Page 32 of The Holiday Gift

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He already has Tor. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all for him to take care of two horses instead of only one.”

“Maybe if I lived here all the time,” Addie said in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s hard enough, only seeing my dad a few times a month. I hate when I have to go back to Boise. It would be even harder if I had to leave a horse I loved, too.”

Faith swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. The girl’s sad wisdom just about broke her heart. “I can understand that. But you do usually spend summers on the ranch,” she pointed out. “That’s the best time for riding horses anyway.”

“I guess.” Addie didn’t seem convinced. “I just wish I could stay here longer. Maybe come for the whole school year sometime, even if I wouldn’t be in the same grade with Louisa.”

“Do you think you might come here to go to school at some point?”

“I wish,” she said with a sigh. “My mom always says she would miss me too much. I guess she thinks it’s okay for Dad to miss me the rest of the time, when I’m with her.”

If she hadn’t been driving, Faith would have hugged her hard at the forlorn note in her voice. Poor girl, torn between two parents who loved and wanted her. It was an impossible situation for all of them.

She and Addie talked about the girl’s upcoming cruise over the holidays with her mother until they arrived at Chase’s ranch. When she pulled up to the ranch, she spotted him throwing a bale of hay into the back of his pickup truck like it weighed no more than a basketball.

She shivered, remembering the heat of his mouth on hers, the solid strength of those muscles against her.

On the heels of that thought came the far more disconcerting one born out of her conversation with Celeste.

The man is in love with you and when you sit there pretending you didn’t know, you are lying to me, yourself and especially to Chase.

Butterflies jumped around in her stomach and she realized her fingers on the steering wheel were trembling.

Oh. This would never do. This wasChase, her best friend. Shecouldn’tlet things get funky between them. That was exactly what she worried about most.

Celeste had to be wrong. Faith couldn’t accept any other possibility.

The moment she turned off the vehicle, Addie opened the door and raced to hug her dad.

Could she just take off now? Faith wondered. She was half-serious, until she remembered Addie’s things were still in the back of the pickup truck.

In an effort to push away all the weirdness, she drew in a couple of cleansing breaths. It didn’t work as well as she hoped but the extra oxygen made her realize she had probably been taking nervous, shallow breaths all morning, knowing she was going to have to face him again.

She pulled Addie’s sleeping bag out from behind the seat and pasted on a casual smile, knowing even as she did it that he would be able to spot it instantly as fake.

When she turned around, she found him and Addie just a few feet away from her. His eyes were shaded by his black Stetson and she couldn’t read the expression there but his features were still, his mouth unsmiling.

“Looks like we caught you going somewhere,” she said.

“Just down to the horse pasture to check on, uh, things there.”

If she hadn’t been fighting against the weight of this terrible awkwardness, she might have managed a genuine smile at his attempt be vague.

“You don’t need to use code. Your daughter is too smart for either of us.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” He smiled down at Addie and something seemed to unfurl inside Faith’s chest. He was an excellent father—and not only to his daughter.

Since Travis died, he had become the de facto father figure for Louisa and Barrett. Oh, Rafe and Flynn did an admirable job as uncles and showed her children how good, decent men took care of their families. But Louisa and Barrett turned to Chase for guidance most. They saw him nearly every day. He was the one Louisa had invited when her class at school had a father-daughter dance and that Barrett had taken along to the Doughnuts with Dad reading hour at school.

They loved him—and he loved them in return. That had nothing to do with any of the nonsense Celeste had talked about the night before.

“Did you have fun last night?” Chase asked Addie now.

“Tons,” she declared. “We popped popcorn and watched movies and played games. I beat everybody at UNO like three times in a row and Barrett said I was cheating only I wasn’t. And then we all opened our sleeping bags under the Christmas tree and put on another movie and I fell asleep. This morning we had hot chocolate with marshmallows and pancakes shaped like snowmen. It was awesome.”

“I’m so glad. Here, I can take that stuff.”

He reached to grab the sleeping bag and backpack from Faith. As he did, his hand brushed her chest. It was a touch that barely connected through the multiple layers she wore—coat, a fleece pullover and her silk long underwear—but she could hardly hold back a shiver anyway.

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