Montana, Mistletoe, Marriage

With A Bride For Rocking H Ranch

Harlequin/Mills and Boon Romance 

November 2009

ISBN 978-0373176199

Reprint November 2010 in Christmas Wishes & Mistletoe Kisses

ISBN 978-0263888287

 Finalist: 2010 Golden Quill Awards

Follow these two sisters as they make their winter wishes...

Snowbound Cowboy by Patricia Thayer

Lone wolf Boone Gifford has spent years standing on the outside.  Now he's looking at Christmas - through the window of beautiful Amelia's home.  The snow falls hard - the stranded family needs help.  It's time for the cowboy to step inside.

A Bride for Rocking H Ranch by Donna Alward

Kelley is rancher, housekeeper, doting sister to Amelia, granddaughter and aunt - and the stress of preparing the perfect Christmas at Rocking H ranch is getting to her.  But distraction soon arrives in the form of delectable chef Mack Dennison...

Excerpt

     “Dammit!”

     Kelley dropped the pan on to the stove top, fanning away smoke as she sucked on her burnt finger. 

     The puffs were ruined, completely ruined.  She took off the oven mitt and went to the window, pushing it open a crack and letting the cold air in and the acrid smell out.  She’d picked up the rest of the ingredients on Mack’s list and taken them back to the motel thinking a trial run would help her put in some time while the storm blew outside.      

     Only there’d been a flaw in her plan.  The one aluminum baking sheet in the kitchenette cupboard now appeared charred beyond repair.  The tops of the phyllo puffs were burnt.  And several of the pastry sheets lay shredded on the small countertop amid a mess of prosciutto, parmesan, asparagus and Mack’s dill seasoning.  The mess was held together by bits of greasy melted butter that hadn’t behaved…perhaps because she hadn’t had something the recipe called a pastry brush.  She’d tried using the curved end of a fork, but it had made nothing but a mess.

     She was in deep, deep trouble. She pushed back a few strands of hair that had escaped her braid.  The recipe had sounded simple.  If she couldn’t even make a simple hors d’oeuvre, how could she expect to pull off a whole dinner without burning down the house?

     A knock sounded on the motel door as she dumped the whole lot of ruined food in the garbage.  “Hello?  Everyone okay in there?”

     And the pan froze in her hand.

     Okay, so she was thinking about Mack, and the way he’d held her hand longer than necessary today.  That was the only reason it sounded like his voice outside.

     She went to the door and looked out the peep hole.       

     “Oh no,” she breathed, pressing her hands to her cheeks and attempting to smooth her wild hair.  She looked a fright.  It was Mack. His dark eyes were flashing, his jaw taut as he lifted his hand to bang on the door again.  She jumped at the harsh contact of fist to wood, her heart taking up a frantic hammering.

     “Are you okay?  I smelled smoke!”  She heard the urgent tone of his voice and had the desperate thought he’d do something stupid like call 911 if she didn’t answer.

“Hello?  Answer me!”  

Oh, hell!  What if he broke down the door?

     “Just a minute,” she called, spinning in a frantic circle.   

She opened the door, stood firmly in the breach.  Snow swirled around Mack’s head as his shoulders hunched against the storm. 

“Kelley?”

     Busted.  “What in the world are you doing here?” she demanded, attempting to look defiant though her pulse was still pounding.

“I smelled smoke and was afraid of a fire.”  Without a how do you do, he pushed by her and into the room.  “Is everything okay?”

“Perfectly fine.”

She hated how the words came out with a quaver at the end, or how his bursting past her sent a spiral of fear from her head to the tip of her toes.  Alone, in a motel room, with a man she didn’t exactly know. Memories rushed back, sharp as knives and she beat them aside angrily.  She was sick to death of them having the power. 

“Is that awful smell asparagus puffs?”

Humiliation made her want to sink through the floor, and she had the thought that at least it would provide an escape route.  She instinctively shuffled sideways so that she had the door directly behind her.  “It was.  Definitely past tense.”

He coughed.  “What did you cook them with, a blow torch?  At least I know you’re all right and not setting the entire motel on fire.”

His obvious concern alleviated a bit of panic she’d inevitably felt at his bursting in.  “What in the world are you doing here!”

He shook his head, sending snowflakes sprinkling off his hair.  “I’m staying next door.  Until my house is finished.”

“Your house?”  What was he talking about?  He was living here?  And building a house?

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head.  “No.”

“I thought the people in Rebel Ridge kept the grapevine going better. Mabel Reese must be slacking.  I’m building a house out on the bluff.”

She refused to be charmed by his reference to the town gossip who kept everyone in the know whether they wanted to be or not.  “And you’re here…”  She went to close the window and left the idea hanging, still aware that if it came to it, she could reach the doorway first. 

He smiled, popping the one dimple most unfairly.  “You mentioned a motel in the shop today.  I had no idea it was this one.  Small world, huh?”

Too small to her mind.  

From A Bride for Rocking H Ranch by Donna Alward

Harlequin Romance, November 2009

Copyright 2009 by Donna Alward

Cover art used with permission

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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