Page 12 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Twelve

Wyatt couldn’t shake the notion he’d been dragged through the Christmas card for only one reason.

To help Eliza Foster honor her family’s bakery.

That meant going with her now to the storage facility on the edge of town, where her grandmother’s things waited. She wanted Maggie Foster’s original Yuletide cookie recipe to bring her family’s story full circle and end Foster’s Bakeshop as it began.

He’d been there when Foster’s Bakeshop opened, and now he would be there when it closed.

Wyatt’s goal stood plain. Find those recipes with her and make the cookies. Be there for her in this bumpiest of times. Nothing pleased him more than to be her comfort.

Eliza pulled her truck in front of the row of storage units. The corrugated doors stretched in two neat lines, numbers painted on them in black. She cut the engine and inhaled deeply.

Snow covered the asphalt, boot tracks from other renters pressed into it like scars. Eliza unlocked the padlock and slid the door up. Inside, boxes stacked high, lamps wrapped in newspaper, a cedar chest, furniture covered with sheets. The neat life of a woman folded into cardboard.

Sadness gripped him. How was Eliza taking this?

Hugging herself, she stepped in. “We’re looking for a wooden recipe box with Foster’s Bakeshop carved into the lid. Sam made it for Maggie the year the bakery opened.”

“That was sweet of Sam,” Wyatt said, running his hand over a box labeled KITCHEN .

“Family lore says they had a strong marriage, even though Maggie was a mail-order bride and didn’t know Sam before they wed.”

“Soul mates,” Wyatt said. “Everyone in town said they were fated.”

“Back in 1878?” she asked, surprised.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Their love story was famous in Evergreen Springs.”

Eliza’s face lit for a moment, making her prettier than ever, then she turned back to the boxes.

“The family stopped making the Yuletide recipe when they retired Maggie’s oven in the 1940s.

I’ve never made them. Recreating Maggie’s original recipe will be a first for me. I never tasted one. Did you?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Maggie hadn’t invited them yet before that card yanked me here.”

“Oh wow, that’s right. I didn’t even think about that. If she invented them in Christmas of 1878 and you’re here now…” Eliza’s eyes widened. “You missed them. What if they’re horrible?”

“Maggie’s a wonderful baker. Better than me. I figure they’re pretty good.”

“I hope you’re right.”

They searched side by side, lifting lids, pushing aside blankets, old pots, and yellowed linens. Wyatt asked about her grandmother to keep her talking and to keep his own thoughts from tangling too hard around how close they were to each other in the narrow aisle.

“Oh, Gram was the best.” Eliza’s voice softened.

“She’s the reason I love both baking and Christmas.

” She laughed suddenly, holding up a card she found in a tin.

“Here’s Gram’s pecan tassie recipe. One year, Gram dressed up like Santa Claus and passed them out at the bakery.

Said, ‘No reason just men get to spread Christmas cheer.’”

Wyatt blinked. “Your grandmother put on the red suit?”

“She stuffed a pillow under it for the belly. Did the whole thing. Beard, boots, all of it.”

“Well, I’ll be.” He chuckled. “Back home, Christmas meant church service and an orange or two if the freight wagons made it through. Never saw a woman in a beard handing out cookies.”

“Gram believed in holiday spectacles.”

“Seems to me she believed in makin’ folks glad they showed up.”

“She did.” Eliza sighed. “I miss her so much.”

“I bet you do. I’m sorry you lost her.”

“Thanks.” Her sad smile tugged at him. “It’s the small things that knock you for a loop, you know.”

He did know. Thoughts of Rose stirred. “You wanna take a break?”

“No, let’s keep going.”

At last, from the top of a box marked PANTRY , Wyatt pulled out a wooden box carved with Foster’s Bakeshop. The painted cookies on the lid were worn smooth where countless hands had touched it.

“Got it.”

“Bring it here.” Eliza dragged over a crate and sat underneath the bare light bulb suspended from the ceiling. “Let’s go through it together.”

He set it down. Their fingers touched. Awareness shot up his arm, and he pulled back, but not too fast. He didn’t want her to think he disliked touching her. The truth was, he liked it too much.

She dropped her gaze and lifted the lid. Recipe cards filled it, edges yellowed and curled.

Eliza gave him a stack of cards to go through while she went through the other half.

A few minutes later, Wyatt found it. Maggie’s original recipe straight from 1878, just like him.

Yuletide Cookies.

Eliza read the margin note scrawled in Maggie’s hand.

Takes two hearts. Worth the trouble.

She crinkled her nose. “What do you suppose that means? Two hearts, two people?”

“Maybe,” Wyatt said, “but she could’ve just said that.”

“I’m beginning to think Maggie Foster was a poetic soul.”

“She is… was.” He stumbled. “Maggie loves quoting poetry.”

Eliza studied him. “You’re the bridge, Wyatt. Between her and me. Between then and now. Between the past and the present.”

The words landed. Since arriving, he’d told himself he was wrong here, extra weight on a ship already sinking. But Eliza was saying he was part of it all.

Two hearts. Hers. His.

No, he didn’t dare think like that.

Silence thickened. He held still, caught in her gaze until she dropped it and turned the card over.

“Wow. This is complicated. Roll the dough thin enough to see the grain of the board. Spread the filling hot. Fold and seal before it stiffens. Cut with two knives. Bake, glaze, sugar while warm. Definitely a two-person job.” She glanced at him. “I wonder who helped Maggie make these.”

“I’m betting it was Sam. He might’ve been the town doc, but when Maggie needed him, he was there…” Wyatt paused. “The way I’m here for you.”

“But for how long?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. That was the question. The painted Christmas card could yank him back any time, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it.

* * *

On the way home, Eliza stole glances at Wyatt. He sat pressed against the passenger side door as if he were trying to meld with the metal, still uncomfortable riding in a car.

“You’re doing fine,” she said, keeping her speed well under the limit. “We’re almost there.”

“Just thinking.” His voice carried the weight of the past, and she wondered if he was missing his people.

Silence stretched between them, but she resisted idle chatter even as her mind raced. What happened next? How long could a man from 1878 survive in 2025? How long before the Christmas card called him back to where he belonged?

She was being selfish, wanting him to stay. Wyatt had a life waiting in 1878. Friends. Work. A world that made sense to him. She had no right to chain him to her sinking ship.

“Eliza, could we... would it be possible to drive past where my crew was camped when it happened?”

His request cracked her chest. Of course he wanted to see the site. Needed to see it. Maybe hoped to find some trace of the world he’d left behind.

“Of course. Where?”

“North of town. Along Sawyer’s Creek. We bedded down among the cottonwood.”

She knew the area. Had picnicked there as a child with Gram, collecting smooth stones from the creek bed. Her stomach dropped.

“Wyatt,” she said, “I need to prepare you. That area? It’s been developed. There’s a big store there now, and the trees are mostly gone.”

His face went still. “Gone?”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you need to hear, but I don’t want you to be shocked when we get there.”

He stared out the windshield for a long moment. “How big a store?”

“Very big. The kind that sells food, clothes, tools. It covers, well, it probably covers your whole campsite, cattle included.”

“I see.” His voice was neutral, but she caught the tightness around his eyes. “Still. I’d like to see what’s become of the place.”

She turned, following the two-lane highway that curved alongside the creek. The cottonwoods stood bare-branched against the gray sky, their trunks white as bone in the winter light.

Eliza pulled into the parking lot. Where Wyatt’s camp should have been, a massive building sprawled across the landscape.

Blue and white, garish in the muted winter palette. WALMART SUPERCENTER, in letters ten feet tall.

Wyatt went very still.

Eliza watched his face crumple, watched him absorb the reality of what 147 years could do to a place. Every landmark erased. Every memory paved over. His campsite buried under bright lights and rolling shopping carts.

“I...” He swallowed hard. “The creek’s still there.”

“Yes.” She followed his gaze to the thin ribbon of water visible beyond the store’s loading dock. “It is.”

He nodded like that mattered, like holding onto that one unchanged thing might keep him anchored. But she could see him drifting, the weight of displacement settling over him.

“Tell me about your crew.”

“Why?”

“Because they mattered to you. Because remembering them keeps them alive.”

Something shifted in his expression. He pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. When he spoke, his voice carried the cadence of a man recounting scripture.

“Cade Sullivan was my best friend. Had been since we were boys in Iowa. Hair like wheat, eyes blue as the summer sky. Could rope a steer faster than most men could blink.” A soft smile played across his lips. “Terrible poker player, though. Lost his wages every payday, regular as clockwork.”

Eliza turned in her seat, giving him her full attention.

“Spring of ’76, we were crossing the Yellowstone.

River ran high that year, full of snowmelt and mean as an ornery longhorn bull.

Cade’s horse spooked, threw him right into the current.

” Wyatt’s hands moved as he talked, sketching the memory in the air.

“Water was so cold it’d stop a man’s heart.

I went in after him, but that river yanked hard.

Kept pulling us downstream, tumbling us like rag dolls. ”

Eliza held her breath, trying to imagine what that must have been like for him. “Did you save him?”

“Barely. I managed to grab hold of a big tree root sticking out of the bank, held onto him till the boys could throw us a rope. But Cade... he wasn’t breathing when we hauled him out. His lips blue as the winter sky, same color as his eyes.”

“That must have been terrifying.”

Wyatt nodded. “I worked on him for ten minutes. Turned him over a saddle to drain the water out of him, rolled him back and forth, anything I could think of. And just when I thought I’d lost him, he coughed up half the Yellowstone and called me seven kinds of fool.”

Eliza put a hand to her heart, empathy pulsing through her.

“He said I saved his life.” Wyatt laughed. “Truth is, he saved mine just as many times. Pulled me out of a stampede in ’74. Stood watch over me when fever nearly took me in ’77. That’s what friends do. That’s what...” His voice trailed off.

“What brothers do.”

“Yeah. Brothers by choice, not blood. Stronger than blood, maybe.” He stared at the Walmart, at the place where his chosen family had gathered around a fire and shared stories under the stars. “I wonder what he’s doing right now. I bet he’s really worried about me.”

The grief in his voice was so acute it closed Eliza’s throat. This was what she’d been too selfish to see. Wyatt wasn’t just a man displaced in time. He was a man torn from everyone he loved, everyone who loved him back.

And she’d been thinking about ways to keep him here.

“I should let you go,” she whispered.

He turned to look at her, confusion creasing his brow. “What?”

“Back to your time. To Cade. To your life.” The words clogged her throat. “I’ve been selfish, wanting you to stay. But you don’t belong here. You belong with them.”

“Eliza—”

“No, listen. I’ve watched you these past few days. Watched you flinch every time a car passes. Watched you struggle with every modern convenience, every rule you don’t understand. I’ve been so focused on what I need that I haven’t thought about what you need.”

“And what do I need?”

“To go home.”

Outside, shoppers pushed carts across the parking lot, going about their ordinary lives while Eliza’s heart cracked open like an egg.

“What if I don’t want to go home?”

She saw longing in his eyes, but also the confusion. The way he held himself like a man braced for loss.

“Then I’d be the happiest woman in Montana,” she said. “But I can’t be the reason you stay trapped in the wrong century.”