Cowboy Firefighter Christmas Kiss by Kim Redford

Author:Kim Redford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2019-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Ivy sat stiffly in the passenger seat of Slade’s pickup. He was quiet. She was quiet. It felt as if they were going to their doom. And that was ridiculous. His family had to be equally as friendly and generous as all the other people she’d met in Wildcat Bluff. Of course, she hadn’t been a girlfriend at the time, but that fact ought to make everything better. It was the unknown that worried her, like it had since she’d set foot in the country.

She just wished she looked better. Fern could walk out of a shower, throw on cutoffs and T-shirt, and look like she was ready for the red carpet. Maybe it was her attitude that always carried her across the finish line first. Whatever it was, Ivy had missed that critical gene in the family pool.

She glanced down. At least she mostly wore her own clothes. Dirty, ripped jeans. Long sleeve, sage green tee. But that was the end of her before he began. Slade had loaned her a big, red satin jacket with promo logos from some rodeo he’d entered back in the day. She liked the fact that it hung down almost to her knees, so it covered up the rip in the seat of her pants, but it also covered up her hands, so she had to keep pushing the sleeves up. Nothing could fault her moccasins except they were stay-at-home wear, not gadding-about-town wear. She could live with all that, but he’d insisted on something else that she still couldn’t wrap her head around.

“I don’t see why I have to wear your old scratched, beat-up buckle and this belt of yours that you cut down to fit me.”

He glanced over at her, smiling. “I told you. It’s a gift—from me to you.”

“You’re wearing a nice, new, shiny one. I’d prefer that buckle, if I have to wear one of these giant things that is cutting me in half.”

“I told you. You’re wearing the last buckle I won. It’s the one I’ve worn all these years because it’s the most important one.”

She pointed at the multicolored stones and raised lettering on a gold-and-crimson background of the rodeo buckle he wore. “But that one is prettier.”

“It’s the next-to-last one I won.”

“I’ll happily take it.”

“Won’t do.”

“And just why not?”

“My best buckle shows my commitment to you.”

“What if you gave me your second best?”

“Then you’d be second best. I’d never do it.”

“Will people, like your family, know what it means?”

“Yes.”

“That I’m your girlfriend?”

“Well…it means a bit more than girlfriend.”

She turned to look at him, but he kept his eyes steady on the road. “What’s after that? Going steady? If it gets any more archaic here, I really will have to go home just to get a reality check.”

“You are home. And it’s sort of like…well, on our way to engagement.”

“Engagement?” She felt shocked to the bone. “What next? I guess we could just skip all the in-between, catch a flight to Vegas, and find Elvis to marry us.

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