by Hart, Hanna
Her Second Chance Cowboy Billionaire Christmas Secret
(Home For Christmas)
Hanna Hart
Copyright ©2019 by Hanna Hart - All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Contents
Home For Christmas
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
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About the Author
Home For Christmas
Home for Christmas… a sweet, romantic journey spanning decades - even centuries - of holiday cheer.
There’s no better season than Christmas to look back with gratitude for all the family blessings and forward with anticipation to all the joy to come. A holiday romance or a surprise Christmas wedding that leads to a lifetime of happiness is an irresistible story for a true romantic. Add some snow, hot chocolate, and carols at the piano and you’ll fall in love again and again.
Second chances, mail order brides, marriages of convenience – this clean and wholesome series brings all this and so much more. Join our heroes and heroines from proper Regency England to the majestic Rocky Mountains as they find peace, true love, and inspiring Christmas spirit.
This multi-author Christmas series is brought to you by these best-selling authors:
Joyce Alec
Rose Pearson
Natalie Dean
Bethany Rose
Annie Boone
Hanna Hart
Sophie Mays
Chapter One
Walker
Snow-capped mountains, lush evergreen trees, the smell of crackling fire and cloves, and mom’s home cooking.
These were all the things that should have had Walker Edwards excited to come back home to Colorado for the winter, but the excitement was far from what he felt about his homecoming.
His parents owned a large stately home in Denver, which he would be staying at for the next couple of weeks.
This was a nice gesture of course—family, friends, feasts, and somewhere free he could stay amidst the festivities.
But returning home after six years away as a newly divorced twenty-eight-year-old didn’t exactly feel like something to celebrate.
"Hey, I thought you weren't coming?" his little brother Rhys asked as Walker stepped in through the front door of his parents’ front door.
No knocking required.
"Yeah, that's what I thought, too," he snorted. "But, hey, miracles happen."
"Alright!" Rhys cheered. "This visit isn't sounding so bad anymore! Are you ready for a month of merriment?"
That's right. An entire month. The family Christmas lasted for the entire month of December, and part of November as well. His mother had six siblings, his father had five, and both sets of grandparents were still alive. The family was extensive and very close, so needless to say, there were many, many family rituals to get through before Walker would be able to mosey on home to his ranch in Texas.
He only seemed to come home for Christmas. It wasn't that he disliked Denver, but he had always been a cowboy at heart, and Texas had quickly become his home.
Walker had also become unaccustomed to the freezing winters and snow-lined streets in his parents’ neighborhood, preferring the mild, friendly winters at his ranch.
"I've cleared my schedule; don't worry about it," he said with a wink in his tone.
"Wowie, thanks for making time for the little guys. How the ranch?" Rhys asked.
"Busy," he said.
"That's my billionaire brother," Rhys said, wrapping an arm around his older sibling.
"You know I hate that," Walker laughed.
"Yeah, but Mom doesn't," his brother said.
"Because she never learned it's impolite to talk about money," Walker added.
"Bingo," Rhys said, tapping his nose. "That's Mom in a nutshell."
The Edwards were a wealthy family. Walker's great-great-grandparents, Clara and Peter Edwards, struck gold back in the eighteen-hundreds, and their family had been set with good investments and a stable financial future ever since. When Walker turned twenty-one, he inherited money that had been put in a trust for him.
When his sister Kendall inherited her share, she traveled across Asia for two years.
Four years ago, when Rhys turned twenty-one, he took his share of the money and partied like there was no tomorrow. When he finally decided to 'settle down,' his version of spending responsibly was to move out to Seattle, buy a sixty-five-foot luxury houseboat, and live out on the water.
It was a nice boat, Walker conceded. It had a hot tub, a sixty-inch flat-screen TV with a satellite and stereo system, two bathrooms, and four large bedrooms. He loved visiting his brother. Seattle had a great vibe. The mountains reminded him of Colorado and gave the city a great homey feel.
But Walker wasn't interested in partying or traveling the world. What he was passionate about was Western living, so when he turned twenty-one, he started looking for property in Texas. He wanted a ranch. That was the goal.
He'd been looking at properties for months and finally fell in love with one. He was in talks with his real estate agent and was planning to surprise his girlfriend at the time with news of the sale. She’d been right by his side on his journey to find a ranch, but they broke up before they could make their country life a reality.
Heartbroken, Walker called his realtor the next day and asked how much it would take to get in the ranch the very next week.
It was a steep asking price, especially for the rush, but Walker paid it all. It was worth it to him to get out of Colorado.
The ranch was a two-hundred-forty-acre oasis surrounded by grasslands.
Wild Bandit Ranch had originally been a working ranch homestead but its scandalous past made Walker consider turning his dream home into a tourist destination.
The first owners of the ranch were real-life bandits who were said to have traveled across the desert robbing the counties. Allegedly, they buried their gold in the caves that lined the south end of the property. In the meantime, the ranch became a home base to all the outlaws in the area—a sanctuary of criminals.
Some famous inhabitants of Wild Bandit Ranch, known as Wild Creek back then, were the Hardin gang, famous for robbing trains, Elmer Bass—a notorious gang member—and Jim and Edith Thompson, a couple who could swindle the money out of any card shark through a rigged game of poker.
Once Walker found out about the scandalous past of the ranch, he knew he wanted to make it a tourist attraction—a luxury dude ranch fit for royalty.
Now he was back in Colorado.
It was mid-November, and his family made a big to-do about the Christmas season. There were gifts, endless family dinners, and plenty of Christmas-themed occasions to busy themselves with around Denver.
<
br /> "Big brother!" his sister said, running down the staircase in the middle of the foyer. She threw her arms around him in a grand hug.
"Hey, Kendall," he said with a smile.
Before any more pleasantries could be exchanged, Kendall raised her left hand, fit with a rock of an engagement ring, and exclaimed, "Guess who's getting married next month?"
"Queen Elizabeth!" he shouted.
"She's already married, doofus," she said, flicking him on the shoulder.
"Hm. Must be some other sucker then," Walker teased, and Kendall's lips curled into an exaggerated frown. "Yeah, yeah, I know it's you," he said with a laugh.
He and Kendall used to be close. She was only two years his junior, and he used to be able to confide in her about his breakups, his marriage, and the future. But somewhere along the way, Kendall started to annoy him. Probably when she started dating Shane, to think of it.
Some might say that he was being jealous of someone else taking her time or that this was his big brotherly instinct kicking in.
But it wasn't that.
It was how perfectly she presented their relationship. How suddenly she needed to prove how much more in love they were than everybody else. Then, after his divorce, it was how much of a screw up he felt like in contrast to her picture-perfect relationship.
Kendall had gotten engaged right as Walker’s marriage was ending. He remembered when he told his sister that Leanne cheated on him, she burst into tears, and he thought it was so very strange for her to care so much.
He and Kendall had a complicated relationship, and he’d been surprised she’d taken it so hard. In retrospect, she was probably just upset that he was ruining the seating plan for her wedding.
"Where is the lucky groom?" Walker asked.
"He's coming later tonight," she said, starry-eyed. "He is so excited that you guys both agreed to be his groomsmen. He doesn't have many friends in the area and—"
"That's because he's bo-ring!" Rhys said in a sing-song voice as he led his older siblings into the marble kitchen.
"Shut up, Rhys!" Kendall snorted. "I'm sorry he doesn't race cars and stay out until four in the morning getting wasted like your friends. And honestly, I don't know how Becca puts up with it."
"It's because I make Becca laugh," Rhys said with a smug smile. "When's the last time grandpa-Shane made you laugh?"
"All the time. And he's not a grandpa, he's a nice guy," his sister replied. "Maybe if you've bothered to get to know him—”
"The guy isn't even having a bachelor's party," Rhys laughed.
Kendall's expression went sour. "Why should my husband be looking at strippers after he vowed to be faithful to me forever?" she snapped. Kendall then softened when she looked at Walker and asked, "Speaking of which, how are you doing?"
"Wow," Rhys laughed into his hands. "Burn!"
Kendall blinked in surprise, and her face went red. "It's not a burn; I was being serious!"
"Speaking of cheating, my good sir," Rhys began, mocking his sister in a British accent, "how is that shrew of an ex-wife? Still a cheater? Still divorced?"
"It's fine," Walker said with a laugh.
Kendall squeezed his arm lightly and said, "I didn't mean anything by it, Walker; you know that."
"I'm fine," he repeated with less enthusiasm.
"You don't look fine," his sister said. "Has Mom gotten a hold of you yet?"
"Yes," Walker said, drawing the word out. "I was peppered with a million questions about Leanne. Why can't we work it out, what happened, the usual."
His sister nodded. "I guess we're all still supposed to keep quiet about it? To our own mother?"
"I just don't want to talk about it," he bristled.
"You're right," Kendall said in her best therapist voice. "This is probably hard enough for you, coming home for all of the festivities without Leanne. It's going to be weird for us, too, to be honest."
It wasn’t long before the family of five was gathered in the living room, watching Christmas-themed movies.
Unsurprisingly, the middle-child behavior reigned strong, and Kendall had managed to turn the entire family visit into a Christmas all about her wedding.
She talked endlessly about every delicate detail of the event.
Walker had a hard time getting along with Kendall. He loved her, and he would protect her to the end as her big brother, but the two of them just didn’t mesh. The idea of spending the next month and a half hearing her self-obsess…
"No!" she exclaimed while she sat cross-legged on the club chair in the living room. "We're doing baby's breath, that's all!"
His mother, Dahlia, shook her head. "I still don't understand why you're not doing flowers," she said thoughtfully.
"Baby's breath are flowers," Kendall snipped back.
"Well, it's just not very traditional," his mother said with a shrug, exchanging a curious glance with his father.
"They're getting married in a barn, Mom," Rhys snickered. "What's traditional about that?"
Kendall laughed, then gave in to a deep frown. She kicked her leg out to hit her foot against Rhys, who was sitting on the couch next to her. "Don't say it like that!" she whined.
"Like what?" Walker asked.
"Like 'barn,'" she repeated, unimpressed. "As if there's going to be cows at the altar with us. It's a beautifully renovated barn, completely heated, and it's gorgeous."
Tired and desperate to keep the kids getting along, Dahlia threw her hands into the air and let out a quiet sigh. "Alright, alright," she said. Her version of telling them to settle down. "I still don't see why you didn't take your brother up on the offer to have the wedding at the ranch."
Walker put all of his money into the ranch.
Every last penny.
He refurbished it with the help from the Texas Historical Society and added thirty luxury guest cabins along with infinity pools, stables, a first-class restaurant, a live-action theatre, which acted out some famous outlaw scenes in history, hot tubs, an old-fashioned saloon for his guests to drink at, and plenty of activities.
The top activity at Wild Bandit Ranch was the outlaw tour, which would take guests on an adventure through a time where they could learn about the various outlaws who had stayed at the ranch. It was an interactive experience that was both educational and fun.
But there were also horse-riding sessions, fly fishing, cowboy campouts, hikes, archery, a pistol range, skeet shooting, geocaching, off-ranch excursions, and of course, weddings.
He had offered to host Kendall’s wedding at the ranch. She swooned over the photos he’d taken of one of the most recent fall weddings. As much as she wanted to take him up on the cheaper, more luxurious option for a venue, she opted to stay in Colorado for the event.
Kendall reiterated this fact as she explained, "Mom! I told you! I love the ranch; it's stunning. But I can't just ask both of our entire families to travel to Texas for our wedding. It isn't financially possible."
"Then you could have a smaller wedding," his father said.
Rhys and Walker exchanged wide eyes and hid their smiles at the very mention of the suggestion, remembering that Walker had a small wedding, and it didn't go over so well with his family.
"We don't want a smaller wedding; we want this wedding," Kendall insisted.
Walker met Leanne at the ranch. She was one of the first people he hired after moving there. She was a horse trainer and led some of the horse-related activities.
His affinity for horses was why he’d wanted to move out to Texas in the first place, so the two of them hit it off immediately. He asked her out just a month after they met, and she said yes. One year after that, he asked her to marry him, and again, she said yes.
Only, their wedding wasn’t all-consuming like Kendall’s was. They didn’t care about making a big show of their love or having an extravagant party. They just wanted to be together.
"I don't care how big this wedding is," Leanne had whispered to him one morning in bed. She was cu
rled up in the crook of his neck, her breath ghosting into his ear. "As long as I'm with you, we could get married at the courthouse for all I care."
"No, we can't do that," he hushed her, making a playful wince. "You deserve a proper wedding. Besides, my mom would kill us both."
She smirked and posed bright eyes at him. "Even more reason to do it."
"What, seriously?"
She ran her fingers down his chest until her hand found his. He lifted their intertwined fingers into the air and watched the sunlight cast a hazy morning light against them.
"I just want to be with you," she repeated.
"No," he said with a smile in his tone. "You want a wedding. You want the big white dress. You want the Cinderella—”
"I just want you," she said again before pulling him into a deep, heartfelt kiss.
That afternoon, drunk with love, the two drove down to city hall fit with giggles and grabbed a marriage license. Two days later, they got married with only the judge, Walker, Leanne, and his best friend Chris and her best friend Zoey by their sides.
Their families were furious, of course. They didn't understand the rush. They didn't understand the desire for privacy.
But the memory of Leanne looking up at him with her beautiful ginger hair curled and in her sweet, gauzy white dress, and those perfect green eyes looking over at him with a mischievous grin on her face as she said "I do" made the entire scandal worth it.
Until six months ago.
For the whole year, Leanne seemed unhappy. When he would ask if everything was alright or if he could be doing anything to be a better husband to her, she would slap on a smile and tell him everything was great.
