Merry Cowboy Christmas (Lucky Penny Ranch #3)

Merry Cowboy Christmas (Lucky Penny Ranch #3)

Carolyn Brown




Chapter One



Jud Dawson tapped the brakes and slid a few feet before his big black truck came to a stop. The rusted out old bucket of bolts he’d been following on the slick road wasn’t quite so lucky, though. It kept going right through a barbed wire fence, taking out two steel posts before it finally came to a halt, kissing a big scrub oak tree about fifteen feet from the fence line.

Jud had barely scrambled from the cab of his truck to see if the driver was unhurt when a redheaded woman dressed in tight jeans, boots, and a sweater hopped out of the truck, kicked the shit out of her blown-out tire, and tangled both her fists in her hair in anger.

“Are you okay?” he yelled as he ran toward her, phone in hand ready to call 911 if he needed to.

“Hell no! My truck is a wreck. I’m going to be late to dinner and I’m so mad I could spit tacks.” She shook her fist at the gray skies. “Damn tires only needed to run for another half a mile. Since when does this part of Texas get snow in November? I should thank you, but I’m too mad to be polite right this second.”

“I can take you wherever you need to go,” Jud offered.

She stopped ranting and shivered. “Do you know where Audrey’s Place is?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s actually where I was headed. You must be…”

He hesitated, trying to remember her name. Faith. Fancy. Something that started with an F, or was it a V? If she was headed to Audrey’s, then she had to be the youngest Logan sister, the married one from Houston who everyone said was giving Midas a run when it came to money. So what the hell was she doing driving a ratty old truck?

“I’m Fiona Logan, and I do thank you for stopping and for offering. Let me just get my stuff. The suitcase and box can wait,” she said.

Evidently she’d decided he wasn’t an ax murderer or a crazy ex-con because she smiled. “Just so you know”—she opened the passenger door of the truck and fished around in the glove compartment—“I do carry a weapon and I have a concealed permit and I can take the eyes out of a rattlesnake at twenty yards.”

Damn, but she was cute with that curly red hair, a faint sprinkling of freckles across a pert little nose and all those curves. “Pleased to meet you, Fiona Logan. Good thing I’m not a rattlesnake.” Jud grinned. “I’m Jud Dawson, co-owner of the Lucky Penny.”

“You’re Blake and Toby’s cousin?” she asked as she shook his hand.

“Yup, and turns out I’m staying at Audrey’s. Your mama didn’t want me to live in the travel trailer with winter coming on.”

Jud removed an expensive monogrammed suitcase from the passenger seat. It looked as out of place in that old vehicle as a cowboy at an opera.

She nodded toward the fence. “Sorry about the damage to your property.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe. And I’m sure your family will be eager to see you,” he said as he hefted her suitcase into his truck. “What did you pack in this thing? Rocks?”

“Everything I could. What wouldn’t fit in there is in the box.”

“Lot to bring home for a four-day holiday,” he said.

She ignored his remark with a shrug and a shiver.

He whipped off his Sherpa-lined leather coat and handed it to her. “Why don’t you get inside the truck and warm up. This will only take a minute.”

The box was only slightly lighter than that monster suitcase. As Jud was walking away from her vehicle, he heard a hiss and turned back to see steam escaping from under the hood. Either the steel fence post had punctured the radiator or barbed wire had ripped away hoses and belts.

He shoved the box into the backseat beside the suitcase and slammed the door, circled around the front of the truck, and crawled inside. “Looks like you’ve made your last voyage in that thing.” He started the engine and eased down on the gas. Ice and gravel crunched under the truck’s tires as he slowly inched along at ten miles per hour.

“I was hoping that it would get me all the way home.”

“At least it got you pretty close.” He stole a glance at her. A little shorter than either of her sisters, she was definitely built with curves in all the right places. She sat ramrod straight in the seat in a no-nonsense, take-control posture, but her dark green eyes and the way she kept biting at her lower lip said that Fiona Logan wasn’t real sure of herself that Thanksgiving.

Her obvious insecurity didn’t jive with the stories he’d been told about the third Logan sister, either. It was shaping up to be an interesting day.

“So what are you doing out on these roads today?” she asked.

“I was sent on an errand. It appears that giblet gravy cannot be made until there is a can of evaporated milk in the house and since Thanksgiving dinner can’t be put upon the table unless there is giblet gravy, someone had to go for milk,” he drawled.

She nodded and became even more nervous when the old brothel known as Audrey’s Place came into view.



So this was Jud, Fiona thought, the cowboy in the Dawson family that everyone said was the lucky one. His blond hair was a little shaggy, hanging down to the collar of his pearl-snap shirt. An errant strand or two peeked out from under his black cowboy hat and inched down his forehead toward his dark chocolate brown eyes. His face would make a sculptor swoon with all those perfect planes and contours, and his hard, muscular body could turn a holy woman into a hooker.