To Santa With Love Read online

  She’d brought most of her clothes from Dallas, filling a couple of suitcases, mostly with jeans and tops. She’d thrown in a low-cut dress in scarlet knit that flared at the hem, in case she and Choya ever went dancing.

  “How’s he doing?” Choya asked her. “Asleep yet?”

  She cast an amused glance backward at him. “Hard to tell. His eyes are closed. But if he can’t help smiling when we talk about him, then he’s awake.” She studied his peaceful expression and tightly shut eyes. “Robbie,” she cooed, “are you sleeping?”

  Robbie didn’t answer or smile. The deep indentation in the pillow cradled his blond head and his relaxed little body was motionless.

  “He’s out cold,” she said to Choya, turning back. “All that excitement finally caught up with him.”

  “He’s just so happy to have you back again.” He grinned at Jacquie, adding wryly, “And he’s not the only one.”

  “I’m glad to be going back.” Contentedly, she looked out of the window at the desert scenery. “You’re still driving the old jeep,” she noted.

  “Don’t remind me,” Choya growled apologetically. “I called Fred about that SUV. He’s taking it in for a tuneup and you’ll have it by Monday. You need a vehicle with four-wheel drive.”

  Jacquie nodded. By mutual agreement, they’d left her small foreign car back in Dallas. Her father had volunteered to list it online and send her a check when he sold it. It really wasn’t suitable for the ranch.

  “Sounds good.” She glanced back at the sound of a childish snore. “Okay. He really is asleep. Now you can tell me what my dad said to you. I never got a chance to ask.”

  “Do you really want to know?” Choya said wryly.

  “Yes. Unless it falls into the category of absolutely none of my business.”

  “Well, the conversation was all about you. He wanted to know my intentions, quote unquote.”

  “So what did you say?”

  Choya shifted his ungloved hands on the wheel. “I said I was serious about you. And that I loved you. He’s getting used to that idea, but he was worried about other things—like you not returning to the university right away.”

  “Taking time off isn’t something he understands. He never did.” She paused for a fraction of a second. “I bet he wanted to know where you went to college. That was always the first question he asked my dates—”

  Jacquie stopped midsentence, realizing that she honestly didn’t know if Choya had or not. The subject had never come up and it wasn’t like she’d checked his house for framed diplomas. But she didn’t care whether he had a degree.

  Choya only shrugged. “I didn’t go to college. I thought about it, sure, but I never applied.”

  “Did you tell my father that?”

  Choya nodded. “He didn’t look too happy about it but he didn’t ask for details.”

  Jacquie fumed. Her father had some nerve. “It’s none of his business.”

  “He doesn’t know much about me and he doesn’t know Sam at all. I didn’t get into the whole story.” He glanced her way, then looked back at the endless road ahead. “Can’t remember if I told you that he was over seventy when I graduated high school.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “It was clear he needed me to help him run the ranch and that’s why I stuck around. And then I got married and we had Robbie—okay, you know the rest.” He seemed to feel the look she shot at him. “I mean, almost all the rest. I did promise you an explanation.” Choya pointed a thumb backward at Robbie to tell her silently that it would have to wait a little longer.

  “Got it.” His laconic explanation of his upbringing fit what she’d learned about him. For all his bull-headedness, Choya put the people he loved first and didn’t think twice.

  “Getting back to your dad—he only wants what’s best for you, Jacquie. I just wasn’t going to argue with him.”

  She knew Choya’s sense of what was right wouldn’t allow him to criticize Cameron Grey, but it still made her mad that her father had been so patronizing. “No one ever does.”

  “You did, honey. And you may be out of his house, but he wanted me to know he’s still watching over you and always will. Just in case I slip up.”

  “Did he say that in so many words?” she asked indignantly.

  “No. But he made himself real clear.”

  That sounded like her dear old dad all over. She couldn’t exactly take him to task when Choya seemed to be on his side.

  “Well, I told him I intend to keep up on the course reading and switch majors,” she huffed. “I’m surprised he didn’t take me aside when he was done with you to give me the usual lecture on my grade-point average and career potential. He doesn’t know when to let up.”

  Choya answered in a level voice. “He paid every penny of your tuition and expenses for, what, two years? Two and a half? Give him credit for that.”

  “It doesn’t give him the right to control my life,” she said heatedly. “Anyway, I’m going to apply for financial aid and scholarships when I transfer.” She didn’t want to be dependent on Choya either.

  “Where to?”

  “I have to think about that,” she admitted. “The university in Tucson, I guess. It’s closest.” She spoke with assurance, but she knew that going there wasn’t necessarily a sure thing. What if she wasn’t accepted?

  “When you decide, tell him. My guess is that he feels left out.”

  “He is. That’s intentional,” she snapped. “He needs to stop hovering. And he really could have talked to me.”

  “You were busy with your mother most of the time.”

  Jacquie nodded, remembering the mother-daughter conversation they’d had. “She didn’t say a word about anything like that. We were concentrating on girl talk.” In retrospect, she was even more grateful than before for her mother’s instinctive understanding of the situation. Maureen hadn’t felt compelled to ask Choya a lot of nosy questions and she hadn’t badgered Jacquie about her future plans. She seemed to trust her daughter’s judgment—and she’d been impressed by Choya.

  But Jacquie had to admit, if only to herself, that she wasn’t as confident. She didn’t quite know how to define her relationship with Choya at this point.

  She rolled down the window an inch or two to get a breath of bracingly cold air. The day was clear and it wasn’t long before she caught a glimpse of Tombstone, though they were several miles outside the town limits. They fell silent until they were nearly there. Choya slowed the car and bumped along the shoulder.

  “Do you have a flat?” she asked anxiously.

  “No,” he laughed, “I just want to show you something.”

  He pulled the jeep over and parked underneath the WELCOME TO TOMBSTONE sign she’d seen when she first entered the old town. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Do I have to get out?” she asked in a teasing tone. The car was deliciously warm and she knew it wasn’t outside. In fact, there was visible frost on the low, gnarled shrubs that dotted the rock-strewn land.

  Choya nodded. “Yes. You can’t see it from here.”

  “See what?” she protested. But he was already out and shutting his door with a quiet click so as not to wake his son. Jacquie followed suit. She walked to where he was standing in front of the sign, pointing to a faint scrawl that sparkled in the sun.

  “Robbie added you to the town’s population,” he said.

  Jacquie peered up. The blowing desert dust had stuck to the crayon marks and made them glitter. She read aloud, “Population, one thousand and sixty . . . one.”

  “You’re the one.” Choya pulled her into a hug and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She smiled and looked at Robbie’s addition to the sign again, reading her misspelled name in his little-boy handwriting.

  “J-A-K-K-Y. That is so sweet,” she said softly. “He never told me. When did he do this?”

  “The day you decided to be our housekeeper. He was hoping you would see it.”

  Jacquie was
touched. “I wish I had.” She looked up again at Robbie’s crayon addition to the town sign and sighed. “He’s such a funny kid. He expected me to stay put from the start.”

  “Yes, he did. I wasn’t so sure,” Choya said. He didn’t seem to be teasing.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “Jacquie, you still have to really think about whether living out here with us is what you want.”

  She burrowed into the warmth of his big jacket, slipping her hands around his middle. “I have. It is.”

  “Give it time, girl. Don’t answer too quickly. You’ve got to be sure. For your sake and Robbie’s.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Oh, right. I almost forgot. You’re tougher than tough.”

  “I try to be.” His chin rested on top of her head as he turned to glance toward the car and check on his son. “Good. He’s still snoozing.” He hesitated, as though he was about to say something more, but he didn’t.

  She looked up at him. “What’s on your mind? Tell me now. He’s going to wake up sooner or later.”

  Choya’s mouth turned downward in a slight frown. “Well, it is important—we haven’t discussed the sleeping situation from here on in. You can’t move into my bedroom just yet.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it.” By mutual agreement, they hadn’t told Robbie anything yet, deciding it was better to let him get used to having her around again.

  He gave her a warmly possessive hug. “You know you belong there, don’t you? I want to wake up with you and I want to fall asleep with you and . . . ” He whispered the rest of his want-to’s in her ear and Jacquie smiled with pleasure.

  “Yes to everything. When we can.”

  Choya dropped his head and rubbed his cheek against hers. “Grrr. I can’t wait,” he growled playfully. The reply and the tickle of his light stubble made her laugh. Then he held her close again and she sobered.

  “We will have to, though. I don’t like sneaking around either. But until you and I have definite plans”—she hesitated, reminding herself that they weren’t even engaged, just on Round Two—“he doesn’t have to know everything.”

  “I think he understands that things have changed for the better,” Choya mused. “But not exactly how or why.”

  “Let’s keep it simple and leave it at that.” She unwrapped her arms from around him and moved out of his embrace, shivering at the coldness of the air. “Brrr. And let’s go. Mind if I drive the rest of the way?”

  “Not at all.”

  She wanted to do something besides think.

  Robbie wasn’t the only one who knew that things had changed. Of course Sam didn’t have to guess at the reasons why. In fact, he’d told Jacquie that he’d encouraged Choya to head for Dallas, lasso her, and bring her back—and added with a wink that his son hadn’t needed or asked for his old man’s approval because Choya was just as damned headstrong as she was.

  Jacquie closed the sociology textbook she’d been reading and looked around the tidy kitchen. Sam had taken over most of the cooking, freeing her, as he said cheerfully, to do something besides scorch food and scrub pans.

  Since her return, she’d felt less isolated. Choya had caved to Robbie’s insistence—he wanted what his friends had, like any other kid—and he’d put up a satellite dish during her absence. Having an internet connection helped, though it wasn’t that consistent way out here, more like old-fashioned dial-up than the high-speed service she’d taken for granted in Dallas. In the afternoons, when schoolkids for miles around were hogging the available bandwidth with assignments and games, it took a while to connect. The evenings were worse, when everybody and their cat checked their e-mail and went online. Late morning was her preferred time.

  Jacquie went into the living room and picked up the laptop she’d left on a side table, settling down on the couch and flipping it open. She got online in just a few minutes—and didn’t fight the temptation to waste a little time and see what everyone she used to know was up to these days. A couple of clicks and she was looking at posted photos of girls she knew from class or study groups or had hung out with at Dallas clubs. Jacquie didn’t leave any messages on their walls, just moved on to check out a few of the guys she’d dated casually, hoisting mugs of beer in some crowded joint or jostling each other in the bleachers at sports events. They looked younger to her now and not in an appealing way.

  They didn’t have anything on Choya, that was for sure. The rugged rancher made them look like a bunch of loud punks.

  He’d undoubtedly heard of social-media sites but she’d bet anything he didn’t give a hoot about them or post photos—feeling guilty, she checked to make sure of that. Nope. Nothing.

  She looked at her own page. There were no new comments on her wall from friends or acquaintances and no pokes. The photos were a couple months old. Jacquie honestly didn’t remember wearing that much makeup or being in half those places. But, she thought wistfully, it had been fun sometimes.

  Jacquie caught up on the news, scrolling through her favorite sites and a couple of blogs, then clicked out and went to the Tucson university site, checking out the new buildings and landscaped campus filled with smiling students before she looked at the left bar and the list of choices.

  Admissions. She let the little arrow hover over it for a second and clicked, downloading the form. It wasn’t that complicated but Jacquie wanted to deal with something else first: Financial Aid.

  That form ran to more than twenty pages, she saw with dismay. Loan packages. Scholarships. Matching grants, state and federal. The amount of information was bewildering. The cost of tuition made her cringe.

  That much?

  She wouldn’t be able to pay back loans, if she could get them, for years. That left scholarships and grants. Her GPA was high, but she had withdrawn for a term. That didn’t put her in the top, gradewise. She skimmed through the form, filling in a blank here and there. Her current income and other assets—zero. Her projected income for the school year—also zero. Choya had paid her in cash and it hadn’t added up to anything that would interest the IRS.

  The next page asked questions about her parents’ income and Jacquie blew out a frustrated breath. She had some idea of what it was but nothing concrete. She was going to have to forward the form to her father.

  Cameron Grey had covered all of her college expenses, just as Choya had said—she’d known that from the day the acceptance letter had arrived in their mailbox. Now she wondered how she ever could have taken that commitment totally for granted.

  With a sigh, Jacquie saved all the forms in a new folder on the desktop screen.

  She couldn’t even check them off her to-do list, because they weren’t done. Jacquie shut down the laptop and set it aside on another one of her textbooks. Then she reached around and rubbed her lower back with one hand, feeling cranky and tired from sitting in one place.

  What she really wanted to do was get out into the wide open space of the desert and just ride. But there was no one to ride with and she was afraid of getting lost again. She put the thought aside and got up, looking at the clock on the mantel.

  More than two hours had gone by without her knowing it. It was probably a good thing that internet access out here was hit-or-miss sometimes. It would keep her from constantly checking it throughout the day and into the evening, a bad habit she’d let go of during her first days at the ranch.

  Robbie would be home from school soon and he was sure to follow her around. She would have to think of something they could do together before he settled down to his homework. Jacquie was a little worried about him.

  The boy had been on his best behavior ever since her return, anxious to please and overly concerned with whether he was doing right. That was the last thing she’d ever wanted Robbie to think—that she’d left after the dust-up with Choya because of something he’d done.

  The silence in the house bothered her, b
ut it wasn’t like she could play loud music and dance away her momentary blues. Not with Sam around. As for Choya, he had gone into Tombstone on business, taking the jeep.

  Which left her with the new SUV but nowhere to go. There really wasn’t time to run errands or anything like that. Jacquie thought again how right Choya had been when he’d told her to think about what she wanted. Yet, despite the loneliness of the high desert, she was beginning to feel at home on the Barnett ranch.

  Jacquie forced herself to get up and stretch. Then she paced, going down the hall and back again into the living room, where she plunked herself onto the sofa.

  She didn’t even want to look out of the window. The time she’d spent on the internet had made her irritable and presented her with problems she didn’t know how to solve.

  Independence was harder than she’d thought. Her parents would have to be in on her plans to go back to college. She dreaded the questions she’d be peppered with when they got the financial aid form.

  Jacquie decided not to send it just yet. There was time—not much, but some. She would just as soon postpone thinking about all that until after Christmas.

  As agreed, she wasn’t going home to visit her parents in Dallas until after New Year’s. The Greys had accepted the invitation to visit their relatives in Galveston, and they planned to have a grand time with good old Gale and Dudley. Jacquie had begged off.

  Trimming the tree with her mom and dad was a tradition she was going to miss. But that couldn’t be helped. It was time, she thought with a flash of pleasure, to make new traditions of her own. With Choya.

  Chapter 12

  Choya sat next to Robbie in the barbershop, leaning back in his chair as they waited and looking around idly. His son was leafing through a magazine from a stack of them, swinging his legs because his feet didn’t touch the floor.

  The barber, Floyd Simmons, gestured toward the old-fashioned chair with a large comb. “Who wants to be first?”