Free A Peyton Family Christmas by Moira Rogers Page A

Mostly
because the road winds around some foothills. The ranch isn’t
actually that big. Just horses.”
    â€œ Everything
I know about horse ranches I learned from questionably accurate
books.”
    â€œ Mm-hmm.
I know all about your dirty cowboy fetish. Plus, I saw the romance
novels you and Mackenzie sent up for Michelle.”
    Kat
actually smiled. “If there aren’t ten stupidly hot men
working for Luciano, I’m going back home.”
    Nick
laughed. “There are a few, and if you tell your cousin I said
so, I’ll deny it.”
    â€œ No
one with eyes would believe it,” Kat murmured. “You don’t
see anyone else.”
    No,
there had been only Derek, for so long it still seemed surreal that
he’d put a ring on her hand and promised to marry her. “I
better not have to come and drag your ass to the wedding on a
purloined jet, by the way.”
    â€œ You
won’t have to. And I thought you didn’t steal the jet.”
    â€œ I
didn’t.” She cleared her throat. “My dad just
doesn’t know I took it.”
    When
Kat laughed this time, it didn’t sound quite so rusty. “You
Peytons rebel in style. I stole Derek’s car once, when I was
nineteen. Never stole a private jet, though.”
    â€œ Stick
with me, kid.” Then she snorted, because she had less than two
years on Kat, but you wouldn’t know if from the way everyone
treated her. “Sorry, it’s not funny. You’re not a
kid any more than I am, but everyone forgets that—including
me—and it sucks.”
    Kat
didn’t bother to lie. “Yeah, sometimes. But I don’t
put up all that much of a fight, especially with Derek. Sometimes he
needs that, and I get it.”
    He
needed it less these days, but it was hard to tell if that translated
to freedom or near abandonment for Kat. “I don’t know
when we’ll get back down to New Orleans, but we’re going
to. I promise.”
    It
had never been easy to hide things from Kat. “Your sister needs
you, and I’ve got some stuff to work through on my own. Derek
is great when you need a champion or a protector, but he’s not
so good at letting you pick yourself up just so you know you can.”
    â€œ Especially
not when he’s used to thinking of himself as your guardian, I
suppose.”
    â€œ God
help your kids, Nick. Maybe, if you’re lucky, he won’t
lock them in a padded room until they’re thirty.”
    After
some of the difficulties Michelle had already experienced in her
pregnancy, Nick would be lucky to escape that same padded room before
their children were born. “Maybe he’ll mellow with age?”
she suggested.
    â€œ Uh-huh.”
Kat’s lips twitched, and she tugged up the high collar on her
coat, presumably to hide her smile. “Here’s to hoping.”
    They
lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive. The guest house came
into view first, followed quickly by the main house, though it was
hard to see anything beyond the outline of twinkling white Christmas
lights in the encroaching darkness. “There it is.”
    â€œ Wow.”
The younger woman used her mitten to clear the fogged window. “It’s huge .”
    â€œ Right?”
Nick was accustomed to the careful use of space in the French
Quarter, and it had taken her a while to get used to the sprawl of
the ranch house. “You’ll get lost a few times, there’s
no way around that.”
    Kat
was still staring, eyes wide. “I don’t know what I was
expecting. All of you crushed into a house like Alec’s, maybe.
No wonder Luciano doesn’t mind all the guests.”
    In
addition to the second, smaller house used for visitors, Derek and
Luciano had been talking about adding another wing to the main home.
“Not guests,” Nick corrected as she parked and shut off
the engine. “Family.”
    â€œ Family,”
Kat echoed