Page 63 of The Holiday Gift

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack just now when you fell. For an instant, it was like Travis all over again—but it also confirmed something I had already been thinking.”

“Oh?”

She pressed her cheek against his hand. “I’ve been worried that I’m not strong enough to open my heart to you. The real question is whether I’m strong enough to live without you. When I saw you fall, in those horrible few seconds when you weren’t breathing, I realized the answer to that is an unequivocal, emphatic no. I can’t bear the idea of not being with you.”

He couldn’t promise nothing would ever happen to him—but he could promise he would love her fiercely every single day of his life.

“I love you, Chase. I love you, my kids love you, my entire family loves you. I need you. You are my oldest and dearest friend—and my oldest and dearest love.”

He framed her face in his hands and kissed her with all the pent-up need from all these years of standing on the sidelines, waiting for their moment to be right. He almost couldn’t believe this was real. Maybe he was simply hallucinating after having the wind knocked out of him. But his senses seemed even more acute than usual, alive and invigorated, and the joy expanding in his chest was too bright and wild and beautiful to be imaginary.

People said Christmas was a time for miracles.

He would never doubt that again.

Epilogue

Christmas Eve, one year later

“Okay, help me out, Mary. Where do you keep the salad tongs since you and Pat have renovated the kitchen?”

With whitewashed cabinets and new stainless steel appliances, the new Star N kitchen was beautiful, Faith had to admit—almost as pretty as the renovated kitchen at the Brannon Ridge that had been her wedding present from Chase. But after two months, she still couldn’t seem to figure out how to find things here now.

Mary headed to a large drawer on the island. “It made more sense to keep all the utensils in the biggest drawer here where they can all fit instead of scattered throughout the kitchen. I don’t know why it took me fifty years to figure that out. Is this what you’re looking for?”

“Yes! Thank you.”

She added the dressing to the rest of the ingredients in her favorite walnut cranberry salad and tossed it with the tongs. “There. That should do it. Everything looks great, Mary.”

“Thanks.” Her aunt beamed and Faith thought, not for the first time, that Mary seemed years younger since her marriage to Pat.

“Thank you for hosting the party here at the Star N.”

“Christmas is about home and this old house is home to you girls,” Mary said simply. “It seemed right, even though all of you have bigger places now. Your kitchen up at Brannon Ridge is twice the size as this one.”

As they were discussing how they would merge their lives after they were married, she and Chase had looked at both houses and decided to run both ranches from Brannon Ridge. The house was bigger for all three of their kids and assorted horses, dogs and barn cats.

It had been a good decision, confirmed just a few months after Faith and Chase’s wedding, when Mary announced she and her beau were getting married and wanted to renovate the Star N—a process now in the final phases.

“Anything else I can carry out to the dining room?” she asked.

“I made a fruit salad, too. It’s in the refrigerator,” Mary said.

Faith grabbed it and, with one bowl under each arm, headed for the two long tables that had been set up in the great room to hold the growing family.

She was arranging the bowls when Hope wandered over. “Hey, do you have any idea where I can find tape? I’ve still got one present to wrap.”

“Let me get this straight. You run the most famous Christmas attraction in the Intermountain Westandyou’ve illustrated a holiday book that was turned into a movie currently ranked number one at the box office for the fourth consecutive week. Yet here it is five p.m. on Christmas Eve and you’re still not finished wrapping your presents?”

“Oh, give me a break. I’ve had a little bit on my plate. You would notbelievehow much of my day this little creature takes up.”

Faith smiled. “I think I would. I’ve had two of my own, remember? Here. Give.”

Her sister held up the wriggling adorableness that was her six-month-old son, Samuel, born healthy and full-term, with no complications whatsoever from that early scare more than a year ago.

“You can have him if you tell me where I can find tape.”

“The desk drawer in the office.” She grinned and admitted the truth. “That’s where I put it a half hour ago, anyway, when I finished wrapping my last present.”

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