Page 45 of A Cowboy Holiday

“Whoa. That’s clever.”

“Yeah, my mom was smart.” I arched a brow. “I let it slide that year and decided I might have been mistaken. But I was a suspicious little shit and once you start to question magic, it slowly slides away.”

Axel sipped his cocoa. “That’s heavy, cowboy.”

I chuckled. “Like I said…devastated.”

“I was nine. I caught my dad assembling my sister’s bicycle, and the jig was up.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Hmm.”

I frowned. “Does she live in Texas?”

“Yep.”

I could take a hint. The grunted and monosyllabic responses indicated that we’d wandered into murky waters, but I pressed anyway.

“You’re not close?”

“No.” He studied Phee, who was intensely focused on putting red candies on a snowman cookie’s belly. “I had a falling out with my family when I was twenty-one and was told to pack my bags and never come back. I didn’t have to be told twice. It was Christmas morning.”

Dangerous territory, I mused as “Last Christmas” gave way to “Santa Baby.”

Don’t ask, don’t ask.

I asked.

“I’m sorry. That’s—what happened?”

“They found out I’d been ‘sexually acquainted’—that was the phraseology, I believe—with someone at the ranch. Another man. He got fired, I got kicked out of the house, and that was that.”

“Are you serious?” I huffed, outraged.

“Yeah.” He waved dismissively. “That’s twenty-year-old news. I’m over it.”

Somehow, I doubted that.

“Do you see any of your family at all?”

“I don’t have a family. My parents are both dead, and my sister married a hellfire and brimstone preacher out of high school. It was a sudden excommunication, and I didn’t deal with it well, as you might imagine,” he said sardonically. “I went from being an average college kid supported by his folks to being dirt poor overnight. I had to get a student loan to finish college. That took a minute. I worked as a valet, a bartender, did some construction—whatever it took to make ends meet. I also felt sorry for myself, hung out with the wrong crowd, doing shit I shouldn’t have been doing, which delayed graduation. Ieventually got my degree in business and a nine-to-five job at an ad agency.”

I huffed in amusement. “I can’t picture you behind a desk.”

Axel inclined his head. “I went stir-crazy in a hurry. At thirty-one, I had a come-to-Jesus moment. The kind where you reevaluate your path. Just because I couldn’t go home didn’t mean I had to give up what I’d always loved. Plain and simple, I missed being with animals, I missed the camaraderie of ranch life. I quit my job at the agency to work at a cattle ranch in Colorado, went to veterinary school at night in between shifts as a bouncer at a dive bar.”

“That’s where you met Mel.”

“Yes.” His voice cracked as he shifted toward Phoebe.

“Does she look like her mother?”

“Spittin’ image.” Axel stroked his beard thoughtfully. “It hurts my heart to think of how much she wanted this little girl, and she never got to meet her. She’d be proud of Phee.”

I squeezed his arm and leaned. “She’d be proud of you too. You’ve done well.”

He covered my hand with his. “Thanks.”