Page 19 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Nineteen

The world slammed into focus with the force of a bronc’s kick. Wyatt hit frozen ground. His knees buckled, and his hands struck dirt that felt too real after days of concrete and linoleum.

No electric hum. No car engines. Just wind through cottonwoods and the low murmur of cattle bedded down for the night.

But something was deeply wrong. It had been bright daylight when the card burned hot in his hand.

Now moonlight glazed the prairie, sharp and silver as broken glass. Time itself had shifted, as if the hours refused to align for his return.

Something was off.

He stared at the stars, disoriented. The time disconnect unsettled him more than anything.

Daylight in Eliza’s world, night here. As if the two worlds were spinning on different axes now, further proof he no longer fit in either place completely.

Even time itself had fractured between them.

Day for her, night for him. Two halves no longer in rhythm, like hearts beating to different clocks.

He pushed upright, head spinning like bad whiskey on an empty stomach. The camp stretched before him in eerie stillness. The chuckwagon in place, fire banked to coals, bedrolls scattered like fallen logs.

Home, or what should have been home.

“I’m back,” he whispered, the words sounding thin against the hush.

Familiar smells rolled over him. Horse sweat. Leather. Coffee grounds. Bacon grease seasoned into the wagon’s boards. His wagon. His domain. Yet each smell seemed too strong, as if the night had sharpened them past natural.

For an instant, another scent cut through. Vanilla and cinnamon, yeast and sugar. Eliza’s bakery.

Then it vanished, leaving him hollow.

Except... the Dutch oven listed wrong. He always nested it inside the spider, both tucked under the boot. Now the spider balanced on the tongue where dew would rust it.

“Cade?” Wyatt stepped toward the bedrolls. “You awake?”

A figure stirred near the fire. “Who’s there?”

Cade’s voice, but hard, edged like a man warning off strangers.

“It’s me. Wyatt.” He moved into the firelight. “Sorry I’ve been... away.”

Cade bolted upright, hand sliding to the Colt at his side. “Mister, I don’t know you. This is Murray’s outfit, and we don’t take to strangers wandering through it at midnight.”

“We’ve known each other since we were eight years old in Des Moines. You pulled me out of that stampede in ’74. I held you strong when Mary left you for that banker in Dodge.”

Cade thumbed the hammer back. “I never told anybody about Mary. How’d you?—”

“Because I was there.” Wyatt’s throat tightened. “Because I’m your friend.”

Other men roused, faces stepping into the glow: Rhett and Holden, the Johnson brothers, Old Pete, who taught him to read wind patterns. But they were wrong too. Same outlines, but blank stares.

“Someone get the chief.” Cade kept the pistol trained on him.

“I’m the cook.” Panic rose inside him. “I make the biscuits you steal before breakfast. Last week, you lost your ace of hearts in a windstorm, and I spent an hour helping you search for it.”

“The windstorm was last week,” Holden said. “But nobody lost any cards.”

Captain Murray stepped out of his tent, suspenders loose, rifle casual in his grip. “What’s the trouble?”

“I’m your cook.” Wyatt turned to him. “Wyatt McCready. You hired me in Abilene eight years ago.”

Murray’s eyes measured him. “Son, I’ve got a cook. Never heard the name McCready.”

“Check your ledger.” Panic gripped him. “Eight years of wages. I’m in there.”

Murray nodded to Tommy. “Fetch the book.”

The wait stretched like a gallows rope. Wyatt stood in the circle of men who should’ve been his family, searching their faces for recognition. Nothing. This work that had been his life for almost a decade felt as foreign as 2025 had on his first day there.

What was happening?

Eliza’s face flashed in his mind. How she’d taught him about electric lights and indoor plumbing, patient with his confusion. He’d learned to belong in her world, only to be yanked back to one where he no longer existed.

Tommy brought the ledger. Murray flipped it open and ran his finger down the columns. “Every man accounted for. No McCready anywhere.”

Wyatt’s knees weakened. He stared at his hands, solid, calloused. He was solid. Real. But for how long? “The wagon. I carved my initials under the box. I’ll show you.”

“Stay away from that wagon.” Cade scowled, waving the pistol.

Wyatt turned anyway. He dropped to his knees and searched the wood. His fingers traced every inch. Smooth. Nothing. “No.” His voice cracked. “I carved it. I know I did.”

When he faced them again, the men had stepped back.

“You best move on,” Murray said. “Whatever you’re after, it ain’t here.”

Wyatt pushed to his feet. His right hand wavered, the wagon tongue showing through when he turned it just so. Cold fear knifed through his chest.

“Please... I existed. I was here. I was real.”

His boots turned translucent, the ground showing clear through them. The truth struck him with devastating clarity. He wasn’t just losing his friends or his place. He was losing himself.

“Something’s wrong with that man,” Rhett said. “Look at him. He’s going strange.”

Wyatt stared at the vanishing outline of his own legs.

He saw Eliza’s kitchen table. Her sitting across from him, morning light in her hair as she poured coffee. The gazebo where they’d danced, her body against his as snowflakes drifted around them. The bakery counter where they’d stood shoulder to shoulder, rolling dough tissue-thin.

Maggie’s words came back to him, scrawled in Eliza’s hand. Takes two hearts.

He had only one heart. The other half of him remained with her, in a bakery a century and a half away. Without her, he wasn’t whole. Without her, he was fading from existence itself.

For a breath, he thought he heard her voice answer, faint, distant, his name carried across centuries. “I said no. I chose you. I chose us.”

Had she refused the offer? The thought gave him strength even as the ground became visible through his chest.

“Eliza,” he whispered, willing his voice to cross time.

He clawed at his vest pocket, searching for the card, some way back, but his fingers met only cloth. The card no longer existed here. The only place he still lived was in her memory.

“Take me back to her,” he begged to whatever force controlled the magic between worlds. “She’s my home now.”

* * *

She had to get Wyatt back.

The thought beat through Eliza like her own pulse as she sat on a crate in the storeroom.

She held the card tight. The painted wagon was clear, but the cowboy beside it had blurred to a shadow. His shoulders, once defined, rubbed thin.

“Please.” The word rasped in her throat. “Come back.”

Nothing happened.

Eliza pressed the card to her heart, breath catching. Maybe she hadn’t asked the right way. “Wyatt, I need you.”

Nothing stirred.

The bell above the bakery door jangled.

She flinched.

“Eliza?” Tessa’s voice rang out, too bright, too alive. “Are you in here?”

Boots crossed the front room. The storeroom door creaked.

“There you are.” Tessa slipped inside, cheeks pink from cold, pom-pom hat crooked. She looked absurdly solid in this dim space. “Where’s Wyatt? I need his expertise with Einstein.”

Eliza couldn’t answer.

The smile slid off Tessa’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s gone,” Eliza said, her voice barely audible.

“Gone? What do you mean gone?” Tessa’s brow furrowed. “Gone where?”

Eliza set the card on the table with shaky fingers.

Tessa frowned. “What’s this got to do with Wyatt?”

“It’s where he came from,” Eliza whispered. “And where he went back to.”

“I don’t understand,” Tessa said.

“A week ago, I found this Christmas card in my Gram’s things. And something happened. A portal in time opened up. He stepped out of it from 1878, and now he’s gone back.”

Tessa stared at her, eyes widening. “Eliza, what are you talking about? Are you okay?”

“Look.” She shoved the card closer. “You can still see him. Barely.”

Tessa bent, squinting. Her hair spilled forward. “That’s just a smudge on a very old Christmas card.”

“It was him.” Tears stung Eliza’s eyes. “And he’s fading away.”

On the card, the faint line of Wyatt’s shoulder evaporated.

Eliza gasped. “No—” She clutched it to her chest.

Tessa jerked back a step, eyes wide. For once, she said nothing.

Eliza bent over the card, sobs shaking her. “I’m losing him.” She peered at the card.

His image drained further. Only the wagon remained.

Eliza’s knees gave. She sank back on the crate, tears spotting the paper. “He’s gone.”