The Nanny's Texas Christmas

by Lee Tobin McClain

  While the chili cooked and sunset made the sky into a work of art, Lana and Logan cuddled up on the couch and read stories, waiting for Flint to come home. And Lana felt a very, very dangerous contentment.

  * * *

  “Come on, Cowboy.” Flint whistled to the dog as he climbed out of his truck. “Let’s get some grub and some rest.” It had been a long day, longer than he’d expected. He was looking forward to collapsing into his chair. Except that he’d have a hungry kid and an annoyed nanny to deal with first, if past experience was any indication.

  Although Lana Alvarez was about as different from Mrs. Toler as day was from night. He found himself whistling as he strode up the steps to the porch.

  He opened the cottage’s front door and stopped, dumbstruck at the scene before him.

  Clearly, Logan had been sitting in Lana’s lap listening to a story when they’d both nodded off. Now, Lana leaned sideways against the back of the couch, her legs covered with a fleece blanket. In her arms was Logan, curled up, his fist pressed to his mouth as it usually was when he slept. A Christmas storybook lay open on the floor.

  Soft carols played on the radio. There was an unbelievably good smell coming out of the kitchen.

  His chest ached with wanting the unrealistic thing his senses presented to him. What would it be like to come home to such a scene every night? Did guys who got to do that realize how good they had it?

  Self-protective armor slammed over the top of his longing. Deliberately, he banged the door behind himself, making a wake-up noise. “What’s going on here?”

  Cowboy bounded in and jumped up at the pair on the couch, front paws propped, tail wagging, barking.

  Lana’s eyes opened and then went wide as Logan stirred in her lap. She sat up and slid her bare feet to the ground. Blinking, hair mussed, face pink, she still kept her arms around Logan, checking to see that he was steady before letting go.

  Flint sucked in a breath and turned away, busying himself with taking off his dirty boots.

  “Quit it, Cowboy!” Logan scrambled down to the floor, only half-awake, wrestling with the barking, prancing dog.

  When Flint straightened up again, Lana was standing, too, brushing back her hair with spread fingers.

  “Whoa,” she said, shaking her head a little. “I’m sorry I fell asleep. Logan, did you sleep, too?”

  “Yeah!” He rolled on the floor with the dog, laughing.

  “I better check the chili.” She hurried into the kitchen, still without looking at Flint.

  Flint’s heart rate had slowed down a little. “You must have done a lot of running around with Miss Alvarez, huh, buddy?” He sat down on the floor beside Logan and Cowboy. Ever since Lana had dressed him down about Logan’s need for more attention, he’d been looking at his own habits. A little boy needed his dad after work.

  So Flint had been trying to sit with Logan for a few minutes after they got home each evening, rather than getting right into cooking dinner.

  Only maybe he didn’t have to cook dinner tonight, because the smells from the kitchen were fantastic.

  “Hey, your dinner is ready when you are,” Lana said, coming out of the kitchen.

  Logan sat up. “I helped make dinner, Dad!” he said. “And we measured stuff and Miss Alvarez said it was math!”

  “That’s great, buddy.” He stood and approached Lana. “I didn’t mean for you to do my cooking.”

  “It was no problem. I enjoy it.” She picked up her jacket and purse. “Logan, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

  Logan frowned. “Where are you going, Miss Alvarez? It’s time for dinner. We have to see if the chili is too spicy. And which fruit salad Dad likes best, the plain or the fluffy.”

  “You can tell me tomorrow.” She patted Logan’s shoulder.

  “You cooked it. You should stay to eat it.” The words coming out of Flint’s own mouth surprised him; up until one second ago, he’d meant to tell her to go on home. Having Lana stay to dinner put Logan at risk of caring too much, of expecting things he couldn’t have.

  “Please, stay, Miss Alvarez.” Logan leaned against her, looking up with wide eyes.

  “Well...” Lana gave Flint a helpless look.

  He couldn’t help smiling. He’d never met a woman who could resist Logan’s smile and puppy dog eyes—well, except for Avery Culpepper—and he had the feeling Lana Alvarez wasn’t an Avery kind of woman.

  He ought to help her with an excuse if she wanted one. “Hey, buddy. Miss Alvarez might have other plans.” He didn’t want her to have other plans, but he knew that if she did, that would be best. Despite her lack of a date last Friday night, he’d seen the cowboys looking. If she didn’t have a boyfriend now, it was only a matter of time until she did. There were plenty of willing candidates right here on the Triple C.

  She met his eyes, and the corners of her mouth quirked up in a rueful smile. “Plans to make lesson plans, that’s all. I guess I could stay for a quick bite.”

  The gladness that lifted his spirits worried him.

  Logan didn’t have any such concerns. “Yay!” he yelled, hugging her. “Come on, let’s eat!”

  In a few minutes of working together, they got dinner on the table. Flint had forced himself to forget the good feeling of being at home with a woman, the rightness of breaking bread together. But it came right back to him, even though he didn’t want to reawaken that awareness in himself, and he definitely didn’t want to stimulate it in Logan. The boy was already longing for things he’d never have.

  When he tasted the chili, though, he thought the emotional consequences might be worth it. “Food’s good,” he said, too engrossed in scooping it up to say more.

  “Better than what Dad cooks,” Logan volunteered, slurping loudly from his spoon.

  Lana smiled. “That’s good to hear. Any self-respecting Mexican should be able to make a good chili. My mom would be very upset if I didn’t live up to the family tradition.”

  “How long has your family been in this area?” Flint forced himself to slow down on his eating. He knew Lana had lived around Haven growing up, and she had no trace of a Spanish accent, but from her name and coloring, he assumed she was full-blooded Mexican.

  “My parents and grandma emigrated thirty years ago.” She smiled, her eyes going dreamy like she was remembering something good. “My parents took pride in the fact that I was born here.”

  “Where’s your mom and dad, Miss Alvarez?” Logan asked around a mouthful of chili. “Are they old people?”

  “They died in a car accident,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Logan’s eyes widened.

  Flint put a hand over his son’s. Given the world today, it was never too early to model the right words to say in the face of a sad situation. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled reassuringly at Logan. “It happened ten years ago, and I have a lot of good memories.”

  “And the rest of your extended family?” Flint asked.

  “Still in Mexico.” She propped her cheek on her hand. “That’s the disadvantage of our family moving here. I don’t really know my Mexican relatives well. We went to visit a few times when I was smaller, but Mom and Dad got very busy in the community here, and we stopped making the trip.”

  “Is your grandmother...” He hesitated, not wanting to overemphasize death around his son.

  Lana glanced at Logan and shook her head, obviously on the same page with Flint about protecting Logan from too much scary information.

  “So...you’re alone.” Sympathy, something he didn’t feel too often toward women, nudged at his heart.

  She nodded. “I mean, I have friends. But the holidays can be sort of hard. What about you, Flint? You’re not native to this area, right?”

  He shook his head. “I gre
w up in Colorado. Me and my eight brothers.”

  Her eyes widened. “Eight brothers? That’s a whole baseball team!”

  He chuckled. “That’s right, but growing up on a farm, we didn’t have much time for baseball.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  He shrugged. “I was a younger brother. I’d have liked to live on the family farm, but by the time I was of age, my older brother had already claimed it. Which is good,” he added to forestall pity. “He’s made a go of it. Anyway, by the time I graduated from high school, there wasn’t money for college, so I went into the army. That way, I’ll have the GI bill when—if—I ever decide I want to get a degree.” He spread his hands. “For now, I know how to be a soldier, a farmer or a rancher. That’s it. So when I heard there was a job open here, I applied and got it.”

  “Do you miss Colorado?” she asked.

  “I don’t miss the snow, but I do miss my brothers.”

  “We go see them every summer,” Logan volunteered as he grabbed another handful of tortilla chips. “We climbed a mountain and went on a roller coaster.”

  “That’s right, buddy, and we’ll do it again this year.”

  “That’s nice,” Lana said. “You and Logan aren’t such a small family after all.”

  “But, I don’t have a mom,” Logan said. “Like we talked about.” He gave Lana a meaningful look.

  Logan had talked about his lack of a mother with Lana?

  “We didn’t look in the boxes,” Logan announced, looking at Flint worriedly.

  Flint blew out a breath. He wasn’t proud of how he’d responded when Logan had come to him with the wedding album Flint hadn’t even known he still had. Usually, he avoided thinking about his ex-wife. But Logan was getting to an age where he obviously had questions. Flint needed to figure out how to answer them, but not tonight and not in Lana Alvarez’s presence.

  They ate the fruit salad—they all preferred the fluffy version—and then Logan went and leaned against Lana’s side. “Can you stay and watch a movie with me and help me go to bed?” he asked, looking up at her with a pleading smile.

  Whoa. Not good. Flint hardened his heart. “No, buddy, Miss Alvarez has to go home.”

  “I can’t, but I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said at the same time.

  She stood and started carrying dishes to the sink, but Flint rose quickly and raised a hand. “I’ll take it from here.” He needed to get Lana Alvarez out of his house. He had to remember that a pretty, too-young woman who looked like a dream come true when she woke up wasn’t any part of his life, nor his son’s. That, in fact, she was more dangerous than a lightning storm to both of them.

  Chapter Five

  Lana pushed back a stray curl, looked around at the not-very-clean storage barn filled with shouting boys and milling adults, and fanned herself with the Christmas pageant script. Why did I agree to do this again?

  It didn’t help that she’d come straight from a full day of teaching first-graders who were hyperexcited about Christmas. Nor that she hadn’t slept much last night, since scenes from her evening with Flint and Logan kept replaying themselves in her mind.

  Pastor Andrew tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned. He was here to help organize the gifts that community members always donated for the boys, and she figured that the lanky young man wanted information or help from her. Instead, his eyes were warm with sympathy. “Want me to settle everyone down with a prayer?”

  “That would be wonderful. Thank you.”

  The pastor boomed out a call for attention, put a hand on Lana’s shoulder, and prayed that the pageant would bless the community and bring people comfort and peace. Which put the focus right where it should be, on helping others rather than worrying. “Thank you,” Lana said, giving the pastor an impulsive hug.

  Then, before the air of spiritual peace and thoughtfulness could dissipate, she started organizing everyone into groups, putting older boys in charge of younger ones and pairing experienced adult volunteers with novices.

  Pastor Andrew took charge of noting down the gifts people were dropping off for the boys at the ranch.

  Marnie Binder came through the door just as Lana was trying to figure out what to do with a group of teenage girls from a service club at the local public school. Ostensibly here to help, they were actually more of a distraction to the teen boys. Instantly, Marnie read the situation and pulled the girls aside to help with decorations.

  When Lana checked in with the set-building group, off at the far end of the barn, there was Flint. The way he looked at her made her feel flustered. Had he been able to read her mind last night? Had she accidentally revealed how much she enjoyed being at his house, pretending to be part of a family?

  It’s just pretend, she reminded herself firmly, and refocused on the multiple tasks at hand. As soon as she’d ascertained that Flint knew exactly what to do and that he was already adept at delegating the right task to the right boy, she turned away.

  As she headed back toward the youngest group of boys, whose rehearsal of lines under Robby Gonzalez’s leadership seemed a little chaotic, she was surprised to see Avery Culpepper come through the barn door, talking on her cell phone. When the blonde saw Lana, she clicked her phone off and approached her like they were old friends. “Hi, Lana! I wanted to see if I could help with the pageant.”

  “We need all the help we can get.” Lana studied the woman, looking for signs of insincerity. Ever since the near-accident with the tractor, she’d been curious whether Avery had played a role in it.

  She looked around, trying to think of a safe place to put Avery to work, when Robby called to her for help, laughing: “¡Ayúdeme!”

  She hurried over, Avery trailing behind.

  “We want to know if Mary and Joseph were married.” Logan was obviously the spokesperson for the first-grade boys.

  “Yeah,” added Colby, the nephew of Lana’s friend Macy. “They had a baby.”

  The next group over was listening, and one of the teenagers chimed in. “You don’t have to be married to have a—”

  “Jesus was the son of God,” Lana interrupted, holding up a hand to quell the older boy’s remark. “And Mary was his mother.” She looked around and noticed that a number of the other groups had stopped working to listen in on the discussion. Including Flint’s group. Great.

  But of course, Flint would want to know how his son’s religious education was being handled. What he might not know was that kids asked every kind of question, including questions that were inappropriate or hard to answer.

  “What about Joseph?” Logan asked, looking puzzled. “Wasn’t he Jesus’s daddy?”

  Eleven-year-old Jordan Gibson, one of the new residents, leaned forward, arms crossed over upraised knees. “Joseph was like his adopted dad.”

  “Exactly.” Lana smiled approval at Jordan.

  “Hey, we should have Joseph and Mary’s wedding at our pageant!” eight-year-old Jasper Boswell shouted. Which led to a vigorous debate between the boys who thought a wedding pageant would be cool and the boys who thought it would be dumb.

  Above the din, Avery’s higher voice sounded loud and clear. “Miss Alvarez wouldn’t want a wedding in the pageant.” She waited until the noise died down. “That’s a sore subject for her because of how she was, you know, left at the altar.”

  Avery’s words hit Lana like a sudden blow to the chest. Her face heated, and tears sprang to her eyes. Every single person in the barn—or at least, it seemed like everyone—stared at her.

  She should have brushed off Avery’s remark with a joke, made everyone comfortable again. Only she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Would she ever get over being mortified about her disastrous almost-wedding?

  “Kids.” Marnie Binder, who’d been standing in the barn doorway, clapped her hands. “Break time. Cook
ies and hot chocolate on the ranch house porch.”

  Amid the shouting, running boys, Lana saw Flint approach Avery and escort her to the door of the barn, his face unsmiling, talking more than she’d ever seen the cowboy talk before.

  Macy, who’d been helping Colby out of his costume so he could join the rest of the boys, finished quickly and hurried over to put an arm around Lana. “Come on. Help me find some supplies over in the library.”

  Because she didn’t know what else to do, Lana left the barn with Macy. She took deep breaths of the soft evening air and wrapped her arms around her middle.

  Once they were out of earshot of everyone else, Macy hugged Lana. “I’m so sorry that happened,” she said, keeping an arm around Lana as they walked slowly toward the ranch library. “What is wrong with that Avery Culpepper, anyway?”

  “How did she know?” Lana’s voice came out husky, so she cleared her throat. “It’s not like my wedding disaster happened here in Haven. It was a couple hundred miles away, where my...where he was from.”

  “She’s been sticking her nose into everyone’s business in town. No doubt she asked the right question of someone who’d heard the story and didn’t mind gossiping about it.”

  Lana breathed in and out a couple more times and managed a laugh. “She certainly brought the rehearsal to a halt.”

  “Maybe that’s what she wanted.” Macy frowned and held the library door for Lana to walk in ahead of her. “She’s the type that likes to stir up trouble. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t located her.” Macy was the one who’d contacted Avery and let her know her long-lost grandfather had passed away.

  As they walked through the nearly empty library to pick up poster board from the little office, Lana noticed an old photograph with a prominent label: Culpepper Family. She paused to look at it, but Avery wasn’t there; it was just Cyrus, his wife, June, and their son, John.