The Holiday Gift. RaeAnne Thayne

didn’t answer for a long moment. “No,” he finally said. “I didn’t.”

      Unease twanged through her, the same vague sense that had haunted her at stray moments for several months. Something was off between her and Chase and, for the life of her, she couldn’t put a finger on it.

      “Oh. Did you already make plans?” She forced a cheerful smile. “We’ve gone together the last few years so I just sort of assumed we would go together again this year but I guess we should have talked about it. If you already have something going, don’t worry about me. Seriously. I don’t mind going by myself. I’ll have plenty of other friends there I can sit with. Or I could always skip it and stay home with the kids. Jenna McRaven does a fantastic job with the food and I always enjoy the company of other grown-ups, but if you’ve got a hot date lined up, I’m perfectly fine.”

      As she said the words, she tasted the lie in them. Was this weird ache in her stomach because she had been looking forward to the evening out—or because she didn’t like the idea of him with a hot date?

      “I don’t have a date, hot or otherwise,” he growled as he pulled the pickup and trailer to a stop next to a small paddock near the barn of the Brannon Ridge Ranch.

      She eased back in the bench seat, a curious relief seeping through her. “Good. That’s that. We can go together, just like always. It will be a fun night out for us.”

      Though she knew him well enough to know something was still on his mind, he said nothing as he pulled off his sunglasses and hooked them on the rearview mirror. What did his silence mean? Didn’t he want to go with her?

      “Faith,” he began, but suddenly she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

      “We’d better get the beautiful girl in your trailer unloaded before the kids get home.”

      She opened her door and jumped out before he could answer her. Yes, sometimes she was like her son, Barrett, who would rather hide out in his room all day and miss dinner than be scolded for something he’d done. She didn’t like to face bad things. It was a normal reaction, she told herself. Hadn’t she already had to face enough bad things in her life?

      After a moment, Chase climbed out after her and came around to unhook the back of the trailer. The striking black-and-white paint yearling whinnied as he led her out into the patchy snow.

      “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Faith said, struck all over again by the horse’s elegant lines.

      “Yeah,” Chase said. Again with the monosyllables. She sighed.

      “Thanks for letting me keep her here for a couple of weeks. Louisa will be so shocked on Christmas morning.”

      “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

      He guided the horse into the pasture, where his own favorite horse, Tor, immediately trotted over as Faith closed the gate behind them. As soon as Chase unhooked the young horse from her lead line, she raced to the other side of the pasture, mane and tail flying out behind her.

      She was fast. That was the truth. Grateful for her own cowboy hat that shielded her face from the worst of the frost-tipped snowflakes, Faith watched the horse race to the other corner of the pasture and back, obviously overflowing with energy after the stress of a day at the auction and then a trailer ride with strangers.

      “Do you think she’s too much horse for Lou?” she asked while Chase patted Tor beside her.

      He looked at the paint and then down at Faith. “She comes from prime barrel racing stock. That’s what Lou wants to do. For twelve, she’s a strong rider. Yeah, the horse is only green broke but Seth Dalton can train a horse to do just about anything but recite its ABCs.”

      “I guess that’s true. It was nice of him to agree to take her, with his crazy training schedule.”

      “He’s a good friend.”

      “He is,” she agreed. “Though I know he only agreed to do it as a favor to you.”

      “Maybe it was a favor to you,” he commented as he pulled a bale of hay over and opened it inside the pasture for the horses.

      “Maybe,” she answered. All three Dalton brothers had been wonderful neighbors and good friends to her. They and others in the close-knit ranching community in Cold Creek Canyon and around Pine Gulch had stepped up in a hundred different ways over the last two and a half years since Travis died.

      She would have been lost without any of them, but especially without Chase.

      That vague unease slithered through her again. What was wrong between them? And how could she fix it?

      She didn’t have the first clue.

      * * *

      What was a guy supposed to do?

      Ever since Beck McKinley cornered him at the diner to talk about taking Faith to the stockgrowers’ holiday party, Chase hadn’t been able to think straight. He felt like the other guy had grabbed his face and dunked it in an ice-cold water trough, then kicked him in the gut for good measure.

      For a full ten seconds, he had stared at Beck as a host of emotions galloped through him faster than a pack of wild horses spooked by a thunderstorm.

      Beckett McKinley wanted to date Faith. Chase’s Faith.

      “She’s great. That’s all,” Beck had said into the suddenly tense silence. “It’s been more than two years since Travis died, right? I just thought maybe she’d be ready to start getting out there.”

      Chase had thought for a minute his whole face had turned numb, especially his tongue. It made it tough for him to get any words out at all—or maybe that was the ice-cold coating around his brain.

      “Why are you asking me?” he had finally managed to say.

      If possible, Beck had looked even more uncomfortable. “The two of you are always together. Here at the auction, at the feed store, at the diner in town. I know you’re neighbors and you’ve been friends for a long time. But if there’s something more than that, I don’t want to be an ass and step on toes. You don’t have to tell me what happens to bulls who wander into somebody else’s pen.”

      It was all he could do not to haul off and deck the guy for the implied comparison that Faith was just some lonely heifer, waiting for some smooth-talking bull to wander by.

      Instead, he had managed to grip his hands into fists, all while one thought kept echoing through his head.

      Not again.

      He thought he was giving her time to grieve, to make room in her heart for someone else besides Travis Dustin, the man she had loved since she was a traumatized girl trying to carve out a new home for her and her sisters.

      Chase had been too slow once before. He had been a steady friend and confidant from the beginning. He figured he had all the time in the world as he waited for her to heal and to settle into life in Pine Gulch. She had been so young, barely sixteen. He wasn’t much older, not yet nineteen, and had been busy with his own struggles. Even then, he had been running his family’s ranch on his own while his father lay dying.

      For six months, he offered friendship to Faith, fully expecting that one day when both of them were in a better place, he could start moving things to a different level.

      And then Travis Dustin came home for the summer to help out Claude and Mary, the distant relatives who had raised him his last few years of high school.

      Chase’s father was in his last few agonizing weeks of life from lung cancer that summer. While he was busy coping with that and accepting his new responsibilities on the ranch, Travis had wasted no time sweeping in and stealing Faith’s heart. By the time Chase woke up and realized what was happening, it was too late. His two closest friends were in love with each other and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

      He could have fought for her, he supposed, but it was clear from the beginning