Hers for the Holidays Read Free

that for her to collect, Lydia had to stay home for a month. Obviously her mother had good intentions, always having insisted that Lydia had to face her past.
    Lydia didn’t agree.
    She needed to sell the ranch as quickly as possible—which meant staying the month, three more weeks—and then leave for good. But the world seemed to be working against her.
    The house needed some necessary repairs, and she had tried to line up someone to do them sooner than later, unsuccessfully. Then, she’d looked into tracking down the one Realtor in Clear River. They were closed on Wednesdays. Of course. Strike three. It was Christmas in a small town. This was not going to be easy.
    Many of the contractors were already booked or not scheduling new work until spring. She’d gotten some suggestions for businesses in the city, but that would add to the cost considerably.
    On top of that, one of the cows was sick, and they’d had to call for the vet. Necessary and costly. The animal would be fine, thank goodness...Lydia had sat with her most of the night before, taking turns with Smitty, the ranch manager. He and one ranch hand, a sour guy named Kyle Jones, were the only two hires her mother had kept on.
    She might have to see if she could take a loan against the house to make repairs and ask Smitty to talk to someone about selling the livestock. She’d forgotten how much she liked the cows. Peaceful creatures, mostly. She was glad her mother had reduced their herd to this small group of gentle dairy cows, but she had to make sure they found a good home, not some meat market.
    It was all so overwhelming. Lydia felt trapped, her present life held hostage to her past, and she didn’t like it. She’d left her life here behind, and she wanted to keep it that way.
    But if she just walked away, she would lose the property, and her chance to sell it. With money from a sale, she could expand her business back in Philadelphia, open a second location of Body Inc., which would also mean hiring a second artist. It was a dream she didn’t think she could attain for several years, but sale of her family home would make it possible.
    Thinking about it made her crave the city, and she took in her surroundings as icy wind whipped her hair around her face, freezing her ears and nose.
    The town was still pretty and well-kept, as it always had been. Twinkling lights decorated most of the buildings and were strung from streetlight to streetlight, their cheerfulness contrasting with the storm clouds that blotted out the stars. She’d heard they were expecting the first real snow overnight.
    Most of the old, low-profile, Western-style buildings were still in place here, though there were a few new constructions. Across the street she saw an architects’ office and a new medical practice that looked pretty upscale for the small town. The street was repaved, the sidewalks new, with large wooden raised gardens placed intermittently along the main street. Where plants would grow in the summer, they were now covered with snow.
    As a kid, she had often gone to the pizza shop down the road with her friends after football games and to the tack store with her father. Every year, she would bake dozens of cookies with her mother for the Fourth of July picnic that always accompanied fireworks at the edge of town. Clear River always had its own little holiday parades with their local bands and town officials, and all of the kids would do something creative to show off. The town itself was often more like an extended family, everyone knowing everyone else. It had been a nice way to grow up. Mostly.
    She’d been the Fireworks Princess when she was thirteen—the girl with most spark—she remembered with a smile. She’d had a lot of good times here, before things had gone bad.
    The same huge spruce grew in front of town hall, even bigger than it had been, and was decorated for the season. That would have been done Thanksgiving weekend, and the annual Winter Festival, a