Dreaming Of A Western Christmas: His Christmas Belle / The Cowboy of Christmas Past / Snowbound with the Cowboy

Goodness, it had been two. In eight more days she would be completely undone.

* * *

In the morning Brand had to shake her awake. When she poked her head out of the blanket she’d burrowed in he noticed her braid had come undone; her hair curled around her face and straggled down to her shoulders. It was the color of gold and looked as soft as dandelion fluff. Made his hands itch to lace his fingers through it.

She opened her eyes, found him staring at her and popped up like a jack-in-the-box. He jerked his gaze back to the coffeepot. Her voice stopped him cold.

“We will travel another forty miles today, I assume.”

“Forty miles? You think we can ride forty miles every day?”

She blinked those unsettling green eyes. “Yes, of course. Why ever not?” She crawled out of her bedroll and stood up. “I calculated it all out last night. Four hundred miles divided by forty is ten. It will take ten days to get to Fort Klamath.”

“Like hell it will.”

Undaunted, she poured herself some coffee and stood blowing on it. A good ten minutes dragged by while he considered how to tell her the facts of life on an iffy trail through the mountains. The more he thought about it, the madder he got. This pampered greenhorn thought they could just sashay over to Fort Klamath as though it was an afternoon buggy ride? She sure as hell had a bunch of learning to do.

“Well?” she said. “You have not answered my question, Mr. Wyler. Why can’t we reach the fort in ten days?”

“You don’t have any idea what you’re up against, do you? Hell’s bells, lady, you don’t have the sense God gave a goose. You have—”

Without thinking, Suzannah dashed her coffee into his face. “A quick temper,” she said with satisfaction. The coffee dripped off his chin and soaked his shirt.

Without blinking he began to undo the buttons, then shrugged it off over his head, wadded it up and tossed it at her. “Wash it out,” he ordered. He tipped his head toward the creek.

She stared at his bare chest. He was as lean and brown as a hazelnut, with rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat anywhere.

His eyes bored into hers and her anger bubbled up anew.

“I would press it as well,” she said in a voice laden with poison, “but I did not pack a sadiron.”

“Stop talking and start washing,” he ordered. “Go on.” He gestured at the creek. “Get to it.”

Twenty minutes later she smacked the sodden bundle against his chest and propped her hands at her waist. Without even blinking he unfolded the laundered shirt, shook it out and pulled it on sopping wet.

“It’ll dry,” he remarked, anticipating her comment. “Might wash your own shirt out as well,” he said. “Must be...uh...dirty.”

“It is no such thing! How dare you insinuate—”

“I’m not insinuating, I’m smelling.”

“Oh.”

She could hear him chuckle. How she detested that sound!

“Take it off,” he said. “I’ll turn my back.”

She would not undress in front of this man. But he stood in front of her, waiting, and she knew he wasn’t going to move until she did what he said. She reached one hand to her top shirt button and hesitated. The look in his eyes grew unsettlingly warm.

“Go on,” he said softly. “I know you’re wearing underclothes, and I’ve seen women’s duds before.”

“Turn around,” she said sharply.

He pivoted on one boot heel and propped his hands on his lean hips.

“You are no gentleman, Mr. Wyler,” she said to his broad back.

“I don’t have to be.”

“If you want my cooperation, it would help if you were at least polite.”

“Just for the record, Miss Cumberland, out here on the trail all I have to be is prepared for anything, and—” he started a gusty whistle between his teeth “—patient as a damn saint.”

She made quick work of rinsing out her shirt and had it buttoned back on before he finished the second verse. “That’s a song sung by some of the workers on the plantation,” she said uncomfortably.

“So?” One eyebrow quirked. “You never sang ‘Oh, Susanna’ in school?”

“Certainly not. I had tutors. Besides, I was not allowed to sing except in church.”

“Bet you didn’t have much fun growing up, didja?”

She opened her mouth, then shut it so fast her teeth clicked. No, she had not had fun. She had played with the young children on the plantation until one day Mama put a stop to it, and from then on she spent all her free time on lessons in deportment and learning how to give a proper tea party.

Until the war. After the war there was no reason for tea parties.

Brand tried not to look too hard at the outline of her breasts where the wet shirt was plastered to her skin. She wasn’t much fun, but she sure was pretty.

“Mount up,” he barked. “Got a long ride ahead.”

When she saluted smartly he laughed out loud. Maybe he was wrong about the fun part.

Chapter Six (#ulink_98c22f5d-e208-5583-a8df-6b37608ebf55)

By midafternoon they still had not stopped to eat or rest the horses, or do any of the things he had done the previous day. Suzannah was too tired to ask why, and anyway, she thought she knew. Mr. Wyler was trying his darnedest to get her to turn back.

Well, she would not. She would pull up her socks and grit her teeth and keep going just to spite him. And, of course, to reach Fort Klamath and her beloved John. Her arrival would be such a surprise for him, a real Christmas present.

Her fiancé would never, ever treat her in such an inhumane manner. John was a thousand times more gentlemanly than Major Brandon Wyler. Her fiancé might be a Northerner and only a lieutenant in the army, but he was a far, far better man. And not only that—

Suddenly Mr. Wyler halted his horse and raised his hand. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation of a meal at last.

“I hope we are stopping for lunch,” she ventured.

He did not answer, just dismounted and walked back past her a good thirty paces, studying the ground. Then he straightened and stood looking off toward the hills, his eyes narrowed. With a shake of his head he strode back to his horse and slipped the rifle out of the leather case.

Oh, she did hope it was another rabbit! She was so hungry she would eat it half-cooked. Or even not cooked.

But he did not raise the gun or aim it at anything. He just stood without moving, looking back the way they had come.