Cowboys and Christmas are an unbeatable combination in this charming anthology of contemporary western novellas perfect for fans of Linda Lael Miller, Jill Shalvis, and Maisey Yates.
Whether they’re out on the range or working in town, these men are rough, rugged, and ready for action. They’re true-blue cowboys, and New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer, along with Delores Fossen and Kate Pearce, will show you just how hot they can be when they’re yours . . .
COLORADO CHRISTMAS CAROL, Diana Palmer When a Texan lands in Colorado to solve a case, the last thing he expects to uncover is a sweetly pretty cook who’s also a struggling novelist—and who is more than ready to write their love story . . .
THE MOST WONDERFUL RANCHER OF THE YEAR, Kate Pearce It’s sour meets sweet when a former rancher battling more than one private demon meets a woman who lights up his heart, and proves to him that anything—even love—is possible.
HER CHRISTMAS COWBOY, Delores Fossen A sheriff convinced to investigate an aging bigamist by the gorgeous P.I. he kissed at a party quickly discovers that the real crime would be missing a chance to get her into his arms again . . .
Release date:
September 24, 2024
Publisher:
Zebra Books
Print pages:
336
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One of the assistants in the kitchen turned her head and the bells in her earrings jingled. Estelle Grancy chuckled. It was the holiday season and she loved Christmas.
The hotel where she worked, and lived, in Benton, Colorado, was a homey place. It was beautifully decorated, with holly and ivy running up the elegant staircase bannisters and Christmas trees in every meeting room. The biggest Christmas tree was in the lobby, a dreamy combination of red bows and golden balls, with white lights climbing up the tree and presents under it.
The staff got along well. And Estelle was a wonderful cook. She had a cushy job with plenty of free time, thanks to the retired cook who loved to fill in when Estelle wanted a day off.
But Essa, as she was called, wanted something more from life than spending it in a kitchen, regardless of how much she loved her job.
She was twenty-three and alone in the world. Both parents had succumbed to a killer virus three years previously and the grieving twenty-year old was left to take charge of their estate and do what was necessary to probate it. She was mostly over the shock, but the grief still hurt.
She pushed back a loose strand of pale golden hair from the tight bun atop her head, and her green eyes twinkled as she glanced toward the laptop computer on a lone table near the kitchen door. She’d left her file open, after saving it. She was writing a novel; a mystery novel. Her one great ambition was to be a novelist, and she loved to read mysteries, so she hoped she might be able to write one that would sell.
Her late father had been a deputy sheriff, and he was a wealth of information about solving crimes. She’d listened to him by the hour, enjoying the methodical way he went about turning up lawbreakers. He hadn’t had much experience with murders, but he knew people who did, in big cities.
He’d wanted to sell a book, too. He’d worked hard at it, but none of his material was good enough. He had poor grammar skills, so Essa, even in her teens, was his copy editor. She polished his prose and made it literate. But his ideas were too run-of-the mill. They never sold.
Essa’s, on the other hand, were unique and complicated. She’d had two notes from actual editors on proposals she’d sent in. The book she was working on now had interested the editor of a publishing house that specialized in mystery novels. So it was a chance, at least, to be published. They say if you start getting personal notes from editors, who were notoriously busy, it was a sign that you might be able to sell a book. Essa hoped so; she didn’t really want to spend the rest of her life in front of a stove. She spent her breaks working on the book. It obsessed her these days.
She turned back to the dishes she was making for the evening meal, her head still in the clouds. She’d been floating since early that morning, when she’d opened the note from the editor.
She pulled her perfectly baked homemade rolls out of the oven and turned it off, admiring their lovely color. Just perfect.
“. . . it was a dark and stormy night?” came a curious little voice from the doorway. “You have got to be kidding!”
Essa turned. A young girl of about ten was standing at the computer, frowning as she read. She was tall for a child, very skinny, with short, straight, thick, blond hair and big brown eyes that suddenly pinned Essa’s. “You’re joking, right?” she asked. “I mean, starting a story with ‘. . . a dark and stormy night . . .’?”
Essa’s eyebrows arched. Talk about precocious kids! “It’s sarcasm,” she said, surprised by the comment.
“Oh! I get it!” The child laughed and her whole face lit up.
“Who are you?” Essa asked.
“I’m Mellie,” came the reply. “Mellie Marston. My dad’s name is Dominic, but everybody calls him Duke.” She cocked her head and smiled. “Who are you?”
“I’m Estelle Grancy. But people call me Essa.”
“I’m very precocious,” Mellie announced. “And I’m also ob . . . obnox . . . something.”
“Obnoxious?” Essa asked, amused.
“That’s it! Obnoxious! I drive Daddy nuts. He says he needs to carry duct tape around so he can shut me up.”
“Do tell.” Essa laughed. “Precocious and also obnoxious. It sounds very interesting.”
“Does it, really? Thank you!” Mellie said. “I’m going to try to be incorrigible next,” she added proudly.
What an odd child, Essa was thinking, but how refreshingly different.
“Why are you in here?” Essa asked. “It’s sort of off limits, you know.”
“Sorry. I’m hiding from Daddy.”
“Why?”
“Well, he has this iPad,” she said, “and he was putting stuff in it for work. I sort of messed it up.” She winced. “I just wanted to play mahjong, but I think I accidentally deleted the icon on the home page.” She sighed. “So can I stay here until he stops using words I’m not supposed to hear?”
“Is he doing that?” Essa asked, fascinated.
“I’m afraid so. He has a very bad temper. And there’s a boy at school who used those words, and they suspended him.” She frowned. “But I don’t think they can suspend Daddy. He’s too important to the agency.”
“Agency?”
“Daddy’s a senior investigator for a detective agency,” she explained. “He’s here investigating somebody who might have killed somebody.”
Essa’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
“That’s what I said.” Mellie chuckled. “Daddy has the neatest job! We go all over the place when he’s on a case. It’s school holidays at the private school I go to, so I get to go with him.”
“Does your mom go too?” Essa asked pleasantly.
The little girl’s face fell. “I don’t have a mom. Not anymore. She got cancer.”
“I’m so sorry!” Essa said, and meant it.
“I don’t remember her very well,” Mellie replied, moving closer. “She was real pretty. Daddy has a photo of her and me in our living room back home.”
“And where’s home?”
“It’s in . . . Oh, dear.”
A deep, irritated voice was calling, “Mellie Marston, where the hell are you?!”
Mellie winced. “Oh, dear, he’s found me!”
She ran behind Essa. “You have to save me!” she whispered. “I’m too young to die!” she added in a theatrical tone.
“You should go on the stage,” Essa murmured as angry footsteps came closer.
A tall, husky man came into view. He had thick, pale-gold hair like his daughter and the same dark eyes. He was very good-looking, but very somber. Make that homicidal.
“Are you harboring a fugitive?” he asked curtly.
Essa cleared her throat. He was intimidating. “Can you describe her?”
Mellie peered around Essa’s apron. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to play mahjong.”
“And destroy my career?”
“No, Daddy, honest,” Mellie said plaintively.
“What have I told you a hundred times about the iPad?”
She sighed. “Don’t touch it without permission.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “But you always say we should be curious about everything and explore things we don’t understand.”
“Not my notes when I’m on a case,” he replied curtly.
“She’s just little,” Essa interjected slowly.
He glared at her. “I’m talking to my daughter, not to you,” he snapped.
She drew herself up to her full height, which was far short of his. “In my kitchen,” she pointed out, “and you’re both trespassing!”
“Aren’t you a little young for a chef?” he asked.
Her eyes flashed. “You can ask the boss that,” she replied.
“Come on, Mellie,” he said, gesturing to his child. He glared again at Essa. “Before she curdles something.”
Essa gave him a mock smile. “Careful you don’t get something curdled thrown at you,” she said sweetly.
He made a rough sound in his throat and turned as his daughter followed him.
Mellie looked back at her. “Help!” she mouthed.
Essa just winced and waved goodbye. Poor kid, she thought as she turned to the stove. Imagine having a father like that!
The next morning, Essa was making rolls for lunch when Mellie peered around the corner, past the other cook and two helpers dressed in holiday motif.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
Essa grinned. “Of course. Make yourself at home.” She glanced at the child. “How did you escape?” she teased.
“Daddy was on a conference call about the case, so I slipped out.” She chuckled gleefully.
“What sort of case?” Essa asked idly as she kneaded dough.
“A murder. Daddy said he found evidence that the killer came this way.”
“What sort of murder?” Essa was interested.
“A really bad one,” she replied. “Daddy won’t tell me much, just that there was a woman they found who’d been hit with a bat many times. There were two other bodies. One was a little boy, and one was a man. Daddy said the boy was an old murder, but the man wasn’t. And the woman was killed very recently. Daddy thinks the murders are all connected and there’s a suspect. But he won’t say who.”
Essa whistled softly. “That’s quick work.”
“Daddy knows his business,” Mellie said proudly. “His boss says it’s a coincidence that all the victims are together, but Daddy says it could be a serial killer.”
“A serial killer,” Essa said under her breath. “That’s scary.”
“But Daddy’s boss said it was a coincidence.” She laughed. “Daddy hung up and said that the killer already had a support system and didn’t even know it!”
Essa chuckled, too. “Sounds like it. Why does he think the killer might be in Benton?”
“Because his father came from here. There’s supposed to be an old ranch house somewhere that he inherited. It’s not in town. Out in the country. Daddy is going out there with the sheriff to have a look later.”
“So his boss isn’t going to make him go home?”
“Daddy wouldn’t leave. He said they could give the case to somebody else, that he’d just hire on as investigator for this sheriff’s department and go right on working it.”
Essa laughed out loud. “Your dad’s stubborn.”
“Oh, yes. He grounds me for two weekends sometimes if I’m bad.”
Essa stopped kneading, up to her elbows in flour, and glanced at the child. “When you’re bad?” she asked absently. “How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“How bad can you be, at your age?” Essa exclaimed.
Mellie beamed. “Well, I don’t think it’s bad at all, telling a teacher that she shouldn’t pick on kids because they’re a little slow.” She grimaced. “I got sent to the principal’s office. But our principal’s nice, and he didn’t even suspend me. It made the teacher really mad. So now I have to toe the line, so she doesn’t get me expelled.” She pushed out her lower lip. “But I’m right, and she’s not. Nobody should pick on people who are different.”
“Mellie, you’re a nice person,” Essa said, and meant it.
The child’s eyes lit up. “You really think so? Thank you. Most people just say I’m irritating,” she added on a sigh.
“It’s that you’re intelligent,” Essa explained as she went back to kneading. “It intimidates grown-ups.”
“I don’t intimidate you, and you’re a grown-up,” Mellie pointed out.
“No, I’m not,” Essa assured her with a grin. “I’m only twelve. I never grew up. It’s boring, being an adult, so I’m not going to be one. Not ever.”
Mellie almost gurgled with glee. Her dad was so busy that he never noticed her, and she had no other family. Kids at school didn’t try to befriend her because they were afraid of the teacher who persecuted her. So she was mostly unappreciated. How nice to find a friend in such an unlikely place!
“Could you teach me how to cook?” Mellie asked.
Essa grinned. “Not right now.”
“I mean when you have time. It looks like fun.”
“It is. It’s about my only talent. Well, I have a way with words, if my English teachers weren’t lying.” Her eyes were dreamy. “Someday, somehow, I’m going to sell a book. It’s the dream of my life.”
“I’m spelling-challenged.” Mellie sighed. “And math challenged. And I hate having to read stories about people I don’t even like!”
“You’ll graduate one day. Then you can read what you like. But spelling is very important. If you ever want to learn a foreign language, it’s a lot harder if you don’t have spelling skills.”
Mellie’s eyes widened. “Do you speak languages besides English?”
“Oh, yes. Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, and enough Italian to get me arrested in Rome.”
“Wow!”
“I love languages.” Essa sighed.
“So does my dad. He speaks Spanish and German.”
“Well!”
“Not much, though,” Mellie said. “He likes archaeology. He says most of the antique papers and books on archaeology are written in German. He learned it because he wanted to research. He got his degree in anthropology, though.”
“And he’s a detective?”
“He didn’t want to teach. And spending his life in a big hole with a toothbrush didn’t appeal to him, he said. But crime-fighting did! So here we are.”
Essa just shook her head. What a fascinating man, she thought.
And sadly that thought went into eclipse when a deep, furious voice called, “Where the hell is my daughter!” Essa grimaced, glancing at a worried Mellie.
“Oh, dear,” Mellie said in a small voice. “I forgot to mention that he said I couldn’t leave the room.”
“Bad time to forget that,” Essa said under her breath as six foot one of solid muscle and wondrous man walked into the room in tan slacks and a green designer short-sleeved shirt. He ignored Essa’s small staff, working in the back of the kitchen.
“I thought I’d find you here,” he muttered at his daughter. He glared at Essa. “Hiding out with the future Nobel prize-winning authoress,” he added in a savage drawl.
Essa just glared right back at him. “Said the man who can’t speak without resorting to foul language as a substitute for good grammar,” she countered. She even smiled.
The glare got worse. “Well, my English skills are probably still superior to your writing skills. Or have you sold something in the past few hours?” he added in a sarcastic tone.
Essa turned, her hands caked with flour, and replied, “When I win the Nobel Prize for literature, I’ll remind you that you said that,” she said with a sweetly snarky smile.
“That’s the very day that I’ll be elected president, too,” he shot back.
They glared at each other while Mellie cleared her throat.
“Uh, Dad, didn’t you have a phone call to make?” she asked.
He blinked and glanced at her, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Phone call? Oh. Yes.” He glared at Essa. “Let’s go. And stay out of the kitchen. I don’t want the staff’s bad attitude rubbing off on you,” he told his daughter.
“It’s not rubbing off, it’s rubbing out,” Essa told him with furious eyes. “And you are so lucky that I don’t have a hit man who owes me a favor as a friend!”
“Good luck affording one on what you probably make working here,” he said insolently.
“Hit men come cheap if you look in the right places!”
“I wasn’t talking about hit men. I meant friends.” He smiled as he said it, and Essa could have thrown something at that smug expression. It was almost as if he knew she didn’t have friends.
She just glared. “Do be careful when you drink coffee at meals,” she said with poisonous sweetness.
“Poisoning guests will get you fired.”
“Extenuating circumstances,” she returned.
He ignored her. “Let’s go, Melinda.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She glanced back at her fuming new friend and made an apologetic face. The kitchen staff was doing its best to smother laughter. Their cool as a cucumber boss was flaming up.
Essa almost ruined the boeuf Bourbonnais. She was burning with fury; she’d never been so angry in her life. She hated Mellie’s dad. She absolutely hated him!
She finished her preparations for the next day with the help of the kitchen staff. They got everything ready for the next morning. She wished them a happy night, took off her apron, and moved warily out of the kitchen, searching to make sure she could avoid the big, blond barracuda who was ruining her life.
But all she saw was a slight, blond man in khaki slacks and a button-up shirt. He stared at her curiously.
She managed a smile and started to walk away.
“Excuse me,” he said in a soft tone, “but I seem to be lost.” He smiled apologetically. “It’s such a big hotel and I’m supposed to be in a meeting room . . .” He looked at a piece of paper in his hand. “The Martinique room . . . ?”
The manager had a wild sense of humor. He had three meeting rooms in the hotel for convention goers, and each one was named for one of his favorite islands. Talk about eccentric! The owner of the hotel was equally so, though, she recalled.
Essa laughed and her whole face lit up. “Our manager names rooms after islands,” she explained. “They aren’t numbered. That one is up that staircase”—she indicated it—“and immediately to the right. There’s a palm tree on the door.”
“Oh!” He laughed. “Thank you. You’re very helpful.” He lifted a shoulder. “I’m not used to women being polite,” he said, and then flushed, as if he thought he’d offended her.
She laughed, too. “I know what you mean! Common courtesy seems to have gone right out the door in our society. I’m frequently shocked at the way people will talk to total strangers. And online . . . !” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe the comment sections!”
“Me, too,” he said, warming to his subject. “Perfectly nice people turn into keyboard monsters online!”
“Exactly!”
He smiled warmly. “I’m Dean Sutter.”
“I’m Essa,” she replied, and shook the hand he held out.
He had an odd handshake, not limp but not assertive, and his palms were sweaty. He was only a little taller than she was, and of a slight built. But he seemed nice. She noticed the pin he was wearing on his collar, which had a karate symbol on it.
“Are you into martial arts? Sorry, if that sounds nosy,” she said.
He touched the pin. “Yes,” he said. “I do tae kwon do. Do you study martial arts?”
“Not anymore. I don’t have time,” she said sadly. “I did tai chi,” she added.
He beamed. “My father made me take it up. He said it would teach me not to be afraid of people.” He laughed apologetically. “I guess it sort of worked.” The smile faded. “That’s where he met my stepmother,” he added, “at a dojo.” And his face closed up.
His stepmother must be awful, she thought, judging from his expression. But she didn’t say it. “What sort of workshop are you here for?” she wondered, because there were three this coming weekend.
“The forensic one,” he said excitedly. “It’s being taught by a forensic expert from the crime lab in Denver. I can’t wait! I love forensics.”
She smiled. “I do, too,” she said. “I never miss those crime dramas.”
“Some of them are pretty good, but there’s no substitute for the real thing,” he said with enthusiasm. “You can learn so much from even a few hours in a class. And this one has a reconstruction expert.”
“You mean those people who use skulls and clay to reconstruct a face for identification?” she asked. “That’s an amazing skill!”
“It really is.” He hesitated. “Are you coming? To the workshop, I mean?”
She grimaced. “I really would like to, but I just don’t have time,” she said sadly. “I’m the head chef here. And it’s the holidays, so I stay pretty busy.”
“Oh, you cook! Wow! I wish I could!”
She smiled. “Anybody can cook, honest. It’s just learning the steps. Forensics, that’s hard! Do you work in law enforcement?” she added.
He smiled oddly. “Well, yes, in an affiliated way. It helps with my work.”
“Lucky you.”
“No, lucky you! I love food. I just can’t make it!”
She laughed. “It was nice to meet you . . . ?” She couldn’t remember his name.
“Dean,” he supplied.
“Dean,” she said.
“And you’re Essa.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ll see you around the hotel, I expect?”
“Yes, you will,” he said, and smiled from ear to ear.
She smiled back and waved as she went down the corridor. She didn’t realize that he watched her every step of the way.
The next morning, she was up to her ears in breakfast with her helper, Mabel, who could make the best sausage and scrambled eggs she’d ever eaten, and the two maids, Jessie and Jennie, who took orders and served.
There had been a sous chef until last week, when he got into an argument with the manager and was fired. So now Essa was doing it all. She hoped a replacement would be forthcoming. There was also an ex pastry chef, so the hotel was leaning heavily on the local bakery for desserts. So many people these days had an attitude problem. The manager didn’t. He was nice.
“How in the world do you make a biscuit?” Mabel grumbled as she worked. “Honestly, I’m fifty, and I’ve spent twenty whole years trying to make one that didn’t bounce. And here you are, and you don’t even measure anything, and you make the most wonderful biscuits on earth!”
Essa laughed. “The secret is to watch someone make them, . . .
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