A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas. Maisey Yates

them.

      The woman who had recognized him today had been a grandmother. A great-grandmother, even. Sweet and gray-haired and looking at him with sympathetic eyes that made him want to jump off the nearest bridge.

      It always seemed worse around the holidays. Perhaps because of the sentimentality people seemed to feel that time of year. And tried to inflict on him.

      He didn’t really know.

      Whatever the reason, he seemed to have an uptick in well-meaning-but-irritating interactions.

      Maybe that was why he always wanted to drink more this time of year, too.

      He shook his head and settled down into his chair, looking around the small, cozy cabin that he called home. And then he looked into the full, inviting whiskey glass he called salvation.

      He didn’t have a problem or anything. He was functional. He considered that the benchmark. Low though it might be.

      He was functional enough that his family mostly joked about his drinking, which meant it was probably fine.

      But the one thing he didn’t want to do was get in bed at night stone-cold sober. Sometimes he could. When the long, hard day of work came inside with him, resting on aching shoulders and the lower back that was getting touchier with each passing year—because age. Not that thirty-four was exceptionally aged, not at all. But physical labor had a way of speeding all that up.

      But then, the alternative had been to spend the rest of his life working at the damned power company, living in a little house on a quiet street in a neighborhood tucked back behind the main street of Gold Valley living the life of a man lost in suburban bliss, without any of the trappings that generally made it blissful.

      No children.

      No wife.

      Not anymore.

      He never had the children, but there had been a time when he and Lindsay had hoped for them. Even though...

      That had always been a pipe dream, he supposed.

      But for a while, he and Lindsay had lived in a world of dreams. Reality had been too harsh. And sometimes sitting around and making plans for a future you knew wouldn’t be there was all you could do.

      He took a long swallow of whiskey and leaned back in his chair. This was why he didn’t go to bed sober.

      Because it was these quiet moments, the still ones—particularly this time of year—that had a way of crushing in on him, growing louder and louder in the silence of the room.

      Solitude was often as welcome as it was terrifying. Sometimes it had teeth. And he did his best not to get savaged by them.

      He took another swallow of whiskey and leaned back farther in the chair before setting the glass on the table with a decisive click. Then he let his head fall back.

      He must’ve dozed off, because when he opened his eyes again the hands on the clock hanging on the wall had made a more pronounced journey than it would have if it had only been the few minutes it felt like.

      He stretched, groaning as his joints popped. He stood, making his way over to the window and looking out into the darkness.

      At least, he should have been looking out into the darkness.

      Instead, he saw a dim light cutting through the trees.

      They did have guests staying on the property, but none out in the woods behind Grant’s cabin.

      Grant lived well out of the way, on the opposite end of Dodge land from the guest cabins. And if there was anyone out there right now, they were not where they were supposed to be.

      He opened up the drawer in the kitchen and took a small flashlight out, and then shoved on his boots before heading outside. He supposed, if he were thinking clearly, he would have called his brother Wyatt. But then, he was half-asleep and a little bit drunk, so he wasn’t thinking all that clearly. Instead, he made his own way out through the trees and toward the single light that was glowing in the woods.

      When he was halfway between his house and the light it occurred to him what he was probably about to walk in on.

      The back of his neck went hot, tension rising inside of him.

      Odds were, anyone out in the middle of nowhere at this hour was up to one thing. And he didn’t especially want to walk in and find two people having sex in the middle of the woods, interrupting his drinking and sleeping time. The teeth on that would be just a little bit too sharp to bear.

      But then, if he wasn’t getting any, nobody else should, either.

      Especially not right next to his house.

      That only increased his irritation as he continued on toward the light, the wind whipping through the trees, the bitter cold biting through the flannel shirt he was wearing. He should’ve put a jacket on, but he hadn’t thought of it.

      He swore, and then he swore again as he approached the light.

      He frowned. Right. There was a cabin back here, but it was dilapidated. One of the original buildings on the property, from back in the late 1800s. One that hadn’t been inhabited in a long time. At least, not by humans. He had a feeling there had been several raccoons, and about ten thousand spiders. But not humans.

      And raccoons did not light lanterns. So he could safely assume this was not a raccoon.

      He was on the verge of storming in—because why the hell not?—but something stopped him. Instead, he softened his footsteps and walked up to the window.

      It was not what he’d been expecting.

      It was a person, but not people. And nobody was having sex.

      Instead, there was a small woman, curled up beneath the threadbare blanket. She looked like she was asleep. The camping lantern next to her head was turned on, a thin, yellow band of light stretching across what he could see of her face.

      She was not one of the guests; at least, he was reasonably certain. He didn’t make a practice of memorizing what they all looked like.

      Mostly because he didn’t care.

      It was also difficult to identify her positively because she was curled up in a ball, the blanket halfway up over her head. He shifted his position and saw there was a backpack in the corner of the room. But nothing else.

      He frowned, looking at her again, and he saw that there were shoes on her feet, which were sticking out just past the edge of the blanket.

      He dragged his hand over his face.

      She could be a criminal. A fugitive from the law. But then, most likely she was a woman running from a difficult situation. Possibly from a man.

      Which could mean there was a safety issue. And he had guests on his ranch, not to mention his younger sister, Jamie.

      Jamie knew how to handle herself, of course. She was a tough-as-rawhide cowgirl who was often packing heat. But that didn’t mean Grant would knowingly expose her to danger.

      It was a lot of drama that he didn’t want coming to roost.

      He stood there, debating for a moment, and then he turned away from the cabin, jogging back to his house and grabbing his cell phone off the bedside table. He dialed his brother Wyatt’s number, knowing that he was going to wake up spitting mad. Because it was four-thirty in the morning, and nobody wanted to be woken up at that hour. Though the Dodges were frequently up before the sun. They had responsibilities to take care of on the ranch that dictated early mornings. Though not this early.

      “What the hell?” Wyatt asked by way of greeting.

      His voice was gruff, evidence that he had been asleep.

      “We have a visitor,” Grant said, keeping his own voice low.

      “Are you drunk?”

      “No,”