Looking gorgeous as ever in a red wool coat, a white scarf wound around her neck, Nora met him at the top of the steps. “I wanted us to be able to talk without interruption.”
Talking sounded good. But first...
Zane ushered her inside, out of the cold, and said, “Before we do that, I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
He exhaled roughly. “For overreacting...and for storming out.”
He watched her unwind her scarf, then helped her off with her coat. Took off his own. Taking her by the hand, he led her over to the sofa.
“I thought about it,” he told her as they sat down, knee to knee. Clasping her soft hands in his, he confided gruffly, “And I realize what you were trying to do, letting me know it was okay with you if I wanted to reenlist again. It was a big sacrifice.”
Nora’s lips curved ruefully. “Not enough of one.” She clasped his hands tighter and looked intently into his eyes. “Because you were right, Zane. I decided your future for you because it was easier than facing my own issues.”
This was a big admission.
And a startling one.
“Which are?” he asked, really wanting to understand.
“All my life I’ve equated love with loss, need with abandonment. And that mindset was even worse after my grandparents died.” She choked up. “So I’ve tried really hard not to let or allow myself to be vulnerable with anyone.”
He used his thumbs to wipe away the tears trembling on her lower lashes. “It wasn’t just you putting up walls, Nora,” he told her, wrapping his arms around her. “I’ve done the same thing.”
She rested her forehead in the curve of his neck. Inhaled a shaky breath. “At least your reason was noble. Made out of honor and duty to your country.”
Tucking a hand beneath her chin, he lifted her gaze to his. “In some respects, yes. But in others, it was done out of a fear of being boxed in, bored, restless.” All the bane of his youth.
Nora looked at him long and hard. “And now?”
“I found a solution.”
He released her and rose. Taking her by the hand, he led her over to his desk. “I didn’t want to tell you until the dream became a reality. But now that it has...” He opened up a folder, handed her a blueprint and a business plan.
Nora studied both. Cheeks pinkening, she read in surprise. “Lockhart Search And Rescue?”
“Laramie County does not have a dedicated search and rescue team. Nor do any of the surrounding counties.”
She nodded. “None of them have the budget for a service that is only needed part of the time. Which, as we found out with Mr. Pierce’s situation this week, is a real problem.”
“Right, because in an emergency, they’re left to cobble together resources as best they can, sometimes from as far away as San Antonio or Dallas. And they pay exorbitant rates for them, too.”
Nora’s eyes lit up. “So there is a definite need,” she said, beginning to understand.
Zane nodded, relieved to have this all out in the open. “One I plan to fill with ex-military, like me, who are skilled in search and rescue. I’ll run it out of the No Name—which by the way will be rechristened with the name of the new business—and have help on-site available to be dispatched twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for a seven-county radius.”
Nora blinked in surprise. “So that’s what’s been going on out here?”
“Choppers don’t come cheap. To get a small business loan, I had to come up with a comprehensive business plan and put my ranch up as collateral. To do that, I had to have the property appraised. Thanks to Sage’s banker friend, Raquel, in Dallas, I got what we needed,” he announced happily. “The loan was approved yesterday. The funds will be in place by the time I come back to Texas on January 15.”
Hurt shimmered in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, confused.
“I should have. I know that now.”
“But while all this was going on...?”
Brusquely, he admitted, “I had promised you stuff before, then was unable to deliver on those vows. I didn’t want to do that again.”
Her pretty eyes lit with understanding, giving him the courage to go on.
He drew her all the way into his arms. “And to be honest, when I first came back to Laramie, I didn’t know what I was going to be able to do here professionally.”
To his relief, she understood that, too.
“Until I started talking to the people at the sheriff’s, fire and EMS departments,” he confessed, breathing in the sweet, womanly scent of her. “And realized just how little they had to offer me in the way of full-time work that matched my skills, and yet how deep their need went, too.”
Nora nodded, smiling. “So the next time someone gets lost...or wanders off from a campsite...”
“It’ll be Lockhart Search and Rescue that gets called.”
She studied him a long moment. “You really want to do this?”
Contentment flowed through him. He brought her even closer. “I really do.”
Nora lifted her lips to his. “Oh, Zane, I love you so much.”
His heart swelled. “I love you, too.” He kissed her softly, deeply. Then lifted his head, eager to spill the rest. Smiling, he said, “And that brings me to the second part of my plan to make this the best Christmas ever.”
With her watching raptly, Zane produced a velvet box. She flipped open the lid and gasped at the gleaming platinum solitaire diamond inside.
“Marry me, Nora,” he urged in a voice filled with all the affection he felt. “And let me be the husband and father you and Liam deserve. Let me make all your dreams come true.”
Nora’s pulse pounded with excitement and joy. This was the best Christmas present he could ever have given her! Better yet, a start to a new and wonderful life for them all. Happy tears spilling down her cheeks, she threw her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe and gave him a resounding kiss, amplified by all the love and tenderness she felt in her heart. He really was all she had ever wanted and needed, and at long last she knew she was that for him, too.
“Yes, Zane,” she murmured emotionally, basking in the love flowing freely between them, “yes!”
Epilogue
One year later
Looking gorgeous as ever, Nora stood ten feet back from the entrance to Lockhart Search and Rescue, sixteen-month-old Liam in her arms. A Christmas wreath looped over one shoulder, Zane moved the ladder beneath the iron archway. “You’re going to have to tell me where you want it,” he said.
Nora squinted, considering. “The center would be good.”
“Cen’, Daddy!” Liam shouted, pumping both his little arms.
Grinning at his son’s helpfulness, Zane positioned the evergreen wreath with the red velvet bow. “Here?” he asked his two “helpers.”
Nora tilted her head to one side, a cascade of chestnut hair spilled across her slender shoulder. “A little to the right,” she said finally.
Trying not to be distracted by the new lushness of her curves—not an easy task—he obliged. “Here?”
She paused, then pursed her soft lips together in a very kissable pout.
But then, her lips were always kissable...
“Maybe slightly to the left,” she said finally.
Zane moved it again.
“Another inch.”
Not sure what she was going for—weren’t they about to get off center now?—he again moved the wreath ever so slightly.
“Again. In the other direction.”
Frowning, he did as asked.
“No,” she corrected, sighing loudly, “back the other way!”
He turned and saw her peering at him mischievously. She laughed at the baleful expression he gave her.
<
br /> “Actually,” she said drily, “that’s good right there.”
He regarded her with comically exaggerated admonition. “It’s good that’s good.” He waggled his brows teasingly. “Or we’d be switching places.”
“Which would be a real problem since I’m not tall enough to reach that, even with the ladder.”
He chuckled. “True.”
“True, Daddy!” Liam echoed. Then at their looks of surprise, he pumped his little arms and let out a belly laugh that quickly had them laughing even more.
Finished fastening the decoration, Zane climbed back down and returned the ladder to the bed of his pickup truck.
Aware he had never been more content in his life, he moved to stand next to his family. Gazing down at Nora’s lovely face, he asked, “How long before the activity buses from Laramie Gardens arrive?”
Nora consulted her watch. “Thirty minutes.”
“How many times have they been out here?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I think this makes their tenth tour. But the residents never tire of seeing the equipment you use and talking with the guys and gals who work here, so...it’s all good.”
“It is all good.” With a smile, he leaned down to kiss her. “Starting with the fact we’re married.”
“Agreed.”
“Proud parents of one amazing child.” He cast an adoring look at Liam, then reached down to pat her tummy. “With another on the way...”
Nora grinned, shifting the son they had both adopted over to his arms for holding. “I really agree there.”
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, while cuddling Liam on the right, he brought her in close to his left side. Brushed his lips across her temple. “I never imagined I could be as happy as I am now.”
“Neither did I,” Nora whispered back.
But they were.
Smiling, she predicted, “And the best is yet to come...”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE COWBOY SEAL’S CHRISTMAS BABY by Laura Marie Altom.
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The Cowboy SEAL’s Christmas Baby
by Laura Marie Altom
Chapter One
Why was a baby crying?
Gaze narrowed, Gideon Snow hunched forward in his saddle. He tugged his cowboy hat’s brim lower against the driving sleet’s pinprick assault. At least twenty miles in on a sixty-mile trail through northern Arizona’s Asuaguih mountain range, on an early December day fit for neither man nor beast, the last thing he should be hearing was an infant’s wail. But there it was again.
Waaahuhah.
Had to be a fox.
No woman in her right mind would bring a baby out in this weather.
Jelly Bean, the pinto mare he’d been rehabilitating for a good twelve weeks, snorted. The cold had her exhalations wreathing her head in white.
“Good girl.” Gideon leaned forward, smoothing his hand along her left cheek. She’d been through a lot—trapped in a burning barn during a Nevada sandstorm. Her fourteen-year-old owner died trying to save her. The girl’s father had carried his lifeless daughter from the flames, then returned for the horse she loved. But the normally easygoing pinto charged into the heart of the storm. Three days after the girl’s funeral, Jelly Bean returned to what was left of the barn. It had taken six men to corral her into a trailer. Her coat had been ravaged by the storm. Her eyes filled with protective mucus.
It had taken Gideon a month of sweet talk to get near the poor creature, but once they’d turned the corner from strangers to friends, progress had been swift. Jelly Bean’s owner prayed to keep the horse in the family as a living tribute to Angela.
This trail ride was Jelly Bean’s final exam.
Gideon had waited for the ugliest conditions possible to push her to her limits. Tonight, he’d stop to make a campfire, and if she could once again handle being at a safe distance from flames, he’d know she was nearing the end of her stay with him.
Gideon would be sad to see her go.
Folks in this lonely corner of the world called him a horse whisperer, but at this point in his life, after all he’d been through, he figured it was the other way around. The horses helped him make sense of a life he no longer recognized as his own.
Was he angry? Hell, yes.
But that didn’t change anything, and it sure as hell wouldn’t bring back his wife or—
Waaaahhhuh!
Jelly Bean whinnied, turning her head toward the sound.
“What do you think, girl? Could there really be a baby out here, or is a crafty fox trying to get a piece of weekend action?”
Of course, the horse gave no answer.
The fact that Gideon had grown close enough to the mare that he’d halfway expected one told him it was high time he start talking to creatures other than horses. But since he still couldn’t stand being around people, maybe he should at least get a dog?
Another hundred yards down the steep, rocky trail, zigzagging around ponderosa pines and thick underbrush, landed Gideon in a clearing.
A blue dome-style tent flapped in the wind, and sure enough, from inside, there was no denying a baby’s panicked wail.
Pumped with adrenaline, Gideon dismounted, loosely looped Jelly Bean’s reins around the nearest pine trunk, then charged toward the infant. He ignored the mild discomfort in his left leg, but upon reaching the tent, he couldn’t ignore the blood. The way it snapped him back to a time he’d fought hard to forget.
Blood pooled on the tent’s floor.
It was everywhere.
And for a moment, red was all his eyes were capable of seeing. But then he forced his breathing to slow, shifting his gaze to the baby. The unconscious woman upon whose chest the infant shivered.
Holy shit...
Think, man...
For an instant, Gideon froze, taking it all in. The blood. The baby. The woman. The sleet’s clatter on the nylon tent.
But then he sprang into action, ducking inside the shelter to check the woman’s pulse. It was weak, but there.
Though getting a signal was a long shot, he unbuttoned his long duster coat and reached into his shirt pocket for his cell. As he’d assumed—zero bars.
He growled in frustration.
The contrast of the woman’s lon
g dark hair against her ghost-white complexion made her appear nearer death than life. A nasty bruise marred her otherwise flawless forehead. In Iraq, he’d grown too familiar with this sort of grisly scene. To find it again here, on this mountain he turned to for security and peace, was unacceptable.
He refused to succumb to the dark memories filling his dreams. Instead, for this woman and her baby—for himself—he had to fight.
First things first.
Triage. The baby’s screams had grown frantic.
Gideon reached for the infant, who was half-covered by a sweatshirt. He lifted the newborn only to receive his next blow—the cord hadn’t yet been cut.
Lord...
No need to panic. Women had been having babies for hundreds of years before fancy birthing suites ever existed. He’d make a fire to sterilize his knife, then do the deed.
He fully covered the infant, then exited the tent.
The red pool had darkened to rust, telling him the woman was at least somewhat stable since there was no additional fresh bleeding.
With the weather worsening, Gideon moved Jelly Bean beneath the shelter of a mammoth pine.
He unlatched his saddlebags, hanging them over his shoulder to carry back to the tent. Inside were dry clothes, a few first aid basics and fire-starting materials. There was also plenty of food and water, but no baby formula or bottles.
Back outside, he found another towering pine that was out of the horse’s view, then assembled a small fire. His grandfather taught him the secret to making all-weather starting blocks that never failed to produce instant heat. Since the wood he’d dragged beneath the tree was wet, it took longer to catch, but soon enough crackling flames banished the cold.
For further insurance, he constructed a small lean-to made of sticks and pine boughs to put another layer of protection between his only heat source and the sleet.
The baby’s wails drove him at a furious pace.
When they stopped, the silence, save for the sleet’s clatter, came as a relief, but then terror struck. Had the infant died?
A Texas Soldier's Christmas Page 19