The Cowboy's Christmas Surprise

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Miss Joan will keep an eye on him,” Holly assured him. The other woman liked to keep things fair and equal, making sure that no one had an unfair advantage over anyone else, and Big Jim could eat faster than anyone she’d ever met. “Remember, she did last year.”

  “But he’s bigger this year,” Ray pointed out with a laugh. “I don’t think anything’ll succeed in reining him in, short of throwing lassos around him, tethering him and staking the ends of the lassos in the ground.”

  “Well, if anyone can do it, Miss Joan can,” Holly bantered back, but her mind wasn’t really on the man they were talking about, or the coffee and pie Miss Joan was giving away or even the Christmas tree she’d worked so hard to help bring back into town.

  No matter what words came out of her mouth, Holly’s mind was stuck in third gear and totally focused on those few precious moments when time had stood still and Ray’s mouth had found hers again.

  Except that this time, though she wouldn’t have thought it was possible until she’d experienced it, had been even more intimate and stimulating than the first time that Ray had kissed her.

  The way she saw it, there was nothing she could find under her tree come Christmas morning that could possibly come close to competing with what she’d already experienced.

  As far as she was concerned, she’d already had her Christmas miracle—and it would last her for many Christmases to come.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sitting in front of her outdated computer, Holly felt her eyelids drooping. She struggled to keep her eyes open. But it was definitely not easy.

  She’d gotten up early—as usual—to put in some study time. Exams were coming up soon and she needed to be ready for them if she was ever going to achieve her goal and become a nurse. However, getting up early, staying up late and working her study schedule around her workday as well as the needs of her mother and Molly was definitely challenging.

  But then, she kept telling herself over and over again, if it wasn’t challenging—if all this phenomenal amount of juggling were easy for her—then life would have been extremely boring with a capital B. It was in her nature to work hard, and she’d always liked challenges.

  It was just a wee bit difficult to work this hard and be this challenged. Holly had to admit that she would have welcomed being a little less challenged once in a while.

  “Damn it,” she muttered under her breath. Her eyes had closed again. She had to stop doing that or she was going to flunk.

  Unless, of course, she found a way to absorb all this information by osmosis.

  Fat chance.

  “Are you asleep at the computer again?”

  Holly’s eyes flew open as she heard her mother wheeling herself into the small bedroom that had been converted into Holly’s study area. She’d thought that her mother was still in bed. Just how long had she been asleep anyway?

  “Nope, not me,” Holly denied cheerfully. She pressed her lips together to suppress the desire to yawn. “Just resting my eyes, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” Martha murmured, clearly skeptical. “You should try resting the rest of yourself once in a while, as well.” Her mother shook her head disapprovingly. “You go on burning the candle at both ends this way, one day you’re going to find that you’re not going to have any candle left. You know that, right?”

  Holly closed down her computer. It was time for her to go to the diner and work.

  “Sure I will, Mom.” Holly turned from the darkening monitor and lightly brushed a kiss against her mother’s cheek before she got up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Why don’t you call in sick and go catch up on your sleep?” her mother suggested.

  “Because Miss Joan doesn’t pay me for being beautiful, Mom,” Holly said, tongue in cheek. “She pays me for showing up and working.”

  Striding to the front of the house, Holly rummaged through the hall closet, found her jacket and put it on. The temperature had dropped in the past couple of days and it was actually rather chilly in the morning. She supposed that since it was December, she really shouldn’t be complaining. A lot of the country was dealing with record snow storms, so a little temperature drop was a small thing in comparison.

  “She also doesn’t pay you for being dead on your feet,” Martha pointed out.

  “Who’s dead on her feet?” Holly asked, feigning confusion.

  Martha frowned. “Don’t play dumb, Holly. You could never pull that off. Even as a baby, you were always alert, always quick to look as if you understood what was going on.”

  “And you’re not prejudiced in any way, right?” Holly laughed.

  Martha lifted her chin as if she’d just been unfairly challenged. “Of course not.”

  Holly grinned. “Maybe you’re giving just a little too much credit to a toddler, Mom—even if that toddler was me.”

  Martha sighed, throwing up her hands and resigning herself to business as usual as far as her daughter was concerned. “I don’t know why I keep hitting my head against the wall like this. You never listen to anything I say anyway.”

  “Sure I listen, Mom. I just reserve the right to pick and choose which advice I want to follow and which I want to put away for another time,” she answered tactfully. They both knew that the second kind of advice wasn’t being put off for another time but being put away into cold storage, to be ignored for all time. “I’ll be fine, Mom, really. Please stop worrying. I’ll cut back on this hectic pace soon, I promise.”

  “Right, when you land in the hospital in Pine Ridge.”

  “Ever the optimist, Mom.” Holly laughed, shaking her head.

  “No, what I’m being is a realist, Holly. You simply can’t keep going like this without some sort of consequences.”

  “And I won’t keep going like this,” Holly promised. She was going to be late, but she couldn’t just leave when her mother was this upset with her. She needed to put her mother at ease as well as make her understand that right now she needed to keep up this pace a little longer. “I’ll be graduating in less than six months—provided I pass my tests—and with any luck, new worlds will open up for me. For us,” Holly amended, smiling warmly at her mother.

  Martha appeared far from convinced. “If you haven’t worked yourself to death by then.”

  “Never happen, I promise,” Holly said, raising her right hand as if she were taking a solemn vow. “I won’t let it.”

  Her mother murmured something under her breath about it not being all up to her, but Holly was determined to leave while she was still ahead in the game—or at least even. She dearly loved her mother, but Martha Johnson could talk a person to death once she got going on a subject. And right now, Holly thought, she had only so much energy to work with and it was all she could do to stay awake and functioning.

  There was a whole day stretching out in front of her. If she spent time arguing with her mother, that would take up energy she needed for work, for studying tonight and for giving Molly a little quality one-on-one time, as well.

  And what about you? When do you get some me time? a little voice in her head demanded.

  The thing Holly had discovered about little voices was that she could ignore them if she chose. It was all mind over matter, properly applied.

  “Hold down the fort until I get home, Mom.” She kissed Martha’s cheek again. “We’ll talk about this then.”

  “No, we won’t,” Martha predicted as Holly left the house.

  Right you are again, Mom.

  Holly walked briskly to the diner. She passed the town square and the lovely Christmas tree, which now stood in all its finery like a giant, well-dressed sentry. All the decorations had been hung—if not all with the greatest of care, then at least with the greatest of affection.

  She smiled to herself as sh
e hurried by it. To her the tree was a symbol of the harmony that existed in Forever. She dearly loved living in a town that had traditions such as this one. From the bottom of her heart, Holly felt sorry for the people who were living in big cities, people who passed their neighbors on the street without a clue as to who they were or what kind of people they were.

  Wax poetic later, Holly. If you don’t pick up your pace, you’re going to be late.

  That’s what she got for falling asleep in front of her computer, Holly berated herself. She was going to have to go over those last few pages she was supposed to have covered. Attempting to summon them now, she was drawing a blank. If those pages turned up on the exam, she was going to wind up failing it.

  Shadows accompanied her through the streets, marking her path as she made her way to the diner. Dawn had yet to crease the horizon with the promise of first light.

  Though she’d promised herself not to, Holly glanced at her watch. Five minutes after six. Not bad as far as being late went. Miss Joan was undoubtedly on the premises already. If it wasn’t for the fact that she knew the woman lived with her husband in Harry’s house, she would have sworn that Miss Joan slept in the diner so she could be there 24/7.

  But when Holly arrived at the diner she found that the door was locked.

  She looked at it in surprise.

  Well, what do you know? She’d beaten Miss Joan in. That was definitely a first.

  Holly fished out her key and unlocked the door. Miss Joan had given her her own key on the outside chance that she arrived first, but neither Miss Joan nor Holly had ever thought that was going to happen.

  Holly caught herself hoping that everything was all right. Stripping off her jacket as she walked into the diner, she dropped it on the back of one of the chairs and went directly to the coffee urns. She had to get the first pots of coffee going.

  She was filling the last urn with water for brewing tea when she heard the door to the diner opening behind her. Glancing over her shoulder in that direction, she saw Miss Joan in the doorway. The expression on the woman’s face was somewhat bemused.

  “You beat me in,” she said.

  Relieved that Miss Joan looked to be all right, Holly cheerfully replied, “Had to happen sometime.”

  “No, it didn’t,” the older woman retorted.

  “Okay, I can leave and come back in again,” Holly offered.

  Miss Joan scowled at her as she deposited her purse behind the counter then shrugged out of her coat. “Don’t patronize me, girl.”

  “I’m not patronizing you,” Holly protested. “I’m just trying to guess what you want.”

  “Not even God can do that,” Ray told her as he came into the diner himself.

  Clearly not expecting anyone in this early, Miss Joan turned around and looked him over. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she commented. “It’s practically the middle of the night—at least for you. What are you doing out of bed so early, boy?”

  Ray shrugged carelessly, as if he hadn’t really noticed that he was the first customer at the diner, a fact he was acutely aware of.

  “Thought I’d get an early start for a change,” he told Miss Joan, carefully avoiding looking in Holly’s direction—the old woman was a mind reader and he didn’t want her thinking that he was here on account of Holly. He wouldn’t even allow himself to think that. “Got a long list of things to do today.”

  “Like sitting on a counter stool, listening to your hair grow?” Miss Joan asked, tying on her apron. “Or are you here to watch my waitress work?” She gestured toward Holly.

  “I’m here to have some of your excellent coffee and sample one of those fantastic raspberry-jelly donuts,” Ray informed her.

  Miss Joan laughed, shaking her head. “Well, I’ll say one thing for you, boy. Your lies are getting smoother and rolling off your tongue with more charm. What do you think, Holly? Is Ray here becoming a more skillful liar than he used to be?”

  Holly’s early morning routine at the diner had become second nature to her and she could initiate it in her sleep—which some mornings was rather fortunate. But there was no sleepwalking through a morning that contained Ray. She was aware of every single movement she made—as well as every single one of his.

  “I think he’s just as attached to your jelly donuts and your coffee as he always is,” Holly answered, waiting for her pulse to settle down to its normal irregular beat whenever Ray was anywhere around.

  Miss Joan looked from one young person to the other. “You’ve been handling the donut orders for the past two years and as near as I can remember, you’re the one who makes the initial pots of coffee in the morning, as well. Sounds to me like you’re the one who should be garnering those compliments—or malarkey—from this boy and not me.”

  Ray sat down at the counter, taking the stool that was closest to where Holly was working. “Coffee ready yet?” he asked her, since as far as he could tell, the urn was still in the process of making its loud brewing noises.

  “You’re in luck,” she told him. “The first urn just finished brewing.” The other two urns were still going through their paces.

  Holly poured the midnight-black liquid into a cup, placed it on a saucer and took it over to Ray. Setting the cup and saucer down on the counter, she selected a raspberry-jelly donut from the center of the box that had been delivered late last night and, placing that on a plate, put it beside the saucer on the counter. She put the creamer on the other side.

  Within a moment, Ray had made short work of the cup of coffee. The rate he was consuming it made her think he needed it to wake up.

  Ray exhaled, pure pleasure on his face as he looked her way. Two thirds of the coffee was gone when he set the cup back on the saucer. “Makes me feel like a new man,” he declared.

  “Nothing wrong with the old one,” Holly heard herself saying before she could think her comment through and keep it to herself.

  Surprised, Ray smiled at her while Miss Joan laughed shortly and said, “You’re obviously not a very good judge of character, Holly. But you’ll learn.” Turning to Ray, she asked, “How’s that wedding coming along?”

  Startled, because his mind was clearly elsewhere, Ray looked at the woman with more than a little nervousness and asked, “What wedding?”

  “Your brother Mike’s wedding,” Miss Joan specified, her eyes all but pinning him to the wall. “That’s not off, is it?”

  Of course she was talking about Mike’s wedding. What other wedding would she have been referring to? Ray upbraided himself. Ever since he’d kissed Holly, his mind—not to mention other parts of him—had been playing tricks on him, making him wonder about things that he’d never wondered about or even contemplated before.

  “No.” And then he cleared his throat, repeating the word with more conviction. “No. As far as I know, it’s still on.”

  “What else do you know?” Miss Joan asked with a strange, sly smile on her lips. A smile that made him fidget inside.

  “About the wedding?” Ray asked, not sure if they were still on the same topic.

  Miss Joan sighed and shook her head. “No, about how long panda bears live. Of course about the wedding. Are they still planning on inviting the whole town, or have they come to their senses and decided to elope?” She spared Holly a glance, saying, “Eloping is really the best way. Just you and your intended and the good Lord—and a preacher, of course.”

  Holly said nothing, but that definitely did sound good to her. Anything sounded good to her, as long as it included Ray.

  Ray laughed at Miss Joan’s suggestion. “Well, I know that Mike would probably like that idea a lot, but seeing as how Samantha doesn’t really have any family to speak of, I think she kind of likes the idea of having a big wedding with lots of people around. And Mike likes seeing her happy, so yeah, they’re still having the
whole town at the wedding.”

  Pouring her own cup of coffee, Miss Joan leaned over the counter, fixed Ray with a very intense look and asked, “Anything else?”

  He had no idea where Miss Joan was going with this—or even if the woman had a destination in mind. With Miss Joan, he’d learned a long time ago, nothing was what it seemed.

  “Like what?” he asked innocently.

  “Like are you part of the wedding party?” Holly asked, getting into the general inquisitive mood that seemed to be permeating the diner this morning.

  “Me? Hell, no,” Ray laughed, waving away the mere notion. “That would mean I’d have to put on a monkey suit.”

  “You could always go in that lovely outfit you have on,” Miss Joan deadpanned, gesturing at the sheepskin jacket, plaid shirt and worn jeans that he was wearing.

  But Holly had a serious question that she raised now. “You mean you wouldn’t put up with a little discomfort in order to stand up for your own brother?”

  Ray became somewhat defensive. “Hey, it’s not like he’s my only brother, and you wouldn’t call it ‘a little’ discomfort if you’d had to put up with it like I did for the last wedding, when Rafe married Val. Or the one before that when Angel and Gabe did the same thing,” he recalled.

  Now that he’d gotten started, it was like opening up a floodgate. “Then there was Eli and Kasey. And Alma and Cash started the ball rolling when they got married.” He’d been there for four of his siblings. That, as far as he was concerned, was above and beyond the call of duty. “Way I see it,” he told her, “I’ve done my time.”

  “So you’re bailing out on Mike?” Holly asked.

  The way she said it sounded like an accusation, Ray thought. But rather than take offense, he just shrugged. “It’s not like he’ll miss me,” Ray said glibly.

  “The hell he won’t,” Holly countered. “I’ve seen all of you together. You all act tough, like you could take the rest of your family or leave it, but deep down, that’s not true and you know it. You all love each other and there’s not one of you who wouldn’t go to their grave defending the others.”