A Mistletoe Vow: A Cold Creek Christmas Story / Falling for Mr December / A Husband for the Holidays

The half dozen black-and-white pudgy things belonged to Georgie, one of the ranch border collies.

“Can I pet them?”

“Sure. I’ll warn you, they’re probably not super clean. You’re going to want to wash your hands when you’re done.”

“I will. I promise.”

She knelt down and was immediately bombarded with wriggling puppies.

Celeste felt her throat tighten as she watched this girl who had been through so much find simple joy in the moment. Flynn had almost lost her. It seemed a miracle that they were here in this barn on a snowy night watching her giggle as a puppy licked her hand.

“She did all right today at the rehearsal,” she said in a low voice to Flynn as they watched together. “I know you were concerned about the noise and confusion, but she handled it well. Wouldn’t you agree?”

They were standing close enough together that she could feel his sigh. “I suppose.”

“Does that mean you’ll bring her to the next rehearsal, then?”

He gave a small sound that was almost a laugh. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re relentless?”

“A few times, maybe,” she said ruefully. More than a few was closer to the truth.

Needing a little distance, she eased down onto the bench next to the stall. To her surprise, he followed and sat beside her.

“Fine,” he answered. “You win. I’ll bring her to the next one. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

She glanced at his daughter playing with the puppies a dozen feet away, then turned back to Flynn. “Why do you have a problem with her performing?” she asked, her voice low. “Especially when it seems to be something she enjoys?”

“I don’t want her to enjoy it,” he answered in an equally low tone. “If I had my way, I would have her stay far away from any kind of stage or screen.”

She frowned at the intensity of his words. “Because of your mother or because of Elise?”

“Either. Both. Take your pick.” He watched as a puppy started nibbling on Olivia’s ponytail, which only made her giggle again as she tried to extricate it from the little mouth.

After a moment he spoke with fierce resolve. “I want my daughter to find happiness in life based on her own decisions and accomplishments, not because of how many pictures of her holding a latte from Starbucks showed up in the tabloids this week. There’s an artificiality to that world that crumbles to nothing in a heartbeat. Take it from someone who grew up on the edge of that spotlight.”

She thought of what Aunt Mary had said about his grandmother’s pride in him for staying grounded. Unlike his mother or his wife, he hadn’t sought that spotlight. He had gone into a career outside Hollywood and had built a successful business on his own merits. She had to admire that.

“That must have been tough for you,” she said.

He shrugged. “How can I complain, really? It sounds stupid, even to me. I grew up with the sort of privileges most people only dream about. A-list celebrities hanging out in my swimming pool, a BMW in the driveway on my sixteenth birthday, vacations in Cannes and Park City and Venice.”

By worldly standards, her family had been very poor. Her parents had given everything they had to helping others, to the point that she remembered a period in their lives when she and her sisters each had had only two or three outfits that they swapped back and forth.

She hadn’t necessarily enjoyed moving from country to country, never feeling as if she had a stable home. In truth, she still carried lingering resentment about it, but she had always known she was deeply loved.

She had a feeling that for all his outward privilege, Flynn had missed out on that assurance, at least from his parents. She was grateful he had known the unwavering love and devotion of his grandmother.

“We don’t get to choose the circumstances of our birth families, do we?” she said softly. “The only thing we have control of is the life we make for ourselves out of those circumstances.”

His gaze met hers and the intensity of his expression left her suddenly breathless. Something shimmered between them, something bright and fierce. She couldn’t seem to look away, and she again had the oddest feeling he wanted to kiss her.

Now? Here? With his daughter just a few feet away? She must have been imagining things. Still, the idea of him leaning forward slightly, of his mouth sliding across hers, made nerves jump in her stomach and her knees feel suddenly weak.

She felt as if she stood on the brink of something, arms stretched wide, trying to find the courage to jump into the empty space beyond.

She could lose her heart so easily to this man.

The thought whispered into her mind and she swallowed hard. With the slightest of nudges, she would leap into that empty space and doubtless crash hard back to earth.

Careful, she warned herself, and looked away from him, pretending to focus on his daughter and the cute, wriggling puppies.

After a long pause, he finally spoke. “Despite everything you and your sisters have been through, you’ve made a good life for yourself here in Pine Gulch.”

“I’d like to think so.” Okay, maybe she was a little lonely. Maybe there were nights she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering if she was destined to spend the rest of her nights alone.

“I guess you know a little about being in the spotlight now, don’t you?” Flynn said.

She forced a little laugh. “Not really. My particular spotlight is more like a flashlight beam. A very tiny, focused flashlight. That’s the nice thing about being only a name on a book cover.”

“That will change when the Sparkle movie hits the big screen,” he predicted.

Oh, she didn’t want to think about that. Just the idea made her feel clammy and slightly queasy. “I hope not,” she said fervently. “I like being under the radar.”

He frowned. “Why agree to let someone make the movie, then? You had to know that’s only going to increase your celebrity status. You won’t be able to stay under the radar for long.”

In her heart, she knew he was right. What had she gotten herself into?

She hadn’t had a choice, she reminded herself. Not really.

“I love my family,” she said. “They’re everything to me.”

“It only took me a few minutes at dinner tonight to figure that out. You have a great family. But what does that have to do with signing a movie deal you don’t appear to want?”

For someone who loved the magic and power in words, sometimes in conversation she felt as if she never could manage to find the right ones.

“Things haven’t been...easy around here the past few years, even before my brother-in-law’s accident. My uncle was a wonderful man but not the best businessman around, and the ranch hasn’t exactly been thriving financially.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The, um, increased interest in The Christmas Ranch after the first Sparkle book came out last season helped a great deal but didn’t completely solve the cash flow woes.” She felt her face heat a little, as it always did when she talked about the astonishing success of the book. “With the deal Hope and I will be signing for the movie rights, we can pay off the rest of the ranch’s debts and push the operation firmly into the black, which will lift considerable pressure from Faith. How could I turn down something that will benefit my family so much?”

He studied her for a moment, that funny intensity in his expression again. “So it’s not necessarily what you really want, but you’re willing to go through with it anyway for your family.”

“Something like that,” she muttered.

“If having a movie made out of your book doesn’t sit well with you, couldn’t you have found an alternative revenue stream?”

She shrugged. “Hope and I talked at length about this. Our agent and publisher were clear. Someone was going to make a Sparkle movie—which, believe me, is an amazing position to find ourselves in. The terms of this particular deal were very favorable for Hope and for me, and we were both impressed by the other projects this particular production company has engineered. The moment seemed right.”