One Season And Dynasties Collection

Flynn had spent six months renovating and adding on to his late grandmother’s old house down the road, a project which had been done just days before their wedding in August.

Chase remembered that lovely ceremony on the banks of the Cold Creek, when the two of them—so very perfect for each other—had both glowed with happiness.

Watching them together had only reinforced his determination to forge his own happy ending with Faith, no matter what it took. He had spent the past few months touching her more in their regular interactions, teasing her, trying anything he could think of to convince her to think of him as more than just her friend and confidant.

Right now he felt further from that goal than ever.

Sometimes their Sunday evening dinners would stretch long into the night when they would watch a movie or play games at the kitchen table, but with the storm, everyone seemed in a hurry to leave. They stayed only long enough to clean up the kitchen and then only he, Mary, Faith and her children were left.

“How’s the homework situation?” Faith asked from her spot at the kitchen sink drying dishes, a general question aimed at both of her children.

“I had a math work sheet but I finished it on the bus on the way home from school Friday,” Louisa said. Chase wasn’t really surprised. She was a conscientious student who rarely left schoolwork until Sunday evening.

“How about you, Barrett?”

“I’m almost done. I just had a few problems in math and they’re hard. I can ask my teacher tomorrow. We might not even have school anyway so maybe I won’t have to turn them in until Tuesday.”

“Let’s take a look at them,” Chase said.

Barrett groaned a little but went to his room for his backpack.

“You don’t have to do that,” Faith said.

“I don’t mind,” he assured her.

They sat together at the desk in the great room while the Christmas lights glowed on the tree and a fire flickered in the fireplace. It wasn’t a bad way to spend a Sunday night.

After only three or four problems, a lightbulb seemed to switch on in the boy’s head—as it usually did.

“Oh! I get it now. That’s easy.”

“I told you it was.”

“It wasn’t easy the way my teacher explained it. Why can’t you be my teacher?”

He tried not to shudder at the suggestion. “I’m afraid I’ve already got a job.”

“And you’re good at it,” Mary offered from the chair where she sat knitting.

“Thanks, Mary. I do my best,” he answered humbly. He loved being a rancher and wanted to think he was a responsible one.

Now that the boy seemed to be in the groove with his homework, Chase lifted his head from the book and suddenly spotted Faith in the mudroom, putting on her winter gear. He had been so busy helping Barrett, he hadn’t noticed.

“Where are you off to? Not out into that wind, I hope.”

“I just need to make sure the tarp over the outside haystack is secure. Oh, and check on Rosie,” she said, referring to one of her border collies. “She was acting strangely this morning, which makes me think she might be close to having her puppies. I’ve been trying to keep her in the barn but she wanders off. Before the storm front moves in, I want to be sure she’s warm and safe.”

Chase scraped his chair back. “I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t need to. You just spent a half hour working on Barrett’s homework. I’m sure you’ve got things to worry about at your place.”

He couldn’t think of anything. He generally tried to keep things in good order, addressing problems when they came up. He always figured he couldn’t go wrong following his father’s favorite adage: an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. Better to stop trouble before it could start.

“I’ll help,” he said. “I’ll check the hay cover while you focus on Rosie.”

Her mouth tightened for an instant but she finally nodded and waited while he threw his coat on, then together they walked out into the storm.

Darkness came early this time of year near the winter solstice but a few high-wattage electric lights on poles lit their way. The wind howled viciously already and puffed out random snowflakes at them, hard as sharp pebbles.

Below the ranch house, he could see that the parking lot of The Christmas Ranch—which had been full when he pulled up—was mostly cleared out now, with a horse-drawn sleigh on what was probably its last go-round of the evening making its way back to the barn near the lodge.

He would really like to find time before Christmas to take Addie on a ride, along with Faith and her children.

The Saint Nicholas Lodge glowed cheerily against the cold night. Beyond it, the cluster of small structures that made up the life-size Christmas village—complete with indoor animatronic scenes of elves hammering and Santa eating from a plate of cookies—looked like something from a Christmas card.

Her family had created a celebration of the holidays here, unlike anything else in the region. People came from miles around, eager to enhance their holiday spirit.

“It’s nice that Hope has hired enough staff now that she doesn’t have to do everything on her own,” he said.

“With the baby coming, Rafe insisted she cut back her hours. No more fourteen-hour days, seven days a week from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.”

Those hours were probably not unlike what Faith did year-round on the Star N—at least during calving and haying season and roundup. In other words, most of the year.

She worked so hard and never complained about the burden that had fallen onto her shoulders after Travis died.

When they reached the haystack, tucked beneath a huge open-sided structure with a metal roof, he heard the problem before he saw it, the thwack of a loose tarp cover flapping in the wind. Each time the wind dug underneath the tarp, it pulled it loose a little further. If they didn’t tie it down, it would eventually pull the whole thing loose and she would not only lose an expensive tarp but potentially the whole haystack to the storm.

“That’s gotten a lot worse, just in the last few hours,” she said, pitching her voice louder to be heard over the wind. “I should have taken time to fix it earlier when I first spotted the problem, but I was doing about a hundred other things at the time. I was going to fix it in the morning, but I didn’t take into account the storm.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “We’ll have it safe and secure in no time. It might take both of us, though—one to hold the flap down and hold the flashlight while the other ties it.”

They went to work together, as they had done a hundred times before. He wrestled the tarp down, which wasn’t easy amid the increasing wind, then held it while she tied multiple knots to keep it in place.

“That should do it,” she said.

“While we’re out here, let’s tighten the other corners,” he suggested.

When he was satisfied the tarp was secure—and when the bite of the wind was close to becoming uncomfortable—he tightened the last knot.

“Thanks, Chase,” she said.

“No problem. Let’s go see if Rosie is smart enough to stay in from the cold.”

She clutched at her hat to keep the wind from tugging it away and they made their way into the relative warmth and safety of her large, clean barn.

The wind still howled outside but it was muted, more like a low, angry buzz, making the barn feel like a refuge.

“That wind has to be thirty or forty miles an hour,” she said, shaking her head as she turned on the lights inside the barn.

“At least this storm isn’t supposed to bring bitter cold along with it,” he said. “Where’s Rosie?”

“I set her up in the back stall but who knows if she decided to stay put? I really hope she’s not out in that wind somewhere.”

Apparently the dog knew this cozy spot was best for her and her pups. They found her lying on her side on an old horse blanket with five brand-new white-and-black puppies nuzzling at her.

“Oh. Will you look at that?” Faith breathed. Her eyes looked bright and happy in the fluorescent barn lights. “Hi there, Rosie. Look at you! What a good girl. Five babies. Good job, little mama!”

She leaned on the top railing of the stall and he joined her. “The kids will be excited,” he observed.

“Are you kidding? Excited is an understatement. Puppies for Christmas. They’ll be thrilled. If I let her, Louisa probably would be down here in a minute and want to spend the night right there in the straw with Rosie.”

The dog flapped her tail at the sound of her name and they watched for a moment before he noticed her water bowl was getting low. He slipped inside the stall and picked up the food and the water bowls and filled them each before returning them to the cozy little pen.

For his trouble, he earned another tail wag from Rosie and a smile from Faith.

“Thank you. Do you think they’ll be warm enough out here? I can take them into the house.”

“They should be okay. She might not appreciate being moved now. They’re warm enough in here and they’re out of the wind. If you’re really worried about it, I can bring over a warming lamp.”

“That’s a good idea, at least for the first few days. I’ve got one here. I should have thought of that.”

She headed to another corner of the barn and returned a moment later with the large lamp and they spent a few moments hanging it from the top beam of the stall.

“Perfect. That should do the trick.”

While the wind howled outside, they stood for a while watching the dog and her pups beneath the glow of the heat lamp. He wasn’t in a big hurry to leave this quiet little scene and he sensed Faith wasn’t either.

“Seems like just a minute ago that she was a pup herself,” she said in a soft voice. “I guess it’s been a while, though. Three years. She was in the last litter we had out of Lillybelle, so she would have been born just a few months before Travis...”

Her voice broke off and she gazed down at the puppies with her mouth trembling a little.

“Life rolls on,” he said quietly.

“Like it or not, I guess,” she answered after a moment. “Thanks for your help tonight, first with Barrett’s homework and then with storm preparation. You’re too good to us.”

“You know I’m always happy to help.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she whispered.

He frowned. “Shouldn’t be what?”

She kept her attention fixed on the wriggling puppies. “Celeste gave me a lecture the other night. She told me I’m not being fair to you. She said I take you for granted.”

“We’re friends. Friends help each other. You feed me every Sunday and usually more often than that. Addie practically lives over here when I have visitation and also ranch work I can’t avoid. And you bought my groceries the other day, right?”

“Don’t forget to take them home when you go.” She released a heavy sigh. “We both know the ledger will never be balanced, no matter how many groceries I buy for you. The Star N wouldn’t have survived without you. I don’t know why you are so generous with your time and energy on our behalf but I hope you know how very grateful we are. How very grateful I am. Thank you. And I hope you know how...how much we all love you.”

He looked down at her, wondering at the murky subtext he couldn’t quite read here.

“I’m happy to help out,” he answered again.

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.

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.”