The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle Read online

  It was the barest of acknowledgments. Deke stopped holding his breath.

  But before he could speak, his father cleared his voice and went on gruffly. "Don't go expectin' your mother to take care of that boy because you haven't got a wife."

  Deke's jaw dropped. Then he clamped his teeth together so it wouldn't, but mostly so he wouldn't voice any of half a dozen furious retorts. How infuriatingly typical of his father to make that assumption. Don't take advantage. As if that was the reason he'd come back.

  "He isn't asking me to take care of Zack," Carol said, her fingers strangling each other. "They came for a visit. For Thanksgiving, didn't you, Deke?" She turned desperate eyes on him.

  Deke had to work to get his jaw to move. When he finally did, he said stonily, "We came for a visit." His voice didn't sound rusty to his own ears now. Or pleasant. It sounded hard—like his old man's heart.

  Why the hell had he bothered?

  "We're so glad you're here," his mother babbled on. "Dori and Riley and the kids got here this afternoon. They're out at Milly's now. But you can have your old room and—"

  "No," Deke cut in swiftly, his voice harsh, then gentling. "Thanks, Mom, but no. Milly said we could stay there. We'll stay with Milly and Cash."

  If he'd thought he would get an argument, he was wrong. His mother actually looked relieved.

  That made two of them, Deke thought.

  Carol smiled. "Well, that's lovely, dear. You'll be more comfortable there. There will be more room, I mean," she corrected herself hastily. "And Zack will have C.J. to play with. It would have been crowded here, but we would have managed, wouldn't we, John?"

  But John Malone wasn't paying any attention to them. He had turned back to the basketball game.

  Deke was halfway to Joneses' ranch before he realized what he was doing.

  It was, of course, where he'd been headed, anyway—to spend the night with Milly and Cash in the small tenant house they occupied on the Jones family spread. But he hadn't been thinking about Milly and Cash at all when he'd kissed his mother goodbye and bundled Zack in the truck and headed out again.

  He'd been thinking about his father, about the less-than-enthusiastic reception the old man had given them, and how he would never understand John Malone if he lived to be a hundred.

  It wasn't as if Deke was a failure, for God's sake, as if he'd turned his back on the family only to bring them shame.

  He might not be Ansel Adams, but he had a reasonable reputation in the photographic world. His work was admired, occasionally even esteemed. He taught masters classes in half a dozen photography schools around the country and was on the staff of a prestigious art institute in Santa Fe. He'd fulfilled his dream of buying a ranch. It wasn't a big one, but he ran cattle on a small spread not far outside Santa Fe.

  Wasn't that better than sorting brussels sprouts for the rest of his life? Wasn't that better than wasting his talents?

  Apparently not. The only thing John Malone seemed to value was blind obedience to his will.

  Deke slammed his fist against the steering wheel and took a bend in the road a little too quickly—the same bend he always used to take too quickly when he'd been on his way to see Erin.

  And that was when he realized what he was doing.

  He'd had a battle with his father. He was angry and out of sorts. He needed someone to talk to, someone who would settle him down, listen to him mutter, steer him straight.

  And that was Erin Jones.

  He lifted his foot off the accelerator, took a deep breath and smiled just a little as he remembered Erin now. From the day he'd met her in his last year of high school, Erin had been his confidante, his soul mate, his friend.

  He'd always thought of her as the "kid sister" who was closer to him than either of his real sisters had been—even closer than Milly, who had followed him around since she'd been born. Because for all that Milly had hero-worshiped him and he'd basked in it willingly, he'd never been able to let down his guard with Milly. You didn't with somebody who thought you were a hero.

  Erin didn't think that. She'd always been his biggest supporter—but she knew he was no hero. He'd been little more than a boy trying to be a man when he'd met her. Erin had helped him find the courage to do it.

  He remembered the day he'd met her as if it were yesterday. She and her dad had come into the grocery store one afternoon just in time to catch him on the receiving end of one of John Malone's "stop your daydreaming and do your work" lectures, which had left Deke both embarrassed and furious.

  He'd wanted to sink through the floor when he recognized Will Jones, one of the biggest ranchers in the county, standing there with his pretty teenage daughter, both of them almost as embarrassed as he'd been at being forced to witness every word of the dressing-down his dad had given him.

  But before he could bolt into the back room, the girl had said, "Aren't you Deke Malone?"

  His father, still glowering, had muttered, "As if there could be another one," in a gruff disgusted tone.

  But the girl just said eagerly, "I saw your photos at Dusty's place. They're fantastic."

  Deke had been amazed. No one else had noticed the dozen photos of an elk hunt he'd hung at Dusty's Art and Bait Shop the week before. His father had snorted something about "showing off" when Deke had told him about it. "Gettin' too big for your britches," he'd said.

  And it seemed he might be right because no one had seemed to notice. Until now. Getting someone else's approval stunned him.

  And it was that approval, Deke was sure, that had given him the courage to follow Will Jones out to his truck to try to talk the older man into hiring him as a cowboy for the summer. It had been a brash, foolish thing to do. He could ride a horse. He could build a loop. But his skills with cattle were nonexistent. He had no experience—except selling groceries.

  But he'd dreamed of cowboying almost as much as he'd dreamed of taking pictures. And another summer spent inside the stifling grocery store under his father's disapproving eye was more than he could stand. He'd known he couldn't make enough money taking photos to support himself, but he had to get out of the store, had to be outside, had to escape.

  "I'll work so hard you won't need to hire anybody else," he'd sworn fervently.

  Will hadn't looked thrilled. He'd scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. He hadn't said yes. He'd said, "I'll think about it."

  Deke had gone back inside, embarrassed by his eagerness and his father's quick dismissal of the idea.

  "What do you know about cowboying?" he'd challenged when Deke had come back inside.

  "Not much," Deke had admitted.

  "Foolishness," his father had said. "You've got responsibilities right here."

  Not ones he'd wanted, though. But he'd figured he'd be stuck with them, so he'd been stunned that night when Will Jones had called and offered to take him on.

  "Not sure you'll be the only hand I'll have to hire," Will had said with a smile in his voice, "But I like a fella who's eager, and I reckon you'll learn something."

  "Yes, sir!" Deke had said earnestly, still amazed at his good fortune.

  It wasn't until the end of the summer that he'd realized that Erin had been the one to talk her father into it. She had always been his advocate, his supporter, his friend. They had been on the same wavelength from the moment they'd met. Erin had been a photographer, too, she'd told him. But she'd never been brave enough to ask Dusty to display her pictures.

  "Or desperate enough," Deke had said.

  Erin had laughed. "Maybe that's it. Or maybe," she'd said humbly, "I'm just not as good as you."

  But she was. Deke had learned that quick enough.

  She was every bit as good with a camera as he was. While he focused on landscapes, Erin concentrated on people. They complemented each other, they challenged each other. They talked and argued and teased and supported each other.

  It was a wonderful summer—the best of his life. Erin was talented and smart and compassionate.
She worked long, hard hours all summer long. And after that, even though in the fall he'd gone to college and still had to work in the store and she'd gone back to high school and they hadn't seen each other every day, whenever he felt hemmed in, he went to talk to Erin.

  She settled him, calmed him, gave him some perspective. She always listened. She made sense of things for him. He talked to her about everything—his hopes, his troubles, his old man, his dreams. He even talked to her about the girls he dated because she was so sane, so sensible, so unlike all of them!

  "You have more girlfriends than my dad has cattle," she'd told him once.

  He'd grinned. "Safety in numbers."

  She'd socked him lightly on the arm. "You're awful."

  He'd shaken his head. "I'm not! I'm trying to find one who'll understand me."

  She'd rolled her eyes. "Good luck."

  Sometimes, when Deke looked back on it, he thought that the only one who had was Erin.

  Apparently, twenty years later, he must still think so because instinctively he'd headed toward the ranch.

  For all the good it would do him.

  Erin was gone. Had been for years. It was Erin who had actually gone to Paris to study photography at the end of her senior year of college. It was Erin who had suggested he come, too. He'd been stamping cereal boxes at the time, still trying to balance his "responsibilities" with his "dreams."

  "Yeah, sure," he'd said, annoyed that she made it sound so easy. "Like I can afford to just pack up and move to Paris."

  "You could," she'd said, "if you—" But then she'd stopped. Her expression grew shuttered. The easy openness he was so used to was suddenly no longer there.

  "If I what?" he'd pressed her.

  "Nothing. Never mind." And she'd pasted on the first artificial smile he'd ever seen on her face. "Whatever."

  It had been the last thing she'd said to him.

  She hadn't come to say goodbye. When he'd got some time off on the weekend and had gone up to see her, her mother said she'd already left. She'd been as surprised as Deke that Erin hadn't come to say goodbye to him.

  "Ah, well," Gaye Jones had said with a gentle smile, "she probably thought it was best this way. She might have cried, you know. Erin gets a little sentimental."

  "Yeah," Deke said, feeling out of sorts. But probably it had been better. For her.

  And maybe for him. He'd had the blowup with his father soon after, and Erin hadn't been there to blunt his fury. With no one there to calm him down or make him see reason, he did exactly what she'd done—for entirely different reasons—he'd left town.

  And in the end, it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

  Erin, too, Milly had told him later. She'd got married to a French journalist. She'd stayed in Paris, had had kids there. Over the years he'd seen a little of her work. She still shot people, capturing their emotions, their reactions, their hopes and joys and fears.

  Every once in a while, when he saw one of her photos that he particularly liked, Deke had been tempted to drop her a note and say so. He never had. It seemed presumptuous. She might not even remember him.

  Two years ago her husband had died—victim of a fire fight in the Middle East while he was covering a story. Milly had told him that, too. Deke had heard about the fighting, but he hadn't realized it was Erin's husband who'd been killed.

  When he found out, he'd considered writing her a letter of condolence. He hadn't done that either. Too many years had passed.

  You can't go home again. Wasn't that what they said?

  But apparently some part of Deke's brain had thought he could, had at least been determined to try. Tonight, in the aftermath of his encounter with his father, he had instinctively headed straight for Joneses' ranch, ready to pour out his frustration to Erin—to Erin who wasn't even there.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  The welcome Deke got from his sisters went a long way toward improving his mood.

  They shrieked and screamed and threw their arms around him and Zack the minute he walked in the door. Laughing, yet feeling oddly emotional himself, Deke hugged them back, delighted that they looked happy and that married life and motherhood seemed to be agreeing with both of them.

  "I'll have to go away more often," he said with a grin. "You were never this glad to see me when we were growing up."

  "One hopes you have grown up," Dori said darkly. "No more bugs in our beds."

  "No more cold cream on the toilet seat," Milly added.

  "Shh! Don't give Jake ideas," Dori cautioned her sister, with a wary look in the direction of her ten-year-old son.

  Jake's eyes were shining. "Did you really?" he asked his uncle Deke.

  Deke grinned. "Only a few times. Holy cow, you've gotten big!" Jake was taller than his elbow now. The boy hadn't reached Deke's belt the last time he and Dori had come to visit him in New Mexico. "Good grief. How old are you? Eighteen?"

  "He wishes," Dori said, and ruffled her son's dark hair.

  "Ten," Jake said, beaming up at his uncle. "I'm ten."

  That was hard enough to believe. "I hear you've got a baby sister now," Deke said.

  "Yep. Carrie. And I got a dad. Riley's my official dad, not just an uncle anymore," Jake said, grabbing his former uncle, now adoptive father, by the hand and dragging him forward to meet Deke. It was hard to tell which one he was more proud of—his brand-new little sister or the lean, dark-haired man who was now his dad.

  "Glad to meet you at last," Deke said, shaking Riley Stratton's hand.

  Riley nodded. "Likewise. Jake talks a lot about you. Cold cream, huh?" He grinned and tossed his wife a speculative glance. "Never thought of that."

  "And you won't think of it again," Dori said sweetly, "or you'll be sorry."

  The two of them looked at each other and a whole host of unspoken messages arced between them. Twitching lips turned to grins, then to outright laughter.

  Riley looped an arm over Dori's shoulders and gave her a hug. "Would I do a thing like that?"

  "No," she said promptly, "or I would be forced to tell everyone about your experience at the swimming hole."

  "What experience?" Jake demanded.

  "Swimming hole?" Milly said. "You never told me about any swimming hole." She looked at her sister avidly.

  Riley was turning a definite shade of red. Deke raised his eyebrows at his sister.

  But Dori grinned in satisfaction "No. Sorry. I think the toilet seat will be safe at our house."

  "Mom!" Jake protested.

  But Dori just shook her head. Before Jake could pester her further, the door opened and a cowboy came in, his arms full of loaves of bread and a little boy about the same size as Zack. The two little boys took one look at each other and beamed.

  "Uh-oh," Milly said. "Double trouble." She turned to Deke. "This is C.J.—and Cash."

  Cash was Milly's husband, a former rough stock rider who now worked for Taggart Jones and Noah Tanner teaching rodeo wanna-bes how to ride. And when he wasn't doing that he was taking classes at MSU, working in the biology lab and studying to become a vet.

  "Hey, there," he said to Deke now, shaking his hand, grinning and giving Zack a wink at the same time. "Glad to meet you at last. How ya doin', buddy?" he said to Zack. "Want to play with your cousin?"

  Zack understood all about the word play. His wariness at his aunts' eager hugging vanished and he grinned, too, and wriggled to get down out of Deke's arms. "Play," he announced.

  C.J. apparently understood the term, as well. "Truck," he said as his father set him down and the two ran off in the direction of a low set of shelves loaded with toy trucks, tractors and farm equipment.

  "Get your stuff," Milly commanded Deke. "I made soup. It's on the back of the stove keeping warm. Cash and C.J. just went to Joneses' to bring back some of Felicity's pumpkin bread. She said she'd made too much for their Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and wanted us to share."

  Felicity, Deke knew, was Ta
ggart's wife. Another new addition to the community whom he'd never met. There were so many new faces—Riley, Cash, Carrie, and C.J. just for starters—that he felt as if he'd been away forever. And yet being in the same room with his sisters again, laughing and teasing and recalling boyhood pranks, made him feel oddly as if no time had passed at all.

  He went out to the truck to get his and Zack's gear, smiling, feeling good. The memory of his father's less-than-enthusiastic welcome faded.

  Tomorrow it would be different. Tomorrow they would talk. He would show his father the books he'd done, photos he'd taken. He'd make the old man proud, make him see that he'd done better than he would have if he'd stayed at the store, that he'd done the right thing.

  He got his and Zack's duffel bags out of the truck, balanced Beero on top of them and carried them back to the house.

  From the sofa, Dori looked up and smiled at him. "You stayed away too long."

  "Yes, you did," Milly chimed in. "You can't do that again. I'll expect you back in May."

  Deke dumped the duffels beside the couch. "What's May?"

  Milly beamed. "C.J.'s sibling is going to be born."

  "What? Another one?"

  Dori obviously hadn't known this, either. "Are you sure?"

  Milly rolled her eyes. "Of course I'm sure. I've done the test and seen the doc. Besides," she added, "I'm exhausted all the time and I'm puking my guts up every morning."

  "Sit down," Dori commanded. She was nursing Carrie, but she moved over to make room for her sister. "You, too," she said to Deke. "Grab a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup and come talk to us."

  Riley and Cash were deep in discussion about doctoring cattle. Jake was building a tower so the little boys could knock it down. Zack was enthralled and making brmmm-brmmm noises with the tractor as he anticipated it.

  So Deke got a cup of coffee and joined his sisters, looking at the baby at Dori's breast, thinking how small she was—only three weeks old—and trying to imagine Zack that small. Had Violet nursed Zack? he wondered. There were so many things he didn't know.

  Dori stuck her foot out and kicked his shin lightly. "So, big brother, who never wanted to be a father, how's it going?"