Marie Ferrarella - The Cowboy's Christmas Surprise

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.

“And you,” she said in a low, throaty whisper as she walked by Holly. “Stop looking at him as if he was the cutest little kitten in the whole world and you were going to just die if you couldn’t hold him in your arms and call him your own. You want him, missy? Go out and get him!” Miss Joan ordered the girl who’d been in her employ for the past five years.

Holly’s eyes darted around to see if anyone within the immediate area had overheard Miss Joan’s succinct, albeit embarrassing romance advice.

To her undying relief, apparently no one had. And the person who actually counted in all this was on his way to the front door—to run whatever errands he had for his father and to shoot the breeze with every pretty girl and woman who crossed his path.

Holly had no idea she was sighing until Miss Joan looked at her from across the diner. While she didn’t think she was possibly loud enough to be heard the length of the diner, she did know that Miss Joan had the ability to intuit things and read between the lines, no matter how tightly drawn those lines might be.

She also knew that she owed a huge debt of gratitude to the woman. Miss Joan had offered her a job out of the blue just when she’d needed it the most and would have given her a roof over her head if she’d needed that, as well.

It was Miss Joan who had taken an interest in her and encouraged her to take some courses online, following up on her dream to become a nurse, specifically, an E.R. nurse, when her dreams of going to college to pursue that career had crumbled. It was Miss Joan who’d had faith in her when she had lost all of it herself. And Miss Joan had come through without a word of criticism or complaint when Holly suddenly found herself a mother—without the excitement of having gone the usual route to get to that state.

She flashed a smile at the woman now, tucked away her starry-eyed look and got back to work. Miss Joan wasn’t paying her to daydream.

Chapter Two

“C’mon, Holly, say yes,” Laurie Hodges, one of Miss Joan’s part-time waitresses, coaxed as she followed Holly around the diner.

The latter was clearing away glasses and dishes bearing the remnants of customers’ lunches.

Every so often Laurie would pick up a dish, too, and pile it onto her tray. But the twenty-four-year-old’s mind wasn’t on her work, it was on convincing her friend to do something else besides work.

“You never have any fun,” Laurie complained, lowering her voice so that those who were still in the diner wouldn’t overhear. Bending slightly so as to get a better look at Holly’s face, she continued trying to chip away at Holly’s resolve. “You want to look back twenty years from now, sitting alone in your house, watching shadows swallow each other up on the wall and lamenting that you never devoted any time to creating memories to look back on? For pity’s sake, Holly, all you ever do is work.” Laurie said it in an accusing voice, emphasizing the last part as if it was a curse word.

Well, she certainly couldn’t argue with that, Holly thought. But there was a very good reason for that. “That’s because that’s all there is.”

At least, that was all there was in her world.

There was her job as a full-time waitress, and when her shift was over and Miss Joan didn’t need her for any extra work, she went home, where an entirely different kind of work was waiting for her. The work that every woman did when she had a family and a home to look after.

In her case, she looked after her mother, whose range of activities was limited by her condition and the wheelchair that had all but kept her prisoner these past few years. She also took care of her niece, Molly, who at four, going all too quickly on five, was a handful and a half to keep up with.

Then, of course, there was the house, which didn’t clean itself. And when all that was taken care of, she had the courses she was taking online. Granted, they were strategically arranged around her limited time, but they were still there, waiting for her to dive into and work through them.

All in all, that usually comprised a twenty-three-and-a-half-hour day.

That left a minimum of time to be used for such frivolous things like eating and sleeping, both of which she did on a very limited basis.

And that, in turn, left absolutely no time for things such as going out with friends and just doing nothing—or, as Laurie was proposing, going dancing at Murphy’s.

“That is not all there is,” Laurie argued with her. “My God, Holly, make some time for yourself before you’re a shriveled up old prune living with nothing but a bunch of regrets.”

Laurie caught Holly’s arm to corner her attention when it seemed as if her words were just bouncing off Holly’s head, unheard, unheeded. Holly was easygoing, but she didn’t like being backed into a corner physically or verbally.

She raised her eyes. The deadly serious look in them caused Laurie to drop her hand. But she didn’t stop talking.

“They’re going to have an actual band that’s going to be playing Friday night. One of the Murphy brothers and a couple of his friends,” she elaborated. “Liam, I think.” Laurie took a guess at which brother was playing. “Or maybe it’s Finn. I just know it’s not Brett.” Brett was the eldest and ran the place. All three lived above the family-owned saloon. “But anyway, it doesn’t matter which of the Murphy brothers it is, the point is that there’s going to be live people playing music for the rest of us to dance to.”

“Might be interesting if they were having dead people playing music,” Miss Joan commented, coming up behind the two young women.

Rather than looking flustered and rushing away, pretending to look busy, Laurie brazenly appealed to the diner owner to back her up.

“Tell her, Miss Joan,” Laurie entreated. “Tell this pig-headed woman that she only gets one chance at being young.”

“Unlike the many chances I give you to actually act like a waitress,” Miss Joan said, her eyes narrowing as she gave the fast-talking Laurie a scrutinizing look. “Don’t you have sugar dispensers to fill?” It was a rhetorical question. One that had Laurie instantly backing away and running off to comply.

Once the other waitress had hurried away, Miss Joan turned her attention back to Holly. “She’s right, you know,” Miss Joan said, lowering her voice. “I hate to admit it, all things considered, but Laurie is right. You do only have one chance to be young. You can act like a fool kid in your sixties, like some of those pea-brained wranglers who come here to eat, but you and I know that the only right time to behave that way is when you are young. Like now,” she told Holly pointedly. “Did Laurie have anything specific in mind? Or was she just rambling on the way she usually does? If that girl had a real thought in her head, it would die of loneliness,” she declared, shaking her head.

“She had something specific in mind,” Holly reluctantly told her.

Holly braced herself. She could already see whose side Miss Joan was on. She loved and respected the redheaded woman and she didn’t want to be at odds with her, but she really had no time to waste on something as trivial as dancing, which she didn’t do very well anyway. She just wished the whole subject would just fade away.