Gena Dalton - Midnight Faith

Finally he and Larry sealed the deal to book his three best mares and Clint moved on to visit with some other guests. The next thing he knew, the band was playing a fast song, LydaAnn and her friend Janie were starting a line dance and Cait had disappeared.

The noise level in the room rose another notch. At least it sounded like a merry Christmas Eve on the Rocking M, in spite of all the sadness of the year just past.

Bobbie Ann came by with a fresh platter of tortilla chips and her famous salsa dip.

“You’d better go get in that line and dance,” she said. “Or your sisters will be on your case.”

“I danced with Faylene. That’s enough dancing for tonight.”

“Delia and LydaAnn are trying so hard to make this be Christmas, Clint,” she said, frowning. “Help ’em out all you can.”

Irritation stabbed through him.

“I’ve been working this crowd like a politician,” he snapped. “What more do they want?”

“How about a smile?” she said. “I’d like to see one of those from you, myself.”

Thoroughly annoyed, he glanced away.

And there was Cait, standing alone in the book-lined alcove that held the Remington sculpture, thumbing through a book she’d opened on the table.

“Now, there’s a family member—according to you, Ma,” he said. “Why don’t you go tell her to do her duty and get out there in line?”

Bobbie Ann gazed at him thoughtfully.

“She even refused to dance with poor old Mac,” Clint groused. “It embarrassed him. And she hasn’t talked to anyone but those kids with the Carmacks.”

“I’m thinking this is all a bit overwhelming for Cait,” his mother said softly. “Don’t you think so? What with her background and all?”

Shame hit him again, like a fist to the gut. When it came to Cait, he was just piling up the guilt.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Standing there so still, looking down at that book so intently, she held her head at a vulnerable angle. The soft light limned her beautiful neck and shoulders, shadow fell across her face. She studied that book without moving a muscle.

“She isn’t accustomed to big social gatherings,” Bobbie Ann said softly. “Our Cait is a bit of a loner.”

Our Cait. Clint didn’t even challenge that. He was too busy trying to fend off the unnameable feelings washing through him as he looked at this Cait he’d never seen before.

Finally she felt his gaze. She glanced up and looked straight at him for a fleeting moment, acknowledging his existence with the most noncommittal of looks and for the barest fraction of a heartbeat in time.

Much as she had done when she first came into the room.

This time it stabbed him even deeper.

Then she looked at Bobbie Ann and smiled before she went back to slowly turning the pages.

“Let her be,” Bobbie Ann murmured. “She likes to see the pictures of the family.”

Only then did he notice that the large-paged book was not a picture book of Western art. It was one of the big leather photo albums embossed with the Rocking M brand that held the history of the McMahans.

Cait sat on the floor in the shadow of the huge Christmas tree and reached out to touch the papiermâché cowboy ornament. He was twirling his red rope above his head in a perfect, huge loop. He was so old that the gold thread he was supposed to hang by from the center of his hat had worn in two and he stood bowlegged on a thick branch instead.

“I’ll be very careful not to knock you off balance,” she whispered.

No one was around to hear her, though. Almost all the guests had gone and Delia and her band had finished playing.

It was almost time for the family dinner.

But was she really one of the family? John was gone.

“John was one of the good guys, too,” she told the cowboy. “He was the very best.”

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them while she stared at the tree. Maybe she’d just stay here and not go to dinner. At this moment she had no desire to eat.

The John McMahan Memorial School of Horsemanship.

That would look good over the gate to the arena. Or over the door of the barn.

She had loved John with all her heart. From the very first minute they’d met, two strangers sharing a table to eat pizza from a cart in the trade show at the Quarter Horse Congress, he had treated her as if she were a princess. John had been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever dated.

He’d been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever known.

His blue eyes had twinkled when he talked to her and his brown hair had lifted and fallen in the wind. Gently. John was a gentle man and a gentleman and she had loved him with her heart and soul.

She had never loved a man until she loved John.

But it was his big brother Clint who stirred her blood now.

Cait closed her eyes and pushed the feelings away—the feelings that tried to take her breath every time she even thought of Clint. She didn’t know how to name them and she didn’t even want to try.

All she knew for sure was that John had wanted her here, with his family. In his family.

Clint did not.

But she wouldn’t think about Clint.

She drew in a deep breath of the wonderful, spicy smell of the tree. She looked up. It must be nine feet tall.

A storybook tree. For a storybook Christmas.

“Mer-ry Christ-mas! And to your mama and daddy, too!”

It was Bobbie Ann’s voice, floating in from outside where she was saying goodbye to the last of the guests.

“Tell them we’re so sorry they didn’t feel up to coming with you all. I’ll be over to see them soon.”

John had told her that all the guests on Christmas Eve who came to the Rocking M with their guests were from families who’d been friends with the McMahans since the Comanches had signed a treaty with the first German settlers. The only treaty between Native Americans and Americans that had never been broken.

“Well,” John had said, laughing, “actually it was between Native Americans and Texans. Maybe that’s why.”

She couldn’t even imagine families who had known each other for so many years, for generations. Families who had grown and multiplied and become intertwined with all the others. Families who had lived in one county for a hundred and fifty years.

When her grandparents couldn’t even stay in the same country. When her parents couldn’t even keep the three of them together or stay in the same apartment for half a year.

John was gone.

Clint was here.

And she was here, in his home, with the first horses she had ever owned and the first important job that God had ever given her. The most important dream she’d ever set out to fulfill.

Clint wanted her gone.

Lord? You brought me here, didn’t You? Isn’t this where You meant for me to be? Maybe I was wrong about Clint. But isn’t this where You sent me to make a mark for You?

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