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As a matter of fact, I had once liked the annual sleigh ride to the mountain peak for a bonfire and to hear the story of the inn’s origins. My mom and Junie’s mom had been close. They’d been the ones to start the tradition with guests who’d opted to stay over Christmas.
Guests all piled into our larger sleighs and were carted up the mountainside where a bonfire awaited. They drank cocoa, mingled near the fire’s warmth, and then Junie or her mom—or both women—took turns telling the tale of Santa’s notorious visit.
They rambled on and on about the romantic notion of the radio being a matchmaker, which was another reason I refused to take guests up the mountain. I wasn’t sure believed that part of things, especially since none of us had ever heard a single note coming from it.
Laughter and joy were rampant. Guests returned year after year for a repeat of the occasion. Admittedly, I’d joined in with the rest of them, laughing and singing carols during the sleigh ride.
Until my wife passed away.
The thought of Amy now stabbed me straight in the heart. The memory of her death made breathing hard enough as it was. But Christmas only thinned the air that much more.
Enduring the holiday was like climbing Mount Everest without any gear or oxygen. My head went light and began pounding. Fatigue washed over me, and nausea at the thought of exactly what I’d lost when my wife had died rendered me unable to do much more than exist.
“Horsesaremy favorite way of spending my time,” I agreed, pushing the painful thoughts away and gulping a breath that was so cold it felt like Listerine for my lungs.
“Come on, Boone,” Junie said, elevating her voice. “You know Laura just quit, and Sam is on vacation with her family. I’m so short-staffed, I’m like a lacrosse player without a stick. Now, we won’t have enough drivers? I need you.”
The barrier I’d built around my heart loosened, but I tightened it right back up again. I refused to let her plea get to me.
We still had time. There were plenty of horsemen down in the town who could hold reins and drive a team up the mountain.
“I’m sorry, Junie,” I said. “But you know I can’t do it. We have enough notice. We can find someone else.”
Junie opened her mouth to argue, but I tipped my head at my cousin and began the trek through the snow toward the large, red barn. The sun set early here in northern Montana. It was usually dark by 4:30, and I needed to get Hazelnut saddled soon.
Childhood memories of romping through this mountainside, of herding my grandparents’ sheep and my first horseback rides with my dad, of traipsing with Junie to gather wildflowers and the time Junie fell into a beaver dam, were rampant in my mind.
One memory I didn’t have of this place was of my late wife, Amy, or our unborn child who’d died in the womb. I’d never gotten to hold that child, not even after the accident. Thoughts of them pricked my eyes, and I blinked away the emotion.
After high school I’d left the inn to work on a ranch. Amy had flitted her way into my life. She’d been down-to-earth and worked at the same ranch I did. Our relationship had quickly built on a mutual love for farm life and sunsets and swings on apple trees.
Since her death, my heart hadn’t beaten the same. I was amazed it could keep on beating at all, if I were being honest. I’d lost a part of myself with her.
That was the reason I’d come back to Grandma Harper’s. The prospect of living at the family’s old cottage had been welcome. Secluded as I was here, surrounded by antiques and things that didn’t and would never belong to me, I could let go as many of those memories of Amy as I could.
I’d left everything behind in Deer Lodge. I’d brought only the clothes on my back. Furniture, clothes, baby items that Amy had been collecting for eight months before she’d died—it had all been abandoned.
The only thing I kept that belonged to me now were some awards from my rodeo days and Amy’s favorite sweater. It had long since lost her smell.
Every woman reminded me of her in some way. The way they tossed their hair. The way they carried themselves. I’d worked to immunize myself against any other woman’s appeal since I’d lost her.
But the woman I’d spoken with near the radio wouldn’t leave my mind as I stalked into the barn, out of the cold wind and past the corral where Hazelnut perked her ears and lifted her nose over the gate.
Or rather, her name wouldn’t leave my mind.
Grace.
I pressed my eyes closed, shook away the sting, and buried my nose into the top of my coat to ward off the winter chill swirling through my hair. The path from the inn to the barn was well worn, flattened snow alongside the wooden fence enclosing the barnyard.
Grace was beautiful, there was no denying that. My heart had sparked for the first time in years, adding an extra beat the minute I allowed myself to meet her blue eyes. That hadn’t happened in so long.
But I’d gotten out of that situation as quickly as I could.
Emotion tightened my throat as I entered the large, red barn. I blinked hard, stepped across the scattered bits of straw, and poured some feed into the dark bucket hanging on a hook nearby. Then I held it below Hazelnut’s mouth.
The horse hungrily dove into the grains. I petted her as she finished and then reached for Hazelnut’s brush.
The horse responded to my proximity, hooves prancing in place as I stood beside her and breathed in her distinctive smell.
