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, who looked as if he’d had the wind and everything else knocked out of his sails.

“Come on, kid. Talk to me.”

The boy met his gaze, his green eyes wide and a little unfocused. After a few seconds, he drew in a deep breath and then he started to wail, softly at first and then loud enough to spook up a couple of magpies that had come to see what the commotion was about.

“Come on, Kip. You’re okay,” the middle kid soothed, patting him on the shoulder, which only seemed to make the kid howl louder.

What Carson knew about bawling kids would fit inside the cap of a ballpoint pen. His instincts were telling him to hop right back into his SUV and leave the boys to fend for themselves. Knowing how rowdy and reckless they were, this couldn’t be the first time one of them had taken a tumble.

But he couldn’t do it. Not with the kid looking at him out of those drippy eyes and the other two watching him with such contrasting expressions—one hostile and the other obviously expecting him to take charge.

The boy swiped at his tears with the sleeve of his parka and scrambled to sit up in the snow. Carson watched his efforts to make sure he wasn’t favoring any stray limbs, but nothing appeared to be damaged beyond repair.

He would let their mother deal with it all, he decided. It would serve her right for letting them run wild. “Come on. I’ll give you all a ride back to your house.”

The middle boy eyed him warily. “We’re not supposed to get in strangers’ cars.”

“He’s not a stranger,” the older boy snapped with a return to that belligerence. “He’s Mr. McRaven, the dude who stole our ranch.”

“I didn’t—” Instinctively, Carson started to defend himself, then broke off the words. How ridiculous, that he would feel compelled to offer any explanations at all to a trio of rowdy little hellions.

“You want me to drive your little brother home or would you like to carry him all the way yourselves?” he asked.

The older boys exchanged a glance and then Hayden, the older one, shrugged. “Whatever.”

He personally would have preferred the latter option, especially after he scooped up the boy and carried him to the SUV, which resulted in even more tears. Again, he wished fiercely that he had just kept on driving when he’d seen them on his fence. If not for that ill-fated decision to stop, none of this would have happened and right now he would be saddling up one of his horses for a good hard ride into the snowy mountains.

He set the boy in the backseat then turned back to the other boys. “You two coming?”

The middle boy with the glasses nodded and climbed in beside his brother but the older one looked as if he would rather be dragged behind the SUV than accept a ride from him. After a long moment, though, he shrugged and went around to the other door.

The only sound in the SUV as they drove the short distance up the driveway to the Wheeler house was the little one’s steady sobs and a few furtive attempts to comfort him.

The two-story cedar farmhouse was charming in its own way, he supposed, with the shake roof and the old-fashioned swing on the wide front porch. But no one could possibly miss that a passel of children lived here. From the basketball hoop above the garage to the Santa Claus and reindeer figures in the yard to the sleds propped against the porch steps, everything shouted family.

It was completely alien to him, and all the more terrifying because of it.

For about half a second, he was tempted just to dump the lot of them there at their doorstep but he supposed that sort of callousness wouldn’t exactly be considered neighborly around these parts.

Fighting his reluctance, he climbed out of the SUV and opened the rear door, then scooped out the still-crying Kip.

They all moved together up the porch steps but before Carson could knock at the door, Hayden burst through and shouted for his mother.

“Mom, Kip fell down off the fence by the bus stop. It was an accident. Nobody dared him or anything, he just went up by himself and slipped.”

Warmth seeped out from the open doorway, along with the mingled aroma of cinnamon and sugar and pine.

The comforting, enticing scents of home.

The Wheeler boys might be wild, fatherless urchins with a distracted mother and more courage than sense. But Carson couldn’t help the niggle of envy for what they had, things they no doubt would not even appreciate until much later in their lives.

“You can come inside,” the middle boy said shyly. “Mom doesn’t like us to leave the door open.”

Feeling a bit encroaching for walking into her house, even at the permission of her kid, Carson took a few steps inside, just enough that he could close the door behind him.

He instantly wondered if he had accidentally stepped into one of those annoying Christmas shops in Jackson Hole. Every inch of the foyer seemed to be decorated with greenery or muted red gingham ribbons or ornaments of some sort. A wide staircase led upstairs and the banister was a wild riot of evergreen boughs and twinkling lights. A small trio of fir trees in the corner of the landing were decorated with homespun decorations from nature—pinecones, dried orange slices, even a couple of miniature bird nests.

Through the doorway into the living room, he caught a glimpse of a big evergreen tree, decorated with sloppy paper chains and a hodgepodge of decorations that seemed lopsided, even at a cursory glance.

He barely had time for the few observations to register when the boys’ mother bustled into the foyer wearing a red-and-green pin-striped apron and carrying the littlest Wheeler—and the only girl of the bunch.

Jenna stopped dead when she saw him, her ethereal blond hair slipping free of its confines, as usual. “Oh! Mr. McRaven! This is a surprise. Hayden didn’t mention you were here.”

“I happened to be passing by in time to see the, uh, accident. I couldn’t just leave him out there.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” she said. Though her tone was polite enough, he was quite sure he caught a whiff of skepticism. He tried not to let it rankle.

“Thank you for your kindness in bringing them home. I’m very sorry they troubled you again.”

Her tone was cooler than the icicles hanging off her porch. The Widow Wheeler didn’t like him very much. She had made that fact abundantly clear over the last ten months since he purchased her property.

Oh, she was polite enough in their sporadic dealings, never overtly rude. But he ran an international technology innovation company, which was a hell of a lot like a good poker game. Keen powers of observation were a vital job skill and he had developed his own to a fine degree. He couldn’t miss the tiny shadow of disdain in her green eyes when she talked to him.

“Where would you like me to set your little injured buckaroo here?”

“I’ll take him.”

She set the little one on the floor and the girl toddled to a wicker basket full of toys in the living room and proceeded to start yanking the contents out, one by one, and tossing them on the floor.

Jenna stepped closer to Carson and reached for the boy in his arms, whose wails had trickled to the occasional sniffle. Carson’s leather coat was open and as she took the child from him, her hands brushed against his chest for only an instant.

Even through his cotton shirt, he could feel the warmth of her hands, the small, delicate flutter of them and his stomach muscles tightened.

It was a ridiculous reaction, one that first stunned, then exasperated him. He really needed to expend a little more energy on his social life if he could be attracted to Jenna Wheeler, even on an instinctively physical level.

Sure, she was soft and pretty, with that wispy honey-blond hair and her undeniable curves and those big green eyes all her children had inherited.

But she had that unfortunate baggage shackled around her neck. Four wild kids, the youngest just a toddler.

Apparently, the only thing the injured one of her children needed was his mother. She sat down on a nearby wooden rocking chair. The boy snuggled against her chest and she pressed a kiss on his forehead.

“Hush now, sweetheart. Where does it hurt?”

He sniffled a little and pointed to the back of his head that had conked against the railing. “I hurt my head.”

“I’m so sorry.” She kissed the spot he showed her, her eyes tender and maternal, and Carson’s stomach muscles tightened again, this time with a weird, indefinable something he couldn’t have explained.

“Better?” she asked.

“A little,” the boy answered.

“Jolie and I made your favorite snickerdoodles this afternoon, didn’t we, ladybug?” she smiled at the little girl, who beamed back in the middle of pulling the ornaments off the tree. “They’re for the party tomorrow but when you feel better, you can go into the kitchen and get one.”

Cookies were apparently the magic remedy. Who knew? The boy’s sniffles dried up and after only twenty seconds more, he slid off his mother’s lap.

“I feel a lot better now,” he announced. “Can I have a cookie now?”

“Yes. Grab one each for your brothers.”

He flashed his mother a smile and raced from the room at top speed, leaving Carson alone with the two equally terrifying Wheeler females.

“Thank you again for bringing him home. It’s a long walk up the driveway for a kid with an owie.”

“I guess I was lucky to be there at the right time,” he said.

“He fell off a fence, you said?”

He hesitated, not sure quite how to answer her. She knew his feelings about the boys trespassing on his property and he was suddenly reluctant to dredge all that up. On the other hand, she needed to know what they had been up to.

“The split-rail fence just past where our access roads fork.”

“On the Raven’s Nest side,” she surmised correctly.

“Yeah.”

“What was he doing on a fence?” She looked as if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear his answer.

“Tightrope walking, apparently.”

She let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I have warned them and warned them to stay off your property. I hate that they’ve put me in this position again.”

“What position would that be?”

“Having to apologize to you once more.”

Again that sliver of disdain flickered in her eyes and he did his best not to bristle, though he was aware his voice was harder than he would have normally used.

“I certainly don’t want to tell you how to be a parent, but you have to do something to get the point across a little more forcefully to them. A working ranch is a dangerous place for three young boys, ma’am.”

Her expression turned even more glacial. “I believe I’m aware of just how dangerous a ranch can be, Mr. McRaven. Probably better than you.”

He remembered too late just why she had been forced to sell her ranch to him. Her husband had been killed in a tragic accident on the ranch two years earlier, leaving behind bills and obligations Jenna Wheeler had been unable to take care of without selling the land that had been in her husband’s family for generations.

He regretted his tactlessness but his point was still valid. “Then you, more than anybody, should stress those dangers to your boys. There are a hundred ways they could get hurt, as today’s accident only reinforced.”

“Thank you for your concern,” she said with that tight, dismissive voice that seemed so discordant in contrast to her soft feminine features. “I’ll be sure to tell them once again to stay away from Raven’s Nest.”

“Do that.”

He shoved on his Stetson, knowing he sounded like a firstclass jerk, but he didn’t know how else to get the message across to her or her boys except with bluntness. “I know neither of us wants any of your boys to be seriously hurt. But I have to tell you, I refuse to be held responsible if they are, especially when you’ve been warned again and again about their trespassing habits.”

“Warning duly noted, Mr. McRaven.”

He sighed in frustration. He successfully negotiated corporate deals all the time, had built McRaven Enterprises into an international force to be reckoned with in only a dozen years. So why couldn’t he seem to have any interaction with this woman that didn’t end with him feeling he was a cross between Simon Legree and Lord Voldemort?

He needed to have his people make her another offer for this land and the house, he decided. As far as he was concerned, the only way to solve their particular quandary would be for her to sell him this section and move her little family somewhere she could be someone else’s problem.

She closed the door behind Carson McRaven, wondering how it was possible for a man to be so very physically attractive—with that dark, wavy hair and eyes of such a deep blue she couldn’t help staring every time she saw them—yet have all the personality appeal of a wolverine with a sore snout.

The sale of the ranch had mostly been carried out through third parties. Jenna had known he was some kind of a Bay Area financial wizard and she had met him briefly when he had come to inspect the Wagon Wheel, as it all used to be called. Sure, he had been brisk and businesslike. But she had admired his plans to experiment with more environmentally sound ranching practices and he had seemed decent enough in that short meeting.

Of course, that was before her boys apparently decided to make it their personal mission to be as mischievous as possible—and to do it on Carson McRaven’s property.

She couldn’t blame him for being frustrated. She was at her wit’s end trying to keep them on their side of the property line. But she resented his unspoken implication that her boys were feral banshees allowed to run wild through the mountains.

“Mom, do I still have to do chores?” Kip asked in a plaintive kind of voice. “Hayden says I do.”

“I think this once, maybe Hayden can take out the garbage for you, if we ask him nicely.”

“My head still hurts.”

She pulled him toward her and gave him another kiss, just for good measure. “I don’t think it’s broken. Bruised a little, maybe, but you’ve got a pretty tough nut.”

“It was scary when I fell.”

“You shouldn’t have been up on Mr. McRaven’s fence, right? I don’t want you boys up there again. Next time you might hurt yourself even worse. What if you fell inside the pasture when one of those bulls of his were close by?”

“But I’m really good at it. I like being good at something. Hayden’s good at riding the ponies and Drew is good at math and stuff. But I can’t do anything.”

“You’re only six years old, bud. You’ll figure out what you’re good at soon enough.”

“Mom!” Hayden called out. “Can we eat these tart thingies in here?”

“No,” she answered as she picked up Jolie and headed back toward the kitchen. “They’re for the party tomorrow.”

“Everything you make is for some party or a reception or something stupid like that. Why can’t we eat any of it?” Hayden complained.

“You can have another snickerdoodle after you feed the horses. I made plenty of those.”

“I wanted a tart,” her oldest muttered.

Naturally. If she had told him the snickerdoodles were offlimits, that would have been the only thing he wanted. She loved him dearly but this sudden contrariness of his sometimes drove her crazy. Hayden was only ten and she already felt like she was battling all the teen stuff her friends had warned her to expect.

Maybe there was a lesson in that for her, she thought after she had shooed Hayden and Drew out the door to take care of their chores in the barn and returned to preparing for her last holiday party of the season.

Carson McRaven was definitely off-limits to her. Beyond the fact that she disliked him personally, he was a multimillionaire tech investor with a reputation for finding products the world didn’t realize it couldn’t do without, while she was an overtired widow with a struggling catering business and more obligations than she could begin to handle.

She wasn’t genuinely interested in any man. In the first place, when on earth would she have the time for one? Between helping the boys with homework, taking care of Jolie, the upkeep on their remaining twenty acres, taking care of her mother-in-law and starting up a struggling catering business, she had nothing left.

In the second, her heart still ached for Joe and probably always would. After two years alone, she still woke up in the middle of the night sometimes and turned over, trying to snuggle into his warmth, only to find a cold void where he used to be. Just like the one inside her heart.

She pushed away the echo of pain out of long practice as she rolled more cookie-dough balls in the cinnamon sugar mix, then set them on the cookie sheet.

Yes, every time she saw Carson McRaven, her heart seemed to race a bit faster and her stomach trembled. She didn’t like her reaction but it was a little easier to comprehend when she told herself it was only because he represented the unattainable.

She almost believed it, too.

Chapter Two

She was impossibly stuck.

Jenna revved the engine one more time and tried to rock her van out of the deep snowbank just outside the turnoff for the Wagon Wheel. Carson McRaven might call it Raven’s Nest now but to her this would always be the Wagon Wheel, named after three generations of Wheelers who had worked this corner of eastern Idaho in the western shadow of the Grand Tetons.

She glared at the clock on her dashboard and then at the snow still falling hard outside the van windows. Of all the miserable, rotten, lousy times to be stuck. She had a van full of food and an extremely short window of time in which to prepare it.

She thought she had everything so carefully orchestrated in order to have all the last-minute details ready for the party she was catering that evening. The moment the boys climbed onto the school bus, she had loaded Jolie into her van and driven to Idaho Falls, where the grocery selection was more extensive—and fresher—than anything she could find here in Pine Gulch.

She had budgeted a little over two hours, figuring that would give her time to drive there, shop and then drive home.

Naturally, it started snowing the minute she left Idaho Falls and hadn’t let up the entire forty-five-minute drive since then. At least four inches had fallen, laying a slick layer of white over everything.

As frustrating as she found the snow to drive in, it did set the perfect scene for Christmas. The evergreen trees on the mountainside looked as if they had been drizzled with Royal Icing and Cold Creek matched its name by burbling through patches of ice.

She only wished she had time to enjoy it all. Then again, if she had taken a few extra minutes to slow down and pay attention to her driving instead of her extensive to-do list, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Instead, she had been driving just a hair too fast when she headed over the bridge just before the driveway split, one route going toward Carson McRaven’s new, huge log house and the other heading toward home.

Just as she made the turn, her van tires slid and she hadn’t been able to pull out of the skid in time before landing in the drift.

She knew better than this. That was the most aggravating thing about the whole situation. She had been driving these Idaho winter roads since she was fourteen years old. She knew the importance of picking a driving speed appropriate for conditions, knew that this section could be slick, knew she had to stay focused on the road—not on the baby field-green salad she still had to make or the tricky vodka blush sauce she still hadn’t perfected for the penne.

But she had just been in such a big darn hurry to make everything just right for this party. It was her biggest event yet, and the one she hoped would make her the go-to person for catering in this area.

None of which would happen if she didn’t manage to extricate herself from this blasted snowdrift.

She shoved the van into Reverse again. If she could just get a little traction, the front-wheel drive on her van might be able to do the job. But try as she might, shifting between Reverse and Drive to try rocking out of the snow, the wheels just spun, kicking up snow and mud and gravel behind her.

Blast it all. She wanted to cry at the delay but she just didn’t have the time.

She looked in the rearview mirror to the backseat, where Jolie was babbling quietly to herself in her car seat and playing with her favorite stuffed dog, bouncing him on her lap then twirling him in dizzying circles.

“Well, bug, it looks like we’re walking home. We’ll go get your daddy’s big, bad pickup truck with the four-wheel drive and come back for the food.”

No big deal, she assured herself. She only had to walk a quarter mile from here down the driveway to the house. If she hurried, she could make it in ten minutes and be back here in fifteen.

She pulled Jolie out of her car seat. Her daughter beamed at her. “Walk, Mommy?”

“Looks like.”

She settled her daughter on her hip, grateful she had at least had the foresight to wear her boots that morning, even though it hadn’t been snowing when she left home.

She had just crossed her slide tracks and started up her long driveway that followed the river when she heard a pickup truck coming down the hill from Raven’s Nest.

She only had time to whisper a prayer that it would be Neil or Melina Parker, McRaven’s ranch foreman and his wife who served as caretaker when Carson wasn’t there, before the pickup pulled up next to her.

Apparently nobody was listening to her prayers today. She sighed as Carson rolled down the passenger-side window.

“You look like you could use a hand.”

Her pulse did that stupid little jumpy thing at his deep voice and she could feel her face heat up. She could only hope he didn’t notice, probably too busy thinking what an idiot she was for driving into a snowbank like that.

“I was just planning to walk to my house for my pickup. I’ve got groceries in the back I need to take care of quickly.”

“Put your baby back in the van, where it’s warm and out of the snow. I should have a tow rope in the pickup truck somewhere. I’ll have you out in a second.”

She wanted to balk at his commanding tone and tell him to go to Hades but for the first time in her life she understood the old saying about pride being a luxury she simply couldn’t afford right now.

She should just be grateful for his help, she reminded herself, even if she found it both humiliating and annoying to be obligated to him once more.

“I’m sorry to trouble you. That’s two days in a row now that you’ve had to come to our rescue.”

He made a kind of rueful grimace that plainly told her he wasn’t any more thrilled than she was about the situation, while he fished around behind the seat of the pickup and pulled out a thick braided red tow rope. “Here we go.”

Before she quite knew how it happened, he was crouched in the snow, attaching the tow to her rear bumper. McRaven probably had more money in loose change than she would see in any lifetime but he didn’t seem to have any qualms about dirtying his hands a little. It was an unexpected facet of a man who she was beginning to believe just may be more complicated than she might have guessed. He hitched the other end of the tow around his own pickup’s bumper, then came to her window again.

“Okay, now start it up and just steer out when you feel your van pull free of the snowbank. You should be on your way in a minute or two.”

She nodded and waited while he climbed back into the truck. Over her shoulder, she watched him engage the four-wheel drive of his truck. He appeared to barely ease forward but just that tiny extra bit of help was enough to accomplish what ten minutes of spinning her tires in the ice and snow hadn’t been able to do.

Another life lesson for her, maybe? she wondered ruefully. Accepting a little help in the short-term might be humiliating but could save much heartache and struggle.

She didn’t have time to wax philosophical this morning, not when her to-do list felt longer than her driveway and just as slickly treacherous.

“Thank you,” she said through her open window when Carson returned to her vehicle to unhook the tow rope.

“No problem. You’re going to want to take things slow until that access road gets plowed. I slid about four times coming down the hill from my place.”

“I know. I was just in too big of a hurry and wasn’t paying attention to how fast I was going. I’ll be sure to concentrate better now. Thanks again.”

He studied her for a moment, then she saw his blue eyes shift to Jolie in the backseat, who beamed at him and waved.

“Hi, mister,” she chirped, which was what she called every adult male of her acquaintance, from her Uncle Paul to the pastor at church to the bagger at the grocery store.

“Hi,” he said, his voice a little more gruff than usual, then he stepped back and waved her on.

With her wipers on high, Jenna slowly put the van in gear and inched through the swirling snow that seemed to have increased dramatically in just the few moments since Carson arrived. She was so busy paying attention to the road—and trying to keep from sliding into the icy Cold Creek that paralleled her driveway—that she didn’t notice the headlights behind her until she was nearly home.

What was Carson doing? She frowned as his pickup continued to tail her along the winding drive. Maybe something had fallen out of her van when she was stopped and he was returning it. Or maybe he decided she needed more of a lecture on her winter driving skills, or lack thereof.

She wouldn’t put it past him. The man seemed to want to give her plenty of advice on child rearing. Judging by past comments, he apparently put her abilities as a mother somewhere between incompetent and negligible and seemed to think she let her boys run wild and free through the countryside with no supervision.

And now he probably thought she was just as inept at driving. She pulled into her garage and stepped out of her driver’s seat to walk back outside, already squaring her shoulders for another confrontation.

“Is something wrong?” she asked coolly when he rolled down his window.

“I just wanted to make sure you made it home safely. I’ll send one of my guys over with the tractor to plow the driveway in case you need to get out soon.”

She blinked at him as hard, wind-whipped snowflakes stung her cheeks. Her first reaction was astonishment and a quick spurt of gratitude, both that he was concerned at her welfare enough to follow her home and that he would offer to help her plow her road.

One less chore to do, right? she thought. Especially since digging out the driveway wasn’t among her favorites.

At the same time, she didn’t want him to think she needed to be looked after like some kind of charity case.

“I have a tractor with a front plow,” she answered. “I can take care of it. I would have done it earlier but it wasn’t snowing when I left for Idaho Falls.”

She regretted her words the moment she uttered them. She didn’t owe Carson McRaven any explanations.”

“I’ll send someone,” he answered. “Stay warm.”

Before she could protest, he hit the button to automatically wind up his window, put his big pickup in gear and drove away.

She watched him go for a moment as the wind howled through the bare tops of the cottonwoods and lodgepole pine along the river. Her neighbor was nothing if not confounding. She couldn’t quite peg him into a neat compartment. On the one hand, he was arrogant and supercilious and seemed to think her family’s entire focus in life was to annoy him as much as humanly possible.

On the other, he had been kind to her boys the day before and he had certainly helped her just now when he really could have looked the other way.

She shivered as the wind cut through her parka and turned back to the garage. She had far more critical things to occupy her mind with right now than obsessing—again—about her new neighbor.

Jolie chattered away as Jenna carried her into the house. Only about one word in three was recognizable and none of them seemed to require a response, but her daughter never seemed to mind carrying on a conversation by herself.

She was a complete joy and far more easygoing than any of the boys had been. She didn’t complain when Jenna took her straight from her car seat to her high chair and set some dry cereal and a sippy cup of milk on the tray while she went out to cart the groceries inside from the van.

Just as she was carrying the last armload in, the phone rang. She thought about ignoring it, but with three boys in school, she couldn’t take the risk it might be one of their teachers or, heaven forbid, the school principal.

“Phone, Mama. Phone.”

“I know, honey. I’ll get it.”

She quickly set down the bags on the last clear counter space in the kitchen and lunged for the cordless handset before the answering machine could pick up.

“Sorry. Hello,” she said breathlessly.

“Hello, my dear.”

Jenna smiled at the instantly recognizable voice on the other end of the line. Viviana Cruz was one of her favorite people on earth. She and her second husband had a ranch a little farther up the creek and raised beautiful Murray Gray cattle.

“Viviana! How are you?”

“Bien, gracias. And you? How do you do? Busy, busy, I would guess.”

“You would be right, as usual, Viv. I’m running a little late, but I promise, all will be ready in time.”

“I do not doubt this. Not for un momentito. The food will be delicious, I have no worries.”

At least one of them was confident, Jenna thought as nerves fluttered in her stomach. This job was important to her, not only professionally but personally. Viviana had taken a big risk hiring her to cater the holiday event she was hosting for the local cattle growers’ association, of which she served as president. This was the biggest job Jenna had undertaken since she started her catering business six months earlier. Before this, she had mostly done small parties, but this involved ranchers and business owners from this entire region of southeastern Idaho.

Viv had told her there would be people coming from the Jackson Hole area, as well. She planned to have her business cards out where everyone could see and made a mental note to also stick the magnetic banner on her van that read Cold Creek Cuisine.

“Thanks, Viv. I hope so.”

“I was checking to see if you are needing any help.”

Unfortunately, the answer to that was an unequivocal yes but she couldn’t admit defeat yet. She could do this. She had planned everything carefully and much of the food was already prepped. Her sister-in-law and niece were coming over in a couple of hours to help her with last-minute things, so she should be all right.

“I think I’ll be okay. Thanks for offering, though.”

“You are bringing your children tonight, yes?”

Oh, heavens, what a nightmare that would be. “No. Not this time, Viv. My niece, Erin, is coming out to the house to tend to them while Terri helps me serve your guests.”

“I so love those little darlings of yours.”

She smiled as she put away the groceries, the handset tucked into her shoulder. Viv was one of the most genuine people Jenna knew. She was enormously blessed to have such wonderful neighbors. After the tractor accident that critically injured Joe, all the neighbors along the Cold Creek had rallied around her. Viv’s husband Guillermo and the Daltons, who owned the biggest spread in the area, had all rushed to help her out.

While she had been numbly running between the ranch and the trauma center in Idaho Falls for those awful weeks Joe was in a coma, they had stepped in to care for her children, to bring in the fall alfalfa crop, to round up the Wagon Wheel cattle from the summer range.

She could never repay any of them.

“They adore you, too,” she said now to Viv. “But I think your party will go a little more smoothly without my boys there to get into trouble.”

“If you change your mind, you bring them. Christmas is for the children, no?”

Those words continued to echo in her mind as she said goodbye to Viviana a few moments later and hung up, then turned her attention to Jolie who was yawning in her high chair ready for her nap.

Her children certainly hadn’t enjoyed the best of Christmases the past two years, but she refused to let them down this year. After tonight, she intended to relax and spend every moment of the holidays enjoying her time with them.

Perfect. It all had to be perfect. Was that such an unreasonable wish?

Her children deserved it. They had suffered so much pain and loss. Their last happy Christmas seemed like forever ago.

Joe had died the day after Christmas two years earlier, and they had known it was coming days earlier. No death of a man in his early thirties could be easy for his family to endure, but her husband’s had been particularly tough. He had lingered in a coma for two months after the tractor accident, fighting off complication after complication.

Finally, just when she thought perhaps they had turned a corner and he was starting to improve, when she was certain his eyelids were fluttering in response to a squeeze of her hands or a particular tone of her voice, a virulent infection devastated his system. His battered body just couldn’t fight anymore.

The next Christmas would have been hard enough for the boys, so close to the anniversary of their beloved father’s death, but they had been forced to spend Christmas with Jenna’s brother. Jolie, born five months after her father’s death, had picked up a respiratory illness and had been in pediatric intensive care through the holidays, consuming Jenna with worry all over again. Then Pat, Joe’s mother, suffered a severe stroke the week before Christmas, so Jenna had been running ragged between both of them.

This year would be different. Everyone was relatively healthy, even if Pat did still struggle with rehabilitation in the assisted-living center in Idaho Falls. Jenna’s fledgling catering business was taking off and the sale of the Wagon Wheel had covered most of the huge pile of debt Joe had left behind.

She refused to allow anything to mess up this Christmas. Not a blizzard, not a big catering job she felt ill-equipped to handle, not sliding her car into a ditch.

Not even an arrogant neighbor with stunning blue eyes.

“You know you don’t have to go to this shindig. I doubt anybody’s expectin’ you to. This was one of those, what do you call it, courtesy invites.”

Carson made a face at his foreman, Neil Parker, as the two of them checked over his three pregnant mares, who were due to deliver in only a few months.

So far all was going well. This particular foal’s sire was a champion cutting horse from the world-famous Dalton horse operation just up the road, and Carson had high hopes the foal would follow in his daddy’s magnificent footsteps.

“I know that,” he answered Neil. “If the local stock growers’ association could have figured out a polite way not to invite me, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“I doubt it’s personal. You just represent change and a different way of lookin’ at things, something that worries the oldtimers around here. New West versus Old West.”

Carson knew that. He knew his purchase of the vast acreage that used to be known as the Wagon Wheel had thrust him onto a hotly debated battleground. All across the West, old-guard ranchers were finding themselves saddled with land that was no longer profitable and practices that had become archaic and unwieldy.

Many of their children weren’t interested in ranching and the lifestyle that came with it. At the same time, ranchers fought development and the idea of splitting the land they had poured their blood and sweat into tract subdivisions.

As feed costs went up and real-estate values plummeted, many were caught in a no-win situation.

He knew old-timers resented when new people moved in, especially those who had the capital to enact sweeping, costly changes in ranching practices in an effort to increase yield. It was even worse in his situation since he wasn’t a permanent resident of his ranch and only came here a couple of times a month for a few days at a time.

He couldn’t avoid the snide comments in town when he came to Pine Gulch. And he knew Neil suffered worse, though his foreman was careful not to share those details with him.

Neil and his wife Melina had been with Carson for a decade, first as caretakers of the central California ranch he purchased several years ago and then at the small Montana ranch he still owned.

Carson loved ranching. He loved being out on his horses, loved the wildness and the raw beauty here, loved the risk and the rewards.

It wasn’t some big secret why that might be. That year he spent on his grandparents’ ranch a few miles away from here had been the happiest, most secure of his life. He wasn’t trying to recapture that, only to replicate it somewhere else if he could. And though Raven’s Nest was only a small segment of his vast empire, this was where he found the most peace.

He wanted to make it a success and he figured a little proactive public relations couldn’t hurt the situation in town. Life would be easier all the way around if Neil didn’t have to play politics with obstinate locals.

“I’m not some Hollywood rancher, only looking for a status symbol. We’re making something out of Raven’s Nest and I need to get that point across. That’s the whole reason I’m going to Viviana Cruz’s party. You and I have been running Raven’s Nest for ten months now and people still won’t accept that we’re serious about what we’re doing here.”

He thought of the coolness in Jenna Wheeler’s eyes when he had pulled her van out of the snow a few hours earlier and the surprise she had showed when he had done the neighborly thing and told her he would make sure her driveway was shoveled.

He didn’t know why her negative opinion of him bugged him so much. Plenty of people hated his guts. It was a normal side effect of both his position and his personality. He hadn’t made McRaven Enterprises so successful by being weak and accommodating.

Jenna probably figured she had reason to resent him. He was radically changing something her husband’s family had built over several generations.

He thought of what Hayden Wheeler had said the afternoon before. He’s the dude who stole our ranch. Had the boy’s mother been feeding him that kind of garbage? He didn’t like thinking she would be the sort to come off as some kind of martyr. She had listed her ranch for sale and he had paid more than a fair price for it. End of story. It was a business deal, pure and simple.

Hell, he’d even made concessions, like granting her the right-of-way to use the Raven’s Nest bridge and access road to the point where her driveway forked off it. Otherwise, she would have had to build a new road and another bridge across the creek, something costly and complicated.

He sighed and pushed the frustration away. What did it matter if she didn’t like him? He certainly wasn’t trying to win any popularity contests with Jenna.

It would be nice, though, if Neil didn’t have to fight through the negative perceptions of everybody else in town every time his foreman needed to do business with anyone in the Teton Valley.

“I’m only going to go for a little while tonight,” he said to Neil. “I’ll shake a few hands, stroke a few egos and be home in time to make sure everything’s ready for the guests coming in on Sunday.”

“Hate to break it to you, boss, but showing up to one Christmas party with the cattlemen’s association probably won’t do much to change anyone’s mind. Folks around here are set in their ways, afraid of anything that’s different.”

“What’s to be afraid of? We’re only trying to find more sustainable ways of doing business.”

“You don’t have to sell me, boss. I’m on board. I know what you’re doing here and I’m all for it. Our overhead is about half of a typical ranch of the same size and the land is already healthier after less than a year. It’s working. But what you’re doing is fairly radical. You can’t argue that. A lot of people think you’re crazy to go without hormones, to calve in the summer, to move your cattle to a new grazing spot every couple of days instead of weeks. That kind of thinking isn’t going to make you the most popular guy at the cattle growers’ association.”

“It can’t hurt to let people see I don’t intend to come out only on the weekends and hide out here at the ranch. I’m not trying to convert anybody, I just want folks to see I’m willing to step out and try to be part of the community.”

“A noble effort, I guess.”

“You don’t mind if I tag along with you and Melina, then?”

“I suppose that would be okay. You want her to find you a date? There’s some real nice-lookin’ girls around here who’d probably love to hit the town with a guy who has a private jet and one of them penthouses in San Francisco.”

Carson narrowed his eyes at his foreman, whose sun-weathered features only grinned back at him. “Thanks, but no,” Carson muttered. “I don’t need help in the dating department.”

“You change your mind, you let me know.”

“Don’t hold your breath. I’m not interested in a social life, just in a little public relations.”

Chapter Three

Two hours later, he reminded himself of the conversation with his foreman as he listened to the Pine Gulch mayor ramble on about every single civic event planned for the coming year, from the Founders’ Day parade to the Memorial Day breakfast to the annual tradition of decorating the town park for the holidays.

Public relations, he reminded himself. That was the only reason for his presence. If that meant expiring from boredom, it was a small price to pay.

“This is a nice town, as you’ll find when you’ve been here a little longer,” Mayor Wilson assured him. “A nice town full of real nice people. Why, I don’t guess there’s a more neighborly town in all of Idaho. You could have done a lot worse if you’d settled somewhere else.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” he murmured to the other man, wondering when he could politely leave.

At least the mayor was willing to talk to him. He supposed he ought to be grateful for that. While he wasn’t encountering outright hostility from people at the party, he had seen little of that neighborliness Mayor Wilson claimed. Most were polite to him but guarded, which was about what he expected.

The server walked past with more of those divine spinach rolls. He grabbed one as she passed by, hoping she wasn’t keeping track of his consumption since he knew he’d had more than his share.

At least the food was good. Better than good, actually. He had come in with fairly low culinary expectations. A stock growers’ holiday party in Pine Gulch, Idaho, wasn’t exactly high on his list of places to find haute cuisine.

But the menu was imaginative and every dish prepared exactly right. He paid a Cordon Bleu-trained personal chef to fill his refrigerator and freezer here and in San Francisco and he thought the food at this party was every bit as good as anything Jean-Marc prepared.

None of it was fancy but everything he had tried so far exploded with taste, from the mini crab cakes with wild mushrooms to the caramel tart he’d tasted to the spinach rolls he couldn’t get enough of.

He could only hope the personal chef he hired from Jackson Hole for the guests who were coming to Raven’s Nest in a few days was half as good as this caterer.

The house party was an important one for McRaven Enterprises and he wanted everything to be exactly right, especially since he had a feeling this was his one and only chance to convince Frederick Hertzog and his son, Dierk, to sell their cellular phone manufacturing business to McRaven Enterprises.

Frederick loved all things Western. When Carson learned he and his family were traveling from Germany to Salt Lake City for a ski vacation, he had made arrangements to fly them to Raven’s Nest for a few days in an effort to convince the man McRaven Enterprises was the best company to take Hertzog Communications and its vast network of holdings to the next level.

He and Hertzog had had a long discussion the last time they met about some of the range policies Carson was trying to emphasize at Raven’s Nest and the man was interested to see those efforts in action.

He expected to have more opportunities to entertain at Raven’s Nest. He preferred his solitude while he was here but he had built the house knowing some degree of entertaining was inevitable. It wouldn’t hurt to meet the caterer before he left, he decided. He could at least get a business card so he could pass it along to Carrianne, his enormously competent assistant who handled all his event-planning details.

The kitchen was at the rear of the community center. Just before he reached it, another server came through the doors carrying a tray laden with artfully arranged holiday sweets. Cookies and truffles and slices of nut bread.

He focused first on the food, wondering how upset she would be if he messed up her lovely tray by snatching one of those giant sugar cookies. He lifted his gaze to the server to ask and did a quick double take.

“Mrs. Wheeler!”

She wobbled a little and nearly dropped the entire platter. “Mr. McRaven,” she exclaimed, in the same voice she might have used if an alien spaceship suddenly landed in the middle of the room. “What are you doing here?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I was invited. Why do you sound so surprised? This is the cattle growers’ association holiday party, right? Since I run four hundred head of cattle at Raven’s Nest, doesn’t that make me eligible?”

She paused for only a moment and then continued to the buffet table, where she set down the tray before answering him. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. You certainly have the right to attend whatever party you’d care to. I just…wouldn’t have expected you here, that’s all. I was surprised to see you. The cattlemen’s association is usually old-timers. The local good old boys.”

“What about Viviana Cruz? You can’t call her a good ole boy and she runs the whole association.”

She smiled suddenly, brightly. “Point taken. Viv is definitely her own person. And we all love her for it.”

With that smile, Jenna Wheeler suddenly looked as delicious as the food she was so carefully arranging, enough to make his mouth water. Her cheeks were flushed like the barest hint of color on August peaches and her silky blond hair was doing its best to escape the confines of the hair clip holding it away from her face.

He wondered what she would do if he reached out to finish the job, just for the sheer pleasure of watching it swing free, but he quickly squashed the inappropriate reaction. She was an extraordinarily lovely woman, he thought, not particularly thrilled that he couldn’t seem to stop noticing that little fact about his neighbor.

“Are you helping the caterer tonight?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I guess you could say that. Is there something wrong with the food?”

“No. Quite the contrary. Everything has been perfect. I’m looking for a business card, in fact.”

She blinked at him for a long moment, her big green eyes astonished, then she quickly looked away as if she hadn’t heard him, her attention focused on arranging items on the buffet table for better access by the guests.

As the silence dragged on, he realized she wasn’t going to respond. “So would you mind getting one for me from the caterer when you have a minute?” he pressed.

Again she gave him that odd look, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to handle his request. Finally, she sighed and reached into the pocket of her red-and-green striped apron and pulled out a business card.

A nice touch for the caterer, he thought, to give all his servers business cards to be handed out upon request. He scanned it quickly, then felt his jaw drop.

Cold Creek Cuisine

Weddings, parties, reunions, or just an unforgettable, intimate dinner for two

Jenna Wheeler, owner

“You made all this?” he asked.

She gave him a long, cool look. “Why do you sound so surprised?” she parroted his own words back to him.

He had no good response to that, other than the obvious. “You’re a widowed mother of four young children. Quite frankly, I’m astonished you have time to breathe, forget about running a business.”

He didn’t add that from what he had seen of her children, he would think just keeping them out of mischief would require six or seven strong-willed adults. Armed with cattle prods, for good measure.

“It can be challenging sometimes,” she answered. “But I do most of the cooking when they’re in school or sleeping.”

Even when he came to Raven’s Nest to relax, he could never completely escape work. Carson often had to take conference calls from Europe or Japan at odd hours. He remembered now that he had sometimes seen lights glowing at her house late at night and had wondered about it.

He was struck by another sudden memory. “Is that why you had so many groceries in your van today? I thought maybe you were just stocking up in case of a blizzard.”

She laughed out loud and he was quite certain it was the loveliest sound he had heard in a long time. “My boys eat a lot, I’ll grant you that. But not quite twenty grocery bags full. Yes, that’s why I had so many groceries in my van. It was also the reason for my panic this morning. I had a million things to do before tonight and couldn’t really afford the delay of being stupid enough to slide into a snowbank. Thank you again for pulling me out.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad I was there. I would have hated missing all this delicious food. Your tandoori beef skewers are particularly wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything like it.”

“Thank you.” She looked as surprised at the compliment as if he had just reached over and kissed her hard, right here above the maple pepper salmon bites.

Not a completely unappealing idea, he had to admit.

None of this made sense to him. Not his sudden fierce attraction to her or the fact that she was here in the first place.

He had paid in the mid seven figures for her ranch, more than its appraised value because he hadn’t wanted to quibble and risk missing out on the purchase after he had searched so long for the perfect rangeland for his and Neil’s plans for sustainable ranching.

He would think with careful management, she and her children would be well-provided-for the rest of their lives.

But she drove a five-year-old minivan and her house needed painting and she worked after her children were in bed to throw parties for other people.

It was none of his business, he reminded himself. She was none of his business.

Except she did fix a mean goat-cheese crostini.

“Well, your food is fantastic. Do you mind if I give your card to my assistant who plans my events for me? I expect I’ll be doing more entertaining at Raven’s Nest in the future. I was hoping to find someone closer than Jackson Hole to handle the catering when I entertain. I never expected her to live just down the hill.”

She paused for a long moment and he could clearly see the indecision in her eyes. He sensed she wanted to tell him no but instead she gave a short nod. “I suppose. I should warn you I’m very selective about the jobs I accept. If it doesn’t work for my children’s schedule, I have no qualms about turning something down. They come first.”

“Fair enough.”

He would have added more but the woman who had been helping Jenna serve at the party approached them at that moment. She barely looked at Carson but the quick glance she shot at him was icier, even more than Jenna’s had been.

“Jenna, the mayor is asking if you have more of your baconwrapped shrimp. He’s crazy about them, apparently. I told him I would ask.”

“I’ll have to go check the inventory in the kitchen.” She turned toward Carson with an apologetic expression he wasn’t completely certain was genuine.

“Will you excuse me? Things are a little hectic.”

“Of course,” he answered. He watched her go, not at all thrilled to realize the brief interaction with her had been the most enjoyable moments of his evening.

Why wouldn’t the man just leave already?

Jenna returned to the kitchen after making yet another trip to replenish the buffet table, fighting the urge to bury her face in a pitcher of ice water.

This was becoming ridiculous.

She had made a half-dozen trips out into the holidaybedecked community center, circulating among the guests with more cheesecake or toffee bites.

Every time, she had vowed to herself she wouldn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to Carson McRaven. But the instant she would walk out of the kitchen, her gaze would unerringly find him, no matter where he was standing.

He shouldn’t have stood out so glaringly. She had no reason to hone in on him like a heat-seeking missile. It wasn’t like he was wearing some fancy tailored Italian-cut suit or anything. He had on perfectly appropriate khaki slacks and a light blue dress shirt under a sport jacket that looked casual but probably cost more than the average fall steer at market.

The man was just too blasted good-looking, with that dark wavy hair and those intense blue eyes. It didn’t help that he wore his clothes with a careless elegance that was completely foreign compared to the off-the-rack crowd in Pine Gulch.

She couldn’t help noticing him, maybe because he looked like a fierce hawk taking tea with a flock of starlings.

This is the cattle growers’ association holiday party, right? Since I run four hundred head of cattle at Raven’s Nest, doesn’t that make me eligible?

If he was your average rancher, she was Julia Child.

“I can’t believe that man had the nerve to show up here.”

Jenna swiveled to find her sister-in-law coming through the doors with another empty tray. “What man?” she asked, playing innocent, just as if her thoughts hadn’t revolved around him from the moment she had discovered him at the party.

“McRaven!” Terri’s glare looked incongruous on her pixie features. “Does the man have to ruin everything? It’s not enough that he waltzes away with your ranch and starts building that Taj Mahal on it but now he has to show up all over town like he owns the place.”

“He didn’t waltz away with anything, Terri. You know that. He paid good money for the ranch. And the house he built is big but it’s not obscenely big.”

“It’s the biggest house in town. I mean, who really needs a twelve thousand square foot mansion out in the middle of freaking nowhere? Do you have any idea what kind of hit he’s going to take if he ever tries to sell the place? Who else is going to want to shell out that kind of money in this soft market?”

“Does everything have to come down to real estate with you?”

Terri made a face. “I can’t help it. I’ve got loan-to-values and escrow analyses on the brain.”

When her sister-in-law wasn’t helping her serve the mad rush of holiday events she had overcommitted to, Terri was studying for her real-estate license.

“McRaven should have taken a good look at the market around here before he jumped in and started building his megahouse,” she added.

“I’m guessing he doesn’t care about the market. He’s got the money and the land. He’s free to build whatever kind of house he wants on it.”

She had to admit, she hadn’t been thrilled that, for ten months, Raven’s Nest had seen a constant stream of workers and delivery trucks and construction vehicles, with their dust and noise. The boys had been fascinated by it all but she had mostly found it annoying. And, okay, she had resented that Carson had the endlessly deep pockets to come in and make all the changes she and Joe had only ever been able to dream about in whispered conversations in the dark quiet of their bedroom.

“I still don’t think it’s right,” Terri muttered. “He doesn’t belong here. It doesn’t help that he comes in looking like he just finished a photo shoot for some sexy men’s magazine. No man should be allowed to be that rich and that unbelievably gorgeous. It’s just not fair.”

“You’re a married woman, Terri!” she teased.

“Very happily married,” she agreed. “But you have to agree, that man is lethal.”

Jenna decided she would be wise to just keep her mouth shut right about now.

“You should see Annalee Kelley putting out the vibe. She’s all over him. If Annalee has her way, she’ll be the first one in town to see the inside of Raven’s Nest. Or at least one of the bedrooms there.”

Okay, she didn’t want to go there, Jenna decided, and quickly changed the subject.

“How are the crab cakes? They seem to be going fast, don’t they?”

Terri looked reluctant to be distracted but finally gave in. “You have, like, three left out there. You’ve done a fantastic job, as usual, Jen. Everybody’s raving about how delicious the food is and at least a half-dozen people begged me for your white chocolate mousse recipe.”

She had been working like crazy to make everything perfect for the party. It was amazing the sense of satisfaction she found.

“Thanks for all your help these last few weeks as everything has been so crazy, Terri. You’ve saved my bacon.”

“You’re welcome, hon. I’m just glad this is our last gig for a while. I can’t wait for the cruise this week. I’m going to completely put the stupid real-estate test out of my head and just bask by the pool with an umbrella drink in my hand.”

Her brother and his family were leaving the day before Christmas for a weeklong cruise on the Mexican Riviera.

“Well, I won’t have umbrella drinks but I’ll be glad to take a rest, too. It will be nice to have things get back to normal.”

“As normal as your life can get when you live just down the hill from the McRaven McMansion. I heard from Melina Parker that he’s got guests coming in this weekend. You let me know if there are any naked hot tub parties up there, okay? As much as I despise the man, I might have to come over with Paul’s binoculars, just for a little peek.”

Oh, as if she needed that visual image in her head. She thrust a platter at her sister-in-law to distract her. “Here. This is the last of the crostini. Try to move them. I don’t want to take any home with me.”

Terri grinned but obediently headed back out to the party.

The next time Jenna dared venture out of the kitchen, Carson McRaven was nowhere in sight. She told herself that odd, hollow feeling in her stomach was simply relief that he was gone and she could finally concentrate on the job at hand.

It certainly wasn’t disappointment.

Chapter Four

“You’ve got company.”

Carson looked up from his computer monitor. His foreman’s wife, Melina—who served as housekeeper at Raven’s Nest—stood in his doorway, a dust cloth in one hand and an amused smirk on her plump features.

“Can you handle it? This is not really a good time for me to be distracted. I’m videoconferencing with Carrianne right now.”

Melina did a little finger wave. “Hi, Carrianne.”

His hyperefficient assistant smiled from the computer screen. “Hello, Melina. How are you?”

“Can’t complain. Except I woke up this morning with a little sciatica, but that should pass when this miserable cold weather eases a little. Sorry to disturb you two while you’re plotting to take over the world or whatever, but I’m supposed to tell you that your visitors are on strict orders to talk to you and no one else.”

“Who is it?”

“You’ll have to find out yourself, won’t you? See you, Carrianne.”

Before Carson could protest, she grinned at him and at Carrianne on the computer screen then walked away. He frowned after her. Neither Melina nor Neil were the most docile of employees, which was probably the reason he liked them both so much.

“Is everything all right?” Carrianne asked.

“Damned if I know but I’d better go see. Can you hang tight for a few minutes?”

“Of course.”

Even if some emergency kept him away all night and unable to reach her, he knew Carrianne would still be waiting by the computer for him in the morning. She was dependable to a fault—and invaluable for it.

The slightest of headaches thudded in his temples in rhythm with the frustration throbbing through him. He didn’t need the distraction right now. He and Carrianne were trying to wrap up several projects before the holidays, a difficult enough task to accomplish via long distance. And even though Christmas was still five days away, the whole business community seemed to have decided to start celebrating early.

His frustration didn’t ease when he reached the foyer and found the three Wheeler boys standing inside the doorway, snow dripping from their parkas onto his custom Italian tile floor. The oldest one, Hayden, he remembered, was holding a couple of small parcels.

Cold poured in from the door they had left open to the outside and he caught a glimpse of two ponies tied to the railing of the front porch. Two horses, three boys. Two must have been forced to double up, a fact he was quite certain didn’t please either of them.

“Hi, Mr. McRaven.” The medium-sized one with the glasses—Drew, he remembered—seemed to have been elected spokesman for the group.

“Hello, boys. What brings you up this way?”

“Our mom sent us.” Apparently, Kip’s trauma of a few days earlier had been forgotten. He seemed to consider Carson his best friend, judging by the wattage of the gap-toothed grin he offered that should have looked ridiculous but seemed rather appealing instead.

“This is for you.” Hayden barely looked at him as he thrust out the parcels and Carson now saw they were clear holiday patterned plastic containers filled with some kind of food items.

“We’re supposed to tell you to put the spinach rolls in the refrigerator. The cookies you can leave out.”

“I hope she gave you snickerdoodles,” Kip said with that grin again. “They’re my favorite.”

“Okay.” He had no idea how to respond to this unexpected visit or to their offerings.

“Tell him what we’re supposed to say,” Drew hissed to his older brother.

Hayden scowled, then spoke in a monotone. “We’re supposed to tell you we’re sorry for trespassing the other day and thank you for bringing Kip home when he fell off the fence and for pulling out our van yesterday when Mom got stuck in the snow.”

“Uh, you’re welcome.” He had absolutely no experience with neighbors who thought they had to bring him cookies. It was a Mayberry moment he found unexpected and a bit surreal. Still, just the thought of having the chance to enjoy more of Jenna Wheeler’s cooking made his mouth water.

“Your house is big,” Kip said, looking around the two-story entry that led to the great room. “It’s like a castle.”

“Grandma Pat says it’s a monster city up here.” The oldest one stated the insult matter-of-factly. “She says you’re only stroking your ego.”

It took him a few moments to figure out “monster city” probably meant monstrosity. Either way, it annoyed him.

“Does she?” he asked evenly, wondering who the hell Grandma Pat might be.

Drew studied him, those green eyes behind the glasses wary. “Is that something mean? What Grandma Pat said?”

Again, Carson felt out of his depth and wondered the best way to usher his bothersome little visitors out the door. “I guess that depends.”

“Grandma Pat says mean stuff like that all the time,” he said, apology in his voice.

“She does not, moron. Shut up.” Hayden punched his shoulder hard enough to make Drew wobble a little and Carson fought the urge to sit the boy down for a long lecture about not mistreating anybody, particularly smaller brothers.

Drew righted himself and stepped out of reach of his brother. “Mom says not to listen to her when she says something mean because she can’t help it. She doesn’t always think about what she’s saying.”

Hayden opened his mouth to defend Grandma Pat but before he could, Kip called out to them from inside the great room. “Hey, where’s your Christmas tree?”

How had the kid wandered away so quickly? One minute he’d been there grinning at him, the next he was halfway across the house. Like wayward puppies, his brothers followed him and Carson had no choice but to head after them.

“Don’t you have a tree?” Drew asked, his voice shocked.

“I have a little one in the family room off the kitchen.” A fourfoot grapevine tree his interior designer had left at Thanksgiving, when he visited last.

“Can we see it?” Drew asked.

“Why don’t you have a big one in here?” Hayden asked, with that inexplicable truculence in his voice.

“I guess I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Don’t you like Christmas?” Kip asked, looking astonished at the very idea.

How did he explain to these innocent-looking boys that the magic of the holidays disappeared mighty damn fast when you lived in the backseat of your druggie mother’s Chevy Vega?

“Sure, I like Christmas. I have a tree at my other house in California.” One that his housekeeper there insisted on decorating, but he decided he didn’t need to give the Wheeler boys that information. “I just haven’t had time to put one up here. I’ve only been here a few days and I’ve had other things to do.”

“We could help you cut one down.” Drew’s features sparkled with excitement. “We know where the good ones are. We always cut one down right by where the creek comes down and makes the big turn.”

“Only this year we couldn’t,” Hayden muttered. “Mom said it would be stealing since it’s on your land now. We had to go with our Uncle Paul to get one from the people selling them at his feed store. We couldn’t find a good one, though. They were all scrawny.”

The kid’s beef was with his mother for selling the land, not with him, Carson reminded himself, even as he bristled.

“You want us to show you where the good trees are?” his brother asked eagerly.

“Drew,” Hayden hissed.

“What? Maybe he doesn’t know. It would be fun. Just like when we used to go with…with Dad.”

The boy’s voice wobbled a little on the last word and Carson’s insides clenched. He didn’t need a bunch of fatherless boys coming into his life, making him feel sorry for them and guilty that he’d had the effrontery to pay their mother a substantial sum to buy their family’s ranch.

“We could take you on Peppy,” the youngest beamed. “Peppy’s the pony me and Drew share.”

“Like three people can fit on Pep,” Hayden scoffed. “He’s so old, he can barely carry the two of you.”

“Maybe he could ride his own horse,” Drew suggested. “It’s not far. So do you want us to help you? We already have our warm clothes on and everything.”

“Don’t be such a dork. Why would he want our help?”

Hayden’s surliness and his brother’s contrasting eagerness both tugged at something deep inside him, a tiny flicker of memory of the one Christmas he had been blessed to stay with his grandparents. He had been nine years old, trying to act as tough as Hayden. His grandfather had driven him on a snowmobile to the Forest Service land above their small ranch and the two of them had gone off in search of a Christmas tree.

He had forgotten that moment, had buried the memory deep. But now it all came flooding back—the citrusy tang of the pine trees, the cold wind rushing past, the crunch of the snow underfoot. The sheer thrill of walking past tree after tree until he and his grandfather picked out the perfect one.

He could still remember the joy of hauling it back to his grandparents’ home and the thrill as his grandmother had exclaimed over it, proclaiming it to be the most beautiful tree they had ever had.

He and his grandfather had hung the lights later that night and he had helped put the decorations up. He had a sudden distinct memory of sneaking out of bed later that night and going out to the living room, plugging in the lights and lying under the tree, watching the flickering lights change from red to green to purple to gold and wondering if he had ever seen anything so magical.

The next Christmas, he had been back with his mother and had spent the holiday in a dingy apartment in Barstow. The only lights had been headlights on the interstate.

He pushed the memory aside and focused on the three boys watching him with varying expressions on their similar features.

He really did need a Christmas tree. It was a glaring omission, one he couldn’t believe he hadn’t caught before now when he had been trying to make sure every detail at Raven’s Nest was perfect. He had guests coming in the next day who would be sure to wonder why he didn’t have one.

He had no good explanation he could offer the Hertzogs, other than his own negligence. He just hadn’t thought of it, since Christmas wasn’t really even on his radar.

He didn’t dislike the holidays, they were mostly just an inconvenience—a time when the whole world seemed to stop working, whether they celebrated Christmas or not.

On the other hand, where the hell was he going to get lights and decorations for a Christmas tree just five days before the holiday?

Carrianne could take care of that, he was quite certain. She would have the whole thing arranged in a few hours, even from California.

“You probably don’t even know how to ride a horse, do you?” Hayden scoffed. “That’s what Grandma Pat said. She says you probably don’t know the back end of a horse from a hole in the ground.”

Grandma Pat sounded like a real charmer.

“I do know how to ride a horse, thanks. I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”

“You’re just sayin’ that.”

He sighed at the boy’s attitude. He never had been good at ignoring a dare. “Give me ten minutes to wrap some things up in my office, then you’re welcome to judge for yourself whether I can ride or not. In the meantime, there’s a telephone over there by the fireplace. Why don’t you call your mother to ask her permission to go with me?”

The two younger boys couldn’t have looked more excited than if he had just offered to let them fly his jet. Hayden, though, looked as if he were sucking on sour apples.

Yeah, kid, I know how you feel, Carson thought as he headed back to his study. He wasn’t that thrilled about the whole situation, either. He should never have opened his mouth. He just had to hope Carrianne could arrange things so he wasn’t stuck with a perfectly good evergreen he had cut down for nothing.

“You’re doing what?”

Certain she couldn’t possibly have heard Drew right, Jenna held the cordless phone closer to her ear and slid away from her sewing machine at the kitchen table and moved into the hall, where she could hear better without the whoosh of the dishwasher and the Christmas carols playing on the radio.

“Mr. McRaven doesn’t have a Christmas tree,” Drew said, in the same aghast tone of voice he might use to say the man kicked baby ducks for fun. “We told him where the good ones are, up above the far pasture, but that we couldn’t go there this year to cut one down ‘cause you said it was stealin’. But since it’s his place now, it’s not stealin’ so he can get one there if he wants. And we’re gonna help him.”

Carson was taking her boys out to cut down a Christmas tree for his gigantic new house? Okay, what alternate universe had she tumbled into while she was sewing new pajamas for the boys?

Or maybe she fell asleep over the sewing machine and this was just some weird, twisted dream. He didn’t like children and didn’t know what to do with them. She didn’t need him to voice the sentiment for her to figure it out. She had seen the vague uneasiness in his eyes every time he had been forced to extricate her boys from one scrape or another.

Why would he suddenly decide to take them to find a Christmas tree? It made no sense.

She shouldn’t have sent them up to Raven’s Nest, she fretted. She had thought the task would be an easy one and would accomplish a couple of purposes—reinforcing to the boys the lesson that it was good manners to express proper gratitude to those who helped them out for one. Getting them out of the house for a while and burning off a little pre-Christmas energy on their ponies was even better.

Now here they were heading off with Carson McRaven to cut down a Christmas tree.

Maybe she should just be grateful instead of worrying about his reasons. The boys had missed not cutting down their own tree this year. The one they found was perfectly adequate but Hayden in particular had been upset at any change in the tradition they had established years ago with their father.

“So can we go with him?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Drew, always the thinker, was never content with a simple answer.

How did she explain to her son that she was fairly certain their neighbor considered them on the same level as magpies or whistle pigs—an inescapable annoyance.

“I just don’t. If he had truly wanted a Christmas tree, I’m sure he would have found one before now, don’t you think?”

“He says he has one in his California house but hasn’t had time to get one here since he’s only been here a few days. Please, Mom. He needs our help. He said he could use it.”

Really? Carson McRaven, cutthroat billionaire businessman said that? He could hire dozens of men to scour the mountainside for the perfect tree. What did he need with three mischievous little boys?

With those killer instincts all her boys had, Drew must have sensed she was wavering. “Please, Mom. Oh please. I promise, we’ll be super good.”

Jenna sighed. The truth was, she could use a little extra time. Jolie was taking a long nap and she had accomplished more in the last hour than she had done all day.

The pajamas she was working on were supposed to be a surprise on Christmas Eve—the boys’ one present she allowed them to open early—and she still needed to finish hemming all three pairs. She enjoyed sewing but didn’t have time for it very often. It seemed like every time she took out her machine, she had to relearn how to thread the bobbin and the rhythm of the thing.

What could be the harm in them going with Carson? He had made the offer, for some completely inexplicable reason.

“I suppose it’s all right,” she finally said. “Behave yourselves and come straight home when you’re done.”

“Thanks, Mom! Thanks a million! Bye.”

Drew hung up before she could give more typical maternal admonishments. She set the cordless phone on the table but she couldn’t quite bring herself to return to the sewing machine yet. Her thoughts were still puzzling over why Carson McRaven would do something so incongruous as to invite her boys along on a tree-hunting trip.

Maybe it was the cookies she’d sent along with the boys to thank him for rescuing them the other day.

No, that couldn’t be it. Sure, they were good but they weren’t quite that good.

Drat the man, anyway. He was supposed to be hard and unfeeling and humorless. It was much easier to dislike him when she considered him simply an arrogant rich man who thought his money could buy anything he wanted.

But in the last few days, she could feel something changing. He had rescued her boys, he had pulled her out of the ditch, he had followed her home to make sure she was safe.

She was beginning to think there was more to Carson McRaven than she wanted to believe.

With another heavy sigh, she turned back to her sewing. Christmas was only five days away and she couldn’t waste another moment obsessing about the man.

“That’s the one, right there.” The lenses of Drew’s glasses gleamed in the sunlight as he beamed up at Carson from his spot standing proudly by a decent-sized blue spruce.

“That is a nice one,” Carson agreed.

“This one’s better,” Hayden insisted from his spot by a gigantic lodgepole pine. “Yours has a big ugly hole on one side, see?”

“Well, yours is way too bushy,” Drew retorted. “How do you think you’re even gonna fit it into the house? It won’t even go through the door!”

An excellent point, Carson wanted to say, but he decided to let them fight it out. He had one picked out already. He had it all figured out. It was just a matter of letting the boys wear themselves out arguing about it for a few more minutes, then he would present his tree as the winner.

In the course of the last half hour with the Wheeler boys, he had begun to finally determine which boy was which and to assess the dynamics between them. In the process, he gained a little more understanding.

Hayden, the oldest, wanted to be boss and was torn between pushing his weight around and trying to pretend he wasn’t enjoying their little excursion. Carson knew it was small of him but he had savored the boy’s reaction when he had led his favorite horse out of the barn, a high-spirited black named Bodie, and effortlessly mounted him. The boy had taken one look at the sleek, elegant lines of the magnificent horse and at Carson’s easy control of him and his eyes had widened to the size of silver dollars.

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