The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Frederick studied him for another long moment, his eyes entirely too perceptive. “Why don’t you have a wife? Children?”

  Carson shifted in his chair, deeply uncomfortable with this particular line of questioning. “I guess it just hasn’t really been a priority in my life.”

  “And why not? If you don’t mind an interfering old-timer’s opinion, a man needs family around him, especially as the years flow past. You might think big, beautiful houses and land and more companies are enough for you. But when you get to be the ripe old age of seventy-five, you learn how little those things matter. Family. That’s the important thing. The joy of watching your grandchildren grow, of knowing you have raised a good, honorable son, of having your wife by your side and standing by in amazement as she becomes more beautiful in your eyes with every passing day. That is where you find true joy.”

  Carson gazed into the flickering fire, wishing he could clap his hands over his ears to shut out the other man’s words.

  What was happening to him this week? He had come to Raven’s Nest five days ago, comfortable in the assurance that his life was rolling along exactly on the track he wanted. His company was successful beyond his wildest dreams, he had found the ideal location for his ranch, he had everything he could imagine.

  If he sometimes wondered why he was working so hard, he just figured that was part of living the high life.

  But somehow everything was changing. All he thought he had attained seemed empty. Meaningless. For the first time, he was beginning to realize how completely he had shut everyone else out of his life. His friendships for the most part were shallow, his relationships with women always casual.

  He had become very adept at relying only on himself. Now he was beginning to wonder if he had made a grave mistake.

  It wasn’t a pleasant realization or a particularly comfortable one.

  She was nearly done.

  The Hertzogs had left just a short time ago to meet their plane at the Jackson Hole Airport. They planned to fly to Aspen for the final leg of their ski journey and she had sent them on their way with breakfast crostinis, chicken foie gras sausages and rosemary potatoes.

  To her surprise, Antonia Hertzog had given her a hug before she left along with a card with her e-mail address, begging Jenna to keep in touch and to send her recipes for several of the dishes she had served.

  Frederick Hertzog had shaken her hand. He had solemnly—but with his eyes twinkling—thanked her for preparing meals “as filling to the soul as to the stomach.”

  Even Amalia had given her a shy smile and whispered her thanks.

  Now all Jenna had left was to wash a few more dishes and finish storing the leftovers that could be heated in clearly marked containers for Carson.

  She was glad it was over, she told herself. These two days had seemed endless, though she had loved the work. Having the freedom to create meals with unlimited ingredients had been both challenging and immensely rewarding.

  She couldn’t do it again, though. Even if Carson offered her a private jet of her own to chef for another of his parties, she would have to decline. Two days at Raven’s Nest was more than enough. She couldn’t work for him again, not with this insane attraction she couldn’t seem to quash.

  She would find a way, though. Once she was away from him and back in the flow of her regular life, she wouldn’t even have time to think about Carson McRaven or the heat of his kiss or the way he made her insides quiver with sensations she thought she had buried with her husband.

  Fifteen minutes later, she dried the last serving tray and returned it to the shelf, then gave one last look around the kitchen to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

  “I suppose you’re glad this is over.”

  She whirled around to find Carson in the doorway. Her heartbeat instantly kicked up a notch, much to her frustration. So much for the assurances she made to herself that she could put her attraction away.

  For some reason, she hadn’t expected to see him again before she left. They had no business left between them, since his assistant had expressed payment to her the day before. She had already deposited it in the bank and this morning had transferred payment over to her small business loan, much to her delight.

  She hadn’t really wanted to see him. Yet, here he was in jeans and a casual shirt and those disreputable boots again. She sighed and tried to pretend he didn’t affect her in the slightest.

  “My children are eager to have their mother back so we can get to some of our holiday traditions,” she finally answered.

  He stepped into the kitchen and leaned a hip against the work island.

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, the usual. Nothing very exciting, I suppose. Tonight we’re going to drive around and look at Christmas lights around town. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we’re driving to Idaho Falls to pick up my mother-in-law, who’ll be staying a few nights with us. We’ll probably go to a matinee or something with her and then dinner, then we’ll read stories and play games by the fire until the boys are worn out enough to sleep. Which might be quite late this year, I’m afraid. Hayden tells me he plans to stay up until at least eleven o’clock.”

  She was rambling, she realized. His blue eyes wore an odd expression. Probably glazed over from boredom, she thought, embarrassed.

  “That probably sounds excruciatingly dull to you, doesn’t it?”

  “You might be surprised,” he murmured.

  She didn’t know how to answer that so she changed the subject. “What about you? What are your plans for Christmas?”

  “That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind. Actually, I have work today and tomorrow.”

  “On Christmas Eve?”

  “I have several projects in the works right now so I thought I would catch up on the research I need to do for them.”

  How terribly sad, she thought. Instead of celebrating with family and friends, he planned to hole up in this huge, echoing house by himself and read business reports. She couldn’t imagine anything more depressing, though perhaps that was exactly the way he wanted to spend his holidays.

  “What about Christmas Day?” she asked, though she wasn’t quite sure why she was so insistent on finding out his plans.

  “I don’t know. Not much. I really don’t usually celebrate Christmas, to be honest. I would spend the entire time working but it’s hard to do that on your own when everyone else is at home doing their holiday thing. I figured I’d take one of the horses up on the ridgeline trail and then come back and have a drink and a long soak in the hot tub.”

  She studied him for a long moment, struck at the sudden realization that what she had always taken for coldness, for hardness, actually cloaked a great deal of loneliness. Why had she never realized it before?

  “You could come to our place for dinner on Christmas, if you’d like.” She spoke quickly, regretting the words almost the moment she uttered them.

  He straightened from the work island, his eyes astonished. “I didn’t realize you were in the habit of inviting strays to dinner.”

  If he was a stray, he was a sleek, extraordinarily well-groomed one. She colored a little, feeling foolish all over again at the impulsive invitation. She couldn’t rescind it now, though, so she plowed forward.

  “One more person at the table certainly won’t make much of a difference, especially this year. Usually my brother and his family would be there but they’re leaving tomorrow morning on a cruise. It will only be my brood and my mother-in-law.”

  She made a face as she suddenly remembered one salient point that couldn’t be overlooked. “I should warn you, in the interest of full disclosure, that Pat—my late husband’s mother—can be…difficult. She had a stroke a year ago and she suffered brain damage from it. I’m afraid, well, it’s changed her personality a bit. And not for the better, I’m sorry to say. She was always a strong-willed woman but since her stroke, she’s become, um…”

  Her voice trailed off and she felt disloyal f
or even bringing it up.

  “Mean?” he asked.

  She stared. “How did you know that?”

  “Hayden told me a few things she’s said about me. Not very complimentary things, I’m afraid.”

  Jenna winced. She could only imagine what Hayden might have told him. Carson and Raven’s Nest were two of Pat’s favorite targets for vitriol. She couldn’t understand Jenna’s reasons for selling the ranch to him and Jenna had never been able to explain to her that her comfortable assisted-living center would never have been in their budget if she hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry. She’s actually a wonderful woman most of the time. She just has her moments.”

  “But you still have her out to your house for Christmas?”

  Jenna sighed at his flabbergasted expression. “She has no other family. Joe was her only son and the Wagon Wheel was her home long before it was mine. What else can I do? My children still love her dearly and she never displays cruelty to them.”

  “Only to you?”

  She flashed him a quick look. The man was too blasted perceptive. “Not much. Anyway, if I haven’t completely scared you off, you’re welcome to join us for dinner. We’ll probably eat around four. My boys enjoy your company and even Jolie seems completely smitten. All afternoon yesterday she wouldn’t stop saying mister. Which I’m fairly sure meant you since you’re the only new man in her life.”

  He smiled at that and she gazed at the way it seemed to light up his features.

  How did he completely wreck all her grand intentions, just with a simple smile? That crazy hunger surged back through her veins and she could only stare at him.

  He had to kiss her again.

  The impulse was so overwhelming, he just about gripped the counter’s edge to keep from reaching for her.

  She was inviting him to share Christmas dinner with her family. With her boys and her darling little girl and her mother-in-law.

  Part of him was totally enraptured by the idea. But it terrified him far more.

  What did he know about family Christmases? When he was a kid, December twenty-fifth had simply been another day, another excuse for his mother to drink or shoot up until she passed out and he had to clean her up and put her to bed.

  He could remember one happy Christmas from his childhood, the year he had spent with his grandparents.

  He had become used to treating the day like any other, just a little more inconvenient since the rest of the world seemed to stop. If he spent the day with Jenna and her family, he was very much afraid he would never be able to go back to those quiet, solitary days he told himself he enjoyed.

  “Forget it. I should never have invited you.” She turned away and he realized he must have been standing there staring at her for a full minute or more.

  “It’s silly,” she went on. “You don’t have to feel obligated. Just pretend I never opened my big, stupid mouth.”

  The big, stupid mouth he couldn’t stop thinking about? The one that haunted his dreams, that he could still taste every time he closed his eyes?

  “Jenna—”

  “Just forget it,” she said. “It was a crazy impulse.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was very sweet.”

  Her gaze flashed to his, her eyes wide and surprised and he lost the battle for control. He stepped forward, pulled her against him and kissed her, as he had been dreaming about doing since the first time he had tasted her.

  She gasped his name just before his mouth found hers. He might have expected her to pull away, as she had done that first time. Instead, she hitched in a little breath and wrapped her arms around his neck and his tenuous hold on control slipped completely away.

  She tasted even better than he remembered from the day before, warm and sultry and sweet at the same time, like juicy sugared peaches.

  She responded wildly to his kiss and he pressed against her, relishing her curves and the way her breathing came in aroused little gasps. She opened her mouth for his kiss and her tongue tangled with his.

  The heat and taste of her sent blood surging to his groin and he was instantly aroused. He gripped her bottom and pulled her against him and she let out a soft, sexy little sound and twisted her fingers in his hair.

  They kissed for a long time, until he couldn’t think straight and his body ached for more. “Let’s go upstairs,” he murmured after several drugging moments. “I’ve got a huge bed in my room. It’s far more comfortable than a marble-topped island.”

  He knew his words were a colossal mistake the moment he said them. She froze in his arms for only an instant but he didn’t want to let her go. Not yet. He couldn’t let her pull away this time. He lowered his mouth again and after only a moment, she kissed him back with more of that enticing eagerness that took his breath away.

  He wanted more. He had to have her, right now, right here, to hell with comfort or common sense.

  He slid his hands under her shirt, to the warm skin at her back and trailed his lips from her mouth to her neck then to the creamy, delicious skin at the vee of her shirt.

  She gripped his head to hold him in place for a moment, then he was vaguely aware of her hands falling away just as he dipped a tongue beneath her bra, to the lush swell of one breast.

  She pushed at him but he couldn’t bring himself to heed her, too lost in his hunger.

  “Stop, Carson. Oh, please, stop.”

  Her whispered words finally pierced his subconscious and he froze, frustration whipping through him.

  He stepped away from her but couldn’t seem to contain the string of low, bitter curses, a throwback to his rough childhood on the street.

  She looked shaken to the core, her eyes wide and almost glassy. Not at his language, he realized. At the wild ferocity of their kiss.

  He had let things get completely out of his control, something he never did. She had tried to stop, he remembered with considerable self-disgust, but he hadn’t wanted to end the kiss until she actually said the words.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Jenna, I’m…”

  “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” Her breath came in sharp little gusts, her chest heaving up and down as she tried to regain control.

  He was. He almost couldn’t breathe around the regret—as much for kissing her in the first place as for not being willing to stop.

  “I was just going to tell you I won’t be coming for Christmas dinner. I need to go back to San Francisco.”

  Now. Today. To hell with the fact that he’d given his pilot the three days off until the holidays were over. He would take a commercial flight if he had to. He needed to return to a place where his life was sane and normal again, instead of filled with adorable toddler urchins, gabby troublemaking boys or lovely widows with big green eyes and kisses that were rapidly becoming his obsession.

  “Now who’s running away?” she asked quietly. She lifted her hands to repair some of the damage his fingers had done to her careful hairstyle and he saw she was shaking.

  He wanted more than anything to touch her again but he didn’t trust himself. “This is insane, Jenna. I’m fiercely attracted to you. More than I’ve ever been to a woman in my life. I’m not used to…losing control like I just did. I can’t let it happen again.”

  She laughed harshly. “What makes you think I would let you kiss me again?”

  He gave her a long look. “Can you do anything to stop it?”

  “I just did, didn’t I?”

  “Eventually. But you didn’t want me to stop, did you? Not really.”

  She just looked at him out of those eyes that suddenly looked bruised and he gave a heavy sigh.

  “I don’t know what this thing is between us,” he said. “But when we kiss, it’s like the blowup of a wildfire scorching out of control. It makes absolutely no sense.”

  “Don’t look to me for answers. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  He needed a clean break from her. That was the only way he could regain any kind of sa
nity. He needed her and her children out of his life, once and for all—or at least as far out of it as he could manage when they lived just down the hill from Raven’s Nest. He didn’t like being cruel—the mother-in-law he hadn’t even met came to mind—but he couldn’t see any other option.

  “Look, I’m physically attracted to you, Jenna. I can’t deny that. But I never should have kissed you. This was a mistake. I don’t want to be attracted to you and I’m sorry I lost control like that. You come with tangles and complications I can’t handle. I’m not interested in handling them. The whole kid and family thing is not anything I’m looking for and that’s what you’re all about, isn’t it. I’m sorry, but you’re just not the kind of woman I want.”

  She paled a shade or two and he didn’t think he had ever despised himself as much as he did right at this moment. “I guess that’s clear enough, isn’t it?”

  “Jenna—”

  “No, I appreciate your honesty. I do. And since we’re being so up-front and honest with each other, I’ll come right out and just say, right back at you. You are absolutely the last man I would be interested in starting anything with. Yes, I find you attractive. But I also believe you’re the most manipulative, self-absorbed person I have ever met. You think you have everything you could ever want, but the truth is, your world is cold and empty. I would feel sorry for you except it would be a complete waste of my time and energy, something in short supply in the whole kid and family thing I call my life. Goodbye, Mr. McRaven.”

  She headed for the door and he wanted, more than anything, to apologize, to call her back and tell her he didn’t mean any of it. He couldn’t, though. Because underneath it all was more than a grain of truth.

  He forced himself to say nothing as she grabbed her parka off the hook in the mudroom with a force that nearly ripped it out of the wall, then she stormed out the back door, slamming it hard behind her.

  She left an echoing kind of silence between them. The kitchen that had seemed so warm and full of lovely scents when she was there had turned barren, inhospitable.

  He stood for a moment, flayed open by her words. You think you have everything but the truth is, your world is cold and empty. I would feel sorry for you except it would be a complete waste of my time and energy.