Midnight Faith. Gena Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ