Hers for the Holidays

Most of the old, low-profile, Western-style buildings were still in place here, though there were a few new constructions. Across the street she saw an architects’ office and a new medical practice that looked pretty upscale for the small town. The street was repaved, the sidewalks new, with large wooden raised gardens placed intermittently along the main street. Where plants would grow in the summer, they were now covered with snow.

As a kid, she had often gone to the pizza shop down the road with her friends after football games and to the tack store with her father. Every year, she would bake dozens of cookies with her mother for the Fourth of July picnic that always accompanied fireworks at the edge of town. Clear River always had its own little holiday parades with their local bands and town officials, and all of the kids would do something creative to show off. The town itself was often more like an extended family, everyone knowing everyone else. It had been a nice way to grow up. Mostly.

She’d been the Fireworks Princess when she was thirteen—the girl with most spark—she remembered with a smile. She’d had a lot of good times here, before things had gone bad.

The same huge spruce grew in front of town hall, even bigger than it had been, and was decorated for the season. That would have been done Thanksgiving weekend, and the annual Winter Festival, a Clear River tradition, should be coming up soon, but Lydia didn’t see any announcement. Had it been canceled? If so, that was unfortunate. Snowman-building contests, craft booths, hot cocoa and treats...it was always the perfect build-up to Christmas.

Ah, well. Things changed. She sure had.

Hailey’s, the inn where she’d eaten, had always been a mainstay in the town, and was still mostly the same as she remembered. It was the only place in town that rented rooms, though she’d noticed some of the other ranches had taken to including tourism packages, probably to stay financially viable. Hailey’s had also always been a hangout for the local cowboys, one of whom had wanted to get friendlier than she wanted tonight.

She was no stranger to one-night stands—she preferred them, in fact—but not here, not now, and certainly not with some drunk ranch worker. Apparently he’d thought, because of her look or because she was there alone, that she might want some fun. She’d set him straight and fast.

The cold crept over her body as she stood there, and she decided she’d had enough walking down memory lane. Fat snowflakes began to fall as if on cue, sticking to her face and hair as she made her way to her car. This would be the first major storm of the season.

A slight shiver of excitement worked its way down her spine. She’d always liked the first big snowstorm. Unlike summer thunderstorms—which sometimes brought nightmarish tornadoes and dangerous lightning strikes that scared the wits out of her—the winter storms were relatively peaceful and soft, snow piling up like a secret overnight.

Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed anyone following her until she heard the footsteps, a man’s low chuckle. Lydia hadn’t lived on the street in some time, but she recognized the tightening of her stomach, the tingle at the base of her neck that signaled danger. She’d learned not to ignore such things and picked up her step, reaching into her bag to grab her keys, holding them firmly, sharp ends pointing out. She wished she had her mace, but hadn’t counted on needing it out here.

She pressed the button to open the doors of her rental, but wasn’t quite fast enough; they caught up with her as she opened the door of the car, the good ol’ boy from the roadhouse and a friend, slamming it shut before she could get inside.

“Hey, darlin’,” said the one who had joined her in her booth earlier. “Want some company on the dark ride home?”

“Told you already, I’m not interested,” she said rudely, making eye contact to let them know she wasn’t afraid.

She was though, and willed someone to drive down the damned street already. It would figure that every time she left her house she bumped into someone from her past, but now, when she wished someone would appear, everyone was inside, hunkering down before the storm.

“Well, you don’t know that, do you? You think you’re from the city, so you’re better than us? We can live pretty fast here, too,” he said.

The men closed in, and panic clawed her chest. She stepped backward, wondering if she made a run for it, toward the roadhouse, how far she’d get.

“Get lost. I will press charges, and I’ll make sure you don’t walk away from whatever you have in mind.” While she talked, she pressed the buttons on the key fob—this thing had to have some kind of car alarm she could set off.

Sure enough, as she pressed the buttons several times, the lights and horn suddenly started blaring in annoying rhythm, filling the street with sound. As the cowboy pulled back in surprise, survival adrenaline kicked in. Lydia brought her foot up, stomping the foot of the one closest to her and then kneed him in the family jewels, sending him howling to the snowy surface as she got inside of her car and locked the doors.

Gunning the engine, she noticed a few people emerging from the restaurant and a local drugstore to see what was happening, probably making sure it wasn’t their own car being broken into. The cowboys got out of the way as she did a quick U-turn in the center of the road, nearly running over the foot of the guy who had threatened her. He swore loudly after her as she raced away.

As she caught her breath and reassured herself that she was safe, she glanced to the side, and nearly hit the brakes as she caught a glimpse of a face she thought she recognized.

Ely?

His hood up, face shadowed, the man who sat in the dark cab of a truck looked like him, but...that wasn’t possible.

She watched as the truck lit up in her rearview and pulled away in the opposite direction, making her shake her head as she slowed down and got hold of herself. Great, now she was imagining things.

Her slamming heartbeat finally calmed as she drove, and she shook off the remnants of panic from the confrontation. She was fine. She had handled things herself, as she always did. If Lydia knew anything, it was how to take care of herself. She’d been doing it ever since she left home.

A momentary spark of worry had her checking her rearview for headlights, worried the cowboys might take after her—those guys wouldn’t enjoy being bested by a girl—but nothing was there. Most likely, they would go home, pass out and hope their wives or girlfriends didn’t get word of their bad behavior. There was nothing to worry about, she reassured herself.

Snowflakes picked up more density on the windshield, and she didn’t really relax until she made it back to the ranch. Smitty and Kyle were in the bunkhouses, if she needed them, anyway.

Ely’s face flashed again in her mind as she parked the car in the garage and sat there for a moment, thinking. The guy in the truck couldn’t possibly have been him, though she had felt the same keen sense of awareness she had felt the first moment she had ever seen him, in a hospital emergency room. She’d been there with Tessa, when Jonas’s vision had returned. She and Ely had gone for a cup of coffee. After that, they went to her place.

It was only one night, but she’d replayed it in her head about a thousand times, much to her annoyance.

Lydia had made sure he knew the rules—she didn’t do relationships. At the time, he’d just ended something bad with another woman, but he was cute and she took him home. That was all there was to it. Lydia preferred not to get too wrapped up in details—they made everything messy and complicated. Sex was fun, and she liked to keep it that way.

But she hadn’t ever felt a connection—physical and otherwise—with anyone like she had with Ely. It had rattled her hard enough to send her running in the other direction, and fast. He had, too.

As it turned out, though, he had probably regretted their night together more than she imagined. That had hurt a bit. She had remained friends with a couple of the guys she’d slept with, and Ely’s clear desire to have nothing to do with her after their night together had been, well, hurtful. It was like he was ashamed of being with her, which she supposed he might have been. She knew that she wasn’t his usual type; he was more into classy, professional, coiffed chicks.

Yes, she had looked up his ex on the internet. Sadly. Suffice it to say they didn’t run in the same circles at all.

She shook it off. Being here was making her moody. Dealing with losing her mother, her past, and all the complications of her inheritance were bad enough, and the holidays always messed with people’s heads. It was why she normally left and went to a beach somewhere over Christmas and ignored it all.

But the nagging feeling that something was lacking in her life wouldn’t quite go away. Being in Tessa’s wedding, and seeing how happy she and Jonas were, didn’t help matters any. It made Lydia think maybe she could find the same kind of real connection with someone, something that would last.

Crazy. She’d always enjoyed her freedom and her work had become her life. She’d never wanted anything else. She was happy as she was. If it wasn’t broken, don’t fix it. She had more than she ever imagined having, and needed to be content with that.

But even if she did ever find something permanent, it wouldn’t be with Ely Berringer, so she had to get him out of her head.

Easier said than done, apparently.

2

ELY LEFT HIS TRUCK about a hundred feet back on the road that led to Lydia’s ranch and walked the rest of the way toward the house so as not to be spotted. He’d followed her to make sure no one else did—namely, the guys who had cornered her by her car. He’d intended to step in, but she’d taken care of things pretty well on her own.

Lydia was one tough cookie, no doubt about it, he thought with a spark of admiration. Even so, Ely wanted to pound the guy who had tried to mess with her. He settled for calling in an anonymous tip to the local authorities before he drove away.

As she’d passed him on the road, he’d made the mistake of looking toward her car. For a split second, their eyes met—she’d seen him. He thought his goose was cooked, but she’d continued to drive and was clearly too panicked to have registered that it was him. His hood had been up, face obscured by the snow and the dark.

But it had been a close call.

He made his way to the edge of the trees in time to watch her pull her car into the detached garage. What was she doing? She sat for a while before she got out and walked around to the door of the huge ranch house. His hoodie wasn’t exactly the right gear for this kind of surveillance, but he hadn’t expected to be out in the woods that evening when he’d headed down for supper. He put it out of his mind, ignored the cold. Not important. He’d make sure she was safely tucked in, then he’d go back.

The area was very remote, rural. The next ranch was at least five miles away. An animal sound—a horse—came from one of the barns, breaking the temporary silence, and Ely shook his head.

None of it seemed like the Lydia he knew.

Then again, no one seemed to know her. Not really. Least of all him.

Unlike the cheerfulness of the town, the ranch was cold and dark except for some lights in a few of the outbuildings away from the house. No Christmas lights or such hung here. That was okay—it made it easier for him to move around undetected.

After she went inside, he watched the lights in the windows as she turned them on, moving through the house. The next thing he knew, he saw her slim form behind the shimmer of curtains upstairs.

Undressing.

He followed the movement of her silhouetted form as she lifted her sweater up over her head, her back forming a graceful arch as her arms rose, crossed and dispensed of the garment.

When she bent to shuck her jeans, he swallowed hard, taking in her profile, the slope of her breasts, the smooth plane of her stomach, curve of her hip. He told himself to look away, though he couldn’t seem to do it.

For a second, he wondered which Lydia was real. The leather-clad, tattooed temptress or the soft shadow of the woman hidden behind the curtains?

Was what had happened between them that night just another act, or had any of that been real? Ely shook his head hard, as if to break the spell. When he looked again, she’d moved away from the window. What was he doing here? Sometimes, there was a thin line between surveillance and Peeping Tom. Time to head out.

First, he walked back to the house, up to the porch. He didn’t have to worry about leaving a path. His footsteps were sure to be buried beneath several feet of snow by morning.

Walking up to the door, he tugged on it to make sure it was locked—it was. He walked around and did the same to the back, finding it locked securely, as well.

Good.

He ran back to his truck and climbed in, turning on the heat. However, as he put it in Reverse, the visibility out the back windows was minimal and he misjudged the distance to the drainage ditch that ran along the side of the road. The next thing he knew, the back passenger side of the vehicle lurched down the slope.

Cursing, he knew he’d have to call for a tow. And it would probably be a while before they could get to him in this weather. He tried some more, rocking the truck back and forth, spinning the tires, and knowing he was probably only literally digging himself in deeper.

And figuratively, as well, since his options were few.

He called his driving association, only to have his suspicions confirmed. It would be a few hours before they could come pull him out; by then, it might be morning. In this snow, the truck would be buried. He told them to never mind.

He muttered another curse, wondering if he should blow his cover with Lydia or walk back to town. Both had their dangers.

He returned to the house, looking up at the still-lit window, pondering his options. He really didn’t have any. Walking unfamiliar roads back to town, at night, in this weather, was not smart. Resigned to his fate, he started to move to the porch, his inner alarm sounding just a few seconds too late. He wasn’t alone.

He knew this primarily from the impression that a gun, very likely a double-barreled shotgun, was making against his spine.

“Enjoy standing around peeking in women’s windows, huh?” someone said, and Ely tensed as he felt a little extra push from the nozzle of the gun.

“I wasn’t making any trouble. I’m a friend of Lydia’s,” Ely said evenly. “I was coming over to check on her and make sure she was okay, but then my truck went off the road back near the entrance to the ranch.”

“Really? So why not call for help?”

“I did. Tow trucks are busy tonight.”

“You could have called Lydia. One of us would have come down with a winch, pulled you out. If you’re such a friend and all.”

Clearly the guy wasn’t going to put the gun down, and Ely didn’t blame him entirely.

“My name is Ely Berringer. I’m here from Philadelphia and I know Lydia from her shop, and she’s best friends with my sister-in-law, but she doesn’t know that I’m in town.”

“Yeah, well, let’s see what Lydia—or the sheriff—have to say about it.”

Ely blew out a breath, knowing there was no way he could convince the guy to change his mind. He marched toward the house, with his hands still up, prodded by the weapon pushed into his back. He could probably disarm the man, but it was risky. Better to just let Lydia clear up the misunderstanding.

Though she might tell the guy to shoot him, Ely thought sardonically.

As the man knocked sharply on the door, Ely found he was holding his breath again, wondering what Lydia’s reaction would be. His concern was short-lived as he heard her yell, and then a shotgun blast echoed through the night a few seconds later.

Ely ignored the push of the gun into his own back as he snapped around, easily disarming his captor with instincts and skill born of years of military training. The other man fell to the porch floor with a grunt, unharmed. Ely took the weapon for himself and ran around back of the house, his heart in his throat, unsure of what he’d find when he got there.

* * *

LYDIA COULDN’T SLEEP even after she was ready for bed, the events of the evening still replaying in her mind. There’d been a few problems since she’d gotten back into town, and maybe those cowboys coming after her was a coincidence, but something in her gut told her it wasn’t.

The vet’s report on the sick cow had been in the mail when she’d come home tonight—the animal had been poisoned. She was lucky it had only been one, and that the cow would be fine.

The night after she had arrived, she’d found that a message, Get Out, had been spray painted on her porch.”

None too subtle there.

Horses had been let out of the barn at night that they had to find before they froze to death, and she had been mysteriously locked inside the garage while looking for something of her father’s. Luckily she’d been able to call for help before she had to drive her car through the door to escape. Then, some fencing had been destroyed on the back acres of the fields, and Smitty had had to spend two days fixing it.

Kyle said someone was trying to warn her off—no kidding. But she couldn’t leave. She’d reported the incidents to a deputy who had dutifully written everything down, but said there was nothing he could do unless she caught someone in the act.

She wasn’t even convinced that all of the events were connected. Maybe Smitty or Kyle had accidentally locked her in the garage, not knowing she was there, or forgotten to lock the barn, and had just not wanted to own up to it. Sportsmen on ATVs or snowmobiles, or even elk, sometimes crashed through fences. The spray painting, and the cow poisoning, however, were no joke.

If someone wanted her gone, all she could do was make it clear as possible that she would be out of here—in a few weeks.

Tonight, however, had been a completely different thing. Those cowboys had nothing good on their mind, and for the first time since she’d come home, she’d really felt unsafe. Ranches picked up temporary labor all the time, men passing through, looking for work, but something about those two men had seemed off. Like they didn’t belong here.

She shook her head. How would she know? She didn’t belong here anymore, either.

She forced herself to stop thinking about it by emptying one of the upstairs closets. She didn’t want strangers going through her family’s things. Besides, a hard look at her past would be a good reminder why she didn’t belong here anymore, and why she could never belong to a guy like Ely.

It was a difficult enough task, physically and emotionally, to distract her somewhat from her troubles. In the middle of a box of photo albums, she pulled out her high school yearbook. Freshman year. Everything had been so different then, she thought. But so what? She’d had some bad breaks, but she’d recovered, right? Made something of herself. She had a good life, a new life, though somewhere down deep, she was never really sure if she deserved it.

Back then, she never would have questioned her future. She knew exactly what she’d wanted. To work the ranch, raise horses and have the same kind of life she’d known up until that point. She’d assumed she would marry one of the rodeo champs that she and her girlfriends had huge crushes on and have several pretty, well-behaved children. It was what most thirteen-year-old girls wanted. She turned to the back of the book, her eyes scanning the signatures until she found a familiar one.

Always be best of the best, Ginny.

Ginny had meant best of best friends. And they had been. Until that summer before their junior year when everything had changed. Life had changed, and all their pretty, perfect dreams had evaporated in one cruel slam of fate. But it hadn’t been fate—it had been Lydia’s fault. None of it would have happened if not for her.

Lydia sucked in a breath, closing the book sharply. She sat there on the side of her mother’s bed, looking around her at a lifetime’s collection of memories and...stuff. There was so much to go through. How was she supposed to do this by herself? She could barely get through one closet. But the idea of anyone else going through it was unbearable. Besides, there was no one else. She was on her own, like she’d been for a long time.

Putting the book down, she blocked out her worry and lay back on the bed. Tomorrow, she’d come up with a plan for dealing with it all. Right now, she was too overwhelmed and exhausted to think of anything.

Sleep crept over her before she had a chance to get back up, change or make her way to her own room. In her dreams, she was with Ginny, playing and laughing under broad, blue Montana skies.

That summer after their freshman year in high school had been perfect and full of promise. The pimages** ran through Lydia’s mind like an old slide presentation, but it all felt real, making her smile in her sleep.

Then abruptly there was noise, a rush of hooves and screams, and the eerie beeping of some machine by the side of Ginny’s hospital bed. Lydia sat with her friend, who, when she awakened, stared at Lydia accusingly.

“Why would you do this to me?” Ginny said, and then turned her face away, other angry voices chiming in. How could you do this? What were you thinking? You ruined her life forever, you selfish little bitch.

Guilt sliced Lydia to her bones, because she knew they were right. Footsteps pounded loud somewhere behind her; a nurse, or someone coming to tell her she had no right to be there. Not after what she’d done. Get out. If you’re smart, you’ll never come back.

Lydia awoke with a start, curled up on the bed, the light still on, tears coursing from her eyes.

Dammit.

The nightmares had stopped years ago, though she never really forgot. Being here brought it all back in stark, painful color.

So did the fear that followed her every time she went into town, worry that she would bump into one of Ginny’s family and have to face it all over again. The recrimination, the blame. Her mother said it was all in the past, and that Ginny was doing fine. That she had married, gotten on with her life.

Really? How fine could she be, paralyzed from the waist down, her dreams shattered?

Lydia was glad if Ginny had managed to find some happiness, but that didn’t make what she had done any more forgivable. It was why she had to get out of here as soon as she could wrap up her obligations. She didn’t like living with all these ghosts; this was all in the past and it had to be left there.

Looking at the clock through bleary eyes, she saw she had only dozed off for less than a half hour, and she was intent on doing more work. It had to be done if she was getting out of here.

She froze as a sound traveled up from the first floor.

Footsteps.

She’d heard them in her dream, too, but now she was awake. Had she imagined it? These were heavy, hard and making their way through the bottom floor.

Holding her breath, she walked carefully to the edge of the door and heard the squeak that came from the floorboard between the dining room and the kitchen.

She wasn’t imagining it. Someone was down there. She thought she heard some voices, as well. Male voices.

Smitty? Kyle? But why would they be in the house in the middle of the night? Had the cowboys who’d harassed her earlier followed her home, or found out where she lived? But she had locked the doors; made sure to do so. Suddenly Clear River was feeling a lot more dangerous than south Philly.

Another crash made her jump, and she knew she had to do something. Slipping from the room, she edged down the hall to the stairs. At the end of the hall was her father’s gun rack; his favorite shotgun was still there.

Holding her breath, she made it to the gun rack, and retrieved the weapon. Her intruder’s footsteps were only yards away, traversing the kitchen. Lydia held her breath and moved in that direction. Stopping just outside the kitchen, she swallowed with resolve and snapped the barrel of the gun into place. Silence.