Page 28 of Rocky Mountain Cowboy Christmas
Maya started giggling, drawing Camille’s attention away from Steve. All three kids appeared amused, even Micah. Steve gave Maya a look that was probably supposed to be stern, but the effect was ruined by a slightly sheepish smile that tugged on the corners of his mouth.
“Behave,” he grumbled, heading for the entryway. With a shake of his head, Joe followed. As soon as the kids heard the front door close behind them, all three started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Camille asked, puzzled. The sound of their amusement was contagious, and she found herself smiling, even though she still didn’t know what was going on.
“Dad,” Zoe said, although it wasn’t really an answer. “You, too, a little bit, but mostly Dad.”
“Me? What’d I do?” she asked, but the kids just waved her off as they got control of their giggles.
“C’mon,” Micah said, his face settling into its usual serious lines as he headed into the living room.
When she realized she wasn’t getting an answer out of Zoe or Maya, Camille gave up on trying to understand and followed Micah upstairs to his room.
“You and Will share?” she asked, noticing that the setup—two beds and two desks—was similar to the girls’ room. Micah gave an absent nod as he dug through a stack of notebooks and loose paper piled on his desk. “How do you like that? I’m an only child, so the only time I shared a room was for one semester at college, and that was horrific.” When Micah paused his search to give her a surprised look, she waved a hand, dismissing her words.
“I’m sure that was only because my roommate wasn’t the most…considerate or hygienic of people, so don’t take that as me saying that no one should go to college. Plus, I was really homesick the whole time, and my grandma wasn’t doing well, so…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m just curious how you like sharing with your brother.”
“It’s fine,” Micah said after a pause, as if checking to see if she was done babbling. She squashed the urge to make a face at herself. It was a little unsettling to realize that all four of Steve’s children were often more mature than she was. “Sometimes he bugs me, but most of the time he’s nice. He’s pretty much always happy, and he doesn’t like to start fights.”
Camille pulled out Will’s desk chair and sat. “That’s good. He does seem really easygoing. It must be nice to have your brother and sisters around, especially after moving. You can take your friends with you.”
“Usually, yeah.” He pulled a sketchbook from the stack and leafed through it. “It’d be nice to be alone once in a while, though. Here.” The drawings must’ve passed muster, because he thrust the sketchbook at her.
“Thanks.” Accepting it, she flipped it open to a drawing of a log cabin in the mountains. As she slowly paged through, she grew more and more impressed. Stopping on a drawing of Steve in his bunker gear, looking soot-stained and weary but satisfied, she resisted the urge to trace the pencil lines of his face. “Wow. Micah, you’re so talented. You really capture the feeling of a moment.” Turning the sketchbook page out so he could see which one she was looking at, she added, “This is like a scene from the end of a battle. I can tell he’s exhausted, but the fire’s out, so the drawing has this sense of weary triumph. Has your dad seen this?”
“Yeah.” Micah’s face was bright red, and he couldn’t seem to stand still, shifting from one foot to the other. Camille had a good idea of how he was feeling. Whenever someone looked at her work, she was torn between bashful pleasure at their praise and the need to rip it out of their hands and hide it from any possibly critical eyes. “He liked it. He keeps offering to have my stuff framed and hang it up downstairs, but I don’t know…” Shrugging, he glowered at his socked feet. “I don’t want everybody to see it.”
“It’s scary, isn’t it? Both times when I brought a new batch of pieces for the store, my stomach was a twisted-up mess.” She finally flipped the page and laughed at a sketch of Maya’s pony, a roguish expression in his eye, trotting along in full tack but without a rider. “This is right after he dumped Maya, isn’t it?”
Moving next to her so he could see the sketchbook too, Micah gave an amused huff. “It was Zoey, but yeah. We all had to ride Q when we were first learning. He taught us how to stay on.”
“I’ll bet,” Camille said dryly, flipping to another sketch, this one a woman that Camille didn’t know, although she looked a bit familiar. She glanced at Micah, intending to ask, but his expression, combined with how the set of his mouth resembled the woman in the sketch, told her who this was. “Your mom?”
“Yeah.” Tearing his gaze away from the drawing, he studied his feet again. “I did that off a photo, since my memory’s getting…” He waved a hand, as if to dismiss his words, but it only gave them greater weight. “She’s getting blurry around the edges.”
Camille studied the picture. “She was beautiful. Is this Will?” She pointed to the chubby baby his mom was holding in her lap.
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “He was cute…all that dark hair.” As she looked at the woman’s features, she grew curious. Although it was a pencil sketch, it was obvious that the kids’ mom had light-colored hair and eyes. “Was Will adopted, then?” she asked and immediately realized the question was probably rude. “If that’s too nosy, you don’t need to answer. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Micah said. “Everyone in Simpson—where we used to live—knew. It’s just because we’re new here that people gossip about why Will’s browner than the rest of us, but they never ask.”
“That’s because most people aren’t as rude as I am,” Camille said dryly.
Micah gave her a quick smile before returning to a more serious expression. “Will’s dad was a soldier in Iraq. He died before Will was even born, and then Mom and Dad got married when Will was just a baby.”
“Ah.” Camille was itching to ask so many questions, but she managed to keep her mouth shut. It really wasn’t any of her business, and there was something shady about trying to get the details out of a thirteen-year-old. She refocused on the drawing. “Was your mom blond?”
“More of a light red.” He grabbed a framed photo off the bookshelf and brought it over to her. “This is the picture I used to draw from. I’m going to do a painting someday, but I’m not good enough yet. All I do is wreck my drawings.”
“Have you tried pastels?” Camille suggested. “That’d let you play with color, but they feel more like sketching to me, so you might like those more than paint.”
“Not really. Aren’t they just crayons for adults?”
She snorted a laugh. “Sort of, but they’re less waxy.” Leaning over so she could see the picture, she made an admiring sound. “Micah, you did a great job capturing her. Her smile is perfect…so kind. It makes me wish I could’ve known her.”
“Thanks,” he said, the word a bit stiff with discomfort but still obviously sincere. “Her nose is off, though, and I don’t know how to fix it. Right here… See?”
