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The Amish Christmas Cowboy
Jo Ann Brown
A cowboy for Christmas or another year in the Amish Spinster Club?Nanny Sarah Kuhns has her hands full with kinder, her overbearing brothers and her big dreams. And it only gets worse when she takes on the care of an injured cowboy.For Amish travelling horseman Toby Christner, tight-knit Harmony Creek represents everything he’s run from. Until he heals, he can’t leave…but will falling for Sarah make him want to stay?
A cowboy for Christmas...
or another year in the Amish Spinster Club?
Nanny Sarah Kuhns has her hands full with kinder, her overbearing brothers and her big dreams. And it only gets worse when she takes on the care of an injured cowboy. For Amish traveling horseman Toby Christner, tight-knit Harmony Creek represents everything he’s run from. Until he heals, he can’t leave...but will falling for Sarah make him want to stay?
JO ANN BROWN has always loved stories with happily-ever-after endings. A former military officer, she is thrilled to have the chance to write stories about people falling in love. She is also a photographer and travels with her husband of more than thirty years to places where she can snap pictures. They have three children and live in Florida. Drop her a note at joannbrownbooks.com (http://www.joannbrownbooks.com).
Also By Jo Ann Brown (#ubc44ee9f-cdcd-5677-b51a-ea9bf2c01656)
Amish Spinster Club
The Amish Suitor
The Amish Christmas Cowboy
Amish Hearts
Amish Homecoming
An Amish Match
His Amish Sweetheart
An Amish Reunion
A Ready-Made Amish Family
An Amish Proposal
An Amish Arrangement
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Amish Christmas Cowboy
Jo Ann Brown
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08618-9
THE AMISH CHRISTMAS COWBOY
© 2018 Jo Ann Ferguson
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Toby had seen Sarah offer a consoling hand to the kinder, but he hadn’t expected her to treat him with the same familiarity.
“I know how difficult that is,” she said.
Did she? Or, he wondered, was she referring to what made her eyes dim? He was curious what it was Sarah wanted to do when she seemed so content living in the new Amish community. The longing for roots among Plain folk gripped him, but he pushed it aside.
“You’re like the kinder. If there’s something you don’t want to do, you need a goal to convince yourself to do it.”
“What is this goal you’ve got in mind?”
“If the doktor’s opinion says your ankle can handle the exertion, I’ll ask Mr. Summerhays to arrange for you to spend a day at his stables in Saratoga.” She grinned. “Enough of a challenge for you, cowboy?”
His efforts to keep a wall between them had been futile. She was able to see within him to know what he’d prize.
He was getting in too deep with her but, for once, he didn’t retreat. He was leaving as soon as he healed, so why not enjoy a challenge—and her sweet smile—until then?
Dear Reader (#ubc44ee9f-cdcd-5677-b51a-ea9bf2c01656),
Family...
The most important people in our lives are our families. Some are related by blood. Others come into our lives in different ways. They’re the people who matter the most, the ones we’d risk anything for...and the ones who drive us crazy at times. We get the angriest at our family because what they think and do and feel matter deeply. Like Sarah and Toby, we have to learn to understand and forgive our families, something that can be more difficult than forgiving friends or strangers. We must come to see that what annoys us is coming from a place of love, a place where we are truly blessed.
Visit me at www.joannbrownbooks.com (http://www.joannbrownbooks.com). Look for my next story in the Amish Spinster Club series, coming soon.
Wishing you many blessings,
Jo Ann Brown
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
—Acts 4:32
For Melissa Endlich.
Thank you for making me feel so welcome
in the Love Inspired family.
Contents
Cover (#ue951b9cc-2ba4-581b-90a1-2fc43cc33278)
Back Cover Text (#ucd871501-28ca-5660-987e-09f82bdd8c07)
About the Author (#ua6cfc411-01c4-572e-a9df-c89c5f6a76ef)
Booklist (#u16837be6-a785-53a7-af45-b6c9b7bb497b)
Title Page (#uc1612ea4-8324-579e-a4e5-ed6f451e20be)
Copyright (#u0897f9af-deb5-52bf-a330-544f5af05523)
Introduction (#u498b0005-13ae-5be7-be03-541b0b93bb94)
Dear Reader (#u507aebfe-cb39-551f-bd73-c713094d9b7a)
Bible Verse (#uacff47a9-7169-502c-ae9b-409c58a88254)
Dedication (#ue04e3ce9-7116-5973-86ba-1a0926f63ab2)
Chapter One (#u86b2a54c-1c22-5142-b1a3-f46fb00942f2)
Chapter Two (#u8735b939-930c-59cc-a0da-eec1911f5f3f)
Chapter Three (#u8b02f48c-e7a9-540e-bba5-1278664a74e7)
Chapter Four (#uc78e376a-08b1-53c3-888f-b09d7c71ff65)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ubc44ee9f-cdcd-5677-b51a-ea9bf2c01656)
Harmony Creek Hollow, New York
“Guess what, Sarah?”
The last thing Sarah Kuhns wanted to do was play a guessing game with Natalie Summerhays, the oldest of the four kinder in the house where Sarah worked as the nanny. At ten, Natalie was poised partway between being a kind and standing on the precipice of becoming a teenager.
“What?” Sarah asked as she wondered why anyone with small kinder would build a house with columns within a youngster’s reach from the bannister on the staircase curving above the elegant entry’s marble floors. She’d talked four-year-old Mia into letting Sarah pluck her off one fluted column. Ethan, who at five years old considered himself invulnerable, wasn’t willing to give up his attempt to touch the ceiling twenty feet above the floor.
God, grant me patience, she prayed as she did often while watching the Summerhays kinder. Please let this be the last time I have to save these little ones from their antics. At least for today...
Motioning with her hands, she called to Ethan again, “Komm, kind.”
His head jerked around, and he grinned as the kinder often did when she spoke to them in Deitsch. For some reason, they found the words she used at home funny. She had no idea why.
Ethan’s blond hair fell into his blue eyes, and he reached to push it aside. With a yelp, he began to slide down the column.
Sarah leaned over the bannister, praying it wouldn’t collapse or her glasses wouldn’t slip off and crash to the floor. She caught the little boy’s shirt as he dropped past her. He shrieked, and she wrapped her fingers in the fabric. With a big jerk that resonated through her shoulders, she flipped him across the rail and into her arms. The motion knocked her from her feet, and she sat hard on a step.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she held the little boy close. He shook, and she cuddled him to her. Maybe he understood how he could have been hurt.
Then she realized he was laughing! He thought the whole thing had been fun. When he squirmed to get out of her hold, she tightened it.
She felt sorry for the four kinder who always were looking for ways to be noticed. Their parents were busy—Mr. Summerhays with his businesses and his racehorses and Mrs. Summerhays redoing her wardrobe and the house every two to three months—and they paid little attention to their kids. Even when one or more acted outrageously, the mischief seldom registered with their busy parents.
Carrying Ethan down the stairs while leading Mia by the hand, Sarah said, “You told me you wouldn’t climb the columns again.”
“We didn’t climb them,” Mia said with the aplomb of a four-year-old attorney arguing a legal loophole in a courtroom. “We got on them up there.”
Sarah resisted rolling her eyes as she put Ethan on his feet. The youngsters nitpicked everything. In the nine months since she’d taken the job as nanny, she’d learned to be specific when setting parameters for them. Apparently, she hadn’t been specific enough.
How her friends in the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club would laugh when she told them about this! They were getting together that evening to attend the second annual Berry-fest Dinner to benefit the local volunteer fire department. She wondered if her friends had guessed that she told them less than a quarter of the “adventures” her charges got into each day. She tried to head the kinder off before they were hurt, but didn’t want to hover over them. Being overprotective wasn’t gut for anyone. She knew that too well.
“Sarah!” Natalie stamped her foot. “Did you hear me?”
“Just a minute.” Frowning at the younger kinder, she ordered, “No more getting on the columns anywhere.”
