The Cowboy's Christmas Surprise

The Best Christmas Present

Since the first grade, Holly Johnson has known that Ramon Rodriguez is the only man for her. But the carefree, determinedly single Texas cowboy with the killer smile doesn’t have a clue. Until they share a dance and a kiss…and Ray finally sees his best friend for the woman in love she is.

With his brothers racing each other down the aisle, Ray figured he’d be the last bachelor in Forever. That was before the night that changed his life. He can’t believe the sexy, beautiful lady who arouses heart-stopping desire is his pal and confidante, and loving aunt to the most adorable little girl. Now that he realizes what he’s been missing, Ray plans to make up for lost time…starting with the three little words Holly’s waited thirteen years to hear.

Damn, what was going on here? Ray’s brain demanded silently.

This was Holly, right?

He wasn’t sure anymore but even so, he was fairly certain that it really couldn’t be. This woman didn’t dress like Holly, didn’t act like Holly, and most of all, she didn’t taste the way he’d always assumed that Holly would taste if he ever thought to fleetingly sample her lips.

The Holly Johnson he knew would have smelled of soap and tasted like some kind of minty toothpaste. Holly was practical. Holly was grounded. By no stretch of the imagination was she some femme fatale who got his pulse running like the lead car in the Indianapolis 500 and his imagination all fired up—like this woman did.

Dear Reader,

We’ve come to the last of the Rodriguez brothers. With all five of his siblings either married or, in Mike’s case, about to be married, Ray Rodriguez considers himself to be the last man standing—and this enthusiastic playboy with a golden tongue fully intends to remain that way. He’s having, he tells his best friend, too much fun to ever consider getting married. And that’s unfortunate for his best friend, because his best friend is Holly Johnson, who has been in love with Ray since the first grade. As his best friend, she knows him better than anyone, is privy to all his secrets and, sadly for her, gets to listen to Ray talk about each of his many girlfriends.

When a series of events—not the least of which is having his sister Alma give birth in the diner’s restroom, with Holly in attendance—cause him to look at Holly in a different light, he begins to wonder what took him so long to realize how terrific, not to mention beautiful, she really is. Now how to convince Holly that he’s really serious and not just pulling her leg?

Got your attention? Good. Start reading.

As ever, thank you for that—and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie Ferrarella

The Cowboy’s Christmas Surprise

Marie Ferrarella

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marie Ferrarella, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Charlie,

Who can still make

My heart

Skip a beat

Just by looking at me.

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Excerpt

Prologue

The bouquet of flowers she’d given her mother for her birthday had done more than serve its purpose. The arrangement of yellow mums, pink carnations and white daisies had remained fresh looking and had lasted more than the customary few days, managing to dazzle for a little more than a week and a half.

However, now, as to be expected, the flowers were finally dying, no longer brightening the family room where her mother usually spent a good deal of her day. Their present drooping, dried-up state accomplished just the opposite, so it was now time to retire the cluster of shriveling flowers to the trash can on the side of the house.

But as she began to throw the wilted bouquet away, one white daisy caught Holly’s eye. Unlike the others, it had retained some of its former vibrancy.

On an impulse, she plucked the daisy out of the cluster, pulling the stem all the way out and freeing it from its desiccated brethren. After dumping the rest of the bouquet into the garbage, she closed the lid of the trash can, then stared at the single daisy in her hand.

Holly shut her eyes, made a wish—the same one she’d made over and over again for more than a decade and a half—and opened them again.

Then, very slowly, she tugged on one petal at a time, denuding the daisy gradually and allowing each plucked petal to glide away on the light late-fall breeze that had begun to stir.

“He loves me,” Holly Johnson whispered, a wistful, hopeful smile curving her lips as she watched the first white petal float away. “He loves me not.”

Just to say those words made her chest ache. She knew she was being silly, but it hurt nonetheless. Because in all the world, there was nothing she wanted more than to have the first sentence be true.

The petal floated away like its predecessor.

“He loves me,” she recited again, pulling a third petal from the daisy.

Her smile faded with the fourth petal, then bloomed again with the fifth. With two petals left, the game ended on a positive note.

She looked at the last petal a long moment before she plucked it. “He loves me.”

This petal, unlike the others, had no breeze to ride, no puff of air to take it away. So instead, when she released it, it floated down right at her feet.

Unable to live?

Or unable to leave?

She sighed and shook her head. What did flowers know anyway? It was just a silly game.

The next moment, she heard her mother calling her name. “Coming!” she responded, raising her voice.

Then, pausing just for a second, she quickly bent down to pick up the petal, curling her fingers around it. She pressed her hand close to her heart.

Turning on her heel, she hurried back into the house, a small, soft smile curving the corners of her mouth. The corners of her soul.

The last sing-song refrain she’d uttered echoed in her head.

He loves me.

Chapter One

“Hi, Doll, how’s it going?”

Holly Johnson’s heart instantly skipped a beat and then quickened, the way it always did when she heard his voice or first saw him coming her way.

It had been like that since the very first time she had set eyes on the tall, broad-shouldered and raven-haired Ramon Rodriguez, with his soul-melting brown eyes, all the way back in the first grade.

The beginning of the second day of the first week of first grade, to be exact. That was the day she’d started first grade. Looking to change his luck, her father had moved his family—her mother, older brother Will and her—from a dirt farm in Oklahoma to Forever, Texas.

Back then she’d been a skinny little tomboy and the only reason Ray had noticed her at all was because she was not only determined to play all the games that boys played, she was actually good at them. She could outrun the fastest boy in class, climb trees faster than he could and wasn’t afraid of bugs or snakes, no matter which one was dangled in front of her face.

And she didn’t care about getting dirty.

All those talents and qualities had been previously acquired in Holly’s quest to gain her older brother’s favor. She never quite succeeded, because during their childhood Will had never thought of her as anything other than a pest he was glad to ditch. During those years, Will was only interested in girls, and he’d thought of her as just holding him back from his chosen goal.

Ray and Will, although several years apart in age, shared the same interest; but while Will had thought of her as a pest, Ray came to think of her as a pal, a confidante. In short, he saw her as—and treated her like—another guy.

Holly was so crazy about him she took what she could get. So over the years she got close to Ray as only a friend could, and while she would rather have had him think of her as a girlfriend, she consoled herself with the fact that in Ray’s life girlfriends came and went very quickly, but she remained the one constant in his life outside of his family.

It was a consolation prize she could put up with until Ray finally came to his senses and realized just what had been waiting for him all along.

It was a decision Holly had come to at the ripe old age of eleven.

That was thirteen years ago.

She was still waiting.

There were times, Holly had to admit, when she felt as if Ray didn’t see her at all, that to him she was just part of the scenery, part of the background of what made up the town. These days, because money was short and she had to provide not just for herself but for her mother and for Molly, the four-year-old Will had left in her care when he abruptly took off for places West, she worked as a waitress at Miss Joan’s diner.

The highlight of her day was seeing Ray.

He stopped by the diner whenever he came to town—which was frequently, because he was in charge of picking up supplies for Rancho Grande, the ranch that he, his father, his brothers and his sister all owned equally. And every time Ray walked into the diner, she’d see him before he ever said a word.

It was tantamount to an inner radar that she’d developed. It always went off and alerted her whenever Ray was anywhere within the immediate vicinity. She’d always turn to look his way, and her heart would inevitably do its little dance before he called out his customary greeting to her.

Ray had taken to calling her Doll, because it rhymed with her name and she was a foot shorter than he was. She loved it, though she was careful not to show it.

“I’ll take the usual, Doll.”

The “usual” was comprised of coffee, heavily laced with creamer, and a jelly donut—raspberry. In the rare instance that the latter was unavailable, Ray was willing to settle for an apple-filled donut, but raspberry was his favorite, and ever since Miss Joan had placed her in charge of doing the inventory and placing the weekly orders, she made sure that there were always plenty of raspberry-jelly donuts on hand. It wouldn’t do to run out.

She would have made them herself if she’d had to, but, luckily, the supplier she used for their weekly orders never seemed to run out.

Technically, Holly thought as she concentrated on regulating her breathing and appearing calm, Ray wasn’t actually coming her way. He was coming to sit down at the counter, get his morning coffee and donut and shoot the breeze for a few minutes. With any pretty face that might have shown up at the counter that morning.

Or, if he was particularly excited about something, or had something exceptional to share, then he’d deliberately seek out her company the way he always did if he needed advice, sympathy or a sounding board. Over the years, she had become his go-to person whenever something of a more serious nature came up.

This morning, Ray had some news to share with her. Big news, from his point of view.

“You’ll never guess what,” he said to her as she filled his coffee cup and placed the sweetened creamer next to it. Unlike his brothers whenever they stopped by, Ray hated black coffee. For him to be able to drink it, his coffee had to be a pale shade of chocolate.

Holly raised her eyes to meet his soft brown ones as she set down the half-filled coffeepot, waiting for him to continue talking.

He, apparently, was waiting for something, too. “You’re not guessing,” he prompted.

“You really want me to guess?” she asked, surprised. But she could see that he was serious. “Okay. But to do a decent job at guessing, I’m going to need a hint.” With Ray, there was never any telling what he thought was share worthy at any particular given time.

He nodded, obviously enjoying stretching this out. “Okay, if you want a hint, how’s this?” he said just before he declared, “The Last of the Mohicans.”

Holly stared at the face that popped up in her dreams at least three nights a week, usually more. What he’d just said didn’t make any sense to her, but she took a stab at it. It really didn’t matter all that much to her what Ray said to her as long as he went on talking. She loved the sound of his voice, loved everything about him, even his devil-may-care attitude, despite the fact that it was responsible for his going from female to female.

“You’re reading James Fenimore Cooper?” she asked uncertainly. Why did he think the book title would mean anything to her?

“No, me,” he told her, hitting his chest with his fisted right hand. When she continued to stare at him, a puzzled expression on her face, he elaborated a little further for her. “I’m the last of the Mohicans.”

Holly knew that he had a little bit of Native American blood in him on his father’s side, but he’d told her that he had traced it back to an Apache tribe, not some fictional tribe the long-dead author had written about.

“It’s too early for brainteasers, boy.”

Holly glanced up to see that Miss Joan had joined them, having made her way to this side of the counter. The red-haired older woman who owned and ran the diner narrowed her hazel eyes as she fixed the youngest of the Rodriguez clan with a reproving look.

“Why don’t you just come out and tell Holly what you’re trying to say while she’s still young enough to be able to hear you?” Miss Joan suggested.

But Ray apparently enjoyed being enigmatic and he gave hinting one final try. “Last Man Standing.”

“Ray,” Miss Joan said in a warning tone, “you’re going to be the last man sitting on his butt outside my diner if you don’t stop playing games and just say what you’re trying to say.”

Ray sighed, shaking his head. He’d thought that Holly, whom he’d always regarded as being sharp, would have already figured out what he was trying to tell her.

“All right, all right,” he said, surrendering. “You know, you take all the fun out of things, Miss Joan.” He couldn’t resist complaining.

In response, Miss Joan gave him a wicked little smile. “That’s not what my Harry says,” she informed him, referring to the husband she’d acquired not long ago after years of being Forever’s so-called carefree bachelorette.

Meanwhile, Holly stood waiting to find out what it was that had her best friend so mysteriously excited.

“All right, why are you the last man standing?” she asked, prodding him along.

“Because everyone else in my family is dropping like flies,” he told her vaguely, playing it out as long as he could. “Except for my dad,” he threw in. “But he doesn’t really count.” Eyes all but sparkling, he looked from Miss Joan to Holly, then said, “We just had another casualty last night.”

“Don’t see why a casualty would have you grinning from ear to ear like that,” Miss Joan observed, then ordered, “C’mon, spit it out, boy. What the devil are you talking about?”

The twinkle in the woman’s hazel eyes, Holly noted, seemed to be at odds with the question she’d just asked and the way she’d asked it. Everyone understood that Miss Joan knew it all: was privy to every secret, knew what people were doing even before they did it at times and in general was viewed as a source of information for everything that was taking place in Forever.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know,” Ray suddenly said, looking at the older woman. He was savoring every second of this—especially if it turned out that he knew something before Miss Joan actually did.

“I’m not saying one way or the other, I’m just saying that since you’re so all fired up about spilling these particular beans, you should spill them already—before someone decides to string you up.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a direct order, and if she actually did somehow know what he was about to tell Holly, he appreciated Miss Joan allowing him to be the one to make the announcement. After all, it did concern his family.

Forever was a town where very little happened. They had the customary sheriff and he had appointed three deputies—including his sister, Alma—but they spent most of their time taking care of mundane things like getting cats out of trees and occasionally locking up one of several men in Forever who had trouble holding their liquor. Occasionally the men in question had imbibed too much in their singular attempts to drown out the sound of displeased wives.

Moreover, it was a town where everyone knew everyone else’s business, so to be the first one to know something or the first one to make an announcement regarding that news was a big deal.

“Well?” Holly coaxed, waiting. “Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to shake it out of you?” It was a threat that dated back to their childhood when they were rather equally matched on the playing field because they were both incredibly skinny.

He grinned at her. “You and what army?” he teased. When she pretended to take a step forward, he held up his hands as if to stop her. Having played out the moment, he was finally ready to tell her what he’d come to say.

“You know the woman who came to our ranch to work on that box of diaries and journals my dad found in our attic?”

Holly nodded. She’d caught a glimpse or three of Samantha Monroe, the person Ray was referring to, when she’d stopped by the diner. The woman had the kind of face that looked beautiful without makeup and Holly truly envied her that. She wore very little makeup herself, but felt that if she went without any at all, she had no visible features.

“Yes,” she answered Ray patiently. “I remember. What about her?”

Ray grinned broadly. “Well, guess which brother just popped the question?” Ray’s soft brown eyes all but danced as he waited for her to make the logical assumption.

For one horrifying split second, Holly’s heart sank to the bottom of her toes as she thought Ray was referring to himself. She’d seen the way he’d initially looked at this Samantha person, and even someone paying marginal attention would have seen that he’d been clearly smitten with the attractive redhead.

And while she knew that Ray’s attraction to a woman had the sticking power of adhesive tape that had been left out in the sun for a week, there was always the silent threat hanging over her head—and her heart—that someday, some woman would come along who would knock his socks off, get her hooks into him and Ray would wind up following this woman to the ends of the earth, hopelessly in love and forever at her beck and call.

But then she realized that the smile curving his sensual mouth was more of a smirk than an actual smile. She wasn’t exactly a leading authority on the behavior of men, but she was fairly certain that a man didn’t smirk when he was talking about finding the love of his life and preparing to marry her.

So he wasn’t referring to himself.

That left only—

“Mike?” she asked, stunned as she stared at Ray. “Seriously?”

Miguel Rodriguez Jr., known to everyone but his father as Mike, was the eldest of the brothers. Unlike Ray, Mike smiled approximately as often as a blue moon appeared. If Ray dated way too much, Mike hardly dated at all. From everything she’d seen, the eldest of the Rodriguez siblings had devoted himself to working the ranch and being not just his father’s right hand, but his left one, as well.

She’d just assumed that the man would never marry. He was already married to the ranch.

“Mike asked this woman to marry him?” she asked incredulously.

She’d known all the brothers for as long as she’d known Ray, but for the most part, she knew them through Ray’s eyes and Ray’s interpretation of their actions. According to Ray, while Mike wasn’t a woman hater, he wasn’t exactly a lover of women, either. And he had no time to cultivate a relationship.

Yet, as she recalled, whenever she did see this Samantha they were talking about, she’d been in Mike’s company.

Well, what do you know. Miracles do happen.

Ray’s news gave her hope.

“Yeah.” Ray laughed at the surprised look on Holly’s face. “Knocked my boots off, too,” he admitted. “So right after Christmas—they want to get married Christmas Eve,” he added, realizing he had left that part out, “I’ll be the only single Rodriguez male walking around.” There was laughter in his eyes as he relished the image that projected.

“Maybe that’s because the girls in Forever have the good sense to know that as a husband, you’d wind up being a lot more work for them than most men,” Miss Joan quipped.

“No, it’s because I’ve got the good sense never to get married,” Ray told Miss Joan, contradicting the diner owner. He leaned his head on his upturned palm as he glanced toward one of the tables where four female customers around his age were seated, eating their breakfasts in between snippets of the conversation they were engaged in. He sighed in deep appreciation as he looked at the women. “There’re just too many beautiful flowers out there for me to pick to be confined to just a garden on my own property.”

“So now you’re a gardener?” Miss Joan asked, rolling her eyes. “Lord help us all.”

She glanced over toward Holly for a moment, her look speaking volumes. But she said nothing further out loud before leaving to wait on the sheriff, who had just walked in.

“Morning, Sheriff,” Miss Joan said, greeting him as she automatically applied a towel to the counter and wiped down an already clean area. “Have you heard the news?” She didn’t bother waiting for him to respond or even make a guess. “The last of the eligible Rodriguez boys is getting hitched.”

Sheriff Rick Santiago’s expressive eyebrows drew together in a look of confusion. Alma, in between stifled groans as she lowered her very pregnant body onto her chair, had told him the news about her brother this morning. But this little detail that Miss Joan had just sprung on him hadn’t been mentioned.

“The last?” Rick echoed. “I thought Ray was still unattached.”

Miss Joan smiled complacently. “I said eligible, Sheriff,” the woman pointed out. “That implies a good catch. Ray there—” she nodded in Ray’s direction “—is the kind you catch and then release after you realize that there’s no way he’s going to be a good fit for that kind of a position.”

Ray turned around on his stool to face the older woman. He looked more amused than annoyed as he asked, “Are you saying I’m not the marrying kind? Or the kind no one wants to marry?”

Miss Joan looked at him for a long moment, her expression completely unreadable, before she finally said, “Well, boy, I guess you’re the only one who really knows the answer to that one, aren’t you?”

Taking out a number of singles, Ray left them on the counter as he slid off his stool. The wrapped-up, partially consumed jelly donut was in his hand. “Good thing I love you, Miss Joan,” he said to the woman as he walked passed her. “Because you sure have a way of knocking down a man’s ego.”

Miss Joan shook her head, a knowing smile on her lips. “You’re not a man yet, Ray. Come back and talk to me when you are,” she concluded with a smart, sassy nod of her head.