Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy - Diana Palmer Page 0,86
to his second chance at love and run with it. Shelby had brought new life to the farmhouse. And JT . . . man, his nephew was something special. That kid could run around the ranch all day long, riding horses and playing in the hills with his buddies, doing all the things a boy should be allowed to do. And he was doing it right here, on a piece of land that hadn’t seen much laughter over the years.
So why couldn’t Noah stop looking over his shoulder for the Ghost of Christmas Past?
“Funny how you said it’d take you a few hours to go pick up the bottled water, but when I texted you that Faith stopped by, you managed it in less than forty-five minutes,” Cody said, reproaching his brother, his hair messed up as if he’d been smooching his wife minutes ago.
“Some good motivation there,” Logan said, grabbing a beer and using the heal of his cowboy boot to pop off the top. “So Cody called it right for once, and you and Faith are a thing.”
“He’s courtin’ her,” Cody said, and Logan burst out laughing.
“Courtin’?” Logan had the stones to laugh again.
“What is this? Mayberry?” Noah asked. “You were in the house literally five minutes.”
Noah had watched Cody grab his wife by the hand and drag her through the back door. He was envious at the easy familiarity Cody and his family shared. Even when his mom had been alive, Noah had never known anything like that. Never thought it was possible for a guy like him.
Being around Faith had challenged that belief.
“What do you expect? You’re back in Sweet,” Cody said, offering him a beer. Noah grabbed a bottle of water instead.
“You’ve been back in town, what? Five months?” Noah asked his brother.
“More or less.”
“And you’re already as bad as Ms. Luella, gossiping like a bunch of hillbilly biddies with nothing better to do than sip sweet tea and flap your lips.”
“Don’t let Ms. Luella hear you say that, or she’ll put soap in your pie,” Cody warned, a happy grin on his face.
“So I see you decided to go there.” Logan leaned back in his camping chair, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles, a pair of pink socks with dancing alligators peeking out from beneath his cowboy boots. “I’d say you need to get laid and blow off some steam, but as the converted father of a daughter I will teach to run from men like you until she’s thirty and old enough to date, I hope that wherever you went, you didn’t go there lightly.”
“I don’t need dating advice from a guy who dated one sister, then married the other,” Noah said, and Logan’s jaw clenched as his gaze landed on Gina. “But yes, I don’t take dating a single mom lightly.”
“So this is a thing then?” Cody asked.
How to answer that without sharing some of the private things Faith had confided in him. He grabbed the back of his neck with a hand and applied pressure to relieve the building tension—a side effect of extended time at the Crossing. “It’s too early to tell.”
Cody snorted. “That’s about word for word what Faith said.”
Noah straightened. “What else did she say?”
“Depends on whether you think I’m an old hillbilly flapping my lips,” Cody said, and Noah chucked an empty water bottle at him. Cody caught it with his hand and crushed it into a ball. “According to Shelby, she said things like this don’t happen to girls like her.”
Cody chucked the bottle back, but Noah didn’t bother to block it. He was too busy thinking about what it must have cost Faith to admit that to someone else. And what kind of disappointments she’d had to deal with to even believe that BS.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” he said. “She’d be so hurt if she knew people were talking about her. So this doesn’t leave the circle.”
“Agreed,” Cody said, and Logan nodded. Thankfully, the other guys had taken off to deliver the extra water to the event site.
“So what are you going to do?” Cody asked.
Noah looked over at Faith, still on the swing, her hair dancing lightly in the breeze, her skin glowing under the setting sun. As if sensing his interest, she met his gaze and—merry Christmas one and all—she was beautiful.
Even from the distance, he could feel the blast when she slid him a shy smile. He tipped his hat, acting as though his heart wasn’t beating out