Page 45 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
At the top of the ridge across from her driveway was Dallas Lisle’s lighthouse, and he had the light beaming around tonight, sweeping this way and that. She liked it. And was looking forward to the bed-and-breakfast that the rumor was he’d be opening next fall.
Everywhere she looked, there were signs that Cowboy Point was having the kind of renaissance that would have horrified her grandfather, who would have preferred the whole community to be little more than the old mine and few outposts. He would have lived in a tent on the mountain all year-round if he could.
But things were changing. There was a new restaurant coming on the main street, though no one was quite sure who owned it or what kind of restaurant it would be yet. Boone and Sierra’s artisan dairy kept getting written up in fancy publications, as did the many food trucks—more every summer, run by folks who didn’t want the hassle of restaurant overheads, but wanted to share the things they made with the world. More people were moving to Cowboy Point than away, which was a big deal in remote, rural communities.
Ramona had no intention of leaving.
No matter what Knox Carey did or didn’t do.
She felt that even more intently when she made it up the hill to Cowboy Point Lodge.
It looked especially pretty tonight with all its lights blazing. It stood as a kind of beacon, there on a hill across from the snow-covered peak of Copper Mountain.
Ramona parked in the big lot, pleased to see that it was packed. She made her way carefully toward the big front doors, nodding as she ran into familiar faces along the way.
Inside, the big lobby had a couple of teenage girls on hand to take all the snowy boots and coats, handing out tickets and running it like a proper coat check. Ramona had only been to an event here once before. It had been a surprise reception for Ryder and Rosie last spring, and the place had still felt largely unfinished.
Tonight it gleamed. It had been built in the Victorian style, like the many grand railway hotels that dotted the West, though it was hard to imagine anyone believed trains would venture this high in the mountains. It was supposed to open fully as a hotel again the summer after next, but Ramona liked that the Starks kept reminding Cowboy Point that it had once been at the heart of the community here.
There was a band in the old ballroom. People were dancing, but Ramona wasn’t a dancer. She moved around the edge of the ballroom, then walked across the hall into another grand room, where food had been laid out on tables draped in glittering fabrics and decorated with candelabras that looked like they belonged in a Gothic romance. There was a bar on the other end of the room, and high tables in between for people to cluster around, having drinks and looking entirely unlike themselves.
There were a lot of suit coats and cowboy hats on men she normally associated with plaid shirts and Wranglers. But then, Ramona was usually in her scrubs and white coat at the clinic, so she wasn’t one to talk. Tonight she’d gone for the sort of gown she never got to wear here. It had a high neck, but no arms and no back. It flowed in gleaming royal blue all the way down to the ground. She also wore a little bit of sparkle at her ears and had piled her hair up on top of her head into something that nodded toward elegant.
She thought she’d cleaned up all right.
And when Wyatt Stark came toward her, grinning, she figured she’d hit the right note.
“You made it,” he said, in that low drawl of his that Ramona dearly wished she found as effective as it should have been.
He had the dark hair, gray eyes, and stern mouth of all the Stark boys. Ramona had learned that when people used the term Stark boys, it meant not only Wyatt, his two brothers, and their cousin Jack, but all of the Stark men who had come before them. Meaning their fathers, living and dead. Maybe their grandfather too.
She knew that Wyatt and his brothers were considered wild and disreputable, but she figured that was mostly because they were all excessively good-looking, and very single.
Ramona didn’t say any of that. She only smiled. “I made it,” she agreed.
He got her a drink and she took it. They stood together at one of the high-top tables, and it was nice. Really, Ramona thought, it was so nice. They talked about nice things. He was interested in what she had to say, he made her laugh, and he was a terrific date. She knew that already.
She should have been having a fantastic time, but instead, she thought that she’d never felt quite so sad and alone in all her life. It was unfair to her date, so she smiled. She laughed.
Maybe if she pretended she was fine, she would be. Eventually.
The music changed in the ballroom. More people came inside. The party got louder, jollier. And then she felt a prickle at the back of her neck.
When she turned, Knox was there.
He was dressed in the Cowboy Point uniform tonight. A black suit that fit him beautifully, and a dressy black Stetson to go with it. She knew that if she looked down at his feet, he would be wearing one of his good pairs of cowboy boots. The kind a man never wore out on the range, but only out on the town.
His eyes found hers immediately, looking dark and coppery tonight. It was like there was a tractor beam connecting them, and nothing made sense until it snapped into place.
And even though Ramona knew better, her heart leaped in her chest. She felt immediately lighter. Better.
Damn that man.
“Ramona,” Wyatt said from beside her. She turned back to him, hoping her face hadn’t betrayed her. But Wyatt was looking across the room, over toward Knox. “I don’t mean to dig too far into your personal business, but I’m guessing that your heart’s not really in this.”
When he turned to look at her again, she got a glimpse of exactly who Wyatt Stark would be for the right woman. Devastating. Calmly authoritative, but in this moment, something like amused.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I didn’t mean to get distracted.”
