A Hartmann Ranch Christmas Read online

  A Hartmann Ranch Christmas

  The Sawtooth Range

  Samantha St. Claire

  Published by Samantha St. Claire, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  A HARTMANN RANCH CHRISTMAS

  First edition. November 18, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Samantha St. Claire.

  Written by Samantha St. Claire.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

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  Also By Samantha St. Claire

  This is for Hisaji.

  He may not be a rancher, but his kindness and compassion for others continues to inspire these stories from The Sawtooth Range.

  Chapter One

  DECEMBER 2, 1891

  With her bright eager face, effusive smile, and aggravating efficiency, Clara Webster was the last person Maddie Reynolds wanted to greet her this morning. With neither her breakfast nor her mood refusing to settle, Mrs. Reynolds found her bookshop assistant’s cheerful enthusiasm more than annoying. The dog sitting by her side, less so, but only slightly. Not even a kitten could improve her mood this morning.

  For a moment, standing there at the open door with her hand resting on the doorknob, she considered returning home and having one more cup of tea with her handsome husband, Dr. David Reynolds. But even his good humor had not set well with her as they breakfasted together. He’d had the poor judgement to make light of her surliness, reminding her of her condition, the infuriating but oh-so rational explanation for everything she was feeling these recent weeks. Mood swings, he’d said, were not uncommon. And without the least effort to sympathize, he had the audacity to laugh!

  No, she wouldn’t go back to the house. Christmas was only a month away, and she had grand plans for her bookstore. Convincing Mrs. Wilkinson to sell the store to her had been only the first step. The second was to hire an assistant. The petite bundle of enviable energy who stood before her now, offering a cup of steaming coffee was she. The cup, at least, was welcome, and she accepted it. “Thank you, Clara.” She sniffed at the steam rising from the cup. “It almost smells enticing.”

  Maddie gave her a rueful smile and bent down to scrub her fingers along the soft fur behind the dog’s ears. “Daisy seems subdued this morning, not her usual behavior.”

  Clara took Maddie’s coat, her bright smile fading. “Do you think so, too? I didn’t want to worry, but she seems different. Almost as if she was—I don’t know, sad.”

  Maddie studied the dog a moment. “It’s difficult to say with dogs, since they don’t actually wear expressions like humans. But it’s something about the way she carries her tail, or is it that her ears are less . . . perky?”

  With a pensive frown, Miss Webster pushed a lock of auburn hair out of her face and stared down at her dog before lifting her blue eyes to look at Maddie. No doubt, a womanly intuition stirred within her, because she asked, “Difficult morning?”

  Maddie allowed herself the slightest sigh. “My darling doctor assures me that this will pass in a few weeks. I’m not sure what replaces it will be any better.” She recognized her whining for what it was and mustered the fortitude to change the direction of the impending conversation about motherhood. “I like the decorations in the window. It’s already looking festive.”

  “But we have a lot of work ahead.” Clara waved Maddie over to the storeroom. “Yesterday, I made some drapes for the windows. That way, our customers won’t see what we’re doing until we raise the curtains, so to speak.”

  “How very theatrical.” Here was another side of her assistant Maddie had not expected from the young, somewhat shy young woman. She followed Clara into the back room, where scattered across the worktable were pieces of a diorama. This part had been Maddie’s idea, scenes from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Clara picked up the miniature crutch and lay it on Maddie’s open palm.

  “What do you think? Is it too small? I could make another if you think it is.”

  Maddie propped Tiny Tim’s crutch against the fireplace painted on a wood shim. “Looks fine to me.” She picked up the table that would hold the Cratchit Christmas feast. “Did Mr. Kincaid make this? It’s wonderful. So realistic. He’s even tooled the legs, hasn’t he?” She carefully placed it back on the worktable. “We’re lucky to know a man with both the time and the talent to help us.”

  Clara responded sullenly, “Yes, I suppose.”

  Maddie studied her assistant, appraising her stiff response, and not for the first time wondered at her attitude toward the Hartmann Ranch’s new shepherd, Graham Kincaid. Polite and reserved, the man had the rugged, healthy attractiveness and manners that should have appealed to most young women. But it seemed Miss Clara Webster was immune to his charms. Or was she?

  In that moment of revelation, Maddie’s spark of enthusiasm for match-making might have ignited a brilliant plan except for the tempering memory of her last disastrous attempt to bring two souls together in wedded bliss. But her husband’s literary reference to Jane Austen’s meddling Emma Woodhouse still stung, and she supposed she should have heeded her dear doctor’s warnings. And yet, they’d seemed so right for each other. She’d simply failed to take into account their families’ generational feud over boundary lines, a dispute so heated to have potentially ended as the tragedy Shakespeare himself had plotted two centuries earlier for Romeo and Juliet.

  Such notions were only a natural extension of her role as an author to view her friends and acquaintances as characters in a novel. Although this was natural to her, they seemed an occasional irritation to her husband.

  But Miss Clara Webster, well, Clara was a sensible young woman and had already proclaimed her intention to marry a man unlike any she had encountered in the East. And Graham Kincaid was as dissimilar to a city-bred man as one might find, perfectly suited to his life as a ranch hand and shepherd. That Miss Clara Webster prickled like a porcupine whenever Mr. Kincaid was within a few feet of her, surely showed the tension that any author would interpret as the young woman’s romantic attraction to the man. And the obvious vexation that Mr. Kincaid struggled to disguise when he was interacting with Miss Webster further confirmed Maddie’s convictions that these two souls were perfect for one another. Besides, their dogs already adored each other. It seemed positively ordained.

  Maddie reached down and gave Daisy’s head another two pats before she started for her office at the back of the shop. “The muse has visited me this morning, and I have some thoughts to put to paper before they elude me again. I should emerge by lunch.” She turned back before closing the door. “Please don’t let anything short of an act of God interrupt me for the next two hours.”

  Clara bobbed her head and smoothed her crisp white apron across her enviably slim waist. “Mrs. Sanderson is bringing her readers’ group this morning, but I should be able to answer any of their questions.” She gave her employer a confident smile. “You have my word. Nothing shall disturb your writing, Mrs. Reynolds.”

  Mrs. Sa
nderson, a woman of equal parts amiability and bull-dog tenacity, might not allow a closed door to stop her from invading Maddie’s privacy. But that would have been so before Miss Clara Webster arrived to take charge of the daily operations of the bookshop. Watching her bustling about dusting shelves and organizing the children’s section while softly humming to herself, made Maddie consider again the notion of returning home—this time for a nap. But the writing muse was waiting, so she took a long sip of coffee instead and closed the door to her office.

  “Yes, the Cratchit family was poor, but would they have used seed sack window curtains? Flour sacks would be less coarse.” The voice was that of a man and one touched with an enthralling Scottish brogue.

  Maddie startled awake and wearily lifted her head from her arm. There’d been no Scottish laird making up the cast of the novel she was currently writing. She wiped the drool from her cheek and blinked rapidly to clear the fog. Drowsy as she was, she immediately recognized the richly accented voice as that of Mr. Kincaid. The next vocalization was that of Miss Webster’s reply, but at a higher octave than her usually reserved soft-spoken timbre.

  “Am I to presume that you have a fashion sense that extends to home décor, Mr. Kincaid?” Sarcasm dripped from the end of the question, and Maddie cringed.

  Silence followed Clara’s question, almost as loud as the previous interchange.

  In carefully measured words, delivered in a tone one might use to instruct a child, Mr. Kincaid responded, “I doubt you’d believe me if I told you I’m not entirely ignorant of the period. I’ll also remind you that you told me to make the furniture realistic? I thought you might not want the curtains to look like something a man like me would hang in his sheep caravan.”

  “Ouch.” Maddie whispered and shivered, convinced the conversation had produced a chilling draft seeping beneath her door. It seemed prudent to appear before the shop windows frosted over. She pushed herself to her feet and opened the door with a broad smile on her face. “Good day, Mr. Kincaid. Have you brought us more of your wonderful miniatures? I’m amazed at what you’ve made of Scrooge’s bedchamber. It’s a pure delight.”

  “Good day, ma’am,” he answered, turning to acknowledge her with a polite nod.

  His accent was not wasted on Maddie, and neither was his smile. Broad shouldered, fair-haired, eyes as blue as an Idaho sky in summer, in other words, blessed with an overabundance of masculine good looks, Graham Kincaid’s charming Scottish burr only further enhanced his physical attractiveness. Maddie was certain that if he were to read from Webster’s dictionary, he’d raise the hairs along the neck of any female with breath in her body. She fancied that it might even have the power to raise the dead.

  Dressed in his usual thickly cabled, wool sweater and knee-high boots, he’d have looked as comfortable on a seaside dock as he did with his sheep. A sharp contrast to her own strikingly handsome husband, Graham Kincaid was ruggedly so, and had turned quite a few ladies’ heads since hiring on as shepherd for the Hartmanns.

  Maddie wedged herself between the two as she passed and gestured to the far side of the display. “Mr. Scrooge’s four-poster is the perfect scale for the wallpaper Clara painted. How did you carve such fine details? With your help, our window display will be a wonderland for the child in all of us. Don’t you agree, Clara?” Maddie ardently hoped that a little honest praise buffed to a high polish would diffuse the situation.

  The appearance of her friend, Evan Hartmann, pulling up in a wagon outside of the shop, necessitated a change of approach to her peacekeeping mission. She waved to him and gave Clara what she hoped was a meaningful glance. “Oh, look! We have a shop visitor. It’s Mr. Hartmann.”

  To the young woman’s credit, she stepped away from Kincaid, and pulled up a credible smile of greeting as Mr. Hartmann walked in.

  “Good day, Mrs. Reynolds. Miss Webster,” he greeted them from the open doorway, his hat in his hands.

  Maddie crossed the room at a pace not quite a trot but with a greater measure of intentionality than usual. “Evan. It’s good to see you.” She doubted the man could understand just how glad she was. “Mr. Kincaid tells me you’ve just finished installing new fencing at the ranch. I’m supposing that’s why we haven’t seen you in town much this fall.”

  As she’d seen him do countless times, the man turned his hat in his hands in an eternal orbit, something she associated with his amusement at some aspect of a conversation. “That’s certain. Thanks to Kincaid’s savvy with sheep, our flock is thriving.” He nodded to Graham Kincaid, both in greeting and acknowledgement of his help. “I was hoping you’d still be here. I’ve got Lena’s supplies in the back of the wagon with your dog, Alec.”

  “I think I’m finished here.” Graham shot Clara a sharp look. “Unless there’s anything else I can do for you, Miss Webster.”

  Clara avoided his eyes and addressed Maddie. “I think we have everything we need. Don’t you, Mrs. Reynolds?”

  She might have added more to her comment if the streak of black and white fur hadn’t startled them all, as it charged passed them for the open door. With a shriek, Clara took off in pursuit. “Daisy! Come back!” Mr. Hartmann presented no problem for the fleet-footed dog, but for her mistress, he was a blockade of broad shoulders and a hindrance to skirts.

  “’Cuse me,” Evan grunted when pushed aside by Clara.

  “Daisy! Stop!” Clara made a grab for the dog, but not before another dog similar in color and size bounded from the back of the wagon.

  The two dogs greeted each other with an enthusiasm bordering on hysteria, each behaving like circus performers, jumping up and over and under the other. At once, looking intently to rip the other to pieces and the next to be the very picture of joyful play.

  “Daisy, stop that!” Clara made another unsuccessful grab for her dog’s collar.

  “Alec only wants to say hello.” Kincaid stood on the sidewalk with Evan, watching the dogs with amusement.

  Clara shot back through clenched teeth. “Well, they have, and now I’d appreciate it if you would collar your dog,” She made yet another grab for the collar and held on for a few seconds before Daisy twisted her head sharply to the side, escaping again.

  Evan leaned over and nudged Kincaid with an elbow. “Better help the lady. I don’t think she appreciates the familiarity of your dog with hers.”

  Kincaid blew a puff of quiet disapproval and whistled. In an instant, the larger dog obeyed and trotted up to his master’s side. Kincaid reached down and scratched his ears. “Good dog.”

  Clara wrapped her fingers through Daisy’s collar, murmuring quite the opposite to her. “Bad girl. You’re a very naughty dog.”

  “Don’t be hard on her. She just can’t resist Alec’s charms. It’s not her fault.” The sarcasm poured out of the man at the consistency of molasses.

  Clara attempted to straighten her back in righteous indignation, but with her fingers laced in Daisy’s collar, she had to settle for lifting her chin at a defiant angle. “I should say it is not her fault. Your dog is a menace. He doesn’t even wear a collar.”

  “Doesn’t need one.” Kincaid cast a triumphant glance down at his dog, sitting obediently beside him.

  Evan slipped his hat back on his head in time to tip it as Clara stormed past him. Maddie rolled her eyes upward in a silent plea and waved Evan and Graham off.

  As soon as Maddie closed the door to the shop and before the men had pulled away from the curb, Clara spun on her heel, eyes flashing blue lightning. “Men like him are the reason I may choose to remain single for the rest of my life.”

  Maddie burst out laughing. “I know you aren’t serious, Clara. You’re just angry right now.”

  Clara huffed and looked away.

  “I seem to recall an early conversation when you described the type of man you hoped to find in the west, someone more—manly. Yes, I think that was the word. You expressed your displeasure with the men of your acquaintance who would be quite helpless if they had to fe
nd for themselves or defend a lady. I would certainly trust in Mr. Kincaid’s ability to protect me. Have you not noticed the man’s physique? My word, Clara! Mr. Kincaid qualifies as masculine in every possible way. And the fact that he is astonishingly attractive makes him even more worthy of your consideration.”

  Clara tossed her head and leaned over, ruffling Daisy’s ears. “He’s no gentleman. And my poor Daisy has been harassed since he returned from the summer range. That mongrel of his won’t leave her alone.”

  Maddie perched on a stool behind the counter, watching her assistant with growing interest. “Aside from the issue of a worrisome dog, can you describe in greater detail your ideal man?”

  Clara answered without hesitation. “Easily. A man like Mr. Hartmann. Educated. Well-spoken. Kind-hearted. Generous. Gracious. Strong. Capable of taking care of himself in any situation.” She took a quick breath and surged ahead. “Someone conversant in multiple topics. Someone who can talk about ranching as well as discuss a novel by Victor Hugo. A man who can be both strong and gentle. Forceful and reserved as needs dictate.”

  Maddie would not dispute her characterization of Evan Hartmann. He was, indeed, a fine example and everything Miss Webster said he was. She’d also learned from her friend Lena Hartmann, his wife, a fuller picture of the man. She scratched her fingernail along the worn edge of the receipt book. “I doubt that Mr. Kincaid has much opportunity when he’s alone in the mountains all summer to review literature with his dog.”

  With a frown, Clara rose to her feet while Daisy padded back to her bed in the children’s section. “You can’t compare the two.”

  “No, I suppose you cannot, nor should we. But I think you discount the influence of a woman on a man’s demeanor and even his ability to discuss a variety of topics. If you have the opportunity one day, talk to Mrs. Hartmann about Evan before and after marriage.” Maddie wouldn’t use her own dear doctor as an example, because it was she who’d changed. “I’m not suggesting that a woman should assume she can change a man’s poor habits by the simple force of her love. No, I’ve known many tragic unions built on such a falsehood. But in other ways, a woman can smooth the edges of a man of solid character.”