Page 24 of Cowboy's Christmas Wife

She shivered against him, and he realized that he’d been playing his fingers up and down her arm. He drew back a little. “Sorry,” he murmured.

Laura shook her head. “Don’t be.”

He wanted clarity: did she mean it was no big deal, or that she liked it? But they were at Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded by his family. Now was clearly not the time to investigate where she might enjoy his touch. Daryl did his best to turn back into the conversation at hand. “The first Thanksgiving we had on our own,” Georgina told Laura, “I burned the turkey so badly that it was unrecognizable.”

Laura tried to hide her laughter, but it was obvious behind her hand. “That’s awful,” she said.

Georgina shook her head. “At the time, I was devastated. I’d wanted to do it up right because Mom and Dad were both gone, and I felt like I needed to step into that role, sort of, but looking back, I am so glad that happened.”

“Why?” Laura was genuinely curious now.

“We laughed that whole night,” Daryl said, grinning at his sister. “When Georgina says she burned the turkey, she’s putting it mildly. It was a briquette. The whole house stunk like charred bird for days.”

“I’ve always thought of that as one of my favorite Thanksgivings,” Kyle added. “The group of us forging our own way forward.”

Georgina looked like she was going to cry for a second before she reached out and smacked him. “You just like the burgers at the diner and were glad to have the excuse to eat there for the sixth time that week.”

Kyle smirked. “Well, when you put it that way—” They all laughed again. “What about you, Laura? What’s your favorite Thanksgiving?”

“You mean, outside of this one?” she countered, and Kyle nodded with a fond smile. “It was probably one of the last that I had solely with my grandfather,” she said. “He wasn’t a stickler for tradition and usually let me choose what we were going to eat. The year before I met Clark, I came home from college, and he had ordered this big to-do dinner for us.”

Georgina sighed. “That’s really sweet.”

Laura snorted. “It would have been,” she said, “but the food arrived cold and inedible, so my grandfather was hopping mad. He shouted at this poor kid who was answering phones for the catering company that evening; I’m pretty sure he’s still traumatized to this day because of that call.”

“This is your favorite Thanksgiving?” Daryl asked incredulously.What the hell kind of holidays did she have growing up?

Laura shushed him. “I’m getting there,” she said. “My grandfather had wanted to surprise me, you see, and take care of things himself instead of just having the housekeeper deal with things. He knew that it mattered to me to have Thanksgiving be about family. For all of his faults, he did care for me truly.” She paused as guilt rose in her stomach. Ever since the divorce, she hadn’t thought of her grandfather in the kindest of terms. His stupid terms for the trust had made her life a living hell. But he had loved her in his own way, and he had been proud of her accomplishments in school. “We ended up at this little Chinese place by our house in Denver; we probably ate there hundreds of times over the years. He kept trying to apologize to me, and I told him that it didn’t matter what we ate or where on Thanksgiving, so long as we were together. Then, we split an order of dumplings and Mongolian beef.”

Daryl stared at her a moment, still a little confused as to why that was her favorite memory, but it would be rude to ask for clarity, right? “I didn’t know you and your grandfather got along,” he said instead.

She ducked her head, and he saw the flash of pain naked on her face. “There’s a lot that he did that I didn’t and don’t agree with,” she admitted, “but he wasn’t an evil man. He just had very old-fashioned beliefs.”

Daryl bit his tongue to keep his thoughts to himself, but his sister, it seemed, had no trouble saying what came to her mind. “You can say that you loved him, but that he was an asshole,” she told Laura. “Both things can be true.”

Laura looked surprised for a moment, but then a smile broke out on her face that made his chest tight. “You’re right,” she said. “I loved him, but God, he was an asshole.” Everyone laughed, and that tightness in his chest squeezed harder for a moment before it relaxed. He sent up a silent thanks that his family had welcomed Laura in so warmly and readily. He’d always loved his family, but tonight, he’d never felt more grateful for them.

FOURTEEN

Laura had shooed Georgina and her family out before cleanup commenced. She could handle some dishes, she’d insisted. But then, she gave Lily a bath and got her settled for the night, and when she walked back out to the kitchen, she saw that the dishes had already been washed. All that was left was to dry and put away. Daryl, who was at the sink, turned and smiled as she came into the room. “You didn’t have to clean up,” she said.

He shrugged. “The football game was already over anyway.” He held up a wet plate. “Want to help me dry and put them away?”

“Sure,” she said, realizing as she moved beside him that they were alone. Kyle must have gone to bed. She shivered.

“You dry, I’ll put away?” he asked, and she nodded. They stood side-by-side, occasionally bumping into one another, and finished up the dishes. She delicately dried each plate, and Daryl would put it back into the china cabinet. She was handing him one of the last plates, and it slipped from her wet fingers. She gasped as the plate slid out of her grasp, but Daryl reached out and caught it, plucked it from the air like it was nothing.

“I’m so sorry!” she cried, tears springing to her eyes.Those are his mother’s plates, she thought dismally.Georgina spent how long telling me how special those plates are? How could I be so careless?

Daryl set the plate down. “Laura Jo, it’s fine—I caught it. It’s not even chipped. But it could have broken into a dozen pieces, and I still wouldn’t be mad at you. It’s a plate.” He reached out and brushed a tear trailing down her cheek. “It’s just a plate.”

“They were your mom’s.”

He nodded. “They were, yeah,” he said. “Do you want to know how many we’ve broken over the years? We started out with two dozen plates, and we’re down to ten.” She felt the feather-light touch of his thumb over her cheek again. “Accidents happen.”

If he keeps touching me, I’m going to be in trouble, she thought, but oh, what a way to go. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, and they both knew she wasn’t talking about the plates anymore. Or, at least, not entirely about the plates.

“Getting hurt is a natural part of life,” he said. “I think we can both attest to that.” That they could too. They’d both lost a lot over the years. “But the risk of being hurt can’t stop you from living, can it?”

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