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Lucy Renner pulled her compact rental car to a stop in front of the enormous barn on Sharpe Ranch outside Crimson, Colorado.
If Norman Rockwell and John Denver had looked down from the afterlife to create their perfect town, she figured Crimson would fit the bill to a T. She’d made a pit stop at a local bakery, Life Is Sweet, on her way through the picturesque mountain community. She had been greeted like an old friend even though she felt like an outsider in every way that mattered.
The woman who introduced herself as the shop’s owner, Katie Crawford, had not only added an extra shot to the espresso Lucy ordered but then insisted she sample a fresh-baked cookie, still warm from the oven, all the while asking about Lucy’s visit to Crimson and plans for the holidays.
But as kind as Katie Crawford seemed, Lucy didn’t trust people who were too nice. It meant they wanted something. At least, it did in Lucy’s world. Definitely in her mother’s world, which was why Lucy’s scam radar had gone on high alert when her mom called three days earlier “just to chat.”
Her mother reached out only when she needed something. Despite Lucy’s resolve not to get mixed up in any more of Maureen’s romantic schemes, she’d never been good at saying no.
Now she’d been summoned to the quaint Colorado town that looked like it had puked Christmas cheer all over the place. Much like the rest of downtown Crimson, the bakery had been decorated with festive lights, greenery, ornaments and other vestiges of Christmas, all coming together to make Lucy feel even more grinch-like than normal.
She didn’t do Christmas, didn’t go in for the magic of the season. She’d worked retail long enough to know that Christmas spirit was a ploy to get consumers to part with their hard-earned cash. She’d had plenty of experience as a kid watching her mother make spirits bright in order to further her agenda of the moment. Lucy wanted no part of it any longer. Her plan for the holidays was to survive both the visit and her mother so she could retreat to her boring, quiet life back in Tampa.
Unfolding herself from the car into the biting winter air, she pulled her thin jacket tighter around herself. A two-story farmhouse sat beyond the big barn, situated in the center of a copse of trees, the naked branches swaying in the cold breeze. A cozy stream of smoke rose from the redbrick chimney, and Christmas lights twinkled from a front window as the afternoon light began to gently fade while she stood watching.
She couldn’t quite force herself to face her mother yet, not when Lucy’s life had become collateral damage in the fallout of Maureen’s last romantic catastrophe. Not when she would have to spend the next two weeks playing a role that made her stomach pitch and twist if she couldn’t convince her mom that whatever fantasies she had about being some sort of modern-day frontier wife weren’t going to hold up for the long term.
A startled cry escaped her throat as something brushed against her leg. An orange tabby cat wound its way between her ankles then trotted over to the barn and disappeared through the slightly open door. A soft whinny broke the quiet a moment later, followed by an excited yip. Lucy followed the noises and slipped into the barn. Her mother was expecting her in time for dinner, but she had a few minutes to spare and couldn’t resist exploring.
She’d taken horseback riding lessons briefly as a girl, paid for by her mother’s husband number three. The smell of a barn—the heady mix of hay and animal—had quickly become her favorite scent in the world, and it had broken her heart when she’d had to say goodbye to the leased horse she’d considered hers.
That was when she’d been young and not so careful with her heart, but the smell of the barn still made her happy. It was warmer than she expected thanks to two industrial-sized heaters mounted on the far wall.
This barn was even larger than the one at the farm where she’d taken lessons, with stalls lining either side and a packed dirt floor in between. A horse leaned its head over a stall door and snorted in greeting.
“Hello, there,” she said, glancing around but not seeing any sign of human life inside the barn. “Aren’t you gorgeous?”
The lights were on overhead and to her right was the open door of someone’s office. She peeked her head in at the meticulously ordered desk, but other than stacks of papers, there was nothing in the space to indicate who used it.
Was this the office of her mother’s fiancé, Garrett Sharpe, the wealthy rancher who owned the property? She assumed someone with as many business dealings as Sharpe employed a ranch manager, so maybe the office belonged to that person.
Whoever ran the barn was clearly quite tidy. Even the horse tack hanging on pegs in one corner was lined up evenly. Lucy could barely remember to put her wet towel on a hook after each shower.
She spotted a basket of apples sitting on a shelf outside the office and grabbed one, then moved across the barn toward the horse. She heard the stamp of a hoof, and the animal bobbed its head as if calling her closer. He’d clearly noticed the apple.
She held it out in an open palm and the horse snuffled, then took it from her hand. She slid her fingers along the underside of his jaw and up to his neck, loving the feel of the bristly hair under her hands. A high-pitched bark had her turning her attention to the next stall and, suddenly, as if she’d just been discovered, a cacophony of noise broke out across the barn.
She heard barks and yips and a low, mournful yeowing sound and quickly realized each of the stalls was occupied. There were four more horses and at least a dozen dogs, mostly in pairs. She went from stall to stall, visiting with the animals, reaching through the slats of plank siding to pet the ones that came forward to greet her.
At the end of the row of stalls were two rooms that had been built along the barn’s outer wall, and she held her breath as she carefully opened one door. The walls of the room were lined with wooden hutches, and a myriad of twitchy noses and bright bunny eyes greeted her.
“What kind of ranch is this?” she asked in a hushed whisper, but the bunnies only hopped back and forth in response.
She reached for the other door, curiosity building in her chest. What was next? Llamas? Alpacas?
Cats.
The second room was filled with cats.
Well, not exactly filled, but there were more than she would have expected, and while she was counting, a small black kitten darted out through her legs.
She closed the door and leaned over to pick up the wanderer, but he crawled under a wide wood shelving unit and out of her reach.
Lucy felt like she’d stumbled on something private here, the animal version of a secret garden or some fairy-tale beast’s private castle. She was no Beauty, but whatever this place was or whom it belonged to, she had a feeling she wasn’t supposed to be here without permission.
Still, she couldn’t leave until she saw the kitten safely back to his cat room, so she got down on her hands and knees and peered under the shelf to the corner where the kitten had lodged himself.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” she crooned. The little cat’s green eyes focused on her for a second. Then he lifted a leg and started grooming his man parts, which seemed to interest him far more than she did.
