“Forgive me?” He squeezed her tighter.
That part was easy. He’d come back to her, even when she couldn’t give him everything he wanted right now. He was offering her just what she needed.
Unconditional love.
“Yes, I forgive you. You’re the only man I ever let see the real me. I love you, Boone Dalton, and I want to get married and have your babies. Someday.” She pressed her forehead to his. “You’re the only one for me. Forever.”
“Whenever you’re ready, you let me know. I have the ring. No pressure.”
She’d been curious about that ring since she’d seen him walk into the jewelry store.
But now it was her turn to be patient.
* * *
Boone couldn’t believe his fortune. Earlier today, Spot had shown up at the ranch again. Now, Sofia had forgiven him. His brothers were right for once. He ought to note the date and the time.
He set Sofia back on her feet. “But wait. There’s more.”
She smiled, tugging on his belt. “There is more, but first I’d like to wash this mask off. Then I’m going to attack you.”
The realization that she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her spiked him with desire. She took his hand and led him to the kitchen sink, where she wet a paper towel and then turned to wipe his face.
Boone couldn’t wait. He started to tell her his news before she’d finished. “Remember I said that my father wanted to do something to help me? He’s been hounding me ever since I moved to Bronco.”
“He wanted to help you to start your own horse rescue business.” She took another paper towel and wiped her own face, the green muck coming off in thick streaks.
And to think she hadn’t liked him seeing her without makeup their first night together. She’d never looked more gorgeous to him than at this moment. Knowing that she trusted him enough to let him see her at what she would consider her worst was everything he needed to know. She was his and he was hers. No going back now, or ever.
He took the paper towel from her and wiped her nose and cheeks until he only saw the milky color of her clear skin.
“But I think it’s pretty clear I’m happy with the work I already have. I’m a horse whisperer and maybe, someday, a horse rescuer.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“In a way. You should know that I forgave my father. It wasn’t easy. It never is for me. But I know deep down he’s a good family man who made a terrible mistake. And he’s more than made up for it.”
She framed his face. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Anyway, I asked him to do something else for me instead. I talked to him about a talented designer I know.” He tugged on a lock of her hair.
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you. I asked him to invest in you. As your first big financial backer. And the thing is, he said yes. He believes in you as much as I do. So you have a backer to start you own clothing line or boutique, whenever you’re ready.”
“Seriously? Oh, Boone. Thank you for believing in me.”
“You believed in me first, when you tried to give me a total fashion makeover.”
“Until I realized you’re perfect just the way you are.”
“Not perfect, never perfect.” He took her hand and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “But definitely yours.”
“I’ll take you.”
He swept her off her feet, carrying her to bed. Their first time had been an explosion of heat and anger, turning into a fiery passion that fueled them all night long. Now they were both tentative and slow. Tender. For his part, he wanted to appreciate the moment, knowing he’d almost lost this treasure. This woman who loved him for himself and not what he owned.
He still had a lot of work ahead to forge a stronger relationship with his father. Sofia had already given him the start. She was undoubtedly his best friend.
Gently he laid her on the bed, her red hair fanning around her like a halo. He was so in love with this woman. Slowly, he removed her clothes, kissing each swath of soft flesh as he went. Lips, the shell of her ear, neck, shoulders. He spent time on each nipple, licking and sucking until she moaned and squirmed. The sounds she made lit a blaze in him, and his vow to take it slow went out the window. They reached for each other, tugging, straining, desperate to get closer.
Sofia pulled at his shirt with such force that one of the buttons ripped. “Oh, sorry.”
“Don’t ever be sorry about that.”
He tried to slow them down, but with a naked Sofia bucking and writhing under him, he wondered if they would ever have a low-flame setting. Definitely not tonight. They could try again another time. Now he ripped open a condom and plunged into her. She gasped, moaning and meeting him thrust for thrust.
“You’re taking me on a wild ride, aren’t you?” he whispered, his breaths ragged.
“Always.”
Boone could always feel when she got close to her release, and only then did he let go of his tight control. He went over the crest with her, moaning her name.
Arms wrapped around her tightly, he eventually managed to slow his breathing.
“That was incredible,” Sofia gasped. “Crazy.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Will it always be this way between us?” Her voice sounded for once weak and even a little bit worried. “Can it?”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Yes. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Boone, I can’t believe I’m so lucky. You entered a contest, but I won the prize.”
Well, that was one thing they could argue about for the rest of their lives, because right now he certainly felt like the grand-prize cowboy.
* * *
Look for the next book in the new Harlequin Special Edition continuity Montana Mavericks: The Real Cowboys of Bronco Heights
A Kiss at the Mistletoe Rodeo
by Kathy Douglass
On sale November 2021 wherever Harlequin books and ebooks are sold.
And catch up with the previous Montana Mavericks titles:
The Rancher’s Summer Secret
by New York Times bestselling author
Christine Rimmer
For His Daughter’s Sake
by USA TODAY bestselling author
Stella Bagwell
The Most Eligible Cowboy
by Melissa Senate
Available now!
Ranch manager Annie McCade thought her twin niece and nephew could join her at the Angel View Ranch for Christmas with her absent employer being none the wiser. But when the ranch’s owner, Tate Sheridan, shows up out of the blue, Annie’s plans are upended. Soon she finds herself helping Tate make a Christmas to remember for his grieving and fractured extended family.
Keep reading for a preview of New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s heartwarming Christmas romance,
Sleigh Bells Ring!
Sleigh Bells Ring
by RaeAnne Thayne
Chapter One
This was war. A relentless, merciless battle for survival.
Backed into a corner and taking fire from multiple fronts, Annelise McCade launched missiles as fast as she could manage against her enemies. She was outnumbered. They had teamed up to attack her with agile cunning and skill.
At least it was a nice day for battle. The snow the night before hadn’t been particularly substantial but it had still left everything white and sparkly and the massive ranchhouse behind her was solid and comforting in the December afternoon sunlight.
A projectile hit her square in the face, an icy splat against her skin that had her gasping.
At her instinctive reaction, giggles rang out across the snowy expanse.
She barely took time to wipe the cold muck off her cheek. “No fair, aiming for the face,” she called back. “That’s against the rules.”
<
br /> “It was a accident,” her six-year-old nephew Henry admitted. “I didn’t mean to hit your face.”
“You’ll pay for that one.”
She scooped up several more balls as fast as she could manage and hurled them across the battlefield at Henry and his twin sister Alice.
“Do you give up?” she called.
“Never!”
Henry followed up his defiance by throwing a snowball back at her. His aim wasn’t exactly accurate—hence her still-dripping face—but it still hit her shoulder and made her wince.
“Never!” his twin sister Alice cried out. She had more of a lisp so her declaration sounded like “Nevoh.”
Alice threw with such force, the effort almost made her spin around like a discus thrower in the Olympics.
It was so good to hear them laughing. In the week since they had come to live with her temporarily, Annie had witnessed very little of this childish glee.
Not for the first time, she cursed her brother and the temper he had inherited from their father and grandfather. If not for that temper, compounded by the heavy drinking that had taken over his life since his wife’s death a year ago, Wes would be here with the twins right now, throwing snowballs in the cold sunshine.
Grief for all that these children had lost was like a tiny shard of ice permanently lodged against her heart. But at least they could put their pain aside for a few moments to have fun outside on a snowy December day.
She might not be the perfect temporary guardian but it had been a good idea to make them come outside after homework for a little exercise and fresh air.
She was doing her best, though she was wholly aware that she was only treading water.
For now, this moment, she decided she would focus on gratitude. The children were healthy, they all had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs and their father should be back home with them in less than a month.
Things could be much, much worse.
“Time out,” Henry gasped out during a lull in the pitched battle. “We gotta make more snowballs.”
“Deal. Five-minute break, starting now.”
Annie pulled her glove off long enough to set the timer on her smart watch then ducked behind the large landscape boulder she was using as cover and scooped up several snowballs to add to her stash.
The sun would be going down in another hour and already the air had cooled several degrees. The air smelled like impending snow, though she knew only a dusting was forecast, at least until the following weekend.
She didn’t worry. Holly Creek, Wyoming, about an hour south of Jackson Hole in the beautiful Star Valley, almost always had a white Christmas.
Annie’s phone timer went off just as she finished a perfectly formed snowball. “Okay. Time’s up,” she called. Without standing up, she launched a snowball to where she knew the twins would be.
An instant later, she heard a deep grunt that definitely did not sound like Henry or Alice.
Annie winced. Levi Moran, the ranch manager, or his grizzled old ranchhand Bill Shaw must have wandered across the battlefield in the middle of a ceasefire without knowing he was about to get blasted.
“Sorry,” she called, rising to her feet. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
She saw a male figure approach, wearing sunglasses. The sun reflecting off the new snow was hitting his face and she couldn’t instantly identify him.
“No doubt,” he said, wiping snow off his face with his sleeve.
She frowned. This was definitely not Levi or Bill.
He stepped closer and Annie felt as if an entire avalanche of snow had just crumbled away from the mountain and buried her.
She knew this man, though it had been nearly two decades since Annie had seen him in person.
It couldn’t be anyone else.
Dark hair, lean, gorgeous features. Beneath those sunglasses, she knew she would find blue eyes the color of Bear Lake in summertime.
The unsuspecting man she had just pummeled with a completely unprovoked snowball attack had to be Tate Sheridan.
Her de facto boss.
The twins had fallen uncharacteristically silent, wary of a tall, unsmiling stranger. Henry, she saw, had moved closer to his twin sister and slipped his hand in hers.
Annie’s mind whirled trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
Tate Sheridan. Here. After all this time.
She shouldn’t be completely shocked, she supposed. It was his family’s house, after all. For many years when her father was the ranch manager, the Sheridans had trekked here annually from the Bay Area several times a year for the Christmas season, as well as most summers.
His younger sister had been her very best friend in the world, until tragedy and pain and life circumstances had separated them.
She had wondered when she agreed to take the job if she would see Tate again. She hadn’t truly expected to. She had worked here for nearly a year and he hadn’t once come to his grandfather’s Wyoming vacation ranch.
How humiliating, that he would show up when she was in the middle of a snowball fight with her niece and nephew—who had no business being there in the first place!
“What are you doing here?” she burst out, then winced. She wanted to drag the words back. It was his family’s property. He had every right to be there.
“I might ask the same of you. Along with a few more obvious questions, I suppose. Who are you and why are you having a snowball fight in the middle of my property?”
“You don’t know who I am?”
Of course he wouldn’t, she realized. And while she thought of him often, especially over the past year while living at Angel’s View once more, he had probably not given her a moment’s thought.
“Should I?”
It was stupid to feel a little hurt.
“Annelise McCade. My dad was Scott McCade.”
He lifted his sunglasses, giving her an intense look. A moment later, she saw recognition flood his features.
“Little Annie McCade. Wow. You’re still here, after all this time?”
She frowned. He didn’t have to make it sound like she was a lump of mold growing in the back of the refrigerator. She had lived a full life in the nearly two decades since she had seen Tate in person.
She had moved away to California with her mother, struggling through the painful transition of being a new girl in a new school. She had graduated from college and found success in her chosen field. She had even been planning marriage a year ago, to a man she hardly even thought about anymore.
“Not really still here as much as here again. I’ve been away for a long time but moved back a year ago. Wallace...your grandfather hired me to be the caretaker of Angel’s View.”
She saw pain darken his expression momentarily, a pain she certainly shared. Even after two months, she still expected her phone to ring and Wallace Sheridan to be on the other end of the line, calling for an update on the ranch he loved.
The rest of the world had lost a compelling business figure with a brilliant mind and a keen insight into human nature.
Annie had lost a friend.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said softly.
“Thank you.” His voice was gruff and he looked away, his gaze landing on the twins, who were watching their interaction with unusual solemnity.
“Are these yours?” He gestured to the children and Annie was aware of a complex mix of emotions, both protectiveness and guilt.
The children shouldn’t be here. She had never asked permission from anyone in the Sheridan family to have the children move into the caretakers’ apartment with her.
She deeply regretted the omission now. While it was a feeble defense, she hadn’t really known whom to ask. No one in the Sheridan organization seemed to be paying the slightest attention to any of the goings on at a ho
rse ranch in western Wyoming that represented only a small portion of the vast family empire.
Annie knew she was in the wrong here. No matter what uproar might have been happening during Wallace’s illness and subsequent death, she should have applied to someone for permission to bring the twins to live with her here.
Instead, she had simply assumed it shouldn’t be a problem since it was only a temporary situation and the children would be back with their father after the first of the year with no one in the family knowing they had been here at all.
“This is my niece and nephew. Wes’s children.”
Tate and Wes were similar in age, she remembered, and had been friends once upon a time, just as Annelise had been close to Tate’s younger sister Brianna. The McCades lived on the ranch year round while the Sheridan children only visited a few times a year, but somehow they had all managed to have a warm, close bond and could always pick up where they left off when the Sheridans came back to the ranch.
She could only hope Tate would remember that bond and forgive her for overstepping and bringing the children here.
“Henry and Alice are staying with me for a few weeks because of a...family situation.”
“Our mom died last year and our dad is in the slammer,” Henry announced.
Annie winced, not quite sure where he had picked up that particular term. Not from her, certainly. She wouldn’t have used those words so bluntly but couldn’t deny they were accurate.
Tate looked nonplussed at the information. “Is that right?”
“It’s only temporary,” she told him quickly. “Wes had a little run-in with the law and was sentenced to serve thirty days in the county jail. The children are staying with me in the caretaker’s apartment through the holidays. I hope that’s okay.”
Tate didn’t seem to know how to respond. She had the impression it was very much not okay with him.
Grand-Prize Cowboy Page 20