Cowboys and Cocoa (Cowboys and Chocolate)

  Published by Cady Phelan Publisher

  Cowboys and Cocoa Copyright 2013 Elizabeth Hooper

  Interior layout: www.formatting4U.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at info@cadyphelan.com. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For more information on the author and her works, please see www.CadyPhelan.com

  Sarah Hunt stood at the kitchen counter, staring out into the night and sipping hot cocoa. Well, since the power had been intermittent all night, it was really lukewarm cocoa.

  Candles flickered on the table in the breakfast nook where she’d halfheartedly set a table for one in honor of the holiday: a simple red placemat, white plate, and Santa hat napkin ring with a green napkin folded inside.

  She didn’t trust the turkey breast she’d been trying to bake all day or the sweet potato casserole that was still far too mushy from the off-and-on oven. Instead, she’d raced to the microwave the last time the lights turned back on, nuking a cup of hot cocoa and stirring it with a candy cane from the Charlie Brown Christmas tree in the living room.

  Outside the window, the wind howled, blowing the snow into drifts that were going to make getting around tough tomorrow. The barn doors were already half-covered. Fortunately, there hadn’t been so much as a bale of hay or a cow housed inside for years. Even so, it made her think how deeply the front door of the ranch might be snowed under. She should check. Hell, she should shovel it, too, before the storm got too thick, but by the looks of it, she was already too late.

  The candles gave her gloomy kitchen a rosy glow, but little could dispel the pall of despair that had fallen over the farm since her father had passed six months earlier.

  She sank into her chair at the lonely table for one, marveling at how far she’d come in half a year. Last Christmas, she’d been at the helm of Delmonicos, her own grass-fed gourmet steakhouse. Too busy for romance, she’d thrown herself into turning Delmonicos into the premier destination for four-star steaks in the greater San Francisco area and, after three years of blood, sweat, and filet mignon, she’d done that and then some.

  The walls of the cavernous former theater that she’d turned into a prestigious eatery had been lined with celebrity photos and awards for distinguished excellence, and reservations had stretched out three months in advance. But then, on a hot summer night in the middle of the dinner rush, the phone had rung. It was Randy Whittmer, the sheriff of Bourbon Creek, Montana and a former high school classmate. She’d known from his voice it was bad.

  It’d been even worse.

  Her father’s heart attack hadn’t exactly been a surprise. He’d eaten meat three times a day for years and had been nearly eighty pounds overweight the last time she’d been home. But her reaction to his death had surprised her.

  She’d been up all night sorting through old photo albums and, before daybreak, had booked the first flight home. Via cell phone while waiting at the airport, she’d given over the main duties of the restaurant to Rico, her head chef.

  That’d been six months ago. Rico had become her partner out of necessity because she still hadn’t sorted through her father’s things.

  She meant to, but every box held a different memory, every photo a week’s worth of pain. August had turned into September; September had turned into jack-o’ lanterns; pumpkins had turned into turkeys, and here it was, Christmas Eve.

  She sighed, hands clasped around the Christmas mug she’d made for her father in grade school. He’d kept it all these years. Had used it, too; the inside was stained yellow from years of coffee, and even though she’d found it in the back of the cabinet..

  On the front, in her fifth grade scrawl, it stillsaid World’s Greatest Dad. It hadn’t been true, not even then, but no one made a Father’s Day mug that said World’s Most Mediocre Pop.

  The rattling windows forced her back to reality. In the living room, the fire crackled and more candles flickered as the wind whistled through the drafty old house. .

  She was alone. All alone.

  And soon, in a few hours, it would be Christmas—her first without her father. Her first back in Bourbon Creek.

  * * * * *

  Gabe St. James put down the phone and cursed his luck. Did the pipes need to freeze on the neighboring Grant Lodge spread during the last hour of his watch? On Christmas Eve, of all nights. Forty-five minutes later and he would have been snug in his bed when the call came into the ranch hand quarters, and Sned Snively, the next one on deck, would have had to take the call.

  Now it was up to him to handle it. He looked around the cavernous Flynn Ranch, his home in the rodeo circuit off-season and his job eight months of every year. He’d been looking forward to a little shut-eye, and a long night’s sleep to shrug off the fact that he was alone, again, on Christmas.

  Instead he was reaching for his toolbox with one hand, his ski jacket with the other, and heading out into the worst storm of the winter. His Jeep Durango was solid on the road—well, when the snow was thin enough to let the wheels touch the road.

  As it was, he’d be practically drifting all the way to the Grant Lodge, five miles away. It didn’t sound that far, but with the visibility in inches instead of feet and his bumpers grinding six-foot snow banks, it felt like five hundred.

  His knuckles were white on the steering wheel and his neck sore from being hunched over for the last two miles when he hit a patch of ice beneath the snow, losing control of the Jeep and plowing so deep into a snowdrift that it took all his strength just to wedge open his door to get out.

  Steam hissed from the cracked radiator as the neon green fluid gushed into the white snow beneath his tires. “Great,” he muttered, pulling his ski cap and gloves out of his jacket pocket and slipping them on as he assessed the lay of the land.

  The moon was full, but the drifts were so high on either side of the road that he hardly knew how far he’d gone or how far he was from Grant Lodge.

  He climbed to the top of the nearest drift, thick work boots crunching in the tightly packed snow. The horizon was bleak and chilly except for a soft, warm glow to his right. If he was halfway between Flynn Ranch and Grant Lodge, that’d put him on the old Hunt Farm.

  But Old Man Hunt had passed months ago. Who would be there now? His wife had died years ago and his only daughter, Sarah, had left Bourbon Creek shortly after graduating from high school. Last Gabe had heard, she was running one of San Francisco’s finest steak houses. They’d even featured her in a “Where Are They Now?” story for the Bourbon Creek Gazette.

  Staring at her most recent photo in the paper a year or two back, Gabe had been instantly transported to their magical senior year together. The long drives into school, the frantic lunch periods spent trying to cram a whole day’s worth of conversation into 40-minutes on the picnic bench outside the wood shop, the longer rides back home each day, the detour they’d take out past Old Man Miller’s Farm where, if the weather was warm, and sometimes even when it wasn’t, they’d lay out an old comforter Gabe kept in the back of his truck, necking for hours until the sun threatened to set, and at last he’d drop her off at home, her old man scowling from the porch as Gabe waved guiltily before speeding off to catch hell from his own father.

  The
y’d planned to attend Bourbon Creek Community College after school, he with an eye on an agricultural degree, she was going to take prep courses for a teaching degree. But then, just before graduation, it’d come: the acceptance letter from Cutting Edge Culinary School.

  Cutting Edge Culinary School in… California.

  He could still remember the sound of his own voice as he’d stood next to his truck, the letter still in her hand. “Accepted?” he’d said, stung by the excited look in her eyes. “I didn’t even know you’d applied.”

  It was the last time they’d spoken that year. He’d watched her graduate, still seething with jealousy, and the next thing he knew, she was gone. Never said goodbye, never wrote, and the closest they’d been in all that time was when the rodeo circuit swung through Bakersfield once a year.

  Now, with frost forming on his nose and his bad knee feeling as if it was made of icicles, he trudged toward Sarah’s old home. He had no choice. If he tried to make it to his own ranch on foot, he’d never get there. But even if the light in the window was a mirage, he needed shelter to survive the night.

  * * * * *

  Sarah was on the front porch, shoveling a path between the front door and the stack of damp wood in the corner, when she heard the thump of something falling in the snow.

  She gave it little thought at first. The farm was knotted with old trees, some of them centuries old, and it wasn’t uncommon in a storm this bad for one or more of them to keel over or, barring that, dump a foot of snow from their uppermost branches.

  But then the fallen thing coughed and moaned and she dropped the snow shovel, tramping down the frozen front steps, before she spotted a hooded figure face-down in the snow.

  She ran to him, her legs sinking nearly knee-deep into the snow until she could kneel by his side, turning him over so he wouldn’t get frostbite. And then gasped once more to see who he was.

  “Gabe?”

  His eyes fluttered open, as soft and blue as ever in the clear moonlight. “S-S-Sarah?” His smile of recognition was thin-lipped and blue. She struggled to get him up and onto his feet, let alone into the house.

  She helped him into the wing chair by the fire, yanking off his snow-soaked boots so his feet could warm twice as fast. She covered him with quilts her mother had knitted and slid a fresh mug of hot cocoa onto the fire grate, hoping the it would warm up by the time his hands had stopped shivering.

  Minutes later he sat up, color in his face, his socks drying as she slipped the mug into his hands.

  “I… I can’t believe you’re really here.” He coughed when he practically inhaled the cocoa. “I thought I was seeing things.”

  “You and me both,” she sat across from him. “Glad as I am to see you, I have to ask: what the hell are you doing out on a night like this? I thought you had more sense than that.”

  “And I thought you were in San Francisco, serving steaks to celebrities and making millions.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure whether to be flattered that he knew what she was up to, or ticked off that he was still bitter about the way they’d broken off their senior year fling.

  She looked at the fire, listening to it crackle, before turning back to him. “Come on, Gabe. I just saved your life. Can’t you forgive me after all these years?”

  He chuckled. “I guess old habits die hard, huh?” A beat, a crooked smile, and then, “Thanks for the cocoa, by the way.”

  Sarah smirked. “And?”

  He gave a little schoolboy shrug. “And… for saving my life.”

  “That’s better.”

  He sipped his coffee, still weak from trudging through the snow. “You still haven’t told me what you were doing out in this storm.”

  “The pipes burst at the Grant Lodge and I was on call to go fix them. I didn’t… I didn’t think the storm was that bad.”

  She tsk-tsked him. “Born and bred in Montana and you still underestimate a winter storm? I thought you cowboys felt winter in your bones.”

  Gabe grabbed his left knee, wincing. “Some more than others.”

  She watched him rub out his knee. He was older now—so was she—and the years showed.. Harder than she’d last seen him and battered and bruised--but the battle scars of a semi-pro rodeo rider only added to his sexy charm. Six feet of all muscle, long and lean in his damp blue jeans and off-white Henley shirt, he still had the power to make her heart melt--if not six-foot snow banks.

  The quiet had settled in, the crackling of the roaring fire the only sound in her father’s old place. “I came to see you once, you know.”

  He looked up, eyes hooded. “When?”

  She shrugged. “A few years back. The local paper did a story on the Bakersfield Rodeo. A couple of the chefs from the restaurant thought it might be fun. We took a road trip and, imagine my surprise when I heard them announcing my old classmate’s name over the loudspeaker.”

  His doubt gave way to a smirk. “How’d I do?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t ask.” Then, a few seconds later, another confession: “I wanted to go wait for you. See you, up close.”

  “And?”

  “I chickened out.”

  He chuckled, dry and familiar. Sarah could hardly believe her ears, or her eyes. All the time that had passed and it felt just like yesterday. “Figures,” he said, giving up on his knee and draining the last of his cocoa.

  “Here,” she said, eager to have something productive to do. “I’ll make you some more.”

  “Really,” he said, even as he held out his empty mug. “I don’t want put you out…”

  A moment later she stood in the kitchen, tearing a packet of instant cocoa into a cup full of cold water and stirring it until the lumps were (mostly) gone. Part of her was glad to see Gabe after all these years; part of her felt guilty that it had been all these years; and part of her couldn’t wait to get back into the living room and feast her eyes on her old cowboy flame.

  “Gabe?” The wing chair was empty, the quilts carefully folded on the seat. “Gabe?” She flew to the door, afraid he might have stumbled out into the storm.

  But just as she reached for the door, the Christmas lights flickered to life and the stereo with it. From near-silence to Bing Crosby crooning about a White Christmas, the living room became filled with holiday cheer.

  Footsteps pounded from the basement and there stood Gabe in the doorway, smiling boyishly and looking ten years younger. “I got the generator up and running, so you can at least have a proper Christmas.”

  “Me? What about us?”

  “Well… I just… I mean...” His eyes flickered toward the door and she stood in front of it, protectively.

  “Oh no, Cowboy, you’re not going out there until this storm lets up, and even then, I’ll drive you out to Grant Lodge then back to where you’re staying.” She looked out the living room picture window and sighed. “Looks like I won’t be spending Christmas alone after all.”

  He followed her into the kitchen, where she set about boiling water for stuffing. Instant stuffing. The thought nearly turned the her chef’s stomach.

  “Were you planning to?” He slid into the breakfast nook chair.

  “Was I what?”

  “Going to have Christmas alone?”

  She nodded, dropping seven grain bread into her father’s ancient toaster. “You see anybody else around here?”

  She caught him looking at the single setting. “Where’s your… husband?”

  Her snort was louder than she’d intended it to be. “I guess you could say I’m married to my work.”

  He nodded, not needing to say “Me, too” to tell her they shared more than just the kitchen.

  “And you?” she asked anyway.

  “There’ve been a few since you,” he confessed. “But nobody permanent.”

  “Still a cowboy, huh Gabe?”

  Her tone had been light but, turning with a jar of organic mayonnaise in her hand, she saw him fiddling with the Santa napkin holder. “I didn’t…” she b
egan, apologetically. “I didn’t mean anything, Gabe.”

  He looked up, smiling that crooked smile. “Just feeling a little melancholy is all, Sarah. It’s so… strange to see you here, in this kitchen, on this night.”

  She nodded, pulling the boiling water off the burner and pouring in the dried bread crumbs and seasonings.

  In a quiet tone he added, “I was sorry to hear about your father. Are you… did you come back just for the holidays?”

  “I’ve been back since his funeral,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

  His breath catching was audible even over the sound of the old wooden spoon stirring the too-dry stuffing. “That… that was months ago.”

  “Six months ago.”

  “And you’ve been here all the time?” He couldn’t hide the hurt in his voice. It was the same tone he’d used when, years before, she’d opened that stupid acceptance letter to culinary school in front of him.

  He’d felt betrayed then, not that she could blame him. And he obviously felt betrayed now.

  She nodded, setting the stuffing down. “I meant to call you, Gabe.” She pointed to where his number was stuck to the fridge with a faded magnet. “But I guess I was just too embarrassed.”

  “Why?”

  She turned, the bread popping up in the toaster making her flinch. “Why didn’t I call you or why was I embarrassed?”

  “Both.”

  “The way I left in a hurry, Gabe. You know.”

  He nodded.

  “It wasn’t you,” she added, turning back to slather mayonnaise on the crusty bread.

  “Then who was it?”

  “It wasn’t just one who, or one thing; it was lots of things.”She didn’t turn back to see if he understood. She busied herself preparing sandwiches to go with the stuffing. A sad dinner, but Christmas always made sad dinners somehow less sad.

  When she slid a plate in front of him he reached out for her, not the food, his hand still cold on her wrist. “I would have understood, Sarah. If you’d just told me about culinary school, I would have understood.”