A Cowboy Christmas Miracle (Burnt Boot, Texas Book 4) (10 page)

Naomi breezed out from behind the bar, where she’d been talking on her phone for the past half hour. Her eyes were barely slits and her face looked worse than Tanner had described Mavis’s when the fire started. “I’ve called Tyrell a dozen times, and there isn’t an answer. So I sent Eli, Randy, and Hart to see where he was. He’s not at the ranch or on his way here. Those rotten Brennans have stolen our Santa Claus. I intend to kick Mavis’s sorry butt all the way to the cemetery and make her dig her own grave.”

“Granny, maybe he was running a little late. You know Tyrell is never on time. And maybe he took a different route that took longer.”

“Nope, the Brennans have kidnapped him to retaliate for that fire. Now what are we going to do?” Naomi wrung her hands.

“I’ll do the best I can,” Betsy said.

She took a deep breath and wove her way through the thick crowd to the truck. Someone stepped forward and helped her up inside the bed with Tanner, and she took the microphone from his hands. “There’s been an accident, folks. Seems Santa was thrown when a big, mean rattlesnake spooked the horse. He’s been taken to the hospital to get his arm stitched up, so he can continue to work on toys until Christmas Eve. Don’t worry. He just now talked to me on the phone and said that other than some mud in his pretty white beard and that cut on his arm, he’s fine. But he wants me to sit in his chair and listen to what you want for Christmas. I’ve got a good memory, so I can tell him every single thing, and Tanner here is going to take the pictures. So line up and let’s get this show on the road.”

Tanner took the microphone from her hands. “Hey, kids, let’s give a big shout up to the sky to Santa Claus for doing his best and remember to watch out for snakes.”

The kids yelled so loud that if Tyrell really had been in a Gainesville hospital, he could have heard it.

“Where is he really?” Tanner whispered as he helped her over the side of the truck and followed her back into the bar.

“The Brennans have probably kidnapped him because of the fire. Hope it was worth it,” Betsy said.

“We’ll get even,” Tanner said through gritted teeth.

* * *

At daybreak, Betsy got a phone call from Tyrell. The kidnappers had taken his beard and his Santa boots. He’d ridden to a motel on the north side of Dallas and rented a room. His horse was tied to a tree, and he was going to sleep until someone came to rescue them. He gave her the number on the phone beside his bed. “Call me after you talk to Granny, please.”

Betsy sighed. “You could ride the horse home. Granny might be cooled down enough to put away the shotgun by the time you got here.”

“Quit teasing me and go tell Granny.”

“Who says I’m joking? Why didn’t you call her to begin with?”

“I know you can smooth it over with her. Come on, Betsy. I’ll owe you one.”

“And I will collect,” she said as she hit the End button on the phone.

She stretched and knuckled her eyes before she went downstairs to talk to her grandmother. “Tyrell called,” she said and gave Naomi the story and the motel’s number.

Naomi reached for her phone as she spoke. “I’m going to murder Mavis one of these days.”

On the way back up the stairs, her phone rang and a picture of Tyrell’s smiling face appeared on the screen.

“Yes, Tyrell?” she said.

“Is she mad? Is she coming after me?”

“Yes, she’s mad and if you beg, she might bring you home with that horse. She’s more worried about him than you right now. What happened?”

“One minute, I was riding along humming ‘Jingle Bells,’ and the next, I was jerked off my horse and something stung my neck. I woke up in a barn with no boots. It’s cold riding a horse ten miles with nothing but socks on your feet.”

“At least you had your Santa suit to keep you warm. Were you aware of the fire?”

“It was my idea.” He laughed.

“Paybacks are a bitch.” She turned her phone off and went back to sleep.

Betsy was glad there was turmoil in the house because no one even knew when she snuck out that evening or noticed that the backseat and passenger seats in her truck were filled with boxes. After a trip by a flooring store and an office supply place, she was on her way to the address written on the paper in her pocket.

The storage place turned out to be closer to Lindsey than Gainesville, and the units were behind a white, six-foot-high privacy fence with a coded entrance. Betsy took out the paper, rolled down the window, and punched in the numbers at the bottom. The gates swung to the inside, and there was Declan, down at the very end, with a couple of teenagers who were helping him take things from the back of his truck. He waved and propped an elbow on the front fender.

Was he crazy or stupid? Or did he have an acute case of both? For this to work, it had to be wrapped tightly in secrecy, and he’d brought help to unload? By the time she backed her truck in beside his, she was ready to strangle the cowboy.

“What are you thinking?” she fumed as she got out of her truck.

“Evidently the same thing as you. That’s not Christmas in the back of your truck. I see carpet, a credenza thing, and a brand-new oak file cabinet, right?”

Her hands went to her hips and she would have gone nose to nose with him, but he was too damned tall. “I’m not talking about donations. Why did you bring those guys to help unload? This is a secret, remember?”

“I paid for the rental space and since I got the biggest one in the place, it comes with help as needed. Those two guys are the sons of the man who owns the place, and I doubt very much if they’re interested in Burnt Boot. And has anyone ever told you that you are cute when you’re mad?”

Desire replaced anger immediately when he grinned. “So what have you got to contribute to the cause?”

She playfully slapped his arm and brought back a tingling hand in a blast of brightly colored sparks. He grabbed her hand and pulled her against him so tightly that she could feel his racing heartbeat.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he said.

“Hey, Mr. Wiseman, does your wife need help with that big old cabinet before we leave?”

“Yes, she does,” Declan said.

“Wiseman? Wife?” she whispered.

“Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wiseman. It’s the best I could do on the spur of the moment. And you are Mrs. Wiseman, don’t forget it.”

She pushed away from him and rounded the back of her truck, where she could see inside the storage place. There was a gorgeous new desk and two nice wingback chairs along with a black leather desk chair. “I guess you noticed the condition of Kyle’s office too.”

“I did and figured we could make it a two-for-one collection.”

She peeked inside the storage unit and gasped. “Good grief, Dec…I mean Joe. You could park a couple of semis in this thing.”

“It was the last one we had.” The guys brought in the file cabinet and started to put it among the things they’d already unloaded.

“Oh, no, that goes on this side.” Betsy pointed.

The guys looked at Declan, who shrugged and chuckled. “The wife and I are having a competition.”

“What does the winner get?”

Declan wiggled his eyebrows, and they both laughed.

They brought in the rolled carpet next and laid it on Betsy’s side.

“I’d work real hard if I were you, man,” the tallest one said.

“I really want to win, so I am working hard.” Declan nodded and handed them each a ten-dollar bill. “Just a little something for all the work.”

“But we come with the territory. Our daddy pays us well, but we thank you,” the shorter one said.

“We can get the rest of it. You guys go on,” Betsy said.

“Yes, ma’am, and good luck on the competition.”

She waited until they were gone to look around. The whole thing was the size of four normal storage units, half the size of a small warehouse. Even with the new desk taking up space on his side, it still looked empty. Her thirty items weren’t going to fill up much more space.

It was as if he’d read her mind when he said, “We still got time to bring in more stuff, and we don’t have to wait until Thursday if we have a truckload. And I promise, it was the last unit available at a place with a privacy fence. That pink truck of yours could be spotted a mile away.”

She paced off the distance from one wall to the other and stared back. “This is the halfway mark, right here at that stud. I’ll mark it so we’ll know which side belongs to the Brennans and which to the Gallaghers.”

* * *

Declan’s nostrils flared in anger. “I thought this was a joint effort. I didn’t realize it was part of the feud that you keep saying you hate so much.”

She whipped around to face him, her green eyes flashing. “It is a joint effort, but how else do we mark our territory? You are a Brennan, and I am a Gallagher.”

He stormed outside, gulped in lots of cold air, grabbed the duct tape from the back of his truck, and met her coming out as he started back inside. “You wouldn’t happen to have some paper in your truck, would you?”

“I thought you’d left,” she said.

“Not without settling this. You want a division, we’ll have it, but it’s got nothing to do with the feud. Understand?”

Betsy nodded, but her expression said she could still chew up his belt like beef jerky. “What do you want paper for?”

“We need two sheets. Size does not matter. I’ll show you rather than tell you,” Declan said coldly.

The stud she’d used to mark the center of the space had a green streak on it, probably where someone had scraped it with a piece of painted furniture. Declan had seen it when she was stepping off the distance, so he used that as his reference. When she returned, he was laying out a line of duct tape from one side to the other.

“I guess that’s good enough. Here’s the paper you asked for,” she said.

“Hold on to it until I get finished,” he said and then added, “Please.”

She sat down in one of the office chairs and waited. When he finished, he held out his hand, and she put the paper in it. He whipped a pen from his pocket and wrote “Wife” on one piece and “Husband” on the other and taped them down firmly at the corners right under the steel beam with the green smudge.

When she gasped, all the anger left his body and he chuckled. “You wanted a division. Now you’ve got it. No feuding in this place.”

“Just writing that could bring the wrath of two families down on your head, Mr. Wiseman.” She smiled.

He sat down in the other office chair and said, “Yes, it could, Mrs. Wiseman, but this is a secret, remember? And a wife can never testify against her husband, or him against her, so this will keep us safe.”

Declan could hardly keep his eyes off the way her jacket fell to the sides, bookending breasts encased in a tight, dark-green knit shirt. It was the same color as her eyes and enhanced her thick, red hair.

“You ever think about being a wife?” Declan asked.

“Granny thinks about it enough for both of us,” she answered. “What about you?”

“Those kind of thoughts scare the devil out of me.” He grinned.

Betsy laughed—not a giggle, not a chuckle, but one of those bursts that come from the gut and soul. Declan liked the sound of it as it bounced around the cavernous space surrounding them.

“But now a husband,” he went on, “is something I hear about daily, especially now that Leah is married. I should be settling down and having a family. The ranch depends on me, and I need a wife to help me do that. I told Granny that she was training Honey to run the ranch and no house was big enough for two women. Know what she said?”

Betsy nodded emphatically. “To build your own house and fill up a yard with little Brennans to carry on the feud when she was gone.”

“They’re an awful lot alike to be such enemies, aren’t they?”

“That statement could bring down the wrath as much as the two words on that paper.” She laughed again. “But yes, they are alike. And so are all their offspring. We’re all ranchers, all go to church, and the kids in our families go to the same school.”

Who would have thought that a storage unit with boxes of Christmas decorations and office furniture could be so peaceful? Or that sitting in it with Betsy Gallagher could make him happier than he’d ever been in his life? Maybe it was because they’d left the feud outside and they were just a man and a woman, Mr. and Mrs. Wiseman, enjoying a quiet Monday evening.

“I hear you loud and clear,” Declan said.

“I don’t think the rest of my stuff is going to unload itself,” she finally said.

“Or mine. I only had the guys help with what was in the back of the truck. Want to get some ice cream after this and take it to the parking lot at the kid’s zoo?”

“It’s too cold for ice cream,” she said as she pushed up out of the chair.

“Then how about hot sweet potato fries?”

Her eyes glittered in the dimly lit room. “And a latte from Starbucks to chase it?”

He followed her out of the building. “Or a bottle of Jack to share. That would warm us up real good.”

She opened the back door of her truck and took out the first box. “After last night, I don’t think Granny would get a single one of us out of jail if we got caught drunk driving. That was some stunt, stealing Santa Claus like y’all did. And besides, she’s made me promise to drink less.”

“Holy smoke, Betsy. I didn’t think anyone had that kind of power over you.”

“It was to shut her up more than anything else. Don’t stand there and tell me that you haven’t done things to shut your granny up,” she said.

He threw up both palms defensively. “More than once, and for the record, I didn’t even know about Santa getting kidnapped until this morning. And, I might add, that was some stunt y’all did, burning baby Jesus down to nothing but a big clump of stinky plastic. But we leave all that at the door, Mrs. Wiseman. In our new home, we are not Brennans or Gallaghers, but the Wiseman couple who are collecting things for our church.”

What would it be like if that were really true, if they were two normal people, say with names like Jones and Smith? Could Declan, or any other man, live with the fiery Betsy Gallagher?

“What an idea,” he mumbled, not knowing she was right behind him.

“Idea?” she asked.

“Just thinking out loud.”

“Be careful. That could get you in a whole mess of trouble. So what all did you collect? Did you make a list?”

He set down the boxes on his side of the tape and shook his head. “Way I figure it is if we get too much, then Kyle can donate it to another church. I counted each person that gave, not what they gave. Some only handed me a box of ornaments they didn’t need anymore, but some gave two or three items. Their names are right here, not so much to prove anything to you but to keep me straight, so I don’t go back to them again.”

“I did the same. Seems the fair way to go, doesn’t it? I’ve got thirty names and the promise of a shed built from old barn wood next week. We’ll have to open up those garage doors at the end of this thing to get it inside,” she said.

“I’ve got a manger coming and six hay bales.” He started back out to his truck for more boxes.

She followed behind him. “Have you seen the inside of the parsonage in the past few years?”

He shook his head. “I hope it looks better than the church office, or his poor little wife is going to cut and run right back over the border to Oklahoma.”

“She might anyway when she realizes that she’s walking into this feud and that the two grannies of the town are the she-coons in the whole thing,” Betsy said.

He held up a finger. “Do we need to get a jar and put a ten-dollar bill in it every time we mention what isn’t supposed to be talked about in this room?”

She clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oops! Won’t happen again. That’s all of my stuff, and now I’m ready for sweet potato fries. I’ll make a deal with you. You go get a couple of large orders of those, and I’ll go by Starbucks for lattes, and we’ll meet at the park.”

“You got it. Only this time, we eat at my apartment,” he said.

A puzzled expression crossed her face. “Where? Do you have an apartment in town?”

“If this is our home, then our trucks are our apartments,” he said. “It’s the Wisemans’ inside joke. And I’d rather have hot chocolate, please, ma’am.”

“You got it,” she said. “Do we have two keys or just one?”

“One to keep us honest,” he answered. “You’ve got the one to the church. I’ve got this one. If you need to unload something, leave me a message in a can on Thursday when you take in the programs.”

He snapped the padlock shut, walked beside her, and opened the truck door so she could get in. “See you at the zoo.”

“This is not a date, Declan. You don’t have to open doors for me.”

He leaned into the truck, cupped her face in his hands, and watched her eyes flutter shut as he leaned in for a kiss. Yes, sir, it was every bit as fiery as the one in the movie theater had been, so that hadn’t simply been a fluke. There was red-hot, steamy chemistry between him and Betsy.

Her mouth opened enough to invite him inside, and he teased her tongue with his, tasting a mixture of cinnamon and coffee. The kiss went from sweet to passionate and sent him into instant arousal. He wanted Betsy, and with that rotten bet in place, plus everything else, it was an impossible situation.

He broke away and brushed a quick kiss on her forehead. “You drive careful now, Mrs. Wiseman, and don’t spill the fancy latte and my hot chocolate. See you in a few minutes.”

* * *

Cowboys like Declan should come complete with a blister pack attached to their belt buckles that held some of those little anti-hot-flash pills. No wonder the women flocked around him like flies on sugar. Any man that could make a woman’s hormones start whining like Betsy’s were right then could probably turn her whole body into nothing but a mass of quivering desire with a bout of hot sex.

“I wouldn’t need to marry him. Taking him to bed would be plenty good enough for me,” Betsy muttered as she drove through the security gates and turned right toward the Starbucks.

There was a line six cars long, and the first five must’ve ordered a dozen drinks each because it took forever for her to get to the window. If she hadn’t been blocked in so tight, she would have parked and gone inside, but there was nothing to do but wait, and Betsy was impatient, jittery from that kiss, and the adrenaline rush wouldn’t die down no matter how many Christmas songs on the radio she sang along to.