by Liz Isaacson
“In the back,” he called to Pete, wondering how many cowboys he’d roped into coming to help Dylan get the deck done and the rest of the floor laid in the living area.
So maybe Dylan was desperate, and maybe he’d complained a little to Pete about the house.
“Oh, you’re making good progress,” Pete said when he arrived. “I brought a few people.”
Five more men came out onto the small patch of deck Dylan had managed to erect, and he almost started crying. “Thanks for coming, guys,” he said. “I don’t have enough hammers for everyone.”
“Oh, I saw the flooring in the house,” Squire Ackerman said. “I’m going to do that. Your air conditioning works great.” He grinned, and Dylan chuckled along with the other guys.
“I’ll work out here,” Cal said, while Garth and Ethan agreed to help Squire in the house.
Boone said, “I’ll stay out here. I don’t even know if I know how to hammer something in.”
Dylan scoffed. “I know you don’t.” He grinned at his best friend.
“I can swing a hammer,” Pete said. “I did build my own homestead, remember?”
“Oh, we all remember,” Squire said. “Too bad Brett’s not here. He’d whip us all into shape.”
A moment of silence passed, and then someone else called from inside the house. A female voice.
“It’s my mom,” Squire said. “She brought reinforcements.”
Everyone went inside, including Dylan, where Heidi Ackerman, who owned the bakery in Three Rivers, set an overly large box on his kitchen counter.
“Ma.” Squire hugged her and swept a kiss across her forehead. “Thanks for bringing food. I don’t think Dylan even thought of it.”
“I have food,” Dylan said, but when Pete opened the box, Dylan realized that he actually didn’t have anything edible in his house, not when compared to the doughnuts and muffins now sitting on his countertop.
“Thank you, Heidi,” he said, giving the woman a quick hug too. If there was anyone who rivaled his mother in her baking abilities, it was Heidi Ackerman. “Will any of this be at the wedding?”
“Oh, Cami would kill me if I served bear claws at her wedding.” She swatted at Dylan. “No, we’re having chocolate pudding cake. Cami came in and ordered it last week.”
“That’s great,” he said. “I can’t believe she didn’t invite me along.” Especially for the food visits.
“She’s busy,” Heidi said.
“Well, maybe you’ll make me one to sample.” Dylan flashed her his best smile and stepped over to the fridge to pull out a gallon of milk.
They ate, and then the work commenced. He chatted with Pete and Cal, who mercifully didn’t quiz him about anything to do with the wedding. Every time he went to his parents’ house, it was all anyone could talk about. Cami had to talk about it, though she did try to bring up other things, he knew.
A few hours later, Dylan hammered in the last nail and said, “Well, I think that’s it.”
“If you want help staining it, let me know,” Pete said. “We can get another crew out here.”
“Easy,” Cal said. “We had to turn boys away from coming today.”
“Really?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “When there’s pay and doughnuts, everyone volunteers.” He took off his cowboy hat and wiped his forehead. “Good to see you, Dylan.” He shook his hand. “Bri wants you to come get her every Tuesday and Thursday from now on.”
“Is that okay with you?” he asked.
“Sure is. She needs to get out of the house every chance she has.”
Dylan followed them inside, pausing to look back over the deck. Yes, this house and yard was going to be exactly what he’d envisioned it to be.
He turned and took a few steps into the kitchen before he realized the rest of the house was now done. “Oh, wow,” he said. “This is amazing.” And it would’ve taken him days to lay this floor by himself.
“Thank you,” he said. “You guys, thank you so much.” Now he could bring in the couches and rugs he’d bought months ago and that had taken up all the space in his garage.
And when Cami showed up later, his house would look like exactly that—a house.
“Is she here?” Dylan asked Boone, who’s guest bedroom he currently stood in.
“Yes, she’s been here for a while.” Boone handed him his bow tie, and Dylan proceeded to put it into position. Cami had shown up. That was good.
Not that Dylan was doubting her. He’d just never envisioned himself as the marrying type—until her.
“Thanks for letting us use your yard,” he said to Boone. “Nicole really is a master gardener.”
“She’d said September would be the best month,” Boone said. “And she was right. It’s like Eden out there.” Boone handed him a pair of cufflinks that belonged to Dylan’s dad.
Finally, Dylan felt like all the pieces were in place, and now he just had minutes to count down. Boone took him down the hall and through the kitchen, then into the backyard.
Dylan paused to take it all in. This would be everything Cami wanted, and all he could do was hope and pray that he could be everything Cami wanted.
He drew in a deep breath and went with Nicole as she escorted him to the altar in the shade. Pastor Scott already stood there, and it seemed everyone who’d been invited had already arrived and taken their seats too.
He hugged his mother and father, each of his sisters, and beamed at his cowboy friends from the ranch. Asher was there with his wife, and so were Dana and Abraham Rogers.
Cami’s parents and brother had come from Amarillo, and Dylan had spent a few evenings with them in the days leading up to the wedding. Now, only her mom sat in the first row, a few empty seats saved beside her.
Now all he needed was his bride.
Finally, something seemed to be happening at the end of the aisle opposite of him, and her very small wedding party appeared.
It was Athena, wearing a veil that had a band that went down around her neck. She sat at the end of the aisle, her tongue lolling out of her mouth and the crowd chuckled at her.
Behind her, Cami clutched her father’s arm and wore a beautiful, frilly white dress and a smile as wide as the state of Texas.
Dylan could barely breathe as she took one agonizing step at a time toward him.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered as her father passed her to him, and he leaned down to kiss her cheek.
They faced the pastor together, hopefully how they’d face everything in their lives—together.
Dylan squeezed her hand, his nerves on overdrive. Then Pastor Scott started talking, and it was like every Sabbath Day. Dylan’s troubles melted away, and when it was time for him to say “I do,” he did in a loud, clear voice.
“You may kiss your bride,” Pastor Scott said, and Dylan turned toward Cami, grinning like a fool.
“I love you,” he said, barely giving her enough time to return the sentiment before he tipped her back and kissed his wife for the first time.
Cheers and yeehaws went up from the crowd, and Dylan couldn’t help feeling like the luckiest man in the whole world.
Yay! Dylan and Cami made things work, even when they got tough. Leave a review now!
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Read on for a sneak peek at HER COWBOY BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND, featuring more Christmas romance, this time in Wyoming.
And keep reading after that for a sneak peek of CHEERING THE COWBOY, holiday romance at another ranch in Texas.
Sneak Peek! HER COWBOY BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND Chapter One
Graham Whittaker gazed at the Tetons, wishing just the tops of the mountains were snow-covered. Unfortunately, it hadn’t stopped snowing for a few days, and the white stuff covered everything from the mountaintops to the grass outside the lodge he’d just bought and moved into over Christmas.
He liked to think heaven was weeping for the loss of his father, the sam
e way the Whittaker family had been for the past nine days. With the funeral and burial two days past now, everyone had gone back to their normal lives—except Graham.
“This is your normal life now,” he told himself as he turned away from what some probably considered a picturesque view of the country, the snow, the mountains.
Whiskey Mountain Lodge was a beautiful spot, nestled right up against the mountains on the west and the Teton National park on the north. It had a dozen guest rooms and boasted all the amenities needed to keep them fed, entertained, and happy for days on end.
Not that it mattered. Graham wasn’t planning on running the lodge as the quaint bed and breakfast in the mountains that it had previously been.
No, Whiskey Mountain Lodge was his new home.
His father had left behind an entire business that needed running, and Graham had nothing left for him in Seattle anyway. So he’d come to help his mother after the sudden death of her husband, and he’d had enough time to find somewhere to live and operate Springside Energy Operations as the CEO.
It was a step up, really. He’d only been the lead developer at Qualetics Robotics in Seattle, but the itch to develop technology and robotics to make people’s lives easier had died when his father had.
Graham hoped it would come back; Springside could definitely benefit from having the first fracking robot to identify the natural gases under the surface of the Earth before they drilled. But they were years away from that.
Just like Graham felt years away from anyone else out here.
A dog barked, reminding him that he’d inherited his father’s dog as well as his company, and he went over to the back door to let Bear back in. The big black lab seemed to move quite slowly, though he still wore his usual smile on his face.
“Hey, Bear.” He scrubbed the dog to wipe off the snowflakes that had settled on his back. “Guess I better go check on the horses.”
Whiskey Mountain had come with a riding stable, something tourists apparently liked to do in the summer months in Wyoming. Graham had grown up in Coral Canyon, Wyoming, but his parents lived in town, in a normal house, without any horses.
Of course, every man in Wyoming learned to ride, and Graham and his three brothers were no exception. But it had been a very, very long time since he’d saddled up in any sense of the word.
But today, though the lodge was a huge building, with dozens of places to which he could escape, he felt trapped. So he plucked his hat from the peg by the door and positioned it on his head. He didn’t get many opportunities to wear a cowboy hat in Seattle, but here, he’d worn it every day. And he liked it.
The brim kept the snow off his face as he trudged down the path he’d shoveled every day since moving in and headed toward the stables.
The stables were named DJ Riders, and Graham had no idea where it had come from. There were only three horses that had come with the property, and thankfully, the loft held enough hay to keep them fed for a while.
Graham went through the motions of feeding them, cleaning out their stalls, and making sure they had fresh water that hadn’t frozen over. January in Wyoming wasn’t for the weak-hearted, that was for sure, horse or human.
The chores done, Graham closed up the stables but turned away from the lodge up the lane. He had plenty of unpacking to do and no inclination to do it. Besides, it would keep, as he’d been living in the lodge for three days without the family pictures, all the dishes, or more than one towel. He’d survived so far, thanks to a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a pocketful of cash.
He wandered away from the stables, the barn, the rest of the outbuildings of the lodge. He passed a gazebo he hadn’t even known existed until that very moment, and he wondered what else he’d find on this parcel of land he’d put his name on. And who knew what spring would bring?
Probably pollen and allergies, he thought, still not entirely happy to be back in Coral Canyon though he’d made the decision to leave his job in Seattle and settle back in his hometown.
The snow muted his footsteps and made it difficult to go very far very fast. Didn’t matter. He had the whole day to do whatever he wanted. Tomorrow too. It wasn’t until Monday that he’d have to put on a suit and start figuring out how to manage an energy company with over two hundred employees.
He approached another building, this one a bit different than the ones he’d seen before. He wasn’t sure what it was, though it looked like a small cabin, with a stovepipe sticking out of the shingles on the roof. Did the lodge have a smaller place to live? Was this another guest area he could rent out?
He stepped closer and peered in the window, not seeing a door anywhere. The place was simply furnished and appeared to be one room with a door leading out of it on his right and into what he assumed was a bedroom.
A woman came out of the bedroom, buttoning her coat.
Graham yelped and backed up at the same time a dog put his front paws on the windowsill inside the house and started barking. And barking. And barking.
With his heart pounding and his adrenaline spiking out of control, Graham’s brain didn’t seem to be working properly. Therefore, he couldn’t move. Didn’t even think to move.
So he was still standing there like a peeping Tom when the woman lifted the window and said, “What are you doing here?” in a tone of voice that could’ve frozen the water into snow if the temperature hadn’t already done it.
“I—I—” Graham stammered. “Who are you?”
She cocked her hip, and Graham noticed the long, honey-blonde hair as she threw it over her shoulder before folding her arms. She possessed a pretty face, with a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks and nose. Her eyes could’ve been any color, as he was looking from the outside in and the light wasn’t the same.
If he’d had to, he’d categorize them as dangerous, especially when they flashed lightning at him.
“I am the owner of this property,” she said. “And you’re trespassing.”
Graham frowned, but at least his brain had started operating normally again. It was his pulse that was galloping now, wondering what he had to do to get invited in to find out what color those eyes were.
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought this was my place. I just bought Whiskey Mountain Lodge.” He waved in the general direction of the lodge, hoping it was the right way.
“The border is back there about a hundred yards,” she said, still positioned like he might come at her through the window screen. “There’s a fence.”
“Maybe it’s buried in all the snow.” Because he had definitely not crossed a fence line. He might have become a city slicker but he still knew what a fence meant. “I’m Graham Whittaker.”
A noise halfway between a squeak and a meow came from her mouth. Those eyes rounded, but he still couldn’t tell what color they were. “Graham Whittaker?”
He tilted his head now, studying her. Because she knew him. No one spoke with that much surprise in their voice if they didn’t know a person.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I’m….” He didn’t know how to finish. Everyone in Coral Canyon knew his father had died. Everyone knew the Whittakers had come to mourn. He supposed everyone though they’d all left again, except for his mother and his youngest brother, Beau, who lived in town and worked as a lawyer.
But he didn’t know what he was still doing in Coral Canyon, or why he felt the urge to explain it to this woman.
“Just a second.” She slammed the window shut and moved away. Feeling stupid, Graham stood there in the snow, wondering what she was going to do. Half a minute later, the dog that had tried to rip his face off through the glass came bounding through the snow from the front of the house.
“Clearwater,” the woman called after him, but the dog was either disobedient or didn’t care. The blue heeler came right up to Graham and started sniffing him.
Graham chuckled and scratched the dog behind his ears. “Yeah, I’ve got a lab. You can probably smell ‘im. Bear? His name’s Bear.”
/> The blonde woman came around the corner of the cabin, and she stopped much further away than her dog had. “Graham Whittaker.” This time she didn’t phrase it as a question, and a hint of a smile touched her lips. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Graham abandoned his administrations to the dog and took a step toward her, trying to place her. He thought he’d definitely remember someone as shapely as her, what with those long legs that curved into hips and narrowed to a waist, even in the black jacket she’d buttoned around herself.
He was about to apologize when the answer hit him full in the chest. “Laney Boyd?” He tore his eyes from hers to glance around the land, not that he could tell anything with the piles and piles of snow.
“Is this Echo Ridge Ranch?” he asked. He hadn’t realized the lodge property butted up against the ranch where he’d spent time as a teenager. And without looking back at Laney, he knew he’d find a pair of light green eyes. Eyes that came to life when she was atop a horse. Eyes that had always called to him. Eyes that saw more than he’d ever wanted her to. Beautiful, light green eyes he wanted to get to experience again.
When he looked at her again, her grin had filled her whole face. “It’s Laney McAllister now,” she said, dashing every hope he had of rekindling an old friendship—and maybe making it into something more.
Which is stupid, he told himself as he chuckled and walked through the snow to give her a hug hello. You just got your heart broken. No need to do it again.
Spend all your Christmases with the Whittaker brothers! Read HER COWBOY BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND now. Available in Kindle Unlimited.
Sneak Peek! CHEERING THE COWBOY Chapter One
Austin Royal washed his hands with the best mechanic’s soap available, but the faint black lines of grease never really left his skin. It would have to be enough. He was already late, and there was nothing that made him jumpier than walking into church after the sermon had started. Something his parents had engrained in him since he was a boy.