The Holiday Gift. RaeAnne Thayne

everything. It was by turns endearing and endlessly frustrating.

      Finally she seemed to have sifted through the possibilities and come up with a scenario she could live with. “You’re such a good friend, Chase. You’ve always got my back. You want to help make this easier for me, just like you helped me buy the horse for Louisa. Thank you.”

      He opened his mouth to say that wasn’t at all his intention but he could see by the stubborn set of her jaw that she wasn’t ready to hear that yet.

      “I’ll talk to Aunt Mary about keeping an eye on the kids on Friday. We can work out the details later. I really do have to go. Thanks again.”

      Her tone was clearly dismissive. Left with no real choice, he stepped back so she could close the vehicle door.

      She was deliberately misunderstanding him and he didn’t know how to argue with her. After all these years of being her friend and so carefully hiding his feelings, how did he convince her he wanted to be more than that?

      He had no idea. He only knew he had to try.

      * * *

      Faith refused to let herself panic.

      I want you to be my date, with everything that goes along with that.

      Despite her best efforts, fear seemed to curl around her insides, coating everything with a thin layer of ice.

      She couldn’t let things change. End of story. Chase had been her rock for two years, her best friend, the one constant in her crazy, tumultuous life. He had been the first one she had called when she had gone looking for Travis after he didn’t answer his cell and found him unconscious and near death, with severe internal injuries and a shattered spine, next to his overturned ATV.

      Chase had been there within five minutes and had taken charge of the scene, had called the medics and the helicopter, had been there at the hospital and had held her after the doctors came out with their solemn faces and their sad eyes.

      While she had been numb and broken, Chase had stepped in, organizing all the neighbors to bring in the fall harvest. He had helped her clean up and streamline the Star N operation and sell off all the unnecessary stock to keep their head above water those first few months.

      Now the ranch was in the black again—thanks in large part to the crash course in smart ranch practices Chase had given her. She knew perfectly well that without him, there wouldn’t be a Star N right now or The Christmas Ranch. She and her sisters would have had to sell off the land, the cattle, everything to pay their debts.

      Travis hadn’t been a very good businessman. At his death, she’d found the ranch was seriously overextended with creditors and had been operating under a system of gross inefficiencies for years.

      She winced with the guilt the disloyal thought always stirred in her, but it was nothing less than the truth. If her husband hadn’t died and things had continued on the same course, the ranch would have gone bankrupt within a few years. Through Chase’s extensive help, she had been able to turn things around.

      The ranch was doing so much better. The Christmas Ranch—the seasonal attraction started by her uncle and aunt after she and her sisters came to live with them—was finally in the black, too. Hope and her husband, Rafe, had done an amazing job revitalizing it and making it a powerful draw. That success had only been augmented by the wild viral popularity of the charming children’s book Celeste had written and Hope had illustrated featuring the ranch’s starring attraction, Sparkle the Reindeer.

      She couldn’t be more proud of her sisters—though she did find it funny that, of the three of them, Faith seemed the one most excited that Celeste and Hope had signed an agreement to allow a production company to make an animated movie out of the first Sparkle book.

      Despite a few preproduction problems, the process was currently under way, though the animated movie wouldn’t come out for another year. The buzz around it only heightened interest in The Christmas Ranch and led to increased revenue.

      The book had helped push The Christmas Ranch to self-sufficiency. Without that steady drain on the Star N side of the family operation, Faith had been able to plow profits back into the cattle ranch operation.

      As she drove past the Saint Nicholas Lodge on the way to the ranch house, she spotted both of her sisters’ vehicles in the parking lot.

      After taking up most of the day at the auction, she had a hundred things to do. As she had told Chase, Barrett and Louisa would be home from school soon. When she could swing it, she liked being there to greet them, to ask about their day and help manage their homework and chore responsibilities.

      On a whim, though, she pulled into the parking lot and hurriedly texted both of her children as well as Aunt Mary to tell them she was stopping at the lodge for a moment and would be home soon.

      The urge to talk to her sisters was suddenly overwhelming. Hope and Celeste weren’t just her sisters, they were her best friends.

      She had to park three rows back, which she considered a great sign for a Tuesday afternoon in mid-December.

      Tourists from as far away as Boise and Salt Lake City were making the trek here to visit their quaint little Christmas attraction, with its sleigh rides, the reindeer herd, the village—and especially because this was the home of Sparkle.

      As far as she was concerned, this was just home.

      The familiar scents inside the lodge encircled her the moment she walked inside—cinnamon and vanilla and pine, mixed with old logs and the musty smell of a building that stood empty most of the year.

      She heard her younger sisters bickering in the office before she saw them.

      “Cry your sad song to someone else,” Celeste was saying. “I told you I wasn’t going to do it again this year and I won’t let you guilt me into it.”

      “But you did such a great job last year,” Hope protested.

      “Yes I did,” their youngest sister said. “And I swore I wouldn’t ever do it again.”

      Faith poked her head into the office in time to see Hope pout. She was nearly three months pregnant and only just beginning to show.

      “It didn’t turn out so badly,” Hope pointed out. “You ended up with a fabulous husband and a new stepdaughter out of the deal, didn’t you?”

      “Seriously? You’re giving the children’s show credit for my marriage to Flynn?”

      “Think about it. Would you be married to your hunky contractor right now and deliriously happy if you hadn’t directed the show for me last year—and if his daughter hadn’t begged to participate?”

      It was an excellent point, Faith thought with inward amusement that Celeste didn’t appear to share.

      “Why can’t you do it?” Celeste demanded.

      “We are booked solid with tour groups at the ranch until Christmas Eve. I won’t have a minute to breathe from now until the New Year—and that’s with Rafe making me cut down my hours.”

      “You knew you were going to be slammed,” Celeste said, not at all persuaded. “Talk about procrastination. I can’t believe you didn’t find somebody to organize the variety show weeks ago!”

      “I had somebody. Linda Keller told me clear back in September she would do it. I thought we were set, but she fell this morning and broke her arm, which leaves me back at square one. The kids are going to be coming to practice a week from today and I’ve got absolutely no one to lead them.”

      Hope shifted her attention to Faith with a considering look that struck fear in her heart.

      “Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “You can forget that idea right now.”

      “Why?” Hope pouted. “You love kids and senior citizens both, plus you sing like a dream. You even used to direct the choir at church, which I say makes you the perfect one to run the Christmas show.”

      She