A Cowboy Christmas: Snowbound Christmas / Falling for the Christmas Cowboy. Linda Goodnight

she could handle. “Do you think the roads are freezing over yet?”

      “The ground was already frozen. Add freezing rain and then sleet and you’re looking at roads of solid ice.”

      Tension sprang up in Kristen’s shoulders. Driving home in the dark in an ice storm could spell disaster.

      * * *

      Caleb had one nerve cell left and it was sparking like a broken highline.

      Having Kristen here in his house day after day was both glorious and awful. He was like a puppy, eager to see her but terrified of being kicked.

      The woman had a boyfriend. But ever since his talk with Pops, Caleb kept imagining Kristen in a lacy wedding gown.

      Now here she was in the flesh, and he kept having the same vision. Only the wedding wasn’t for her and some rich doc. It was for him and her, followed rapidly by a breath-grabbing vision of her rocking his baby in a wooden rocker with a sweet Madonna smile on her lips.

      He was going seriously nuts.

      To add to his torment, curtains of sleet hammered his house and gave no sign of letting up.

      To make one final check of the animals, he left the house, Rip at his side, while R2-D2 filtered Pops’s blood. He slipped a few times, almost fell. Once he went down but managed to grab the shed door and pull himself back to his feet. He went inside the small shed to test-fire the generator. Just in case.

      He started back to the house, shocked at how much the conditions had deteriorated since he’d first come outside. Ice pellets sluiced down the collar of his coat. Sleet stung his cheeks. He shivered, moving as fast as he could without taking another tumble.

      They were in for a doozy of an ice storm. He had to get Kristen home. Fast.

      By the time Greg’s treatment was complete, the TV on the wall was warning motorists to stay off the roads.

      “You need to get out of here,” he told Kristen.

      She frowned at the windows. “That bad?”

      “Vicious.”

      He helped her gather her supplies, stewing, thinking. Was it safe for her to drive?

      Greg had followed them into the living room. He stood at the front windows. “Looks too treacherous, Kristen. Maybe you ought to stay here until this settles down.”

      Caleb’s heart slammed against his rib cage. Yes. No!

      He wasn’t the sort of man who encroached on another man’s territory. Having Kristen under his roof any longer than it took to do the treatments would kill him...as in hammer him in the head dead. He’d implode like one of those buildings loaded with dynamite. Only the dynamite inside him was all the words he wanted to say, the love he wanted to share.

      “I’ll make it.” Kristen wound the plaid scarf around her pretty neck. “It’s not that far into town.”

      Four miles might as well be a thousand on wet ice.

      “Maybe I should drive you.”

      She gave him one of those insulted, I-am-woman looks and exited the house.

      With more misgivings than a debutante in a pigpen, Caleb watched from the porch. Sleet swirled up in his face, pitted his cheeks. His eyes burned from the cold.

      She’d walked less than two yards when her vinyl clogs slipped. Her arms windmilled.

      Bolting from the porch in one leap, he skidded behind her in time to stick out his arms, but not in time to brace his legs.

      Kristen fell back against him. He circled her waist. His boots slipped.

      They went down. Hard.

      All he could feel was the frozen ground, Kristen’s puffy coat and the freezing rain melting against his scalp.

      He battled to a stand, somehow bringing her up with him. The ground was slicker than a used-car salesman. Any second, one of them could unbalance the other and down they’d go.

      “Are you hurt?” He turned her to face him.

      “No.”

      “What about your leg...” He looked down, suddenly realizing what was different about her today. “Your boot is gone.”

      She huffed. “Took you long enough to notice.”

      Was he supposed to notice?

      Holding on to his arm, Kristen started toward her Civic again. They slipped, almost went down again.

      She was starting to make him mad. Barking mad, as in worried. “It’s idiotic to think you can drive in this.”

      She turned his arm loose and slid the rest of the way to the vehicle, slamming into the side. Holding on to the ice-covered car, she turned her head, glaring. “Are you calling me an idiot?”

      Caleb’s shoulders heaved. He slid in next to her, using the car as support. His breath puffed white fog. The freezing rain was giving him hypothermia.

      “I didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t like the idea of you out by yourself in this kind of weather. If you wreck or run off in a ditch—”

      “I have a cell phone.”

      Irritating, independent woman. “But no one will be able to get to you. Be sensible and let me drive you home.”

      “What makes you think you can drive any better than me?”

      When had she become so unreasonable? “My truck is heavy, a three-quarter-ton four-wheel drive. We stand a better chance of actually getting to town in it than in your lightweight car.”

      She considered for less than a second. “My dad would agree with you.”

      “One sensible Andrews anyway,” he grumbled. “I’ll bring the truck around. Wait inside your car out of this weather.”

      He made his way up the rise to the carport. Driving in this weather was madness. But Kristen wanted to go home, and he wanted her safe and sound and out of his house. He yelled in the back door to let Pops know where he was going, got in his truck and drove carefully out to the road.

      He waited while Kristen locked her car—as if some fool would be out burglarizing cars tonight—then slid her way to his truck, where she slammed into the side. Laughing. The crazy woman was laughing.

      Nothing was funny to him right now.

      He’d get out and open her door, but the truck would probably slide off on its own. Not a happy thought.

      Using the overhead handle, she pulled herself up and into the cab, taking care, he noted, to keep her weight off the formerly broken leg.

      “If I wasn’t trying to get home, the icy ground would be fun.”

      “You’re not a rancher.” He’d probably have three babies tonight, all of them in danger of freezing to death in this wet, cold weather unless he stayed out in the barn with the mamas. “Buckle up and hold on.”

      Once she was settled, he eased off the brake. Traction was limited, but the truck crawled forward.

      They didn’t talk. Tension filled the cab. Caleb thought his shoulder muscles might snap in half.

      Kristen leaned forward, staring out at the crystallized terrain as if her kryptonite eyes could melt the ice. Caleb focused on holding the truck on the road. No one else had driven this way since Kristen had come in. No tracks, no ruts, and the dirt and gravel had disappeared beneath a thick sheet of ice. Nothing to give him traction.

      They’d traveled less than a quarter mile when he started up a small hill. The truck slowed to a crawl. He gently pressed the accelerator. All four wheels spun. The truck slipped to one side. Caleb eased off the gas pedal. And the truck began a slow, silent slide. Backward.

      Caleb