Page 13 of Cowboy's Christmas Wife

Then, she grabbed Daryl’s hand and pulled him along, head held high just like she wanted when she walked into the courtroom. “You were amazing,” Daryl whispered to her as they went. Pride coursed through her, and she squeezed the hand that she was holding.

Once they got out of the courthouse, Laura almost let go of his hand, but the judge’s words echoed in her head. For the time up until the hearing, they had to make sure to make everyone believe that they were madly in love. She looked around. There were some people milling around, but Clark had stormed off towards the parking lot with his overpriced lawyer. “We should talk about what all of this means,” she told him.

Daryl kept their fingers laced together. “Sure,” he said. “We’ll need to make all of this look believable, right? When the hearing rolls around, we don’t want the judge to have any reason to think we got married out of any reason other than love.”

Laura nodded. “We’ll have to tell your family what’s going on so that they can be in on the act, too,” she said. “I hate putting them in the position of having to lie for us if anyone asks, but…”

“They’re going to be fine with it,” Daryl assured her. “You’re helping us out in a big way; they aren’t going to let that prick win.”

Laura’s heart fluttered a little bit, but she shoved away the affection welling up within her.Getting into a real relationship is the last thing I need, she reminded herself. She didn’t need another situation like she had with Clark. It was not that she thought Daryl was anything like her ex-husband. She just didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to have that much power over her again. “Okay,” she said, suppressing her smile, “maybe we should set up some boundaries?”

They reached Daryl’s truck, and Laura watched as he carefully tucked her into her car seat. She couldn’t quite stop herself from checking the straps to make sure they weren’t too loose or too tight before she went around to her side of the truck to climb in. “So, boundaries,” Daryl said as she was buckling her seatbelt. “We’ve already established that holding hands is fine.” Laura nodded, but her heart sped up. She knew where this was going. “What about kissing?”

Though her throat felt like it was going to close in on itself, she managed to croak, “Do you really kiss your girlfriends in public?”

Daryl shrugged. “Not if it makes her uncomfortable…though I’ve been known to push my luck a time or two when a girl just happened to look especially kissable. I’ll try to tone it back if that’s what you’d prefer, but if you’re game for it, then I certainly don’t mind being affectionate.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “You’ll have to take care not to fall in love with me, Laura Jo. I can put onquitea show.”

Laura swallowed as best she could. Why was her mouth suddenly so dry? “Kissing is fine,” she said, “but no making out or anything like that.”

“Damn,” Daryl muttered. “Guess I can’t cover you in hickies then.”

“What?” she yelped, and he laughed, long and from the belly.

“Lord, your face!” He wiped at his eyes, as if he’d teared up.Jerk, she thought, but Laura couldn’t help but notice how good he looked when he laughed. His face relaxed in a way that she hadn’t seen in a long time. “I’m kidding, Laura Jo. Hickies went out in high school.”

“I’ve never had one,” she said, “so I’ll take your word for it.”

Daryl looked shocked, but he did his best to school his expression when he seemed to realize that she wasn’t kidding. “Seems like you missed out.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. Her grandfather didn’t like her dating much; she hadn’t had a proper boyfriend until college, and that had only lasted a short while. Then, she met Clark. “Act like a couple in public, hold hands, PG kissing,” she said. “Anything else?”

Daryl reached across and touched her knee. It was a brief, comforting gesture that speared heat through her. “We’re going to be fine, Laura Jo. This whole town will believe we’re the picture of matrimonial bliss. I guarantee it.”

EIGHT

Daryl stared at the laptop screen in front of him.I am screwed, he thought. “You’re not ever allowed to leave,” he said, panicked. “I won’t be able to manage when you go.”

From beside him, Laura giggled. “It’s a website, Daryl; it’s not scary,” she said, scrolling down the new webpage she’d put together for Rivers Leather Goods again, making sure that everything was as it should be before the page went live. She seemed so relaxed, like it was no big deal, but it all looked like magic to him. He begrudgingly had a Facebook account because Georgina insisted, but he wasn’t the type to sit on his phone all day, wasting time on the Internet.

He harrumphed. “Says you.”

True to her word, after the hearing Laura had started helping him with his leatherworking business. She asked to see his website, any marketing he had, his orders, and he had been embarrassed to admit that he had nothing to give her outside of a few emails with clients. She had been horrified when she learned that he basically took orders over the phone. He could still hear her:Daryl, you are not the bakery at Walmart; this is not a call-in an order for pickup operation!It had made him laugh at the time, but it had stuck with him.

Today, she had spent the day building the site, and it certainly was a masterpiece. Not only did it look fantastic, but it was going to keep him organized. She had made it so that it would automatically send him a spreadsheet every day with his current slate of orders. As he accepted new orders, it would add the agreed upon due dates to his calendar with scheduled reminders. Invoices would be created and sent automatically, and the system would even follow up with late-payment notifications.Now, if only I could figure out how to make any of that work, he thought. Laura made it sound easy to do, but whenever he touched the keyboard, he was all thumbs.

“I never thought of any of this,” he muttered, mostly to himself, but Laura’s soft hand on his let him know that she heard him. Daryl had to be some kind of moron to start a business without any kind of plan. No wonder it was failing!The bank ought to take the ranch away before I run that into the ground too.

“Stop berating yourself,” Laura told him, leaning into his side. “I can’t have you beating up on my husband that way.”

Her words made his heart start thumping.Cut it out, he told himself. He’d teased her about not falling in love with him, but really, the words had been a warning to himself. He knew how he felt about Laura, how drawn to her he’d always been even when they were just kids playing together at school, and he’d agreed to this arrangement anyway, but it would be so easy to fall in love with her. Any time she used the wordhusband, it got his heart…and other things going, and it wasn’t his place to feel that way. “I’m allowed when I’m him,” he countered.

Laura nudged him and went back to her scrolling. After a moment of quiet, she said, “I am a little baffled by all of this.” She turned, and her green eyes locked onto him. “Why didn’t you ask for help before?”

“Didn’t think of it,” he replied with a shrug. “I figured that I knew what I was doing when it came to the leatherwork, so as long as I was able to get customers, I believed everything would work itself out in the end. But then I just ended up drowning in projects and half-collected invoices.” Self-doubt ate at him. He’d dove into the business stupidly believing that he could just wing it. Never really thinking it through, just going with his gut. Just like he did everything else in his life. He pointed at the laptop’s screen. “This is amazing, though. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

Laura blushed a little. It looked pretty, just a brushing of color over the apples of her cheeks. “I’ve built a few websites in my day,” she said. “Clark’s firm was big into a yearly charity event, and I always took point on advertising and getting the message out.” She smiled, and it was dazzling. “Somewhere there’s a March of Dimes website that is my magnum opus.”

“Pride looks good on you, Laura Jo,” he told her.

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