Read Online A Cowboy's Christmas Promise by Maggie McGinnis - Free Book Online

him off to bed when he gets back here from the trail. Am I wrong?”
    “Nope.”
    “You are the master of the short sentence, aren’t you?”
    “Yup.”
    Hayley growled. “All right. I’ll pull professional rank on you, then. As a fellow vet, I can’t leave you out here all alone all night. I’ll stay out of the way unless you need me, and if you don’t need me, then I’ll just chatter ceaselessly and drive you nuts all night.”
    “Sounds like a dream. How could I resist?”
    “You really can’t.”
    Daniel didn’t speak for a long moment. Then, “Are you always this—I don’t know—”
    “Persistent?”
    He laughed. “That wasn’t exactly the word I had in mind.”
    Hayley turned toward the huge door at the end of the stable. “Think of it this way. You’d be helping
me.
I’m dying for some big animal time. Dying for it. I have been looking forward to this vacation for”—she pretended to count on her fingers—“approximately eleven months and two weeks. In that time, I haven’t worked with an animal bigger than my head. I
need
this.”
    And, as a side bonus, maybe if I stay up all night with you and Apollo, I can claim exhaustion tomorrow and sneak out of centerpiece duty.
    “It wouldn’t have anything to do with getting you out of arts and crafts tomorrow if you stay up all night?”
    Gulp.
    “Ooh! Hadn’t even thought of that.”
    “Right.”
    “Am I really that transparent?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Any requests from the kitchen?”
    “That depends…“
    “
Ma’s
kitchen.”
    “I’ll take whatever she’s offering.”
    —
    Sometime after midnight, Hayley was sitting on a hay bale outside Apollo’s stall, legs pulled up to her chest, while Daniel walked the horse in big circles up and down the barn hallway. She had no idea what time it even was at this point. They’d inhaled a plate of Ma’s pork roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans hours ago, and had spent the past few hours discussing a study Daniel was dying to enroll in, but just didn’t have the bandwidth to take on.
    “So let me guess. You don’t have to do the all-nighter thing much in your practice.” Daniel’s low, rumbly voice made her eyes pop open.
    Oops. When had she closed them?
    “Not in a really long time, no.”
    “You can go to bed, you know. I’m perfectly fine out here.”
    She stretched, embarrassed. Here she’d made a case for coming back down to the barn and keeping
him
awake, and now she was the one falling asleep. “No, I’m good. I just need chocolate. And maybe coffee. Yes, coffee.”
    She reached for the Thermos and poured a small glug of coffee into a paper cup. She gulped it, then reached for the bag of cookies Ma had sent down with their dinner. “Want a cookie?”
    He reached over to snag one on his way by the hay bale. “Thank you.”
    Hayley watched as he led the horse a little further down the barn, increasing the diameter of his circles. She inhaled slowly, loving the smell of hay and horses and summer. And Daniel. A breeze crept through the south end doorway and tickled her hair, and she could hear muffled snorts and stomps as the horses floated in and out of sleep.
    It was warm and homey, and she realized with a start that this really was Daniel’s
office,
of sorts. He didn’t have a standing clinic that smelled like alcohol and medicine and wet pooch. He had this—this glorious life treating animals where they lived, in big open barns on big open ranches in big open Montana.
    “What are you smiling at?” He came by again. “Got any more cookies?”
    She handed another one over. “I was just thinking how different
your
office is from mine.”
    “And?”
    “I might maybe like yours better.”
    “I think I do, too, though I’ve never done time on the show circuit, so I might be ill-informed.”
    “You’re probably as informed as you need to be. It’s a scary place.”
    “You really don’t