Page 70 of Rancher's Return

She’d seen a movie when she was a kid calledA Little Princess, and there was a scene where one of the girl’s rooms had been transformed for Christmas as if by magic, with warm shoes and cozy blankets and finery.

Lily always felt that way coming to this house. Coming into this room.

Like it was a magic miracle that could all disappear in a puff of glitter.

It made her ache.

It was such a strange thing. She and her mother had lived hand to mouth for most of her childhood. It had been comfortable, and it had been nice. Her mother was such a hard worker.

But her stepdad wasrich. His whole family was rich. They had multiple houses. Her aunt Tansy had a private jet. It was just a whole new kind of life, one she’d been thrust into when she was seventeen. She’d gone to college not long after, so she dipped in and out of this life, and she’d never gotten used to it.

She knew that her stepbrothers were just as overawed by it as she was most days. They had been adopted by her stepdad when they were teenagers, so the change to their lives had come around when it had come to hers. In that sense, they were united. If she didn’t feel so awkward around Colton, she might feel a kinship to him.

He, however, didn’t seem to feel any awkwardness at all. Not that she could see. But then, maybe that was because Colton wasn’t awkward, ever.

No. He was just hot. Overly confident in all things. It was deeply annoying. Because she just didn’t feel like she was... It was hard to articulate. He seemed to have taken to everything in his whole life better than she did. He was gorgeous. Self-assured. He seemed to step into his role in their family with ease. He had become a Carson effortlessly.

She still felt very much like she had been grafted onto the tree, not because of the way anybody treated her. Of course not. The Carsons were wonderful. But she just mostly felt like the girl who had been raised by a single mother, whose dad was an absolute dickhead and who had lovely grandparents who lived in a modest house on a regular old street.

It still felt like she was going to a museum when she visited the Carsons. With their massive mansion in Lone Rock, and yet...

And yet there was something reassuring about this place. She couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

Her phone buzzed, and she took it out of her pocket.

She had missed a call from her mother.

She wrinkled her nose, and then hit the button to call her back. She started to walk down the stairs with her phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi Mom,” she said. “Sorry. I got here safely, the roads were sketchy but I’m fine. I just put my bag in my room. I don’t know why my phone didn’t ring.”

“Thank God. Because apparently the highway between Lone Rock and the coast is closed.”

“What?”

“The road is completely impassable.”

She’d been coming from the north, and her family was coming in from the east.

“I don’t...” Her head was spinning. She didn’t want to spend Christmas without her family. Surely it would clear up in the next couple of days.

She heard tires on the gravel driveway out front.

“Hang on. Somebody’s here.” She craned her neck to try and see out the front door window. “It might be... Did you get food delivery?”

“Yes. And Christmas dinner is going to be catered.” They always did that. They got a fully cooked meal delivered.

Her mom did meal prep for a living so the holidays were a time when she absolutely didn’t prep anything.

“Surelyyou’re going to be able to get here for Christmas.”

This was starting to feel like a bad holiday special.

“I don’t know. It’s going to depend. They can plow the road, but I imagine it’s going to take several days to clear since it’s both the snow and the downed trees, and that’s if the weather behaves itself. We got about an hour from home and had to turn around, and from what I heard it was even worse up ahead.”

“I really want to see you,” she said.

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