Rich Rancher for Christmas

by Sarah M. Anderson

  But if that made her nuts, so be it.

  When he saw her, he came to a screeching halt and just stared as she got out of the car. For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Which, in the grand scheme of things, was probably progress. At the very least, he wasn’t telling her to go to hell, so that had to count for something, right?

  “You’re here,” he said in a strangled voice. “I thought you were at the studio—your show?”

  “We taped it two days ago.” She’d spent the last two days wondering if she should go back and un-resign. If the segment hadn’t aired, had she really quit?

  But Steve wouldn’t have taken her back, anyway. Kevin had a shiny new show and Steve was happy for a chance to take another crack at the ratings and...

  And they wouldn’t miss her. But that wasn’t the important thing, she’d discovered.

  No, the more important thing was that she wouldn’t miss them. What a revelation that had been—and she never would have had it without the man before her.

  She had missed CJ. All she could do was hope that he had missed her, too. “I, um, I brought you a Christmas present.” She took a deep breath and braced for the worst. If he were going to tell her to get the hell off of his property, now would probably be when it happened.

  “It’s not Christmas anymore,” he said, staring at her as if she were a ghost.

  “I know.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and held it out for him. “Here.”

  He looked down at the red bow she tied around the middle of it. But the bow wasn’t big enough to hide the shattered screen. “What the hell happened to your phone?”

  It was important to keep breathing. It would be silly if she passed out now. “I took a hatchet to it. After I deleted all my social media accounts. Aside from a few photos, there wasn’t anything on there that I wanted to keep.”

  “I didn’t ask you to delete your accounts. You didn’t have to do that for me.”

  “I didn’t.” She took a deep breath. “I needed to do it for me. I might go back online, but it’ll be on my terms this time. I need to... I don’t know. I need to keep the negative out and that was so wrapped up with who I was that I just had to burn it down and start over.”

  His mouth was open and he was staring at her, and then her phone, and then back at her. It was a hard thing to watch, so she dropped her gaze. “What about your phone numbers? Your contacts?”

  She shrugged. “I quit. My job, that is.”

  He took a step toward her. “So I saw. I saw your apology, too.”

  “I meant it. I made a mistake, CJ. I let a moment of panic overrule my judgment. I should’ve had faith in you. Because you’re real. You are a real, honest, decent man and... And I don’t know very many people like you. So I didn’t know how to act around you.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she looked up at him. He managed to get his mouth closed, but his head was tilted to the side and he stared at her in open confusion. “I just did what anyone would do.”

  “No, you didn’t—don’t you see? I’ve never known anyone like you. You don’t know how special you are and...” She squeezed her eyes shut so that she wouldn’t do anything ridiculous, like start crying. “And I let you down. I ruined everything.”

  His face hardened. “Who said that to you?”

  “What?”

  “Who told you that you ruined everything?”

  She blushed from the tips of her ears to her toes. This was one of her most painful memories. “My mom.” If he had been anyone else in the world, she wouldn’t have told him. But he had asked for honesty and she had absolutely nothing left to give him except the truth. “I was six, I think, and I didn’t get what I wanted from Santa so I threw a fit and she told me that I was a spoiled brat and I ruined everything and I always had and I always would. Her body, her marriage, her career—Christmas. I ruined Christmas.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, trying to ease the tightness there. “And then she left. She left and I’ve never seen her again.”

  His mouth flopped open again. No, he didn’t know how special he was—how lucky he was to have two parents who loved him and protected him. “And your dad?”

  She shrugged. “I ruined Christmas. So we stopped having one. I don’t think he ever forgave me or her.” She straightened up, turned on a brave face. “I did not save his phone number to my new phone. Every year I try to call him and every year, it hurts more. I’m going to stop trying to please other people. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” he told her. “You were six—that matters.” He took another step closer to her—close enough now that she could feel the warmth from his body. “And you don’t ruin everything, Natalie. I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”

  She closed her eyes again. “I ruined us. You gave me my phone back and I immediately took a photo. I didn’t plan on uploading it. I didn’t. I just wanted something to remind me of the best week of my life when it ended. And then my dad told me I’d ruined his Christmas again and told me to leave him alone and...and I panicked. I had this moment where I felt like I was nothing all over again and I was going to lose my show and without that, who am I?”

  “Natalie...”

  She shook her head. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me. I just want you to understand that I was trying to find a compromise between what you wanted and what I thought I wanted and a semi-random Santa photo seemed the safest way to make our two worlds meet. But I was wrong about that. And I’m sorry.”

  The next thing she knew, she was folded into his arms. She didn’t want to hug him back—she didn’t want him to think that she needed this. Even if she did, just a little.

  “My mom lives in fear of the Beaumonts,” he said softly. “I always knew that Hardwick was my birth father because she told me that he might come for me one day and that if anyone named Beaumont ever showed up, I should run the other way or hide or scream. Beaumonts were dangerous and I had to be protected from them.”

  She leaned back in his arms and looked at him. “Really? I mean, I guess that makes sense—he usually kept the children in the divorces. But he was never married to your mother.”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  She was having trouble thinking with his arms around her, so she stepped away from him. “And Hardwick is dead, anyway.”

  For the first time, he smiled. “I knew that—but I don’t think I understood it. Does that make sense? It was so ingrained in me to be afraid of the Beaumonts that, even after he was dead, I didn’t stop hiding. But they’re just people.” He reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek. “I’m going to go to an Epiphany party with them on the sixth. I’ll talk to a couple of reporters and be as boring as possible and then wait for the story to die.”

  She gasped at him. “You’ll what?”

  He shot her a crooked grin. “It’s still going to upset my mother. She made a good life for herself and for me and she doesn’t want anyone to think about a mistake that she might have made a long time ago. But I don’t have to hide. I don’t have to be afraid of who I might be.” He stared down at her. “We all make mistakes, Natalie. It’s how we make up for them that counts.”

  This time, she was the one who hugged him. “I—I don’t know if I should apologize for finding you or not. If I hadn’t, nothing would’ve changed. I would still be doing a job that made me sick, and you...”

  “And I would be alone,” he said into her hair.

  She didn’t know how long they stood there like that, but finally, the cold began to catch up with her. She had dressed better today—her own jeans and boots and a chunky turtleneck sweater. But they were still standing outside and the temperature was dropping. So, even though she didn’t want to, she pulled herself out of his arms. “So.”

  His grin got slightly less crooked. “So,” he agreed. She hadn’t realized she was still holding her dead phone until he plucked it from her hands. He looked down at it as if he couldn’t believe she
had really smashed the damn thing, and then he reared back and threw it. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Honestly? I’m not sure. I’m unemployed and I think I’m going to sell my condo. It’s Natalie Baker’s condo—and I don’t feel like that person anymore. But I don’t know how to do anything else. My whole life has been one long con game of trying to convince people I’m something that I’m not and now that I’m not going to do that anymore...” She shrugged. “I’m at a loss.” His eyebrows jumped up and he looked like he was going to say something—so she hurried to cut him off. “I didn’t come out here to ask if I could stay. I just wanted to apologize, CJ.”

  He mulled this over. “Apology accepted. And I wanted to say that I’m sorry, too.”

  Now was her turn to stare at him. “What? Why? You didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one at fault.”

  “I don’t think it’s such a bad thing, being a Beaumont. Suddenly, I’ve gone from being an only child to having all these brothers and sisters who want to meet me. I’m not going to pretend I’m going to like all of them, but...” He shrugged. “It was always this terrible thing in my mind and I don’t think it is so terrible in reality. So when I found out that you’d taken that picture, I was still acting like you had ruined my life. And I’m not proud of how I treated you. But I don’t think you ruined anything.”

  Unexpectedly, her throat closed up. It was sweet of him to say that, but they both knew the truth. “I’m glad to hear that.” She may not have ruined his life, but she didn’t think there was any hope for the two of them.

  She should leave, she decided, and as she turned away a snowflake landed on her cheek. She looked up at the sky. It wasn’t a rolling wall of clouds barreling down on her—but it was beginning to snow.

  “Where are you going?” CJ asked, stepping to the side and blocking her path back to her car.

  “I should leave before the weather gets really bad.”

  “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  He stared at her, his jaw tightening. “Don’t leave. I want you to stay. It’s New Year’s Eve.” He took a deep breath and then reached out a hand toward her. “I want you to stay with me.”

  “CJ, you can’t be serious.” Could he? Now that she thought about it, had he ever not been serious? He did what he said and he said what he did. There were no games when it came to CJ Wesley. “I screwed up! I took that picture of you and I posted it, remember?”

  He looked off in the distance, where, maybe twenty or thirty feet away, her phone had met its final end. “Yeah, okay—you did. But I’m not going to think about what you did anymore. Instead, I’m going to think about what you didn’t do. You didn’t run back to Denver and broadcast all of my secrets. You didn’t kiss and tell. Hell, except for that one photo, you didn’t even say anything about my town.”

  “But that’s not the end of it. Other people are talking, and other reporters will keep digging—and that’s my fault.”

  He shrugged as if this were seriously no big deal. “This, too, shall pass. It’s not just me against the Beaumonts. It’s the Beaumonts against the world. I’ve got a family who’s going to stand beside me and that’s something I only have because of you, Natalie.” He grinned and brushed another snowflake off her cheek. “Besides, I have a job for you.”

  She looked at him hard, trying to ignore the way his touch warmed her skin. “A job? Are you serious?”

  “You talk about yourself as if you’re useless—a talking head. But that’s not what I see. I see someone who’s intelligent and beautiful and whose capacity for kindness is there.” She rolled her eyes, and he added, “It hasn’t been nurtured properly, but it’s there. And you did something that very few people have done—you found me.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I’m qualified for a ranch job.” Because if he were asking her to stay...

  Well, it would be tempting. When they had been snowed in, she had wanted nothing more than for that time to never end.

  But she wasn’t a ranch wife. She didn’t really cook. The only thing she had that would recommend her to that position was the fact that she was used to getting up early, but that wasn’t enough.

  “You’re a little too shy around horses to be a good ranch hand,” he said with a chuckle. “No, Daniel Lee has offered to hire you. He knows exactly how far you got trying to dig up information on him and he was impressed. And according to him, you’re brilliant—and more tenacious than a private eye. Plus, you know how to handle the media. If you’re interested, I could call him right now.”

  Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him. “You’re lying.” But even as she said it, she knew he wasn’t. Not a single muscle in his jaw had twitched.

  “Hand to God,” he said, grinning wildly.

  More snow fell from the sky. They were working their way close to full-on flurries. His hair was turning white and his beard was catching flakes. Soon the roads would get slick and her Mustang was not any better equipped for that than it had been two weeks ago.

  “You know what else I’m not lying about?” he asked, stepping into her again and dusting snow off of her shoulders. “I’m not lying when I say that I want you to stay. You made me feel like it was okay that I was a Beaumont and a Wesley. You knew my deepest secret—but for the most part, it didn’t matter.”

  “But it did, don’t you see? I ruined—”

  “No, you didn’t. You changed things, Natalie—things that, in retrospect, needed to be changed.” He leaned down and touched his forehead to hers. “You changed me for the better.”

  “How can you say that?” Because it didn’t make any sense. She had hurt him—she knew she had. And anyone else would have held that against her. Including her own parents. Especially her own parents.

  “Because it’s the truth, babe. I accept your apology. I forgive you. And I hope you can forgive me for overreacting.”

  She couldn’t stop the tears this time. Forgiveness? She’d come out here with the intent to apologize—and that was it. Forgiveness was such a foreign concept to her it hadn’t even occurred to her as an option.

  But she saw that he was right. She’d only been a little girl when she threw a temper tantrum. Probably every kid did that at some point—even him. It wasn’t her fault that her mother had walked out. Her parents were messed up if they couldn’t even forgive a little kid for doing something that all little kids did.

  “Of course I do,” she said, her voice trembling. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tight. “I’m not any good at this. I’m trying so hard, CJ. But I’m going to screw things up. Things that you think anyone would do? It’s all new to me. But I want...”

  She wanted it all and, no matter what he said, she wasn’t sure she deserved it.

  He tilted her head back and looked her in the eyes. He was only a breath away. “Just be honest, Natalie. The truth—that’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”

  “You changed me, too. You made me realize that I could be worth something to someone. You made me want to be good enough for you.”

  “You are. You’re good for me. And I want you to stay. Stay for the New Year.” His lips brushed against her, damp from the snow. “Stay forever.”

  She jolted in his arms. “What?”

  “I love you,” he said, and damn if he didn’t sound completely serious. “Let’s get married, Natalie.”

  She cupped his face in her hands. “You want to marry me?”

  “I do. I trust my gut.” Not a single muscle in his face moved—except for that smile. Oh, that grin of his warmed her heart—and a few other places. “And you? Is that what you want?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Just then, the snow began to fall in earnest. CJ swept her up and spun her around, kissing her like she was worth something. She was. It would take some work, but this was New Year’s Eve—a time for starting over, a time for hope. And, maybe for the first time, she dared to hope.

  CJ looked up at the sky. “We mig
ht be snowed in for a little bit...”

  “After last time, I resolved that I wouldn’t go anywhere without a week’s worth of clothes in the car.”

  CJ laughed and Natalie laughed with him. “Come on,” he said, opening the door to her car so she could snag the duffel bag. “Let’s ring in the New Year properly.”

  “Promise me,” she said, leaning into him as they walked up to the house, “that we will always celebrate Christmas.”

  He turned and pulled her into a fierce kiss. “Always,” he whispered against her lips.

  For the rest of their lives, they would keep Christmas in their hearts.

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss the other BEAUMONT HEIRS from Sarah M. Anderson! One Colorado family, limitless scandal!

  NOT THE BOSS’S BABY

  TEMPTED BY A COWBOY

  A BEAUMONT CHRISTMAS WEDDING

  HIS SON, HER SECRET

  FALLING FOR HER FAKE FIANCÉ

  HIS ILLEGITIMATE HEIR

  RICH RANCHER FOR CHRISTMAS

  All available now from Harlequin Desire!

  And don’t miss Daniel’s story, coming March 2017!

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from MARRIED TO THE MAVERICK MILLIONAIRE by Joss Wood.

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