Page 31 of A Christmas Miracle at the Ranch
We laughed until it faded into a quiet kind of stillness.
She tapped the edge of the photo album. “Do you think you’ll always stay at Starcrest?”
I hesitated.
“I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know if I can call Starcrest home without…” My throat closed, the words catching on a barrier of old fears and a fragile new hope. I couldn't say out loud that I didn't know if home existed without the one person who might make it feel new again.
A sharp knock at the front door broke the silence. Ella rose to answer it.
Sarah stepped inside, brushing a flurry of snow from her coat and holding a pie tin. “Hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.
“Never,” Ella said, stepping aside. “Come on in.”
Sarah’s smile faded a little as she looked between us. “You two are doing wonders here. Really. The ranch feels alive again.” Her words, which should have felt like a blessing, suddenly felt like an eerie foreshadowing.
“But,” Sarah continued, setting the pie down, her voice dropping to a serious tone, “I thought you should know—one of the boys saw a man poking around the edge of the property line earlier.Said he had a clipboard and was taking photos. Looked like someone from the city.”
Ella stiffened, the easy warmth of her smile completely gone. “A developer?”
Sarah nodded. “Could be. Might be nothing. But it might be something.”
The warmth of the evening shifted. The crackle of the fireplace now felt less like comfort and more like a nervous energy. Outside, the light tap of snow against the windows sounded like a warning.
I looked at Ella. Her jaw was set, her eyes narrowed and sharp. She had gone from a woman lost in old memories to a fighter, all in a single breath.
And just like that, the Christmas quiet was gone. Replaced by something sharper. The fight wasn’t over yet.
Chapter 19 - The Saboteur
Ella
I didn’t sleep much after Sarah’s warning. My mind replayed the image of a stranger in the dark, circling the ranch like a buzzard.
The idea of losing this place, this feeling, kept my heart hammering in my chest. By morning, I was already halfway through my second cup of coffee, standing at the kitchen window, watching the snow melt in rivulets off the barn roof.
Max came in, stamping snow off his boots. "No sign of anyone this morning. But I'll ask Clint to keep an eye on the back fields. Just in case."
I nodded, wrapping my hands tighter around the mug. "It just doesn’t make sense. Why now?"
"Because we’re making progress," Max said simply, his voice low and steady. "Some people hate to see that."
Later that day, I walked the fence line near the southern edge of the property. The snow had crusted over, making each step crunch beneath my boots.
That’s when I saw him. A man in a dark jacket crouched near one of the boundary markers, camera in hand, snapping photos of the barbed wire.
All the fear and anxiety of the night coalesced into a fierce, protective anger. I marched straight toward him, my boots biting into the hard ground.
"Can I help you?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
He straightened, startled, but quickly masked it with a smirk. "Public right of way, isn’t it?"
"Not here it isn’t," I said, a tremor in my hands that I hoped he couldn’t see. "This is private property."
He slipped a business card from his coat. "Just doing my job. We’re evaluating potential development opportunities in the area. No harm intended."
I didn’t take the card. "There’s no opportunity here. This ranch isn’t for sale."
"Everything’s for sale," he said, walking past me with maddening calm. "Some just don’t know it yet."
