'Tis the Season: Under the Christmas Tree / Midnight Confessions / Backward Glance. Robyn Carr

to be frozen for the barrage of company—but she would have her dinner at the bar. Because of the puppies, of course.

      “You’re very quiet, Annie,” her mother said. “I think you’re letting this adventure with the puppies wear you out. You’ve always had such a tender heart.”

      “I am tired,” she admitted, rolling out cookie dough. “I’m getting up extra early, starting at the shop earlier so I can leave earlier, staying up late to finish work. And you know I won’t leave my house alone—I’m decorating for Christmas. I’ve been doing a little here and there, before and after work.”

      “Then you shouldn’t be out here two days a week,” Rose McKenzie said. “Really, I appreciate the help, but I’m not too old to do the holiday baking.”

      “I count on our baking as gifts,” Annie said. “So I’m glad to help.

      “I didn’t realize we had a new and improved Doc Jensen,” she went on, changing the subject. “I thought it was still old Doc Jensen who came for the horses and Erasmus when you needed a vet. But when he stopped to look at the puppies, he explained he was Nathaniel Junior. You never mentioned.”

      “Oh, sure we did, honey. His coming home was good gossip there for a while. He had some woman living with him, but she took off like a scalded cat. I don’t think we talked about anything else for months.”

      “A woman? When was that?”

      “A couple years ago. Some fancy young Hollywood girl,” Rose said with an indulgent laugh. “We ran into them a few times—at the fair, the farmers’ market, here and there.” Her mother was kneading dough as she chattered. “You know, you don’t run into people that often around here. They could’ve been here a year before anyone met her, but Nathaniel had her out and about. Probably trying to help her get acquainted. But it didn’t work too well, I guess.”

      “I’m sure I would have remembered, Mom. I don’t think you ever mentioned it.”

      Rose looked skyward briefly, trying to remember. “That might’ve been about the time you were preoccupied with other things. Like buying the Clip and Curl shop. And then there was Ed, and that ordeal with Ed. You might’ve had other things on your mind.”

      Ed. Yes, Ed. She hadn’t exactly been engaged, thank God, but they’d been an item for about a year and she’d expected to be engaged. They had talked about marriage. She laughed humorlessly. “That could have distracted me a little,” Annie agreed.

      “The bum,” Rose McKenzie muttered, punching dough more aggressively than necessary. “He’s a pig and a fool and a liar and a...a bum!”

      Loving it, Annie laughed. “He’s really not a bum. He works hard and earns a good living, which it turned out he needed for all the women he had on a string. But I concede to pig, liar and fool, and I’m certainly not missing him. The louse,” she added. “I can’t remember now—why was it we didn’t let the boys shoot him in the head?”

      “I can’t remember exactly, either,” Rose said. “I knew all along he wasn’t right for you.”

      “No, you didn’t,” Annie argued. “You had me trying on your wedding dress about once a month, asking me constantly if we’d talked about a date. You expected him to give me a ring.”

      “I just thought if...”

      Ed was in farm-equipment sales and had a very broad territory in Northern California, a job that had him on the road most of the week. Then she learned that for the entire time they’d dated, Ed was involved with another woman in Arcata. About six months ago he’d decided it was time to make a choice, and he chose the other woman.

      Ouch.

      Annie’s pride was hurt, but worse than hurt pride was her embarrassment. How had this been going on without her getting so much as a whiff of it? When she hadn’t seen him, she had talked to him every single day. He never betrayed the slightest hint that she was not the only female in his life. And it made her furious to think he’d been with another woman while he was with her. She even drove to Arcata to sneak a look at her, but she couldn’t figure out, based on looks, just what it was that won her the great prize that was Ed.

      Before she could ponder that for long, that Arcata woman found her, looked her up, informed her they weren’t the only two. Ed, as it happened, was quite the dabbler. He had at least one other steady girlfriend to spend the nights with.

      Her tears had turned to fumes. She threw out everything that reminded her of him. She bought all new bedding and towels. Went to the doctor and got a clean bill of health. But at the end of the day when she grieved, it wasn’t so much for Ed as for the idea of Ed; she had invested a year in a man she thought would give her the stability of marriage and family, a settled life. The dependence of love. Security. When she thought about Ed, she wanted to dismember him. She wanted her brothers to go after him and beat him senseless. But not only would she never take him back, she’d cross the street to avoid him. So maybe Rose was right—maybe they both really knew all along he just wasn’t the one.

      But neither was anyone else. She hadn’t been out on five dates since the breakup a little more than six months ago, and the number of boyfriends she’d had before Ed had come along were too few to count. She went out with her girlfriends regularly, but the best part of her life was spending a couple of days on the farm, riding, cooking or baking or putting up preserves with her mom.

      The farmhouse had a wide porch that stretched the length of the house, and from that porch you could watch the seasons come and go. The brightness of spring, the lushness of summer, the burnt color of fall, the white of winter. She watched the year pass from that porch, as she had since she was a little girl. But lately it seemed as though the years were passing way too quickly and she wondered if she’d ever find the right partner to sit there with rather than alone.

      A Hollywood woman? A fancy Hollywood woman? That would explain things like Caribbean vacations. Nate was drawn to flashy, sexy women. Or maybe the kind of women found in the private boxes at races or horse shows; Annie had seen enough of those televised events to know the type—model gorgeous, decked out in designer clothes, hand-stitched boots, lots of fringe and bling. Or the type seen at the fund-raisers and society events attended by the wives, daughters and sisters of Thoroughbred breeders, the kind of women whose horses were entered in the Preakness. Or perhaps he preferred medically educated women, like another vet who could appreciate his professional interests—the kind of women who also rubbed elbows with the well-to-do because of their profession.

      But probably ordinary, sensible-shoes farm girls didn’t do anything special for a man like Nate.

      Annie’s thoughts were broken when her father walked into the kitchen and refilled his coffee cup. He put a hand on the small of his back and stretched, leaning back, rolling his shoulders.

      “Are you limping, Dad?”

      “Nah,” he said. “Got a little hitch in my giddyup is all.”

      “As soon as I’m through with this puppy project, I’ll make it a point to get out here more often to help.”

      “The doctor says the best thing is for him to keep moving,” Rose said. “You do enough to help already.”

      “You don’t remember that fancy Hollywood woman?” Hank asked, going back to the conversation he had overheard. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Breeze woulda blown her away. Skinny thing. Could see her bones. Not at all right for Nathaniel.” He took a sip of coffee and lifted his bushy brows, looking at her over the rim of his mug. “You’da been more his speed, I think. Yeah, better Nathaniel than that son of a so-and-so you got yourself mixed up with.”

      “I didn’t even know Nate Jensen was here until a few days ago, remember?” Annie pointed out. “And before that, I was with the so-and-so, and Nate was taken.”

      “Yeah, you’da had to kill that skinny thing, but she looked near death, anyhow.” Then he grinned at her and left the kitchen.