The Christmas Ranch

“You might not have meant to cause harm, but you saw what happened. You messed up, kid.”

The irony of those words seemed to reach out and grab him by the throat. Joey’s actions might have cost Hope Nichols a car window, something that easily could be replaced.

His actions toward her and her sisters had far more long-reaching consequences.

If his reflexes had been half a second faster, he could have taken out that jacked-up, trigger-happy rebel before the bastard squeezed off the shot that took her father forever.

“Will I have to pay for the window?” Joey asked. “I have eight dollars in my piggy bank. Will it be more than that?”

“We’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll pay her and then you can work to pay me back.”

The boy looked out the window. “I can shovel the snow.”

“Hate to break it to you, but I was going to make you do that anyway. That’s going to be one of your regular chores, helping me with that. We’ll have to figure out how to pay back Ms. Nichols some other way.”

As for the debt he owed her, Rafe knew there was no way he could repay her or her sisters.

Chapter Two

Something was very, very wrong.

Hope wanted to think she was only upset from the encounter with Rafe Santiago and his very cute but troublesome nephew. Perhaps she was overwrought as a natural by-product from first having her window shattered in such a shocking manner and then coming face-to-face with a big, dangerous-looking man.

But as she approached the Star N and especially The Christmas Ranch—her family’s holiday-themed attraction that covered fifteen acres of the cattle ranch—she couldn’t seem to shake the edgy, unsettled feeling.

Where was everyone? As she approached, she could see the parking lot in front of the charming and rustic St. Nicholas Lodge and it was completely empty, which made absolutely no sense.

There should at least be a maintenance crew getting ready for the season. It usually took several weeks before opening day—which traditionally happened with a grand lighting ceremony at dusk on the Friday after Thanksgiving—to spruce things up, touch up the paint, repair any damage done throughout the summer.

Instead, the place looked like a ghost town. All it needed were a few tumbleweeds blowing through to complete the picture.

Maybe everybody had simply gone home for the day, but she suddenly realized the reindeer enclosure was missing slats and reindeer, nor did it look like any of the colored lights had been hung on the fence or in the shrubs lining the road.

She drove farther down the road with cold air whistling in from the shattered window. As she approached the parking lot entrance, her stomach suddenly dropped and she hit the brakes.

A banner obscured the sign that usually read Welcome to The Christmas Ranch, where your holiday dreams come true.

In huge red letters on a white background, it read simply, Closed Indefinitely.

Closed. Indefinitely.

Shock rocketed through her faster than a speeding sleigh. Impossible! She couldn’t believe it. Surely her sisters wouldn’t have closed down The Christmas Ranch without telling her! This was a tradition, a gift from the Nichols family to the rest of Pine Gulch and this entire area of southeastern Idaho.

Families came from miles around to partake of the holiday spirit. All of it. The horse-drawn sleigh rides. The sledding hill. Visits with Santa Claus. The reindeer herd in the petting zoo and the gift shop filled with local handicrafts and the huge collection of Nativities, many which had been sent from around the world by her parents as they traveled around as missionaries.

Even the cheesy little animatronic Christmas village was a family favorite.

It was a place of magic and wonder, a little piece of holiday spirit for the entire community to enjoy.

How could her sisters and Auntie Mary close it, indefinitely or otherwise?

And how many shocks in the space of an hour could one woman endure? Her hands shook on the steering wheel as she drove the remaining three hundred feet to the driveway leading to the ranch house.

She drove up the winding road with her heart pounding. At the house—a rambling white two-story farmhouse with a wide front porch—she parked and stomped up the steps.

Though she was tempted to dramatically storm inside—she had spent all her teen years in this house, after all, and still considered it her own—she forced herself to stop at the front door and knock.

Though Aunt Mary still lived here with Faith, it was really her sister’s house now and Hope didn’t feel she had the right to just barge in. Living in other cultures most of her life, barring the years she spent here, had given her a healthy respect for others’ personal space.

Nobody answered for a few moments. She was about to pound harder when the door suddenly opened. Instead of Faith or Auntie Mary, her nephew, Barrett, stood on the other side of the door.

At the sight of her, his darling face lit up with a joy that seemed to soothe all the ragged, battered edges of her spirit and made the whole long journey worthwhile.

“Aunt Hope! What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were coming!”

“I’m sure it will be a big surprise to everybody,” she answered, a little grimly.

“The best, best, best kind,” her sweetly loyal nephew claimed as he wrapped his arms around her waist. She hugged him, feeling better already—even as she thought of the last little boy she had encountered, who hadn’t been nearly so enthusiastic about her presence.

“Oh, I missed you,” he exclaimed.

“I missed you, too, potato bug.”

Barrett was seven and most of their relationship had developed via email and the occasional video chat when the vast time zone conflicts could be worked out.

She hadn’t received nearly enough of these hugs in her lifetime, she suddenly decided, with an almost painful aching for family and home.

“Who’s at the door, Barrett?” she heard her sister call from the kitchen.

“Don’t tell her,” Hope said, managing a grin even though some part of her was still annoyed with her sister.

“Um, nobody,” he answered back, obviously not good at coming up with fibs on the fly.

“How can it be nobody?” her older sister said, and Hope could almost hear the frown in her voice.

Holding a finger to her mouth for Barrett, she headed down the hall toward the kitchen where her sister’s voice originated.

In the doorway, she caught a glimpse of Faith at the work island in the center of what was really command central of the house. Her sister’s dark hair was held back in a messy ponytail and she looked tired, with deep circles under her eyes and lines of strain bracketing her mouth.

More of Hope’s half-formed displeasure at her sister slipped away. Her sister had lost so much—everything!—and Hope hadn’t been here for her.

“Seriously, Barrett. Who was at the door? Was it UPS again, delivering something for Auntie Mary?”

The boy giggled, a sweet, pure sound that drew Faith’s attention from the vegetables she was cutting at the island. She looked up and her jaw sagged.

“Hope! What in the world?”

Hope mustered a smile. “Surprise.”

Her sister wiped her hands on a dish towel and came toward her. Faith had lost weight. Hope was struck again by how fragile and slight she seemed, as if a sharp gust of wind from a December storm would blow her clear out to the barn.

Those lines around her mouth had been etched by pain, she suddenly realized. Her sister had lost the love her life, her childhood sweetheart, a mere four months earlier in a tragic accident and had barely had time to grieve. She would be reeling from the loss of her husband for a long time.

Travis Dustin had been killed after he had rolled an all-terrain vehicle while rounding up cattle in the mountains. He hadn’t been wearing a helmet and had been killed instantly, leaving behind Faith and their two children.

Hope still couldn’t believe he was gone. If she closed her eyes, she could almost picture him the last time she saw him alive, nearly two years earlier when she had been able to come home briefly between assignments in time for New Year’s Eve. He had been a dear friend as well as a beloved brother-in-law and his loss had hit her hard.

She had been here four months earlier for his funeral but had only been able to stay a few days. It hadn’t been long enough.

Hope crossed to her sister and hugged her hard, wishing she could absorb some of her pain.

They were extremely close to each other and to Celeste, their sibling relationship forged through their unorthodox upbringing and the tragedy that had changed all of them so long ago.

Faith rested her cheek against Hope’s. “Oh, what a wonderful surprise. I thought you were going on to Nepal after you finished your teaching stint in Morocco.”

“That was the plan, but I decided to take a break for a few months to figure things out. I thought maybe, I don’t know, I could take a rest from traveling. Maybe stay and help you out around here for a while.”

“Oh. It will be so wonderful to have you here longer than a few days!”

“I thought I could stay through the holidays, if you’ll have me.”

While Faith smiled at her with apparent delight, Hope didn’t miss the sudden wariness in her gaze. “This is your home, too. You’re always welcome here, you know that.”

She paused and gave Hope a searching look. “I guess you must have seen the sign at the Ranch on the way in.”

Hope tried to summon a little of the anger that had accompanied her on the short drive to the ranchhouse but it was impossible to dredge up more than a little kernel at this sister she had always loved and admired for her courage, her sweetness, her practicality—all the things Hope didn’t have.

Her sister had suffered great pain and somehow continued to trudge on, though Hope had no idea how she was managing it.

“I saw the sign. I don’t understand what it means.”

“It means we’re not opening The Christmas Ranch this year,” Barrett announced, sounding just as disgruntled as Hope had been when she first spotted the empty parking lot.

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “That’s what I suspected when I saw the sign. I still can’t quite believe it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Faith’s mouth compressed into a tight line. “I would have told you eventually, if you had asked how things were going with The Christmas Ranch, but I didn’t see any point in stirring the pot when you weren’t here anyway.”

She couldn’t blame her sister for that, she supposed. Her family had no reason to believe this year would be any different from the last handful, when she hadn’t been able to manage coming home for longer than a day or two for a quick visit, if that.

“What gives, though? Why are we Closed Indefinitely?”

Her sister pounded a little harder on the dough she was working on the table. “Auntie Mary and I decided to take a break this year while we figure things out.”

She gave a meaningful look to her son. “And speaking of Mary—Barrett, go find her. I think she went into her room earlier to do some knitting.”

“You mean to take a nap,” he said with a grin as he headed out of the room.

“A nap?” she asked as soon as her nephew was out of earshot. The idea of her vibrant aunt taking a nap was as foreign to her as she imagined Couscous Friday—a Moroccan cultural tradition—would be to her family.

“She takes a nap just about every afternoon. She starts in with watching a television show and usually dozes off in the middle of it for a few minutes. Don’t forget, she’s in her seventies and not as energetic as she used to be, especially since Uncle Claude died.”

Hope hated thinking of her aunt slowing down. Mary was her aunt by marriage, wed to the girls’ father’s oldest brother. She and her husband had become the only thing they had to parents after their parents’ tragic deaths only a few months apart.

“You’re telling me she wants to close the ranch, too?”

“Celeste voted, too. It was a mutual decision. We didn’t have much of a choice.”

“But people around here love it. It’s as much a tradition as the giant Christmas tree in the town square and the ice rink on the tennis courts behind city hall.”

“You think I don’t know how much people love the place? I completely get it. This is my home, remember? You haven’t been around since you graduated from high school and left for your study abroad in Europe.”

Though she didn’t think her sister meant the words as a barb, they stuck sharply anyway.

“But the Ranch is hemorrhaging money, sis. Money we just don’t have. Last year it was the stupid motor on the rope tow that had to be replaced, the year before that the roof on St. Nicholas lodge. The liability insurance alone is killing us.”

Hope frowned. “But Travis loved it. You know he did. Uncle Claude loved it! It was his life’s work. He loved everything about Christmas and found the greatest delight in his life by helping everyone else celebrate the holidays. How can you just close the door on all that tradition?”

“Uncle Claude is gone now. So is Tr-Travis.” Her voice wobbled a little on her husband’s name and Hope felt small and selfish for pushing her about The Christmas Ranch.

“It’s just me, Mary and Celeste—and Mary isn’t as young as she used to be and Celeste works fifty-hours a week at the library in town. That leaves mostly me and it’s all I can do to keep the cattle part of the Star N functioning without Travis. We wouldn’t have survived harvest and round-up if Chase Brannon hadn’t stepped in to help us and sent a couple of his guys on semipermanent loan, but he’s got his own ranch to run.”

“I’m here now. I can help. I want to help.”

“For how long this time?”

The question was a legitimate one. Hope didn’t know how to answer. She had finished her teaching obligation in Morocco and had been actively looking around for another one, but at this point her plans were nebulous at best.

“I don’t have anything scheduled. I can stay through the holidays. Let me run The Christmas Ranch. You can focus on the cattle side of things at the Star N and I’ll take care of everything on the holiday side.”

If she thought her sister would jump at the chance for the help, she would have been disappointed. Faith only shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s more than just wearing an elf costume and taking tickets. You haven’t been here during the season in years, not since Claude expanded the operations. You’ve got no experience.”

“Except for the five years I spent helping out when I was a kid, when we all pitched in. Those were magical times, Faith.”

Her sister’s expression indicated she didn’t particularly agree. Faith had never much liked the Christmas village, Hope suddenly remembered.

When they had come to Cold Creek Canyon and the Star N to live with Mary and Claude so long ago, they had all been traumatized and heartbroken. Three lost young girls.

Their father had died on Christmas day. The next year, Claude had put them all to work in the concessions stand at what was then only the reindeer petting zoo and the Christmas village with the moving figures. Her older sister had been reluctant to help, and never really wanted much of anything to do with it. She had only agreed after Claude had continued to hint how much he needed her help, in that gentle way of his.

No wonder she had been so quick to close the attraction at the first opportunity.

“Well, I thought they were magical times. I love The Christmas Ranch. I can make a success of it, I swear.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. Thanksgiving is next week. There’s simply no time to get everything ready in a week and a half!”

She didn’t know why this was so important to her but she couldn’t bear the idea of no Christmas Ranch. Only at this very moment did she realize how much she had been looking forward to it this year.

She opened her mouth to say so but a flurry of movement in the doorway distracted her. Her aunt appeared, with Barrett close behind.

Her heart squeezed when she saw that it did, indeed, look as if Mary had been napping. The graying, old-fashioned bun she always wore was lopsided and her eyes were still a little bleary. Still, they lit up when they saw her.

“Oh, Hope, my darling! What a wonderful surprise!”

Mary opened her plump arms and Hope sagged into them. This. She hadn’t realized how very much she needed the steady love of her family until right this moment.

She could smell the flowery, powdery scent of her aunt’s White Shoulders perfume and it brought back a flood of memories.

“Why didn’t you call us, my dear?” Mary asked. “Someone could have driven to the airport to pick you up. Even one of Chase’s ranch hands. Did you fly into Jackson Hole or Idaho Falls?”

“I actually flew into Salt Lake City last night and bought a pickup truck near a hotel by the airport. I figured I would need some kind of four-wheel-drive transportation while I was here anyway and I didn’t know if you had any extra vehicles around the ranch.”

“We could have found something for you, I’m sure. But what’s done is done.”

Hope didn’t mention the noisy engine or the fact that it now was missing most of the passenger-side window.

She made a mental note to find some plastic she could tape up to keep the elements out until she could take it somewhere in town to have the window replaced.

“How long are you staying?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Fae and I were just talking about that. What would you say if I told you I would like to run The Christmas Ranch this year.”

For just an instant, shock and delight flashed in her aunt’s warm brown eyes, then Mary glanced at Faith. Her expression quickly shifted. “Oh. Oh, my. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I don’t think you have any idea how much work it is, honey.”

She had lived on her own all over the world. She could do hard things—and maybe it was time her family accepted that.

“I know it will be, but I can handle it, I promise. You won’t even have to lift a finger. I’ll do all of it.”

“But, my dear. The reindeer. The sleigh rides. It’s too much work for you.”

The reality was daunting. A tiny little voice of doubt whispered that she didn’t have the first idea what she was getting into but Hope pressed it down. This was suddenly of vital importance to her. She had to open the ranch. It was a matter of family pride—and belief in herself, too.

“I’ll figure something out. I might not be able to do everything, but even a limited opening is better than nothing. Please. Just let me do this. It’s important to me. I have such wonderful memories of The Christmas Ranch, just like everyone in town who has been coming here for years.”

Aunt Mary was plainly wavering—and in the long run, the Star N was still her ranch and she ought to have final say. Her aunt glanced at Faith, who was pounding the pizza dough so hard it would be a miracle if she didn’t pummel all the gluten right out of it.

“The decision to cancel the whole season was a huge disappointment, and not just to me,” Mary admitted. “You wouldn’t believe the comments I’ve been getting in town.”

Hope decided to press her advantage. “It’s our civic duty to keep it open this year, don’t you agree? Why, it wouldn’t be the holidays in Pine Gulch without The Christmas Ranch.”

“Don’t go overboard,” Faith muttered.

“Please. Just give me the chance. I won’t let you down.”

She could see her sister was wavering. Faith let out a deep sigh just as her niece Louisa skipped into the kitchen.

“Mom, there’s a strange pickup in the driveway. It’s kind of junky,” she said, then stopped when she spotted Hope.

“Aunt Hope! Hi!”

“That’s my junky pickup in the driveway. I’ll move it.”

“What are you doing here?” her niece asked as she gave her a big hug.

“Guess what? She’s going to run The Christmas Ranch!” Barrett exclaimed. “We’re going to open after all!”

“Really?” Louisa exclaimed. “Oh, that would be wonderful!”

“We haven’t decided that yet,” Faith said firmly. “Children, go wash up for dinner and then you can set the table. I’m about to throw the pizza in. Aunt Celeste will be home any minute and we can eat.”

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Louisa said with another hug.

At least a few members of her family were happy to see her. Celeste wasn’t here yet but she and her younger sister had always been close—of course, she thought she and Faith were close, yet her older sister fairly radiated disapproval and frustration.

As soon as the children left the room, Hope suddenly realized her sister wasn’t just frustrated. She was angry.

Hope again felt small and selfish. If she were in Faith’s shoes, she would be furious, too. Her sister was doing her best to keep the family together. She was managing the ranch, taking care of her children, trying to keep everything running while still reeling from her husband’s death.

Now Hope came in and expected to shake everything up and do things her way.

“There is no money, Hope. Do you not get that? You’ll have virtually no operating budget. You’ll barely make enough to pay the salaries for Santa Claus and anybody you hire to work in the gift shop.”

Oh. Right. How was she going to find people to help her in only nine days?

Mary could help line her up with the seasonal employees who had worked at the Ranch in previous years. Surely a few of them might still be looking for work.

“You said it’s been hemorrhaging money. Is it really that bad?”

“People just aren’t coming to holiday attractions like this one much anymore. The only reason we kept it going was because Uncle Claude loved it so and Travis wanted to honor his memory.”

Her sister’s words were sobering.

“You’ve always been enthusiastic about things, Hope. It’s one of the best things about you. You jump right in and try to fix things. But you can’t fix this. The Christmas Ranch is a losing proposition. We just can’t afford it anymore. There’s no money. We’re holding on by our fingernails as it is. If things don’t pick up, we’re going to have to sell off part of the cattle herd and possibly some of the pasture land along the creek. Wade Dalton made us a more than fair offer and Mary and I are seriously considering it.”

“Oh, Faith. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know the whole picture either, until after Travis died. He was very good at putting on a cheerful face.”

Faith was quiet for a moment, then walked around the island. “I should probably tell you, I had a very respectable offer for the reindeer. A guy with a petting zoo in Pocatello. We’ve talked about it and were planning to take that, too. He was interested in taking them before the holidays.”

The small herd of reindeer had been part of the ranch as long as she had lived here. They were part of the family, as far as Hope was concerned.

“Sell the reindeer?”

“I know,” Mary piped in. “It breaks my heart too.”

“Did you sign any papers?”

“No, but...”

“Don’t. Please, Faith. Wait until after Christmas. Give me this season to prove I can turn things around. I know I can do it. I am going to make money with The Christmas Ranch this year, enough to tide the Star N over the rest of the year. You’ll see.”

Her sister sighed. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”

“Maybe not, but that could be a good thing, right? Ignorance is bliss, and all that.”

“Oh, Hope. You always could talk me into anything.”

Mary gave a short laugh. “That’s my girls!”

Relief and excitement and no small amount of nerves washed over Hope like an avalanche. “You won’t be sorry. This is going to be our best year ever, I promise.”

She had no idea how she would keep that promise but she intended to try.