Page 4 of The Cowboy's Christmas Baby
Vanessa’s double chin quivered. “Your shift is over. Go home.”
Tate decided to call this a win. On the positive side, she would no longer have to listen to seventeen different versions of “Santa Baby” piped through the store’s public speaker system. All. Day. Long. And there was always the chance she’d do such a great job in the warehouse that the store manager might move her there permanently.
She had a new problem, however. She’d counted on the extra money that being an elf would bring in to help pay for Christmas. Giving family and friends the perfect gifts had always brought her twin, Tanner, so much joy. This would be the second Christmas since his death, and she was determined to carry on the traditions he’d loved. Last year, wrapped in her own misery and heartache, she hadn’t been in a good enough mental place to understand how important it was to keep his memory alive.
Tanner’s last, brightly wrapped gift to his girlfriend, Dana Barrett, sat on the shelf in Tate’s bedroom closet, reminding her every time she opened the bifold doors that it had yet to be delivered. This year, she’d see to it.
She scurried into the women’s locker room—which smelled of deodorant, dust, and decades of despair—to change. She had to swing by the Grand Master Brewery and Taproom, where her older brother, Ford, was tending bar, and wait for a ride home. She wasn’t about to show up wearing a forest-green miniskirt and candy-striped tights. For starters, she’d freeze on the walk over.
She caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror next to the staff washroom and stopped in the middle of peeling out of the tights. Hannah, Ford’s boss, had said she could clear tables for tips whenever she had to wait for him, and this was a Saturday night. The brewery taproom didn’t serve food, meaning the tips were rarely extravagant, and the elf outfit might come in handy.
And with Ford keeping watch from behind the bar, no one would dare put a hand up her skirt.
Not even Santa.
Chapter Two
Miles
Miles had abunkhouse set aside for his personal use at the ranch whenever he needed it, but he’d bought a house in Grand and that was where he preferred to spend his off hours. Since it was only two blocks from the taproom, he left his truck in the yard and walked over.
The Grand Master Brewery and Taproom occupied a weathered brick building that had once been an old dairy. The building itself dated from the mid-1800s when Grand was established. Inside, pub tables with chess boards carved into them butted the walls on opposite sides of the room. Regular tables that seated four people—more, if the people were friendly—hogged the real estate under the street-facing front window. Long shelves held an assortment of board games. A metalwork cowboy riding a bucking bronco hung from the ceiling. Hannah’s brother, an artist, had made it for her.
The bar, complete with a brass footrail, squared off against the front window from the back of the room. Right next to the bar hovered a door that led into the brewery itself. Between that magic door and the brewery lurked another, more private, entrance to an apartment above. Hannah and Dallas used the apartment whenever they needed to stay in town for the night—usually when Dallas worked a shift at the hospital. Otherwise, they lived at the ranch.
In a nod to the season, Hannah had spaced red-and-green wreaths along walls netted by colorful lights. Each table supported a cheerful pine bough centerpiece that cupped a battery-operated candle, because drinks and open flames made a bad combination.
While Miles had to work in the morning, he didn’t have to make an early start of it. The two Endeavour ranch hands sitting in the corner by the window when Miles entered the taproom couldn’t say the same thing. But they were a mere twenty-one years old, eager to enjoy the age of majority, and the long working hours of a ranch didn’t stop them from having fun.
He’d been their age once, too, but thirteen years made a big difference in terms of how much sleep he required. He couldn’t pass out at the drop of a hat anymore, either.
Now he felt old.
“Handy. Young John.” He nodded in greeting. “You boys are out late.”
Handy blinked sandy lashes, part drunk, part confused. “It’s Saturday night.”
Really, really old.
Miles eyed the lineup of empty glasses next to the board game they were playing and decided he might as well roll with the dad—older brother—theme he’d begun. “Got a ride back to the ranch?”
Young John, the optimist, spoke up. “Hannah and Dallie might give us a ride. They usually drop in before heading home.”
Hannah offered an informal shuttle service to regulars, but she wasn’t always around to provide it, so the boys were gambling on something they should have confirmed with her first.
“If not,” Miles said, “walk over to my place. You can crash in my living room. I’ll take you home before chores in the morning.”
“Thanks, man.”
The boys returned to their game and Miles aimed for the bar, stopping along the way whenever he was hailed. Most people here knew who he was—this was rural Montana—and since they all lived in the same neighborhood, he’d put in the effort required to learn each of their names.
There was one person new to him tonight, though. A pretty blonde elf, wearing a green skirt that barely covered her perky elf ass, with endless legs sheathed in red-and-white stripes, carried a tray of empty glasses to the bar. She was of medium height and build—curvy but solid, all muscle, not extra weight—and owned an interesting face blessed with angles and edges and full, perfect lips. She bordered on beautiful but came in at a ten due to the sass that flashed in her eyes. It said she’d give a man a run for his money, but he’d likely need a head start to have half a chance. She reminded him of a champagne quarter horse he’d once owned. Skittish and fast and requiring a firm touch. He was intrigued.
But not crazy. She had to be at least ten years younger than he was, maybe more. He’d given up on women like this right about the same time he’d stopped drinking until dawn and sleeping it off on friends’ sofas. They’d given up on him the day he’d been gored by a bull and lost his endorsements.
He was good with all that.
He saw Levi Harrington, who worked on the Running River Ranch, sitting alone, and forgot all about the elf. Levi was a scientist as well as a cowboy. He’d studied animal genetics at Columbia University but quit a few years into his PhD program. The two men weren’t yet acquainted, but that would soon change.
