Page 3 of Christmas at the Ranch
“Let me guess, because you got a boyfriend?”
I could have said yes, kept up the charade—but I shook my head. I didn’t want to lie to him. I liked him too much, already.
“Actually, I discovered the honor roll. And my desire to get into a good university.”
He looked away from me then, seemed thoughtful. “Well, sure,” he finally said. “I’ll take you on a tour of the ranch if you want. Just let me finish this.” He shook the beer bottle I had just returned to him and tipped it back.“Meantime, do you know how to skip rocks? They make a cool sound at this stage in the lake’s freezing process.”
Since I wasn’t pretending to be someone else anymore, I was able to tell him I was the kind of person who avoided throwing or catching things at all. This got me a rumble of a laugh that made me feel like the bonfire had transferred itself to my chest.
“I’ll teach you,” he said, moving down the shore, gathering stones as he went. When he returned, he set a pile of them at my feet.
“It’s all in the flick of the wrist,” he said—or something to that effect. I was distracted by how close he was to me then. And how good he smelled. Like leather soap and hay, pine needles and woodsmoke, and something else I suspected was justhim. I watched as he demonstrated, keeping the stone in his hand instead of releasing it. When he finally let the stone fly, the deep pinging sound it made as it ricocheted across frozen water reminded me of a video game or a spaceship’s controls.
“That can’t be real.” Much like the otherworldly groaning from beneath the lake ice I had listened to earlier, the noise the stone made as it skipped didn’t sound like it should be coming from a lake at all.
“Lakes in winter are full of surprises.”
Honestly? I was feeling the same way about him.
“Now you try,” he said, handing me a smooth, flat stone. My first attempt was a fail: I threw too hard and the stone landed several feet out with a single resonant clunk. He stepped even closer and said, “May I?” His hand hovered just above my wrist.
I wonder if that was the moment everything changed—or if everything had changed already by then. As I was standing on that shore with him, under the starriest winter sky I had ever seen, Tate Wilder touched me and a shower of sparks flooded my system. My stomach swooped, my knees weakened, I truly understood the meaning of the word “swoon.” This could not possibly be what it’s always like when one person puts their hand on another person’s wrist. Could it? Is this what I’ve been missing?
With the utmost effort, I dragged my thoughts away from how his touch made me feel and back to what he was trying to show me. I perfected the snapping motion and my stone did exactly what it was supposed to: ricocheted across the ice four times, then five, pinged and ponged while I cheered and laughed. So did he.
“Okay, so, that ranch tour,” he said. “Still interested?” He thought for a moment. “There’s also a party in town I was invited to, if that’s more your speed.”
“I want to see your ranch.”
I helped him put handfuls of snow on the fire to extinguish it. Then he led me down the snowy embankment into the valley.
Soon, we were standing at the edge of a paddock, watching a herd of about a dozen horses gallop in the moonlight. He whistled. One of them, her gray-white coat shining palely, trotted over. When she reached the fence, she nuzzled Tate’s shoulder while he laughed and patted her, then reached into the pocket of his plaid flannel jacket to pull out a bag of mints, those round white ones.
“I have to keep these on me at all times,” he said witha sweet laugh I wasalmostgetting used to. He popped a mint in his mouth, offered me one, then held a mint out to the horse while she stamped her hooves, appearing to protest the order in which the mints had been distributed. But then she picked the mint delicately from his palm.
“She’s beautiful,” I said.
“Isn’t she? Her name is Mistletoe. Because of the marking on her face, see?” He ran his finger along the pure white blaze running from between her eyes to just above her soft muzzle. Indeed, there was an unusual shape at the top, just like a little sprig of festive leaves.
I was wishing he would touch me that softly. I was wishing a lot of things.
“She was born on Christmas Eve, five years ago. Mistletoe was the perfect name for her.”
“She really seems to like you.” The horse was nuzzling him again, rubbing her face against his broad shoulders—and I have to admit, I was still envious.
“It’s the mints,” he said with another laugh, stroking her muscular neck while she nickered in his ear. “But yeah, she’s pretty much mine. I helped train her. We get along well.” Now his voice became even softer and the horse pricked her ears forward. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” he murmured.
Diary, I cannot stress this enough: Listening to Tate Wilder croon sweet nothings into a horse’s ear was probably the most charming thing I have ever experienced. I had the sudden urge to say something stupid like, “Well, since we’re standing near Mistletoe, maybe we should…”
But that’s not how the kissing happened.
He told me Mistletoe was expecting a foal in the new year and that he and his dad were so excited about this. He then pointed out the other horses in the small herd that were his favorites: a compact chestnut Thoroughbred gelding named Jax, a beautiful bay Dutch warmblood mare named Dolly, a sturdy quarter horse named Walt.
“But Mistletoe is the prettiest,” I found myself saying, earning a nod of approval and agreement from him.
He showed me the stables next. Inside, they were cozy, dimly lit. The air smelled of the bodies and warm breath of the horses in their stalls. Of sweet grain and hay, leather soap and dust. He explained that they boarded some of the horses, owned some of them, currently operated a small breeding facility—but that he wanted to start a riding school someday so they could keep all their horses, rather than have to sell any of them.
He asked me questions about the show team I had been on, and my time on the Trillium circuit. He asked if I missed it, and I told him that until tonight, I hadn’t realized just how much. Not the competition element, but being around horses.
