Page 66 of The Mistletoe Kisser

“Anyway, we were talking about your sister and wondering if she and Jeff are going to move now that baby number three is on the way.”

“Marcie’s pregnant?” He tried to remember the last time he and his oldest sister had talked. There’d been that missed call a few weeks back. But he’d been in the middle of a merger and too busy to talk. Hang on. The merger had been months ago, not weeks. But he’d never returned her call.

His mom laughed like he’d told a joke. “Of course she’s pregnant. She’s due in February. It’s another girl, and they can’t decide on a name yet. You know Jeff and his terrible taste in names.”

Did he?He wasn’t sure he could pick Jeff out of a line-up if his sister wasn’t standing next to the man.

“Anyway, are you going to be able to make it home for Christmas since you’re still on the East Coast or have you used up all your measly vacation time on Uncle Carson?”

He winced. Misleading his mom hadn’t exactly been intentional, but when she’d called with the emergency he didn’t feel mentally up to confessing that he’d been fired and was, for the first time in his life, adrift. “I don’t think so, Mom. I have to get back soon.”

His mom sighed. “Well, I’m not going to pretend I’m not disappointed. But I understand. I suppose Marsha wants to spend Christmas with you. How is she doing? You haven’t mentioned her in quite a while. Where does her family live?”

Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Marsha and I broke up.”Last year.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry. Did you tell me? Your dad and I were just saying you hadn’t brought her up in a while. We both just assumed you’d been busy.”

He had been. But too busy to mention that he’d broken up with the woman a year ago? Too busy to know his oldest sister was expecting another baby? Too busy to know that his parents had become friends?

“I rode a horse yesterday.” He blurted the words out.

“On purpose?”

It seemed he and his mother had managed to shock the hell out of each other in the span of one phone call.

“It wasn’t my idea. But yes. On purpose.”

“I’m impressed. Who convinced you to overcome your Napoleon thing?”

“I accidentally spent yesterday with a veterinarian. She took me to a dairy farm, I got kicked by a llama, and then we rounded out the day on horseback after looking at a horse’s uterus.”

It was eerily silent on his mother’s end of the call for thirty seconds, and then she started laughing. “I haven’t heard a more un-Ryan-like sentence come out of your mouth in years. It sounds like your vacation is turning out to be pretty memorable.”

He winced then opened his mouth to tell her. To say the words. But they got stuck somewhere in the throat region. “Yeah,” he said weakly.

“Anyway, I need to go. Let me know if you need me to rally the troops for Carson, my good, low-maintenance son. I owe you for taking time away from work to handle this. I know how busy you are.”

“It’s, uh, not a problem,” he said lamely. “I’ll talk to you on Tuesday.”

He stared at the phone for a long beat after disconnecting. Then looked at the remaining shoeboxes.

At home, when he’d needed to puzzle over something, he’d walk a few blocks. Perhaps a stroll around the farm would help him clear his head.

He dressed in as many layers as he could without immobilizing his limbs and headed outside.

He wandered down the lane to the road where he spent a few long minutes admiring the expansive sky. Infinite blue today with a few thready clouds.

There was something about the paperwork niggling at the back of his mind. He paced down the lane, avoiding puddles from the melting snow.

“Baaaa!”

“Mother of God!” he yelped.

Stan the sheep was waiting expectantly at the pasture gate, his white wool camouflaging him against the backdrop of snow.

“I already fed you breakfast,” Ryan told the sheep.

Stan stared at him mournfully.