The Rancher's Christmas Bride Read online

  Lucy sat on a rolling stool and watched him. Studied him, more like. The way a scientist studied an insect. “One of these days there will be a woman who makes you forget. Or at least helps you let go of the past.”

  “It isn’t going to be this woman.” By the past Lucy meant the women who couldn’t be seen with him because their daddies didn’t want them dating a Palermo. As a teenager it had hurt. As an adult, he guessed he didn’t blame them.

  His dad had been a cult leader who abused his family. And most people would have said the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. For a long time he’d almost believed it, thinking that he had no choice but to grow up in the shadow of Jesse Palermo.

  He slid under the tractor and ignored his sister. Time was limited and Jerry Masters expected his tractor fixed in the next week. “I’m looking at buying some used equipment to sell.”

  “Can you do that and get those bulls ready to buck?”

  “I can. Marcus is going to come home and help with the bulls. It works for us both. I invested my earnings. He blew through his like water.” He scooted out and picked a different tool. Lucy was watching him, her dark eyes serious. “Stop worrying, Luce. I’ve got this.”

  “I always worry. It’s my job.”

  “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Yes, I do. I worry that Marcus is going to hurt himself or someone else. I worry that Maria has been talking to Jaxson Williams. And I worry that you still think it was all your fault. Everything.”

  “It was.” He scooted back under the tractor, hoping she’d take the hint and leave. He knew better, but it was worth a try.

  “You were a teenager and not responsible for our father’s actions. Ever.”

  He gave up on the tractor, slid out and sat up, knees bent and arms resting on them. He gave his sister a long look. “Are you finished?”

  The look in her eyes told him she wasn’t. “No. I have a lot to say. You didn’t lock me in that room. Our father did. You couldn’t have busted me out. He wouldn’t have allowed it. You didn’t kill him. He made a choice to get on a bull that was rank and couldn’t be ridden.”

  “I’m pretty sure I wished him a less-than-heavenly reward.”

  “You’ve regretted those words a thousand times.”

  “Are we done?” Because she hadn’t yet brought up his best friend, Daniel, who had died under a bull. It had been Alex’s job as a bullfighter to protect him but he hadn’t. He had a long history of not being able to protect the people he cared about.

  Lucy shook her head and he knew the worst was yet to come.

  “What is it?” he asked when she didn’t spit it out.

  “Mom.”

  Great. This was going downhill fast. Deloris Palermo had a habit of putting her kids last. She’d skated in and out of their lives for the last dozen years.

  Lucy sighed. “She took out a mortgage on the farm.”

  It took him a minute to make sense of those words.

  “And?”

  “And she hasn’t been making the payments.”

  He wanted to punch something. Instead he sat there with a wrench in his hand, waiting, hoping she’d tell him it was all good somehow.

  “Please give me some good news.”

  Lucy shook her head. “I’d love to but there isn’t any. She hasn’t made the payments in six months. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t seen a man at the end of the drive taking pictures. The place is going to be auctioned off.”

  “What do we do? I’ve invested most of my savings in this business and the bulls. I know Marcus doesn’t have two dimes to rub together.”

  “I don’t know if you’re right about Marcus. He’s been winning lately. Mom said she’ll sell her half to us if we want. She’s being generous, she says. Because she won’t make us buy the whole ranch. She said Dad wanted her to have half and the rest split between his four kids. So in order to get her name off the land we have to pay her half the appraised value.”

  “The appraised value of five hundred acres and a house.” He hung his head, wishing he could start this day over. “If we do that, she has to pay the second mortgage. That or we pay her, less the amount she owes. But do you really want to go in on this? Now that you’re married, it doesn’t seem like this should be your problem.”

  “We stick together, Alex. All of our lives we’ve only had each other. That doesn’t change just because I’m married.”

  He tossed the wrench to the ground and did something he rarely did: he gave his sister a quick hug. “Thanks.”

  She hugged him back, the gesture awkward. “You’re welcome.”

  He headed back to his tools. “So now I just have to figure out how to scrounge up a down payment. And face the reality that our own mother has put us in debt.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you ask me why I’m not interested in a relationship. From what I can see, people who say they care tend to just rip each other to pieces.”

  “There’s a difference between people who care and people who say they care. You’ve never let me down. I don’t know if I’ve ever said it, but I love you, Alex.”

  He blinked to clear his blurry vision. Because he wouldn’t let her make him cry. “I have to get up early,” he said as he wiped his hands on a towel. “And you have kids to take care of and a husband probably wondering where you are.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

  He managed a grin. “Remember when you used to stay out of our business and just let us all live our lives?”

  “I seem to remember that person. I was a little bit broken, too.”

  “I’m not broken. I’m not even fragile. I’m cautious.”

  “And you’re not cautiously interested in Dan’s granddaughter?” she asked as she stood at the door, preparing to leave.

  “No. I’m not interested. I found her on the side of the road in her wedding dress. If that doesn’t scream trouble, I don’t know what does.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “A wedding dress? That’s a part of the story no one is talking about. Including you.”

  He was filled with some kind of strange loyalty and protectiveness. Hadn’t he just said he wasn’t getting tangled up in Marissa Walker’s life?

  “It’s a part of the story that doesn’t need to be talked about. No one ought to be walking down a back road on their wedding day, in the dress and without the groom.”

  Lucy gave him a long look. “You’re right. But when you said she needed extra clothes, you didn’t mention the dress.”

  “I didn’t think it was anyone’s business but hers.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re the one who found her.”

  “I guess it is. I’ll see you later, sis.” He reached to open the door for her. With a quick hug, she left.

  He watched her truck head down the drive and then he went back inside the garage. Focusing on the tractor helped him keep his mind busy and kept him from worrying too much about the mortgage and buying the ranch he’d always considered his home. Fixing that tractor also kept him from thinking about Marissa.

  Kind of.

  He didn’t want to think about blue eyes that rivaled the bluebonnets his hometown was named for. Or the blue of the sky on a clear winter day. He didn’t want to think about how she’d managed to pull herself together, even though she had to be pretty close to devastated.

  He couldn’t help but think she needed family. Or a friend. Someone to help her through what had to be a pretty difficult time.

  Someone who was not him.

  Chapter Five

  The gray light of early dawn peeked through a crack in the curtains. Marissa tried to roll over on the lumpy sofa but a bigger lump kept her from moving. She pushed at the drooling dog that had climbed up and was stretch
ed out next to her.

  “Down, Bub.”

  The dog groaned, then made a noise that was followed by a foul smell. She pushed him off the sofa and sat up, holding a hand over her nose.

  “You are the most disgusting animal.”

  Bub just looked at her with his soulful eyes, his skin sagging downward, ears slightly perked. His tail thumped the faded carpet. Then he got up and lumbered to the door.

  She followed, pushing the door open to the cool air. The rooster was sitting on the porch rail. As if on cue, he bristled his feathers and starting crowing.

  “Good morning to you, too.” She closed the door, shutting out the rooster and the noxious dog.

  Blurry-eyed from lack of sleep, she headed for the coffeepot. She found coffee in a canister and filters in the cabinet. The refrigerator, as she’d learned the previous evening, didn’t contain much in the way of food. Her grandfather seemed to live on eggs, skim milk and bologna.

  She didn’t know how he ever got to sleep. The quiet country seemed so loud compared to the sounds of the city. All night long she could hear the wind whistling through windows, the creaking of the camper settling, an occasional coyote howling and cattle mooing in the distance.

  She put eggs on to boil and sat down at the table with a pad and a pen. She needed a list. Her life was about lists. It was important to her that she stay organized and stay on schedule. As she put pen to paper, she placed a fishing magazine on the pad to keep her penmanship level.

  Tricks of the trade, she told herself. Before being diagnosed with dyslexia she had learned to compensate for her disability on her own. She’d learned to block off sections of reading material and use rulers to make her writing stay on one line—she’d never understood how these difficult tasks seemed to come easy for everyone else.

  As she wrote out a list that included feeding livestock, cleaning, picking up groceries and visiting her grandfather, her phone rang. Her mom. It was too early for a lecture. She let it go to voice mail.

  A text came through a few minutes later.

  You have responsibilities, a job and a family. When will you be home?

  She stared at the text for a full minute. Then she got up to pour herself a cup of coffee. Why couldn’t her mother say something comforting? Why couldn’t she tell Marissa that it wasn’t her fault? That yes, Aidan had hurt her, but she would get past this. There were so many things a mother could say to comfort a child. But her mother had ceased being that person when Lisa died. She’d burrowed into her own pain, forgetting the daughter who still lived. A girl who had lost a sister and been overcome with guilt.

  What they never talked about, what no one ever said, was that it had been her fault. Because of her, they’d all lost the thing they treasured most—her sister. Her parents’ first child. And they never talked about it. Ever.

  She’d spent sixteen years trying to make it up to her parents, always following the rules, always working twice as hard. She’d done whatever she could to make life easier for them, to cause less trouble.

  Through it all, Marissa had felt guilty. Because she was alive and Lisa wasn’t. She’d felt guilty each time she’d saw a glimpse of sadness in her parents’ eyes or caught one of them looking at a picture of Lisa.

  And every single day she’d missed the sister she should have grown up with.

  Blinking back tears, she poured the coffee down the drain and turned off the burner under the eggs. She typed out a text to her mom, telling her she was sorry that she never seemed to be enough for them. But the words were too honest. Instead she deleted the message and texted her mom she was sorry and would come home soon. Maybe after Dan got out of the hospital. Without waiting for a reply, she walked out of the camper.

  Cool air greeted her. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket and walked a little faster.

  Cattle mooed at her approach. Red, the rooster, hurried across the lawn, wings flapping. She grabbed a stick and turned to face her attacker. The rooster jumped at her, and when she shook the stick, he squawked as it brushed against him.

  “Oh, come on, I didn’t even hit you.”

  The rooster flew at her again, but when he saw the raised stick he changed course and settled on the ground, feathers ruffled and a lot of rooster indignation in evidence. As she continued to the barn he followed, still making agitated noises and ruffling his feathers as he marched along behind her. He didn’t trust her. She wasn’t feeling a lot of trust for him, either. Occasionally she shot a look back to make sure he kept his distance.

  As she entered the barn, a phone rang. She followed the sound to the feed room. An old rotary phone hung from the wall. She picked it up and answered.

  The caller stuttered at her hello, and when Marissa asked who was calling, there was a long pause.

  “This is Sheila from the IRS calling to speak to Mr. Wilson,” the woman said, her tone hesitant.

  “I’m sorry, he isn’t here. Can I help you?”

  “No, you can’t. It’s a matter of some importance. Could you please give him a message that I called?”

  “I’ll tell him.” She hung up, staring at the avocado-green phone that hung on the rough wood-plank wall.

  She wasn’t about to give her grandfather that message while he was hospitalized. But maybe the call explained the cattle that Alex had insisted were missing and had been sold off, and the run-down conditions of the property. How much could Dan possibly owe?

  She stood there in the quiet, musty barn and replayed the call in her mind. Did the IRS actually make phone calls asking for money? A cat mewed. She glanced around and saw it sitting on the door that led to an empty stall. It licked a paw and surveyed her, then turned its attention to the rooster.

  “Do you get fed, too?” she asked the cat. It looked at her with amber-colored eyes.

  Inside the feed room she searched cabinets and buckets until she found a bag of cat food. She poured some in a metal dish she found in the aisle of the barn.

  Marissa returned to the feed room, where she poured a few cans of grain into a bucket, the way Alex had done when he’d fed the mules the previous day.

  Outside the air was still cool and a trace of frost remained on the grass. She had found leather work gloves in the feed room. They were loose on her hands but at least offered some warmth. The mules grazed a short distance away. When they spotted her pouring feed in the metal trough their heads went up. They watched curiously for a moment before heading her way. She emptied the bucket and then moved away. Having witnessed those hooves yesterday she had no desire to be too close.

  She leaned against the side of the barn, breathing in the cool air. In the distance a bird swooped low over the field. She watched as the hawk grabbed at something, then ascended, carrying its prey as it flew away.

  Closing her eyes, she thought about her childhood and the Sunday morning services they had attended. It had been different then, when there had been four of them and they’d been happy. After Lisa’s death it all changed. They didn’t attend church. Holidays became quiet affairs with dinners at restaurants and limited decorations. The mourning should have faded and life should have returned to their home. She knew that now. As an adult she knew that something had been very broken in their home.

  As a child she hadn’t comprehended, she’d only guessed that she was to blame. Maybe if they had healed, maybe if things had returned to normal, she wouldn’t have been attracted to Aidan, to his laughter and to his promises. She’d seen him as an escape.

  A horse whinnied. She opened her eyes and surveyed the horizon until she spotted horse and rider coming across the field. The rider wore his hat low over his eyes, but even on their short acquaintance, she recognized Alex. He rode the horse with the same easy confidence that seemed to be his trademark.

  But now that easy confidence got under her skin. She’d never posse
ssed that personality trait. Instead she’d fought hard to feel somewhat accomplished. She’d had tutors in college, studied on her computer when possible and occasionally she’d paid someone to read assignments out loud for her so that she could process them easier. She was an auditory learner. Reading too much, trying to decipher words that jumped around the page, sometimes brought on a migraine.

  She went inside the barn, avoiding him, avoiding the strange need to talk to him. That urge to talk to him got under her skin as much as his brazen confidence on the back of that horse.

  Of course she couldn’t escape him. He came in through the front double doors of the barn, leading the big gray horse behind him. The animal snorted and shook its head. Alex patted the horse’s neck and spoke in a soothing voice, as if the horse was a small child in need of calming.

  “He doesn’t like new places,” Alex explained as he approached. The horse, as if to prove him right, sidestepped like it had been spooked at something. Alex held tight to the reins, drawing the animal back to his side with a firm hand.

  “I see. What are you doing here so early?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Is it early?”

  “You know it is.”

  He shrugged it off. “I’ve been up for a while. I thought I’d check and see how your night went.”

  “Good.”

  “You look tired.” He stepped closer, bringing the horse with him. With his free hand he brushed at her cheek. “And you have something right there.”

  “You shouldn’t point out that a woman looks tired.” She paused, then went on, “I’m not sure why people talk about how quiet it is in the country. It’s loud. Coyotes. Cattle. Wind.”

  “Those sounds are like a lullaby, you just have to get used to them.”

  “I won’t be here long enough.”

  He led his horse to a stall, removed the saddle and bridle and then gave the animal a flake of hay from the nearby stack of square bales. Marissa watched, waiting for him to say something, anything. The silence was getting to her. This was what came from watching the old programs picked up on the broadcast antenna and then switching to her grandfather’s hunting magazines.