A Cowboy for Christmas

  A Cowboy for Christmas

  Stella Bagwell

  To my editor, Mary Theresa Hussey,

  for her patience, guidance and friendship

  This is a pie I always prepare for my family at Christmas. And I promise no real cowboy can resist!

  Strawberry Cracker Pie

  3 egg whites

  1 cup sugar

  16 small square saltine crackers, crushed

  ¼ tsp baking powder

  ½ cup nuts (I use pecans)

  1 tsp vanilla

  1 pint strawberries (crush into large pieces and sugar to your liking, or you may use frozen, already sweetened, berries)

  whipped cream

  Preheat oven to 350˚F.

  Beat the egg whites until stiff. Add 1 cup sugar slowly, the crushed crackers, baking powder, nuts and vanilla. Pour into buttered pie pan. Bake at 350˚F until lightly browned, usually about 15 min. Cool. This will serve as the crust.

  Spread fruit over the crust, then cover all with whipped cream. Chill and serve.

  Merry Christmas!

  Stella Bagwell.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Prologue

  Lucinda Lambert stared cautiously at the brightly wrapped package on her coffee table. It was long and slender in shape, the paper printed with Santa Clauses and reindeer. She’d found it on the back steps of her apartment when she’d arrived home from work. That was enough to alarm her. No one had access to the inner courtyard of her apartment building, except the other tenants. Could she be that lucky? Was it possible the gift had merely come from a neighbor?

  Seeing no other way of finding out, Lucinda reached for the small card that was slipped beneath the red ribbon. Her fingers shook as she opened the envelope, then everything inside her went cold and still as she read, “Merry Christmas, my darling Lucinda. All my love, Richard.”

  Fear clutched her heart, drained the blood from her face and left her hands clammy. It had been almost a week since her telephone had rung in the middle of the night, or an unmarked police car had followed her home from work. The small reprieve had led her to hope this horrible nightmare was going to end, that Richard was finally going to come to his senses and realize she was never going to love him, much less marry him.

  Lucinda could see now that she’d been crazy to hope. Christmas was little more than a week away, but obviously Richard wasn’t going to use the holidays to spread cheer and goodwill. No, she thought sickly as she glanced once again at the wrapped package, he was going to use Christmas to spread his own special brand of evilness.

  As if on cue, the telephone rang. Lucinda stared at it a moment, then with a small groan hurried across the room to pick up the receiver.

  Perhaps it was Molly. She’d left her friend working late tonight at The Fashion Plate. There was a chance she might be having problems with the mohair cape she’d been sewing.

  “Hello,” Lucinda answered warily.

  “Hello, sweetheart. Did you get my Christmas package?”

  The mocking masculine voice sent shivers of pure terror along her spine. Without saying a word, she slammed down the receiver and backed several feet away from the telephone.

  Before she could reach the kitchen, it began to ring again. Lucinda did her best to ignore the demanding sound and tried not to think of the caller, who might be far across town, or perhaps just across the street from her.

  The doors and windows are locked, Lucinda. He can’t get to you, she fiercely told herself. But deep down, she couldn’t make herself believe that she was truly safe. If, or when Richard finally decided to get to her, he could easily do it. Being on the Chicago police force had taught him all the ins and outs. It had also left Lucinda without any protection at all. No one believed she needed to be protected from one of their finest homicide detectives.

  Finally the incessant ringing stopped. But by then, Lucinda was shaking all over. She was also furious. She was sick of being afraid. She was tired of constantly looking over her shoulder and dreading the ring of the telephone.

  Chicago was the only place she’d ever lived. But it wasn’t a home to her anymore. It was a cage of fear and would be as long as Richard continued to harass her.

  Squaring her slender shoulders and lifting her chin, she walked to the bedroom and pulled several suitcases out of the closet.

  It was time she found a real home.

  Chapter One

  Lucinda leaned over the steering wheel and squinted through the small circle she’d just swiped upon the windshield. The misty rain that had been falling for the past fifty miles had turned into snow. Not just a few fat flakes drifting along in the wind; this stuff was coming down by the bucketfuls, turning the night into a white blur and making it impossible for her to see more than a few feet in front of the car.

  For the past fifteen minutes she’d been straining her ears to catch a weather report on the radio. So far the only thing she’d managed to pick up from an Amarillo station was a cowboy humorist telling a story about a bull and a greenhorn rancher. And now, thanks to the fading radio station, she’d even missed the end of that, drat it!

  The windshield fogged over once again and Lucinda flipped the defroster on high. It was the middle of December. She’d expected Texas to be cool, but a blizzard? Not in her wildest dreams. This was a southern state! At least it was far south of Chicago!

  Lucinda supposed she should have stayed at Amarillo and gotten a room for the night. But ever since she’d crossed the line from Oklahoma into Texas, she’d felt the urge to press on. California was still more than a thousand miles away. The longer she could stay on the highway, the sooner she could get there.

  But Lucinda hadn’t planned on driving straight into this foul weather. Now she was going to be lucky if she made it to a town large enough to have a motel or a place of lodging. If she made it to a town at all!

  “You’ve lost your mind, Lucy. Moving to California isn’t going to make your life all sun and roses,” her friend Molly had told her the minute she’d heard Lucinda was leaving. “Richard can always follow you out there.”

  “He won’t follow me all the way out to California,” Lucinda had protested. “Surely he’s not that obsessed.”

  Molly glumly shook her head. “I’m beginning to think the man is crazy. He might do anything.”

  “That’s why I’m leaving and you’re not to tell anybody where I’m going.”

  “If you’d let the police—” Molly began only to have Lucinda interrupt her with a mocking snort.

  “Do you hear yourself, Molly? Richard is the police.”

  Maybe her friend Molly had been right, Lucinda thought as she fiercely gripped the steering wheel. Richard could possibly follow her. But she had to take that chance. She had to find a new life for herself. Whether it was in San Diego or Los Angeles, she didn’t know yet. She only knew that she was finally putting Richard and the hellish months of his abusive threats behind her.

  “—snow and sleet with high winds and dangerously low temperatures. This winter storm—”

  Apparently the weather was playing havoc with the antenna on her car. The man’s voice faded into nothing. Lucinda desperately twisted the tuning knob, but it didn’t help.

  Oh well, she thought wearily, from the dim view she had before her, she didn’t need a meteorologist to tell her it was bad out there. The wind had picked up con
siderably, slashing snow straight into her little car. The tall, yellow grass on either side of the highway was bent flat under the merciless gale, making Lucinda wonder how soon it might be before her car was blown off the road or into the path of a passing vehicle.

  Perhaps she’d be better off if she stopped the car and waited for the storm to abate. But where? From the sketchy glimpses she could catch outside the windshield, there was no place to stop. This was a rural area she was traveling through, much of it open farm and ranching country. The four-lane highway had ended several miles back, leaving her on a narrow highway with hardly any shoulder.

  “Damn!”

  She shrieked the word as suddenly a loud pop exploded at the front of the car. The steering wheel jerked violently against her hands. Instinctively Lucinda reacted by stomping hard on the brake pedal, jamming it nearly to the floor. In response, the wheels locked and sent the car skidding sideways on the ice-slick road.

  Frantically Lucinda jerked on the steering wheel to right the car back on a straight course. But it was too little too late. She was going to crash and there was nothing she could do about it.

  *

  “What the hell?” Chance Delacroix muttered as he topped a rise in the road and saw a small red car buried nose first in the ditch.

  Quickly he eased the pickup off to the side of the highway and dug a flashlight out from under the seat. More than likely the car was empty, left by the owner until the weather cleared. But Chance couldn’t, in all good conscience, pass it by without checking first. If someone was still in the car, it would only be a matter of minutes before hypothermia set in.

  The moment he stepped out of the shelter of his warm pickup, bits of ice and snow smacked him straight in the face. Cursing, Chance tugged the brim of his cowboy hat lower onto his forehead and hurried across the wide ditch to the wrecked car.

  It had Illinois plates and the back seat was piled high with bags and suitcases, but more important, a head of dark hair was pressed against the driver’s window.

  He rapped his knuckles against the window. “Hey in there! Can you hear me?”

  There was no response. Or at least Chance couldn’t hear any over the sound of the driving wind.

  Gently, in case the driver was unconscious and not belted in, Chance opened the door.

  Lucinda immediately felt something wet against her face and for a moment she thought she’d been dreaming and had woken up crying. But then a hand touched her forehead. A big, callused hand that smelled like man and snow.

  Slowly she opened her eyes and found herself looking into a darkly shadowed face.

  “Who—what happened?” she asked fuzzily.

  “Looks like you met up with a patch of ice. Are you hurt?”

  The voice was deeply masculine, very Texan and oddly soothing. She took a deep breath and tried to pull her senses together.

  “I don’t know.” Frowning, she touched her fingers to her forehead as her eyes swept frantically around the dark interior of the car. “There was a loud pop and then—did I—” her gaze swung back to the stranger’s shadowed face “—did I hit something?”

  “I don’t see anything else around here, lady, but you and a ditch.”

  Lucinda groaned as her wits gathered and reality began to settle in. “Is the car ruined?” She fumbled with the seat belt while inwardly cursing the fact that the interior lights had obviously gone awry.

  Chance hadn’t spared an extra moment to pull on his coat. Now he was getting wetter and colder by the second. Didn’t this woman realize they were out in a blizzard? he wondered irritably.

  “You can worry about the car later, ma’am,” he said, raising his voice above the wind. “Are you all right?”

  The belt finally snapped free. She pushed it out of the way. “I’m fine—I think. Except for my right foot. It feels like I must have twisted it, or banged it against something.”

  “My truck is just a few yards away. I’ll take you to a doctor.”

  “Oh, do you think that’s necessary?” She knew she was in a predicament, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wanted to put herself into the hands of a total stranger. And she certainly didn’t want to go to a hospital emergency room where they’d charge her several hundred dollars for five minutes of service. Money that she didn’t have to spare.

  She had a Midwestern accent, but Chance would have known she was a Northerner even without hearing her voice. She had that attitude about her that Texans like himself described as standoffish.

  “Look, lady, you can’t wait here for a tow truck! It could be hours before one is available. You’d freeze to death before then.” He put one hand on her shoulder and another on her arm. “The D Bar D is only about four miles from here. We’ll call a wrecker from there.”

  Lucinda grabbed her purse and coat from the passenger seat.

  “The D Bar D?” she asked, darting him a frantic glance as he began to virtually lift her up and out of the seat, pulling her coat over her.

  “My home.”

  Suddenly she was outside the car, cradled in his arms. Ice and snow pelted her face and the streaks of pain shooting through her ankle felt as angry as the freezing wind howling around them.

  Even though Lucinda couldn’t see her rescuer’s face under the brim of his black Stetson, she could feel his chest and shoulders were wide and his arms strong as he began to carry her easily across the wide, soggy ditch to his vehicle.

  Once he’d placed her on the bench seat and hurried around to the driver’s side, Lucinda had collected herself somewhat. Pushing her dark hair behind her ears, she bent forward and tried to examine her foot.

  “Do you think it’s broken?” he asked gruffly.

  The dome light came on and she jerked her head in his direction. “I hope not,” she said through chattering teeth. “I don’t think…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at him beneath the glow of the dome light.

  That drawling, sexy voice had a face that was equally disarming. Crow black hair hung in wet curls around his angular features. Bits of ice and snow glistened on his tanned skin and spiked the thick sooty lashes that were now drooping over his gray eyes. Which, at the moment, were looking back at her, waiting for her answer.

  Yet Lucinda couldn’t get a word past her lips. All she could do was stare at him. Her eyes felt glued to his roughly hewn mouth, the long hawkish nose, the cocky jut of his jawline. Unable to suppress a shiver, she hugged her arms to her.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had a broken bone. Have you?”

  He took off his hat, quickly dusted the snow from the brim, then socked it back onto his head. “A couple. They hurt like hell.”

  He put the pickup into gear and carefully pulled back onto the highway. White sheets of snow slashed horizontally through the air, making visibility practically nil. Lucinda didn’t know which was more threatening, the violent weather or this dark stranger who was taking her to God only knows where.

  “Is this weather—isn’t it unusual for Texas?”

  Shaking his head with disbelief, he switched the wiper blades to a faster rhythm. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Texas is big. What goes on down in the south is nothing like here in the Panhandle.”

  So he was telling her that blizzards were a normal happening around here. He must be thinking she was an idiot for driving in one.

  “It was misting rain when I left Amarillo, I never thought I’d run into snow like this,” she felt compelled to explain.

  Chance didn’t say anything, but he wanted to. It was damn stupid for a woman to be traveling alone at night. And in this weather! She had to be one of those flighty females who never thought before they acted.

  “You must be in a hell of a hurry to get where you’re going,” he muttered. “Does your husband know you’re out in this?”

  The heater was running full blast but Lucinda felt cold in spite of the warm air rushing over her feet. “I’m not married.”

  Chance darted a quick glance at her. She wasn’
t married, so who or what was she trying to get to? A job? A lover?

  “Well, I can tell you the highway on down to Roswell is a solid sheet of ice. In fact, parts of it are closed. But you would have never made it that far. You have to have a four-wheel-drive vehicle to travel on this stuff. Were you headed in that direction?”

  Lucinda bit her lip. This man had just rescued her from a wrecked car in a freezing blizzard. She shouldn’t mind his asking questions. But she was loath to tell him where she was going. She didn’t want to leave any sort of trail behind her that Richard could follow.

  Her eyes traveled over his dark face as she tried to decide whether he was a man to be trusted. “Yes. I’m working my way south to Interstate 10.”

  That didn’t tell Chance much, but he didn’t question her further. She looked frazzled, but then he supposed any woman who’d just slammed her car into the ditch would be a little distracted.

  She was pretty though, Chance concluded, and young, too. He doubted she was a day past twenty-five. Straight brown hair spilled over her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes were also dark, but whether they were brown or green he couldn’t tell.

  At the moment he could feel those eyes studying him warily. “Well, miss, you haven’t told me your name.”

  Lucinda looked away from him. She didn’t want to tell him her name. That was too personal. And he didn’t really need to know it, did he?

  “You do have one, don’t you?” he prompted when her silence continued.

  Her eyes straight ahead, she nodded. “It’s Lucinda Lambert. Lucy to my friends.”

  “Well, Lucy,” he said as he carefully guided the pickup onto a graveled lane, “I’m Charles Delacroix. Most everyone calls me Chance.”

  From the corner of her eye, Lucinda noticed his snow-dampened shirt was white and obviously for dress wear. Gold-and-onyx cuff links glinted at his wrist while the toes of a pair of fancy black cowboy boots extended beneath the legs of his dark trousers.