Debra Clopton - Yuletide Cowboy

He’d hung several strands of Christmas lights, and Lynn’s old house was looking great. He was standing close to her and she could feel the warmth from his body through the down vest he wore. She’d helped him for the past hour and he’d been wonderful with her boys. And okay, the man smelled wonderful.

“Momma, don’t ya got yor ears on? What do you think?” Jack asked, tugging on her arm. It was what she always asked him and Gavin when they weren’t listening to her.

Boy, where had she been? “Ear one and ear two are both on and ready to do their jobs,” she said lightly.

She hoped Chance hadn’t noticed her embarrassing lapse. She stole a glance at him. He caught her looking and the wink he gave her said he’d noticed plenty.

was a 2004 Golden Heart finalist in the inspirational category, a 2006 Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award winner, a 2007 Golden Quill award winner and a finalist for the 2007 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year Award. She praises the Lord each time someone votes for one of her books, and takes it as an affirmation that she is exactly where God wants her to be.

Debra is a hopeless romantic and loves to create stories with lively heroines and the strong heroes who fall in love with them. But most important, she loves showing her characters living their faith, seeking God’s will in their lives one day at a time. Her goal is to give her readers an entertaining story that will make them smile, hopefully laugh and always feel God’s goodness as they read her books. She has found the perfect home for her stories, writing for the Love Inspired line, and still has to pinch herself just to see if she really is awake and living her dream.

When she isn’t writing, she enjoys taking road trips, reading and spending time with her two sons, Chase and Kris. She loves hearing from readers and can be reached through her website, www.debraclopton.com, or by mail at P.O. Box 1125, Madisonville, Texas 77864.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?

—Psalms 56: 3, 4

This book is dedicated to my home church: Cowboy Church of Leon County. Thank you all so much for your huge hearts! You are changing lives…mine included!

A special thank-you and dedication to our pastor, Tuffy Lofton—you are a cowboy preacher with a true heart for God.

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

Chapter Twenty

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chance Turner stepped from his truck as country singer Craig Morgan crooned “Small Town USA” on the radio. He was home in Mule Hollow, Texas, which definitely fit the song’s positive image of small-town life in the USA. A smile tugging at his lips, he reached into the truck bed for the large box his sister-in-law had instructed him to deliver to the church.

Colorful strings of Christmas lights overflowed from the box. Melody was late for work, she’d said, and didn’t have time to deliver the lights to the church secretary. That had been her pretense anyway, but Chance had no illusions about why she’d asked him to run the errand for her. It was the church.

She wanted him to be as near the church as possible. She had hopes that being here would fix “his problem”…if only it were that easy. He could have told her that seeing the church, being on the premises, wouldn’t help him. In stead he’d done as Melody asked—it was easier that way. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about his problem.

And he didn’t want to think about it either.

Pushing the dark thoughts aside he focused on delivering the lights. He’d get this done, then he’d head back to the ranch, back to the solitude he’d come home to find. Just him and his horse, and the land that had been in his family for six generations. He wasn’t the first Turner to contemplate the state of his life riding in the sanctuary of the vast Turner family ranch. Sanctuary—not exactly something he deserved. Not when he couldn’t see past the guilt eating at him.

Still, right now he needed what the solitude of the ranch offered him.

He wanted to ride across the pasture, just him and his horse…but, before he could saddle up, he had lights to deliver.

Hefting the box into his arms he strode toward the quaint white church he’d attended off and on for the better part of his youth. His boots crunched on the white rock and his spurs jangled as he headed down the side walk toward the office. The squeals of kids’ laughter, shrill with excitement, rode the chilly November wind. Chance had just reached the door when, like bulls out of the chute, two small boys pounded around the edge of the building. Trailing behind them was a monster of a dog.

He tried to sidestep the first kid but he was already on a collision course, and the rest was a blur. One-two-three he was hit by the first kid, fighting for balance as the second kid tangled up with them, and the horse of a dog launched himself at the box of lights in Chance’s arms. That was the kicker.

Boots up, head back, Chance sailed straight to the ground, landing like a hundred-and-eighty-pound sack of bad luck!

“Oh, my goodness,” Lynn Perry gasped when she opened the door of the church office to find her twins and a long-legged cowboy sprawled on the grass. Rushing forward she grabbed Gavin by his belt and hauled him off Chance, setting him to the side where he stood giggling as she reached for Jack. The poor cowboy was on his own with Tiny, though. The big dog was all over him like butter on toast.

“Tiny, get off of him.” Lynn grabbed the dog by his collar and tugged. Nothing happened. “Move, Tiny, you big bag of rocks. Come…on.” The beautiful, slate-gray Catahoula had a pale buff face outlined in rich chestnut. The giant blinked his silver-blue eyes at her, clueless as to what he was doing wrong. After all, he was simply having a great time sitting on top of the new cowboy play-toy.

Looking less than pleased, Chance scowled as he pushed the dog off him.

“Are you all right?” Lynn asked, holding Tiny back when he flopped his tongue out and made a last-ditch effort to swipe the cowboy’s face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. The last thing she’d expected to find when she’d heard her kids squealing was Chance Turner, rodeo preach er, beneath the pileup of her twin boys and their dog. Poor man was covered in Christmas lights, too.

In the two years that she’d lived in Mule Hollow the handsome preacher had come home only recently to per form his cousin’s wedding. But here he sat sprawled on the sidewalk, his serious green eyes looking through the curtain of Christmas lights hanging from his cowboy hat. Thankfully, those gorgeous eyes were crinkling around the edges as his lips turned up in a smile.

“We had a bit of a wreck,” he drawled, instantly sending butterflies into flight in her chest.

Startled, she ignored the response. “A wreck?”

“Yeah, Momma,” Gavin offered, grinning like an opossum. “We done run him down. Tiny didn’t mean to do it.”