The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle Read online

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

  Epilogue

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  Chapter 1

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  "Da," the little boy in the car seat said. He bounced himself against the restraining belt that anchored him, clapped his hands together and grinned. "Da," he said again, testing the word, frowning as if it didn't sound quite right. "Daaaaa…" he tried again. "Da-da…" Then at last, "Da…d."

  And he beamed his triumph at the man driving the pickup—his father.

  Me, Deke Malone thought, his gaze flicking to the boy in the rearview mirror, his fingers strangling the steering wheel.

  Even after three months' time, the notion still occasionally had the effect of poleaxing him.

  He was a father. Two and a half years ago he had contributed unknowingly to the conception of a child. This child.

  This beautiful, wonderful, nearly twenty-month-old boy whose existence he had never imagined—especially not that August afternoon three months ago when a stranger had appeared on his doorstep.

  She had looked proper and official in her dark skirt and pale-blue blouse, not at all like the usual photographer's groupies or wanna-bes who occasionally turned up to knock on Deke's door now that his work was well-known.

  She was, she'd said, Mrs. Trammell from some department of social services or child welfare or something he'd never heard of before. He'd said she must have the wrong house.

  But she had consulted the sheaf of papers in her hand, then looked up and asked if he was Mr. Malone? "Mr. Daniel Kevin Malone?"

  "That's right," Deke said, still mystified.

  And she had smiled at him. "I've brought your son."

  For a moment the word had meant nothing to him. Son? It wasn't even a part of his active vocabulary. Deke wasn't a family man. Had no intention of ever becoming one. But as the word echoed in his head, it connected with the preceding one: your … and the meaning began to register.

  Deke took a quick step back, holding up his palms in denial. "Son? My son? Ho, no! No, ma'am. No way. You've got the wrong guy. I don't have a son."

  But Mrs. Trammell assured him that he had.

  Deke hadn't believed her.

  "Who's the mother?" he'd demanded, certain it was a mistake. Not that it was impossible, just extremely unlikely. He'd slept with women in his lifetime, but there hadn't been many and he'd always been careful. Very careful. Deke wasn't a fool and he didn't sleep around. The women he slept with were no more interested in having a family than he was.

  Mrs. Trammell consulted her paperwork again. "Her name was Violet Ashton."

  "Violet?"

  That was almost more stunning.

  Violet Ashton had had his child? The Violet who'd climbed Everest? Who'd ridden camels in Marrakesh? Who'd spent a season at the South Pole?

  For three years running Violet Ashton had been named Adventure Photographer of the Year by one of the biggest trade publications in the outdoor recreation field. The same Violet had once confided to him that her primary goal in life was to go as many places and do—and shoot—as many things as she possibly could. Not exactly Mom of the Year material.

  In fact, in the dozen or so times Violet had breezed through his life in the past ten years, Deke had never heard her express any interest in having a child.

  He'd always liked Violet. And one of the things he'd liked best about her—besides the fact that she approached sex with the same enthusiasm with which she approached kayaking down the Mackenzie or climbing Kilimanjaro—was that she'd never been any more interested in home and family than he had.

  "What are you talking about?" he'd demanded of the woman standing on his doorstep. "Where the hell is Violet?"

  Mrs. Trammell must have majored in patience. She took a slow, calm breath and answered his first question. She was, she told him, talking about a seventeen-month-old boy named Isaac Daniel Ashton.

  His son. And Violet's.

  "You're listed as his father on his birth certificate," she told him, shuffling through more papers and finally pulling out an official-looking document. She handed it to him.

  He stared at it.

  In the meantime Mrs. Trammell went on to answer his second question. Another slow calm breath, followed by a sad smile this time. She was very sorry to have to tell him that Violet was dead.

  Deke's gaze jerked up to meet hers. "Dead?"

  "She drowned two weeks ago in Chile. She'd gone there on assignment for some magazine. We just got Zack back."

  "Who's Zack?"

  "Isaac," Mrs. Trammell had explained patiently. "Your son. Isaac Daniel. She called him Zack." Deke hadn't taken it all in.

  But eventually, of course, he had—because Mrs. Trammell hadn't gone away. She'd come in and sat down and laid all of her papers out on the table for him. The baby's birth certificate. Violet's death certificate. A sworn affidavit from a friend of hers declaring that, indeed, Violet had told her that Daniel "Deke" Malone was the father of her child.

  He had the birth certificate memorized now. Isaac Daniel Ashton had been born in San Antonio, Texas, on April 24 of last year at 1:13 p.m. He'd weighed 8 lbs. 5 oz. and had been 21 inches long. His mother was Violet Mary Ashton. His father was … Daniel Kevin Malone.

  "Dad!" Zack affirmed happily now, tossing a block at his father's ear. "Dad! Dad! Dad!"

  Deke glanced back once more to see Zack grin at him, then arch his back, as if he could push his way out of the car seat.

  They'd have to stop soon. They'd been driving all day, and Zack didn't do long stretches gladly. Deke had found that out yesterday, two hours after they'd left Santa Fe.

  Two hours in a car seat was pretty much the little boy's limit. Then he needed to get out and run around. He needed to eat, to roll on the ground, to grab his father's hands and scale his legs, then clamber up and ride on Deke's shoulders as they explored the rest stop.

  It didn't matter to Deke. He was in no hurry.

  They were in Wyoming now, near the Montana border. They'd passed the turnoff to the town near his sister Dori and brother-in-law Riley's ranch a couple of hours back. He hadn't stopped because Dori and Riley and their kids were on their way to Livingston, too.

  Everybody was coming to the first—and undoubtedly last—Malone family Thanksgiving dinner. The very thought made Deke's stomach clench.

  "Dad! Cookie, Da!" Zack demanded.

  "You want to stop and eat lunch?" Deke asked. To Zack almost everything edible was a cookie. "Guess we can do that."

  It would put off the inevitable a while longer.

  They stopped at the next town. Deke bought Zack a carton of milk and made them each a cheese sandwich. He changed Zack's diaper and then took him to a small local park where he pushed him on the swing for ten minutes before they got back in the truck again and headed north. And his sense of foreboding returned.

  Of course he hadn't had to come. No one was holding a gun to his head. His parents weren't even expecting him. Why should they be? He hadn't been home in fifteen years.

  But Milly, his youngest sister, the family peacemaker, had called him last month and invited him.

  "Dori and Riley are coming," she'd said, "and the kids. You could meet Carrie." Their daughter, she meant. "And C.J." Her own son whom he hadn't ever seen either. C.J. was a couple months younger than Zack.

  "Well, I—"

  "And, for that matter, you could meet Cash and Riley," Milly went on relentlessly. His two brothers-in-law.

  Deke had missed both his sisters' weddings, claiming to have photo assignments that prevented him from making it. In fact, he could have, but he chose not to.

  He hadn't
wanted to make things even more tense than weddings already were by turning up on a festive occasion and creating family tension instead. He'd figured maybe Dori and Milly would bring their husbands and come see him, but so far they hadn't.

  "And we," Milly went on determinedly, "could finally meet Zack. We want to meet Zack, Deke."

  Milly knew about Zack. Dori knew about Zack. His mother knew about Zack. Probably most of Montana—even his father—knew about Zack by now.

  But Deke hadn't told anyone about Zack right away. He'd needed to get used to the idea of having a son himself first.

  He hadn't had the faintest idea how to be a father. He'd never changed a diaper or spooned oatmeal into a waiting mouth. He'd never paced the floor with a crying child or felt parental panic at a spiking fever or ill at the sight of blood.

  Not then. But he'd learned. Fast.

  He was on a first-name basis with a pediatrician now. He had been to the hospital emergency room with a screaming child, been patted on the head and reassured by a trio of long-suffering nurses. He'd felt like an idiot—but had been so vastly relieved when they'd told him teething was all that had been making Zack scream that he hadn't cared about appearing idiotic at all.

  He loved being a father. He loved the little boy who wrapped his neck in a tight hug, who laughed at his animal noises, who wept tears on his shirtfront, who peed on his bare feet.

  And he'd found himself wondering at odd moments if his own father had ever felt any of those things.

  Two of a kind—stubborn hard-nosed men—John and Deke Malone had fought many a battle with each other while Deke was growing up. If Deke had been the apple of his father's eye when he was young, all that had begun to change when he'd got a mind—and goals—of his own.

  Deke had loved the outdoors, the wide-open spaces, horses and cattle, and the simple little camera his mother's father had given him. It had given him a new way of seeing the world—and he'd seen that he didn't want to spend it working in the family grocery store.

  His father had disagreed.

  The disagreements had escalated through Deke's high school years. They'd worsened during his time at Montana State. The last one had taken place fifteen years ago, not long after Deke graduated. He'd told his father he was thinking about going to Paris to pursue his study of photography. He could remember it now. It was as if he'd said he was going to be an astronaut or president of the United States.

  John had stared at him over the side of beef he was carving, then he'd shaken his head and told Deke to stop talking nonsense and sort the brussels sprouts.

  It had been the last straw.

  He'd ripped off his butcher's apron and stalked out.

  He'd never been back. He'd left home that night, had taken jobs where he could find them, had taken photos when he could. He and his father hadn't spoken since that day. And Deke had rarely thought of him until he'd held Zack in his arms.

  When he did, he couldn't imagine that his father had ever felt for him anything close to the intense love he felt for Zack. Or maybe he just hadn't wanted to imagine.

  Over the past three months, he'd begun to wonder.

  What had it been like for his father? John Malone had been barely twenty-one when Deke was born. He'd already been working in the store alongside his own father. When he'd held his son in his arms, what had he hoped for? Deke didn't know. Couldn't even guess.

  Memories came back. Not just those of the later fights and arguments, but earlier ones, happier ones. Ones he had forgotten, that pricked at him and made him wonder. What was the old man like now?

  Would they understand each other any better than they ever had? Could they ever make peace? Did he want to?

  Surprising himself, Deke took Milly's invitation.

  "But don't tell the folks we're coming," he'd warned.

  "In case you chicken out?"

  "I'm not going to chicken out," Deke had replied, stung, even though God knew he'd been tempted often enough to do just that in the month since he'd agreed. He told himself it was a very bad idea and still felt this compulsion to go. Probably it was both—a bad idea and a compulsion.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror now. Zack's eyes were closed. He was asleep, his worn stuffed dog, Beero, in his arms.

  So they didn't have to stop again. They'd surely make Livingston by nightfall now, and he'd come face-to-face with his father for the first time in fifteen years—the prodigal son come home.

  But one thing he was damned sure of—as far as John Malone was concerned, there would be no fatted calf and no celebration.

  The house looked just the same.

  It was a wood frame story-and-a-half bungalow with dormers, built in the first quarter of the last century. It was painted white—there was no other color as far as John Malone was concerned—and had a deep front porch that spanned its entire width.

  "We're here, buddy," Deke said, lifting Zack out of his car seat. The little boy looked curiously at all the white stuff on the ground. They'd had only a flurry or two in Santa Fe so far this year. Already there was half a foot of snow in Livingston on the ground.

  Deke scooped some snow up and held it so Zack could touch it. The little boy's eyes widened at the cold on his fingers. He grinned, then poked his fingers in it again. "Cream?" he said hopefully.

  Deke shook his head. "Not ice cream. Snow. We'll build a snowman." Zack looked puzzled. "I'll show you," Deke promised. It was one of the wonderful bits of being a father—enjoying everything anew, treasuring the wonder on his son's face. He would have liked to set the boy down right then and build the snowman for him.

  But that would be postponing the inevitable. Postponing his father.

  He mounted the steps.

  "Da!" Zack wriggled fretfully in his arms, and he realized his grip on the boy had tightened. Deliberately he eased his hold and balanced Zack on his hip. Then, taking one more deep breath, Deke knocked on the door.

  He waited, shifted from one foot to the other, felt like a fool for knocking on the door of the house he'd grown up in, yet knew he couldn't just walk in.

  The porch light came on. Beyond the glass of the storm door, the front door opened slowly and his mother's astonished eyes widened as she stared at him.

  Deke grinned faintly, hopefully. "Hey, Ma."

  For just a second she didn't move. Then she made a sound somewhere between a soft shriek and a moan and she shoved the door open.

  "Oh, my! Oh, my God, Deke!" She started to hug him, stepped back and looked at the little boy in his arms. Her eyes filled with tears. "This is … Zack?"

  "This is Zack," Deke agreed. "This is your grandma," he told his son.

  Zack looked at her, wide-eyed, as Carol Malone gathered both of them close in a hard fierce hug. And Deke knew that, regardless of how his father felt about his arrival, he was right to have come. He'd seen his mother only a handful of times since he'd left—when she and Milly or she and Dori and Jake had come to visit him in Santa Fe. Then she'd put on her best face and acted as if it was all a wonderful holiday. Now he could see in her unguarded expression as she looked at him how much pain there had been.

  She dabbed at her eyes and shook her head. "You just don't know…" she began, then stopped and went up on tiptoe to kiss Deke's cheek while she stroked Zack's soft hair. "I never dared hope… You're both so stubborn."

  His father, she meant. And him.

  "We're not," Deke said flatly, his words encompassing himself and his son.

  His mother didn't reply, just drew the two of them into the house. "He's in the den watching basketball. He'll be glad to see you."

  Deke raised a doubtful brow.

  "He will," she insisted, "though he might not admit it."

  "Surprise, surprise," Deke said under his breath.

  "He doesn't always show his feelings."

  On the contrary, Deke thought. John Malone had often shown his feelings far too well. "You don't have to explain him, Mom. I remember what he's like."

  Bu
t he wasn't prepared for the man he saw.

  It might only have been fifteen years since he'd seen his father, but he looked as if it had been fifty. Deke had often referred to his father as "the old man" without really meaning the adjective or thinking of his father as old.

  But the man in the recliner was definitely that.

  He wouldn't be sixty for two more years, but his hair was snow-white. He'd been broad-shouldered and sturdy in the old days. Now he looked gaunt, almost frail and far older than his years.

  Deke knew his father had suffered a serious heart attack six years ago. But he'd bounced back and within weeks had insisted on going back to work full-time at the store, much to his daughters' dismay. They'd told Deke repeatedly that it had aged him. Deke had thought they were exaggerating.

  Apparently not, he thought, stopping in the doorway to the den.

  "John," Deke's mother said brightly, "look who's here."

  His father turned his head, starting to smile. Then he saw who it was and his expression became flat, shuttered and remote—as if a door had been firmly shut. He didn't speak.

  "It's Deke," his mother said a little desperately, "and Zack."

  As if the old man didn't know, Deke thought. He still hadn't moved.

  At the sound of his name, though, the little boy grinned and bounced in his arms. Thank God someone was impervious to the tension vibrating in the room.

  "Da!" Zack said cheerfully, and reached up to wrap his small arms around Deke's neck. "Dad!"

  John Malone's gaze flickered again. A muscle ticked in his jaw. He looked from Zack to Deke.

  "Dad," Deke said after a moment, measuring his tone, aiming for polite, but not eager or desperate. His voice sounded rusty and his throat felt tight, but he was damned if he'd clear it. He simply stared straight ahead, meeting his father's gaze and wondering if the old man would say what he'd said fifteen years ago. Get out.

  Deke could hear his mother's nervous breathing. He seriously debated turning on his heel and heading back out the door.

  But then, at last, his father dipped his head slightly. "Deke."