Chapter One
“Bet your butt’s tired.”
Case Dalton shot his cousin, Hank, a sideways glance. “After that little jog? I’ve run after my great-aunt Gerty faster.”
Hank chuckled. “You don’t even have a great-aunt Gerty, and I don’t care that you’re ten years younger than me—that was a damn hard run.”
They stepped onto the front porch of the Dalton family homestead, where Case’s other cousins were congregated, trying to remove the worst of the mud from their boots. Texas in winter on the ranch meant rain, and they’d all had a hell of a slog through the mud trying to round up three cows that had broken through the fence.
“Hell, anybody can run faster than Hank. Age is catchin’ up to ya, bro,” Cash teased. As second brother in the family, he wasn’t far behind.
“Who’s getting old?” The patriarch of Paradise Valley, Case’s uncle Ted and father to the other five Dalton cousins, stepped onto the porch, face creased in a grin.
“You’re the only one with clean boots. How did you stay outta the mud?” Hank asked.
Ted examined his dusty but relatively clean boots. “Easy—I got sons and a nephew to do the dirty work. Hurry up now, your momma’s squawking about you coming late to the table.”
“Tell her it’s the cows’ fault,” Cash shot out, hat askew as he used the metal boot scraper alongside the door.
For a second, Case watched his cousins taking turns trying to get most of the mud off. Then he hitched up his leg and pulled his boot off, followed by the other. He set them neatly where none of the little Dalton children would trip over them in their haste to get back outside.
He sauntered to the door and opened it. “If y’all’d just stop being so stubborn and take your boots off at the door, you could be sitting at the table now enjoying a hot breakfast like I will be.”
As soon as he got through the door, chaos broke out—or was in the process of breaking out.
Or this was really just how the ranch was at all times.
With five boys and their wives, along with grandchildren over the dozen mark, there was no such thing as peace and quiet.
Case grinned as he surveyed the hell breaking loose. He’d grown up as an only child and in his teens gotten a stepsister, but he’d never felt more part of something than when he was in Paradise Valley.
This was his second year spent on the ranch after Witt had gotten between a cattle chute and an eight-hundred-pound heifer, he’d suffered a broken leg and the Daltons had been down a man. They’d called Case for backup, and he’d never left. Never had intentions of leaving, if he had a say.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a place of his own right now. As long as there were scrambled eggs and biscuits enough for him, he was a happy man.
“Hurry, Momma, I need to be an angel when I eat bweakfast!” Little Avery used Ws in place of Rs, so it sounded like huwwy. She stood on the seat of the chair in front of her mother Shelby. The girl’s little brown curls bobbed around her shoulders and the feathers on the angel wings Shelby was trying to attach to Avery’s back floated in the air like snowflakes.
“Hold still, Avery. I can’t pin them on if you’re bouncing like a cat who fell into a puddle.”
The little girl gave a loud meow. Case walked by and nabbed a feather out of the air. He leaned in and tickled Avery’s nose with it.
Avery wriggled with laughter, and Shelby shot him an exasperated look. “You’re as much of a kid as they are, Case. Why don’t you pin these wings on?” She handed him two big safety pins.
“Step aside, Momma Shelby.” He took his place behind Avery and accepted the wings from her mother.
“Cousin Case can pin them on. He did it before,” Avery sounded with confidence.
“Case, you’re welcome to it. I hear the baby crying.” Shelby hurried into the kitchen, where a baby was wailing and others were trying to soothe him.
“Hold still now, Avery. I don’t want to jab you.”
“If you do, I’ll jab you back.”
He chuckled around the second pin he’d stuck between his lips for safekeeping. “I have no doubt of that, sugar.” He planted the feathery wings against Avery’s small back and fished the pin through the loop of fabric. After he secured the first pin, the second went easier.
He barely got the metal closed and Avery leaped off the chair, trundling toward the kitchen.
Witt appeared next to him. “That girl’s got two speeds—on and asleep. Thanks for doin’ the wings. She’s been driving Shelby nuts for a week.”
“By the time the Christmas show comes around, they’re going to be bald wings.” Case glanced at the feathers clinging to his shirt, jeans and the toes of his socks.
Witt waved a hand. “Plucked angel. C’mon, let’s get that breakfast. You deserve an extra helping for being today’s hero.”
When he got into the kitchen, breakfast was in full swing. Aunt Maggie stood at the stove, using a spatula to dump the rest of the scrambled eggs into a huge bowl. She hurriedly stuck a lid over it to keep the eggs warm before carrying the bowl to the table. All his cousins’ wives were in various stages of organizing their offspring, who weren’t putting up with the delay.
Beck’s boy, Carter, stood on a chair next to his mother as she buttered toast as fast as it was thrown at her.
“Beck, get Carter’s hat off and make him sit down to eat,” Sabrina said as her husband walked into the kitchen.
“You want him covered in mud or can I wash first?”
“Why don’t you wash up outdoors like Case?”
“Oh, if I hear one more time how Case’s daddy raised him better and I spoiled my boys by letting them come inside with dirty hands and boots, I’ll scream.” Aunt Maggie softened her words with a grin for Case, and she dropped a kiss to his cheek as she passed him to put jam on the table.
Case dipped at the knees to look at Carter standing on the chair. “You sure this kid can even sit? Maybe he wasn’t born with hips.” He plucked off the two-year-old’s cowboy hat, which was the cutest thing Case’d ever seen on a baby, and picked him up.
“Course he’s born with hips,” Sabrina said with a laugh. “Soon as he could sit, he only sat. Soon as he could stand, well…” She waved at Carter’s stiff legs as Case tried to force him into the booster seat attached to the chair.
“C’mon, Tiger. Bend those legs o’ yours.” Case tried again. Carter lunged for a handful of eggs his mother had spooned onto his plate, and Case saw his chance. He shoved the boy down and strapped him in faster than he could tie a hog.
Sabrina stood back, eyes wide, the butter on her knife ignored.
Case lifted a shoulder in a shrug. Carter was using his chubby fists to shove scrambled eggs into his mouth as fast as he could. “Distraction is key.”
Somehow, they all came to order at once, butts in seats and hands clasped for prayers. Uncle Ted looked around the kitchen. “Dear Lord, we thank you for our beautiful family and this bountiful breakfast before us. And a big thank-you for sending my nephew to us.”
Case looked up in surprise. His cousins grinned at him, and his heart warmed. This was part of the reason Case never wanted to leave Paradise Valley. He’d spent a lot of years with only his busy father for company and only got to experience the big family he craved on holidays spent with his cousins. Even after his father remarried, bringing a stepsister into the mix, Case hadn’t felt it was real family.
Humbled, he bowed his head but couldn’t hide his smile.
When the chorus of amens resounded through the room, the womenfolk ignored the howls of their children and paused before digging in.
“What happened out there this morning? You’re all covered in mud, not that it’s a surprise. December in these parts is pure mud.” Aunt Maggie passed a platter to Case.
“Three cows loose in the top field. Just as we’d move on them, one would get spooky and take off again, which meant the others followed. Somehow, they evaded every lasso we threw.”
“Wow, even yours, Kade?” Aunt Maggie asked her son. They were all good with a rope, but Kade was the best.
“Yup.” Next to him in the highchair, Kade Jr. opened his mouth as wide as a bird’s for a bite of the slimy white cereal Kade was shoveling in as fast as the kid could swallow it. “Cash and Beck landed the other two cows, but the third was leading us for a merry chase.”
At this, Uncle Ted burst out laughing. The tip of his nose grew pink as he shook with amusement. “Shoulda seen Hank and Cash when they had to dodge from the cow’s path. Slippin’ in that mud.”
Hank and Cash weren’t laughing as hard as everybody else, but they were good-natured as could be. Which was why Case had always wanted to emulate those two cousins growing up. There was a decade between him and Hank, and to a six-year-old, watching his cousins work had given him the itch to learn ranching skills young.
“Hank and Cash did their part. If they hadn’t headed off the cow, I never could have roped it.” Case helped himself to five sausage links and three slices of buttered toast. He nabbed the jam pot from Hank Jr., and the boy’s jaw dropped in surprise.
“Thanks, Junior.” Case elbowed him lightly with a laugh. Case hoped to tease the little cousins as his older ones had teased him. Keep the tradition going. He spread jam on a slice of toast and handed it to the kid in trade.
Hank Jr. gave him a crooked grin.
“Well, it sounds like teamwork saved the cow, but Case deserves more eggs.” Aunt Maggie passed him the bowl.
As they all tucked in to the meal, talk turned to the Christmas festivities. The church play, a Christmas parade in the nearby town. Shelby’s candy shop was having Santa Claus in for a visit. At the word candy, Carter looked up from the eggs on his plate.
“Candy!” Carter struck the table.
That was one word all the Dalton kids knew, since Aunty Shelby often brought home treats and spoiled them rotten, to their parents’ displeasure.
Carter, realizing he was sitting and not standing, started kicking up a fuss. “C’mon, Tiger. Eat more eggs,” his mother wheedled. Poor woman probably never got a hot meal. That kid was feisty as a toddler, but he was going to give his parents a run for their money when he got a little older.
“Candy!”
Case broke off a piece of his toast with jam and tossed it. Landing it right on Carter’s plate. The boy looked at it with wide eyes for a moment before picking it up and stuffing it into his mouth.
Sabrina stared at Case, and he shrugged again.
“Oh, Charlotte, when is your friend coming in to stay?” Aunt Maggie asked.
Everybody looked to Hank’s wife.
She lowered her coffee mug. “Tomorrow. I think.”
“You think?” Hank asked. “Shouldn’t you know? She’s your friend.”
She lightly punched Hank’s arm. “You know how frazzled I am with the elementary school program and the Christmas party for the kids. I don’t even know what day it is.”
“Friday,” everybody answered, except Maya, who said Thursday. She and Charlotte shared twin looks of embarrassment. Charlotte’s expression quickly changed to one of shock.
“Then Annabelle’s coming tomorrow.”
“Are you sure, Charlotte? It’s the school program.”
Charlotte sat back in her seat. “How am I going to pick her up at the airport then?”
Hank rested a hand on his wife’s arm, soothing her. “We’ll send someone else.”
“Who? Everybody’s going to the program. We all have kids singing and nobody wants to miss it.”
Feeling a bunch of eyes on him, Case looked up. He stopped with the fork halfway to his mouth.
“He can go,” Charlotte said hopefully.
He blinked, not understanding what she meant.
“Case can be the one-man welcoming committee.”
“That would be so sweet of you, Case,” Aunt Maggie said with a smile.
Wait—he was getting roped into driving to the airport and picking up a woman he’d never met?
“Oh, would you, Case?” Charlotte leaned forward.
Cousin Cash threw him a grin. “Means you get out of sitting through two hundred elementary school kids singin’ Silent Night off-key.”
Maya elbowed him in the ribs, and he hunkered forward with laughter.
“I mean, poor Case.”
“That’s right, buddy,” Maya half-scolded, dark eyes flashing.
Case considered it. He wasn’t shy about meeting a strange woman, but how comfortable would she be after finding out she’d been pawned off onto him?
“I don’t mind going to the airport. But,” he glanced from cousin to cousin, “would be mighty nice not to be on pig-pen duty Sunday mornin’ before church.” Finally, his gaze landed on Hank.
“Fine, I’ll do it. It’s my wife’s friend.”
Charlotte’s face lit up. “I’ll text Annabelle and let her know you’re picking her up. You’re a real lifesaver, Case!” She got up and came around the table to plant a kiss on his cheek.
* * * * *
Annabelle narrowed her eyes at the pile of clothes scattered across her bed. Several pairs of jeans, leggings, sweaters and a denim shirt plus T-shirts and cozy PJs. Since making plans with her dear old friend Charlotte, she’d been planning what she’d wear on this trip.
She couldn’t deny she was a clothes horse—her apartment luckily had several closets, which she’d organized into seasons. Her teacher’s wardrobe of blouses, dress pants and skirts wouldn’t cut it for a ranch in Texas.
She ran her fingers over the holly-red wool coat. It would fit in her carryon, but question was, did she need such a warm coat in the Lone Star state?
Winter in the Midwest where she lived warranted at least one parka with a big hood that buffeted a person against the strong winds and subzero temperatures. But the weather app on her phone said the Texas temps over the Christmas holiday in Paradise Valley, Texas wouldn’t get below fifty-eight degrees.
She picked up her holly-red coat and carried it back to her closet. Her black raincoat seemed more practical, if a lot less festive. With a sigh, she took the garment off the hanger, folding it as she returned to her luggage laid open on her bed.
As she folded each item meticulously so it wouldn’t wrinkle, her mind wandered over her past two Christmases. First her beloved grandmama had passed suddenly, and on Christmas Eve day. Festivities had been cancelled, food uneaten. Grandmama had been the glue that held together her family.
Now they were all scattered across Missouri and Illinois, hardly keeping in touch. Her grandmama’s worst fear had happened, and there was nothing Annabelle could do to draw everyone back for a big holiday celebration. The previous year, she’d tried.
That year, with a handful of family members coming to her apartment to stay for Christmas, she’d been overloaded with baking and wrapping. She and her boyfriend Maxwell were in a serious, committed relationship, and Annabelle had been eager to introduce him to her aunts, uncles and cousins.
For weeks he’d been hauling Christmas items into her house—first the perfect spruce tree to decorate, followed by a beautiful snow globe music box that played her grandmama’s favorite Christmas tune—I’ll Be Home for Christmas.
So when he’d handed her a big box addressed to My Girl, what was a woman to do but tear into it with excitement? Pulling off the lid of the brightly-wrapped box, she’d found lingerie—a red teddy with matching stockings that was four sizes smaller than she was.
Her cheeks had reddened with embarrassment, thinking Maxwell thought her a whole lot smaller and she should definitely cut back on those sugar cookies. But the lingerie wasn’t the only thing that hadn’t fit.
The gift card was addressed to somebody named Marley.
Not only was her boyfriend two-timing her, it was with a skinny rail of a woman four sizes smaller than Annabelle.
Christmas number two had ended with Annabelle tossing Maxwell out on his ass and a whole lot of rum. She’d been so drunk the entire weekend that she hardly recalled seeing her relatives, and she hadn’t heard from them since.
She twisted her lips as she rolled a pair of warm reindeer-patterned socks and slipped them into the suitcase. Two crappy holidays in a row. She didn’t expect this year’s to be better—only different.
She’d never been to a real working ranch, and Charlotte’s family was huge. The man she’d married had four brothers and they all had big families of their own. Actually, Annabelle was hoping to throw herself into Christmastime with children and experience the joy through them. One thing about being single and on a school break was how much she missed her class. Third grade was such a shapeable age and so full of wonder.
Charlotte had been begging Annabelle to visit for years, and this year when she’d extended the invitation again, Annabelle had finally asked herself what she had to lose.
Nothing.
Living alone with not even a goldfish, and with her mom, dad and little brother living hours away, she was on her own.
The last of the clothing went into the suitcase, along with a shoe bag with a pair of flats. She stood back, thinking of the holly-red coat. In the end, she went back to her closet and brought out a red plaid scarf.
A girl had to have something red on Christmas, right?
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text, and she threw herself down on her bed to read it.
I hate to say this, but plans are out of control. I’m sending the Daltons’ nephew to pick you up at the airport. His name’s Case and he looks like this.
A photo popped onto her screen of a twenty-something cowboy, face half-turned away from the camera.
Okay, wow.
Annabelle issued a maybe-there-is-a-Santa-after-all sigh.
She was grateful Charlotte couldn’t hear. She didn’t want her friend thinking she was already crushing on the cute guy who seemed to be looking off into a sunset. Heck, he probably was.
On the heels of her reaction to this nephew, her heart dropped. Her worst fear had been realized—she was officially a pain in their butts. The last thing she wanted.
Poising her thumbs over the keyboard to reply with just that, she read Charlotte’s next text.
Now don’t even say you’re a pain.
How well Charlotte knew her.
I just got my days mixed up, and it’s the kids’ Christmas show at school. I’m sorry you’re going to miss it. But I’ve told Case to take good care of my bestie and treat you to pie on the way home at our favorite joint.
Annabelle sighed again as she looked at Case Dalton’s picture. Strong profile, a jaw so sharp that it could cut timber and a small depression in his cheek that might be a dimple if he smiled.
From the photo, she couldn’t tell his personality—or what she was getting into. Charlotte would only have her best interests at heart, but Annabelle wasn’t sure she could make small-talk with a cowboy stranger. What could they possibly have in common?
In the end, what choice did she have? She had to get to Paradise Valley, and Case was her ride.
She texted back: Tell him I’ll be wearing a red scarf.