She wanted to make a good impression on this group that Anya obviously cared about. She drew a deep breath and raised her hand to knock on the heavy door, but it was yanked open before she could. Anya stood in the doorway, grinning at her.
“About time you got here. What happened? You hit the snooze button too many times?”
Elena gave a startled laugh as Anya grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the house. “It’s seven in the morning! What time did you expect me to get here?”
“This is a ranch, remember?” Anya winked at her. “They get up before the sun.”
“Yeah,” Stryker said, the first man they encountered as they entered the dining room. “Not all of us get to work the easy hours like you and Phantom.”
“I’ll have you know there’s nothing easy about our work,” Phantom said, walking forward, and Elena’s heart beat a little faster at the sight of him. “Good morning,” he said, his gaze for her alone. “Did everything go smoothly getting the horse back last night?”
She nodded. “Yes. No problems.” He smiled at her and she thought she might melt into the floor. His smile was dangerous. It made her crave things she shouldn’t. They had barely started working together, and her thoughts kept drifting to the feeling of his skin against hers, his lips brushing her ear, his gentle compassion as he’d wiped away her tears. She thought it would be a good idea to stay focused on her job as his horse trainer.
Then again, they weren’t technically working at the moment. And whenever they weren’t working together, she gave her mind the freedom to fantasize about him as much as possible. She didn’t see any harm in it as long as she stayed professional while training his horses.
“You’ll get to enjoy some more of Snap’s good cooking,” Anya said, having released her arm to lean into Stryker instead.
Elena forced her eyes past Phantom and struggled to hide her surprise. The kitchen overflowed with some of the largest cowboys she had ever seen. They were all at least Phantom’s size—at least one was certainly bigger as he towered over everyone.
“Gang, look alive! We’ve got a guest in the house.” Stryker’s voice cut across the noise of all the men talking and they turned to face her.
Anya pushed her from behind, nudging her farther into the dining room. “Good morning,” she said, wondering if her eyes were bugging from her head.
“Of course, you met Snap already,” Phantom said, “but there’s also Santo, Buzz, and Brusco.”
The men nodded to her cordially and each stepped forward offering their hands to shake. She did her best to get all their names right as she greeted each of them individually. “I didn’t know so many of you lived here,” she finally said, unable to control her surprise any longer. “Are all of you partners in the operations of the ranch? All of you?”
“Yes,” Stryker answered. “We’ve all become close friends over the years, and when the opportunity presented itself, we decided to go in together on the ranch. Plus, we’ve got enough elbow grease here that we don’t have to hire twenty ranch hands to take care of this giant spread.”
Elena nodded slowly, absorbing the information. “I don’t think I’ve ever known such an arrangement before. Usually there’s only a couple of people partnered together to run a ranch, and they still bicker and fight amongst each other over minor details. You must all get along really well.”
Snap laughed. “Oh, no. We bicker and fight plenty. But we’ve got it set up so that each one of us is responsible for a certain aspect of the ranch so we aren’t dancing on each other’s toes. It works well for us.”
“Ah.” Elena looked back at Phantom. “That explains why you run the horses.”
He nodded, then moved towards her until he stood toe-to-toe with her. He leaned down and whispered loudly in her ear, “You better hurry and get some food before Snap or Buzz eat it all.”
“I heard that,” Snap and Buzz grumbled together at the same time, and Elena laughed, turning towards the kitchen with Phantom following her.
Soon everyone had loaded up on Snap’s cooking and were seated around the large dining room table. Elena had Anya on her right and Phantom on her left, and was surprised when they held out their hands to say grace over the food. She smiled as she bowed her head and listened to the short, but sweet, prayer of thanks. Then there was a short period of silence as everyone began to dig into the food.
“So, do you have any ranches you have to go out to today?” Phantom asked.
“No. That’s one of the perks of being my own boss—I get most weekends off. Except, of course, on show weekends.”
“How did the show go yesterday?” Anya asked from her other side.
“Terrific.” Phantom answered for her. “She won in both of the classes she entered. And she taught me that I’m in desperate need of some help.”
“I wouldn’t say desperate,” Elena offered, trying to reassure him.
“No? What would you say?”
Elena thought for several seconds, then, “You are in critical need of some help,” and laughed at the expression on his face.
“That’s even worse than saying I’m desperate.”
“Does that mean you’ve asked her to take your sorry ass back as a client?” Stryker asked from the head of the table.
“I’ve asked. She hasn’t given me a solid answer yet.”
Elena looked over at Phantom and saw the question in his eyes. He needed to know if she accepted his request from the previous night. If she trusted him, she’d take him back as her client. Her heart pounded hard in her chest with fear of the unknown and excitement at the same time. “Yes. I’ll take you back as my client.”
He smiled brightly at her and she smiled at him in return. They stared at each other for several seconds before one of the men asked Phantom a question, breaking the spell. His gray eyes had held her mesmerized.
Everyone ate as if they hadn’t had food in years. Elena and Anya both praised Snap’s cooking, which brought groans from the rest of the men about making Snap’s head bigger than it already was. Elena enjoyed the banter between the men as they teased each other, and laughed and joined in when she could. She enjoyed elbowing Anya every time she started to make moon eyes at Stryker.
All too soon, breakfast ended and they began to clean up. Elena insisted she help, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She and Phantom were assigned to clear the table while Anya and Stryker began to do dishes. Buzz and Santo worked on storing any leftovers, which were few.
As they worked, Buzz began singing a Christmas song, making Elena hesitate as she reached for a plate. She glanced over at Phantom, one eyebrow raised. “He does know that it is several months until Christmas, right?”
Phantom smirked. “Try explaining that to him. He believes Christmas should be celebrated year-round.”
Elena shook her head and continued her work before finally stopping and turning to face Buzz. “Are you doing that on purpose?” she asked him.
He paused in his singing. “Doing what?”
“Singing off-key and off-beat? I just wondered if you were trying to make up your own version of the song.”
Phantom’s deep laugh behind her took her by surprise and she turned to see him, his face full of joy as he laughed. So far, in the limited time she had with him, she had never heard him laugh. The sound was so delightful and happy, it made her begin to laugh, too.
“Ha, ha. Very funny. You two chuckle-heads enjoy your joke. Just because you can’t appreciate my Christmas spirit, you’re jealous, that’s all.”
Phantom laughed even harder, and Elena decided in that moment she would do everything possible to hear his laugh as often as she could.
About the Author
Holly Castillo grew up spending many lazy summer days racing her horses bareback in the Texas sun. But whenever Holly wasn’t riding her horses or competing in horse shows, she was f
ound with pen and paper in hand, writing out romantic love stories about Texas heroes.
Today, Holly lives in a small community just south of San Antonio, with her husband and two children. On the family’s eighty-acre ranch, surrounded by cattle during the day and hearing the howl of coyotes by night, Holly has endless inspiration for her writing. Holly’s current romantic suspense series about heroic Navy SEALs is set in her own backyard of south Texas.
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