Yuletide Cowboy. Debra Clopton

he was simply having a great time sitting on top of the new cowboy play-toy.

      Looking less than pleased, Chance scowled as he pushed the dog off him.

      “Are you all right?” Lynn asked, holding Tiny back when he flopped his tongue out and made a last-ditch effort to swipe the cowboy’s face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. The last thing she’d expected to find when she’d heard her kids squealing was Chance Turner, rodeo preach er, beneath the pileup of her twin boys and their dog. Poor man was covered in Christmas lights, too.

      In the two years that she’d lived in Mule Hollow the handsome preacher had come home only recently to per form his cousin’s wedding. But here he sat sprawled on the sidewalk, his serious green eyes looking through the curtain of Christmas lights hanging from his cowboy hat. Thankfully, those gorgeous eyes were crinkling around the edges as his lips turned up in a smile.

      “We had a bit of a wreck,” he drawled, instantly sending butterflies into flight in her chest.

      Startled, she ignored the response. “A wreck?”

      “Yeah, Momma,” Gavin offered, grinning like an opossum. “We done run him down. Tiny didn’t mean to do it.”

      Jack looked intently up at her. “It was an accident.”

      She had to smile and Chance did, too. His lips hitched to one side in that signature Turner grin he shared with his three cousins, a bit crooked with a hint of mischief. Her pulse skittered crazily when his eyes met hers in shared humor.

      “Well.” She swallowed hard, pushing Tiny out of the way and the frog in her throat, too. “I’m certainly glad it was intentional.”

      He wore a tan insulated jacket, cowboy-cut at the hips. Tall and lean with dark good looks and a strong jawline, he looked especially cute as he tugged the lights off him. At her words he cocked a dark brow.

      “I mean, it wasn’t intentional,” she protested.

      He chuckled as he rose to his feet in a smooth motion.

      “I know. I just got in their way when they came around the corner.” He shook his head and lights slid to his shoulders—the boys giggled.

      Mortified, she went into action and reached for the lights. “Here, let me help.” She began untangling the strings of lights, without much success. “I still don’t understand. How a big man like you ended up on the ground? I mean, they’re little—” Her mouth was saying things her brain was trying to stop.

      “Yup, I do tend to be clumsy. My momma used to say the Lord gave me two left feet when He passed them out.”

      “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to say that.” If the man had a clumsy bone in his body her name was Reba Mc Entire!

      He chuckled and the sound made her feel all warm and happy, like drinking hot cocoa—where in the world had her brain gone?

      Gavin stepped up. “We just come around the corner, Momma, and boom, there he was.” He used exuberant hand gestures to help explain the situation.

      “We didn’t mean to knock him down.” Jack shook his dark head, his big blue eyes looking suddenly worried.

      “You all right, mister? Tiny’s sorry.”

      Tiny was waltzing about them happily.

      “I’m fine. But you two sure pack a punch. Are y’all football players? Or maybe your dog is.” That won him a round of giggles.

      A crimson tide of humiliation crept warmly up her cheeks when Chance’s gaze locked with hers.

      “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe they knocked you off your feet. As big as you are—I mean. Well, you are a man.” Most definitely a man, no doubt about that.

      His eyes crimped around the edges and it seemed almost as though he could read her thoughts. Her crazy-unable-to-understand-them-herself thoughts! No mistake about it, despite not wanting to be, she was attracted to Chance Turner. Heart-thumpingly, breathlessly attracted. Okay, so she wasn’t dead.

      “Last time I looked in the mirror I was a man. But you’ve got two dynamos here. They took me out like pros with the help of their linebacker there.”

      Tiny sat on his haunches and cocked his big head as if he knew they were speaking about him.

      She scanned the cowboy for damage. Though he was a bit rumpled there were no tears in his long-sleeved shirt, no rips in his jeans. “Are you hurt?” she asked anyway.

      “My pride is stomped on, but I don’t have any broken bones.”

      Lynn laughed with a mixture of relief and nervousness. “I guess for a former bull rider like you that is a little hard to swallow.”

      “You’re a bull rider?” both boys gushed in unison. They loved bull riders. Something she wasn’t thrilled about in the least. To Lynn, riding a bull was right up there with swimming in a shark tank.

      “I was a bull rider,” he said to the boys, then cocked his head slightly toward her. “Have we met?”

      Lynn realized her mistake. “No, not exactly. I’m Lynn Perry. I saw you at Wyatt and Amanda’s wedding but we weren’t introduced. I heard though that you used to be a bull rider before you became a preacher. They need all the prayers they can get,” she added, and realized she’d probably stepped on his toes a bit as he stiffened be fore taking the hand she held out to him.

      She was instantly hit by the strength in his large hand as he wrapped it around hers. Warm pinpoints of awareness prickled across her skin at the touch of his calloused palm. In his eyes she saw a spark of recognition—as if he felt the same sensation—she pulled her hand from his as her pulse kicked up a notch.

      “It’s nice to meet you, Lynn. I’m Chance, but you already know that.” If he was startled by her reaction, he hid it well, tugging a strand of lights from his shoulder as if he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. “I guess these lights are for the church? Melody, my sister-in-law, said I was to bring them here and give them to the secretary. Is that you?”

      “That’s me.” Had Melody meant them for her? They hadn’t discussed lights. “I didn’t know we were expecting them though.”

      “Are they ours?” Gavin’s eyes widened as he looked up at Chance in awe.

      “We need some lights, for our house,” Jack piped up, beaming at the assortment. “We don’t got none do we, Momma?”

      Any other time she would have corrected his English but not now. It had been a hard month getting moved from the shelter to the house she was renting. Settling in and making it a home had cost more than she’d planned, and with Christmas right around the corner money was tighter than ever. She’d been saving every penny she could over the last two years while they lived at No Place Like Home, the women’s shelter from abuse. Most of her savings had gone toward rent, deposit and getting all the utilities turned on. Christmas lights hadn’t been in the budget and yet the boys talked about them all the time. Trying not to dwell on what she couldn’t give the boys, she focused on what she had accomplished and quickly moved past the tug of feeling sorry for herself. She refused to give in to those types of feelings when they snuck up on her. Instead she smiled at the boys.

      “Let’s pick them up. We’ll put them inside the office until I talk to Melody and find out what they’re for.”

      Gavin and Jack whispered to each other, then stared up at Chance.

      “You’re a preacher?” Jack asked.

      Chance hesitated before answering, which seemed odd to Lynn.

      “I’m taking a break, but yes, I’m a rodeo preacher.” Chance knelt and began rolling up one of the strands of lights into a ball.

      Lynn did the same and each boy grabbed a strand of his own, imitating exactly the way Chance was coiling his.

      “You boys