A Cowboy For Christmas (A Copper Mountain Christmas) Read Online Free PDF

paint roller and brushes and bring them by your place.”
    “ You don’t mind?” It was more than she’d hoped for.
    “ I wouldn’t have offered if I did.”
    “ But why? You said we’re strangers now.”
    “ We’re still neighbors,” he said.
    And that meant a lot in Montana. Or really any rural area. “Thank you, Carson. You’ve treated me better than I deserve after the way I left.”
    “ You were young. Hell, I was too.”
    He turned his horse and cantered away from her. She watched him go, realizing that being back in Montana had one big plus that she’d never considered—Carson. But she also knew that she couldn’t stay for a man. She’d left for herself, and she really needed to be back for herself as well.
    She got back into her car and drove to La Terra De Reves. She’d gone shopping in town and bought a couple of cans of paint and a wreath for her front door. Her sister Marilyn had yet to return one of Annie’s phone calls but that hadn’t stopped Annie from calling.
    Being back home made her miss her sister and Annie knew it was past time to mend fences. Neither of them had recovered from losing their mom and sister. Last night she’d felt so mired in the past, but today she focused on the future.
    She was still a little scared and very unsure of what, exactly, she was going to do next. She’d had a sense of purpose that had been eroded by time and the years she’d spent away from this quiet valley. Looking at the weathered cedar post and rail fencing that lined the gravel drive leading up to the wooden ranch house didn’t inspire her, but the thought of seeing Carson again did.
    La Terre De Reves, the optimistic name her father had given the ranch. The land of dreams , so named because her mother was an immigrant from France. Annie remembered her early childhood and the happy memories she had. But everything changed when she’d turned thirteen and it was impossible, standing here twenty years later, to forget the intervening years and the experiences she’d had.
    A cold nose nudged the middle of her hand and she looked down at Rumple her English bulldog. He was sprawled out next to her, his stubby legs flat so that he could rest his belly on the leather seat. His coat was short and wiry, a brindle mixture of white and red. His face had the normal bulldog folds and he looked up at her with big, wide-set eyes. Running errands in town had worn him out. She scratched behind his ears. He responded with a sloppy kiss on her hand.
    “ This is it, baby,” she said. “We’re back home”
    Marietta, Montana was a far cry from her apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan but the FBI had taken everything that she ’d had there. She was literally holding everything she owned. This old rust-bucket of a car, Rumple, and a small duffel bag they’d provided for her to gather clothing and makeup in before the rest of it was seized to be sold. Sold to repay the people her ex-husband had bilked out of their savings.
    She groaned and put her head on the steering wheel. She wished she felt like Fantine in Les Miserables , but instead she was pissed off that she’d put her faith and her fortune in a man like Davis and now she was back where she started. Older, but she sure wasn’t wiser.
    She and Davis had been married for ten years, childless by choice, and she ’d sort of been his arm candy – and as it turned out, his distraction for potential investors. Davis had been a con man and a fraud... everything her father had warned her about as she’d left the ranch behind.
    She put her car in gear and drove up the snow-covered winding road to the main house, which was now hers, thanks to Davis buying her sister out after their father died. She owned a hundred acres of land and this ramshackle single-story ranch house. There was a bunkhouse behind it that looked as rundown as the house, and the pastures had grown over.
    The front yard was full of brown batches of dead grass, mounds of unmelted