Maisey Yates – A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas (страница 6)

She didn’t, either. In fact, she had a feeling that he didn’t mind one way or another, but had sensed that maybe she didn’t. Knew that she was cold.

Right. He doesn’t care. Don’t go applying warm and fuzzy motives to him.

She climbed cautiously into his truck, closing the door behind her. “A gentle reminder,” she said when he started the engine. “I do have a knife.”

“Yeah,” he responded, starting the engine and putting the truck in Reverse. “Me, too.”

“Why do you have a knife?”

“For all I knew you had a gun.”

She sputtered. “If I had a gun and you had a knife it wouldn’t help you.”

“It’s just a good thing it didn’t get to that.”

“Well. See that it doesn’t.”

“I know,” he said, his tone dry. “You’ll cut me.”

They didn’t speak for the short drive down the bumpy, pothole-filled dirt road. McKenna folded her hands in her lap and stared down at her fingers. There was dirt under her nails.

You’re homeless. It’s been days since you’ve had a shower.

It was amazing how you could push all of those things to the side, but the minute you had to interact with another person—a beautiful person—it all came rushing back.

“Where are we going?” Suddenly, she was full of panic.

“To my brother’s house,” he repeated. He had said that already.

“And he’s going to be there?”

“Yes,” he responded.

“Oh,” she said, looking back out the window.

So, someone else was going to see her like this. She didn’t really care. Her entire life had been a series of inglorious situations. It was just that this was the worst.

She’d done a pretty good job of letting shame roll off for most of her life. She’d been the poor kid. Had never had cool clothes. Had never been able to have friends over. Had been shuffled around homes, some good, some bad. She’d built up some tough armor over the years.

But this was a new low, and apparently...apparently shame still existed inside of her.

They pulled up to the house and her heart sank into her stomach. She hadn’t fully realized where she was. She had hitchhiked to the edge of town, and she had fully intended on camping out in the woods. She had happened upon a collection of cabins on the edge of the woods, and then had circled around, and found a dilapidated, abandoned one deeper in. She had realized she was camping out in a place people stayed in for money, but she hadn’t realized people also lived there.

Or that it was quite so fancy.

Her companion got out of the truck and headed toward the broad front steps that led to the porch. She just sat there. She took a breath, and opened the door. There was no point being timid. No point feeling like crap. She knew what she was.

And that was: more than her current situation.

It didn’t matter what these people thought of her.

It mattered if they turned out to be psychotic killers, though. But she really did have a pocket knife.

And okay, she knew that wasn’t the deadliest of weapons. But she had sat outside a self-defense class one time and had heard the woman talking about how the element of surprise was generally on your side when you were a woman. It was about the only thing on your side, so you had to use it. They didn’t expect you to fight back.

McKenna Tate had been fighting back for her entire life. She wouldn’t stop now.

And she supposed that right there was the point of that hope inside her chest she often resented. It had brought her this far. Made her feel determined. It was what kept shame and hopelessness from taking over.

As long as she never let it get out of hand, it was what kept her going.

She walked slowly up the front steps and stood next to the man. She came up to the top of his shoulder. Just barely. He was so tall. And yeah, now that she was a little bit more awake, and it was a little bit lighter out, she could see... Definitely as beautiful as she had first thought. If not more so.

She turned her face back to the door in front of her.

Her new friend knocked, and they waited.

The man that answered the door was nearly as tall as the man at her side, and just as good-looking. Though in a different way. He had that easy manner about him, a charm that the other man did not have.

She didn’t trust charm.

“Hi,” she said. “I was told there would be breakfast.”

The new man looked at the other man, and then back at her. “Wyatt Dodge,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“McKenna Tate,” she responded, grasping it with her own.

Of all the ways she had envisioned being caught by the owners of the property, she hadn’t imagined this.

And then she realized that she still didn’t know the name of the man who had found her in the cabin. The beautiful one. The one who looked like he might not remember what a joke was, much less have a whole store of them like Wyatt Dodge probably did.

She looked at him, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t offer a name.

“Come on in,” Wyatt said, still eyeing his brother speculatively.

She took him up on his invitation.

The inside of the house was even more beautiful than the outside. Rustic, but incredibly comfortable. Cozy. She suddenly became aware of how cold her nose and cheeks had been when they began to warm up.

She looked to the left of the entryway and saw that there was a fire in a rock fireplace. She wanted to go sit in front of it. She wanted to press her face against it.

But then, she also smelled food. Bacon.

She’d had many a disagreement with the man upstairs over quite a few of the circumstances in her life, but right about now she was feeling much friendlier to him. She sent up a prayer of thanks.

If anything could surprise the divine, McKenna Tate being thankful might do it.

“My wife, Lindy, is in the kitchen,” Wyatt said.

“Not cooking,” a voice rang out from the next room. “Just waiting for the bacon to be done.”

He gestured that direction and McKenna followed the directive, walking into the beautiful kitchen, to see an equally beautiful blonde woman sitting at a small breakfast table. Her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her manner elegant even though she was wearing sweats.

“I’m cooking, technically,” Wyatt said. “It’s part of the agreement.”

“Agreement?” McKenna asked.

“Yes, I agreed to marry him and move from my winery to his ranch. But only if he cooked me breakfast at least four days a week. The other three days I get a pastry from the coffee place in town.”

McKenna’s stomach tightened. Jealousy. She was as familiar with that as she was with hunger, and right now she felt nearly overtaken by both.

Not because she wanted the man cooking the bacon, specifically. Just that it would be nice to have an arrangement like that in general. Someone who cared. Someone who would vow to cook bacon four days a week just so you would marry him.

She couldn’t imagine someone caring like that.

“What are you doing on my property, McKenna Tate?” Wyatt asked, turning toward the stove and getting bacon and some scrambled eggs out of a pan, putting them on a plate and setting them down on the table. She eyed them hungrily.

“Have a seat,” he said.

She hesitantly did as he said, sitting next to his lovely wife, and feeling every inch the bedraggled urchin that she was. “Eat.”

Her man said that.

Not that he was her man, just that he was the one that had woken her up, and she still didn’t know his name. And on principle, she wasn’t going to ask.

Still, she obeyed.

“Coffee?” Lindy asked.