A Bravo For Christmas

She started to argue that she had a job to do and he was interfering with it, but why get on his case for something she wanted as much as he seemed to? So she tipped her face up to him, and his beautiful mouth came down on hers.

The kiss hollowed her out down low and left her wonderfully breathless. He tried to steal a second one.

But she put her fingers to his soft lips. “Tonight.” He sucked those fingers into his mouth and swirled his tongue around them. “You say I’m bad,” she accused.

He laughed then—and stole one more kiss before he let her go.

* * *

Dare’s house on the edge of the forest was two stories, the porch wide and welcoming, sided in natural wood shingles and stone. He was waiting on the step, wearing his usual jeans and boots and also a heavy red-and-black plaid jacket, the collar turned up against the cold. Apparently, he’d been sitting there for a while. The brim of his black cowboy hat held a dusting of snow. A floppy-eared white dog sat beside him.

Ava stopped the Suburban in front of the porch, and he rose and came down the steps to her, pulling open her door and leaning into her, bringing the sharp, cold scent of snow and a hint of evergreen. “You made it.” She nodded, feeling strangely shy and way too excited at the prospect of the evening ahead. “This is Daisy.” The dog, who’d come to sit a few feet away, cocked an ear at Ava.

“Hello, Daisy.”

“Now you can come meet my horses,” he said.

She grabbed her wool beanie off the passenger seat and put it on, then took his offered hand. His fingers were surprisingly warm as he helped her down to the snowy ground.

Gathering her coat a little closer around her, she went where he led, across a cleared space, past a faded red barn to a stretch of paddock fence.

The horses spotted them and trotted over—three of them, a white mare and two geldings, one black, one a bay. “Josie, Clem and Sweet Sam, meet Ava.” They greeted her with soft snuffling sounds. Dare had three small half-withered apples in his pockets. “Here. They’ll love you forever.” He passed them to her, and she gave each horse a treat.

Then she bent to pet Daisy, who’d followed them from the car. “In school, you always seemed like a guy who’d go to Yale,” she said. “Preppy, you know? And a jock. I never made you for a cowboy.”

He took her hand and pulled her to her feet again. “I’ve got three horses and a barn, but I wouldn’t say I qualify as a cowboy.”

She thought about kissing him and felt shy all over again. “What about the hat?”

He tipped the snowy brim at her. “The hat, least of all—and in high school I didn’t know what I wanted, really. Now I do. I like horses, and I like a place with lots of trees. And I have a workshop in the basement. I do some mediocre carpentry when I have the time.” He pointed off across the paddock. “I own twenty acres, most of it forest.”

“It’s a lot to manage, isn’t it—I mean, what with running Bravo Steelworks, too?”

“I have help. His name is Corky. He lives in what used to be the foreman’s cottage, on the far side of the barn. Corky does most of the cowboying around here. He works with the horses, mends the fence and takes care of Daisy when I’m not around.”

“Sylvie would love it here.” The words kind of slipped out, and she regretted them instantly.

“Bring Sylvie next time.”

She stared off toward the barn. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a good idea. This is supposed to be a secret, remember? And it ends with the New Year.”