EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from Kassie’s Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna–look below!!!
From the snowy, wind-whipped prairie to the remote Australian Outback, a cowboy’s loving kiss makes this Christmas merry and bright . . .
“The Snow Man” by Diana Palmer
Meadow Dawson needs Santa to deliver a solution to her management of the Colorado ranch she’s inherited. Cattleman Dal Blake just wants his pretty neighbor’s dog to quit digging under his fence. This Christmas, the unexpected gift of love will surprise them both.
“Kassie’s Cowboy” by Lindsay McKenna
A brutal blue norther is battering Wyoming just in time for Christmas when solitary former Marine Travis Grant finds his childhood sweetheart, Kassie Murphy, injured in her car just beyond the ranch where he works. For Travis and Kassie, this snowy silent night will be one last chance to put the painful past behind them—and treat the wounds only love can heal.
“Her Outback Husband” by Margaret Way
Scott and Darcey MacArthur were the perfect couple, devoted to their life together on the family cattle ranch. With one blistering rumor, it ended in heartbreak—but Scott’s mother has a scheme that will reunite them in the Outback for a holiday that will prove it’s the season for forgiveness.
REVIEW BN.com
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/romance-roundup-cowboys-writers-tons-christmas-romances/
Christmas With My Cowboy, by Lindsay McKenna, Diana Palmer, and Margaret Way
Three MORE stories in one, and these feature SEXY COWBOYS! In McKenna’s “Kassie’s Cowboy,” (Gah! Already getting so excited!) former Marine Travis Grant finds his childhood sweetheart, Kassie Murphy. She’s just been in a car accident, so Travis feels the need to care for her. Oh, and all of the love feelings are 100 percent intact, so it’s going to be a very cozy Christmas! In Palmer’s “The Snow Man,” Meadow Dawson needs some help managing her Colorado ranch. She soon meets a super-duper hunky cattleman by the name of Dal Blake. He’s not too thrilled that Meadow’s dog keeps digging under his fence, but he’s not one to abandon a lady in need. (Dude, the puppy’s digging is totally a sign that you and Meadow belong together!) And in Way’s “Her Outback Husband,” Scott and Darcey MacArthur are reunited after a painful rumor drove them apart. Can they make amends in time for the holidays—and before those long winter nights really start to kick in? (Available in paperback, audiobook, and NOOK on September 26.)
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from Kassie’s Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna
Kassie’s Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna
Christmas with my Cowboy anthology
Chapter 1
December 8
A blizzard was coming. A bad one. A blue norther and a five-dayer, as Wyoming ranchers referred to the deadly weather front.
Travis Grant fed his two horses, made sure all the windows were shut and the area as warm as it could be. His two geldings had thick winter coats and would weather this blizzard, no problem, in his two story, one-hundred-year-old barn. They were well fed and completely protected from the harsh, brutal elements to come. He’d also placed a heavy canvas well-padded horse blanket on each of them every night. Wyoming winters got way below zero.
It was barely dawn, a lighter gray ribbon along the clogged, cloudy western horizon. Pulling his sheepskin coat collar up a little tighter around his exposed neck, Travis heard the howling of the wind slamming against the western barn wall like invisible fists pummeling the aged wooden surface. Gale-force winds would precede this blue norther, and more than likely three to six feet of snow would be dumped on the Wind River Valley as it passed through like a slow-moving freight train.
Travis lived near the center of the Wind River Valley, about six miles away from where Maud and Steve Whitcomb had their hundred-thousand-acre Wind River Ranch where he worked four months out of the year as a wrangler.
His cowboy boots echoed and thunked hollowly along the old oak planking. He slid the door shut to the horse barn and went into his furniture-making studio, which was right next to it. In there, since returning home from the Marine Corps and too many deployments to Afghanistan, he’d found a way to make money and deal with his PTSD instead of committing suicide, like so many of his vet friends already had.
Turning on the overhead lights, his gaze moved through the thousand-foot rectangular room. It held his projects, all handmade furniture for clients who had ordered specific pieces from him.
Walking across the oak floor that shined dully beneath the fluorescent lights, he trailed his fingers across a reddish-colored mahogany top of a four-drawer dresser that was closest to where he stood. It was nearly finished, the deep crimson gleam of the wood beautiful beneath his hand and the patient waxing he’d done on it all day yesterday. It was a beautiful hardwood from South and Central America.
In creating furniture he’d found solace, maybe even a tiny corner of peace, by working alone in here from dawn to dusk, his anxiety tamped down, which was a godsend. Hard physical work like wrangling or creating furniture kept his PTSD anxiety volume turned down to a dull roar. He could use his woodworking tools, his hands, his chisels and sanding paper, to create beauty even though anxiety lived inside him like an angry, stalking monster 24/7/365.
He meandered through the clean room, a bit of satisfaction flowing through him. The scent of the different types of wood, the organic beeswax polish he used, made him breathe a little deeper. It was like a tack room in a barn, in one sense; the fragrance of leather saddles, bridles, martingales, the neatsfoot oil and saddle soap applied to all of them from time to time always calmed him, too.
In one corner he had a black potbellied that radiated enough heat to keep the studio toasty warm. Having just made the fire for the coming day’s work, Travis walked over, opened the latch, and placed a couple more pieces of wood he’d chopped a week ago into it. Shutting it, he went to a small kitchenette where he made his coffee. Recently, he’d installed a small fridge with comfort foods such as cheese, milk, fruits, and veggies he liked to nosh on. The steel double sink was a place to wash his hands and the few dishes he dirtied daily.
For the next five to seven days, as this blizzard roared through northwestern Wyoming, Route 89, a north-south two-lane highway, would be closed. Wyoming simply did not have enough snowplows to quickly clear the one-hundred-mile stretch of Wind River Valley. It would take days to open it back up after the snow rapidly accumulated, so truck and civilian traffic could flow freely back and forth once more.
The studio was warming up. He checked the progress on each of his six projects. Thanks to Steve Whitcomb, owner of the Wind River Ranch, his career as a furniture maker had suddenly and unexpectedly taken off. Steve was a world-class architect, and he’d invited Architecture magazine to send out a reporter to do a story on him and his master carpentry craftsmanship last year. He’d had three pieces of furniture under way at that time, trying to make a living between being a wrangler on their ranch during the summer months and creating beautiful furniture the other eight months of winter. That one article catapulted him from being a nobody to a somebody in the world of high-class handmade furniture.
He was forever indebted to Steve for his support. He and his rancher wife, Maud, had already ordered and bought two pieces from him. The money was more than good and he’d been able to buy this small farm that sat along Route 89. It only had five acres, a fifteen-hundred-square-foot single-story turn-of-the-century cabin on it, a two-story barn, corrals, and a huge garden area. For him, it meant safety, solace, and finding the peace that eluded him since getting PTSD.
Seeing the flash of headlights through his double-paned window, he scowled. Who the hell was out at this time of morning and driving in the imminent deadly weather conditions? The beams had turned in a full circle on Route 89. That meant someone had hit black ice and was spinning out of control.
Damn.
He pulled his black Stetson down a little tighter on his head, hauled on his thick elk skin gloves to protect his hands from the plummeting temperature, and quickly headed out of the barn. The wind was hard, battering against his body as he ran to the garage. He hit the door opener and waited impatiently to get to his huge Dodge Ram three-quarter-ton pickup inside. His dirt road was muddy and iced, as well. He backed the truck out, a sense of urgency filling him.
Probably some stupid tourist or a person who didn’t really understand Wyoming blizzard weather, he thought as he drove slowly through the ice-covered mud ruts. They’d already gotten two feet of snow a week ago, and the plows had just finished pushing it off the sides of the highway into high white banks. There was no way he could speed down his quarter-mile driveway or he’d spin out, too. Mouth tightening, Travis saw that the car, a bright red one, had spun out and was now tipped on its side in the huge ditch next to the entrance gate of his property.
Travis parked behind the gate and climbed out, seeing steam rising from beneath the bent hood. He couldn’t see who was in the vehicle because all the air bags had deployed, and there was no movement. That bothered Travis. The windshield wipers on the car were still, indicating the car’s engine was off. All he could see as he slipped and slid down the short slope of mud and snow were the layers of deployed air bags. His mind automatically began to tick off potential medical issues. As a trained recon Marine, Travis was more than knowledgeable about medical emergency situations, what to do and how to handle them.
The wind, sharp and cold, tore at him, his ears unprotected, tingly and burning as they began to freeze in the dropping temperature. Was the person in this car injured?
As he reached the car door, he could only see the outline of a person beneath the limp air bags. Eyes narrowing, he knocked on the window, but there was no movement. He called out. No answer. The driver could be unconscious. Double damn.
Travis didn’t need this complication with a blue norther blizzard bearing down on the area shortly. There was no way an ambulance would try to make it out here from the small hospital in Wind River, twenty miles away. The first responders knew better than to drive after the road had been shut down by the sheriff’s department, according to his weather radio, an hour ago. This car and driver were probably the last to make it onto Route 89 before they closed the gates. No Wyoming person would ever go out in this kind of killing weather.
He yanked open the door. It grudgingly gave way.
“Hey,” Travis called, pushing the air bag out of the way. “Are you all right?”
His heart crashed in his chest.
There, lying unconscious, slumped in her seat belt, was Kassie Murphy!
His mind blanked out briefly as he froze, as so many images from their past–talks, kissing her, then leaving her–slammed through him. Travis shook himself out of his state, reaching in after yanking off a glove, two fingers pressed gently against the side of her slender neck, searching for a pulse. Her black hair, thick and luxurious, had swirled around her shoulders, covering part of her face. Worse, as he felt for a pulse against her carotid artery, he saw just how pale she’d become. And then, as he swiftly perused her for other injury, he saw a thin trail of blood leaking out from beneath her hairline along her left temple.
Kass! No! No, this can’t be happening!
Travis felt as if his whole, carefully structured world had just shattered. The woman he loved was unconscious. Injured.
http://www.lindsaymckenna.com
Available in paperback and ebook at your favorite platform!
Lindsay McKenna 