If Santa Were a Cowboy

By Melissa Cutler

Friends turn into something more when they work as Santa and his elf helper in this charming Christmas story from Melissa Cutler.

Paul Savage loves Christmas at Briscoe Ranch Resort, when he gets to take a break from being a back country guide to play Santa in the resort’s lobby and talk to kids about toys. The last thing he expects is his high school crush to come waltzing in as his new assistant photographer, wheeling a suitcase that's more naughty than nice.

Kelly Walker is a disaster. All she’d wanted was to spice up her life by saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity, which is when the universe started pelting her with ‘no's.' So when she comes across a job listing for a holiday photographer working with the sweet, scrawny boy whose advances she’d laughed off in high school, she jumps on the chance to turn her bad Karma around by giving Paul a second chance.

Trouble is, Paul’s anything but scrawny anymore, and his cowboy swagger throws her grand plans for a loop—especially when he tempts her with a red hot proposition of his own. Kelly’s in way over her head, but as she gets swept up in the magic of Briscoe Ranch’s holiday charms—and Paul’s—could Kelly’s year of ‘no’s' be leading up to the ‘yes’ of a lifetime?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781250108401

Melissa Cutler

Melissa Cutler has the best job in the world, dividing her time between her dual passions for writing sexy contemporary romances and romantic suspense. She was struck at an early age by an unrelenting travel bug and is probably planning her next vacation as you read this. When she's not globetrotting, she's enjoying Southern California's flip-flop wearing weather and wrangling two rambunctious kids. Contact Melissa at [e-mail]

Book preview

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at: http://us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Chapter One

Kelly Sawyer is single again, the text read.

Paul Savage stood center stage in the bridal-gown shop—a slash of red in a sea of white. Seamstresses bustled around him, making final alterations to his Santa Claus costume. He stared at his phone, as though he could will the words to rearrange into a new syntax that would make sense for his life in a way that Kelly Sawyer did not.

Someone’s been eating his Wheaties because I know for a fact these sleeves fit last year, said Carina Decker, the owner of the bridal shop at Briscoe Ranch Resort, where Paul also worked. She gave his biceps a squeeze of admiration, then helped him shrug the jacket on.

Nice to know the pull-ups he’d added to his morning workout were paying off. I’m just glad you could fix it. Despite what you remember, the jacket barely fit last year. Every kid I lifted onto my lap, I was afraid the sleeves would rip open.

Rikki, Carina’s young assistant, paused in her work of letting out a hem in the Santa pants Paul was wearing. She stared off into space, a dreamy look in her eyes. You did kind of look like the Chippendales’ version of Santa, from that routine in their winter show where Santa rips off his Velcro-seamed pants to reveal a red thong shaped like an upside down Santa hat and starts gyrating against a huge candy cane. She snapped out of her dream-state with a jolt, her cheeks pinking. Not that I’ve ever seen anything like that.

Carina and the other two ladies filled the room with giggly, good-natured teasing about Rikki’s flimsy denial and Paul’s stripper qualities. Paul struck a pose and flexed gamely, letting the ladies have their fun. In the corner of the room, Paul’s coonhound, Sadie, raised her head to see what all the fuss was about. Her tail nudged left, then right, with the beginning of a wag, but she stayed on her mat just as Paul had long-ago trained her to, even though he knew she’d rather be sitting right up against his leg on the alternations platform, especially with so much talk and fuss swirling around him, as it was at the moment.

Other than the fact that it made Sadie restless and needy, Paul didn’t mind that he was easy to tease and harmless to flirt with thanks to the Mr. Nice Guy gene he was blessed with. It was the one thing about himself that he’d decided to hang onto in the years since high school graduation, even as he’d worked hard to shed every other scrap of the scrawny, pimply, awkward nerdboy who had wasted his time pining for the likes of Kelly Sawyer. That drastic transformation had paid off for him, big time. He had a great life, a great dog, and a great career as a backcountry guide for one of the premier luxury resorts in Texas. Plus, every year he got to play Santa Claus—the holiday season’s number-one rock star. Life didn’t get any sweeter.

When the teasing died down and Carina and her staff got quiet as they focused on his costume’s final adjustments, Paul lifted his phone again and took another look at the text message from his friend Shawn.

Kelly Sawyer is single again.

Paul didn’t care. He refused to care.

Shawn’s wife was buddies with Kelly, and they all still lived in Cranston, the east Texas town they’d grown up in together. Shawn never passed up the chance to remind Paul how embarrassingly infatuated he’d been with the most popular girl in school. Paul couldn’t even call Kelly the one who got away. More like the one who taught him the painful lesson that he was better off saving his heart for girls who could care about him more than their reputations.

Is it just me or is our favorite Santa extra quiet today? Carina mused.

He’s always quiet, said Peg, one of Carina’s assistants, as though Paul wasn’t right there in the room with them. Maybe he and Mrs. Claus are on the fritz.

Or his reindeer are rebelling, Carina said.

Rikki snapped her fingers. I know. He’s busy running through his naughty and nice lists, getting ready for the big night.

He let them talk around him for a bit, amused by their banter. But his mind kept boomeranging back to Kelly, so to prove how little he gave a shit about his past mistakes and embarrassments, he held out his phone. Sorry for being so quiet. It’s this text I just got.

Peg did the honor of reading it aloud. According to somebody named Shawn, Kelly Sawyer is single again.

That had the ladies falling all over themselves and filling the room with giggles and twittering ideas about who Kelly was and why Paul would care. This time, Sadie sat up on her mat, her eyes trained on Matt for guidance on how to deal with the sudden explosion of feminine voices. With a snap of his fingers, Paul summoned her to his side then dropped his hand on her head for a reassuring scratch.

Carina took a seat near Paul’s boots on the alterations platform and gave Sadie a chest rub before starting in with a needle and thread on the bottom button of Paul’s jacket. Who is this Kelly Sawyer? Your ex?

Paul shook his head. Girl I went to school with. My big crush.

Instead of more giggles and twittering, the air filled with wise, womanly hums of approval and intrigue. Carina gave the hem of his jacket a tug, capturing his attention. We’re going to need some more details, here, before we start making up details on our own.

He didn’t doubt that. "Kelly and I were always close, growing up—alphabetically, that is. Sawyer and Savage. It was a small town, not too many kids, so every time they lined us up or seated us in order by last name, kindergarten through high school graduation, we were put next to one another. There was no way not to bond with each other after a while. And that’s the story of how an awkward, video-game-obsessed late bloomer of an ugly duckling came to be friends with the most popular girl in school. And have the requisite crush on her, of course."

You couldn’t have been that bad of a prospect for her. I mean, look at you, Rikki said, her face pinking again.

Sweet, naïve Rikki . . . if you only knew.

And then he decided, what the hell. He wasn’t ashamed of who he’d been, even if he was beyond grateful that he’d had the wherewithal to leave Cranston in the dust and remake himself into a better, more confident man. He scrolled through his phone for the family Christmas card photo that his brother had posted on Instagram for Throwback Thursday.

In the photo, Paul was a gangly sixteen-year-old with a bowl haircut, braces, and wearing an ugly red Christmas sweater that his grandma had knitted for him. The ladies gathered around him, their eyes bugging out as they examined the photo.

I’m the tall one, he said.

Carina looked like she was barely holding back a laugh. Oh, my God.

How can that be you? That’s . . . Peg added.

He stuffed the phone into the pocket of his Santa pants. Yeah, the ladies weren’t exactly flocking to me back then.

They flock to you now, Rikki muttered.

Yes, they did. A fact he found endlessly bemusing in a Revenge of the Nerds kind of way.

Carina got back to work reinforcing the stitching on his buttons. Are you and this Kelly Sawyer still in touch?

Not really. Only through mutual friends like Shawn. Right after high school, he and Kelly had stayed friends in the loosest sense of the word, liking each other’s posts on social media and making bullshit small talk when they’d run into each other at parties the first few times Paul was in town visiting his folks, before he’d figured out that distance was best. Best not to have to watch her twist herself into a pretzel for all the fuckboys who didn’t deserve her attention. Best not to get so close that it highlighted the disparity between her worldliness and his seemingly impossible-to-shed virginity, between her polished looks and his gangly limbs and oily skin, between their divergent social statuses. It had been a lot of years since they’d last seen each other.

Do you have any pictures of her on your phone? Carina asked.

Not saved onto his phone, but he found a shot of her on Instagram easily enough. He handed the phone to Carina while he crouched and hugged Sadie to him, giving her a whole body rub while she nuzzled his beard. The beard was another point of pride to him. It had filled in nice and thick this fall, despite that he preferred it shorter than most Santas wore theirs. The only task to complete in advance of that weekend’s holiday kickoff was to let the ladies in the resort’s salon turn his whiskers silver.

This was why Paul was asked every year by the resort bosses to step out of his main job as a backcountry tour guide and into the role of Santa—because he didn’t phone it in with a half-assed performance, but rather treated his job as Santa Clause with the reverence it deserved. There was no greater honor than helping bring magic to kids’ lives.

Rikki crowded close to Carina for a look. "Oh wow. She’s pretty. I can see why you were so into