Page 17 of The Cowboy's Miracle Baby

Cami pressed her lips together to keep from letting her mouth fall open. Eloise was onlysix. “Wait. You… you don’t believe in Santa Claus?”

“No. It’s okay,” Eloise said. “I don’t tell the other kids. It’s a secret.”

Gus flicked a guilty look at Cami. “Library,” he said.

“Well, sometimes even libraries can be wrong.” Cami leaned close to the little girl. “You know, I used to think that, too… about Santa. But I’ve changed my mind.”

“You have?”

“Oh, yes. I think he’s absolutely real.”

Eloise made a face. “No, he’s not. That’d be a miracle. Right, Daddy?”

Gus opened his mouth to answer, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Well, Santa Claus does kind of fall into the miracle category, doesn’t he? I mean, making it around the world in one night with toys for everyone? And if you ask me, miracles are not so uncommon. In fact, I think they happen all the time.”

Gus dropped the tree off his shoulder, and it landed with a thud on the ground between them. “A cow giving birth to a perfect calf? A foal getting to its feet for the first time? Yeah. Those I’d call the real miracles. Miracles we can see. Ella and me? We keep things on the up and up. She knows.”

How had this conversation taken such a weird turn? It really was none of her business what Gus told Ella about Santa. But she was so little.

“I’m sorry. I… I didn’t mean to step on your toes.”

“My toes are just fine. We should find someone to ring up this tree though.”

Ugh. She’d said the wrong thing. And he was not happy with her. Of course she did. Why couldn’t she learn to leave well enough alone?

“They’ll ring you up over there. I’m going to go find another little tree real quick to take home from the cut ones over there. Ella, do you want to help me pick one out?”

“Okay! I’ll find one!” She bolted ahead, running toward the lot full of pre-cut Douglas firs and nobles.

Cami lingered beside Gus for a moment, trying to think of how to remove her foot from her mouth. But he spoke first.

“She’s too smart for her own good sometimes,” he said when Ella was out of earshot. “But I don’t like to lie to her. If I did, she’d find out the truth eventually anyway. And then what?”

She had no answer for that, except that by then Ella would be eight or nine and she’d know the secret of Santa was something he’d shared with her because he loved her. But it wasn’t her place to say it. So, she said, “You’re an amazing dad. And she’s a darling girl. Don’t mind me. I have zero children to raise. Well… except momentarily.”

“Yeah, you’ll probably want to be getting back to her. And figure out what you’re going to do.”

She rubbed her forehead. “I could actually use one of those miracles right now. See any on the horizon?”

“Nope. Just blue sky.”

Gus Claymore was as pragmatic as he was handsome. But underneath all that pragmatism was some quiet river that made her wonder about him and his just-the-facts-ma’am attitude about life. Maybe it was the scientist in him.

It was probably the elementary school teacher in her that perpetuated all this Christmasy optimism in her. But Santa and Christmas had always been big on the ranch when they were young, and her older siblings had dutifully kept that secret from her for years as she grew up, faithfully visiting Kris Kringle, the Graff Hotel’s long-time Santa. It hadn’t hurt her one bit to know her siblings had kept that secret from her in the end. Nor did it color her belief in the spirit of Santa being alive and well. It had only made them all closer with the joy of Christmas mornings together.

For just a few minutes, she’d nearly forgotten that baby who’d fallen into her life like a little miracle herself. The baby her entire family was now looking after. She hadn’t made any decisions at all about her, but putting all that off by distracting herself with Gus and Eloise wasn’t going to make her choices any easier.

“Blue skies it is,” she said and headed off to join Eloise in the tree hunt.

Chapter Four

Gus followed herover to the Hard Eight with her Christmas tree still in the back of his truck and Eloise excited to see the baby again. But as they pulled onto the long drive of the ranch, Cami’s heart fell at the sight of the sheriff’s car parked in front of their house.

“Oh, no,” she breathed. “No.”

She wanted to stop right there, back up the car, try to come up with a good reason why she hadn’t called them herself. But she didn’t have one. Or a good reason why she shouldn’t simply let the sheriff take her, disappear her into the system.

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