Her Christmas Valley Cowboy

Chapter 1

Redemption is for men who care. I lost all that a long time ago.

Cassidy Wilder had known exactly what she wanted since she was nine years old. To have in this order: a home of her own, a place in the town of Rustler Mountain, and to marry Dalton Wade.

She now had a small home on her brother’s ranch—not quite what she was after, but something adjacent.

Her brother Austin had turned the tide of public opinion on the reputation of their outlaw family over the last couple of years—which again, wasn’t her doing but had given her a sense of belonging she’d been missing.

So really all that was left was marrying Dalton.

The issue was that she might die a vestal virgin waiting for him to ever kiss her.

Dalton was her brother Flynn’s best friend, and she knew he was being respectful by not making a move on her. He was being a good friend, a good … well, whatever he was to her. Because he was a good guy, and he probably had that weird, wrongheaded idea that sex would corrupt her.

Well, she wouldn’t say no to some corruption, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to her that she was going to have to make the first move.

And what better time than now? This season.

The season.

Fa-la-la-la fuck me please, cowboy.

That little internal thought made her shiver, just slightly. Whether because she was pondering the meaning of the word, or because she was afraid she’d be struck by a falling Christmas tree for being so irreverent around a holy season, she wasn’t sure.

But the season was upon them, nonetheless.

Rustler Mountain was definitely beginning to look like winter was approaching.

The trees in front of the town hall had all turned a vibrant red and orange, and Cassidy knew that meant the leaves would wither and drop by next week.

The color was vivid, but fleeting, a metaphor, probably, for something she had never experienced.

Every weekend between now and Christmas, there would be festivities on the main street of town.

While Cassidy didn’t like to betray the fact that she was secretly soft, in her own heart she could admit it.

She loved the decorations, the music, the food.

Sometimes she thought that if she could immerse herself in Rustler Mountain Christmas, then she would forget all the Christmases that came before, and most crucially, the Christmas when her mother left her stranded on Austin’s doorstep, making her a Christmas foundling at the mercy of three older half brothers who had never even known of her existence.

It would not be surprising if she hated Christmas.

For a while it had been difficult. But Christmas in Florida had been different.

The way the seasons changed—and they did change, contrary to what people who didn’t live there believed—was different from the way they changed in Oregon.

The air tasted different, the foliage behaved in a different manner.

The way fall turned things crisp before winter made the landscape an easily shattered pane of ice was something she had never experienced until she moved here.

Christmas had become a new tradition that had new meaning.

Now it reminded her of how lucky she was to have her older brothers.

How lucky she was to have this place to call home.

And really, how lucky she was to have Dalton.

Her entire family was helping with her future sister-in-law’s booth.

Jessie Jane Hancock was doing blacksmithing demonstrations in a station by the courthouse and answering people’s questions and concerns as Rustler Mountain’s future mayor. Her term would begin in January.

Cassidy was walking toward the booth now, hands in her pockets, a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck to keep the chill at bay. She could hear music, laughter, conversation, could smell cinnamon, apples, and cloves on the air.

There were carolers walking toward her, wearing Victorian costumes, the men in top hats, the women in dark, high-collared dresses with bustled skirts. It was a familiar scene, and yet always different. Always a spectacle.

She quickened her pace as she moved toward the family booth, crossing the street while traffic stopped for her. She waved cheerily at the cars and kept on going.

There was a crowd around Jessie’s booth, so she could barely see what was happening, though she could see sparks flying upward and people clapping.

She could see Austin, wearing a black cowboy hat, holding his daughter, Emma. And his wife, Millie, standing beside him holding his arm. The sight made Cassidy ache, but not in a bad way.

One of the things that Cassidy was having a difficult time wrapping her head around was how different everything was this Christmas.

A couple of years ago, Austin and Millie got married; then they had a baby. Then Carson married his best friend, Perry Bramble, and now Flynn and Jessie Jane were engaged after what seemed to Cassidy to be a whirlwind fling.

She couldn’t imagine doing anything like that.

Because Dalton wasn’t a whirlwind.

He was stable and steady. He was everything she valued.

Right. All of the women he’d had casual affairs with would call him stable and steady.

Okay. Maybe they wouldn’t.

But she knew him as stable and steady. He was always good to her. Always patient and wonderful and exceptionally kind.

He was everything she could ever want in a man.

The crowd around the booth began to disperse, and that was when she saw him.

Hands moving in broad gestures as he told a story that made Jessie and Perry double over with laughter. Cassidy felt an absurd prick of jealousy. She had nothing to be jealous about. Perry and Jessie weren’t single.

She picked up her pace. She cut across the lawn rather than walk around the perimeter and ignored the delicious smelling treats as she made a beeline for her family.

“Hi,” she said.

The conversation broke off, and she became very aware of the fact that she had just crashed in. Not only that, but they had all responded to her appearance by ceasing their conversation.

Her brothers were careful with her. Maybe a little bit too careful, because of the circumstances surrounding her coming to Rustler Mountain.

Everyone was so painfully aware of the fact that she’d been abandoned, and while it was really sweet that they worried about her and all, she didn’t need to be treated like a charity case. Or like she was tragic.

Though, to be fair, she definitely acted like the youngest, most coddled member of the group. It was a learned habit. And now that everybody was pairing off, getting married, having children, it seemed … silly. She felt silly. She wanted things to change.

She looked at Dalton, and her heart jumped. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I was talking about the time my brother and I were hunting and he got a deer. Then we came up over the mountain, and there was a bear feeding on the deer that he’d just dropped. Well, then he got the bear, and went running down the hill shouting, ‘Two-for-one!’”

She knew this story. Of course she did. It had happened way back when Dalton was a kid, and he got a lot of mileage out of it. But she laughed anyway, because she loved to hear him tell it.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jessie said, wiping a tear underneath her eye. “What are the chances?”

“They must not be very good, because I’ve never known another person that it happened to. And it never happened to him again.”

“He was just lucky, I guess,” Cassidy said, smiling at him.

“I guess so,” he responded. “I know I am.”

She tried to pick that apart. To see if there was something hidden under his words. A secret message meant only for her.

Jessie sighed heavily and looked at her phone. “I have to start another round again. Just pounding out a shoe, but look, there’s a crowd coming.”

“You look tired,” Cassidy said, meaning to be helpful.

But Jessie flinched. “Do I?”

“Not in a bad way,” Cassidy said hurriedly. “In a way that suggests you’re very industrious.”

Her older brother Flynn reached over and clapped his hand on her shoulder. “Quit while you’re only a little bit behind, Cass.”

Cassidy felt her smile falter. “Can I help with anything?”

“You can go gather some people,” Jessie said.

“I will,” she said, scampering away and finding a knot of teenagers. “There’s a blacksmithing demonstration starting over there. Free to watch.”

She moved through the group of people, marveling at the strange faces. So many people drove all the way out to Rustler Mountain around the holidays. It was a local tourist attraction. The kind of place that was worth an hour’s drive.

Sometimes Cassidy wondered what it would be like to live close to a movie theater, a chain restaurant, or a Walmart, instead of being well over an hour away. But her ultimate conclusion was that it just wasn’t the life for her.

She liked living here. The sense of community, the traditions.

She had no intention of leaving. She liked stability. The familiarity of Rustler Mountain. The sameness of life here.

Well, a lot of things in her life had changed lately, but she had no intention of changing.

Except, she did want things to change with Dalton. It was what she had always hoped for.

And if he rejects you, then what?

No. She’d had enough bad things happen to her.

She had been over this in her mind before.

If you were abandoned by your mother, brought to a town you had never even heard of to live with your father, who died right before you arrived, leaving you totally stranded with three feral older brothers, then you were owed some smooth sailing.

She was convinced of that. Or rather, she wanted to be convinced of that.

She gathered quite a crowd to visit Jessie’s booth, where she watched her brother admiring his fiancée’s handiwork.

“She’s something,” said Flynn.

The way he looked at his fiancée, it was just so obvious he was head over heels in love. It was really something. Flynn’s expression brought her back to that earlier interaction with Dalton. What had she seen in his eyes?

She couldn’t be sure.