Holiday Bride (Wolf Brides Book 4) Read online

  HOLIDAY BRIDE

  CAN BE READ AS A STANDALONE

  (WOLF BRIDES, BOOK 4)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Holiday Bride

  Copyright © 2019 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2019, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: December 2019

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoyce.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  If you like these characters…

  New Release from T. S. Joyce

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  More Series from this Author

  For More From this Author

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Maya

  Three Nights Before Christmas

  I hadn’t been back to Colorado Springs in three years, and I’d nearly forgotten how bitterly cold it could be in the winter.

  Hopping off the single step of the covered carriage, I pulled my shawl closer and looked around. It struck me straight in the heart how different everything seemed. The streets were much louder, and teaming with people and horses. It seemed more crowded then when I’d left.

  The dressmaker’s shop was now a home décor store. Whatever had happened to Mrs. Havish? That woman was horribly rude, and didn’t much appreciate my mixed race, but she’d been a damn fine seamstress. I assumed that old coot would outlive the devil himself with that horrid tongue, and keep making dresses until the day she dropped like a fly.

  “You okay, Miss Maya?” Mr. Hartland, the driver asked from his perch up front. He held the reins, and his pair of bay horses pranced, showing darker shades of sweat on their necks and down their legs. Their backs were covered in a fine layer of snow.

  “Oh yes, sir, I’m just taking it all in.”

  “Looks a mite different than when you were here last, don’t it?” he asked. Mr. Hartland had always been kind to me and my family when he was in town.

  “Positively different, but the same all at once,” I told him, wishing I could better describe the sensation of homecoming that shivered through my stomach.

  Mr. Hartland handed me the floral bag I’d travelled with and I nearly went down to the ground with it. Lord, what had I packed in this thing? Stones? He chuckled at my struggle and asked, would you like me to carry it to the top of the stairs at least, Miss Maya?”

  “Oh, no, no, no, I’ve got this. It’s my own fault for packing my entire life into this bag. I’m only here for a few days.”

  “Holidays here and then back to your life in Boston?”

  But Mr. Hartland had only been my driver for the last leg of my journey. “How did you know I lived in Boston now?”

  “Oh, nobody ever left this town but you. Everyone knows what you’ve done.” His eyes twinkled as he offered me a wink. “We’re all real proud of you.” He flicked his wrists and clacked the reins against his horses’ backs. “Hup!” Over his shoulder he called out, “You behave while you’re here, Miss Maya. Don’t need no more fires at the water tower.”

  My eyes went so wide I nearly caught a snowflake right in one. This town sure did have a long memory. Yes, I’d been a hellion in my younger days and yes, I had absolutely accidentally burned down the water tower. Ukiah had helped.

  Just his name brought a wave of strange feelings washing straight through me.

  It was winter. He wouldn’t be here. He would be at the reservation with his Ute family. Not here. Not in Colorado Springs. He had been much older than me, but we had grown up together and he was and would always be my dearest friend. Even if we didn’t speak anymore.

  “Outta the way,” a man demanded as I was nearly trampled by his gray dappled horse. The creature reared and screamed, and the man glared at me with pure and undiluted anger sparking in his dark eyes.

  “So sorry,” I murmured, rushing to haul my bag up the stairs to the newly renovated home décor store. I should go straight to Mother and Father’s home down the street, but I was putting off seeing their old restaurant, Cotton’s. That old kitchen had built me in so many ways. How many hours had I spent with my mother, learning to cook, serving the hungry town, making people see we were a family worth getting to know? Even if my mother was black, and my father was white, and I was in between. How many times had my friends walked through that door and sat at a table and enjoyed a good, relaxed meal?

  That’s what my mother had always done—provided happy and joyous moments at meals. She wasn’t just a cook. She poured her heart and soul into her food, and provided an environment in Cotton’s where no matter what age a person was, or their gender, or the color of their skin, or the animal in their blood…everyone was welcome, and everyone could talk openly, and laugh loudly, and enjoy some downtime from their difficult lives, even if for just a little while.

  And now it was gone.

  Mother and Father had closed the eatery last year, and honestly, I didn’t know if I was strong enough to walk past the old building where Cotton’s had been without breaking down.

  Cotton’s had been home for most of my twenty-six years on this earth.

  So, weakly, I hoisted my bag to my hip and meandered along the wooden floorboards of the long porch that stretched on and on in front of the connected shops of Main Street. Some shops were the same, and I waved through the windows at the owners. It was three days before Christmas, so many of the front windows were decorated for the holiday. Colorful toys and trinkets and dresses and shoes adorned the shops, beckoning me to go inside. I would need to do some holiday shopping this week, before the Christmas Eve celebration began, but for now, it was freezing and I wasn’t dressed for this weather. The full skirts of my dress dragged along the porch boards, picking up the snowy mush and mud that had accumulated from the muddy boots of uncareful men. The breeze was frigid and snowflakes drifted right under the eaves and against my cheeks. It was getting darker with each passing minute, and I grew restless to see Mother and Father. They expected me tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they opened the door and realized I was here an entire day early. In the distance, the choooo of the train echoed through town, and if I looked hard enough, I could see the steam from it through the snowy fog.

  My arms were burning with the weight of my bag, so I shuffled my heeled shoes faster across those hollowed out old wooden boards. I stepped down the stairs and onto a wooden plank that had been settled on the muddy street. It was covered in a thin layer of snow, but I found it with my heels just fine. One alleyway, and two more buildings and I was there, looking up at the old build
ing that used to be Cotton’s. Mother and Father still lived in the small home I’d grown up in, right beside the abandoned restaurant. The windows were boarded up, and the door had a hefty metal lock on it. The Cotton’s sign had been taken down and hadn’t been replaced. It was snowing in earnest now, catching even on my short eyelashes. They melted on the tears that streamed down my cheeks.

  As a child, I’d thought the magic of Cotton’s would’ve lasted forever.

  “Someone will buy it and make it great again,” Mother said from behind me.

  Even tearing up, I smiled and sighed in relief as I turned. She was the most beautiful woman in the whole world. Dark skin, and full lips, and joy dancing in her emotion-filled eyes. Her smile could light up any room.

  “Hey, Momma,” I whispered, dropping my bag in the snow.

  She held out her arms and caught me. “Baby, baby, babyyyyy,” she crooned. She would always call me that, no matter how old I got.

  Father was running from the house, his smile as bright as the snow flakes, his gray hair disheveled, and his freckles stark on his face in this cold wind. He darn-near barreled us over as he hugged us up tight, and the things inside of me that had been broken apart and displaced when I’d left this place were put back together.

  “Come on, my two wild birds,” Father murmured. “Out of the cold with you both. Rabbit stew will warm you right up.”

  “Rabbit stew?” I asked, as he bent and picked up my bag. “That’s what you make for homecomings. How did you know I would be here early?”

  He and Mother looked at each other, but I couldn’t read their strange expressions. “Someone told us.”

  “Who?”

  Mother squeezed her hand and said, “When we woke up this morning, there was a dead rabbit on the stoop.”

  My heart stopped. I just…stopped. My body discontinued working for three full seconds before I could even inhale shuddering breath and ask, “Was it him?”

  My father, Elias, nodded. “It was a gift. For you.”

  My emotions were already wrenched up so high, and now my eyes filled with tears again as I asked softly, “Is he still here?”

  Mother shrugged and shook her head. “We don’t know.”

  My mother and I followed Father to my childhood home and I could see it, right there on the front stoop. There was blood staining the snow. Red snow—the mark of Ukiah, and his father and uncles before him.

  The rabbit was a gift from his monstrous side. The side that scared me. The side that had never fully been in Ukiah’s control. The side that had driven a wedge between us.

  You see, years ago, Ukiah had been my friend, but he wasn’t like other men.

  He wasn’t like anyone.

  In fact, sometimes, he wasn’t a man at all.

  Sometimes…he was a Dawson wolf.

  Chapter Two

  Ukiah

  My long hair whipped in front of my face, and I jerked my head to the side so it wouldn’t hinder my view of her. Of Maya.

  God above, she looked different. Slender, with that fitted dress hugging all her curves. She wore a shawl around her shoulders, but her collar bones were still exposed. Soft, smooth, dark skin that stretched to the tip of her shoulder. The dress was some fancy number she probably fell for in Boston. Not much use for dresses like that here, in Colorado Springs. She looked like she didn’t belong here anymore. Something about that thought made my wolf want to howl in anguish.

  Maya had left us—me and the wolf. She’d left and she hadn’t come back for a single visit in years.

  It had been good for her, I told myself. Look at her, you selfish creature. Look how she’s blossomed away from you. Her skin glowed, and her cheeks were rosy as she stood in front of Cotton’s hugging her parents. Her smile was heart-stopping, and those eyes…blue against her dark complexion with perfectly arched, dark eyebrows showing every emotion she’d ever had. Maya was an open book. She was so different from the other women in town and at the reservation. There were no games with her, no hidden agendas. I could read everything she said without words on her face. I was a professional at reading Maya’s mind from her face.

  Or I had been.

  How much had three years in the big city changed her? Maybe I didn’t even recognize her insides anymore, who knew?

  Why did my chest feel so hollow? It was as if I’d cracked open my ribcage, scooped out my heart, and laid it on the ground in front of me before sewing myself up again.

  Stupid wolf. He’d already outed me. He’d tracked her travels, followed her carriages at a distance. And for what? So he could hunt a bunny and lay it at her parent’s doorstep for stew?

  She’s not mine.

  She’s not mine.

  She’s not mine.

  Three times was the charm to get me moving, and I stood, wrapped my thin shirt closer to my body. She couldn’t see me from here, but old Elias looked right at me. Just tossed me a look over his shoulder as he led his wife and daughter inside.

  I expected to find anger written onto his face, but his blue eyes were full of sadness instead.

  She’s not mine.

  She’s not mine.

  She’s not mine.

  She never was and she never would be.

  Maya was poise, and grace, and maturity. She was the one a man should change his rambling ways for. She was the one who should be treated like royalty, and what had I done? Hurt something beautiful by setting it free.

  It’s what a creature like me did. It was the only thing I knew. What right did I have to keep anything fragile?

  She was the rose and I was the thorn, and it would always be that way.

  I waited until they disappeared inside, because I couldn’t pull the animal away from watching her.

  Gritting my teeth, I turned my back and aimed for the sounds my horse made in the blustering wind. I could find him anywhere, just by scent and right now, he was tied off at a fence down the road.

  This was the part I was good at. How many times had I walked away while she watched my back, and for pride, I never turned around to let her know leaving hurt me? Even if we were kids when I did it, that kind of shit had lasting effects on a tender heart like Maya’s.

  Gotta act like nothing hurts. That’s what it was to be a man in these parts. Nothing hurt. And if it did? You carved out your own soul before you let any hurt show.

  Maya was a woman a man changed for, but I was incapable of that.

  So, I did what I knew, and I left her without looking back.

  Again.

  Chapter Three

  Maya

  “You’re awfully quiet,” my father said.

  I dragged my attention from the smiling face I’d made with some carrots and rabbit meat on my plate. Mother’s stew was sturdy enough to stand on its own, and didn’t need a bowl. A plate did just fine. Even the broth was thick. My dad’s eyes were dancing and his lips were pursed like he knew some secret no one else did. And when I looked over at my mother, she wore the same expression.

  “What are you two goin’ on about?” I asked, irritated by the teasing.

  “Why don’t you just go pay a visit to the Dawson Ranch and be done with it?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I lied, like my mind hadn’t been on Ukiah’s strange gift. Three years was sure a long time to go without seeing him.

  “Luke and Kristina have a new grandbaby,” my father started in. “A little boy, of course. Another wolf in the family. They added onto their house last summer to make room for visitors. And Jeremiah and Lorelei just renewed their vows a couple months back right in front of their home. With lanterns in the tree branches, and white table linens, and half the town showed up. Your momma cooked for it.”

  Nonchalantly, I leaned back in my chair and asked, “How are Gable and Lucianna?” They were Ukiah’s parents. Well, Gable was his father, and his mother was a Ute woman who died when he was little. I was mixed, and so was Ukiah. We sure had made a pair to look at when we’d spent time to
gether in town when we were growing up. Lucianna had raised him like her own boy, and she and Gable had never had another.

  It was my mother who answered. “Lucianna sure has trouble moving around on that bad hip when the weather is like this.”

  “I still remember the day we hunted down the monster who shot her up like that,” my father said, hands gripping his fork and knife tighter as he glared at the scraps of remaining food on his plate. “It pains me to see her aching like this. Gable shoulders a lot.”

  “You mean he’s been doing her work, too?” I asked softly.

  “Takes care of her completely,” my mother murmured. “Works himself to the bone to make sure she’s as comfortable as she can be. We put in an order for some pain relief medicine a month back but they still haven’t been delivered yet. Elias checks the post office every day for those Dawsons, but it’s stuck somewhere—”

  “Has he married her,” I blurted out, eyes downcast. It was the only discussion I was really interested in. The rest I wanted to know from the Dawsons. I swallowed hard and asked it softer. “Has Ukiah married the Ute woman?”

  “I don’t know,” my mother said so softly, I almost couldn’t hear her. “No one does. When we see him in town, he is alone.”

  I stood suddenly, unable to calm my fidgeting legs anymore, and cleared my plate. And then I did something I always did when I was deep in thought.

  I cooked.

  Everything was at my fingertips for making cornbread. The cornmeal, the flour, salt, baking powder, eggs, milk, all the seasonings my mother coveted for that good flavor. Fresh-churned butter was in the root cellar, and the cast iron skillets I’d burned my hands on a hundred times growing up were already sitting on the stove, like Mother knew what I would be doing tonight. The recipe was etched into my mind for eternity, because my mother and I had made it so many times together. It was a staple at the restaurant I cooked at in Boston, and always reminded me of home when I made it. And tonight? I wanted to feel completely at home.