Page 104 of Mistletoe All the Way

First there’s a video of Noah rolling up the cuffs of his flannel while tending to the horses, then sliding on his cowboy hat, then walking toward Honey’s stall and dropping a kiss to her muzzle. Music plays over the video and the caption reads: Just taking care of my girls.

It’s the last thing I thought he’d do. It’s so not him.

“Why did you do this?” I’m gobsmacked.

A small smile teases at the corner of his lips, then it burns off. His brown eyes hold mine, full of emotion, full of vulnerability. “You’ve done so much for me. I wanted to do something to help you with this whole…” He waves a hand. “Thing.”

My heart thunders, hard and loud. He went so far out of his comfort zone… for me. Never in my years with Bryan did he step this far out of his comfort zone for me. My parents certainly never have. Only my grandma and my friends have gone big like this.

“Thank you,” I say, fighting to keep my heart out of my throat.

“Did it work?” His grin is lopsided, just shy of cocky, like he knows his thirst traps hit the mark. So damn well.

I let out an amazed gust of breath. “So well my mentor told me it was blowing up.”

“I’m sure Stephen will be shirtless Santa Claus next. Shirtless Santa is coming to town,” he says.

“Let him,” I say, since this is so much more… real. It’s staged, of course, but it’s born from who this man is. A horse man. An animal lover. A genuine carer for four-legged friends of all shapes and sizes.

His brown eyes darken, locked on me. Heat rushes to my cheeks. He tips his chin toward me. “Worked on you?”

I roll my eyes. But my voice is breathy as I say, “You know it did.”

He strides across the ground, jerks me toward him, and plants a kiss on me in the middle of the barn.

There’s no other word for it. I swoon. My knees wobble from the ardor in his kiss—a firm crush of his lips to mine. When he breaks it, my mind is a fog of… want. Of possibility. And also of the nervous hope that he’ll like what I’ve planned for him on this day.

Maybe I’m being presumptuous. I’m unsure if he’ll even need or want to acknowledge the date with me. But I swallow past the nerves and ask anyway: “Hey, any chance you’d want to go for a horseback ride? I know what today is, and I thought maybe you’d want to.”

I hope I haven’t overstepped.

He tilts his head, scrubs a hand across the back of his neck, and whispers, his voice a scrape, “You remembered?”

“I did.”

“I would like that.”

I don’t think I’ve overstepped at all.

33 I LIKE A SLEIGH RIDE

Eloise

An hour later, the sun slopes toward the horizon and somehow, unexpectedly, clouds are hanging low. The cold bites my skin, but Noah offered me a pair of slim, faux leather gloves—they’re easier to manage reins with than mittens. Plus, I’ve got on a heated coat keeping me warm as I ride Honey across a snowy beginner trail in the foothills by the farm. This is the path they take for the sleigh rides, he’s told me. It’s a little bumpy but this horse is so patient and easy, and I feel comfortable enough on her. Noah’s behind me by a horse length or two, riding Pepper. When I sneak peeks at him, he cuts such a striking silhouette against the fading sun with his fake sheepskin jacket, strong shoulders, and hands loosely holding the reins.

But mostly, I keep my eyes on the path ahead of me.

“You’re doing great,” he calls out, his tone gruff but encouraging since I’ve ridden only a few times before.

But with him here guiding the horse, and me, I feel like someone believes in me.

Someone doesn’t think I’m silly or unimportant.

Someone thinks I can do whatever I put my mind and heart to.

This was supposed to be for him. To commemorate a hard day. But he’s showing me that I can face challenges too.

At a bend in the trail full of towering evergreens, we turn around, circling back toward the farm, which is tiny in the distance—just a red dot for the barn, and a white one for the home. The swoosh of the reins and the breathing of the horses are the only sounds as we return. When I look up at the sky, the clouds are ringed with orange. A dart of tension shoots through me. Sure, the ground is snowy and so is the trail, but what about falling snow? “Are we going to be okay if it snows?”