Free An Outlaw's Christmas by Linda Lael Miller

he sighed miserably, turned and headed outside, ostensibly to bring in Sawyer’s trunk and the things Dara Rose had sent in from the ranch.
    Doc smiled and touched her upper arm. “There, now,” he told her. “Matters are rarely as bad as they seem.”
    Piper opened her mouth, closed it again, remembering childhood counsel. If she didn’t have something nice to say, she shouldn’t say anything at all.
    “I’m going back in there to check the wound and change the bandages,” Doc said, leaving Sawyer himself completely out of the equation, it seemed to Piper.
    She busied herself building up the fire. Clay carried in a crate filled with supplies, and she spotted not only the promised book, one she’d been yearning to read, but a bag of coffee beans, tea leaves in a tin canister, several jars of preserves, two loaves of bread, and even part of a ham, with the bone intact, so she could make soup later.
    Piper said nothing.
    Clay, resigned, went out again, lugged a sizable travel trunk over the threshold and on into the little room that now contained two beds instead of one.
    As if she’d consider sleeping in such close proximity to a man, an armed stranger, no less, of dubious moral convictions.
    Spending another night on the floor wasn’t a happy prospect either, though, so she put that out of her mind, along with thoughts of Sawyer McKettrick.
    Doc and Clay conferred again, and soon came out of the bedroom, single file. Doc’s hands were wet from a recent washing—he must have used the basin on Piper’s bureau—and he was rolling down his sleeves, shrugging back into his coat to make his departure.
    Most likely, he would go straight home and tell Eloise that the problem of sleeping arrangements over at the schoolhouse had been solved. Now the teacher would have a bed of her very own.
    Inwardly, Piper sighed. Doc, having only the best of intentions himself, mistakenly believed that everyone else was the same way.
    “I’ll tie Cherokee behind the sleigh and lead him out to the ranch,” Clay told Piper. “That way, you won’t have to worry about feeding and watering him if it snows again.”
    “Thank you,” Piper said crisply. This, it seemed, was Clay’s version of appeasement, at least in part. “When will you be back?” The question was addressed to both Clay and Doc Howard.
    “I’ll get here tomorrow if it’s at all possible,” Doc promised.
    “Soon as I can,” Clay said, in his turn. “Dara Rose tells me the baby’s dropped a little, says it means we’ll have another daughter or a son anytime now, so a lot depends on how she’s feeling.”
    “Maybe Dara Rose would be safer in town,” Piper said, fretful again as she thought of her cousin way out there on that lonely ranch, heavily pregnant. “Closer to Doc.”
    “I’m a dentist, ” Doc reminded them both.
    “You’ve delivered babies before,” Piper said. It was true; she herself knew of two different occasions when he had served as midwife.
    “Only because I didn’t have a choice,” Doc answered.
    “I’ve brought a few colts and calves into the world,” Clay put in, affably confident. “It can’t be all that different.”
    Piper had had enough male wisdom for one day. As much as she dreaded their leaving, a part of her couldn’t wait for both Clay and Doc to make themselves scarce. Naturally, that meant she’d be alone with Sawyer again, but he slept most of the time anyway.
    “Tell Dara Rose I’m grateful for the things she sent to town for me,” she said moderately. “Especially the book.”
    Clay smiled. “She wrote you a letter, too. It’s in the box somewhere.”
    The news heartened Piper, and at the same time made her regret that she hadn’t anticipated this and prepared a letter of her own, to send back with Clay. “I hope to see all of you at the Christmas program, if not before then,” she said.
    Clay looked dubious. “I’ll do my best to bring the girls in for the party, if the weather allows, but I