A Touch of Magic: Mistletoe Magic Read online

  Touch of Magic

  A Mistletoe Magic Story

  By

  Desiree Holt

  Table of Contents

  Don’t miss the stories of the other Woodward sisters

  From Desiree

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  From Desiree

  Don’t miss the stories of the other Woodward sisters

  Breath of Magic

  Powerhouse attorney Liza Woodward knows a little something about losing control and it’s been her life’s mission never to do it again, especially when it comes to small-town lawyer Tyler Blackwell.

  Ty takes one look at the woman he’s always loved and knows it’s way past time he seduced away the control she wears like a suit of armor. It will take a steady hand, a bit of dominance, and a little breath of magic from a Christmas Elf to win this sassy Texas woman.

  Whispers of Magic

  Jenna Woodward has lost her parents, her job, and her cheating “fiancé” but she does have a book deal--if she can get the subject of her most famous photograph to agree. Rancher Mitch Sterling doesn’t want his face on a book, but he does want Jenna back in his life. He offers a deal—he’ll sign off, if she agrees to be at his mercy for one day. Jenna left him once because she was afraid of his taste for dominance. Now Mitch has twenty-four hours of passion to convince her that she can handle him--and his love.

  From Desiree

  People ask me all the time if I always wanted to be a writer. I don’t know if “always” is the word but certainly for all the years I can remember. I was a voracious reads, as were my mother and sister and books held a royal place in our home. The funny thing is I always thought I would write mysteries because that’s what we all read. I didn’t read my first romance until 2004, when I was sitting with the same three chapters of a mystery on my computer that had been there for three months. But then my eyes were opened and they never closed.

  Submitting that first book was scary, but after a lot of rejections you stop being scared and become determined I’m glad I never gave up, because I am having the most fun in my life I have ever had. (Well, maybe not ever! LOL!) So here I am, with all these titles under my belt.

  Writing a book is a solitary experience but it never comes to the bookshelves, virtual or other, alone. For me it starts my treasured friend and beta reader extraordinaire, Margie Hager, who has the best eagle eye in the world. Thank you, Margie, for all the hours you put in to help me bring my stories to life. And for your friendship, which is a highlight of my life.

  Thanks to Janet Rodman, who always has my back.

  To my cats, of course, who keep me company while I write. You all have seen pictures of Bast at the keyboard with me. She thinks she should get co-author credit!

  Thanks to all the people who let me pester them for information, on all the different topics I tackle, from the military to local law enforcement to so many people in the different careers I research. I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone and if I have, I am so sorry because the time you continue to give me is very special.

  To my Review Crew. Thank you for all the hours you spend reading my books and posting your reviews. Every one of them sells another book.

  To Joseph Patrick Trainor for his fortunately never-ending insight, information and brainstorming.

  To all of you, my wonderful readers, who send me such great emails and posts and are so faithful. A special shoutout to Phuong Phen, Fedora Chen and Shirley Long who have been with me on my long journey and in frustrating times give me the inspiration to push ahead.

  I love you so much. You are my extended family and I send you all many hugs.

  Last but very far from least is my family—my daughters Amy and Suzanne and my son, Steven. Do they read my books? Absolutely not! But they are the best public relations team in the world and support me every day as I battle my way through my books.

  There are a lot more stories to come. Watch for me in the Kindle Worlds of some very excellent authors and for my new romantic suspense series, Vigilance, debuting in October 2017. I am very excited about this series and will be doing a lot of special things. If you’d like to become a Vigilance Special Agent, watch for the Facebook page to launch.

  Please stay tuned.

  I love to hear from my readers. You can write to me at [email protected] and I hope you will do that.

  Where else can you find me?

  www.desireeholt.com

  www.desireeholttellsall.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/authordesireeholt

  Twitter: @desireeholt

  Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/desiree02holt

  I look forward to hearing from all of you.

  Desiree

  A multi-published Amazon and USA Today Best-selling author, Desiree Holt has produced more than 200 titles and won many awards. These include the EPIC E-Book Award, the Holt Medallion and many others including Author After Dark’s Author of the Year. She has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and in The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The London Daily Mail. She lives in Florida with her cats who insist they help her write her books, and is addicted to football.

  “Get out the ice water and fan…Desiree Holt delivers smoking hot alpha heroes and red hot romances.” Lea Franczak, USA Today Happy Ever After blog

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Desiree Holt

  Copyright © 2016 Desiree Holt

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  Prologue

  Will leaned back on his bed and watched the other elves, Sparkle and Glimmer, playing with the snow globe and laughing. He wished they’d be a little more serious. After all, their horsing around had gotten them in big trouble with Santa Claus and this was their last chance to redeem themselves.

  Of course, trying to control three sisters and make sure their romances had happy ever after endings wasn’t exactly a dream job. Women were so unpredictable. So headstrong. So…so…female!

  Take Sparkle, for instance. He’d had a thing for her as long as he could remember, yet she always danced just out of his reach. He’d hoped fervently that this assignment would bring them closer together, even if they did have to include Glimmer. Sometimes Will just wanted to knock all that shiny elf dust from the handsome elf’s body and see how Sparkle would like it then.

  Now, now, he could almost hear Santa saying. You’re supposed to be attending to the sisters’ sex lives, not your own.

  Still, when he looked at Sparkle’s pert breasts beneath the soft green cloth and imagined the glorious sight between her legs, he got so hard his brain refused to work.

  All right. Enough. I better get down to work or I’ll never redeem myself. And maybe if I ca
n work some magic for the Woodward sisters, I can do the same thing for myself. Back to the snow globe.

  Sparkle was lying on the bed, feet crossed, her snow globe balanced on her delightful tummy. She had given both him and Glimmer a tasty kiss, then issued a challenge. Whoever succeeded first with his or her assigned sister could have whatever they wanted from the other two. Anything at all.

  Will felt his cock harden just at the thought. So what if he had to share Sparkle with Glimmer. As a matter of fact, the endless possibilities were making him harder than Santa’s cane.

  “Okay,” he said, picking up his own globe. “Maddie’s going to be a real challenge because right now there’s only room in her heart for the ranch. And she has a history with the temporary foreman that doesn’t bode well for this situation. But I can fix that. I know I can.”

  He peered into the globe to see an SUV pulling up to the ranch and a dark-haired cowboy watching it with wary eyes from the entrance to the barn.

  Here we go.

  Chapter One

  Maddie Woodward concentrated fiercely on navigating the narrow highway that led out of town out to the ranch. In her small compact she would have felt at ease but the big SUV was still new enough to be challenging.

  Had she made a mistake buying it? Just as she might have made a mistake in her other recent decisions?

  No. I won’t play that game. I made up my mind and I’m doing this. No matter what.

  The moment the arched rock entrance of the road leading to the house came into view, with the Flying W in wrought iron swinging slightly in the breeze, her heart stuttered.

  Home!

  That was all she could think. She was home. And she didn’t plan on ever leaving, no matter what her sisters said or tried to talk her into. She’d burned her bridges to make sure there was no going back.

  She stopped for a moment to look at the familiar brand, the wings of the W looking like angel’s wings, and she thought how appropriate it was for Christmas. But that brought back the feeling of sadness that she couldn’t seem to shake. This would be the first Christmas since their parents were killed two months earlier in a plane crash.

  The trip to the ranch that time had been consumed with the funeral and more grief than she thought it possible for a human being to bear. When she’d returned to San Antonio and her teaching position, all she could think about was the Flying W, her years growing up there, and how the ranch had been in the Woodward family for three generations. Somehow it seemed sacrilegious to be selling it, the way her sisters wanted to. The more she’d thought about losing it, the more grief had weighed her down.

  Until she’d come to her decision. Before she could second guess herself, she’d quit her job, sublet her apartment and loaded everything she could fit into her brand new Jeep four wheel drive. There was nothing to keep her in San Antonio. No close friends. Certainly no love life.

  No, this was where she belonged, even if she lived here alone for the rest of her life. If all else failed, she’d negotiate a loan at the bank and buy them out. She had a good-sized savings account, having spent very little on herself for the past ten years, and the land was good collateral.

  And there were no bad memories left to run away from. That particular part of her life had taken off for the rodeo circuit and never returned.

  And good riddance.

  Taking her foot off the brake, she pulled through the entrance and headed for the stone ranch house, passing horses inside the corral on the left and spying the familiar outbuildings like the barn and the stable beyond that. A warm feeling spread through her as her eyes took in every inch of the place where she’d grown up.

  Anxious to be inside, to light a fire and maybe dig out the old Christmas decorations, Maddie unfastened her seat belt and jumped out of the vehicle. But the smile on her lips disappeared and her stomach knotted as she spotted the figure watching her from the open door of the barn.

  No. It can’t be. Fate wouldn’t play such a cruel trick on me.

  But there was no mistaking the tall, lean lines of Zach Brennan, even with a jacket concealing part of him. The hat still sat the same way on his head and his posture still shouted arrogance and confidence. And sex. Oh, God. Sex.

  What is he doing here?

  And then he was walking toward her with that same lean-hipped stride that was so recognizable, even after all this time. She was rooted to the spot as if her feet were encased in concrete. The knot in her stomach grew larger and tighter, even while her breasts ached and her pussy wept at the memories that flashed through her brain.

  Zach Brennan. Here, on her ranch. How could life be so cruel?

  His stood in front of her now, tilting his hat back just enough so she could see the glint of light in his coffee-colored eyes. His skin was tanned as if he spent a great deal of time outdoors and there were fine networks of lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth.

  His mouth!

  She had to focus on something else, because all she could remember was the last time they’d been together and the wonderful things that mouth had done to her body.

  Maddie wondered if he was still riding the rodeo circuit. Like a nail poking into an open sore, she’d kept up with his career until she couldn‘t stand it anymore. She knew all the silver buckles he’d won, all the grand prizes. Not to mention, she was sure, the adoration of dozens of buckle bunnies. That had been her last sight of him, twenty-five years old and a walking bottle of testosterone, surrounded by rodeo groupies in the beer tent, ignoring her last-ditch effort to talk to him, winking at her as he leaned in to kiss the brunette hanging on one arm.

  “Hello, Maddie.” His voice was like aged whiskey—smooth as silk but burning its way into her body. “Ty said you’d be the first one to arrive.”

  Ty Blackwell, Zach’s friend and her older sister Liza’s lover years ago, was handling the estate of her parents. But just what did Zach have to do with that?

  She had to swallow twice before she could get words out in something approaching a normal tone. “I was sorry to hear about your mom.”

  Pain slashed through his eyes, darkening them. “Yeah. That was a bad scene.”

  “I heard your dad sold your place and moved to Colorado to live with your brother.”

  Zach gave a brief nod. “He was pretty lonely after Mom died.”

  Maddie screwed up her courage. It was now or never. “What are you doing here?”

  A hint of a grin kicked up one corner of his mouth. “I guess that gets it right to the point, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t see any point in beating around the bush. Where’s Jack Grady and the rest of the hands? What’s going on here?”

  “Grady got kicked by the new bull your daddy had just bought about a week before the accident. At his age that’s not such a good thing. His doctor thinks he might not be able to come back to work.”

  Maddie wet her lips. “That still doesn’t answer the rest of my questions.”

  “The hands are out taking care of business. I’m here because Ty needed someone to run the ranch until you and your sisters sign the papers to sell it.”

  Maddie felt as if a giant fist had just punched her in the stomach. “Sell the ranch,” she managed to get out. Well, she hadn’t told Ty about her decision yet. Or her sisters. She supposed she should be grateful he hadn’t left the ranch to its own devices.

  “Yes. I understand that’s what y’all plan to do.” He moved closer to her so their bodies were almost touching. His hand reached out to cup her cheek, his thumb lightly stroking the skin. “I’ve missed you, darlin’. More than you can possibly know.”

  Before she could gather her wits about her, that sensuous mouth had pressed down on hers, his tongue probing the closed seam of her lips. She gasped at the contact and he took advantage of the opportunity to sweep his tongue inside, teasing and tasting. Her knees felt weak and without realizing it she leaned against him for support.

  His other arm closed around her, pressing her body to his, m
olding her to him. There was no mistaking the hardness of his cock behind the worn denim of his jeans, or the ache that throbbed in her breasts. When he finally released her, all she could do was stare up at him, dazed.

  “It’s still there, isn’t it, darlin’. We’ve still got the chemistry.”

  The cocky self-assurance in his tone was like a bucket of ice water. Maddie pushed away from him, anger surging through her.

  “You keep your damn hands to yourself, Zach Brennan. Go find one of your buckle bunnies to play games with.”

  It irritated her even more that he still kept his arm around her and his eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “I think I’d rather have what I’ve got right here,” he teased. “Much tastier.”

  She pushed hard against his chest and he finally dropped his arm. “You have nothing here, Zach. You gave it up a long time ago. And I’m going to call Ty right now and tell him to get someone else to manage the ranch.”

  Zach’s grin widened. “I’m afraid you can’t do that, Maddie.”

  “And just why not? This is still our ranch. My sisters’ and mine.”

  “See, it’s like this. I’ve put in an offer with Ty and given him a big fat earnest money check. Maddie, I’m done with the rodeo circuit. I plan to buy the Flying W.”

  “What?” Maddie thought her heart would stop beating. “No, no, no. That is so not happening. Not for one minute. You can just forget about it. Get off this ranch, Zach. Right now, Get away.”

  She knew she was raving out of control but she couldn’t seem to help herself. How dare he walk away from her ten years ago, treating what they had as if it was nothing more than a passing fancy for him and then show up to practically steal her home out from under her.