Cowboy Christmas Blues

And that was when she caught his eye. Standing over at the jukebox, looking down, caramel-colored hair falling over a face he couldn’t see. A curvy figure, and a pretty delicious ass highlighted by the tight-fitting skirt she had on.

Not here to hook up, remember?

Yeah. He was not here to hook up. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t check out a good-looking woman.

“Can I get you something?”

Laz hadn’t been the owner of the bar back when Cooper had lived in town, but the two of them had gotten acquainted over the past week. “The usual,” Cooper said.

“Whiskey and lots of it coming up,” Laz said.

That was another reason that Cooper felt comfortable at the bar. Laz didn’t know his life story. That was another thing about coming back to town. He didn’t know how his parents coped with it. Didn’t know how Lindsay’s widowed husband managed. To stay here in town where everybody was so keenly aware of the loss all the time. Every moment of every day. It was all they thought about when they looked at his family, he knew. When he or his parents walked out of a room, it was the thing they whispered to their friends.

That’s Connie Mason. Her daughter died. Isn’t that sad? So young.

Too damned young.

Right on cue Laz produced the promised whiskey, and Cooper took it down in one slug. Then turned his attention back to the pretty girl over at the jukebox. Yeah, he really would like a distraction. Particularly an hourglass-shaped one.

The woman turned then, and treated him to a view of what was a damned spectacular rack and a pretty face, as well.

She looked vaguely familiar, but then, living in a town this size most people looked familiar. Could be a clerk from a store he’d gone to earlier in the week, someone he’d passed on the street.

She looked up, her brown eyes clashing with his, and she bit her lip. It was a cute gesture. Seductive, and not accidental, he had a feeling.

Well, maybe Pretty Jukebox Girl was looking for a night of distraction herself.

It might be worth exploring. For a night. Nothing else. He left a twenty on the bar top and began to walk her way.

* * *

HE WAS COMING toward her. Cooper was coming toward her. She had come here tonight for him, so she supposed she should be excited. That she should be triumphant, because she had been working up the nerve to approach him for the past week, and she had spared absolutely no effort getting herself ready for a seduction tonight. Which was hilarious, since Annabelle Preston had never seduced anyone in her life.

Being in a relationship was one thing. She’d been in one for a long time. Too long. It wasn’t like she didn’t have experience. But setting out to a bar with the express purpose of seducing a man? That was...yeah, that was outside her scope.

Cooper had always been the most beautiful man. She had thought so for as long as she could remember. Back when her father had serviced the heavy machinery on the Mason family farm, she had often tagged along and taken the opportunity to stare at the brooding boy who captured her attention with such intensity.

Cooper had always been sweet to her. But like an older brother or something. Their dads were good friends in addition to having a professional relationship, and so they’d seen each other quite a bit when he lived at home and she was a child.

He hadn’t ever noticed her noticed her, of course. She was seven years younger, and had definitely been a kid in his eyes.

She’d been so hungry to matter. Her father had always been so good to her, but he was all she had, and attention from someone like Cooper had been thrilling.

He had looked sad sometimes, and she’d known it was because his sister was sick. And even if she didn’t understand everything when she’d been nine or ten years old, she’d delighted in making him smile. Or even laugh. Running around the ranch, while the poor guy was tasked with chasing after her.

She’d climbed apple trees in their front yard, filling her arms with as many as she could. And he would always shine them with his shirt and hand her the best, brightest ones.

One time he’d taken her to the barn so she could look at a box of kittens one of the barn cats had just given birth to. Seeing those strong hands, so gentle and tender, on such tiny creatures had made her feel... She hadn’t really understood it.

She’d been thirteen then and he’d been twenty. He’d made her ache. Made her feel so much longing she hadn’t fully comprehended.

At fifteen, she’d had a fight with her father and run away to the Masons’ farm. She’d climbed into the loft and fallen asleep and hadn’t realized she’d worried everyone sick. Then she’d awoken to a husky, masculine voice and had opened her eyes to see Cooper looking down at her. He was angry, because of how she’d frightened her dad, but...but seeing him look down at her like that...

She’d wanted him to be the one to wake her up forever after that.

The last time she had seen him she had been seventeen and all rounded puppy fat, to his chiseled twenty-four.

Even if she hadn’t been a child to him then, she wouldn’t have expected him to notice her that day. Because the last time she’d seen him had been at Lindsay’s funeral. It had been a blur of tears and grief for her, so she knew it had been much more so for him. He’d been so still and stoic, all grim-faced and hard. She remembered hugging him, offering what little comfort she could.

He’d wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, the slight hitch in his breathing the only real show of emotion she saw from him that day.

She thought of that day far too often. Of how much she wished she could take his pain away. Of how much she wished she could be in his arms again, even though that was messed up because he’d been grieving and it shouldn’t have affected her to be held by him while he was grieving.

He had been back intermittently since he had moved away, but never for very long, and he’d never sought her out. In fact, it felt like he deliberately avoided talking much to anyone in town other than his parents whenever he came back for a visit.

Then last night she had been in the Gold Valley Saloon, meeting up with a group of friends, and there he was. He had walked in and her entire world had stopped.

She’d been in a T-shirt and jeans, looking about as plain as paper, because she’d just gotten off work, and he’d never once looked her direction.

And that was when she had made a decision. She was single, had been for almost a year, and she was ready. Ready to do something bold. Ready to make a change. Ready to stop settling.

So she’d decided she would come back to the bar looking...sexy. And she would get his attention. Because yes, she was ready.

Ready to be the kind of woman that Parker had said she could never be. Parker, who thought that she needed to make sure she wore outfits that didn’t show muffin tops and who felt that most lingerie didn’t suit her figure.

Parker, who thought that she was too doughy to ever be a sex kitten.

And yeah, tonight she was wearing Spanx. Which she knew could become an issue later. But she had to get the man into the bedroom before she could worry about how she would take the Spanx off gracefully with him in residence, and what he would think when he found out she wasn’t quite as sleek as she appeared.

Yes. That was a problem for after she passed this first hurdle.

But he was coming toward her. And his gaze was hot, so she was hoping she was on the right track.

He was as beautiful as ever, and had actually gotten better-looking with time, in her opinion. He had filled out more, the shadow on his jaw darker than it had been back then, that jaw a bit more square. His forearms were thicker, his shoulders broader. He was bigger all over, really. More heavily muscled. She had heard that he did something with livestock, and she imagined that contributed to his physique. Whether he was eighteen or twenty-six, he appealed to Annabelle. She had a feeling he would appeal to her when he was forty. Fifty. Beyond. He was her special brand of catnip, and whatever the reason why, it was true.

She wanted her catnip.

She’d walked herself into a safe, settled life that had been a direct route to nowhere. A boyfriend of five years who’d done nothing but eat all the yogurt the day she bought it and criticize everything she did in that slow, subtle way that was like death to her self-esteem by a thousand paper cuts.

It had taken her time to figure out what she wanted after Parker had ended things—he had ended things with her, that had been another blow straight to her soft underbelly (very soft, according to Parker)—and now that she had...

Well, her revelation was shaped like Cooper Mason.

She wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, and God knew Cooper wouldn’t be either. He wasn’t that kind of guy. At least, he gave no indication of being that kind of guy, not in all the years he had lived in Gold Valley, and his rumored lifestyle certainly didn’t conform to that idea either. But she needed excitement. She needed to seize something for herself.

She needed to stop acting like she believed that she was everything Parker thought she was.

She had started changing her life last year after the breakup. When she had gone ahead and bought the Western clothing store, Gunslinger, on Gold Valley’s main street, a store she had worked at for most of her adult life. She had always dreamed of having her own store and it had fallen into her lap when her boss had informed her she was retiring.