Cowboy Under the Mistletoe. Линда Гуднайт

months ago. And Jake had been gone so long no one even cursed his name anymore.

      If Allison had a funny quiver in her stomach, she played it off as anticipation of Faith’s bridal shower this afternoon. As hostess, she wanted to arrive early and make sure everything—including her dearest friend—was perfect.

      She glanced at the dash clock. Three hours early might be overkill.

      On the opposite corner, Dakota Weeks and a half-dozen fat puppies rolled around in the fading grass while the mama dog wagged her tail and smiled proudly, occasionally poking her nose into the ten-year-old boy’s hand for a head rub. Allison grinned and waved.

      A boy and his dogs on Saturday afternoon put her in mind of her older brothers. Even now as adults, rolling in the grass with a dog—or each other if a football game broke out—was a common occurrence. And today was a perfect day to be outside. The weather was that cusp season when cool breezes crowded out the scent of mowed grass, Dads cleaned out chimneys and Moms stored away the shorts and swimsuits. Or as townsfolk would say, “football weather.”

      Like many small Texas towns, Gabriel’s Crossing lived and breathed high school football year round, but especially in the fall. Teenage boys in pads and helmets became heroes, not only on Friday night but every day. Golden boys. Boys of the gridiron.

      Exactly the reason Jake Hamilton was no longer welcome at her mother’s table or a lot of other places in Gabriel’s Crossing.

      Oh, but they didn’t know the Jake Allison had known. The Jake who carried her darkest, most humiliating secret, the one she’d never shared with another living soul.

      Casting one last worried glance toward the Hamilton house, Allison convinced herself the truck belonged to a lawn service or maybe some long-lost relative looking to take over the place, not Jake Hamilton.

      She eased her foot off the brake and started across the intersection. The front door to the house opened and a man walked out onto the small concrete porch.

      This time Allison’s stomach did more than quiver. It fell to the floorboard and took her breath with it.

      Jake.

      She slammed on the brake and stared. It was him all right. Trim and tight muscled in fitted Wranglers, dusty boots and black cowboy hat, he looked as dangerously handsome as ever.

      His head turned her direction, and Allison realized she’d stopped at midintersection. She started forward again. At the last possible second, the steering wheel seemed to take on a life of its own because the Camaro swung into the Hamilton driveway and came to a stop.

      With the spontaneity her parents considered impulsive, Allison hopped out of the running car and walked right up to the man, her pulse in overdrive.

      “Hello, Jake. Long time.” Funny how normal her voice sounded even when she stared into fathomless olive green eyes with lashes as black as midnight.

      He hadn’t changed much except for a new scar below one eye, and she fought off the crazy urge to soothe it with a touch the way she’d once soothed his football bumps and bruises. He’d also grown facial hair in the form of a very short, scant mustache above a bit of scruff, and his sideburns were long. She couldn’t decide if she liked the look but then, when had Jake Hamilton cared one whit about what anyone else thought? Especially a Buchanon.

      “You shouldn’t be here, Allison.” His voice was the same, a low note, surprisingly soft but steel edged as if to drive her away. The way he’d done before.

      “We’re adults now. We can be anywhere we choose.”

      Jutting one hip, he tipped his hat with a thumb. His nostrils flared. “Ya think?”

      “You owe me a dance.”

      The reminder must have caught him off guard. Something flickered in his eyes, a brief flame of memory and pleasure that died just as quickly unborn.

      Jaw hard as flint, he said, “Better run home, little girl, before the big bad wolf gets you.”

      Before she could tell him that nothing he’d ever done would change what she knew that no other Buchanon understood, Jake spun away from her and slammed inside the house, leaving her standing in the front yard. Alone and embarrassed. Exactly like before.

      * * *

      He had as much right to be in this town as the Buchanons. Maybe more. His great-great-something on his daddy’s side had founded Gabriel’s Crossing back in the mid-1800s when Texas was a whole other country and the adjacent hills of Oklahoma were wilder than any bull he’d thrown his rope over.

      Jake banged his fist against the countertop of his family home. Right or not, being here would not be easy. Nearly broke, he needed to be working, and if that wasn’t enough to move him on, the Buchanon brothers were. And Allison. Especially Allison.

      But Granny Pat was his only living relative. Anyway, the only one that claimed him. She’d been his anchor most of his life, but now the tables had turned. She needed him, and he wouldn’t fail her, no matter how hard the weeks and months ahead.

      He’d wanted her to give up the Hamilton house to live with him in his trailer in Stephenville, but she’d wanted to come home. Home to Gabriel’s Crossing and the familiar old house that had been in the Hamilton family since statehood. He understood, at least in part. There was history here, joy and sorrow. He’d tasted both.

      Granny Pat had raised him single-handedly in this house after his daddy died and his mother ran off. Grandpa was here, too, his grandmother claimed, and though her husband had been dead for longer than Jake had been alive, she missed him. Ralph, according to Granny Pat, had never liked hospitals and hadn’t visited her in the convalescent center one single time.

      As if that wasn’t scary enough, who was the first familiar face Jake had to see in Gabriel’s Crossing? Allison Buchanon. His heart crumpled in his chest like a wad of paper tossed into a fire pit, withering to black ashes. Allison of the dark fluffy hair and warm brown eyes. She’d always seen more in him than anyone else had, especially her family. Foolish girl.

      Although as small as a child, Allison could hammer a nail as easily as she could back-flip from a cheerleading pyramid, an action that had sent his teenage chest soaring and turned his mouth dry as dust. And she’d broken that same young man’s heart with one sentence. My family would kill me if they saw us together.

      No, he’d said, they’d kill me. They’d have had every right, after what he’d done.

      The rodeo circuit attracted plenty of buckle bunnies and if a man was so inclined; he could have a new girl every night. With everything in him, Jake wanted to put Allison and her family behind him, but he never had. They mattered, and the wrong he’d done lay on his shoulders, an elephant-size guilt. No matter what Allison said, he’d never been anyone’s hero.

      When he’d been a lonely boy living with his grandma, the Buchanons had been his dream family, a mom and dad, brothers and sisters. A boy with none of those yearned for the impossible. For a while, for those years when Quinn had been his best friend and Allison had thought he was the moon, he’d basked in the Buchanon glow.

      Allison. Why had she pulled into the driveway? And why had he been so glad to see her? Didn’t she remember the trouble they’d caused? That he’d caused?

      He rubbed a hand over the thick dust coating the counters, coating everything in the musty old house with the pink siding and dark paneling.

      He should have stuck to the rodeo circuit and stayed away from Gabriel’s Crossing for another nine or ninety years, but sometimes life didn’t give you choices. Four years ago, when he’d handed the reins to Jesus at a cowboy church in Cheyenne, he’d vowed to do the right thing from that moment on, no matter how much it hurt. Coming home to help Granny Pat was the right thing. And boy, did it hurt.

      He didn’t have enough money or time to be here. He needed to make every rodeo he could before the season ended, but Granny Pat came first. He’d figure out the rest. Somehow.