The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle

Grandma Pat sounded like a real charmer.

“I do know how to ride a horse, thanks. I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”

“You’re just sayin’ that.”

He sighed at the boy’s attitude. He never had been good at ignoring a dare. “Give me ten minutes to wrap some things up in my office, then you’re welcome to judge for yourself whether I can ride or not. In the meantime, there’s a telephone over there by the fireplace. Why don’t you call your mother to ask her permission to go with me?”

The two younger boys couldn’t have looked more excited than if he had just offered to let them fly his jet. Hayden, though, looked as if he were sucking on sour apples.

Yeah, kid, I know how you feel, Carson thought as he headed back to his study. He wasn’t that thrilled about the whole situation, either. He should never have opened his mouth. He just had to hope Carrianne could arrange things so he wasn’t stuck with a perfectly good evergreen he had cut down for nothing.

“You’re doing what?”

Certain she couldn’t possibly have heard Drew right, Jenna held the cordless phone closer to her ear and slid away from her sewing machine at the kitchen table and moved into the hall, where she could hear better without the whoosh of the dishwasher and the Christmas carols playing on the radio.

“Mr. McRaven doesn’t have a Christmas tree,” Drew said, in the same aghast tone of voice he might use to say the man kicked baby ducks for fun. “We told him where the good ones are, up above the far pasture, but that we couldn’t go there this year to cut one down ‘cause you said it was stealin’. But since it’s his place now, it’s not stealin’ so he can get one there if he wants. And we’re gonna help him.”

Carson was taking her boys out to cut down a Christmas tree for his gigantic new house? Okay, what alternate universe had she tumbled into while she was sewing new pajamas for the boys?

Or maybe she fell asleep over the sewing machine and this was just some weird, twisted dream. He didn’t like children and didn’t know what to do with them. She didn’t need him to voice the sentiment for her to figure it out. She had seen the vague uneasiness in his eyes every time he had been forced to extricate her boys from one scrape or another.

Why would he suddenly decide to take them to find a Christmas tree? It made no sense.

She shouldn’t have sent them up to Raven’s Nest, she fretted. She had thought the task would be an easy one and would accomplish a couple of purposes—reinforcing to the boys the lesson that it was good manners to express proper gratitude to those who helped them out for one. Getting them out of the house for a while and burning off a little pre-Christmas energy on their ponies was even better.

Now here they were heading off with Carson McRaven to cut down a Christmas tree.

Maybe she should just be grateful instead of worrying about his reasons. The boys had missed not cutting down their own tree this year. The one they found was perfectly adequate but Hayden in particular had been upset at any change in the tradition they had established years ago with their father.

“So can we go with him?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Drew, always the thinker, was never content with a simple answer.

How did she explain to her son that she was fairly certain their neighbor considered them on the same level as magpies or whistle pigs—an inescapable annoyance.

“I just don’t. If he had truly wanted a Christmas tree, I’m sure he would have found one before now, don’t you think?”

“He says he has one in his California house but hasn’t had time to get one here since he’s only been here a few days. Please, Mom. He needs our help. He said he could use it.”

Really? Carson McRaven, cutthroat billionaire businessman said that? He could hire dozens of men to scour the mountainside for the perfect tree. What did he need with three mischievous little boys?

With those killer instincts all her boys had, Drew must have sensed she was wavering. “Please, Mom. Oh please. I promise, we’ll be super good.”

Jenna sighed. The truth was, she could use a little extra time. Jolie was taking a long nap and she had accomplished more in the last hour than she had done all day.

The pajamas she was working on were supposed to be a surprise on Christmas Eve—the boys’ one present she allowed them to open early—and she still needed to finish hemming all three pairs. She enjoyed sewing but didn’t have time for it very often. It seemed like every time she took out her machine, she had to relearn how to thread the bobbin and the rhythm of the thing.

What could be the harm in them going with Carson? He had made the offer, for some completely inexplicable reason.

“I suppose it’s all right,” she finally said. “Behave yourselves and come straight home when you’re done.”

“Thanks, Mom! Thanks a million! Bye.”

Drew hung up before she could give more typical maternal admonishments. She set the cordless phone on the table but she couldn’t quite bring herself to return to the sewing machine yet. Her thoughts were still puzzling over why Carson McRaven would do something so incongruous as to invite her boys along on a tree-hunting trip.

Maybe it was the cookies she’d sent along with the boys to thank him for rescuing them the other day.

No, that couldn’t be it. Sure, they were good but they weren’t quite that good.

Drat the man, anyway. He was supposed to be hard and unfeeling and humorless. It was much easier to dislike him when she considered him simply an arrogant rich man who thought his money could buy anything he wanted.

But in the last few days, she could feel something changing. He had rescued her boys, he had pulled her out of the ditch, he had followed her home to make sure she was safe.

She was beginning to think there was more to Carson McRaven than she wanted to believe.

With another heavy sigh, she turned back to her sewing. Christmas was only five days away and she couldn’t waste another moment obsessing about the man.

“That’s the one, right there.” The lenses of Drew’s glasses gleamed in the sunlight as he beamed up at Carson from his spot standing proudly by a decent-sized blue spruce.

“That is a nice one,” Carson agreed.

“This one’s better,” Hayden insisted from his spot by a gigantic lodgepole pine. “Yours has a big ugly hole on one side, see?”

“Well, yours is way too bushy,” Drew retorted. “How do you think you’re even gonna fit it into the house? It won’t even go through the door!”

An excellent point, Carson wanted to say, but he decided to let them fight it out. He had one picked out already. He had it all figured out. It was just a matter of letting the boys wear themselves out arguing about it for a few more minutes, then he would present his tree as the winner.

In the course of the last half hour with the Wheeler boys, he had begun to finally determine which boy was which and to assess the dynamics between them. In the process, he gained a little more understanding.

Hayden, the oldest, wanted to be boss and was torn between pushing his weight around and trying to pretend he wasn’t enjoying their little excursion. Carson knew it was small of him but he had savored the boy’s reaction when he had led his favorite horse out of the barn, a high-spirited black named Bodie, and effortlessly mounted him. The boy had taken one look at the sleek, elegant lines of the magnificent horse and at Carson’s easy control of him and his eyes had widened to the size of silver dollars.