“I can blanket this horse,”

Clint said sharply.

Cait glanced up at him, held his gaze.

“You can certainly ride him,” she said sincerely. “You two looked like poetry out there.”

Her words stunned him. So did the pleasure that ran through him.

“Compliments don’t excuse you sneaking up on me,” he muttered.

She grinned. “Don’t worry, Clint,” she said. “I won’t tell your secret.”

“Tell whatever you want,” he snapped.

She chuckled and handed him the buckle strap. “So you’re not vulnerable to blackmail?”

He snorted. “As if you’d need blackmail, Cait. I’m thinking a bulldozer’s more your style.”

She straightened suddenly, at the very same time he did, and smiled at him across the horse.

He couldn’t keep from watching her smile and noticing the sparkle in her dark eyes. In fact, he couldn’t move a muscle. Suddenly all he could do was look at Cait.

GENA DALTON

wanted to be a professional writer from the time she learned to read at the age of four. However, she became a secondary school teacher and then a college professor/dean of women instead, and began to write only after she was married and became a stay-at-home mother. She entered an essay contest, which resulted in a newspaper publication that gave her confidence she could achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a “real writer.”

Gena lives in Oklahoma with her husband of twenty-four years. Now that their son is grown, their only companions are two dogs, two house cats, one barn cat and one cat who belongs to the neighbors but won’t go home.

She loves to hear from readers. She can be reached c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10017.

Midnight Faith
Gena Dalton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

He went on to say, “What is the kingdom of God

like? What shall I compare it with? It is like a

mustard seed, which a man took and threw into

his garden; it grew and became a tree, and the

birds of the air sheltered in its branches.”

—Luke13:18-19

For my sisters,

Linda and Bonnie

Dear Reader,

This story of the oldest McMahan brother, Clint, and Cait McMahan, who is his widowed sister-in-law, is one that touches my heart. At some time in all our lives we reach a midnight hour that tests our trust and makes us reach for our faith, even if it seems as small as a mustard seed.

From the moment Cait comes back to the Rocking M Ranch with her newly bought horses and her heartfelt plans to establish a horsemanship school for troubled teenagers, Clint is trying to find a way to trust her and the feelings between them—as well as to trust God to direct the decisions that he always feels are his responsibility alone.

While you are reading Clint and Cait’s story, I’m writing about Clint and Jackson’s brother, Monte, who finally comes home after six long years of barely communicating with the family. I hope you will look for his story, Long Way Home, coming in February 2003.

Please let me know how you like this book. I would love to hear from you. You can reach me c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017.

All best wishes,

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Something was definitely wrong when a man had to sneak around before daylight to ride a horse on his own place.

It added to his pleasure, though. Clint whistled a tune, very softly, as he led the tall black colt out of the barn toward the indoor arena, its hooves echoing out into the frosty air until they left the asphalt for the gravel. Then the sound lessened to a muted, homey plop.

His guess would be that sitting in the saddle on this lanky rascal would be anything but homey, though. His heartbeat sped up. This colt might be the biggest challenge of all the two-year-olds on the ranch this year.

The black snorted, shook his head and spooked at the kitten that came tumbling out of the tack room ahead of its brother. Then he kicked up behind when Clint tied him.

“Now, now,” Clint said, grinning, “give me a chance to take a seat before you get to bucking, all right?”

He gave the colt a pat on the neck—which bothered him so much he pinned his ears—and went to get the saddle. The tune he kept whistling was “Two-Step around the Christmas Tree,” which he couldn’t get out of his head and which irritated him to no end. If it was left up to him, they’d just skip Christmas this year here on the Rocking M.

Clint slapped that thought right out of his head with his usual skill. Right now would be the best time of his Christmas Eve and he was going to enjoy it without thinking ahead. Or back.

It added a little spice to life, having a secret vice, and it amused him every day. So far, neither of the trainer’s assistants had stepped down off a colt and wondered aloud if somebody else had already ridden him.

Mainly because the idea was inconceivable. The least-skilled horsemen on the trainer’s staff, the assistants to the assistant, started the colts because nobody else wanted that hard, dangerous job. They were young and their bodies could take it.

Clint grinned again. It’d blow everybody’s minds, for sure, to know that the ranch’s owner was doing that work, and he would surely get a kick out of telling them. He couldn’t, though, because it would insult the hands whose duty it was, implying that they weren’t doing their jobs. It would also insult the trainers who supervised those hands, and they’d accuse him of messing up their training programs for these horses.

More to the point, they’d all probably leave the Rocking M and go somewhere else because Clint had not respected their territory. He wouldn’t take that chance—winning trainers who brought attention and celebrity to the ranch were hard to find.

His grin faded. Always, always and forever, he had to do what was good for the ranch.

Sometimes he felt he was the ranch and not a person anymore.

The colt stood, although his ears were still pinned. He let Clint ease the saddle and pad onto him and cinch him up before he kicked out again. Clint’s heart made a triple beat. This one would be the liveliest of the bunch.

He’d sensed that all along, which was why he’d left him for last, he supposed. If the black dumped him and he broke a bone, he would already have had the excitement of riding the others.

He untied the colt and led him into the indoor arena, closed the gate behind them and reached over the fence for a bridle hanging on the rack. The black stood quietly while he exchanged it for the halter, then walked just as quietly as he led him farther into the pen.

After arranging the reins, Clint took hold of the horn and the cantle and lifted his weight onto the saddle, hanging off the side of the horse. No problem. The black didn’t even move—forward, back or sideways.

Clint stepped up into the saddle.

Both feet set in the stirrups, he shifted carefully back and forth. Nothing.

He settled his weight into the depth of the seat. No movement from the young horse. Maybe he’d been entirely wrong about him.

Clint made himself take in a deep breath and then wait, letting it out slowly. The whole, quiet, darkest-before-dawn world waited with him to see what this colt would do.

All he did was look around. Clint followed his gaze. The lighted arena made the patch of night that showed through the top half of the south door as black as the horse.

The glass wall to the customers’ lounge was a dark blank. This morning there were no owners sitting in front of the fireplace talking, getting drinks from the refrigerators, or swiveling in the leather easy chairs to watch the wide-screen TV and their horse being ridden at the same time. No one at all intruding into Clint’s own private world.

The black stared at the glass for so long that Clint realized he was looking at his own reflection. He probably thought it was another horse.

“You’re not gonna spook at your own shadow, are you now, Midnight?”

That was the last coherent thought he had. The colt dropped his head and gave a mighty pitch so fast Clint hadn’t even sensed him thinking about it. His hat flew off, the seat of his pants separated from the saddle, he grabbed for his balance, and from then on, everything he did was on instinct.

His legs clamped the colt’s sides and one hand tangled in the mane as his center of gravity shifted, but he still would have gone over and off if Midnight hadn’t raised his head right then and caught Clint along his neck. The steady, waiting world was long gone as fast as if it had never been, turned upside down and spun sideways.

All he knew was blurs of fence and dirt and the black’s long mane, whipping around. It caught him across the face once, twice, as the jarring landings shook him looser. Finally, by a superhuman effort, using the momentum of the next jump, he fought his way back into the saddle. His balance came back, too. Sort of.

Everything turned to motion and speed, into flying jumps and hard, punishing landings. All he could do was try to keep breath in his body while he tried even harder not to come loose again.

At last, after an eternity of uncertainty, he could feel the rhythm, he could anticipate the force, he could judge how much and which way to respond, and the thrill of staying on began to pound into his blood. He and Midnight traveled across the arena and back to the other side molded together into one plunging, rising, falling animal.

Eventually they stretched out into a run. The wind they created blew the colt’s mane back toward Clint and he glanced toward the glass wall to see the wild picture the black horse made as he flew around the arena.

He had this one now. But only this one ride. It’d be a long time before he’d expect the big black colt not to buck, at least a little.

Maybe he ought to ride him every morning instead of rotating through all the others. This was a horse after his own restless heart.

The truth was that this secret fun was the only reason he was glad to get up in the morning. Everything else seemed to be work. Duty. Responsibility. All his and only his.

They rounded the southwest corner and started down the straightaway.

Clint glimpsed somebody standing at the rail. His gut tensed. He looked again.

But he’d known who it was from that first, fast flash in the corner of his eye. That mass of black curly hair catching the arena lights was unmistakable. That and her bold stance.

He sat back and murmured to the colt.

“Whoa. Whoa, now, Midnight.”

Midnight didn’t whoa, but he did slow down.

By some miracle of Clint’s determination, or maybe because the colt was actually tiring at last, he rode him to a stop in front of her with a tolerable show of control.

Her straight look hadn’t changed a bit. He met it with one of his own.

“Caitlin O’Doyle.”

Her name came off his lips sounding like a challenge.

She challenged him right back, as always.

“It’s McMahan.”

Instead of ignoring her and riding on, as he should’ve done, he fell into fussing with her as naturally as breathing.

“I thought you might’ve changed it back by now.”

“No,” she said, and propped one booted foot on the bottom rail as she folded her long, graceful arms along the top one. “It’s still McMahan…just like yours. Clint.”

Her crisp northern accent might’ve softened a little, but nothing else about her had changed one whit. She still held herself as if she owned Texas for as far as she could see, and all the cattle in it. That high, straight-bridged nose of hers still gave her that haughty look and her tall, voluptuous shape still begged for a man’s hands.

Or maybe it was the other way around. Caitlin O’Doyle McMahan never begged. She never even bent.

If she had bent enough to go to Mexico with John, his brother would be alive today. And he, Clint, would still have one of his brothers, at least, by his side every day.

“Why don’t you get a life, Cait? You ought to be back in Chicago by now.”

Her big dark eyes flashed.

“I’d never presume to tell you to get a life, Clint.”

She glanced around the empty arena.

“But then, maybe that’s because you already have one. Riding colts alone in the middle of the night must be a thrill a minute.”

Hot fury sliced at his gut. Was it because she still attracted him so much, even when she was making fun of him? Even when he knew she hadn’t done right by John?

The black shifted beneath him and tried to drop his head, but Clint wouldn’t let him. He gave Cait a hard stare while the horse stepped to the left, then back to the right.

“You appear to be out alone in the middle of the night, yourself, Cait.”

“I got a late start from Tulsa.”

“They celebrate Christmas in Tulsa, too, last I heard.”

Her eyes, black as her hair, sparked with fire.

“Your mother invited me, Clint. This is her ranch. Bobbie Ann can invite anyone she wants for Christmas.”

“It’s my ranch, too.”

“And that is exactly the reason I’m interrupting your night ride,” she said, looking at his horse instead of him as the black danced sideways. “To ask you, the co-owner and general manager, where I should unload my horses.”

She stared at the colt for a minute, then met Clint’s gaze again. He clenched his jaw so hard he could hardly speak. One reason Cait had always irritated him so was that she had no end of nerve.

“Your horses,” he repeated flatly.

“Yes.”

“How many head?”

“Seven.”

What in the name of good sense was she doing dragging seven head of horses in here?

“I know you don’t want to miss any of the McMahan festivities,” he said sarcastically, “but it’s early yet. So why don’t we do it this way? You take a run on over to Roy’s and unload his horses and we’ll hold up on the eggnog until you get back. How’s that?”

“These aren’t Roy’s horses.”

He stared at her, trying to figure out what she was up to and steady the colt at the same time. All he needed now was to fool around and let the black throw him right in front of her.

“Then whose are they?”

“Mine.”

He stared at her some more. She was so full of life and so full of confidence. Not once did she smile or try to charm him into giving permission, as another woman might have done.

“Did Bobbie Ann invite you for Christmas or for the rest of your life?”

“Roy’s not going to let an assistant trainer keep any personal horses over there, much less seven head,” she said, so reasonably that he wanted to punch something. “You know that.”

His blood ran cold, then hot, with anger.

“Are you telling me that you just drove to Tulsa and bought seven head of horses that you’re fixing to keep here? On the Rocking M?”

He bit his tongue to hold back the rest of the words that leapt to it. He ought to go ahead and tell her to haul them on out of here, but he didn’t. Never had he ever known anyone, man or woman, who had this much sand.

She looked up at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.

“Yes.”

“How long do you want to leave ’em?”

She shrugged her beautifully square shoulders, tilted her head to the side and he saw once again what every man always saw: Caitlin McMahan wasn’t really what you’d call beautiful, but she was one magnificent woman. Already. And she was barely past being a girl.

“I’ll be straight with you, Clint,” she said, unnecessarily. “I want to leave ’em indefinitely. I told Bobbie Ann not to say anything because I wanted to tell you myself.”

Tell you. Not ask you. That was Cait.

He stood in the stirrup and stepped down off the black. Whatever she was up to, he’d better give it his full attention. This could affect him for a long time to come.

Without another word he led the colt toward the gate. Sure enough, Cait met him there. She walked at the colt’s other shoulder as they headed for the saddling bay.

“I’m starting a riding school,” she said.

That was Cait, again. Not “wanting to” or “planning to,” but doing it. She wasn’t asking permission, either.

“On the Rocking M,” he said.

His tongue was thickening with fury. His blood thundered with it. She’d be hanging around, here in plain sight, all the time.

She read his mind.

“I’ll only be here a couple of hours in the evenings,” she said. “I won’t interfere with your trainers or anybody else using your facilities.”

He tied the colt and began uncinching the saddle. He paused to glare at her.

“They have amateurs that come to ride in the evenings,” he snapped.

Why’d she have to get this insane idea in the first place? Why couldn’t she just stay away from the Rocking M the way she’d been doing?

“I know,” she said. “But I’ll only be here in the late afternoons and I’ll use the old outdoor pen.”

“Give me a break, Cait,” he interrupted. “Ask my permission, at least.”

She flashed those eyes at him again.

“I don’t have to, Clint,” she said. “I have every right to be here.”

“Don’t start telling me you inherited part of this ranch from John,” he said harshly. “It’s bad enough you’re spending his blood money.”

She stiffened.

“You know he’d still be alive if you’d gone with him,” he blurted. “With his wife there to protect, he’d never have taken any chances.”

Cait stepped right up and got in his face.

“Watch your mouth,” she growled, her eyes bright with fury. And hurt. Maybe even with tears. Maybe tears of guilt.

Even if she did feel guilty, shame stabbed through him. He had crossed a grave line here and he wasn’t one to do that.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

He turned his back on her, unwrapped the latigo, took the saddle and pad off, and strode toward the tack room, searching his mind frantically for a way to get rid of her. Bobbie Ann had already heard about this, and, knowing her, she’d approved the idea.

She would welcome Cait’s presence every day. She would say it reminded her of how happy John had been in his marriage to Cait.

And he had been, poor sucker. Nobody had ever been able to figure out why the striking, bold nineteen-year-old girl from up north who’d come to Texas to be Roy Bassett’s assistant trainer had ever agreed to marry quiet, thoughtful, unexciting John McMahan. It had to be the name, the ranch, the money.

Wasn’t that true of 90 percent of the women who chased after any of the McMahan brothers?

Cait O’Doyle could’ve had any man in Texas if she’d so much as crooked her finger. Any one of those men would have been a better match for her than John.

Why, even he would’ve been a better match for a girl with her spirit.

He took as long as he could to put the saddle on the wall and the steaming pad to dry on the rack. That reminded him that the colt had worked up a sweat and he needed to get him back to the stall.

What was he doing, letting Caitlin’s appearance and then her announcement unsettle him? This was ridiculous. He could handle her and her half-baked ideas.

Quickly he crossed the hallway again and went into the open bay. Cait was rubbing the colt down.

“I want to get him back and get him blanketed,” he said.

“Right,” she said in a sensible tone, and stepped away to drop the rubber currycomb into the tray that topped the roll-around cart.

“Thanks,” he said stupidly, before he thought.

Out of guilt? Or in an effort to prove he did have some manners, after all? What was the matter with him, giving her any shred of encouragement to do anything around here?

For answer, she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. His pulse raced.

Maybe she wasn’t beautiful, but her smile certainly was. At every horse show some guy said something about her smile. Or just about her, period.

Well, about her looks or her horsemanship or what a good hand she was. Very few people knew anything about her.

He avoided looking at her again, went to the colt’s head and untied him, started to lead him away. He needed a chance to think. Surely he could figure out a way to keep her from hanging around the Rocking M all the time.

But he could hear her footsteps following him down the gravel incline and across the paved street to the barn.

“I surely do hate to bother you, Clint,” she said dryly, “but I’d like to get unloaded and make it to the house in time for some of Bobbie Ann’s hot biscuits.”

Well, there was no hope for it. Bobbie Ann would have his hide if he caused a big fuss and ruined Christmas Eve, so he might as well find a temporary spot for Cait’s horses.

“The quarantine barn’s empty,” he said, throwing the words at her over his shoulder.

“Fine. Thanks.”

But she didn’t turn and start back to her truck. A quick glance from the corner of his eye told him that.

He moved faster, tried to walk away from her into the long, limestone barn, but she stayed right with him the whole way. He ignored her, led the colt to his stall and took the blanket from the rack on the door.

Cait walked around them and went to the black’s head, grasped the lead right under his chin to hold him. Clint refused to turn loose of the rope.

“You’re in a hurry,” he growled. “Go on.”

“Not that big a hurry,” she said absently, stepping back to look the colt over as if he were the only thing in the barn.

Clint clenched his teeth. Wasn’t that just like a woman? Just like Cait—first she’s in a fit to be gone and the next minute you can’t run her off with a stick.

He gathered the blanket and went to slip it over the colt’s head.

“I’ve got him,” he said sharply.

“So have I,” she said, laughing a little as she helped manage the blanket.

“Very funny,” he said sarcastically.

She was, without a doubt, the stubbornest woman he’d ever met.

Their hands brushed together as they brought the big blanket over the colt’s tossing head. Cait’s bare fingers were surprisingly warm in this frosty weather—warm enough to send a twinge of heat through him.

The black stepped sideways. Cait moved with the colt, keeping parallel with Clint to spread the blanket. He set his jaw. Why didn’t she just go on about her business and get out of his?

Why didn’t she go away, so he couldn’t catch even one faint drift of her citrusy scent?

“I can blanket this horse,” he said sharply.

She glanced up at him, held his gaze.

“You can certainly ride him,” she said sincerely. “You two looked like poetry out there.”

That stunned him. So did the pleasure that ran through him with her words.

“Compliments don’t excuse you sneaking up on me,” he muttered.

She grinned before she leaned over to reach under the colt’s belly to hand him the strap to buckle.

“Don’t worry, Clint,” she said. “I won’t tell your secret.”

“Tell whatever you want,” he snapped.

She chuckled as she handed him the other strap.

“So you’re not vulnerable to blackmail, huh, Clint?”

He snorted. “As if you’d need blackmail, huh, Cait? I’m thinking a bulldozer’s more your style.”

She straightened suddenly, at the very same time he did, and smiled at him across the horse.

“Aw, come on. It’s Christmas. Let’s not fight.”

He couldn’t keep from watching that smile. He couldn’t keep from noticing the sparkle in her dark eyes.

To tell the truth, he couldn’t move a muscle. Suddenly all he wanted was to look at Cait.

“Hey, Clint, Christmas Eve gift,” she said.

The ancient greeting handed down from his Appalachian ancestors startled him once more. The magic phrase that claimed the other person’s first gift filled him with sudden memories of playing this game with his brothers. Then it filled him with anger and regret. She had no business even saying it—it sounded strange in her northern accent.

“Always one for a little family tradition, huh, Cait?”

Quick, deep hurt showed in her big dark eyes. It wiped her smile away.

Guilt tugged at him. He was never one to be deliberately cruel and he’d spoken before he thought. Cait was practically an orphan—she had no family traditions of her own.

She was tough, though, this Irish girl from Chicago. A little hurt would never damage her confidence.

“Yes. Ever since I fell in love with your brother I’ve been into the traditions of this family.”

She gave him that straight look of hers that dared him to contradict her.

“I’m a McMahan, too, Clint, whether you like it or not.”

He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a blessed thing he could do about it.

From the instant she got back into her truck and turned the key in the ignition, Cait wouldn’t let herself think beyond the moment at hand. Not one second beyond it.

The night was beginning to lighten from true black to a hint of gray as she put the gearshift into Reverse and backed away from the indoor arena. While she pulled out into the paved street and drove past the west end of the barn, she watched the sky in her rearview mirror, waiting for the first glow of pink to prove that the day truly was coming.

Her eyes burned with fatigue and so did her heart, but she wasn’t going to think about that now. Not right now. She was unloading her new horses into their new home and after that she’d think about whatever was next.

The security lights scattered over the ranch were still bright against the darkness, and when she’d reached the barn farthest from the other buildings she parked under the light beside its door. Just get them out and comfortably settled, that was all she had to do. Throw them their alfalfa and get them some water.

Suddenly even that seemed like too much to contemplate. Her limbs felt too shaky to do anything.

Cait set her brake and turned on the lights inside the trailer. She’d driven longer trips than this with no more frequent stops than she’d made tonight. She’d hauled Roy’s horses all the way to Ohio to the Quarter Horse Congress, nearly twenty-four hours with no relief driver and no sleep.

Exhaustion wasn’t her problem.

What was the problem?

She snapped her mind away from that next logical thought and got out of the truck. Not allowing so much as a pause to reach back inside for her canvas coat, she headed for the trailer. She’d work fast enough to keep warm in just her fleece jacket.

“You are some fine travelers,” she said as she opened the narrow door and stepped up inside, “with, perhaps, an exception here and there. Which one of you has been kicking the side?”

The sight of the nice horses, not great, but plenty good, sound horses—her horses—strengthened her. For all these years, she’d never legally owned a horse, and now she owned seven. Today or tomorrow, Christmas or not, she’d get all the registration paperwork ready to mail. She couldn’t wait to see her name on those official papers.

She let down the padded strap across the rear of the short, roan horse and untied his head.

“I only hope I’m not making a big mistake unloading you here,” she confided as she backed him out, “but I can’t go somewhere else now. If I find another location for my school, Clint will think he ran me off and he’ll only be harder to deal with next time.”

And there would be a next time, because she was not giving up her rights to be on this ranch. For one thing, the rent money she’d pay somewhere else for facilities could be better spent on more horses for more disadvantaged kids and then for an assistant as their numbers grew.

This school was what the Lord had laid upon her heart and this was what she had to do to the very best of her ability. Her memorial to John would be this school, which would have two purposes: to introduce troubled teenagers to horses and to faith in God.

When Clint knew that, he’d change his attitude. At least, he’d change it a little.

So why hadn’t she told him that at once?

She tried to puzzle out the answer as she led the roan into the barn and into the first stall, slipped his halter off and then left him, to get some bags of shavings from the trailer. Maybe it was because she wanted him to acknowledge her right to use the ranch. Maybe it was because she wanted him to know that Bobbie Ann had every right to make decisions, too.

Maybe it was because she wanted Clint to accept her as a person and not only because of John.

That was close.

It was because she wanted him to see her as a woman, not as his brother’s wife.

Chapter Two

All he had to do was simply not think of Cait as a woman.

Impatiently Clint popped the shine cloth across the toe of his right boot one more time, put that foot to the floor and set his left one up onto the woven-bark footstool. It was stupid that he’d ever even noticed that she was a woman, anyhow.

She was his brother’s wife—widow or not—for heaven’s sake! She was forward and stubborn and she had no tact whatsoever in any situation. He didn’t have the slightest interest in her.

Except, of course, as to how her cockeyed school was going to impact his ranch operations. He popped the cloth in the air and then pulled it vigorously across his already-shiny left boot.

He snorted. Her staying out of everybody’s way and using only the old outdoor pen was nothing but a pipe dream. Just let the temperature go above a hundred, let the wind blow dust in their eyes at forty miles an hour, and Caitlin and her little-rich-girl clients would be cluttering up the indoor arena from one end to the other. They’d turn the whole place upside down and probably drive his trainers so crazy they’d quit.

And that kind of trouble he did not need—especially not now, when he was making so many decisions about the ranch and its future. He absolutely would not lose two top trainers who were winning at all the big shows and bringing attention and dollars to the ranch.

What he would do was find a way to get Cait’s silly school off this ranch and to another location as soon as humanly possible. He’d talk to Bobbie Ann and start pushing for that just as soon as Christmas was over.

He could see his face in his boot, so he threw the rag back into the wooden box and went to wash his hands before he touched his white shirt. It was time to go downstairs and get on with this poor excuse for a Christmas Eve. Dad, John and Monte all being absent was an unbearable thought, especially for the late-night hot-chocolate family time, and Caitlin’s presence was the icing on the cake. As if he didn’t have enough to think about!

All he wanted was to get this Christmas over with.

Tonight he would simply look at Caitlin as a sister-in-law, exactly as he did Darcy, Jackson’s new wife. That was the one bright spot of the past year—Jackson’s sudden marriage and his gradual rejoining of the human race.

Clint tucked in his shirt, went to the armoire for a belt, selected the saddle-tan one that matched the boots, put a buckle on it and threaded it through the loops of his pants. It would serve Caitlin right, pushy as she was, if he did convince Bobbie Ann that this riding school business was a bad idea. He had a ranch to run, he was responsible for everything that happened on it, he didn’t have time to deal with the trouble Caitlin was bound to bring to it and he didn’t owe her the time of day.

He hooked the buckle, gave his hair one last, quick swipe with the brush and headed for the door. Well, if he were perfectly honest, he did owe Cait an apology. That crack he’d made about family traditions had been cruel and he hated the sharp pain it had brought to her big dark eyes.

Least said, soonest forgotten, though. No sense in bringing it up and hurting her feelings all over again.

He strode across his room and out into the hallway, glancing toward the guest rooms on that wing. Cait had slept all day, Bobbie Ann had said—not that he’d asked about her—and he’d heard that before breakfast, even, Manuel had asked her for instructions so his crew could feed her horses and take care of them for her.

Poor Manuel. Evidently he was as goofy as all men were about the tall, black-haired, long-legged horsewoman with the million-dollar smile. He’d probably hire a couple more stable hands just to wait on her hand and foot.

He started down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Manuel had said her horses were good, sound stock but not world-class. Said half of them weren’t tall enough to compete in English classes, which was Cait’s specialty over at Roy’s.

That right there made him wonder what she was really up to. Maybe she was planning a horse-trading business here on his ranch, where all the chores were done efficiently and on schedule and any problems would be taken care of by him and Manuel.

Which, come to think of it, would explain her smiling at him this morning and teasing him and saying let’s not fight, when they had never been in the same room in their lives when they didn’t fuss and wrangle about something. That must be it.

All Cait wanted from him was free rent at an efficiently run stable.

Even if that were true, though, it didn’t excuse him for not helping her unload and get her horses settled. He felt ashamed every time he thought about that—he would’ve extended the courtesy to anybody else in the world, since none of the hands had come to work yet.

He had never shown anyone such a lack of hospitality.

What was it about Cait that made him behave like a stranger to himself?

What was it about Cait that made him obsess about her every time he saw her?

Cait hardly knew the woman who looked back at her from the mirror.

She wore a skirt, for one thing, a very feminine, clingy, black velvet skirt cut with a bell flare at the below-calf hem, and with it, a white silk blouse that had cost as much as a good work saddle. Never in her entire life had she owned such an expensive garment. She still could not believe she had bought it.

Or that the moment she’d tried it on at that expensive shop in Dallas, she’d thought of Clint. Had imagined Clint seeing her in it.

Tears stung her eyes at her own foolishness, but she forced herself to blink them away and meet her own gaze.

“Face reality,” she told her reflection.

She hadn’t survived this long without knowing how to do that.

Lifting her chin, she looked it right in the eye: Clint might be attracted to her, too—maybe—but what he also felt for her was scorn.

And she was not accepting any scorn tonight.

Tonight was Christmas Eve. She was invited to a family celebration. Of her family.

For the four months of her marriage to John, the two of them had lived on the ranch in a small house about two miles away from headquarters. They had come back from their elopement in time for New Year’s Eve and she’d been in the family for Easter that year, but this was her first Christmas.

Tears stung her eyes. How could she ever have believed it would be a true Christmas without John?

If she had gone with him to Mexico instead of doing her job for Roy, would it have saved him—as Clint believed it would?

Dear Lord, I hope I wasn’t the cause of his dying. Please help me know, once again, that I wasn’t.

Most of the time she clung to the assurance she’d achieved through hours of prayer after the very first time she’d heard that theory, which was by accidentally overhearing a conversation between Clint and Jackson at John’s funeral. Today, though, Clint’s accusation had shaken her.

Her heart beat faster. She tightened the combs holding the mass of her hair on top of her head and pulled at the tendrils curling along her neck.

John was gone. Nothing could bring him back. He would not want her to be sad and mourn for him when she should be happy. He would want her to help make his family happy, too.

Deliberately she set her mind to that goal.

It would be a storybook Christmas—family and friends, a huge tree with ornaments that had been in the family for years and years, a festive dinner, gifts, traditions and singing. They would have hot chocolate late, right before they went up to bed. After the old family friends and their Christmas guests came and then left after appetizers and drinks and a dance or two, after the family dinner was over and they’d all sat around telling stories and singing carols and after they’d opened one gift apiece. She would be here for all of it because she was one of the family.

Eagerly she turned and went out into the hallway, savoring the spacious, secure feeling of the old stone house around her. Closing the door of her room behind her, she leaned back against it for a moment, just taking in the scents and sounds of the house before she saw anyone else.

This was the most wonderful house she’d ever been in. The center of it was old, a classic, two-story Texas Hill Country farmhouse squarely built of big, rectangular chunks of limestone carved more than a hundred years earlier out of the dusty land itself. It had the typical wooden porches front and back, and wings on either end of the old house, which had been added on fifty years later.

When those wings were built, the once-small oldest rooms in the center had been converted into a couple of huge ones—the great room and the dining room. The part of the kitchen that held the fireplace also had been in the original house. There were nooks and crannies in these rooms and huge rough-cedar posts and beams bearing the weight of the second floor. All the rooms had high ceilings and wide windows and ceiling fans and the solid feel of a home that had its roots deep in the ground.

She looked up and down the hall of this bedroom wing. Old Man Clint, John’s grandfather, had believed every bedroom should have the south breeze or the east breeze or both if possible, so this east wing was family bedrooms and guest rooms, while the west one held a pool room, music room, saddle room, library and spaces for Bobbie Ann’s sewing and other activities.

But what Cait loved most was not the space—although it amazed her every time she walked through it—it was the old, settled, secure atmosphere created by the worn oak floors, the square Mexican tiles of the kitchen, the leather furniture that had been there since the house was built, the Navajo rugs on the floors and the walls, the wood worn smooth by much use and many hands, the gorgeous Western paintings and sculptures that had gradually come into the house over the years and now looked as if they’d been born there.

This family had not moved out in the night when the rent was due. This family had not splintered into pieces and sent its children to live with the first relatives who would grudgingly take them.

The long, deep nap that had erased her tiredness had left her senses all open and vulnerable. She trembled as she breathed in the cedar smell of the greenery Bobbie Ann had wrapped around the banister railing of the stairs. There was a strong scent of spices, too, because every few feet a bundle of cinnamon sticks and oranges studded with whole nutmegs were tied into the cedar with a big red bow.

A marvelous Christmas that she’d never forget. That’s what John had promised her. And that’s what he would want her to have.

She started walking down the hall, and passed Clint’s room. The door stood ajar, the light was out. He was already downstairs.

Fine. Let him be anywhere he wanted. She didn’t have to talk to him. She wasn’t accepting any scorn tonight.

Slowly she walked down the stairs, humming along with the song floating up from below. John had said that his sister Delia’s band always played for the dancing. Right now, though, it was a lone guitar playing “White Christmas.”

Well, there was no chance of snow in the Hill Country tonight, but Cait didn’t care. She didn’t even need it. In fact, she didn’t want it. It would only remind her of the miserable Christmases of her childhood.

Chatter and laughter rose, then, to drown out the guitar and to fill the whole downstairs. The doorbell rang again as Cait reached the first floor. And she could smell chili. Chili and tamales were the McMahan tradition on Christmas Eve.

Company was the other McMahan tradition. There were six or seven families who had all been friends for generations, and they and any Christmas guests of theirs came to the Rocking M for appetizers and drinks before dinner on Christmas Eve. Probably, in the next two hours, at least a hundred people would come and go from this house.

LydaAnn’s trilling laugh sounded above the din of greetings called out by a dozen different voices. Bobbie Ann demanded that all the guests take off their coats and stay awhile.

Christmas had arrived at the Rocking M.

Cait lingered at the bottom of the stairs, kicking out so she could see her new, custom-made-in-Dallas-by-Matteo black boots. Matteo had created the design just for her: red roses and green, twining vines, carved to have layers and layers of petals and stems, plus white butterflies, all of it inlaid and stitched to perfection.

Western boots with the old traditional high, slanted heels and pointed toes. She could have spent less and gotten a great new pair of English riding boots, which she truly needed, but then she wouldn’t feel so much like a Texan, would she?

She grinned at her own silliness and started down the hall toward the huge living room full of people. Maybe no one would notice when she came in and she could just wander around and enjoy the tree and not have to make too much small talk.

“Cait! My goodness! What a gorgeous blouse!”

Bobbie Ann was coming out of the living room with her arms full of wraps and jackets of the guests. Cait went to help her.

“And those boots! Oh! I have to see them. Hold up your skirt!”

“It’s all your fault, Bobbie Ann,” Cait said. “You’ve been telling me to indulge myself, so I did.”

Bobbie Ann’s bright blue eyes looked her over from top to toe.

“You done good, girl,” she said, with an approving smile. “You look wonderful tonight.”

She let Cait take half her load and led the way toward the master suite.

“I bought this blouse, these boots and seven head of horses,” Cait said. “Did I indulge myself enough?”

Bobbie Ann gave her husky chuckle.

“No, but it’s a start,” she said. “I’ll take you shopping after Christmas and we’ll buy you a wardrobe for spring.”

“I don’t want any more clothes,” Cait said quickly, although the very thought made her yearn to do it. “And I won’t have time, anyhow. As soon as I finish working for Roy every day, I’ll have to rush over here and protect my school—Clint is furious at the very idea of it.”

“Clint needs a distraction,” Bobbie Ann said calmly. “He’s trying to work himself to death. Anything new is good for him.”

They dumped the coats on the bed and Bobbie Ann turned to Cait with open arms.

“Oh, Cait, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

Cait’s heart leapt as they hugged. Clint might not want her here, but his mother truly did.

“I’m glad, too,” she said. “Thanks for asking me for Christmas, Bobbie Ann.”

“Thanks for coming.”

Bobbie Ann stepped back and looked up into her eyes.

“I couldn’t have borne it if you’d refused my invitation, Cait,” she said. “You’re all I have left of John.”

She took Cait’s hand and led her toward the festivities then, but Cait’s heart had dropped into her new boots. Was that the only reason Bobbie Ann wanted her there? Did she not love her for herself at all?

Clint stood in front of the fireplace talking to Pete Kirkland—well, listening to him would be more like it—and wondering how soon he could get away to circulate among the other guests. Delia’s band was playing, a lot of people were dancing and he needed to dance with Aunt Faylene because that had been their own private Christmas Eve ritual since he was ten years old.

He also needed to be sure he had a good visit with Larry Matheson, because he was talking about breeding a couple of his best champion mares to the Rocking M’s new young cutting stallion, Trader Doc Bar. Larry was nothing if not stylish and a leader in the industry, and his enthusiastic support of the stallion could fill the stud’s book for next year and mark him as the up-and-coming best in the business. It was worth far more than any paid advertising ever could be.

One thing he did not need to do was apologize to Cait. That would only encourage her to settle in here with her horses.

He tried to covertly glance at his watch. It already felt as if this evening had lasted a year.

Fortunately, just when he thought he couldn’t stay in one spot any longer, the doorbell rang and he excused himself from Pete to go to answer it. His parents’ lifetime friends, the Carmacks, and the twenty-two guests they were having for Christmas this year poured in through the door.

Lorena Carmack laughed as she kissed Clint’s cheek.

“They swarmed on us this time,” she said. “Aren’t you glad this tradition is only bring all your own guests for appetizers and drinks and not for dinner, too?”

“Ma’s made enough chili for everybody in Texas,” Clint said hospitably. “Y’all should stay.”

“Truly spoken like a man,” she said. “We can tell you’re not the one arranging the place settings, Clint dear.”

He ushered them into the already-crowded great room and was in the middle of introductions all around when Bobbie Ann called to him. He looked up…and saw Cait.

All the music and the talk faded away beneath the roaring of his own blood in his head.

Cait was beautiful. He had been wrong about that.

He had never seen her in a skirt, and this one fell over her body like a sunrise coming over the land, touching here and there and then sliding away. She was all softness, all creamy skin and white silk and black velvet. She didn’t seem like Cait at all.

She seemed like a stranger.

Except for her unmistakable presence, the way she held herself and the way she moved that drew the eye of everyone in the room. She still had that distinctive, long-strided walk that said, I know where I’m going and nobody’d better get in my way.

The eternal challenge of her was the same. Except for an added one—the tumbled mass of black curls piled high on top of her head made a man want to take out the pins and run his hands through her hair.

Her eyes looked like black velvet—like her skirt.

Finally they rested on him. Just for an instant.

“Cait, honey, you know the Carmacks, don’t you?” Bobbie Ann said, and she and Lorena began the introductions all over again.

Cait spoke to everyone in the group except him. No one else noticed. Two of the young men in the group—he thought they were Carmack grandsons—monopolized her as soon as they could.

And then she was gone, drifting away with those boys after a pat on the arm from Bobbie Ann, who was shepherding the Carmack group toward the tables full of food.

Clint just stood there for a long minute, looking after her. Then, mercifully, Aunt Faylene came to claim him.

It was the novelty of it, he decided as he danced with Faylene. Simple novelty was the reason she was getting so much attention from everyone.

Why, he, himself couldn’t help but watch Cait in spite of a firm resolution not to give her so much as a glance more than the cool one she’d given him.

No one at the party had ever seen her in a dress before. Few of them, if any, had ever seen her at a social function.

It was the men, as always, who were most fascinated.

Those two young Carmack kids were sticking with her, but several others had joined them, vying for her attention to their jokes and stories. Clint set his jaw and guided Faylene in the opposite direction.

“That Cait’s a knockout, isn’t she?” his aunt said.

Faylene was nearly as good as Bobbie Ann in reading a man’s mind in a New York minute.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Half the men here can’t see anything but her and the other half are the old codgers with failing eyesight.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

His lack of response didn’t discourage her one bit.

“She’s exotic, that’s one reason,” she said, “besides being so drop-dead striking in every way. You know what I think makes her so interesting?”

That brought his gaze straight to her sharp blue one, so like his mother’s. Faylene indulged herself in one gleam of triumph before she answered the question in his look.

“She’s different from other women because she gives no quarter.”

He looked at her.

“Like the old Texas Rangers?”

“Exactly.”

“She’s from Chicago, Faylie.”

She ignored his little sally.

“Everything about Cait proclaims it,” she said seriously. “The look in her eye, the way she walks, the way she keeps her head in her business all the time. No man can resist a challenge like that.”

“Hmpf.”

Faylene went right on.

“A man gets one chance with Cait,” she said. “One.”

A strange, sharp feeling, like a warning, pierced him.

“One’s enough when he gets the rough side of her tongue.”

“Cait’s a direct-talking woman,” she said. “Y’all are just used to us Texas women sugarcoating everything for you.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You and Bobbie Ann are the champion sugarcoaters of all time. Steel magnolias is more like it.”

“Well, we all have our own styles,” his diminutive aunt said sweetly as she looked up at him with a beatific smile. “I, for one, admire a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. Cait’s bound to be a world-class horsewoman and she will be.”

“What’ve you heard about that?”

Maybe Bobbie Ann had talked to her sister about Cait’s silly riding school. Maybe he could get some ammunition here to stop it.

But no. Faylene had her own ideas about what was important information.

“You can see she’s Black Irish,” she said in a reproving tone. “Same as your great-grandpa Murphy—except his eyes were blue. But his hair was midnight-black, just like Cait’s.”

“So, Jackson must look like him,” Clint said, hoping to get her off the subject of Cait.

At least until this endless waltz could be over. Didn’t Delia’s arms ever get tired of that fiddle?

“You look like your great-grandpa, too,” Faylene said. “Tall and black-haired and handsome as can be. Your eyes are different, though—gray as mist instead of blue.” She smiled as if he needed comfort. “That’s why I used Jackson for an example instead of you.” He returned her smile. She was his favorite aunt. “Ooh,” she said, “I can’t wait until Jackson and Darcy get here! I still could just spank them for having that tiny wedding in the old chapel instead of letting us throw them a great big one. There’s five hundred people with their feelings hurt….”

But he couldn’t let well enough be. He’d distracted her and now he had to bring her back.

One of the young men appeared to be asking Cait to dance. She was shaking her head and smiling a refusal.

“What does being Black Irish have to do with being a world-class horsewoman?”

Faylene flashed him an incredulous look.

“The Irish have an affinity for horses, you know that. Their emotions and their spirits run deep and they have a strong connection with things unseen.”

Clint had to grin at her seriousness.

“The Comanches had a connection with horses,” he said.

“Same with them,” Faylene said promptly. “Close to the earth—the Comanches and the Irish.”

“Giving no quarter, like the Texas Rangers.”

“Right!”

She beamed at him.

He laughed and hugged her as Delia’s fiddle finally sang out the last note.

“Thanks for the dance and the information, too, Auntie Fay,” he said.

“Any time, lovey.”

Then the question on his mind came off his tongue of its own accord.

“Why do you think she married John?”

Faylene narrowed her blue eyes and stared up at him.

“Nobody but Cait knows that, sugar,” she said. “Whatever I’d say about it would only be speculation.”

Clint grinned.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to push you into speculation,” he said dryly, “since everything else you’ve told me tonight has been ironclad fact.”

“That’s exactly right,” she said, twinkling at him.

Then she patted him on the arm and hurried off, waving at Jim Prescott. Suddenly she stopped and looked back.

“Sometime she might tell you herself, sweetie,” she said.

Oh, sure. Sometime when he and Cait became best buddies.

Immediately, without so much as a glance toward Cait and her admirers, he started looking for Larry. The reason Cait had married John was totally immaterial to him and he had no idea why he’d asked that question out loud.

He didn’t even want to know. All he wanted was to make the Rocking M the premier breeding station in the reining-horse industry, and in the meantime come up with new stallions to take over the cutting-and pleasure-horse market, too.

And he also wanted to make some waves with his cattle. Might as well dream big. He was the oldest brother, and he’d always been the most responsible one, so perhaps the whole ranch was meant to fall on his shoulders. Jackson was the next oldest, and he was here on the Rocking M and, in time, might come to share the burden.

Monte, the third one born, had always been the wildest, and John, the baby brother, had always been the gentlest, the kindest, the best. Maybe it was true that the good die young.

Maybe it was true that even if both of them were still here, neither would want to make the ranch his main concern for all his life. He, Clint, would just have to accept life the way it was.

Maybe if he made his challenges big enough, and took big enough risks to try to meet them, he’d forget all about this lonely funk he was in, and the ridiculous riding school, too.

The whole time he was visiting with Larry, though, he couldn’t keep from glancing around for Cait from time to time. Just out of curiosity as to how she was handling herself. She did finally escape from the younger men but, just as she tried to slip out into the kitchen, his grandfather’s old friend Mac Torrance caught up with her. Clearly he was asking her to dance but she refused him, too.

Finally he and Larry sealed the deal to book his three best mares and Clint moved on to visit with some other guests. The next thing he knew, the band was playing a fast song, LydaAnn and her friend Janie were starting a line dance and Cait had disappeared.

The noise level in the room rose another notch. At least it sounded like a merry Christmas Eve on the Rocking M, in spite of all the sadness of the year just past.

Bobbie Ann came by with a fresh platter of tortilla chips and her famous salsa dip.

“You’d better go get in that line and dance,” she said. “Or your sisters will be on your case.”

“I danced with Faylene. That’s enough dancing for tonight.”

“Delia and LydaAnn are trying so hard to make this be Christmas, Clint,” she said, frowning. “Help ’em out all you can.”

Irritation stabbed through him.

“I’ve been working this crowd like a politician,” he snapped. “What more do they want?”

“How about a smile?” she said. “I’d like to see one of those from you, myself.”

Thoroughly annoyed, he glanced away.

And there was Cait, standing alone in the book-lined alcove that held the Remington sculpture, thumbing through a book she’d opened on the table.

“Now, there’s a family member—according to you, Ma,” he said. “Why don’t you go tell her to do her duty and get out there in line?”

Bobbie Ann gazed at him thoughtfully.

“She even refused to dance with poor old Mac,” Clint groused. “It embarrassed him. And she hasn’t talked to anyone but those kids with the Carmacks.”

“I’m thinking this is all a bit overwhelming for Cait,” his mother said softly. “Don’t you think so? What with her background and all?”

Shame hit him again, like a fist to the gut. When it came to Cait, he was just piling up the guilt.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Standing there so still, looking down at that book so intently, she held her head at a vulnerable angle. The soft light limned her beautiful neck and shoulders, shadow fell across her face. She studied that book without moving a muscle.

“She isn’t accustomed to big social gatherings,” Bobbie Ann said softly. “Our Cait is a bit of a loner.”

Our Cait. Clint didn’t even challenge that. He was too busy trying to fend off the unnameable feelings washing through him as he looked at this Cait he’d never seen before.

Finally she felt his gaze. She glanced up and looked straight at him for a fleeting moment, acknowledging his existence with the most noncommittal of looks and for the barest fraction of a heartbeat in time.

Much as she had done when she first came into the room.

This time it stabbed him even deeper.

Then she looked at Bobbie Ann and smiled before she went back to slowly turning the pages.

“Let her be,” Bobbie Ann murmured. “She likes to see the pictures of the family.”

Only then did he notice that the large-paged book was not a picture book of Western art. It was one of the big leather photo albums embossed with the Rocking M brand that held the history of the McMahans.

Cait sat on the floor in the shadow of the huge Christmas tree and reached out to touch the papiermâché cowboy ornament. He was twirling his red rope above his head in a perfect, huge loop. He was so old that the gold thread he was supposed to hang by from the center of his hat had worn in two and he stood bowlegged on a thick branch instead.

“I’ll be very careful not to knock you off balance,” she whispered.

No one was around to hear her, though. Almost all the guests had gone and Delia and her band had finished playing.

It was almost time for the family dinner.

But was she really one of the family? John was gone.

“John was one of the good guys, too,” she told the cowboy. “He was the very best.”

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them while she stared at the tree. Maybe she’d just stay here and not go to dinner. At this moment she had no desire to eat.

The John McMahan Memorial School of Horsemanship.

That would look good over the gate to the arena. Or over the door of the barn.

She had loved John with all her heart. From the very first minute they’d met, two strangers sharing a table to eat pizza from a cart in the trade show at the Quarter Horse Congress, he had treated her as if she were a princess. John had been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever dated.

He’d been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever known.

His blue eyes had twinkled when he talked to her and his brown hair had lifted and fallen in the wind. Gently. John was a gentle man and a gentleman and she had loved him with her heart and soul.

She had never loved a man until she loved John.

But it was his big brother Clint who stirred her blood now.

Cait closed her eyes and pushed the feelings away—the feelings that tried to take her breath every time she even thought of Clint. She didn’t know how to name them and she didn’t even want to try.

All she knew for sure was that John had wanted her here, with his family. In his family.

Clint did not.

But she wouldn’t think about Clint.

She drew in a deep breath of the wonderful, spicy smell of the tree. She looked up. It must be nine feet tall.

A storybook tree. For a storybook Christmas.

“Mer-ry Christ-mas! And to your mama and daddy, too!”

It was Bobbie Ann’s voice, floating in from outside where she was saying goodbye to the last of the guests.

“Tell them we’re so sorry they didn’t feel up to coming with you all. I’ll be over to see them soon.”

John had told her that all the guests on Christmas Eve who came to the Rocking M with their guests were from families who’d been friends with the McMahans since the Comanches had signed a treaty with the first German settlers. The only treaty between Native Americans and Americans that had never been broken.

“Well,” John had said, laughing, “actually it was between Native Americans and Texans. Maybe that’s why.”

She couldn’t even imagine families who had known each other for so many years, for generations. Families who had grown and multiplied and become intertwined with all the others. Families who had lived in one county for a hundred and fifty years.

When her grandparents couldn’t even stay in the same country. When her parents couldn’t even keep the three of them together or stay in the same apartment for half a year.

John was gone.

Clint was here.

And she was here, in his home, with the first horses she had ever owned and the first important job that God had ever given her. The most important dream she’d ever set out to fulfill.

Clint wanted her gone.

Lord? You brought me here, didn’t You? Isn’t this where You meant for me to be? Maybe I was wrong about Clint. But isn’t this where You sent me to make a mark for You?

Chapter Three

Clint showed the Tollivers to the door when they got ready to leave, and stood on the porch talking to them for a minute. Then, as soon as they said their last goodbyes, he headed for the barn.

“Hey,” James Tolliver yelled as he wheeled his Escalade around the circle drive, “need some help with the chores?”

“No, thanks.”

Clint waved him off and kept going. If he didn’t get a few minutes alone, he was going to smother. And if he was checking the horses, his mother couldn’t fuss at him about neglecting his duties as host. After all, she was the one who had insisted on giving every hand on the Rocking M the evening off for Christmas Eve.

He had to get away from her. And from his sisters, who were trying to make it be Christmas. They had worried about holiday celebrations for two years now, ever since Dad had died of a sudden heart attack.

He had to get away from them.

He had to get away from everybody.

He had to get away from Cait.

The truth of it shocked him. He surely wasn’t leaving the house to avoid Cait.

But he was, and that brought an ironic grin to his lips. Cait wasn’t exactly chasing him around the Christmas tree.

And he couldn’t say that he blamed her.

Once inside the refuge of the big barn, he walked slowly down the aisle, looking into the stalls on each side, checking to see that no one was looking colicky and no one was out of water. Halfway down the show-horse side, he heard footsteps behind him.

Uneven footsteps. Finally. Jackson was here. Clint stopped and turned around.

“Well, it’s about time you showed up!”

He ought to be angry with his tardy brother, but these days it was hard to be anything but glad whenever he saw him. Since he’d met Darcy and married her, it was as if the real Jackson had come back to life.

“Did you miss me, big brother?”

It was still a shock to get a response from Jackson, much less a cheerful one, after being accustomed to him staying locked in his own gloomy, reclusive little world for months and months after his terrible wreck.

“I could use a little help keeping the festivities going,” Clint said in the same light tone. “Right now I’m in trouble for refusing to line dance.”

“Then let me at ’em,” Jackson said. “I’ll dance ’em right into the ground.”

His limping gait brought him nearer, and Clint saw that he not only had a wide grin on his face, he had a twinkle in his eyes.

“I’m gonna go get the thermometer,” he said. “I think you’ve got a fever.”

“I do,” Jackson said. “A fever named Darcy.”

Clint threw back his head and laughed and laughed, which made him feel much better all of a sudden.

“You’re over the edge, man, you’re downright besotted. I never thought I’d see you in such a pitiful shape.”

Jackson turned his hands—his bare hands—palms up.

“What can I say? I’m all hers. I live to please her.”

“Hey, hey, get a grip,” Clint said, grabbing his arm in mock panic. “Be sure not to tell her that!”

Jackson just grinned at him and Clint grinned back. Then he got serious and searched his face.

“No foolin’, Jackson,” he said. “You think she loves you as much as you love her?”

Still smiling, Jackson nodded.

“I know she does.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. By the way she acts. By what she says.”

When Clint just stared at him without saying any more, Jackson nailed him with a sharp look.

“How come you wanna know? You fallin’ for somebody?”

He thought for a minute, then snapped his fingers as best he could.

“Lorrie Nolan! I heard you took her to Hugo’s for breakfast the other day!”

Clint snorted.

“Are you and Lorrie…”

“No!”

“She’d be a good match for you—she’s got a mind of her own.”

“Yeah. A mind to be a McMahan.”

Clint turned and started past the last half of the stalls.

“Check ’em on that side for me, will ya?” he said.

“Yeah. And you tell me what you’re talkin’ about, then, if it’s not you and Lorrie.”

Clint shrugged.

“Women in general, I guess,” he said. “When they act like a different person than they ever did before, how d’you know which one’s real?”

Then he snapped his jaw shut. He wasn’t saying any more, no matter what, because this whole conversation was nothing but a stupid waste of breath. Jackson couldn’t be a bit of help, anyhow, blindly in love with Darcy as he was.

But Jackson was silent, thinking about it.

“Well,” he drawled at last, “I’d say, Clint, ol’ bro, if she’s actin’ like she never did before, she might have changed her mind. She may be trying to tell you somethin’.”

By the time he and Jackson got to the house, only the immediate family, which included various relatives of Bobbie Ann’s, was left. At least the evening was passing.

Everybody was standing around talking in the dining room or going in and out of it, bringing in food and lighting candles, and Aunt Faylene was at the sideboard taking the cover off one of her famous cakes. She turned and smiled at them as they walked in.

“My favorite nephews,” she proclaimed. “I want a hug.”

They gave her hugs and listened to her chatter for a minute, then she said, very low, “Any word from Monte?”

“Not that I know of,” Clint said.

“You’d know,” she said, her lips tightening. “Poor Bobbie Ann’d be walking on air if he’d called.”

Her gaze went to her sister, just coming in from the kitchen with a huge crock of chili. Clint went to help her with it.

“Places, everyone,” she called. “Time for dinner.”

Clint set the crock in the middle of the long table and glanced around.

“Where’s Cait?” he said.

No one knew.

“I’ll get her,” he said, and left the room.

First she wouldn’t dance, then she wouldn’t mingle and now she wouldn’t come to dinner. What was she doing, anyhow? Bobbie Ann didn’t need another worry, nor another absentee right now. He would say something to Cait. If she was going to accept an invitation, then she had an obligation…

The sight of her stopped him in his tracks.

She sat beside the Christmas tree with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, staring at it as if she were a little girl. Lost in its magic.

As he watched, she lifted one hand and fingered the glass bead on the simple necklace at her throat. She was gone someplace else, that was for sure. Dinner at the Rocking M was the furthest thing from her mind right now.

A thought came, unbidden. Was she thinking about John? Remembering times with him? Had they shared a mighty love like Darcy and Jackson’s seemed to be?

His gut told him no. Darcy and Jackson were a matched pair. Anybody could spend five minutes with them and know that. John and Cait had been a whole different story.

She laid her head against her knees for a long moment, then lifted it and looked up at the angel at the top of the tree. The white profile of her face and throat was so pure and beautiful it made him swallow hard.

Slowly he walked across the room. She didn’t even hear his boot heels on the tiled floor. He reached the circle of light made by the tree and looked down at her sitting in its shadow.

“Cait?”

She started as if he’d waked her from sleep. A quick flash of fear crossed her face, then surprise. Was that a sheen of tears in her eyes?

It moved him. Against his will.

It made him want to protect her, somehow. Which was a laughable thought, for sure.

What was she afraid of? The Caitlin he knew wasn’t scared of anything.

“Dinner’s ready.”

Cait wanted to get up. She really did. But Clint was so close she could smell his aftershave.

His gray eyes were so intense they seared her skin.

The heat rose up in her neck and her entire body tilted to feverish.

Just like early this morning when she’d walked in on him riding that colt.

Just like the moment, dear Lord help her, that she’d looked at him across the back of the black horse and told him, “Christmas Eve gift.”

“Time for dinner,” he said, as if she spoke a foreign language and he should try another phrase to convey the same information.

But she was frozen there, despite the blood pulsing through her veins hot enough to melt her.

He took a step closer, as if to see what was wrong, and for one instant she thought he was going to hold out his hand to help her up. For that same instant, she was ready to reach for it.

But he kept his hands at his sides.

“We’d better get in there,” he said, in a tone so neutral she couldn’t find his feelings in it, “or else Jackson will eat up all the tamales.”

Her pulse was pounding so hard she was afraid he’d hear it and she stood still for a moment the instant she was on her feet. Trying to slow the blood in her veins. Trying to deepen the breaths in her body.

Even in that split second, though, while they stood near enough to touch, a deeper thrill went surging through her, the thrill of his closeness, the warm scent of him and the look in his eyes that tightened the unspoken tension that invariably vibrated between them. She cleared her throat and tried to speak normally.

“So,” she managed to say in her coolest tone, “is that another family tradition I don’t know? Last one to the table gets no tamales?”

He did have the grace to let her see his chagrin.

But he didn’t apologize. Actually, she couldn’t imagine Clint apologizing to her. Not for speaking his mind about his strong, true feelings that she didn’t belong here.

She had to remember that. He thought she didn’t belong here. He didn’t want her here, no matter how gallantly he’d called her to dinner. He was the host, she was the guest.

Of his mother.

She walked past and left him to follow as she headed toward the rest of the family gathering around the table in the dining room. Delia’s voice came to her clearly as she and Clint approached the door.

“…that time John was trying to steal my sopaipilla and I tried to spear it with my fork and stabbed him in the hand instead? That’s what started the water fight of all time!”

“Ooh, yeah!” LydaAnn chimed in. “That was in Tulsa at the Fourth of July show. We had everybody at the stalls soaking wet before it was all over.”

Jackson added something, too, but Cait barely heard it. She felt she was the one stabbed. That was a story John had never told her, had never even mentioned, and everyone else here knew all about it. Everybody in the family, judging from the number of voices recalling more details.

“I remember,” Faylene said, “when Johnny was little and he’d string honey all over his sopaipilla and his plate and the table and everything else and refuse to pass it on and—”

She stopped talking the minute Cait stepped into the room. So did everybody else. No more talk about John. Or anything.

Just for one heartbeat.

“Ah, Cait, there you are,” Bobbie Ann said, and indicated her place.

Clint held the chair for her before he went around to what must be his regular seat at the end of the long oak table.

“Let’s hold hands and say the blessing.”

They did. Cait had never heard that blessing. She didn’t know the words.

Then Bobbie Ann began filling the brightly colored bowls with chili, one by one they passed them around the table, and everyone started talking at once. Faylene served the tamales from the pottery platter; they all passed around the huge salad and the salsas and quesos, chips, corn bread, tortillas, red, yellow and blue corn and flour ones, too, pico de gallo and guacamole.

Cait concentrated on the beautiful sight of the table and its bountiful, colorful food. She tried to fix her mind on what Faylene was telling her.

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