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

Chapter Nineteen

E mmet trudged through the snow toward the boardwalk. Boxing Day always felt a little anticlimactic to her. Gifts had been exchanged, turkey and pie eaten, parties and get-togethers were mostly finished but it was too early to take down the decorations, even though they’d started looking a little shopworn after all the festivities.

Here, in the unfamiliar world of Grand, however, Christmas remained as beautiful as ever, especially outdoors. The sun, which had never really been up today, had already disappeared and fresh snow was falling. The evergreens overlooking the river were layered white and green, graceful as swans, and hers were the first prints on the walking trail winding through them. Someone had built a family of snow people, two larger ones and two smaller ones. The classic perfect family.

All she wanted was to get back to Chinook, to her apartment, to her job, her students, to normal, everyday life that wasn’t dramatic or confusing or disappointing.

Diwali usually occurred in October or November and those five days were, to her, the true kick-off to the season. By Chinese New Year in January, she’d be home, delivering lectures, grading papers, watching her students make plans for the rest of their lives, while her own life settled back into the same old routine. As much as she craved that routine, she recognized a growing restlessness. Even the project on holiday diversity that had seemed so promising a few weeks ago now felt stale and flat. She wanted something with meat, something she could get her teeth into. Something that would make a difference.

Something that would distract her from the loneliness she feared the New Year would bring.

Hetty might return to Chinook for now, but her heart was clearly in Grand. Em told herself she didn’t need Hetty…but the discovery of this new family was lifting a corner of the gaping hole left by Jolene’s death, forcing Em to look at her own losses.

She tossed her head. “Enough, Em. Enjoy what you’ve got in front of you.”

Despite her misgivings about Hetty’s family, Christmas in Grand was lovely. Tonight, the huge tree lit up the dark, sending multi-colored sparkles over the nearby buildings, coloring the drifting flakes green and blue and red and silver. Christmas carols sounded faintly from Lou’s Pub or maybe the brewery, the music muffled by the falling snow. She felt like she was inside a snow globe that had been gently shaken. A magical, unreal place. A dream.

No. This was someone else’s dream. She was standing outside the snow globe, looking in, wishing she could, for once in her life, feel like she was truly home.

She ached for Hetty, on the cusp of so much, while being slapped in the face with all she’d missed. Her smile had a quality to it now that Em had never seen before. She knew the welcoming smile, the empathetic smile, the I’m-proud-of-you grin and that soft, misty expression she wore when she was deep in a painting. She’d seen the challenging teeth-bared snarl of a woman determined to protect those she loved at any cost. She knew, to her regret, the faint half-smile of forgiveness and disappointment.

But this tremulous expression of disbelief mixed with fear masquerading as gratitude was something she’d never seen on Hetty before. She could see the girl in love that Hetty had once been, before life had beaten her down, and she’d gotten herself back up again, stronger than ever.

Heather Hudson Scott Malone was not a woman to indulge in self-pity, but instead, she’d put that sliver of her soul on ice and saved all her warmth for others.

Em shivered as a gust of wind tugged at her coat, and she pulled it tighter around her neck. Could Father Joseph Patrick Malone Keane melt that sliver of ice? Would he handle her wounded heart with the care it deserved? Would Hetty allow herself to trust him again?

Em hoped the JP Malone Hetty had loved long ago was still inside Father Patrick, that she wasn’t about to be hurt again. She wanted Hetty to be happy. If anyone on the planet deserved love, it was this woman who’d given so much to so many, at such a cost.

Did Em deserve that kind of love, too? Did anyone? Or was love a crap shoot: maybe you find someone, maybe you don’t. Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe stuff happens and the love of your life is ripped from your arms. Maybe you’re a flawed human being who makes mistakes and hurts the ones who make your life worth living, and then you can’t find your way back to undoing the mistakes.

Was she thinking about herself? Or Colt?

Was it love she felt for him? Or was it just the fond memories of the little girl he’d called Sparrow, after he held her against the terrors of the darkness?

Colt didn’t love her, at least not that way. Tammy, sure. But Em? No.

“Hey.”

She jumped at the voice behind her.

Shoot.

“The weather’s turning. You should go inside.” Colt stepped away from the lamppost he’d been leaning against. “Are you crying?”

She swiped a mittened hand against her cheek. “It’s snowflakes. What are you doing here?”

His eyes were dark, his expression unreadable in the low light. Then again, he’d always been something of a mystery, hadn’t he? Whatever she’d once thought she’d known about him had been mostly the yearnings of a lonely girl who needed a hero.

“Looking for you. The front desk clerk said you went this way. Everything okay?”

She shoved her hands into her pockets and walked past him. “Great. Needed some exercise after all the turkey.”

She wasn’t in the mood for small talk. She didn’t have her armor engaged enough right now to be safe around him. If he said too much, she was likely to cry for real and that wouldn’t do.

He fell into step beside her. “Good idea.”

He kept enough distance on the sidewalk that their shoulders didn’t touch. Good thing, because she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to keep from leaning against that broad chest and pretending he was the Colt she remembered.

“So, you’re okay with Hetty’s kids now, I take it?” he asked eventually.

It was a simple question, but there was a tentative tone in his voice, as if he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask. Or he feared he held an opinion that might not be allowed.

“Sure,” she said. “You?”

“They’re good people,” he replied. “She seems happy and that’s all that matters.”

She cut a quick glance at him but his head was down and she couldn’t read his face.

“What about Father Patrick?” she asked. “Or JP, I guess.”

His boot scuffed a clump of snow. “Mack confirmed his story. Again, it’s Hetty’s life. All the pieces of her past are coming together now.”

When they reached the bench, Em swiped the snow off and sat down. The cold bit into her legs and she shivered.

Colt stood a few steps away, as if unsure whether he should join her.

“Can I sit with you, Em?”

His shoulders were hunched against the chill. He was a well-built man, but right now, he had the air of a teenager.

Did he feel displaced, too? Was he itching to get back to his glamorous life and forget about the people who reminded him of a time in his life that he’d rather forget?

She wiped off another section of bench for him. “Sure.”

Tension hummed between them, words unsaid. Finally, she had enough. If you couldn’t tell the truth at Christmas, when could you? Without turning to look at him, she began talking.

“I’ve got a good life. I love my work, my students, the faculty. I’m making a difference in the world.” She shook her head, unable to find the right words to express herself, not sure the right words existed. “I understand now what drives Hetty to do the work she does, the ghosts she’s been living with. And I’m so glad—I really am—that she’s found the family she lost so long ago.”

He put his arm over her shoulder and she let him. “So why am I so sad right now, Colt? It’s Christmas. I should be celebrating the love she’s found. Instead, I’m mourning the fact that Hetty finding her family means me losing the closest thing to family that I’ve got left. I’m trying, every day, to be worthy of her, but it’s not enough. She’s got her real kids now.” She swallowed. “I want to be a better person but it seems I’m still that terrified nine-year-old girl, or that sad, lonely fourteen- year-old girl. Or that eighteen-year-old watching her two best friends cut her out.”

“Em—”

“No.” She was crying now and still hadn’t said what she wanted to. “Do you know that I thought I was in love with you? We had something, the two of us. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t for very long, but somehow, you got into my heart and no matter how I tried, I’ve never found another…friend…like you.”

He started to speak.

“No, Colt. Don’t.” Whatever he was going to say, it wouldn’t be what she needed. She stood up, paced a few steps, knocked the snow off her boots against a tree. It was the one with the carving in it and she reached up and cleared the snow from the letters. LM+ AM.

“I wonder if they got their happily ever after,” Em said.

“Depends on your definition, I guess.” Colt nodded toward the initials. “Lou Monahan carved that the year Angela died. On their anniversary. Leila told me. They were it for each other.”

Her heart clenched. “Then they got happily for now. What if that’s the best anyone can hope for? What’s wrong with that, anyway? Nobody gets out of life alive. What’s wrong with taking joy where we find it, for however long we have it? That’s what Hetty did, back then. Maybe she and JP will have another spell of happy for now. I hope so.”

“I’m so sorry for hurting you, Em.” Colt braced his forearms against his thighs and hung his head. “I never wanted that.”

She inhaled and the cold air clipped her lungs.

“One childhood kiss kept me warm for a lot of years, Colt.” Her words shook. “Then you changed. Tammy was part of it, but it wasn’t just Tammy. You left us. You left me . I became invisible to you. And I still don’t know why.”

“Em.” His voice was raspy. “I’ve made so many mistakes in my life.”

Now or never, she thought. “Colt, what happened that night? I could never figure it out. You said she wasn’t your girlfriend. Then, you ended up marrying her. And now you’re divorced. I don’t get it. I lost my two best friends, and then—”

Sometimes she still imagined her poor old Jasper curled up in the cupboard, thirsty, bleeding, scared, alone. It was easier to focus her anger on Colt for that neglect, because honestly, how could he have let that happen? He knew what that cat had meant to her. But hadn’t he also known what he’d meant to her? How much choosing Tammy over her had hurt?

Colt sat as still as a statue, frozen like the perfect family of snow people that stood sentry on the banks of the Yellowstone flowing silently below them.

“Nothing I can say will change what happened,” he said, finally. “It won’t help.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “How do you know?”

He wasn’t wearing a hat and his ears were red with cold. “I just do.”