A Western Christmas Homecoming: Christmas Day Wedding Bells / Snowbound in Big Springs / Christmas with the Outlaw

He smoothed one finger across his mustache and tried to think. He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted in the middle of a murder investigation. He hadn’t been interested in a woman since his Texas Ranger days, and when she’d been killed he’d sworn he’d never allow another female he cared about into his life.

But it was growing harder and harder to keep his mind off Alice Montgomery. Especially when she was playing Lolly Maguire.

“Rand? Please say something.”

“Yeah, I liked your Robin Hood story. You. Everything.”

She must have heard something in his voice because she walked over and sat down on the bed beside him. Instantly he stood up and moved away. He didn’t trust himself anywhere near her.

Lordy, he needed a drink!

Huh! He was no better than weak-willed Sheriff Lipscomb, drinking on duty. God in heaven, it was going to be a long night.

“Rand, what is the matter? Did I say something wrong?” Her eyes looked hurt and a little frightened.

He crumbled. “Alice, dammit, I—”

She rose slowly and moved toward him, her face pale. “What?” she breathed.

He reached out to touch her shoulder. “Hell and damn, I’m half in love with Lolly Maguire and you’re not even real! I’m trying to investigate this killing, and I don’t need any distraction!”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought there was something really wrong!”

“Alice, what in the hell do you think this is?”

She looked up at him with the most puzzling look he’d ever seen on a woman’s face. “Oh, Rand, it’s very simple, really.”

“Simple? It doesn’t seem simple to me. Why don’t you explain?”

“It’s simple because...” She stretched up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his cheek. “Lolly Maguire is just a pretend person, and you’re just a pretend George Winston Oliver. It’s only these pretend people who are attracted to each other, not you and me.”

He jerked as if she’d shot him. “What? Are you crazy?”

She laughed again, more softly. “It’s just Lolly and George,” she repeated.

“No!” he said brusquely. “Lolly or not, or Alice, or whoever you are, I can’t fall—and you can’t. We have work to do.”

“Yes, I know,” she said with a little catch in her voice. “We have to find out who murdered my sister.”

“Yeah. I just wanted to remind you that’s why we’re here.”

“Together,” she said.

“In this hotel room.”

“Together,” she said again.

“Alice.” He curved his fingers around her shoulders and purposefully set her aside. “If you stay here one more minute, I’m going to kiss you, and I won’t want to stop. Do you understand?”

“Oh,” she breathed.

“Alice?”

“I never, ever thought this would happen to me,” she whispered. “And I...I have a confession to make.”

His heart dropped into his stomach. “Yeah?”

“I have never kissed a man. I mean really kissed a man. Not unless you count the boys out behind the barn at dances.”

Rand couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cheer. Alice was the most unexpected, most surprising, most puzzling, most maddeningly attractive female he’d ever encountered. He prayed he could get through the next few days until he’d solved the murder without compromising her.

He glanced over her head at the two beds in the room, shoved together to make a wide, almost double sleeping arrangement against one wall. He could separate them, pull them far apart from each other. But he’d been sleeping at just an arm’s length from Alice for the past three nights. Why stop now?

Because, you idiot, because now you’re falling in love with her and you’re an honorable man. Or you used to be.

The answer to this dilemma was simple, he decided. Just stop falling in love with her.

Her voice startled him. “What will we do tomorrow, Rand?”

The question jolted him out of his mental rambling. “Tomorrow? Well, we—I will visit your sister’s assay office, talk to the people who work there and look through the business records. Then I’ll look up Dorothy’s attorney, find out whether she had a will.”

“Oh, good. I was getting a bit bored talking to the miners at the Golden Nugget.”

“You’re not coming with me.”

“Oh, but I am, Rand.” She pressed her lips together. “Dottie was my sister, and I am your undercover assistant. You need me.”

“You’ll have to be Lolly Maguire,” he warned.

She laughed. “I am growing fond of Lolly Maguire. She’s like my secret self, someone I could never be in real life, just in a pretend world.”

“It could be dangerous,” he warned. “A killer is a killer. He’ll be ruthless in covering up his crime.”

“Well, of course, Rand. I knew that all along.”

He just looked at her. Alice was not just surprising, she was shocking. She was brave. Foolishly brave. And, right in character, her next question surprised him.

“Do you think the dining room is still open? I find I am most dreadfully hungry.”

Chapter Ten

That night Rand couldn’t sleep. Neither could Alice, as far as he could tell. He couldn’t hear her breathing, and he suspected she was lying awake four feet away from him, wondering whether he was asleep. Being in a hotel room with her wasn’t like sleeping rolled up in blankets beside a campfire; this was far more dangerous.

The problem was he had surreptitiously watched her peel off that red dress and a silky-sounding petticoat, and then he’d kept right on watching right down to her lacy camisole and frilly drawers. By the time she crawled under the blue quilt covering her bed, his groin was swollen and he was plenty hard.

This is just plain damn crazy.

Now he lay awake, aching and feeling lonelier than he’d ever been in his life. He realized suddenly that nothing was going to help until two things happened. First, Dorothy’s murderer was caught. And second, he could hold Alice in his arms and kiss her for as long as he wanted.

But God knew that might never happen. Not the catching the murderer part, but the Alice part. He was sure of his ability to apprehend a killer; he was less sure about Alice. Lolly Maguire might want him to kiss her, but what about Alice Montgomery? What would Alice want?

He flopped over and closed his eyes again.

Alice listened to Rand toss and turn for another hour until all at once she couldn’t stand it one more minute. “Rand!”

He sat straight up in bed. “Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

“Well, which is it, ‘nothing’ or ‘everything’? Or maybe it’s just ‘something,’ huh?”

She twisted to face him. “Rand, you are absolutely no help in a crisis.”

“What crisis? What are you talking about? We’ve barely started to solve your sister’s murder... What crisis are you referring to?”

“I’m...worried. And I can’t sleep.”

“Maybe you’re hungry.”

She had no answer to that. At midnight he had conducted her downstairs to the dining room, where she had devoured fried chicken and mashed potatoes and he had downed a platter of dry scrambled eggs and bacon.

“Actually,” she said hesitantly, “feeling hungry isn’t the problem.”

“But?” His voice sounded both sleepy and exasperated.

She couldn’t answer. She lay still for a long time, wondering what was wrong. She was feeling hungry for something, but it wasn’t food.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Rand. Something is nagging at the back of my mind, but I don’t know what it is.”

“And this is your crisis, is it?” he said in a tired voice. “Something ‘nagging’?”

“Well, yes. I’m feeling restless and upset and confused, and I’m starting to realize how alone I am now that Dottie is gone. I feel lost, Rand.”

He groaned, and the next thing he knew she started to cry and he was sitting on the bed beside her. He pulled her upright and held her tight against him.

“Alice,” he breathed.

“Don’t talk, Rand. Just hold me and listen. All of a sudden I’m frightened. Not about play-acting as Lolly Maguire, I know I can ferret out information from the miners at the Golden Nugget that you can use to catch Dottie’s murderer. It’s something else, something I’ve never felt before.”

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