Book 6: Cowboy Santa
The Cowboy Academy Series
On this page, you’ll find the story blurb, an excerpt, the story behind the story, and bonus content.
Can they help each other make the season bright?
A small-town Oklahoma Christmas would be charming if single dad Chandler Cochran wasn’t being called into the principal’s office to deal with his son’s antics. The instigator behind young Sam’s misbehavior? Little Della-Mae, Izzy Adams’s daughter. The same Izzy who has just taken a job decorating Chandler’s family ranch for the holidays! And even though she and Chandler are pulled together to deal with their children’s misadventures, the bubbly mom and her sweet daughter are adding light and warmth to the stoic cowboy’s world. Will trouble turn into an unexpected gift this Christmas?
Excerpt:
There was nothing Chandler Cochran liked less than to be called into the principal’s office.
Didn’t matter that he was thirty-six. Didn’t matter that Chandler had done nothing wrong or that his seven-year-old son had never been in trouble before, either. Chandler sat slumped in a chair in the lobby of the Clementine Elementary School office, knee bouncing, uncertain.
Just like the old days.
Chandler never knew what awaited him in the principal’s office. A cop? A social worker? One of his parents? Whoever it was, it meant the same thing. Change. Uprooting. Uncertainty.
But that’s not what’s happening here.
Right.
Chandler stared at his hands while chattering kids came through the door and went back out again, while parents poked their heads in to wish the school secretaries Merry Christmas, while holiday music played from a small speaker on the counter and gobs of tinsel shimmered on a small tree. No one entered from the sheriff’s office or county services.
History isn’t repeating itself.
Sam was a good kid. Chandler was a good father and an upstanding citizen. He hadn’t been called to the principal’s office in decades.
But still, his knee bounced.
“What are you in here for, mister?” A stout lad of about seven or eight sat on Chandler’s right. He pushed back the brim of his small, brown cowboy hat as he looked Chandler up and down. “I’m here because I wouldn’t stop dancing during choir practice.”
That gave Chandler pause. “I thought kids in choir did a little dancing nowadays.”
The boy nodded, getting to his feet. “We were practicing our moves like this.” He rocked his arms back and forth with a good bit of rhythm. “And then I did this…” He lifted his hands toward the ceiling and shimmied his entire body as if he was trying not to topple in the midst of an earthquake. “And then I was sent to the office.” His arms fell to his sides, his shoulders slumped and he plunked back into his seat. “Our music teacher, Miz Cornwall, told me, ‘Pete, you’re too much. Go see Principal Crowder.’ So, here I am.” Pete shrugged.
“Maybe you should try to tone it down,” Chandler said carefully, not wanting to offend.
“Is it my fault that when I hear music I feel like dancin’?” Pete sighed, a dramatic, full-body action.
Chandler refrained from pointing out there was music playing from a small speaker on the counter and Pete wasn’t dancing to the “Carol of the Bells.”
“I gotta do what I gotta do,” Pete continued. “That’s what my grandpa says. And it works for me.”
And there it was. The reason for Pete’s behavior. In Chandler’s experience, there was always a cause kids acted out or behaved the way they did—divorce, a death in the family, a bad influence in school or at home. As a foster kid, Chandler had seen it all, not to mention been an example of that axiom himself, reacting negatively when the status quo was challenged.
Before Chandler could respond to Pete, the boy on his left poked Chandler’s arm repeatedly. Poke-poke-poke.
“Are you here because you parked in the principal’s parking spot?” Without waiting for an answer, the boy shook his head slowly. “You shouldn’t do that. My ma did it once. Spent thirty minutes with the principal.”
“That’s not it, Matty. Look at how his knee is jumping up-and-down.” Pete leaned around Chandler to look Matty in the eye. “I bet he’s the one who jumped his place in the pickup line. You drove on the sidewalk, didn’t you, mister?”
“No,” Chandler blurted, shocked. The line moved slower than an old nag in the hot summer sun but he’d never do something like that.
Before Chandler could ask for more details, the main office door swung open, and a reindeer pranced in—jingling all the way.
Oh, it wasn’t a reindeer of the animal kingdom. It was a woman wearing brown cowboy boots, brown jeans, a brown sweater with Rudolph on the front—complete with blinking nose—and a headband with a large pair of brown antlers sprinkled with tiny, tinkling bells.
Antlers wobbling, Isobel Adams hustled into the school office like she was late delivering Chandler’s feed order. Izzy was a wisp of a woman, short with white-blond hair and big blue eyes. She worked at Clementine Feed and was quiet, unassuming and efficient. So much so that Chandler never gave her more than a passing thought.
But today…
He’d never seen Izzy so bubbly. So…so alive.
Chandler couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had a pair of tan leather gloves hanging from the back pocket of her jeans and red Christmas bulb earrings swinging from her ears. Her cheeks were flushed, and her blue eyes sparkled.
She reminds me of Mom, full of holiday spirit and not afraid to show it.
His foster mother, that is. Who knew how his biological mother felt about Christmas nowadays.
Reindeer Izzy trotted toward the row of chairs where Chandler waited, an out-of-character big smile gracing her fine features.
“Ho-ho-ho!” Izzy greeted the boys sitting with Chandler before seemingly registering there was an adult in their midst. Her eyes widened. And then she removed her antlers and turned toward the office desk with much less joviality. “Hey, Ronnie. Am I late?”
“Nope.” Ronnie, one of the school secretaries, grinned at her friend from the other side of the desk. She hadn’t grinned at Chandler like that when he’d arrived and she was married to Wade, one of his foster brothers. “What’s seven minutes when the principal is running behind?”
Chandler refrained from rolling his eyes. He’d already been waiting more than seven minutes to see Principal Crowder. As ranch foreman at the Done Roamin’ Ranch, Chandler could pay several ranch bills online in seven minutes, plus return a phone call and adjust the work schedule.
“I bet she’s the one who jumped the pickup line,” Pete whispered, nodding toward Izzy.
Chandler shook his head. Rudolph channeling aside, Izzy was rule-abiding and reliable.
“I was stringing lights at April Forester’s place,” Izzy told Ronnie, rubbing the back of the hand that held the jingling antler headband. “Got stuck in her rosebush. Took some time to free myself and the lights.”
Chandler took note of a long scratch on Izzy’s hand and the thinness of the leather gloves in her back pocket. He managed forty cowboys at the Done Roamin’ Ranch, give or take, and hundreds of heads of stock. If Izzy worked for him, he’d make sure she had a decent pair of leather gloves. For whatever reason, it was easier thinking about Izzy and work than Izzy as the walking, talking embodiment of Santa’s lead reindeer, perhaps because his foster mother was recovering from two intense rounds of chemotherapy this holiday season and, consequently, the Christmas spirit had been lacking at the Done Roamin’ Ranch.
Yeah, that’s it. The cause of Izzy’s suddenly magnetic effect on me.
The Story Behind the Story
When I came up with the premise of Cowboy Santa - 2 parents with kids in the same class at school - I thought I’d found something special. They’ve both been married before. They’re both more involved in their kids’ lives than their exes. And they both deserve a special someone this Christmas…and always.
Chandler and Izzy have been mainstays in the series, always their for friends and family. It was nice to finally give them a happy ending.
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