The Christmas Ranch. RaeAnne Thayne

you I stopped by just to save you from certain culinary disaster?”

      “Yeah, sorry. Not buying it, though I won’t complain about the pleasant secondary outcome.”

      Oh, she liked this man. Entirely too much. Again, she thought how familiar he seemed and was vexed that she couldn’t place him.

      “All right. You caught me. The truth is, I found an excellent way for Joey to work off the cost of replacing my truck window.”

      “I suspected as much.”

      “Okay, here’s the skinny. I know you’re not from Pine Gulch but are you at all familiar with The Christmas Ranch?”

      “Don’t think so.”

      “Well, let me just tell you, sailor, it’s a magical place near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon. My uncle and aunt started it years ago, shortly after they were married. Christmas is kind of a big deal in my family. My family name, Nichols, used to be Nicholas. As in St. Nicholas. You know, the big guy in the red suit with the beard. It was shortened when my ancestors migrated to America several generations ago. Despite that, my uncle Claude and aunt Mary always took the whole holiday thing very seriously.”

      “Makes sense.”

      “In spring, summer and fall, the Star N is like any other working cattle ranch, with a pretty small herd but enough to get by. But from Thanksgiving to just after the New Year, an entire section of the ranch is set aside to celebrate Christmas. We have a huge holiday light display, sleigh rides, a sledding hill, even a reindeer petting zoo.”

      He raised a dark eyebrow. “With real reindeer?”

      “You guessed it. We have a herd of ten.”

      He looked puzzled. “Ten? I thought there were only eight who pulled the big guy’s sleigh. Oh, right. You can’t forget Rudolph. But then who’s the other one?”

      “We do have a Rudolph, only we call him Rudy and he doesn’t have a red nose except when we stick one on him, which he hates. We’ve got a bunch more. Glacier and Floe, Aurora and Borealis—we call him Boris for short—Brooks and Kenai and Moraine. Oh, and I can’t forget Twinkle and of course Sparkle. He’s kind of our favorite. He’s the smallest one in the herd and also the sweetest.”

      “Okay. And you’re telling me all this why?”

      “It’s kind of a long story. Stir the sauce while I tell you.”

      He made a small, amused sound at her deliberately bossy tone but headed for the stove anyway and picked up the spoon. She tried not to notice how gorgeous he looked doing it.

      “My oldest sister and her husband had been running the Star N for the past few years—that’s the cattle operation—along with The Christmas Ranch, but Travis was killed in a ranch accident this summer.”

      “Oh. I’m sorry.”

      She accepted his condolences with a nod, feeling a sharp ache in her chest all over again. Travis had been her friend and she had loved him from the time he came to live with Mary and Claude to help them run the ranch. She would always miss him but she grieved most that her sister had lost her husband and Barrett and Louisa their father.

      “Faith—my sister—is understandably overwhelmed. She’s hardly had time to grieve and so she and my aunt Mary and my sister Celeste all decided to take a break from operating the holiday side of things. Since I’m here now and don’t have anything going, I offered to take over and run The Christmas Ranch this year. As you can imagine, I have a gazillion things to do if we’re going to open in little more than a week. That’s where I need Joey’s help.”

      “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think he knows anything about reindeer.”

      She made a face. “He won’t need to deal with the reindeer unless he wants to. But I could really use him after school helping me get everything ready in time for our traditional opening the day after Thanksgiving.”

      Ten days. She had no idea how she would accomplish the tiniest fraction of what she had to do but she had to start somewhere.

      “If Joey can help me every day after school for a few hours that should make us square on the three hundred dollars it’s going to take to replace my truck window.”

      “It would be far easier for me to just pay you the three hundred dollars now and be done with it.”

      She made a face. “You’re absolutely right. But raising boys into men isn’t about the easy. It’s about consequences and accountability. What lesson would he learn if you stepped in to fix his problem for him?”

      “Yeah, yeah. I know. Fine. I’ll bring him out tomorrow after school. You said it’s in Cold Creek Canyon?”

      “Yes. You know where that is?”

      “Yes.”

      “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then. Thanks. Have him wear boots and warm clothes. And don’t worry. I’ll find something fun for him to do.”

      “Sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? Seems only fair, after you did all the work.”

      She was extraordinarily tempted. She liked the man, entirely too much, but the hard reality was, she didn’t have a minute to spare. Even the fifteen minutes she had spent here already was too much.

      “I appreciate the invitation and I really wish I could, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.”

      “I think you’re just chicken your sauce won’t be edible after all, for all your big talk.”

      She gave a short laugh. “Wait and see, sailor. Wait and see. Bring that cute nephew of yours over after school, whenever he’s done with homework. We’re on the north side of the road, about three miles up the canyon. You can’t miss it. There’s a sign over the driveway that says The Christmas Ranch.”

      “I’ll figure it out.”

      “Great. See you then.”

      He started to walk her to the door but she shook her head. “I can find my way out. You need to stay and stir that sauce.”

      And she needed to do her best to figure out how she was going to keep from losing her head over a man with hazel eyes, a sweet smile and shoulders made for taking on a woman’s cares.

       Chapter Four

      By the time she finally made it back to the Star N, spaghetti with Rafe Santiago and his nephew sounded like the most delicious thing she could imagine, even if the man somehow ended up burning the sauce again.

      She was exhausted and starving and trying not to feel completely defeated at the magnitude of the task ahead of her.

      Nothing seemed to be going the way she planned. Of their six regular temp employees in years past, three were unavailable or had already found other positions for the season and one had moved away. Only two of their regulars were available to help this year—Mac Palmer, who had been their Santa Claus for years, and Linda Smithson, who helped out in the gift shop.

      She was glad to find workers where she could, at least, but she would definitely need to find extra help—in a town she hadn’t lived in with any regularity in a decade. It was an overwhelming undertaking.

      She was most concerned after her last conversation with Dale Williams. The retired schoolteacher had been their general handyman for a decade and also stepped in to play Santa Claus sometimes, trading off with Mac when needed. But he had had bypass surgery just three weeks earlier and wouldn’t be in any shape to help her this year.

      She faced the most uphill of uphill battles. A truly epic vertical slope.

      While she was tempted to throw in the towel now, before she even started, she absolutely refused.

      This