Chapter 8 Holly #2
“I have four sisters, but none of them live here anymore except for me.” And now that she’d let him know exactly how pathetic she was, Holly leapfrogged on to the rest of his question.
“The tree farm does actually need work year round, for replanting trees and whatnot. But yeah, in the summer we grow hay commercially, and lease out some of the fields to a neighbor for grazing their sheep. And we have a you-pick berry bush patch. It’s Dad’s pension that mostly pays the bills, though.
The farm itself isn’t really a full-time, year-round business. ”
“What do you do, then?” Jace asked, brow furrowing in a slight frown.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if there’s not enough year-round work for two people, but you stay here full-time ...”
“I moved back this fall. I used to live in the city.” Holly glanced down at herself, the old coat sticky with pine sap and the hay-covered jeans. “You’d never know to look at me, but I had an office job and a nice condo.”
“What happened?”
“I got laid off,” she said shortly. She didn’t want to go into how she’d all too quickly run through her savings as she tried to find something else in a tight job market, until finally she had limped home with her wounded ego and a small condo’s worth of stuff.
“I got rid of the city place and moved back here to help Dad. It’s been rough on him, being here by himself.
We used to run a B he seems to be very friendly. ”
“How long have you had him?”
Holly’s lips twitched. “Two days.”
She gave the dog’s head a little pat. Cupcake licked her fingers, but seemed perfectly content to remain where he was.
And remain there he did. Jace extracted him when he needed to do something with a Christmas tree, but otherwise carried the dog tucked into his jacket, keeping Cupcake warm even though Jace himself was shivering as the temperature started to drop in the late hours of the afternoon.
“You need a better coat,” Holly said.
“Tell me about it.”
“I can find you something in the attic, I’m sure.
Maybe one of Dad’s old coats, or something belonging to one of my sisters’ old boyfriends.
” That reminded her of Rob again, but she knew none of Rob’s things were at the ranch, at least not anymore.
Even when they dated in high school, he’d rarely come over.
Her dad had hated him, which would have been more of an effective warning sign if her dad hadn’t been the stereotypical shotgun dad about all his daughters’ boyfriends.
However, the fact that Rob hadn’t been willing to stand up to him to spend time around her probably was a warning sign, in retrospect.
She had hoped to walk down to the house and poke around in the attic to grab a coat for him before the end of the workday.
But the tree farm was abruptly slammed in the last hour before closing, and when they finally put out the CLOSED sign and hung up the chain across the driveway, Holly realized that she was more than ready to collapse for a while.
“What now?” Jace asked.
“Now we put things under cover for the night, and I guess I’ll get started on dinner.
” The sound of power tools from the barn had stopped, and she realized that she wasn’t sure where her dad was, then noticed the farm truck was missing.
So he’d gone to run an errand. Holly tried not to sigh inwardly.
She wished he would maybe talk to her once in a while, but that wasn’t the Colonel’s way, and she knew him well enough to be aware of it.
“What’s wrong?”
She hadn’t meant any of that to show on her face. “Nothing.”
“Do you want help cooking?”
“No, I want my dog back,” she said, but she was smiling.
Jace snorted and untucked Cupcake from inside his coat. Even sheltered, Cupcake had been out here a long time, and she felt around the dog’s legs and ears with her fingertips. But he was fine, everything warm and pink, no sign of incipient frostbite or discomfort.
“He really likes you,” she said, setting Cupcake down to frisk ahead of them with Rocket.
Jace shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I get along pretty well with dogs. I mean apart from the ...” He hesitated. “You know. The shifter thing.”
Holly looked at him in open puzzlement. “Why?”
“Animals don’t like shifters.”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know. Ours always seemed fine with it.”
Jace just grunted. Great, now she’d closed him up again and she wasn’t even sure why.
Frustrated, she withdrew too.
In the yard in front of the farmhouse, Jace hesitated. “I mean it, about helping with cooking.”
“No thanks,” Holly said. She wanted some time alone, away from the confusing mix of feelings that Jace produced in her. “Just be back down here by six.”
“All right.” He hesitated, then turned away.
Holly couldn’t help pausing to watch him trudge up the driveway to the Christmas village. Not looking back, of course.
Rocket nuzzled up against her leg, and she leaned down to pet the dog’s soft head.
Cupcake was already on the porch, sniffing at something in front of the door—had one of the neighbors left something there?
“Hey, drop it, Cupcake. Leave it.” If someone had left food on the porch—on the floor on the porch—surely they remembered that the farm had dogs?
She hoped she wasn’t going to have to deal with a veterinary emergency tonight, on top of everything else.
Whatever was on the porch, Cupcake seemed more puzzled by it than truly interested in eating it or carrying it around. He sniffed at it and then, inexplicably, growled.
“Rocket, no, leave it, heel,” Holly ordered, when the border collie started to surge forward. Rocket was considerably better with voice commands than Cupcake, and fell back to Holly’s side.
Cupcake meanwhile was sniffing at the thing again. It definitely wasn’t food. She could see fabric; something wrapped in a piece of cloth, maybe? Holly moved Cupcake out of the way and bent over to see what it was.
And then she screamed.