Ho Ho Ho Giveaway - Guest Post - Meg Maxwell - The Cowboy's Big Family Tree

Welcome back to my annual  Ho Ho Ho Harlequin Holiday Extravaganza bash. Its my tribute to Harlequin who in my opinion makes the world go round! Today I have Meg Maxwell visiting with a sweet Christmas memory and she's sponsoring a giveaway of all three books in her Hurley's Homestyle Kitchen series. Details below.

Enjoy

 

Overview:

TIME TO ADD ANOTHER BRANCH? 

Former rodeo rider Logan Grainger had finally set down roots to care for his orphaned twin nephews. He'd allowed himself to consider a future with the boys' pretty caretaker, Clementine Hurley. Then he'd discovered he was not truly a Grainger. His life in turmoil, Logan decided to break all ties with her before someone got hurt. 

Clementine was not about to let Logan keep avoiding her. His nephews are in her Christmas pageant; she has plans to foster a girl who might well be Logan's stepsister. He's been hiding from their attraction for too long. The feisty waitress is gonna show that stubborn cowboy just how much room he has to add on to his family tree…starting with her!



Meg's Website

Meg is sponsoring a giveawy of
all 3 books in her Hurley's Homestyle Kitchen series
pictured below US ONLY
Please use Rafflecopter form to enter
Thanks Meg!!

One of the many reasons I love the holiday season: egg nog. I LOVE EGG NOG. Several early Decembers ago, I was suddenly craving egg nog and realized my local grocery store would probably have it. So I bundled up my then four year old son, Max, and off we went. During the car ride, Max asked (for the twentieth time that week) if he could have a kitten for Christmas. Since we already had two cats and lived in a small apartment then, I said, “No, sweetie, sorry,” and his little face fell—for the twentieth time that week.

When we parked in the grocery store lot, I took my son out of his car seat and set him down, and he said, “Mommy, look!” And there was a skinny kitten, maybe five or six months old, gray and black and bedraggled and dirty, and absolutely precious. It was clearly a stray. As we approached the kitten she came right up to us and meowed, a small sound, and I scooped up the kitten and put her in the car, then buckled my son back in his car seat. We headed back home.

That evening we kept the kitten in my bedroom, away from the two adult cats, who were pacing and sniffing under the door. My son and I gave the kitten one of our many cat beds, set up food and water dishes and a small litter box. I made a few “Kitten Found” signs to hang around the supermarket and the neighborhood. In the morning we took the kitten to the veterinarian who declared her healthy if dirty—and unfortunately she had no microchip. A vet tech sparkled her up, and I posted one of the Kitten Found signs on the bulletin board, then around town. My son asked if we could keep her if her owner didn’t come for her. He said he wanted to name her Egg Nog since we found her the night we went out for egg nog. I told him that we would keep her for a few days in case someone called and foster her until she was claimed or adopted.

That same day, a woman and her daughter called: the kitten was theirs. They had actually found her as a stray and she’d slipped out of their house a few days prior. They had many photos of the kitten snuggled in their arms and playing with a toy mouse to prove it. My son was teary but he handed Egg Nog over to the woman’s daughter, who was just two years older. He said he’d taken very good care of her kitten and wished that he could have a kitten for Christmas but it wouldn’t be right to keep Egg Nog because she wasn’t really his.

I want to tell you that I rushed over to the humane society to let my son pick out a kitten for Christmas, but with two cats and a tiny home, it wasn’t meant to be. Flash forward to when my son was twelve and our beloved cats had passed, I did take Max to the humane society and he fell in love with a black and white kitten. “I want to name her Egg Nog but that’s just not her name,” he said. “Egg Nog is a really nice memory, though.” A really nice Christmas memory. He named his kitten Cleo, and sometimes, when I see Cleo, all curled up with her best friend, our beagle, Lemon, I’ll call her Egg Nog. We never did get our egg nog that long ago December, but I do have some now. Every December around this time, I think about Egg Nog the kitten and what a sweet, trouper my son was and still is. If you have a special holiday memory, I’d love to hear about it!

Happy Holidays!

Meg Maxwell

 

Max and Cleo!

Today's Gonereading item is:
What's a better way to get the 

entire family together than over

a great puzzle. Click HERE for 

the buy page. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway