by Joanna Sims
Dallas climbed up onto the trailer to get a closer look at the truck. “Where did you find this?”
The restoration of the truck was impeccable. She’d only seen trucks rehabbed like this in Las Vegas. The truck looked like it had just been driven straight off a showroom floor in the 1950s.
“Lightning Rock,” Nick said, watching her from the ground.
Dallas stopped moving, her hands resting on the hood of the truck. It took a lot to make her tear up; with tears in her eyes, she ran her hand over the hood of Davy’s most prized possession. She had thought that it was lost to her forever.
Dallas hopped down off the trailer, threw herself into Nick’s arms and gave him the first genuine hug since their fight in Chicago.
“I love you, Nick.” Dallas rested her head against his chest. “Thank you.”
Nick wiped her tears off her cheeks, held her face in his hands and looked down at her with love in his eyes. “I love you, Dallas. I’m not perfect...”
“Neither am I!”
“But I do love you.”
* * *
Thanksgiving Day was a bustling, loud, chaotic affair at Bent Tree’s main house. Nick’s aunt Barbara was happier than he had seen her since he reunited with this side of his family. She was a woman who thrived when surrounded by her children and her grandchildren. The kitchen was filled with incredible smells of turkey basting, sage-bread stuffing cooking, apple, pumpkin and cherry pies cooling on racks. Pots of Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes were being kept warm on the stove top; the sound of children playing, crying and laughing and multiple adult conversations overlapping blended together into one loud cacophonous din that felt the way a holiday should feel. At his parents’ Lincoln Park mansion, Thanksgiving had always been a formal, quiet, well-ordered affair and the food was prepared by the cooks on duty. In Nick’s opinion, a Bent Tree Thanksgiving beat his Lincoln Park Thanksgivings by a mile.
“What has Dallas done to you, Nicholas?” His older sister, Taylor, broke into his internal dialogue.
“What are you driving at?” Nick asked her.
“Well—you’ve been holding your niece for ten minutes now and you haven’t broken out into hives or the sweats.”
Nick laughed. “Don’t read too much into it. Penny didn’t have to eat, cry or be changed.”
Taylor took her daughter into her arms and kissed her on her peaches-and-cream chubby cheek. Penny squealed and buried her head into her mom’s blouse.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Nick.” Taylor kissed him on the cheek.
“Happy Thanksgiving.”
Luke and his wife, Sophia, arrived, followed by their three children.
“Oh! Sophia! I could sure use your hands right now to make the one-cup salad!”
Sophia, a pretty blonde with hazel-green eyes and a sweet disposition, gave him a quick hug in greeting and then went straight to her mother-in-law to help with the meal prep.
“Can I go outside with J.T. and Grandpa?” Luke’s towheaded son, Danny, asked his father.
Luke gave his son the green light and the young boy ran out of the kitchen into the foyer.
“Don’t forget your coat, Danny!” Sophia called after her son.
“Got it, Mom!” Danny called back, and then slammed the front door behind him.
Luke stood beside him, as inept with anything kitchen related as he was.
“It’s good to see you and Sophia back together,” Nick said to his cousin, quiet enough not to be heard with all the other noise in the room.
“I’m damn lucky she took me back,” Luke said seriously, his thick, muscular arms crossed over his chest.
“How are you doing?”
Luke had shared with him on his last visit to the ranch that his PTSD had made married life nearly impossible.
“One day at a time, brother,” Luke said. “I was accepted by K-9 Care—after the holidays, I’m going to be matched with a service dog.”
“Congratulations, man. That’s great news.”
They caught up for a few minutes longer and then Luke headed outside to join his son, his father and his brother Tyler’s stepson, who had pulled his snowmobile out of the shed. The one person Nick had been waiting to arrive showed up soon after—his younger sister, Casey, and her fiancé, Brock.
“Nick!” Casey hugged him tightly and enthusiastically as she always did.
Casey had a face full of freckles, wide emerald eyes and a beautiful head of thick auburn hair. The family had been worried about Casey—she was a uterine cancer survivor and was still emotionally recovering from surgery. Taylor had let him know that Casey had been struggling with depression. But today, her eyes were bright and happy.
“You doing okay, munchkin?” he asked his slim-framed sister.
“I’m having a great day.”
“Is Hannah coming today, Brock?” Barbara’s voice cut through the other voices.
“She’s with her mother in California.” The ranch foreman snuck a biscuit out of a basket on the table.
“Oh—I was looking forward to seeing her,” Barbara said. “But maybe it’s just as well. It’s loud here today.”
Brock’s daughter, Hannah, was on the autism spectrum and had difficulty with crowds and noise.
“Be sure to tell her happy Thanksgiving for me!” Nick’s aunt added.
Nick had just finished hugging his younger sister when Dallas stepped into his arms. “Are you okay?”
“It’s a lot different than Davy and me and two microwave turkey dinners.”
Nick laughed as he hugged her tightly to him. “I’m not used to quite this many Brands at one time, but I have to say, I like it. Makes me think that I’d like to have a big family of my own one day.”
* * *
“Hank. Hank?” Barbara looked around the kitchen for her husband. “Tyler, please go find your father! Where did he go? He knew we were about to eat!”
Tyler, known to be the easygoing son, reached around his mother to pluck a Brussels sprout out of the pot and popped it into his mouth.
“You should have another glass of wine,” Tyler said between chews. “It’ll help you remember that holidays are supposed to be fun.”
Barbara spun her tall son around and gave him a playful push. “Go!”
It wasn’t easy to get all the Brands wrangled in the kitchen, but it finally happened. Barbara delegated jobs to each person, directing family members to wash their hands, take dishes to the table, and make sure everyone had a glass for wine, or water, or homemade root beer.
The last event was Hank taking the golden thirty-pound turkey out of the oven.
Nick stood behind his designated seat next to Dallas, and he, along with the rest of the family, clapped and whooped as Hank put the turkey on the table. He was about to make a preemptive reach for the one-cup salad when Barbara raised her voice to get everyone’s attention.
His aunt’s eyes were watery with emotion as she stood next to her husband at the head of the table and looked at her family. She put her hands together and rested her chin on her fingertips, appearing to get her emotions settled.
“It means so much to have you all here today.” Her eyes drifted briefly to the empty seat that they had all agreed to leave empty for Daniel. “I want us to resurrect a Brand family tradition. Before we sit down to eat, I would like for all of us to share what we are most thankful for this year.”
“I’ll start,” his aunt continued with an emotion
al catch in her voice. “I’m thankful to have all of you here at Bent Tree Ranch for Thanksgiving. I am thankful for our ability to forgive each other, our ability to love one another. May we all see even more Brand family members around our Thanksgiving table next year.”
One by one, all the Brands shared what they were thankful for the most.
“I’m thankful that we have set a date for our wedding.” Josephine Brand, an attorney from San Diego, hugged her police officer fiancé. “By this time next year, I will be Mrs. Logan Brand-Wolf.”
Jordan Brand, her arm linked with her husband Ian’s arm followed her twin by saying, “I’m thankful that Ian has found his way back to photography, which is his life’s passion. And I am super thankful that our application has been accepted by an adoption agency and we hope to adopt a sibling group next year!”
Tyler Brand was thankful to have been able to move his young family back to the ranch he loved; his heart had always been with Bent Tree Ranch, and with his being the next in line to inherit the ranch, his time living in Virginia had seemed like much too long for all of them.
Luke was thankful to have moved back with his wife and kids in their house outside Helena, just as he was thankful for having survived Afghanistan and Iraq, when so many of his friends and his own twin brother had not. He wasn’t surprised when his sister Taylor was thankful that her husband, Clint, had decided to give up bull riding, or that she was thankful for their daughter, Penny. It had been her dream to be a mother and she considered Penny to be her miracle baby; in many ways, she was a miracle, having been born premature.
“I’m thankful for Hannah—for Brock—for surviving cancer—and...” Casey beamed at everyone at the table. “I’m thankful that we have begun the process of looking for a surrogate to carry our child.”
Dallas was thankful for how the Brand family had cared for her father, thankful for the kindness he had shown her at Lightning Rock and thankful for how the entire family had taken her under their wings. And then it was his turn. His statement stood between a table full of hungry Brands and the delicious-smelling food on the table.
Nick threaded his fingers with Dallas’s fingers. “I’m thankful for many things this year, but what I am most thankful for is the love of this incredible woman right here.”
He looked into his cowgirl’s eyes, finding it surprisingly easy to put his family in the background as he said, “I love you, Dallas. I hope I will be able to call you my wife one day.”
“Happy Thanksgiving!” the entire family cheered after Hank led the family through a prayer.
Chair legs scraped across the floor, bowls were passed, silverware clinked against plates and children cried in their high chairs. As Nick scooped large helpings of one-cup salad onto his plate, he thought that this was exactly how he always wanted Thanksgiving to be—surrounded by his family, with the woman he loved by his side.
Dallas touched his leg with her hand to get his attention.
“What can I get for you?” he asked, thinking that she wanted a dish passed her way.
Dallas leaned in toward him, her eyes looking directly into his.
“Yes.” She said one word.
“Yes?” He wanted to confirm that she was, quietly, in her own way, agreeing to be his wife.
“Yes,” Dallas repeated, and then added in a whisper, “More than anything this year, Nick, I am thankful for you.”
* * * * *
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
Crown Prince Armando enlists Rosa Lamberti to find him a suitable wife—but could a stolen kiss under the mistletoe lead to an unexpected Christmas wedding?
Read on for a sneak preview of
WINTER WEDDING FOR THE PRINCE
by Barbara Wallace
“Have you ever looked at an unfocused telescope only to turn the knob and make everything sharp and clear?” Armando asked.
Rosa nodded.
“That is what it was like for me, a few minutes ago. One moment I had all these sensations I couldn’t explain swirling inside me, then the next everything made sense. They were my soul coming back to life.”
“I don’t know what to think,” she said.
“Then don’t think,” he replied. “Just go with your heart.”
He made it sound easy. Just go with your heart. But what if your heart was frightened and confused? For all his talk of coming to life, he was essentially in the same place as before, unable or unwilling to give her a true emotional commitment.
On the other hand, her feelings wanted to override her common sense, so maybe they were even. As she watched him close the gap between them, she felt her heartbeat quicken to match her breath.
“You do know that we’re under the mistletoe yet again, don’t you?”
The sprig of berries had quite a knack for timing, didn’t it? Anticipation ran down her spine ceasing what little hold common sense still had. Armando was going kiss her and she was going to let him. She wanted to lose herself in his arms. Believe for a moment that his heart felt more than simple desire.
This time, when he wrapped his arm around her waist, she slid against him willingly, aligning her hips against his with a smile.
“Appears to be our fate,” she whispered. “Mistletoe, that is.”
“You’ll get no complaints from me.” She could hear her heart beating in her ears as his head dipped toward hers. “Merry Christmas, Rosa.”
“Mer…” His kiss swallowed the rest of her wish. Rosa didn’t care if she spoke another word again. She’d waited her whole life to be kissed like this. Fully and deeply, with a need she felt all the way down to her toes.
They were both breathless when the moment ended. With their foreheads resting against each other, she felt Armando smile against her lips. “Merry Christmas,” he whispered again.
Don’t miss
WINTER WEDDING FOR THE PRINCE by Barbara Wallace
Available December 2016
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Copyright ©2016 by Barbara Wallace
ISBN: 978-1-474-04189-8
THANKFUL FOR YOU
© 2016 Joanna Sims
Published in Great Britain 2016
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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