Chapter Eleven
Chase ended up staying to watch the rehearsal, figuring he could help corral kids if need be.
He had plenty of other things he should be doing but nothing else seemed as important as being here if Faith or her family needed him.
A few minutes after the rehearsal started, Celeste showed up. She went immediately to the office, where Faith was staring into space. The two of them embraced, both wiping tears. Not long after, Mary showed up, too, and the three of them sat together, not saying much.
He wanted to go in there but didn’t quite feel it was his place so he stayed where he was and watched the children sing about Silver Bells and Holly Jolly Christmases and Silent Nights.
About an hour into rehearsal—when he felt more antsy than he ever remembered—Faith took a call on her cell phone. The anxiety and fear on her features cut through him and he couldn’t resist rising to his feet and going to the doorway.
“Are they sure? Yes. Yes. I understand.” Her features softened and she gave a tremulous smile. “That’s the best news, Rafe. The absolute best. Thank you for calling. I’ll tell them. Yes. Give her all our love and tell her to take care of herself and not to worry about a thing. That’s an order. Same goes for you. We love you, too, you know.”
She hung up, her smile incandescent, then she gave a little cry that ended on a sob. “Dr. Dalton says for now everything seems okay with the baby. The heartbeat is strong and all indications are good for a healthy pregnancy.”
“Oh, thank the Lord,” Mary exclaimed.
She nodded and they all spent a silent moment doing just that.
“Jake wants to put her on strict bed rest for the next few weeks to be safe,” Faith said after a moment. “That means the rest of us will have to step up here.”
“I’m available for whatever you need,” Chase offered once more.
She gave him a distracted smile. “I know but, again, you have plenty to do at your own place. We can handle it.”
“I want to help.” He tried to tamp down his annoyance that she was immediately pushing aside his help.
“We actually could use him tomorrow,” Celeste said thoughtfully.
Faith didn’t look convinced. “We’ll just have to cancel that part of the party, under the circumstances. The kids will have to understand.”
“They’re kids,” her sister pointed out. “They won’t understand anything but disappointment.”
“I’ll just do it, then,” Faith said.
“How, when you’re supposed to be helping me with everything else?”
He looked from one to the other without the first idea what they were talking about. “What do you need me to do?”
“I’ve been running a holiday reading contest at the library for the last two months and the children who have read enough pages earned a special party tomorrow at the ranch,” Celeste said. “Sparkle is supposed to make an appearance and we also promised the children wagon rides around the ranch. Our regular driver will be busy taking the regular customers to see the lights so Rafe has been practicing with our backup team so he could help out at the party. Obviously, he needs to be with Hope now. Flynn is coming back tomorrow but he won’t be here in time to help, even if he learns overnight how to drive a team of draft horses.”
Why hadn’t they just asked him in the first place? Was it because things with him and Faith had become so damn complicated?
“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 sure they understood 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 for this, 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.”
In the fading light, she saw stark relief on his chiseled features. “I’m so glad. I’ve been worried all day. And how is your other little mama?”
It took her a moment to realize he meant Rosie. “All the pups are great. They opened their eyes yesterday. The kids have had so much fun watching them. You’ll have to bring Addie over.”
“I’ll try to do that before she leaves on Wednesday but our schedule’s pretty packed between now and then. I don’t think we’ll even have time for Sunday dinner tomorrow.”
“Oh. That’s too bad,” she said, as he moved away from the horses toward the driver’s seat of the sleigh. “The family will miss you.”
“What about you?” he asked, his voice low and his expression intense.
She swallowed, not knowing what to say. “Yes,” she finally said. “Good thing we’re not having steak or we wouldn’t know how to light the grill.”
“Good thing.” He tipped his hat back. “Is there room for me up there or are you going to make me walk back to the lodge?”
She slid over and he jumped up and took the reins she handed him.
Though there was plenty of space on the bench, she immediately felt crowded, fiercely aware of the heat of him beside her.
Maybe she ought to walk back to the lodge.
The thought hardly had time to register before he whistled to the horses and they obediently took off down the drive toward the lodge, bells jingling.
After a moment, she forced herself to relax and enjoy the evening. She could think of worse ways to spend an evening than driving across her beautiful land in the company of her best friend, who just happened to be a gorgeous cowboy.
“Wow, what a beautiful night,” he said after a few moments. “Hard to believe that less than a week ago we were gearing up for that nasty storm.”
“We’re not supposed to have any more snow until Christmas Eve.”
“With what we already have on the ground, I don’t think there’s any question that we’ll have a white Christmas.”
“Who knows? It’s Idaho. We could have a heat wave between now and then.”
“Don’t break out your swimming suit yet,” he advised. “Unless you want to take a dip in Carson and Jenna McRaven’s pool at their annual party this week.”
“Not me. I’m content watching the kids have fun in the pool.”
The McRavens’ holiday party, which would be the night after the show for the senior citizens, had become legendary around these parts, yet another tradition she cherished.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to that one this year,” he said. “It’s my last day with Addie.”
“You’re still doing Christmas Eve the night of the show?”
“That’s the plan.”
It made her heart ache to think of him getting everything ready for his daughter on his own, hanging out stockings and scattering her presents under the tree.
“You’re a wonderful father, Chase,” she said softly.
He frowned as the sleigh’s movement jostled her against him. “Not really. If I were, I might have tried harder to stay married to her mother. Instead, I’ve given my daughter a childhood where she feels constantly torn between the both of us.”
“You did your best to make things work.”
“Did I?”
“It looked that way from the outside.”
“I should never have married her. If she hadn’t been pregnant with Addie, I wouldn’t have.”
He was so rarely open about his marriage and divorce that she was momentarily shocked. The cheery jingle bells seemed discordant and wrong, given his serious tone.
“It was a mistake,” he went on. “We both knew it. I just hate that Addie is the one who has suffered the most.”
“She has a mother and stepfather who love her and a father who adores her. She’s a sweet, kind, good-hearted girl. You’re doing okay. Better than okay. You’re a wonderful father and I won’t let you beat yourself up.”
He looked touched and amused at the same time as he pulled the sleigh to a stop in front of the lodge. “I’ve been warned, I guess.”
“You have,” she said firmly. “Addie is lucky to have you for a father. Any child would be.”
His expression warmed and he gazed down at her long enough that she started wondering if he might kiss her again. Instead, he climbed down from the sleigh, then held a hand up to help her out.
She hesitated, thinking she would probably be wise to make her way down by herself on the complete opposite side of the sleigh from him. But for the last ten minutes, they had been interacting with none of the recent awkwardness and she didn’t want to destroy this fragile peace.
She took his hand and stepped gingerly over the side of the sleigh.
“Careful. It’s icy right there,” he said.
The words were no sooner out of his mouth when her boot slipped out from under her. She reached for the closest handhold, which just happened to be the shearling coat covering the muscled chest of a six-foot-two-inch male. At the same moment, he reacted instinctively, grabbing her close to keep her on her feet.
She froze, aware of his mouth just inches from hers. It would be easy, so easy, to step on tiptoe for more of those delicious kisses.
His gaze locked with hers and she saw a raw hunger there that stirred answering heat inside her.
The moment stretched between them, thick and rich like Aunt Mary’s hot cocoa and just as sweet.
Why was she fighting this, again? In this moment, as desire fluttered through her, she couldn’t have given a single reason.
She was in love with him and according to two of her relatives, he might feel the same. It seemed stupid to deny both of them what they ached to find together.
“Chase,” she murmured.
He inched closer, his breath warm on her skin. Just before she gathered her muscles to stand on tiptoe and meet him, one of the horses stamped in the cold, sending a cascade of jingles through the air.
Oh. What was she doing? This wasn’t the time or the place to indulge herself, when a lodge full of young readers would descend on them at any moment.
With great effort, she stepped away. “Hang out here and I’ll go check with Celeste to see when she’ll be ready for the kids to go on the sleigh.”
He tipped his hat back but not before she saw frustration on his features that completely matched her own.