Page 18 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Eighteen

Wyatt stood frozen as Eliza stared at the proposal like it held salvation itself.

In his mind’s eye, he saw her spending the money. The relief blooming on her face, the way her shoulders eased like she had set down a twenty-pound bag of flour.

The conflict tore at him. He wanted her to keep Maggie’s recipe, to honor that legacy. But he also knew the money would secure her future in ways he never could. Maybe that was selfish of him, wanting her to choose principles over practicality when her whole life was at stake.

“Gonna get some air.” He plucked his Stetson off the peg where he’d left it last night and set it on his head.

She didn’t glance up from the Sweet Delights’ proposal, just nodded absently. “Uh-huh.”

He lingered at the doorway, one hand on the frame, willing her to look up, to see him standing there, to choose him over paper promises.

Wyatt turned away and headed toward the storeroom, every step as heavy as walking through thick mud. The floorboards creaked beneath his boots, familiar sounds that once brought comfort now marking his retreat.

Call me back. Ask me not to go. Tell me you don’t need time to think about it, that you’re refusing Sweet Delights’ offer and keeping Maggie’s recipe in the family.

He paused at the storeroom door, holding his breath. But the only sound was the rustle of papers as she turned a page.

She did not call for him.

He stepped into the kitchen and moved to the storeroom.

The small space embraced him. His few belongings sat neat on the shelf.

It was just his woolen gloves, shearling coat, and the modern bills she pressed into his hand the day of the carnival.

He put on the gloves and the coat but left the money.

The Christmas card waited like it had every day since he arrived. Just paper an artist put paint on, no glow, no magic, no pull.

He picked it up.

His painted image stared back at him. The man from 1878 reaching for something beyond the frame. Wyatt knew what he was reaching for now. Not something.

Someone.

A someone contemplating selling her history to the highest bidder.

“Get a load of you,” he said. “Frozen right where you belong. At your wagon, with your crew nearby, knowing what you’re supposed to do come sunrise.”

The card felt cool against his palms, ordinary as old paper ought to feel.

“She’s going to take the offer.” The words tasted like ashes. “Can’t say I blame her. The money would fix everything. Give her a future where she didn’t need some displaced cowboy who can’t even figure out how electric lights work.”

The picture warmed. Barely noticeable, like sun filtering through glass. Was he imagining it? Wyatt shifted his grip but didn’t set it down. Couldn’t make his fingers release it.

“At least she’s got her miracle now.” Disappointment crept into his voice. “Too bad it means selling out to the same vultures picking Foster’s bones clean.”

The warmth increased. The air in the storeroom thickened, pressure building against his eardrums like the moment before a storm breaks.

“You had it right, staying in your own time.” He traced the paint with one finger. “I never belonged here. I was borrowed. Like a tool you use for a job, then put back in the shed.”

Downright hot now. The faint scent of woodsmoke and trail coffee drifted up from the card, familiar smells from a life that seemed more dream than memory.

“She doesn’t need me anymore.” The words fell out before he could stop them, heavy with a truth that cut deep. “I doubt she ever really did.”

The edges of the card began to shimmer. Tugging on him. He felt it in his solar plexus first and then in the dead center of his heart. Wyatt’s pulse jumped. A low humming filled the room, vibrating through the floorboards, through his bones.

No. Not now. Not like this?—

The card blazed like a branding iron. The shimmering exploded outward, warping the air around him. That familiar thickness pressed in, the world going syrup-slow and strange.

Somewhere distant, he heard the creak of wagon wheels, the lowing of cattle, sounds from a world he’d left behind.

“No.” He tried to drop the card, but his fingers locked rigid. “Not yet. I haven’t said goodbye. Haven’t told her?—”

Flashes of memories cut through his panic. Eliza’s face tilted up to his in the gazebo, snowflakes catching in her eyelashes.

Her hands guiding his as they rolled dough paper-thin.

The way she’d looked this morning, sleep-softened and smiling as she found him making breakfast in her kitchen.

The pull wrenched like a lasso over his chest, yanking backward through time itself.

He shot out his free hand, grasping for the shelf, the wall, anything solid. He grabbed empty space.

The world blurred, colors bleeding together, Foster’s Bakeshop dissolving around him like sugar in hot water.

One more memory.

Eliza’s eyes finding his across the counter as they shaped Yuletide cookies together, that moment of perfect understanding when no words were needed.

Two hearts working as one.

The last coherent thought he had before everything ripped apart:

I never told her I love her.

* * *

She shoved the Sweet Delights’ proposal away and stood up. She needed to find Wyatt and tell him some things mattered more than money.

“Wyatt?” She moved toward the kitchen. “I need to tell you something.”

The air felt strange as she crossed into the bakery kitchen. Unnaturally still. The light through the windows dimmed, though no clouds crossed the sun. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees in the few steps it took to reach the storeroom.

The door stood ajar. She pushed through. The room lay empty.

Not empty like he had stepped out. Empty like he had never been there at all.

His personal things were gone. The only thing that remained was the money she’d given him and the air mattress.

“Wyatt?” Her voice came out so soft she barely heard herself.

She checked behind the shelves, as if a grown man could hide there. She searched in the shadows by the water heater. Peered through the small window to the alley below.

Nothing.

That’s when she saw it.

The Christmas card, face up on the concrete floor. She knelt and picked it up.

The painted cowboy at his chuckwagon was fading. Not all at once, but like morning frost melting under the sun. His image lightened, as if the artist was erasing him.

“No.” She clutched it against her chest. “No, no, no.”

Her knees gave way completely. She sank to the floor, a strange weightlessness spreading through her limbs, followed by a twisting sensation beneath her ribs that stole her breath.

The storeroom carried the smell of him, leather and woodsmoke, pine sap and winter air. She breathed it in, and for a second, it almost convinced her he still stood there. But the scent thinned with every breath, dissipating like the bakery’s legacy.

Six generations dwindling to nothing in heartbeats.

A memory flashed through her mind. Wyatt’s hand finding the small of her back as they waltzed in the gazebo, his forehead pressed to hers, the words he whispered: I’d have won you in the end, Eliza Foster.

From the street outside came laughter, a door slamming, the crunch of tires through snow. Life continued on, ordinary and indifferent. The world did not pause to notice her heart splitting in two.

She ran to the back door, yanked it open, and stared down the empty alley. “Wyatt!”

Her voice bounced off brick walls and came back unchanged. No answer. No footsteps. No familiar figure in a long coat walking back to her.

She glanced at the card again, fainter now. In minutes, seconds even, the painted figure would vanish entirely.

“I’m saying no to the proposal,” she whispered to the fading image. “I chose you. I chose us. Why didn’t you wait for me to tell you?”

The card warmed in her hands, the edges glowing faintly gold for a pulse before fading again. A promise? A goodbye? She couldn’t tell.

The painted cowboy kept disappearing, line by vanishing line, stealing any hope of answers.

Eliza sank to the cold concrete floor and understood with terrible clarity what happened. The magic dragged him back. She hesitated too long over the Sweet Delights’ proposal.

He was gone.

And the worst part? He left thinking she decided to take the money. Thinking she chose Sweet Delights over everything they built together.