Christmas Kisses (Romance on the Ranch Series #5) (13 page)

What fun I've had writing this Christmas story!
I love the season, especially driving around and viewing all the decorative
lights. I hope I was able to capture enough of the magic of Christmas that it
overflowed the pages of this novella. And what a relief that Cecelia finally
found happiness with Mac in her new town.

As I'm sure you realized while reading the
story, I did some set-up for a future romance. Will Tessa fall in love with
Preston, Sean, or someone else?

As each story builds on previous ones, I'm
finding it challenging to keep the ages of the children consistent to what they
should be. Because I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of writer, I
often find myself rereading the previous books as a refresher. I abhor making
lists. Silly me.

As for the next
Romance on the Ranch
novella, I haven't decided whether to jump a few years ahead with Tessa's
story, or stay closer to this timeframe. I'm considering writing a story about
Sarah's sister who was briefly introduced in book one and would be over fifty
now. There aren't a lot of romances involving the "mature" woman and
I'm toying with the idea of writing one with a sexy "mature" man.

There were many characters in
Christmas
Kisses
that were introduced in
Candy Kisses.
For those of you who
haven't read
Candy Kisses,
I have included an excerpt. It fits nicely
with
Christmas Kisses
and tells the story of Tessa's father and
stepmother, Dirk and Monica Branigan. Because all the stories in this series
can be read as stand-alones, it's okay to read them out of order. Fitting the
families together is easy.

I have also included an excerpt from the
Unconventional
Series.
Writing historical westerns is another of my passions. The excerpt
is from
Abby: Mail Order Bride.

As always, I thank you for reading stories that
made the transition from my mind to paper and I love hearing from you. My email
address is [email protected].

Tooty admonished her boys as they piled out of
the van, "Morgan, stop tormenting your brother! Harris, make sure Morgan
and Eli are careful when they climb the ladder. And when I call you for lunch,
I don't want you dallying around." She grinned. "Oh, and one more
thing—have fun!"

Harris, Eli, and Morgan yelled thanks to their
mom and then shouted for joy as they raced across the drive on a perfect spring
Saturday.

Six months pregnant and with her youngest son,
two year old Austin on her hip, Tooty waited until her boys had reached the
tree house Sage Tanner and Jackson Martinez had just finished building a week
earlier, before climbing her porch steps next to the wheelchair ramp for her
husband.

"I wanna pway wid brothers," Austin
pouted.

"Honey, after I let daddy know we're home
I'll take you to play."

"Otay, Mommy."

On the porch Tooty set Austin down and juggled
the grocery sack so she could open the front door. Glancing around, she made a
mental note to water the bulbs in her window boxes and sweep the debris that
had blown across the porch. Although Miles insisted that she hire help for the
innumerable chores necessary for their family of six—soon to be seven, she
enjoyed working around the home she had inherited before marrying Miles, and
which they had expanded upon by adding three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a family
room, an office, and modernizing the kitchen. The additions were larger than
the original house.

"Miles! I'm home!" Tooty called as
Austin ran to find his daddy. "I ordered the new blinds for our bedroom. I
can't wait 'til they arrive." She entered the kitchen.

Austin had already climbed onto his father's lap
and was grinning from ear-to-ear as he reached for a cookie on a platter in the
center of the table. The strange expression on Miles' face while he talked on
his cell phone alerted Tooty to the fact that something was wrong. Her heart
dropped. Had someone been hurt? Lifting Austin off his lap, she carried him and
his cookie to the family room to play with the myriad of toys always scattered
about.

When she returned, Miles was saying into his
phone, "Hmm. The guy's a rat. Are you going to pursue legal action if you
find him?"

Tooty walked to the sink, poured herself a glass
of water, and then sat across from Miles.

He glanced at her, shook his head and said,
"Monica, let me think about your situation and then I'll call you back."

Tooty's eyes rounded.
Monica!
She jerked
her hand to her mouth in surprise.

Miles watched her reaction and slowly nodded
that it was the same person Tooty suspected.

Snotty Monica, my husband's ex-girlfriend is
calling him!

Miles said, "Don't cry. Everything will
work out." He listened and finished with, "Try not to worry. I'll
talk to you soon." He touched the screen of his cell phone to disconnect
and shook his head again. "I can't believe it."

Tooty, on pins and needles, waited for him to
spill the beans.

"Give me just a minute," he said, and
rolled his wheelchair to the counter to pour a cup of coffee. After opening the
fridge and dousing a healthy dose of cream into his cup, he returned to the
table and sipped.

Tooty said, "Miles, if you keep me in
suspense much longer, I'm going to scream."

Her husband set his cup down. "Monica is
broke, homeless, and…three months pregnant."

"What!" Tooty's eyes rounded like
saucers.

"Seems she got involved with some smooth
talker who convinced her that he was an investment banker, and after they'd
lived together for some months, she invested all of her funds in what she
thought was a high yielding account. A few days later the scumbag left her high
and dry and the authorities think he skipped the country. Then, within the same
week, her company downsized and laid her off." Miles wasn't finished,
"And the next week she discovered she was pregnant after she got an
eviction notice because 'scum bag' hadn't paid the rent like he'd said."

Tooty held her hands to her cheeks in shock.
"What's she going to do…about the baby, I mean?"

Miles smiled and chuckled. "She surprised
me there. She said she's going to keep this baby no matter what. She said if I
could survive having so many children, she could survive having just one."

Still shocked, Tooty asked, "Why is she
calling you? Does she want to borrow money?"

"Actually, no. I offered to give her a
loan, but she refused. She said the reason she'd called, other than having a
shoulder to cry on, was to ask if I had any connections for a new job. She said
she's been applying for positions for a month, with no luck, and I was the only
friend she could think to call."

"Well, that doesn't surprise me. Her not
having friends, I mean. So she hasn't contacted your mom or dad?"

"No. She said she hasn't spoken with them
in over a year and now she's too mortified to do so."

"Well, as you know, she's not on my list of
favorite people after that stunt she pulled in New York. She wanted me to feel
like a hick at that fancy restaurant, and I sure did, but I'm not so vindictive
as to not want things to turn out well for her. I know what it's like to be
alone, pregnant, and rejected by the father of your child."

Miles reached his hand across the small table
and clasped hers. "But I'm eternally grateful that Harris' father turned
out to be such a lowlife. I love you, Tooty, and I love Harris like my own
son."

Tooty lifted the hand of the father of Eli,
Morgan, and Austin and their teeny bun still in the oven, and kissed it.

Abigail picked up the newspaper advertisement
for the hundredth time, read it again, reread it, and tossed it back on the
desk in her library. Smoothing her hand over the sides of her auburn hair and
the bun at the nape of her neck, she pushed her chair back and walked from the
library to the parlor. Pacing the length of the lovely room, she stopped
occasionally to straighten a vase or lift a family photo, all the while
contemplating something so crazy it made her heart pound.

After an hour, she squared her shoulders,
returned to the library, sat at her desk, slipped a piece of stationary from
the drawer, reached for her ink and quill, and wrote:

March
18, 1886

Dear
Mr. Samson,

I
am writing to introduce myself. My name is Abigail Mary Vaughn and I read your
classified advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer seeking a wife to help
raise your three children. I would like to recommend myself. By trade, I am a
teacher and that would benefit your children.

I
have never been married and I am thirty-eight years old. I have lived in
Philadelphia all my life and taught school for the past eighteen years. I am an
only child and my parents died last year so there are no responsibilities
keeping me here. I have always desired my own family, but circumstances of
caring for my elderly parents prevented that.

I
do not believe in withholding information, so I have been candid in my response
to you. I hope to hear from you.

—Miss
Abigail Mary Vaughn

Before she could react and change her mind,
Abigail enclosed the letter in an envelope and asked Harry Puffins, her old
servant, to walk it to the post office not far from her home near the city's
center.

*

Brant removed his cowboy hat and ran a hand
through hair as black as coal. Standing in front of the blacksmith's where he'd
just had his horse shod, he heard his daughter calling from the entrance to
Clyde Jenkins General Store across the street. Clyde, being the most likely
candidate, was also the postmaster for the central eastern Texas town of Two
Rivers. Jenny held her baby brother in one arm and waved letters in the other.
"Hey Pa, you got more mail. Maybe you'll find us a Ma in this bunch."

Brant paused while a buckboard pulled by a
swayback horse ambled past. He waved at old Mr. and Mrs. Snodgrass and then
crossed to the warped boardwalk that ran in front of a dozen businesses.
"Jenny, did you give Mr. Jenkins that list of staples so we can pick them
up next trip to town?"

"Yes sir." She shifted two year old Ty
to her other hip. "One of the letters came all the way from
Philadelphia."

"I'll read them tonight. Where's
Luke?"

"He's still talking to Mr. Jenkins about
ordering some more dime novels."

Brant bent and kissed his baby's forehead.
"Well, run in and tell him it's time to go while I hitch Sugar back to the
buckboard and bring it around. We've got chores to finish up."

"Sure, Pa."

Several minutes after Brant had pulled the wagon
in front of the store, his fourteen year old son sauntered out. Inhaling a
calming breath, he said, "It's nice you could join us, Luke. I'd sure like
to get home before nightfall. If not, you'll be mucking the barn in the
dark."

With a sullen look, Luke hopped onto the back of
the wagon and sat on a sack of grain. Jenny snickered and Ty scrambled to sit
on his big brother's lap. Brant flicked the reins. "Giddup."

After a long evening of chores, Brant finally
collapsed into his favorite chair and propped his feet on the hearth. He could
hear Jenny telling Ty a bedtime story in the room she shared with her baby
brother. No doubt Luke was in the loft devouring another cheap novel.

Leaning his head back, he surveyed his cabin.
Besides his bedroom and Jenny's room, there was an additional bedroom that his
mail order bride would stay in until they got to know each other. His plan to remarry
scared the bejesus out of him, but he was dead set to find a ma for his
children. He closed his eyes and saw Molly's laughing face. God, he missed her.
How he'd loved her. His eyes stung and he blinked rapidly, glancing again
around the combined living, dining, and cooking area that still held her touches
in the curtains and knickknacks. Although modest, the cabin was sturdily built
from the labor of his own hands.

Unable to put it off any longer, he unfolded his
lanky frame and reached for the letters he'd tossed on the mantel. Sighing, he
read more responses to his advertisement, none of which he felt any inkling to
respond to. Damn, but the thought of marrying someone he'd come to know through
a newspaper ad irked him. However, his children needed a mother. Jenny did the
best she could caring for Ty, but she was only ten years old. Guilt plagued him
at the responsibility that had been forced on her. As for Luke, Brant hadn't
been able to bond with his son since Molly's death, and now the boy lost
himself in dime novels. And Ty, his baby, God help him, needed a mother's care.

He fingered the letter from Philadelphia. He'd
placed ads in newspapers, local and cross country, and wondered if the call of
the West would provoke responses from city girls. He'd received a few, but from
the tone of their letters, they'd seemed too high and mighty to live in a humble
cabin on a small ranch. He slipped a thumb under the envelope flap and ripped
it open. The letter was short and written on quality stationary in neat
printing. He read it a couple of times.

Going to his room, he retrieved a paper and his
quill and ink and brought the kerosene lamp to the dining table. Tapping his
jaw, he thought about his response.

May
1, 1886

Dear
Miss Vaughn,

Thank
you for your letter and also your forthrightness. Please tell me more about
yourself and why you would want to marry someone you have never met and mother
children that are not your own.

As
for myself, I will also be forthcoming. I am solely seeking a mother for my
children. If you have romantic notions, I am not the husband for you. My wife
died over a year ago from lung fever. I have two sons, a fourteen year old and
a two year old, and a ten year old daughter. My ranch is small, as is my cabin,
so if you are looking for anything else, I suggest you not respond to this
letter.

As
for your qualifications, they are excellent. My eldest son loves reading. I can
hardly get him to complete his chores without a book in hand. My daughter is
very smart and an avid learner. Both children attended school until their
mother died. My eldest son now helps me on the ranch and my daughter cares for
her baby brother. My desire is for them to return to school after I marry. I am
the son of a teacher so I know the importance of education.

As
for Two Rivers, it is a small town that does not have much in the way of
diversion to keep folks interested.

So,
as you can see, I have not painted a pretty picture. I have written the truth
so as not to waste your time or mine.

—Brant Samson