The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle. RaeAnne Thayne

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      Jenna stopped dead when she saw him, her ethereal blond hair slipping free of its confines, as usual. “Oh! Mr. McRaven! This is a surprise. Hayden didn’t mention you were here.”

      “I happened to be passing by in time to see the, uh, accident. I couldn’t just leave him out there.”

      “Of course you couldn’t,” she said. Though her tone was polite enough, he was quite sure he caught a whiff of skepticism. He tried not to let it rankle.

      “Thank you for your kindness in bringing them home. I’m very sorry they troubled you again.”

      Her tone was cooler than the icicles hanging off her porch. The Widow Wheeler didn’t like him very much. She had made that fact abundantly clear over the last ten months since he purchased her property.

      Oh, she was polite enough in their sporadic dealings, never overtly rude. But he ran an international technology innovation company, which was a hell of a lot like a good poker game. Keen powers of observation were a vital job skill and he had developed his own to a fine degree. He couldn’t miss the tiny shadow of disdain in her green eyes when she talked to him.

      “Where would you like me to set your little injured buckaroo here?”

      “I’ll take him.”

      She set the little one on the floor and the girl toddled to a wicker basket full of toys in the living room and proceeded to start yanking the contents out, one by one, and tossing them on the floor.

      Jenna stepped closer to Carson and reached for the boy in his arms, whose wails had trickled to the occasional sniffle. Carson’s leather coat was open and as she took the child from him, her hands brushed against his chest for only an instant.

      Even through his cotton shirt, he could feel the warmth of her hands, the small, delicate flutter of them and his stomach muscles tightened.

      It was a ridiculous reaction, one that first stunned, then exasperated him. He really needed to expend a little more energy on his social life if he could be attracted to Jenna Wheeler, even on an instinctively physical level.

      Sure, she was soft and pretty, with that wispy honey-blond hair and her undeniable curves and those big green eyes all her children had inherited.

      But she had that unfortunate baggage shackled around her neck. Four wild kids, the youngest just a toddler.

      Apparently, the only thing the injured one of her children needed was his mother. She sat down on a nearby wooden rocking chair. The boy snuggled against her chest and she pressed a kiss on his forehead.

      “Hush now, sweetheart. Where does it hurt?”

      He sniffled a little and pointed to the back of his head that had conked against the railing. “I hurt my head.”

      “I’m so sorry.” She kissed the spot he showed her, her eyes tender and maternal, and Carson’s stomach muscles tightened again, this time with a weird, indefinable something he couldn’t have explained.

      “Better?” she asked.

      “A little,” the boy answered.

      “Jolie and I made your favorite snickerdoodles this afternoon, didn’t we, ladybug?” she smiled at the little girl, who beamed back in the middle of pulling the ornaments off the tree. “They’re for the party tomorrow but when you feel better, you can go into the kitchen and get one.”

      Cookies were apparently the magic remedy. Who knew? The boy’s sniffles dried up and after only twenty seconds more, he slid off his mother’s lap.

      “I feel a lot better now,” he announced. “Can I have a cookie now?”

      “Yes. Grab one each for your brothers.”

      He flashed his mother a smile and raced from the room at top speed, leaving Carson alone with the two equally terrifying Wheeler females.

      “Thank you again for bringing him home. It’s a long walk up the driveway for a kid with an owie.”

      “I guess I was lucky to be there at the right time,” he said.

      “He fell off a fence, you said?”

      He hesitated, not sure quite how to answer her. She knew his feelings about the boys trespassing on his property and he was suddenly reluctant to dredge all that up. On the other hand, she needed to know what they had been up to.

      “The split-rail fence just past where our access roads fork.”

      “On the Raven’s Nest side,” she surmised correctly.

      “Yeah.”

      “What was he doing on a fence?” She looked as if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear his answer.

      “Tightrope walking, apparently.”

      She let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I have warned them and warned them to stay off your property. I hate that they’ve put me in this position again.”

      “What position would that be?”

      “Having to apologize to you once more.”

      Again that sliver of disdain flickered in her eyes and he did his best not to bristle, though he was aware his voice was harder than he would have normally used.

      “I certainly don’t want to tell you how to be a parent, but you have to do something to get the point across a little more forcefully to them. A working ranch is a dangerous place for three young boys, ma’am.”

      Her expression turned even more glacial. “I believe I’m aware of just how dangerous a ranch can be, Mr. McRaven. Probably better than you.”

      He remembered too late just why she had been forced to sell her ranch to him. Her husband had been killed in a tragic accident on the ranch two years earlier, leaving behind bills and obligations Jenna Wheeler had been unable to take care of without selling the land that had been in her husband’s family for generations.

      He regretted his tactlessness but his point was still valid. “Then you, more than anybody, should stress those dangers to your boys. There are a hundred ways they could get hurt, as today’s accident only reinforced.”

      “Thank you for your concern,” she said with that tight, dismissive voice that seemed so discordant in contrast to her soft feminine features. “I’ll be sure to tell them once again to stay away from Raven’s Nest.”

      “Do that.”

      He shoved on his Stetson, knowing he sounded like a firstclass jerk, but he didn’t know how else to get the message across to her or her boys except with bluntness. “I know neither of us wants any of your boys to be seriously hurt. But I have to tell you, I refuse to be held responsible if they are, especially when you’ve been warned again and again about their trespassing habits.”

      “Warning duly noted, Mr. McRaven.”

      He sighed in frustration. He successfully negotiated corporate deals all the time, had built McRaven Enterprises into an international СКАЧАТЬ