Hers for the Holidays by Samantha Hunter Page A

good enough job of it that she wasn’t interested in a second go-round. That was fine, he told himself, ignoring the mocking chant in the back of his brain that said he was fooling himself.
    So he’d spent a couple of hours making a list of things he’d need to start making repairs. The wiring was old but should pass inspection, he thought, but it wouldn’t hurt to replace several sockets and the old fixtures. The bigger jobs would be shoring up the kitchen floor and doing something with the windows. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to replace the windows, or if that could even be done in a timely way, but they could re-caulk and perhaps insulate them better.
    He dressed and left early, the rumbling of a motor outside waking him before it was light. Not that there would be much light with the storm still dumping snow by the buckets. Predawn gave way to just a slightly less-dark morning. Smitty, the ranch manager, an older man about sixty or so, was starting up a tractor with a plow attachment outside the larger barn.
    “Need an extra pair of hands?”
    Smitty looked him in the eye, and nodded. “You that friend of Lydia’s that Kyle mentioned?”
    “That would be me,” Ely said, offering a handshake and then going to work alongside the man. “I’ll be around for a few days, and don’t mind helping out.”
    “Good to know.”
    Ely grabbed a shovel to start clearing the more narrow paths as Smitty plowed the main areas between the house and the barns. Kyle emerged, heading directly to the barn without talking to either of them. He sent a glare in Ely’s direction, and Ely casually saluted back before Kyle disappeared into the barn.
    The morning became a bit brighter, and Lydia came out to join them, offering only a grumbling good morning as she walked by. Not so much a morning person, he guessed.
    Ely continued to work, enjoying the brisk air, though he wished he had his heavier jacket with him. The effort kept him warm, more or less, but when a wind blew, it cut through his light coat.
    A ringing came from his pocket, and he pulled out his phone.
    Jonas.
    “Hey, brother.”
    “Ely. What’s going on? Tessa won’t stop pacing, so I promised I’d call and get a status report.”
    “Sorry about that. I was going to call her today, but we got hit by a storm, so we’re in the process of digging out. The white stuff is still coming down.”
    “I didn’t call for a weather report,” Jonas said sarcastically, in his usual gruff style. Tessa had done a lot to soften him up, but he was still Jonas. “Are you okay? And Lydia?”
    “Yeah. She’s fine, but I might stick around for a while just to make sure. My truck went off the road last night, so I ended up staying at her place.”
    “Her place? How does Lydia have a place in Montana?”
    Ely gave his brother the skinniest version of the truth that he could. “But I’d rather you didn’t tell Tessa any of that. Lydia wants to tell her herself when she comes home.”
    Hopefully, Ely thought uncomfortably.
    “I see. So until then, you’re staying with her at this ranch? Just the two of you?”
    “It’s not what you think, Jon. And there are ranch hands around, as well.”
    “I know how it can be to be stuck in a storm with a beautiful woman,” Jonas said with a chuckle. “Changed my whole life.”
    Tess and Jonas had been stuck in a major east coast storm the previous summer, one that caused blackouts up and down the entire seaboard. Jonas had lost his eyesight, and he and Tessa ended up traversing the city in the storm in order to help one of her elderly friends. It had been a tense time, but it was also when they had fallen in love.
    Ely needed Jonas to know the same thing did not apply in this case. Even if he and Lydia had agreed to be friends for the time being, it was never going to come to more than that. He had his whole life ahead of him, and he wasn’t going to go jumping into another serious relationship.
    “Listen, I’m helping her out with