The Christmas Ranch

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She mulled that as she opened a can of tomatoes and poured the contents into the saucepan. “Are you on leave, then?”

“I had my twenty years in so I retired.”

It had been the toughest decision of his life, too, but he didn’t add that.

“You gave up your career to take care of your nephew?”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “I’m not quite that noble. I’d been thinking about leaving for a while.” That was somewhat true. As he headed into the tail end of his thirties, he had started to wonder if he still had the chops for what was basically a younger man’s game. He had started to wonder what else might be out there, but he hadn’t been ready to walk away quite yet and had all but committed to re-up for another four years, at least. Everything changed after that phone call from Cami.

“So what will you do now? Are you sticking around Pine Gulch?”

“Only until my sister’s sentencing. I’d like to go back to the San Diego area where I have a condo and a couple of job offers, but she begged me to stay until she is sentenced so she can see her son once or twice. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let Joey finish school here since he has friends and seems to be doing okay.”

“San Diego is nice. Pretty beaches, great weather. An excellent place to raise children.”

He let out a breath, more uneasy at her words than he should be. He was now raising a child. How the he—er, heck was he supposed to do that? The past few weeks had been tough enough. Looking ahead at months and possibly years of being responsible for a boy who wanted little to do with him was more daunting than his first few weeks of BUD/S training.

He would get through this new challenge like he did that hellish experience, by keeping his gaze focused only on the next minute and then the one after that and the one after that.

Right now, the next minute was filled with a beautiful woman in his kitchen, moving from counter to stove to refrigerator with a graceful economy of movement he found extremely appealing. He liked having her here in the kitchen, entirely too much.

Something about her delicate features, the pretty blue eyes and those wild blond curls held back in a ponytail, made his mouth water more than the delicious aromas now wafting from the saucepan she was stirring on the stove.

He wasn’t sure he liked this edgy feeling. As a rule, he tended to favor control, order.

His turbulent childhood probably had something to do with his need for calm. He had a feeling Hope was part of it, too—after the way he had screwed up on his very first mission as a SEAL, he had channeled all his guilt and regret into becoming a highly trained, totally focused, hard-as-titanium special warfare operator.

His platoon members called him Frío, the Spanish word for cold. Not because he was unfriendly or unfeeling but because he generally turned to ice under pressure.

Come to think of it, that need for order might be one of the reasons he and Joey were struggling to find their way together. Seven-year-old boys—especially troubled, unhappy seven-year-old boys—tended to generate chaos in their wake.

He’d need to find a little of that ice water in his veins pronto and remember he had enough to deal with right now without this unexpected and unwelcome attraction to someone who would likely hate him if she knew who he truly was.

* * *

She hadn’t been lying when she said she wasn’t much of a cook, but maybe she had exaggerated a little.

She wasn’t terrible exactly, she just generally didn’t have the patience or time for it. There was something quite satisfying about having one specialty, though, and she could say without false modesty that her red sauce was something truly remarkable.

Rafe Santiago and his nephew were in for a treat—if she could relax enough to finish the job while the man glowered at her from his position leaning against the counter next to the sink.

Why did he seem so familiar? She wished she could place him. It could just be that she had encountered more than her share of big, tough military types.

Usually they turned her off. She tended to gravitate toward scholars and artists, not big hulking dudes with biceps the size of basketballs.

The truth was, Rafe Santiago made her nervous and it was a feeling she was completely unaccustomed to.

She forced away the feeling and focused instead on the red sauce. She gave the pot a stir and then grabbed a clean spoon so she could taste it.

“Mmm. Needs more oregano.” She shook in a little more and stirred a few more times then grabbed another clean spoon to taste again. “There it is. Perfect. See for yourself.”

“I trust you.”

“Come on. Try it.” She held out yet another spoon for him. After a moment, he rolled his eyes then leaned in and wrapped that very sexy mouth around the spoon.

“Right?” she pushed.

He gave a small laugh that held no small amount of appreciation. “Wow. That is much better than anything I could have come up with.”

“Again, to be clear, a good red sauce is literally one of my very few skills in the kitchen. My aunt Mary despaired of me ever learning to even scramble an egg. I have conquered a halfway decent omelet and the red sauce, but that’s about it. Oh, and couscous. I just spent three years in Morocco and you can’t leave the country without at least trying to make tagines and couscous.”

“In the space of five minutes, you’ve gone from starting a club for people who are helpless in the kitchen to spouting culinary words I barely even know.”

“A tagine is both a cooking implement and a dish. Sort of like the word casserole. It’s a pot that comes with a domed lid. Tagines are also very delicious meat and vegetable dishes, kind of like a stew. I make a really delicious one with honeyed lemons and lamb.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Maybe I’ll make it for you sometime.”

As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she wanted to yank them back. Why on earth would she say that? She wasn’t going to be cooking for the man again. She shouldn’t be here now. She had a million other things to do at the moment and none of them had anything to do with fixing a red sauce for Rafe Santiago, even if she was incredibly drawn to the man.

How could she help it, when he talked about giving up his military career to rescue his nephew? It was a wonder she hadn’t melted into a mushy pile of hormones on his kitchen floor.

“So what time will Joey be back?”

He glanced at the clock on the microwave.

“Hard to say. I told him five-thirty. So far obeying the rules doesn’t seem to be one of his strengths.”

She smiled a little at his disgruntled tone. “Well, you’ll want to give the red sauce about fifteen minutes more than that, stirring every few minutes. Don’t forget to stir. Seriously. Don’t forget! I always set a timer to remind me every two or three minutes. If you start your pasta water boiling now, you can add it just as Joey gets back.”

“That’s it? You come in, throw together dinner and then just take off? You could at least stay and eat it with us.”

Oh, she was tempted. If circumstances had been different, she would have jumped at the chance. But, again, she had a million things to do and she couldn’t afford any distractions. Rafe Santiago was the very definition of the word distraction.

“Sorry, but I can’t.”

He gave her a challenging sort of look. “Why not? That would at least give you a chance to finally bring up the reason you came here in the first place.”

She laughed. “Ulterior motive? Me? Why, you suspicious man. You mean I can’t convince you I stopped by just to save you from certain culinary disaster?”

“Yeah, sorry. Not buying it, though I won’t complain about the pleasant secondary outcome.”

Oh, she liked this man. Entirely too much. Again, she thought how familiar he seemed and was vexed that she couldn’t place him.

“All right. You caught me. The truth is, I found an excellent way for Joey to work off the cost of replacing my truck window.”

“I suspected as much.”

“Okay, here’s the skinny. I know you’re not from Pine Gulch but are you at all familiar with The Christmas Ranch?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Well, let me just tell you, sailor, it’s a magical place near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon. My uncle and aunt started it years ago, shortly after they were married. Christmas is kind of a big deal in my family. My family name, Nichols, used to be Nicholas. As in St. Nicholas. You know, the big guy in the red suit with the beard. It was shortened when my ancestors migrated to America several generations ago. Despite that, my uncle Claude and aunt Mary always took the whole holiday thing very seriously.”

“Makes sense.”

“In spring, summer and fall, the Star N is like any other working cattle ranch, with a pretty small herd but enough to get by. But from Thanksgiving to just after the New Year, an entire section of the ranch is set aside to celebrate Christmas. We have a huge holiday light display, sleigh rides, a sledding hill, even a reindeer petting zoo.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “With real reindeer?”

“You guessed it. We have a herd of ten.”

He looked puzzled. “Ten? I thought there were only eight who pulled the big guy’s sleigh. Oh, right. You can’t forget Rudolph. But then who’s the other one?”

“We do have a Rudolph, only we call him Rudy and he doesn’t have a red nose except when we stick one on him, which he hates. We’ve got a bunch more. Glacier and Floe, Aurora and Borealis—we call him Boris for short—Brooks and Kenai and Moraine. Oh, and I can’t forget Twinkle and of course Sparkle. He’s kind of our favorite. He’s the smallest one in the herd and also the sweetest.”

“Okay. And you’re telling me all this why?”

“It’s kind of a long story. Stir the sauce while I tell you.”

He made a small, amused sound at her deliberately bossy tone but headed for the stove anyway and picked up the spoon. She tried not to notice how gorgeous he looked doing it.

“My oldest sister and her husband had been running the Star N for the past few years—that’s the cattle operation—along with The Christmas Ranch, but Travis was killed in a ranch accident this summer.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

She accepted his condolences with a nod, feeling a sharp ache in her chest all over again. Travis had been her friend and she had loved him from the time he came to live with Mary and Claude to help them run the ranch. She would always miss him but she grieved most that her sister had lost her husband and Barrett and Louisa their father.

“Faith—my sister—is understandably overwhelmed. She’s hardly had time to grieve and so she and my aunt Mary and my sister Celeste all decided to take a break from operating the holiday side of things. Since I’m here now and don’t have anything going, I offered to take over and run The Christmas Ranch this year. As you can imagine, I have a gazillion things to do if we’re going to open in little more than a week. That’s where I need Joey’s help.”

“I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think he knows anything about reindeer.”

She made a face. “He won’t need to deal with the reindeer unless he wants to. But I could really use him after school helping me get everything ready in time for our traditional opening the day after Thanksgiving.”

Ten days. She had no idea how she would accomplish the tiniest fraction of what she had to do but she had to start somewhere.

“If Joey can help me every day after school for a few hours that should make us square on the three hundred dollars it’s going to take to replace my truck window.”

“It would be far easier for me to just pay you the three hundred dollars now and be done with it.”

She made a face. “You’re absolutely right. But raising boys into men isn’t about the easy. It’s about consequences and accountability. What lesson would he learn if you stepped in to fix his problem for him?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Fine. I’ll bring him out tomorrow after school. You said it’s in Cold Creek Canyon?”

“Yes. You know where that is?”

“Yes.”

“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then. Thanks. Have him wear boots and warm clothes. And don’t worry. I’ll find something fun for him to do.”

“Sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? Seems only fair, after you did all the work.”

She was extraordinarily tempted. She liked the man, entirely too much, but the hard reality was, she didn’t have a minute to spare. Even the fifteen minutes she had spent here already was too much.

“I appreciate the invitation and I really wish I could, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.”

“I think you’re just chicken your sauce won’t be edible after all, for all your big talk.”

She gave a short laugh. “Wait and see, sailor. Wait and see. Bring that cute nephew of yours over after school, whenever he’s done with homework. We’re on the north side of the road, about three miles up the canyon. You can’t miss it. There’s a sign over the driveway that says The Christmas Ranch.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Great. See you then.”

He started to walk her to the door but she shook her head. “I can find my way out. You need to stay and stir that sauce.”

And she needed to do her best to figure out how she was going to keep from losing her head over a man with hazel eyes, a sweet smile and shoulders made for taking on a woman’s cares.

Chapter Four (#ulink_c7313599-40d6-5fb1-bf9f-3d2411f50b8d)

By the time she finally made it back to the Star N, spaghetti with Rafe Santiago and his nephew sounded like the most delicious thing she could imagine, even if the man somehow ended up burning the sauce again.

She was exhausted and starving and trying not to feel completely defeated at the magnitude of the task ahead of her.

Nothing seemed to be going the way she planned. Of their six regular temp employees in years past, three were unavailable or had already found other positions for the season and one had moved away. Only two of their regulars were available to help this year—Mac Palmer, who had been their Santa Claus for years, and Linda Smithson, who helped out in the gift shop.

She was glad to find workers where she could, at least, but she would definitely need to find extra help—in a town she hadn’t lived in with any regularity in a decade. It was an overwhelming undertaking.

She was most concerned after her last conversation with Dale Williams. The retired schoolteacher had been their general handyman for a decade and also stepped in to play Santa Claus sometimes, trading off with Mac when needed. But he had had bypass surgery just three weeks earlier and wouldn’t be in any shape to help her this year.

She faced the most uphill of uphill battles. A truly epic vertical slope.

While she was tempted to throw in the towel now, before she even started, she absolutely refused.

This might not be the most memorable holiday season The Christmas Ranch had ever enjoyed but she was going to make darn certain it was still a good one.

She repeated the mantra that helped her through the jitters she always had when taking a new teaching job. She could handle this. Heaven knows, she had faced tougher obstacles before.

She and her sisters had survived being kidnapped with their parents by leftist rebels in a foreign country—being held for several weeks in very tiny rooms with no running water and a bucket for a toilet, watching her mother growing increasingly sicker from the cancer ravaging her body while they were helpless to get her the medical help she needed, watching her father die in front of her just when they all thought they would be rescued, then losing her grief-stricken mother just a few months later.