A Cowboy's Christmas Promise by Maggie McGinnis Read Free Book Online

small wave. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
    He nodded, and couldn’t help but watch her head up the hill, dog bouncing along beside her.
    “Told ya.” Cole’s voice came up behind him.
    Daniel turned around quickly, making himself busy grabbing his stuff from the stable floor. “Told me what?”
    “Told ya you wouldn’t be able to resist her.”
    “I can resist her just fine, buddy.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “She’s gorgeous! What self-respecting man
wouldn’t
look?”
    Cole paused. “You, normally.”
    “Don’t say it.” Daniel put up a hand. “Please don’t say it.”
    “Okay.” Cole eyed him. “But just so you know, Hayley’s a lot of bluster and careless energy on the surface, but underneath, she’s one of the good ones. Like Katie was.”
    “Good to know.”
    Daniel felt his throat tighten as the words came out. He needed to get out of here, and now. Jesus, there was no way he’d ever think about being with someone else, and it stabbed at him to think Cole thought it was a possibility. What bothered him way more, though, was that he’d apparently given Cole a reason to
think
it was a possibility.
    Guilt descended on him like a dark, scratchy blanket as he grabbed hold of his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “I gotta get out to Tanner’s place. Give me a call if Apollo gets worse.”
    He felt badly leaving Cole in his figurative dust as he turned the truck around and drove out the driveway, but how could even his best friend understand the flood of emotion that washed over him at the most inconvenient times? How could he explain it to someone who’d never really even
been
in love, let alone married?
    How could he tell him how it felt to wake up after a couple of fitful hours of sleep, only to feel a telephone pole slam into your chest when you saw the empty pillow beside you? How could he explain how the word
we
had grown spikes?
    And how could he describe the grief that washed back over him eighteen months after Katie’s death, when he realized he’d gone an entire day with
out
thinking about her?
    How could he possibly explain his fear that by starting to feel better, he was actually leaving her behind?
    Of
course
he’d thought Katie was his forever. He’d never believed it would be any other way. And when she got sick, he’d still thought the chemo and radiation would save her, even though the doctors’ faces said otherwise. Because how could God take a woman with two precious five-year-olds, anyway?
    But his prayers hadn’t worked, and one quiet night, with the crickets and tree frogs chorusing outside the bedroom window, she’d slipped away. Forever.
    In the past two years, he’d gone through all of the standard stages of grief, enhanced by trying to learn how to be a single parent to two little girls who’d been devastated by their mother’s death. And even though he now had more good days than bad, and had relearned to appreciate the simple beauty of a sunset or a foliage-tipped mountainside, and had developed with the girls a routine…of sorts…he still had never imagined another woman in his life.
    He’d already found true love, and maybe his life with her hadn’t been nearly long enough, but he’d had it, and he was grateful for it. He wasn’t looking for another person to fill Katie’s shoes, either as his partner, or as the girls’ stand-in mother.
    That kind of thing didn’t happen twice in a lifetime.

Chapter 6
    “When is Jess supposed to get here, again?” Hayley looked up from her latest disaster of pine boughs and lace the next morning, trying to keep one hand on the bent bough and one on the hot glue gun. It was only Tuesday, and she was starting to regret coming out to Whisper Creek early to help out with the wedding. She’d figured on running errands and keeping Kyla sane all week, not on playing with froofy lace and glue for the second day in a row.
    “Are you afraid we’re going to get all of these centerpieces done without her?”