Her Mistletoe Cowboy
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Marie Ferrarella
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16,1K
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19
Prologue
“No.”
Stunned, Garrett White Eagle stared at his older brother, Jackson. He’d just checked his email and when he read the notification from the editor in chief of a well-known magazine, asking to do an in-depth article on the work he and his brother were doing at the Healing Ranch, he thought that Jackson would be as excited about it as he was.
Obviously not.
This was going to take some work on his part, Garrett decided.
“No?” he repeated incredulously. “What do you mean, no?”
Jackson rose from behind the scarred, second-hand desk he’d rescued from being turned into kindling half a dozen years ago. He had a full day ahead of him at the ranch and he’d already wasted enough time with the stack of unpaid bills that seemed to be breeding on his desk. Apparently, moving them from one pile to another didn’t diminish their number or get them paid off any sooner.
He couldn’t think about them right now. The boys were waiting for him at the corral. The bunkhouse was almost filled to capacity and every teen currently staying at the ranch required individual care. He’d sworn when he took all this on that nothing short of that would suffice and he had meant it. But it did get hard to live up to at times.
“No,” Jackson repeated. “It’s a simple enough word to grasp.” The corners of his mouth curved just the slightest bit as he glanced toward his younger brother. “Even you, with your limited education, should be able to figure out its meaning.”
“Look, I get it. You’re not into social media. But I’m not asking you to get on Twitter, or Facebook, or any of the other modern innovations you keep insisting on staying clear of. I’m not even asking you to use smoke signals, like our ancestors. But to turn your back on a magazine interview is positively criminal,” Garrett accused. “Western Times is a big-time magazine,” he emphasized, as if the increased volume would somehow get his brother to agree. This was an opportunity and he wasn’t about to give up until he made Jackson see the light. He had his work cut out for him, seeing as Jackson could bring new meaning to the word stubborn when he wanted to.
Jackson turned around for a split second, looking his brother in the eye and enunciating every word slowly. “I can’t make time for it.”
“Do you have time to make money?” Garrett asked. “How about that? Do you have time to do that?”
Jackson stifled an impatient sigh. “What are you talking about? They’re not paying us for the interview.”
“No, but doing the interview could really pay off in the long run.” Garrett picked up his pace to keep up with Jackson.
Just like when we were younger, he couldn’t help remembering. Back then, he’d worshipped Jackson, who was five years his senior. Technically, Jackson was his half brother. They shared a father who wasn’t interested in either of them. Ben White Eagle walked out on them just the way Jackson’s mother had walked out on him several years before that. It was his own mother who was left with the task of raising both of them.
Sylvia White Eagle was a warm, loving woman who more than had her hands filled with a very hostile, rebellious Jackson. Jackson was always rushing off to be with his friends, friends who were interested in grabbing what life hadn’t given them. Friends who kept getting him into more and more trouble.
Desperate, Sylvia had turned to Sam, her ex-husband’s brother, and Sam had taken Jackson in hand, putting him to work on his ranch. It was there that Jackson got his life back.
As for Garrett, he had joined Jackson and his uncle when his mother died. They worked the ranch together and when Sam passed away, he had left the ranch to both of them.
It was Jackson’s idea to start up the Healing Ranch, creating it in Sam’s honor. There Jackson and Garrett put Sam’s methods to work, using horses as a way to get through to misguided, wayward boys and make them come around rather than turning into hardened criminals.
Since its slow start, the ranch had been growing increasingly successful. Despite that, it wasn’t making any money, but that was because Jackson, ever mindful of the dire circumstances some people found themselves in, only charged what he felt the parents or guardians who came to him as their last hope could afford to pay. But their bills to run the ranch just kept on growing.
From what Jackson had let slip recently, they couldn’t be ignored too much longer.
And now, Garrett thought, it seemed that Fortune had decided to smile on the Healing Ranch—except that Jackson refused to see it that way.
Garrett was determined not to have him pass up on what just might be their one chance to make things work.
He blew out a frustrated breath. Jackson apparently had stopped paying any attention to the conversation he thought he was having with his brother.
“The Saunders kid is finally ready to get in the saddle,” Jackson was saying as he walked toward the front door.
Garrett hurried after him. Spotting Debi in the living room, Garrett immediately enlisted his sister-in-law as an ally. “Debi, talk some sense into this lunkhead you married,” he pleaded.
The blonde, green-eyed nurse willingly obliged. “Lunkhead, listen to your brother.” Debi smiled at Garrett as she lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I tried. By the way, what’s he supposed to be listening to?”
“The voice of reason,” Garrett answered, doing his best to keep his temper.
“Ha!” was Jackson’s response. He looked at his wife of three months, appealing for her to back him up. “He wants some woman to come out and follow us around, asking a bunch of questions, snooping and getting in the way.”
“Auditioning for a wife, Garrett?” Debi asked her brother-in-law, amused.
“No point. Jackson’s already snatched away the love of my life,” Garrett replied with a good-natured wink. And then he grew serious. “I’m just trying to find a way to keep the wolf from the door.”
As down to earth as her husband, Debi took an active interest in the monetary issues that went into running the school. It was the school that had initially brought her here, looking for a way to get through to her younger brother before he destroyed himself. If possible, she was even more dedicated to keeping the ranch operating than either of the brothers.
“Keep talking,” she urged Garrett.
Jackson groaned. “Don’t encourage him.”
But Garrett was quick to get his sister-in-law to join forces with him. He felt confident that Jackson wouldn’t say no to her. “Western Times Magazine wants to send a writer to come out and do a story about the ranch.”
Surprised, Debi turned toward her husband. “That’s wonderful!”
“What’s wonderful about it?” Jackson asked. “I’ve got a ranch to run, I don’t have time to answer a bunch of questions.”
“Then don’t,” Debi told him simply. Before Jackson could say something about being vindicated or Garrett could complain that he thought that she would have been on his side, she came through with the natural solution. “Have Garrett do it. He’s a lot more outgoing than you are, anyway.”
Jackson pretended to scowl. “Thanks.”
Debi hooked her arm through his, looking up into his eyes. Her own were sparkling with humor. “But you have all these other fine qualities.”
“I guess I do at that.” Jackson laughed, allowing himself one quick kiss before he looked at his brother. “Okay, call them and tell ’em she can come.”
This time it was Garrett’s turn to kiss Debi, planting one on her cheek. “Bless the day you came here, Debi! I’ll call them right now before Smiley here changes his mind!”
And with that Garrett raced up the stairs to his room and his computer.
