Loe raamatut: «The Rancher's Christmas Song»

Chapter One

The twin terrors were at it again.

Ella Baker watched two seven-year-old tornadoes, otherwise known as Trevor and Colter McKinley, chase each other behind the stage curtains at the Pine Gulch Community Center.

In the half hour since they arrived at the community center with their father, they had spilled a water pitcher, knocked down a life-size cardboard Santa and broken three ornaments on the big Christmas tree in the corner.

Now they were racing around on the stage where tonight’s featured act was set to perform within the next half hour.

She would have to do something. As organizer and general show-runner of this fund-raising event for the school’s underfinanced music program, it was her responsibility to make sure everyone had a good time. People’s wallets tended to open a little wider when they were happy, comfortable and well fed. A gang of half-pint miscreants had the potential to ruin the evening for everyone.

She had tried to talk to them. As usual, the twins had offered her their angelic, gap-toothed smiles and had promised to behave, then moments later she saw them converge with four other boys to start playing this impromptu game of tag on the stage.

In order to tame these particular wild beasts, she was going to have to talk to someone in authority. She gave a last-ditch, desperate look around. As she had suspected, neither their uncle nor their great uncle was in sight. That left only one person who might have any chance of corralling these two little dynamos.

Their father.

Ella’s stomach quivered. She did not enjoy talking to Beck McKinley and avoided it as much as possible.

The man made her so ridiculously nervous. He always treated her with careful politeness, but she could never read the expression on his features. Every time she spoke with him—which was more often than she liked, considering his ranch was next door to her father’s—she always felt like she came out of the encounter sounding like a babbling fool.

Okay, yes. She was attracted to him, and had been since she moved back to Pine Gulch. What woman wouldn’t be? Big, tough, gorgeous, with a slow smile that could charm even the most hardened heart.

She didn’t want to be so drawn to him, especially when he hadn’t once shown a glimmer of interest in return. He made her feel like she was an awkward teenager back in private school in Boston, holding up the wall at her first coed dance.

She wasn’t. She was a twenty-seven-year-old professional in charge of generating funds for a cause she cared about. Sexy or not, Beck had to corral his sons before they ruined the entire evening.

Time to just suck it up and take care of business. She was a grown-up and could handle talking to anyone, even big, tough, stern-faced ranchers who made her feel like she didn’t belong in Pine Gulch.

It wasn’t hard to find Beck McKinley. He towered about four inches taller than the crowd of ranchers he stood among.

She sucked in a steadying breath and made her way toward the group, trying to figure out a polite way to tell him his sons were causing trouble again.

She wasn’t completely surprised to find her father was part of the group around Beck. They were not only copresidents of the local cattle growers association this year, but her father also idolized the man. As far as Curt Baker was concerned, Beck McKinley was all three wise men rolled into one. Her father still relied heavily on Beck for help—more so in the last few years, as his Parkinson’s disease grew more pronounced and his limitations more frustrating.

At least her father was sitting down, leaning slightly forward with his trembling hands crossed in front of him atop the cane she had insisted he bring.

He barely looked at her, too engrossed in the conversation about cattle prices and feed shortages.

She waited until the conversation lagged before stepping into the group. She was unwilling to call out the rancher over his troublemaking twins in front of all the others.

“Beckett. May I have a brief word?”

His eyebrows rose and he blinked in surprise a few times. “Sure. Excuse me, gentlemen.”

Aware of curious gazes following them, Ella led Beck a short distance from his peers.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

She pointed toward the pack of wild boys on the stage, who were chasing each other between the curtains. “Your sons are at it again.”

His gaze followed her gesture and he grimaced. “I see half a dozen boys up there. Last I checked, only two of those are mine.”

“Colter and Trevor are the ringleaders. You know they are. They’re always the ones who come up with the mischief and convince the others to go along.”

“They’re natural leaders. Are you suggesting I try to put the brakes on that?”

His boys were adorable, she had to admit, but they were the bane of her existence as the music teacher at Pine Gulch Elementary School. They couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time and were constantly talking to each other as well as the rest of the students in their class.

“You could try to channel it into more positive ways.”

This wasn’t the first time she had made this suggestion to him and she was fairly certain she wasn’t the only educator to have done so. Trevor and Colter had been causing problems at Pine Gulch Elementary School since kindergarten.

“They’re boys. They’ve got energy. It comes with the package.”

She completely agreed. That was one of the reasons she incorporated movement in her music lessons with all of her students this age. All children—but especially boys, she had noticed—couldn’t sit still for long hours at a time and it was cruel to expect it of them.

She was a trained educator and understood that, but she also expected that excess energy to be contained when necessary and redirected into proper behavior.

“Our performers will be taking the stage soon. Please, can you do something with the boys? I can just picture them accidentally ripping down the curtains or messing with the lights before we can even begin.”

Beck glanced at his boys, then back down at her. His strong jaw tightened, and in his eyes, she saw a flash of something she couldn’t read.

She didn’t need to interpret it. She was fairly certain she knew what he thought of her. Like her father, Beck thought she was a soft, useless city girl.

Both of them were wrong about her, but nothing she did seemed to convince them otherwise. As far as her father was concerned, she belonged in Boston or New York, where she could attend the symphony, the ballet, art gallery openings.

Since the moment she’d arrived here with her suitcases a little more than a year ago, Curt had been trying relentlessly to convince her to go back to Boston with her mother and stepfather and the cultured life they had.

Beck seemed to share her father’s views. He never seemed to want to give her the time of day and always seemed in a big hurry to escape her presence.

Whatever his true opinion, he always treated her with stiff courtesy. She would give him that. Beck McKinley was never rude to anybody—probably one of the reasons all the other ranchers seemed to cluster around the man in public. Everybody seemed to respect his opinion and want to know what he had to say about things.

The only thing she wanted from him right now was to keep his boys from ruining the night.

“I’ll talk to the parents of the other boys, too. I’m just asking if you’ll please try to round up Colter and Trevor and have them take their seats. I’ll be introducing our performers in a moment and I would like people to focus on what they came for, instead of how many straws Colter can stick up his nose.”

He unbent enough to offer that rare, delicious smile. It appeared for only a moment. His cheeks creased and his eyes sparkled and his entire face looked even more gorgeous. “Good point, I suppose. The answer is five, in case you wanted to know. I’ll grab them. Sorry they caused a ruckus.”

“Thank you,” she said, then walked away before she was tempted to make another joke, if only to see if he would offer up that smile again.

Better to quit while she was ahead, especially since her brain was now struggling to put together any words at all.

* * *

Beck watched Ella Baker walk away, her skirt swishing and her boot heels clicking on the old wooden floor of the community center.

He had the same reaction to her that he always did—sheer, wild hunger.

Something about that sleek blond hair and her almond-shaped eyes and the soft, kissable mouth did it to him. Every. Single. Time.

What was the matter with him? Why did he have to be drawn to the one woman in town who was totally wrong for him?

Ella wore tailored skirts and suede boots that probably cost as much as a hand-tooled saddle. She was always perfectly put together, from the top of her sleek blond hair to the sexy but completely impractical shoes she always wore.

When he was around her, he always felt exactly like what he was—a rough-edged cowboy.

Can you at least pretend you have a little culture? Do you have any idea how hard it is to be married to someone who doesn’t know Manet from Monet?

Though it had been four years since she died—and five since she had lived with him and the twins—Stephanie’s words and others she had uttered like them seemed to echo through his memory. They had lost their sting over the years, but, boy, had they burned at the time.

He sighed. Though the two had similar blue-blood backgrounds and educations, Ella Baker looked nothing like his late wife. Stephanie had been tall, statuesque, with red hair she had passed on to their sons. Ella was slim, petite and looked like an exotic blonde fairy.

Neither of them fit in here, though he had to admit Ella tried a hell of a lot harder than Stephanie ever had. She had organized this event, hadn’t she?

He should probably stop staring at her. He would. Any moment now.

Why did she have to be so damn beautiful, bright and cheerful and smiling? Every time he saw her, it was like looking into the sun.

He finally forced himself to look away so he could do as she asked, quite justifiably. He should have been keeping a better eye on the boys from the beginning, but he’d been sucked into a conversation about a new ranching technique his friend Justin Hartford was trying and lost track of them.

As he made his way through the crowd, smiling at neighbors and friends, he was aware of how alone he was. He had been bringing the boys to these community things by himself for nearly five years now. He could hardly believe it.

He was ready to get out there and date again. The boys had somehow turned seven, though he had no idea how that happened.

The truth was, he was lonely. He missed having someone special in his life. He was tired of only having his uncle and his brothers to talk to.

Heaven knows, he was really tired of sleeping alone.

When he did jump back into that whole dating arena, though, he was fairly sure it wouldn’t be with a soft, delicate music teacher who didn’t know a mecate from a bosal.

It might be easier to remember that if the woman wasn’t so darned pretty.

In short order, he found the boys on the stage and convinced all of them it was time to find their parents and take their seats, then led his own twins out of trouble.

“Hey, Dad. Guess what Thomas said?” Colter asked, as they were making their way through the crowd.

“What’s that, son?” He couldn’t begin to guess what another seven-year-old might pass along—and was a little afraid to ask.

“His dog is gonna have puppies right before Christmas. Can we get one? Can we?”

He did his best not to roll his eyes at the idea. “Thomas and his family have a miniature Yorkie that’s no bigger than my hand. I’m not sure a little dog like that would like living on a big ranch like ours with all our horses and cattle. Besides, we’ve already got three dogs. And one of those is going to have her own puppies any day now.”

“Yeah, but they’re your dogs. And you always tell us they’re not pets, they’re working dogs,” Trevor said.

“And you told us we probably can’t keep any of Sal’s puppies,” Colter added. “We want a puppy of our very own.”

Like they didn’t have enough going right now. He was not only running his horse and cattle ranch, the Broken Arrow, but also helping out Curt Baker at his place as much as possible. He had help from his brother and uncle, yeah—on the ranch and with the boys. He still missed his longtime housekeeper and nanny, Judy Miller, who was having double–knee replacement and would be out for six months.

Adding a little indoor puppy into the chaos of their life right now was completely unthinkable.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said firmly but gently.

“Maybe Santa Claus will bring us one,” Colter said, nudging his brother.

At seven, the boys were pretty close to understanding the truth about Santa Claus, though they had never come right out and told them. Every once in a while he thought they might know, but were just trying to hang on to the magic as long as possible. He was okay with that. Life would be full of enough disappointments.

He was saved from having to answer them by the sight of beautiful Ella Baker approaching the microphone.

“Hey! There’s Miss Baker,” Trevor said, loudly enough that she heard and looked in their direction.

Though families had been encouraged to attend the event and it was far from a formal concert, Beck was still embarrassed by the outburst.

“Shh,” he said to the boys. “This is a time to listen, not talk.”

“Like church?” Colter asked, with some measure of distrust.

“Sort of.” But more fun, he thought, though of course he couldn’t say to impressionable boys.

Trevor and Colter settled into their seats and Beck watched as Ella took the microphone. He figured he could watch her here without guilt, since everyone else’s eyes were on her, too.

“Welcome, everyone, to this fund-raiser for the music program at the elementary and middle schools. By your presence here, it’s clear you feel strongly about supporting the continued success of music education in our schools. As you know, programs like ours are constantly under the budget knife. Through your generous donations, we can continue the effort to teach music to the children of Pine Gulch. At this time, it’s my great pleasure to introduce our special guests, all the way from northern Montana. Please join me in welcoming J. D. Wyatt and his Warbling Wranglers.”

The introduction was met with a huge round of applause for the cowboy singers. Beck settled into his chair and prepared to savor the entertainment—and prayed it could keep his wild boys’ attention.

* * *

He shouldn’t have worried. An hour later, the band wrapped up with a crowd-pleasing, toe-tapping version of “Jingle Bell Rock” that had people getting up to dance in the aisle and in front of the small stage.

His twins had been utterly enthralled, from the first notes to the final chord.

“That was awesome!” Colter exclaimed.

“Yeah!” His twin glowed, as well. “Hey, Dad! Can we take fiddle lessons?”

Over the summer, they had wanted to learn to play the guitar. Now they wanted to learn the violin. Tomorrow, who knows, they might be asking for accordion lessons.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see,” he said.

Before the twins could press him, Ella Baker returned to the mic stand.

“Thank you all again for your support. Please remember all proceeds from ticket sales for tonight’s performance, as well as our silent auction, will go toward funding music in the schools. Also, please don’t forget tomorrow will be the first rehearsal for the Christmas show and dinner put on by the children of our community for our beloved senior citizens at The Christmas Ranch in Cold Creek Canyon. This isn’t connected to the school and is completely voluntary. Any students ages four to sixteen are encouraged to join us.”

“Hey. That’s us!” Trevor said.

“Can we do it, Dad?” Colter asked, with the same pleading look on his face he wore when asking for a second scoop of ice cream. “We wanted to last year, remember? Only you said we couldn’t because we were going to visit our Grandma Martin.”

That had been a short-lived visit with Stephanie’s mother in Connecticut, who had thought she would enjoy taking the boys into the city over the holidays and showing off her grandsons to her friends. After three days, she had called him to pick up the boys ahead of schedule, sounding ages older than she had days earlier. She hadn’t called again this year.

“Can we?” Trevor persisted.

Beck didn’t know how to answer as items on his massive to-do list seemed to circle around him like buzzards on a carcass. He had so much to do this time of year and didn’t know how he could run the boys to and from the rehearsals at The Christmas Ranch, which was a good fifteen minutes away.

On the other hand, Ella Baker lived just next door. Maybe he could work something out with her to give the boys a ride.

Of course, that meant he would have to talk to her again, though. He did his best to avoid situations that put them into closer proximity, where he might be tempted to do something stupid.

Like ask her out.

“Please,” Colter begged.

This was a good cause, a chance to reinforce to them the importance of helping others. The holiday show had become a high point to many of the senior citizens in town, and they looked forward to it all year. If the twins wanted to do it, how could he possibly refuse?

“We’ll see,” he hedged, not quite ready to commit.

“You always say that,” Trevor said. “How come we never really see anything after you say we will?”

“Good question. Maybe someday, I’ll answer it. We’ll have to see.”

The boys laughed, as he hoped, and were distracted by their friend Thomas—he, of the tiny puppies—who came over to talk to them.

“Are you gonna do the Christmas show? My mom said I could, if I wanted.”

“We want to,” Trevor said, with another cajoling look at Beck.

“Maybe we can have a band,” Thomas said. “I’ll be J.D. and you can be the Warbling Wranglers.”

As they squabbled good-naturedly about which of them would make the better lead singer, Beck listened to them with a sense of resignation. If they really wanted to be in the Christmas program, he would have to figure out a way to make it happen—even if it meant talking to Ella Baker again.

The thought filled him with far more anticipation than he knew was good for him.