Page 2 of Christmas at the Ranch

In that moment, I knew I liked him. Already.

And I decided I wanted him to like me back so badly.

I needed to try to be someone else. Not the shy awkward girl I’m known as at school.

The one who had worn bottle-thick glasses until she recently got contacts and would rather stay home with a book than go out on weekends.

“I’m Emory,” I said, hoping the smile on my face was as casual and appealing as his. I nodded at his beer bottle. “You don’t happen to have a drink for me, do you?”

There it was, that smile again—now wider.

He was looking at me with the interest I had been seeking, the same delighted surprise I felt the second I saw him.

I tossed my hair over my shoulder, glad I’d allowed my mother’s stylist to have her way, pre–family reunion.

My normally flat chestnut-brown hair was layered into a long bob that flipped up at the ends.

“So, a city girl just walks onto my beach, asking for a drink?” he said, his eyes dancing in the firelight. “What do you think this is, a bar? Maybe I should be asking for ID.”

I tilted my head, doing my absolute best at insouciance. I pretended I did this sort of thing all the time. “What makes you think I’m a city girl?”

At this, he laughed—and if his voice was maple syrup on snow, his laugh was butterscotch in a double boiler. “The haircut, the outfit…” he began.

I looked down at myself. “I’m wearing flannel pants with snowflakes on them.”

“Hmm, that’s true. And yet there’s just something city-ish about you.”

Now it was my turn to smile. “You’re right. I’m from Toronto.”

“I’ll try to overlook that,” he said as he pulled a half-empty six-pack from under his Muskoka chair. “Here you go, City Girl.”

Crooked smile. (Him.) Heart palpitations. (Me.)

“Help yourself,” he said.

I don’t usually drink beer, or anything at all, but I pretended I did, taking a bottle and twisting off the cap like I had done it tons of times before, then casually sipping while trying not to grimace. He saw it anyway and raised an eyebrow.

“I guess Labatt 50 isn’t exactly your flavor,” he said, and my heart fluttered again because, dear Diary, we were flirting.

I’ve never flirted with anyone—unless you count Maxwell Corbett at school, who told his friends last year I’d be “pretty without glasses” and “maybe if she weren’t so tall.

” Then, the next time I saw him, I said “hi,” started to blush furiously, and ran away. But you know all that already.

“It’s my favorite,” I replied, taking a longer sip—and then, embarrassingly, gagging and nearly spitting it out. Beer is gross.

“I can get you something else,” he offered.

“Maybe this really is a local bar?” I countered.

“Yeah, it’s a real dive,” he said with a laugh. “But actually, there are some nice parts.”

He gestured behind him and I realized that just beyond us, down a snowy hill, were fenced paddocks and stables.

The wooden boards of the buildings were hung with red and white Christmas lights.

I peered into the moonlit darkness at the magical setting spread out before me, feeling as if I had wished it into existence.

“Wilder Ranch,” he said, and I could hear the pride in his voice. “It’s mine. Well, mine and my dad’s.”

“I love horses,” I breathed, because this is true. It was a relief to drop the pretenses. “Why is it called Wilder?”

“That’s my last name. I’m Tate. Tate Wilder.”

“Nice to meet you, Tate.” I tried one more sip of the beer and sighed. After just five minutes of pretending to be a cool girl from the city, I was tired of it. “I don’t actually drink,” I said, handing him back his beer bottle. “But I would love to see your horses.”

He tilted his head then. “You ride?” he said.

I told him about the stables I used to take lessons at, just outside the city limits. “I joined the show team and practically lived there until I was sixteen. But then I stopped,” I told him.

“Let me guess, because you got a boyfriend?”

I could have said yes, kept up the charade—but I shook my head. I didn’t want to lie to him. I liked him too much, already.

“Actually, I discovered the honor roll. And my desire to get into a good university.”

He looked away from me then, seemed thoughtful.

“Well, sure,” he finally said. “I’ll take you on a tour of the ranch if you want.

Just let me finish this.” He shook the beer bottle I had just returned to him and tipped it back.

“Meantime, do you know how to skip rocks? They make a cool sound at this stage in the lake’s freezing process. ”

Since I wasn’t pretending to be someone else anymore, I was able to tell him I was the kind of person who avoided throwing or catching things at all. This got me a rumble of a laugh that made me feel like the bonfire had transferred itself to my chest.

“I’ll teach you,” he said, moving down the shore, gathering stones as he went. When he returned, he set a pile of them at my feet.

“It’s all in the flick of the wrist,” he said—or something to that effect.

I was distracted by how close he was to me then.

And how good he smelled. Like leather soap and hay, pine needles and woodsmoke, and something else I suspected was just him .

I watched as he demonstrated, keeping the stone in his hand instead of releasing it.

When he finally let the stone fly, the deep pinging sound it made as it ricocheted across frozen water reminded me of a video game or a spaceship’s controls.

“That can’t be real.” Much like the otherworldly groaning from beneath the lake ice I had listened to earlier, the noise the stone made as it skipped didn’t sound like it should be coming from a lake at all.

“Lakes in winter are full of surprises.”

Honestly? I was feeling the same way about him.

“Now you try,” he said, handing me a smooth, flat stone. My first attempt was a fail: I threw too hard and the stone landed several feet out with a single resonant clunk. He stepped even closer and said, “May I?” His hand hovered just above my wrist.

I wonder if that was the moment everything changed— or if everything had changed already by then.

As I was standing on that shore with him, under the starriest winter sky I had ever seen, Tate Wilder touched me and a shower of sparks flooded my system.

My stomach swooped, my knees weakened, I truly understood the meaning of the word “swoon.” This could not possibly be what it’s always like when one person puts their hand on another person’s wrist. Could it? Is this what I’ve been missing?

With the utmost effort, I dragged my thoughts away from how his touch made me feel and back to what he was trying to show me.

I perfected the snapping motion and my stone did exactly what it was supposed to: ricocheted across the ice four times, then five, pinged and ponged while I cheered and laughed. So did he.

“Okay, so, that ranch tour,” he said. “Still interested?” He thought for a moment. “There’s also a party in town I was invited to, if that’s more your speed.”

“I want to see your ranch.”

I helped him put handfuls of snow on the fire to extinguish it. Then he led me down the snowy embankment into the valley.

Soon, we were standing at the edge of a paddock, watching a herd of about a dozen horses gallop in the moonlight.

He whistled. One of them, her gray-white coat shining palely, trotted over.

When she reached the fence, she nuzzled Tate’s shoulder while he laughed and patted her, then reached into the pocket of his plaid flannel jacket to pull out a bag of mints, those round white ones.

“I have to keep these on me at all times,” he said with a sweet laugh I was almost getting used to.

He popped a mint in his mouth, offered me one, then held a mint out to the horse while she stamped her hooves, appearing to protest the order in which the mints had been distributed.

But then she picked the mint delicately from his palm.

“She’s beautiful,” I said.

“Isn’t she? Her name is Mistletoe. Because of the marking on her face, see?” He ran his finger along the pure white blaze running from between her eyes to just above her soft muzzle. Indeed, there was an unusual shape at the top, just like a little sprig of festive leaves.

I was wishing he would touch me that softly. I was wishing a lot of things.

“She was born on Christmas Eve, five years ago. Mistletoe was the perfect name for her.”

“She really seems to like you.” The horse was nuzzling him again, rubbing her face against his broad shoulders—and I have to admit, I was still envious.

“It’s the mints,” he said with another laugh, stroking her muscular neck while she nickered in his ear. “But yeah, she’s pretty much mine. I helped train her. We get along well.” Now his voice became even softer and the horse pricked her ears forward. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” he murmured.

Diary, I cannot stress this enough: Listening to Tate Wilder croon sweet nothings into a horse’s ear was probably the most charming thing I have ever experienced. I had the sudden urge to say something stupid like, “Well, since we’re standing near Mistletoe, maybe we should…”

But that’s not how the kissing happened.

He told me Mistletoe was expecting a foal in the new year and that he and his dad were so excited about this.

He then pointed out the other horses in the small herd that were his favorites: a compact chestnut Thoroughbred gelding named Jax, a beautiful bay Dutch warmblood mare named Dolly, a sturdy quarter horse named Walt.

“But Mistletoe is the prettiest,” I found myself saying, earning a nod of approval and agreement from him.