A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [66]
These things alone would delight the children, she knew, but there was so much more; she’d splurged on shoes and ready-made coats for her daughters, and Clay’s packages—still wrapped in their brown paper and tucked beneath the lowest boughs of the tree—contained numerous mysteries.
They retreated into the kitchen, Clay drinking luke warm coffee left over from supper, and Dara Rose sipping tea. She’d felt downright reckless, spending Piper’s ten dollars so freely, and it still made her breath lurch to think how she’d spent some of it.
Idly, Clay took a small package from the pocket of his shirt, and set it down next to Dara Rose’s teacup.
She looked up at him, but she didn’t—couldn’t—speak.
“Open it,” he urged, with that crooked grin tilting his mouth upward at one side, in the way she’d come to love.
Dara Rose hesitated, drew a folded sheet of paper from her skirt pocket and handed it to Clay. “This is for you,” she said, so softly that he cocked his head slightly in her direction to catch the words.
“You go first,” he said, holding the paper between fingers calloused from working practically every spare moment to prepare for the arrival of the Sears, Roebuck and Company house, all while tending to his duties as town marshal.
Dara Rose’s fingers trembled as she opened the little packet, folding back its edges.
A golden wedding band gleamed inside, sturdy and full of promise.
“Will you wear my wedding band, Dara Rose?” Clay asked.
In some ways, it would always seem to both of them that that was the moment they were truly married, there at the kitchen table, in the light of a single lantern, on Christmas Eve.
She nodded, murmured, “Yes,” all the while blinking back tears, and allowed him to slip the ring onto her finger. It was a perfect fit.
Clay sat watching her for a few moments, his gaze like a caress, and then, very slowly, he opened the sheet of paper she’d given him.
His eyebrows rose slightly as he read, and then a grin spread across his face, lighting him up from within.
She’d given him a receipt for a night’s lodging at the Texas Arms Hotel—for two.
“Does this mean what I hope it does?” Clay asked.
Dara Rose had been blushing a lot since she met Clay McKettrick, but at that moment, she outdid herself. Her whole face caught fire as she nodded.
Clay still didn’t seem convinced. “You’re giving me a wedding night for a Christmas gift?”
She blushed even harder. As her legal husband, he was entitled to a wedding night, their bargain notwithstanding. Maybe she should have waited, given him socks or a book or perhaps a fishing pole….
Meanwhile, his golden band gleamed on her left ring finger, simple but heavy.
“Yes,” she forced herself to say.
“Hallelujah!” Clay replied, and then he got up from his chair and pulled her into his arms—clear off her feet, in fact—and kissed her so thoroughly that she was gasping when he let her go.
Dara Rose dashed out of the kitchen, afraid of her own scandalous tendencies, and went to look in on the children.
Certain that Edrina and Harriet were at last asleep, she returned to the front room just in time to see Clay set the exquisite doll from the mercantile window squarely in front of the Christmas tree, next to a stack of story-books that must have been meant for Edrina.
Dara Rose drew in her breath.
“Oh, Clay,” she whispered. She’d hadn’t dared think, or hope, that he’d been the one to buy Florence.
But he had.
He waggled an index finger at her and spoke gruffly. “Don’t you dare tell me I shouldn’t have done this, Mrs. McKettrick. I might not be Edrina and Harriet’s real father, but I couldn’t love them more if I were, and besides, after all they’ve been through in their short lives, they deserve a special Christmas.”
Dara Rose was fresh out of arguments. She simply went to Clay, slipped her arms around his lean waist and let her head rest against his chest. She could feel his steady, regular heartbeat under her cheekbone.
“I love you, Clay McKettrick,” she heard herself say.
Clay drew back just far enough