Page 49 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

“Well, here we are.” Monica smiled nervously at the man in the passenger seat. She’d picked up her parents at the Bozeman airport this morning, and they’d be staying the night to see Revival and meet her colleagues. Then they’d head back to Denver with Colin in tow, and she would stay behind until the twenty-third, when she’d head to Denver and spend the night and have a family Christmas before heading back to Montana with Colin on Christmas Eve.

She’d parked in the Revival lot, which gave quite an impressive view of the house, the stables, the barn.

Her father looked stoic as ever.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Mom said enthusiastically from where she sat with Colin in the back. “I can see why you’d want to move here.”

Dad grunted.

She’d been nervous all day, from the morning airport pickup, to this. Alex and Becca had had their week of staycation honeymoon solitude, so Monica had been scarce. So scarce she hadn’t talked to anyone since the wedding night.

Well, she’d had a phone conversation with Becca and Rose. But none of the men, and maybe there’d been a purposeful avoiding when it came to Gabe. Which meant she was going to introduce him to her parents after their hostile parting.

The only way out was through though. She pushed out of the truck and her family followed. “Since it’s afternoon, everyone is going to be out and about. We could always go to the cabin first and settle in a bit and do this lat—”

“Show us around,” Dad said.

Ordered more like. But Monica smiled and tramped through the snow, leading them toward the stables. “The house is something of a home base. Becca and Alex live there.”

“The newlyweds, right?” Mom asked.

“Yes. Then Gabe lives in the bunkhouse there, and that’s where the new men will stay. We’ve got two coming in January, and we’ll slowly determine how many we can keep on at one time from there. Luckily, with a ranch this size, there’s plenty of work to go around.”

“Hard work is good,” Dad said.

Monica warmed a bit at that. Her father could be hard, and that was probably as close to a compliment as she was going to get. But itwasa compliment coming from him.

“You hear that, Colin?” Dad asked, motioning Colin to hurry up and come walk by his side.

“Yeah, Gramps. Hard work.”

He ruffled Colin’s hair and that warmed Monica, too. He was still not a particularly effusive man, but he’d softened a lot. He never would have ruffled her hair growing up. She liked seeing him be more demonstrative with her son.

Mom linked an arm with her as they made it to the stables. “It’s a postcard,” Mom said happily. “I didn’t think it could be that much different than Denver, but…well, it’s beautiful.”

Monica squeezed her mom’s arm. “I know. Just wait till tonight. We’ve got so many Christmas lights the whole places blazes. It makes my heart happy.”

They stepped into the stables, and Becca had the horses out.

“Oh, hi!” Becca smiled warmly. “You made it. Roads weren’t too bad?”

“Not too.” Monica made the appropriate introductions, then they talked a bit about the therapeutic horsemanship. It was fun to watch her father’s skepticism melt in the face of Becca’s exuberance and knowledge.

“How many horses do you have?”

“We’ve got six right now,” Becca said, nodding to the stables. “The goal will always be to be able to have enough horses for all the men if its financially feasible. We do a lot of work with tractors and utility task vehicles now, with winter in full swing.”

“Quite the operation. Quite,” Dad said, nodding thoughtfully.

It was possibly one of the biggest compliments Monica had ever heard him give, and she might have ridden that giddy pride all the way into tomorrow—except Gabe stepped into the stables.

“Hey, Bec. I—” He stopped abruptly when he saw there was more than just Becca in the stables. “Oh.”

Monica cleared her throat. “Mom. Dad. This is Gabe Cortez. Gabe, these are my parents. Martin and Lorraine.” Monica tried to smile, tried not to look nervous or still mad at him or any of the confusing things she felt.

You’ve kissed that man. His tongue has been in your mouth and his hands on your ass.

Yeah, she really wished she could ignore all that, but she felt like it was imprinted on her forehead. A bright-red, shining beacon of embarrassment.

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