The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle

“Jolie and I made your favorite snickerdoodles this afternoon, didn’t we, ladybug?” she smiled at the little girl, who beamed back in the middle of pulling the ornaments off the tree. “They’re for the party tomorrow but when you feel better, you can go into the kitchen and get one.”

Cookies were apparently the magic remedy. Who knew? The boy’s sniffles dried up and after only twenty seconds more, he slid off his mother’s lap.

“I feel a lot better now,” he announced. “Can I have a cookie now?”

“Yes. Grab one each for your brothers.”

He flashed his mother a smile and raced from the room at top speed, leaving Carson alone with the two equally terrifying Wheeler females.

“Thank you again for bringing him home. It’s a long walk up the driveway for a kid with an owie.”

“I guess I was lucky to be there at the right time,” he said.

“He fell off a fence, you said?”

He hesitated, not sure quite how to answer her. She knew his feelings about the boys trespassing on his property and he was suddenly reluctant to dredge all that up. On the other hand, she needed to know what they had been up to.

“The split-rail fence just past where our access roads fork.”

“On the Raven’s Nest side,” she surmised correctly.

“Yeah.”

“What was he doing on a fence?” She looked as if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear his answer.

“Tightrope walking, apparently.”

She let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I have warned them and warned them to stay off your property. I hate that they’ve put me in this position again.”

“What position would that be?”

“Having to apologize to you once more.”

Again that sliver of disdain flickered in her eyes and he did his best not to bristle, though he was aware his voice was harder than he would have normally used.

“I certainly don’t want to tell you how to be a parent, but you have to do something to get the point across a little more forcefully to them. A working ranch is a dangerous place for three young boys, ma’am.”

Her expression turned even more glacial. “I believe I’m aware of just how dangerous a ranch can be, Mr. McRaven. Probably better than you.”

He remembered too late just why she had been forced to sell her ranch to him. Her husband had been killed in a tragic accident on the ranch two years earlier, leaving behind bills and obligations Jenna Wheeler had been unable to take care of without selling the land that had been in her husband’s family for generations.

He regretted his tactlessness but his point was still valid. “Then you, more than anybody, should stress those dangers to your boys. There are a hundred ways they could get hurt, as today’s accident only reinforced.”

“Thank you for your concern,” she said with that tight, dismissive voice that seemed so discordant in contrast to her soft feminine features. “I’ll be sure to tell them once again to stay away from Raven’s Nest.”

“Do that.”

He shoved on his Stetson, knowing he sounded like a firstclass jerk, but he didn’t know how else to get the message across to her or her boys except with bluntness. “I know neither of us wants any of your boys to be seriously hurt. But I have to tell you, I refuse to be held responsible if they are, especially when you’ve been warned again and again about their trespassing habits.”

“Warning duly noted, Mr. McRaven.”

He sighed in frustration. He successfully negotiated corporate deals all the time, had built McRaven Enterprises into an international force to be reckoned with in only a dozen years. So why couldn’t he seem to have any interaction with this woman that didn’t end with him feeling he was a cross between Simon Legree and Lord Voldemort?

He needed to have his people make her another offer for this land and the house, he decided. As far as he was concerned, the only way to solve their particular quandary would be for her to sell him this section and move her little family somewhere she could be someone else’s problem.

She closed the door behind Carson McRaven, wondering how it was possible for a man to be so very physically attractive—with that dark, wavy hair and eyes of such a deep blue she couldn’t help staring every time she saw them—yet have all the personality appeal of a wolverine with a sore snout.

The sale of the ranch had mostly been carried out through third parties. Jenna had known he was some kind of a Bay Area financial wizard and she had met him briefly when he had come to inspect the Wagon Wheel, as it all used to be called. Sure, he had been brisk and businesslike. But she had admired his plans to experiment with more environmentally sound ranching practices and he had seemed decent enough in that short meeting.

Of course, that was before her boys apparently decided to make it their personal mission to be as mischievous as possible—and to do it on Carson McRaven’s property.

She couldn’t blame him for being frustrated. She was at her wit’s end trying to keep them on their side of the property line. But she resented his unspoken implication that her boys were feral banshees allowed to run wild through the mountains.

“Mom, do I still have to do chores?” Kip asked in a plaintive kind of voice. “Hayden says I do.”

“I think this once, maybe Hayden can take out the garbage for you, if we ask him nicely.”

“My head still hurts.”

She pulled him toward her and gave him another kiss, just for good measure. “I don’t think it’s broken. Bruised a little, maybe, but you’ve got a pretty tough nut.”

“It was scary when I fell.”

“You shouldn’t have been up on Mr. McRaven’s fence, right? I don’t want you boys up there again. Next time you might hurt yourself even worse. What if you fell inside the pasture when one of those bulls of his were close by?”

“But I’m really good at it. I like being good at something. Hayden’s good at riding the ponies and Drew is good at math and stuff. But I can’t do anything.”

“You’re only six years old, bud. You’ll figure out what you’re good at soon enough.”

“Mom!” Hayden called out. “Can we eat these tart thingies in here?”

“No,” she answered as she picked up Jolie and headed back toward the kitchen. “They’re for the party tomorrow.”

“Everything you make is for some party or a reception or something stupid like that. Why can’t we eat any of it?” Hayden complained.

“You can have another snickerdoodle after you feed the horses. I made plenty of those.”

“I wanted a tart,” her oldest muttered.

Naturally. If she had told him the snickerdoodles were offlimits, that would have been the only thing he wanted. She loved him dearly but this sudden contrariness of his sometimes drove her crazy. Hayden was only ten and she already felt like she was battling all the teen stuff her friends had warned her to expect.

Maybe there was a lesson in that for her, she thought after she had shooed Hayden and Drew out the door to take care of their chores in the barn and returned to preparing for her last holiday party of the season.

Carson McRaven was definitely off-limits to her. Beyond the fact that she disliked him personally, he was a multimillionaire tech investor with a reputation for finding products the world didn’t realize it couldn’t do without, while she was an overtired widow with a struggling catering business and more obligations than she could begin to handle.

She wasn’t genuinely interested in any man. In the first place, when on earth would she have the time for one? Between helping the boys with homework, taking care of Jolie, the upkeep on their remaining twenty acres, taking care of her mother-in-law and starting up a struggling catering business, she had nothing left.

In the second, her heart still ached for Joe and probably always would. After two years alone, she still woke up in the middle of the night sometimes and turned over, trying to snuggle into his warmth, only to find a cold void where he used to be. Just like the one inside her heart.