Yuletide Cowboy

by Debra Clopton

  “How’s Clint holding up?” Lynn liked Clint. The hard-working cattleman sometimes looked at a loss for the things his wife came up with, but there was always a glowing admiration and love in his eyes…even though she’d seen a time or two when he was exasperated. Lacy tended to do that to people though. She got so caught up in what she envisioned for couples that she often acted before thinking things through. Despite that, he loved her…or actually, from what Lynn observed, he loved her because of it. Lynn wouldn’t know what that was like. In her marriage she’d learned, slowly, not to voice her opinion, much less make an impulsive move. It had happened over time, practically sneaking up on her. The mental abuse started long before the beatings had occurred.

  “Lynn, so you aren’t going to bid?”

  Lacy’s words pelted through the fog of memory like buckshot. “No. I’m not.” She braced herself for Lacy to jump on the bandwagon.

  “Too bad. I’ve been praying God would lead the right man to town for you and your boys.” Lacy rubbed her extended belly and took a long breath.

  “Lacy, you look really tired,” Lynn said, concerned.

  “Why don’t you call it a night?” Norma Sue called out. “You’re standing on your feet too much.”

  Lacy gave a smile—not her normally exuberant one but a smile nonetheless. “You’ve been talking to Sheri! I sit down when I need to—”

  “Ha!” Sheri exclaimed from her perch on a ladder across the room. She cocked her spiky brown head to the side and looked down from where she’d been tacking up red-and-blue bandanna decorations. “You lie, Lacy Matlock! You don’t sit down nearly as much as you should. If it were up to me I’d hog-tie you to a couch and make you stay there till our baby comes.”

  Lacy laughed. “Okay, okay, I get it. I’ve promised Clint that I’m going to start taking it easy so y’all relax and let me talk to Lynn.” Lacy’s eyes twinkled like they usually did when she was inspired. “You should bid on Chance. If not for yourself then for him. The man could use some distraction, I think. And you and your sweet boys might just be what the doc upstairs has in mind for him.”

  Inwardly Lynn groaned as all eyes returned to her. Lacy, the sneak, was trying to turn the tables on her. “I’m not bidding on Chance or anyone else…”

  Chance pulled into a parking space in front of Sam’s Diner and got out of the truck. There was no way he could come home and not drop by for breakfast at Sam’s. His cousins’ trucks were lined up along the plank sidewalk and he knew he was running late. Hurrying, he pushed open the diner’s heavy swinging door to find Lynn Perry standing on the other side. She was carrying a stack of carryout boxes and coffee in a paper cup. When she saw him she stopped in her tracks.

  For a little while the day before, he’d rolled over their meeting in his head, and for the life of him he couldn’t stop thinking about her. There was something about her that had edged under his collar and wouldn’t let go. She was pretty, with her dark hair and shimmering midnight eyes, but he’d sensed a tough girl underneath her soft image. A tough girl determined to make it for herself and her boys. He liked that.

  But she had a keep-your-distance wall erected around her and it was firmly in place right now, even though she was smiling at him.

  He tipped his hat and gave her his best smile. “How are you this morning?”

  “Great. How are you? I hope you didn’t have any lingering aches and pains from yesterday. The boys really didn’t mean to lay you out like that.”

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ve been thrown from horses and bulls that make being taken out by two pint-sized four-year-olds a piece of cake.”

  She flinched prettily. “It still had to hurt, but I’m glad to see you aren’t limping.”

  “Like I said before, only my pride was hurt.”

  “Yes, well, that’s good—I mean it’s good that’s all that was hurt.”

  She sidestepped him to go out the door. “Here, let me,” he said, pressing his back to the swinging door and opening it. She edged past him and he got the sweet scent of chocolate as she passed. He couldn’t help but lean her way—just his luck, she turned and caught him. “You, ahhh—” What? “You smell good. Is that choc o late?” Slick, Turner. Way to stick a boot in your mouth.

  She colored rose-pink and he could tell he’d flustered her. He’d flustered himself! He could flirt with the best of them but it had been a while since he’d done it. He was about as rusty as a bucket of wet nails.

  “I’ve been mixing chocolate bars since seven.”

  “Sweet. I mean, sweet job.”

  He figured she was probably ready to toss her coffee on him but she chuckled instead and walked off without another word. She probably thought he was a lost cause. Come to think of it, maybe he was. He watched her cross the street and push open the door to the candy store.

  “You jest gonna stand thar and stare all day or ya gonna come in and have a bite to eat?”

  He should have known Applegate Thornton would be sitting at his usual seat by the window. The old coot’s booming voice probably could be heard across the street at the candy store. But at least it had Chance moving back inside and not standing halfway out on the side walk.

  Ignoring the laughter from the table in the center of the room where his cousins were sitting, he strode to the window table to see App and his buddy Stanley Orr. “It’s good to see you two are still holding down the fort. How’s it going?”

  Applegate grinned. “We ain’t doin’ nearly as good as you, son. Lynn was lookin’ mighty sweet at you. Stanley, you ever seen Lynn lookin’ at anybody like that?”

  Stanley was slightly balding, plump and about the easiest-going man Chance had ever been around. “Nope, can’t say I have. You got a ticket to the steak dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, he has a ticket,” Cole called from the table where he, Wyatt and Seth were watching Chance like hawks.

  “I didn’t buy a ticket.”

  “The ranch bought it for you,” Seth said.

  He took the fourth cane-backed chair at the table and sank into it. “I don’t remember saying I wanted to at tend a steak dinner.”

  “It’s for a good cause,” Seth said, taking a drink of his coffee, just as Sam, the owner of the diner, came striding toward their table with coffeepot in hand.

  Small and wiry, with a quick step, Sam gave a hearty smile. “It’s good ta see ya, son!” He set a coffee mug in front of Chance then shook his hand fiercely. “I was sure sorry ta hear about that bull rider. A cry’n shame is what that was.” Shaking his head he poured coffee into the mug.

  Chance wrapped his hands around the warm cup and felt the stab of deep regret. “Yeah, it was.” All eyes were on him right now. He didn’t want to discuss this.

  “All you could be was there fer them if they needed you.”

  Chance met Sam’s wise, gray eyes. How could he say that he hadn’t been there for Randy? That in his heart of hearts he felt—

  “Yor taken his death pretty hard, ain’t ya?”

  “Yes, he is,” Cole answered for him.

  Chance met his gaze across the table. His cousin had been running hard from his past for years after his fiancée’s death. He was settled and happy now, thanks to a beautiful country vet named Susan. Cole was more content than he’d ever been and he and Susan were planning on starting a family soon. He’d been through a lot and found solace in helping disaster victims rebuild their homes during the time that he lost his way. Chance stared into the black coffee and wondered if that was what he’d done…lost his way. Ever since that horrible night he just couldn’t think of himself as a pastor. It ate at him.

  “That’s what makes you good at what you do, Chance,” Cole continued. “You care. You can’t be a pastor, a shepherd to your sheep, and not care.”

  He felt as far away from being a shepherd as he could possibly get. Talk about a gulf…

  “So don’t keep beating yourself up with things that were out of your control,” Seth, the
control freak of the Turners, added. Chance looked at him in disbelief. Seth grinned. “Yeah, you heard right. That coming from me. I’ve been learning to let God handle things more. Not that it’s been a bed of roses. Old habits are hard to break. But I’m working on it.”

  Chance had been handing out advice right and left, thinking he was making sense. Funny how it all seemed out of focus to him right now. “Can we talk about something else?” He didn’t want to be rude but he felt like he was swinging zeros.

  Sam squeezed his shoulder. “You were reckless but you always was one to take the world on yor shoulders. You got a big heart, Chance, even after all you went through. I gotta git back ta work, but you listen ta these boys and pull yourself out of this spot yor in. My eggs and bacon’ll help ya. That all right by y’all?”

  Everyone gave hearty agreement and Sam strode off on his bowlegs. Chance knew Sam had been referring to Chance’s childhood…he’d long ago come to terms with the fact that his dad had had better things to do than raise his son. Chance had been hard to deal with at an early age and his mother hadn’t known what to do with him. He’d spent many summers here in Mule Hollow with his cousins. Their dad had loved him and treated him like his own, worked him hard and given him as much direction and love as he gave his own sons. But in his early teens Chance had rebelled against his dad’s lack of interest and he’d hit the road…it had been a hard time. Too heavy for him to think about right now.

  “Look, Chance, take it from my experience.” Seth glanced around the table at his brothers. “God is in control even when we don’t understand or don’t agree. You’ve given us all that advice at some point in time.”

  “Yeah, I was pretty liberal handing it out, wasn’t I?” He grunted, his mood taking a downhill turn and picking up speed.

  Wyatt frowned. “You hand out great advice. I owe you and there’s no two ways about it. God sent you to me with the advice I needed to hear just when I needed to hear it. I was about as low as a man can get and you helped me see what I needed to do to help Amanda. You just have to heed your own good advice and give this over to the Lord. We’ve all been where you’re at, and it’s not a fun place to be.”

  Applegate and Stanley had been pretending like they were engrossed in their morning checkers game—why they were even pretending was a mystery to Chance. For two men who couldn’t hear they heard everything. It was a miracle beyond understanding, which made Chance smile—some much-needed relief from the downturn of this conversation. App spat a sunflower seed into the brass spittoon at his feet and Stanley did the same. Both hit the opening in the conversation dead-on.

  “Sounds ta me like that steak dinner is jest the place you need ta be. Don’t you thank so, Stanley?”

  “Yup. Ain’t nothin’ like a good steak and the company of pretty women ta pull a man out of the dumps.”

  “A woman is the last thing I need to be thinking about.”

  “It ain’t us that caused Lynn ta blush,” App grunted.

  “You got a free ticket and a woebegone attitude that needs sprucing up. Put on some starched jeans and a crisp shirt, slap on a little smell-good and join the festivities.”

  Sam came out of the kitchen loaded down with plates. Chance had never been so glad to see a plate of eggs in all his life. Maybe putting food in their stomachs would get them off him.

  “And speaking of other thangs,” App drawled, his lean face cascading into a dour look. “We need a preacher. No two ways about it. I been thankin’ that thar is the reason the good Lord brought you home.” App had made it clear at Wyatt’s wedding that he thought Chance should come home to Mule Hollow and become the past or of the church. Chance had told him then that he didn’t feel called to preach in a local church. That should have ended the discussion, but App wasn’t known for letting go of things and it looked like he hadn’t let this go either. “So what do ya say?”

  Chance looked at the steaming breakfast plate and took a long, slow breath. So much for thinking the food was going to get him off the hot seat.

  Chapter Three

  The morning after Chance had flustered her by telling her she smelled sweet, Lynn dreamed about him! Oh yeah, but thankfully she was awakened from dreaming about the hunky, dark-haired bachelor by her horse of a dog, Tiny. Her unlikely hero bounded onto her bed and pounced on her with all four of his huge paws! The power of the attack knocked the wind and the dream right out of her.

  “Thank you,” she gasped, trying to get her breath back as she stared into Tiny’s pale face. His excited are-you-ready-to-play eyes danced as he gaped at her. She relaxed, relieved to be awake…it wasn’t unusual for her to have nightmares. Though they had slowly become less frequent and they were always about her ex-husband…Dreaming about Chance Turner was disturbing on an entirely different level. Thank goodness for Tiny.

  “What are you doing in the house?” she asked, making certain not to scold. The boys sometimes tried to sneak the giant animal into the house, or when they went out side they forgot to close the door and Tiny would sneak into the house by himself. On those occasions there was never any telling what he was going to get into. And if you scolded him he tended to leave puddles—and that wasn’t a good thing.

  The sound of erratic hammering filled the air outside her window. She glanced at the bedside clock—seven o’clock. Tiny danced on top of her, tail wagging, breath huffing, eyes twinkling, he barked excitedly and looked toward the window.

  “Okay, okay. I get it.” Gently pushing the oversize pup off her, she padded to the window and pulled aside the curtain.

  Before going to help decorate for the auction—and getting attacked by her friends—she had worked a full day at the candy store. Her boys had spent the day at Amanda Turner’s place. Amanda couldn’t have children of her own and since marrying Chance’s cousin, Wyatt, she often enjoyed having Gavin and Jack over to play when Lynn needed a babysitter. She and Wyatt were in the process of trying to adopt, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that any baby would be blessed to have her and Wyatt as parents.

  Just after Lynn had told everyone that she was not bid ding on a bachelor, Amanda and her two sisters-in-law, Susan and Melody, had arrived with the kids.

  Melody had asked about the lights and the boys had immediately told everyone about how they’d caused Chance to fall and dump the lights all over himself. Everyone got a good laugh and she’d seen the spark of excitement burn brighter in the three matchmaking buddies’ mischievous eyes. That was all it had taken for them to be off and running with stories about Chance when he was growing up—Chance Turner had been a handful. Of course, her boys had jumped right into the fray, giggling at stories of the things Chance and his cousins had gotten into.

  She had also been informed by Melody that the Christmas lights he’d brought up to the church were for her, and that they were to be used to decorate her new house. Lynn had been touched by the gift and told Melody so. All their questions about Chance and what she thought of him had taken her by surprise and left her suspicious. Mule Hollow was known for its matchmaking, after all.

  She and the boys had been late getting home and they’d all been tired. The last thing she expected to see when she looked out the window this morning was Gavin and Jack outside attacking the large oak tree in the backyard with hammers.

  “What are they doing?” she asked, looking down at Tiny.

  The dog placed his paws on the windowsill and whined as he studied them. His tail wagged impatiently, signaling that he wanted to be out there with his boys. “Come on, let’s go.” That was all it took. The dog shot out of her bedroom like a flash. Lynn grabbed her housecoat off the bed as she passed. It was chilly in the house and she stopped to turn the thermostat up a notch or two. She put on her leather slides beside the back door, which was cracked open but not enough for the dog to escape. Lynn guessed that he’d snuck inside when the boys left it ajar and then the draft must have sucked it shut, trapping him.

  Tiny wiggled with anticipation and the
instant she pulled the door open he shot outside and was gone. Lynn agreed with him—life was never dull with Gavin and Jack around. She trailed him.

  Jack had both hands wrapped around the middle of a hammer that was as long as his arm. Gavin held a twelve-inch piece of old barn wood against the tree. Both of them looked up at her as she approached. Tiny stuck his nose into the mix and Gavin pushed it away.

  “What are you two little mischief makers doing?”

  “Workin’, Mom,” Jack answered, slamming the head of the hammer at the nail protruding at an angle from the piece of wood. He missed.

  “We’re gonna build a tree house.” Gavin nodded to ward the old shed at the back of the yard. “There’s a whole bunch of wood in there we can use.” His high-pitched voice was shrill with excitement.

  Jack again whacked the nail, which bent over and smashed against the wood. She cringed—better the wood than his finger. His shoulders slumped and his face fell as he let the hammer drop to his side. He looked so dejected it was all Lynn could do not to scoop him up and hug him tight.

  Gavin scrunched his brows together looking at him. “That’s okay, Jack. I didn’t do no better.”

  Her little men, her heart tugged. “Building a tree house sounds like a great plan, guys. But let’s put the hammer up for now. It’s time to get ready for church. When we get home I’ll come out here and we’ll take a look at what’s in the shed and see what we can do.” Like she could actually build something! Who was she kidding?

  “But you’re a girl, Momma.”

  Oh, the challenge of it. “Yes, Jack, I am. But girls can build tree houses, too.” She was sure some girls could. Whether or not she could was yet to be seen.

  “You sure?” Gavin asked, looking as skeptical as she felt.

  “Yes, Gavin, I am. Now come inside and let’s get dressed for church.”

  “Momma, I bet Chance can build a tree house.”