The Wrangler’s Christmas Gift (The Malones of Grand, Montana #4)

Chapter Six

“W ell, that was awkward,” Em muttered as they took their seats.

“No shit.” He took a gulp of beer. “You dropped my hand like it was on fire.”

“You just kissed her, like everything’s fine.”

“Hey! I greeted an old friend. You looked loaded for bear and I figured I’d be a good distraction from whatever you thought you were doing.”

“I wasn’t doing anything but saying hi! Then I’d have come back here, you and I could have had a quiet drink while I filled you in on who’s who. But nope, Colt Boone’s got to jump in and announce himself and his plans. As if you hadn’t ghosted her for the last decade.”

“Not a decade.”

“Close enough.”

“I’m here to make up for that.”

She eyed him. “So you say,” she said.

“She invited me,” he said quietly, “to document this first Christmas with her children. It’s a favor for a friend. I wanted to be up-front with them about it.”

It would be intrusive and her children would likely at some point resent his presence or outright object. But that was between Hetty and them.

Emmet snorted. “Out of the goodness of your heart.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care if you believe me. I’m not here for you.”

“Great.”

“Good.”

“Glad we got that out of the way.” Em drank half her beer and got to her feet. “I’m going back my room. Thanks for the beer.”

Before he knew it, she was gone. He scrambled for his wallet but had to wait for the server to bring a machine. By the time he caught up with Emmet, she was about a block down the street.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her arm. “What’s your problem?”

She yanked her arm out of his grasp and whirled on him. “My problem! My problem? You’re the one who shows up after how many years and gives her a kiss like nothing’s happened!”

A chunk of hair blew across her forehead and she flicked it away with one mittened hand. Snowflakes caught in her lashes and the colored twinkle lights overhead reflected in her black eyes.

“Are you mad that I kissed her,” he asked, “or mad that I didn’t kiss you?”

She wound up and before he realized what was happening, he was staggering backward from a solid slug to the shoulder.

“I didn’t let you kiss me,” she said. “Be glad I didn’t aim for your face.”

He rotated his arm. She had skills.

And her words carried a sting, too.

“You used to be nice.”

“I used to be a kid,” she snapped back. “You were a kid too, though you’ve never been nice.”

“Oh?” He couldn’t help but smile. “I think there was at least one time you thought I was nice.”

She flushed and looked away. He’d always suspected she’d had a little crush on him. Maybe he’d even indulged it a bit, giving her some of the candy he swiped from the corner store a few times. She never knew and wouldn’t have accepted it if she had. She’d been something of a goody two-shoes.

He glanced at her feet. No more of that, either.

“What did you expect, Emmet? That I’d just nod to her across the room?”

For a moment, they glared at each other, their breath coming in short, sharp puffs in the cold air.

Then her gaze softened, ever so slightly. “I’m pretty mad at you.”

He nodded, feeling warmth seep into his chest. “You have good reason.”

“You’re a thoughtless jerk.”

“True. But people change.”

“Have you?”

He looked toward the river, tumbling just beyond the long, sloping snow-covered bank beside them. “It’s been five years since we’ve talked, Em. Of course I’ve changed. Haven’t you?”

“It’s been closer to a decade since we’ve had a real conversation, Colt. Kids always change. Some for the better, some for worse. Which one are you?”

He glanced up and down the street, then took her hand. “Come on. The park is pretty. Let’s walk or we’ll both freeze.”

To his relief, she allowed him to tug her through the crosswalk and onto the snowy pathway. He hated to let this girl, who’d once more or less worshipped him, think the worst of him.

“You always did like horses,” she said. “I guess you learned to ride?”

His mother had been a fan of cowboy romances and had named him optimistically, given that she had neither the means nor the opportunity to expose him to anything more than the petting zoo on discount days.

“I did,” he said.

“Huh,” she replied. “Good. You’re not a total faker anymore, then.”

“Not totally,” he agreed.

They were edging from anger into banter, which was a good sign.

After a few minutes of walking silently, Em asked, with obvious reluctance, “You like being in show business?”

“It’s not the glamorous life you’re probably imagining. I’m strictly behind the scenes. Behind the camera, maybe. If I’m lucky.”

“Are you any good?”

“As a wrangler? Yes, I am.”

He hated that it sounded as if he was trying to earn her good opinion. Which he was…but he didn’t want her to know.

She turned, her brows lifted. “Oh, yeah?”

“I’m good with animals. It’s important to me that they’re well taken care of while working with us. I make sure the crew follows all the rules so we don’t get protesters outside our gates. I get them back to their homes when filming is done.”

“Just horses?” she asked.

“Other animals, too. Dogs, though their owners usually come with them. Livestock like cattle and sheep for distance scenes. Had to manage some reindeer for a Christmas movie once. Goats now and then. They’re easy.”

“Cats?”

A flake of snow went down his collar and he shivered. She still blamed him for what happened to Jasper. “Occasionally. They’re not super manageable. As you know.”

“Hetty’s come when called and do tricks for tuna.”

He sighed. “It sounds like they could have promising careers.”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Maybe I could be their manager. Does it pay well? Mine is a small community college. I could use a side gig.”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” he said. “How about you? Are you good at what you do?”

She hesitated. “I believe in it. That’s half the battle, right? Studying the systems that maintain injustice, the history underpinning it, is essential if we want to change things for future generations.”

Like him, Em had learned early that life wasn’t fair. Now she was a warrior. He had to admire that.

She turned to look up at him. “What?”

Against the black sky, her dark eyes reflected the moonlight, making her look mysterious and otherworldly.

“Don’t read too much into this,” he began, returning her gaze, “but I’d say that somewhere along the way, little Emmy Garcia got over her fear of the boogeyman and began wielding her own powers.”

“Wow.” She blinked and ducked her head. “I’m mostly a keyboard warrior these days, but…thanks.”

Something in his chest expanded with her quiet appreciation. It felt good to make Em feel good. “You have a fierceness now that you didn’t have when I knew you before. I’m glad to see it.”

They walked in silence for a few steps. Em would understand, if he told her the truth. Wouldn’t she?

Then Em said, “I got it from my mom. And Hetty, too. She’s always been such a fighter—underground and quiet—but she has done so much for so many, been so incredibly fierce and unrelenting. I hope she doesn’t lose that, now that she’s found her children. I hope she doesn’t feel she has to make up for their lives, or something. Their lives seem pretty fine to me.”

He thought about the surprised faces that had turned to him at the table, circling their wagons, as it were, around the woman at the center of them all. Hetty’s children, all of them, in one way or another.

“I could tell they were related,” he said. “Same line between their eyebrows. What else should I know about the triplets?”

Emmet sighed heavily. “They discovered each other through DNA tests. None of them knew about each other. They’d all been adopted into separate families. Closed adoptions but once they discovered each other, they started searching for her and their father. Someone had gone to some trouble to make that difficult, and then Hetty did even more to hide her past.” She paused to shake her head. “Nobody had any idea she was keeping such enormous secrets.”

Em stopped at a picnic table, swiped the snow off the bench and sank onto it. He did the same and sat opposite her.

“How are you doing with it all, Em?”

“Fine.” She nodded. “I’m fine. Happy for her.”

“Oh, right, me too,” he said, gently. “But I mean…come on, Em. This can’t be easy for you.”

Em had already lost too much in one lifetime. She’d never bear losing Hetty, even to happiness.

Tears shone in her eyes and she looked away. “I love her, Colt. She’s the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever known. How could someone like that do what she did? First, she had the triplets. Then, after they were adopted out of her life, she got married and had Diana. Then she left them and started a new life. How does that happen?”

She lifted anguished eyes to his and for the first time since seeing her again in Lou’s Pub, he caught a glimpse of the scared little girl she’d once been.

“She saved me and my mom, Colt. How could someone who did so much for so many kids, have done this to her own kids? I don’t understand it. I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me.”

He reached across the cold concrete and covered her mittened hand. “She saved me, too, Em.”

“So, explain it then, will you? How could any of this possibly make sense?”

He hesitated, not wanting to betray anyone, not even sure who he was protecting anymore. “Everyone has stuff,” he said. “Things that drive us. Everyone does things they wish they could undo. Few of us get that chance. But I think we need to give her the benefit of the doubt, don’t you?”

She sniffed and pulled her hand away. “Look at you, all grown up and giving advice.”

“Well,” he said. “I’ve certainly done my share of stuff I wish I could undo. You haven’t?”

“Not like that.” Then she met his eyes. “What stuff are you talking about?”

He looked down past the trees toward the riverbank and the black water rushing beneath them, wondered what secrets lay beneath the frigid sparkles.

“When the time is right, little sparrow,” he said, Hetty’s old nickname for Em coming to mind again.

She swallowed. “Right. Of course you’re not going to actually share anything meaningful.”

“Hey, I shared, didn’t I?”

“Oh, sure, about your career. You got totally vulnerable. I feel like we connected on a soul level.”

He met her implacable gaze evenly. “You’re still upset about Tammy.”

She flushed and looked away. “Of course not. She put out. What high school guy would turn that down?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like, Colt? You stole my best friend, and then you both ditched me.” She gave a little forced laugh. “But hey, it was a long time ago. She wasn’t that great a friend anyway.”

“You’re wrong about Tammy.” He looked toward the river again. “But I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and Hetty about us getting married.”

“At least you got out before you had kids to screw up,” Em said. “That was smart.”

“Yeah.”

He’d been hoping to heal old wounds with Tammy, to save her, maybe even hoping she could fill the void in his life and help him become real, mature, a responsible adult. In fact, he’d needed to become a real, mature, responsible adult before getting married.

Twenty-twenty hindsight and all that.

He glanced sideways at Em. “You ever come close?”

“To marriage? No.” Now it was her turn to look away into the night. “You nailed it earlier. Too young, too smart, too bitchy.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s not wrong. I get so tired of convincing people that what I teach is relevant for everyone, not just feminists. Or rather, that everyone who cares about humanity should care about marginalized demographics.” She gave a light, embarrassed laugh. “You see? Anyway, I’m too busy reading and marking papers to have a love life. Nothing I’ve just said works into a scintillating Tinder profile.”

He laughed. “You don’t need online dating, Em. Look at you.”

She gave him a quick once-over. “Well, look at you, saying nice things to me and all. What’s wrong? You lonely? Looking for an ally?”

“Would you be up for the job?”

Once upon a time, they’d been co-survivors both struggling to keep their heads above water. Kids, dumb, naive and too worldly wise at the same time. What did they know of friendship? There was no time for friendship in his world. Probably not hers, either.

Em huffed. “Listen, Boone, I’m not thrilled with any of this. But it’s Christmas and I want to have at least some semblance of a holiday with Hetty. Since you’re here, you might as well be part of that. But you have to promise me you won’t ruin things for her.” She glared at him.

“I already promised.” He held out his hand. “Now you promise me something.”

“What?”

“That you’ll cut me some slack? That you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt? That you’ll try to see the boy you once liked, instead of the man you don’t trust?” He tapped his chest. “He’s still in here, Em.”

She took his hand. “Is he?”

He slid the edge of her glove away from her skin, lifted the hand to his mouth and kissed her on the wrist. “He’s there. I promise.”

*

The next morning in the coffee shop, Em looked across the table at Hetty, who was about to head off for a wedding decor session with Leila and Kendall.

“How can I help?”

“You?” Hetty inquired, a teasing look in her eye. “What assistance might you provide? Reminding them how marriage is an ancient tradition based on using women as chattel?”

“I was thinking flowers,” she deadpanned. “But your idea is good, too.”

Hetty stacked her mug onto her plate. “Kendall asked us specifically for our professional advice on the color scheme. The famous Mel Brezo could hardly decline.”

Us referred to her and Leila, the artists. Not exactly something Em could contribute to. She was lucky if her socks matched. Was Diana, Hetty’s other “real” daughter, also artistic? Or if not, did she feel just as left out as Em did at this moment?

Hetty sure had leaped at the opportunity to be more involved in the preparations for the big day. Em wondered if she’d noticed that the invitations were coming from Kendall, rather than Brade.

“I heard that Sawyer could use a hand, though,” Hetty said. “Since that’s where Colt is staying, I figured the two of you could find out what they need.”

Leila’s husband managed the ranch that Lucas’s partner Bayleigh Sutherland owned. Em couldn’t imagine how she might be useful on a ranch.

“Unless someone out there needs a lecture on gender politics,” she said, “this feels like you’re trying to get rid of me.”

“Last night’s introduction was awkward,” Hetty admitted. “Think of this as a redo. Go. Be nice. Be helpful. Smile.”

“Now you’re just goading me.”

Hetty grinned evilly. They were in full agreement on the appropriate reaction to the suggestion that a woman hide her irritation with a smile, and it involved words not suitable in public spaces.

“I was tired.” She heaved a sigh. Penance. She was being punished. This was Colt’s fault. “They better not want me to muck out stalls.”

“I think it’s something to do with a Christmas festival.” She got to her feet and touched Em’s shoulder lightly. “Remember, I love you. Okay?”

Em’s chest tightened. “Yeah. Me too.”

Hetty was a hard person to stay mad at. Right now, she was being pulled in a dozen different directions, by people she cared about, who she wanted to make happy, most of whom had good reason to resent her. She was trying her best to do right by all of them. Em knew this.

But she couldn’t help but wish for the quiet Christmases of years past, when it was just her and Jolene and Hetty, and maybe whichever kids happened to be around.

And Colt, if he was there.

No conflict. Everyone aware of where they fit into the ecosystem of Hetty’s heart. A band of misfits, with nowhere else to be and no one else who loved them.

Here, there was an overflow of family, with everyone with ties to everyone else.

Except her.

Em’s ties were to Hetty. These people weren’t her family.

But they were Hetty’s family.

She sighed, tipped the last of her coffee into her mouth and wiped her lips on a paper napkin.

She paid the bill, went to her car and cranked the heater to high. While she was waiting for it to warm up she called Colt.

“I’m headed your way,” she asked. “Do you know what our assignment is?”

“I sure do.”

His voice had the gravel roughness of just waking up and it made something turn over low in her belly. Was he still in bed?

“Well?”

“What are you wearing?”

Those words, in that voice, turned her knees to jelly. His mouth…the lips that had so lightly touched her wrist last night.

Then she rallied. Who was he to flirt with her?

“Can you be serious for one second, please? Is that too much to ask?”

“Hey, relax, Em. It’s a ranch. I just wanted to make sure you’re dressed appropriately.”

She heard amusement in his voice. He was teasing. Like they’d always teased. It was nothing. It meant nothing.

She glanced at her jeans and boots.

“If shoveling shit is involved,” she said with a sigh, “I’m ready.”