Page 2 of The Holiday Gift

“Beck wants to take you to the Christmas party this weekend. I understand there’s going to be dancing and a full dinner this year.”

Beck McKinley. The idea of dating the man took her by complete surprise. Yes, he was a great guy, with a prosperous ranch on the other side of Pine Gulch. She considered him a good friend but she had neveroncethought of him in romantic terms.

The unexpected paradigm shift wasn’t the only thing bothering her about what Chase had just said.

“Hold on. If he wanted to take me to the party, why wouldn’t Beck just ask me himself instead of feeling like he has to go through you first?”

That muscle flexed in his jaw again. “You’ll have to ask him that.”

The things he wasn’t saying in this conversation would fill a radio broadcast. She frowned as Chase pulled into the drive leading to his ranch. “You told him I’m already going with you, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. “No,” he finally said. “I didn’t.”

Unease twanged through her, the same vague sense that had haunted her at stray moments for several months. Something was off between her and Chase and, for the life of her, she couldn’t put a finger on it.

“Oh. Did you already make plans?” She forced a cheerful smile. “We’ve gone together the last few years so I just sort of assumed we would go together again this year but I guess we should have talked about it. If you already have something going, don’t worry about me. Seriously. I don’t mind going by myself. I’ll have plenty of other friends there I can sit with. Or I could always skip it and stay home with the kids. Jenna McRaven does a fantastic job with the food and I always enjoy the company of other grown-ups, but if you’ve got a hot date lined up, I’m perfectly fine.”

As she said the words, she tasted the lie in them. Was this weird ache in her stomach because she had been looking forward to the evening out—or because she didn’t like the idea of him with a hot date?

“I don’t have a date, hot or otherwise,” he growled as he pulled the pickup and trailer to a stop next to a small paddock near the barn of the Brannon Ridge Ranch.

She eased back in the bench seat, a curious relief seeping through her. “Good. That’s that. We can go together, just like always. It will be a fun night out for us.”

Though she knew him well enough to know something was still on his mind, he said nothing as he pulled off his sunglasses and hooked them on the rearview mirror. What did his silence mean? Didn’t hewantto go with her?

“Faith,” he began, but suddenly she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

“We’d better get the beautiful girl in your trailer unloaded before the kids get home.”

She opened her door and jumped out before he could answer her. Yes, sometimes she was like her son, Barrett, who would rather hide out in his room all day and miss dinner than be scolded for something he’d done. She didn’t like to face bad things. It was a normal reaction, she told herself. Hadn’t she already had to face enough bad things in her life?

After a moment, Chase climbed out after her and came around to unhook the back of the trailer. The striking black-and-white paint yearling whinnied as he led her out into the patchy snow.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Faith said, struck all over again by the horse’s elegant lines.

“Yeah,” Chase said. Again with the monosyllables. She sighed.

“Thanks for letting me keep her here for a couple of weeks. Louisa will be so shocked on Christmas morning.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.”

He guided the horse into the pasture, where his own favorite horse, Tor, immediately trotted over as Faith closed the gate behind them. As soon as Chase unhooked the young horse from her lead line, she raced to the other side of the pasture, mane and tail flying out behind her.

She was fast. That was the truth. Grateful for her own cowboy hat that shielded her face from the worst of the frost-tipped snowflakes, Faith watched the horse race to the other corner of the pasture and back, obviously overflowing with energy after the stress of a day at the auction and then a trailer ride with strangers.

“Do you think she’s too much horse for Lou?” she asked while Chase patted Tor beside her.

He looked at the paint and then down at Faith. “She comes from prime barrel racing stock. That’s what Lou wants to do. For twelve, she’s a strong rider. Yeah, the horse is only green broke but Seth Dalton can train a horse to do just about anything but recite its ABCs.”

“I guess that’s true. It was nice of him to agree to take her, with his crazy training schedule.”

“He’s a good friend.”

“He is,” she agreed. “Though I know he only agreed to do it as a favor to you.”

“Maybe it was a favor to you,” he commented as he pulled a bale of hay over and opened it inside the pasture for the horses.

“Maybe,” she answered. All three Dalton brothers had been wonderful neighbors and good friends to her. They and others in the close-knit ranching community in Cold Creek Canyon and around Pine Gulch had stepped up in a hundred different ways over the last two and a half years since Travis died.

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