Cowboy Christmas Redemption - Maisey Yates
Cowboy Caleb Dalton has loved single mom Ellie Bell, and her little daughter, Amelia, for years. But since Ellie is his best friend’s widow, Caleb’s head knows Ellie will always be strictly off-limits. If only his heart got the memo. So when Caleb discovers that Ellie has a Christmas wish list—and hopes for a kiss under the mistletoe—he’s throwing his cowboy hat into the ring. If anyone’s going to be kissing Ellie and sharing this magical time with her and her daughter, it’s him.
Ellie has dreaded the holidays since losing her husband. But this year, she’s finally ready to make some changes. She never expects the biggest change to be the heart-stopping kiss she shares with Caleb. For almost five years, Caleb has been her best friend, her rock, her salvation. This Christmas, can Caleb prove he’s also the missing puzzle piece of Ellie’s and Amelia’s hearts?
My thoughts...
I have been waiting for this story for SO LONG!! I knew that Caleb and Ellie would end up together and we would get snippets of their friendship in all of the other stories and it was just enough to make you want to abandon what you were reading and read THEIR story and here it is. It goes without saying that I loved it and it was everything I wanted this to be. I can't tell you much without giving some of the best parts away but Maisey Yates did a fantastic job and all of the waiting was worth it. With that said, it is part of a series and while the other books are OK to jump into without reading the previous ones... this one you really do need to read the previous ones. It features a lot of the previous characters (yay!) but also a lot of Caleb and Ellie's stories (individually) are in those books so if you read those you are coming into this one with anticipation that you just aren't going to have if you start here. Does that make sense? Trust me, those books are really good and you're going to really enjoy this series and I'm not even a cowboy romance fanatic, but these are really good. The best part? Is I finally understand what kept both of them from each other for so long, it's like all of the pieces came together and everything fit together well. The ending? Swoon. That's all I'm going to say- swoon. I have to give this 5 stars because I loved it so much.
Excerpt
“Caleb!” Amelia flung herself off his parents’ front porch and into his arms. He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around him, clinging tightly to him. And then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. She smacked her hand against his jaw. “Prickly,” she complained.
Something in his chest tugged. “Well, you caught me at the end of the day, squirt. I need to shave.”
She looked at him and wrinkled her nose. “Am I going to need to shave someday?”
He laughed. And he was surprised how genuinely light he felt in that moment. “Not likely. Your mom doesn’t have a beard, does she?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “My mom says that you have Christmas trees.”
“I do,” he said. “At least, they’re about to be mine. It’s going to be a whole farm of them.”
“I didn’t know you had Christmas trees on a farm,” she said.
“Well, you can. It’s where most of the Christmas trees from the lots come from.”
“I want to see them.”
He hesitated because he knew that if he took Amelia to see the trees, in all likelihood he would have to take Ellie with him. And really, spending time with Ellie and Amelia in the same space right now was strange and loaded.
“All right,” he said. “But only if your mom’s okay with that.”
“She will be,” Amelia said, full of confidence.
He set her down, and she scampered into the house.
“What am I going to be okay with?”
He turned around and saw Ellie. The sight of her just about set him back on his heels. She looked the same as she always did.
But that was the problem.
“Amelia wants to go out and see the Christmas trees,” he said. “I didn’t figure you would mind. I don’t mind taking her by myself, if you need to go home.”
She lifted her shoulder. “No. I don’t mind going up.”
She started to take a step toward him, and his gut tightened. Then the door opened again, and Amelia reappeared with her backpack from preschool, and another stack of old printer paper that his mother had given her to scribble on.
“Can we ride in Caleb’s truck?”
“Yes,” Ellie said.
“I’m sitting in the middle.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Ellie’s lips, and she narrowed her eyes slightly. The impish expression making his gut feel hollow, and effortlessly conveying that she had been hoping for the middle seat.
She was flirting with him.
Now, that, he hadn’t expected.
So maybe this whole making her wait thing was really going to work in his favor.
Buy me!
To order this or any of the other Harlequin holiday books (honestly I want them all), you can visit their website HERE and shop your little heart out.
Or, if you have an Amazon gift card from Christmas to burn or you want to try out your new Kindle or something, you can find it here, too:
A huge thank you to Harlequin, Maisey Yates, and Pump Up Your Book for having me on this tour! If I could just have one of everything from Harlequin, I would die a happy gal. (Christmas gift idea for next year, folks.)
