Harlequin American Romance November 2014 Box Set: The SEAL's Holiday BabiesThe Texan's ChristmasCowboy for HireThe Cowboy's Christmas Gift

by Tina Leonard

  She put in her password and waited while everything loaded. “Do you have plans?”

  “Actually, I got thinking after yesterday’s dinner. It was nice having Lacey here.” He pulled up a spare chair on casters and rolled his way to the side of the desk. “What do you think about having Christmas here, at the ranch? Would that be okay?”

  It sounded so perfect that it was scary. “It’s your ranch,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to run it past me.”

  He put his hand on her arm. “It’s been more your home than mine, Carrie. I want to ask Lacey, and Rylan, and my mom and her new husband, and Quinn and Amber and you. I want to get a big tree and have presents and the whole nine yards. Do you know how long it’s been since I had a Christmas like that?”

  She swallowed against the lump in her throat. There was such yearning in his voice, whether he knew it or not. She suspected the last time he had a big family Christmas was probably right around the time she’d had one, too.

  When her mother and father had been together, and it had been the three of them. Christmas morning had been quiet as an only child, but happy. And they’d always made a big breakfast and gone to church and then Carrie’s mom had cooked a dinner, divided portions into tin plates with lids and delivered them to less-fortunate people who didn’t have family to share the holiday with. People who had been forgotten or left behind.

  She blinked against the tears that had formed in her eyes, and to her chagrin a few slipped over her lashes and down her cheeks.

  “Hey,” Duke said softly, pushing his chair closer to hers and putting his hands on her knees. “I didn’t mean to upset you. We don’t have to do it. It was just an idea.”

  She sniffled. “I think it’s a great idea. I just got sentimental, that’s all.” She wiped her lashes and let out a shaky breath. “My mom loved Christmas. She decorated and baked and we delivered Christmas dinners to seniors and shut-ins. But that all changed when she got sick. I haven’t had a good Christmas like that in so long. Joe always included me, but it was quiet and I think he always thought of the people who were missing.”

  “I should have been here....”

  “Life is too short for shoulds. I think Joe and Eileen would be happy that you want to do this. And your family, too. Whatever help you need, let me know.”

  “You might be sorry you said that.”

  “Maybe.” She smiled through her tears. Truthfully, she tended to dread the holidays. She usually volunteered to look after the chores so the other employees could spend the day with their families. As she’d said, Joe and Eileen included her, but it hadn’t been the same. Since her mother’s death two years ago, she hadn’t even bothered with a tree at the house.

  But first there was work to do. “Let’s get started on this first,” she suggested, opening up a program. “I’ll show you what we did last year, explain why we did it and our long-term plans. Then I’ll start putting together a plan for this year. Once that’s complete—not today, of course—I’ll take it to Quinn and we’ll go over it, make changes. In the spring we might tweak it again, after we do some soil testing.”

  They got to work and the Christmas talk was forgotten, but only temporarily. Quinn came in later to say he was going to check on one of the horses that had a quarter crack and would they mind watching Amber for a little while. She offered to go instead of Quinn, but to her surprise Duke said he’d stay with Amber if two sets of hands would be better than one.

  “You’re sure?” Quinn asked. “She can be a handful.”

  “We’ll be fine. I’ll have her reading and doing algebra before you get back.” Duke grinned in the disarming way he could and Quinn laughed.

  “Okay,” he agreed, his tone implying, “You asked for it.”

  Carrie and Quinn bundled up and trudged their way to the horse barn. She and Quinn examined the hoof and then checked on the other equine stock before heading back to the house. The snow still fell, the flakes smaller and harder now as they drifted along the sides of the path.

  They were stamping their boots as they entered the house, and a delicious smell wafted from the kitchen to the foyer. It was followed by a gleeful giggle and clapping of hands.

  “What’s going on in here?” Carrie and Quinn walked into the kitchen and halted straightaway. The butcher block was covered in flour. Amber was standing on a dining chair and Duke had pinned a dish towel on her as a makeshift apron. She had flour on the tip of her nose and down one cheek, plus a smudge on her pink-and-purple top. Duke, to Carrie’s shock, was wrist-deep in some sort of dough, a gigantic grin on his face.

  “We’re makin’ cookies!” Amber’s delighted voice piped up through the silence.

  Quinn raised an eyebrow. “You are full of surprises, Duke.”

  He laughed and kneaded the dough a little more. “I still have one or two up my sleeve. When a guy’s single, and likes cookies, he learns how.”

  “You haven’t heard of a grocery store?” Carrie laughed. Amber was fairly hopping from one foot to the other, eager to get her hands messy.

  “What’s the fun in that?” he asked. He took his hands out of the bowl. Dough clung to his long fingers. “Okay, put your hands in and squeeze it around a bit. When it gets good and soft, we’ll make it into a ball and you can roll it out with the rolling pin.”

  With her tongue between her teeth, Amber started working the dough with her small fingers. After a few moments, Duke put his in the bowl, too, and the two of them laughed as they formed the buttery dough into a smooth ball.

  “My fingers are dirty,” Amber announced, holding up her hands.

  “Hmm, mine, too,” Duke answered. With an impish smile, he lifted his hand and began licking the dough off his fingers.

  Amber giggled, Duke waggled his eyebrows and Carrie began the precarious fall into love.

  Duke had taken Amber to the sink to wash her hands when the timer on the oven dinged. “Do you think you could take out the pan that’s in there?” he asked Carrie, looking over his shoulder.

  So that was what the smell was. Not the cookie dough, but a pan of mystery squares that were brown and spicy-looking. Carrie took a pot holder and lifted them out of the oven, putting them on top of the glass top stove. “I can’t believe you had the ingredients for this,” she said, putting down the pot holder and inhaling the rich scent.

  “Joe had a pretty well-stocked cupboard. I noticed the groceries when I was working around yesterday, getting dinner.” Duke spread flour on the butcher block in preparation for the dough. “It seems strange, this house being empty. It’s like it’s half lived in and half vacant, you know?”

  Quinn looked up from his laptop. “You could always move back in.”

  But Duke shook his head. “Naw, it’s not for me. This house needs something more.” Carrie watched his gaze move to Amber. “Like a family.” He took a moment to show Amber how to sprinkle the dough with flour and let her start rolling it out. “You know, there’s no reason why you couldn’t move in here, Quinn. It’d save you the drive and you’d be on-site.”

  Carrie had thought the same thing in the weeks since Joe’s sudden death, but hadn’t brought it up. It wasn’t her house to offer.

  “Thanks, but I like to keep things as stable as possible. With the future of the ranch undecided, I don’t want to move Amber and then have to maybe move again.”

  Carrie watched as Duke smoothed out some of Amber’s dough and sent her for the cookie sheet. “Keeping things familiar for her is probably pretty important.”

  Quinn agreed.

  Amber pulled on Duke’s sleeve. “Can we cut them out now?”

  Carrie stepped forward. “Can I help? I love making cookies.”

  Amber beamed. “Yes, yes! You can help, Carrie!”

  Carrie looked up at Duke. She’d seen him dressed in all sorts of ways, bu
t right now, in jeans and a shirt with flour and little bits of dough stuck on his hands, he was irresistible. She was starting to see depths to him she hadn’t even imagined existed. Depths that showed what a wonderful man he could be.

  “It seems we don’t have any cookie cutters,” she mentioned, wishing her words didn’t sound quite so breathy.

  “I don’t expect they were high on Joe’s list of baking priorities,” Duke answered, his gaze meeting hers. “But I thought this would work.” He held up a tiny juice glass. “The perfect size for shortbreads.”

  Amber was looking up at him as if he hung the moon and stars. Carrie wondered if she gazed at him the same way.

  “You girls can cut out the cookies, and I’ll cut the squares. We’re going to do something fun with them.”

  As Carrie helped Amber cut out the cookies with the small tumbler, Duke took a knife and cut the squares into small cubes. The first pan of cookies went in and the timer was set, and then they went to work rolling the cubes of warm, spicy squares into balls while Amber rolled them in sugar and put them in an empty ice-cream container Duke had unearthed from a cupboard somewhere.

  “Try one,” he suggested, and Carrie popped one into her mouth. It was a little like gingerbread, a little like cookies, soft and chewy.

  “Those are delicious.”

  Amber chewed on one thoughtfully. “I like chock-lit.”

  They both laughed. “My mom used to make these around the holidays,” he said. “I called her and asked for the recipe. She didn’t even have to look it up. Knew it by heart.”

  He’d called his mom. Something inside her expanded, warm and happy. He was reaching out to his family, settling in here. Dare she hope that he’d hang around longer than just for the holidays?

  “I invited her for Christmas. Just put it out there for her to think about,” he added. “I’m not sure if they’ll come or not. But I’m hoping they will.”

  “I’m glad,” she murmured, sneaking another ball and popping it into her mouth.

  The first sheet of cookies came out and a second went into the oven. Amber was getting restless, so while Quinn kept working, they set her up at the table with two shortbread cookies and a glass of milk.

  “I suppose now I get to clean up this mess.”

  “I’ll help. We can go over more of the cattle records after if you like.”

  They ran water in the sink, put baking supplies away in the sparsely filled cupboard. “You went through a lot of Joe’s supplies.”

  He nodded. “I never really thought about it before. How he was just...here. Then gone. It must have been hard on you.”

  She swallowed. “It was. I still miss him. It isn’t the same without him here. Quinn and I know what we’re doing, but it felt different when he was alive, having him at the helm.”

  “He was a good boss, then.”

  “He was a leader.” She grabbed a dish towel. “Quinn’s a great manager. I can handle the cattle. But what we’re missing is leadership.”

  Leadership that Duke could provide. It wasn’t all about knowing everything there was to know about ranching. It was bigger than that. It was being someone who could be trusted, who listened, who inspired confidence. Duke, whether he knew it or not, had all those traits. He was more like his grandfather than he probably cared to admit.

  After the dishes were done, they retreated to the office again. They’d worked for a long time sorting through livestock records when Carrie looked out the window and started laughing.

  The snow had let up a little, and Quinn and Amber had put on their gear and were outside attempting to build a snowman. So far Quinn had built an enormous bottom ball and was trying to get the second ball up on top of the first, only it wasn’t budging. Amber’s little hands were on the side of the huge orb, completely ineffectual.

  Carrie looked over at Duke. “When was the last time you built a snowman?”

  A grin climbed his cheek. “I don’t know. When I was about eight?”

  “There might be some carrots leftover from dinner yesterday,” she suggested.

  “You want to go out there?”

  “Come on,” she said, clicking off the monitor. “You took a cookie break. Why not take a snowman break?”

  “You did say you liked building snowmen.”

  They bundled up quickly, pausing to grab a scarf from the closet and a large carrot from the fridge. Outside, the snow fell lightly, as though the weather was taking a breath from the hard work of dumping white stuff for hours. Amber’s nose was cherry-red and her eyes danced as Carrie and Duke joined them on the front lawn.

  Together the four of them hefted the middle snowball on top of the first, and Carrie went around the “seam” between the two layers and packed in reinforcing snow. Amber started rolling the ball for the head while her dad helped her, and Duke jogged off to the brush and shrubs along the edge of the driveway. By the time the ball was done, he was back with two forked sticks. They lifted the head onto the top, packed it in tight and then Duke stuck in the branches for arms. Quinn put the nose on, Carrie used two rocks for eyes and Amber looped the scarf around the snowman’s neck, reaching around the huge white mass while being held by her father’s strong arms.

  They stood back and admired their handiwork.

  Amber leaned over and whispered something in her dad’s ear.

  “You should tell Duke,” Quinn nodded solemnly.

  She turned her pixie face to Carrie and Duke. “We should name him Joe,” Amber said.

  Carrie looked over at Duke. Did he appreciate all the reminders of his grandfather, or did he feel overshadowed by them? They all spoke of Joe as if he was the be-all and end-all. But Duke just smiled at Amber. “I think that’s a great idea,” he answered.

  Carrie was starting to understand that the little girl was wrapping Duke clear around her little finger.

  Amber leaned over to her dad and whispered something else, and Quinn laughed.

  “What now?”

  Quinn didn’t answer. He just put Amber down, reached for a handful of snow, quickly formed it into a ball and let it fly at Duke, hitting him square in the chest. Amber collapsed in the snow in a fit of giggles while a foolish look spread across Duke’s face.

  He bent and scooped up some snow and sent his snowball in Quinn’s direction, but Quinn darted to the side and Duke missed. The sound of Quinn’s dry laugh echoed through the yard, making Carrie smile. Cautiously, she took a few steps sideways, putting some distance between her and Duke. She wouldn’t put it past him to use her as a human shield....

  While Amber giggled and Quinn and Duke sent a few snowballs back and forth, Carrie stealthily made her way to a pine tree about twenty feet away. Hiding behind the trunk, she made a good half-dozen snowballs before Duke noticed she was missing.

  “Hey, where’d Carrie go?”

  She waited until he was looking in another direction before stepping out from behind the tree and nailing him with a snowball.

  “Ow!” The snowball exploded as it connected with his shoulder.

  She reached for another as the sound of Quinn’s mocking laughter reached her ears, and Amber jumped up, shouting, “Get him, Carrie!”

  A ball popped against the trunk of the tree—a dead hit if she hadn’t moved behind the trunk again. The white circle of snow stuck to the bark, a warning that the next time she might not be so lucky. She adjusted the weight of the snowball in her hand, darted out from behind the tree on the opposite side and let another one rip. It just glanced off his leg, and he took a menacing step forward, then another. Quinn attempted a distraction by hitting Duke on the arm, but Duke was undeterred. He’d locked on to his objective and he was determined to take it.

  She grabbed another ball and fired it in his direction, then grabbed the other three she’d made and dashed across
the yard, looking for another position. The only cover was the snowman they’d just made, but it was huge and solid and the perfect hostage.

  She ran behind it, dropped two snowballs while weighing another in her hand. “Stop right there, Duggan, or the snowman gets it!”

  “No!” Amber cried out from her spot nearby. Carrie looked over at the girl and gave a broad wink to reassure her. But it had been enough for Duke to pause, and Carrie nailed him with her next snowball, immediately dropping to reach for another.

  She was all teed up and ready to let another one fly when a snowball thwacked against her back. She turned to see Quinn with one eyebrow raised, his eyes twinkling. “I would have sided with you,” he said, “until you brought the snowman into it. I can’t let you hurt an innocent bystander.”

  “Yay, Daddy!” Amber jumped up and down. She made her own snowball, sent it in Carrie’s direction. It hit the mark, surprisingly, a light poof of contact. Carrie dutifully called out, “Ouch!”

  The distraction was all Duke had needed. When she spun back, he was running in her direction, charging the enemy. She couldn’t get her arm back fast enough and he football-tackled her, sending her into the cushy snow.

  Her breath whooshed out of her lungs and she took a deep breath in and started to laugh. “No fair!” she protested. “That was three against one!”

  “All’s fair in love and war,” Duke announced, pushing her shoulders down into the snow and then straddling her so she couldn’t get up. “Shame on you for taking a hostage. That’s playing dirty, Coulter, and now you’ve got to pay the price.”

  Oh, God. He was sitting on her and laughing at her and his threat filled her with delicious anticipation. What was he going to do?

  “You’re bluffing.” She grinned up at him, taunting. “You’re just a big bluffy bluffer.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  And he picked up a handful of snow and proceeded to wash her face with it.

  Cold snow trickled down the neck of her jacket and was icy-hot against the skin of her cheeks. She sputtered and spit out the bits that had gotten into her mouth, turning her head from side to side.