Page 41 of A Gift for the Hopeful Cowboy

The way he described it made it sound like Rob was being ridiculous. And maybe he was.

Brent continued. “But that’s it, right? God created man and woman to be a partnership. We complete one another, but her brain works differently than mine. If she can see a solution to a problem that I’m too stubborn to accept, then I want to hear it.” He chuckled again. “Granted, I might not want to hear it in the moment, but at the right time, I can accept that she was right, and she made my life easier because she was stubborn.”

Rob couldn’t help but compare what Brent said about his wife to what Pippa had said. If he looked deeper inside himself, he’d have to admit that there was something missing. Even when he was committed to Pippa and on the verge of asking her to marry him, he could feel that hollow space begging to be filled.

He’d gotten the job. He’d gotten the girl. And yet he still needed more.

Was she right? His unwillingness to consider what she was offering might be all that kept him from feeling like he’d finally figured his life out. Now he felt like he’d backtracked.

Rob cleared his throat and peered at his boss again. “I suppose you could be right.”

Brent stared at him hard. “I had a feeling you and my sister were getting closer than what we saw on the surface.”

Chest tight, Rob tore his eyes away. Pippa’s father was no longer in the picture. All she had were her brothers, as her mother was usually traveling. He probably should have spoken to Brent and Luke about asking for her hand. The guilt made his stomach swirl and he forced himself to meet Brent’s discerning gaze.

“I love her,” he said.

“Then you should probably talk to her. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what you’re arguing about. If you care about her that much, you need to do whatever it takes to make things right.”

Rob nodded.

“Alright, now that that’s settled, let’s finish this up. I have a few more things I have to pull from storage to send out to Santa’s Village in town before they open the gates tonight.”

That must be what the sleigh was for. “I thought it was supposed to be open all month long?”

Brent flicked the reins and moved forward at a quicker pace. “Depends on the year and who ends up available to dress up as the big man himself.” He flashed a smile and hurried past.

Brent was right. The only right thing to do was to talk to Pippa and mend what had been broken. Rob just wished the thought of having that conversation didn’t fill him with such dread.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Pippa stared at her phone with trepidation. Santa’s Village had been open for a couple nights and her whole family had planned on attending on the first weekend. But then Molly had gotten sick and insisted they needed to wait for her to get better.

Now they planned on going Christmas Eve. The town was going to be swamped, but in all the craziness, it would be magical. There was only one problem.

She’d wanted to go with Rob. The time she’d spent apart from him had only made her heart feel worse. She was a shadow of what she once was—she couldn’t even draw joy from working at her restaurant.

Everywhere she looked, she could see him and his awkward smiling face. That first night he’d come in his work clothes was her favorite memory. If she closed her eyes and focused right, she could re-live that first kiss they had shared since he’d been back.

Her whole body tingled with the memory, but all too soon the sensation would leave her and she’d return to the shallow, cold feeling she’d been dealing with since their fight.

Rob hadn’t reached out, but she didn’t expect him to. She’d been the one to overstep. She’d been the one to break the rules.

Pippa sighed as she sat on the porch of Luke’s house, staring out at the land she’d grown up on. The ranch was massive enough that it almost felt like her brothers lived in two separate places. If she’d stuck with ranching like her parents had wanted her to, she would have liked to think there would be a plot of land where her own home could have been built.

Rob’s presence had made that thought more of a reality, even though she couldn’t bring herself to voice it out loud. Her mother would have loved for all her children to be able to settle on the land owned by the Duncan family.

Right now, it made more sense for Pippa to be closer to the restaurant.

She heaved a sigh at the unending emptiness she currently felt. For years, the restaurant had been the one thing that made her feel whole. She hadn’t needed anything or anyone else. Perhaps that was why she had zero interest in dating. No one quite measured up to the friendship and chemistry she had with Rob.

Pippa groaned, putting her face in her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees. If she was more confident in herself, she might have reached out to Rob and told him she was sorry. She’d explain that she was only trying to keep him here because she didn’t want to lose him. But that sort of confession might be the one thing that scared him off for good.

A rock and a hard place. That was where she was stuck. There was no way out without sawing off her own arm. At least, that was how it felt.

“What are you doing here?” Allie wandered up to the front porch. The only evidence of where she’d been was the mud on her tennis shoes. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. “If I had known you’d be stopping by, I would have cut my run short.” She headed up the steps and settled beside Pippa. “What’s going on?”

Pippa gave her friend a side-eyed stare.

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