The Last-Chance Maverick

by Christyne Butler

  Jonah had decided he’d get dressed at his folks’ tonight, despite the fact he was slowly moving his stuff to the cabin, something about getting his hands on a special addition for his costume.

  She guessed it would be one of his father’s rodeo belt buckles that Charles had showed off with such pride after a family dinner last night.

  A dinner that turned into a celebration when Jonah shared his plans to make Rust Creek Falls his home again. There were still a lot of details to be ironed out, but everyone was so excited, none more than her.

  Being happy and in love was wonderful!

  Ready for a night of fun with their friends, Vanessa opened the door. “Hey, you’re early! I still need to get dressed—”

  Her breath disappeared. Her words were gone, too.

  Jonah stood on the deck, looking amazing in dark slacks and a fitted jacket made from a beautiful red brocade material with a high collar and richly decorated epaulets at the shoulders. A collared shirt, complete with a cravat-style tie at the neck, a leather belt and a sweeping cape that just about touched the ground completed the look.

  No, the sword he carried at his waist was what truly made him look like a member of a royal family.

  “What’s this?” she asked, unable to hold back her delight when he bowed deeply from the waist. “Where’s my cowboy?”

  “Gone for the evening, milady.” Jonah straightened, then grinned. “I hope you will allow Prince Charming to escort you to the festivities this evening instead. I do believe meeting him was on your list.”

  Vanessa gasped, one hand pressed to her lips.

  Number twenty-two: kiss Prince Charming!

  She couldn’t believe Jonah remembered her list and had hunted down a fitting costume for tonight. “Well, actually, the goal is to kiss Prince Charming.”

  Jonah’s grin widened. “Oh, I think we can arrange that.”

  Vanessa stepped back and waved him inside. “Where did you get that outfit?”

  “My sisters are involved with a theatre in Kalispell that put on a version of Snow White last year,” Jonah said, closing the door behind him. “When I asked if I could borrow it for tonight, they were very happy to help. As long as I agreed to pose for pictures.”

  “Well, you look wonderful. You’re probably plastered all over the internet by now,” Vanessa said, then laughed as she started back for the bedroom. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Hey, wait a minute.” He took her hand, stopping her. “I’ve got something else for you.”

  “Really? What might that—” She turned back and once again found herself speechless when he eased the sword to one side before he slowly knelt before her, one knee on the hardwood floor. “Jonah!”

  “I know this is sudden. We’ve only been a part of each other’s lives for a short time, and it’s only been two days since I said I love you. But with everything I am and everything in me, I know being with you forever is what I want.”

  He pulled a small velvet box from a hidden pocket and opened it to reveal a solitaire diamond ring that sparkled brilliantly in the light.

  “You don’t have to answer me now. Take as much time as you need,” he continued. “I won’t even say the words yet if you’re not ready, but I want you to know—”

  “I’m ready.”

  Her reply came out of her with such certainty Vanessa knew, to the depth of her heart, it was true. She’d been so lucky to find this special man. She didn’t want to waste one more moment.

  Not when time, and life, was so precious.

  “You can ask me.” She smiled at the look of pure love that filled Jonah’s handsome face. “I mean, since you’re already down there.”

  “Vanessa Brent, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  “Yes!”

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss the next installment of the new

  Special Edition continuity

  MONTANA MAVERICKS:

  20 YEARS IN THE SADDLE!

  Maggie Roarke’s one-night stand with rancher Jesse Crawford was out of character—and resulted in pregnancy! These two parents-to-be couldn’t be more different. Will their holiday-baby-to-be bring them to a fairy-tale holiday ending?

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  THE MAVERICK’S THANKSGIVING BABY

  by award-winning author Brenda Harlen

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  Prologue

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Maizie Connors, youthful grandmother, successful Realtor and matchmaker par excellence, looked at the tall, handsome, blond-haired young man standing in the doorway of her real estate office. Mentally, she whizzed through the many faces she had encountered in the past handful of years, both professionally and privately. Try as she might to recall the young man, Maizie came up empty. His smile was familiar, but the rest of him was not.

  Ever truthful, Maizie made no attempt to bluff her way through this encounter until she either remembered him or, more to the point, the young man said something that would set off flares in her somewhat overtaxed brain, reminding her who he was.

  Instead, Maizie shook her head and admitted, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “I was a lot younger back then and I guess I looked more like a blond swizzle stick than anything else,” he told her.

  She didn’t remember the face, but the smile and now the voice nudged at something distant within her mind. Recognition was still frustratingly out of reach. The young man’s voice was lower, but the cadence was very familiar. She’d heard it before.

  “Your voice is familiar and that smile, I know I’ve seen it before, but...” Maizie’s voice trailed off as she continued to study his face. “I know I didn’t sell you a house,” she told him with certainty. She would have remembered that.

  She remembered all of her clients as well as all the couples she, Theresa and Cecilia had brought together over the past few years. As far as Maizie was concerned, she and her lifelong best friends had all found their true calling in life a few years ago when desperation to see their single children married and on their way to creating their own families had the women using their connections in the three separate businesses they owned to find suitable matches for their offspring.

  Enormously successful in their undertaking, they found they couldn’t stop just because they had run out of their own children to work with. So friends and clients were taken on.

  They did their best work covertly, not allowing the two principals in the undertaking know that they were being paired up. The payment the three exacted was not monetary. It was the deep satisfaction that came from knowing they had successfully brought two soul mates together.

  But the young man before her was neither a professional client nor a private one. Yet he was familiar.

  Shrugging her shoulders in a gesture of complete surrender, Maizie said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to take
pity on me and tell me why your smile and your voice are so familiar but the rest of you isn’t.” Even as she said the words aloud, a partial answer suddenly occurred to her. “You’re someone’s son, aren’t you?”

  But whose? she wondered. She hadn’t been at either of her “careers”—neither the one involving real estate nor the one aimed at finding soul mates—long enough for this young man to have been the result of her work.

  So who are you?

  “I was,” he told her, his blue eyes on hers.

  Was.

  The moment he said that, it suddenly came to her. “You’re Frances Whitman’s boy, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “Mom always said you were exceedingly sharp. Yes, I’m Frances’s son.” He said the words with pride.

  The name instantly conjured up an image in Maizie’s mind, the image of a woman with laughing blue eyes and an easy smile on her lips—always, no matter what adversity she was valiantly facing.

  The same smile she was looking at right now.

  “Christopher?” Maizie asked haltingly. “Christopher Whitman!” It was no longer a question but an assertion. Maizie threw her arms around him, giving him a warm, fond embrace, which only reached as far up as his chest. “How are you?” she asked with enthusiasm.

  “I’m doing well, thanks.” And then he told her why he’d popped in after all this time. “And it looks like we’re going to be neighbors.”

  “Neighbors?” Maizie repeated, somewhat confused.

  There’d been no For Sale signs up on her block. Infinitely aware of every house that went up for sale not just in her neighborhood, but in her city as well, Maizie knew her friend’s son was either mistaken or had something confused.

  “Yes, I just rented out the empty office two doors down from you,” he told her, referring to the strip mall where her real estate office was located.

  “Rented it out?” she repeated, waiting for him to tell her just what line of work he was in without having to specifically ask him.

  Christopher nodded. “Yes, I thought this was a perfect location for my practice.”

  She raised her eyebrows in minor surprise and admiration.

  “You’re a doctor?” It was the first thing she thought of since her own daughter was a pediatrician.

  Christopher nodded. “Of furry creatures, large and small,” he annotated.

  “You’re a vet,” she concluded.

  “—erinarian,” he amended. “I find if I just say I’m a vet, I have people thanking me for my service to this country. I don’t want to mislead anyone,” he explained with a smile she now found dazzling.

  “Either way, you’ll have people thanking you,” Maizie assured him. She took a step back to get a better, fuller view of the young man. He had certainly filled out since she had seen him last. “Christopher Whitman,” she repeated in amazement. “You look a great deal like your mother.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said with a warm smile. “I was always grateful that you and the other ladies were there for Mom while she was getting her treatments. She didn’t tell me she was sick until it was close to the end,” he explained. It was a sore point for him, but under the circumstances, he’d had to forgive his mother. There hadn’t been any time left for wounded feelings. “You know how she was. Very proud.”

  “Of you,” Maizie emphasized. “I remember her telling me that she didn’t want to interfere with your schooling. She knew you’d drop out if you thought she needed you.”

  “I would have,” he answered without hesitation.

  She heard the note of sadness in his voice that time still hadn’t managed to erase. Maizie quickly changed the subject. Frances wouldn’t have wanted her son to beat himself up over a decision she had made for him.

  “A veterinarian, huh? So what else is new since I last saw you?” Maizie asked.

  Broad shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “Nothing much.”

  Habit had Maizie glancing down at his left hand. It was bare, but that didn’t necessarily mean the man wasn’t married. “No Mrs. Veterinarian?”

  Christopher laughed softly and shook his head. “Haven’t had the time to find the right woman,” he confessed. It wasn’t the truth, but he had no desire to revisit that painful area yet. “I know Mom would have hated to hear that excuse, but that’s just the way things are. Well, when I saw your name on the door, I just wanted to drop by to say hi,” he told her, adding, “Stop by the office sometime when you get a chance and we’ll talk some more about Mom,” he promised.

  “Yes, indeed,” Maizie replied.

  As well as other things, she added silently as she watched Christopher walk away, anticipation welling in her chest. Wait until the girls hear about this.

  Chapter One

  Okay, how did it get to be so late?

  The exasperated, albeit rhetorical, question echoed almost tauntingly in her brain as Lily Langtry hurried through her house, checking to make sure she hadn’t left any of her ground-floor windows open or her back door unlocked. There hadn’t been any break-ins in her neighborhood, but she lived alone and felt that you could never be too careful.

  The minutes felt as if they were racing by.

  There was a time when she was not only on time but early for everything from formal appointments to the everyday events that took place in her life. But that was before her mother had passed away, before she was all alone and the only one who was in charge of the details of her life.

  It seemed to her that even when she was taking care of her mother and holding down the two jobs that paying off her mother’s medical bills necessitated, she had usually been far more organized and punctual than she was these days. Now that there was only one of her, in essence only one person to be responsible for, her ability to be on top of things seemed to have gone right out the window. If she intended to be ready by eight, in her mind she had to shoot for seven-thirty—and even that didn’t always pan out the way she hoped it would.

  This morning she’d told herself she would be out the door by seven. It was now eight-ten and she was just stepping into her high heels.

  “Finally,” she mumbled as she grabbed her bag and launched herself out the front door while simultaneously searching for her keys. The latter were currently eluding detection somewhere within the nether regions of her oversize purse.

  Preoccupied, engaged in the frantic hunt that was making her even later than she already was, Lily wasn’t looking where she was going.

  Which was why she almost stepped on him.

  Looking back, in her defense, she hadn’t been expecting anything to be on her doorstep, much less a moving black ball of fur that yipped pathetically when her foot came down on his paw.

  Jumping backward, Lily’s hand went protectively over her chest to contain the heart that felt as if it was about to leap out of it. Lily dropped her purse at the same time.

  Containing more things in it than the average overstuffed suitcase, the purse came down with a thud, further frightening the already frightened black ball of fur—which she now saw was a Labrador puppy.

  But instead of running, as per the puppy manual, the large-dog-in-training began to lick her shoe.

  Since the high heels Lily had selected to wear this morning were open-toe sandals, the upshot was that the puppy was also licking her toes. The end result of that was that the fast-moving little pink tongue was tickling her toes at the same time.

  Surprised, stunned, as well as instantly smitten, Lily crouched down to the puppy’s level, her demanding schedule temporarily put on hold.

  “Are you lost?” she asked the puppy.

  Since she was now down to his level, the black Labrador puppy abandoned her shoes and began to lick her face instead. Had there been a hard part to Lily’s heart, it would have turned to utter mush as sh
e completely capitulated, surrendering any semblance of control to her unexpected invader.

  When she finally rose back up to her feet, Lily looked in both directions along the residential through street where she lived to see if anyone was running up or down the block, frantically searching for a lost pet.

  It was apparent that no one was since all she saw was Mr. Baker across the street getting into his midlife-crisis vehicle—a sky-blue Corvette—which he drove to work every morning.

  Since it wasn’t moving, Lily took no note of the beige sedan parked farther down the block and across the street. Nor did she notice the older woman who was slouched down in the driver’s seat.

  The puppy appeared to be all alone.

  She looked back at the puppy, who was back to licking her shoes. Pulling first one foot back, then the other, she only succeeded in drawing the dog into her house because the Labrador’s attention was completely focused on her shoes.

  “Looks like your family hasn’t realized that you’re missing yet,” she told the puppy.

  The Lab glanced up, cocking his head as if he was hanging on her every word. Lily couldn’t help wondering if the animal understood her. She knew people who maintained that dogs only understood commands that had been drilled into their heads, but she had her doubts about that. This one was actually making eye contact and she was certain that he was taking in every word.

  “I have to go to work,” she told her fuzzy, uninvited guest.

  The Labrador continued watching her as if she was the only person in the whole world. Lily knew when she’d lost a battle.

  She sighed and stepped back even farther into her foyer, allowing the puppy access to her house.

  “Oh, all right, you can come in and stay until I get back,” she told the puppy, surrendering to the warm brown eyes that were staring up at her so intently.

  If she was letting the animal stay here, she had to leave it something to eat and drink, she realized. Turning on her heel, Lily hurried back the kitchen to leave the puppy a few last-minute survival items.