Cowboy Under the Mistletoe. Линда Гуднайт

of a football-focused town had heaped so much condemnation and hurt onto a teenage boy that he’d run away with the rodeo.

      “Ralph was my grandpa. She talks to him a lot.”

      “Did the doctors say anything?” Allison folded a blue fleece throw into a neat square. “About her mental state, I mean?”

      “No. I’m worried, though. I wonder if she’ll be able to live alone again.”

      “You’re not planning to stay?”

      “Not long. Maybe until after Christmas.” He jerked one shoulder. “I gotta make a living.”

      A massive wave of disappointment drenched her good mood. A short stay was better, safer, sensible, but Allison didn’t like it.

      A stack of nighties in her hand, she pondered her reaction. She was an adult now, not a dewy-eyed teenager in love with the only boy who’d ever kissed her.

      Like that made one bit of difference when it came to Jake Hamilton.

      * * *

      Jake saw a range of emotions flicker across Allison’s face. Disappointment, worry, relief. He latched on to the last one. She wanted him gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Away from the town that revered Buchanons and loathed Jake Hamilton.

      Then why was she here? Why did she insist on pushing past his caution when absolutely nothing good could come of it?

      He zipped open a tired blue suitcase, a throwback to the sixties, to find a stack of underwear. Not his favorite thing to unpack with Allison in the room.

      His brain had a sudden flashback, a suppressed memory of pink and lace he never should have seen.

      He glanced at her. Did she remember, too?

      Allison was beside him in a second. “Let me do that.”

      She grabbed the stack from his hands as he crouched toward the opened drawer. They knocked heads.

      “Ow!” Allison sat back on her haunches and laughed. “Hard head.”

      “I was about to say the same thing.” In truth, her head was harder on the inside than on the outside. The woman never gave up, a trait that would leave her disappointed and hurt.

      They were a foot apart in front of Granny Pat’s oak dresser, on their toes, both holding to a stack of ladies’ lingerie, and Jake wished for the thousandth time he could erase one terrible day from their lives. He was comfortable with Allison, liked her, a dangerous thing, then and now. She made him smile. She even made him believe in himself. Or she once had. With everything in him he wanted to know this grown-up Allison, a dangerous, troubling proposition.

      “You’ve grown up.” Stupid thing to say, but better than yanking her into his arms—an errant, radical thought worthy of a beating from the Buchanon brothers.

      She tilted her head, smile quizzical. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

      For him? Very bad. But instead of admitting the truth, he tweaked her flyaway hair and pushed to a stand, distancing himself from the cute temptation of Quinn Buchanon’s sister. “I’ll drag in more of Granny Pat’s stuff while you put this away. Okay?”

      As if he wasn’t already struggling not to touch her, Allison reached out a hand. What could he do except take hold and help her up?

      A mistake, of course.

      Her skin was a thousand times softer than he remembered and smooth as silk. His rough cowboy hand engulfed her small one. He was nowhere near as tall as her brothers, but he towered above Allison. What man wouldn’t understand this protective ferocity that roared in his veins?

      Allison had definitely grown up.

      And Jake Hamilton was in major trouble.

       Chapter Three

      Monday morning, Jake drove the dusty graveled road past rows and rows of fence line leading to the Double M Ranch two miles and a world away from Gabriel’s Crossing. Multicolored Brahma brood cows grazed peacefully in this section of Manny Morales’s pasture land. Not one of them looked up as Jake roared by and pulled beneath the Double M crossbars.

      In the near distance, a sprawling ranch house sat like a brick monument to the success of a Mexican immigrant whose work ethic and cattle smarts had created a well-respected bucking bull program. Jake knew. He’d worked for Manny before the Buchanons and the rodeo had given him reason to leave Gabriel’s Crossing.

      Dust swirled around the truck tires as he parked and got out. Manny, short and stout and leathery, stood in the barn entrance, white Resistol shading his eyes.

      “Manny!” Jake broke into a long stride, eager to see his friend and mentor.

      “Is that you, Jake boy?” The older man propped a shovel against the barn and came to meet him.

      With back slaps and handshakes, they greeted one another. “Manny, it’s good to see you.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me you was coming?”

      “Why? Would you have cooked for me?”

      Manny laughed. He could wrangle a cow, ride a horse and haul a dozen bulls all around the region, but he couldn’t boil water. “Paulina will be crazy happy. She’ll want to cook cabrito and have a fiesta!”

      Jake laughed for the first time since his arrival three days ago in Gabriel’s Crossing. “No need to kill the fatted goat. I’ll be satisfied with some frijoles and her homemade tortillas.”

      “Sure. Sure.” Manny clapped him on the shoulder again. “But first you got to see your bulls.”

      “How are they doing?”

      Manny’s black eyes crinkled at the corners. “You see for yourself. They’re good.”

      Together they made their way inside the enormous silver barn where Manny’s dark green Polaris ATV was parked. In minutes, they’d bumped across grassy yellowing fields to a pasture where a dozen bull calves grazed.

      “I moved the big boys to the west pasture, closer to the house so I can keep an eye on them,” Manny said as he climbed out of the Polaris. “Mountain Man is cranky sometimes so he has his own lot. You saw him buck in San Antonio.”

      Jake nodded. Chance meetings at rodeos were one of the perks of having a friend in the stock business. “He’s a good bull. Some of the cowboys are afraid of him.”

      “Ah, he’s not so bad.”

      Jake differed in opinion. Mountain Man, a white monster of a bull, was big and bad with the horns to end any discussion. He was also an athlete, hard to ride and keeping his owner in tamales. Manny hauled him to rodeos every week during the season.

      “There are your sons,” Manny said as he propped a boot on an iron gate and pointed toward the herd.

      His sons. Likely the only ones he’d have for a long time. Not that he wouldn’t love a family. A stray like him had dreams. A big ranch and plenty of money. Then a woman to love and a few kids. Maybe a lot of kids. If Allison Buchanon intruded on those dreams at times, he’d learned to shut her out and focus on the first part. A ranch. His bulls.

      Over the past several years he’d searched out and bought the best young calves he could afford and partnered with Manny to finish and train them.

      Their expense, along with the cost of the brood cows, meant a tight budget most of the time but eventually, he’d reap the benefits of his sacrifice. He’d start a ranch of his own and hopefully be able to retire from the circuit. The past couple of seasons had taken a toll on his body and his bank account. At twenty-seven, he was still fit, but a bull rider never knew how long before the constant pounding ended his career. Even now, his shoulder predicted rain before the meteorologists.

      “How’s