I Saw Mommy Kissing A Cowboy (Cowboy Christmas Romance)

by Charlene Bright

  “Can Mr. Underwood stay for dinner?”

  She wondered if grounding him for a month would be too much. “Oh … um … I was only making soup and grilled cheese tonight.”

  “I love soup and grilled cheese,” Grant said with a grin. “And I think you should call me Grant,” he said to Gabe.

  Or maybe Grant was the one who needed to be grounded.

  “Yay! So Grant can stay, Mama?”

  “Of course.” What else was she going to say?

  So an hour later while she heated the soup and began making the grilled cheese sandwiches, Grant and Gabriel looked at the toy catalog where he’d marked everything he wanted for Christmas with a big red circle. Grant commented on each thing that Gabe pointed out, either telling him it was awesome or cool or that he’d had one just like it when he was a kid. Gabriel was soaking up the male attention, and Jyl even found herself lulled into a sense of domestic bliss as she cooked and watched the two of them. She told herself that she needed to shake that off. She had no intentions on getting sucked into Gabriel’s hero worship of Grant. She didn’t need a man in her life right now, especially not a player like Grant Underwood. That thought was confirmed for her a few minutes later when Grant’s phone beeped. He checked the text message and said, “Oh damn!” He looked at Gabriel and said, “I mean, shoot! I’m sorry, Jyl. I forgot that I was supposed to be at my mother’s house for dinner tonight.”

  She thought the mother thing was a likely story, but again she reminded herself that she wasn’t dating this man and it didn’t matter who he was rushing off to see.

  * * *

  An hour later Grant stood in his mother’s kitchen, heating the plate that she’d saved for him in the microwave. He had his back to her and Kat, but he could still feel their curious eyes boring into the back of his head. He didn’t want to turn around, even after the microwave signaled that his dinner was ready. He pulled the plate out and picked up a piece of pot roast. He was about to stick it in his mouth when his mother said, “Grant Michael Underwood, don’t you dare! Get some silverware and sit down. Do not act like a Neanderthal in my kitchen.”

  With his back still to her, he rolled his eyes and reached for a fork.

  “Do not roll your eyes at me, young man.”

  “I have no idea how you do that,” he said as he finally turned around and sat down next to the two women at the table.

  “It’s a mom thing,” Kat said. “I can see Scotty roll his eyes at me from a hundred yards away.”

  He smiled and started eating. The women fell silent again and watched him. After a few bites he finally looked from one to the other and said, “Why don’t we just get this over with so I can eat in peace.”

  “Get what over with, dear?” his mother asked.

  “Whatever questions are on your mind, Mom. I know that Kat told you she saw me at Jyl’s house today and I know how the two of you are.”

  “And how are we?” his mother asked, handing him a napkin and motioning at him to wipe his chin.

  He almost rolled his eyes again but caught himself. He wiped his chin and said, “You both think I need a wife. Every time a woman comes along that you think has potential to fill that role, the two of you begin to scheme behind my back.”

  “We’re not scheming,” Sadie said. “We just want to see you happy.”

  “I haven’t even been on a date with this woman yet, Mom. There’s nothing to report here—or even look forward to. I asked her out, she said no.”

  His mother had her eyebrow cocked. “She said no? Why? What’s wrong with her?”

  Kat laughed. “Nothing is wrong with her, Sadie.”

  “Then why wouldn’t she want to go out with him? Look at him.”

  Kat laughed again. Grant shot her an evil look and said, “She just isn’t in a place where she’s looking to date right now, Mom. She has a little boy.”

  “Kat told me. She also told me that little boy seems pretty crazy about you. You’ve always been good with kids. It would be so nice—”

  “Dad!” he yelled. The two women startled.

  “Grant! What are you yelling about?”

  “Dad! Scott!”

  “Grant!” His mother was looking at him incredulously.

  Scott opened the accordion blinds between the kitchen and living room and said, “I’m here with a message. Dad says I’m supposed to tell you that if you would have arrived on time and eaten at the table along with the rest of us, he would have gladly defended you. Now, however, he is in the middle of ‘Boston Fire’ and he says you’re on your own and you should quit hollering like a little girl.”

  “So what about you? Get in here and help me. Your wife is out of control.”

  Scott looked at Kat. She blew him a kiss. He winked at her and said, “She’s a lot prettier than you, so she wins.” He closed the blinds and left Grant to fend for himself. By the time he left to go home, his mother and sister-in-law were cooking up a scheme to get Jyl to come to dinner. He didn’t even tell them about spending the next day with her and Gabe.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jyl stood at the top of the hill and watched Grant and Gabriel go down on the toboggan for at least the fifth time. Each time they’d get to the bottom, Grant would haul it back up with Gabe bouncing along beside him. She could see this time that the climb was beginning to wear on him.

  “Let’s go again, Grant!”

  “Gabe, let Grant rest for a minute.”

  Grant dropped down into the snow on his back and looked over at her. “Thank you,” he said. “The boy is killing me.”

  “You’re welcome. He just doesn’t understand how old you are.”

  He laughed. “You’re calling me old?”

  “No, I mean … well, you are pushing thirty.”

  She could see his body shake. She also saw his fist scraping at the snow on the other side of him. She was from New York; she was no stranger to a snowball fight. She casually bent down and scooped up a ball of it. He saw her and tried to work faster on his. They both released at the same time. His snowball pinged her on the shoulder. Hers hit him in the side of the head.

  “Oh! You are going to be so sorry!” He scooped Gabe up and they disappeared in a torrent of the little boy’s giggles behind a patch of trees.

  “Hey! What is this! That’s my kid! He should be on my team.”

  “Sorry, Mama! It’s boys against the girls,” was her sweet baby’s reply.

  “Oh that’s it, little man! For that, I show you no mercy!” Another snowball whizzed past her head. She ran for cover and one struck her in the back of the leg.

  She heard Gabriel squeal. “I got her!”

  She ducked behind a tree and started making snowballs. Suddenly everyone was quiet and all she could hear were the squirrels and birds chittering overhead in the trees. She peeked around the corner and—Thwack! A snowball hit her right in the face.

  “Oh no, you did not!” She picked up her ammo and started throwing it in rapid fire at their retreating forms. She didn’t even feel bad about pummeling her baby. He’d gone over to the dark side. Now he would have to pay the consequences. She hit them each at least five times before they dove and disappeared behind the trees again.

  “Ha ha! Mama’s on fire! You two think you’re all that because you’re men. Girls rule and boys drool!” She suddenly started giggling. She hadn’t actually giggled in at least a year. She felt like she was ten years old throwing snowballs and taunting the boys. She had officially lost it. But she was having more fun than she could remember having in a very long time. She bent down to make some more ammo when she saw her son’s little hand appear from behind the tree.

  “Don’t shoot, Mama! I surrender.”

  She laughed. “Come on out, baby. I won’t get you.” He stepped out and she said, “You decided to join Team Mom? You figured out that guy you were hanging with couldn’t hang with the big girls, did you?” She didn’t realize that he was looking over her shoulder until it was too late. Suddenly she
felt a pair of strong arms go around her waist and hoist her up off the ground. Then her sweet baby picked up the ammo she had made, and while Grant held her, Gabriel covered his mother with snow.

  She took about five direct hits before conceding defeat. “Okay, I surrender! Stop! Put me down!” She was laughing so hard that she could barely breathe. Grant was too, and when he set her down she turned around and pushed him on his butt into the snow.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “Picking on a woman,” she said.

  He laughed and let the top half of his body drop back. Turning his head in Gabe’s direction he said, “Remember this, buddy, they’re never satisfied. If we let her win, she would have said that we were patronizing her.”

  “What does pat-ro-zing mean?” Gabe asked.

  “Never mind,” Jyl told her son. “Come over here and let me dry you off.”

  “Aw, Mom, I want to slide some more.”

  “If we’re going to the tree farm, we should get going soon.”

  “What about the mall and Santa Claus?”

  “Yeah, I really did want to see Santa,” Grant said. “Besides, I’m kind of hungry. Are you hungry, kid?”

  “I’m so hungry, Mama.”

  She laughed and shook her head. She couldn’t win with them both ganging up on her. “Okay, we can go to the mall first. Go on and get in the truck. Pull your boots off and change your socks.”

  “Thanks, Mama!” Gabe ran over to Grant’s truck. Jyl watched him scramble up into it like a little spider monkey. She was still smiling when she turned back around and saw Grant watching her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something.”

  “You just look happy. It suits you. Don’t you wish you would have gone out with me back when I asked you the first time?”

  She picked up one of the toboggans. “This is not going out,” she said, shaking her head at him.

  “Well, technically it is.”

  She glanced over to make sure Gabe was still in the truck. “Technically … it isn’t.”

  “Is too. We’re together and we’re out.”

  She was trying not to laugh. He stood up and picked up the other toboggan and they started toward the truck. “This is not a date,” she said, scooting the sled into the back of the truck.

  “Is too,” he mumbled as he put his in too.

  She rolled her eyes and said, “You’re incorrigible.”

  He grinned and said, “I’m not sure what that means, but if you’re calling me sexy, I agree.”

  That did it; she couldn’t hold back the smile any longer. She burst out laughing. He grinned and winked at her. She wouldn’t be surprised to look down and see the snow melting underneath her feet. That was how hot he made her.

  * * *

  The mall was packed. It was only a couple of weeks until Christmas so that was to be expected. Since the line to see Santa was so long, Jyl waited in line with Gabe while Grant went in search of pizza. They were almost to the front of the line when he made it back. He sat down on a bench and watched them. He had no idea what he was doing here, but he knew that he was falling for her—and to make matters more complicated, he was falling for the kid too.

  Gabriel looked over and saw him and waved. He waved back. He held up the pizza in Jyl’s direction and she rubbed her belly. As soon as Gabe was up on Santa’s lap, she went over and joined Grant on the bench. He handed her the pizza box and said, “I didn’t know what kind you liked.”

  She took the napkin he was offering and opened the lid and laughed out loud. The pizza had been cut into eight pieces. Each piece was topped with a different topping. “I didn’t know they would do this,” she said.

  He looked around like he was being sneaky and then he leaned in and said, “Don’t tell anyone, but I flashed the badge. I put a little pressure on them. “

  Still laughing she said, “Shut up. You did not.”

  “Would you believe there was a young lady making the pizzas and I charmed her?”

  “Hmm … how young?”

  Grant laughed. “Young enough to know a stud when she sees one and old enough to be legal.”

  “Okay, I believe the badge story,” she said, taking out a piece of pizza.

  He laughed again. He thought sometimes that he must be crazy but the fact that she didn’t seem overly impressed with his looks like other women did was a huge part of her appeal to him. She grounded him and he was actually discovering that was a good thing.

  “Pizza!” Gabe said, running over to them when he finished with Santa.

  “Here, sit and I’ll give you a piece,” his mother told him. “What did you ask Santa for?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  She raised an eyebrow and said, “And why not?”

  “Because it’s a secret.”

  “Did Santa say he would bring it to you?”

  “He said he would see what he could do,” Gabe said as he stuffed a bite of pizza into his mouth.

  “Did he say—” she tried again.

  “I can’t tell you, Mama!”

  “Okay, okay. I just thought if it needed accessories or batteries I should know what it is, that way I can get you those other things.”

  Gabe looked at Grant, who smiled at him. Then he said, “Nope, it doesn’t need batteries or anything.”

  Grant could see Jyl’s face from the corner of his eye. She had her brows drawn together, obviously worried about what Gabe had asked Santa for. When Gabriel finished eating and she took him to wash his face and hands, Grant did use his badge. He told the “elf” guarding Santa’s court that he was an officer and he needed to speak with Mr. Claus, “Urgently.” After a flash of his badge, the elf quickly led him to the big man.

  “I know this is unorthodox, sir, but I need to know what the little dark-haired boy in the striped shirt that was here a few minutes ago asked you for.”

  The old man laughed and Grant realized for the first time that his belly did shake like jelly. “He wants me to bring him a daddy for Christmas.”

  “A daddy?”

  “I’m afraid so, son. But that’s not all. He doesn’t want just any daddy. He wants you.”

  Grant stepped out of Santa’s court not knowing how he felt about that. In the past, with another woman, it might have scared him to death. But the fact was, he’d already been thinking along those lines himself and he hadn’t even kissed her yet. He looked up to see Gabe and Jyl coming out of the bathroom. He watched the little boy come toward him and smiled. He wasn’t going to share Gabe’s secret with his mom. Who knew? Maybe someday he could help the little boy make his wish come true.

  The next stop was the Christmas tree farm. It was a place where Grant had a lot of warm holiday memories. Every year he and his dad and brother were sent out to get the tree a week before Christmas. As soon as each one of Scott’s boys had turned two years old, he was sent along with the men. Sadie and Kat stayed home and cooked all day and did whatever it was they did when the men weren’t around. The men also made a day of it, taking the boys ice skating or sledding and spending more time playing in the snow than picking out trees, but every year they somehow managed to come back with a better one than the year before. Grant was looking forward to starting a new tradition for Jyl and her son to hang onto in the future for as long as they stayed in Shiloh Falls.

  “Look at all the trees!” Gabriel’s wide-eyed look of awe tugged at Grant’s heart. “Can I pick any one I want?”

  “Any one, buddy,” he told him as he unloaded his ax and saw from the truck.

  Jyl gave him a look and as Gabe ran off toward the entrance to the tree farm, she said, “He can’t get any one.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, we’ll have to consider the cost.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “No. You’re not buying my tree.”

  “Nope, I’m not. I’m buying Gabe’s tree. It’s my Christmas gift to him.”

 
; “You don’t need to get him a gift.”

  “I know, but I want to. So no looking at prices. It’s rude to price a gift.”

  She shook her head and said, “There’s also the matter of having room for it. If you tell him he can have any one, he’ll pick out one that’s eight feet tall.”

  Grant smiled. “Yeah, I always did that too when I was a kid. Let’s just wait and see what he does.”

  They spent the next two hours following the excited little boy as he ran from tree to tree. He would pick one out and declare it the best tree ever and then ten minutes later change his mind. Finally when Jyl told him it was time to make his final decision, he settled on a monstrosity that was a foot taller than Grant and at least five feet across.

  “Gabe, sweetness, we can’t get that one,” she told him.

  “Grant said I can have any one I want.”

  She shot Grant an I told you so look. Grant only smiled.

  He lay his tools down in the snow and said, “I did say that.” As he lay down next to the tree he said, “Do you want the bats too or …”

  Gabe’s eyes grew to the size of plates. “Bats?”

  “Yeah, this one has some bats nesting in it. I don’t think they’re vampire bats.”

  The little boy hid behind his mother’s leg. She was trying to keep a straight face as she said, “Maybe we should just pick another one, Gabe. What do you think?”

  He nodded. He stayed behind his mother until they were about six feet away. She stopped in front of a six-foot tree and said, “This one is nice. Do you like it, Gabe?”

  “Yeah, check it for bats.”

  With a straight face, Grant lay down in the snow next to it. Making a play of looking up inside of it he said, “No bats.”

  “Okay, we’ll take it!” Gabe said.

  Grant cut it down and had it paid for and loaded into the truck in minutes. As they were driving back toward town, Gabe said, “I’m hungry.”

  “Okay, baby, we’re almost home,” his mother told him.

  “We’re closer to the diner,” Grant said in a low voice.

  “We don’t need to go to the diner. We have food at home.”

  “It would save you from cooking.”