Cowboy Christmas by Mary Connealy

Author:Mary Connealy [CONNEALY, MARY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62836-163-6
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2009-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Annette Talbot was a pain in the neck.

Walker stormed through his morning chores. He growled at the hands when they wished him a happy Thanksgiving.

He’d grabbed half a loaf of bread on his way outdoors, rising long before dawn to dodge his ma…and Annie and didn’t go in at all for breakfast. The loaf was gone and he was starving and he’d wandered too close to the house once, about an hour ago, and smelled the turkey roasting. His ma was an uncommonly fine cook.

Now the morning was gone and so were his excuses.

Thanksgiving.

God, what am I supposed to be thankful for, huh?

Good health. A prosperous ranch. Honest, hardworking cowhands. Enough snow to fill the mountain gaps and supply the springs in the summer. A healthy spring crop of calves that would winter well and bring a good price. Priscilla locked up tight and for a good long time.

His ma not yelling when she walked in on her son…

Kissing their guest…

When Ma left them alone for about five minutes.

Oh, he could think of things to be thankful for. Rather than go in, Walker dabbed a loop over one of the saddle horses in the corral nearest the barn.

None of the things on his “thankful list” overshadowed the thing he had to be unthankful for.

Stealing a kiss from Annette.

She wasn’t a woman with many choices, and Walker had put her in a terrible position. She had nowhere else to go. Every time Walker thought of that, he wondered if she might put up with unwanted advances for fear she’d be cast out in the snow to starve and freeze and die.

Cross-tying the horse inside the barn, in a pen, Walker tried to remember how she’d acted, what she’d said. Had she been interested in him…or just well and truly trapped? It made him crazy to think of such a thing, which is exactly why he should never have kissed her.

The horse snorted and Walker realized he’d been standing there, staring into space, remembering details, every move and sound and scent. He shook his head and went to get the hoof-trimming tools.

It wasn’t proper. He’d had no right to give in to the intense curiosity about how Annette would feel in his arms and how she’d taste.

Now he knew and he remembered how perfectly she fit in his arms. She’d tasted like a dream come true.

And that brought him to the thing he was most unthankful for in the whole world. He wanted to hold her again. And trying to remember how she’d acted was just his wanting to think, over and over, about that sweet moment when he’d held her in his arms.

Women got a man stirred up. They turned a perfectly normal man into a fool…which reminded him that Annette might not be such a fragile, beautiful, innocent girl. Priscilla had surely given that same impression.

Walker felt his spine growing back as he lifted the horse’s front right hoof between his legs, faced toward the horse’s hind end, and began running his rasp over it with a dull grating sound.

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