A Texas Kind of Christmas

by Jodi Thomas, Celia Bonaduce, Rachael Miles

Genres: American Romance; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Take a trip to beautiful Texas and the fabled St. Nicholas Hotel on Christmas Eve, 1859 where anything can happen—even love—in the story collection fans of Diana Palmer, Linda Lael Miller, and Lori Wilde will fall in love with this holiday season!
 
ONE NIGHT AT THE ST. NICHOLAS

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Jodi Thomas
To escape her stepmother’s plot to marry her off, Texas heiress Jacqueline Hartman spends Christmas Eve sharing a hideout with an accused bank robber. After a night in Nathanial Ward’s arms, Jacqueline is certain she has met her match after all. But will his heartfelt promise of love lead to his demise at the hands of the law?
 
BIRDIE’S FLIGHT * Celia Bonaduce
Seamstress Birdie Flanagan gets the surprise of her life when she receives a beautiful gown—and a sudden invitation—for the ball of the season! With her flaming red hair, Birdie creates a stir from the moment she arrives, capturing the eye of the dashing Captain Douglas Newcastle.  But will a villainous suitor from her past keep her from her long awaited happily-ever-after?
 
TEXAS SPIRIT * Rachael Miles
When lovely spinster Eugenie Charpentier makes a trip across the Texas frontier with former Texas Ranger Asher Graham, she gets an unexpected lesson in the ways of rough-and-tumble men. But once Asher is escorting her across the dance floor at the Christmas ball, it’s Jenny’s turn to tutor the rugged lawman in the art of love. . . .
 

Release date: October 29, 2019

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Rain hung in the air so thick Cody Lamar couldn’t see the sunset as he rode into Dallas. He swore into the wind. This was the dumbest idea he’d ever had in his life.

He was thirty-four, old enough to know better, but here he was going courting at some fancy party, looking for a girl he hadn’t seen in years.

Probably half the single men in the state would be at the St. Nicholas Hotel tonight, lined up to propose if they’d heard the same rumors he had. A Texas princess, who came with a dowry of cattle and land, was looking for a husband. Shy, rarely seen, Miss Jacqueline Hartman, daughter of one of the richest ranchers in Texas, would be married by the new year or rumor was her father planned to disown her.

Cody had been twenty when he met his neighbor Harry Hartman, and his daughter Jacqueline had been about seven. The day hadn’t been much better than today; funeral weather, he’d thought then.

He couldn’t remember what the little girl had looked like that morning they all huddled around her mother’s grave. Harry had stood like stone in the rainstorm, but his daughter looked like she might blow away. She’d clenched her hands behind her back as the preacher shouted above the thunder. Cody wondered if she was stubbornly refusing to touch her father, or simply frozen in place.

Little Jacqueline Hartman wore a coat a few sizes too big with a hood covering her face. Cody remembered brown hair or maybe it had been wet blond. She was skinny, though. He noticed that. Bony as a fence post with that big coat flapping around her like a black flag.

She’d spent most of the funeral standing behind her daddy, who ignored her. When one of the cowhands tossed the first shovel of dirt on her mother’s casket, the girl started crying.

No one moved to comfort her. No one said a word. Harry finally noticed her. He swore so loud it raveled the storm. He picked her up and loaded her in the back of the buckboard as if she was simply a newfound burden.

All the other families stood in the rain watching as he climbed on the seat and grabbed the reins.

When the wagon finally disappeared in the dreary fog, Cody could still hear her sobs carried on the icy wind.

He had felt sorry for her that day, but he hadn’t known what to say. Afterwards, he’d watched for the kid at barn raisings and when he went to town. A sad little girl with a bull of a father raising her. Once he thought he saw her in the schoolyard sitting all alone. He’d noticed her asleep in the wagon while her father went about his business in town, and again a few years later when she rode wild across open pasture.

Cody had left his land for a while, raising money by serving in the war with Mexico. By the time he’d gotten back, folks said they never saw her in town at all. She’d grown up so shy she never left her father’s spread.

He remembered being happy for her when Harry married again. Folks bragged that Margaret Hartman was the most beautiful bride they’d ever seen. The new Mrs. Hartman was one of those rare women who takes up all the air in a room. She acted as if all others were simply around to entertain her. Harry paraded her about like she was a prize heifer and she talked baby talk to him as if she was too dumb to sneeze without directions.

Cody didn’t really care. The war had hardened him and all he wanted to do was live in peace on his land. On the rare occasions he saw Mr. and Mrs. Hartman, Harry’s daughter was never with them.

Now, over a dozen years since the day he’d seen Jacqueline cry, she was the belle of the ball. She was long into marrying age at twenty-one and her father and stepmother seemed set on the idea that she find a husband tonight.

Cody pushed memories aside as he slowed his mount into the heavy traffic of a dozen wagons. Dallas wasn’t much of a town, but bigger than most this far north of the Rio.

He stabled his horse across the street from the St. Nicholas and stomped through the mud suddenly in a hurry to get his chore finished. He planned to propose to Miss Hartman whether she was pretty or homely. Something he never figured he’d do. If she needed a husband he could handle that job.

He was about to walk into some elegant ball wearing worn clothes and ask a girl he’d never spoken to if she’d be interested in marrying him. He didn’t want a wife, but he’d treat her right. Talk to her now and then. Finish building the house he’d started years ago. Take her to town once a month whether they needed supplies or not.

With the land she’d be getting when she married Cody, he’d be able to grow his herd. Otherwise, he’d have to pack up and move farther north to expand.

Marriage seemed less trouble than moving beyond the fort line into Indian Territory.

But, he’d never tell her he loved her. He’d given up being that kind of fool years ago. She’d have to agree to that term. Cody had a feeling she was used to no one caring about her.

Nathaniel Ward lowered his bowler and tried to ignore the three mismatched passengers across from him on the stage heading toward a settlement known as Dallas.

First was a plump little woman who never stopped talking to her barrel-chested husband, a farmer, who didn’t bother listening to his wife. He was trying to sleep while their son, about six, refused to settle in one spot.

On every stop of the dusty two-day journey people had gotten on or off, but they all had the same look of disgust when they glanced at Nate.

Maybe it was the hat, Nathaniel decided. Most of these Texans wore wide-brimmed, high-crowned hats or wide sombreros with a Mexican flare. No one but an Easterner would wear a bowler in this wild windy country.

Of course, their frowns might be because Nathaniel hadn’t had a bath in a week. Or maybe it was the bloodstains on his coat. He thought of telling them that it wasn’t his blood, but somehow he doubted that would offer much comfort.

And then, there was the fact that he was handcuffed to the rawhide, mean lawman.

Marshal Cash Calaber might think of himself as Texas’s best, seeing he was a lawyer, a marshal, and mentioned to every passing voter that he’d be running for governor the next election. But all Nate saw was six feet of nasty wrapped in self-righteous lectures and seasoned with bullshit.

Nate had been watching him for days. Studying him carefully. He had expensive boots with his initials sewn into the leather and a valise branded in the same style.

Cash was about Nate’s build, but the blowhard carried himself full-sized. Reminding Nate of a toad puffed up to fight.

If no one in the coach acted like they were listening to him, the man would talk louder as if giving a speech to a whole hall of people. He had enough stories to have lived a dozen lifetimes. A few, he claimed were personal experiences, but Nate had read them in dime novels. To stay awake, the marshal sometimes ran down all the rules of law. He’d say, “I know enough law to pass the bar in every state, but I don’t want to dumb myself down to a solicitor’s level. I’ll run this state in five years.”

If no other passenger commented, Cash talked about his parents’ ranch down near Austin or about the rich girl he was going to meet in Dallas as soon as he turned over this outlaw. “I’ve never met her, but she’s a true Texas princess. Her folks were part of the Old Three Hundred, the first settlers Stephen F. Austin brought out in 1825. All I got to do before I claim her is see this bad guy hang first. Duty before pleasure, I always say.”

He’d elbow Nate every time he repeated his goals and Nate would play his part by growling.

“Captured him all by myself even though my duties are usually called for at the capital. But, it was my obligation to keep the great state of Texas safe from outlaws and killers.”

Nate thought of adding that the capture wasn’t very hard. He’d been sitting on the steps of his burned theater trying to drink himself to death when Cash marched up, pulled his gun, and arrested him.

Nate noticed Cash wasn’t the brightest of men. For one, he never allowed anyone else to talk and two, he hadn’t figured out that Nate wasn’t the outlaw he’d been looking for.

Not that Nate was a saint, but he’d never robbed the banks the marshal claimed he had. He didn’t even own a gun.

Calaber might think Nathaniel Ward was a criminal, but in truth, Nate was simply an actor on hard times. He’d spent his last dollar to buy a theater in Austin, only to find the place had burned down six months ago. He’d thought Texas might be his chance, but things weren’t going so well. Chained to a marshal trying to make a name for himself and headed toward his own hanging didn’t sound like much of a career choice.

“Hey, Mister? You kill somebody?” the squirmy kid asked.

Both of the parents frowned and glared at Nathaniel.

An out-of-work actor is still an actor. Nate twisted a smile on one side of his mouth like he’d seen the marshal do. “Yep. Killed a snot-nosed kid who bothered me with questions back at the last watering hole.”

The boy paled and Marshal Cash laughed. “Hell, Ward, you sound just like me. What happened to that Yankee accent of yours?”

Grinning, Nathaniel added, still in the marshal’s accent, “Southern with a hint of Irish, you are, partner. I’ve been cooped up with you for almost three days. It was bound to rub off.”

Calaber turned back to the boy. “He ain’t no killer, kid. He’s a thief, a pretender. Almost had me convinced he was an actor and not a bank robber but I caught him just around the corner from the bank. You ask me, acting isn’t no kind of job. Ain’t much different than a robber. Breath will go out of either one when the rope tightens.”

Now the chubby little woman in a hat bigger than her head gasped. “An actor. I’ve heard of them but haven’t ever seen one.”

The marshal grinned. “Most of the time he just acts like he’s an actor. I don’t think he’s any good. I’ve never heard of him and I’ve been around.”

Nathaniel pushed his hat back down, deciding Calaber just liked to needle him. The man had probably never seen a play. Despite all his talk, Nate could honestly say that the marshal had the manners of a prairie dog, but he’d be insulting the pup.

Cash had bragged that tonight he’d be at some big ball and he planned to court a rich rancher’s only daughter. He claimed she’d look good in the governor’s mansion.

The stage stopped at a crossroads and the driver yelled, “This is y’all’s last stop if you’re not heading toward Dallas.”

As the family bumped their way out, the man looked back at Marshal Calaber. “Take care. The last leg north runs right through outlaw country. Keep your gun fully loaded and at the ready. Next forty miles is dangerous.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Nathaniel said in the marshal’s voice. “But I’ve got a schedule to keep and a pretty princess to charm.”

Calaber slugged Nate in the chest with his free fist as the farmer closed the stage door. “That will be enough out of you, parrot. We’re making Dallas before dark and it won’t be soon enough to get rid of you.”

When they were around people, Calaber was civil, but the minute they were alone, the lawman was downright bothersome, Nate decided. Men like that were pretenders. In public, all smiles and righteous, but behind doors they were twisted.

Nate acted like he was hurt, which usually satisfied Cash. The marshal had no way of knowing that a few blows were nothing compared to the treatment of orphans running the streets of New York.

That’s where Nate had learned to pretend. Immigrants from all over were crammed into the slums and Nate had learned to shift his body, change the way he talked, even cuss in the language of each street. Someone told him a nun had dropped him off at the orphanage and said his name was Nathaniel. When Nate ran away at seven, he’d picked the name over the door where he’d slept. Ward.

Calaber pulled out a bottle and took a long draw, something else he never did in front of people. “By midnight I’ll bed that princess.” He tossed his wide-brimmed hat across to the empty seat, rolled his leather jacket up as a pillow, and stretched his legs atop his valise. “You’ll be in jail and I’ll be sleeping at the St. Nicholas. I already got my room booked and a maid name of Katie waiting for me to chase her around the hallways.” He laughed. “She’s a wild one. She’ll fight and fight, but in the end I’ll win, and she’ll never say a word about what I’ll do to her.”

Nate had worked at a hotel as a kid. He knew the maids never told no matter what the hotel guests did for fear of getting fired. Their job was all that stood between them and starvation.

While the marshal slept and the miles flew by, Nate thought of how he could get out of this mess. Cash had already told him that his trial wouldn’t take more than an hour. The clerk who’d seen him rob the bank remembered a dark-haired man in a bowler hat. He’d described half the men east of the Mississippi, including Cash, but that didn’t seem to matter to the marshal.

“You fit the bill, Ward. You’ll be swinging from a rope in the midnight breeze.” The lawman had said it so many times it was starting to echo.

All Nate needed was one break. A blink when Calaber forgot to watch him, a minute to run. He’d vanish so fast the marshal would never find him.

Rain tapped on the coach and Nate could hear the driver cussing to the man riding shotgun.

Pulling his hat off with his unshackled hand, Nate thought about tossing it out the window. All he needed was a pinch of luck. One moment to run, then he’d lay low. Grow his hair long like the Texans did. Stay in the sun until his skin tanned. He’d find work somewhere and remain silent until he picked up an accent that was so far south everyone would think he was born and raised on the Rio Grande.

Give him a month, maybe two, and the marshal wouldn’t know Nate if they bumped into each other on the street.

Lightning flashed and thunder shook the earth. The stagecoach rocked Nate out of his planning as the horses screamed. He pulled the flap on the window open but couldn’t see through the downpour. If he hadn’t been chained, he’d kick the door open and roll out into the mud. No one could see more than a few feet.

If he wasn’t shackled to the near-drunk sheriff, he’d vanish.

“Damn driver better slow down. He’ll roll the coach if he hits a hole.” Cash stuck his arm out of the window as if the driver might see it. “Slow down, you idiot.”

As if his words took action the right front wheel slammed into something and the stage shifted. Nate heard the crack of wood, screams of the horses and driver. A moment later the hooves thundered away, no longer tethered to the coach as it rocked once before slamming on its side.

Cash’s body smashed against the window, his free hand caught outside the window beneath the stage.

Nate plummeted into the lawman, his elbow falling against his jawline like a hammer. Cash’s body seemed to melt into a pile of rags.

Slowly, Nate’s head stopped spinning and he shifted off Calaber, dragging the marshal’s arm along as far as his could. The chain held, but the body didn’t move.

All was dark as tiny waterfalls dripped through the cracks and windows. Nate had no idea if the marshal was dead, or just out cold. He tried to pull the lawman up, but his arm was wedged beneath the overturned coach.

Nate weighed the facts. The marshal was silent, whether unconscious or dead. And this was Nate’s chance to escape.

In total blackness, he patted the lawman’s chest until he felt the shackles’ key in his vest pocket. In seconds, he unlocked the chains and opened the coach door that now faced skyward.

Waterlogged light blinked into the coach. The drunken marshal looked like a man sleeping it off with scattered clothes and whiskey and weapons around him.

Just before he jumped out, Nate snatched the valise and crammed as many items as he could find into it. A Colt. The marshal’s badge. A shaving kit. Any clothes he could reach.

He left the chains, the lock, and the whiskey. On impulse, he crammed the bowler hat on Calaber’s head and traded for the sheriff’s wide-brimmed hat and leather coat.

As he climbed out the stagecoach, Nate spotted the driver and guard. They were headed down the road the coach had just traveled with no sign of the horses. The axle that had once been tied to the horses lay in pieces in the mud and lightning still blinked against the southern sky.

Time for Nate to vanish.

He followed the trail from a distance so no one traveling the road would see him. He guessed Dallas couldn’t be much farther. It would be dark soon.

The rain eased and he began to run. It would take the driver an hour or more to catch the horses, if he caught them, then he’d need time to right the coach. If the wheel was broken, that meant more work, more time. He might just decide to spend the night and leave the repairs until dawn.

If Cash were dead, there would be no hurry to ride in and report an accident. If the marshal were still alive, he’d probably be yelling for them to hurry. Since Nate hadn’t felt any blood, he guessed Calaber was alive.

Either way Nate figured he had several hours’ head start.

A half hour later he was too tired to run and began to recalculate.

He couldn’t turn off the road into the wild. Survival had always been in towns and cities. Never in the country. He had no choice but to stay on the road.

Nate had slowed to a walk and was half asleep when he almost bumped into a cart stuck in mud halfway off the road. The horse had wandered far enough to graze, and the driver had fallen backward into the wagon bed. From the smell of it, Nate guessed he was dead drunk.

“Don’t worry, partner,” Nate said softly in his best Texas slang. “I’ll help you get home.”

Within minutes he had the horse trotting at a pace that rocked the drunk back to sleep, and with the dying sun’s light he made out the outline of a settlement. Dallas.

By twilight they’d reached town. The sound of carolers singing Christmas songs seemed out of place in the cold, dusty town.

He asked a kid selling papers where the St. Nicholas Hotel was and within minutes Nate climbed out of the wagon with the sheriff’s valise in one hand and his wide-brimmed hat in the other.

Without bothering to tie the reins, he let the horse continue on, obviously heading for his barn. The drunk would simply wake up in the morning thinking that his horse had found his own way home.

The clerk looked overwhelmed with duties when Nate walked up to register. He wore the marshal’s hat low and set the monogrammed luggage on the counter.

The entire lobby and every parlor were open and looked like Christmas had exploded inside. Since Nate had never celebrated Christmas, he turned away, concentrating on signing the logbook.

“We received the telegram you’d be in tonight, Marshal,” the clerk said with his back to Nate as he fetched a key. “We have your room ready. Your dress clothes for the ball have been pressed and put in your room.”

Nate nodded once and took the key. “Thanks. Is it too late to get a meal delivered?”

The clerk’s voice sounded harsh when he said, “No. I’ll see Katie brings it up.”

Nate remembered how Cash bragged about teasing the girl and he suddenly felt sick at his stomach for pretending to be such a man. Without another word, Nate rushed upstairs.

Ten minutes later, when a petite maid brought in a tray, Nate stood in the shadows by the window so she couldn’t see his face. “Just leave it on the table, Katie.”

As she backed away, he added, “There’s two bits on the dresser. Take it for your trouble.” He would have liked to leave her more but didn’t want to draw attention.

She backed all the way to the door with the money in her fist, then ran.

Nate ate his first real meal in days as he tried to make his tired mind think. If there was a big ball at the fancy hotel tonight, that meant there was probably going to be a high-stakes poker game in one of the rooms. The cash in the pocket of the marshal’s bag gave him plenty of pocket money. Nate would be gambling with time if he showed up at the ball, but if Cash was hurt, or delayed long enough, Nate might just win enough to travel back to Chicago in style. At the very least he’d fill up on whatever kind of food they have at balls.

He reached in the valise and pulled out a roll of bills. If he lost, no problem. He was playing with the marshal’s money. They could only hang him once.

Jacqueline Hartman stood before a long mirror in her suite on the top floor of the St. Nicholas. All she saw were her flaws. Plain brown hair that refused to hold a curl no matter how hot the iron, skin too tanned to be fashionable. Too tall. Too ordinary.

Her father’s new wife had spent years reminding Jacqueline of all her shortcomings. The second Mrs. Hartman, Jacqueline’s stepmother, was beautiful even into her forties with golden hair and a peach complexion that made her seem twenty years younger. She made it plain to all the staff that she was the reigning queen of the Double H Ranch and Jacqueline was never to receive any special treatment for being Harry’s daughter.

Margaret Hartman even joked, when Jacqueline’s father wasn’t around, that it was lucky Harry was rich because she’d never find a beau otherwise. Men might outnumber women three to one in Texas, but that wasn’t enough odds to help Harry’s poor pitiful daughter.

Jacqueline grinned as she set aside the frilly pink gown with ribbons flowing down the length of the skirt. She’d been told to wear the pink, but she picked up a simple midnight blue dress. Her mother’s dress had been packed away in the attic, as if waiting for Jacqueline to find it. It was cut low, showing off her shoulders and the top of her well-rounded breasts. Her father wouldn’t approve if he even remembered the dress. Her stepmother would be shocked. But if Jacqueline was forced into going fishing, she might as well dress the bait.

She’d show them that she was not a child to be paraded out. She was a woman who had the sense to pick her own mate or better yet, pick no mate at all. This might be her one chance to break free before she disappeared completely.

“If this doesn’t work,” she said, winking at her reflection, “I’ll become an outlaw, or a pirate.” All the time she’d been hiding away from people, she’d been reading books filled with adventures. In every story there was always a call to action, a quest. Maybe tonight she’d be strong enough to accept the challenge. She’d step out of her shell and start charting her own destiny.

Deep in her heart she knew she’d never be truly brave, but if wishing it so could work, she might be brave enough to run away tonight. She’d kept in touch with her first teacher, a widow who moved to Austin. Mrs. Eden would welcome her in. Plus, Jacqueline had saved enough money to live until she found employment.

With each cut her stepmother made, each joke, each reminder of what she’d never be, Jacqueline withered until she became exactly what her stepmother wanted, little more than a shadow who haunted the attic rooms of Hartman Headquarters. But, inside, she’d planned for someday and that someday was about to come.

When her father threw one of his big parties on the ranch, his daughter was rarely seen. If she did step from the background, Margaret was always there hinting at what a fool she was to even try. “You’ve got all you want in your room, Jacqueline. Your books, your drawings. Don’t try to be something you’re not.”

Only last month Jacqueline turned twenty-one, and being invisible was no longer an option. Harry began teaching his daughter to run the ranch and suddenly Margaret wanted her gone. Two women in the house was one too many. Jacqueline’s father was growing old and more manageable for his younger wife. A grown daughter might prove bothersome if not a full-out threat should Harry die, so Margaret whined and begged and bullied until she got her way.

When the St. Nicholas Hotel began to plan for a Christmas ball, Margaret went to work. Her project suddenly had a deadline. Harry’s child would be married and gone by the New Year.

Jacqueline watched her stepmother’s plan form b. . .