The Holiday Gift

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She swallowed hard, avoiding his gaze. “I guess what I wanted to tell you is that things are better now. The Star N is back in the black, thanks in large part to you and to The Christmas Ranch finally being self-sustaining. I’ll never been an expert at ranching but I kind of feel like I know a little more what I’m doing now. If you...want to ease away a bit so you can focus more on your own ranch, I would completely understand. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  It took about two seconds for him to go from confusion to being seriously annoyed.

  “So you’re basically telling me you don’t want me hanging around anymore.”

  She looked instantly horrified. “No! That’s not what I’m saying at all. I just...don’t want you to feel obligated to do as much as you have for us. For me. I needed help and would have been lost without you the last two years but you can’t prop us up forever. At some point, I have to stand on my own.”

  “Would you be saying this if I hadn’t kissed you the other night?”

  Her eyes widened and she looked startled that he had brought the kiss up when they both had been so carefully avoiding the subject.

  Finally she sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice low again and her gaze fixed on the five little border collie puppies. “It feels like everything has changed.”

  She sounded so miserable, he wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her he was sorry, that he would do his best to make sure things returned to the way they were a week ago.

  “Life has a way of doing that, whether we always like it or not,” he said, knowing full well he wouldn’t go back, even if he could. “Nobody escapes it. The trick is figuring out how to roll with the changes.”

  She was silent for a long time and he would have given anything to know what she was thinking.

  When she spoke, her voice was low. “I can’t stop thinking about that kiss.”

  Chapter Ten

  At first he wasn’t sure he heard her correctly or if his own subconscious had conjured the words out of nowhere.

  But then he looked at her and her eyes were solemn, intense and more than a little nervous.

  He swallowed hard. “Same here. It’s all I could think about during dinner. I would like, more than anything, to kiss you again.”

  She opened her mouth as if she wanted to object. He waited for it, bracing himself for yet one more disappointment. To his utter shock, she took a step forward instead, placed her hands against his chest and lifted her face in clear invitation.

  He didn’t hesitate for an instant. How could he? He wasn’t a stupid man. He framed her face with his hands, then lowered his mouth, brushing against hers once, twice. Her mouth was cool, her lips trembling, and she tasted of raspberry and chocolate from Louisa’s cheesecake—rich, heady. Irresistible.

  At first she seemed nervous, unsure, but after only a moment, her hands slid around his neck and she pressed against him, surrendering to the heat swirling between them.

  He was awash in tenderness, completely enamored with the courageous woman in his arms.

  Optimism bubbled up inside him, a tiny trickle at first, then growing stronger as she sighed against his mouth and returned his kiss with a renewed enthusiasm that took his breath away. For the first time in days, he began to think that maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to see that this was real, that they were perfect together.

  They kissed for several delicious moments, until his breathing was ragged and he wanted nothing more than to find a soft pile of straw somewhere, lower her down and show her exactly how amazing things could be between them.

  A particularly fierce gust of wind rattled the windows of the barn, distracting him enough to realize a cold, drafty barn that smelled of animals and hay might not be the most romantic of spots.

  With supreme effort, he forced his mouth to slide away from hers, pressing his forehead to hers and giving them both a chance to collect their breath and their thoughts.

  Her eyes were dazed, aroused. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for nearly three years and now...I’m not,” she admitted.

  He pressed a soft kiss on her mouth again. “Welcome back.”

  She smiled a little but it slid away too soon, replaced by an anxious expression, and she took another step away. He wanted to tug her back into his arms but he knew he couldn’t kiss her into accepting the possibilities between them, as tempting as he found that idea.

  “I’m afraid,” she admitted.

  His growing optimism cooled like the air that rushed between them. “Of what? I hope you know I would rather stab myself in the foot with a pitchfork than ever hurt you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered, her features distressed. “You’re the best man I know, Chase. When I think about...about not having you in my life, I feel like I’m going to throw up. But I’m not sure I’m ready for this again—or that I ever will be.”

  Well. That was honest enough. He had to respect it, even if he didn’t like it. It took him a moment to grab his scrambled thoughts and formulate them into something he hoped came out coherently.

  “That’s a decision you’ll have to make,” he said, choosing his words with care. “But think about those puppies. We can keep them here under that heat lamp forever where it’s safe and warm and dry. That’s the best place for them right now, I agree, while they’re tiny and vulnerable. But they won’t always be the way they are right now, and what kind of existence would those puppies have if they could never really have the chance to experience the world? They’re meant to run across fields and chase birds and lie stretched out in the summer sunshine. To live.”

  She let out a breath. “You’re comparing me to those puppies.”

  “I’m only saying I understand you’ve suffered a terrible loss. I know how hard you’ve fought to work through the grief. It’s only natural to want to protect yourself, to be afraid of moving out of the safe place you’ve created for yourself out of that grief.”

  “Terrified,” she admitted.

  His heart ached for her and the struggle he had forced on her. He wanted to reach for her hands but didn’t trust himself to touch her right now. “I can tell you this, Faith. You have too much love inside you to spend the rest of your life hiding inside that safe haven while the world moves on without you.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “That’s easy for you to say. You never lost someone you loved with all your heart.”

  He wanted to tell her he had, only in a different way. He had lost her over and over again—though could a guy really lose what he’d never had?

  “You’re right. I can only imagine,” he lied.

  As tempting as it was to tell her everything in his heart—that he had loved her since that afternoon he took her shopping for Aunt Mary—he didn’t dare. Not yet. Something told him that would send her running away even faster.

  She would have to be the one to make the decision about whether she was ready to open her heart again.

  The storm rattled the window again, fierce and demanding, and she shivered suddenly, though he couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or from the emotional winds battering them. Either way, he didn’t want her to suffer.

  “Let’s get you back to the house. Mary will be wondering where we are.”

  She nodded. After one more check of the puppies, she tugged her gloves back on and headed out into the night.

  * * *

  Faith was fiercely aware of him as they walked from the barn to the ranch house with the wind and snow howling around them.

  She felt as if all the progress she had made toward rebuilding her world had been tossed out into this storm. She had been so proud of herself these last few months. The kids were doing well, the ranch was prospering, she had finally developed a new routine and had begun to be more confident in what she was doing.

&nbs
p; While she wouldn’t say she had been particularly happy, at least she had found some kind of acceptance with her new role as a widow. She was more comfortable in her own skin.

  Now she felt as if everything had changed again. Once more she was confused, off balance, not sure how to put one more step in front of the other and forge a new path.

  She didn’t like it.

  Even in the midst of her turmoil, she couldn’t miss the way he placed his body in the path of the wind to protect her from the worst of it. That was so much like Chase, always looking out for her. It warmed her heart, even as it made her ache.

  “You still need your groceries,” she said when they reached the house. “Come in and I’ll grab them.”

  He looked as if he had something more to say but he finally nodded and followed her inside.

  Though she could hear the television playing down the hall in the den, the kitchen was dark and empty. A clean, vacant kitchen on Sunday night after the big family party always left her feeling a little bereft, for some strange reason.

  She flipped on the light and discovered a brown paper bag on the counter with his name on it. She couldn’t resist peeking inside and discovered it contained a half dozen of the dinner rolls. Knowing Aunt Mary and her habits, she pulled open the refrigerator and found another bag with his name on it.

  “It looks like Mary saved some leftovers for you.”

  “Excellent. It will be nice not having to worry about dinner tomorrow.”

  She knew he rarely cooked when Addie was with her mother, subsisting on frozen meals, sandwiches and the occasional steaks he grilled in a batch. Mary knew it, too, which might be another reason she invited him over so often.

  Faith headed to the walk-in pantry where she had left the things she bought at the store for him.

  “Here you go. Dishwashing detergent, dish soap and paper towels.”

  “That should do it. Thanks for picking them up for me.”

  “It was no trouble at all.”

  “I’ll check in with you first thing in the morning to see if you had any storm damage.”

  If she were stronger, she would tell him thank you but it wasn’t necessary. At some point in a woman’s life, she had to figure out how to clean up her own messes. Instead, she did her best to muster a smile. “Be careful driving home.”

  He nodded. Still looking as if he had something more to say, he headed for the door. He put a hand on the knob but before he could turn it, he whirled back around, stalked over to her and kissed her hard with a ferocity and intensity that made her knees so weak she had to clutch at his coat to keep from falling.

  She could only be grateful none of her family members came into the kitchen just then and stumbled over them.

  When he pulled away, a muscle in his jaw worked but he only looked at her out of solemn, intense eyes.

  “Good night,” he said.

  She didn’t have the breath to speak, even if she trusted herself to say anything, so she only nodded.

  The moment he left, she pulled her ranch coat off with slow, painstaking effort, hung it in the mudroom, then sank down into a kitchen chair, fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands and weep.

  She felt like the world’s biggest idiot.

  She knew she relied on him, that he had become her rock and the core of her support system since Travis died. He made her laugh and think, he challenged her, he praised her when things went well and held her when they didn’t.

  All this time, when she considered him her dearest friend, some part of her already knew the feelings she had for him ran deeper than that.

  She felt so stupid that it had taken her this long to figure it out. She had always known she loved him, just as she had told him earlier.

  She had just never realized she was also in love with him.

  How had it happened? How could she have let it happen?

  She should have known something had shifted over the last few months when she started anticipating the times she knew she would see him with a new sort of intensity, when she became more aware of the way other women looked at him when they were together, as she started noticing a ripple of muscle, the solid strength of him as he did some ordinary task in the barn.

  She should have realized, but it all just seemed so...natural.

  She was still sitting there trying to come to terms with the shock when Mary came into the kitchen wearing her favorite flannel nightgown over long underwear and thick socks.

  “Did Chase take off? I had leftovers for him.”

  She summoned a smile that felt a little wobbly at the edges. “He took them. Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, you know me. Worrying is what I do best.” Mary looked out the window where the snow lashed in hard pellets. “I’ll tell you, I don’t like him driving into the teeth of that nasty wind. All it would take would be one tree limb to fall on his pickup truck.”

  Her heart clutched at the unbearable thought.

  This. This was why she couldn’t let herself love him. She would not survive losing a man she loved a second time.

  She pushed the grim fear away, choosing instead to focus on something positive.

  “Rosie had her puppies. Five of them.”

  “Is that right?” Mary looked pleased.

  “They’re adorable. I’m sure the kids will want to see them first thing.”

  “I made them take their showers for the night. Barrett isn’t very happy with me right now but I’m sure he’ll get over it. They’re both in their rooms, reading.”

  She would go read to them in a moment. It was her favorite part of the day, those quiet moments when she could cuddle her children and explore literary worlds with them. “Thank you,” she said to her aunt. “I don’t tell you enough how much I appreciate your help.”

  Mary sat down across from her at the table. “Are you okay? You seem upset.”

  For a moment, she desperately wanted to confide in her beloved great-aunt, who was just about the wisest person she knew. The words wouldn’t come, though. Mary wouldn’t be an unbiased observer in this particular case as Mary adored Chase and always had.

  “I’m just feeling a little down tonight.”

  Mary took Faith’s hands in her own wrinkled, age-spotted ones. “I get that way sometimes. The holidays sure make me feel alone.”

  A hard nugget of guilt lodged in her chest. She wasn’t the only one in the world who had ever suffered heartache. Uncle Claude had died five years earlier and they all still missed him desperately.

  “You’re not alone,” she told her aunt. “You’ve got us, as long as you want us.”

  “I know that, my dear, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that.” Mary squeezed her fingers. “It’s not quite the same. I miss my Claude.”

  She thought of her big, burly, white-haired great-uncle, who had adored Christmas so much that he had started The Christmas Ranch with one small herd of reindeer to share his love of the holiday with the community.

  “I’m thinking about dating again,” Mary announced. “What do you think?”

  She blinked at that completely unexpected piece of information. “Really?”

  “Why not? Your uncle’s been gone for years and I’m not getting any younger.”

  “I... No. You’re not. I think it’s great. Really great.”

  Her aunt made a face. “I don’t know about great. More like a necessary evil. I’d like to get married again, have a companion in my old age, and unfortunately you usually have to go through the motions and go on a few dates first in order to get there.”

  Her seventy-year-old great-aunt was braver than she was. It was another humbling realization. “Do you have someone in mind?”

  Her aunt shrugged. “A couple of widowers at the senior citizens center have asked me
out. They’re nice enough, but I was thinking about asking Pat Walters out to dinner.”

  She tried not to visibly react to yet another stunner. For years, Pat had been one of the men who played Santa Claus at The Christmas Ranch. His wife had died just a few months after Uncle Claude.

  She digested the information and the odd rightness of the idea.

  “You absolutely should,” she finally said. “He’s a great guy.”

  “He is. Truth is, we went out a few times three years ago when I was living in town and we had a lot of fun together. I didn’t tell you girls because it was early days yet and there was nothing much to tell.”

  She shrugged her ample shoulders. “But then Travis died and I moved back in here to help you with the kids. I just didn’t feel like the time was right to complicate things so Pat and I put things on the back burner for a while.”

  Oh, the guilt. The nugget turned into a full-on boulder. Had she really been so wrapped up in her own pain that she hadn’t noticed a romance simmering right under her nose?

  What else had she missed?

  “I wish you had told me,” she said. “I hate that you put your life on hold for me. I would have been okay. Celeste was here to help me out in the evenings and I could have hired someone to help me with Lou and Barrett when I was busy on the ranch and couldn’t take them with me.”

  Mary frowned. “I didn’t tell you about Pat to make you feel guilty. You didn’t force me to move in after Travis died. You didn’t even ask me. I did it because I needed to, because that’s what family does for each other.”

  Mary and Claude had been helping her and her sisters for eighteen years, since they had been three traumatized, frightened, grieving girls.

  Her aunt, with her quiet strength, support and wisdom, had been a lifesaver to her after her parents died and even more of one after Travis died.

  “I can never repay you for everything you’ve done,” she said, her throat tight and the hot burn of tears behind her eyes.

  Mary sat back in her chair and skewered her with a stern look. “Is that what you think I want? For you to repay me?”