The Cowboy's Christmas Surprise

by Marie Ferrarella

  “There’s lots of things I’m not telling you, girl,” Miss Joan said. “But on the subject of my health, there’s nothing wrong.”

  Then what was with the drama? Holly didn’t understand. “Then why—”

  “Because I’m not going to live forever,” Miss Joan said practically. “Nobody does, and after I’m gone, I want to be sure that this town always has the best damn tree that can be found on the mountain every year.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Ray told the owner of the diner, walking in on Miss Joan’s last sentence. “You know that you’re just too ornery to die,” he reminded the older woman.

  Miss Joan turned to look at him. “Well, it’s not going to be anytime soon, at any rate.” She wiped her hands. “You want the usual?” she asked Ray. When he nodded, rather than getting it herself, she turned to Holly. “Get Ray the usual—it’s on the house this morning, seeing as how I’m going to be making use of that strong back of yours,” the woman informed him.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Holly had made no effort to move and fetch Ray either the coffee or his customary jelly doughnut.

  “Somebody glue your feet to the floor, girl?” Miss Joan asked.

  Holly was only vaguely aware that Miss Joan had said anything at all to her. Her mind had stopped processing words right after she heard that he was going on the expedition with them.

  “You’re coming with us to get the tree?” she asked Ray, needing to make sure that she’d heard correctly.

  “No, I’ve decided to take a lover and I’m seducing him with my jelly doughnuts,” Miss Joan deadpanned. “Yes, he’s coming with us. That’s why his breakfast—which is a damn unhealthy one if you ask me, but then, you didn’t ask me—is on the house,” the woman concluded, then shifted her attention to Holly. “Now, are you going to get his coffee and doughnut or have you taught the doughnuts to come when you call?”

  That made her finally come to. Holly turned on her heel and moved quickly across the floor, rounding the counter so she could get to the giant coffee urn and fill up a cup for Ray.

  Miss Joan was doing her best to sound gruff, Holly thought, but it didn’t matter what she said or how she said it, that quirky woman had just created what had to be the perfect day for her. They were going on the mountain to bring back a giant Christmas tree for the town, and not only was she going to be part of the group that selected the tree—or, more accurately, part of the group that rubber stamped Miss Joan’s selection—she was going to be doing it with Ray.

  “You grin any wider, girl, it’s going to slow down your progress considerably,” Miss Joan warned her.

  “Yes, ma’am, no grinning,” Holly automatically agreed. Right now, she would have been hard-pressed to think of a single thing that Miss Joan could ask her to do that she’d turn down.

  “Now, did I say that?” Miss Joan asked. “I said, and I’m quoting now, ‘any wider.’ That means keep it to a safe level where you’re not catching bugs and working with a windchill factor.” Three more men came in and Miss Joan frowned as she looked at her watch. “Can’t none of you boys tell time? I said eleven, not seven. I know they rhyme, but they’re four hours apart.”

  Eli, one of Ray’s older brothers, slid onto a stool at the counter. He nodded a greeting at the older woman, carefully removing his hat in her presence.

  Miss Joan smiled at him. She had always had a soft spot in her heart for Eli. She considered him to be the most sensitive of the Rodriguez brothers.

  “Maybe we’re just all too excited to wait,” Eli told her. “It’s kind of like when we were little and waiting for Santa Claus to come. It felt like time just stretched out endlessly before us.”

  Miss Joan looked down the bridge of her nose at the strapping young man. “If you still believe in Santa Claus, Eli, I think we might just have ourselves a problem here.”

  “Don’t spoil their fun, Joannie. If they want to believe in Santa Claus, let ’em,” Harry, Miss Joan’s husband, said as he came around to her other side and put his arms around her, then pressed a kiss to her cheek. He’d walked into the diner not more than three minutes ago, slipping in quietly as was his custom. He liked to say that he enjoyed watching his wife in action.

  Miss Joan didn’t look overly happy as she pulled free of his embrace after a rather long moment. “What did I tell you about calling me Joannie in public?” she asked in almost a snarled whisper.

  “You said not to,” Harry dutifully recited. “But honey, these boys and Holly—” he nodded in her direction “—are like family. No need to be embarrassed around family,” her husband teased.

  “A lot you know,” Miss Joan quipped. If Laurie had been here instead of late the way she customarily was—she’d assigned the girl to start her shift half an hour earlier than she was actually supposed to, thereby breaking even—her nickname would have found itself posted everywhere. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Thought I’d come along,” Harry told her. “Help you make up your mind about which tree to bring back. You know, do the kind of things a husband is supposed to do for his wife.”

  “Said the man who stares at three pairs of black socks in the morning, trying to decide which pair to put on. You’re staying here, Harry,” she informed him in her no-nonsense voice. “You’ll just hold me up and I don’t want to have to be worrying about you up there.”

  “No reason to worry,” Harry told her. “I’m as surefooted as a goat.”

  Miss Joan almost hooted. “An old goat,” she specified. “And I want to be sure that you just keep on getting older—and you won’t if you fall and break that fool neck of yours. End of discussion. You’re staying here.”

  “Then you are, too,” Harry informed his wife mildly. “I can be just as stubborn as you, Joannie.”

  Rick had joined them at the counter, looking for nothing more than a fortifying black cup of coffee. Holly automatically poured him a cup and set it down in front of him.

  “No offense, Harry, but not even God is as stubborn as Miss Joan is,” Rick told the woman’s husband. “There’s no shame in retreating if it’s from Miss Joan,” he guaranteed. “We’ve all done it.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not married to her,” Harry pointed out.

  “And you are, which already proves the kind of steadfast man you are. Now, you can stand here, arguing with her and have her argue back, but we’ll be losing precious time because she’s not budging and if you don’t budge, there’s not going to be a tree in the town square until Easter,” Holly predicted, throwing in her two cents and hoping to make a difference. “Do it for the town, Harry,” she urged. “We need you to back off.”

  “Don’t you be telling my man what to do,” Miss Joan declared, her hands fisted at her waist and creating a formidable image despite her thin frame. “You can come, Harry. Just stay in the truck. There’s snow on that mountain and I don’t want you falling and breaking something I’ve taken a shine to,” she told her husband with a surprisingly sexy smile.

  “Whatever you say, darlin’,” Harry readily agreed. It was obvious that when she looked at him like that, he lost all desire to argue even for a second.

  “Okay, that’s settled,” Miss Joan declared, relieved. She turned toward Ray and a couple of the other men who had shown up, bleary-eyed and mumbling. “One of you boys go get Mick out of bed and tell him we need chains for our tires. And if he doesn’t have them, he damn well better find a way to make them—quick,” she warned.

  “I’ll handle it,” Cash volunteered.

  “Good.” Miss Joan nodded at her stepson and half a second later, was on to the next detail of her very detailed list. The others all listened. Everyone knew better than to interrupt Miss Joan once she got rolling.

  Chapter Eight

  Miraculously, Mick Henley, Forever’s resident—and on
ly—mechanic, did have not only one but several sets of tire chains. They were packed away in his storeroom where they’d been ever since they’d made the move with him years ago from his previous shop in Utah. Consequently, there were enough sets of tire chains for Miss Joan’s 4x4 and Joe Lone Wolf’s truck as well as the flatbed truck that Miss Joan had specially requisitioned and brought in from a Pine Ridge garage the day before.

  But getting the trucks’ tires outfitted took time. So while Holly waited for the vehicles to be prepared, Miss Joan asked her to continue waiting on the customers who came in to the diner to grab a quick breakfast or to treat themselves to a slow, leisurely one because today was Saturday and they had no place to be.

  Holly tried to bank down the excited feeling that insisted on pulsating through her, but she wasn’t having all that much luck.

  Added to that, it seemed unusually crowded to her for an early Saturday morning, and Laurie was already twenty minutes late.

  Holly knew everyone by name as well as by their orders. Most people, she’d discovered shortly after taking this job, were predictable. If they found something they liked, they stayed with it rather than experimenting and sampling other things.

  She supposed, as she juggled two orders, that she was the same way herself. In her case, it wasn’t food that won her steadfast allegiance, it was love.

  Specifically, it was love of Ray.

  Looking back over her short life, Holly couldn’t remember even having so much as a passing crush on any other boy or man from the very first time she’d laid eyes on the youngest of the Rodriguez clan.

  And she sincerely doubted that she ever would.

  Every so often, Holly glanced out the side window to see how Mick was doing as he worked at getting the tires fitted with the proper chains. Her mind vacillated between the customers she was serving inside the diner and what was going on just outside the diner. She was so preoccupied that she came close to refilling the space next to Gabe Rodriguez’s cup rather than aiming the spout of her coffeepot into his empty coffee cup.

  She flushed when she realized that Ray’s brother was moving her hand an inch to the left so that his cup could catch the black liquid that was about to come pouring out.

  “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Gabe,” Holly cried, dismayed at what she’d almost done. By not paying attention, she could have easily burned his hand. Damn it, she was usually better at juggling tasks than this, she silently upbraided herself.

  “No harm done,” Gabe told her cheerfully. “What’s got your attention so riveted?” he asked, glancing out the same window she’d just been looking through.

  “I’m just waiting for Mick to finish putting chains on Miss Joan’s 4x4 and the other vehicles,” she told one of Forever’s three resident deputies.

  Holly had piqued his interest. “Why does Miss Joan need chains? Is she planning on taking a trip?” Gabe asked, this time turning his stool around to face the same direction Holly had been looking. “Oh, wait,” he suddenly recalled before he could see exactly what the mechanic was doing. “Today’s the day she picks out the town’s tree, isn’t it?” Gabe’s eyes shifted back to the flustered waitress who was hovering over him and he made a calculated guess. “And you’re one of the people she picked to go with her this year, aren’t you?” When Holly bobbed her head up and down, Gabe asked, “Who else is going this year, do you know?”

  She rattled off a few names, then added, “and Ray,” doing her best to sound nonchalant, or at least indifferent—and fairly certain that her future did not lie in the field of acting.

  But if Gabe suspected that she had a crush on his brother, or any feelings for Ray at all for that matter, he gave no indication.

  Instead, the deputy continued to make polite conversation. “Dad said Ray seemed to be in an all-fired hurry to be somewhere this morning when he left the house.” Specifically, the senior Rodriguez had called him to ask if he knew what was up with Ray and why he’d actually gotten up and gotten dressed so early in the morning without being nagged into it. Of all of them, Ray was the one who liked to sleep in the most.

  “So it takes a Christmas-tree expedition to get Sleeping Beauty out of his bed,” Gabe marveled. “I would have said that it would have taken nothing less than a shotgun aimed at his toes to get Ray moving before dawn.” But even as he said it, Gabe had serious doubts that getting Ray up early actually had anything to do with selecting the right Christmas tree.

  From what he’d heard from a couple of his friends who’d been at Murphy’s last night, Gabe was far more inclined to believe that his younger brother had actually been motivated by the promise that his best friend was going on the expedition, as well.

  The slight noise made by the bell that Miss Joan had hanging at the front door instantly caught Holly’s attention. The first thought she had was that someone had been sent in to fetch her.

  But it was only Laurie coming on duty.

  Good, that meant she could go outside and wait for Mick to finish there.

  Her joy was short-lived. The other waitress looked bleary-eyed and seemed as if she was having trouble focusing. Instead of going behind the counter for her apron, Laurie sank down on the closest empty stool and propped her elbows up on the counter. She used her hands in turn to prop up her head.

  “Coffee,” she called out to Holly. “Please,” she added plaintively. “Pour it straight into my veins if possible.” As she leaned her head harder against her upturned palm, she made a miscalculation. The next thing she knew, her chin slipped and it all but made contact with the counter, jolting her into a state of almost wakefulness as her eyes flew open.

  Holly was quick to bring her the requested coffee, black as midnight.

  “Hey, careful before you knock yourself out,” Holly warned, witnessing the near collision of chin and counter. She slid the cup and saucer directly in front of the other waitress.

  Laurie eyed her accusingly. “Why do you look so wide awake?” she asked. Before Holly could say anything, Laurie thought of an answer. “Don’t tell me you actually went into your house when we dropped you off there last night.”

  Holly shrugged, not quite following what the other waitress was getting at. “Okay, I won’t,” she agreed, then couldn’t help asking, “Why won’t I?”

  “Because none of us did, that’s why.” She thought of her own evening. “Jimmy Evans swung by to pick me up in his Jeep after I dropped off the other girls.” Laurie managed a wide, wistful smile.

  “What time did you get in?” Holly asked.

  Laurie looked at her watch, trying to focus on the numbers and finding that her eyes weren’t up to the task just yet. “What time is it now?” she asked Holly.

  “You didn’t go home at all, did you?” Holly guessed. “You just stopped off to change before coming here, right?”

  “Nobody likes a smart-aleck,” Laurie mumbled. The next moment, she seemed even worse than when she’d first walked in. “Take my shift, Holly,” she begged suddenly.

  “I can’t,” Holly said, thinking of the afternoon that lay ahead. She really didn’t want to miss being part of that, especially since Ray was going to be part of it, as well.

  But Laurie wasn’t ready to give up. “Please? Pretty please?” she begged more urgently. “I’ll give you my firstborn.”

  “Tempting though that is, I really can’t. Miss Joan wants me to go with her.” And that was the main reason she wasn’t going to stay and take Laurie’s shift as well as her own. Because when Miss Joan told you to come, you did exactly that, even if there were obstacles in your way.

  “Miss Joan wants a waitress who’s conscious,” Laurie pointed out. Holding her cup with both hands, she all but drained it, then waited for the caffeine to kick in. It didn’t. Impatience coupled itself with nervousness. “You have to take my shift, Holly. If I don’t get some sleep and soon, I’m g
oing to die,” she lamented.

  “Correction. If you try to palm off your shift onto someone else, you’re going to die,” Miss Joan said, walking into the diner. As was her habit, she’d zeroed in on the conversation that concerned her most. Her hazel eyes shifted toward Holly. “We’re ready. Come outside,” she instructed.

  She really, really wanted to go, but there was someone in distress right in front of her. How could she have a good time, knowingly abandoning Laurie in this miserable state?

  “But Laurie doesn’t feel well,” Holly pointed out, unhappily resigning herself to take the other waitress’s place as well as waiting on customers in her station. “She needs to go home.”

  “Laurie is hungover,” Miss Joan corrected. “What she needs is to man up so she can do her shift as well as yours.” Miss Joan paused to take the other waitress’s chin in her hand, closely examined the young woman’s face from both sides, then released it. “You’ll live,” she told Laurie crisply. “Nobody ever dies from a hangover—they just want to,” she added with a knowing look. “Now get out there,” she said, addressing the command to Holly. “We roll in less than five.”

  Holly knew that Miss Joan was as good as her word, and if she wasn’t out there on time as ordered, the small convoy would head out without her. She didn’t want them to.

  Quickly making up her mind, Holly removed her apron and grabbed the jacket she’d left slung over the back of an unoccupied chair. Saturdays were casual, and Miss Joan allowed her waitresses to wear jeans, which was lucky for her, Holly thought, hurrying into her jacket and trying to keep up with the older woman as she walked out of the diner.

  “Were you ever in the military, Miss Joan?” Holly asked, quickening her pace. In the background, she could hear Miss Joan’s husband laughing at her question.

  “I tried to enlist once, when I was a lot younger,” she admitted, then deadpanned wryly, “But they told me I was too tough for them.”

  Holly could readily believe it.

  “Good luck!” she heard Gabe call out after her. She turned and waved at him just before she crossed the threshold.