Snowed in at the Ranch. Cara Colter

       Seeing Amy with the horse told Ty exactly who she was.

      Ty talked her through the sequence a few more times. Her face was absolutely glowing as she began to understand that the horse was responding to her slightest move.

      “Everyone and everything is responding to us all the time at some level. Sometimes it’s so subtle we don’t know what we’ve told them.”

      For instance her kiss had told him she was hungry. But her eyes were saying she wasn’t ready.

      “Okay, lower your hand and move your eyes to his shoulder.”

      The horse skidded to a halt. He turned in, his eyes riveted on her.

      “Scratch his ears. And his forehead. Say something to him.”

      “Ben, I think I’m in love with you.”

      Her voice was husky and sweet, and it seemed to Ty a man could die to hear such words coming from her.

      His next instructions, intended for the horse, were instructions he needed to heed himself.

      “Now, turn and walk away.”

      Not that he could. Not while they were snowed in here together. But there were many ways to walk away.

      And he should know, because he’d done most of them at one time or another.

      “I don’t want to walk away,” she said, stroking Ben’s nose with soft reverence. “I want to stay like this forever.”

      Yup, she was the kind of girl who could turn a man’s thought to forever.

      Dear Reader,

      I hate to choose a favourite story, because it’s something like choosing a favourite child. Having said that, the hero of this story grabbed me from the moment he sauntered into my imagination and levelled me a look from under the brim of his hat! I am totally in love with him. Ty Halliday is quiet, strong, sexy, calm and a cowboy. Can you imagine being snowed in with him?

      That’s exactly what happens to my heroine, Amy, a soft-hearted young widow disillusioned with love. Add to the mix the amazing ranch country of Southern Alberta, a baby and Christmas a-comin’ and I think this becomes one of the most tender tales I’ve ever told!

      I hope you enjoy it. If you do, would you come visit me on Facebook and let me know? I am amazed by how technology has given us this wonderful ability to connect!

      Wishing you the most wonderful Christmas ever,

       Cara

      About the Author

      CARA COLTER lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the ‘Love and Laughter’ category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website: www.cara-colter.com.

      Snowed in

      at the Ranch

      Cara Colter

      www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To my daughter, Cassidy:

      Love you forever.

      CHAPTER ONE

      TY Halliday was beyond exhaustion. The driving mix of sleet and snow had soaked through his oilskin slicker hours ago. Icy water was sluicing off the back of his hat’s brim, inside his upturned collar and straight down his spine.

      The horse stumbled, as exhausted as his rider, dark setting in too fast.

      But beneath all the discomfort, Ty allowed himself satisfaction. He’d found the entire herd. The three cows that shuffled along in front of him were the last of them.

      It had been sixteen hours, roughly, since he’d found the broken fence, the cougar tracks. He counted himself lucky most of the herd had petered out and allowed themselves to be herded home, long before these three.

      Tracks in fresh snow told the story of the herd splitting in a dozen different directions, the cougar locking in on these three, finally giving up and prowling away down Halliday Creek. These cows, in a panic, had kept on going, almost to the summer range, way up the mountain.

      Below him, Ty could see the lights of his house winking against the growing darkness. It made him impatient for hot food, a stiff drink, a scalding shower and his bed.

      But the horse, Ben, was young and had already demonstrated great heart, had given everything he had, and so Ty did not push him, but let the young gelding set his own pace down a trail that was slick with new snow.

      Finally, finally, the cows were back with the herd, the pasture fences secured, Ben fed and watered. Ty followed a path from the barn, worn deep by a hundred years of Halliday boots, to where the “new” house sat on the top of a knoll of land, in the shadow of the mountain behind it.

      The house was called new because it shared the property with the “old” homestead place, which his father had built for his first wife twenty-five years before Ty had been born.

      Ty swayed on his back porch, his hand going to the doorknob.

      Where it froze.

      What had he heard?

      Silence.

      He cocked his head, listening hard, but heard only the lonely whistle of a December wind under the rafters of the house.

      Ty felt he was suffering the delusions of a man who had pushed himself to his limit, and then a mile or two beyond it.

      But he was frowning now, thinking of the lights inside his house that had winked him home. He lived alone. He was pretty damned sure that he had not left any lights on when he’d left way before dawn this morning.

      The sound came again, and he took a startled step back, nearly tumbling down his back-porch steps.

      The sound was definitely coming from inside his house. It was an almost shockingly happy sound. His tired mind grappled with it. He hadn’t had a television for years. He didn’t own a computer. Had he left the radio on?

      No. He had not turned on anything this morning, some distress note in the faraway bawl of a cow letting him know something had been amiss. He had scrambled out of bed and out of the house in total darkness and in a hurry.

      There was only one thing that made a sound like the one he had just heard.

      And there was absolutely no chance it was coming from inside his house.

      No, it was exhaustion. An auditory hallucination. Ears straining, picking up noises that did not exist.

      Just as Ty was about to dismiss the sound he thought he had heard as a figment of an exhausted mind—clearly it was impossible—it came again. Louder. A babbling sound, like cold creek water tinkling over the first thin shards of ice.

      And even though he was not a man with much experience in such things, Ty knew exactly what it was.

      There was a baby inside his house.

      Ty backed off his porch on silent feet, took a deep breath, felt a need to ground himself. He paused at the corner of his house, surveying the rolling land of the foothills, black against the midnight-blue of a rapidly darkening sky.

      Snow-crusted pasture rolled away from him, beyond that a forested valley, all of it ringed by the craggy magnificence of the Rocky Mountains. The rugged sweep of his land soothed him, though it was not “safe.” A man could die—or be injured—in this country fast and hard. The arrival of the cougar was a case in point, though getting wet and lost in December was far