Laney had never had such a magical Christmas. Santa managed to find them, and she managed to kiss Graham under the mistletoe one of Eli’s friends had hung at the bottom of the stairs leading into the basement, and it was wonderful having meals provided for her. Hot water in her private bathroom. A warm, comfortable bed she didn’t have to make in the morning if she didn’t want to.

But after that kiss on Christmas morning, she’d had a very hard time getting Graham alone. He was always surrounded by his brothers, talking and laughing. Laney learned that the four of them hadn’t been together since their father’s funeral, and she hadn’t wanted to impose on their family reunion.

So more often than not, she found herself hanging out with Meg and the kids. On Christmas Day, when everyone had drifted to quiet spots to take naps, she wandered into Bailey’s room. All three dogs looked up, but no one came to greet her.

“Bay? Can I talk to you for a second?”

Bailey set down her tablet and said, “Okay.”

“It’s about me and Graham.” She perched on the edge of the bed, praying for six-year-old words to explain an adult situation. “You like Graham, right?”

“Yeah.” She blinked. “You like Graham too.”

“Right.” Laney smiled at her hands which lay in her lap. “I like Graham too. The kind of like where you hold hands and kiss and stuff.” Her heart did a jig in her chest. “It’s nothing too serious yet. We haven’t even gone out.”

“But you will go out with him.”

“Probably, Bay, yes.”

“So I’ll get to go to grandma’s.” She reached over and patted Barry’s head, which caused the dog to stretch out and groan.

Laney chuckled. “Yes, Bailey, most likely. When I go out with Graham, you’ll stay with grandma so I can go alone.”

“You told me not to be alone with boys.”

“Right.” She tapped Bailey on the nose. “Because you’re a kid. When you’re an adult, you can make a decision for when’s a good time to be alone with a boy and when it’s not a good idea.”

“I think you can be alone with Graham. He seems nice.”

Laney smiled at Bailey. “He does seem that way, doesn’t he?” Bailey didn’t get the joke, and Laney stood. “Okay, go back to your ‘resting’. I’m going to go lie down too.” She went next door to her room, but she didn’t feel sleepy. She felt caged. Alone. Trapped all by herself, and while she was glad she’d been able to talk to Bailey, she didn’t like lying around without anything to do.

Perhaps Celia would have something for her to do in the kitchen, but when Laney went down there, she found the main level of the house completely deserted. A cheer came up the steps from the basement, and she faced the doorway as she contemplated going down to see what all the fuss was.

But she hadn’t been invited, and she thought it was quiet time for a while anyway. So she went back upstairs and into her room, wishing her text to Graham didn’t go unanswered.

By the time two more days had passed, the restlessness in her muscles—her very soul—drove her out of the lodge and down to Echo Ridge Ranch. She told only Bailey where she was going and her daughter had promised to stay out of trouble and inside the lodge.

“Hey, Starlight.” Laney approached the horse that had helped her through some of the most trying times of her life. When Mike had left. When Laney had packed up everything he’d left behind and taken it to good will. When she’d filed for divorce.

The black mare had always been there, just like now. She nickered, and Laney leaned into her palm against the horse’s nose. “I don’t know.” She wanted to believe that Graham wouldn’t abandon her and Bailey the way Mike had. She also wanted to believe their five-day relationship hadn’t been a fluke or some sort of fling. That he was simply preoccupied with his family.

“But what else will he become preoccupied with?” she asked the horse. Starlight closed her eyes and opened them again, nothing else to say apparently.

Laney spent another few minutes with the horse and then got to work. After all, all the animals needed to be fed, and Laney needed more clothes if she and Bailey were going to stay at the lodge for another five days.

Because they’d moved the chickens into the barn, she found the beasts clucking happily in their nests. Laney worked methodically, slowly even, and got all the chores done. With no housework to do, a few hours of her day had been cleared up.

She faced the lodge, thinking of the little house on the very edge of her property. After running inside and throwing a few more sets of clean clothes into a bag, she set off for the cabin on the fence line. The trek through the snow left her tired and wet, but when the little round building without a back door came into view, her heart lifted.

She’d built this place with her father, and it was one of her strongest childhood memories. She’d barely been able to keep up with him as he hauled lumber and hammered nails, but she’d loved the look of him in his cowboy hat and tool belt.

She’d handed him tools, brought him food and water, and spent hours listening to him talk about their land, the ranch, and how much he loved it. By the time she was nine years old, she loved Echo Ridge as much as he did. And since she didn’t have any brothers to work the ranch, Laney had learned all the chores by age twelve.

Gentry, her younger sister, didn’t want anything to do with horses or hay, and that had been just fine with Laney. She’d just inherited the ranch a little too soon, as her father was taken home to heaven much too young.

She sighed and went around to the front door, which had a few feet of snow blown against it. She brushed the offending substance away from the door jamb and kicked as much back as she could. When she finally got in, she automatically stretched for the light switch and flipped it.

The lights came on.

This place had electricity.

A buzz tiptoed down her arms and along her shoulders, zinging up into her hair. She and Bailey could stay here. Though the place was small, there were two bedrooms, running water, a kitchen. She’d stockpiled several days’ worth of firewood in the lean-to off the front porch, and she and Bailey could survive just fine here.

Her thoughts tumbled. Part of her really wanted her privacy back, though no one pressed her to spend meals with them, or get up earlier than she wanted. She was well-fed at the lodge, but her heart pinched.

She was lonely there.

Bailey had found a new playmate, and Meg’s every breath was dedicated to making sure Stockton was happy. Laney had no role at the lodge, and Graham didn’t seem to have time for her.

She’d been abandoned once before. She wouldn’t put herself or Bailey through that again. And as soon as she and Bailey left the lodge, it would probably be a miracle if they saw Graham once a week.

After all, the man worked non-stop, even during Christmastime.

Laney turned off the light, wishing her thoughts would darken just as easily. They didn’t, and she moved over to the couch and collapsed onto it. Melting snow permeated her boots and socks, and she wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath.

So she did, Graham never far from the center of her thoughts.

She seriously considered staying at the cabin for the night, but she couldn’t leave Bailey up at the lodge without supervision. She wouldn’t ask Graham for his permission, so after she’d dried her hair and knotted it under her knit cap, she started up the hill toward the lodge.

She’d stayed in the hot water longer than she should’ve, because darkness had dunked the day into nothing more than shadows and there was no trail to follow. She kept one eye on the light lifting into the air just over the hill and kept her feet moving in the right direction.

The house finally came into view, just beyond Graham’s outbuildings. The path became easier, and she wondered if he had heated sidewalks his were so clear. Pausing, she drank in the sight of the lodge, with several of the back windows lit from within. It was the perfect country retreat, and she felt a measure of gratitude that she’d been allowed a few days at Whiskey Mountain Lodge.

She burst into the mudroom to a wall of warmth, thank goodness. Though she’d just had a bath, a chill had seeped into her very bones on the trek here from the cabin. Bootsteps sounded—angry bootsteps—and Graham appeared from the kitchen.

“There you are.” He didn’t seem happy about it.

“Here I am.” She shrugged out of her coat, glad when Graham stepped forward to help her with one offending sleeve that wouldn’t slide down.

“I’ve been worried about you.” He spoke in a low voice and edged even tighter into her personal space.

“I’m fine.” She bent to untie her boots.

“I didn’t ask if you were okay.”

She finally got the courage to look into his eyes. A storm swirled in his, and she couldn’t tell if it was fueled by frustration or desire. His hand came up and drifted down the side of her face, barely touching her and yet branding her all the same.

“You never answered any of my texts.”

“I didn’t get any.” She swallowed, the words about the electricity at the cabin springing to the back of her throat.

“Where were you?”

“The ranch.”

“You get my texts down there.” He tilted his head, clearly trying to hear or see something she hadn’t said or showed him. “Laney?”

She wanted to spill her guts to him. Pour out her loneliness and ask him to spend time with her while she was here. Selfishness pulled through her before she could say anything too damaging, and she cleared her throat.

“I went out walking.” She indicated the wet bottoms of her jeans, where water had seeped almost all the way to her knees. “Maybe I lost reception.” As if proving her point, her cell phone chimed three, four, five, six times in rapid succession. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the messages. “Here they are now.”

She flashed the phone in his direction but he didn’t even glance at it. “Laney, I can tell something’s different.”

Looking into his eyes, her entire past flashed through her mind. Had she said enough to Mike before he left? If she’d tried harder, would he have stayed?

“I feel left out,” she blurted without giving herself a chance to censor her words. “Your family is here, and I get this is a special time for you, and….” She exhaled and pulled her hat off. She unknotted her hair and let it fall over her shoulders. “I’m not trying to be selfish, but I feel…I’m lonely. Even here, with all of you. I don’t fit.”

“Of course you do.” Graham gathered her into his arms, and she definitely fit there. She took a deep drag of his T-shirt, which held the scent of his cologne and his fabric softener.

“I don’t want to be left behind,” she said so quietly she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. She pushed away from him and strengthened her resolve. “I’ve lived through a man leaving me for something he deemed better, and I won’t do it again. I won’t allow Bailey to go through that.”

Graham blinked at her, the confusion racing through his eyes somewhat comforting. “I’m not abandoning anything. I live here.” He gestured back toward the kitchen. “My brothers and I have been talking about making this lodge into what it was meant to be. Andrew has degrees and experience in marketing and public relations. Eli runs the biggest resort in Bora Bora. Beau already handles all the legalities for Springside Energy, and he said he’d look into what we have to do to make this place a legal lodge again.”

Laney had no idea why he was telling her this, but she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt at the relationships he had with his brothers. Gentry hadn’t sent a card or gift this Christmas either, though Laney continued to send small things to her for her birthday and other special events. Her sister was off living in California or New York. Laney wasn’t exactly sure.

“That’s great,” she said, trying to make her voice light. But Graham was as smart as he was handsome, and he heard the forced measure of nonchalance in her tone.

“I’m just saying I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He backed up another step, and Laney hated the distance—physical and emotional—between them. “Are you going to read those texts?” He indicated her phone, and she looked at it.

Bailey said you went down to the ranch. Wondering if you wanted to go to dinner tonight.

Meg said she can watch Bailey, no problem.

I mean, it’s fine if you don’t want to.

Laney? Are you all right? I’m worried I haven’t heard back from you.

So I guess we won’t go to dinner tonight.

She raised her eyes to his. “I didn’t get these.”

His voice softened, along with the dangerous edge in his eyes. “I know. I heard your phone chime.”

“Is it too late for dinner?” Because she really wanted to go, and she was starving. Of course, the aroma coming from the kitchen meant Celia had been at work and would most like have something as restaurant-worthy as anything in Coral Canyon.

“I haven’t eaten yet.”

“Can I have ten minutes to change?”

Graham regarded her for a moment, those beautiful eyes taking on a sparkle. “A beast would insist we go now because it’s already going to be busy. But you know what? Take fifteen minutes.”

Laney burst into laughter, glad when Graham joined her. She gave him a quick hug, swept her lips across his stubbled jaw, and ran upstairs to change for her first date with Graham Whittaker.