Small Town Christmas Read online

  Swallowing down the last of her reservations, she tapped her throat and mouthed, “Laryngitis.”

  Those deep eyes grew more puzzled. “Huh?”

  “My throat,” she croaked in barely a whisper.

  His brows lifted. “Oh! Your throat’s hoarse. Well, that explains it.” He gathered her back against his side and started moving again. “For a second, I thought I had someone else in my arms besides Miss Hog Caller of Haskins County five years runnin’.” He chuckled deep in his chest. “ ’Course, Slate’s gonna love this. He always said you talked too much.”

  “Hey, Kenny! What ya got there?” A skinny man stepped off the dance floor with a young woman in a tight T-shirt with the words “Keepin’ It Country” stretched across her large breasts and an even tighter pair of jeans that pushed up a roll of white flesh over her tooled leather belt.

  “None of your damned beeswax, Fletch.” Kenny winked at the young woman. “Hey, Twyla.”

  She scowled. “I thought you was goin’ home, Kenny Gene.”

  “I was, darlin’, but I have to take care of something first.”

  “I got eyes, Kenny. And if this is the somethin’ you need to take care of, then don’t be callin’ me to go to the homecomin’ game with you. I got other plans.”

  “Now don’t be gettin’ all bent out of shape, honey,” Kenny yelled at the woman’s retreating back. “Man, that gal’s got a temper,” he chuckled. “Almost as bad as yours.”

  Faith didn’t have a temper. At least not one anyone had witnessed.

  “Now don’t go and ruin the surprise, Hope. Let me do all the talkin’.” He shot her a weak grin. “Sorry, I forgot about your voice. Man, is Slate gonna be surprised.”

  For the first time since allowing this man to take charge of her life, Faith started to get worried. Surprises weren’t always well received. Her mother had dropped a surprise a few months before she passed away, a surprise Faith was still trying to recover from.

  But this was different. It sounded like this Slate and Hope had been good friends. He would probably whoop like Kenny had done, give her a big hug and possibly a little more razor burn—and hopefully a lot more information before she made her excuses and slipped out the door.

  And no one would be the wiser. Except maybe Hope, if she came home before Faith found her. But that wouldn’t happen. Faith had every intention of finding Hope as soon as possible. She might not be a rebel, but she was tenacious.

  Tenacious but more than a little scared when Kenny pulled her inside a room with two pool tables, a gaggle of cowboy hats, and a sea of blue denim. The light in the room was better but the smoke thicker. The music softer but the conversation louder. They hesitated by the door for a few seconds as Kenny looked around; then Faith was hauled across the room to the far table where a man in a crumpled straw cowboy hat had just leaned over to take a shot.

  Faith had barely taken note of the strong hand and lean forearm that stretched out of the rolled-up sleeve of the blue western shirt before Kenny whipped the hat off her head and pushed her forward.

  “Lookie what the cat drug in, Slate!”

  The loud conversation came to a dead halt, along with Faith’s breath as every eye turned to her. But she wasn’t overly concerned with the other occupants of the room. Only with the man who lifted his head, then froze with his fingers steepled over the skinny end of the pool cue. He remained that way for what seemed like hours. Or what seemed like hours to a woman whose knees had suddenly turned as limp as her hat hair.

  Someone coughed, and slowly, he lifted his hand from the table and unfolded his body.

  He was tall. At least, he looked tall to a woman who wasn’t over five foot four in heels. His chest wasn’t big enough to land a 747 on but it looked solid enough to hold up a weak-kneed woman. It tapered down to smooth flat cotton tucked into a leather belt minus the huge buckle. His jeans weren’t tight or pressed with a long crease like most of the men in the room; instead the soft well-worn denim molded to his body, defining his long legs, muscular thighs, and slim hips.

  The hand that wasn’t holding the cue stick lifted to push the misshaped sweat-stained cowboy hat back on his high forehead, and a pair of hazel eyes stared back at her—a mixture of rich browns and deep greens. The eyes sat above a long, slim nose that boasted a tiny white scar across the bridge and a mouth that was almost too perfect to belong to a man. It wasn’t too wide or too small, the top lip peaking nicely over the full bottom.

  The corners hitched up in a smile.

  “Hog?”

  Hog?

  Her mind was still trying to deal with the raw sensuality of the man who stood before her; there was no way it could deal with the whole “hog” thing. Especially when the man leaned his pool cue against the edge of the table and took a step toward her.

  She prepared herself for the loud whoop and the rough manhandling that would follow. But what she was not prepared for was the gentleness of the fingers that slid through her hair, or the coiled strength of the hand that pulled her closer, or the heat of the body that pressed up against hers. And she was definitely not prepared for the soft lips that swooped down to bestow a kiss.

  It wasn’t a long kiss or even a deep one. It was merely a touch. A teasing brush. A sweep of sweet, moist flesh against startled gloss. But it was enough. Enough to cause Faith’s heart to bang against her ribs and her breath to leave her lungs.

  Wow.

  Her hands came up and pressed against the hard wall of his chest in an effort to balance her suddenly tipsy world. Her eyelids, which she hadn’t even realized she’d closed, fluttered open. Unlike her, he didn’t look passion-drugged. Just cocky and confident.

  “Don’t tell me I left you speechless, darlin’.” The words drizzled off his tongue like honey off a spoon, with very little twang and a whole lot of southern sizzle.

  She swallowed hard as Kenny spoke.

  “She can’t talk. She’s got that there lar-in-gitis, probably from all that actin’ she’s been doin’.”

  A smirk a mile wide spread across Slate’s devastating, handsome face. “Is that so? Well now, ain’t that an interesting state of affairs.”

  “Who cares if she can talk, Coach.” A man behind him yelled. “You call that a welcome-home kiss?”

  Two other men joined in.

  “Yeah, Slate, I kiss my cousin better than that.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re married to her.”

  “And you got a problem with that?”

  “Shut up, you two,” Kenny said. “Come on, Slate, remind her of what she’s been missin’ out on. Give her the good stuff.”

  A look of resignation entered those hazel eyes, a strange bedfellow for the dazzling grin. “Sorry, Hog,” he whispered, right before he dipped his head for another taste. Except, this time, his lips were slightly parted, and the soft kiss brought with it the promise of wet heat.

  If it hadn’t been a year since she’d been kissed, she probably could’ve ignored the tremor that raced through her body and the zing that almost incinerated her panties. But it had been a year, a year filled with loss, pain, and revelation. A year that made a cautious conformist want to be something different. Something more like an arrogant rebel, Miss Hog Caller of Haskins County, or Annie Oakley with a loaded gun.

  Or just a woman who gave a handsome cowboy a kiss he wouldn’t forget anytime soon.

  With a moan, she threw her arms around his neck, knocking off his cowboy hat and forcing him to stumble back a step. A chorus of whoops and whistles erupted, but didn’t faze her one-track mind. Not when his lips opened wider, offering up all the good stuff. Teetering on the tiptoes of her high heels, she drove her fingers up into the silky waves of his hair, encasing his head and angling it so she had better access to the wet heat of his mouth. She dipped her tongue inside and sipped and tasted. But it still wasn’t enough.

  She wanted to consume this man. Wanted to slide her fingers over every square inch of fevered skin and sculptured muscles. Wa