Chapter Eight
“Why couldn’t Lou come with us to take me home?” Addie asked Faith as they pulled out of the Star N driveway to head toward Chase’s place.
Faith tried to smile but it ended in a yawn. She was completely wrung out after a fragmented, tortured night spent mostly staring up at her ceiling, reliving the evening—those kisses!—and her conversation with Celeste and wondering what she should do.
She must have slept for a few hours, on and off. When she awoke at her five-thirty alarm, all she wanted to do was pull the covers over her head, curl up and block out the world for a week or two.
Faith blinked away the yawn and tried to smile at Chase’s daughter again. “She had a few chores to do this morning and I decided it was better for her to finish them as soon as she could. Sorry about that.”
Addie gave her a sudden grin. “Oh. I thought it was maybe because you didn’t want her to see her Christmas present in the pasture.”
She winced. She should have known Addie would figure it out. The girl was too smart for her own britches. She only hoped she could also keep a secret. “How did you know about that?”
“My dad didn’t tell me, in case you’re wondering. It wasn’t that hard to figure it out, though, especially since Lou hasn’t stopped talking about the new barrel racing horse she wants. It seemed like too much of a coincidence when I saw a new horse suddenly had shown up in my dad’s pasture.”
Faith didn’t see any point in dissembling. Christmas was only a few weeks away and the secret would be out anyway. “It wasn’t a coincidence,” she confirmed. “Your dad helped me pick her out and offered to keep her at Brannon Ridge until after Christmas, when we take her to the Dalton ranch to be trained.”
“Louisa is going to be so excited!”
“I think so.” Her daughter was a smart, kind, good girl. Louisa worked hard in school, did her chores when asked and was generally kind to her brother. She had channeled her grief over losing her father at such a young age into a passion for horse riding and Faith wanted to encourage that.
“I won’t tell. I promise,” Addie said.
“Thank you, honey.”
Addie was a good girl, as well. Some children of divorce became troubled and angry—sometimes even manipulative and sly, pitting one parent against the other for their own gain as they tried to navigate the difficult waters of living in two separate households. Addie was the sweetest girl—which seemed a minor miracle, considering her situation.
“Maybe once she’s trained, Lou might let me ride her once in a while,” the girl said.
Faith didn’t miss the wistful note in Addie’s voice. “You know, if you want a horse of your own, you could probably talk your dad into it.”
Quite frankly, Faith was surprised Chase hadn’t already bought a horse for his daughter.
“I know. Dad has offered to get me one since I was like five. It would be nice, but it doesn’t seem very fair to have a horse of my own when I could only see it and ride it once or twice a month. My dad would have to take care of it the rest of the time without me.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He already has Tor. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all for him to take care of two horses instead of only one.”
“Maybe if I lived here all the time,” Addie said in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s hard enough, only seeing my dad a few times a month. I hate when I have to go back to Boise. It would be even harder if I had to leave a horse I loved, too.”
Faith swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. The girl’s sad wisdom just about broke her heart. “I can understand that. But you do usually spend summers on the ranch,” she pointed out. “That’s the best time for riding horses anyway.”
“I guess.” Addie didn’t seem convinced. “I just wish I could stay here longer. Maybe come for the whole school year sometime, even if I wouldn’t be in the same grade with Louisa.”
“Do you think you might come here to go to school at some point?”
“I wish,” she said with a sigh. “My mom always says she would miss me too much. I guess she thinks it’s okay for Dad to miss me the rest of the time, when I’m with her.”
If she hadn’t been driving, Faith would have hugged her hard at the forlorn note in her voice. Poor girl, torn between two parents who loved and wanted her. It was an impossible situation for all of them.
She and Addie talked about the girl’s upcoming cruise over the holidays with her mother until they arrived at Chase’s ranch. When she pulled up to the ranch, she spotted him throwing a bale of hay into the back of his pickup truck like it weighed no more than a basketball.
She shivered, remembering the heat of his mouth on hers, the solid strength of those muscles against her.
On the heels of that thought came the far more disconcerting one born out of her conversation with Celeste.
The man is in love with you and when you sit there pretending you didn’t know, you are lying to me, yourself and especially to Chase.
Butterflies jumped around in her stomach and she realized her fingers on the steering wheel were trembling.
Oh. This would never do. This was Chase, her best friend. She couldn’t let things get funky between them. That was exactly what she worried about most.
Celeste had to be wrong. Faith couldn’t accept any other possibility.
The moment she turned off the vehicle, Addie opened the door and raced to hug her dad.
Could she just take off now? Faith wondered. She was half-serious, until she remembered Addie’s things were still in the back of the pickup truck.
In an effort to push away all the weirdness, she drew in a couple of cleansing breaths. It didn’t work as well as she hoped but the extra oxygen made her realize she had probably been taking nervous, shallow breaths all morning, knowing she was going to have to face him again.
She pulled Addie’s sleeping bag out from behind the seat and pasted on a casual smile, knowing even as she did it that he would be able to spot it instantly as fake.
When she turned around, she found him and Addie just a few feet away from her. His eyes were shaded by his black Stetson and she couldn’t read the expression there but his features were still, his mouth unsmiling.
“Looks like we caught you going somewhere,” she said.
“Just down to the horse pasture to check on, uh, things there.”
If she hadn’t been fighting against the weight of this terrible awkwardness, she might have managed a genuine smile at his attempt be vague.
“You don’t need to use code. Your daughter is too smart for either of us.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” He smiled down at Addie and something seemed to unfurl inside Faith’s chest. He was an excellent father—and not only to his daughter.
Since Travis died, he had become the de facto father figure for Louisa and Barrett. Oh, Rafe and Flynn did an admirable job as uncles and showed her children how good, decent men took care of their families. But Louisa and Barrett turned to Chase for guidance most. They saw him nearly every day. He was the one Louisa had invited when her class at school had a father-daughter dance and that Barrett had taken along to the Doughnuts with Dad reading hour at school.
They loved him—and he loved them in return. That had nothing to do with any of the nonsense Celeste had talked about the night before.
“Did you have fun last night?” Chase asked Addie now.
“Tons,” she declared. “We popped popcorn and watched movies and played games. I beat everybody at UNO like three times in a row and Barrett said I was cheating only I wasn’t. And then we all opened our sleeping bags under the Christmas tree and put on another movie and I fell asleep. This morning we had hot chocolate with marshmallows and pancakes shaped like snowmen. It was awesome.”
“I’m so glad. Here, I can take that stuff.”
He reached to grab the sleeping bag and backpack from Faith. As he did, his hand brushed her chest. It was a touch that barely connected through the multiple layers she wore—coat, a fleece pullover and her silk long underwear—but she could hardly hold back a shiver anyway.
“I’ll just take it all into the house now,” Addie said. “Thanks for the ride, Faith.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said.
After she strapped the bag over her shoulder and Chase handed her the sleeping bag, she waved at Faith and skipped into the house, humming a Christmas carol.
What a sweet girl, Faith thought again. She didn’t let her somewhat chaotic circumstances impact her enjoyment of the world around her. Faith could learn a great deal from the girl’s example.
“I’ll add my thanks to you for bringing her home,” Chase said. “I appreciate it, though I could have driven over to get her.”
“I really didn’t mind. I’ve got to run into Pine Gulch for a few things anyway. Can I bring you back anything from the grocery store?”
They did this sort of thing all the time. He would call her on his way to the feed store and ask if she needed anything. She would bring back a part from the implement store in Idaho Falls if she had to go for any reason.
She really hoped the easy, casual give-and-take didn’t change now that everything seemed so different.
“We could use paper towels, I guess,” he said, after a pause. “Oh, and dishwasher detergent and dish soap.”
“Sure. I can drop it off on my way home.”
“No rush. I’ll pick it up next time I come over.”
“Sounds good,” she answered. At his words, her smile turned more genuine. This seemed much like their normal interactions—and if he was talking about coming to the ranch again, at least he wasn’t so upset at her that he was going to penalize the kids by staying away.
“Did you hear Jim Laird messed up his knee?” he asked. “Apparently he slipped on ice and wrenched things and Doc Dalton sent him over to Idaho Falls for surgery yesterday. I wondered why he wasn’t at the party last night. I was hoping Mary Beth wasn’t in the middle of a relapse or something.”
She didn’t like hearing when bad things happened to their neighbors. Jim was a sweet older man in his seventies whose wife had multiple sclerosis. They ran a small herd of about fifty head and he often bought alfalfa from her.
“As if he didn’t have enough on his plate! What is Mary Beth going to do? She can’t possibly do the feedings in the winter by herself.”
“Wade Dalton, Justin Hartford and I are going to split the load for a few weeks, until he can get around again.”
He was always doing things like that for others in the community.
“I want into the rotation. I can take a turn.”
“Not necessary. The three of us have it covered.”
She narrowed her gaze. “For six months after Travis died, ranchers up and down the Cold Creek stepped up to help us at the Star N. I’m in a good place now, finally, and want to give back when I can.”
The ranch wouldn’t have survived without help from her neighbors and friends—especially Chase. She had been completely clueless about running a cattle ranch and would have been lost.
Now that she had stronger footing under her, she wanted to start doing her best to pay it forward.
Chase looked as if he wanted to argue but he must have seen the determination in her expression. After a moment, he gave an exasperated sigh.
“Fine. I’ll have Wade give you a call to work out the details.”
She smiled. “Thanks. I don’t mind the early-morning feedings either.”
“I’ll let Wade know.”
There. That was much more like normal. Celeste had to be wrong. Yes, Chase loved her—just as she loved him. They were dear friends. That was all.
“I better run to the store before the shelves are empty. You know how Saturdays get in town.”
“I do.”
“So paper towels, dish soap and dish detergent. You can pick up everything tomorrow when you come for dinner,” she said.
“That would work.”
She felt a little more of the tension trickle away. At least he was still planning to come for dinner.
She loved their Sunday night tradition, when she and her sisters and Aunt Mary always fixed a big family meal and invited any neighbors or friends who would care to join them. Chase invariably made it, unless he was driving Addie back to Boise after a weekend visitation.
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something more but she didn’t give him the chance. Instead, she jumped into her pickup and pulled away, trying her best not to look at him in the rearview mirror, standing lean-hipped and gorgeous and watching after her.
They had survived their first encounter post-kiss. Yes, it had been tense, but not unbearably so. After this, things between them would become more comfortable each time until they were back to the easy friendship they had always enjoyed.
She cared about him far too much to accept any other alternative.
* * *
He stood and watched her drive away, fighting the urge to rub the ache in his chest.
The entire time they talked about groceries and hot chocolate and Jim Laird’s bum knee, his damn imagination had been back in a starlit wintry night, steaming up the windows of his pickup truck.
That kiss seemed to be all he could think about. No matter what else he might be trying to focus on, his brain kept going back to those moments when he had held her and she had kissed him back with an enthusiasm he had only dreamed about.
Hot on the heels of those delicious memories, though, came the cold, hard slap of reality.
I have to ask you not to kiss me again.
She was so stubborn, fighting her feelings with every bit of her. How was he supposed to win against that?
He pondered his dwindling options as he headed inside to find Addie so she could put on her winter clothes and help him feed the horses.
He found her just finishing a call on her cell phone with a look of resignation.
“Who was that?” he asked, though he was fairly sure he knew the answer. He and Cindy were just about the only ones Addie ever talked to on the phone.
“Mom,” she said, confirming his suspicion. “She said Grandma is doing better and Grandpa says he doesn’t really need her help anymore. She decided to take me back tomorrow so I can finish the last week of school.”
Why didn’t she call him first to work out the details?
He was surrounded by frustrating women.
“That’s too bad. I know you were looking forward to practicing for the show with Louisa.”
Her face fell further. “I forgot about that!” she wailed. “If I don’t go to practice, I don’t know if I can be in the show.”
“I’m sure we can talk to Celeste and Hope and get special permission for you to practice at home. You’ll be here next weekend and the first part of next week so you’ll be able to be at the last few practices.”
“I hope they’ll let me. I really, really, really wanted to be in the Christmas show.”
“We’ll work something out,” he assured her, hoping he wasn’t giving her unrealistic expectations. “Meanwhile, why don’t you grab your coat and boots. Since you’re so smart and already figured out the new horse is for Lou, do you want to meet her for real so you can tell me what you think?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed.
“You’ll have to work hard to keep it a secret.”
“I know. I would never ruin the surprise.”
With that promise, his daughter raced for the mudroom and her winter gear and Chase leaned a hip against the kitchen island to wait for her and tried not to let his mind wander back to those moments in his pickup that were now permanently imprinted on his brain.
* * *
Chase headed up the porch steps of the Star N ranch house with a bag of chips in one hand and a bottle of his own homemade salsa in the other, the same thing he brought along to dinner nearly every Sunday.
The lights of the house were blazing a warm welcome against the cold and snowy Sunday evening but his instincts were still urging him to forget the whole thing and head back home, where he could glower and stomp around in private.
He was in a sour mood and had been since Cindy showed up three hours earlier than planned to pick up Addie, right as they were on their way out the door to go to their favorite lunch place.
It was always tough saying goodbye to his daughter. This parting seemed especially poignant, probably because Addie so clearly hadn’t wanted to go. She had dragged her feet about packing up her things, had asked if they could wait to leave until after she and Chase had lunch, had begged to say goodbye to the horses.
Cindy, annoyed at the delays, had turned sharp-tongued and hard, which in turn made Addie more pouty than normal. Addie had finally gone out to her mother’s new SUV with tears in her eyes that broke his heart.
Being a divorced father seriously sucked sometimes.
In his crazier moments, he thought about selling the ranch and moving to Boise to be closer to her, though he didn’t know what the hell he would do for a living. Ranching was all he knew, all he had ever known. But he would do whatever it took—work in a shoe factory if he had to—if his daughter needed him.
He wasn’t sure that was the answer, though. She loved her time here and seemed to relish ranch life, in a way Cindy never had.
With a sigh, he rang the doorbell, grimly aware that much of his sour mood had roots that had nothing to do with Cindy or Addie.
He had been restless and edgy since the last time he rang this doorbell, when he had shown up at this same ranch to pick up Faith for that disaster of a date two nights earlier.
How many mistakes could one man make in a single evening? Part of him wished he could go back and start the whole stupid week over again and just let his relationship with Faith naturally evolve from friendship to something more.
How long would that take, though? He had a feeling he could have given her five years—ten—and she would still have the same arguments.
Despite all his mistakes, he had to hope he hadn’t completely screwed up their friendship for good, that things weren’t completely wrecked between them now.
As she had a few nights earlier, Aunt Mary was the one who finally answered the doorbell.
“It’s about time,” she said, planting hands on her hips. “Faith needs a man in the worst way.”
He blinked at that, his imagination suddenly on fire. “O-kay.”
Mary looked amused and he guessed she could tell immediately what detour his brain had taken.
“She needs your grilling skills,” she informed him.
He told himself that wasn’t disappointment coursing through him. “Grilling skills. Ah. You’re grilling tonight.”
“We would be, but Faith is having trouble again with that stupid gas grill. I swear that thing has it out for us.”
He gestured behind him to the elements just beyond the porch. “You do know it’s starting to snow, right?”
Aunt Mary shrugged. “You hardly notice out there, with the patio heater and that cover Flynn built us for the deck. Steaks sounded like a great idea at the time, better than roast or chicken tonight, but now the grill is being troublesome. Rafe and Hope aren’t back yet from visiting Joey’s mom, and Flynn had to fly out to California to finish a project there. That leaves Celeste, Faith and me. We could really use somebody with a little more testosterone to figure out what we’re doing wrong.”
“I’m not an expert on gas grills but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, honey.”
He followed Mary inside, where they were greeted by delectable smells of roasting potatoes and yeasty rolls. No place on earth smelled better than this old ranch house on Sunday evenings.
“I’ve got to finish the salad. Go on ahead,” Mary said.
He walked through the kitchen to the door that led to the covered deck. Faith didn’t see him at first; she was too busy swearing and fiddling with the controls of the huge, fancy silver grill Travis had splurged on a few months before his death.
She was dressed in a fleece jacket, jeans and boots, with her hair loose and curling around her shoulders. His chest ached at the sight of her, like it always did. He wished, more than anything, that he had the right to go up behind her, brush her hair out of the way and kiss the back of that slender neck.
Little multicolored twinkly Christmas lights covered all the shrubs around the deck and had been draped around the edges of the roof. He didn’t remember seeing Christmas lights back here and wondered if Hope had done it to make the rear of the house look more festive. It did look over The Christmas Ranch, after all.
Faith wasn’t the biggest fan of Christmas, which he found quite ironic, considering she was part owner of the largest seasonal attraction in these parts.
She fiddled with the knobs again, then smacked the front of the grill. “Why won’t you light, you stupid thing?”
“Yelling at it probably won’t help much.”
She whirled around at his comment and he watched as delectable color soaked her cheeks. “Chase! Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”
He was aware of a fierce, deep-seated need to have her say those words because she wanted to see him, not because she had a problem for him to solve.
“Mary said you’re having grill trouble.”
“The darn thing won’t ignite, no matter what I do. It’s not getting propane, for some reason. I’ve been out here for ten minutes trying to figure it out. It’s a brand-new tank that Flynn got for us a few weeks ago and we haven’t used it since. I checked the propane tank. I tried dropping a match in case it was the ignition. I tried all the knobs about a thousand times. I just think this grill hates me.”
He found it more than a little amusing that she had learned to drive every piece of complicated farm machinery on the place over the last two years and could round up a hundred head of cattle on her own, with only the dogs for help, but she was intimidated by a barbecue grill.
“This one can be finicky, that’s for sure.”
She frowned at the thing. “Travis had to buy the biggest, most expensive grill he could order—forget that the controls on it are more confusing than the space shuttle.”
She didn’t say disparaging things about her late husband very often. In this case, he had to agree with her. He had loved the guy, but she was absolutely right. Travis Dustin always had to have the best, even when they couldn’t afford it. His poor management and expensive tastes in equipment—and his gross negligence in not leaving her with proper life insurance—had all contributed to the big financial hole he had left his family when he died.
“I’ll take a look,” he said.
She stepped aside and he knelt down to peer at the connection. It only took him a moment to figure out why the grill wouldn’t work.
“Here’s your trouble. Looks like the gas hose isn’t connected tightly. It’s come loose from the tank.”
He made the necessary adjustment, then stood, turned on the propane and hit the ignition. The grill ignited with a whoosh of instant heat.
She made a face. “Now I feel like an idiot. I swear I checked that already.”
“It’s easy to overlook.”
“I guess my mind must have been on something else.”
He had to wonder what. Was she remembering that kiss, too? He cast her a sidelong look and found a pink tinge on her cheeks again that might have been a blush—or just as easily might have been from the cold.
“Thank you for figuring it out,” she said.
“No problem. You’ll need to let the grill heat up for about ten minutes, then I can come back and take care of the steaks.”
“Thank you. No matter how well I think I know my way around all the appliances in my kitchen, apparently this finicky grill remains my bugaboo. Or maybe it’s outdoor cookery in general.”
“I can’t agree with that. I seem to remember some mean Dutch oven meals where you acted as camp cook when Trav and I would combine forces for roundup in the fall.”
“That seems like a long time ago.”
“Not that long. I still dream about your peach cobbler.” Usually his dreams involved her kissing him between thick, gooey spoonfuls, but he decided it would probably be wise not to add that part.
Still, something of his thoughts must have appeared on his face because she seemed to catch her breath and gazed wide-eyed at him in the multicolored glow from the Christmas lights.
“I didn’t know you liked it that much,” she said after a moment, her voice a little husky. “Dutch oven cooking is easy compared to working this complicated grill. I’ll be happy to make you a peach cobbler this summer, when the fruit is in season.”
“Sounds delicious,” he answered, his own voice a little more gruff than usual, which he told himself was because of the cold—though right now he was much warmer than he might have expected.
She swallowed hard and he was almost positive her gaze drifted to his mouth and then quickly away again. He was sure the color on her cheeks intensified, which had to be from more than the cold.
Was she remembering that kiss, too? He wanted to ask her—or better yet, to step forward and steal another one, but the door from the house opened and Louisa popped her head out.
“Hey, Chase! Where’s Addie? Didn’t she come with you?”
He took a subtle step back. “No. She went back to Boise with her mom this afternoon. Didn’t she tell you?”
Her face fell. “Oh, no! Does that mean she won’t be able to do the show with us? She thought she could! She and I and Olivia were going to sing a song together!”
“She still wants to. She’ll have to miss the first few rehearsals, but she should be here next week for the actual show. We’ll do our best to get her back here for rehearsal by Thursday. I might have to run into Boise to make it happen.”
“Isn’t that your day to help out at Jim Laird’s place?”
Rats. He had forgotten all about that. “Yes. I’ll figure out a way to swing it.”
“I’ll help,” she said promptly. “I can either run to Boise for you or take your day at Jim’s house. Either way, we will get Addie here.”
His heart twisted a little that with everything she had to do here at the Star N, she would even consider driving six hours round-trip to pick up his daughter.
“Thank you, but I think I can manage both. If I take off as soon as I finish feeding my stock and his, I should be able to have Addie back in time for practice. It’s important to her so I’ll figure out a way to make it happen.”
Both Faith and her daughter gave him matching warm looks that made him forget all about the snow just beyond their little covered patio.
“Thanks, Chase. You’re the best,” Lou said. Despite the cold, she padded out to the deck in her stocking feet and threw her arms around his waist. He smiled a little and hugged her back, thinking how much he loved both Louisa and her brother. They were great kids, always thinking of others. They were like their mother in that respect.
“Better head back inside. It’s cold out here and you don’t have shoes or a coat.”
“I do have to go back in. I have to finish dessert. I made it myself. Aunt Mary hardly helped at all.”
“I can’t wait,” he assured her.
She grinned and skipped back into the house, leaving him alone again with Faith. When he turned away from the doorway, he found her watching him with an expression he couldn’t read.
“What did I say?” he asked.
“I... Nothing,” she mumbled. “I’ll go get the steaks.”
She hurried past him before he could press her, leaving him standing alone in the cold.