Big Sky Christmas
Autor:in
JoAnna Sims
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Prologue
Dean Legend walked slowly up the porch steps, trying to calm his nerves. His Western-style tuxedo felt a little bit too tight just about everywhere. And even though Rayna Brand, his high school sweetheart and prom date, had told him specifically to wear a gold-colored shirt, Dean felt like he was just wearing yellow. He imagined all of his friends were going to razz him and call him buttercup or something along those lines because he sure as heck would’ve done it to them.
At the front door of the Brand family’s log-cabin home, Dean closed his eyes, took a deep breath in, let it out and then knocked on the door. He heard several voices, but Rose Brand, Rayna’s mother, was the loudest of the bunch. Dean knew that the rapid, decisive footsteps toward the door also belonged to Rayna’s spitfire mother.
The door swung open, making a bell attached to the doorknob jingle as it always did. Rose’s bluish-gray eyes were shining with anticipation. Her hair had been freshly home-dyed her signature mahogany brown and was swept up into a simple ponytail. There was a small telltale smudge of dye on her left ear, but that didn’t change the fact for Dean that when he looked at Rose he was looking at Rayna twenty years into their marriage. Rayna and her identical twin sister, Danica, were Rose’s miniatures.
“Dean Legend!” Rose greeted him with so much genuine affection whenever he came to the ranch that he considered Hideaway Ranch his second home.
“Hi, Mrs. Brand,” Dean said politely. “I’m here for Ray.”
“Well, of course you are.” Rose’s face was alight with excitement. “You look so handsome.”
“Thank you.”
“Come in, come in.” Rose stepped aside so he could enter. After she shut the door, she hugged him tightly.
“I got this for Ray.” He showed Rose the delicate corsage he’d had made at the flower shop.
Rose looked down at the corsage and then hugged him again. “It’s absolutely perfect, Dean. You are such a dear boy.”
He was glad for Rose’s approval of it; he hadn’t heard of a corsage prior to getting prepared for the prom. His mother, Nettie, had walked him through the preparation and he’d thought most of it had been a real waste of time, but for Rayna, who had dreamed of going to prom since she’d become a teen, he needed to get all of these details right.
“Rayna!” Rose stood at the bottom of the old creaky stairs. “Dean is here.”
“She’ll be down in a minute!” Danica called back.
Rose tilted her head and smiled at him. “You heard it. In a minute.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Let me put this lovely corsage in the fridge to keep it fresh while you join Butch in his study.” Rose took the plastic container from his hand. “And relax, Dean. You look like someone starched you inside of that getup.”
Dean had always gotten on well with Ray’s father, Butch Brand. Butch wasn’t a classically educated man, having hardly made it out of high school, but he could’ve had an honorary PhD in ranching and homesteading. The man was a genius in those areas, and he appreciated young people who’d had the work ethic instilled in them at an early age, and Dean fit that bill. His father, a third-generation cattle rancher, expected Dean to know every single job on the ranch just in case anything were to happen to him. Just like Rayna, he would be up before sunrise helping with the ranch chores before heading off to school.
“Hey, Mr. Brand.” Dean walked into Butch’s study at the back of the house.
“Hey there, D.L.” Butch put his newspaper aside, pushed his reading glasses on to the top of his head, groaned as he stood up and held out his rough, strong hand to Dean.
After they shook hands, the elder looked him up and down with a discerning eye. “You don’t look half bad for a cowpuncher.”
“I’m not much for it.” Dean rolled his shoulders forward, trying to get more comfortable while he tugged on the bottom of his jacket. “But Ray...”
Butch chuckled as he sank back into his brown recliner that had been patched in several places by Rose’s crafty hands. “Yeah, buddy. Ray is her mother’s daughter, and she is mighty particular about those fiddly diddly details.”
He lowered his reading glasses, grabbed the newspaper off of the table, jerking it to get it sorted out so he could read it. Butch looked at him over the edge of the paper and said, “If you didn’t want to deal with all of that, you should’ve cut Charlie from the herd.”
Butch and Rose had triplet daughters: identical twins Danica and Rayna and a third fraternal triplet, Charlotte. Charlotte “Charlie” Brand was her father’s daughter through and through. Charlie was a tomboy who had better cowhand skills than most full-grown men; she could rope, brand, wrangle and birth-assist before her twelfth birthday. She didn’t mind mud or dirt or sweat, and if the conversation didn’t revolve around horses or homesteading, she wasn’t interested. Charlie would one day make the perfect rancher’s wife, but his heart belonged to Rayna.
A minute later, Rose came scurrying in with a delighted expression on her face. “They’re ready.”
She waved her hand at them to follow her. “Come, come.”
“Well, let’s go see what all the fuss is about.” Butch stood up again, tried to close his paper neatly but then folded it haphazardly and tossed it onto the seat of his chair.
Dean walked down the narrow hall filled with frames of all finishes of the family. Rose had marked every occasion with the triplets and had made three giant photo albums for each of her girls.
Rose was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs; she smiled at them and gestured for Dean to stand on one side while Butch was directed to stand on the other.
“Okay!” Rose called up the stairs. “We’re ready!”
Danica appeared at the top of the stairs in a formfitting black vintage gown that had a scoop neckline made of ruffles and an eyelet corset that emphasized her tiny waist and a thick velvet sash that was tied into a large bow at the back. She had worked several jobs to save up enough money to purchase it, and with her wheat-blond hair in a perfect chignon, she looked as regal as Grace Kelly.
“Wait! Wait!” Rose said. “Daddy doesn’t have his camera.”
“Shoot,” Butch said on his way back to his study.
He returned moments later with his Nikon digital camera, and once he was ready, Rose gave the signal for Danica and Rayna to make their entrance. Once again, Danica appeared at the top of the stairs; she waved her hand with a dramatic flair and said, “May I present to you Miss Rayna Brand!”
Dean felt his entire body break out into a nervous sweat; his heart was beating so fast and so hard in his chest that it was making him feel light headed. At the top of the stairs, Rayna appeared, a vision in a gold chiffon floor-length gown with a unique square bodice, cap sleeves and a natural waist. The gown was covered in hand-embroidered delicate wildflowers. Her long waist-length hair was sleek and unbound.
When their eyes met and she smiled at him with the sweetest, slightly self-conscious smile, his knees tried to buckle on him. She was so beautiful and kind and intelligent that Dean couldn’t imagine a day in his life that he wouldn’t love Rayna Brand.
Beside him, he heard Butch rapidly clicking on his camera as Rayna reached the bottom of the stairs. Dean held out his shaking hand to her and she took it.
“You have never looked more beautiful,” he told her, feeling for a brief moment that they were the only two people in the world.
“Thank you,” she said. “You look handsome. Thank you for wearing the gold shirt.”
Rose raced to the kitchen, grabbed the corsage and brought it back. “Get a picture of him putting it on her wrist, Butch,” she said, opening the plastic container for Dean to take out the corsage.
He slipped the corsage onto Rayna’s wrist, and he was pleased with how well the corsage matched her dress—he was beginning to see the point of all of the preparations. This was a life highlight that deserved a gold shirt, a snug tuxedo and a corsage for his sweetheart.
Butch and Rose fussed over their girls, and the way that they still looked at each other, the kindness that they showed each other always left an impression on Dean. After twenty-five years together, Butch and Rose were still in love.
Danica broke free from the group and looked out of the kitchen window.
“Scott is here with the limo!”
Scott Johnson was one of his best friends, and Scott and Danica had an on-again, off-again relationship. For the prom, they had decided to be “on again.”
Rose hustled her husband out of the front door so he could grab candid shots of the prom party as they walked down the steps.
“Charlie!” Rose yelled for her eldest daughter, who was riding her horse in the adjacent field. Tim Harris had planned on taking Charlie Brand to the prom, but an emergency at his family’s hay-and-grain operation had forced him to back out.
“Charlie!” Rose waved her arms in the air. “Get over here! I need you in the pictures!”
Charlie turned her buckskin gelding and galloped across the field, jumped over a log and then barreled into the clearing in front of the cabin. The eldest triplet—dressed in jeans, a faded Wrangler T-shirt, a cowgirl hat and boots—halted the horse a few feet from the limo. Smiling with her face flushed, Charlie swung her left leg over the saddle horn until she was sitting sideways in the saddle and then jumped down. She patted her horse on the neck, pulled the reigns over its head and looped the reigns over a hitching post nearby.
Scott had gotten out of the limo and was now being photographed with Danica while Rose directed Butch.
“Why don’t you come with us?” Rayna asked her older sister.
Charlie wrinkled her nose and gave a quick shake of her head. “Spare me. When Tim had to cancel, my prayers were answered.”
“Charlie Brand!” Rose turned her attention to her wild-child tomboy daughter. “Couldn’t you at least have put on a clean pair of jeans?”
Charlie looked down at her jeans, “These are clean.”
Rose sighed at her eldest child; then she waved her arms to her daughters and herded them back onto the top steps of the porch.
They lined up eldest to youngest: Charlie on the right, Danica in the middle and Rayna on the left. They hooked arms as they had always done—arm in arm, side by side.
“Smile, my beauties,” Butch said.
Dean stood next to Scott while they waited for their dates.
Dean felt something different in that moment, something more deep than he had ever experienced in his life up to that point. He was enchanted by Rayna and knew that what he felt for her was genuine, lasting love. The kind of love Rose and Butch shared.
“One day, I’m going to marry Ray,” Dean said quietly to his best friend.
Scott had his hands in his front pockets. “Yeah. I know.”
