Close Range Christmas

by Nicole Helm

  Dev placed his hands over Sarah’s belly.

  “I can feel the baby kick you. I heard his heartbeat. But he still doesn’t feel...real.”

  No, none of any of this felt real, most especially Dev touching her like this. But it would. At least the baby would. “He will. When you hold him. It’ll feel more real than we can imagine.”

  Dev looked at Sarah. His gaze was searching. Open. There was something in those hazel eyes that had her breath catching in her throat.

  But then he dropped his hands and stepped back. “We should get going. Don’t want to be separated any more than we have to be.”

  Sarah could only nod, because her throat was too tight, and everything she’d dreamed of was too close. But instead of reaching for it, demanding it, she kept her mouth shut and followed Dev back out to the waiting room.

  Because there was still a stalker torturing them, and no dreams were going to be realized in the midst of that...

  CLOSE RANGE CHRISTMAS

  Nicole Helm

  Nicole Helm grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons and dreams of someday owning a barn.

  Books by Nicole Helm

  Harlequin Intrigue

  A Badlands Cops Novel

  South Dakota Showdown

  Covert Complication

  Backcountry Escape

  Isolated Threat

  Badlands Beware

  Close Range Christmas

  Carsons & Delaneys: Battle Tested

  Wyoming Cowboy Marine

  Wyoming Cowboy Sniper

  Wyoming Cowboy Ranger

  Wyoming Cowboy Bodyguard

  Carsons & Delaneys

  Wyoming Cowboy Justice

  Wyoming Cowboy Protection

  Wyoming Christmas Ransom

  Stone Cold Texas Ranger

  Stone Cold Undercover Agent

  Stone Cold Christmas Ranger

  Harlequin Superromance

  A Farmers’ Market Story

  All I Have

  All I Am

  All I Want

  Falling for the New Guy

  Too Friendly to Date

  Too Close to Resist

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Dev Wyatt—Former police officer who suffered major injuries at the hands of his father that led to him leaving the force. Now works as a rancher at Reaves ranch, which has been in his grandmother’s family for generations.

  Sarah Knight—Rancher helping her father run their ranch next door to the Reaves ranch. Lifelong friends with Dev Wyatt, she convinces him to be the father of her baby with the understanding he won’t be involved in the baby’s life.

  Duke Knight—Owner of the Knight ranch. Sarah’s adoptive father. Rachel’s biological father. Cecilia’s uncle. Foster father to Liza, Nina, Cecilia and Felicity.

  Pauline Reaves—Grandmother to the Wyatt brothers.

  Anth Wyatt—Man behind the threatening notes being left for the Wyatt brothers.

  Jamison, Cody, Brady, Gage Wyatt—Dev’s brothers, who all work in various law enforcement capacities and are being threatened by the same man.

  Liza, Nina, Felicity, Cecilia and Rachel—Sarah’s adoptive/foster sisters, all involved with their own Wyatt brother.

  I have to dedicate my fiftieth published work to computers, because after watching the recent Little Women movie, I know I couldn’t have done it by pen.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Investigation in Black Canyon by Cindi Myers

  Prologue

  March

  “You’re avoiding me.”

  Dev Wyatt looked up from the beer in his hand to the woman he was indeed avoiding at all costs. He didn’t know if she meant tonight at his brother’s and her foster sister’s wedding or in general, because both were true.

  But he was especially avoiding her tonight because she was wearing a dress that made what he had been trying to ignore for years all too clear. Sarah Knight was hot and he had no business noticing the generous curves all too invitingly showcased in some silky siren-red fabric.

  Worse, he had no business considering her... proposition. Even though it had been lodged in his head for the entire month she’d been hounding him over it. She was his neighbor, adopted daughter of the man he looked up most to in the world, a good eight years younger than him, and a business partner of sorts. With neighboring ranches, and their siblings losing their minds and all marrying each other, they helped each other quite a bit.

  He took a swig of beer then scowled at her. “Of course I’m avoiding you, Sarah. You’ve lost your mind and I’m tired of you trying to drag me into it.”

  He didn’t have to look at her to know she would have raised her chin at that.

  “It isn’t losing my mind to go after what I want,” she said stubbornly. And worse, resolutely. Even his hard head had nothing on Sarah’s resolute.

  She wanted a baby. Dev couldn’t figure out why. She was only twenty-five. She wasn’t exactly running out of time for the whole husband and kids thing.

  When he’d brought that up, she’d scoffed.

  I’m never going to find someone. I don’t leave my ranch, and I don’t want to. But I do want to be a mother. I’ve given it a lot of thought and you are the best option for father.

  He’d given her every argument he could think of.

  Sperm bank? Too expensive. Adoption? She herself was adopted and wanted someone in her life to be genetically related to her. Stranger at a bar? Similar reasons to the adoption and worse, what if the stranger wanted to be involved?

  He’d tried them all, and she had rational, reasonable responses to every excuse he put up. Not that having sex with him to get a baby was in any way rational or reasonable to begin with.

  “You’re young,” Dev insisted. “You might change your mind.” He nodded out to where his brother Brady was dancing with his new wife, Cecilia. He never would have predicted that. Things and people changed. “You might want all that in a few years.”

  Sarah looked at Cecilia and Brady smiling at each other. She seemed to give that some thought, but he should have known better. She turned her big blue eyes on him.

  “Are you going to change your mind about not wanting a family? Are you going to change your mind about running Reaves Ranch?”

  He could lie and say a person never knew what might change, but no. Those were the two tenets of his life—keeping everyone at arm’s length and running his grandmother’s ranch, which had been in his family for generations. Something go
od his blood had done with this earth.

  Sarah knew it just as well as he did, so he said nothing.

  But she nodded as if he’d agreed with her. “And I’m not going to change my mind about wanting to be a mother, and not really wanting a partner to do it. You’re the only guy I know who doesn’t want a family and isn’t going to change his mind, but who I know well enough to...you know. So I’m not letting this go. Might as well give in.”

  The worst part was knowing that when Sarah got an idea in her head, she did not let it go. He’d have to keep fending her off for...forever.

  She touched his arm so he had to look down at her. Sarah was usually all sharp edges and sharper words, but her expression was open and vulnerable here. Which was horrifying.

  “You’re the only one who can help me, Dev. Please.”

  Dev couldn’t remember Sarah ever saying please to him, or worse, asking him for anything. No one asked him for anything anymore. Ever since he’d barely survived his father’s attack on him over a decade ago, leaving him permanently damaged—body and spirit—the best he could hope for was ranching. For being considered the grumpy Wyatt brother, whose only use was keeping an eye on Grandma Pauline. Not that she needed any tending.

  Sarah wanted to get pregnant and raise a baby on her own, with no one knowing he was the father. Which didn’t bother him because he didn’t want to be a father or a husband. He had plans to be alone for the rest of his life.

  Still, she was asking him to...sleep with her. Maybe the reasons were biological. The act was personal, though.

  It was wrong, but she was looking up at him, blue eyes sincere rather than piercing daggers like usual. Her touch was light instead of the random punches she usually aimed at him if she was going to touch him.

  Because Sarah was the only one in his life who rarely treated him like he was fragile. Enough that she was asking him for this. She thought he could do it. Give her this thing she so desperately wanted that she’d been bugging him about it for weeks. Hounding him and refusing to find another alternative. Because she wanted it this way.

  And she needed him.

  No one should need him, and he shouldn’t fool himself into thinking he could help. Not anymore.

  He tried to fight the overwhelming need to give in. Maybe Sarah knew what she wanted, but she didn’t know what she was asking. She couldn’t want help from him. No one could.

  “Dev. Just once.” She slid her hand up his arm, and of all the ways she’d touched him in the twenty-some years he’d lived with his grandmother at Reaves Ranch with Sarah next door at Knight Ranch, she’d never once touched him like that. “If it doesn’t work,” she continued, leaning in so that her painted mouth was all too close to his, “I’ll let it go. Promise.”

  He’d be stupid to believe her. She’d never let it go. And just once would be...well, something like a catastrophe.

  Aren’t you intimately acquainted with catastrophe?

  He downed his beer. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. But he had a very bad feeling he was going to end up doing it, one way or another.

  “Better drink up,” he muttered, heading for the bar.

  * * *

  SARAH WOKE UP the next morning with a pounding headache, and only fuzzy memories of Dev in her hotel room. Much as it had been her idea, and she’d relentlessly hounded Dev until he’d given in, she’d still been more than a little nervous to have sex with someone she’d known her whole life. With the sole purpose of getting pregnant. So getting really drunk had been an excellent plan.

  She even applauded herself for it as weeks passed. That’s what she’d wanted. The act that led to a baby, not the act that meant something. She tried not to think of the night that was just fuzzy memories of a few kisses and touches and laughing a little too hard at Dev Wyatt kissing her.

  When she did think about it, she was glad for the lack of memory. She couldn’t remember what Dev looked like naked, which was good considering how closely they worked together on their neighboring ranches. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure they’d actually done anything, considering how Dev didn’t treat her any differently as the weeks piled up. Maybe he’d just let her think they had.

  Or maybe her plan had worked.

  From that morning after, she’d counted down the days until the earliest moment she could take a pregnancy test. Now she just had to pray that one drunk hookup with one of her best friends in the world had yielded what she’d always wanted.

  A baby.

  She inhaled sharply. Today was the day. She’d driven two towns over to buy the pregnancy test. In the Walmart bathroom, she’d discovered that her insane plan had indeed worked.

  She was pregnant. The test in her hand said so.

  It didn’t feel real. She’d expected to be magically transformed. Her plan had worked. There were still a hell of a lot more steps to go: a doctor’s appointment, lying to her family that she’d hooked up with a random stranger, and then actually preparing for a baby. But she’d expected to feel settled and ready once she’d seen the positive result.

  She was thrilled. Ecstatic. But...was there really a baby in there? She hadn’t had any noticeable symptoms. She’d overanalyzed every cramp, every moment of tiredness, and determined that nothing was all that different.

  Maybe the test was wrong. She went through the whole process over again, with the same result. She threw everything away, washed her hands and then headed out of the store to her truck.

  She was going to believe she’d succeeded. She was pregnant. Maybe she didn’t feel different yet, but she would. As she went through everything she had to do, she’d have more and more belief, until there was a little baby in her arms.

  Her own baby. Someone who shared her blood. Someone she’d be able to look at and maybe see her own eyes or nose. A mix of her and...

  Dev.

  She couldn’t tell anyone else yet, but she could tell him. She drove back home, deciding she’d stop by the Reaves ranch.

  She wanted a baby for herself. Someone to belong to her. Her sisters were all off married or living with their Wyatt boyfriends. The Knight house was quiet with just her and Dad. Much as Sarah loved her adopted father—the only father she could remember—she wanted more than just...the two of them.

  She wanted to be a mother. She wanted a child. The plan had been a little far-fetched but it had given her exactly what she wanted—what she needed.

  It was all about her. She convinced herself of that over and over again. Until she parked her car next to the barn on the Reaves Ranch.

  She walked inside. Dev was brushing down his horse, that permanent scowl affixed to his face. He said it was just his expression, but Sarah knew it was pain. After a long day of riding, his leg hurt him.

  She stood in the doorway of the barn and admitted that as much as she’d done this for her own self, she’d also harbored a tiny hope that the reality of a baby might...reach Dev. He was a good man—as good as his brothers. The problem was, since his injuries had kept him from returning to law enforcement, he considered himself less than those brothers.

  He wasn’t, but he’d have to come to that conclusion on his own.

  So if a baby woke him up out of the dark cloud he kept himself in, that would be icing on the cake. She wouldn’t expect it, but she could hope for it.

  “Help you?” he demanded when she thought she’d been staring unnoticed.

  Still, she didn’t startle. She was too used to his grumpy preternatural observations. So she stepped forward. The faint light of the barn highlighted him, and his face looked...hard. There was something edgy and dangerous about him in this light.

  It gave her an odd shiver of foreboding, but she pushed that away. She came up to stand next to him. “Well, it worked. The whole baby thing.”

  He looked down at her, expression guarded. “Congratulations,” he said, with absolutely no in
flection on the word.

  “Thank you. It’s early yet, and I’ll have to go to the doctor, but...” She felt teary, surprisingly emotional over telling him. But it was big. Huge. “Thank you, Dev. I don’t think I could ever tell you how much it means to me that—”

  “Don’t mention it. Ever. Really.”

  He didn’t ask her anything else, but he gave her a brush and they worked in companionable silence. It felt...right. He’d given her what she’d always wanted, and now things would go back to normal.

  Until she had to tell her family. Until she started to show. Until she had a baby.

  She laughed and shook her head. Life was about to get flipped on its head, and that was fine. That was what she wanted. But there was more to this than what she wanted. Something she hadn’t predicted. “If you ever want to—”

  “I don’t,” he said, and there was more emotion in those two words than everything he’d said so far.

  “Okay, I’m only saying it because you’re alone, Dev. Not because I need you to be involved. You’re just the only one who...” She trailed off. It seemed cruel to point out all their siblings were building lives, she was having a baby and Dev was still...in a black cloud of his own making.

  “I’m exactly where I have to be,” Dev replied. He took the brush from her and tossed it in a pail. “I’m heading inside for dinner. I’m sure Grandma Pauline made enough.” Then he walked away with that kind-of invitation hanging there.

  Sarah could only frown after him, mulling over what he’d said. Because have to be wasn’t the same as want to be.

  Chapter One

  In June, Sarah had broken the news to her family. She’d refused to name the father no matter how they’d prodded. From there, she’d begun to adjust to her new normal. It wasn’t all that different than her old one.

  If she lived with the tiny hope Dev might slowly come around, she didn’t let on to that expectation to him or anyone else. She kept it buried deep.

  In August, she’d found out she was having a boy. While her sisters all had girls, she was going to have a boy. Much as she would have been happy with any healthy child, a boy was a relief. Sarah wouldn’t know what to do with a girl. She barely knew what to do with herself when it came to all the girly things her sisters seemed so natural at.