Harlequin Special Edition October 2015, Box Set 1 of 2 by Christine Rimmer

Author:Christine Rimmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459290723
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Closing her eyes, Anna tipped her face to the gently falling snow and, as she’d done as a child, stuck out her tongue to catch a mouthful of icy snowflakes. It was Christmas Eve morning, and she and Logan had been at the Bur Oak Ranch—named, she imagined, for the numerous bur oak trees dotting the land—since late yesterday afternoon.

They’d driven onto the property just before sunset, and she’d glimpsed an old-fashioned wooden swing on the sprawling red-shingled house’s wraparound porch. And she had the thought that it would be nice to sit and swing and think about nothing at all.

Waking up in an empty bed with no sign of where Logan might have gone, and finding the main floor empty—save for a trio of snoring border collies stretched in front of the fireplace—had inspired her to take advantage of the peace and slip outside.

She was still surprised she was even here, in the place Logan called home. Leaving her aunt alone for the holidays hadn’t felt right. But Lola had insisted, stating that Anna shouldn’t put off meeting Logan’s family any longer, and had sworn she’d be just fine. After eliciting a promise that they’d celebrate Christmas upon her return, Anna finally relented.

So. Here she was, sitting in the cold morning air, catching snowflakes on her tongue and feeling as if she’d somehow wandered into a mystical winter wonderland.

Yesterday, between her nervous anticipation at meeting Logan’s family and her near-crippling exhaustion, she hadn’t really looked at the details of the ranch. Now, after a good night’s sleep and without the anxiety-inducing presence of Logan’s mother, grandmother or stern grandfather, she was able to relax enough to take in her surroundings.

A group of buildings—maybe fifty to sixty feet away—faced the main residence in a half circle, and behind them stood several more structures. Most were, she assumed, housing for the cattle, horses and the herding dogs that weren’t lucky enough to sleep in front of a roaring fire. The other structures were likely storage for machinery, tools, equipment, feed and...well, whatever else a ranch required to function. Then directly next to the rear group of buildings were medium to large plots of land squared in by fences, resembling a neat if oversize checkerboard.

In the opposite direction existed a variety of snow-covered trees—pine, bur oak and others she didn’t recognize—and a long, winding creek that bent and wiggled its form around the land’s natural slopes and ridges, before cutting a path between a thick cluster of pines and disappearing from view. And extending along the other side of the family house was a seemingly endless expanse of wide-open land that, at the moment, was coated in a heavy layer of snow.

Yet, as much as Anna could see, she knew it was only a small slice of the entire pie and there was more wide-open land, more creeks and buildings and neat, fenced-in squares well outside her vantage point. In addition to the bunkhouses, there were a handful of

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