Burke's Christmas Surprise

He nodded his craggy head one time.

“Is my sweater on backward, or is my hair a mess, or have I grown a third eye or something?”

He looked her up and down as only a man could. “Your hair’s a little windblown, and I ain’t used to seeing it down around your shoulders, but everything seems to be in the right place. Why?”

“Well, everybody’s looking at me as if—never mind.”

Cletus slapped his towel on the counter. Making a tsk, tsk, tsk sound, he headed for the door. “You look fine. Pretty. Like a woman who’s recently been thoroughly kissed.”

The door swung closed behind him. This time it was Louetta who blanched.

She didn’t move until the door had stopped swinging on its hinges. Merciful heavens. She had been thoroughly kissed. She’d had no idea it showed. No wonder everybody was looking at her strangely.

Louetta Graham simply didn’t know how to handle this kind of attention, this kind of speculation. There was something to be said for being a wallflower, for blending in with the scenery. No, she told herself, putting the stacked dishes on the shelves where they belonged. Going unnoticed by people she’d known all her life had been a lonely way to exist. It had taken courage to make a stand three years ago. It had taken courage to dig her way out of her shell. She couldn’t slide back in now, when she’d come so far.

The old Louetta would have taken the cowardly way out and stayed in the kitchen until everyone left. The new Louetta had no room in her life for craven tendencies and faintheartedness. Taking a deep breath, she pushed through the swinging door.

She let out a little yelp as a man swooped in front of her and pulled her to him the second she entered the room. “Wes,” she exclaimed, watching in dismay as his face descended to hers.

His kiss had come out of the blue, which pretty much described the color of his eyes and the wink he gave her moments later. “There,” he said, sauntering toward the door. “Might as well keep the gossips on their toes, don’tcha think? I’ll see you tonight, Lou.”

Louetta stared after him, one hand over her mouth, the other over her heart. She knew her cheeks were flaming. And she knew everyone was looking at her. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

Plain, shy Louetta Graham had gone thirty-three years without being kissed. Suddenly, at thirty-five, she’d been kissed by two of the most ruggedly attractive men in the entire state of South Dakota, and all in the span of fifteen minutes. Whatever was a woman to do?

“There I was,” Wes Stryker said, blue eyes full of mischief as he regaled Louetta with another rodeo story, “balancin’ on the top rung of the chute, all psyched to climb onto that bronco’s back and stay there. Only, the horse had other ideas. And I knew, the second my butt hit the saddle, that I was in for quite a ride.”

Louetta leaned forward in her chair, her stomach comfortably full, both hands curled around a cup of coffee, intrigued as much by the warmth and friendliness in Wes’s expression as by the tale itself. “Did you last your eight seconds?” she asked, feeling her smile broaden at the look of self-confidence and humor on Wes’s lean face.

“The longest eight and a half seconds of my life. Near as I can tell, ridin’ a bucking bronco is a lot like steering a spaceship through reentry.”

“How many times have you steered a spaceship through reentry?” Louetta asked around a grin.

Although she hadn’t seen much of Wes since they’d graduated from high school, she realized he’d always been easy to be with. Maybe it was because he hadn’t exactly fit in, either. He hadn’t been unpopular, but he’d rarely participated in after-school activities.

Louetta couldn’t remember much about Wes’s mother, who’d died when he was a young boy, but it was common knowledge that Sam Stryker had had a drinking problem, just as it was common knowledge that the reason Wes had spent every free moment practicing his roping and riding skills was that he’d been planning his escape from Jasper Gulch. He’d left town the day after graduation. Although he’d come back a couple of times every year, nobody had really expected him to return for good. But then, Louetta thought to herself, nobody had ever expected her to be pursued by two men, either.