The Holiday Gift

“Really, it doesn’t bother me to skip it this year if you want to make other plans.”

“I don’t want to skip it,” he growled. “I want to go. With you. On a date.”

He intended to stress the last word, to make it plain this wouldn’t be two buddies just hanging out together, like they always did. As a result, the word took on unnatural proportions and he nearly snapped it out until it arced between them like an arrow twanged from a crossbow.

Eyes wide, she gazed at him for a long moment, clearly startled by his vehemence. After a moment, she nodded. “Okay. That’s settled, then. We can figure out the details later.”

Nothing was settled. He needed to tell her date was the operative word here, that he didn’t want to take her to the party as her neighbor and friend who gave her random advice on a barrel racing horse for her daughter or helped her with the hay season.

He wanted the right to hold her—to dance with her and flirt and whisper soft, sexy words in her ear.

How the hell could he tell her that, after all this time, when he had so carefully cultivated a safe, casual relationship that was the exact opposite of what he really wanted? Before he could figure that out, an SUV he didn’t recognize drove up the lane toward his house.

“Were you expecting company?” she asked.

“Don’t think so.” He frowned as the car pulled up beside them—and his frown intensified when the passenger door opened and a girl jumped out, then raced toward him. “Daddy!”

Chapter Two

He stared at his eleven-year-old daughter, dressed to the nines in an outfit more suited to a photo shoot for a children’s clothing store than for a working cattle ranch.

“Adaline! What are you doing here? I didn’t expect to see you until next weekend.”

“I know, Dad! Isn’t it great? We get extra time together—maybe even two whole weeks! Mom pulled me out of school until after Christmas. Isn’t that awesome? My teachers are going to email me all my homework so I don’t miss too much—not that they ever do anything the last few weeks before Christmas vacation anyway but waste time showing movies and doing busywork and stuff.”

That sounded like a direct quote from her mother, who had little respect for the educational system, even the expensive private school she insisted on sending their daughter to.

As if on cue, his ex-wife climbed out of the driver’s side of what must be a new vehicle, judging by the temporary license plates in the window.

She looked uncharacteristically disordered, with her sweater askew and her hair a little messy in back where she must have been leaning against the headrest as she drove.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” she said. “We took a chance. I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon. Why didn’t you answer?”

“My phone ran out of juice and I forgot to take the charger to the auction with us. What’s going on?”

He knew it had to be something dramatic for her to bring Addie all this way on an unscheduled midweek visit.

Cindy frowned. “My mother had a stroke early this morning and she’s in the hospital in Idaho Falls.”

“Oh, no! I hadn’t heard. I’m so sorry.”

He had tried very hard to earn the approval of his in-laws but the president of the Pine Gulch bank and his wife had been very slow to warm up to him. He didn’t know if they had disliked him because Cindy had been pregnant when they married or because they didn’t think a cattle rancher with cow manure on his boots was good enough for their precious only child.

They had reached a peace accord of sorts after Addie came along. Still, he almost thought his and Cindy’s divorce had been a relief to them—and he had no doubt they had been thrilled at her second marriage to an eminently successful oral surgeon in Boise.

“The doctors say it appears to be a mini stroke. They suspect it’s not the first one so they want to keep her for observation for a few days. My dad said I didn’t have to come down but it seemed like the right thing to do,” Cindy said. “Considering I was coming this way anyway, I didn’t think you would mind having extra visitation with Addie, especially since she won’t be here over the holidays.”

He was aware of a familiar pang in his chest, probably no different from what most part-time divorced fathers felt at not being able to live with their children all the time. Holidays were the worst.

“Sure. Extra time is always great.”

Cindy turned to Faith with that hard look she always wore when she saw the two of them together. His ex-wife had never said anything but he suspected she had long guessed the feelings he had tried to bury after Faith and Travis got married.

“We’re interrupting,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Not at all,” Faith assured her. “Please don’t be sorry. I’m the one who’s sorry about your mother.”

“Thanks,” Cindy said, her voice cool. “We spent an hour at the hospital before we came out here and she seems in good spirits. Doctors just want to keep her for observation to see if they can figure out what’s going on. Dad is kind of a mess right now, which is why I thought it would be a good idea for me to stay with him, at least for the first few days.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Thanks for taking Addie. Sorry to drop her off without calling first. I did try.”

“It’s no problem at all. I’m thrilled to have her.”

The sad truth was, they got along and seemed to parent together better now that they were divorced than during the difficult five years of their marriage, though things still weren’t perfect.

“I packed enough for a week. To be honest, I don’t know what I grabbed, since I was kind of a mess this morning. Keith was worried about me driving alone but he had three surgeries scheduled today and couldn’t come with me. His patients needed him.”

“He’s a busy man,” Chase said. What else could he say? It would have been terribly hypocritical to lambast another man in the husband department when Chase had been so very lousy at it.

“I should get back to the hospital. Thanks, Chase. You’re a lifesaver.”

“No problem.”

“I’m so sorry about your mother,” Faith said.

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

Cindy opened the hatchback of the SUV and pulled out Addie’s familiar pink suitcase. He hated the tangible reminder that his daughter had to live out of a suitcase half her life.

After setting the suitcase on the sidewalk, Cindy went through her usual drawn-out farewell routine with Addie that ended in a big hug and a sloppy kiss, then climbed into her SUV and drove away.

“My feet are cold,” Addie announced calmly, apparently not fazed at all to watch her mother leave, despite the requisite drama. “I’m going to take my suitcase to my room and change my clothes.”

She headed to the house without waiting for him to answer, leaving him alone with Faith.

“That was a curveball I wasn’t expecting this afternoon,”

“Strokes can be scary,” Faith said. “It sounds like Carol’s was a mild one, though, which I’m sure is a relief to everyone. At least you’ll get to spend a little extra time with Addie.”

“True. Always a bonus.”

He had plenty of regrets about his life but his wise, funny, kind daughter was the one amazing thing his lousy marriage had produced.

“I know this was a busy week for you,” Faith said. “If you need help with her, she’s welcome to spend time at the Star N. Louisa would be completely thrilled.”

He had appointments all week with suppliers, the vet and his accountant, but he could take her with him. She was a remarkably adaptable child.

“The only time I might need help is Friday night. Think Aunt Mary would mind if she stayed at your place with Lou and Barrett while we’re at the party?”

Her forehead briefly furrowed in confusion. “Oh. I almost forgot about that. Look, the situation has changed. If you’d rather stay home with Addie, I completely understand. I can tag along with Wade and Caroline Dalton or Justin and Ashley Hartford. Or, again, I can always just skip it.”

Was she looking for excuses not to go with him? He didn’t want to believe that. “I asked you out. I want to go, as long as Mary doesn’t mind one more at your place.”

“Addie’s never any trouble. I’m sure Mary will be fine with it. I’ll talk to her,” she promised. “If she can’t do it, I’m sure all the kids could hang out with Hope or Celeste for the evening.”

Her sisters and their husbands lived close to the Star N and often helped with Barrett and Louisa, just as Faith helped out with their respective children.

“I’ll be in touch later in the week to work out the details.”

“Sounds good.” She glanced at her watch. “I really do need to go. Thanks again for your help with the horse.”

“You’re welcome.”

As she climbed into the Star N king-cab pickup, he was struck by how small and delicate she looked compared to the big truck.

Physically, she might be slight—barely five-four and slender—but she was tough as nails. Over the last two and a half years, she had worked tirelessly to drag the ranch from the brink. He had tried to take some of the burden from her but there was only so much she would let him do.

He stepped forward so she couldn’t close the door yet.

“One last thing.”

“What’s that?”

Heart pounding, he leaned in to face her. He wanted her to see his expression. He wanted no ambiguity about his intentions.

“You need to be clear on one thing before Friday. I said it earlier but in all the confusion with Addie showing up, I’m not sure it registered completely. As far as I’m concerned, this is a date.”

“Sure. We’re going together. What else would it be?”

“I mean a date-date. I want to go out with you where we’re not only good friends hanging out on a Friday night or two neighboring ranchers carpooling to the same event. I want you to be my date, with everything that goes along with that.”

There. She couldn’t mistake that.

He saw a host of emotions quickly cross her features—shock, uncertainty and a wild flare of panic. “Chase, I—”

He could see she wasn’t even going to give him a chance. She was ready to throw up barriers to the idea before he even had a chance. Frustration coiled through him, sharp as barbed wire fencing.

“It’s been two and a half years since Travis died.”

Her hands clamped tight onto the steering wheel as if it were a bull rider’s strap and she had to hang on or she would fall off and be trampled. “Yes. I believe I’m fully aware of that.”

“You’re going to have to enter the dating scene at some point. You’ve already got cowboys clamoring to ask you out. McKinley is just the first one to step up, but he won’t be the last. Why not ease into it by going out with somebody you already know?”

“You.”

“Why not?”

Instead of answering, she turned the tables on him. “You and Cindy have been divorced for years. Why are you suddenly interested in dating again?”

“Maybe I’m tired of being alone.” That, at least, was the truth, just not the whole truth.

“So this would be like a...trial run for both of us? A way to dip our toes into the water without jumping in headfirst?”

No. He had jumped in a long, long time ago and had just been treading water, waiting for her.

He couldn’t tell her that. Not yet.

“Sure, if you want to look at it that way,” he said instead.

He knew her well enough that he could almost watch her brain whir as she tried to think through all the ramifications. She overthought everything. It was by turns endearing and endlessly frustrating.

Finally she seemed to have sifted through the possibilities and come up with a scenario she could live with. “You’re such a good friend, Chase. You’ve always got my back. You want to help make this easier for me, just like you helped me buy the horse for Louisa. Thank you.”

He opened his mouth to say that wasn’t at all his intention but he could see by the stubborn set of her jaw that she wasn’t ready to hear that yet.

“I’ll talk to Aunt Mary about keeping an eye on the kids on Friday. We can work out the details later. I really do have to go. Thanks again.”

Her tone was clearly dismissive. Left with no real choice, he stepped back so she could close the vehicle door.

She was deliberately misunderstanding him and he didn’t know how to argue with her. After all these years of being her friend and so carefully hiding his feelings, how did he convince her he wanted to be more than that?

He had no idea. He only knew he had to try.

* * *

Faith refused to let herself panic.

I want you to be my date, with everything that goes along with that.

Despite her best efforts, fear seemed to curl around her insides, coating everything with a thin layer of ice.

She couldn’t let things change. End of story. Chase had been her rock for two years, her best friend, the one constant in her crazy, tumultuous life. He had been the first one she had called when she had gone looking for Travis after he didn’t answer his cell and found him unconscious and near death, with severe internal injuries and a shattered spine, next to his overturned ATV.

Chase had been there within five minutes and had taken charge of the scene, had called the medics and the helicopter, had been there at the hospital and had held her after the doctors came out with their solemn faces and their sad eyes.

While she had been numb and broken, Chase had stepped in, organizing all the neighbors to bring in the fall harvest. He had helped her clean up and streamline the Star N operation and sell off all the unnecessary stock to keep their head above water those first few months.

Now the ranch was in the black again—thanks in large part to the crash course in smart ranch practices Chase had given her. She knew perfectly well that without him, there wouldn’t be a Star N right now or The Christmas Ranch. She and her sisters would have had to sell off the land, the cattle, everything to pay their debts.

Travis hadn’t been a very good businessman. At his death, she’d found the ranch was seriously overextended with creditors and had been operating under a system of gross inefficiencies for years.

She winced with the guilt the disloyal thought always stirred in her, but it was nothing less than the truth. If her husband hadn’t died and things had continued on the same course, the ranch would have gone bankrupt within a few years. Through Chase’s extensive help, she had been able to turn things around.

The ranch was doing so much better. The Christmas Ranch—the seasonal attraction started by her uncle and aunt after she and her sisters came to live with them—was finally in the black, too. Hope and her husband, Rafe, had done an amazing job revitalizing it and making it a powerful draw. That success had only been augmented by the wild viral popularity of the charming children’s book Celeste had written and Hope had illustrated featuring the ranch’s starring attraction, Sparkle the Reindeer.

She couldn’t be more proud of her sisters—though she did find it funny that, of the three of them, Faith seemed the one most excited that Celeste and Hope had signed an agreement to allow a production company to make an animated movie out of the first Sparkle book.

Despite a few preproduction problems, the process was currently under way, though the animated movie wouldn’t come out for another year. The buzz around it only heightened interest in The Christmas Ranch and led to increased revenue.

The book had helped push The Christmas Ranch to self-sufficiency. Without that steady drain on the Star N side of the family operation, Faith had been able to plow profits back into the cattle ranch operation.

As she drove past the Saint Nicholas Lodge on the way to the ranch house, she spotted both of her sisters’ vehicles in the parking lot.

After taking up most of the day at the auction, she had a hundred things to do. As she had told Chase, Barrett and Louisa would be home from school soon. When she could swing it, she liked being there to greet them, to ask about their day and help manage their homework and chore responsibilities.

On a whim, though, she pulled into the parking lot and hurriedly texted both of her children as well as Aunt Mary to tell them she was stopping at the lodge for a moment and would be home soon.

The urge to talk to her sisters was suddenly overwhelming. Hope and Celeste weren’t just her sisters, they were her best friends.

She had to park three rows back, which she considered a great sign for a Tuesday afternoon in mid-December.

Tourists from as far away as Boise and Salt Lake City were making the trek here to visit their quaint little Christmas attraction, with its sleigh rides, the reindeer herd, the village—and especially because this was the home of Sparkle.

As far as she was concerned, this was just home.

The familiar scents inside the lodge encircled her the moment she walked inside—cinnamon and vanilla and pine, mixed with old logs and the musty smell of a building that stood empty most of the year.

She heard her younger sisters bickering in the office before she saw them.

“Cry your sad song to someone else,” Celeste was saying. “I told you I wasn’t going to do it again this year and I won’t let you guilt me into it.”

“But you did such a great job last year,” Hope protested.

“Yes I did,” their youngest sister said. “And I swore I wouldn’t ever do it again.”

Faith poked her head into the office in time to see Hope pout. She was nearly three months pregnant and only just beginning to show.

“It didn’t turn out so badly,” Hope pointed out. “You ended up with a fabulous husband and a new stepdaughter out of the deal, didn’t you?”

“Seriously? You’re giving the children’s show credit for my marriage to Flynn?”

“Think about it. Would you be married to your hunky contractor right now and deliriously happy if you hadn’t directed the show for me last year—and if his daughter hadn’t begged to participate?”

It was an excellent point, Faith thought with inward amusement that Celeste didn’t appear to share.

“Why can’t you do it?” Celeste demanded.

“We are booked solid with tour groups at the ranch until Christmas Eve. I won’t have a minute to breathe from now until the New Year—and that’s with Rafe making me cut down my hours.”

“You knew you were going to be slammed,” Celeste said, not at all persuaded. “Talk about procrastination. I can’t believe you didn’t find somebody to organize the variety show weeks ago!”

“I had somebody. Linda Keller told me clear back in September she would do it. I thought we were set, but she fell this morning and broke her arm, which leaves me back at square one. The kids are going to be coming to practice a week from today and I’ve got absolutely no one to lead them.”

Hope shifted her attention to Faith with a considering look that struck fear in her heart.

“Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “You can forget that idea right now.”

“Why?” Hope pouted. “You love kids and senior citizens both, plus you sing like a dream. You even used to direct the choir at church, which I say makes you the perfect one to run the Christmas show.”

She rolled her eyes. Hope knew better than to seriously consider that idea. “Right. Because you know I’ve got absolutely nothing else going on right now.”

“Everyone is busy. That’s the problem. Whose idea was it to put on a show at Christmas, the busiest time of the year?”

“Yours.” Faith and Celeste answered simultaneously.

Hope sighed. “I know. It just seemed natural for The Christmas Ranch to throw a holiday celebration for the senior citizens. Maybe next year we’ll do a Christmas in July kind of thing.”

“Except you’ll be having a baby in July,” Faith pointed out. “And I’ll be even more busy during the summer.”

“You’re right.” She looked glum. “Do you have any suggestions for someone else who might be interested in directing it? I would hate to see the pageant fade out, especially after last year was such a smash success, thanks to CeCe. You wouldn’t believe how many people have stopped me in town during the past year to tell me how much they enjoyed it and hoped we were doing another one.”

“I believe it,” Celeste said. “I’ve had my share of people telling me the same thing. That still doesn’t mean I want to run it again.”

“I wasn’t even involved with the show and I still have people stop me in town to tell me they hope we’re doing it again,” Faith offered.

“That’s because you’re a Nichols,” Hope said.

“Right. Which to some people automatically means I burp tinsel and have eggnog running through my veins.”

Celeste laughed. “You don’t?”

“Nope. Hope inherited all the Christmas spirit from Uncle Claude and Aunt Mary.”

The sister in question made a face. “That may be true, but it still doesn’t give me someone to run the show this year. But never fear. I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeves.”

“I can help,” Celeste said. “I just don’t want to be the one in charge.”

Faith couldn’t let her younger sister be the only generous one in the family. She sighed. “Okay. I’ll help again, too. But only behind the scenes—and only because you’re pregnant and I don’t want you to overdo.”

Hope’s eyes glittered and her smile wobbled. “Oh. You’re both going to make me cry and Rafe tells me I’ve already hit my tear quota for the day. Quick, talk about something else. How did the auction go today?”

At the question, all her angst about Chase flooded back.

She suddenly desperately wanted to confide in her sisters. That was the whole reason she’d stopped at the lodge, she realized, because she yearned to share this startling development with them and obtain their advice.

I want you to be my date, with everything that goes along with that.

What was she going to do?

She wanted to ask them but they both adored Chase and it suddenly seemed wrong to talk about him with Hope and Celeste. If she had to guess, she expected they would probably take his side. They wouldn’t understand how he had just upended everything safe and secure she had come to depend upon.

When she didn’t answer right away, both of her sisters looked at her with concern. “Did something go wrong with the horse you wanted to buy?” Celeste asked. “You weren’t outbid, were you? If you were, I’m sure you’ll be able to find another one.”

She shook her head. “No. We bought the horse for about five percent under what I was expecting to pay and she’s beautiful. Mostly white with black spots and lovely black boot markings on her legs. I can’t wait for Louisa to see her.”

“I want to see her!” Hope said. “You took her to Chase’s pasture?”

“Yes, and a few moments after we unloaded her, Cindy pulled up with Addie. Apparently Carol Johnson had a small stroke this morning and she’s in the hospital in Idaho Falls so Cindy came home to be with her and help her father.”

At the mention of Chase’s ex-wife, both of her sisters’ mouths tightened in almost exactly the same way. There had been no love lost between any of them, especially after Cindy’s affair with the oral surgeon who eventually became her husband.

“So Cindy just dropped off Addie like UPS delivering a surprise package?” Hope asked, disgust clear in her voice.

“What about school?” ever-practical Celeste asked. “Surely she’s not out for Christmas break yet.”

“No. She’s going to do her homework from here.” She paused, remembering the one other complication. “I haven’t asked Mary yet if she’s available but in case she’s not, would either of you like a couple of extra kids on Friday night? Three, actually—my two and Addie. Chase and I have a...a thing and it might run late.”

“Oh, I wish I could,” Hope exclaimed. “Rafe and I promised Joey we would take him to Boise to see his mom. We’re staying overnight and doing some shopping while we’re there.”

“How is Cami doing?” Faith asked. “She’s been out of prison, what, three months now?”