Yuletide Cowboy. Debra Clopton

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      “So what do you think?” Chance asked.

      He’d hung several strands of Christmas lights, and Lynn’s old house was looking great. He was standing close to her and she could feel the warmth from his body through the down vest he wore. She’d helped him for the past hour and he’d been wonderful with her boys. And okay, the man smelled wonderful.

      “Momma, don’t ya got yor ears on? What do you think?” Jack asked, tugging on her arm. It was what she always asked him and Gavin when they weren’t listening to her.

      Boy, where had she been? “Ear one and ear two are both on and ready to do their jobs,” she said lightly.

      She hoped Chance hadn’t noticed her embarrassing lapse. She stole a glance at him. He caught her looking and the wink he gave her said he’d noticed plenty.

      DEBRA CLOPTON

      was a 2004 Golden Heart finalist in the inspirational category, a 2006 Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award winner, a 2007 Golden Quill award winner and a finalist for the 2007 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year Award. She praises the Lord each time someone votes for one of her books, and takes it as an affirmation that she is exactly where God wants her to be.

      Debra is a hopeless romantic and loves to create stories with lively heroines and the strong heroes who fall in love with them. But most important, she loves showing her characters living their faith, seeking God’s will in their lives one day at a time. Her goal is to give her readers an entertaining story that will make them smile, hopefully laugh and always feel God’s goodness as they read her books. She has found the perfect home for her stories, writing for the Love Inspired line, and still has to pinch herself just to see if she really is awake and living her dream.

      When she isn’t writing, she enjoys taking road trips, reading and spending time with her two sons, Chase and Kris. She loves hearing from readers and can be reached through her website, www.debraclopton.com, or by mail at P.O. Box 1125, Madisonville, Texas 77864.

      Yuletide Cowboy

      Debra Clopton

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?

      —Psalms 56: 3, 4

      This book is dedicated to my home church: Cowboy Church of Leon County. Thank you all so much for your huge hearts! You are changing lives…mine included!

      A special thank-you and dedication to our pastor, Tuffy Lofton—you are a cowboy preacher with a true heart for God.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Letter to Reader

      Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      Chance Turner stepped from his truck as country singer Craig Morgan crooned “Small Town USA” on the radio. He was home in Mule Hollow, Texas, which definitely fit the song’s positive image of small-town life in the USA. A smile tugging at his lips, he reached into the truck bed for the large box his sister-in-law had instructed him to deliver to the church.

      Colorful strings of Christmas lights overflowed from the box. Melody was late for work, she’d said, and didn’t have time to deliver the lights to the church secretary. That had been her pretense anyway, but Chance had no illusions about why she’d asked him to run the errand for her. It was the church.

      She wanted him to be as near the church as possible. She had hopes that being here would fix “his problem”…if only it were that easy. He could have told her that seeing the church, being on the premises, wouldn’t help him. In stead he’d done as Melody asked—it was easier that way. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about his problem.

      And he didn’t want to think about it either.

      Pushing the dark thoughts aside he focused on delivering the lights. He’d get this done, then he’d head back to the ranch, back to the solitude he’d come home to find. Just him and his horse, and the land that had been in his family for six generations. He wasn’t the first Turner to contemplate the state of his life riding in the sanctuary of the vast Turner family ranch. Sanctuary—not exactly something he deserved. Not when he couldn’t see past the guilt eating at him.

      Still, right now he needed what the solitude of the ranch offered him.

      He wanted to ride across the pasture, just him and his horse…but, before he could saddle up, he had lights to deliver.

      Hefting the box into his arms he strode toward the quaint white church he’d attended off and on for the better part of his youth. His boots crunched on the white rock and his spurs jangled as he headed down the side walk toward the office. The squeals of kids’ laughter, shrill with excitement, rode the chilly November wind. Chance had just reached the door when, like bulls out of the chute, two small boys pounded around the edge of the building. Trailing behind them was a monster of a dog.

      He tried to sidestep the first kid but he was already on a collision course, and the rest was a blur. One-two-three he was hit by the first kid, fighting for balance as the second kid tangled up with them, and the horse of a dog launched himself at the box of lights in Chance’s arms. That was the kicker.

      Boots up, head back, Chance sailed straight to the ground, landing like a hundred-and-eighty-pound sack of bad luck!

      “Oh, my goodness,” Lynn Perry gasped when she opened the door of the church office to find her twins and a long-legged cowboy sprawled on the grass. Rushing forward she grabbed Gavin by his belt and hauled him off Chance, setting him to the side where he stood giggling as she reached for Jack. The poor cowboy was on his own with Tiny, though. The big dog was all over him like butter on toast.

      “Tiny, get off of him.” Lynn grabbed the dog by his