Free A Cowboy For Christmas (A Copper Mountain Christmas) by Katherine Garbera Page A

with the sounds of music from her Christmas CD was masking the one thing that he couldn’t stop thinking about.
    He tugged on the strand of lights and she glanced up at him from where she held the other end and he slowly drew her toward him by coiling the lights in his hand the way he would a lasso.
    “Now about that kiss,” he said when she was standing not an inch from him.
    “ What about it?”
    “ I’d like another chance at it,” he said, pulling her into his arms and taking the kiss that he’d been wanting since he’d held her in the pine tree forest and he’d tasted her tears and her passion.
     

     
    Caution had been her touchstone since Davis had been arrested and her life had fallen apart and for once she wanted to just jump in and forget that there were such things as might-have- beens and regrets. For once she was just going to take what she wanted and, as she’d been doing for the last nine months, she’d deal with the consequences later.
    She wanted this moment. She wanted this man and his kisses. They tasted better than the finest cuisine she’d ever sampled. He felt right when he wrapped those big strong arms around her. He was tall but not so much taller that it was a strain to kiss him. And she really liked that his arms around her and his lips on hers had started to feel like home.
    Or something damned close to it. The fire crackled behind them and the piney scent of the tree mingled with the smells of the lasagna and for a minute it felt like home.
    Home.
    The one place she’d never really found in all her years of searching. But home shouldn’t feel like this, shouldn’t be a person, should it?
    His hands smoothed over her waist and he tugged her off balance until she was pressed breast-to-chest with him. She grabbed his hips and went up on her toes as she thrust her tongue deeper into his mouth.
    He moaned deep in his throat and his hands tightened on her waist and then slid them lower to her butt. He cupped her and pulled her closer until she felt the ridge of his erection nudging her center. She melted and clung to him as he lifted her off her feet. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders.
    She lifted her head and looked down at him. Those big blue Montana sky eyes of his were dilated with passion and she easily read the intent them.
    “ Dinner will be ready in five minutes,” she said, her own voice sounded husky to her ears. “I can turn the oven off and…
    “ I can wait,” he said, giving her a hungry kiss before setting her on her feet. “Just barely, but I can wait. I want this to be about more than sex. Unless you’re just looking for a holiday fling.”
    “ I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” she admitted. “I’m not trying to lead you on, but I’m a mess right now.”
    “ Fair enough,” he said. “Why don’t you go and get dinner ready and I’ll put these lights on the tree. Then we can drink wine and talk and see where the night leads. No pressure.”
    “ No pressure,” she said, but in her mind there was already a lot of it. He was a single dad. He was a Paradise Valley rancher. He was settled. Everything that she wasn’t. She had no idea what she wanted or needed. Only that she really liked Carson.
    She walked into her kitchen listen to the Charlie Brown Christmas CD that had switched on after Diana Krall and wondering when life was going to settle down.
    She’d thought by the time she was thirty she’d have at least figured out how to not be awkward around a guy. But she hadn’t. Part of it she blamed on Davis. Not on him exactly, just on having spent ten years living with him as pleasant roommates and almost strangers.
    But she knew that her awkwardness owed more to her own uncertainty in herself. She pulled the lasagna from the oven and set it on the counter to cool while she made the garlic bread. It was her dad’s recipe for bread and as she melted the butter and added minced garlic and dried garlic powder to