Cowboy for Christmas Eve at Juniper Ridge

Snowed in with a cowboy who hasn't put up a Christmas tree in three years.Event planner Hallie Rennick has spent her whole life making perfect nights for other people. Then her rental car slides into a ditch on a Wyoming back road one week before Christmas, and the man who pulls her out has a broken nose, a border collie with one ear up, and exactly two answers to every question: "e;Yep"e; and "e;Could be."e;Widowed rancher Cal Dunning wants nothing from the holidays except to get through them. But the Juniper Ridge Lantern Walk has lost its organizer to a broken hip, six hundred paper lanterns sit uncounted in a church basement, and Hallie cannot watch a disaster happen without fixing it. What starts as one favor turns into a week of sleigh rides, chili nobody should praise, a mistletoe kiss in front of the whole town, and a slow burn that stops being slow the night the longest dark of the year arrives.Then a blizzard shuts the valley. One barn. One woodstove. A cot, three quilts, and a grief that has been waiting three years to be let out. When morning comes, Hallie has a job offer in Chicago with a deadline at midnight on Christmas Eve, and Cal has to decide whether being brave means guarding his heart or opening the door.Inside this holiday novella:- Stranded heroine, widowed rancher hero, and a town that knows everything by breakfast - Snowed-in barn, string lights, sleigh bells, and a lantern walk to the last light - Slow burn to open-door heat, with tender, consensual, grown-up love scenes - Deadpan-meets-determined banter, a label maker, and one very stubborn glass bird - Small-town Christmas cast: a bossy matriarch on a sofa, a matchmaking sister, a Santa in a borrowed suit - A happily ever after on Christmas EveFor readers of cowboy Christmas romance, small-town holiday novellas, and stories where two careful people finally stop being careful. Contains adult content; for readers 18 and older.