Page 1 of Snowed In with the Rancher

Chapter One

“Well that fucking sucks,” Hannah said through the phone after Triss spent the last twenty minutes telling her friend how her boyfriend of three years had just dumped her out of the blue. “I’ll certainly be leaving a scathing Yelp review at Lorne’s restaurant now.”

“Don’t waste your time,” Triss said with a sigh, flopping into her desk chair in her office. “The worst of it all is that I still live with the guy.”

Hannah made a cringing sound. “Riiiight. How long did you sign your lease for?”

“Just a year, but we’ve only been there three months.”

“Ugh. Awkward.”

“And we were supposed to go spend Christmas with his family in New Hampshire, but he’s taking Echo now.”

“Wait, hold up—who the fuck is Echo?” Triss could just picture her raven-haired friend with the piercing blue eyes holding up her hand like she was a cop directing traffic and wrinkling her naturally thick brows in utter confusion.

“Oh, did I leave that part out? Echo is Lorne’s culinary school girlfriend. They reconnected on social media a couple of months ago and that’s why he dumped me. To get back together with her.” Triss made sure her office door was closed before putting Hannah on speakerphone so that she could massage her temples with both hands. “And he’d like to move Echo into our apartment.”

“So in other words, he wants you to move out?”

“Yeppers.”

“Fuck almighty. Now I’m going to go and slash the motherfucker’s tires, screw the Yelp review. Cut his brake lines, put his number on the wall in a men’s bathroom at a biker bar for those looking for a good time.”

“You’d never step foot into a biker bar.” That brought a smile to Triss’s otherwise perpetually scowling face. At least it felt like she’d been perpetually scowling since Lorne dropped the breakup bomb on her yesterday. But the thought of Triss’s princess-esc friend with her designer everything going into the men’s room of a sketchy biker bar was hilarious in its absurdity and gave Triss’s lips the much-need lift at the corners they needed.

Hannah made a dismissive noise. “I would for you, babe. You know that.”

Yeah, she did know that. Hannah was one of her closest friends. They met in grad school and although Hannah now worked in Manhattan as a speech pathologist, and Triss in Connecticut as a speech path, they spoke several times a week and made a point of getting together at least once a month for drinks, dinner, and more drinks.

“So now what are you going to do?” Hannah asked, the echo of other voices around her filtered through the phone. She had to be on the subway getting ready to head home for the day.

“For what? A house? A boyfriend? Christmas? Choose one. Their answer will be the same. I have no freaking clue.” It was times like these where Triss really wished she had a bottle of something stronger than sparkling water in the bottom drawer of her desk. Even a beer would be better than room-temperature sparkling water.

“Well, yeah, but I was going to say Christmas.”

“No idea. I have no desire to go home and be the only kid at home with my parents. Besides, I think they’re going to visit my mom’s sister in Florida. Mieka is on a cruise ship doing her dancing thing, Oona is still in Montreal going to school. And then of course there is my oldest and youngest sister in Victoria, happy and blissfully in love. Gag. No thanks. As much as I love my niece and nephew, I don’t feel like watching Pasha and Heath make googly fuck me eyes at each other. And Rayma has zero filter, so I’m sure she’d have no problem literally straddling her boyfriend and making out with him right in front of me.”

“Yeah … Rayma’s a handful.”

“Understatement of the century.” It was also really funny coming from Hannah, since she and Rayma were a lot alike. Particularly in the lack of a filter department.

“Spend Christmas with me,” Hannah said.

“Which is going to be where this year? Your family is spread out more than mine.”

“I’m going to see my uncles in Colorado at their dude ranch and stud farm. They’re grumpy, crotchety old buggers. Were in the Navy for a while, then bought a ranch when they retired from fighting bad guys.”

“And why are you going there?”

“Because I can’t stand to spend Christmas with my mother and her new husband, or my dad and his wife, who is five years older than me. And they can always use the extra help at the ranch during the winter. Plus, I love cuddling goats and baby horses.”

“They have goats?”

“Dude ranch, stud farm, and petting farm, I should have said. They have it all. And I think they have a couple of mares that are getting ready to foal soon, so we might get lucky and get to cuddle some fresh babies.”

“And these are your uncles?”

“Yeah.”

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