by Liz Isaacson
“How’s your Christmas?”
“A lot of driving,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“The afternoon movie is starting in a few minutes,” she said. “So I was putting together the hot bar with the teenagers.”
“Ah, the hot bar,” he said, and his voice strummed something inside her that no one else ever had. They’d spent three amazing weeks together, but Sophia couldn’t let those twenty days dictate her whole life.
Ames obviously hadn’t.
He hadn’t called or texted her once since he’d left Coral Canyon in September. Of course he hasn’t, she told herself. They’d agreed that they weren’t dating, and they could text if they wanted to.
She hadn’t reached out to him either. She’d coached herself relentlessly to allow him to be the one to make the first move post-break-up, and he hadn’t.
She blinked, realizing the conversation had stalled completely. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little swamped.”
“I’ll let you go then,” he said. “I’ve got everyone in the car with me, and I’m driving, so.”
“Ames,” she practically shouted.
“Yeah?”
“Can I…maybe you’ll be free to…call me later?”
Heavy silence came through the line, and Sophia pressed her eyes closed as she pressed her back into the wall behind her. “Never—”
“Sure,” he said at the same time. “I’ll text you first to see if you’re still swamped.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
She didn’t hang up, and neither did he. Finally, the line beeped, and Sophia pulled the device away from her face to see Ames’s handsome face on the screen. He wasn’t smiling in the picture, because everything about Ames was so straight and proper. So laced up tight. So right at the speed limit.
In fact, she couldn’t believe he’d answered the phone while he’d been driving at all. That was completely out of character for him.
A sigh passed her lips, and she was aware of what it held. Longing and bliss. The kind of sound she used to make after he’d kissed her goodnight for the final time, settled that cowboy hat on his head, and ducked out the door of the cabin.
She’d liked Ames Hammond very much. She still did, if she were being honest with herself. A hint of humiliation hummed through her though. She wasn’t going to be yet another female to fall to the charms of the Hammond brothers. She’d watched all of her friends do that, each of them falling in love one by one while she got left behind.
Sophia gave herself a mental shake. She was happy here in Coral Canyon. This was the first place she’d ever truly made real friends and found that happiness, and she wasn’t going to give it up for just anyone.
“There you are,” Julianne said as she entered the office. “Celia was just asking where you went. I think she might get on the PA system to find you.” She picked up a piece of paper from the desk, a smile on her face. “The cake is ready, and I guess that means it’s movie time.”
“It does,” Sophia said, glad her voice came out normal. Julianne was a very nice woman, and she was the same age as Sophia. She lived with Melinda, the new event coordinator, in the cabin where Elise and Bree had once lived.
Sophia’s heart shrank, though she wasn’t sure why. She still got to see Bree all the time. She lived here in Coral Canyon. Elise did too, at least in the summertime.
Sure enough, the speaker system that ran through the lodge crackled to life, and Celia’s voice said, “The cake is ready, and the kids are telling me the hot bar is too. Let’s gather in the kitchen for our celebration.”
The Whittakers got together every Christmas season. Since Sophia had no family in town, and no desire to go visit anyone in her family, she stayed at the lodge with them.
She’d enjoyed their family traditions. She loved participating in the good-natured contests they had. Yes, she had to work, because it was a big job to feed thirty people, but she didn’t mind. If she wasn’t cooking, Sophia wouldn’t even know what to do with herself.
She’d always adored cooking, even when her father had warned her against the idea of becoming a chef. You’ll have to work long hours, he’d told her. You can’t have a family and be a chef.
Turned out, she didn’t have a family yet. She knew she was a great disappointment to him, but Sophia couldn’t make a man fall in love with her. If she could, she would’ve done so with Jake Cyprus, the high school quarterback Sophia had spent the better part of her teenage years crushing on.
She followed Julianne down the hall to the kitchen, others streaming in from downstairs and the living room. The Whittakers had expanded the kitchen and dining room so the gathering area was twice as big now. The guests loved it, and it definitely fit the whole family better than the table for twelve had.
Sophia stayed on the fringes of the family, but she didn’t mind. She was loved and accepted here; she knew that.
Celia made a big deal about presenting the triplets with the immaculate cake she’d made. A thread of jealously moved through Sophia. She’d gone to culinary school, and she certainly had a chocolate cake recipe memorized. Celia had never gone to culinary school, and she still made a better cake and better meals than Sophia.
A sense of failure moved through her though she cheered when the triplets managed to get their candles blown out. It wasn’t their birthday for another month or so, but their parents were taking them on an extended vacation, and they’d wanted to celebrate at the lodge this Christmas.
She stepped forward to help with plates and forks, trying to strike up a conversation with a couple of the children. But she’d never been all that great with kids, and they seemed to sense her awkwardness. In the end, they usually came around, but today, she found herself with a delicious-looking piece of chocolate cake on a plate, alone.
She looked around at everything going on in the lodge. The dozens of conversations. The laughter. The cowboy hats. The teenagers and children.
And then there was her.
Even Julianne sat next to some of the younger children, happily helping them make bibs out of a couple of napkins she’d unfolded.
Sophia hadn’t felt this level of isolation for a long, long time, and she wished she could erase it. She wished she could go back in time and fix some of the bridges she’d burned. Or at least not light those matches.
She turned away from the dining room and headed outside. Down the sidewalk that the Whittaker brothers were religious about clearing for her, and across the backyard, Sophia marched toward her cabin.
Once up the steps and inside, her heartbeat felt like it was trying to flee from her body. She hadn’t felt like this in a while.
“Since the day Ames found you on that trail.”
She had the sudden urge to call Patsy, but her best friend was gone to Colorado.
Still, her fingers fumbled as she tried to set down her cake and pull out her phone at the same time. She managed to do both without dumping the cake on the floor, and she sent a text to Patsy.
How was the flight? Are you nervous to go to the farm?
She knew Patsy was nervous about meeting Cy’s parents as his official girlfriend. She’d met them in group settings before, but this was different, and they both knew it.
You called Ames?
Sophia took a long breath, something steadying inside her. She didn’t want to say it was an accident, because what if it hadn’t been? What if somehow, the Lord had allowed that pocket dial to happen?
“It’s just because his name starts with an A,” she told herself, dismissing the feeling of divine intervention.
But it kept creeping back, and Sophia looked down at her phone again, trying to figure out how to answer Patsy.
You don’t have to tell me, came in. Forget I asked. The flight was great. Not terribly long, and Cy had all these treats.
Sophia smiled, because Patsy didn’t leave Coral Canyon very often. She’d grown up here, and been raised here, and she wanted to stay here
and raise her family on her generational orchard.
Sophia thought that sounded like a fairy tale. To stay in one place for longer than a year or two, to always have somewhere to belong, to have a place that brought peace to her soul.
She’d never had that, and she’d spent plenty of years bitter about it.
“I’m not bitter,” she whispered to herself and to reassure God that she wasn’t ungrateful for what He’d done for her. “Thank you for bringing me here and for letting me stay for so long.”
She’d been in Coral Canyon and at Whiskey Mountain Lodge for just over six years now, and she didn’t want to leave.
What kind of treats? she asked Patsy, because that mattered. As she started an easy, non-important conversation with her best friend, Sophia left her chocolate cake on the side table and settled on the couch.
Every once in a while, when Patsy wouldn’t answer for a few minutes, Sophia looked up from her phone, her thoughts centering on one person only.
Ames Hammond.
She’d been so resistant to a relationship with him, because he’d been very clear that he wasn’t going to relocate to Coral Canyon. She’d told him about herself, including that she hadn’t enjoyed moving often. Even now, her dad and step-mother moved all the time, always searching for the next place to be. Sophia didn’t even know where her father lived right now, as she hadn’t spoken to him in years.
Sophia had found her place, and it was right here. She looked around the living room. Yes, it was small. But it was hers, and she’d felt the first inklings of God’s love here, and she didn’t want to leave the cabin, the lodge, or Coral Canyon.
With that between them, her relationship with Ames had become about companionship. Friends. They were friends.
“Maybe I can still be friends with him,” she murmured to herself.
Text him then.
The thought appeared in her mind, and Sophia knew exactly who it had come from and what to do with it.
She backed out of her texting conversation with Patsy and started a new one with Ames. Hey, she started, trying to think of what else to say. I sure do miss talking to you. Today was an accident, but I liked hearing your voice. Maybe we could be friends?
She read the words over and over again, trying to decide if they were too needy. Too desperate. Too cold. Too much of anything.
In the end, she decided they were fine, and she sent them flying the five hundred miles between Coral Canyon, Wyoming and Ivory Peaks, Colorado.
She drew in a deep breath, feeling strong and sure. The ball was in his court, and Ames was very good at bouncing it back. He was surely still driving, and Sophia would just have to employ her patience until he wasn’t surrounded by his family and he could text back.
She could do that….
She could.
Six Months Later
Ames ignored his phone when it chimed, because he knew it would be Cy. His brother had an alarm set to text Ames every Sunday evening, and he lived and died by his alarms. Ames was grateful for them, because setting the reminders helped free Cy’s mind enough so that he could function.
Hiring a shop manager had helped a ton, and the last eight or nine months since he’d gotten back together with Patsy had completely transformed him again.
Ames was happy for his brother. He was. He absolutely was.
He reached for the next bale of hay he needed to throw down the conveyor belt, grateful for the leather gloves he wore. He focused on the work, because he wasn’t the only one in the loft, and he couldn’t just be tossing things wherever.
He was grateful for the sun. For the sky above Texas. For Jeremiah Walker, who had hired him on at Seven Sons Ranch.
Ames’s new habit the past few months was to go over all the things he was grateful for whenever the heaviness and enormity of life started to press down on him.
“Just a couple more,” Orion said over the walkie on Cub’s belt, and Ames met the other cowboy’s eye.
“One each,” Cub said, his bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief. Ames wondered if he’d ever been as carefree. He’d never been one to pull pranks and laugh at every little thing someone said, the way Cub did.
He’d been told when he was eight that he’d inherit two billion dollars when he turned twenty-one, and that his father expected him to do something with it. The Hammond boys didn’t have “the talk” until they were thirteen, but once Wes knew, it trickled down the brothers until Colton had told the twins the day after he’d turned thirteen.
Ames supposed he hadn’t been much fun since then. Cy didn’t seem to carry the same worry about things that Ames did, and he’d dated a ton in his teens, designed and built tree houses, and then did a welding certificate while he waited for his money.
He’d always known what he wanted to do with his inheritance—open a custom motorcycle shop.
Ames drove one of the bikes his brother personally designed and built, and he was grateful for that too.
He tossed his last bale of hay onto the belt, glad his shoulders didn’t ache constantly the way they had when he’d first started at the ranch. He only worked a few days a week, and that was just fine by him. He didn’t need the crazy, packed, full-time schedule of a cop, though he had originally come to Three Rivers to join the police force here.
In the end, Texas had experienced some natural disasters in the few months leading up to his arrival that had every county and district across the state tightening their budgets. The position he’d interviewed for and received just after Christmas suddenly wasn’t available anymore.
This time, he hadn’t kept the secret from his brothers or his parents. He’d told them all—and then surprised everyone once again when he’d announced that he was moving to Texas anyway.
He could still see Gray’s drawn face and unhappy eyes as Ames loaded up his truck on the day he’d moved, only six weeks ago.
You don’t have to do this, Gray had said. He was much less intimidating than he’d once been—especially when he was holding his little girl.
Ames loved Gray with his whole soul, and he had missed running with his brother. He missed getting Hunter after school and working with the boy on his history homework. He missed driving him out to the farm and staying for dinner. Hugging his mother. Holding baby Jane.
He missed a whole lot of things, and Ames started to spiral as he climbed down the ladder from the loft to the main level of the barn.
Orion stood there, cinching the hay bales onto the trailer. “Thanks, guys. That’s it for today.”
Cub whooped, but Ames just nodded. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and replaced his cowboy hat. He didn’t mind the work, though it was incredibly hot in the Texas Panhandle in June.
But he didn’t have much else to do. He’d bought a small fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood in Three Rivers. An older neighborhood, and the woman who’d owned the house before him had lived in it for sixty-two years.
Her kids had finally convinced her to move into an assisted living facility, but they’d promised not to sell the house until she passed away. That had happened a few months ago, and Ames had bought the house as-is, and for cash.
He’d been working on it in every spare moment he had, and if anyone who’d been there before came through the front door, they wouldn’t recognize the house.
No one came over, though.
No one here knew that his last name meant anything, and Ames sure did like that. He’d met a couple of women the few times he’d gone to church, but Ames hadn’t followed up on the numbers he’d gotten.
Just like he’d never called or texted Sophia back. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. Only that when he’d gotten his phone out to do it, his stomach had tightened, and he’d realized that nothing had changed between them.
“Hey, Ames,” Orion said, and Ames turned back to the other cowboy.
“Yeah?”
“Did you want the info about the summer dance?”
“Oh, sure,” Ames said. He’d heard the ot
her cowboys talking about the famous Three Rivers summer dances, and he’d said he was interested. He wasn’t sure if he was or not, because Cub had said he’d been going for a couple of years, and he sure did like the “girls” there.
Ames had just turned forty last month, and he wasn’t looking for a girl.
The fact was, he hadn’t been looking at all, something Cy had called him on last Sunday evening.
“Friday and Saturday,” Orion said. “Starts this weekend. Seven o’clock. Come as you are. They put a dance floor down on the grass.” He smiled. “I met my fiancée there last year, so they’re not all girls.”
Ames smiled, and it felt good. Orion wasn’t as old as Ames, but he wasn’t twenty-two either. “Thanks, Orion.”
“Sure,” he said. “And if you need someone to go with, I’m pretty sure I heard Micah say he was trying to get Bear Glover to go.”
Ames didn’t know Bear Glover from Adam, so he just nodded. “I’ll have to see how I’m feeling.” He tipped his hat and walked away, the path back to where he parked his motorcycle beside the barn with the huge American flag painted on it not that far away.
He did everything by how he was feeling these days, except work. Ames absolutely loved working, because it kept his mind and hands busy.
He needed to figure out what to do with his inheritance, because he was definitely the loser in the family who hadn’t done that yet. Everyone around him was so impressive, and Ames felt like he was suffocating almost all the time, pressed down on by all the family expectations.
He’d never told anyone—not Cy and not Gray—the real reason he’d had to leave Ivory Peaks.
Them.
They were so good, and so wonderful, and while Ames definitely had plenty of role models to look to, every one of his brothers served to remind him how little he’d accomplished in his life.
When they’d asked him why he’d quit the force in Littleton, Ames had told them part of the truth. He didn’t love the work as much as he once had. He didn’t like the pressure or the hours. He needed a break.
All of those were true.