Page 6 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Six

Wyatt sat in the dark, listening to the room’s noises and missing Eliza.

The cat had gone boneless on the couch, one paw twitching in some stalking dream of mice or birds.

The walls held her smell, vanilla and citrus scent.

He promised he’d keep to the room. He meant it when he said it, but if that painted Christmas card meant to call him back, it wouldn’t happen in a lady’s sitting room under tiny lights that twinkled like trapped stars. It would happen downstairs, in the cool and the dark where such things belonged.

He found a blank recipe card and wrote carefully with a pencil he found in a drawer.

Miss Foster, I will sleep below in the storeroom. I will be here come morning. —W. McCready.

P.S. Unless the card takes me.

He propped it on the counter where she would see it first thing when she came through the door.

Nutmeg opened one green eye, the look saying she knew exactly what kind of fool he was but would keep his secret.

He scratched the ruff under her chin until her eye slid closed again, that motor-sound purring up through his fingers.

Wyatt took the stairs. Small noises threaded the stairwell, a tick in the pipe like a clock counting wrong, a soft clank in the wall that made him pause until he understood it was just the building settling.

Through the glass of the storefront, streetlights burned cold white, and a car rushed past. He turned away.

The bakery kitchen floor spread before him, ovens hulking in the dark like sleeping buffalo. He kept to the shadows from old habit and drew in smells that made sense. Good smells. Food smells.

Inside the storeroom, the dark felt honest. Cool as a root cellar, quiet as prayer. His eyes adjusted until he could make out shelves, sacks, and the geometry of things.

The painted card waited where he fenced it, low shelf, roasting pan pulled forward like a gate meant to keep something in or out.

He crouched without touching it. No heat. No pull. Just paint on old card stock and his name on the back in brown ink.

“Thank you for staying put,” he murmured, because talking to the dead and the inanimate carried many a man through many a night. “We will figure this out come morning, you and me.”

He made a bed from what was at hand, the way he had done a thousand nights on the trail. Three fifty-pound flour sacks for a mattress, set end to end. His coat for a blanket, still smelling of wood smoke and winter from a hundred and forty-seven years ago.

Wyatt still had a hard time wrapping his mind around that.

A stack of clean dishtowels for a pillow, then one more under his ribs. He set his hat crown-down on the shelf above his head, where he could reach it quick if needed. He kept his boots on. A man who had been caught barefoot once learned not to be caught twice.

Once he stopped bracing against every sound, they sorted themselves into sense.

Snow slid off the roof and whispered past the window.

He folded his hands on his stomach and told simple truths.

His name was Wyatt McCready. The outfit bedded the herd north of Sawyer’s Creek on the first of December, 1878.

He’d been at his board rolling breakfast biscuits, first pan ready for the oven, when his world disintegrated. He was not where he had been. He was not when he had been. But he was still alive, and he could work with that.

There were other truths, quieter ones. The Foster woman gave him hope with plain talk and capable hands, teaching him the dangers of her world like he was worth keeping. The cat claimed him like he’d come bearing gifts. He owed both of them a return on their kindness.

He bent his word tonight by leaving her couch. But she had said, “Do not go into the street.” And he had not. He kept the letter of instructions if not the spirit, and that small dishonesty sat in his lungs like a bad smell.

He closed his eyes and let the dark have him. He woke the first time with a start. Something in the wall sang a high note that did not belong, electric maybe, or just the building complaining about the cold. He lay still and counted to twenty until it passed.

He woke the second time because a car out front growled like a bear with its paw caught. He named it in his head so it would not own him. Car.

He woke the third time from a dream of biscuit dough that glowed like snow under a full moon, and when he pressed two fingers into it to test, it pulled back like a living thing trying to breathe. He smiled without moving.

A soft thud brought him up on one elbow.

He felt it through the floor, not just in his ears. Not the cooler’s complaint. Not the pipe’s tick. Somewhere between wood and nail, a small sound that did not belong to any machine.

“Miss Foster?” he said low, testing if she was there.

Nothing answered. He did not call again. If she was home, she would come. If she was not, his calling wouldn’t conjure her.

He rolled to his side, face toward the Christmas card and its guardian pan. He set his palm flat to the floorboards the way he would lay a hand on a horse’s flank to feel if the skin trembled with fever or fear.

His body knew before his mind did. He was not ready to go back even if the chance came.

The thought of it sat heavy. Cade would have the breakfast started wrong.

The other fellas would make jokes about him running off with some farmer’s daughter.

Captain Murray would dock his pay and hire some green kid who would burn the beans the first day out.

Then he thought of the street outside, black and slick as oil, and those car-machines. He thought of a pretty woman saying, I need to teach you how not to die. He thought of work he could do. A man could be useful in any year if he knew how to bake bread.

A faint draft slipped across his cheek. He held still and watched the edge of the card to see if it would move.

It did not.

Outside, the clack of a key finding the hole.

She was home.

He sat up, then changed his mind. Words would ask more of him than he had left tonight. He set his hat back on his head, brim low, and stretched out on the flour sacks.

He turned on his side toward the card, tucked one hand under his cheek like a child might, and let the other rest easy on his coat. He loosened his jaw and lengthened his breaths until they ran slow and even as a river.

The bell up front gave its tired silver ring. Footsteps crossed the bakery floor, quick and light, trying not to make noise. He heard the turn in the stairwell, the climb, a door above opening.

A pause, where she would have found his note. Then careful steps returning, faster now.

The storeroom doorknob turned, barely a whisper.

“Wyatt?” Her voice stayed low, like she was afraid of startling something wild.

He did not answer. He kept his breathing even and let his face go slack the way a man learned to do when he meant to sleep through night watch or camp checks or any other thing that was not his business.

The door opened wider. A wedge of light fell across the floor, just missing him.

Her shadow, tall and thin and tired. She stood there a moment. Fabric whispered. Something soft touched his shoulder. Not her hand, though for a second his body hoped for that in a way that surprised him.

A blanket. She had brought him a blanket and set it over him gentle as snow falling.

She stood there a moment longer. He felt the weight of her looking, wondering what kind of man chose a floor over a couch, chose the dark over lights.

“All right,” she whispered, and there was something in it, not pity, but understanding. Like she knew about needing to be near the thing that had broken you, just in case it decided to put you back together. “Sleep well.”

The door eased shut with barely a sound. Her footsteps crossed the floor again and faded toward the stairs.

He lay without moving until he heard the apartment door close above and the building settle back to its ordinary music.

Only then did he let out a breath and open his eyes to the dark shape of the roasting pan standing guard over the Christmas card painting of a man who used to be him.