Page 3 of The Cowboy's Christmas
Her taciturn uncle, who’d raised four rowdy sons, had turned into a mother hen since Sophie and Jessa had arrived. It had to be all the beard patting. The girls loved his whiskers. Also, Deke’s boys had turned out a touch wild, so she could see where he might have some reservations about his parenting skills. In her opinion it was more a case of the apple not falling far from the tree than parenting, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“We’ll get a chopper in,” she said.
“In this wind?” he asked in a touché voice. Savannah let out an irritated breath and he continued. “If it was only you and me, then I’d wait.”
“No. You’d still go.” Sometimes he was a total mother hen with her, too.
Deke shifted his gaze sideways. “Right. I’m going.”
He stopped at the door, glancing over his shoulder, and his expression softened, as if he knew that she was thinking of Matt.
“I’ll be back,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I wish you wouldn’t go.”
They were equally stubborn, which sometimes made ranch life difficult, but when they couldn’t find a middle ground, Deke bowed to her—making no secret of the fact that it was only because her name was on the deed, which was his way of saving face. Unfortunately, heading to town in an ice storm wasn’t affected by names on deeds.
“And I wish the ram hadn’t busted. But things are what they are.” He gave her a nod and stepped out the door into the wind, then poked his head back in. “Do you need anything at the store?”
Savannah went to the fridge and pulled off the list, then crossed the room to hand it to him. “Only if a blizzard isn’t breathing down your back. Nothing is essential. And text me when you get there.”
Deke rolled his eyes, no doubt remembering the good old days when no one knew where he was.
“Do it for me,” she said, knowing that he would.
“I will.”
She went to the door and moved aside the lace curtain covering the window to watch Deke’s truck pull away from the barn, somewhat heartened to see that the snow wasn’t coming down that hard. She could still see the barn, which she couldn’t when the serious storms came through. If the radar was accurate, the storm was moving away from them and only the peripheries would sweep over them. Deke would be fine. Logically she knew that. Emotionally…she was getting there.
Savannah dropped the curtain and crossed the kitchen to the hall where she stepped around her laundry basket as she headed to the guest bedroom to check on the girls. After two months of being a primary caretaker, Savannah was a big believer in letting sleeping children lie, but every now and again she needed to assure herself that all was well—not out of a sense of paranoia or fear, but…just because. Watching them sleep calmed her and right now, with the wind buffeting the house and her uncle heading out onto what had to be icy roads, she could use some calm.
Savannah cracked open the bedroom door, then the corners of her mouth lifted as she saw that the girls were now in one bed even though they’d started out in two. Some things needed to be shared, like beds, and others didn’t, like the best Breyer horse, which was tucked safely into the crook of Sophie’s arm. Savannah wondered if it would remain there if Jessa woke up first.
Sophie took after her mother with dark hair and blue eyes and Jessa after their father with red-brown hair and a smattering of freckles. Their personalities, however, were reversed. Jessa was all about adventure and cutting corners like her mom, while Sophie was the meticulous one, taking after her engineer father.
How her sister had managed to find a cowboy engineer from Montana while serving in the military was beyond Savannah. But she had, and everything had worked out well until they’d been assigned overlapping deployments less than a year from her sister’s planned retirement from her service duties.
That had thrown a wrench into their plans, but Savannah offered to take the girls before her sister had asked. She and Sara had been late-in-life babies and there was no way that their parents—happily ensconced in their Arizona retirement community—could take the girls, and Sara’s husband, Rand, had no contact with his family. Things had not been happy in the Westmont household, located in the middle of a wind-scrubbed eastern Montana plain. Rand had left home and never looked back. Savannah and Sara had encountered some bumps in life, but regardless of what happened, what mistakes they made, their parents had been there. When Savannah lost Matt, they’d been there. And when she’d decided to continue running the ranch that she and Matt had purchased less than two years before the accident, they’d been the ones to suggest she consider bringing on Deke as a partner. Insurance had paid off the mortgage, but she couldn’t run the place alone.
She didn’t know how she would have gotten through the days, months and weeks following her husband’s death without family, which made Rand’s situation more poignant to her. But he seemed fine with it. As he’d once told her, no family was better than bad family.
Sophie stirred, then her blue eyes opened. She frowned a little when she saw Savannah through the cracked door. “Aunt Vannie, why are you looking at us?”
Savannah bit her lip to keep from laughing at the accusatory note in her niece’s voice as she moved into the room to crouch next to the girls.
“I was thinking how lucky I am to have you staying here with me.” This may well be as close to motherhood as she ever got, and she was going to treasure every moment with her nieces—even the difficult ones. Like all the Christmas-related ones.
A gust of wind rattled the windows, making her jump. When she looked back at Sophie, the little girl’s eyes were wide.
“Just the wind,” Savannah said nonchalantly. Sophie had a thing about monsters trying to get into the house, while Jessa would have invited them in to find out what they wanted.
“Just the wind,” Sophie repeated solemnly as Jessa stirred beside her. “It’s okay.”
“Right,” Savannah said with a smile. “Do you want to help me get a snack ready while Jessa sleeps?”
“Yes.” Sophie practically sprang out of bed, Breyer horse in hand, waking her sister in the process. Jessa sat up and pushed hair out of her eyes, checking to see who had the horse. She scowled when she saw that Sophie maintained ownership, then followed her sister out of bed.
“Oreos?” she asked sleepily, leaning her head against Savannah as she yawned.
Savannah’s heart did a funny flip-flop as she stroked her niece’s hair. “Fresh brownies.”
The girls’ faces brightened, and Savannah jerked her head toward the door. “Go wash your hands and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
The girls raced to the bathroom and Savannah heard the sound of the small step stool being pushed in front of the sink as she headed into the kitchen. The wind hit the house with a mighty blast as she passed the refrigerator, and she gave an involuntary shiver before pulling her phone out of her pocket and firing off a text, which would deliver when her uncle hit the service area at the bottom of their mile-long driveway. She wanted Deke to skip the grocery store and head home as soon as he picked up the tractor part. Logic and the radar map told her that he’d be fine. The storm would probably be long gone before he started back home.
But she still had a bad feeling.
