Page 51 of The Holiday Gift

“I can do it, no problem—as long as you don’t mind if Addie comes along.”

Celeste gave him a grateful smile. “Oh, thank you! And Addie would be more than welcome. She’s such a reader she probably would have earned the party anyway. Olivia, Lou and Faith are my volunteer helpers and I’m sure they would love Addie’s help.”

“Great. I’ll plan on it, then. Just let me know what time.”

They worked out a few more details, all while he was aware of Faith’s stiff expression.

At least he would get to see her the next day, even if she clearly didn’t want him there.

* * *

She lived in the most beautiful place on earth.

Faith lifted her face to the sky, pale lavender with the deepening twilight. As she drove the backup team of draft horses around the Star N barn so she could take them down to the lodge late Sunday afternoon, the moon was a slender crescent above the jagged Teton mountain range to the east and the entire landscape looked still and peaceful.

Sometimes she had to pinch herself to believe she really lived here.

When she was a girl, she had desperately wanted a place to call her own.

She had spent her entire childhood moving around the world while her parents tried to make a difference. She had loved and respected her parents and understood, even then, that they genuinely wanted to help people as they moved around to impoverished villages setting up medical clinics and providing the training to run them after they left.

She wasn’t suretheyunderstood the toll their self-ordained missionary efforts were taking on their daughters, even before the terrifying events shortly before their deaths.

Faith hadn’t known anything other than their transitory lifestyle. She hadn’t blinked an eye at the primitive conditions, the language barriers, making friends only to have to tearfully leave them a few months later.

Still, some part of her had yearned forthis, though she never had a specific spot in mind. All she had really wanted was a place to call her own, anywhere. A loft in the city, a split-level house in the suburbs, a double-wide mobile home somewhere. She hadn’t cared what. She just wanted roots somewhere.

For nearly sixteen years, that had been her secret dream, the one she hadn’t dared share with her parents. That dream had become reality only after a series of traumas and tragedies. The kidnapping. The unspeakable ordeal of their month spent in the rebel camp. Her father’s shocking death during the rescue attempt, then her mother’s cancer diagnosis immediately afterward.

She had been shell-shocked, grieving, frightened out of her mind but trying to put on a brave front for her younger sisters as they traveled to their new home in Idaho to live with relatives they barely knew.

When Claude picked them up at the airport in Boise and drove them here, everything had seemed so strange and new, like they had been thrust into an alien landscape.

Until they drove onto the Star N, anyway.

Faith still remembered the moment they arrived at the ranch and the instant, fierce sense of belonging she had felt.

In the years since, it had never left her. She felt the same way every time she returned to the ranch after spending any amount of time away from it. This was home, each beautiful inch of it. She loved ranching more than she could have dreamed. Whoever would have guessed that she would one day become so comfortable at this life that she could not only hitch up a team of draft horses but drive them, too?

The bells on the horses jingled a festive song as she guided the team toward the shortcut to the Saint Nicholas Lodge. Before she could go twenty feet, she spotted a big, gorgeous man in a black Stetson blocking their way.

“I thought I was the hired driver for the night,” Chase called out.

She pulled the horses to a stop and fought down the butterflies suddenly swarming through her on fragile wings.

“I figured I could get them down there for you. Anyway, we just bought new sleigh bells for the backup sleigh and I wanted to try them out.”

“They sound good to me.”

“I think they’ll do. Where’s Addie?”

“Down at the lodge, helping Olivia and Lou set things up for the party. We stopped there first and Celeste sent me up here to see if you needed help with the team.”

Faith fought a frown. She had a feeling her sister sent him out here as yet another matchmaking ploy. Her family was going to drive her crazy. “I’ve got things under control,” she lied. She was only recently coming to see it wasn’t true, in any aspect of her life.

“That’s good,” he said as he greeted the horses, who were old friends of his. “How’s Hope?”

“I checked on her a few hours ago and she is feeling fine. She had a good night and has had no further symptoms today. Looks like the crisis has passed.”

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