The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (9 page)

“Yep, you did. Ella Jo used to make that kind of cake and sometimes I can talk Hazel
into making one. She says anything that takes three fourths of a pound of butter is
too rich for my old heart.” Henry chuckled.

Natalie went back to putting tinsel on the tree. “Aunt Leah says the same thing. That’s
why we don’t get it very often either. She used to live close to us but now she is
in Conway, Arkansas. Momma married a rancher and raised me and my three younger brothers.
Aunt Leah married a career.”

“I see. Looks like maybe you got the best of both worlds,” Henry said. “Damn, this
tea is good. Ain’t nothin’ like sweet tea, don’t matter if it’s winter or summer.
Unless it’s a shot of Jack Daniel’s after supper on a cold night. Don’t you give me
that look, Lucas. The Bible says not to get drunk. It don’t say I can’t have a sip
of Jack to warm my old bones.”

“Ain’t nothin’ like an icy cold beer in the summer when the day’s work is done,” Grady
said.

Jack chuckled. “Or a bottle of cold watermelon wine chilled in a cold creek.”

“Guess there will be an open bar like always at the party?” Lucas asked.

“Oh, yes there will,” Jack said. “I even ordered a few bottles of watermelon wine
and a couple of strawberry wine just for you.”

“Tell me about this party,” Natalie whispered to Lucas.

“Dad, tell Natalie about the Christmas open house,” Lucas said loudly.

“We always have a little get-together for the neighbors and our business friends at
Christmas. You don’t have to do much. Caterers come in with the food, and the hired
help moves the furniture out of the living room and helps set up the tables and all.
Folks filter in and out from about six to midnight. Mostly they stay about an hour
and go on to the next party and then some more come in. Usually ain’t no more than
thirty or forty in here at one time. Y’all probably have something like it out there
in Silverton, right?” Jack asked.

She nodded. “Lawton Pierce has a big Christmas party down in the Palo Duro Canyon
every year. Last year it had to be postponed a couple of weeks because of that snowstorm
we got out there. We began to think it wasn’t going to stop until it filled the whole
canyon. Momma has a New Year’s party in the big sale barn and everyone in the whole
county is invited. Unless the weather is bad, we have a barn full.”

They’d finished the second roll of tinsel and the tree was beginning to look decorated.
Lucas stood back and eyed it, walking all the way around to the back before he nodded.
“I believe we’ve got it. It’s ready for the ornaments. You guys have to do those since
we did the hard part. And we get to sit in the chairs and boss you.”

“Josh here is nodding off. I’d better sit right here and hold him,” Jack said.

Natalie shook her head. “No, sir! It’s your turn, and besides, I’m thirsty. So I’m
going to hold Joshua and enjoy that glass of tea before it gets so watered down that
it’s tasteless.”

“Sassy bit of baggage, ain’t you?” Jack smiled.

“That’s the understatement of the whole year. I’m sassy. I’m bossy. I pitch fits.
And I’m more stubborn than a cross-eyed mule. I see the sun is trying to peek through
the clouds out there”—she pointed out the window—“which means it’ll be thawing in
a couple of days. You sure you want me to stay on until Hazel comes back?”

“Yes, he’s sure. I’m not about to eat his cookin’ for a whole month. I’d rather spend
eternity on the backside of hell sittin’ on a barbed wire fence. And honey, you got
a long, long way to go before you ever get as bossy as Hazel,” Henry said.

“Gramps!” Lucas said.

“Well, I would. Jack can barely make a pot of coffee. His momma never could teach
him the ways of the kitchen. I’m putting the ornaments in the middle. I’m too old
to bend and too mean to stretch,” Henry declared.

Jack handed Joshua off to Natalie, and the three old men talked about every ornament
they picked up. This one was from the first years that Henry was married to Ella Jo;
that one was what Lucas made in school in the second grade. It sounded like home,
which reminded her that she had to call her mother.

When every one of the ornaments was dangling from a tree branch, Henry stood back
like Lucas had earlier and cocked his head to one side. “It’s time to put the top
up there. Josh is the youngest, so he gets to do it.”

“Good grief! He’s two months old and he just learned to smile. There’s no way he can
put the top on the tree,” Natalie said.

“Sure he can if we help him. Lucas, you hold this and I’ll hold the baby up there.
Grady, you got the camera?”

“Right here,” Grady said.

Lucas reached up and set the angel on top of the tree and Jack braced Joshua with
one hand under his bottom and one at his back. “Right now, snap it while he’s got
a hold of one of her wings.”

“He thinks it’s edible.” Henry laughed.

“If he wants to slobber on it, that’s just fine. Angels love babies as much as we
do.” Grady chuckled.

After half a dozen pictures were taken, Jack handed Joshua back to Natalie and said,
“Turn that baby boy around here, Natalie. He’s got to see his first Christmas tree
the minute that it lights up.”

Sharp guilt hit Natalie in the heart. It should have been her momma’s tree that he
saw first or even hers, not one that he’d probably never see again. Two steaming hot
scorching kisses did not mean there was something permanent at Cedar Hill for her
and Joshua. It just meant that her hormones were out of control and that Lucas Allen
was one very sexy cowboy.

She turned him around and propped him upright in her lap, and Jack kept his eyes on
Joshua while he stuck the lights into the plug.

“Look at his eyes!” Henry said. “They’re big as cow patties.”

“He’s smiling and it ain’t none of that gas stuff,” Grady said.

Jack stood up, folding his arms over his chest. A smile tickled the corners of his
mouth. “I knew he’d like it. Wait until Saturday night when all the neighbors come.
He’s going to be the star of the show.”

***

Natalie figured the rest of the decorations would be a few candles, maybe some extra
lights to go around the window behind the tree, and a wreath for the door.

Boy, was she wrong! Just when she thought they couldn’t get another box stacked in
the living room, they brought in a dozen more.

“Well, that does it for the house decorations,” Henry said. “Grady, you can have the
hired help get all the yard stuff out of the barn and put it out there close to the
porch. Lucas can decide how he wants it put up, but the blow-up things are going up
close to the house so Josh can see them when I hold him up to the window.”

Lucas winked at Natalie. “You want me to go outside or put up stuff inside first,
Gramps?”

“I want that train put up around the bottom of the tree. I want to see the baby’s
face when he sees and hears that train,” Henry said.

“We haven’t put that up in years,” Lucas said.

Jack slit the packing tape on a big box that had TRAIN written on the side in three-inch
letters. “Not since you was a kid. But we got a baby in the house now, and he’s going
to love it just like you did when you were little. That was your favorite part of
Christmas.”

Natalie had seen Lionel trains in pictures but never had seen one in action. She had
trouble keeping her eyes off of those tight jeans stretched across Lucas’s butt while
he crawled around and obeyed the orders that all three of the older guys barked at
him. She needed a long walk outside in the freezing cold weather by the time he got
that blasted train running in circles around the tree.

Joshua blessed them with his biggest smile of the day when Henry propped him on his
knee and the train whistled.

“See, I knew he’d love it,” Henry said. “We’ll sit right here in this big old recliner
and watch it go round and round a few times.”

“It’s going to take days to empty all these boxes y’all have brought inside,” Natalie
said.

“Naw, honey. We’ll have it done by the time we go to bed tonight with your help,”
Jack said. “We got a system. First, we’ll do the tinsel around the walls. I’ll have
to get out the ladder for that. Even Lucas can’t reach the ceiling.”

By midafternoon tinsel was looped around the top of the walls with a Christmas ornament
hanging in the middle of each loop. A Nativity scene was set up on a table at the
far end of the living room and a Santa scene on a table on the other end. Family pictures
had been cleared off the mantel and replaced with an assortment of beautiful angels
in cut crystal, china, and even a gorgeous one carved from wood.

“Look at Josh,” Henry beamed. “He likes the shiny angel with the gold wings the best.
That was Lucas’s favorite one when he was a little boy.”

“I like the wooden one,” Natalie said.

“Gramps, tell her about that one,” Lucas said.

Henry picked up the figurine from the mantel. “Well, when me and Ella Jo was first
married, we had bought the ranch and we was living in the little cabin. It was tough
those first years until we got on our feet, so we made each other a Christmas present.
That first year I got a good warm wool scarf and hat that she knitted special for
me. And I carved that angel out of an old cedar stump for her because she was my own
special angel. Look at this, Josh.” Henry held the angel out to him. “When you get
to be a grown man, you find someone who just takes your breath away and looks just
like an angel to you. When you do, you chase her until she says that she’ll be yours
forever.”

Tears welled up in Natalie’s eyes, but she kept them at bay with several blinks.

“And now for the crowning glory,” Jack said. “I searched everywhere to find a bunch
big enough to hang pretty this year.” He held up a ball of mistletoe as big as Lucas’s
head. “The hook is still there from last time, and I tied a pretty red ribbon on it.
It ain’t holidays without mistletoe.”

“Hell, you wouldn’t ever get a kiss if you didn’t put that up there for the holidays.”
Grady laughed.

“Don’t I know it, and just think, Saturday night is the night.” Jack laughed with
him.

Lucas was standing under it when Jack hung it on the hook. He looked down at his son
and motioned toward Natalie. “He’s in the right spot, girl.”

“Dad!” Lucas exclaimed.

Natalie walked right up to him, smacked a kiss on his cheek, and looked up at Jack.
“Is that the way it’s done?”

“It’ll do for starters.” He nodded seriously, but his expression was anything but
serious.

“And now it’s about Josh’s nap time, so Natalie can put him to sleep while we take
care of the lawn stuff,” Henry said.

She and Joshua watched from the window for a while, but he got fussy, so she gave
him a bottle and he went right to sleep. He didn’t even wiggle when she laid him in
the crib. While the guys argued about the outside lights and the right place to put
the blow-up decorations, she cleaned up the kitchen and put a load of laundry in the
washer.

She’d never had a problem throwing her underpants in the same washer with her brothers’,
but that day she blushed when her things and Lucas’s all went into the washer together.
It seemed far too personal even though they had shared kisses and bumped into each
other dozens of times.

She thought about leaving and not looking back. Then she thought about staying. The
work wasn’t any more or less than what she did at her folks’ ranch and the pay was
a hell of a lot better. She and Joshua had a single-wide trailer on the back of the
cotton farm out there; here they had a bedroom with a rocking chair and a nice view
of trees and cows at Cedar Hill. The only con about the setup was that they had to
share a bathroom with everyone else in the house whereas they had their very own in
their small trailer.

She fished her phone from her shirt pocket and slowly poked in the numbers rather
than hitting speed dial. It barely finished the first ring when Debra said, “Did I
miss something else? I don’t think you should stay at Leah’s all week. The weatherman
says that it’s clearing off tomorrow, and if Joshua does something else that Leah
gets to see before I do, she’ll never shut up about it.”

“Are you sitting down, Momma?” Natalie asked.

“Yes, I’ve spent the morning cleaning up the tack room and I just now made a pot of
coffee,” Debra rattled on.

“Get a cup of coffee and don’t say a word until I’m finished,” Natalie said.

“You are scaring me. Are you all right? Has something happened to Leah or to Joshua?”
Debra’s voice was filled with panic.

“Everyone is fine. I should have said that first. I’m sorry,” she said.

“You scared the hell out of me. What could be so damned important that I have to sit
down? You didn’t take a job out there in Arkansas, did you? I swear, I won’t have
it! I wasn’t happy that you had a baby without a husband, but I got over it and I
love Joshua. Please don’t tell me you found a coaching job and you are moving in with
Leah. All you have to do is wait a couple of years until the stink dies down around
here and you’ll have a job at the school again.”

“Momma! I said you couldn’t say anything until I finished telling you what I have
to say. I did not take a job in Arkansas, and I have no intention of living with Aunt
Leah.”

“Well, halle-damn-freakin’-lujah!”

“But I’m not coming home next week.” She went on to tell her mother the whole story,
from the time that Lucas first appeared on the computer screen with Drew and how that
it was Lucas who’d kept her sane after Drew died.

She ended with, “I’m staying here until Hazel comes home.”

A long, pregnant silence made her wonder if her mother had fallen off the stool in
front of the worktable in the tack room. She could be lying dead on the barn floor
with the phone stuck to her ear and an expression on her face even the mortician couldn’t
erase.

“Well?” Natalie asked.

“You’ll be home by midnight or I’m sending your father and all three of your brothers
to get you,” Debra whispered.