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

it, she was struck by the memory of her entire family in the kitchen.
    Momma and Daddy laughing with each other as she and her sisters had set the table and danced around to the music playing. Daddy had to have missed that closeness once momma and Gilly had gone to Ohio to see the specialist oncologist. It had to have been hard for him. Gilly’s death from the cancer and her father’s reliance on the bottle had meant that momma hadn’t come back.
    Only as an adult could she see what he ’d lost instead of, through her childish selfishness, only focusing on what she had lost. A different man would have handled the situation in a better way, but her father had done the best he could.
    She sliced the French baguette she ’d bought in town and slowly dipped the bread in the hot butter and placed it on the tray. As she did it she wrapped herself in the memory of the happier times, questioning if she had left Montana searching for the same kind of happiness she’d missed when her mom and sister were gone and their family had shattered.
    She pulled the bread out from under the broiler and wrapped it in a towel in a basket and placed it on the table. It would be so easy to just say yes and let herself fall for Carson. Really fall for him because when she’d been younger she’d been too focused on leaving to ever realize what a great guy he was.
    But was she trading her dreams for someone else ’s again? That was what she’d done with Davis. Was she so easily led that she never knew what she wanted?
    “ You okay?” Carson asked from the door.
    She turned, taking his long, lean frame. Those long legs encased in faded denim that hugged his body in all the right places. The worn cowboy boots that were functional, not fashionable, and the long sleeved Zac Brown Band t-shirt that clung to the muscles of his arms and chest. She wondered why she was thinking so hard on this – on him.
    She wanted Carson and if he made her happy, who cared whose dream it was?
    “Yes,” she said, deciding to stop trying to make everything fit into her ideal of perfect when it was clear that hadn’t worked for her in the past.
    “ I think I am.”
     

     
    Carson knew he was a taking a risk, but since Rainey ’s death he’d hadn’t been much for playing it safe. Life was short – no one understood that better than he did. And Annie had always been the one woman who’d been able to make him feel wild. When they were younger she’d almost convinced him he was meant to leave Marietta... but in the end he knew he’d been right to stay.
    But now that she was back in town… well, only a fool would let the same woman slip away twice.
    Dinner was good and the conversation stilted at times but he didn’t mind it. It felt right, even the odd bits. They were slowly coming to know each other again. He took another sip of the Chianti she was serving and then leaned back, pushing his chair up on two legs.
    “ What’d you do then?” she asked.
    “ Lassoed my son to keep him from running off. You should have seen the looks I got from those soccer moms at the playground.”
    She laughed. “It worked, didn’t it?”
    “ Yes, but then Connie Miller… she was Connie Perkins when were in school, said that three-year-olds weren’t calves and needed to be taught to listen.”
    “ How’d you manage that?”
    “ I have no idea, but Evan liked playing rodeo which was what we’d always called the game, so we still did it when we were at home. But at the park I’d just yell rodeo and he’d stop running away from me.”
    Talking about Evan now made their learning curve seem funny but in reality it had been hard and scary. And that night after Connie had talked to him, he’d lain awake in bed praying to a God he wasn’t sure existed to help him make sure he didn’t screw his son up.
    “ I’m scared to be a parent. Hell, I was scared talking to Evan earlier today that I’d say the wrong thing,” Annie admitted. “I can’t even remember the