Cowboy Who Came For Christmas (Harlequin Romance) Read Online Free PDF

time, she’d held a gun on him, watched her friend knock him out and they’d tied him up and put tape over his mouth. Now, she was so glad he’d come to Crescent Mountain. The man exuded confidence and power and made her feel secure. But those traits didn’t hide the one glaring thing Adan’s presence had brought out in her—the solid fear she’d managed to keep at bay by sheer force and willpower.
    For the first time in years, she didn’t feel safe here.
    * * *
    A DAN SLID ALONG the rough plank walls of the square brown cabin. He’d checked around the big front porch and found nothing. But here on the side of the house, he hit the ground with a penlight and saw fresh footprints by the back window of one of the bedrooms.
    Someone snooping, or someone leaving through a window. He checked the windowsill but it didn’t look as if the window had been opened. Fresh snow was encrusted over the bottom of the glass and the thick wood casings. He did see a couple of imprints. Looked as though someone had placed a hand against the outside sill. Then he heard a crunching sound out in the woods.
    Adan cut his light and turned to stare into the swaying trees. Something was definitely out there. Or someone. Had ol’ Joe seen his truck down on the road and followed the path Adan had taken to get up to the cabin?
    Or had the man he’d come to find been here all along? He waited in the shadows, his breath hitching in the cold, his hands freezing against the steel of his gun. A shuffling and rustling in the distant woods had him on the move again. He reached the edge of the cabin’s garden and stood silent behind a giant oak tree.
    More thrashing about and then the woods went quiet. Deciding to circle back around, he trotted from tree to tree, hiding behind snowdrifts and limbs heavy with ice and snow until he thought he’d cleared the area in the woods where he’d heard the noise. But the heavy snow and the midnight darkness kept him from finding anything. Following his own footsteps, he could imagine how easy it would be to get lost out here at night. Maybe whoever’d been snooping around had gotten confused and crashed into a ravine. Or they’d purposely caused a distraction to lure him away from the cabin.
    When he heard a scream, he started running through the knee-deep snow, falling and getting up again until he hit the porch and rushed inside the cabin.
    Sophia stood there staring at a piece of paper, her face as pale as the night. Adan hurried to take the paper from her. “Where did you find this?”
    She pointed to the back door. “Inside the screen. I heard someone and I thought it was you.” She shuddered, took in a breath. “When I opened the door I found this.”
    Adan stared at the artist’s rendering of the man he was chasing. “Do you know this man, Sophia?”
    She sank down on a dining chair, shock evident in her eyes. Holding her chest, she gave him a frightened stare. “I... I don’t know. I mean, I just got scared when I saw that someone had left that there.” She gulped in air and shot a worried glance at the door.
    Adan’s gut told him she was lying. This woman who’d been so strong and sure was now shaking and uncertain. Fear colored her skin white. Her hands were cold, her actions jittery and unsure. She kept staring at the mug shot in the picture with a shocked expression on her face.
    “You know this man, don’t you?” Adan asked again. “Sophia, did you help this man escape earlier tonight?”
    She hurtled out of the chair and crossed her arms as if to stop the shaking. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
    He grabbed her, his hands rubbing her arms over her heavy sweater. She stared up at him but she couldn’t seem to speak.
    Finally, she asked, “The man you’re tracking? You said he’s a wanted felon. What did he do?”
    Adan decided it was time to come clean. Someone had left that poster on this woman’s door on purpose. That same person had obviously broken into his truck and