A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise Read online

  USA TODAY bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne brings readers back to the ranch for an emotional holiday visit with The Cowboys of Cold Creek!

  Hardened rancher Ridge Bowman has long told himself he has no need for love—just work and his little girl are enough to get him through. But when his “cleaning lady,” Sarah Whitmore, gets injured on his staircase, well, of course he has to invite her to spend the holidays with him. It’s only the responsible thing to do.

  Only, Sarah isn’t really there to work on his house. She came bearing precious artwork belonging to Ridge’s late mother, and possibly a secret that could devastate them both. But as Christmas draws closer, so does Ridge—and Sarah convinces herself that she will tell him what she knows as soon as the holiday is over. She might be the key to his past—if only he could be a part of her future....

  She gazed at him, her eyes soft, and he felt something sparkle to life in his chest as if someone had just plugged in a hundred Christmas trees.

  He was falling hard for this lovely woman, who treated his daughter with such kindness.

  Fear not.

  That little phrase written in his father’s hand seemed to leap into his mind.

  Fear not.

  He was pretty sure this wasn’t what his father had meant—or the angels on that first Christmas night, for that matter—but he didn’t care. It seemed perfect and right to fearlessly take her mug of cocoa and set it on the side table next to his own, to lean across the space between them, to lower his head, to taste that soft, sweet mouth that had tantalized him all day.

  Dear Reader,

  In the course of forty-five books, I’ve written many heroes I have loved: FBI agents, baseball players, police chiefs, vets. Each has moved into a little corner of my heart—and I hope the hearts of my readers. I can honestly say I have never had so much mail from readers about a hero as I have about rancher Ridge Bowman…and I hadn’t even written his story yet!

  The oldest Bowman brother first appeared as a secondary character in Christmas in Cold Creek, published in 2011. With each new Bowman story, more and more readers began asking when I was writing Ridge’s book. After Caidy Bowman’s book, A Cold Creek Noel, came out last Christmas, I quickly realized Caidy’s tall, quiet, tough-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside brother had already sneaked his way into my readers’ collective heart. I began receiving a steady stream of letters, most saying they enjoyed Caidy’s book, but all asking me when they could read Ridge’s story!

  I have to tell you, that’s a great deal of pressure on an author. I knew I couldn’t just create any old heroine for Ridge. She would have to be someone all those readers who already cared about him would deem worthy. I have been delighted with the final results. Sarah Whitmore is kind, smart, caring—exactly what Ridge needs to find true joy at Christmas and always.

  All my very best wishes for a wonderful holiday season,

  RaeAnne

  A COLD CREEK CHRISTMAS SURPRISE

  RaeAnne Thayne

  Books by RaeAnne Thayne

  Harlequin HQN

  Blackberry Summer

  Woodrose Mountain

  Sweet Laurel Falls

  Willowleaf Lane

  Harlequin Special Edition

  **Christmas in Cold Creek #2149

  **A Cold Creek Reunion #2179

  **A Cold Creek Noel #2228

  **A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise #2299

  Silhouette Special Edition

  **Light the Stars #1748

  **Dancing in the Moonlight #1757

  **Dalton’s Undoing #1764

  †The Daddy Makeover #1857

  †His Second-Chance Family #1874

  ~A Merger…or Marriage? #1903

  †A Soldier’s Secret #1918

  **The Cowboy’s Christmas Miracle #1933

  §Fortune’s Woman #1970

  **A Cold Creek Homecoming #1996

  **A Cold Creek Holiday #2013

  **A Cold Creek Secret #2025

  ‡A Thunder Canyon Christmas #2083

  Harlequin Books

  Special Edition Bonus Story: The Anniversary Party—Chapter One

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom #960

  Saving Grace #995

  Renegade Father #1062

  *The Valentine Two-Step #1133

  *Taming Jesse James #1139

  *Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid #1144

  The Quiet Storm #1218

  Freefall #1239

  Nowhere to Hide #1264

  ††Nothing to Lose #1321

  ††Never Too Late #1364

  The Interpreter #1380

  High-Risk Affair #1448

  Shelter from the Storm #1467

  High-Stakes Honeymoon #1475

  *Outlaw Hartes

  ††The Searchers

  **The Cowboys of Cold Creek

  †The Women of Brambleberry House

  ~The Wilder Family

  §Fortunes of Texas:

  Return to Red Rock

  ‡Montana Mavericks:

  Thunder Canyon Cowboys

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  RAEANNE THAYNE

  finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be contacted through her website, www.raeannethayne.com.

  To my wonderful readers. You constantly awe

  and inspire me with your passion, loyalty and heart.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  The River Bow had never seemed so empty.

  Ridge Bowman stomped snow off on the mat as he walked into the mudroom of the ranch house after chores. The clomping thuds of his boots seemed to echo through the big rambling log home he had lived in most of his life, but that was the only sound.

  He was used to noise and laughter—to his sister Caidy clanging dishes or singing along to the radio in the kitchen, to his daughter watching television in the family room or talking on the phone to one of her friends, to barking dogs and conversation.

  But Caidy was on her honeymoon with Ben Caldwell and Destry had gone to stay with her cousin and best friend, Gabi.

  For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had the house completely to himself.

  He didn’t much like it.

  He slipped out of his boots and walked into the kitchen. A couple of barks reminded him he wasn’t completely alone. He was dogsitting for Ben’s cute little pooch, a three-legged Chihuahua mix aptly named Tripod. Most of the dogs at the River Bow slept in the barn and lived outside, even Luke now—Caidy’s border collie, who had been injured the Christmas before—but Tri was small and a bit too fragile to hang with the big boys.

  The dog cantered i
nto the mudroom and planted his haunches by the door.

  “You need to go out? You know you’re going to disappear in all that snow out there, right? And by the way, next time let me know before I take off my boots, would you?”

  He opened the door and watched the dog hop out with his funny gait to the small area off the sidewalk that Ridge had cleared for him.

  Tri obviously didn’t like the cold, either. He quickly took care of business then hopped back to Ridge, who stood in the doorway. The dog immediately led the way back toward the kitchen. Ridge followed, his stomach rumbling, wondering what he could scrounge from the leftover wedding food for breakfast. Maybe a couple of Jenna McRaven’s spinach quiche bites he liked so much, and there were probably a few of those little ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Ham was close enough to bacon, right?

  He managed to add a yogurt and a banana, missing the big, hearty, delicious breakfasts his sister used to fix for him. Fluffy pancakes, crisp bacon, hash browns that were perfectly brown on the outside.

  Those days were over now that Caidy was married. From here out, he would just have to either fend for himself—and Destry—or hire a housekeeper to cook his breakfast. Too bad Ben’s housekeeper, Mrs. Michaels, wanted to move back to be near her grandchildren in California.

  He was happy for his little sister and the future she was building with Pine Gulch’s new veterinarian. She had put her life on hold too long to help Ridge out here at the ranch after Melinda left. At the time—saddled with a baby he didn’t know what to do with, right in the middle of trying to rebuild the ranch after his parents’ deaths—he had been desperately grateful for her help. Now he was ashamed that he had come to rely on her so much over the years and hadn’t tried harder to insist she move out on her own years ago.

  She had found her way, though. She and Ben were deeply in love, and Caidy would be a wonderful stepmother to his children, Ava and Jack.

  All his siblings were happily married now. He was the last Bowman standing, which was just the way he liked it.

  He nibbled on one of Jenna’s delicious potato puffs then had to stop for a huge yawn. The obligations of running a ranch didn’t mix very well with wedding receptions and dances that ran into the early hours of the morning.

  “Is it still a disaster out there, Tri?”

  The little dog, curled up in a patch of morning sunlight trickling in from the window, lifted his head and flapped his tail on the kitchen tile, then went back to sleep, oblivious.

  Ridge knew from his walk down the stairs that morning that the kitchen was just about the only clean part of the house right now. Jenna’s catering crew had done a good job in here and had wanted to go to work on the rest of the house, but he hadn’t let them. He had also had to shove his sisters-in-law out the door at 2:00 a.m. when they started wandering around with garbage bags. He loved Becca and Laura dearly, but by then he just wanted everybody to go before he fell over, knowing he had to get up in three hours to start his day.

  Given the choice between sleep and a pristine house, he had opted for the former, especially since he knew damn well that Caidy, ever efficient, had made arrangements for a cleaning crew to come in today to mop up after the big party.

  He grabbed his improvised breakfast and whistled to Tri, then headed through the party carnage into his office, doing his best to ignore the mess as the dog hopped along behind him.

  Though it was Saturday, Ridge had plenty of work to catch up on, especially since the past few weeks leading up to his sister’s wedding had been so chaotic. He had several emails to deal with, a phone call to a cattle broker he worked with, ranch accounts to reconcile. Finishing off the last bite-sized ham sandwich on his plate sometime later, he glanced up at the clock and was shocked to realize two hours had passed.

  He frowned. Where was the cleanup crew? He was positive Caidy had said they would be here at ten, but it was nearly noon.

  As if on cue, the doorbell suddenly rang, and Tri jumped up, gave one little well-mannered bark and raced to the front door as fast as his little hoppy, butt-bouncing gait would take him.

  The housecleaners really had their work cut out for them, he thought as he walked back through the house. He only hoped they could finish the job before midnight.

  With Tri waiting eagerly to see what exciting surprise waited on the other side of the door, Ridge opened it.

  Instead of the team of efficient-looking workers he expected to find, he found one woman. One small, delicate-looking woman with big blue eyes and a sweep of auburn hair that reminded him of the maple trees down by the creek at the first brush of fall.

  She wore jeans and a short black peacoat with a scarf tied in one of those intricate knots women seemed to like.

  Overall, he had the impression of fragile loveliness, and he wondered if the scope of the cleanup job would be too much for her. He pushed the thought away. He had to trust that Caidy had hired a reputable company and that she knew what she was doing. He sure as hell didn’t want to clean the mess up himself, especially after he had rebuffed everybody else’s offers to help.

  “Mr. Bowman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hello. My name is Sarah Whitmore. I’m sorry to...”

  He didn’t wait for her apology, he just opened the door wider for her. “You’re here now. That’s the important thing. Come in.”

  She gazed at him for a moment, her mouth slightly open and an odd expression on delicately pretty features. After a slight pause, she walked inside.

  “I thought you were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

  “I...was?”

  The cleaning service must have mixed up the time. While he was usually hard-nosed about punctuality, she appeared so befuddled and a little overwhelmed— probably at the mess confronting her inside the house—that he decided not to sweat it.

  “As long as you put in an honest day’s work and do what you were hired to do, I don’t see why I need to tell the company about this.”

  “The...company.”

  With a slight blush staining her cheeks, she gazed around at the muddle of crumbs, discarded napkins, empty champagne bottles. “Wow. What happened here?”

  Man, he would have to talk to Caidy about her choice in cleaning services. The woman’s bosses really should have filled her in about the particulars of the situation.

  “Wedding reception. My sister’s, actually. It was after two when the party finally broke up, and since I had ranch chores to deal with early this morning, you can probably tell I just left things as they were.”

  “It’s certainly a mess,” she agreed.

  “Nothing you can’t handle, though, right?”

  “Nothing I can’t...”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he assured her quickly. He really didn’t want to clean all this up by himself. “The catering crew took care of the kitchen, so there’s nothing to do in there. Just this space, a few of the bedrooms where guests changed clothes and the guest bathrooms here and on the second floor. You should be done in three, four hours, don’t you think?

  She gazed at him, a little furrow between her brow, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth.

  Completely out of nowhere—like a sudden heat wave in January—he had a wild urge to be the one nibbling on that delectable lip.

  The urge shocked him to his toes. What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t responded like this to a woman in a long, long time but something about her soft, lovely features, the soft eyes and that silky spill of auburn hair sent raw heat pooling in his gut.

  He set his jaw, shoving away the inappropriate, wholly unexpected reaction.

  “Cleaning supplies are in the closet in the mudroom, which is just off the kitchen back there. You should find everything you need. I’ll be in my office or out in the barn if you have any questions,” he said, already heading in
that direction in his eagerness to get away from her.

  He thought the dog would follow him, but Tri seemed more interested in the new arrival. Not that Ridge could blame the dog for a minute.

  “But, sir,” she called after him, a slight note of panic in her voice. “Mr. Bowman. I’m afraid—”

  The phone in his office rang at just that moment, much to his relief. He didn’t want to stand here arguing with the woman. She was being paid to do a job, and he wasn’t the sort of boss who stood around like a hall monitor, making sure his people did what was expected of them. She could ask any of his ranch workers and they would tell her the same thing.

  The phone rang again. “I’ve got to take this,” he said, which wasn’t really a lie, as it was probably the hay supplier he’d been trying to reach. “Thank you for doing this. You have no idea what a godsend you are. Let me know if you need anything.”

  He left her with her mouth slightly ajar and that look of dismay still on her features.

  Okay, so he had run away like he was twelve years old at a school dance and the girl he liked had just asked him to take a spin around the floor with her. It was strictly self-preservation.

  The last time he had been so instantly tangled up by a woman, he had ended up married to her—and look how delightfully that had turned out.

  All he could think was that it was a good thing she would only be there for a few hours.

  * * *

  Sarah now understood the definition of the word dumbfounded.

  After Ridge Bowman—at least she assumed it was Ridge Bowman—hurriedly left her alone with a funny-looking little three-legged dog, Sarah stood motionless in the big, soaring great room of the River Bow ranch house trying to catch her breath and figure out what had just happened.

  Okay, this did not go the way she had anticipated.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she certainly had never guessed the man would mistake her for someone else entirely.

  She stood with her hands in her pockets, gazing down at the little dog, who was watching her curiously, as if trying to figure out what move she would make next.