5. Knox
KNOX
Moonlight Sleigh Ride to the Homestead
Cold · Heavy snow fall
Supper: Pot roast · Short ribs · Mashed potatoes Cornbread · Roasted Winter Veggies
The next morning, I was enjoying the ranch’s delicious coffee and a plate of pancakes, minding my own business, when Rhett dropped into the chair across from me with a plate stacked high enough to feed a road crew.
“Good morning.” Rhett raised an eyebrow, looking at me as if I’d stolen from the cookie jar.
“What?” I asked.
“You waiting for someone?” Rhett asked. “You keep looking at the door.”
“I haven’t been looking at the door.” Had I?
“Okay, my mistake,” Rhett said. “What really happened yesterday on the trail? You and Madeleine looked pretty tight there for a moment.”
“Nothing happened, other than Madeleine having a legit scare. I only tried to keep her in one piece until we got back to the ranch.” I kept my eyes on my coffee.
“Truth is, the whole thing scared me too. That horse just took off like a bat out of you know where, and I was not at all sure Price could hold on.”
“But she did.” Rhett forked up eggs, watching me like he expected me to say more.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that,” I said.
“You and your enemy looked friendly, that’s all. Like two people who’d had a moment they didn’t expect.”
“You’re delusional,” I said.
“I’m a big fan of Madeleine and everything she does,” Rhett said.
“I’m clear on that,” I said dryly.
“She changed our lives for the better, and you know it. Someday you’ll acknowledge it.”
I ate a bite of a pancake so I didn’t have to reply. While I was chewing, I decided to turn it back on him. “What’s going on with you and Holly? You two seem to have a lot to talk about. All the time.”
It was his turn to act evasive. “We go way back. So yeah, a lot to talk about.”
“Why did you two break up back in the day?”
“We were eighteen and going in different directions,” Rhett said. “And we were super young.”
“Do you ever think about her?” I asked.
“All the time.”
“And?”
“And we’re in the same place long enough for me to fall in love with her all over again, only to have my heart broken when we go back to real life. Separately.”
“Does it have to be that way?”
“She has a life back in Stonehaven—you know, saving the world. We’re completely incompatible. There’s no way I would ever go back there and there’s no way she’ll ever leave. So that’s that.”
I could tell by the way his tone had flattened to leave it well enough alone. I’d touched a nerve. Not that he didn’t deserve it after ribbing me about Madeleine.
Grant appeared, setting a bowl of granola and yogurt on the table before sitting next to me. “Morning.”
“Sleep well?” Rhett asked him.
“Okay.” Grant pushed some granola around his bowl but didn’t lift the spoon to his mouth. Something was wrong.
“Hey, you all right?” I asked.
Grant’s gaze lifted and he shrugged one shoulder. “I’m fine.”
“You guys going on the sleigh ride tonight?” Rhett asked.
“Ivy said we have to,” Grant said. “That it’s not to be missed.”
“Yeah, I’m in,” I said. “This whole place is pretty cool. I was skeptical, but it’s more fun than I thought it would be.”
“Kind of like camp for grown-ups,” Grant said.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I said. “Not that any of us ever went to camp.”
“Right,” Rhett said. “But we are now.”
I almost heard him finish the sentence with: all because of Madeleine.
But if he was thinking it, he didn’t say anything out loud. He knew better.
The sleighs appeared at dusk. There were three of them, big old sledges with runners that hissed over the packed snow, each hitched to a pair of draft horses with bells on their harnesses.
Soren drove the first sleigh, which I noticed held Ivy, Jack, his mother, and her parents.
Grant, Luci, Beck, and Blake were in the second.
I was one of the last to arrive and was directed into the third.
Rhett and Holly were already seated across from me. Seconds later, Madeleine appeared.
“Here we are again,” she said to me as one of the stage hands helped her into the sleigh.
“Knox and I seem to be paired off for every event.” She wore a cream-colored coat with her dark hair loose under a knit hat.
The two of us ended up hip to hip under the same heavy wool blanket; her shoulder was warm against mine.
“We have been too,” Holly said.
“Probably just a coincidence,” Rhett said.
Somehow I doubted that. Was Ivy up to something? Pairing us off this way?
“Where are they even taking us?” Madeleine asked as the sleigh lurched into motion.
“Finley said it was a surprise,” Holly said.
“I hate surprises,” Madeleine said.
“I love them,” Holly said. “I especially love not having to make any decisions about what we’re doing. In my job, I feel like it’s an endless list of things that only I can do or make happen. It’s nice to have a break.”
“I understand completely,” Madeleine said. “My job’s that way too. And the never-ending attempts to get people to agree on something or do what they said they were going to.”
“Preaching to the choir,” Holly said. “The amount of red tape I have to get through in a week boggles the mind.”
“Tell us more about what you do,” I said. “You still live in Stonehaven, right?”
“That’s right,” Holly said. “They escaped but I’m still there.
I run a nonprofit community development corporation.
Think grassroots, funded by grants and donations.
I’m at the mercy of others at all times.
Right now I’m trying to get the Boys and Girls Club rebuilt.
They had to tear the original one down last year, which means a lot of kids have no place to go after school or during school breaks.
Families rely on it, but I can’t seem to get it funded.
To be honest, I’m happy to be away for a while.
I didn’t realize until I got here how tense I’d been. ”
“Your work must be exhausting,” Madeleine said.
“It is. Especially when I don’t know if anything I do matters at all. The town’s been overrun with drugs—makers and dealers. Our schools are terrible. Retired people don’t want to fund education. The list goes on and on.”
“You ever think of doing something else?” I asked.
“Just every day of my life,” Holly said, laughing. “But my ties to the community are deep. My dad’s the high school principal. My mom serves on a hundred church committees. They pounded service into my brain from the time I was tiny.”
“Holly’s family was the respectable one of the three of us,” Rhett said. “My dear old dad’s one of the local drunks. Or was. He’s dead now.”
“Jack got his mom out, though,” Holly said. “I was happy to see that.”
“And Luci’s a doctor,” Madeleine said. “Clearly the town produced some impressive people.”
Holly glanced up at Rhett, eyes shining. “It sure did.”
The sleigh carried us out past the barn and up the northwest trail, into country I hadn’t seen yet. We went up through the timber with the light dimming behind the peaks, bells twinkling merrily.
“This is fun,” I said. “Even though I have no idea where we’re going.”
“Supposedly this is the original homestead,” Holly said. “It was just an old cabin but Finley told me Sammie had the idea to fix it up and make it another activity on the ranch. There’s going to be supper and dancing. Sounds festive.”
“Finley told me to be careful of whatever the signature cocktail is,” Rhett said. “So I’m sticking with beer.”
“Always a good idea,” I said.
We came around a stand of pines to see a cabin nestled in the woods.
Log-built, with a stone chimney puffing woodsmoke and windows alight, with wreaths on the doors and lights strung along a porch that looked out at the whole mountain range going purple in the dusk.
With snow covering the roof, it looked like something out of the front of an old-fashioned Christmas card.
“Lovely,” Madeleine said softly.
I looked over at her, and her whole face was lit up like a kid’s, just like at the tree lighting.
My chest kind of ached with … longing? No, that couldn’t be it. I was just seeing another side of her. Her vacation side. When we got home, she’d return to the hard-driving business woman who would do anything for success.
For now, I jumped out of the sleigh and offered her my hand to help her down. She took it.
Inside, The Homestead was one big warm room, low-beamed, a fire roaring in a stone hearth that was as big as my first apartment in Nashville.
String lights crisscrossed the rafters. Long tables ran down the middle with plaid runners, Mason jars, lit candles, and sheepskins thrown over the benches.
The air smelled of woodsmoke, roasting meat and pine, which equaled up to a very merry Christmas scent.
When we came in, we were handed a signature cocktail and told to find a place at the table when we were ready. No place cards on the table. I felt a vague sense of disappointment about that, especially when I saw Madeleine sit next to Luci.
I hung my coat and hat on a hook near the door and then took a sip of the cocktail. It was made from cranberry and orange juices, combined with warm spices, served in a Mason jar with a sprig of rosemary. And it went down way too easy.
Our meal came out family-style, carried in on big platters and set down the length of the table for us to pass hand-to-hand. A young woman in an apron told us to help ourselves and holler if we ran low, then left us to it.
And lord, there was a lot of it. A pot roast that had clearly been going since morning, the beef falling apart at the touch of a serving fork, swimming in dark gravy with carrots and onions gone soft and sweet.
A platter of short ribs, glazed and glistening, the meat sliding right off the bone.
Bowls of mashed potatoes with butter melting into the tops of them.
A cast-iron skillet of cornbread cut into wedges, still warm, with honey butter to go with.
There were also roasted winter vegetables caramelized at the edges, and a big wooden bowl of greens.