The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby

by Carolyn Brown

  She shivered.

  He wrapped the side of the comforter around them and kissed her on the forehead. “Well, sweet cheeks, it might take me a few minutes to build up to a second round after that.”

  “Who needs ten when one is perfect?” she mumbled sleepily.

  Having sex with a man that much taller was a brand-new experience. She could bury her face into his neck instead of looking him right in the eye.

  “Lucas, this isn’t going to make it all awkward between us, is it?”

  He propped up on an elbow and studied her face by the light of the moon, drifting through the mini-blind slats on the window across the room. “Why would you ask that?”

  “It did between me and Drew. Crazy thing is we were both so drunk that we weren’t even sure what had happened.”

  “No, it’s not going to be awkward. We didn’t take a vow to be just friends forever and after what we just had, wild horses or hellfire couldn’t force a vow like that out of me.” He chuckled.

  He plopped back down and she settled back into the curve of his muscular body. The flickering colors of the afterglow dimmed as she shut her eyes and fell asleep.

  Chapter 11

  Natalie dressed for church in a long denim skirt, bright blue sweater, and boots. She made a pan of quick cinnamon rolls from sweet biscuit dough that morning since she only had to cook for two. They were almost ready to take out of the oven when a blast of winter wind blew Lucas in the back door.

  “Better bundle up good before we go this morning… wow! You look gorgeous, and is that cinnamon rolls? You didn’t have to go to so much trouble,” he said.

  “It’s no trouble. About last night,” she said.

  She’d never been one to sit on the fence or worry about something for days. Like an old Angus bull set loose in a fancy China shop, she dealt with problems head-on.

  He hung his coat and hat on a rack and raised an eyebrow. “What about last night? I thought I was pretty awesome considering that I haven’t had sex in almost a year.”

  “I don’t want it to make us awkward,” she said.

  Lucas poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with it. “I missed you this morning. I thought you were cuddled up to my back, but when I turned over it was the pillow. If it was going to be weird between us, I wouldn’t have wanted you to still be there in bed with me.”

  “Joshua woke up at two o’clock for his bottle,” she explained.

  “I figured as much. You could have come back to bed afterward. You’ve got that monitor thing,” he said.

  She set the pan of cinnamon rolls on the table and sat down across from him. “I started to but I thought I might be pushing my luck.”

  “I thought guys got lucky.” A big sexy grin split Lucas’s face, and there was laughter in his eyes.

  “You know what I mean. We’ve been such good friends and…”

  “Like I told you last night, I’m not Drew. I liked him. He was my friend and I miss him. But I’m not just your friend, Natalie. Haven’t been in a long time. Now pass those cinnamon rolls. My mouth is watering,” he said.

  Joshua’s swing made a clicking noise. He looked from one to the other, as if trying to decide who to grace with his smile that morning.

  Lucas changed the subject as he shifted three rolls onto his plate. “Joshua woke up in a good mood.”

  Natalie appreciated that more than he’d ever realize, but she had to know where she stood. “What am I at this point, Lucas? Housekeeper, cook, friend, lover?”

  Lucas pushed back his chair and rounded the table. He put a hand on each of her shoulders and leaned in for a kiss. He tasted like hot coffee and sweet, sweet cinnamon rolls.

  When he pulled back, he said, “I want more than a friendship with you, Natalie.”

  “Okay, I can live with that,” she said.

  He kissed her again and ran a hand down her arm. Her hormones started humming and begging for more.

  “Lucas, Joshua is…”

  He put a finger over her lips before she could finish. “I don’t think he minds if we share a kiss.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.” He sat down on his side of the table and finished off his cinnamon rolls. “You should have told me about him, Natalie. He’s a good kid and I like him a lot.”

  “I wanted to meet you so bad. Your visits were all that kept me going most days right after Drew died. And then when we started talking on the phone on weekends and things were going from friendship to something more, I really wanted to tell you. But I was afraid you’d tell me to stay away from you. So I came and then Hazel fell and why would she make me promise to stay here anyway?”

  He reached across the table and covered her hands with his. “I talked to you every morning before I went to work. I talked to Hazel and Dad and whoever else was in the house every evening before I went to sleep. Guess I told them all about you, so they knew how much you meant to me. Didn’t you tell your folks about me?”

  “Hell, no!” she said so loud that Joshua jumped.

  His dark eyebrows shot so high that they looked like they’d touch the ceiling. “You didn’t?”

  “Not until last week.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Fallout.”

  “Which means? Are you ashamed of me?” He frowned.

  She shook her head emphatically. “Hell, no! My folks and my brothers don’t believe in the Internet dating thing. They’d have a fit if they knew I’d met you that way and was coming halfway across Texas to meet you. They’d think that you should come to Silverton if you wanted to meet me and we should date the proper way. And that means without the Internet or late-night phone calls. And then there was the Drew thing, and we’d talked it to death, but I was afraid that you had just stepped into his shoes and what if that’s all we had. Oh, hell, Lucas, we don’t have time to pick this thing to the bare bones right now.”

  The grin returned. “Maybe this evening we’ll take a ride over to Sherman. Joshua is probably getting stir-crazy. And we’ll pick it apart then. What do you think?”

  “That sounds fine. We’ve got half an hour to get to the church. And you still have to get dressed,” she answered.

  He downed the last of his coffee. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes. You can go ahead and get Joshua into his seat and I’ll carry him out to the truck. Oh, and you really do look beautiful this morning. Maybe not as gorgeous as you were last night with nothing but a sheet pulled up over you, but beautiful all the same.”

  Natalie blushed from her toenails to her eyebrows. When Joshua had begun to fuss in the middle of the night, she’d been so deep into sleep that she hadn’t even heard the monitor until he set up a real howl. She’d scuttled out of Lucas’s bedroom without a stitch of clothing on her body. When she stepped out into the hallway, she glanced at Jack’s bedroom door and was glad that he’d moved out into his own house.

  She’d jerked on a nightshirt that barely came to her knees and fresh underpants before she did anything. Joshua was already mad as hell. Thirty more seconds wasn’t going to make bit of difference. She carried him to the kitchen and prepared a bottle. There’d been no grins or cooing when she put the nipple in his mouth. He’d latched onto it like it was the last thing he’d ever get to eat and glared at her.

  “You are like your father when you are hungry, little boy. He was an old bear too when he was hungry, but when you get older, you won’t get away with throwing fits.” She smiled as she settled him into his car seat that morning. “Hopefully, you’ve gotten the temper all out of you and you’ll be good this morning. We’re going to church, and I don’t want to see one of those temper fits. You’ve had your bottle and even a bit of rice cereal, so you shouldn’t want to eat again until noon. Church should be over by then.” She talked as
she fastened all the straps.

  Lucas’s boots on the hardwood floor announced that he was on the way. “Make sure he’s bundled up good. It’s sixteen degrees out there and spittin’ sleet again. We don’t usually get this much bad weather until February in these parts.”

  “We don’t either, out in the Panhandle.”

  She didn’t want to think about snow or even Christmas. She wanted to stare at Lucas all morning instead of going to church. He was so sexy in those black jeans and light tan Western-cut shirt. Not as sexy as he’d been all wrapped around her in the bed the night before, but still enough that she talked too much to cover up the effect he had on her.

  “Dad talked about that storm. He got prepared for it to hit the ranch, but it weakened and bypassed us on the north. Oklahoma got it worse than we did. Where’s your coat?”

  She nodded toward a chair in the living room where she’d draped her coat earlier. The place still looked like it had when the party ended the night before. The folks who owned the tables and chairs would be back that afternoon to pick them up and the crew would return the furniture to its rightful place. She glanced at the big open space in the middle of the living room floor and remembered the dances. Then she looked at the Nativity scene. From dancing to the honky tonk moon song to going to church to hear the Christmas story, all in less than ten hours. Talk about cultural shock!

  His fingertips brushing against her arms as he helped her with her coat sure enough made her wish she was still dancing beneath the honky tonk moon rather than going to church.

  Savoy, like Silverton, might be small, but by golly, they celebrated Christmas. Windows glittered with lights from Christmas trees and yards were filled with decorations. The sleet and snow lent the perfect touch to the season.

  Well, that and the mistletoe, Natalie thought. Could that stuff really have magic in it? Ever since that first kiss under the mistletoe, he’d been different and it had been very, very good. But still, Natalie kept her guard up. Sometimes when the magic show was over, all that remained was fairy dust and a puff of wind.

  Lucas parked on the west side of the church. “We all dreamed about having a white Christmas when I was a kid. This is real Christmas weather even if it is a bitch to work in.”

  “I remember some holidays that we played football out in the yard without a coat, but we always dreamed about white Christmases too. I think it was because we thought Santa Claus could fly better in the snow,” she said.

  “I deserve this kind of Christmas after the last one. We had a sandstorm that was the mother of them all. I swear we even limited our intake of fluids so we wouldn’t have to go outside to the bathrooms,” he said.

  She unbuckled her seat belt and pulled the collar of her coat up around her ears. “Well, you’d best keep your mouth shut about that today.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Why’s that?”

  “You reckon these little elderly folks like this kind of messy weather, or the mailman or the folks who are running around the country fixing all the power lines ice breaks down? If they find out that God just froze up this part of Texas for you, they’ll haul your sexy ass out into the road and stone you to death,” she said.

  He bailed out of the truck, jogged around the front side, and opened the door for her. “Oh, you think my ass is sexy, do you?”

  Everything about him was sexy—from his grin to his fingertips. And the way he looked at her made her feel sexy.

  “You going to answer me?”

  “Not today. I have to be nice because the three wise men will glare at me if I’m not,” she said.

  “I bet Mary told Joseph his ass was sexy,” Lucas said.

  “If she did, she was talking about the donkey he rode into town on, and she didn’t use the word sexy. She said the jackass was cute.” Natalie slid out of the seat and helped unfasten the harness holding Joshua in the seat. She scooped him up into her arms, slung his diaper bag over her shoulder, and bent her head against the wind as she headed toward the front door.

  She looked up at the gray sky just before she climbed up the three porch steps.

  Lucas held the door open for her. “What are you looking at?”

  “Checking to see if the clouds have parted enough for lightning bolts. You were edging up on sacrilege right talking about the Virgin Mary like that,” she said.

  He ushered her inside with his hand on her back. The second she walked inside the warm church, Sonia and Melody grabbed her arm.

  “You need to put the baby in the nursery. We need both of y’all to sing in the choir, and we’ve got to get you in choir robes. Weather has kept some folks at home and we’re short,” Melody said.

  “No, ma’am. I’m not singing in a choir because I promised the three wise men who are Grady, Dad, and Gramps that Joshua would be sitting right up front and he could see them,” Lucas declared.

  Sonia frowned and tapped her foot. “We need choir members. You sure that kid can’t go to the nursery?”

  Natalie nodded. “I’m very sure. He stays with me.”

  “I took my boys to the choir with me when they were little. I can hold a baby and sing, and I bet Natalie can too,” Melody said. “And a front row seat right there by the Nativity scene will give the baby a lot better view of the three wise men.”

  “Thank you,” Henry whispered to her left.

  Lucas winked as he followed Grady, Jack, and Henry to a different room. “Boys and girls don’t get to dress in the same room,” he threw over his shoulder.

  The ladies’ choir robes were stored in a closet in the Sunday school room meant for preschoolers because all the chairs were small and the tables low. She damn sure didn’t intend to lay Joshua on one of those tables. Lord, he could wiggle off there and land on his head. The floor wasn’t even carpeted to break the fall if he did.

  “Hello, I’m Mary Alice,” a small dark-haired woman said. “What a cute little boy. He looks just like Lucas. My baby girl, Ziva, looks like my husband’s mother. Red hair and blue eyes. We’ll have to get together and have a play date when they are a little older.”

  “That would be nice.” Natalie picked out the longest robe in the closet.

  “Here, I’m already dressed. I’ll hold the baby while you get the robe on.” Mary said.

  Natalie hesitated.

  “I won’t break him, I promise. Ziva is my first girl but she’s my third child. I know how to hold a little boy,” Melody said.

  Natalie shifted the baby into her arms and set the diaper bag on a nearby table.

  “He’s just adorable with that dark hair, and I like the way you comb it like a cowboy’s hair. I bet the guys at the ranch are just crazy about him,” Mary said.

  “Not as crazy as he is already about them.” Natalie adjusted the white collar and pinned it down.

  “Your robe is the longest one we have in the church and it is still too short. I’m glad that the banister will keep everyone from seeing your legs. You’ll be sitting on the back row so…” Sonia said.

  “No, I will not. I’ll sit on the front row. You can put me at the far end and leave the chairs behind me empty if my height is a big problem, but Joshua will see the three wise men, and he can’t from the back row,” Natalie said.

  “Sounds like a doable plan to me,” Mary said.

  “Oh, all right,” Sonia said coldly.

  Lord, why didn’t she pack her pistol in the diaper bag instead of a hairbrush and compact mirror? She’d known that Sonia would be there that morning. That wild night of sex had addled her brain and kept her from using the good old common sense that she’d been blessed with.

  She turned around and there was Sonia in a flowing white angel robe. It nipped into her tiny waist with gold Christmas tree tinsel that matched the halo floating three inches above all that big blond hair. Big white fluffy win
gs shot out from her back and it took a trained eye to see the elastic bands holding them onto Sonia’s petite body.

  “Well?” Sonia did a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn.

  “You look lovely just like you do every year,” Melody said from the doorway.

  Sonia looked at Natalie.

  Natalie smiled sweetly. “Your black bra strap is showing and I can see a fine black line where your thong rests. When the lights come on, it’ll shine. I used to tell my basketball girls to never wear black underwear under their white uniforms.”

  “Shit!” Sonia gasped. “Melody, trade with me.”

  “Honey, I wear granny panties and my bra would go around you twice. You are on your own this time.” Melody laughed.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me. Go out there and tell Noah to hurry back to his house and get a white set,” Sonia hissed.

  “Sure thing. Be right back. Good thing that we got here early, isn’t it?”

  “If I undo the belt, I think I can make the change without taking everything off,” Sonia said. “What is Hawaii like anyway?”

  Natalie frowned. “Why are you asking?”

  “That is where you got pregnant with that kid, isn’t it? Noah said that Lucas got a couple of days of R and R in Hawaii. You met Lucas there, right? So what’s it like at Christmastime? I heard it never snows there.” Sonia checked her reflection in the mirror and applied more pale pink lipstick while she waited.

  “It’s complicated,” Natalie said.

  “I imagine it is.” Sonia laughed. “I bet he told you he couldn’t make babies, didn’t he?”

  “That’s personal,” Natalie said.

  Melody rushed back inside and tossed a white bra and pair of silk bikinis on a table. “Noah said that you left these in the pickup last night, so he didn’t have to go all the way home.”

  Sonia did a half giggle, but she didn’t blush.

  Melody tossed her blue velvet dress over the back of a chair and donned her angel robe. She was a bottle blond just like Sonia, but her hair was cut in a bob that brushed her jawbones. She was a couple of inches taller and several pounds heavier than Sonia.