world. There are precious few who know they can fly—please understand.”
She blinked back the tears that wanted to fall. The whole day piled upon her, and she heard everything from her mother’s warning that the reindeer would always be more important than her to the betrayal from Dad, who’d never told her Santa was real. Finally, there was the feeling that she should have been more to Caleb. “If your kisses meant half of what you claimed they did, then telling me wouldn’t have been a problem.”
She turned on her heel and hurried out. Swiping at her tears, she made a plan. It was clear she couldn’t stay here. No one trusted her enough to tell her that reindeer could fly, so she wasn’t really one of them. Dad tried to claim otherwise, but his plea for her to stay was as empty as his house. If he’d believed in her, he would have done things differently.
With all this pain, she couldn’t spend one more night in his house, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near where Caleb was going to be. He was supposed to be one of the good guys, but he’d held back as much as her dad. If that was the kind of man that Reindeer Wrangler Ranch turned out, then she didn’t want to be a part of it.
It was time to go back to her normal life. It was time to go to Grafton.
Chapter 32
Caleb
“Nutcrackers!” Caleb rushed Rudy to the barn and pushed him through the door. He couldn’t leave the reindeer in the arena without supervision, and he couldn’t chase after Faith with a flying reindeer following him like a Macey’s Day Parade balloon. He shut the door tight—they didn’t need another Snowflake issue flying around town—and ran for the parking area. By the time he got there, all he could make out were her taillights.
“Shoot.” He threw his hat in the snow.
“What’s eatin’ you?” asked Jack.
“Faith knows.” Caleb snatched his hat off the ground. “She knows, and she’s ticked off that I didn’t tell her. I feel like I’ve been caught with another woman.”
Jack laughed and then schooled his features. “Sorry. What are you going to do?”
Caleb blew out a breath. “I’m going to chase her down.” He headed for his truck.
“Whoa!” Jack grabbed his arm. “Do you think that’s a good idea? She just found out that reindeer can fly—and she’s mad. That’s a lot to process in one night.”
Caleb filled his chest with air, letting it expand past all the tightness Faith yelling at him had caused. What had she said about her dad? There were so many layers to this that he was buried in them. “She was pretty angry.”
“Exactly. And what do we do with angry reindeer?” Jack spoke slowly as if leading Caleb along.
“We let them cool off.”
“Right.”
Caleb hunched forward. Everything inside of him told him to go after Faith, to make this right. But Jack was the levelheaded one at the moment. “Okay. I’ll give her the night to sleep it off.”
“Good idea.” Jack side-hugged him.
Caleb headed back to the barn, needing to put the reindeer up for the night. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making a huge mistake, even if logic told him otherwise.
Chapter 33
Faith
Faith blinked back the tears that pricked her eyes and made her throat close off. The Grafton clinic had welcomed her with a warm puff of air that smelled like disinfectant and animals. Her partner, Johnathan, had been shocked to see her walk through the doors this morning. If she was an employee, she would have felt sheepish just showing up, but she was part-owner and her own boss, so she’d gotten to work.
By lunch, they were ahead enough that she felt good sending the other vet home. “Go on—I’ve got this, and if an emergency comes in, I’ll call you.”
Johnathan shoved his arms into his coat. “I appreciate the time off, but it’s not a big deal. We had a system down while you were gone.”
She felt the jab that she wasn’t needed. Well, too bad for Johnathan that she’d paid for half this place and he couldn’t tell her to leave. Pasting on a smile, she shooed him out the door and went back to work.
Johnathan’s system became clear as she found the supply closet reorganized and the staff bringing patients through in a different order of events. Instead of her meeting with them first and discussing the issue, the vet techs took vitals and