Read Online A Cowboy For Christmas (A Copper Mountain Christmas) by Katherine Garbera - Free Book Online Page A

out the big bay window for him.
    Rumple sat at her feet, every once in a while looking up at her as if to ask where he was. She knew she was being stupid. This wasn’t the way she normally acted. But to be fair, she hadn’t had a first date with anyone in over ten years and she was a little out of practice.
    One thing a settled relationship did was take the nerves out of things like dinner. Her house smelled of garlic and tomatoes, she’d made her own sauce from her mother’s recipe which had been her grandmother’s, and there had been something soothing about making it.
    She ’d felt the same way when she’d been in New York and made it. The food and the recipes of the women in her family linked her to them. It was the closest thing she had to home until now.
    She looked at the boxes of Christmas decorations she ’d found in the attic, but had been afraid to open. She had no idea what memories lurked in the boxes and she wasn’t sure she was ready to face them. But she knew once she had a tree she was going to want to decorate it.
    She ’d found the box labeled Lights. She should go through them instead of standing at the window like… like a woman who couldn’t wait for her man, she scolded herself, and forced herself to turn away. Carson wasn’t her man. He couldn’t be unless she let herself be honest with him about her emotions. And she’d have to start thinking about staying here. Something she didn’t want to do tonight.
    She opened the box with the string lights in it and groaned. Last year she’d hired a service to do this. Really, it had been so much easier but then again she’d had the entire interior of her apartment decorated by the service. The doorbell rang and she started at the sound.
    “ Stop being silly,” she warned herself. But she couldn’t help the jolt of excitement that went through her. He was here.
    She took her time walking to the front door and unlocked the deadbolt before opening the door. Diana Krall had started singing Sleigh Ride and it felt like a sign to her. Carson stood there with his Stetson in one hand and his leather jacket open.
    “ You look pretty,” he said.
    “ Thanks. You look good too.”
    “ I’ve got your tree but seeing this door, it’s going to be hard to get it in.”
    Rumple ambled forward and nudged Carson ’s legs with his nose and he bent down to scratch her dog behind his ears. And she just noticed how well the jeans fit him and when he straightened and looked over at her, one eyebrow lifted in question she sort of blushed and wanted to kick herself for that.
    “ How’d you do it the last time you delivered it for dad?” she asked as Rumple ambled back to his large doggie bed in the kitchen.
    “ He never had the tree delivered. Just left it there on the lot said maybe someday he would if his girls came home,” Carson said.
    Those words made her heart ache. She hadn ’t been close to her dad. They hadn’t gotten along, but if he’d asked her one time to come home she would have. She’d just always felt so unwanted, so in the way. And now she heard from someone else that maybe she had been needed here.
    “ Oh. I never knew that,” she said, feeling it was one more way she and her father had never understood each other. Would it have killed him to call her and ask her to come back?
    “ That was thoughtless,” he said, he ran his hand over his thick hair. “I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
    “ It’s fine. I never wanted to come home. I never knew he wanted me to,” she said. “Want to come in and see if there is a better way to get the tree in?”
    “ I think I’d better. I have it on a hand truck, so… don’t you have double-sided French doors on the back?” he asked.
    “ Yes. You want to come in there?”
    “ I think it’ll work. I brought a couple of guys with me. Where do you want it set up?” Carson asked.
    “ I’m debating. Either next to the fireplace...” she said, leading him into the living room and