A Cowboy's Christmas Reunion (Mills & Boon Cherish) (The Boones of Texas, Book 1)

by Sasha Summers

  “No,” she said, walking away from him again, this time in the direction of her car.

  “Thanks, but definitely, no.”

  Eighteen months later...

  THROUGH THE RAIN-DRIZZLED, holiday-themed windows of bustling Hohlmann’s Department Store, Chance caught sight of a woman’s long, buttery-blond hair. Heart pounding, his first instinct was to run toward her, seeking an answer to the perpetual question: Was it her? Was it Rachel?

  No. It wasn’t her. And this time, just as so many others, the disappointment landed like a crushing blow to his chest.

  That day at the chapel had been the last time he’d seen her. Despite exhaustive efforts to track her, she’d vanished—destroying him inside and out.

  When eventually he’d had to return to work and his so-called normal life, he’d put a private investigator on retainer, telling the man to contact him upon finding the slightest lead.

  “You all right?” his little sister, nineteen-year-old Sarah, asked above an obnoxious Muzak rendition of “Jingle Bells.” She was clutching the prewrapped perfume box she’d just purchased for their mother. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Might as well have,” he said, taking the box from her to add to his already bulging bag. “Got everything you need?”

  “Sure,” she said, giving him the Look. The one that said she knew he was thinking about Rachel again, and that her wish for Christmas was that her usually wise big brother would once and for all put the woman—his dead best friend’s wife—out of his heart and head.

  Two hours later, Chance stuck his key in the lock of the Victorian relic his maternal grandmother had left him, shutting out hectic holiday traffic and torrential rain. Portland had been swamped under six inches in the past twenty-four hours. The last time they’d had such a deluge had been the last time he’d seen Rachel.

  “Where are you?” he asked softly as the wind bent gnarled branches, eerily scratching them against the back porch roof.

  Setting his meager selection of family gifts on the wood bench parked alongside the door, he looked away from the gray afternoon and to the blinking light on his answering machine. Expecting the message to be from Sarah, telling him she’d left a gift or glove in his Jeep, he pressed Play.

  “Chance,” his PI said, voice like gravel from too many cigarettes and not enough broccoli. “I’ve got a lead for you on that missing Finch girl. It’s a long shot, but you said you wanted everything, no matter how unlikely...”

  Despite the fact that Rachel had run off without the decency of a proper—or even improper—goodbye, her tears still haunted him when he closed his eyes.

  Chance listened to the message three times before committing the information to memory, then headed to his computer to book a flight to Denver.

  * * *

  “WESLEY, SWEETIE, PLEASE stop crying,” Rachel crooned to her ten-month-old baby boy, the only bright spot in what was becoming an increasingly frightening life. Having grown up in an orphanage, Rachel was no stranger to feeling alone in a crowd, or having to make it on her own. So why, after six months, was this still so hard?

  Despite her hugging and cooing, the boy only wailed more.

  “Want me to take him?”

  She looked up to see one of Baker Street Homeless Shelter’s newest residents wave grungy hands toward her child. She hadn’t looked much better when she’d first arrived, and Rachel still couldn’t get past the shock that she and her baby were now what most people would call bums.

  After reverting back to the name she’d gone by at the orphanage, Rachel Parkson, she’d traveled to Denver to room with her friend Jenny. But while Jenny had gotten lucky, landing a great job transfer to Des Moines, Rachel had descended into an abyss of bad luck.

  A tough pregnancy had landed her in hospital. While she’d been blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby, at the rate she was going, the hefty medical bill wouldn’t be gone till he was out of high school. Wes’s life insurance company had repeatedly denied her claim, stating that without a body it wouldn’t pay.

  Making a long, sad story short, she’d lost everything, and here she was, now earning less than minimum wage doing bookkeeping for the shelter while trying to finish her business degree one night course at a time through a downtown Denver community college.

  She was raising her precious son in a shelter with barely enough money for diapers, let alone food and a place of their own. She used to cry herself to sleep every night, but now, she was just too exhausted. She used to pray, as well, but it seemed God, just like her husband, had deserted her.

  Baby Wesley continued to wail.

  “Sorry for all the noise,” she said to the poor soul beside her, holding her son close as she wearily pushed to her feet with her free hand. She had to get out of here, but how? How could she ever escape this downward financial spiral?

  “Rachel?”

  That voice...

  She paused before looking up. But when she did, tingles climbed her spine.

  “Chance?”

  * * *

  AFTER ALL THIS TIME, was it really Rachel? Raising Wes’s child in a homeless shelter? Why, why hadn’t she just asked for help?

  Chance pressed the heel of his hand to stinging eyes.

  “Y-you look good,” he said, lying through his teeth at the waiflike ghost of the woman he used to know. Dark shadows hollowed pale blue eyes. Wes used to brag about the silky feel of Rachel’s long hair cascading against his chest when they’d made love—but it was now shorn into a short cap. “And the baby. He’s wonderful, Rachel. You did good.”

  “Thanks,” she said above her son’s pitiful cry. “We’re okay.” She paused. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see you... To help you...”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Bull,” he said, taking the now screaming baby from her, cradling him against his chest, nuzzling the infant’s downy hair beneath his chin. “What’s his name?”

  “Wesley,” she said, refusing to meet his gaze.

  He nodded, fighting a sudden knot at the back of his throat. Such a beautiful child, growing up in such cruel surroundings. And why? All because of Rachel’s foolish pride.

  “Get your things,” he growled between clenched teeth, edging her away from a rag-clothed derelict reeking of booze.

  “W-what?”

  “You heard me. You tried things your way, honey, and apparently it didn’t work out. Now we’re doing it my way. Your husband’s way.”

  “I— I’m fine,” she said, raising her chin, a partial spark back in her stunning eyes. “Just a little down on my luck. But things will change. They’ll get better.”

  “Damn straight they will.” Clutching the infant with one arm, he dragged her toward the shelter’s door with the other. “You don’t want charity from me, fine. But is this really what you want for your son? Wes’s son?”

  While Chance regretted the harshness of his words, he’d never retract them. Years ago he’d made a promise to her husband, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to back out on it now.

  He glanced away from Rachel to take in a nearly bald, fake Christmas tree that’d been decorated with homemade ornaments. Pipe cleaner reindeer and paper angels colored with crayons. Though the tree’s intent was kind, he knew Rachel deserved better.

  While killing time on endless stakeouts, Wes would ramble for hours about his perfect wife. About how much he loved her, how she was a great cook, how she always managed to perfectly balance the checkbook. Wes went so far as to offer private morsels he should’ve kept to himself—locker room details that should’ve been holy between a man and his wife. But because of Wes’s ever-flapping mouth, whether he’d wanted to or not, Chance knew everything about Rachel from her favorite songs to what turned her on.

  Another thing he knew were Wes’s dreams for her. How because she’d grown up in an orphanage, he’d always wanted to have a half-dozen chubby babies with her and buy her a great house and put good, rel
iable tires on her crappy car.

  Chance had made a promise to his best friend; one that put him in charge of picking up where Wes left off. It was a given he’d steer clear of the husband-wife physical intimacies—she was off-limits. Totally. But when it came to making her comfortable, happy...by God, if it took every day for the rest of his life, that’s what Chance had come to Denver prepared—and okay, he’d admit it, secretly hoping—to do.

  Looking back to Rachel, he found her eyes pooled. Lips trembling, she met his stare.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”

  Baby Wesley had fallen asleep in Chance’s arms. His cheeks were flushed, and he sucked pitifully at his thumb.

  “I—I tried breastfeeding him,” she said. “But my milk dried up.”

  “That happens,” he said, not knowing if it did or didn’t or why she’d even brought it up...just willing to say anything to get her to go with him.

  Shaking her head, looking away to brush tears, she said, “Wait here. I’ll get our things.”

  * * *

  FOR RACHEL, BEING at the airport and boarding the plane was surreal. As was driving through a fog-shrouded Portland in Chance’s Jeep, stopping off at an all-night Walmart for a car seat and over five hundred dollars’ worth of clothes, diapers, formula and other baby supplies. The Christmas decorations, hundreds and thousands of colorful lights lining each new street they traveled, struck her as foreign. As if from a world where she was no longer welcome.

  “I’ll repay you,” she said from the passenger seat, swirling a pattern in the fogged window. Presumably, he was heading toward his lovely hilltop home she’d always secretly called the real estate version of a wedding cake. “For everything. The clothes. Plane ticket. I’ll pay it all back. I—I just need a breather to get back on my feet.”

  “Sure,” he said. Was it her imagination, or had he tightened his grip on the wheel?

  “Really,” she said, rambling on about how Wes’s life insurance company refused to pay. “Just as soon as I get the check, I’ll reimburse you.”

  “Know how you can pay me?” he asked, pressing the garage door remote on the underbelly of his sun visor.

  She shook her head.

  He pulled the Jeep into the single-stall detached garage she’d helped Wes and him build, that same enchanted summer she and her future husband had become lovers.

  It is said a woman’s heart is a deep well of secrets and Rachel knew hers was no different. Squeezing her eyes shut, she saw Chance as she had that first night they’d met at Ziggy’s Sports Bar—before she’d even met Wes. Despite his physical appearance—six-three, with wide, muscular shoulders and a chest as broad and strong as an oak’s trunk—Chance’s shy, kind spirit made him a gentle giant to whom she’d instinctively gravitated.

  Never the brazen type, Rachel had subtly asked mutual friends about him, and every so often, when their eyes met from opposite ends of the bar during the commercial breaks of Monday Night Football, she’d thought she’d caught a glimmer of interest. And if only for an instant, hope that he might find her as attractive as she found him would soar. But then he’d look away and the moment would be gone.

  Then she’d met Wes—who’d made it known in about ten exhilaratingly sexy seconds that he didn’t just want to be her friend. Handsome, five-eleven with a lean build and quick smile, Wes hadn’t had to work too hard to make her fall for him—or to make any and all occasions magic.

  Chance turned off the engine and sighed. The only light was that which spilled from the weak bulb attached to the automatic opener, the only sounds those of rain pattering the roof and the baby’s sleepy gurgle... Angling on his seat, Chance reached out to Rachel, whispering the tip of his index finger so softly around her lips...she might’ve imagined his being there at all.

  “Know how you can repay me?” he repeated.

  Heartbeat a sudden storm, she swallowed hard.

  “By bringing back your smile.”

  * * *

  RACHEL AWOKE THE next morning to unfamiliar softness, and the breezy scent of freshly laundered sheets. Sunshine streamed through tall paned windows. After a moment of initial panic, fearing she may have died and moved on to heaven, she remembered herself not on some random cloud, but safely tucked in Chance’s guest bed in the turret-shaped room she’d urged him to paint an ethereal sky blue.

  The room was the highest point in his home, reached by winding stairs, and its view never failed to stir her. Mt. Hood was to the west, while to the east—long ago, while standing on a ladder, paint brush in hand, nose and cheeks smudged blue—she’d sworn she could see all the way to the shimmering Pacific. Wesley and Chance had laughed at her, but she’d ignored them.

  To Rachel, the room represented freedom from all that had bound her in her early, depressing, pre-Wes life. The panoramic views, just as her marriage, made her feel as if her soul was flying.

  As she inched up in the sumptuous feather bed to greet a day as chilly as it was clear, the room still wielded its calming effect. She’d awakened enough to realize how late it must be...and yet Wesley hadn’t stirred.

  Tossing back covers, she winced at the wood floor’s chilly bite against her bare feet. With one look at the portable crib that had been among their purchases the previous night, Rachel realized that Wesley’s cries hadn’t woken her because he wasn’t there.

  Bounding to the kitchen, she found her son sitting proud in his new high chair, beaming, covered ear to ear in peachy-smelling orange goo.

  “Morning, sleepyhead.” Baby spoon to Wesley’s cooing lips, Chance caught her off guard with the size of his smile.

  “You should’ve woken me,” she said, hustling to where the two guys sat at a round oak table in a sunny patch of the country kitchen. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”

  “Nope,” he said. “I took the day off.”

  “I’ll pay you for your time.”

  He’d allowed her to take the spoon as she’d pulled out a chair and sat beside him, but now, his strong fingers clamped her wrist. “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “The whole defensive routine. It doesn’t become you.”

  “S-sorry. That’s who I am.”

  “Bull.”

  “E-excuse me?” He released her, and the spoon now trembled in her still tingling wrist.

  “I knew you as playful. Fun. Now, you seem like you’re in attack mode.”

  “And why shouldn’t I be?” she asked. “Aside from Wesley, name one thing that’s gone right for me in the past year?”

  “That’s easy,” he said, cracking a slow and easy grin that, Lord help her, had Rachel’s pulse racing yet again. Had the man always been this attractive?

  Judging by the massive crush she’d had on him all those years ago...yes.

  Making things worse—or better, depending how you looked at it—he winked. “One thing that’s gone very right is how you’re finally back with me.”

  * * *

  SENSING RACHEL NEEDED two gifts above all else that Christmas season—time and space—Chance returned to work Tuesday, and every day for the rest of the week. Come Saturday, though, despite her protests that they should stay at the house, he bustled her and the baby into his Jeep and started off for the traditional holiday ride he’d loved as a kid, but had given up as an adult.

  “Well?” he asked a silent Rachel an hour later, pulling into a snow-covered winter wonderland. “See anything that’d fit in the living room bay window?”

  She glanced at him, then at the sprawling Christmas tree farm that might as well have been Santa’s North Pole as everywhere you looked, Christmas was in full swing. Kids laughing and sledding and playing tag while darting in and out amongst fragrant trees. Families hugging the fires built in river rock pits, sipping steaming mugs of cocoa. Upbeat carols played from a tiny speaker.

  “It’s—” she cautiously glanced at the idyllic scene before them, as if they didn’t belong, then back to him “—amazing. But if
you want a tree, wouldn’t it be cheaper to—”

  “Look—” he sighed “—I wasn’t going to bring this up until it’s a done deal, but I told my boss about your situation—with Wes’s flaky life insurance—and fury didn’t begin to describe his reaction. Wheels are turning, and I’d say you’ll have a check by the end of next week.”

  “Really?”

  Just then, she was seriously gorgeous, eyes brimming with hope and a shimmering lake of tears. “Yeah,” Chance said. “I’m serious. So what’s with the waterworks? I thought you’d be thrilled to be rich?”

  “I would be—I mean, I am. It’s just that after all these months of barely scraping by, not sleeping because I’ve literally been afraid to close my eyes, it seems a bit surreal to have such a happy ending at all, let alone in such a happy place.”

  He laughed, unfastening his seat belt to grab the baby from his seat. “Don’t you think after what you’ve been through you two deserve a little happiness?”

  She turned away from him while she sniffled and dried her cheeks, and he couldn’t tell if she was nodding or shaking her head. “Well?” he asked. “Was that a yes or no?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe both. I’m just so confused. And grateful. Very, very grateful.”

  “Yeah, well, what you need to be,” he said, Wesley snug in his arms, “is energized.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she asked, again blasting him with a tremulous smile. “How come?”

  “Because me and this kid of yours are about to whomp you in a snowball fight.”

  * * *

  “IT’S BEAUTIFUL,” RACHEL SAID, stepping back to admire the nine-foot fir they’d finished decorating. Heirloom glass ornaments and twinkling white lights hung from each branch. “Perfect.”

  With Chance beside her, carols softly playing and a fire crackling in the hearth, Rachel couldn’t have ordered a more enchanting holiday scene.

  “I don’t know,” Chance said, finger to his lips as he stood beside her, surveying their afternoon’s work. “Something’s missing.”

  “You’re right,” Rachel said. “We forgot the angel.”

  “I didn’t see it, did you?”