The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby by Carolyn Brown Page A

braced Joshua with
     one hand under his bottom and one at his back. “Right now, snap it while he’s got
     a hold of one of her wings.”
    “He thinks it’s edible.” Henry laughed.
    “If he wants to slobber on it, that’s just fine. Angels love babies as much as we
     do.” Grady chuckled.
    After half a dozen pictures were taken, Jack handed Joshua back to Natalie and said,
     “Turn that baby boy around here, Natalie. He’s got to see his first Christmas tree
     the minute that it lights up.”
    Sharp guilt hit Natalie in the heart. It should have been her momma’s tree that he
     saw first or even hers, not one that he’d probably never see again. Two steaming hot
     scorching kisses did not mean there was something permanent at Cedar Hill for her
     and Joshua. It just meant that her hormones were out of control and that Lucas Allen
     was one very sexy cowboy.
    She turned him around and propped him upright in her lap, and Jack kept his eyes on
     Joshua while he stuck the lights into the plug.
    “Look at his eyes!” Henry said. “They’re big as cow patties.”
    “He’s smiling and it ain’t none of that gas stuff,” Grady said.
    Jack stood up, folding his arms over his chest. A smile tickled the corners of his
     mouth. “I knew he’d like it. Wait until Saturday night when all the neighbors come.
     He’s going to be the star of the show.”
    ***
    Natalie figured the rest of the decorations would be a few candles, maybe some extra
     lights to go around the window behind the tree, and a wreath for the door.
    Boy, was she wrong! Just when she thought they couldn’t get another box stacked in
     the living room, they brought in a dozen more.
    “Well, that does it for the house decorations,” Henry said. “Grady, you can have the
     hired help get all the yard stuff out of the barn and put it out there close to the
     porch. Lucas can decide how he wants it put up, but the blow-up things are going up
     close to the house so Josh can see them when I hold him up to the window.”
    Lucas winked at Natalie. “You want me to go outside or put up stuff inside first,
     Gramps?”
    “I want that train put up around the bottom of the tree. I want to see the baby’s
     face when he sees and hears that train,” Henry said.
    “We haven’t put that up in years,” Lucas said.
    Jack slit the packing tape on a big box that had TRAIN written on the side in three-inch
     letters. “Not since you was a kid. But we got a baby in the house now, and he’s going
     to love it just like you did when you were little. That was your favorite part of
     Christmas.”
    Natalie had seen Lionel trains in pictures but never had seen one in action. She had
     trouble keeping her eyes off of those tight jeans stretched across Lucas’s butt while
     he crawled around and obeyed the orders that all three of the older guys barked at
     him. She needed a long walk outside in the freezing cold weather by the time he got
     that blasted train running in circles around the tree.
    Joshua blessed them with his biggest smile of the day when Henry propped him on his
     knee and the train whistled.
    “See, I knew he’d love it,” Henry said. “We’ll sit right here in this big old recliner
     and watch it go round and round a few times.”
    “It’s going to take days to empty all these boxes y’all have brought inside,” Natalie
     said.
    “Naw, honey. We’ll have it done by the time we go to bed tonight with your help,”
     Jack said. “We got a system. First, we’ll do the tinsel around the walls. I’ll have
     to get out the ladder for that. Even Lucas can’t reach the ceiling.”
    By midafternoon tinsel was looped around the top of the walls with a Christmas ornament
     hanging in the middle of each loop. A Nativity scene was set up on a table at the
     far end of the living room and a Santa scene on a table on the other end. Family pictures
     had been cleared off the mantel and replaced with an assortment of beautiful angels
     in cut