Get Lost in A Long Tall Cowboy Christmas from USA Today Bestselling Author Carolyn Brown!

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A heartwarming holiday read from USA Today Bestselling Author Carolyn Brown!

Nash Lamont is a man about as solitary as they come. That's exactly why ranch life in middle-of-nowhere Happy, Texas suits him. So what the heck is he doing letting a beautiful widow and her three rambunctious children temporarily move in? Before he knows it, they're stringing Christmas lights and decorating the tree... and he's having the time of his life. But after everything he's been through, Nash knows this kind of happiness doesn't last.

Kasey Dawson thought she'd never get over the death of her husband. Nash, with his strong hands and infinite patience, is stirring something she hasn't felt in a long time. Kasey knows the sexy cowboy isn't telling her everything about this past, though. And she refuses to risk heartbreak all over again. But her kids have a plan of their own: Nothing will keep them from having a real family again-even if it takes a little help from Santa himself.

"Genuinely sweet." --Publishers Weekly

The Happy, Texas series:

Toughest Cowboy in Texas

Long, Tall Cowboy Christmas

The Luckiest Cowboy of All

Nash could taste the sand in his mouth despite the bandana covering his face. Thank God that tomorrow he would be headed back to Texas for a month-long leave. He was looking forward to the green trees, fishing in the Big Cypress Bayou and his grandmother’s cooking. But right now a little boy needed his help. And there was no one to save him but Captain Nash Lamont.

The whirr of helicopter blades above the base meant that it was time to leave. Three of his six-man team would be going home in flag-draped coffins—one of them had been married and had children. He’d been the one who saved Nash’s life at the expense of his own, but the captain couldn’t think about that now. There was a child in danger out there beyond the base perimeter. He could hear the mother screaming her son’s name somewhere in the dust behind him.

Nash rubbed the sand from his eyes and focused on the child outside the command center. He yelled at the kid, and the kid waved and nodded. He kicked the inflatable ball he’d been playing with all day toward Nash, but wind picked it up and twirled it back at him like a boomerang, floating over his shoulder and landing twenty feet behind him. Nash couldn’t take a chance on the boy running through that mine field so he took off in long, strides, and threw himself on top of the little boy. Then in a flash, he was on his feet with the boy slung over his shoulder. With a kicking and screaming kid beating at his back, he prayed that he’d make it through the gates without stepping on an IED.

When they were inside the gates, Nash set the boy down and let his breath out in a long whoosh. He’d saved him—this time Nash had saved the kid. The boy might be upset but at least he was in one piece. Everything was going to be all right. He had failed in his mission and half his team was going home in caskets, but he’d saved the boy.

* * * * *

Kasey tightly held the red bandana across her face and bent her shoulders against the wind bringing half of the dirt in New Mexico across the border into the Texas panhandle. When the storm hit she’d gone to the back door and yelled at her six-year-old son, Rustin, to get inside the house. When he didn’t come running, she’d yelled again and again and finally with worry and fear mixed, she’d started out to find him, stopping every few feet to scream his name.

He’d been kicking a ball around inside the yard fence the last time she checked on him. She searched the barn first, but no one was there. Then she remembered the last time he’d slipped off that she’d found him over at the ranch next door. His dog, Hero, had run away and Rustin had gone looking for him. Hoping that’s what had happened this time, she made a bee line down the rutted path leading that way.

A quarter of a mile to the barbed wire fence didn’t seem like far unless there was a fierce wind blowing dirt everywhere. When she reached fence separating Hope Springs from the Texas Star Ranch, she found a piece of Rustin’s jacket stuck in the wire and flapping in the wind. She was on the right track. Hopefully, he was holed up in the barn and out of the driving, miserable dirt storm.

She crawled through two strands of wire and then called Hope, her grandmother, to tell her that she’d be back to the ranch house soon with the runaway. Shielding her eyes, she could see the barn through the sand. Who was that in the doorway? He was too tall to be Paul, her children’s grandfather. She took another step and rubbed the dirt from her eyes.

Oh, no! Whoever it was had raced out and grabbed her son. He’d thrown himself on top of Rustin, then stood up with the boy thrown over his shoulder like a sack of chicken feed. Rustin was kicking and screaming out for her the whole time. She took a deep breath and started coughing when her nostrils filled with dirt. Feeling as if she was running in boots filled with lead, she could hear Rustin bellowing as she fought against the hard wind trying to knock her backwards.

“What the hell!” She gasped for breath when she was finally inside the barn. “What are you doing to my son? Put him down right now!” She shouted as adrenaline rushed through her body like fiery hot whiskey.

Kicking and screaming, beating the man on the back with his fists, Rustin didn’t even see her and turned on her when she grabbed him away from the man. She put her boy behind her and faced the tall, dark cowboy. “Who are you and why were you kidnapping my child?”

Dirt dusted the stranger’s dark hair but his near black eyes looked blank, as if he was seeing but not seeing, if that made sense.

“I was saving him. You are safe now, Ahmid.” The man looked as if he was sleep walking.

Kasey snapped her fingers in his face, and he quickly grabbed her wrist. She jerked it free and took a step back.

“I’m not Ahmid. I’m Rustin.” Rustin wrapped his arms around her waist and peeked around her side.

The cowboy’s brow furrowed in a frown. “You aren’t Farah. You have red hair.”

She jerked off the bandana, letting it hang around her neck and shook her hair out of the stocking hat. “I’m Kasey McKay and this is my son, Rustin.” She took a step back and looked into his dark brown eyes. “What are you doing in this barn?”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep out here and when I woke up the sand—I thought I was back,” he stammered. “That’s classified. I am Captain Nash Lamont and I just saved this boy from—oh, no!”

He squared his broad shoulders, standing at attention, but after a few seconds they sagged and he ran a hand over his angular face. So this was Nash. Everyone in Happy had been talking about how that he’d taken over Henry’s old ranch. He’d moved into the old house last week, but no one had seen him. Not at the café or at church the previous Sunday. Folks wondered if he might like his great uncle—a harmless hermit.

At well over six feet tall, his black hair brushed the collar of his denim duster that strained at the shoulder seams and those dark brown eyes darted around the barn as if he wasn’t sure where he was. His broad chest narrowed down past a silver belt buckle with the state of Texas engraved on it. Faded jeans, cowboy boots, a felt hat thrown over there on a hay bale said he was proud to be a cowboy. Yet he’d identified himself as Captain Lamont, and that was definitely military.

“You deserve an explanation.” His accent was a blend of Texas drawl and something even further south, maybe Louisiana or Mississippi. “I was in the army and did some work in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. There was an incident involving a young boy who had kicked a ball outside the gates in dangerous territory. I tried to save him but didn’t get there in time and wound up with a head wound of my own. I came out here to check on the sheep and the sand storm hit. I thought—” He shrugged.

“You thought you were back over there, right? The sand storm and the kid out there in it gave you a flashback?” Kasey understood, but she still kept Rustin behind her.

Get your copy today: http://www.carolynbrownbooks.com

Meet Carolyn

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and a RITA finalist. The author of more than eighty published books, she’s also the three-time recipient of the National Reader’s Choice Award, a Bookseller’s Best Award, and a Montlake Diamond Award.

Carolyn and her husband live in the small town of Davis, Oklahoma, where everyone knows everyone else, as well as what they’re doing and when—and they read the local newspaper on Wednesday to see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young.

When she’s not writing, Carolyn likes to sit in her gorgeous backyard with her two tomcats, Chester Fat Boy and Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, and watch them protect the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, locusts, and spiders. Visit her at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.

Q&A

What is something you’d like to tell your fans? 
I love everyone of you. Without our fans, authors would be at the top of the endangered species list and that’s one list I never want my name on. I love you because you buy my books, because you tell your friends about them and leave honest reviews. But what I love the most is that you send me notes that make me misty eyed. One in particular comes to mind. One of my long-time readers is now afflicted with Alzheimer’s and her husband wrote to me. He said that he reads my books to her every night and she both laughs and cries. To see her able to still show emotion brings him great joy and puts tears in my eyes that something I wrote could do that.

Describe an absolutely perfect day. 
That would be a day when there’s no drama in my life, when there’s no distractions, when the phone doesn’t ring one time and when I can get totally immersed in the work-in-progress so much that I feel every emotion that my characters feel. Then at the end, hamburgers and milk shakes with Mr. B.

What three things are, at this moment, in your heroine’s purse, satchel, reticule, weapons belt or amulet bag (whatever she carries)? 
My heroine has three children, Rustin, Emma and Silas. So she will have an extra diaper for Silas, a book for Rustin and maybe a small stuffed animal for Emma.

How often to you get lost in a story? 
Every single time I read one or write one. I never start a book unless I have time to read it in full. I like to get the full impact of the story, every emotion whether it’s tears or giggles. And when I’m writing I have tunnel vision. My characters live with me, talk to me and tell me exactly how the story should be written. I have a plaque in my office that says, “I know the voices in my head aren’t real but they tell such wonderful stories.”

What is your favorite tradition from your childhood that you would love to pass on or did pass on to your children? 
Home in time for supper! I’ve been asked many times what my secret in raising children and creating such a tightly knit family was. It’s simply home in time for supper and all the other kids they’d been playing football or Barbies with in the back yard had to go home. We always had supper around the table with only our family and it was our time to discuss what we did that day. It wasn’t fancy by any means but it built strong family values.

What’s the first thing you do when you finish writing a book? 
Clean up my office. Put away the notes and get ready to start another book.

What is your hero’s “kryptonite” – in other words, what will bring him instantly to his knees? 
The heroine, Kasey, plain and simple. He’s been in love with her when she was nothing but a picture in his best friend’s wallet.

Is there a “Blooper” in your story (it may have been changed before printing)? 
Not that I know of in this one but there was a major one in a previous book. It was the end of a steamy sex scene between the hero and heroine and I misspelled crescendo. So I was spell checking and going too fast and the misspelled word got replaced with credenza. My editor got a good laugh out of that one and insisted that sometime in the future I give her a love scene on a credenza, which I did.

What story are you working on next, and what inspired it? 
I’m working on the second book in the next cowboy series—The Longhorn Canyon Ranch Series—Cowboy Honor. It’s set in the winter around the holidays when miracles and magic happen and will be published in the fall of 2018. It follows Cowboy Bold which will be out in May of 2018. It was inspired by the foreman of the ranch in Cowboy Bold, Levi Jackson, who is constantly bringing home stray animals—a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a turtle and a crippled miniature donkey. I wondered what would happen if he brought home a damsel in distress and the story evolved from there.

Do you read holiday books all year or just during the season? 
What is your favorite all time cowboy Christmas book?

Do you love binging on Christmas romances? When do you gear-up for the season and start reading them? 

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