Page 1 of Christmas Music
CHAPTER1
Connor
“This,” I said, slamming the gate shut on the fifteen cows I’d just managed to wrangle into the pen where they belonged, “is not what I saw myself doing a week out from Christmas this year.”
And that was the God damned truth.
A month ago, I’d thought I’d be doing a Christmas tour right now. Or... Well, I guessed ‘tour’ was being a little bit generous. I thought I’d be playing free shows in the bars that would have me in Nashville. Maybe even Memphis, though Nashville was my preferred venue. I thought I’d be haunting the doorways of places that would let a no-name country artist trying like hell to get up to an At Least Some People Know My Name country artist play as many free shows as he could manage in a weekend.
I’d been in contact with people who had told me that if I did enough shows, I’d be a whole lot higher on their list of up-and-coming artists. I’d been... within a few blocks, at least, of starting on the road that would take me to a recording contract.
I’d been on the verge of something big. I’d felt it in my bones. Known it like I knew my own name. And leaving all of that behind to come home to Arberry for a family emergency? Definitely not part of the plan.
Running the ranch for my parents had been even further down the list.
“And yet here I am,” I told a friendly heifer, who had decided to come back and ask forgiveness—probably because she was the one who’d let the other cows out of the paddock in the first place. She looked smarter than the other ones. No, I didn’t know how, but something about her made her look like she was actually thinking.
Thinking enough to come around and see if I had anything for her, at any rate.
I pushed her nose away from me, paused to wipe my hand down my jeans with a grimace—cows had a way of leaving a sort of residue whenever you touched them—and then turned and headed back toward the house.
I paused, though, at the sight that stretched out before me, awestruck once more at the idea that this...
This all belonged to us.
The ranch was freaking gorgeous, and there was no way around that. Especially this early on a crisp winter morning, when the mist was just starting to rise from the ground, floating up into the first rays of the sun as they peeked over the horizon. Wheating Ranch sat up against the hills on one side, but on the other side...
On the other side lay the valley, so that when you stood here in the space right in front of the house, it felt a whole lot like you were God, looking out over the earth.
I snorted at the thought, shaking my head.
“A week back in the country and you’re already losing your mind,” I muttered to myself.
Still. The view was gorgeous. No amount of losing my mind could change that. The ranch stretched across this valley, from the hills to the creek in the distance, all of it divided into large pastures for the horses and cows. Here and there, my father had set aside a plot for crops, but that wasn’t where the ranch made its money.
No, we made money from the cows, and the horses that my dad had started breeding when he was young. The place had a thriving economy to it, too, with new herds coming in every year for fattening up before my dad’s contacts came to pick them up in the fall. The horses? Well, they were the cherry on top. Dad had practically founded an entire breed on his own with his careful selections, and there were cowboys on the rodeo circuit that would only ride horses that Caleb Wheating had bred.
Of course, that was before. All that money and success and fame?
That was before.
These days, Dad was lucky if he managed to get out of bed on his own, and the only way he made it out to see his prized horses was if Mom managed to get him into the four-wheeled monster they called a golf cart for a field trip.
I closed my eyes on the sunshine and mist and lush green grass of the ranch and bit my lip, trying—again—to come to terms with the man my father had become.
When I was a kid, growing up by myself on the ranch with nothing to do but follow my father around and get in his way, the old man had been a god to me. A god and a cowboy and a freaking idol all rolled into one. He’d been everywhere, doing everything and fixing any problem anyone had. Hell, I’d never seen him admit defeat at anything, I didn’t think.
And when I was young, I’d thought he’d be that way forever. I hadn’t imagined any enemy that could come for my dad—at least not successfully. I’d thought he was timeless. Immortal, even.
Then cancer had entered the picture and changed everything.
I opened my eyes, glanced over the view once more, taking it in and trying to memorize it, and then turned and headed for the ranch house, my thoughts pulling away from the ranch itself and heading into the kitchen toward breakfast.
God, I hoped my dad was feeling well enough to get up and eat with us this morning.
I was the man of this ranch, now, since my mom had called me home to help. But I wasn’t sure I was man enough to have to take my dad breakfast in bed one more time. I wasn’t a little boy anymore, and I no longer thought he was immortal. But seeing him so weak and fragile...
Well, I hoped he was strong enough to get up and eat with us in the kitchen, today. That was all.
