Christmas Enemies at Crescent Moon Ranch

As lead guitarist for Jack Wilder, Knox Hartley has always believed the songs should stand on their own.

For ten years Madeleine Price has been the band's publicist, the brilliant strategist who packaged that music, sold it everywhere, and left her mark on every platinum record.

Knox resents the machine she built around something he thought was pure, and he resents her most of all, never seeing what it cost a poor girl from nowhere to become the sharpest publicist in country music.

Now a monthlong Christmas celebration at Crescent Moon Ranch puts them at the most public wedding of the year, with the bride determined to seat them side by side.

Montana's December cold starts wearing through a decade of slammed doors, and Knox begins to notice the secret Madeleine has protected since long before the band.

She is not the enemy he named her, yet she is the last person he ever planned to want.