The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “I’m sorry, Carson. So very sorry.”

  Her low words seemed to echo through the quiet kitchen, reaching deep inside him to a raw wound he thought had healed long ago.

  Why the hell was he telling her this? He never talked about Suz and their baby. Never. There wasn’t another soul on earth who knew this part of his past, of the guilt and pain that had been his constant companions for so long after her death.

  He had been so alone, so angry. Just a stupid, powerless punk, bitter at the world and especially at the substandard hospital’s emergency room that had delayed admitting her because they were a poor teenage couple without health insurance, and at the incompetent doctors who hadn’t diagnosed her toxemia in time to save either of them.

  Mostly he had been consumed with guilt. He had vowed to love and cherish and take care of Suz and their baby and he had screwed up.

  He still carried that guilt inside him like an anchor, though he had become so accustomed to it after all these years that it just seemed a part of him now.

  He knew it had been his fault she died. If he had done a better job providing for them, it wouldn’t have happened. Early in her pregnancy he had taken a construction job with health insurance but had ended up walking out because of the callous way the company treated its workers.

  She had wanted to apply for government assistance, as her mother and sisters and everyone else in the inner-city projects where she had grown up had done. But Carson’s prickly pride wouldn’t allow it. He had promised her he would find another position with insurance before she had the baby, but times had been tough and he had failed. And because of his pride and stupid convictions, his wife and son had died.

  He could never forgive himself for that.

  He had vowed as he stood over the two side-by-side graves that he would never allow anyone else to depend on him. He couldn’t be counted on, nor could he count on anyone else. His childhood had taught him that.

  He had worked hard to graduate from college in three years by taking a double load of classes. He had used the small malpractice settlement from the hospital to invest in his first company, a failing Silicon Valley software start-up with a winning product but poor management. He had turned it around in eighteen months then bought another company and another and had been doing it ever since.

  Every McRaven company provided extensive health-care programs for its employees, especially prenatal care. It was a primary part of the business model.

  None of the success he found would ever ease the guilt over those two lives that had depended on him.

  “What was his name?”

  He blinked away the past and realized Jenna was watching him closely, her features soft with sympathy.

  “Your son,” she said when he didn’t answer. “What did you name him?”

  “Suzanna picked out Henry James. She’d always loved the author—and the name—so that’s what I stuck with.”

  He didn’t think about his son as often as he thought of his young wife. He had loved the idea of having a child as much as it had terrified him, but mostly he had been happy because Suzanna had been happy. She glowed with joy and hope at the idea of bringing new life into the world—a minor miracle itself, since her upbringing in deep poverty and despair would have left most women cynical about the future.

  Henry James McRaven would have been graduating from high school this year. It was a stunning realization.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenna said again. She laid a hand on his arm with a comforting kind of gesture that seemed a sweet balm to the aching corner inside him.

  “It seems like another lifetime ago. I was a different person.”

  “But it’s one of the things that shaped the man you’ve become, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Without question.”

  It had been a terrible time in his life, one he wouldn’t wish on anyone, but those years had defined everything that came after.

  If Suzanna and Henry had lived, he didn’t know what course his life would have taken. He certainly wouldn’t have been so driven to prove something to the cold, heartless bitch he called fate.

  He studied Jenna, this woman who had somehow managed to reach through his careful barriers and tug out memories and experiences he had always believed he preferred to keep close inside him.

  “So what events in your past helped shape the woman you’ve become?”

  She leaned against the marble work island, her head tilted as she appeared to consider his words. “I’m still very much a work in progress.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  A warm intimacy surrounded them in the quiet kitchen. That connection he had been fighting all day seemed to tighten between them.

  He should leave right now, before this thing between them grew even stronger. He knew it was the wise course—and he was a man who prided himself on his prudence. But he couldn’t seem to make himself move from this spot. He wanted to know about her, he discovered.

  “If you had to pick the top three events that shaped you, what would make the list?” he asked impulsively.

  She made a face. “No fair asking me to have a coherent thought after I’ve been on my feet since seven o’clock,” she protested. “Anyway, I don’t know if I could narrow it down to three.”

  “Try.”

  She paused for a moment, her forehead furrowed in concentration. “Well, I suppose off the top of my head—and purely in chronological order—the first thing would have to be my parents’ death in a car accident when I was sixteen. My brother Paul had just turned twenty-one and he became legal guardian to me. I was a sixteen-year-old girl who thought she was invincible and that was the first time I realized the precariousness, the fragility, of life.”

  “That’s one.”

  Her features grew pensive. “Of course, I would have to include falling in love with Joe the summer before I graduated from college, and then marrying him and moving home to Pine Gulch to stay for good. Hand in hand with that would have to be the births of each of our beautiful children. Those four wise little souls shaped me more than anything else.”

  She grew quiet, her eyes shadowed. “Then my world and my children’s was forever changed two years ago on October 15 when a tractor rolled over on the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, crushing our future together. I guess that’s three.”

  A few days ago, he would have thought he had little in common with a woman like Jenna Wheeler. But the pain in her eyes was only too familiar. For a long time after Suzanna’s death, he had seen it gazing back at him in the mirror.

  “It sucks, doesn’t it?” he said.

  She was speechless for a moment then she laughed, a low, surprised sound that somehow lifted his spirits.

  “It really does. That’s the perfect word for it.”

  He wanted to kiss her again. He had spent all day telling himself why that would be a grievous mistake, but right now none of those reasons seemed very important. She was soft and warm and eminently desirable here in the quiet of his kitchen.

  He leaned forward slightly and he could smell her again, that strangely seductive scent of vanilla and cinnamon.

  Her gaze met his and in those glittery green depths he saw the same spark of awareness that sizzled through him, the same subtle yearning.

  She caught her breath and leaned toward him slightly, her weight canted onto her toes.

  His nerves tightened with anticipation and he moved to close the last few inches between them.

  At the very last second, just when his mouth would have covered hers, she turned her head and took a jerky step backward.

  “Please don’t, Carson. Not again.” She let out a shaky breath and he saw her hands were trembling.

  Frustration burned through him. She had been ready for his kiss, had parted her lips in clear invitation. He knew he hadn’t imagined it. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s completely unfair!” Her voice was heated. “I have no defenses against a man like you.”

&nbs
p; “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She drew her hands to her suddenly rosy cheeks, then dropped them as if the heat there burned her fingers. “I have dated one man seriously in my life and I married him a year later. I’m not the sort of sophisticated socialite who can do the casual affair thing. I’m just not.”

  “What makes you think that’s what I want?”

  She gave him an impatient look. “You will break my heart, Carson. I’m sure you won’t mean to but you’ll do it anyway because that’s the kind of man you are.”

  Her words shouldn’t have the power to hurt him but they sliced him open anyway. “How do you know what kind of man I am?”

  Her laugh sounded sharply discordant after the warm intimacy they had just shared. “Look at you. You’re like something out of a movie. Gorgeous, rich, successful. I’m the mother of four children, hanging by my fingernails on the ledge of a wild, turbulent world. You will chew me up and spit me out and there will be absolutely nothing I can do about it. When whatever this is is out of your system, I will be left here living just down the hill from Raven’s Nest, forced to see your house out my window and remember.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. We can go back to the place we were before you…before you kissed me this afternoon. I had hoped we were on our way to being, if not friends, at least friendly.”

  “That’s what you want? A friend?”

  “Right now I want to go home to my children. I’ve been away too long. I’ll be back first thing in the morning for breakfast.”

  He wanted to argue with her. To tell her he had never known anything like his attraction to her. But how could he possibly refute what he knew was absolute truth?

  “That snow has made everything slick. Be careful.”

  Her smile was rueful and, he thought, a little sad. “What do you think the last five minutes was all about?”

  Before he could answer, she grabbed her scarf and coat off the hook by the back door and headed out into the snow.

  A few moments later, he watched her van’s headlights cut through the night as she headed down the drive toward her house.

  She was right. Somehow they needed to step back a bit. What other option was there? She wasn’t interested in anything casual and he would never allow anything else. As soon as Christmas was over, he would be heading back to California, to his deals and his penthouse and the life he had carved out for himself, as empty and cold as that suddenly seemed.

  Chapter Ten

  “Mom, Hayden won’t move so we can see. Make him cut it out!”

  Jenna closed her eyes and whispered a quick, fervent prayer for patience. She looked toward the closed kitchen door that led to the rest of the house and then back toward the small couch and love seat where her boys were sitting by the fireplace in their pajamas.

  “Come on, guys. Hayden, quit teasing your brothers. You promised. I just need you all to sit quietly and watch Rudolph for a while, okay? And then Aunt Terri will be here to take you back to the house.”

  “This is a baby show,” Hayden grumbled.

  “What are you talking about? This is your favorite show!”

  “No way. It’s totally stupid.”

  She glared at her oldest. He was such a leader to the other boys. If they picked up his lead and refused to watch the DVD she had brought, she just might have a mutiny on her hands, which was the absolute last thing she needed when she still had a hundred things to do before breakfast in an hour.

  When had her oldest son become too old to enjoy one of the classic Christmas specials? It was a tough age for a boy, she knew. He was ten and struggling to decide if he still wanted to be a boy or a preadolescent. Since his father’s death she had watched him as he tried to grow up faster than she thought he should.

  She had desperately tried to avoid exactly this scenario—having to bring the children with her to Raven’s Nest while she prepared breakfast for Carson and his guests. She thought she had everything arranged and had planned to have her niece, Erin, sleep over so she could spend the morning with the children.

  But when she returned to her house the night before, after that awkward encounter with Carson, Erin had apologetically informed her she forgot she had promised to cover a friend’s paper route and had to be home to take care of it.

  She had hoped to be finished before Jenna had to leave for Raven’s Nest but Terri had called her and said the route was taking longer than they planned because of the snow. They expected to be done in the next hour.

  She had to keep her fingers crossed and hope the holiday magic of Rudolph and his friends would keep the children preoccupied enough that they wouldn’t start ripping apart Carson’s house.

  If not for Hayden, it just might work. Jolie was still sound asleep in one corner of the couch and the other two boys were at least moderately interested, though she could see the indecision in their eyes. If Hayden called it a baby show, neither Drew nor Kip would be caught dead watching it.

  She considered her maternal grab bag of manipulation techniques and decided the fine art of diversion was a proven winner. “If you don’t want to watch the show, why don’t you come and help me?”

  He opened his mouth to protest but then a crafty light entered his green eyes. “Will you pay me as much as you’re paying Erin to sit with us? She says she’s making a ton.”

  She smiled. “I guess that depends on how much help you are. While I crack the eggs for the frittata, why don’t you come and peel these oranges so we can squeeze them for juice?”

  He looked less than thrilled but apparently he decided the possibility of a little coin was more exciting than watching a baby show with his brothers.

  It was actually quite enjoyable working beside him while the DVD played quietly in the background. She had discovered these small moments working one-on-one with her children provided an invaluable opportunity for conversation she would normally miss. With four children, she sometimes felt stretched thin when all of them were talking to her at once. She had learned to cherish any opportunity to interact with them individually—even when she was knee-deep in work making a gourmet breakfast for seven people.

  For twenty minutes, she and Hayden talked about his favorite subject right now, football, and his favorite team, the Denver Broncos. The time flew past as they talked about passing percentages and wild card play-off slots and player trades. They talked about school and about his friends and his plans for the rest of Christmas vacation.

  The time flew past and before she knew it, a quick check of the clock told her it was 7:10 a.m. and Carson’s guests were expecting breakfast in twenty minutes.

  She just might make it, she thought as she poured the freshly squeezed juice into a crystal pitcher.

  The door to the kitchen suddenly opened and her ridiculous heart skipped a beat when Carson appeared in Levi’s and an earth-toned sweater. His dark hair was damp and he was freshly shaved and all she could think about for one crazy moment was the stunning heat they had shared the day before.

  “Mom, the orange juice is spilling!” Hayden exclaimed.

  She looked down and realized she had just wasted a good cup or more of his hard work by letting the pitcher overflow. Juice dripped all over the countertop in a sticky orange mess.

  She flushed and reached for the roll of paper towels. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “Is the coffee ready?” Carson asked.

  “It should be.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his gaze, though she was painfully aware of him.

  “Smells good in here.”

  She suddenly remembered the scent of him, masculine and sexy, and ordered herself to stop. She would never stop blushing if she couldn’t manage to focus on breakfast.

  “I was still shooting for seven-thirty for everything to be ready.” She forced her voice to be brisk and professional as she finished cleaning up the orange juice and turned her attention to the final thing
on her list, the batch of currant muffins she had added to the menu at the last minute. “Does that time still work for you and your guests?”

  “Everybody seems to be stirring. Frederick was getting in a swim a minute ago but he looked like he was just ready to get out. We were trying to head to the slopes in Jackson by eight-thirty.”

  “I love to snowboard,” Hayden announced. “My dad used to take me before he died. I’m saving up to buy a new snowboard and I almost have enough.”

  That was the first she had heard of that particular plan. Last she knew, Hayden was saving to go to a football camp at Idaho State in the summer.

  “You’ve got helpers this morning.”

  She gave Carson a quick look, trying to gauge his reaction to her children’s presence, but he only looked impassive and rather distant. “Yes. I didn’t have a choice. If you’ve got a problem with it, I’m more than willing to let you make your own currant muffins.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did I say I had a problem with it? I was simply making an observation.”

  She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive or confrontational and she worked to moderate her tone.

  “My niece is supposed to be tending them for me this morning but something came up and she can’t get here for another—” she glanced at the omnipresent clock on the river-rock fireplace “—fifteen minutes. They have promised they’d be on their best behavior until then and so far they’ve been great. We’ve been here nearly an hour and you didn’t even know they were here, did you?”

  “I didn’t hear a sound,” he assured her as he moved to the coffeemaker and pulled a mug out of the cupboard above it.

  He poured a cup but before he could take a sip, Jenna heard a squeaking kind of sound and looked down to see Jolie had awakened while she had been talking to Carson.

  Her daughter stood next to her in her red footie pajamas, hanging on to Jenna’s pant leg with one hand as she rubbed her bleary eyes.

  “Hi, baby.”

  “Mama. Up.”