Title: True-Blue Cowboy
Christmas
Series: Big Sky Cowboys,
#3
Author: Nicole Helm
Pub Date: October 4, 2016
ISBN: 9781492641537
BIG SKY CHRISTMAS
Thack Lane has his hands full. For the past seven years, he’s been
struggling to move on from his wife’s tragic death and raise a daughter all by
his lonesome. He doesn’t have time for himself, much less a cheerful new
neighbor with a smile that can light up the ranch.
Christmas spirit? Bah, humbug.
With Christmas right around the corner, Summer Shaw is searching for
somewhere to belong. When her neighbor’s young daughter takes a shine to her,
she is thrilled. But Thack is something else altogether. He’s got walls around
his heart that no amount of holiday wishes can scale. Yet as joy comes creeping
back to the lonely homestead, Summer and Thack may just find their happily ever
after before the last of the Christmas miracles are through…
NICOLE HELM writes down-to-earth
contemporary romance specializing in neighbors who don’t live close enough to
be a problem. When she’s not writing, she spends her time day dreaming about
someday owning a barn. She lives with her husband and two young sons in
O’Fallon, Missouri.
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GUEST POST
Top Five
Holiday Traditions
I admit it,
I’m a Christmas junkie. I used to take boxes of Christmas decorations to my
college dorm/apartment every year. I have three trees in my basement and a
plethora of tubs of ornaments, books, sparkly things, decorative plates and the
like. December is all Christmas music all the time. I love Christmas.
Which was why
it was fun to mix the magic of Christmas and the magic of romance in True-Blue
Cowboy Christmas. My favorite part of Christmas is family, which is why
I brought the whole crazy Shaw clan together for this final book in my Big Sky
Cowboys series.
To me, the
holidays are all about love, so my favorite holiday traditions are either done with
family or because they remind me of family.
Eating! I’m sorry, it’s true, I love
eating through the holidays! There are a lot of one-time treats that come out
at my house, or in the houses we visit. I love to make Kringla, but it’s a
pain, so I only make it at Christmas time. My grandma always has gingerbread
cake, which feels especially like Christmas to me, plus the afore-mentioned
sugar cookies. My mom or I make Swedish Rye Bread. My tastebuds are always very
happy the week of Christmas. And all these eating usually happens with some of
my favorite people in the world, which makes it that much more fun.
There are a
million other things I love to do around Christmas time as well, but I’ll spare
you my never-ending list. True-Blue Cowboy Christmas features a few (Rudolph,
tree trimming, etc), and if you’re looking for a heart-warming Christmas read,
I hope you’ll check it out.
EXCERPT
Summer started walking, but Thack
took the guitar case from her. “Here, let me help.”
It wasn’t necessary, but it was
awfully nice. Especially when his free hand took hers, their fingers
intertwining. It was like the culmination of so much desperate belief—that not
all men were like the men Summer had met through her mother. That something sweet
and easy and normal could exist, and that it could be something she might earn.
She swallowed at the lump in her throat. How silly she was to be emotional over
something so…little.
The frigid, dark air helped her
get her bearings. She led him to where her car was parked, and he helped her
load the guitar in the back. When she shut the door, she turned to look at him
and managed her best flirtatious-if-nervous smile. “So. Walk?” Though she didn’t know
how long they’d last in the freezing temperatures, she thought she might tempt
frostbite if it meant spending time with him.
“Yeah. Just…one thing first.”
Before she could even ask what,
his mouth was on hers and she sighed into the kiss, leaning into him. She loved
the way his hands tangled in her hair, that even though they weren’t exactly at
ease around each other one hundred percent of the time, this was easy.
No, easy wasn’t the right
word. It just worked. Their bodies fit and somehow his mouth always knew
exactly how to move against hers, like they had been built to match in all of
the right places—two puzzle pieces that on the surface hadn’t looked like they
would fit together.
But the surface was never the
whole story, and while for the past two years she’d desperately tried to make
the layers fit, she couldn’t erase those first twenty years of her life.
Somehow, kissing Thack in the
middle of a dark Montana town, she found she no longer wanted to erase the
experience of those years. It was a part of her, a part of how she’d gotten
here, to this place where his kiss, his hands, he felt like magic.
She wanted more. He wanted more.
They wanted each other. She didn’t want to freeze her butt off on a walk down
Main Street. Not when, for the first time, their time together was truly just
the two of them. No matter where this took them, that was something to grab
with both hands and not waste.
“We could skip the walk,” she said,
holding on to his coat, ignoring the press of the car door handle in her back.
His eyes narrowed as if he wasn’t
quite certain she was suggesting what he thought she was suggesting. “Um. What exactly would we do
instead?”
“You could take me home.” She
sounded breathless and probably ridiculous, but she didn’t care. This was
something she’d dreamed about. Over the years, she had put a great deal of
thought into the details—when and how, and what type of person would be the one
she would want to give those last pieces of herself to.
Thack wasn’t exactly what she’d
pictured, but at the same time, he was more. Strong, steady, dedicated.
Everything about him awed her. He had her pressed against a car door, and she
was deliriously excited with it. How could she not want to jump in feet first?
“But we have two cars and… I’m
taking this too literally, aren’t I?”
She couldn’t stifle the laugh,
both happy and nervous. “You are. I mean, if you have to get back to Kate, I
understand. But you could escort me home. If you have the time. If you want.”
“Dad said he’d call if he and Mrs.
Bart needed me, so I could take you home. You know, I…I’m kind of curious about
what the inside of that thing you live in looks like.”
“I’ll give you a tour.”
“Thank you for being ten times
better at this whole flirting thing than I am.” He brushed a kiss against her
mouth.
She smiled up at him. “Luckily, you make up for the bad
flirting in the kissing department.”
He gave a short laugh. “Not a bad trade.”
She took a deep breath and
mustered all of her courage and all of her determination. She set goals, and
she reached them. Thack didn’t have to be any different. “So, follow me home?”
He gave a short nod and held the
driver’s side door open for her as she slid in. She started the old clunker,
only partially sad when it actually started. It would have been kind of nice if
he’d been able to drive her home.
Oh well. “Parked around front?”
“Ah, yes. Meet me there?”
“Yup.”
He hesitated again, then smiled. “I’ll see you soon.” Carefully, he
closed her door. In the rearview mirror, she watched him walk away, her heart
pounding wildly. She’d invited him to her place. She’d offered a tour, which she hoped was obviously
more euphemism than reality.
Well, it didn’t matter. Because
tonight…tonight she was going to go after exactly what she wanted.
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