The Texas Christmas Gift (24 page)

“You’ve got that right,” he murmured, kissing her back just as gently. He looked down at her, all the affection he felt reflected in his eyes. “Merry Christmas, Mrs. McCabe.”

Eve wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close. She whispered sweetly, “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

* * * * *

Watch for the next book in Cathy Gillen Thacker’s
McCABE HOMECOMING
miniseries,
THE TEXAS WILDCATTER’S BABY,
coming March 2014,
only from Harlequin American Romance!

Keep reading for an excerpt from THE COWBOY’S CHRISTMAS SURPRISE by Marie Ferrarella.

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Prologue

The bouquet of flowers she’d given her mother for her birthday had done more than serve its purpose. The arrangement of yellow mums, pink carnations and white daisies had remained fresh looking and had lasted more than the customary few days, managing to dazzle for a little more than a week and a half.

However, now, as to be expected, the flowers were finally dying, no longer brightening the family room where her mother usually spent a good deal of her day. Their present drooping, dried-up state accomplished just the opposite, so it was now time to retire the cluster of shriveling flowers to the trash can on the side of the house.

But as she began to throw the wilted bouquet away, one white daisy caught Holly’s eye. Unlike the others, it had retained some of its former vibrancy.

On an impulse, she plucked the daisy out of the cluster, pulling the stem all the way out and freeing it from its desiccated brethren. After dumping the rest of the bouquet into the garbage, she closed the lid of the trash can, then stared at the single daisy in her hand.

Holly shut her eyes, made a wish—the same one she’d made over and over again for more than a decade and a half—and opened them again.

Then, very slowly, she tugged on one petal at a time, denuding the daisy gradually and allowing each plucked petal to glide away on the light late-fall breeze that had begun to stir.

“He loves me,” Holly Johnson whispered, a wistful, hopeful smile curving her lips as she watched the first white petal float away. “He loves me not.”

Just to say those words made her chest ache. She knew she was being silly, but it hurt nonetheless. Because in all the world, there was nothing she wanted more than to have the first sentence be true.

The petal floated away like its predecessor.

“He loves me,” she recited again, pulling a third petal from the daisy.

Her smile faded with the fourth petal, then bloomed again with the fifth. With two petals left, the game ended on a positive note.

She looked at the last petal a long moment before she plucked it. “He loves me.”

This petal, unlike the others, had no breeze to ride, no puff of air to take it away. So instead, when she released it, it floated down right at her feet.

Unable to live?

Or unable to leave?

She sighed and shook her head. What did flowers know anyway? It was just a silly game.

The next moment, she heard her mother calling her name. “Coming!” she responded, raising her voice.

Then, pausing just for a second, she quickly bent down to pick up the petal, curling her fingers around it. She pressed her hand close to her heart.

Turning on her heel, she hurried back into the house, a small, soft smile curving the corners of her mouth. The corners of her soul.

The last sing-song refrain she’d uttered echoed in her head.

He loves me.

Chapter One

“Hi, Doll, how’s it going?”

Holly Johnson’s heart instantly skipped a beat and then quickened, the way it always did when she heard his voice or first saw him coming her way.

It had been like that since the very first time she had set eyes on the tall, broad-shouldered and raven-haired Ramon Rodriguez, with his soul-melting brown eyes, all the way back in the first grade.

The beginning of the second day of the first week of first grade, to be exact. That was the day she’d started first grade. Looking to change his luck, her father had moved his family—her mother, older brother Will and her—from a dirt farm in Oklahoma to Forever, Texas.

Back then she’d been a skinny little tomboy and the only reason Ray had noticed her at all was because she was not only determined to play all the games that boys played, she was actually good at them. She could outrun the fastest boy in class, climb trees faster than he could and wasn’t afraid of bugs or snakes, no matter which one was dangled in front of her face.

And she didn’t care about getting dirty.

All those talents and qualities had been previously acquired in Holly’s quest to gain her older brother’s favor. She never quite succeeded, because during their childhood Will had never thought of her as anything other than a pest he was glad to ditch. During those years, Will was only interested in girls, and he’d thought of her as just holding him back from his chosen goal.

Ray and Will, although several years apart in age, shared the same interest; but while Will had thought of her as a pest, Ray came to think of her as a pal, a confidante. In short, he saw her as—and treated her like—another guy.

Holly was so crazy about him she took what she could get. So over the years she got close to Ray as only a friend could, and while she would rather have had him think of her as a girlfriend, she consoled herself with the fact that in Ray’s life girlfriends came and went very quickly, but she remained the one constant in his life outside of his family.

It was a consolation prize she could put up with until Ray finally came to his senses and realized just what had been waiting for him all along.

It was a decision Holly had come to at the ripe old age of eleven.

That was thirteen years ago.

She was still waiting.

There were times, Holly had to admit, when she felt as if Ray didn’t see her at all, that to him she was just part of the scenery, part of the background of what made up the town. These days, because money was short and she had to provide not just for herself but for her mother and for Molly, the four-year-old Will had left in her care when he abruptly took off for places West, she worked as a waitress at Miss Joan’s diner.

The highlight of her day was seeing Ray.

He stopped by the diner whenever he came to town—which was frequently, because he was in charge of picking up supplies for Rancho Grande, the ranch that he, his father, his brothers and his sister all owned equally. And every time Ray walked into the diner, she’d see him before he ever said a word.

It was tantamount to an inner radar that she’d developed. It always went off and alerted her whenever Ray was anywhere within the immediate vicinity. She’d always turn to look his way, and her heart would inevitably do its little dance before he called out his customary greeting to her.

Ray had taken to calling her Doll, because it rhymed with her name and she was a foot shorter than he was. She loved it, though she was careful not to show it.

“I’ll take the usual, Doll.”

The “usual” was comprised of coffee, heavily laced with creamer, and a jelly donut—raspberry. In the rare instance that the latter was unavailable, Ray was willing to settle for an apple-filled donut, but raspberry was his favorite, and ever since Miss Joan had placed her in charge of doing the inventory and placing the weekly orders, she made sure that there were always plenty of raspberry-jelly donuts on hand. It wouldn’t do to run out.

She would have made them herself if she’d had to, but, luckily, the supplier she used for their weekly orders never seemed to run out.

Technically, Holly thought as she concentrated on regulating her breathing and appearing calm, Ray wasn’t actually coming her way. He was coming to sit down at the counter, get his morning coffee and donut and shoot the breeze for a few minutes. With any pretty face that might have shown up at the counter that morning.

Or, if he was particularly excited about something, or had something exceptional to share, then he’d deliberately seek out her company the way he always did if he needed advice, sympathy or a sounding board. Over the years, she had become his go-to person whenever something of a more serious nature came up.

This morning, Ray had some news to share with her. Big news, from his point of view.

“You’ll never guess what,” he said to her as she filled his coffee cup and placed the sweetened creamer next to it. Unlike his brothers whenever they stopped by, Ray hated black coffee. For him to be able to drink it, his coffee had to be a pale shade of chocolate.

Holly raised her eyes to meet his soft brown ones as she set down the half-filled coffeepot, waiting for him to continue talking.

He, apparently, was waiting for something, too. “You’re not guessing,” he prompted.

“You really want me to guess?” she asked, surprised. But she could see that he was serious. “Okay. But to do a decent job at guessing, I’m going to need a hint.” With Ray, there was never any telling what he thought was share worthy at any particular given time.

He nodded, obviously enjoying stretching this out. “Okay, if you want a hint, how’s this?” he said just before he declared,
“The Last of the Mohicans.”

Holly stared at the face that popped up in her dreams at least three nights a week, usually more. What he’d just said didn’t make any sense to her, but she took a stab at it. It really didn’t matter all that much to her
what
Ray said to her as long as he went on talking. She loved the sound of his voice, loved everything about him, even his devil-may-care attitude, despite the fact that it was responsible for his going from female to female.

“You’re reading James Fenimore Cooper?” she asked uncertainly. Why did he think the book title would mean anything to her?

“No, me,” he told her, hitting his chest with his fisted right hand. When she continued to stare at him, a puzzled expression on her face, he elaborated a little further for her. “
I’m
the last of the Mohicans.”

Holly knew that he had a little bit of Native American blood in him on his father’s side, but he’d told her that he had traced it back to an Apache tribe, not some fictional tribe the long-dead author had written about.

“It’s too early for brainteasers, boy.”

Holly glanced up to see that Miss Joan had joined them, having made her way to this side of the counter. The red-haired older woman who owned and ran the diner narrowed her hazel eyes as she fixed the youngest of the Rodriguez clan with a reproving look.

“Why don’t you just come out and tell Holly what you’re trying to say while she’s still young enough to be able to hear you?” Miss Joan suggested.

But Ray apparently enjoyed being enigmatic and he gave hinting one final try.
“Last Man Standing.”

“Ray,” Miss Joan said in a warning tone, “you’re going to be the last man sitting on his butt outside my diner if you don’t stop playing games and just say what you’re trying to say.”

Ray sighed, shaking his head. He’d thought that Holly, whom he’d always regarded as being sharp, would have already figured out what he was trying to tell her.

“All right, all right,” he said, surrendering. “You know, you take all the fun out of things, Miss Joan.” He couldn’t resist complaining.

In response, Miss Joan gave him a wicked little smile. “That’s not what my Harry says,” she informed him, referring to the husband she’d acquired not long ago after years of being Forever’s so-called carefree bachelorette.

Meanwhile, Holly stood waiting to find out what it was that had her best friend so mysteriously excited.

“All right,
why
are you the last man standing?” she asked, prodding him along.

“Because everyone else in my family is dropping like flies,” he told her vaguely, playing it out as long as he could. “Except for my dad,” he threw in. “But he doesn’t really count.” Eyes all but sparkling, he looked from Miss Joan to Holly, then said, “We just had another casualty last night.”

“Don’t see why a casualty would have you grinning from ear to ear like that,” Miss Joan observed, then ordered, “C’mon, spit it out, boy. What the devil are you talking about?”