The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle. RaeAnne Thayne

      

       She was inviting him to share Christmas dinner with her family.

      Part of him was totally enraptured by the idea. But it terrified him far more.

      What did he know about family Christmases? He could remember just one happy Christmas from his childhood: the year he had spent with his grandparents.

      “Forget it. I should never have invited you.” She turned away.

      “It’s silly,” she went on. “You don’t have to feel obligated. Just pretend I never opened my big, stupid mouth.”

      The big, stupid mouth he couldn’t stop thinking about? The one that haunted his dreams, that he could still taste every time he closed his eyes?

      “Jenna—”

      “Just forget it,” she said. “It was a crazy impulse.”

      “No, it wasn’t. It was very sweet.”

      Her gaze flashed to his and he lost the battle for control. He stepped forward, pulled her against him and kissed her, just as he had dreamed about doing…

      RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honours, including a RITA^® Award nomination from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com.

      The Cowboy’s

      Christmas Miracle

      RaeAnne Thayne

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Chapter One

      The brats were at it again.

      Carson McRaven scowled as he drove under the massive, ornately carved log arch to the Raven’s Nest Ranch.

      He owned five thousand acres of beautiful eastern Idaho ranch land. A reasonable person might suppose that with that kind of real estate, he had a good chance of escaping Jenna Wheeler and her hell spawn.

      Instead, it seemed like every time he turned around, some little towheaded imp was invading his space—sledding down his private driveway, bothering his horses, throwing snowballs at his ranch sign.

      A month ago—the last time he had found time to come out to his new ranch from San Francisco—he had caught them trying to jump their swaybacked little paint ponies over his new electric fence. The time before, he had found them building a tree house in one of the trees on his property. And in September, he had ended up with a broken window in the gleaming new horse barn and his foreman had found a baseball amid the shattered glass inside.

      He couldn’t seem to turn around without finding one or more of them wandering around his land. They were three annoying little flies in the ointment of what would otherwise be the perfect bucolic retreat from the hectic corporate jungle of San Francisco.

      When he bought the property from Jenna Wheeler, he thought he had been fine with her stipulation that she retain one twenty-acre corner of land for her ranch. He was getting five thousand acres more, bordered by National Forest land. One little nibble out of the vast pie shouldn’t bother him. But in the ten months since they closed on the deal, that little nibble sat in his craw like an unshelled walnut.

      Every time he drove up Cold Creek Canyon to Raven’s Nest and spotted her two-story frame house in the corner of his land, he ground his back teeth and wished to hell he had fought harder to buy the whole property so he could have torn it down to have this entire area to himself.

      And to make matters even more aggravating, apparently the Wheeler urchins didn’t understand the concept of trespassing. Yes, their mother had paid for the broken window and had made them take the tree house down, plank by plank. After her frustrated reaction when he told her about their steeplechase through his pasture, he would have expected her to put the fear of God into them.

      Or at least the fear of their mother.

      But here one of them was balancing on the snow-covered split-rail fence that lined his driveway, arms outstretched like he was a miniature performer on a circus high wire, disaster just a heartbeat away while his brothers watched from the sidelines.

      Carson slowed the SUV he kept stored at the Jackson Hole airport, an hour away, though he hesitated to hit the brakes just yet.

      He ought to just let the kids fall where they may. What was a broken arm or two to him? If the Wheeler hellions wanted to be little daredevils, what business was it of his? He could just turn the other way and keep on driving up to the house. He had things to do, calls to make, fresh Idaho air to breathe.

      On the other hand, the boys were using his fence as their playground. If one of them took a tumble and was seriously injured, he could just hear their mother accusing him of negligence or even tacit complicity because he didn’t try to stop them when he had the chance.

      He sighed. He couldn’t ignore them and just keep on driving, as much as he might desperately want to. He braked to a stop and rolled down the window to the cold December air. “Hey kid, come down from there before somebody gets hurt.”

      He was grimly aware he was only a sidestep away from sounding like a grumpy old man yelling at the neighbor’s kids to stay the hell off his grass.

      The boys apparently hadn’t heard the rumble of his engine. They blinked and he could see surprise in all their expressions. The younger two looked apprehensive but the biggest boy jutted out his chin.

      “We do it all the time,” he boasted. “Kip’s the best. Show him.”

      “Maybe we should go home.” The medium-sized one with the wire-rim glasses slanted a nervous look toward Carson. “Remember, Mom told us this morning to come home right from the bus stop to do chores.”

      “That’s a good idea,” Carson encouraged. “Go on home, now.”

      “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,” the older one taunted, then turned to the other boy, who was watching their interaction closely, as if trying to predict who the victor would be. “It’s okay, Kip. Show him.”

      Before Carson could figure out a way to climb out of his truck and yank the kid off the fence, the boy took another step forward and then another.

      He grinned at Carson. “See? I can go super far without falling!” he exclaimed. “One time I went from the gate all the way to that big pine tree.”

      The words were barely out of his mouth when his boot hit an icy patch of railing.

      His foot slid to the edge though not completely off the log, but his arms wheeled desperately as he tried to keep his balance. It was a losing battle, apparently. His feet went flying off the fence first and the rest of him followed. Even from here, above the sound of his vehicle’s engine, Carson could hear the thud of the boy’s head bumping the log rail on the way down.

      Damn it.

      He shut off the vehicle and jumped out, hurrying to where the boy lay still in the snow. The middle boy was already crouched in the snow next to him, but his attention was focused more on his older brother than the injured younger one.

      “You’re such a dope, Hayden.” He glared. “Why’d you make him do it? Mom’s gonna kill us both now!”

      “I didn’t make him! He didn’t have to do it just because I told him to. He’s got a brain, doesn’t he?”

      “More of one than you do,” the middle boy snapped.

      Carson decided it was past time for him to step in and focus attention on the important thing, their dazed brother,