Rachel Lee - A Very Maverick Christmas

She ached to feel his hands on her, to feel him inside her, to know what it was like.

“Braden,” she said, her voice so thick his name almost didn’t come out.

“I feel you,” he murmured.

His choice of words at once seemed odd and yet right. He wanted to know her first, but he knew essentially all there was to know about her, the pathetic story of her search for self and place. Maybe part of that search could be answered right now with him. Maybe she was afraid of knowing any more about her past, but she wasn’t afraid of this.

To just be a woman at her most basic seemed like the greatest gift on the planet. To stop being guarded, to stop censoring herself, to stop fearing. To just be.

* * *

Montana Mavericks:20 Years in the Saddle!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RACHEL LEEwas hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

To my family,

who have blessed me in so many ways.

Contents

Cover

Introduction She realized that in that instant if there was one thing she wanted as much as to know who she really was, it was Braden. She ached to feel his hands on her, to feel him inside her, to know what it was like. “Braden,” she said, her voice so thick his name almost didn’t come out. “I feel you,” he murmured. His choice of words at once seemed odd and yet right. He wanted to know her first, but he knew essentially all there was to know about her, the pathetic story of her search for self and place. Maybe part of that search could be answered right now with him. Maybe she was afraid of knowing any more about her past, but she wasn’t afraid of this. To just be a woman at her most basic seemed like the greatest gift on the planet. To stop being guarded, to stop censoring herself, to stop fearing. To just be. * * * Montana Mavericks: 20 Years in the Saddle!

Title Page A Very Maverick Christmas Rachel Lee www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

Dedication To my family, who have blessed me in so many ways.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes,” Vanessa said over the phone. “Okay?”

“I’m almost ready,” Julie answered, looking around for her boots. “See you.” Spying one under the bed, she clicked off the call and made a grab for it.

Going to a Christmas pageant? She wondered if she was losing her mind. All those people... The only thing that was going to be worse was Thanksgiving, right around the corner, a day she was going to spend determinedly by herself.

Trying to feel at home constantly troubled Julie Smith. She had come to Rust Creek Falls nearly six months ago in June, had made a few friends at the Newcomers Club, but she still didn’t feel as if she belonged.

But how could she? she wondered as she finished dressing to join her new friends for the Christmas pageant. She had no memory older than four years, and no idea who she was. Julie Smith was a name conveniently tacked to her by the people who had cared for her after the incident that had erased her memory.

But coming out here to Montana to live in this tiny ramshackle cabin sometimes struck her as the ultimate grasping at straws. She looked into the mirror that hung—oddly, she thought—beside her front door and touched the necklace she wore, her only touchstone to her past, gazing at the tarnished coins that hung from it. A specialist in antique coins had told her she was wearing a small fortune around her neck, and that the most recent information he had been able to find about the collection was that it had last been owned by a man in Montana. No name, as collectors preferred to protect their identities, and insurance companies wouldn’t give out private information.

So here she was. All because of a necklace and an online blog by someone named Lissa Rourke that had somehow roused a sense of familiarity in her.

Stupid? Maybe. Desperately hunting for a place in this world? Definitely.

For sure, what she found most familiar was the deepening winter. Little enough to cling to.

She smoothed her blue wool sheath over her body and looked at her shoulder-length blond hair. She preferred jeans and Western shirts, and the dress felt awkward. Four years, and she still somehow didn’t look right to herself, either. Something was wrong. The hair, she decided, and quickly pulled it back into the ponytail she favored. Better, but the bright blue eyes that stared back at her held no answers to the mystery of who she was. Sometimes she thought she ought to just cut off all her hair, but stopped herself. She’d been able to sell one of her coins, which had given her enough to live on for a while, but that didn’t mean she could afford to splurge. Nor did she want to part with another piece of what might be the only clue to her identity.

Sighing, she went to get her coat, wishing she had a longer memory, wishing things in life really seemed to fit somewhere in her experience. But she was woefully inexperienced now. A grown woman with a four-year-old memory. Pathetic. Frustrating.

It struck her, though, as she pulled on her coat, that while Montana was a big state and some conviction that this wasn’t the right town kept gnawing at her, things did strike her as familiar. Cowboys. Horses. Even the occasional family name. Those small familiarities kept her here, kept her hoping.

She felt more at home here, if she could feel that at all, than she had at any time since her memory loss.

But what was home? She didn’t even know. And if she ever found out who she really was, could she be sure she would feel that other woman was really her? Or would she meet a stranger inside her own head?

Stop it, she told herself. Time to look forward to whatever tonight would bring, and stop peering backward into a black hole.

It had been hard enough to join the Newcomers Club. She suspected she hadn’t always been so uncomfortable with people, but how would she know? Going to the pageant tonight had taken some persuasion from her small group of friends. Big groups still overwhelmed her, mainly because she felt out of context. Always out of context and unsure how to react. She didn’t have a list of anecdotes to tell about herself in casual conversation, and much of her experience since the amnesia was off-limits. She couldn’t bring herself to expose that flaw to anyone.

So she kept quiet, tentatively reacting, speaking only rarely about the most recent events around here, and that left her little enough confidence or conversation. Somehow she had to build enough of a future to have a past.

Because she suspected she might never regain her full memory. As time passed, it became less likely. But maybe she could find at least some snatches of who she had once been.