Also by Carolyn Brown Lucky Cowboys Lucky in Love One Lucky Cowboy Getting Lucky Talk Cowboy to Me Honky Tonk Cowboys I Love This Bar Hell, Yeah My Give a Damn’s Busted Honky Tonk Christmas Spikes & Spurs Love Drunk Cowboy Red’s Hot Cowboy Darn Good Cowboy Christmas One Hot Cowboy Wedding Mistletoe Cowboy Just a Cowboy and His Baby Cowboy Seeks Bride Cowboys & Brides Billion Dollar Cowboy The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride How to Marry a Cowboy Burnt Boot, Texas Cowboy Boots for Christmas The Trouble with Texas Cowboys One Texas Cowboy Too Many A Cowboy Christmas Miracle The Shop on Main Street The Sisters Café Dear Reader, Welcome to the Palo Duro Canyon. Creed Riley has found the ranch of his dreams in the big crater out in the Texas Panhandle and just in time for Christmas. There are a couple of little stipulations in the deal. He has to live on the ranch for three weeks before he and the owner sign the legal forms, and he has to agree to let her granddaughter live on the ranch as long as she wants. No problem! And then the snowstorm blows in, shuts down the electricity, and roads are closed into and out of the canyon. He and the granddaughter are stuck in a small house together with an ugly stray mutt and a momma cat. He’s determined that he is buying the ranch; she’s determined to change her grandmother’s mind about selling and his about buying. Husband and I discovered the Palo Duro Canyon when we were out on a research trip south of that area. A little town called Post, Texas, was the place I had in mind to set this book, but something about it wasn’t the “right” place. So we drove on, and on, and on, until we reached Silverton. I almost had a “feeling” about that place, but when we drove north toward Claude (mentioned in Darn Good Cowboy Christmas) and found the canyon, I knew I’d found the setting for this book. Husband and I made several trips to the canyon before this book was actually finished. It is an amazing place with its rock formations rising up like castles or huge chimneys to heights so tall that the eagles nesting at the tops look like tiny toys. It’s a desolate, lonely land dotted with mesquite and scrub oak and cows, but there was something about it that said love and romance could be found there with the right characters at the right time. Happy Reading! Carolyn Brown Thank you for downloading this Sourcebooks eBook! You are just one click away from… • Being the first to hear about author happenings • VIP deals and steals • Exclusive giveaways • Free bonus content • Early access to interactive activities • Sneak peeks at our newest titles Happy reading! CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Books. Change. Lives. Copyright © 2012, 2020 by Carolyn Brown Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks Cover images © kajakiki/Getty Images Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book. Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900 www.sourcebooks.com Originally published as Mistletoe Cowboy in 2012 in the United States of America by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks. Contents Front Cover Title Page Copyright Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Excerpt from Honky Tonk Christmas Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Acknowledgments About the Author Back Cover To Joanne Kennedy, my fellow smut peddler Chapter 1 “Dammit!” Sage’s favorite cuss word bounced around inside her van like marbles in a tin can, sounding and resounding in her ears. She had slowed down to a snail’s pace and was about to drop off the face of the earth into the Palo Duro Canyon when two men dragged sawhorses and a “ROAD CLOSED” sign toward the middle of the road. She stepped on the gas and slid between the sawhorses, slinging wet snow all over the highway workers. The last things she saw in her rearview mirror were shaking fists and angry faces before the driving snow obliterated them. They could cuss all they wanted and even slap one of those fines double where workers are present on her if they wanted. She didn’t have time to fiddle-fart around in Claude waiting for eight to ten inches of snow to fall and then melt. She had urgent business at home that would not wait, and she was going home if she had to crawl through the blowing snow and wind on her hands and knees. She’d driven all night and barely stayed ahead of the storm’s path until she was twenty miles from Claude and got the first full blast of the blinding snow making a kaleidoscope out of her headlights. If she was going to stop, she would have done so then, but she had to get home and talk her grandmother out of the biggest mistake of her life. With the snowstorm and the closed roads into and out of the canyon, Grand wouldn’t be making her afternoon flight for sure. Maybe that would give Sage time to talk her out of selling the ranch to a complete stranger. “Dammit!” she swore again and didn’t even feel guilty about it. “And right here at Christmas when it’s supposed to be about family and friends and parties and love. She can’t leave me now. I should have listened to her.” What was Grand thinking anyway? The Rockin’ C had been in the Presley family since the days of the Alamo. It was one of the first ranches ever staked
