Snowed in at the Ranch

“That’s right. Things are primitive out here in the sticks. We don’t read and can barely write. When we do, we use a tablet and a chisel.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, blinking hard. “Now I’ve insulted you. I’ve moved in to the wrong house and I’ve insulted you. But I’m not going to faint. I promise. I’m not the fainting kind.”

“Reassuring,” he said drily. “And just for the record, I’m not easily insulted. It would take a lot more than the insinuation that I’m not up on my literary classics.”

She sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “This isn’t the McFinley residence, is it?”

Her face was crumpling, all the wariness and defiance seeping out of it. It was worse than pale and shaky.

He had the most ridiculous notion of wanting to comfort her, to move closer to her, pat her on the shoulder, tell her it would be all right.

But of course, he had no way of knowing if it would be all right, and he already knew if you moved too fast around a nervous colt, that little tiny bit of trust you had earned went out the window a whole lot faster than it had come in.

“But you know the McFinleys?” she asked, the desperation deepening in her voice. “I’m housesitting for them. For six months. They’ve left for Australia. They had to leave a few days before I could get away….”

He shook his head. He had the horrible feeling she was within a hairsbreadth of crying. Nervous colts were one thing. Crying women were a totally different thing. Totally.

The baby had sensed the change in his mother’s tone. His happy babbling had ceased. He was eyeing his mother, his face scrunched up alarmingly, waiting for his cue.

One false move, Ty warned himself, and they would both be crying.

Ty checked the calendar in his mind. It was six days before Christmas. Why did a woman take her baby and find a new place to live six days before Christmas?

Running.

From what, or from whom, he told himself firmly, fell strictly into the none-of-his-business category.

“Mona and Ron?” Her voice faded as she correctly read his expression.

He was silent.

“You’ve never heard of them,” she deduced. She sucked in another deep breath, assessing him.

Ty watched, trying not to let amusement tug at his mouth, as she apparently decided he was not an ax murderer, and made the decision to be brave.

She moved the baby onto her hip and wiped her hand—she’d been scared enough to sweat?—on slacks that weren’t made for riding horses. Like the shirt, the slacks emphasized the surprising lushness of such a slight figure.

All the defiance, all the I’ll-lay-my-life-down-for-my-baby drained out of her. She looked wildly embarrassed at having been found making herself at home in someone else’s house. Still, blushing, she tried for dignity as she extended her hand.

“I’m Amy Mitchell.”

The blush made her look pretty. And vulnerable. He didn’t want to take her hand, because despite her effort to be brave she still looked a breath away from crying, and the baby was still watching her intently, waiting.

“Mrs. Mitchell,” he said, even though she wore no wedding band. He took her hand.

Ty knew instantly why he had resisted taking it. Amy Mitchell’s hand in his felt tiny, soft beyond soft. The touch of her hand, his closeness to her, made him aware of his bleak world in ways that made him uncomfortable.

Her eyes were not brown, as he had initially thought from across the room, but a kaleidoscope of greens and golds, shot through with rich, dark hints of coffee color.

Now that she didn’t feel she had her back against the wall, with a home invader coming at her, her eyes were soft and worried. Her honey-in-a-jar hair was scattered about her face in a wild disarray of curls that made him want to right it, to feel its texture beneath his fingertips.

Ty Halliday’s world was a hard place. There was no softness in it, and no room for softness, either. There was no room in his world for the tears that shone, unshed, behind the astounding loveliness of her eyes; there was no room in his world for the bright, hopeful lights of the Christmas tree.

The baby, eyes shifting from him to his mother and back again, suddenly relaxed. “Papa,” he cooed, and leaned away from his mommy, reaching for Ty.

Ty took a defensive step backward.

There was no room in his world for such innocence or trust. All these things were as foreign to Ty as an exotic, unvisited land.

He realized he was still holding Amy Mitchell’s hand. She realized it, too, and with a deepening blush, slipped it from his.

“I can’t believe this,” she muttered. “I have GPS.”

She said that as if her faulty system or reading of it was the cause of the stain moving up her cheeks, instead of her awareness of him.

And maybe it was.

But he didn’t think so.

Still, he focused on the GPS, too, something safe in a room that suddenly seemed fraught with dangers of a kind he had never considered before.

The faith city folk put in their gadgets never failed to astound him, but aware she was still terrifyingly close to the tear stage, he tried to think of a way to phrase it that wouldn’t wound her.

“It wouldn’t be the first time GPS got people into trouble in this country,” he said after some thought.

“Really?”

Obviously, she was pleased that hers was not an isolated case of being misled by her global positioning system, and he could have left it at that.

Instead, he found the worry lines dissolving on her forehead encouraging enough to want to make them—and the possibility of tears—disappear altogether.

“One of the neighbors found an old couple stranded in George’s Pass last year. They’d been on the news. Missing for a week.”

But instead of being further reassured that her mistake was not all that uncommon, Amy looked aghast. He remembered the locked doors and saw her considering other scenarios. Disastrous possibilities flashed through her eyes as she considered what could have happened to her if she had followed her GPS instructions somewhere other than his driveway.

Which just served as a reminder that he could not really be trusted with soft things or a woman so frightened of life she locked everything all the time and was ready to defend herself with a lamp if need be.

She marshaled herself and turned away from him. She plunked the baby down on his padded rear and began to whip around the room, picking up baby things, putting them in a pile. Given the short amount of time she had been here, the pile grew to a mountain with astonishing swiftness.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Halliday. We’ll go right away. I’m so embarrassed.”

If he had thought she was blushing before, that had only been a hint of the main event.

Amy Mitchell was turning a shade of red that matched some of the lights on the tree. Was that a smile tickling around the edges of his mouth? He tried to remember the last time he had smiled.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town had made him smile, he decided. He’d reread that a week or so ago.

No doubt his current good cheer was because his visitor was so intent on leaving. There was no need to tell her to pack her baby and get the hell out of his house. She was doing it all on her own.