The mare whinnied and pawed the ground as if to tell her offspring the apple was safe to eat. With his mother’s permission, the foal’s long tongue licked across Miles’ palm, tickling him as the chunk of apple disappeared. He tapped the foal’s rump gently, to encourage it further into the stall, and the animal flicked out his hind legs before scurrying inside. The mare tugged on her tether, clearly concerned about her separation from her offspring.
“Okay, steady girl, I haven’t forgotten you.”
Miles went to her and held out his hand with the remainder of the apple. She scraped her teeth gently against his palm as she vacuumed it up in one whole piece. Then he listened to her crunching noisily on it while he undid the rope and removed her halter. With a final click from Miles, she walked back to her stall and greeted her foal. Miles locked up the stall, and as he walked through the stable block, he checked the doors of the other horses as he went by.
Outside, it was freezing cold. The ground was blanketed with snow and the night sky was crystal clear. There’d be a re-freeze again tonight and the areas where the snow had run to slush would be crisp and crunchy beneath his feet in the morning. Miles drew his duster around him, blocking out the wind, and pulled on sheepskin gloves to keep his hands warm as he made the rounds of his yard, checking that the chickens were locked up tight and the stores were secure.
It was only around seven in the evening, but he was done for the night. In some ways, Miles loved the winter months because of the decline in guest numbers. It gave him more time to himself and it was good to have a break from the beck and call of demanding tourists. On the other hand, he missed the routine the paying guests provided, and to be perfectly honest, he missed the regular flirting and the hot and heavy encounters, too.
In the winter, he always felt lonelier. The ranch was a fair way out of town and it felt even remoter without the injection of city folk driving down week in and week out. Next year, he would put more thought into extending the cabin rental weeks. Perhaps they could offer something that might take advantage of their winters. Some of his fellow dude ranch owners cashed in on the ski season, but this place was too low and too far away from the ski runs for that to really work for him. He’d seen a couple of snowcats for sale, and he had half a mind to pick them up for tours next season. He reckoned guests would be keen to hire them to whiz across the snowy fields on. Miles made a note to talk about it with Caleb. The guy had a thing for fast machines; he’d probably jump at the chance to take tours out on them.
“Everything good?” Caleb stood at his truck, wearing a huge sheepskin jacket and fur-lined boots.
“Yeah, you going into town?”
“Aye. I’ll be back Sunday night.”
“Any particular little lady you’re visiting?”
Caleb grinned back at him. “What makes you think it’s a woman?”
“Well, there’s only two reasons to head into town on a Friday night. Beer or sex, and the former doesn’t keep you out until Sunday.”
With a chuckle, Caleb climbed into his truck. “You want me to pick up any supplies before I come back?”
“Nah, I’ll have to go in myself tomorrow. I need to put in the orders for Christmas.” Miles went to walk away but then hesitated. “Oh, perhaps there is something you could do. Harriet is on the fence about coming for Christmas. Could you talk to her? You know your mom will be heartbroken if she’s not here.”
Caleb sighed. “Is this still over Clarissa?” Miles shrugged, but he knew it was. “Jeez. It was you that had to go through the messy divorce, why is she still behaving like she was the one hurt?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, buddy. They weren’t even that close after I married Clarissa.” But then Miles probably had his answer right there. Harriet was mad at him for stealing her friend away, and after shit hit the fan, Harriet was not gonna throw him a bone just because Clarissa showed her true colors.
“Family is family. I’ll talk to her.”
Miles raised his hat and immediately regretted it. The wind blew around his ears, freezing the tips, and sending a shudder down his spine. “Thanks, I’d appreciate it.”
After Caleb drove away, he went to the big farmhouse kitchen in the main house. If the bookings allowed it, Miles sometimes took one of the more remote cabins as a way of taking a break from work and family, but he always used the main catering kitchen to cook his meals.
“Hey, Sarah, how’s the Christmas baking coming along?” His stepmom was up to her elbows in cookie dough, and all across the huge island counter were sheet pans filled with cookies in holiday-themed cutouts. Their guests had already consumed several pounds of them, but Sarah continued to crank them out in batches of two hundred, once a week. In between, she baked a dozen apple pies, whipped up trays of pigs in a blanket, and dressed and cooked turkeys. By the time the Carmichael family got to celebrate Christmas Day, Sarah would have already cooked several full Christmas feasts.
“Nearly there. Did you get the family tree set up?”
They had a huge twenty-foot-high holiday tree erected in the yard, lit up with white twinkling lights and hundreds of red and gold baubles. Then in the guests’ dining room and lounge area, there were two ten-foot trees similarly dressed. Each of those went up before Thanksgiving and it was a behemoth task to get everything looking festive before the first holiday guests arrived.
“Yes, it’s in the family room. I’m just letting the branches drop before I put on the lights.” The rest of the decorations wouldn’t actually go on the tree until all the family arrived. It was tradition that they decorated this last tree together.
Christmas at the Carmichael ranch was all about togetherness. The feast they’d eat Christmas evening would be a joint effort, as by then Sarah would be exhausted. Miles carried on his father’s tradition of giving her the day out of the kitchen. Instead, it was the rest of them that treated Sarah to a festive meal that she didn’t have to lift a finger to produce.
“Did you see the weather report?” Sarah rubbed her forehead with her forearm, dislodging a cloud of flour.
“I did, they’re predicting two snow storms between now and December 25th.”
Sarah sighed. “Well, I just hope flights aren’t cancelled.”
Miles kissed her on the cheek. “We should be good. Don’t worry so much, everyone always makes it.”
Frowning at him, she looked melancholy. “Nolan didn’t last year.”
“That couldn’t be helped, Sarah. But it wasn’t the weather that stopped him.” Nolan and Olivia had taken a sudden trip to Bali when news of Olivia’s husband came through the week before Christmas. “But hey, Nol is making up for it this year, he’s bringing Livi, too.”
That put a smile on Sarah’s face. For many years, she had been good friends with Lenny’s mother. All the Carmichael kids had attended the same local school as the guy. Nolan and Lenny had been inseparable, even following each other to the same college in San Francisco together. Sarah had attended Lenny’s wedding, and loved his pretty Puerto Rican wife. She was as heartbroken as both Nolan and Olivia when Lenny was lost, but she couldn’t have been more thrilled when Nolan announced he’d asked Livi to marry him.
Miles picked up a cookie but as he bit into it, Sarah tutted at him.
“It’s just one.”
“There’s leftover pot roast in the refrigerator.”
He grinned at her. Mostly, he liked to cook for himself, but it was a treat when Sarah had put something aside for him. “You’re the best, you know that?”
Sticking his head in the fridge, his grin broadened as he found a plate of meat and vegetables. After placing it in the microwave to reheat, he grabbed some cutlery and a beer. “You want me to help you finish up this lot?”
“No, I just have this batch to roll and cut out. Go eat and relax, it won’t take me more than fifteen minutes.”
After he ate, Miles stretched out his long legs and pulled out his phone. He wondered if Cady had managed to get home at a decent time
tonight. Her boss was a real asshole and someone should teach that guy a lesson. The entitled prick had her at his disposal and never once said thank you. In fact, from what she told Miles, he always did the opposite, taking every chance to demean her and chip away at her confidence. Miles hated how Paul made Cady so miserable. Work should be at least semi-enjoyable—especially if you put in more than twelve hours a day.
He scrolled to the picture of the foal he took earlier. The damn thing was all sorts of cute. As he stared at the screen, Miles realized he’d been miserable in his own job not so long ago. When his hardware store stalled after a giant chain version moved in to the outskirts of town, Miles worked around the clock to try to make stuff work out. He’d had to let staff go—good, loyal fucking staff that he couldn’t afford to pay—and on top of that, Clarissa refused to lift a finger to help; instead, she found another man to entertain her. He was one person being pulled in ten different directions, growing more miserable by the day, and all he could think of was how he had fucked everything up. That he was a big, fucking failure—he couldn’t hold onto a wife or a business.
Although he didn’t think so at the time, taking over the running of the ranch was a salvation. He still worked long shifts, but he enjoyed every minute of the day. Perhaps there was more of the old man in Miles than he thought.
When he turned eighteen, the ranch business had been the farthest thing from his mind. The big city beckoned, along with civilization. But Miles never made it to the big city, and made do with small town. His one trip to Denver turned him off to that whole idea. Noisy, dirty streets, too many people, everything so damn unfamiliar that it made him homesick—he should have realized then that the ranch was in his veins.
Miles pressed share on the photo of the foal and sent it to Cady. Over the last few weeks he’d taken pictures from around the ranch. They were kind of artsy—embarrassingly so, in some case. He had to laugh, as it reminded him of his sister’s Instagram account that she showed him once. But for some reason, he wanted to evoke something in his snaps, capture the love he felt for this place, and give Cady a little piece of him. In doing so, he had begun the ritual of opening up the night’s conversation by sending her an image. One of those automatically generated messages came back immediately, stating she was driving, so Miles decided he’d go take a shower and try her again later.
As the hot water streamed down his body, Miles wondered, not for the first time, what Cady looked like. He only had her voice to go on as he’d still not seen a picture of her. In some ways, he liked the mystery of it, but part of him itched to see if the woman he had created in his mind was anything like the one in real life.
The imaginary Cady was tall. Being six foot, Miles had always been drawn to taller women. Legs were his thing, or more specifically tanned bare legs that were shown off by short skirts. He chuckled to himself, was it possible to glean how long someone’s legs were just by chatting to them? Probably not, though he pretty much had decided from her voice that she had to be a blonde—or perhaps that was wishful thinking, as well.
Damn it, perhaps he should ask her to send him a picture. What if he was being cat-fished? Maybe she was a forty-year-old guy pretending to be a twenty-something-year-old woman with blonde hair and long legs. Hmm, and that was another thing, just how close to twenty or thirty was she?
Miles shut off the water and laughed. You’ve spoken to her, Miles. No way did that sexy voice belong to a man, and she didn’t sound like a kid either. And, in all fairness, he wasn’t sure you could be cat-fished if you were the one starting the conversation night after night. He scratched at his chin. Hmm, Cady rarely called him. Perhaps he was taking this friendship too far and should back off.
Wrapping a towel around his waist, he padded out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Was he really expecting anything to come out of this long distance thing? Was it even a thing? Jeez, perhaps he should have taken a leaf out of Caleb’s book and gone into town to get laid.
His phone buzzed along his nightstand, and he scooped it up. Excitement fluttered in his belly as he saw Cady’s reply.
Oh. My. God! That foal is all kinds of ADORABLE!!!
Miles grinned at her response. The same could be said about Cady, he was sure of it.
How was your day?
The three dotted lines undulated for a while and finally one word came back.
Crap.
His big thumbs typed out the letters while his hackles rose. He hated the thought of her being miserable.
You wanna tell me about it?
Yeah, I think I do. Are you sure you’re not busy?
Never too busy for you, honey.
Miles pressed send and immediately regretted it. Was that too familiar? Did he cross a line?
Rather than torture himself on what was done, he pressed call. “Hi, Cady, what did Paul do now?”
“It’s not Paul, for once. Jesus you’re gonna think I’m being ridiculous.”
“That’s the farthest thing from my mind. Now come on tell me what it is.”
“It’s my mom’s dog. She's been with us since I was a teenager, and I just got a text… I don’t think she’s gonna make it.”
The emotion cracked in her voice, and Miles had a sudden urge to put his arm around her. If only there weren’t sixteen hundred miles between them, he’d have jumped in his truck and gone to comfort her.
“Hey, that’s not ridiculous. Why don’t you tell me all about her.”
6
Cady
Alexandria, Virginia December 20th
The rain lashed at the window and the wind howled outside. Cady turned over in bed and wished she didn’t have to get up. Today was going to be a nightmare from start to finish and she’d just rather fast forward things to when she could climb back under her blankets.
With just a few days before Christmas, work had been more frantic than usual. Everyone seemed to have put in twelve-hour a day shifts for weeks just to keep up. Thankfully yesterday, the multi-million dollar development project with M.K. Morning had been signed off, and it looked like they might get a few days to catch up on other projects before her firm closed for the holiday break.
While usually the wrap-up of a project should make things better at work, sadly that success was overshadowed by three things looming on the horizon.
Why did crap always descend on you in threes? She sat up in bed and wondered if she could play sick. Her work phone buzzed and she sighed as she picked it up. A long list came through in a text, Paul’s handy reminder for what she needed to do for tonight. Guess not!
Climbing out of bed, she checked her other messages and was relieved there was still no news from home—that was good wasn’t it? It’d been five days since she’d received the sad news that the family dog was finally succumbing to old age, and her Mom had rushed Pebbles to the vets. The border collie had been around for Cady’s entire teen years and, although she knew Pebbles had a good life and couldn’t possibly live forever, news of her dog’s sudden decline had generated an ache around her heart. What made it worse was that she wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Pebbles in person, as the collie was all the way across the country in Washington.
But it wasn’t just the waiting for bad news that was dragging her day before it had begun. The twentieth of December also marked the office Christmas party and her personal performance review day. Either one of those things would have been enough to make her drag her feet, but both of those together with Pebbles had totally zapped her strength.
When Cady went to make herself a coffee, she found Juliet at the kitchen table wrapping presents. Damn, she also needed to sort out her online shopping or Christmas was not going to be very festive this year. Actually, she didn’t even have a clue what she was going to do for the holidays. Her family had planned a cruise way back in July and were all spending Christmas floating around some Caribbean islands. Unfortunately for her, Paul had the M.K. Morning contract all set to fall smack in the middle of the holidays, and h
e made it damn clear there would be no vacations taken. When she broached the subject, he’d almost bit her head off and told her she should be grateful he wasn’t going to make them work Christmas Day.
Now she felt a little sore. The project closed early and while she knew her boss couldn’t have predicted things going so well, she felt cheated out of a Christmas away with her family.
“Any news on Pebbles?” Juliet looked up as Cady walked in.
“No, I’m hoping that means it’s good news.”
“Fingers crossed. I made coffee if you want some.”
“Thanks, Jules. Ugh, I really need it today.”
Juliet got up and poured her a cup. “How are you feeling about your review?”
Cady shrugged. “One minute, I feel good—Paul’s given me so much more responsibility this year—but the next… well, you know what it’s like. I keep thinking of all the mistakes I made at the beginning of the year and—”
“You’ll be fine. Those were nothing. Posting Paul’s sister’s birthday card shouldn’t even have been your responsibility, I’d have forgotten to do it on purpose just to teach him a lesson. And you can’t be held responsible for Paul’s favorite pair of pants getting lost at the dry cleaners. Most of the stuff he scolded you about isn’t even in your job description!”
Cady sighed. That was mainly true, but still her head was messing with her. “I just freak out about these personal performance things. Why the hell would he schedule them right before Christmas anyway? I can’t relax and get into the holiday spirit until I get through it.”
Miles' Christmas Roundup (Holiday Hunks Book 2) Page 4
