The Brands Who Came For Christmas Page 3

Chapter 2

  Maya Brand, he thought as he watched her across the table, pouring his cocoa and stirring it absently and looking at him as if…as if she couldn’t look at him enough.

  Caleb knew he was running away. Shirking his responsibilities, worrying his father sick, more than likely, and letting a lot of people down. He knew that. And he knew it couldn’t go on. He had to go back. To pick up the legacy and carry it forward. It was what was expected of him. His life plan. He’d worked for these goals for years, and it was all coming together finally. In just over a year he would announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. He would step into the shoes of his father and grandfather. He would fulfill his destiny.

  He didn’t know why the hell he’d put on these clothes or borrowed José’s pickup or driven clear out into some hole-in-the-wall town. Last minute jitters? A sudden attack of nerves? A desire to sabotage his own success?

  Whatever it was, he’d arrived at the door of this little saloon angry, wet, and confused. But this…this was something different.

  Maya Brand was an exceptionally beautiful woman. Oh, not the way most people would think of beauty. Her hair, for example. It wasn’t “done” or sprayed. Its color wasn’t artificial, but a deep mink brown. It was long and wavy, but not curly, exactly. It fell over her shoulders. She didn’t fuss with it. Her face…was clean. So clean he could see the slight sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Very slight. But there, not covered by makeup. Her shape was not bone thin. She was curvy. Wider at the hip than most women would probably like to be or see as ideal. On her it was good, especially in the snug-fitting jeans she wore. He wanted to rest his hands just above her hips and hold her close to him.

  But the most attractive thing about her, he realized with the part of his mind that was still functioning on some rational level, was that she didn’t have a clue who he was. She didn’t look at him and see Cain Caleb Montgomery III, heir to millions, former mayor, future senator. She didn’t see anything but a man in dusty boots and worn-out jeans. And it seemed to him that she liked him anyway.

  Why?

  It puzzled him and drew him. What was there about him that she could see to like? He’d been Cain Caleb Montgomery III for so long he wasn’t sure who plain old Caleb was anymore. And he suddenly found he wanted to know. And he thought maybe this woman might be able to show him.

  She went to the center of the floor, where a small crowd had already gathered. Men in their best blue jeans and western shirts with pearl snaps. Women in short skirts and cowboy boots. Caleb had never line danced in his life. He figured he would probably make a fool of himself. But it would be worth it just to have an excuse to get close to Maya Brand.

  She stepped to the front of the room, looked around, and then glanced at him almost reluctantly. Everyone else had a partner. Everyone but him.

  He shrugged. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

  She smiled, not just to be polite, he thought. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Come here.”

  Damn, he liked the way she said “Come here.”

  He moved to stand beside her at the head of the class. Maya waved to the woman at the far end of the bar. The woman at the bar waved back. She looked like a shorter, curvier version of Sophia Loren. Exquisite bone structure, dark coloring. Mexican, he thought. She had a head of raven curls that reached to her waist and a few laugh lines around her eyes that only added to her appeal.

  Maya called, “Crank it, Mom. Let’s start ‘em with the Boot Scoot.”

  Caleb blinked and looked at Maya. “Mom?”

  “If you’re gonna look so shocked, Caleb, you really ought to do it when she’s up close enough to enjoy it,” Maya told him.

  “She’s your mother,” he said, still not believing it.

  ‘‘Vidalia Brand, mother of five, and the most notorious female saloon owner in seven counties,” Maya told him, and there was more than a hint of pride in her voice and in her eyes.

  “Wow.”

  The music came up, and he had to focus on Maya’s instructions and try to imitate her footwork for a time. It was okay, though, because he had to get up close beside her and, every once in a while, hold her hand or slip his arm around her waist, so he didn’t mind at all.

  And every time he looked down at her, her eyes were sparkling and staring right up into his. And her cheeks were pink with color, her lips full and parted as she got a little breathless. He hoped not entirely from the dancing.

  Once he had the moves down, they ran through the dance again, without stopping after each step to explain the next one, this time. And though he got lost once or twice, he had it down soon enough, so he could resume the conversation.

  “Mother of five, you said.”

  Maya nodded.

  “So the cute one with the short, raven hair who’s tending bar and sending me daggers would be…?”

  “That’s my sister Melusine. She’s kicked the stuffing out of some of the baddest men in town. Some of them for far less serious offenses than calling her cute.”

  He lifted his brows. “But she’s so small.”

  “She’s strong and she’s fast, and most importantly, she’s mean. Hot tempered anyway. Rides a motorcycle and takes karate lessons. Goes rock climbing. She’s a year younger than me, but she kind of sees herself as the protector of the bunch. Guess she figured if our father wasn’t around to do it, someone had to.”

  He nodded, searching her eyes. There had been a flash of pain when she’d mentioned her father. “Would I be out of line if I asked what happened—to your father, I mean?”

  She smiled up at him as they moved to the music. “Stick around this town more than five minutes and you’ll hear all about it. It’s the juiciest gossip Big Falls has ever had.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “Most everyone is.”

  The music stopped, the dance ended. Maya turned to her group. “Ten-minute break. You know the drill.” Some of them wandered off to tables, the rest room, the bar, while others just stepped closer together and wrapped their arms around each other as a slow, sad song came wafting from the speakers.

  Before Maya could turn to go, Caleb slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close, started moving her slowly in time to the steel guitar. She tilted her head curiously but didn’t pull away. She put her arms around his neck and smiled a little nervously.

  “Tell me about your father,” he urged her. He wanted to know all about this woman for some reason. Why did she so intrigue him? Was it because she was exactly the opposite of the political wife his father and the others had described to him? Or was it something more?

  She shrugged. “Okay. It’s public knowledge, anyway. My father met my mother when she was seventeen. They had a brief affair, and then he went his way and she went hers. By the time she found him again to tell him she was pregnant, he was on the East Coast with a wife of his own. Still, time passed, and he came back. Told Mom things hadn’t worked out with his first wife, that they’d split up, and he asked her to marry him. She did.”

  “Doesn’t sound so scandalous to me,” he said. He was listening as much to the sound of her voice as to her story. Her tone was deep, rich. Erotically husky.

  “Well, that’s because I haven’t gotten to the scandal yet. See, Daddy-Dearest wasn’t divorced from his first wife at all. Not even separated from her. For ten years he managed to get by with two families. He traveled all the time on business—or we thought it was on business. What he was doing was dividing his time between the wife he had in Silver City and the one he had here in Big Falls, Oklahoma.”

  “He was a bigamist?”

  She waggled her brows. “Told you it was scandalous.”

  “So what happened?” he asked. “Where is he now?”

  Maya lowered her head. “He got involved with a bad crowd in Silver City. In the end he tried to mess with the wrong people and was murdered, along with his wife. I never did
learn what became of the two kids he had with her. It was only after he was dead that we found out about his other life. By then my mother had five daughters, every last one of us illegitimate. I was young at the time, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It damn near destroyed Mom.” She lifted her head, looked across the room with admiration in her eyes. “But she came through it.”

  “She must be one hell of a woman,” he said.

  She looked up at him. “She is.”

  “And she’s raised one hell of a daughter,” he said.

  She lowered her head quickly. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

  “I know you well enough to know that I’d like to know you better, Maya Brand. I’d like that a lot.”

  Thick lashes lowered; then she glanced up from beneath them. “I…think I’d like that, too.”

  “I’m awfully glad to hear that.” He leaned in closer, intending to steal a kiss, but she artfully turned her face away before he could accomplish that. When he lifted his head again, he felt eyes on them from everywhere in the bar, and he thought maybe that was why. Her sisters, her mother—and for some reason, every customer in the place—seemed to be watching them intently.

  Okay. So he was going to have to get her alone if he wanted to do anything more than dance with her. It shouldn’t be a problem. Nothing he’d ever wanted in life had been difficult for him to have. Especially women.

  He stopped himself then. This was different. Always before he’d been Cain Caleb Montgomery. Everyone knew the Montgomerys always got what they wanted. It was a patriarchal dynasty, practically his birthright.

  Here, tonight, he was just Caleb. And she was like no other woman he’d ever met.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was out of line.”

  She lifted her face to his, and he was tempted to get out of line again. “I can’t kiss a man who hasn’t even told me his last name, Caleb,” she said.

  And he got a feeling—a feeling that the way he answered that one, simple question might easily have some great impact he would feel for a long time to come. It was one of those moments when you just sense things looming—like a crossroads. More than anything, he wanted this delicious anonymity to go on. He’d learned more about her—and about himself—in the last couple of hours than he ever would have or could have as Cain Caleb Montgomery III.

  So he made his choice. He chose to lie to her.

  “Cain,” he said. “My name is Caleb Cain.”

  She thought he was looking less heartsick than he had when he’d arrived.

  And she hadn’t minded dancing with him at all. Sure, he was a drifter, on the skids, and from out of town. Sure, he barely had two nickels to rub together, from the looks of him. But tomorrow was her damned birthday, and he was drop-dead good-looking. His touch made her tingle, and she really was getting tired of being good all the time.

  No steady boyfriend, no prospects in sight. Hell, one more year and she would be a thirty-year-old virgin. Being the good one was not turning out at all the way she had hoped it would. So if dancing real close and real slow with a handsome stranger was bad, well, then she would be bad. Just for this once.

  She ignored the look of surprise on her mother’s face when she lifted her head from his shoulder to see her across the room. She ignored the way Vidalia elbowed Mel and pointed at her, and the way Mel’s brows came down hard, and the way Selene folded her arms and nodded knowingly, while Kara peeked out of the kitchen looking curious and excited for her. She ignored everything except the man she was with. And how good and strong his arms felt wrapped tight around her. His breath tickled her ear and her neck, and she grew warmer. She might very well be good, and respectable, and pure. But she was also a woman. A Brand woman. And never had she felt it more than she did in this stranger’s arms.

  At some point later, she realized she was laughing. Laughing out loud up at him, and he was laughing, too. Her skin was warm, and her heart was racing, and she felt incredibly alive.

  He walked her back to his table, eyed the now cold cocoa and said, “Am I allowed to have a beer now?”

  “Sure you are. In fact, I think I’ll join you.” She held up two fingers, not even looking toward the bar.

  “Think someone saw you?” he asked.

  She winked. “Believe me, they haven’t taken their eyes off me since you walked in.” Then she pursed her lips. “On second thought, I’d better get that beer myself. They’re liable to water it down or something.”

  He looked surprised but said nothing as she went to the bar.

  When she came back, he was deep in conversation with one of her regulars, a local fellow by the name of Jimmy Jones, but they stopped talking the minute she arrived, and Jimmy tipped his hat to her and skulked away, never meeting her eyes.

  She set two foaming mugs and a filled pitcher on the table, then sat down and sipped from one. “So what was Jimmy telling you about me?”

  “What makes you think he was talking about you?”

  She thinned her lips, lowered her brows, gave him the look. She’d learned the look from her mom, and she was pretty good at delivering it, in her opinion. All the Brand women were.

  He smiled. “Okay. You win. He was. He said you come from a wild family. That you Brand girls are the talk of the town.”

  “Oh, but I already told you about our notoriety.”

  He smiled. “You left out some things.”

  She sat down, grinning. “I’m dying to hear. What did he say?”

  Tilting his head to one side, Caleb’s smile faded. “I don’t want to say anything to ruin the night for us, Maya. It’s been…too nice.”

  She drew her brows together, turning to look at Jimmy, who immediately looked away. “My goodness. It must have been pretty bad.”

  “No, it really—”

  She reached across the table, clasped his hand and said, “I’ve been putting an awful lot of effort into making myself respectable in the eyes of the good people of this town, Caleb. It would help me a hell of a lot if you’d be honest with me right now. What did Jimmy say about us?”

  He cleared his throat, turned his hand over and closed it around hers. “He seems to think Selene is either a Communist, a Satanist, or both.”

  She laughed. It came out in a burst, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Then she took a long drink of beer and said, “She’s a vegetarian and a feminist who believes in UFOs, Bigfoot and reincarnation. I suppose that does make her a Communist and a Satanist in Jimmy’s eyes.”

  “You have a beautiful smile, you know that?”

  She felt her face heat. “Stop changing the subject. What else did he say?”

  He drew a breath. “He seems to think one of your other sisters is…uh…cursed somehow. A ‘jinx’ is the way he put it.”

  Again her smile didn’t falter. “That would be Kara. She’s somewhat accident-prone—and, I have to admit the men she dates seem to have a tendency to…get hurt But it’s just a string of bad luck.” She frowned. “I hope the jerk doesn’t let her hear him say something like that.”

  “If he does, I’ll punch him in the nose for you.”

  She smiled. “You won’t have to. Mel will.”

  “Mel. Right Jimmy thinks she’s a sex fiend. He didn’t say it flat out, but he implied she was into whips and dog collars. A dominatrix type.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It would serve Jimmy right if I told Mel what he said. He’s still pissed because she broke his nose last year when he got fresh with Mom.”

  He nodded. “Then it’s safe to say you don’t have a sister who’s a porn star?”

  Her jaw dropped. “Edie is a lingerie model in L.A. Quite a successful one, too. But no, she’s no porn star.”

  “Probably a big relief to your mom,” he said lightly.

  “Not really. To Mom, there’s not that much of a distinction between the two. They haven’t spoken since Edie left home.”

  She pursed her lips, then sipped her beer and set the mug down. “So? W
hat did our friend Jimmy have to say about me?”

  Caleb’s eyes shifted away from hers. “Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on, Caleb. Of course he said something about me. What would have been his point in talking to you at all if not about me? Hm? You’re not here with Edie or Mel or Kara or Selene tonight. You’re with me. So what did he say?”

  He shook his head slowly. “He…told me I might as well give it up and go look elsewhere for fun tonight. Told me you don’t date, don’t even like men.”

  She leaned back in her chair, took a long pull of her beer. “Well now, this is interesting. I’ve been wondering what the locals are thinking and saying about me.”

  He licked his lips, looked away from her.

  “What?” she asked, coming upright again. “What’s that look?”

  “What look?” he asked, still not meeting her eyes.

  “That look! There it is again! Jimmy Jones said something else, didn’t he? He told you what they’ve been saying about me around town. Didn’t he, Caleb?”

  Sighing deeply, he finally looked at her. “You don’t want to know, hon. Trust me on this one.”

  “Of course I want to know. I’ve been bending over backward to become socially acceptable around here. Hell, this is the first real chance I’ve had to find out how my efforts are panning out. So spill it, Caleb. Tell me what he said.”

  Caleb pursed his lips. “It’s not gonna make you happy, Maya. And it seemed to me you were starting to enjoy yourself a little bit. You sure you want to ruin all that?”

  “Tell me.”

  He nodded, took a drink of beer, licked the foam off his lips. Made her tummy tighten in response. She took another drink of her own, and he spoke. “He said that as near as anyone can figure, you must be one of two things. Either you’re frigid or you’re gay.”

  Maya choked and sprayed beer like a geyser. It hit Caleb square in the chest and rained down on the table between them.

  He jumped up automatically, arms out at his sides as the beer dripped from his borrowed sweatshirt.

  Maya grabbed a napkin and lunged at him, dabbing his chest, wiping his chin. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  He stilled her hands, took the napkin from them and lifted it to gently wipe the beer from her lips. Maya went still, lowering her eyes.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” he said softly.

  “No. No, I needed to know the truth.”

  “If it helps any, I told Jimmy that if he said another word, I’d knock his teeth out.”

  She smiled, but it felt weak. “I appreciate that.”

  “Why does this hurt you so much, Maya? Why do you care what some ignorant fool like Jimmy Jones thinks of you, anyway?”

  Closing her eyes, she shook her head slowly. “I’ve been trying to be the good one. The responsible one. Trying to be good enough for the upper crust residents of Big Falls.” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “Trying to be something I guess maybe I’m not and never will be.” She sat back down. So did he.

  “Hey. Maybe you don’t fit in with those kinds of people, Maya, but don’t ever think it’s because you aren’t good enough.”

  She looked across the table at him, smiled a little. “Thanks for that.”

  “I meant it. But for the rest of it—I know what you’re going through.”

  “You do? You’ve been trying to be respectable, too?”

  He shrugged and seemed to think about it. “More like I’ve been trying to live up to other people’s expectations of me.”

  “While I’ve been trying to live them down.”

  He smiled at that. “And the results so far have been pretty lousy.”

  She drew a breath, sighed. “I’m a saint. I live like a nun, but nobody gives me any credit for it.”

  “I’m expected to live my whole life according to someone else’s plan. I’ve never even questioned it, so they assume I never will.”

  She drank her beer, surprised to see the bottom of the glass so soon. She was even more surprised when he refilled it for her. “I, um…I don’t drink very often,” she said.

  “Me either,” he said. “But tonight I’m going to do what I want, instead of what other people want me to do. If I want to drink, I’m going to drink. So there.”

  She pursed her lips, tilted her head. “Yeah. You know what? Me too.”

  She took a nice long drink. Then she glanced out at the floor, where her dancers were getting ready to begin again. “Ready for round two?” she asked him.

  “You lead, lady, and I’ll follow.”

  She did lead. She led him out onto the dance floor, then back to the table for two more beers when the line dancing was done. And then she was on the dance floor with him again when a slow song came on, and everything was different.

  He held her closer, tighter, than she had ever been held in her life, and he said softly, “I’m liking this way too much, Maya.”

  She said, “I am, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded, looking up into his eyes, liking what she saw there. Feeling the sting of all her efforts to be respectable having failed, the depression over her impending birthday, and the effects of too much beer, she knew she was in trouble tonight. And she didn’t even care.

  “You want to get out of here?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “Yeah…I do.”

  His smile was slow, but gentle somehow. “Your family…?”

  She glanced toward the bar. Her younger sister, Mel, was looking decidedly violent just now. Leaning on the hardwood, watching them through narrow eyes. Her short, dark hair and pixie-like features hid an explosive temper and a body to match.

  Maya felt warm all over in spite of that cold surveillance. Then she frowned at Caleb as a thought occurred to her. “Are you okay to drive?”

  “I’ve only had two beers all night, hon. And the second one’s still half full.” He nodded toward his mug on the table. “But how about you?”

  “It’s my birthday,” she said, and that was her only reply.

  He frowned. Then he looked at her empty mug on the table, and she could almost see him mentally counting how many beers she’d had tonight. Then, licking his lips and sighing deeply, he looked at her again. He said, “As much as I hate to say this, Maya Brand, I think we ought to call it a night. Tell you what. You show me where I can get a room for the night, and we’ll continue this tomorrow.”

  She lowered her head, thinking that she didn’t want the night to end so soon. But it was a good sign, she thought.

  It said a lot about his character. “You’re a real gentleman, aren’t you, Caleb Cain?”

  “I try to be.”

  She nodded. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

  “So who, exactly, is that stranger?” Mel asked, when Maya carried the empties back to the bar. Caleb had gone to the fireplace for his hat and his shirt, and gone out to start up his truck.

  “Hell, sis, he was just a man. Had a flat, changed it in the rain and came in to get warm.”

  “Well, shoot, since when do we have body heat on the menu?”

  “Melusine Brand, you hush up!” Vidalia said. She came out from behind the bar, slipping an arm around Maya’s shoulders. “You okay, hon? You look a bit flushed and flustered.”

  “Fine. Tired, but fine.”

  “That young man…he new in town?”

  She sighed. “Just passing through,” she said. And if her regret was audible, she couldn’t help it. “He’s looking for a room. I said I’d show him the way to the boarding house.”

  They all looked up at her, silent, eyes wide.

  “I’ll show him the freaking boarding house,” Mel said, balling up her apron and slamming it down, starting around the bar.

  Maya grabbed her shoulder, halting her in her tracks. “I’m pushing thirty, Mel. If I want to spend some time with a man, it’s my choice to make.”

  “But…but—”

  “She’s right, Melusine.” Vidalia spoke with authority, an
d Mel calmed down. She didn’t like it. But she backed off.

  Then Kara popped out of the kitchen and said, “What’s going on? Did someone call a family meeting and forget to tell me?”

  “Maya met a handsome stranger,” Selene said. She was sitting on a bar stool to the right, playing around with one of those decks of cards she was always messing with. “And now she’s going to show him the way to the boarding house.”

  Kara’s eyebrows went up. “The one I saw you dancing with, Maya?” she asked.

  Maya nodded.

  “Wow. What a hunk.”

  “Shut up, Kara,” Mel snapped.

  “He’s your soul mate, Maya.”

  They all turned at once to see Selene leaning over and staring down at her tarot cards, which she’d laid out in some strange pattern on the gleaming mahogany bar.

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  “The cards don’t lie,” Selene said softly.

  “Those cards come from the devil, Selene, and you oughtn’t be messing with them,” Vidalia put in.

  Maya rolled her eyes. “I’m going now. You all have given me a headache.”

  Each and every one of them eyed her speculatively as Maya grabbed her coat off the peg near the door, put it on, hoisted her purse and sent them a final wave. She knew what they were thinking…and she didn’t particularly care.

  “Be careful, sweetheart,” she heard her mother say just before she stepped out into the rain. “Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for later on.”

  Those words echoed in Maya’s mind and sent a little shiver down her spine. She shook it off, ignored it, pretended not to hear her mother’s words over and over again in her head as she tugged her collar up around her, ducked against the rain and ran across the wet parking lot to the battered pickup that waited with its wipers flapping madly and its headlights shining through the rain onto the road sign that said Leaving Big Falls. Come Back Soon!