The Cowboy's Christmas Surprise

Deliberately?

“I’m sure,” Ray said casually, completely ignorant of the way what he’d just said had thrown Holly for a loop. “That’s what she told her brother. She also said that Cyndy Adams was hoping to catch Ty Smith’s eye, as well. Come to think of it, Laurie mentioned Reta Wells, too, but I didn’t hear the name of the guy that Reta was looking to corner.”

“So they’re all looking to get partnered up?” Holly asked.

She was doing her best to hide the distressed feeling that was growing in the pit of her stomach. Why hadn’t Laurie leveled with her?

Because she knew you’d never agree to come if she mentioned being interested in catching some guy’s eye. You know that.

“It sounded like that to me,” Ray told her. And then he shrugged. “But, hey, I could be wrong. And even if I’m right, this just might be a fishing expedition on their parts. I think that if this was a done deal, they would have all gotten paired off before they ever got to Murphy’s. So, if this is just in the works, it’s all going to be casual,” he assured her. Ray slanted a look in her direction. “You sure there’s nobody you’re looking to cut out of the herd?” he asked her.

“I’m sure,” she answered firmly. She’d known this was a bad idea. Holly glanced over her shoulder at the road they’d just traveled. “Look, maybe you’d better take me back home.”

Ray just kept driving the way he’d been going, heading toward Murphy’s.

“Sorry, Doll, I told you I don’t want to be late for Liam’s first number. I’m really curious to see how he does. Besides, if I take you back now, that knock-’em-dead dress’ll go to waste, since I’d be the only one who’s seen it on you,” he maintained.

You’re the only one who counts.

Why did he have to be so thickheaded when it came to this? Holly wondered in frustration.

Out loud she merely said, “I can always save it for another time.”

“C’mon, Doll, where’s your sense of adventure? Let your hair down,” he prompted.

“Maybe you need an eye exam,” she told him with a touch of sarcasm. “My hair is down.”

“See?” he asked with that same disarming grin. “Halfway there.”

Holly sighed and, for the moment, gave up as she slouched back in her seat.

The trip was all but over.

Murphy’s looked as if it had been infused with a community of fireflies; it was so lit up that it was visible from a few blocks away.

“I guess word must have gotten around about Liam and his band,” she speculated.

Ray laughed. “He’d better be good. If he’s not, he’s going to fall flat on his face in front of a packed house.”

She caught herself having performance jitters for the middle Murphy brother. “I think they’re probably more than ready to meet him halfway,” she said. At least she hoped so, for the sake of Liam’s pride.

Everyone in Forever knew everyone else. That meant that, by and large, they pretty much had each others’ backs. While some occasional petty jealousies might surface between the inhabitants of Forever and the people who lived on the surrounding ranches, for the most part, everyone wished everyone else well.

Ray pulled up in front of the saloon. Then, seeing that there was no space to park his truck, he circled around to a larger lot in the back. Usually there were plenty of spaces to be had there. Tonight Ray found that he had to drive up one lane and down another before he finally found a space where he could park his truck. He pulled it in between two 4x4s of almost identical color—battleship gray.

“Sure hope this means he’s selling beer to all these car owners,” he commented, looking around the lot.

The offhanded comment caught her attention. She looked at Ray sharply. “Why? Is Brett having trouble staying in the black?”

Brett Murphy wasn’t the kind who talked about money problems except in the most casual way, making it sound as if there was no problem at all.

“Mike heard him say something about having a note come due on Murphy’s next month,” Ray answered.

He and his siblings certainly knew what it was like to have their backs up against a wall and the bank breathing down their necks, Ray thought. They’d almost lost the ranch after their mother had died. Pulling together as a family had been the only thing that had saved them from foreclosure. Even though he was the youngest, the experience had made him hypersensitive to other people’s problems when it came to needing money for payments due.

“I think that’s the reason behind Brett agreeing to have Liam get his friends together and play tonight. Having a packed house never hurts,” Ray told her as he pocketed the keys to his truck.

Holly looked out at all the cars parked outside the saloon. It looked as if everyone in town had shown up, not to mention that there appeared to be vehicles from some of the neighboring towns, as well.

“Well, whatever his reason, I think he’s going to be up all night counting the saloon’s take from tonight,” Holly predicted.

They could hear the noise coming from the saloon even inside the cab of the truck. She estimated that it would be close to deafening once they were inside the small, rectangular building that was both the place of business for the three Murphy brothers and their home since they lived right above the saloon. “Maybe we should have brought earplugs,” she all but shouted to Ray.

She saw him grinning at her. It was the kind of grin that acknowledged he was aware she’d said something to him, but hadn’t a clue what that something had been.

It didn’t matter to her if Ray had heard her or not; the important thing was being this close to him. She hadn’t seen him for the past couple of days and had assumed that work on the ranch was keeping him busy.

Either that, or a new love interest had come into his life. That happened with a fair amount of regularity—like clockwork.

Holly shut down the idea as soon as it occurred to her, preferring not to think about it.

But since Ray hadn’t mentioned anyone’s name on the way over here—and he would have had there been someone new—she just assumed that tonight he’d be back on the prowl again. One of his brothers—Mike—had made the observation that Ray changed girlfriends the way other men changed undershirts while working out in the hot sun.

What that meant to her was that Ray wasn’t getting serious about any of the women he went out with—which was just the way she liked it.

Someday, Holly firmly hoped, Ray Rodriguez would come to his senses and realize that what he had been looking for all this time had been standing right there in front of him all along. The fact that he’d said more than once that he wasn’t looking for that special someone didn’t carry any weight with her. It was a rare man who admitted that he wanted a wife in his life, that he wanted something other than to be a carefree, love-’em-and-leave-’em man that all the available women in the area—and some who weren’t so available—flocked to.

Just before he opened the front door to Murphy’s, Ray bent close to her ear and promised, “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you until we find Laurie.”

The moment he said that, Holly fervently hoped that Laurie and her friends had gotten stuck in some parallel universe and had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared off the face of the earth for the duration of the evening.

Her wish to that end intensified when, to her surprise, Ray took her hand. “So we don’t get separated,” he explained.

The explanation came with an accompanying puff of warm breath—his—that instantly seemed to sink right into the sensitive skin along her neck and cheek.

For a split second, Holly thought her heart was going to burst through her chest, it was hammering that hard. But she managed to take in, hold and then release two long, even breaths, which in turn steadied her pulse—or got it as steady as was humanly possible, given the circumstances.

She took another long breath before saying, “I’m not worried.”

He turned to look at her over his shoulder, guessing she’d said something but the din from the saloon had completely swallowed it up.

“What?” he asked, his voice just a decibel below shouting.

This time, it was her turn to lean forward and bring her lips to his ear. “I said, I’m not worried,” she repeated.

Something tightened in his gut as he felt her breath along his ear. It sent a reflexive shiver through a large part of him, which surprised him. Feeling slightly unsettled, his eyes met hers.

And held.