Doc Holiday

by Debra Dixon

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

With poignant humor and sizzling romance, Debra Dixon presents a story about the magic of Christmas and promises made under a starry winter sky.
 
Drew Haywood needs a feminine touch to help give his young son a holiday to remember—and no one does Christmas better than Taylor Bishop. She knows how to transform a house into a home that sparkles. But when Drew lets his guard down, he finds that Taylor has much more to offer. Kissing her is like coming in out of the cold—and Drew doesn’t want to go back out.
 
Taylor has already raised one family—she grew up with six brothers, after all—and she doesn’t need another. She may have fallen for Drew as a teenager, but he’s asking for a Christmas miracle that would break all her rules. Still, the chemistry she shares with this sexy, single father has nothing to do with the past. Perhaps the gift of a young boy’s smile, not to mention stolen kisses beneath the mistletoe, will point the way to the one thing on Taylor’s wish list.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: About Last Night, Blaze of Winter, and Lana’s Lawman.

Release date: November 12, 2012

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 256

Sample

ONE
 
“Bah, humbug,” Taylor Bishop whispered as she shut the door behind her. The December cold was easier to take than the Christmas chaos that reigned inside the house.
 
Every year she swore she’d get through the holidays without killing anyone, and every year she contemplated murder within twenty-four hours of crossing the threshold of her childhood home. While the urge to strangle her many siblings and widowed father had become something of a tradition, she didn’t remember the compulsion ever being this strong.
 
Taylor leaned her forehead against the door’s cold stained-glass oval and sighed. She loved her family. She did. Really. But right now she didn’t like them very much.
 
Not a one of them had lifted a finger to organize Christmas. Not even the ones who lived close to home. The decorations were still in the attic; no one had given a thought to the festival parade. Dad hadn’t even bought the first present! A bunch of men might think eight days was plenty of time to pull the holiday together, but she wasn’t convinced. In fact, the situation might well be hopeless. Taylor wasn’t sure she was up to another Christmas just like the last one.
 
You’re not as young as you used to be, Taylor. You can’t expect to have as much energy, she reminded herself, and then straightened up with a jerk as she realized she’d insulted herself. Taylor looked at her blurry reflection in the brass knocker beside the door and said out loud, “Twenty-nine years old is not exactly over the hill, either!”
 
“But you are climbing, Mouse,” teased a warm, utterly masculine voice from behind her.
 
Taylor sucked in a breath, and the starch went right out of her legs. She steadied herself with a hand on the doorknob. No one called her Mouse anymore. No one had ever called her Mouse except Drew Haywood, and the voice couldn’t possibly belong to him. He’d moved away from this northern Arkansas patch of nowhere a long time ago … and never looked back.
 
“Mouse?” the voice asked again, uncertain this time.
 
Slowly she turned around, irrationally thankful for a good hair day, last month’s diet, and the chance to show the object of her first serious crush that she’d grown up. That she wasn’t Clay’s pesky kid sister anymore. Unfortunately, she hadn’t planned on the man packing the same sensual wallop today as he had when Clay first introduced him to the family.
 
Before she could scrounge a sophisticated facade out of her bag of feminine tricks, the bottom fell out of her stomach. Witty words deserted her. Honest to a fault, she silently acknowledged that the English language had always been a bit of a problem in Drew’s presence. As a teenager she had spent a whole lot more time looking at him than talking to him.
 
Unexpectedly fond half-forgotten memories floated to the surface, and nostalgia stole over her as she raised her eyes to his and smiled. Drew’s familiar grin was the nicest surprise she’d had since coming home yesterday.
 
“Hello, Taylor,” he said in a voice that could still pull quicksilver through her veins.
 
In the blink of an eye, she replaced the schoolgirl adjectives of “good-looking” and “tall” with more accurate tags, like “sensual mouth,” “devastating gaze,” “sexy five o’clock shadow,” and “shoulders wide enough to cradle a woman’s head and soak up her tears.” Not that she had any tears to spill right now, but one never knew when broad shoulders would come in handy.
 
Suddenly Taylor sobered and reminded herself that his shoulders had already been tested. He had offered her comfort and in the process stolen a piece of her heart that she’d never been able to get back.
 
“Stolen” wasn’t the right word. She’d given him that little piece of her heart. Unfortunately, he hadn’t wanted it. Shaking off the embarrassing memory, Taylor abandoned the past for reality. She wasn’t sixteen anymore, and she didn’t need comforting. She didn’t need a man; she didn’t need the complications.
 
“Hello, Hayseed,” she said, using the old name she’d given him in retaliation for Mouse. “Long time no see.”
 
Drew Haywood chuckled and decided that little Taylor Bishop had grown up with a vengeance. Not that he had any business noticing she could hold her own in a room full of dreams. Nope, he didn’t have any business noticing at all. But that didn’t stop him. It never had.
 
Her eyes were the same rainy-day blue he remembered; her mouth still generous; but she wasn’t the much-too-young and adoring Taylor who’d smiled shyly at him and crept right into his heart. Her coltish movements had settled themselves into supple gestures that suggested grace without being too formal. Her naturally blond hair skimmed her shoulders and shimmered with sophisticated highlights. He could only hope her offbeat sense of humor had survived the transformation and lurked behind the mature, sensitive expression she offered him.
 
As silence stretched between them, Taylor didn’t rush to fill the void with chatter. Nor did Drew, which made him wonder why neither of them was particularly anxious to mix the moment with conversation. Because of the cold, she flipped up the collar on her quilted denim jacket and put her hands into the pockets. Drew mirrored her movements as he huddled deeper in his sheepskin coat, never taking his eyes off her. The grown-up version of Taylor fascinated him, and so did the tension.
 
Finally she said, “Well, I guess you’re back for Christmas.”
 
“No.” Drew was certain he saw disappointment flicker across her face before he added, “I’m back for good.”
 
“You’re back? For good?” Surprised, Taylor tried to envision Drew as a pillar of the small Arkansas community. It wasn’t much of a stretch. In her imagination, he made a very good pillar—strong, committed, vital. She wondered if he was living in the big white, ivy-covered monster his parents owned two streets over or if he’d bought something else. “Clay never said a word.”
 
“He doesn’t know. We haven’t kept in touch the last few years.”
 
“That would explain it,” she said.
 
“Yeah,” Drew agreed. “It would.”
 
Taylor nodded and made an “um” sound. They were out of conversation again.
 
Anyone else would have wondered why two old friends were having such a hard time making small talk, but not Drew. He knew why. He and Taylor weren’t old friends. Their relationship had been a lot more complicated. She’d had a crush on him. He’d had feelings for her, feelings he had no business having. The one time he let down his guard, he’d felt like a dirty old man taking advantage of her grief to rob the cradle.
 
Looking at the woman in front of him, he knew he’d never have to think of her as Clay’s little sister again. The six-year age difference that had created the original problem was now a moot point. She was twenty-nine, definitely out of the cradle, and all grown up. Not that it mattered. Even if she wasn’t in love or involved with someone else, his timing was still lousy.
 
In the beginning she’d been six years too young; now she was six years too late. He had Noah to think about. All he’d ever wanted was a family. Now that he had a second chance, he was going to make the most of it. Even if that meant he had to ignore ancient, but potent, chemistry.
 
Taylor shifted her weight, drawing one foot back and bouncing the toe of her shoe off the painted concrete porch. “I suppose you’re anxious to meet Martha—” As she broke off, she rubbed her hands together in glee, and her eyes lit up with a wait-until-you-hear-this-one twinkle. “Oh, you probably don’t know! Clay’s married!”
 
“Married? Never-say-die, never-say-marry Clay actually got married?”
 
“Not in church, but he did get married. None of us have met her, and all he’ll say is that she’s perfect. That I’m going to love her.” Then she added, “If they ever get here. They’re not coming until tomorrow. Which means you’ll have to come back. Sorry.”
 
“Don’t be. I didn’t come here to see Clay.”
 
Taylor’s heart thumped a hard beat. “You didn’t?”
 
“No.” There wasn’t the slightest hesitation in his answer, and the tiny word seemed to hang in the air between them like a promise waiting to be claimed.
 
Good Lord, she admonished herself. She was doing it again. Letting herself create something from nothing. Sure, it’d be nice to have Drew groveling and apologizing for breaking her heart and begging her to give him a chance. But that wasn’t about to happen. She really didn’t want it to happen. She doubted he even knew that, once upon a time, he’d broken her tender young heart.
 
Refusing to let old teenage fantasies take over her common sense, Taylor asked bluntly, “You’re not selling something, are you? Like life insurance or cemetery plots?”
 
“Cemetery plots!” Stunned, Drew looked at her for a second before he caught the twinkle in her blue eyes. Then he laughed. “I’m not selling anything. Would you believe I came looking for you?”
 
“Right,” she said with a touch of friendly sarcasm, and patted him on the shoulder as she walked briskly past him. “Dad’s inside. He’ll be glad to see you. Just go on in. I was going for a walk before dark.”
 
He watched her skip lightly down the steps and strike out across the yard, skirting the line of cars double parked in the wide drive. When she didn’t so much as look back, he decided that the tension between them must have been his imagination. While he tried to figure out why that bothered him so much, she turned left and headed in the general direction of Main Street. That’s when Drew remembered that he hadn’t asked for the favor yet.