The Cowboy's Family Christmas. Carolyne Aarsen

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      Seeing George in full-on Walsh mode wouldn’t help their cause. She was the temporary secretary for the Cedar Ridge Rodeo Group. For the past couple years the group had tried to get their town’s rodeo to be a part of the larger Milk River Rodeo Association. They needed all the goodwill they could muster.

      “This is private land,” George continued as the man drew closer.

      “Here, punkin, why don’t you come down?” Leanne asked, tying up the horse and reaching for Austin. She had to intervene before George took a notion to grab the shotgun stashed in the barn behind them.

      Leanne lifted her son over the fence, clambered over herself, picked Austin up, then hurried over to where her father-in-law stood, hands planted on his hips, head thrust forward in an aggressive gesture. “What’s your business here?” George growled.

      But the stranger was unfazed by George’s belligerence. A slow smile crawled across his well-shaped mouth, shaded by a scruff of whiskers, and the unease in Leanne grew.

      “Hey, George,” the man said, sweeping his sunglasses off, tucking them in the pocket of his shirt and flicking his cowboy hat back. “Been a few years.”

      Leanne’s legs suddenly went numb. Her heart turned to ice at the sound of that voice. At the sight of those brown eyes, crinkled at the corners.

      Reuben Walsh.

      Prodigal son come home.

      And right behind all her initial reactions came a wave of anger so fierce it threatened to swamp her.

      * * *

      Reuben Walsh had known his father wouldn’t throw out the welcome mat when he saw him nor kill the fatted calf when he arrived. And he had guessed Leanne wouldn’t be thrilled either.

      But the blatant rage in her narrowed eyes was unexpected.

      The last time he’d seen her, she’d been lying in a hospital bed, her auburn hair tied up in a tangled ponytail he knew would have driven her crazy. Leanne always wore her thick hair loose, hanging halfway down her back. Always had her nails perfectly done. Always looked amazing even in the simple clothes she tended to wear.

      But at that time she lay unconscious, her pale features slack as if she were as dead as her husband, Dirk, was. His brother, Dirk.

      She and Dirk had been on their way back from their honeymoon after a quick and unexpected wedding that happened before Reuben had flown back to Cedar Ridge.

      To propose to Leanne himself.

      He stopped in at the hospital to see her after his brother’s funeral, stood by her bed, the angry questions swirling around his mind unable to be asked, and then he left. Taking his ring and his broken heart with him. He hadn’t been back since. Nor had he and Leanne been in contact.

      What could they possibly have to say to each other?

      “Hey, Leanne,” he said, surprised at the hitch in his voice when their eyes met.

      To his surprise and disappointment, old feelings gripped his heart.

      For years she had occupied his waking thoughts and drifted through his dreams. Now here she stood, Dirk’s widow, with his nephew resting on her hip. Two reminders of the distance between them.

      “Hey, Reuben.”

      Her voice was cool and clipped. He felt his own ire rise up, wondering what right she had to be bent out of shape.

      “What are you doing here?” His father’s gruff voice grated and once again Reuben fought the old inferiority his father always created in him.

      When Reuben received the email from Owen Herne, chairman of the Cedar Ridge Rodeo Group, asking him to assess the unfinished arena for them, he’d been tempted to delete it. He had no desire to return to Cedar Ridge and face the woman he had loved, now the widow of his forever-favored older brother. And why would he deliberately put himself in the line of his father’s constant disapproval? He had lived with that long enough when he was a teenager.

      The last time he was in Cedar Ridge was three years ago to attend his brother’s funeral. George had been so bitter, he hadn’t acknowledged Reuben’s presence. No personal greeting. No question about how he was doing. No recognition of Reuben’s own pain at the loss of a brother.

      As for Leanne, she’d still been unconscious and in the hospital. While seeing her so incapacitated had gutted him, in some twisted way it was probably for the best. Reuben wouldn’t have known what to say to her after she’d left him for his brother.

      But the tiny part of him that still clung to hope pushed him to come home.

      “Owen asked me to come talk to the Rodeo Group. About the arena,” Reuben said, determined not to let these two show how much influence they had over his life and emotions.

      “He never said anything to me,” George complained.

      “You’ll have to take that up with him,” Reuben said, trying to keep his tone light and conversational. “But the ranch was on my way to town. I thought I would stop by and say hello.”

      “It’s been a long time since you were here,” George said.

      On this point Reuben couldn’t fault him, though he stifled a beat of resentment at his father’s frowning disapproval. Didn’t matter what he did when he was growing up, George criticized him.

      Come home with good marks?

      Well, he could have done better.

      Ride the rankest bronc in the rodeo?

      Could have scored higher.

      Never as good as his brother. Never as good as Dirk.

      “It has been a while,” Reuben agreed. He wasn’t apologizing for his lack. As the son of the wife who had taken off, Reuben often felt his father held him to account for his mother’s behavior. And Reuben had taken that on, as well, always trying to find ways to earn his gruff father’s approval.

      But it never happened. In fact George had made it clear Dirk would take over the ranch when he was old enough and that there was no place for Reuben in spite of all the work he had done here year after year. Reuben left home as soon as he graduated high school. He rode rodeo in the summer and took on any odd job to help pay for his structural engineering classes. He was determined to show his father he could go it alone. Now he had a degree and had already racked up some impressive jobs. Though his heart had always been here in Cedar Ridge, once he discovered that Dirk and Leanne had had a baby, he shelved any hope of coming back.

      His eyes drifted again to Leanne, the woman who, at one time, he had dared to weave dreams and plans around.

      “So, here we are,” he said.

      Instead of responding, she set his nephew, Austin, on his feet and clung to his chubby little hand. She adjusted the little cowboy hat he wore, then glanced over at George.

      Looking everywhere but at him as a tense silence fell between them.

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