Snowed in With the Rancher Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  RELAY PUBLISHING EDITION, NOVEMBER 2019

  Copyright © 2019 Relay Publishing Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United Kingdom by Relay Publishing. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Mary Sue Jackson is a pen name created by Relay Publishing for co-authored Romance projects. Relay Publishing works with incredible teams of writers and editors to collaboratively create the very best stories for our readers.

  Cover Design by Mayhem Cover Creations

  www.relaypub.com

  Blurb

  Olivia Wickham could never forget the cowboy she met on a cruise five years ago. The two spent a magical few days together before she was called home for an emergency, without giving him her number. She would have gotten over Tate McConnell—it was just a few nights of paradise, after all—if it wasn’t for two little things: her twin daughters, who were born as a result of those wonderful days. Though she searched for her lost romance in vain, she never forgot his mesmerizing eyes, and the way his smile made her melt inside.

  On a trip to the wilderness just before Christmas, things take a scary turn when one of her daughters is injured on a snowshoeing tour and the little family is unknowingly left behind by the guide. When Tate shows up to save them, she instantly knows who he is—the father of her children, and possibly the love of her life.

  Surprised is a mild term for what Tate feels when he realizes the woman he’s been sent to rescue is Olivia. He’d searched for her over the years, her smile and laugh invading his thoughts on lonely nights. When he learns the two little girls with Olivia are his, surprise makes way for shock. Now, with a major snowstorm coming their way, Tate has to quickly get them to safety inside a cozy little cabin in the woods. Too cozy, since Tate is adjusting to being a father and trying to fight his fierce attraction to Olivia. But since they’re snowbound, there’s nothing to be done but to let his feelings thaw a bit. Or a lot, since they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other every chance they have to be alone. When reality intrudes, though, real panic sets in for Tate. He’s been alone too long to suddenly be a big family man, even if it is Christmas time.

  But when Tate finds himself alone on Christmas Day, he realizes being alone is, well, lonely. He can only hope he’s not too late to create his own Christmas magic.

  Mary Sue Jackson and USA Today Bestseller Leslie North invite you to indulge in a heart-warming small-town western romance with a smoking hot cowboy and the woman who tames him...

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  End of Snowed in With the Rancher

  Thank you!

  About Mary Sue Jackson

  About Leslie

  Sneak Peek: Protecting His Cowgirl

  Also by Mary Sue Jackson

  Prologue

  Tate inched his way along the cruise ship’s long, zigzagging gangway, blessing the partial shade that the overhead canopy provided as he reached the top section. He felt a sharp elbow in his side from the woman pushing forward on his left, struggling to grab a kid who held a dripping ice cream cone in one hand. She yanked the kid back, the ice cream flew off and landed on Tate’s sneaker, and then the child began shrieking in distress.

  “Sorry,” the woman muttered as she dragged the child by one arm back to her family’s place in the boarding line, shoving people aside with those sharp elbows as she went.

  Tate tried to shake the ice cream off his foot, but as he was packed in among a multitude of people, all struggling to make their way up that narrow incline in what seemed like too small a space for the crowd it was supposed to accommodate, he didn’t have much room to maneuver.

  “She shoulda waited to get that kid ice cream,” the older man on his right said as he grunted with the exertion of tugging his wheeled carry-on—evidently packed with heavy items—along. “They got three flavors of soft serve on board. My grandson ate ice cream four times a day when we took him to Aruba.”

  “Is it always this crowded?” Tate asked, wiping sweat from his face.

  The man laughed. “If you try to get on early, like everybody else and his brother. I tried to convince my wife that we should wait to board until half an hour before the lifeboat drill at four o’clock. There are never any crowds then. But you miss out on the lunch buffet if you do that.”

  Tate nodded and gave the man a tight smile right before he was jostled from behind and an ungodly odor wafted through the hot tunnel of humanity. What had possessed him to accept this gift of a cruise from his dad and stepmom? “You need a vacation,” his dad had said. “Get out there and meet people,” both had told Tate.

  Tate gritted his teeth and continued the snail’s crawl along the gangway until he finally reached the deck of the ship and saw the bottleneck: crew members were scanning the ship-issued ID card of every single passenger coming through the security checkpoint. He made his way over, got officially scanned aboard, and shoved his way over to the railing to watch the mass of humanity crawling at a snail’s pace up the gangway behind him, all the way down to the terminal. How were they going to fit this many people on the ship, even if it was a big as a small city? Because he was taller than the average passenger, he managed to eke out a tiny sliver of railing for his elbow, and a touch of fresh air for his lungs. Whatever benefits he’d gotten from the fancy drinks they’d offered to passengers waiting to board were long gone. Now all he had left was a headache and what felt like a sunburn starting on his nose.

  “It’s stupid crowded, isn’t it?” a silky feminine voice to his left said.

  Tate grimaced before plastering on a smile as he turned to face her. But as his gaze focused, the smile became more genuine.

  “It is,” he said, clearing his throat, which was suddenly hoarse and tight. He stared at her long enough that he figured he probably looked like a creeper, but she was gorgeous. Her big hazel eyes gazed up at him, and her ruby lips curled in a warm, inviting smile. Flawless golden skin covered a set of cheekbones most women would probably kill for, if he were to judge by the billboards he’d seen along the way from the airport to the cruise terminal, and while he didn’t want to be obvious about looking, he could tell that everything below the neck was equally fabulous.

  “You on board alone?” she asked as she leaned a hand on the six inches of railing not draped in humans taking pictures of the terminal, the dock, and the harbor beyond.

  “Yeah,” he said, shifting to face her and gesturing for her to take up some of the space on the railing that he’d been using.

  She squeezed in next to him, putting them mere inches away from one another. She smelled like lemons and sunshine, and Tate’s heart gave a little flutter that made him
feel like a teenage girl.

  “The cruise was a uh, gift,” he told her as explanation for his solo status.

  “Nice!” she exclaimed. “I’m here alone, too. Once a year, I scope out all the biggest deals on vacations and pick one, then go for it.”

  Tate’s cheeks started hurting from the unfamiliar need to grin at her. “That’s adventurous. I’m impressed.”

  She laughed, her entire face lighting up with a glow that made him want to lean in and bask in the residual warmth. “It’s once-a-year adventurousness. The rest of the time, I’m boring.”

  He chuckled. “What do you do the rest of the year?”

  “I work for a nonprofit. I finished my degree last year, so it’s my first real job. How about you?”

  “I work at my family’s ranch. The opposite of adventurous.” He put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from being bumped by someone passing by with an overlarge shoulder bag. That one touch was all it took to short-circuit what was left of his inhibitions. Her skin was silky smooth like her voice, and warm like her smile, and a frisson of electricity shot through him as he reluctantly let his arm drop.

  “I’m Tate, by the way,” he said. “From Montana.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Tate from Montana,” she replied. “I’m Olivia from Washington.”

  * * *

  They decided to meet up for dinner in the Tapas restaurant after the mandatory lifeboat drill. Neither of them had ever had tapas so they didn’t know what they were getting into, but as Olivia said, “That’s the whole point of the trip.”

  Tate sat at the table watching her pick apart something called a croquette. The thing was filled with ham and some kind of sauce. Not terrible, but the look on Olivia’s face said she wasn’t convinced.

  He looked longingly at the platter that had held the shrimp. They had been delicious, but there were only three of them, not exactly the kind of meal he was used to.

  “I should have let you have this,” she said as she carefully extracted a piece of ham from the inside of the fried ball. “I thought I’d be safe with ham, but I’m really not a fan of the sauce.”

  He smiled and reached across the table, stabbing the remains of the little croquette before popping it in his mouth. He wasn’t picky, but he was definitely hungry.

  After he swallowed, he leaned forward and whispered, “You want to go get a burger and fries at the diner on the fifth deck? I hear they have shakes, too.”

  “Oh my God, yes,” she said, tossing her napkin on the table and shoving her chair out.

  Tate laughed as he stood and held out his hand. They walked out hand in hand, struggling to keep from laughing like a couple of schoolkids breaking the rules.

  Later, as they sat on pool loungers in a shadowy spot on the darkened pool deck, scarfing their hamburger take-out, Tate thought that his dad had been right after all—a cruise might be the best thing he’d done in months.

  “Now, that was a meal,” Olivia said, leaning back on her chaise with a satisfied smile. Tate wondered if she would have that same smile after an orgasm. He decided in that moment he wanted to find out the answer as soon as possible.

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” he said somewhat suggestively as he shifted so he could reach for her hand. She didn’t resist, and he held on while gazing into her eyes with longing.

  “I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve done with you today,” she told him softly.

  His heart clenched, and something else hardened in anticipation.

  “So, Olivia from Washington…would you like to have a drink in my cabin?” he asked, hoping like hell he hadn’t misread the situation. “Just a drink, if that’s all you want,” he added, in case he had misread it.

  “Which deck are you on?” she countered, tilting her head as she awaited his reply.

  “Four.”

  “I’m on three—yours is closer.”

  Then she stood and tugged him up. He pulled her into his arms as he stood, and she giggled. His forearm banded across the dip in her spine, and he buried his other hand in her hair. “But let’s practice first.”

  Then he kissed her with everything he had, and as her pretty mouth gave way beneath his and his mind became a tangle of slick heat and warm skin, he thought he’d never been so damn happy.

  When they finally broke for air, she took him by the hand, and not wanting to wait for the elevator, they ran all the way to his cabin.

  One

  Five years later

  “You’ll just love all the little glass reindeer I put in that box.”

  Tate McConnell scrubbed a hand across his eyes and tried to smile at the screen in front of him. Smiling back at him, only with a lot more authenticity, was his stepmother, Lucy. Not to mention, in the background behind her was his father, Thomas. Tate noted, though, that his dad was tying fishing flies and letting Lucy do all the talking.

  “There’s also a nativity scene,” she continued, her voice warm and enthusiastic. “I found it the last time we were in Billings. There’s a darling little creche, and the baby is made out of…”

  Tate’s jaw ached from the effort it took to pretend he wanted to have this conversation. Next to him on the floor was the box of Christmas decorations Lucy had delivered earlier in the day while he’d been out doing a survey of the unused land his family ranch was going to lose if they didn’t do something with it. Federal leases were funny that way; you didn’t get to keep them if you couldn’t show you needed them.

  “I threw in some of that tinsel you used to like so much as a kid,” his dad remarked with squinting concentration, his eyes on the fuzzy caterpillar-looking thing dangling off a wickedly sharp hook. Tate contemplated the barbed point, thinking about how he liked the solitude of fishing but not the guts and blood.

  “With the storm coming, I thought it would be good for you to have something to do in case you’re snowed in up there for the next few days,” Lucy continued. “And maybe you could practice baking some of your famous cookies? Everyone will want some for Christmas.”

  Tate sighed. He knew what all this was about. Lucy and his dad wanted him to come and take part in a big Christmas celebration at their house with the entire family. While Tate had grown up an only child with only his dad around, Thomas had remarried about a year before the gift of the cruise ticket, and Lucy came with a large extended family. They were good people, but there were so many of them. Cousins and in-laws and siblings and nieces and nephews and he didn’t know what-all. Sometimes he wondered how Lucy kept them all straight.

  “I’ll see,” he prevaricated. “But I have a lot of work to do with this empty parcel on the north side. The feds will take that land back if we don’t get it productive in the next six months, and that’s not going to be easy. I should never have let it go this long, but I was so busy with that fencing project, I lost track.”

  His dad leaned over Lucy’s shoulder. “You know, you could ask Lucy’s nephews—you know, William and those brothers of his—to help out while they’re here. That operation they run in Wyoming is nearly as big as ours. I bet they’d have some good ideas for that tract.”

  Lucy nodded vigorously. “I don’t know if I told you, but William started a new breeding program last year. His momma says he’s been written up in the Wyoming Cattleman’s Journal for it. They’ll be here before Christmas and weren’t planning to leave until almost New Year’s. That’s plenty of time for them to take a look at that tract and help you brainstorm some ideas.”

  Tate felt something wet on his knuckles and looked down to find his dog Lobster, who’d just woken from a nap.

  He grinned for real now and gave the old lab a good scratch behind the ears. Lobster’s tail thumped and he moaned in delight.

  “That Lobster?” his dad asked from the laptop screen.

  “Yeah, he just woke up,” Tate answered, turning the computer so the camera would show the black beast to his parents. Lobster’s tongue lolled out of his smiling mouth, and Lucy and Tom began cooing at him.
>
  Tate’s gaze roamed around his living room. He’d spent the last five years redoing the old cabin, and it had come together nicely, an eclectic mix of traditional Montana décor—an antler chandelier over the dining room table, overstuffed leather sofas—and modern practicalities—triple-glazed windows, gas fireplace, heated floors. It wasn’t a big place, offering a couple of bedrooms and a study, one great room with living area, kitchen, and dining, and two and a half bathrooms. He’d added the powder room on the main floor at Lucy’s suggestion. He had to admit it was a lot more convenient than trekking to the master bedroom all the time.

  The cabin was his refuge, the place he’d retreated to after his heart had been broken one too many times. And as much as he loved Lucy and knew she was good for his dad, putting the box of decorations she’d dropped off to use was just asking for somebody to come by to see them. His feelings about people in his space for the holidays could be succinctly described as hell to the no.

  “So what do you say?” Thomas asked. “You going to set up some time to have William and the boys help you with that land?”

  Tate ground his teeth briefly. A quiet man, he didn’t tend to lose his temper. But he could get as frustrated and impatient as the next man, and that’s exactly what this conversation was doing to him. It seemed as if over the last couple years, he was finding it harder and harder to play the part of the dutiful son. He really simply wanted to work the land, fix up his cabin, and hang out with Lobster. Since his dad’s heart attack three years ago, he didn’t even talk business that much with the old man. Thomas had seemed relieved to hand the reins to Tate, and Tate was fine with keeping his business his.