The Mistletoe Kisser: Blue Moon #8

by Score, Lucy

  “Joey is very determined. It’s always safer to just go with whatever she wants you to do.”

  “I seem to recall you were also rather convincing,” he said dryly.

  “I did no such convincing,” she argued, swinging away from the fence line to cut down the middle of the field.

  “You underestimate the power of those big, blue eyes, Sparkle.”

  She shifted and looked at him again. His ear flaps were down, the reins clenched in a death grip in one hand—a stickler for the rules. He looked both ridiculous and yet still unsettlingly attractive. “Are you flirting with me?”

  “I don’t flirt. I’m simply stating a truth.”

  “Well, it sounds like flirting,” she pointed out.

  “It’s not my fault if you take it that way.”

  Sammy shook her head and returned her focus to the ride. She reached down and patted the neck of sweet Magnolia. Maggie was a blue roan Tennessee Walking Horse. Sweet and dainty, she had an enviable stride. She also was a skittish mount. With a little more time, a little more love, she’d find her confidence again.

  Sammy loved a snowy ride. The thick quiet broken only by the crisp crunch of hooves. The trail of prints the only imperfection in the otherwise intact blanket still covering the ground. The creak of the saddle. The rock of the gentle horse beneath her. The way the sun and sky and snow built a picture so vibrant she couldn’t stare directly at it.

  “How do I catch up to you?” Ryan called from behind.

  “Give her a little kick with your heels and click your mouth.”

  It took him three times, and his mouth click was more like a kiss, but he managed to bring his mount next to hers and looked pretty pleased about it.

  “Nice job, cowboy.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  A young boy in a snowsuit and bright orange hat burst out of the back door of the barn, a scruffy gray-and-white dog in a sweater on his heels.

  “That’s Caleb and Waffles,” Sammy explained, returning the wave the boy sent her as he ran for what looked like the beginning of an army of snow people lining up against the pasture fence. “Both adopted by Jax and Joey. Reva too. They’re good people. They built their own family.” She respected that about them.

  “Are all your friends married?” he asked.

  “Married or in committed relationships. Layla and I are the lone holdouts in our little circle,” she said. “You?”

  “Mostly married. The ones who haven’t divorced already are struggling their way through the early years of kids,” he said with a shake of his head. “People just don’t get it. Marriage isn’t some romantic thing that happens to you—it’s a decision you make based on your current and predicted compatibility.”

  “Be careful, your accountant is showing,” she teased. “You’re a very practical man.”

  Ryan shrugged his broad shoulders then had to steady his balance. “Why waste each other’s time with grandiose ideas of mortgages and minivans and basketball practice if all those goals are built on the idea that one of you has to change to make it happen?”

  She pressed her lips together and thought about it. “You’re not wrong,” she admitted. “But is there a place for romance or is it just a business partnership?”

  “Romance is like the big family vacation every year. The thing you look forward to while you’re doing the hard work. The hard work is what makes that vacation possible. The hard work that you’ve put into the relationship is what allows you to enjoy the reward of the romance. It works that way. But it never works the other way. How long can someone live off of flowers and candy and surprise Christmas morning proposals if your partner uses baby talk in bed or consistently runs up her credit cards over the limit?”

  “Those are some very specific examples,” she noted with a grin. He was unsettlingly cute when he got carried away lecturing. “But what you’re saying makes sense. It’s a shaky foundation to start an entire relationship based on what you think you can turn the other person into. It’s much smarter to prioritize compatibility.”

  He shot her a searching look. “Are you just saying that so I don’t feel like some Cupid-stomping robot?”

  She laughed. “I’m not. But—”

  “I knew that was coming,” he groused.

  “Compatibility is important,” she conceded. “But there’s also something to be said for finding someone who challenges you, who makes you a better version of yourself. If you went by compatibility alone, wouldn’t you just end up with Lady Ryan?”

  “What’s wrong with Lady Ryan?”

  “Do you want to wake up next to someone as grumpy as you are for the rest of your life?”

  “God, no,” he shuddered. “But why can’t I just go out there and find Less Grumpy Lady Ryan?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” she said, warming to the topic. “Because you need to be challenged with a puzzle, a mystery. We all do to a point, but you especially. There’s a special kind of chemistry between people when there’s interest. When you don’t already understand every motivation. When you’re surprised by a reaction and feel the need to dig into it and get to the bottom.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm ‘interesting point’ or hmm ‘shut up’?” she asked.

  “Hmm, somewhere in the middle,” he decided. Ryan carefully leaned forward and patted Shakira on the neck.

  She knew better than to ask him if he was having fun. Instead of admitting it, he’d provide a list of criticisms for the experience before even attempting to decide if there were any positives. But somewhere, deep down, Grumpy Ryan was having a nice time.

  “You know, the last twenty-four hours have felt like an out-of-body experience,” he said.

  “Every once in a while, we all need one of those,” she sympathized.

  “Will Magnolia come to live with you when you finish your barn?” Ryan asked, changing the subject.

  “She will. As long as I have another horse. She came from a big riding stable operation in Pennsylvania. An unstable ex-husband broke into the barn and shot the trainer. The trainer survived, the bad guy went to jail, but Magnolia here was traumatized. The students and staff couldn’t seat her anymore and put her up for sale. I fell in love with her the second I saw her online, and I think she liked me at first sight. She’s doing really well here.”

  “How do you deal with it?” he asked with a frown aimed between his mount’s ears.

  “Deal with what?”

  “The cruelty. The neglect. You’re not a DEA agent busting up drug rings. You’re an animal lover caring for animals that are in pain or traumatized. Some you can’t save.”

  She pulled up on the reins and brought Magnolia to a halt before exhaling a stream of silvery breath to the sky.

  The view from the ridge of the hill was a picture-perfect winter scene. Fields rolled out gently before them. A small pond where the Pierce men were rumored to skinny dip on occasion turned almost turquoise under the afternoon sky. Patches of woods and sentry lines of pine trees popped green against the white and blue.

  “It’s not easy,” she admitted. “It can be crushing to try to save a starving calf, to see the fear in a horse’s eyes when you try to approach it after years under bad hands. To know you can’t save them all or give them all the life they actually deserve.”

  “I hate that for you,” he said with a quiet vehemence that she found oddly comforting.

  “Thank you,” she said, not daring to look at him. “But the key is to find the good and to hold on to it with both hands. I’m there when a calf takes its first breath in the spring. I get to watch sheep unburdened of their winter wool dance around the pasture in the spring. I fix baby goats’ legs so they can keep up with their siblings. I celebrate every birth, every recovery with the family.”

  “That means you also mourn every loss with them,” he pointed out astutely.

  “Ah, but there’s no good without the bad, Ryan. No life without death. No celebration without mourning.”


  “But someday, you’ll watch Magnolia take her last breath,” he said. Not cruelly. Almost like he was warning her, like he was afraid she hadn’t protected herself enough from the eventuality.

  She reached out and laid her gloved hand on his. “I know. But when she does, I’ll know that I gave her the best possible life I could between our meeting and our parting.”

  He wrapped his fingers around her fist. “You have to know how terrifying that concept is to me.”

  “Maybe that’s why you think you can look for a life partner and not the love of your life.”

  “I like certainties. Guarantees.”

  “You don’t get a lot of those in real life,” she said with sympathy. “This land? It was tended by John Pierce. Phoebe’s first husband and father to the Pierce brothers. This was a dilapidated, broken-down farm when he took it over. He grew crops, raised a family, taught the whole town a lot about respecting the land and each other. To honor him, his family carried on with his legacy. They took what he’d built and found ways to make it their own. Carter works the land. Beckett’s the natural-born leader. And Jax has the artistic soul. Phoebe remarried, but she still lives on the land she and John worked together. Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean they all don’t still love him.”

  Sammy thought about John on that long-ago Winter Solstice, beaming at her in that flannel coat. “For a long time, I thought it was your cousin who talked me into being a vet, but I think the credit is really due to John Pierce. We all leave fingerprints on each other. His mattered so much to so many people. I want mine to matter too.”

  “Some fingerprints shouldn’t be left behind,” Ryan said softly. His grip on her hand tightened, and she wondered who had left their fingerprints on him.

  “No, they shouldn’t,” she agreed. “Maybe that’s why we gravitate toward people and animals with the right kind of prints.”

  They sat shoulder-to-shoulder on their mounts and took in the panorama.

  “This doesn’t suck,” he said finally.

  She laughed. It was as good as a gold star from the man. “We should head back. You’ve got an emergency to tackle, and I’ve got wreaths to make.”

  He looked earnestly into her eyes. “If I were smarter, I’d have taken you up on your offer.”

  “You are smarter. You’d have to be different, and I don’t want that. I kind of like you the way you are.”

  “Surly and unfiltered?”

  “Brooding and realistic,” she decided. “I hope you find your partner, Ryan.”

  “I hope you find the love of your life, Sam.”

  She stifled a sigh. “Let’s get back before you freeze your West Coast ass to the saddle. Think you’re up for a trot?”

  “Most definitely not.”

  Ten minutes later at a slow and awkward trot, the stone barn on the hill came into view. “That’s John Pierce Brews,” she said, slowing her mount.

  “Part of the legacy?” Ryan asked.

  “When Jax came home from LA, it was with two aims: to win back Joey and to start the brewery. He knocked them both out of the park… eventually.”

  “She looks like she’d put up a good fight.”

  “You’re not wrong. Rumor has it the first time Jax saw her when he came home, he kissed the crap out of her and she slapped him so hard, people in town heard it,” Sammy said.

  Ryan snorted in amusement.

  A shrill whistle cut through the air, and she spotted her former crush and current client Carter Pierce bundled up against the cold next to his pickup truck. Summer’s blonde head popped up on the other side of the hood. They both waved and Sammy returned the greeting.

  “That’s Carter Pierce and his wife, Summer. And their twins,” she added with affection when two toddlers practically tumbled out of the back seat.

  “Older brother to goat guy and the mayor, right?”

  She glanced at him, surprised. “You sure get around a lot for a guy who can’t wait to get out of here.”

  Blue Moon Community Facebook Gossip Group

  Frieda Blevins: Spotted! Veterinarian Sammy Ames canoodling with sexy stranger at Villa Harvest! Is love in the air for our single Sammy?

  Bill FitzSimmons: Has anyone seen my Velcro pants? I can’t remember the last place I ripped them off.

  18

  Sunday, December 22

  * * *

  Ryan rolled out the kinks in his shoulders and slid the chair back from the kitchen table to survey the progress. It was late morning. His eyes were bleary. His ass was sore from sitting on a goddamn horse the day before.

  In between fantasies of what would have happened had he taken Dr. Sammy Ames up on her offer, he’d eaten half of a vegetable korma casserole he’d found in Carson’s freezer for breakfast and methodically picked his way through nearly every single shoebox, ruthlessly organizing, scanning, and tallying as he went.

  His weapons of choice were a laptop with spreadsheets, highlighters—yellow for important, red for essential—a three-hole punch, and a now-empty pot of coffee.

  Great-Uncle Carson had saved every grocery store receipt from 1983. He’d also used his tractor loan statements to write out shopping lists.

  Organizing as he went, Ryan banded the receipts together and put them back in the shoebox now labeled Potentially Sentimental Paperwork. Property tax paperwork went into one binder. Farm equipment statements and manuals went into another. There were seven years of recent tax filings rolled up and secured with blue rubber bands. He’d found nothing of interest in the taxes. No mention of mortgage interest. No late fees or back taxes due.

  He’d moved on to the paper statements from Blue Moon Bank. Opening each one, scanning it with an app on his phone and uploading them to the cloud before stashing the originals in yet another binder. He raised his eyebrows at the current account balances. He’d assumed that his elderly great-uncle living in a shabby farmhouse eating casseroles supplied by his neighbors was living Social Security check to Social Security check.

  However, the six figures in CDs and $50,000 in savings told a different story.

  Something wasn’t adding up.

  It didn’t make sense that the man had saved coupons for dish detergent for the better part of two decades but hadn’t managed to hang on to loan documents or any of the ensuing late notices. Of course, he’d recently claimed to be flying through an air tunnel on his way to a fetlock surgery so it was possible, Ryan mused.

  If his uncle wasn’t of sound mind, there might be a valid argument for buying more time for the balloon payment or having the lender held up to a review.

  On an impulse, he picked up his phone and dialed his mother. While it rang, he popped the lid off another shoebox. Inside was a treasure trove of old photos.

  “Ryan!” she said. “You made me think it was Tuesday.”

  Lisa Sosa kept a strict schedule of weekly phone calls. Ryan and his sister Tina were Tuesdays.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m face-deep in Uncle Carson’s paperwork. How sharp would you say he is?”

  “Well, we only talk once a week on Sundays,” his mom began. “But honestly, Ryan, the man is more with it than I am.”

  That was saying a lot. Lisa Sosa’s walk-in closet was organized by season, color, and last time worn.

  He picked up a black-and-white photo with crimped edging. Uncle Carson and Aunt Midge stood on the steps of a courthouse. Carson had a flower tucked into the front pocket of his overalls. Midge’s dress flared out over a petticoat. She was clutching a small bouquet of daisies. They were beaming at each other like they couldn’t wait to start the adventure.

  “I’m finding cash in his accounts, every piece of paper he’s touched in the last forty years, and nothing but a vague letter from the bank about an overdue balance on a loan and a foreclosure.”

  “Do you want me to try to get him on the phone? Maybe he can clear some of this up,” Lisa offered.

  “Couldn’t hurt. He hasn’t responded to any of the voicemails I left him. Ma
ybe you’ll have better luck.” He picked up the next photo. A group shot from one of the Shufflebottom family reunions. Ryan was perched on his father’s shoulders. In the next, the cousins, all twenty of them, had formed a sloppy class picture-style pose on the grass.

  There he was again, eight years old, hanging upside down by his knees from the jungle gym on the playground. His skinny arms dangled toward the ground. Where had his parents been? He was lucky he hadn’t fallen and landed on his head. That was a spinal injury waiting to happen.

  To make himself feel better, Ryan turned the photo around so Young Ryan was right side up. His hair stood on end, but the grin on his face looked much like the one on Carson’s on his wedding day.

  When had he stopped smiling upside down and started worrying about spinal injuries?

  “So, how much trouble is Carson in? Do I need to take up a collection from the cousins?” she asked.

  “I’m still not sure. The bank is giving me the runaround, but I’ll figure something out.”

  “Oh dear. Well, I hope you’re at least getting a chance to enjoy the holiday festivities. It’s been a few decades since I’ve been there, but I recall the whole town going all out.”

  “That hasn’t changed,” he said.

  “Speaking of the holidays, I was talking to your father at dinner yesterday,” his mom was saying.

  “Hang on. What? You and Dad had dinner?”

  “Of course. We have dinner every week.”

  “Why?” He couldn’t quite contain the shock. His parents divorce had been contentious, ugly… devastating. He had no idea they were capable of speaking cordially to each other let alone having dinner together.

  Lisa laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because we share five children and four grandkids? We have to catch each other up in case one of us got news the other one didn’t hear yet.”

  “How long has this been going on?”