Darn Good Cowboy Christmas by Carolyn Brown

interested in. It’s what lives next door. See you around, Raylen.” She blew Raylen a kiss as she left, hips swaying and hand-tooled boots tapping on the wood floor.
    Liz looked across the table at Raylen.
    â€œWhat?” Raylen asked.
    Liz shrugged. “Guess I’m sitting on a gold mine since you live next door. If I sold, would I owe you a commission?”
    Raylen’s face registered shock. “Me?”
    â€œWho else lives next door?”
    â€œDewar,” Raylen said.
    â€œSo is Becca interested in Dewar? Does Jasmine know?”
    Raylen threw both hands up. “Jasmine isn’t Dewar’s girlfriend. Becca has been my best friend since grade school. We’re just good friends. She’s a handful and speaks her mind, but she’s just my friend.”
    â€œSo then it’s not a love triangle?”
    Raylen stuttered and stammered, “A what?”
    â€œNever mind. So why does she want my land?”
    â€œShe lives down close to Stoneburg on a cattle ranch. And since we’re friends, I guess she wants to live close to my family. Hell, I didn’t even know she was interested in buying land in Ringgold. Her daddy owns three fourths of Stoneburg,” he said.
    â€œI see,” Liz said.
    Becca didn’t really love Raylen. She put on a show for some strange reason, but she didn’t love him. Her hand had rested possessively on his shoulder, but her eyes did not glitter when she looked at him. They did not say that she could stretch him out on a plate like a Christmas ham and devour him like Liz could.
    The image of Raylen without jeans, boots, and a shirt that strained at the arm seams made Liz so hot that her insides went all gushy and warm. She sipped ice cold sweet tea, but it didn’t help much when she shut her eyes and caught an imaginary glimpse of him from behind wearing nothing but his sweat-stained straw work hat. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and willed him to turn around in her vision, but he broke the spell when he spoke.
    â€œBecca is my friend and she never likes…” he stopped himself before he said, “any of my girlfriends,” then he took a long sip of tea and said, “any of my other girl type friends. Tell me about you. So you grew up in a travel trailer. Why?”
    Her eyes snapped open and she was only slightly amazed to see him still dressed and pushing back his dinner plate. “I was born a carnie. My grandparents were carnies. My mother and her sister are carnies even yet. Didn’t Uncle Haskell tell you?”
    â€œCarnie? That a family name?”
    Liz laughed. “Carnie as in carnival. Did you ever go to the carnival when it was in Bowie?”
    Raylen cocked his head to one side. “Are you serious?”
    â€œI am very serious. My grandparents owned the carnival. When Nanna died, Poppa, that’s my grandfather, bought a small trailer to live in and gave it to his daughters since Uncle Haskell didn’t want any part of that kind of life. He parked it on their land out in west Texas, not far from Amarillo, but he refuses to take the wheels off or skirt the thing. It’s where we winter from the end of November until the first of March. We do maintenance, paint, grease, and whatever else is needed to put the show back on the road in the spring. Each year there’s evidence that’s Grandpa is growing roots, but he’ll never admit it. The carnival was doing a gig in Jefferson, Texas, when Mother had me, so I’ve truly been a carnie all my life. If you came to the carnival in Bowie when you were a little boy, our paths have probably crossed in the past.”
    Raylen nodded. He’d thought his older brother, Rye, was crazy when he fell hard and fast for Austin, a big city girl with a big city job. There was no way Austin would ever leave everything she’d worked toward her entire life and move to tiny little Terral, Oklahoma, to run a watermelon farm. But