Scrooge Wore Spurs - Softcover

Since romance novels aimed at the December holidays must ultimately resolve in a warm 'n' fuzzy, family-friendly manner, the question here is not whether relationships will work out, but rather whether all the lonely people will pair up happily in time to score a great tree. That seems unlikely in Dailey's (A Capital Holiday; Green Calder Grass) western-themed tale, since poor but proud stock rancher Eben MacCallister and dude ranch owner Maddie Williams, who is equally stubborn but financially flourishing, have resisted pairing since their painful broken engagement 20 years earlier. The apparently insoluble argument: He grimly prioritizes things ahead of personal joy things like working non-stop to pay off the loan threatening his ranch with an un-Happy New Year's foreclosure; she, a marriage-before-mortgage gal, passionately insists that only people count. Then four unexpected people arrive to complicate the Christmas chaos: the young, precocious orphaned children of Eben's recently deceased, long-lost sister. The children are as cute as candy canes and irrepressibly inventive... and they really want that tree. Unlike Dailey's intense Calder family saga, but very much like eggnog, this book is 100 percent frothy fun.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As Christmas approaches, nothing is going well for fortysomething Eben MacCallister. The family ranch he has devoted his life to is about to be foreclosed upon. He has just been notified that the sister he raised but has been estranged from since she ran away at age 17 has been killed in an accident. Now, a lawyer has dumped Eben's four orphaned nieces and nephews on his doorstep. The witness to all this heartache is Maddie, the childhood sweetheart who had gotten away but who, now widowed, has returned to run a dude ranch on her neighboring Arizona spread. The children seem bent on making Eben miserable--the twins want to celebrate Christmas, which also happens to be their birthday; the seven-year-old won't do his homework; and the baby cries in need of diaper changes and food. What's a curmudgeon to do? Dailey breaks no new ground here, but comes through with a light, predictable but reliably entertaining category-type romance. Diana Tixier Herald
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