Christmas Valley

Book 4: Rustler Mountain

by Maisey Yates

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Holiday Romance; Western Romance

Synopsis

When it comes to the Christmas season, Rustler Mountain, Oregon, is as lively as its Wild West past, from its winter wonderland landscape to its weekend festivities, filled with food, music, and sometimes, wild hearts meeting in unexpected romance . . .

A swoony Christmas cowboy romance for fans of Lyla Sage, Elsie Silver, Jessica Peterson, Amy Barry, and Robyn Carr.

No one would blame Cassidy Wilder if she wasn’t a big fan of Christmas, or of Rustler Mountain. After all, her introduction to the town came the Christmas her mother left her on her father’s doorstep. Yet Cassidy grew to love it all, especially her three protective half-brothers. And this Christmas, she’ll have it all too, if she can make one of her lifelong wishes come true: to marry Dalton Wade.

Sure, Dalton’s had casual affairs over the years, but obviously, with Cassidy he’s too respectful to make the first move. So, she’s finally going to confess her love. There’s just one hitch: brooding, tatted bad boy West Hancock. There’s bad blood between the Wilders and the Hancocks but West is about to be Cassidy’s brother-in-law. He’s the total opposite of the man she’s given her heart to. If only he didn’t ignite . . . other parts of her. Worse, he’s got to help her train as a trick rider for the Wild West show.

West is determined to ignore the heat between him and Cassidy. He just wants to get through Christmas and move on to working his own ranch. Still, even if it’s purely lust, it’s powerful. Too powerful for either of them to resist. Trouble is, they seem to understand each other better than anyone else does. Can a winter fling become an evergreen love?

Release date: September 29, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Redemption is for men who care. I lost all that a long time ago.

—Butch Hancock’s Diary, June 15th, 1867

Cassidy Wilder had known exactly what she wanted since she was nine years old. To have in this order: a home of her own, a place in the town of Rustler Mountain, and to marry Dalton Wade.

She now had a small home on her brother’s ranch—not quite what she was after, but something adjacent. Her brother Austin had turned the tide of public opinion on the reputation of their outlaw family over the last couple of years—which again, wasn’t her doing but had given her a sense of belonging she’d been missing.

So really all that was left was marrying Dalton.

The issue was that she might die a vestal virgin waiting for him to ever kiss her.

Dalton was her brother Flynn’s best friend, and she knew he was being respectful by not making a move on her. He was being a good friend, a good … well, whatever he was to her. Because he was a good guy, and he probably had that weird, wrongheaded idea that sex would corrupt her.

Well, she wouldn’t say no to some corruption, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to her that she was going to have to make the first move.

And what better time than now? This season.

The season.

Fa-la-la-la fuck me please, cowboy.

That little internal thought made her shiver, just slightly. Whether because she was pondering the meaning of the word, or because she was afraid she’d be struck by a falling Christmas tree for being so irreverent around a holy season, she wasn’t sure.

But the season was upon them, nonetheless.

Rustler Mountain was definitely beginning to look like winter was approaching. The trees in front of the town hall had all turned a vibrant red and orange, and Cassidy knew that meant the leaves would wither and drop by next week. The color was vivid, but fleeting, a metaphor, probably, for something she had never experienced.

Every weekend between now and Christmas, there would be festivities on the main street of town. While Cassidy didn’t like to betray the fact that she was secretly soft, in her own heart she could admit it. She loved the decorations, the music, the food. Sometimes she thought that if she could immerse herself in Rustler Mountain Christmas, then she would forget all the Christmases that came before, and most crucially, the Christmas when her mother left her stranded on Austin’s doorstep, making her a Christmas foundling at the mercy of three older half brothers who had never even known of her existence.

It would not be surprising if she hated Christmas. For a while it had been difficult. But Christmas in Florida had been different. The way the seasons changed—and they did change, contrary to what people who didn’t live there believed—was different from the way they changed in Oregon. The air tasted different, the foliage behaved in a different manner. The way fall turned things crisp before winter made the landscape an easily shattered pane of ice was something she had never experienced until she moved here. Christmas had become a new tradition that had new meaning.

Now it reminded her of how lucky she was to have her older brothers. How lucky she was to have this place to call home. And really, how lucky she was to have Dalton. Her entire family was helping with her future sister-in-law’s booth. Jessie Jane Hancock was doing blacksmithing demonstrations in a station by the courthouse and answering people’s questions and concerns as Rustler Mountain’s future mayor. Her term would begin in January.

Cassidy was walking toward the booth now, hands in her pockets, a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck to keep the chill at bay. She could hear music, laughter, conversation, could smell cinnamon, apples, and cloves on the air.

There were carolers walking toward her, wearing Victorian costumes, the men in top hats, the women in dark, high-collared dresses with bustled skirts. It was a familiar scene, and yet always different. Always a spectacle.

She quickened her pace as she moved toward the family booth, crossing the street while traffic stopped for her. She waved cheerily at the cars and kept on going.

There was a crowd around Jessie’s booth, so she could barely see what was happening, though she could see sparks flying upward and people clapping.

She could see Austin, wearing a black cowboy hat, holding his daughter, Emma. And his wife, Millie, standing beside him holding his arm. The sight made Cassidy ache, but not in a bad way.

One of the things that Cassidy was having a difficult time wrapping her head around was how different everything was this Christmas.

A couple of years ago, Austin and Millie got married; then they had a baby. Then Carson married his best friend, Perry Bramble, and now Flynn and Jessie Jane were engaged after what seemed to Cassidy to be a whirlwind fling.

She couldn’t imagine doing anything like that.

Because Dalton wasn’t a whirlwind.

He was stable and steady. He was everything she valued.

Right. All of the women he’d had casual affairs with would call him stable and steady.

Okay. Maybe they wouldn’t.

But she knew him as stable and steady. He was always good to her. Always patient and wonderful and exceptionally kind.

He was everything she could ever want in a man.

The crowd around the booth began to disperse, and that was when she saw him.

Hands moving in broad gestures as he told a story that made Jessie and Perry double over with laughter. Cassidy felt an absurd prick of jealousy. She had nothing to be jealous about. Perry and Jessie weren’t single.

She picked up her pace. She cut across the lawn rather than walk around the perimeter and ignored the delicious smelling treats as she made a beeline for her family.

“Hi,” she said.

The conversation broke off, and she became very aware of the fact that she had just crashed in. Not only that, but they had all responded to her appearance by ceasing their conversation.

Her brothers were careful with her. Maybe a little bit too careful, because of the circumstances surrounding her coming to Rustler Mountain. Everyone was so painfully aware of the fact that she’d been abandoned, and while it was really sweet that they worried about her and all, she didn’t need to be treated like a charity case. Or like she was tragic.

Though, to be fair, she definitely acted like the youngest, most coddled member of the group. It was a learned habit. And now that everybody was pairing off, getting married, having children, it seemed … silly. She felt silly. She wanted things to change.

She looked at Dalton, and her heart jumped. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I was talking about the time my brother and I were hunting and he got a deer. Then we came up over the mountain, and there was a bear feeding on the deer that he’d just dropped. Well, then he got the bear, and went running down the hill shouting, ‘Two-for-one!’”

She knew this story. Of course she did. It had happened way back when Dalton was a kid, and he got a lot of mileage out of it. But she laughed anyway, because she loved to hear him tell it.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jessie said, wiping a tear underneath her eye. “What are the chances?”

“They must not be very good, because I’ve never known another person that it happened to. And it never happened to him again.”

“He was just lucky, I guess,” Cassidy said, smiling at him.

“I guess so,” he responded. “I know I am.”

She tried to pick that apart. To see if there was something hidden under his words. A secret message meant only for her.

Jessie sighed heavily and looked at her phone. “I have to start another round again. Just pounding out a shoe, but look, there’s a crowd coming.”

“You look tired,” Cassidy said, meaning to be helpful.

But Jessie flinched. “Do I?”

“Not in a bad way,” Cassidy said hurriedly. “In a way that suggests you’re very industrious.”

Her older brother Flynn reached over and clapped his hand on her shoulder. “Quit while you’re only a little bit behind, Cass.”

Cassidy felt her smile falter. “Can I help with anything?”

“You can go gather some people,” Jessie said.

“I will,” she said, scampering away and finding a knot of teenagers. “There’s a blacksmithing demonstration starting over there. Free to watch.”

She moved through the group of people, marveling at the strange faces. So many people drove all the way out to Rustler Mountain around the holidays. It was a local tourist attraction. The kind of place that was worth an hour’s drive.

Sometimes Cassidy wondered what it would be like to live close to a movie theater, a chain restaurant, or a Walmart, instead of being well over an hour away. But her ultimate conclusion was that it just wasn’t the life for her.

She liked living here. The sense of community, the traditions.

She had no intention of leaving. She liked stability. The familiarity of Rustler Mountain. The sameness of life here.

Well, a lot of things in her life had changed lately, but she had no intention of changing.

Except, she did want things to change with Dalton. It was what she had always hoped for.

And if he rejects you, then what?

No. She’d had enough bad things happen to her. She had been over this in her mind before. If you were abandoned by your mother, brought to a town you had never even heard of to live with your father, who died right before you arrived, leaving you totally stranded with three feral older brothers, then you were owed some smooth sailing.

She was convinced of that. Or rather, she wanted to be convinced of that.

She gathered quite a crowd to visit Jessie’s booth, where she watched her brother admiring his fiancée’s handiwork.

“She’s something,” said Flynn.

The way he looked at his fiancée, it was just so obvious he was head over heels in love. It was really something. Flynn’s expression brought her back to that earlier interaction with Dalton. What had she seen in his eyes?

She couldn’t be sure.

But then, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She turned her focus on Jessie, who was heating the horseshoe, bringing it out of the forge when it was bright red, and hammering it forcefully, the sound of metal on metal filling the air.

Jessie went on until the shoe was the perfect shape, then doused it in water, cooling the metal. She gave it to a triumphant little girl in the front row.

“I didn’t know girls could do jobs like that,” the little girl said.

“Of course we can,” said Jessie. “And I’m also going to be the mayor of this town. We can do anything we put our minds to.”

Cassidy smiled. Because the exchange was adorable. And honestly, it just made her proud to call Jessie part of the family. Funny, because Jessie was a Hancock, and only two years ago, her older brother Austin would have had a heart attack if he’d been told that a Hancock was going to marry into his family.

Wilder family lore was deep and vast. Well, the lore of this entire town was like that. Founded during the gold rush, Rustler Mountain had been filled with pioneers, both good and bad. When Austin had started doing deep historical research into their family roots, it turned out that the ones who had been touted as heroic for years were somewhat more complex.

For years, town lore had celebrated the heroes and vilified the bad guys. The lawmen and the outlaws. And of course, the Wilder family had been among the outlaws.

Her brother was named after Austin Wilder, who had been a stagecoach and train robber, notorious throughout the state of Oregon for his crimes. He had ridden with his two brothers and a fourth gang member named Butch Hancock. Until Lee Talbot, sheriff of Rustler Mountain, had shot Austin Wilder dead in the street and had the other Wilders hanged on suspicion of murder.

But it turned out that Lee Talbot had colluded with Butch Hancock, agreeing to give him immunity if the sheriff could become famous for taking down Oregon’s most notorious gang. The Wilders had been criminals, but they had never committed murder.

Austin had set the record straight in his bestselling book, and Millie had started getting the truth out in town, which had led to a lot of historical inaccuracies and half-truths being corrected. Now the true history of the town could be told, not just of the victors—white men who liked to claim ultimate authority—but the stories of Chinese immigrants, of Black settlers who had met with hostility and been kept out of the state because of virulently racist laws, and of course the native tribes whose land had been taken from them.

So maybe change was good. Sometimes, it definitely needed to happen.

She looked over at Dalton.

And then the atmosphere around the booth changed. Shifted. As if the air itself shivered.

She turned because she was compelled, like steel to a magnet. And not just her apparently, because every head turned.

West Hancock had just arrived. He wasn’t dressed seasonally.

He wore a tight black T-shirt, displaying his muscular arms for no reason. Black ink licked up his forearms, past his biceps, and disappeared beneath the sleeves of the shirt.

He also had on a black cowboy hat, black jeans, and black boots.

He was, without a doubt, the only man in town with a more dangerous reputation than her brothers.

If the Wilders were outlaws, the Hancocks were the outlaws the outlaws didn’t associate with.

Or hadn’t, anyway, until Jessie Jane and Flynn had hooked up.

Cassidy still felt uneasy around West. Jessie Jane might be fine, sure, but in general the women weren’t blamed for family wrongdoing. The men …

Well, West was giving bad-seed vibes without even trying.

He made her skin feel like it was too tight, and a feeling of alertness rolled over her, increasing the nearer he got.

“I’m here to relieve you.”

For a second, she thought he was talking to her, and everyone around them went a little blurry. But thankfully she was so busy trying to figure out what he meant, she didn’t say anything right away and therefore didn’t embarrass herself before his sister, Jessie Jane, answered, “You’re the best.”

“What a departure from your usual verbal abuse,” he said, moving into the booth, which was indeed very warm and explained his choice of T-shirt.

“Well, right now I need you, so I’m being nice.”

Jessie took her apron off and dashed out of the booth. Flynn followed behind her.

“What happened?” Cassidy asked her brother Carson.

“Oh, Danielle wanted to show her something about this event. And then some other things. The transition of power is … intense and more than a little rocky since Danielle kind of hates Jessie.”

Danielle LeFevre was the current mayor and also the very recent loser of the election. She was also Flynn’s half sister. But not Cassidy’s half sister. Thank God. She’d really rather not have any association whatsoever with Danielle, who was just a spiteful, terrible person.

“It’s nice that she’s trying to help Jessie Jane,” Millie said, which was more than generous of her considering that a few years ago Millie’s wedding had been called off because her fiancé was cheating, and Danielle had been the woman he was cheating with.

“I think Danielle is trying to run Jessie ragged,” West said, his voice grim and gritty over the sound of the forge. “Trying to burn her out before she’s even started, and with this holiday fair and rehearsals for the Christmas Wild West Show, she’s about laid out flat.”

Oh dear. Butch Hancock’s Wild West Show was always extra busy the week before Christmas—its special holiday-themed show brought in thousands of visitors. That and the summer season were the main sources of revenue for the show, Jessie had told them all recently.

The show was important, but so was the mayoral stuff, and Cassidy was worried about Jessie’s ability to do it all.

“I mean, sabotage would track with Danielle’s character,” Austin said.

“True,” Dalton agreed.

West turned to the forge with an iron rod trapped in tongs and heated the metal until it was glowing. Then he brought it out and started hammering away at it, each movement molding the hot iron in a way Jessie’s hammering simply hadn’t.

West also drew a different crowd from Jessie.

Suddenly, the booth was surrounded by a gaggle of women who had materialized out of the ether, all eyes glued to West’s movements.

Cassidy could admit his work was compelling.

But he was … well, he was West Hancock, and these ladies must not be from around here. Because women from Rustler Mountain knew the truth: West Hancock was as dangerous as his ancestor, Butch Hancock the Traitor, whose name sent waves of loathing around her family dinner table any time it came up.

Sure, West’s broad shoulders might be of interest. His muscles might be eye-catching.

But he wasn’t Dalton.

Dalton was safety and security, and he had plenty of muscles too, so why would she ever look at West?

With that thought uppermost in her mind, she turned to Dalton and smiled.

Oh yes, Cassidy Wilder knew exactly what she wanted.

And she was going to get it.

I had my best friend killed so that I could live the life I wanted. Come to find out I’m not sure what the hell that is.

—Butch Hancock’s Diary, July 1st, 1867

“Do you want some nuts?”

Cassidy turned and blinked in Dalton’s direction. She knew exactly what he was offering—the smell of roasting cinnamon and sugar meant there was very little space for a double entendre—but her imagination slid through the meager window anyway.

“Sure,” she said. And once she got past that moment of immaturity, she felt a sense of triumph, because he was paying attention to her. Offering her something special. It almost transformed standing together outside Jessie Jane’s blacksmithing stall into … a date.

He grinned at her and stuffed his hands into his pockets. It was as if he had put a boundary around himself by doing that, but she wasn’t mad. She put her hands in her own pockets and kept pace with him as he walked across the spongy, wet grass.

“So,” she said. “How was … traveling around with the rodeo?”

Though she saw Dalton often because he was Flynn’s best friend, she was rarely alone with him. But now Flynn was with Jessie, and maybe she and Dalton were both feeling a little bit left behind.

“It was good. I might spend another year traveling with them. Who knows? Good money to be made when you’re winning.”

“And you do win.”

He chuckled. “I do.”

She took a step forward, and the heel of her boot went down first, connecting with a particularly slippery patch of mud, skidding across the surface and nearly sending her into a split, which she did not possess the flexibility to pull off comfortably. But as she was about to tear both her jeans and her body in half, Dalton reached out and grabbed her arm, lifting her and keeping her from going down entirely.

“Oh,” she said, looking up at him. “Thank you.”

Her heart was pounding hard, from the adrenaline of the near accident, but also from his closeness. His large, warm hand wrapped around her upper arm. It was as if a team of butterflies had woken up, spread their wings, and taken flight in her stomach.

His dark eyes met hers, and she could feel her face getting hot.

“Thank you,” she said again, pulling away from him, wishing she hadn’t. It was only that she couldn’t hide the way he affected her. Her feelings were far too obvious, and she didn’t want to switch up her relationship with Dalton on the public streets of Rustler Mountain.

She definitely didn’t want to do it anywhere near the vicinity of one of her brothers. If she hoped to make a new relationship with him, her brothers were going to have to be very, very separate from it. Because Dalton was going to have to think of her as something other than little Cassidy Wilder. It was time he saw that she was the perfect woman for him. At least, that was the narrative in her head.

And it was one that made sense, really.

She and Dalton were an obvious fit. They got along well. She loved talking to him. She was attracted to him.

Maybe he’s not attracted to you …

That was a grim possibility. She chose not to think about it.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said. “I promise you, the nuts aren’t worth it.”

She snorted. She couldn’t help it. The double entendre had gone too far.

“Call them something else,” she said. “Cashews, or something.”

“I don’t know what kind of nuts you like,” he said.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Dalton, you’re doing it on purpose.”

He smiled. Mischievous. “Maybe.”

“For the record,” she said, “I do want cashews.”

“Eminently possible.”

There were really only two reasons he could possibly be teasing her like this. Either he wanted to move things into more risqué territory … or it didn’t feel risqué to him, because he didn’t think of her sexually at all.

One was exciting, the other was galling, and that was the paradox of Dalton Wade.

“Do you want to go to The Watering Hole after we’re done here? I could use a warming drink, honestly,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the cold.

“Sure,” he said.

Her breath left her body in a rush. She hadn’t realized she had been holding it tightly. That was another thing about Dalton. She felt comfortable around him, she thought. And then something happened that proved she didn’t really. That proved she was actually wound tighter than a music box in the hands of an overzealous toddler.

He walked up to the nut booth—she was never going to b. . .