A Laramie, Texas Christmas

A Laramie, Texas Christmas
Cathy Gillen Thacker

All Kevin McCabe wants for Christmas is to get closer to Noelle Kringle.A party planner from Houston, she and her young son are in Laramie to help out a friend. Kevin can't stop thinking about her, and he can tell the feeling is mutual. But as quickly as he's falling for her, Kevin can't help but think she's hiding something.All Noelle Kringle wants for Christmas is a distraction from the very sexy Deputy McCabe. She hasn't felt anything like this since the death of her husband several years ago. And she sees her son, Mikey, responding to him like a father figure.However, despite what her heart tells her, Noelle knows it can never go anywhere. She has secrets in her past that make it impossible for her to be with a lawman like Kevin. Then again, you can never underestimate the power of a Laramie, Texas Christmas….

“Is Laramie always like this?

“Everyone helping everyone else? Or is that just because it’s Christmas?” Noelle asked.

“I think,” Kevin answered, “Christmas inspires everyone to be generous. But Laramie is a great place, year round. People here take care of each other.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You being a big-city girl and all,” he teased.

“Houston has its perks, but a small-town feel is not one of them,” Noelle replied. Then she changed the subject. “What kinds of cases are you working on?”

“Yesterday, there was the case of the missing leaf blower,” Kevin said with exaggerated seriousness. “Turned out to be in the caller’s backyard. He’d just forgotten to bring it in, and panicked when he didn’t see it in his garage.”

A mixture of amusement and respect sparkled in her eyes. “That sounds…”

“Pedestrian? I guess it is. But compared to things I saw when I worked on other police forces—let’s just say I prefer small-town problems.”

“And small-town women?” Noelle asked. “Do you prefer them, too?”

Dear Reader,

Christmas is a holiday that stirs strong emotions, and mine have run the gamut. There was my first Christmas as a new bride—very romantic. My first Christmas hundreds of miles away from my family—highly sentimental, and not necessarily in a good way. Our Christmases with our children when they were young and impossibly excited were very joyous indeed. The Christmas immediately following the passing of my father was achingly bittersweet.

There are years when the holiday spirit seems determined to elude me—although I always find it eventually—and years when I am overrun with merriment and anticipation weeks before the actual day. I never know how the season is going to start—that sort of depends on what is going on around me. I always know how it’s going to end, with celebration and appreciation, love and family. And the same is true of the residents of fictional Laramie, Texas.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. For more information on this and other titles, please visit me at www.cathygillenthacker.com.

Happy holidays and best wishes,

A Laramie, Texas Christmas

Cathy Gillen Thacker

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cathy Gillen Thacker married her high school sweetheart and hasn’t had a dull moment since. Why? you ask. Well, there were three kids, various pets, any number of automobiles, several moves across the country, his and her careers and sundry other experiences (some of which were exciting and some of which weren’t). But mostly, there was love and friendship and laughter, and lots of experiences she wouldn’t trade for the world.

For my buddy Regan, the best canine companion this writer could ever have. And definitely my best Christmas present ever.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Kevin McCabe knew thirteen-and-one-half days of pure unadulterated bliss were too good to be true. It figured that on his way back to Laramie, Texas, he would see something that just had to be investigated. And that the unmarked white van currently backed up to the rear door of the Blackberry Hill mansion would be in an area with no cell phone connections. Had he been driving his work vehicle he’d have had a way to communicate his concern. Instead, he was driving the battered four-wheel drive Jeep he’d owned since high school. It had no two-way radio or emergency communication system.

After pulling over to the side of the winding rural road and watching a woman carry armloads of stuff out of the house, stash it in the van, then dart back into the residence via the side door, he decided to scope out the situation himself. If it had been just material possessions in question, Kevin would have waited for backup. But an eighty-five-year-old woman owned the property. And Miss Sadie had had a bad year already, losing her husband of sixty-two years. Kevin wasn’t sure if she was back yet from that six-week recuperative cruise she had been on, but he knew, as did everyone else in the close-knit community, that she was due home any day. Chances were, she wasn’t there now, hadn’t walked in to witness the theft, or worse, been there when the thieves arrived. But if she was there, Kevin couldn’t drive off and leave her. Not without first making sure Miss Sadie was okay.

Keeping an eye out for anything else suspicious, he drove slowly toward the pink brick Georgian house with the weathered gray shutters, stopping just short of the white van. Wishing he had a way to check the license plates, he cut the engine and got out. He walked down the long, tree-lined driveway toward the open side door, then paused to look in the windows of the rented van. It was loaded with Miss Sadie’s valuables, all right, he noted grimly. Everything from a Tiffany lamp to her jewelry box and favorite rocking chair.

“May I help you?” a feminine voice asked coolly from the top of the steps. Christmas music floated merrily from the interior of the house.

Time to appear clueless about what was going on. Kevin turned away from the loot with his best “Aw, shucks, ma’am, I’m just a dumb country boy” grin, and immediately noticed several things about the woman standing beneath the portico. She wasn’t a local. He was sure of that because had he ever encountered this very beautiful woman, even in passing, he definitely would have remembered her. She was dressed in a pair of olive wool slacks that lovingly gloved her slender hips and long lissome legs. A white cotton shirt, open at the throat, lay beneath an argyle sweater vest and tweed blazer. Her accent said Texas, born and bred. Her boots were the high-heeled, soft-leather type city slickers wore, their only purpose to change the tilt of her posture and make her legs look damn good. Which they did.

Reminding himself he would need to make a positive ID later, Kevin estimated the interloper was around five foot six, one hundred and twenty pounds, close to his own twenty-seven years in age and, as previously noted, curvy in all the right places. Her copper hair fell to her chin in a riot of springy curls he found incredibly sexy. And his attraction to the perpetrator didn’t end there. She had an angelically round face with a straight, slender nose and a thin upper lip countered by a full lush lower lip, just right for kissing. Her peachy skin was fair and flawless save for the sprinkling of freckles; her savvy blue eyes were intelligent, wide-set and long-lashed.

Not surprisingly, she was incredibly nervous—and pretending not to be, even as she stood there with a five-foot-high plastic candy cane beside her, cupped loosely in her right hand. Although he couldn’t fathom what she was doing with that ridiculous thing. The faded red-and-white plastic lawn ornament didn’t look like something anyone would want to steal.

Reminding himself she could be a lot more dangerous than her sweet and sexy appearance indicated, he paused at the bottom of the stairs. Tipping his hat in her direction, he acted every bit as oblivious to the criminal wrongdoing going on as the situation demanded. “Hello. I’m Kevin McCabe.”

THAT WAS THE PROBLEM with agreeing to do a last-minute job like this, in an unfamiliar part of the state, Noelle Kringle noted, not buying the name he had given her for one instant. She didn’t need this kind of trouble two weeks before Christmas. And the six-foot-tall hunk in front of her was heartache personified.

Or at least he would have been if he’d bothered to clean up. The golden-brown hair peeking from beneath the brim of a bone-colored Stetson hat and falling haphazardly across his brows, over his ears and down the nape of his neck needed to be combed and cut. She estimated it had been weeks since his boyishly handsome face had been shaved. And that, she couldn’t help but note a little wistfully, was a shame. The scraggly, dark brown whiskers on his face detracted from his nicely chiseled features and the sexy cleft in his chin. Not that she needed to be admiring the sensual lips, square masculine chin and arresting brown eyes of a man in ripped jeans, and a grime-smeared flannel shirt and gray Henley that had both seen better days. Especially when she feared she knew exactly why he was surreptitiously scoping out everything about the place—and her. He’d heard the rumors, too.