Lone Star Christmas

Maggie lifted a speculative brow.

But before anyone had another chance to say anything, a ruckus broke out in the adjacent family room. “My daddy!” Henry shouted.

“No,” Brian disagreed, climbing onto Hart’s lap and wrapping his arms around Hart’s neck. “He’s mine!”

Henry attempted to push his cousin aside. “No,” Henry shouted back emotionally. “He is your uncle Hart. He’s my daddy!”

Hart wrapped both boys in his arms. “Hey now,” he soothed, holding them both close—to no avail. “I’m here for both of you...”

Brian let out another outraged howl, and Henry followed suit. Her heart breaking, Callie rushed to the rescue.

But Brian did not want to go with her. Or his grandparents. Or his aunt Maggie. So Callie did the only thing she could do, the thing she always did, and she went to get Brian’s picture of Seth.

* * *

NASH COULD HEAR the ruckus inside, the moment he pulled up to the Heart of Texas ranch house in his pickup truck.

Inside, Nash found, it was little better. Callie was in tears. So were both preschoolers. Hart and Maggie were doing their best to separate—and soothe—the two quarreling little boys, but emotions were at an all-time high. Only Callie’s in-laws were calm.

“This is exactly why you’ve got to think about remarrying,” Doris was telling Callie.

Rock agreed. “We loved our son dearly, honey, and we will always miss him, but we know, like it or not, that life goes on. It has for us. And it must for you and our grandson, too.”

Callie shook her head, understanding—if not agreeing. She wiped the moisture from her face and, picture in hand, went to her son. She hunkered down beside him. “Brian, honey, we have to talk.”

The tyke turned to Callie with a heartfelt glare. “No, Mommy,” he said. “No talk. No picture!” He pushed the framed photo in her hand away.

Deciding to do what he could to break the tension, Nash stepped forward and interjected brightly. “Who wants to see how many Christmas trees I have in the back of my pickup truck?” He squinted at the two boys. “I’ll bet you anything you can’t count them.”

Henry straightened. “I can, too!” he said with importance.

Brian scrambled off Hart’s lap and headed for Nash, doing his best to push his cousin out of the way in the process. “I want to see!” Brian declared.

“Well, okay then.” Nash put out a hand to each child. “Let’s go see. You think you fellas are old enough to see into the bed of my pickup truck, if I lift you up?”

“Yes,” Henry and Brian shouted in unison.

Out the door they went. When they reached the tailgate, Nash bent down to take a boy in each arm and lifted them high. Their quarrel forgotten, they leaned over to look into the bed of his truck, where four unwrapped, fresh-cut pines, of varying sizes, lay.

“Wow,” the cousins said in unison.

Nash let them study the trees. “Think we should get them out, to see just how tall they are?”

The boys nodded.

Nash handed off Brian to Callie, and Henry to Hart. “Okay then,” he said with comically exaggerated importance. “Everyone stand back...”

The next few minutes were spent admiring the trees from all angles and selecting which one would go into the bunkhouse retreat and which would go to the ranch house.

By the time they secured each in the stands Callie had already purchased, the boys were filled with wonder.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Callie said, as she walked him back to his truck, while the others all returned to the ranch house.

Nash tipped his head at her. “Happy to be of service,” he drawled.

Callie’s eyes drifted to his mouth. Flushing, she sucked in a breath and returned her gaze to his. “What do I owe you for the trees?”

That was easy. “Dinner—tonight.”

Her slender shoulders stiffened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He studied the mutinous expression on her pretty face. “Why not?” he prodded, enjoying the display of temper.

Aqua-blue eyes narrowed. “Because.”

He stepped close enough to inhale the flowery scent of her hair and skin. “We might end up kissing again?”

Scoffing, Callie folded her arms in front of her, tightening the cashmere fabric of her sweater over the rounded softness of her breasts. “That’s not going to happen.”

He moved even closer. “Mmm-hmm,” he said huskily. It took everything he had not to touch her again. Haul her into his arms. And...

“And what if I promise not to kiss you again?” he asked. “At least tonight?”

A pulse throbbed in her throat. “Meaning?”

“I only like to think about things like that short term.”

“Well, I don’t like to think about them at all!”

He’d been able to tell that it had been a while. A long while. “So noted,” he said dryly. Besides it wasn’t a vow which would necessarily be hard to keep if she continued to have as many chaperones as she had inside her home at that moment.

“Seems like your son could use the distraction,” he persuaded.

He had her there...and she knew it.

Callie blew out a gusty sigh. “Fine,” she conceded. “But don’t expect anything other than leftovers.”

Leftovers sounded a heck of a lot better than she knew.

“What time?” he asked, before she could change her mind.

Another breath, so deep it lifted—then lowered—the soft swell of her breasts.

Not that he was noticing, he told himself firmly.

She bit her lip, as she considered. “Seven-thirty?”

Nash shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”