Teacher's Christmas Cowboy (Trinity Falls Sweet Romance - Icicle Christmas #5)

Cora covered her mouth with her hand, her gray eyes dancing.

“From the audience,” Jared put in. “I think it’s only fair to tell you that his eyes were as wide as dinner plates, and he just blinked at all of us in total terror, even though we were all his friends and family.”

That was too much, and a giggle escaped from behind Cora’s hand.

“It’s okay to laugh,” Derek said. “It only gets funnier. Because I was busy clinging to the top of the tree like a koala bear, so that meant there was no rat king. The girl playing Clara just stood onstage waiting, and not understanding why everyone was gasping and giggling at her.”

“Oh, no,” Cora said, but she was chuckling along with everyone else now.

“That Amanda Luckett’s one tough cookie,” Dad proclaimed. “Another girl might have been scarred for life.”

“Anyway,” Derek said. “Our baby sister saved the day. Lucy was one of Mother Ginger’s children, the littlest kids in the whole play, but she found my headpiece backstage, put it on, and trotted out there, ready to rumble. She knew my whole fight. She loved that stuff, so she’d been practicing it with me for weeks.”

“Amanda Luckett had to fight a two-foot-tall rat king,” Jared said, laughing. “It was lose-lose, either she won a fight against a tiny little kid, or she lost to a baby. And by then, the audience was in tears from laughing so hard.”

“But Amanda didn’t miss a beat, she just jumped right in,” Derek said, shaking his head in admiration.

“And at least it was easier to hit Lucy with the shoe,” Jared pointed out. “Since she was so short.”

“Either way, best Nutcracker I’ve ever seen,” Dad said, slapping his thigh. “Hands down.”

Cora laughed along with him and so did Derek, surprising Jared with the deep belly laugh he usually only let out around family. He had honestly never seen Derek open up like this around someone outside the Webb circle.

Is she like this with her students?

He found himself wondering if maybe he’d had her wrong all along. What if she was one of those needle-in-a-haystack teachers, like the few who had given him the benefit of the doubt, and tried to encourage him in spite of his reputation.

He thought of Mrs. Brandt, who had been tough but fair, and how she had told him more than once that he was a good boy and that he only needed to focus on staying in his seat.

“What are you smiling about?” Derek teased him suddenly, pulling him out of his daydreams.

“Nothing, rat king,” Jared teased back. “Scuttle back up your tree.”

As they laughed, Mom came in with a plate of cookies, with the kids trailing after her.

Derek grabbed for them, and Jared darted after him.

He was too late. His brother had the plate in his hands, so Jared grabbed Derek around the shoulders and rubbed his knuckles on his head, giving him a wicked noogie, until his hair stood straight up, like they’d done to each other about a thousand times growing up.

The kids melted with laughter.

“That’s enough, boys,” Mom scolded good-naturedly. “You’re going to drop the cookies, or make poor Cora think we’re an uncivilized house full of hooligans.”

“What’s a hooligan?” Scout piped up.

“It’s a troublemaker,” Sylvester told her right away.

“How did you know that?” Scout demanded.

“From a book,” Sylvester said, shrugging.

“I don’t know that a single noogie makes me a troublemaker,” Jared said, letting his brother go before giving him a pat on the shoulder and swiping another cookie. “Especially when it was on a deserving cookie thief.”

“What’s a noogie?” Sylvester asked.

“It’s that thing he did to his hair,” Scout told him before Jared could answer.

“How did you know that?” Sylvester asked her.