I’m finishing up this version of the story at Christmastime, which made the revision even more fun. I hope when you read it you are filled with hope and love for the holiday season, and that if you don’t believe in miracles, some phrase or scene in the book will change your mind.

Until next time,

Carolyn Brown

Chapter 1

It was just a white frame house at the end of a long lane.

But it did not have wheels, and to Liz that meant it was a mansion.

She squinted against the sun sinking in the west and imagined the house with multicolored Christmas lights strung all around the porch, the windows, even in the cedar tree off to the left side. In her vision, it was a Griswold house from Christmas Vacation that lit up the whole state of Texas. She hoped that when she flipped the electricity on she didn’t cause a major blackout because in a few weeks it was going to look like the house in that old movie that she loved.

Now where is the cowboy to complete the package? the voice in her head asked.

Christmas lights on a house without wheels and a cowboy in tight-fittin’ jeans and boots—that’s what she asked for every year when her mother asked for her Christmas list. She didn’t remember the place being so big when she visited her uncle those two times. Once when she was ten and then again when she was fourteen, but back then she’d been quite taken with the young cowboy next door and didn’t pay much attention to the house. The brisk Texas wind whipped around her skirt tail as if saying that it could send her right back to east Texas.

“I don’t think so,” she said with half a giggle. “I’m here to stay, and I know a thing or two about Texas wind. It would take more than a class five tornado to get rid of me. This is what I’ve wanted all my life, and I think it’s the prettiest house in Montague County. It’s sittin’ on a foundation, and…” She clamped a hand over her mouth in disbelief when she saw her uncle’s old dog, Hooter, slowly come down off the porch, head down and wagging his tail. Blister, the black-and-white cat, eyed her suspiciously from the ladder-back chair on the tiny porch.

“Uncle Haskell, I could kiss you!” she said as she slung open the truck door. The wind pushed its way inside, bringing a few fall leaves with it, but she didn’t even stop to brush them away. Aunt Tressa would say that was an omen—that the place was welcoming her into its arms. Her mother would say that the wind was blowing her back to the carnival where she belonged.

Her high heels sank into the soft earth, leaving holes as she rushed across the yard toward the yellow dog. She squatted down, hugged the big yellow mutt, and scratched his ears. “You beautiful old boy. You are the icing on the cake. Now I’ve got animals and a house. Who cares about a cowboy? I can’t have it all, now can I?”