Christmas At Cade Ranch

The Christmas they never had.

James Cade has one priority: keep the family ranch running smoothly in the wake of his younger brother’s death. With Jesse’s ex, Sofia Gallardo, and her young son, Javi, stranded at Cade Ranch over Christmas, this task just got a lot harder. The longer Sofia and Javi stay, the harder it is to imagine the ranch without them. James couldn’t save his brother from his inner demons, but he can give his nephew a secure future. Maybe more—if he can figure out how to trust Sofia, and stop feeling like he’s betraying Jesse. Because trying to stop thinking about beautiful, determined Sofia is impossible.

“All I could hear was you, Sofia. Singing the wrong words.”

He couldn’t stop his twitching mouth any longer and gave in to a full-on smile. An unfamiliar feeling.

“Then what does the singer mean when he says he wants to get lost in the rock and roll? Huh?” Her huff made something tight inside his chest loosen.

“He wants to get lost in the beat,” he said reasonably, inhaling the vanilla-musk scent of her hair. “Here. Listen again.” He started the song over. At the chorus, he sang the correct line.

A quick glance to his right revealed Sofia’s frown. Her dark eyebrows met over her nose and that full pink mouth of hers, the one he hadn’t been able to stop staring at since they’d met last night, pursed. He forced his gaze back on the road where it belonged.

He had no business thinking Jesse’s girl was pretty.

Dear Reader,

The holidays hold unique memories for all of us. Some of them are warm and wonderful as we remember happy gatherings around a Christmas tree laden with gifts or cozy evenings eating homemade treats beside a fire while listening to carols. But for people who don’t have homes, or family, the holidays can be riddled with unpleasant memories.

For struggling single mother Sofia Gallardo, the holidays evoke a mix of emotions. Her only Christmas wish is to give her six-year-old son, Javi, a real Christmas, a home and a family to be proud of. For the Cades, the holidays are a time they pretend doesn’t exist as it brings back painful memories of a beloved family member they’ve recently lost.

I’m inspired by Sofia’s perseverance and determination to provide a better life for her child, and am moved by the Cades’ grief and need to come together as a family again. The magic of Christmas heals wounds and brings a couple and child the love and family they deserve. I welcome you to the first book in my Rocky Mountain Cowboys series and hope you find it as uplifting and inspiring as I did!

Wishing you a holiday season filled with joy, laughter and love.

Happy reading,

Karen Rock

Christmas at Cade Ranch

Karen Rock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN ROCK is an award-winning young adult and adult contemporary author. She holds a master’s degree in English and worked as an ELA instructor before becoming a full-time author. Most recently, her Harlequin Heartwarming novels have won the 2015 National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award and the 2015 Booksellers’ Best Award. When she’s not writing, Karen loves scouring estate sales, cooking and hiking. She lives in the Adirondack Mountain region with her husband, daughter and Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Visit her at karenrock.com.

To my husband and daughter, whose love is the greatest gift I receive every Christmas and the whole year through.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“IS DADDY DOWN THERE?”

Sofia Gallardo knelt beside her five-year-old son, Javi, on frozen grass and snuggled him close. All around them, poinsettia and pinecone Christmas wreaths bedecked the surrounding gravesites. She pulled in a ragged breath of balsam-scented air and blinked stinging eyes.

How to explain the afterlife to a child? An animated film they’d watched at a public library came to mind. “No, honey. Daddy went ‘up.’”

Javi traced the plaque’s engraved letters with a fingertip poking through his faded red glove. The white tops of Carbondale, Colorado’s nearby Rocky Mountain range breathed chill late-November air down at them. It rustled through the Douglas firs dotting Rosebud Cemetery and jingled bell-shaped ornaments looped around a wintergreen boxwood. “Like in the movie?”

“Just like that.”

“With balloons?”

“Maybe.”

Brown eyes slanted up at her beneath a drooping toque a size too big for his head. He looked thinner, she assessed, gnawing on her lip. Pale. When was the last time he’d had milk? Fruit? Two days ago?

No. Three.

Four.

“He can’t go up without balloons.” Javi pulled a creased picture from his backpack and peered at it. “And he wasn’t old like Mr. Fredisson.”

“Fredricksen,” she corrected automatically, then closed her eyes for a moment and gathered her thoughts. How to make sense of something she hadn’t yet fully processed? Outside the cemetery’s gates, the swish-hiss of a sander slipped past, ahead of this afternoon’s predicted storm.

She shivered in her sweater and wished for a winter coat, gloves and a better set for Javi, too, than his mismatched pair.

Wishes.

At least they didn’t cost a thing.

“You don’t have to be old to go up.”

Her ex, Jesse Cade, was dead at only twenty-six, gone from her life before Javi’s first birthday when Jesse relapsed into heroin addiction. Gone from this world two years ago without her knowing until a stranger, Jesse’s mother, Joy Cade, tracked her down last week and phoned with the news. Sofia had promised to meet her here during her Portland-bound bus’s layover from Albuquerque.

Her stomach knotted. When Joy had pleaded for the chance to meet her grandson, Sofia heard a mother’s pain and found it hard to refuse. After wrestling with the decision, she’d finally called Joy this morning and accepted the invite.

Not that she’d made peace with the plan.

Sofia avoided people who associated her with her own addiction history. What if Joy divulged Sofia’s shameful past to Javi?

She wouldn’t be able to bear it.

Javi sprawled forward and pressed his cheek to the stone. His Batman hoodie—a dingy black thing he’d plucked from the shelter’s discard pile—rose above his waist. “I don’t want to go up. Ever.”

“You won’t, sweetie. Promise.” She brushed back his dark hair and clamped her chattering teeth. Growing up in the inner city and forced at times to live in shelters, Javi had already endured a harsher life than some adults. She’d do everything in her power to keep him safe.

Even from herself.

“But what if they don’t have free lunches in—in— Where are we going?”

“Portland.” She gathered him close and the familiar fear of not knowing where their next meal would come from curdled inside her. “No more being hungry.”

Hopefully her friend’s job lead panned out. Finding steady, decent-paying employment wasn’t easy for former felons without high school degrees. She’d run out of options in Albuquerque.

But maybe in Portland she had a chance at a position that’d last more than a few months, a career, maybe even a real home for Javi. One she’d decorate for the holidays in every inch of its space to make up for all the Christmases he’d had to do without.

It might be a pie-in-the-sky idea, but when you had nothing, you had nothing to lose by dreaming big.

She had two bus tickets and three hundred and forty-two dollars in her wallet. Since being laid off from her latest job and evicted from another apartment, it was all she had in the world besides her little guy. Her grip tightened on Javi.

She’d made a lot of mistakes. Failing to provide for her son, making him ashamed of who he was or where he came from, would not be part of them.

This had to work.

“Never ever?”

“Never ever,” she vowed, fierce.

She would not, could not, break this promise.

Society had judged her a disgrace, as had her father when he’d tossed her out at age sixteen. What her deceased mother thought...she’d never know.

Didn’t want to know.

Most important of all, though, was how Javi would judge her someday. If he knew she was a former junkie, he might stop believing in her. Which was one reason she needed to keep Joy’s visit short—to prevent any damaging revelations.

Her “respectable mom” persona had been crashing around her ears recently. A former addict “friend” had tracked Sofia down and begged to crash at her apartment. Feeling bad for the woman, Sofia agreed to let her stay, just for a couple of nights. But then their houseguest spiraled into a drug-induced manic state where she’d threatened Javi with a gun and hollered about Sofia being a hypocrite. The woman created such a ruckus that it had caused Sofia’s eviction. It also confirmed that the only way to truly erase who she’d once been was to start over in a place where no one knew her.

No more reminders of her old ways.

Javi wriggled away and pulled a toy Batmobile from his pocket. He clicked on the red headlights. “Did Daddy love me?”

She pictured Jesse, the easygoing cowboy she’d met in court-ordered rehab and once believed she might marry. Stupid, foolish girl. “He did.”

“How come he left?”

“He was sick.” A shiver trailed an icy fingertip down her spine as the afternoon sun finally succumbed to cloud cover. Addiction was a sickness, she justified, so it wasn’t a lie.

“Did he get sick and die?”

She started to shake her head, then nodded instead. There were no easy answers when drugs and violence mixed. According to Joy, drug dealers murdered Jesse for unpaid funds.

Javi propped himself on his elbows, and his sneaker-clad feet, crossed at the ankles, swung. He pointed at the lettering again. “Is Grandma coming?”

“She said so...” Though Joy should have arrived by now.

“Will she like me?”

“How could she not?”

“My teacher doesn’t like me.”

“That’s only because you won’t stop eating all of her erasers.”

“She told Mrs. Penn she couldn’t keep bringing in paper for me anymore. She sounded angry.”

Sofia bit her lip. School supplies. Another thing she struggled to provide. “Honey, sometimes grown-ups just have bad days. I know she likes you.”

“What’s that say?” Javi pointed at the marker, switching subjects with the whiplash speed of a child.

“I’ve read it to you twice, honey.”

“Please,” he wheedled, and she sighed. Where was Joy? Their bus departed in twenty minutes. She’d breathe easier once she put this part of the world, this part of herself, in the rearview mirror for good.

“That’s a J,” Sofia began.

Javi traced the first letter at the top of the plaque. “Like me.”

“Right.” Jesse’s siblings’ names all began with J and he’d wanted to follow the tradition with Javi.

“What’s this say?”

“‘Jesse Andrew Cade. Beloved son and brother.’”

In the distance, a lone cardinal perched in a skeletal maple, bright as a leftover leaf. A gray-haired woman approached, wearing navy shoes and carrying a matching purse. A sensible-looking gray wool coat fell past her knees. Joy?

Sofia turned away, her heart picking up speed.

“Cade like me!”

She felt her smile falter. “And that says, ‘Free spirit. Roam in peace.’”

Free spirit. Yes. That’d been Jesse. The quality that had attracted her and made her believe in a better life, a better her.

“I’m hugging Daddy goodbye.” Javi rolled back on his stomach and curved his arms around the plaque. Then he leaped to his feet and slipped a hand in hers. His lone, left-sided dimple, the only trait that resembled Jesse, appeared when he smiled up at her. “How many brothers did Daddy have?”

“Four,” someone replied softly behind them.

Sofia whirled and came face-to-face with the gray-haired woman she’d spied. Her pale pink lips lifted slightly in an uncertain smile and a gust blew strands of her neatly clipped bob across her thin face. It was relatively unlined and pretty in an understated way, her age younger than her hair color suggested. Wire-framed lenses magnified the hazel eyes that darted between Javi and Sofia. That color...the light yellow-green surrounded by a ring of brown. She’d seen it only once before...

Her heart beat a fast tap.

“Did you know my daddy?” Javi skidded to a stop in front of the stranger and gaped up at her.

“I’m his mother,” came her quiet, tremulous voice. She pulled her purse closer to her body and her wool coat sleeve rode up to reveal an elastic-wrap bandage crisscrossing her left wrist. “And you must be...?”

“Javi!”

Joy swayed and her face paled. Concern shoved caution aside. Sofia swept an arm around the woman’s waist and guided her to a bench beneath a cluster of towering pines. “Thank you,” Joy murmured once she sat. “Now. Come closer, dear.”

She crooked a finger, and Javi clambered up on the bench beside her. His short legs dangled, scuffed sneakers kicking the air.

“Are you my grandma?” His left-sided dimple appeared in a quick smile.

Joy gasped. “Yes.”

“You don’t look so old.”

Despite the tense moment, Sofia held in a short laugh. Joy’s warm eyes met hers. “Well. I appreciate that. And how old are you?”

He held up four fingers, and Sofia shook her head. Red stained his cheeks as he peeled up one more digit.

“And do you go to school?”

He nodded. “Yesterday my teacher had a party for me. She brought in cupcakes, and they were free.”

“Javi goes to—went to—preschool in Albuquerque,” Sofia interjected.

“Education is important.”

Javi scrunched his face.

“Yes,” Sofia agreed, feeling like a hypocrite. How she wished she’d gotten her diploma. Without it, the label High School Dropout followed her wherever she went, like an invisible capital F sewn to her clothes. At least she would not fail at being a good mother, the one and only thing she was proud of.

“I have to go to a new school and make new friends.” Javi nibbled on his thumbnail, then dropped it at Sofia’s head shake.

“Are you excited about that?”

“What if they call me Free Lunch like back home?”

Joy blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Oh. It’s just something kids say,” Sofia said quickly, hating how a few children had picked on Javi for his secondhand clothes and the card he used instead of money in the cafeteria. Someday she’d give him everything that other kids had so no one would ever make fun of him again. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, it does,” Javi insisted through hands covering his face. “It means we’re poor trash. Least that’s what Timmy Rice says.”

“That’s a mean thing to say,” Joy insisted, indignant. “It’s better to have no money than no heart.”

Javi peeked up through his fingers. “Is that true?”

“I swear.”

“A lady at a desk called me a waste of space. Is that true?”

“Absolutely not,” declared Joy, her voice firm.

Javi threw his arms around her. “I like you.”

Joy smiled, blinking fast. Her trembling hand passed over his hair. “I like you, too, honey. A lot.”

He angled his head to peer up at her. “How come?”

“Because you’re a Cade, and Cades always stick together.”

“Mama says the Cades ride on top of mountains and don’t ever fall off. Their hats touch the clouds. Right, Mama?”

Sofia dropped her eyes at Joy’s surprised look. Okay. Maybe she’d exaggerated a bit about Jesse’s family, but she’d wanted Javi to believe he came from good people...strong men and women...a family he could be proud of, unlike her.

“That’s right, Javi.” Time to change the subject. “Joy, I’m not sure if you ever mentioned how you found us...?”

Joy produced a cell phone with a familiar rodeo buckle cover. Jesse’s phone.

“The police returned this to us a couple years ago, but I didn’t... I couldn’t bring myself to look through it. Not until recently. Then I saw this.”

She flipped the phone around to show a picture of Sofia in a hospital bed, a newborn Javi in her arms. Jesse grinned as he crouched beside them. The name Cade was scrawled in big letters on the empty baby pen nearby.

“That’s me!” Javi exclaimed.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Mama said I cried a lot. Is that why Daddy left?”

“Honey!” Sofia exclaimed. Out of the mouths of babes. Javi had been a colicky baby. True, she had worried at one point that taking care of a demanding baby had driven Jesse back to drugs, but she knew that was not the case at all.

“Mama said he got sick.”

Joy nodded. “Yes. She has the right of it.” She cleared her throat. “Javi, would you find me some holly berries?” She pointed to a patch of bushes beyond the pine bunch. “Celtics believed they were good luck.”

“Like basketball?”

“No, honey. Ancient people. They’re all gone now.”

“Like Atlantis? Mummies?”

“Something like that...”

“Got it!” Javi leaped off the bench and raced away, eager as always to help. He lived to save the day like his beloved superheroes.

“Don’t eat them, now!” Joy called.

The bushes were in their line of vision but out of earshot. Sofia admired the woman’s deft handling of this tricky moment. She pressed clammy palms on her jeans and perched on the edge of the bench. Her insides felt frozen, her heart beating in a block of ice.

“So Javi doesn’t know about Jesse’s addiction.”

“No,” Sofia said swiftly. “I don’t want him knowing about any of that.”

Joy studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “He won’t hear of it from me.”

Sofia released a breath. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been searching for you ever since I found this.” Joy tucked the phone in her purse. “I figured out who you were by searching his contacts, but your number no longer worked.”

“I’ve moved around a lot.”

And Sofia couldn’t afford a phone, or this conversation. It brought up too much of her past. She needed to leave. Now.

Joy’s eyes glistened as she studied Javi scuttling across the whitened ground on his hands and knees. The sky spit a few snow flurries. A first volley of more to come, Sofia worried. A low howl rose in her ears.

“I—I—” Sofia was struggling to think of a graceful way to extricate herself when Joy buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. Overhead, a pair of cooing mourning doves alighted on a branch. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

“No!” Joy lifted a tearstained face and a left-sided dimple appeared. “This is wonderful. It’s just hitting me that this is real.” She released a shaky breath. “Javi’s my first grandchild. Knowing there’s a part of my Jesse still here on this earth, well, it’s the first thing that’s made me feel alive in a long, long time.”

Sofia’s heart felt like it might explode. “I wish we could stay longer and visit, but our bus leaves soon. May I call you when Javi and I are settled?”

“I’d appreciate that. Will I see you again?” Joy rose.

“I’m not sure,” Sofia temporized. She reached for her wallet and came up empty.

Had she left it by the grave? Her eyes flew to the area and landed on Javi’s backpack. Perhaps she’d stowed it in there. The events of this anxious morning blurred. Her panicked thoughts knocked against each other, and her temple throbbed. When was the last time she’d had it?

“Javi, have you seen my wallet?” she asked, hustling to the backpack.

“Uh-uh.”

She scrounged through Javi’s backpack and her purse. Nothing.

“Our bus tickets were in there. Money. Identification...”

“Let’s retrace your steps. If we can’t find it, you’ll stay at the ranch until everything’s sorted,” Joy declared in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Wooo-hooo!” Javi shouted. “I want to see Daddy’s ranch! Can we, Mama? Can we?”

She stared into two pairs of hopeful eyes. Her throat constricted as though someone slipped a noose around it and tugged. If she didn’t find her wallet, they’d be out of options, and this small town didn’t look like it had a shelter.

Where would she and Javi sleep during the blizzard?

It’s only one night, a voice whispered. A chance for Javi to see what a real family looks like and meet his aunt and uncles.

Fine.

CHAPTER TWO

“MOVE IT! MOVE IT!” James Cade hollered as he thundered at breakneck speed alongside a stampeding herd of longhorns. His siblings’ bloodthirsty howls filled the broad valley. Pelting snow obscured his vision and froze his throat. He yanked up his bandanna to cover his nose and mouth, leaned low over his palomino’s neck and galloped flat out to redirect the rampaging group before they plunged off the bluff ahead. His heart drummed. Stinging sweat dripped in his eyes.

“Hee-yah!” pealed his younger brother Jared, his lusty shout ringing above the bellowing cattle’s din.

Their trampling hooves slapped the hard, rocky earth in a heart-pounding rhythm. At James’s finger point, Jared swerved away in the white murk and chased after a breakout group of cows and heifers, his face animated, eyes intent, back straight. He looked as unruffled as he had when they’d begun searching for the runaways who’d broken from their winter pasture hours ago. Of course, it’d take a lot more than a hundred out-of-control livestock to rattle golden-child Jared’s bone-deep confidence.

As for him? Chaos got under James’s skin, made it itch. And whenever chaos hit, James’s restless thoughts didn’t quit until everything on the family ranch he managed was in its proper, predetermined place. The rules he’d instituted after his youngest brother Jesse died and older brother, Jack, left to seek justice were needed to protect his family and their way of life. Otherwise, their carefully pieced-back world risked falling apart again.

“Yip! Yip! Yip!” hooted his sister, Jewel. She barreled at lightning speed along the right side of the cattle atop her large bay. Her dark eyes flashed, and her mouth curled slightly at the edges in a fearless smirk. She’d lost her black Stetson, he noticed, and snowflakes clung to her dark, braided hair. Red filled in the pale skin between her freckles. If she was tired after their grueling day, she wasn’t showing it. Not that she ever would.

In fact, since Jesse’s death, she’d thrown herself into ranching as if possessed. As though she could somehow make up for the shattering loss.