Page 21 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Twenty-One

Nutmeg’s meow pulled Eliza awake. The cat paced the apartment, restless, tail switching as if she expected Wyatt to step from the shadows. She prowled, came back to the bed, mewled, jumped down, and did it all over again.

Eliza sat up, gathered the cat close, and pressed her cheek to her fur. “I know, baby, I miss him too.”

Her phone buzzed with a text.

It was from Fiona, with a picture of her and Jamie baking Yuletide cookies.

First batch done! It was tricky, but we made it happen.

Eliza texted back.

Enjoy.

The landline rang. Caller ID: Evergreen Springs Bank.

Oh no. What now? She didn’t want to answer. It rang again.

Sighing, she picked up. “Eliza Foster.”

“Miss Foster, it’s Kyle Hartley. I’m calling about your loan.”

Her breath caught. Was he moving up the due date? “I have until the fifteenth to pay it, right?”

“The balance has been paid in full,” Mr. Hartley said. “An anonymous benefactor arrived this morning to cover the entire amount.”

“Wh-what?” Had she heard correctly?

“Your account is closed. Congratulations.”

Eliza bit her bottom lip. How was this possible? “By who?”

“I can’t disclose that information. However, they did leave a Christmas card for you. I’ll have it delivered.”

Her throat tightened, and for one impossible moment, she thought Wyatt might have paid it, but that was silly. How could he? “A card?”

“Yes. I’m sending someone over with it now.”

She hung up. Paid in full. Someone had saved Foster’s Bakeshop.

Her mind circled useless guesses. Fiona’s parents? Someone who grew up here and wanted to give back? A stranger moved by the story online? Whoever it was, they hadn’t wanted her thanks.

An hour later, a courier dropped off a flat envelope. Eliza slit it open at the counter. Inside lay a Christmas card, holly pressed in gold foil, with no signature inside.

For having the courage to do the thing I want to do but can’t. Have a wonderful Christmas, Eliza. You deserve it.

The words blurred. She lifted the card stock closer, and the faint scent of anise and amber rose from it. The same notes as Betsy Houston’s perfume.

Huh?

She made herself hot chocolate and wandered to the window, peering out onto Main Street.

Across the street, Sweet Delights’ lights blazed as people lined up for baked goods. In the upstairs office window, Betsy stood framed against the glass, arms folded, a faraway look on her face.

Then Betsy’s glanced down and their gazes made contact.

Eliza lifted the mug of cocoa she’d poured for herself and held it up in a quiet salute. She mouthed, “Thank you.”

For a heartbeat, Betsy’s expression didn’t change. Then her mouth curved into the slightest smile. She tipped her head, gave a small nod, and turned back into the shadows of her office.

* * *

Fiona, Megan, and Tessa insisted on taking her out to celebrate that evening, but she begged off with a headache after an hour.

She went home, took a hot bath and two aspirin, and crawled into bed with Nutmeg, the quilt pulled high around her shoulders, and watched It’s a Wonderful Life.

It was a wonderful life. It should have been enough. The debt was gone. Foster’s was safe. Maggie’s recipe lived again in a hundred kitchens all over Evergreen Springs.

Why wasn’t it enough?

Wind pressed against the panes. She pressed her hands to her eyes until she saw stars burst. On the nightstand lay the Christmas card that had brought Wyatt into her life, the edges worn, the cowboy gone from the painting since the night he vanished.

She had carried it upstairs with her, unwilling to leave it in the dark below.

“Oh, Wyatt, I wish you could be here with me.” She stared at the card, willing his image back into the painting.

She thought she saw a glimmer of gold, but no, it was just the light reflecting off the gilded paint.

Sighing, she turned off the light and burrowed under the covers. She must have drifted off because she woke a few minutes later to sudden heat in the room.

And glow running along the border of the card.

Goosebumps prickled along her arms. She sat straight up. Nutmeg made a low guttural sound.

The glow spread. She grabbed the card. It was warm.

The painted scene sharpened. A shoulder appeared. Then a hat brim. The tilt of a smile she knew so well.

“Wyatt?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

The air heaved. Light pulsed once, strong enough to bleach the walls.

She shielded her eyes. The glow faltered, brightened, and stuttered again like a hiccup.

“Come on,” she said to the card, to him. “Come back.”

The glow thinned, as if something pushed against it from the other side. Then it flickered and went dark.

“No!” Eliza pressed the card against her chest. “Please, not again.”

Nothing. The card lay cold as ordinary paper in her hands. She closed her eyes, trying to recapture that desperate need that had first brought him through. But desperation wasn’t what she felt now. Now it was bone-deep certainty.

“I know you’re trying to come back,” she whispered to the card. “I can feel you fighting. But maybe you can’t do it alone.”

She thought of Maggie’s recipe. Takes two hearts. What if the magic worked the same way?

Eliza lit the bedside candle, the one Gram had given her that smelled of cinnamon and clove. She placed the card on the nightstand and put both palms on it, the way she and Wyatt had pressed the cookie dough together, sealing in the filling.

“We do this together,” she said. “Like everything else. You push from your side, I’ll pull from mine.”

Heat bloomed under her palms. Faint at first, then stronger. The painted scene sharpened. She could see the wagon wheels, the coffee pot, the rope coiled just so. And there a shadow where Wyatt should be, struggling to take form.

The card began to tremble. Not just the card. The whole room vibrated like a tuning fork struck hard. Nutmeg yowled and leaped to the floor, fur standing on end.

In the painted scene, the shadow darkened, solidified. She could make out shoulders, the curve of a hat brim.

But something was fighting it. The image would clarify, then blur again, as if two forces were pulling in opposite directions.

“Wyatt, I can see you!” She leaned harder on the card. “Don’t give up!”

A crack appeared in the air above the card not in the paper, but in the actual air, as if reality itself was splitting. Light leaked through, brilliant and white. Otherworldly. It smelled of prairie grass and leather and winter nights from another century.

She heard something that stopped her heart. Wyatt’s voice, faint and far away, calling her name.

But the crack was sealing itself, the light dimming. Whatever force governed the magic was winning, pulling the portal closed.

“No!” Eliza grabbed the edges of the card with both hands. “You brought him to me when I needed him. I need him still. We need each other. That has to mean something!”

The card burned her fingers, but she held on.

“I choose him,” she said to whatever force was listening. “Not the money, not the bakery, not safety or sense. Him. I choose him with both hands, with my whole heart, with everything I am or ever will be.”

Her palms pressed harder to the painted surface. The room tightened. The crack widened again, fighting against whatever tried to close it. Current pressed back against her chest. She leaned with her weight and her will, called his name.

Light spilled through and drew itself inward until it became a doorway no wider than a breath, and Wyatt stepped out.

The glow collapsed. The room went still. The card burst into flames and burned to ash.

Eliza gasped. She could hardly breathe.

He stood in her bedroom, framed in the faint glow that still trembled along the card’s edges. Solid. Tall. The lines of him burned into her sight as if her heart had etched him there so he could never fade again.

The same Stetson hung from his fingers, dented where it had rolled across asphalt that first night.

The same broad shoulders that had bent over Maggie’s cast iron stove at three in the morning.

The same gentle eyes that watched her across the gazebo as snow drifted down and “The Christmas Waltz” played in the night air.

She flung back the covers, hit the floor with both feet, and rushed to him.

“You’re real,” she whispered, clutching fistfuls of his shirt, feeling the warmth of him beneath the fabric, the steady rise and fall of his chest. The faint scent of leather and wood smoke clung to him, as real as the floor beneath her bare feet.

“I am.” His hand came up, roughened palm fitting against her cheek like it had always belonged there, his thumb brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen.

His voice thickened, the familiar baritone she’d heard in her dreams every night since he disappeared.

“God help me, Eliza, I thought I’d never see you again. ”

Her throat closed. More tears spilled before she could stop them, hot against her cheeks.

“I thought I’d lost you. Forever.” She traced the scar on his left hand, making sure every part of him had returned. “The card… your image vanished completely from the painting. Like you’d never existed.”

He swallowed hard, the muscle in his jaw trembling under her fingers. “When the card dragged me back, I landed in my camp, but while it had been daylight here when the card took me, it was midnight there.”

“That must have been so confusing.”

“Oh, that wasn’t the half of it. They didn’t know me. None of them. Cade looked at me like I was a stranger. The men cursed, called me a devil, drove me off with stones in their fists.” His voice caught, raw with remembered pain.

“Oh, Wyatt. I am so sorry that happened to you.” She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“I ran into darkness, and the world split under my feet. I walked in nothingness. Sky without stars, ground without earth. I didn’t know if I was alive or dead. Days that weren’t days. Nights that weren’t nights. No fire. No voices. Only one thing kept me from losing my mind.”