A Coulter's Christmas Proposal. Lois Dyer Faye

had work to do, she told herself firmly.

      Despite her best efforts to concentrate solely on her research, however, thoughts of Eli smiling as he sprawled opposite her in the café booth kept intruding.

      Eli spent the half-hour drive back to the ranch trying to figure out what it was about Amanda that made him tell her things he usually kept to himself.

      Was it the warm interest in her hazel eyes that lured him into opening up and confiding in her?

      He reached the ranch house, no closer to understanding the effect she had on him. He went inside and when he found the house empty, tossed the packet of legal documents on the table and left again to search for his brothers.

      Just as he stepped off the porch, Cade rounded the corner of the barn and walked toward him.

      “Hey,” Eli called as his brother neared. “Did you bring the keys?”

      “Yeah.” Cade lifted his hand, a set of metal keys on a round metal ring dangling from his fingers. “Are you ready to do this?”

      “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Eli told him, accepting the key ring and shoving it in his jeans pocket. “Where’s Zach?”

      “He’s meeting us at the studio.”

      The two men climbed into Eli’s truck and left the ranch yard, following the gravel road for a quarter mile before turning into a dirt drive that led off the road and beneath the thick green leaves of towering maple trees. Zach was already there, leaning against the front bumper of his pickup, arms crossed. He straightened as Eli parked next to him, joining Cade to follow Eli up the short walk to the single-story studio’s front door.

      “I pulled the plywood off the doors and windows.” Zach pointed to a stack of wood on one side of the walk. “The Lodge had all the windows covered when we went in and we couldn’t see a damned thing. I figured ripping the wood off would save some time.”

      “Thanks.” Eli fitted one of the keys into the lock. Stiff from years of being unused, metal grated against metal before the lock mechanism turned and slid free. Eli pocketed the keys and opened the door, shoving it inward and stepping over the threshold.

      He brushed his hand over the light switch beside the door frame but got no response.

      “Electricity isn’t working,” he commented as he halted just inside, his gaze sweeping slowly over the interior.

      Cade and Zach joined him, as silent as he as they studied the big room.

      Despite being closed and shuttered for more than two decades, the area was surprisingly undamaged. Tools hung neatly on the wall above the long workbench, where welding equipment sat next to a vise that held a curved piece of blackened metal. The white-painted walls were hung with sculptures in various stages of completion, the silver and copper metal black with tarnish and draped with ghostly swathes of cobwebs. A thick layer of dust coated every surface in the long room and the silence was eerie.