Wild West Christmas: A Family for the Rancher / Dance with a Cowboy / Christmas in Smoke River. Kathryn Albright
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knew that children should be seen and not heard. She knew because her mother had constantly said so. Still, she did not have the heart to shush him. At six, Colin was an inexhaustible sponge, soaking up everything around him and curious as a cat.
“I’m not sure, dear.”
She redirected their attention toward lunch, and soon her selection was served. The fare was excellent, far better than the bustle and rush of the rail station meals. Alice savored her pot of gunpowder tea as the boys devoured their apple pie as if they had not already eaten everything on their plates. They seemed to be always hungry. Alice watched them with a mixture of pride and sorrow. Very soon she would have to give them up and return to her home. She had only had them for three weeks. Two after Sylvia took ill. And one since her friend’s burial beside her husband, Ben Asher.
The hotel manager finally arrived, as she had requested, and she asked if he knew Dillen Roach.
“Roach, yes, ma’am. He took over the Harvey place, about three miles outside of town. Small spread, but nice. Horses mostly. Hear he’s a real whiz with horses. I can get you directions.”
Alice frowned at learning Dillen had a horse ranch. A man with a home was usually able to wed. Perhaps to a woman to whom he had professed the most tender of emotions and declared the most honorable of intentions. But that was before he learned the truth. Why hadn’t she told him sooner?
Because deep in your heart you wanted a man who loved you for yourself and not for your money. She could hardly blame him for leaving her. A lie was a black and evil thing.
She asked the manager if Mr. Roach was married.
“No, ma’am.”
She closed her eyes in a vain effort to hide her relief. But the joy was short-lived, for if Dillen had a place of his own and had not even written her, well, that told her all she needed to know. She thanked the manager and he took his leave. Alice poured another cup of tea with a shaking hand.
If there was anything Alice had learned following Dillen’s leave-taking, it was that, unlike the other men in her life, Dillen was not lured by her family’s fortune. Without that money, what was she? She felt the determination to learn the answer to that question. She had lived a sheltered life quite long enough. Alice was ready to see what she was made of.
She straightened, gathering her resolve for what would come. Giving up the boys would break her heart. But she must honor her friend’s dying wish—that her boys be raised by family.
Cody straightened in the chair upon which he knelt. He lowered his fork and lifted his finger.
“Cody, dear, it’s not polite to point.”
“But, Miss Alice, I see Uncle Dillen, and he looks mad.”
* * *
Dillen crossed the hotel’s elegant lobby but found no sign of Alice, so he headed for the dining room. A fussy-looking gent stationed behind a high pedestal swept him with a disapproving look and his face pinched up as if he’d sucked a dill pickle. Dillen glared and the man spun about and vanished behind the swinging door to the kitchen before Dillen could ask him about Alice. He shrugged and searched the room for Alice. He found her an instant later and he paused in the doorway.
She looked right here, in the elegant surroundings. A refined lady seated at a table draped in white linen so bright it hurt his eyes. The sight made him more aware of his worn, faded dungarees and the smell of horse that emanated from his sheepskin jacket. She belonged here, but he sure the hell did not.
The boys sat facing him, heads down over their plates of pie, their legs tucked beneath them so they could reach the table. Alice sat in profile, and he admired her glossy brown hair looped up into a coronet on top of her head. The style revealed the curve of her slender neck. He’d never seen her hair down, but now discovered that he wanted that more than anything he could think of, apart from seeing her as God made her.
She lifted a fine china teacup to her mouth. Her full lips pursed to sip and Dillen’s stomach flipped clean over. His skin went all hot and prickly, and he couldn’t breathe until that tiny cup was seated back on its saucer. The woman was like a mule kick to his gut every time he looked at her.
Cody lifted his head, spotted his uncle and then pointed in Dillen’s direction.
Alice spoke to Cody and then stilled with her tea suspended for a long moment between her mouth and the table. She lowered her cup, then lifted a hand so her elegant fingers danced over the cameo-and-diamond brooch. As he stalked forward, she released the brooch, clenched her napkin upon her lap before pivoting in her seat to face him. These small gestures were the only indication of her disquiet. But he knew her and was not fooled by her elegant posture and fixed smile. Alice was less than happy to see him.
Who could blame her?
She held his gaze, staring directly at him. One thin brow quirked and her shoulders straightened. The wooden smile of welcome remained, a lie. Only this time he wasn’t fooled. He resisted the urge to turn tail. He’d done enough running. Now it was time to settle things, do what was best for the boys. Damn, he felt like such a failure.
Why couldn’t Alice be an ordinary sort of woman?
Why did his sister have to go and die when he was holed up in a winter job? Four months, and then what? He didn’t know. Another cattle drive? Driving horses?
He didn’t want to give his nephews up, but he’d be damned if he’d drag them about from place to place as his father had done with him and Sylvie. Now he was just as rootless as dear old Dad. Children needed a home, and he knew that he couldn’t give them one. He had no business even entertaining the notion of keeping them, yet his heart still ached with the impending loss. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t even know them.
But then he didn’t have to. They were Sylvie’s. That was enough. He thought of his own father and grimaced.
“Can’t do worse than that,” he muttered.
Steeling himself for what must be done, he marched across the long runner that bisected the rows of dining tables. This being neither lunch nor dinner, the room was quiet. He passed only one other customer, a gentleman in a clean brown suit whose hat rested, brim up, in the empty seat beside him.
Momentum carried Dillen forward until he rested a hand on the top of the two chairs occupied by his nephews, but his eyes were still on Alice seated before her china teacup.
“You look just the same as the last time I saw you.”
Her eyes narrowed at the reference. “Do you mean at the station?”
The corners of his mouth tipped down and he could see from the glitter in those green eyes that she knew exactly what he had meant.
“I meant in Omaha on Christmas Eve.”
Perhaps she was recalling the last thing he’d said to her before his departure from Omaha.
I don’t even know you. But it wasn’t her lie that had sent him running. It was the truth, and that was a far different thing.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” she said. “You above all should know that.”
He thought it was this woman, more than appearances, that were deceiving. If only it had not all been a glorious lie. Still, he wouldn’t trade his memories of Alice for the truth.
He became aware of the silence and that someone other than Alice was staring. His nephews sat as still as twin fence posts, watching him with the dark brown eyes of his sister. Without their hats, he could see the wide-set eyes fringed with dark lashes and the familiar wavy hair of the Roach family. The resemblance was so strong that he realized, with a pang of pride, that they could easily be mistaken for his. He’d once hoped to be a father, vowing that unlike his own, he would be kind, supportive and present. Now that fate had given him the opportunity, he would be forced to give them up for their own good.
“How’s the pie?”
Cody