A Cowboy For Christmas (A Copper Mountain Christmas) by Katherine Garbera Page A

living room and found her looking at the tree, lost in thought, he knew now wasn’t the time for the third degree. She needed a friend... and as much as he wanted to be her lover, he’d learned that being friends first was the best way to have a lasting relationship.
    And he wanted that. The more he got to know Annie, the more he wanted to keep her in his life for Christmas and the future.
     

 
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    The snow fell outside, getting heavier and heavier as she stood staring at the lights, feeling the mistakes of the past scattered around her like shards from the glass ornament she ’d broken. She knew she should pick it up, but instead she just stood there transfixed – caught between the past and the present.
    “ I think the storm that was threatening is finally here,” she said.
    “ Let me check the news.”
    “ You’ll have to do it on the radio, I don’t have television service yet.”
    He pulled out his smartphone and did some quick tapping. “I might get snowed in tonight.”
    “ Do you want to go now? Will Evan be okay?”
    “ He’s spending the night with my dad, he’ll be fine.”
    But the snow outside her door was coating everything in white. Making the overgrown lawn look pretty, pristine. Just like her life could be now. She cleaned up the ornament and tossed it in a box she’d set aside for trash and went back to standing in front of the tree. Otis Redding was singing a Christmas song, and she let everything slip away. She wasn’t sure how people lived for the moment.
    She had a damned hard time letting go of everything.
    “Tis the season to be joyful,” Carson said, quietly as he came up next to her.
    “ Is it joyful for you?” she asked.
    “ Most of the time. I miss my mom and Rainey and my grandparents but there are so many new faces too – like Evan and my nephew JT and seeing them discover our family traditions for the first time or look forward to them… well, yeah, it does bring me joy.”
    “ I bet it’s like that for Marilyn,” Annie said. “I don’t have any traditions.”
    He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Then let’s start some.”
    She wanted to but then she started worrying if he ’d be with her next Christmas. “What if—
    “ No. No questions, we are going to start a tradition and that’s it.”
    “ Okay, so what is the tradition going to be?”
    “ Well it starts with me delivering your tree and you fixing me lasagna for dinner… see how I’ve guaranteed you’ll make dinner for me again?”
    “ In a year? Don’t you want dinner before then?” she asked, worried. She realized that she was afraid because she wanted this to be real. She wanted everything she felt for Carson to be perfect and if it wasn’t she had no idea what she’d do. She was out of places to run to. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe it’d be enough to stay this time.
    “ We’ll have dinner again before next Christmas, but this is about our tradition.”
    “ Okay,” she said. Stop worrying, she warned herself. “What’s next?”
    “ Well, we decorate your tree,” he said.
    “ You’re just saying the things we’re doing,” she said. “Does that count?”
    “ That’s how traditions get started,” he said. He took a box of hand-wrapped ornaments that had been her mom’s and handed them to her.
    She took them and unwrapped them slowly. “This one was my paternal grandmother’s.”
    “ Tell the stories behind it. How did you end up with it?” he asked.
    “ She gave it to us the year that Gilly got diagnosed with cancer—the first time. This little angel was meant to watch over us and make sure that Gilly got healthy again. Grandma P came for Christmas that year and she helped us make a chain for the tree that was made of wishes. We each wrote them on a scraps of paper and then she made them into rings and we draped our wishes around the tree and the house,” Annie said. She’d forgotten how special that Christmas had been. So full of