Oklahoma Christmas Blues by Maggie Shayne

Author:Maggie Shayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: miracles, contemporary romance, holiday romance, letter to santa, series romance, christmas romance, maggie shayne, texas brands, oklahoma brands, mcintyre men

Chapter Ten

It was the damn song.

He’d been doing great, having fun, starting to get into the whole holiday thing for the first time in recent memory. Every shop had carols playing, bells jingling. Every day the church bells rang with a song at high noon. He knew the lineup by heart. “Silent Night,” “The Carol of the Bells,” and “Away in a Manger.” The entire saloon was decked to high heaven and so was the whole danged town.

He had not thought, when he’d accepted the job offer via the net, and headed out here, that he was moving into Christmas central.

And yet, somehow it had been all right. Being with Sophie had made it all right.

Until they had to go and play that damned song.

He probably owed Sophie an apology for reacting to it the way he had. She’d just tried to do something nice for him.

Sophie. The thought of her hit the brakes on his racing thoughts. Her face hovered in his mind’s eye, and he relived those moments in his bedroom upstairs. That kiss. Holy Moses. And she’d been there for that. For him.

She was smart. A doctor, for crying out loud. He didn’t think of himself as an intellectual, really. He’d been a good soldier right up until he’d got himself blown up, and then after he’d recovered, he’d been a good cop, and later a good agent. Right now, he was a good PI-slash-bodyguard. He didn’t know if that was going to be forever, but he didn’t think so.

She was quirky, looking for reasons for everything, the way she was. Deep. Kind of spiritual. He liked it. He found that knowing it made him like her even more than he had before.

He was walking around outside the saloon. He’d gone out through the front doors, not the back, and he could see the parking lot was almost filled to capacity. He was on the job and shouldn’t shirk his duties, even if they weren’t the reason he’d truly been hired.

But he needed a break.

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he paced past the parking lot and walked out into the grassy meadow beside it. The din of the band—which had wrapped up his song and started another—was almost non-existent there. The stars were blinking to life in the dark blue sky. The sun hadn’t been down long. It wasn’t full dark yet, but the air was cool enough that he could see his breath.

It cleared his head both literally and figuratively. Yeah. Okay, so he and Sophie had got off on the wrong foot. He hadn’t been honest with her, and she’d thought the worst. But things were out in the open now. Things were better now.

He didn’t know exactly what “things” he was referring to. He just knew he liked her. He liked her a lot.

But he didn’t think that “everything-happens-for-a-reason” bit was very logical. He’d almost been a father once. A teenage father, but a father, all the same. That had been taken away from him, and an IED had ensured the chance would never come again.

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