The Cowboy's Christmas Surprise

She really wasn’t all that close to the girls she was going out with. Not so much that she could really call them her friends.

Holly raised one shoulder in a helpless gesture. “I’m going out with girls I work with, Mom.”

“Close enough,” her mother pronounced.

There was no doubt about it, Holly thought. She was going to feel awkward. She had trouble blending in in situations outside of her comfort zone, at work or home. Anything beyond that was no longer in her zone.

Martha took her hand between both of hers, a sympathetic look in her eyes. “Honey, the more you hide, the harder it’s going to be on you to come out and mingle with people who aren’t sitting at the counter, giving you their lunch orders.” If Holly could be outgoing in that situation—which she was—then she had it in her to be outgoing in other kinds of situations. She just had to be drawn out. “My friends occasionally drop by the diner and they all tell me that you’re the nicest, most helpful girl there—”

“Yes, but that’s work,” Holly reminded her. And that was exactly her point. She was fine as long as she could hide behind her job. No one expected any real one-on-one time with her while she was at work.

Martha was not about to accept defeat. In her own way, she was as stubborn as her daughter. “Then pretend you’re at work tonight—just don’t go behind the bar and start serving drinks,” Martha warned with an understanding smile.

“Mom, I—” The doorbell rang, interrupting what she was going to say next. Her head swung in the direction of the front door. “Oh, God, that’s Laurie.” She glanced toward her mother. “She said she was going to swing by to pick me up because she didn’t trust me to come to Murphy’s on my own.”

Martha looked just the slightest bit impressed, as well as surprised. “That Laurie is smarter than she looks.” Maneuvering her wheelchair so that she was closer to her daughter’s double bed, Martha deposited the new dress on it, then announced, “You get ready. I’ll let Laurie in and tell her that you’ll need a few extra minutes. She’ll understand.”

Holly’s stomach officially tied itself up in a knot. The kind that threatened to cut off her air supply. She pressed her hand against her stomach. “Tell her I’m sick.”

“Holly Ann Johnson, you know how I feel about lying,” Martha informed her, pretending to look stern.

“But I think I am coming down with something,” Holly protested. “I feel feverish.”

Martha frowned, wheeling herself over to her daughter. “Bend down,” she ordered.

Holly had no idea what her mother was up to. “Mom, I—”

“I said bend down,” Martha repeated even as the doorbell pealed again. When Holly did as she was instructed, her mother leaned forward in her chair and employed the classic mother’s thermometer: she brushed her lips lightly across her daughter’s forehead. “Cool as a cucumber,” she pronounced, motioning for her to straighten up again. “No fever present.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going. No argument.”

With that, Martha wheeled herself out of the room as the doorbell rang a third time.

Holly sighed. Okay, she silently argued with herself, searching for the pros in this. After all, how humiliating could this be? She was going out with a bunch of girls from the diner, and while they weren’t bosom buddies, she did know them, at least to varying degrees. They’d go to Murphy’s, have a couple of beers—or, in her case, a single sangria—eat a few oversalted peanuts and listen to this band that Laurie had gone on about for the past two days.

If guys came by and asked the other girls to dance, leaving her alone at the bar, she knew Brett Murphy—the bartender who was most likely on duty tonight—well enough to have a conversation with him while she waited for her friends to come back.

She didn’t consider what she’d do if someone asked her to dance, because she was more than fairly certain that no one would. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t think of herself as the type to attract the attention of anybody, except maybe someone who desperately didn’t want to leave alone at closing time. And when it came to fending off someone like that, well, she could handle herself in those sorts of situations. Just before he’d left home, Will had gotten interested in martial arts and he’d taught her a few self-defense moves that would come in handy in dicey situations.

Okay, enough thinking, time for dressing, she silently ordered herself.

Hurrying into the blue-gray dress, she had to admit she liked the feel of the material as it glided passed her hips, stopping several inches above her knee—quite a bit shorter than the navy dress.

She wasn’t accustomed to wearing anything this short—or this clingy, she thought, looking herself over in the narrow full-length mirror that hung on the back of her door.

The fabric looked almost shimmery, she thought, staring at her image as she turned first in one direction then the other.

Holly didn’t realize she was smiling until she caught her reflection.

Running a comb through her hair, she decided to leave it down. After all, she wasn’t trying to attract any undue attention, and the dress looked as if it could do more than that on its own.

For a second, she debated taking it off again and slipping on her faithful old navy dress, but she had a strong suspicion that Miss Joan had eyes everywhere, and if she wore her navy dress to Murphy’s, Miss Joan would know and get on her case about that.

Besides, this had to have cost the woman a pretty penny, she thought as she lovingly glided her hand along her hip.

Holly took a deep breath. “Okay, ready or not, here I come.”

Grabbing her hoop earrings from the top of her bureau—a gift from her mother on her graduation day—she put them on as she walked toward the front of the house. The earrings were the one good piece of jewelry she had besides the small gold cross her father had given her on the first day of school.

She heard voices coming from the living room.

As she drew closer, Holly cocked her head, listening intently.

She could make out her mother’s voice, but the voice that was answering her mother didn’t sound anything like Laurie—or any other female she knew, except possibly Miss Joan. But even Miss Joan’s voice wasn’t this deep.

If she didn’t know any better, she would have said that the voice she heard belonged to—

Holly’s heart began to pound the way it always did whenever she first heard his voice and realized he was somewhere close by.

“Ray?” she asked as she walked into the small living room.

Ray shifted his brown eyes toward her a beat after he uttered a preoccupied, “Hi.” But once he actually focused on her, the greeting was immediately followed by an awestruck, “Wow,” and then a joking request for some sort of proof of identity.

“Doll, is that really you?” Ray asked, staring at her and cocking his head as if that could somehow help him clear his vision, or at least allow him to make a better identification of the shimmering fairy princess entering the room. He took a step toward her, staring so hard his eyes all but burned into her. “Wow,” he said again. “You clean up really well,” he told her, appreciation all but vibrating in his voice.

“Doesn’t she, though?” Martha said, pride brimming over in her voice as she, too, turned around to face Holly.

A warm, pleased feeling swept through her, but she told herself that Ray was just being nice. After all, they were friends and they’d known each other since they were children.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him. Holly glanced around, expecting to see Laurie somewhere in the room, but there was no indication that he’d come with anyone.

What was going on here?

“Well, this afternoon I happened to mention to Laurie’s brother that I was going to see if Liam could play half as well as he thinks he can, and I guess Laurie overheard me because next thing I know, she’s asking me for a favor, saying that she and her friends were going to Murphy’s tonight, too. Her problem was that she didn’t have enough room in her car for everyone. She thought that since you and I are friends, maybe I wouldn’t mind picking you up and taking you with me.” He shrugged casually. “I said sure, why not. Why didn’t you tell me you were going tonight?” he asked. “You know that I would have taken you—like I am now.”

Her shrug matched his, except that hers was tinged with self-consciousness. “It kind of just came up as a spur-of-the-moment, last-minute thing,” she told him, deliberately avoiding his gaze.

His eyes swept over her as the corners of his mouth curved in a smile that could only be described as wicked.

“That dress certainly doesn’t look like a spur-of-the-moment thing,” he told her.

In all the time that he’d known Holly, he’d never seen her looking this good, this, well, sexy for lack of a better word. Did she even know that? That she looked really hot? He had a feeling that, this being Holly, she didn’t.

He had a full agenda planned for tonight, but it looked as if he might have to add chaperone to that list. As her friend, he didn’t want to see guys hit on her if that made her uncomfortable.

Seeing that Holly was momentarily stuck for a response to Ray’s assessment of the dress that adorned her body, Martha came to her daughter’s rescue.

“That was a birthday present I gave her last year. You know how Holly is, she saves things until the very last minute—even leaves the tags on until she wears the item for the first time,” she added, seeing that there was one telltale tag hanging from the back of the stunning dress. Shifting her wheelchair so that she was behind her daughter, Martha drew close enough to remove the tag with one well-executed yank.

“I knew it would look good on you,” she told her daughter, playing her part to the hilt.

“Good?” Ray echoed incredulously. “Doll, you’re downright beautiful in that.”

“She’s downright beautiful without it, too,” Martha told him. The way she saw it, Holly enhanced the clothing she wore, not the other way around.

“Mom!” Holly cried, mortified at the implication of the words.

“No, she’s right,” Ray cut in. “You’re a beautiful person, especially on the inside, Doll. I’ve always said that.” He had a feeling it was getting late. “Okay, you ready to go?” he asked, glancing at his watch. He’d expected to be there by now, looking over the crop of women the band had attracted. “The first set is at eight and I want to get there before that, look over the crowd and all that good stuff,” he told her.

She felt her heart go back to its regular measured beat. She knew what he meant by “good stuff.” How could she forget? If Ray was going to Murphy’s, it was because he wanted to see if the promise of a band had drawn any new faces from the neighboring towns and places farther south.

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to be late,” she told him glibly.

“You two have fun, now,” Martha told them as she followed in their wake to the front door. “Don’t worry about Molly—or anything else, either,” she instructed Holly. “Just for one night, please act your age and not mine.”

“Good advice, Mrs. Johnson. I’ll see that she follows it,” Ray promised the woman with a bright smile. “Okay, milady, your chariot awaits,” he told Holly grandly, bowing from the waist and gesturing toward the truck that he always drove.

“I see that your ‘chariot’s’ been freshly washed,” she teased as she opened the passenger-side door and got in.

“Can’t make a good impression in a dirty chariot, now, can I?” he asked with a laugh, getting in on his side.

Holly made no reply.

She knew that the good impression he was talking about referred to whatever woman he set his sights on tonight, but just for the moment, she pretended that he’d actually done this for her and that he was her date, not just a friend doing another friend a favor.

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