Christmas with the Cowboys by Mary Sue Jackson & Leslie North

Author:Mary Sue Jackson & Leslie North [Jackson, Mary Sue & North, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Belle slept fitfully, tossing and turning as her mind refused to let go of the evening’s events. Donna had made her promise that she would take a Saturday morning off for a change, but Belle rose with the sun all the same. There was too much internal noise for her to lounge around in bed. She felt like her body was running on pure adrenaline, and not in a nice, motivating way. She was full to the brim with agitation, and she needed somewhere to put it.

That, at least, was a problem she could solve. Out of the whole, confused jumble of the night before, one thing stood out as crystal clear. Her mother had taken a night that was supposed to be for them and chosen to ambush her. Any way she looked at it, that was simply unacceptable.

She was determined to wait until what others might consider a reasonable hour, but by eight o'clock, she couldn't stand it any longer. She knew her mom liked to sleep late on Saturdays, but oh well. If her mother didn't respect Belle enough to keep from pulling awful stunts like ambushing her with Blain, why should she care about her mom's wishes to sleep?

Fueled by copious amounts of coffee, she climbed into her car and made the drive to her childhood home. She was in the mood to live dangerously, and she pushed her car up to five miles over the speed limit. She was too angry to give much thought to the inconvenience being pulled over and getting a ticket would cause her.

Her pulse quickened as she drew nearer the old family home, the same as it always did when she had to come over for some reason. She had loved the Manning land more than anything in the world. On more than one occasion, she had informed her father of her grand plans to be buried there when she died. He had laughed her off and ruffled her hair, but he had never understood that she was one hundred percent serious. Now, coming home just reminded her of everything they had lost after he died. Thinking about that made her even angrier, and by the time she stomped into her mom's kitchen, the poor woman didn't stand a chance.

Belle was mildly surprised to smell coffee brewing and bacon cooking. She blew into the kitchen and found her mother at the old linoleum kitchen table, a piece of buttered toast poised right in front of her mouth.

"What is this?" Belle demanded her hands on her hips. "What are you doing?"

Her mom stared at her with confusion. “What am I doing? You’re the one who just came tearing into the kitchen like a dervish. What on Earth is the matter?”

Now that she was here, she didn’t even know where to start. For years now, she had spent exorbitant amounts of energy worrying about her mom and trying to help fill the void left by her father’s passing. She knew how many choices her mother regretted, and so she had tolerated the relentless intrusions.

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