by Dani Collins
Love in Montana
Book 1: Hometown Hero
Skye and Chase’s story
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Book 2: Blame the Mistletoe
Liz and Blake’s story
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Book 3: The Bachelor’s Baby
Meg and Linc’s story
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Book 4: His Blushing Bride
Piper and Bastian’s story
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Book 5: His Christmas Miracle
Nicki and Quincy’s story
View the entire series here
Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from
Blame the Mistletoe
Dani Collins
Copyright © 2014
Liz Flowers busied herself arranging her bruschetta-topped baguette slices into a wreath shape, trying to act comfortable, when she was out of her element arriving at a party in full swing like this.
Welcome new people into your life, she chided herself, as she took extra care placing little toothpick bunches of cherry tomatoes and green olives in strategic spots to look like berries. The ‘ribbon’ was made up of strips of lox threaded into a rippling pattern onto skewers. The arrangement looked fantastic, if she said so herself, and spoke of how much time she had on her hands these days.
A pang of loneliness struck, but she ignored it. That emotion was precisely the reason why, despite a mild attack of anxiety at being a stranger in a strange land, she had come here this evening and would stick it out for at least an hour.
Cocktail parties had never been her thing. Her hostess, Skye Wolcott, had assured her this would be more of a potluck get together with neighbors and friends. Skye and her fiancé have a lot of friends, Liz thought ruefully, moving her dish into a more central position on the cluttered table. The gorgeous, high-ceilinged, open-plan house was packed.
To give herself an excuse to scan the crowd, she took in the tasteful extravagance of the Christmas decor. The tree was the focus, as it should be. And real, of course. The one thing she’d begun to learn about this little town was that Marietta was authentic. For some reason, she hadn’t noticed that before, on the few quick visits she’d made over the years.
So, she suspected that the tree might have come from a farm, but was more likely from someone’s ranch. The tree’s base of white lights and tiny silver baubles was layered with colorful ornaments, obviously homemade by children.
Giant poinsettias splashed red and white throughout the room between the shift of bodies as people crossed with drinks and plates in their hands. Their pleasure at seeing familiar faces was genuine. Vases full of frosted sticks vied with bunches of holly encircling candles on end tables and across the mantle.
Whether it was the candles or something in the oven, Liz noted a waft of nutmeg and cinnamon under the heavier aroma of meatballs and lasagna, roasted garlic and ham. This was the kind of home, the kind of Christmas, she’d envied all her life.
So, even though she was having a moment of nerves, she pushed it aside, determined to at least drink in what she’d always yearned for, even if it was second hand.
The table fairly buckled under the mix of finger foods, crock pots, platters of cheese, baskets of buns and bowls of salad. Laughing, joking voices created a lively din over the Christmas music, as people jostled and reached. They all seemed friendly enough, but she didn’t know them and they all seemed to know each other. Their circles looked too intimidating to crack.
Being in an unfamiliar town for the holidays, making new friends, would put butterflies in anyone’s middle, she reasoned. The sense of being an outsider would only get worse if she didn’t take chances like this.
Which was basically what she’d been telling herself about dating for the last couple of years.
She was definitely not looking for Mr. Right while she was here. Not at this party or even this month. No, she refused to put that sort of pressure on herself when she was already feeling vulnerable. The specter of her thirty-eighth birthday could loom all it wanted, along with the false deadlines she’d set for herself to meet the right man, remarry and have another baby before she turned forty. No. She had come to the realization that trying to force things was only making for disappointment as things failed to pan out.
As a Christmas present to herself, she was letting go of all of that and keeping her expectations simple: get out of the house and meet new people. That, at least, she could do successfully.
Maybe.
She suppressed a sigh, not wanting anyone to see how hard she was finding this. Come on, Liz. You talk to strangers all the time.
It was way easier to strike up conversations with a nail file in her hand and when people came to her, but—Wait, was that guy staring at her?
Heart skipping, she reflexively shied away, taking her plastic tub back to the kitchen counter along with an impossible-to-shake impression of a good-looking cowboy in a blue plaid shirt. He’d been clean-shaven, rugged. Familiar? No. Everyone she knew in Marietta had climbed onto a plane for Mexico six days ago.
Oh, quit being such a chicken, she cajoled herself, surprised by how much electricity was running through her limbs. Chatting to a man for five minutes was not a lifetime commitment, she reminded herself. If he wanted to approach her, she shouldn’t act like a nineteenth century school marm about it.
Gathering her courage, she forced herself back to the table where she picked up a plate and began loading it for herself, trying to act like she was open to chat.
“Auntie Liz,” a male voice said in a tone of discovery.
Startled, she looked up.
It was him. The guy who’d been staring. He’d moved to stand across the table from her. Perhaps they’d met somewhere with her niece or nephews, who lived here in Marietta. He looked familiar, but he wasn’t a long-lost nephew to her.
Like most of the men here tonight, he’d left off his cowboy hat for the party. He had thick dark hair with a hint of curl, a smart shirt. Cowboy boots, she surmised, even though she couldn’t see his feet. He had the stance. And he was trim in a natural way. A lot of the men here were ranchers, which was demanding work. She’d always had a thing for nice shoulders so she let herself admire his. Briefly. Very briefly. She couldn’t help it. He was very good looking with his strong jaw and direct blue eyes that gave her a girlish swoop in her middle.
Had she just caught him glancing up from a male assessment of the glittery top she’d purchased the day after she’d been invited to this party? It was a T-shirt style, but clingy with a cowl neckline in midnight blue with streaks of silver and shiny black. She’d been working out lately, trying to build her dating confidence, but hadn’t felt like men had noticed until now. Trickles of flattery and attraction worked through her.
“I’ve been trying to place you since you walked in. Blake Canon,” he said. “Ethan’s dad.” He offered his hand.
She gathered the neglected female hormones that had scattered in a teenaged fit of giddiness. Reaching across to shake his callused hand, she saw him in her mind’s eye wearing a tuxedo, very young to be at the altar…
“Uncle Blake,” she countered, laughing softly to cover her mixture of relief at knowing someone after all and shock at how he’d only grown more good looking with the passage of some fifteen years.
Oh, that realization caused a wistfulness in her. Her hand lingered in his a bit too long before she pulled it away, vaguely aware that he hung on loosely, making her fingers slide from his grip. Making her imagine he wanted to maintain the connection longer, too.
Lucky Crystal, she had thought about her sister-in-law back then. Doesn’t have a clue what she has…
And probably still didn’t know what she’d lost, but Liz shook off those sorts of thoughts. Blake was still too young for her. She probably had four or five years on him, which wasn’t a huge issue, but more importantly, he’d married a Flower, just like she had. The association put him totally beyond her reach.
Nevertheless, in the way of soldiers who’d
done similar combat tours, she experienced a surge of camaraderie and warmth toward him, probably making her smile too big, but he was smiling at her in a way that made her warm all over. If she blushed, she’d die. The air was way too sexually charged for merely bumping into an old acquaintance.
“Have you two introduced yourselves?” Skye asked, appearing next to Blake with a hostess’s eye for matchmaking. “Liz, this is Blake Canon. His ranch is next to my family’s place out on Timberline. Blake, Liz is house-sitting for the Flowers at the bottom of the road—”
“Seriously?” He sent her a look that Liz ducked by switching her attention to Skye.
“We actually know each other.” His judgment shouldn’t matter, but she didn’t like him thinking she’d let the Flowers turn her into a doormat. She had, for years, but that was in the past. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. “Blake’s ex-wife and my ex-husband are brother and sister,” she explained to Skye, something she might have expanded on when first chatting to Skye, but it hadn’t seemed important then.
Or maybe she’d feared judgment from a stranger, too.
“Oh. When you said your last name was Flowers, I assumed you were a niece or something,” Skye said with a breezy smile, then reassessed them with speculative lift of her brows. “Well, you two have plenty to catch up on, I’m sure. I’ll leave you to it.” She walked away.
“I didn’t put it together that you lived here,” Liz said. “Or that I’d run into you. Or that you’d remember me,” she added with an echo of surprise. “Did we even see each other after your wedding? All I ever heard at the family gatherings was that you couldn’t leave the ranch.”
That’s why most of her ex-husband’s family had moved from California to Montana. Blake’s wife—ex-wife—had begged her parents and siblings to join her in Marietta, only to divorce Blake as soon as everyone settled here. Liz had been separating from Dean at that point and hadn’t even considered the move.
Maybe that had been closed-minded of her.
She could say with fresh eyes and emotional distance that Marietta wasn’t a bad place, but at the time she’d only seen that her family was in California. If Dean had wanted to move to be with his, that was his business. Fortunately, he hadn’t and they’d had plenty of fuel for their fights without bringing geography into it. From what Liz had heard of Blake and Crystal’s break up, it had been even more contentious and bloody than hers.
Blake took a pull off his beer, eyelids lowered circumspectly, not saying anything about being tied to his ranch.
“That wasn’t meant to sound like I was taking their side,” Liz said. “I know ranching isn’t something you just take a week off from because you want to.” She bit into a tangy olive, enjoying the way it burst with flavor in her mouth. “For what it’s worth, Dean never understood the demands of the salons either. That’s one of the reasons he made me quit doing nails.” That and how it had looked when his wife gave manicures to the wives of his colleagues.
Blake’s dark eyes sharpened as they flashed to connect with hers. It almost looked like he took umbrage at Dean’s heavy-handed control—as she had. Maybe it was just another thing they had in common: letting the Flowers talk them into things they didn’t really want to do.
Then his gaze warmed with amusement. “Are you saying your clients demand attention every day? I just envisioned a herd of women with broken nails bawling in a meadow.”
She chuckled, realigning her vision of Blake from an overwhelmed young man wiping his brow as he spoke his vows to this mature, confident man with a wry sense of humor.
“They’re not much better this time of year,” she said ruefully, “Habitual nail-chewers suddenly stampede to look pretty for Christmas.”
“And yet you’re here rather than polishing.”
She heard the question in his tone and shrugged. “I’m in management now. I fill in sometimes if I have to. It’s flu season, so techs call in sick and the phones never stop, so I often man those, but…” She shrugged, debating how much to tell him about why she was staying here. They were strangers really, having only met the once. But their kids had remained connected as cousins. She heard things. Their shared sister-in-law, Stella, was very talkative when she had a glass of wine in her. Blake might not be entirely comfortable with how much Liz knew of his personal business, actually.
For the first time in nearly a week of being in Marietta, however, she felt like she had a friend. She nibbled the tip of a gherkin, edging around revealing her motives by asking, “What do you think of the big family wedding and tropical Christmas?”
“I don’t have a problem with it,” he said with a small flicker of surprise that she hadn’t really answered his question. He motioned for her to come into a corner with him as people crowded near the table, squeezing them out. “Ethan’s coming home early since it’s my year to have him. Is Petra staying the whole time?”
“She is.” A pinch near her heart made her face his lingering curiosity and the decision she’d made with all its cloudy facets. It was okay that it hurt, she reminded herself. Generosity was something that might sting when it was extended, but it had to be exercised or it would stiffen up and atrophy. “I was upset when they first started planning it, but it’s her Dad’s wedding. And she genuinely loves being around her cousins. I couldn’t fight it. It’s the sort of thing they’ll remember forever.”
“Which is why I said Ethan could go for two weeks, but not all of December.”
Liz still privately agonized at allowing Petra to be gone so long. She’d been furious and aggrieved, dreading the whole thing from the time it was proposed, and then she’d arrived here to a fresh pie in the face. She tried to smile past the tightness straining her expression.
“I’ve been bitter for a long time,” she confessed. “Always gearing up for a battle. I knew it wasn’t healthy and I’m sure it looks from the outside like I’m the biggest dupe in America. I mean, who gets suckered into watching their ex-mother-in-law’s chirpy little dog, alone through Christmas, while her ex-husband’s family has a month in the sun? Right? But it is Christmas. When I got here and they told me Nola’s dog sitter had fallen through and Nola just assumed I had nothing else to do and could take him…” She shook her head, hating how the ball of mistreated energy had come to life with a vengeance, throbbing and pulsing and threatening to tear up her insides.
“I’m tired of giving them the power to make me unhappy,” she said. “I asked myself if I would do it for a neighbor in a pinch, or a client, and I would. The only reason I would refuse Nola was animosity and I’m tired of it. So, I decided to embrace the spirit of the season. I don’t care if Dean appreciates the gesture, or whether the Flowers think kindly of me, or even if karma repays me. I’m not trying to be bigger than them, I just don’t want to be angry anymore. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
Her mother and sister had certainly thought so when she’d called to tell them she was staying here while Petra was gone. Her sister had said it was a recipe for a fresh batch of resentment. But even though Liz was facing a lonely Christmas, even though this ‘favor’ was actually putting her out and taking her away from her family in California, she felt like she was doing the right thing. Christmas had always been a bit of a let down for her anyway. Her family wasn’t the warmest and half the time her father had missed it altogether. This way her expectations were rock bottom, so she couldn’t be disappointed.
“I say no to Crystal all the time,” Blake said reflectively, mouth going flat.
“Your situation is completely different from mine,” she assured him with an instinctive touch on his arm.
He glanced at her hand and she pulled it away, curling her fingers into her palm and licking her lips in a sudden attack of nerves that had nothing to do with social anxiety. That had felt—he had felt good. Muscly hard. Masculine. And there’d been a little zing of sexual something that she would completely ignore, because it was silly to even imagine it had been there.
She cl
eared her throat.
“I know what you’re up against with Crystal. If you give her an inch, you’ll never see your son again, so you’re better to stick hard and fast to your custody agreement. I wasn’t trying to sound pious or tell you what to do.”
He absorbed that with a cant of his head. “You are setting a precedent, though. They’ll expect things from you going forward,” he warned.
She shrugged, trying to be philosophical. “Maybe. I’ll deal with that as it comes, but I didn’t want to go home indignant that they’d had the nerve to ask. I didn’t want to carry guilt if I said no. Instead, I took control, decided I wanted to do this, and I feel okay about it.”
He stared at her.
He thinks I’m nuts, she thought.
“Are you still bitter?” she asked.
“As snake venom,” he replied conversationally, making a surprised laugh burst out of her.
He had a right to be, she supposed, thinking of what she knew about his marriage and divorce, then letting her lashes sweep down so he wouldn’t know she knew.
Did he even know?
Find out what happens next…
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About the Author
After twenty-five years of writing and submitting, Dani Collins won the 2013 Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best First In Series from Romantic Times Book Reviews. Known mostly for her emotional, passionate Harlequin Presents, she has also published a hilarious romantic comedy, an epic medieval fantasy romance, and a pair of extremely erotic erotic romances. Dani writes anything, so long as it’s romance.
Keep up with Dani on these links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads and Join Dani’s Newsletter to be notified when a new book comes out.
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