Sweet Cowboy Christmas: A Sweet, Texas Novella

by Candis Terry

  She glanced away but not to swipe away tears. The brief moment was clearly so she could rein in the resentment she still maintained.

  “I thought we had so much in common,” she continued, bringing her direct gaze back to him. “A passion for healing, family, and old-fashioned values. As you can imagine, as the head of orthopedic surgery, he lived well. Attended the kinds of events you see in the society pages of the newspaper. He treated me like a queen. For a girl who’d grown up without much and busted her ass and worked hard all her life, I’ll admit, I liked being regarded and accepted by that side of the social order. He never made me feel like I didn’t belong. I thought he was perfect. Right up to the day my uncle got sick and I wanted to come take care of him and the ranch.”

  “And your fiancé didn’t approve?”

  “Ex-fiancé. At first, he didn’t mind that I came for a few weeks. But after my uncle died, and I discovered he’d left me the ranch, I wanted to stay. I thought maybe he’d see how important maintaining my uncle’s dream meant to me. How much I had loved this place ever since I was a child. Like a fool, I thought he might consider accepting a position at a hospital in San Antonio or Austin. He was always getting offers, so I didn’t think it was any big deal.”

  “And he proved you wrong?”

  “Boy, did he.” She shook her head. “I believe his exact words were, “I can’t believe I wasted so much time trying to train you to be a member of the upper class. All you really are is a hillbilly who should never have left the farm.”

  Chase stood speechless. Even as he watched the visible tension constrict her neck and jaw muscles. Even as she transferred her weight from one foot to the other and clenched her fists. The laugh that left her pretty mouth held anything but humor.

  “I mean, really,” she said, her wild hand gestures doing most of the talking for her. “We don’t have farms in Texas. We have ranches. Big effing ranches that offer opportunities for underprivileged children to forget their troubles for a while. To dream big and discover they can be whatever the heck they want to be. Even a freaking hillbilly with a bachelor of science degree. So while he started out treating me like a queen, he ended up treating me like trash.”

  Bastard.

  “So you’re going to blame everyone else for one asshole’s actions?”

  She blinked. “I don’t mean to.”

  “Anger and regret are a waste of energy, Faith.” He knew a little about the power of those emotions. He’d spent an entire week reacting in the same way after his heart had stopped and changed his entire life.

  The two of them had a lot in common. She’d loved her uncle and wanted to maintain his dream, much as he had with his father.

  The difference?

  She’d been brave enough to stay put. He’d run like a coward.

  “Anger and regret don’t change anything,” he said. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘the best revenge is to live well and be happy’?”

  “You’re not at all who I think you are,” she said, her eyes squinting. “Are you?”

  “I hope not.”

  For a long moment, they stood there, gazes locked, the air around them thickening.

  He took that last step closer to her. Simply because he couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried.

  Then he did exactly what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He reached out his hand and gently cupped her cheek. Her thick, dark lashes fluttered as she looked up at him. But she did not pull away. Unable to fight the desire burning through his blood, he lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers.

  To his surprise and absolute satisfaction, she slid her hands up his chest, wrapped her lovely arms around his neck, and leaned into his kiss.

  As she lifted to her toes, her full breasts pressed into his chest, and a hot zap of lust spiked deep in his groin. His arms went around her, pulling her closer just as her moist mouth parted and let him in.

  When their tongues met, a surge of pleasure so different from anything he’d ever felt before lit him up inside. Kissing Faith was like the Fourth of July and Christmas morning all rolled into one. In the warm recess of her mouth, their tongues tangled, danced, and made love. Chase could have stood there all day, holding her in his arms, kissing her until she moaned with the need of something more.

  When she did just that, he gathered his wits and ended the kiss by once more pressing his mouth to the center of her luscious lips, then one to her forehead.

  With a sigh, she stepped away, and his arms were instantly void of the pleasure of her warmth.

  “Why did you kiss me?” she asked.

  “Because I wanted to. Why did you kiss me back?”

  She grinned. “Because I wanted to.”

  He returned the gesture. “Then we’d better be prepared. Because I’m guessing there are probably more where that one came from.”

  She flashed a come-and-get-me grin as she spun on the heels of those worn-down boots, and said, “A girl can only hope.”

  Chapter Four

  THE DAY AFTER their breath-stealing, heart-pounding kiss, Chase disappeared. For, at last count, two days without a word as to where he was going.

  Not that he owed her an explanation.

  But hauling ass out of Dodge wasn’t exactly the response a girl was looking for after she’d thrown caution to the wind and locked lips with a man she’d met only twenty-four hours earlier. Well, maybe she didn’t exactly know him, but based on the way he handled himself, she had a pretty good idea who he might be. Either that, or she’d been watching way too many romantic comedies.

  The second day of his disappearance, Faith began to wonder if he would come back at all or if she’d scared him away for good. Kissing a guest was bad for business. Not that she’d made the first move that day in the kitchen. But she had responded like he’d been a bowl of her favorite ice cream on a hot summer day.

  She didn’t know what had really brought him all the way to the Magic Box Guest Ranch because he hadn’t given her that information. Neither had his cousin Abby. So maybe she should pull her head out of the south end of her body and pay attention to the warning signs. Maybe his being so secretive about his reasons for picking up and running from whatever was back in New York said a lot more about him than just a really hot kiss.

  In fact, she was pretty danged sure it did.

  Yet she couldn’t dismiss the way he had kissed her.

  Hot, hungry, yet restrained at the same time. His hands hadn’t wandered all over her body. Just the same, the urgency in his touch told her he’d have been happy to remove her clothes and give her what she’d been missing for a really long time.

  Passion.

  Something about Chase Morgan said the man had a sincere appetite for life and appreciated the opposite sex. And she was a woman who’d been too long without that particular emotion for a man. Which was probably the only reason she was so intrigued.

  Yeah. She’d go with that pathetic excuse.

  Because at the end of the day, she saw good-looking men all the time. Texas overflowed with them. Heck, just down the road were the pinup boys of good-looking men who went by the last name of Wilder. So even though Chase Morgan fell in the upper level of manly hotness, it wasn’t just his looks–or his body–that attracted her. It was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Sure as Christmas was getting closer every day, Faith was drawn to him.

  On the third day of his disappearance, she gave in to all the curiosity playing hide-and-seek in her brain and checked his cabin. Using the excuse that it was close to Christmas and Maria, the full-time housekeeper should be spending her time with her family rather than coming all the way to the ranch to clean just one cabin, Faith put her supersnooper sensors in gear and opened the unlocked door.

  If he had been worried about privacy, he would have locked the door, right?

  The warm and welcome scent of cinnamon sticks and crisp red apples greeted her as she stepped inside and found the cabin as neat as if no one had be
en staying there. Everything was in its place. Bed made. No dishes in the sink. Curtains open. The only sign that the cabin had recently been inhabited was a single coffee cup on the counter–rinsed and turned upside down to drain.

  In all her thirty-two years, she’d never seen such a tidy man. Maybe all he needed was a little messing up. She thought of her own cluttered room back in the lodge house. Or maybe she could stand to take a few housekeeping lessons from him.

  The large armoire against the far wall near the corner where she’d set up the small Christmas tree served as the cabin’s closet and dresser. Her heels tapped on the floor as she crossed the room and pulled open the double doors. Inside the cedar cabinet were shirts and pants neatly hung on wooden hangers. In the drawers were pristinely folded boxer briefs in colors of gray, blue, and black. Sharing drawer space were several black, blue, and white T-shirts.

  Apparently, Chase had a thing for dark colors.

  Lucky for him he looked amazing in them.

  Maybe all he really needed was a little color in his life. Maybe that’s why he’d come to Texas. Everyone knew the Lone Star State was a colorful place. Most believed God made Texas on his day off just for sheer entertainment. There were even folks who swore they’d rather be a fencepost in Texas than king of the world. So maybe all Chase really had in mind was a little distraction from the mad rush of New York. Maybe all he really had in mind was a little Southern hospitality and a good time.

  Questions were: Where the heck had he gone for three whole days? And did she intend to be his good time?

  Faith closed the drawers, then turned back to face the empty room. Only it wasn’t quite as empty as it had been when she’d first come through the door.

  “Snooping, Faith?” Chase’s muscular silhouette loomed large in the open doorway. His deep voice was tinged with humor. “You’re such an openly honest woman, it hardly seems your style.”

  “Disappearing for three days without a word might be your style,” she said, trying to keep the mortification from getting busted from her voice. “But I have a business to run. And I needed to know whether you were coming back or not in case someone else wanted to rent this cabin.”

  “I prepaid for the entire ten days.”

  “Yes. Well, I would have refunded your money if you hadn’t come back.”

  “Uh-huh.” When he came into the room and walked right up to her, she noticed the hint of amusement playing at the corners of his masculine lips. “Thought you said you didn’t rent out cabins this time of year.”

  “I don’t, but–”

  “You were snooping, Faith. Admit it. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Okay. Fine.” A hard breath whooshed from her lungs. “I was snooping.”

  The quirk of his smile went full tilt. “Find anything interesting?”

  “You’re a neat freak. And you only wear dark colors. And I no longer need to wonder boxers or briefs.”

  His dark brows shot up his forehead. “And that’s interesting how?”

  She shrugged. “Okay, so maybe it’s not as interesting as it is curiosity-satisfying.”

  “You were curious about the kind of underwear I put on?” He folded his arms beneath the pair of aviator sunglasses hanging from the crew neck of the black T-shirt stretched tight across his fabulously defined pecs, abdomen, and narrow waist. Chase was long and lean, with a physique that appeared to be more from living a healthy lifestyle and long-distance running than the men she saw posing on the Internet like a bunch of muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzeneggers. Not that she hunted up photos of muscle men on Google . . . too frequently.

  Because it was actually the curiosity of what Chase would look like when he took off that butt-hugging underwear that bothered her, she realized she needed to escape this whole fiasco of a conversation.

  “Sorry I snooped.” She stepped around him and headed toward the door. He was fast and caught her by the arm.

  “Running doesn’t seem your style, either.” He smirked like he knew she was running from him.

  She wasn’t. Exactly. She was really running from the way he made her feel and the sensations he awakened inside her. Maybe she was just afraid she might do something stupid and unforgivable, like push him down on that big king-sized bed, tear his clothes off, and climb on top.

  God, her fantasies were out of control. She had to get a life.

  The knowing smile he flashed verified it.

  CHASE COULDN’T HELP but grin when Faith’s eyes revealed the truth.

  She was running, but not from him. She was running from herself and the way they’d heated up that kitchen three days ago.

  Rightly so that she seemed agitated when he’d disappeared without telling her or anyone where he was going or if he’d even come back.

  In truth, he’d given in to the guilt that had weighed heavy in his chest for years, and he’d returned to Stephenville to visit Boone and Cassidy at the longhorn ranch where he’d been raised. Driving the Chevy Silverado half-ton he’d rented in San Antonio, he’d gone through almost four hours of flatlands before he finally saw familiar landmarks like the Lone Star Arena and Moola, the cow statue in front of the county courthouse.

  The more miles he’d put on the truck, the more he’d been surprised to sense the undeniable pull toward the small Texas town. Or maybe it had just been the eagerness to see Boone and Cassidy again. His enthusiasm had died, however, when he pulled up in front of the ranch-style house and parked. Memories flooded him, and he’d almost turned the key in the ignition and driven off. But then his little sister, now a lovely, full-grown woman, had pushed open the screen door and, long dark hair flying, raced across the drive and launched herself into his arms.

  Boone had followed up with a bear hug and a slap on the back. From there, Chase finally found the courage to take a deep breath and step inside the house.

  On a mighty exhale, he realized that everything had changed. The color of the walls. The furniture. The kitchen layout. Even the pencil markings that recorded his, Boone, and Cassidy’s growth on the inside of the hall closet door were gone. The entire country vibe of the four-bedroom house had been transformed into something trendy and modern.

  Relief freed the boulder from his chest. He didn’t know what he’d expected to see after all these years, but he’d been thankful his fears had been for naught. The memories of his dad would remain in his heart, not as a ghost sitting in his old leather recliner.

  The visit had gone so well he’d stayed longer than he’d originally planned. He’d been invited to stay for Christmas, but even with as well as things had gone, even with all the physical changes within those walls, he knew he could not be in that house on that day. Before he’d driven off to head back to the Magic Box Guest Ranch, his brother and sister told him anytime he wanted to come back home, they’d be there with open arms.

  Going back had been a huge step. But he wasn’t ready for any long-term commitments to anything.

  Not yet.

  Not until he’d come to terms with the radical change in his life. A change that left him unsure of the direction he’d go after these ten days at the Magic Box Ranch. Ten days that surely promised to intensify his attraction to the ranch’s sexy owner.

  Regardless of what her jackass of an ex-fiancé had done, Faith was the kind of woman a man didn’t take for granted. She was the kind of woman a man protected, spoiled, and loved for the rest of his life.

  He didn’t know if he could ever be that man for Faith or any woman. It wasn’t because he didn’t believe in love or long-term relationships. It was simply because he didn’t know who the hell he was anymore. Everything he’d planned for his life had disintegrated with one skipped heartbeat.

  How could he ever pledge his life to a woman when he didn’t know a damned thing about the life he lived anymore?

  What did the future hold for him?

  What would he do?

  Where would he go?

  A woman like Faith needed a stable man who had his
shit together and knew exactly what he wanted in life.

  He was lost.

  But even that didn’t stop him from wanting her.

  “I’m not running,” she said. The determination tightening her lips didn’t make it any less a lie. “There are only two more weeks till the charity event, and I have work to do.” She untangled her arm from his grasp. “You, however, as a paying guest, have many choices.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, you can take a hike.”

  He laughed. “Literally?”

  “Funny.” She wrinkled her nose. “We have several lovely hiking trails that follow the banks of the creek. Most of the trails are beneath a canopy of trees, so you don’t need to worry about heatstroke.”

  About the only stroke he was bound to have was because of the way she filled out a pair of jeans and that Magic Box Ranch T-shirt.

  “Or you can check with Bull,” she said, stealthily easing toward the door like he wouldn’t notice. “I’m sure he’d be happy to take you on a ride. Most of our horses are well broke for inexperienced riders. Or you can grab a pole and go down to the fishing pond. It’s stocked with some smallmouth bass and catfish. Or I can schedule you for a hot-stone massage. Or–”

  “Are you the massage therapist?”

  Her eyes widened. “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  She cleared her throat and took a step backward. “Or if you feel like playing a game of chess, Bull would probably be up for that too.”

  “Long list.”

  “We try to satisfy everyone’s needs.”

  Now didn’t that just shoot a whole bunch of interesting images through his imagination.

  “I’ve made my choice,” he said.

  “Great.” She gave him a relieved smile. “What will it be so I can contact the right person to help you?”

  “I’m going to help you.”

  She gave him an obstinate lift of her chin. “That wasn’t an option.”