A Cowboy Christmas Miracle (Burnt Boot, Texas Book 4)

by Carolyn Brown

  “No, I’m good.”

  “I’ll rent the storage unit and meet you there on Thursday night.”

  “Leave me a note about where to go.”

  He nodded. “Will do.”

  She made it to the truck before she flipped the hood back on her jacket. Then she slid down in the driver’s seat and took several deep breaths. It’s a wonder the earth was still rotating around the sun after a kiss between a Gallagher and a Brennan.

  “And I liked it. I did more than like it. I wanted more. A first kiss has never affected me like that before. It has to be the danger involved. I’m not a teenager. I’m almost thirty years old, and I know my way around the bedroom,” she mumbled.

  She adjusted the rearview mirror and turned on the light above it, so she could see if her lips looked as hot as they felt. Other than two spots of high color in her cheeks, the woman staring back at her was Betsy Gallagher—red hair, green eyes, and a slightly oval face.

  She turned the key in the ignition and had started the engine when her phone rang. Hoping that the Burnt Boot gossip vine didn’t extend all the way to Gainesville, she answered it cautiously.

  “Hello, Granny.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I came to town to see a movie, but the one I chose was a dud so I’m on my way home,” she said. “Do you need something?”

  “Angela is on her way to the hospital and I wanted to be there when the baby comes. I thought you could drive me.”

  “Call Tanner to take you, and I’ll go on to the hospital. If he doesn’t want to stay, you can ride home with me,” Betsy said.

  “That sounds good. I’ll see you there.”

  * * *

  Declan could feel his heart thumping around in his chest as if it wanted to fly out right there in the theater and do a dance down the aisle. He’d kissed Betsy Gallagher and it had been wonderful. It could have been because he was working undercover, or maybe it was the danger of her cousin showing up when he had, but he’d never kissed another woman who’d made him forget where and who he was.

  He ate a couple of handfuls of popcorn and washed it down with the soda pop, but he could still taste Betsy’s kiss, still feel her arms as they snaked up around his neck and clutched his hair as she pulled him in closer. She’d liked the kiss as much as he did, even though later she might swear that she went home and gargled with Jack Daniels to get the taste of it out of her mouth.

  If he was labeled a womanizer, then Betsy was his match. Her temper was only exceeded by her ability to pick up men. He was on his way out of the theater when he got a text message from Leah asking him to come to the hospital.

  Fear replaced all thoughts of Betsy as he nervously hit the button to call Leah. She didn’t answer until the third ring. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he heard her voice and his breath escaped in a whoosh.

  “Are you okay? Why are you at the hospital?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. I was visiting with Callie when she slipped on a throw rug and fell. Verdie made me drive, and Finn sat in the backseat with her in case the fall caused problems with her pregnancy. That means I’m here without a ride and I wanted you to come get me,” she explained.

  “Is she okay?” Declan asked.

  “They’re keeping her a few hours for observation, but everything looks fine. I’d call Rhett, but he’s over at Fiddle Creek with Sawyer, helping fix a tractor.”

  “I’m also in town. I’ll swing by and pick you up,” he said.

  “I’m in the maternity waiting room.”

  “I’ll find it,” he said.

  He asked for directions at the front desk and only got lost once on his way, but when he stepped inside, the first thing he saw was a flamboyant red ponytail and gorgeous green eyes looking up at him.

  “What are you doing here?” Naomi Gallagher asked. “One of your girlfriends having a baby? I might have known you’d have little bastards all over the north part of Texas.”

  He shot a sly wink toward Betsy and then turned to look Naomi right in the eye. “Two of them actually. Nice of them to go into labor the same night, wasn’t it?”

  “Don’t you be smart with me,” Naomi said. “Why are you really here?”

  Leah stepped out of the ladies’ room on the far side of the waiting area and smiled. “That was quick. I’ll go check on Callie one more time before we leave, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. I’ll be right here. Tell her and Finn that if they need anything at all to give me a call,” Declan said.

  The only empty seat was next to Betsy, so he eased into it. The chairs were locked together, leaving no space between them, so no matter how much he crunched his wide shoulder, it still touched Betsy’s. Naomi glared at him, but if she’d had horns and a pitchfork, he couldn’t make his shoulders smaller.

  “So who are you here to see?” he asked.

  “Angela is having a baby boy.” Betsy’s voice sounded thin and strained.

  “Well, you will probably be here all night. I’m just here to give Leah a ride home, since Verdie made her drive.”

  “Why didn’t Finn drive?” Naomi asked.

  “Callie slipped and fell. Verdie was afraid it would hurt the baby, so she made Leah drive her to the hospital with Finn in the backseat with Callie,” he explained.

  Naomi continued to stare at him as if he were a cockroach under a microscope.

  “Callie’s tough. She’ll be all right,” she said.

  “I hope so. She and Finn are pretty excited about another baby, and their other children are counting the days,” Declan said. “I see Leah on her way, so you ladies have a good evening, and I do hope everything goes well for Angela.”

  He escaped before Naomi could say another word. Leah looped her arm through his, and together they headed out of the hospital.

  Leah kept glancing over her shoulder all the way to the hospital parking lot. “I keep expecting to see a Gallagher behind us. In my mind, they’ve got sawed-off shotguns shoved down the legs of their pants.”

  “Hey, they’re interested in the new baby, not us. Callie okay?”

  “Doctor says that she’s fine, but as a precaution, they’ll keep her hooked up to the baby monitor thing for another few hours. She should get home by midnight, and the doc’s saying she should have bed rest for a couple of days—at least through the weekend. Verdie will see to it that she obeys,” Betsy said.

  Declan opened the door for her. “They’re good for each other out there on Salt Draw.”

  “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

  Declan drove out of the parking lot and onto the highway, made a few turns, and was on the way back to Burnt Boot in a few minutes. “Do you believe in fate, Leah?”

  “Yes, I do,” Leah said.

  “Really?”

  “If I didn’t before, I would now. Sorry to leave you in that rattlesnake den back there. Confession time: I didn’t need to be in the bathroom, but I couldn’t stand all those Gallaghers giving me dirty looks, so I hid out until I heard your voice.” She giggled nervously.

  “All those Gallaghers? I only saw Betsy and the grand matriarch, Naomi.”

  “Did you have on blinders? There were at least a dozen in there.”

  “Guess I did,” he chuckled.

  On the way home, he worried about Betsy and then scolded himself silently for feeling that way. She was a bet, for God’s sake, not a date. He’d win the money from her by gathering more Christmas stuff and give it to Tanner to pay off his debt, since he had no intentions of sleeping with her. Heaven help Texas if that happened. One kiss came close to sending the movie theater up in blazes. Sex would burn down the state.

  Two wild folks like Declan Brennan and Betsy Gallagher did not belong together. Besides, she wasn’t his type. He liked short, blond-haired women with big, blue eyes and
sweet dispositions. Someone who made him feel like he was macho and who needed him to protect her. He sure didn’t need a woman who could scare the horns off Lucifer.

  “What are you thinking about? It looks like you are arguing with yourself.” Leah laid a hand on his arm.

  “You know me too well, Sis. I’ve got a little deal going but it has to be a secret. You can tell Rhett because I wouldn’t want you to keep things from him but…”

  Leah sighed. “You’ve fallen in love.”

  “Oh, no!” he said too quickly.

  “Methinks the man is protesting too loudly,” she said.

  “No, it’s the truth. Why settle with one piece of sea foam fudge when there’s a whole candy shop at your disposal? I can’t tell you why, but I’m gathering up used or new or anywhere-in-between things that have to do with Christmas. You want to donate something?”

  “Sure.” She nodded.

  “That was quick. You didn’t even make me beg.”

  “Well, I am a schoolteacher, and we always have tons of stuff that we store from year to year. I was going through my school things the other day and ran across three plastic door covers. Anyway, I only need one door cover, and I’m using the life-size Santa Claus this year, so you can have the two others. One is a nativity and the other is a skyline view of Bethlehem with the Star of David in the sky. And you will tell me later why you want this, right?”

  “You’ll know before Christmas,” he said.

  “I’ll bring them to you on Monday or you can pick them up at the school. Want me to ask the other teachers if they’ve got anything?”

  He grinned. “That would be wonderful.”

  * * *

  The baby was born at one minute after midnight, and the first person Angela asked for was Betsy. Jody brought the red-haired baby boy out to show the family and then the nurse whisked him away for skin-on-skin bonding time with Angela.

  Betsy peeked inside the window of the labor-and-delivery room before she stepped over the threshold. Jody was sitting beside Angela, and the baby was cuddled up next to his mama’s bare skin, both of them wrapped snugly in a blue blanket. Betsy’s eyes misted as she waited in envy for one of them to motion her inside.

  Angela saw her first and her smile was probably every bit as beautiful as Mary’s was the day that Jesus was born. “Come in and meet Christian. He has your red hair, and he’s going to be a perfect baby Jesus at the program this year.”

  “Now, darlin’—” Jody started.

  “Yes, he will,” Betsy said as she crossed the room. “He’s beautiful. Looks like Jody, doesn’t he? Only with red hair.”

  “I thought so,” Angela said.

  “And how are you?” Betsy asked.

  “Fine. I took the drugs and it was a breeze. I may have another one next year,” Angela said.

  “It might not be the time to bring it up, but I’m working on something that could help the cause in the long run. It’s a secret so you can’t tell a single soul that you donated anything, but would you be willing to give something with a Christmas theme to my secret cause?”

  Angela nodded seriously. “I want to give a tree topper. My granny crocheted an angel for my mama’s tree years ago. We were going through what we had for decorations when I went into labor and I saw it there. They’ll probably let me go home tomorrow, so come on by the house and pick it up anytime. And neither one of us will tell. I want this program to happen so badly, so my Christian can be baby Jesus, I’d keep a secret from God if I had to.”

  The Gallaghers waited an extra hour for the baby to go to the nursery, where they could see him through the glass and exclaim about his red hair. According to Naomi, he was the first red-haired child to be born into the family since Betsy, and that made him very special.

  “And now I’m ready to go have breakfast at the all-night waffle house and go home,” Naomi said. “I’m not good at waiting. You won’t make me sit in an uncomfortable chair when you have your babies. You’ll have them like I did. One hour in the hospital and the baby will be here.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  Betsy shook her head slowly. “Why didn’t you make that decree for Angela?”

  “She’s not a Gallagher. She only married into the family,” Naomi said.

  “Granny!”

  “I’m hungry and I’m tired and I’m cranky. Let’s go,” Naomi said crossly.

  “Aren’t you going to stop in and see Angela and Jody?” Betsy asked as they headed down the hallway.

  “Already did. I slipped in after you left. Never heard of them putting the baby up on the mama like that. They sure do things different nowadays. When you was born, they took you straight to the nursery and your mama didn’t see you until you had a diaper and a little shirt on your scrawny body. You only weighed five pounds, so you looked more like a red-haired monkey than a baby.”

  “Well, thank you so much for that. If I’d known you were going to insult me, I would have let you ride home with someone else,” Betsy said.

  “Don’t threaten me, young lady. And while we’re arguing, I saw the way you looked at that Declan Brennan. Don’t think your glances his way got past me.”

  “I’m going to call him to come over to Wild Horse for a booty call soon as I get you home.”

  Naomi slapped her on the arm. “That’s not a joking matter. Go get the truck and pick me up at the door. I don’t feel like walking all that way.”

  When Betsy drove up, Naomi crawled inside the passenger side. When her grandmother was mad, she puffed up and always reminded Betsy more of a bullfrog than a bulldog, but both had the word bull in them, and that part was right because Naomi was definitely bullheaded! Her chin tucked down into the layers that made up her neck. Her shoulders hunched forward, and air seemed to inflate her whole body into a round ball, with skinny arms and legs protruding at strange angles.

  “Declan has always been a good-looking cowboy, and that’s why women flock to him like flies on honey,” Naomi finally said.

  Traffic was almost nonexistent at that time of night, so Betsy pulled out onto the highway and headed toward the waffle house. “No argument here.”

  “I don’t like it when you give him that once-over that says you like what you see.”

  Betsy’s shoulder raised an inch. “I love to look at all the Christmas ornaments in the stores this time of year. It doesn’t mean I’m going to buy them all.”

  Naomi sighed, and the bullfrog disappeared. “But you might buy one, right? And when you get it home, it might be the wrong one.”

  “Or it might be the one that I’ll put on my tree for the next fifty years. Stop worrying, Granny. Just because Leah Brennan moved away from River Bend doesn’t mean you’re going to lose me.” Betsy reached across the console and patted Naomi’s hand.

  “I feel a change in the air, and I hate change,” Naomi said.

  “Everything changes, and the more they change, the more they stay the same.”

  “That sounds like a load of philosophical bull. Forget the waffle house. I want to go home and have a shot of Jameson and go straight to bed.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Betsy took the next exit, made a loop, and caught the highway north toward Burnt Boot.

  Chapter 6

  The heart might want what the heart wants, but sometimes it has to be trained to want something else. Betsy’s heart was about to get its first lesson in cross-training and learn to forget that steamy kiss she’d shared with Declan. For the past forty-eight hours, she’d pined for him, but now she realized it was nothing more than a game. Even the Christmas decorations were a competition, and everything else most likely had something to do with the feud. The Brennans were trying to stir up trouble in the Gallagher court so Mavis could one-up Naomi at Christmas.

  The Brennans, including Declan, were not to be trus
ted.

  It was time to suck it up and stop letting her heart lead her around by her hormones. And there wasn’t a better night to get the job done than a Saturday night at the Burnt Boot bar. One single shot of Jameson was all she would have, so her grandmother wouldn’t fuss. The place would be hopping with cowboys, so her plan was simple: dance with a dozen or more good-lookin’ guys and take the one that made her forget all about Declan home for the night. Sneaking a one-night stand in and out of the big house right under her grandmother’s nose held enough danger and excitement, even for Betsy.

  She turned around slowly in front of the floor-length mirror. Rhinestones created the outline of a cowboy hat and boots on the back of her shirt. She’d tucked it in to show off the blinged-out pockets on her designer jeans as well as the belt that sparkled even more than the shirt and jeans. Makeup was perfect, hair down and curled, and expensive perfume settled on her like a fine mist.

  She repeated her mother’s words. “Spray it in the air and walk through it.”

  And you should be going to dinner with her and your dad, rather than trying to find a one-night stand—the voice in her head belonged to Tanner.

  “If you knew what was really going on, you’d be out there hunting down a stranger for me, Tanner Gallagher,” she mumbled. “I’m going to Sunday dinner at home tomorrow, and I promise not to have a hangover, so hush. Mama and Daddy would both be willing to kill their firstborn to keep them from hooking up with a Brennan, and since I’m the firstborn, I need to get him out of my mind.”

  She grabbed a fancy denim duster, picked up her hat, and made it out of the big house without Naomi catching her in the foyer. Tanner’s voice in her head had gone silent. Those were both good signs, weren’t they?

  The two-foot layer of smoke hugging the ceiling of the bar was so heavy that the ceiling fan didn’t do anything but stir it a bit. Blake Shelton was belting out “Goodbye Time” from the jukebox. All of the lyrics didn’t relate to Betsy’s situation, but the one where he sang that it was good-bye time sounded loud and clear in her heart.