The Last Wicked Scoundrel (15 page)

From Emma Cane, Jennifer Ryan, and Katie Lane come three wildly romantic holiday stories featuring snowstorms, proposals, a sleigh ride . . . and, yes, cowboys.

The Christmas Cabin
by Emma Cane

Sandy and her five-year-old son, Nate, are Christmas tree–hunting when a snowstorm strikes and an old ranch hand points them to an abandoned cabin. Little does Sandy know, the hand sent cowboy Doug Thalberg to the same place. It’s a Christmas all of Valentine Valley will remember.

Can’t Wait
by Jennifer Ryan

Before The Hunted Series began . . .

Though she is the woman of his dreams, Caleb Bowden knows his best friend’s sister, Summer Turner, is off limits. He won’t cross that line, which means Summer will just have to take matters into her own hands if she wants her cowboy for Christmas.

Baby It’s Cold Outside
by Katie Lane

Alana Hale hits the internet dating jackpot when she finds Clint McCormick. He’s sensitive and responsible—not to mention wealthy. When he invites her to spend the holidays on his family’s ranch, she readily accepts. But on the way there, a blizzard strands her with a womanizing rodeo cowboy who could change everything . . .

An Excerpt from

SANTA, BRING MY BABY BACK

by Cheryl Harper

A bride abandoned at the altar . . . just in time for Christmas? ’Tis the season for second chances at Cheryl Harper’s Elvis-themed Rock’n’Rolla Hotel.

T
here was something about Grace Andersen that made him want to help, even after decades of trying to guard his mother and her money against personalities and stories like hers.

He wouldn’t mind being Grace Andersen’s hero.

To avoid doing something stupid, Charlie turned to go but stopped when she added, “Oh, Charlie, could you do me a favor?”

She shuffled toward him, the rustle of the wedding dress sweeping the floor loud in the silence. “Could you unzip me? I thought I was going to dislocate a shoulder getting it zipped in the first place.” She turned and bent her head so that all Charlie could see was the smooth, pale skin of her shoulders and the loose dark hairs that tickled her neck.

When he didn’t move quickly enough, she turned her head to look at him over one perfect shoulder.

Remembering to breathe became a struggle again.

He forced himself to step closer. He grasped the zipper with one hand and slid the other under the fabric. The zipper made a quiet hiss as it slid down the curve of her back, every centimeter showing more beautiful skin.

And out of the blue he wondered if unzipping Grace Andersen would ever get old. Finished, he took two steps away to keep from smoothing his hands over her shoulders like he wanted, or tracing a finger down her spine just to see goose bumps.

She turned her head. “Thanks.”

As he pulled the door closed behind him, Charlie tried to remember the last time he’d seen anyone as pretty as she was in real life. Never. But she wasn’t his type. He preferred career women who wore glasses and looked like they could reel off stock prices or legal precedents. He liked women with sharp minds and sturdy savings. He’d had enough excitement growing up with Willodean McMinn Holloway Luttrell Jackson. Now all he wanted was a comfortable home, an easy, companionable, stable relationship, and maybe a baby to keep things interesting. Maybe.

Grace Andersen looked like . . . magic.

He propped his hands on his hips and shook his head as he looked out at the guitar-shaped pool that was covered for the season.

Magic?
He hadn’t been in the hotel for a full twenty-four hours and already his mind was going. Something about being that close to her had melted it. But Grace Andersen was just a woman. She’d been left at the altar but didn’t seem too broken up about it. He hoped her new plan, whatever it was, included checking out of the hotel immediately. Beautiful Grace Andersen might have the ability to wreck his goals along with his logic if she stayed.

An Excerpt from

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CHRONICLES: GRACE

by Lori Wilde

(Originally appeared in the print anthology
The Christmas Cookie Collection
)

New York Times
bestselling author Lori Wilde returns to Twilight, Texas, for another delightful holiday installment of her
Christmas Cookie Chronicles
. And this time, a young couple are thrilled to expect the greatest gift of all: a new baby!

The perfect Christmas starts with the perfect tree . . .

F
lynn MacGregor Calloway put a palm to her aching back, wrapped her other arm around her pregnant belly, canted her head, and studied the spindly-branched, lopsided Scotch pine. After much wrestling and a few choice words, she’d managed to get it set up in a corner of the living room in the cottage she shared with her husband, Jesse.

She’d wanted to surprise him, so she’d waited until after the morning wedding of Jesse’s father, Sheriff Hondo Crouch, and his bride, Patsy Cross, before she’d slipped down to the Christmas tree lot and, using Jesse’s pickup truck, drove the tree home. Jesse had volunteered to drive the newlyweds to DFW airport to catch a plane bound for a Hawaii honeymoon, so he had taken their sedan because three people and luggage fit in it better, giving Flynn plenty of time to get it done.

The glow from the icicle lights dangling on the eaves outside slanted through the window and shone through some of the more meager limbs.

Okay, so it wasn’t quite a Charlie Brown tree, but it was close and clearly not what Maven Styles, the author of
How to Host the Perfect Christmas
, had in mind when she declared that an impeccable holiday began with the perfect tree.

Then again, Maven Styles probably wasn’t on a newlywed student’s tight budget that required her to wait for Christmas Eve, when they marked down the trees. Flynn had picked this one up for five dollars, and she was proud of her bargain. Maybe not proud, but it was a real tree, not artificial, and seven feet tall. She should get points for that, right? All it needed were a few decorations to spiff it up.

She couldn’t regret cutting corners. The baby had been a surprise, a very welcome surprise to be sure, but their finances had taken an added hit because of it. Between scraping together money for her college tuition, the cost of rebuilding Jesse’s motorcycle shop after the fire, exorbitant health insurance for the self-employed, and getting ready for the baby’s arrival, they hadn’t much money left to spend on holiday celebrations. Their situation was a temporary setback, she knew that, but part of her couldn’t help feeling wistful that their last Christmas with just the two of them was going to be as sparse as that scraggly Scotch pine.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself
, she scolded.
Plenty of people have it much worse
.

By tightly pinching pennies all year and keeping an eagle eye out for sales, she’d managed to save just enough to buy Jesse a new leather jacket to replace the one he’d worn since high school. She couldn’t wait to give it to him on Christmas morning. For now, it was wrapped and stowed in the trunk of their car. He’d had so little growing up that she ached to give him everything his heart desired. Which was why she’d checked
How to Host the Perfect Christmas
out of the library, hoping she could pick up a few pointers.

A cardboard box filled with decorations from her childhood sat on the floor. Flynn peeled back the tape and opened the flaps. Her mother had had the habit of either buying or making one special ornament to commemorate each Christmas.

As she removed them from the box, each decoration stirred a memory—the candy canes made out of bread dough and shellacked (crumbling a bit now with age) that she and her younger sister, Carrie, had helped their mother bake in 1992. The twin wooden toy soldiers her mother’s best friend, Marva Bullock, had given her after the twins, Noah and Joel, were born; and the last ornament her mother had ever purchased, a delicate red glass ball inset with a tiny nativity scene.

Air stilled in her lungs. Although her family hadn’t known it at the time, the red glass ball represented the last perfect Christmas before her mother had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Tears misted her eyes.
Oh, Mama. You’ll never know your grandchildren.
With a knuckle, she wiped away the tears. Should she put the ornament on the tree? It would stir painful memories every time she looked at it. And yet the ornament was a shining reminder of that one perfect Christmas when her family was last together and whole.

An Excerpt from

DESPERATELY SEEKING FIREMAN

A Bachelor Firemen Novella

by Jennifer Bernard

From
USA Today
bestseller Jennifer Bernard comes the steamy story of a sexy bachelor fireman and the woman who will turn his life around.

Wayside Chapel, San Gabriel, California

T
he groom’s side of the aisle was packed with an astonishingly high number of gorgeous men. Nita Moreno, standing near Melissa McGuire—soon to be Melissa Brody—surveyed the pews with widening eyes. There was enough testosterone in the building to fuel a small nation’s army. Enough handsome, manly faces to fill an issue of
Playgirl
. Enough brawny muscles to . . .

Oops. Busted. From across the aisle, two steps behind Captain Brody, a pair of amused, tiger-striped eyes met hers. An unusual mixture of gold and green, surrounded by thick black eyelashes, they would have made their owner look feminine if he weren’t one solid hunk of hard-packed male. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. Even in this context—the so-called Bachelor Firemen crowding the wedding of their revered fire captain—he stood out. First there was that breath-taking physique. Then there was his face, a study in contrasts. His features were so strong they almost qualified as harsh. Firm jaw, uncompromising cheekbones. A man’s man . . . until one looked into those golden eyes, or noticed that he possessed the most beautiful mouth Nita had ever seen on a man.

She narrowed her own eyes and met him look for look. Hey, she wasn’t checking out the available men. She had one of her own. Very deliberately, she let her gaze roam to the bride’s side of the aisle and settle on Bradford Maddox the Fourth. Hedge fund operator, family scion, possessor of a killer business instinct and an only-slightly-receding hairline, he was hers, and she could still scarcely believe it. Maybe soon she and Bradford would be making their way down an aisle like this. Out of unconscious habit, she took the inside of her cheek between her teeth and worried it at. She loved Bradford, and she knew he felt the same. He must.

Bradford, who seemed lost in thought, startled when he realized she was looking adoringly at him. He gave her a faint smile, then pressed his finger to his ear. Lovely. He wasn’t lost in thought, he was listening to his Bluetooth. She sighed, telling herself to let it go. It came with the territory when you dated a hotshot financier. Of course he couldn’t focus his
entire
attention on the wedding of two people he didn’t even know.

The right side of her body felt suddenly warm, and she realized the man across the aisle was still watching her, as if she fascinated him.

Really?
She
fascinated
him
? That seemed unlikely. She raised a questioning eyebrow at him. He smiled, the expression transforming his face from the inside out. Goodness, the man was gorgeous, in a totally different way from Bradford. Dark instead of blond, tough instead of charming. Virile and primitive, the kind of man who would toss you over his shoulder and have his way with you.

He jerked his chin at her, as if signaling her to meet him in the chancel.

She frowned at him, scolding.
Excuse me?
How inappropriate.

He did it again, more urgently this time.

What did the man want? She lifted her hands, palms up—a frustrated question—as he mouthed something to her.

“Bouquet.”

Aw, crap.