The Cowboy's Christmas Gift. DONNA ALWARD

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СКАЧАТЬ corners while the rest of his facial muscles relaxed. When he wasn’t brooding, he was incredibly attractive. And of course that smile had only blossomed on his face when Kailey addressed him. Jerk.

      “Are you always going to go by that silly nickname?” Carrie asked, rolling her eyes a bit.

      He raised an eyebrow. “I’m used to it. It’s all I’ve been called since I was six years old.” He turned away from her and smiled at Kailey. “When someone calls me Dustin, it makes me feel like my mom’s calling me out for doing something wrong.”

      Carrie wiped her fingers and took another sip of her drink simply to hide her face. Duke suited him. Suited him better than Dustin. Dustin brought to mind a tall, gangly boy with thick, unruly hair and freckles. The man beside her was muscled, hard, 100 percent male, still with the hint of freckles under his tanned skin but with a no-nonsense military cut taming his cap of hair. More than that, it was his bearing. Solid and steady and a little bit dangerous. The kind of man you didn’t want to cross, but the sort you felt completely safe with, too.

      Well, mostly safe.

      She looked up and caught him watching her and her heart did that weird thump thing again, feeling as if it was banging up against her rib cage while she grew hot all over.

      Maybe Kailey was right. Maybe it had been too long since she’d dated because she was definitely overreacting.

      “So how’d you get the nickname anyway?” Quinn asked, reaching for a jalapeño.

      Duke grinned. “When I was six, we spent the summer here and my grandmother put all of us in summer Bible school at the church. One day some kid was picking on my little sister. I cleaned his clock and told him never to bother her again.”

      Everyone laughed a little, but Carrie wrinkled her nose. “That still doesn’t explain the name.”

      Duke met her gaze. “You know Joe. He loved his John Wayne movies, and I sat through lots of showings of Rio Bravo. When the kid apologized to Lacey, I swaggered up to him, doing my best impression of the Duke, and drawled, ‘Sorry don’t get it done, dude.’ I’ve been called Duke ever since.”

      Quinn and Kailey burst out laughing and even Carrie’s lips tilted a little at the cute story. Duke’s icy eyes warmed a little as they fell upon her and his face relaxed. He wasn’t the prettiest man she’d ever seen, but there was something about him that was charismatic. Sexy. Maybe it was his general aloofness blended with moments of charm. Whatever it was, Carrie wasn’t immune. Not even close.

      A two-step that was popular on the radio these days came on the speakers and Carrie’s toe tapped along with the opening bars. “Hey, Quinn,” Kailey said loudly, to be heard over the music. “You wanna take a turn on the floor?”

      Quinn smiled. “Why not?”

      Carrie watched as Quinn and Kailey headed out to the sawdust-covered floor and started circling the perimeter with the other dancers. Kailey was laughing and Quinn was smiling. Carrie had once asked Kailey about why she didn’t date Quinn—they got along great. Kailey confessed that once, before Quinn met his wife, they’d gone out on a couple of dates and that kissing him was like kissing a brother. There just wasn’t any chemistry. Now that Quinn was a widower, they’d just stayed friends.

      Carrie turned back to the table and her stomach flipped again. Duke was watching her, his gray-green eyes studying her as if he could see clear through her. She wasn’t sure if she liked the sensation or if it made her uncomfortable. Before she could decide, he took a drink of his iced tea. “So,” he said. “You and Kailey. She your wingman?”

      Carrie nodded. “Yeah. Most of the time anyway. We’ve been friends a long time.”

      “She’s a nice girl. I vaguely remember her from school.”

      “She’s a bad influence,” Carrie admitted. “And I love her for it. She keeps me from getting too boring.”

      “Are you boring, Carrie?”

      She tried hard not to get lost in his eyes. “Occasionally. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

      He took a drink of his soda. “You weren’t boring as a kid. Not as I recall anyway. I still remember the day in third grade when you put the frog in Jennifer Howard’s lunch box.”

      Carrie couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of her mouth. “Oh, my gosh. I’d forgotten about that!”

      “I’m sure Jennifer hasn’t. She gave you the stink eye for months. I don’t think I’ve ever heard quite that same combination of crying and grossing out since.”

      She took another drink of rum and realized she needed to slow down. Carefully she put the glass back down on the table and stared at it for a few moments.

      “So what changed?” Duke asked. “All work and no play? What turned that troublemaker into someone boring and responsible?”

      Boring and responsible. When she’d looked at him talking to the other men earlier, those words had popped into her mind, too. Was it a case of pot meeting kettle?

      She met his gaze and decided to be honest. It wasn’t as though it was a big secret after all. “My mom got sick just before I graduated. Breast cancer.”

      “I’m sorry. Is she okay now?”

      A lump formed in Carrie’s throat. “No. She got through the first occurrence with surgery and chemo. It came back, though, more aggressive than before. She died two years ago.”

      “God.” Duke put his hand over hers for a few seconds. It was warm and rough. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have brought it up...”

      “It’s okay.” She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but she was sure it wobbled a bit around the edges. “It is what it is, right?”

      “You and your dad must miss her so much.” He slid his hand away.

      And with that he scored another hit. Carrie absorbed the pain, knowing it was completely unintentional on his part. “My dad didn’t take it so well. He turned to the bottle when she was doing her first round of chemo and barely hung on during her treatment. When she was rediagnosed, he fell apart. He left, and I haven’t seen him since. In the end it was just Mom and me.”

      She didn’t tell him to elicit his sympathy. She didn’t want people to feel sorry for her. She gave her shoulders a shrug, loosening them up. “Anyway, I guess I put away childish things when that happened.”

      Yeah. Including disposable income. She’d gone from being a supportive daughter to assuming the mortgage for the house so the bank wouldn’t foreclose when her father quit making the payments. Not to mention the medical bills and keeping the lights on. The few evenings she spent at the Dollar was about as exciting as her life got.

      “I’m really sorry,” he repeated. “How long have you been working at Crooked Valley?”

      She smiled then, a genuine one, because she really did love her job. “Your grandfather hired me as a part-time hand when I was seventeen. I liked it so much I stayed on.”

      “And now you’re my foreman. At thirty.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ