He was tall and handsome with dark eyes, a close-cropped beard, and dark hair that flopped over his forehead.
“Hailey?”he said, looking astonished.
She opened her mouth and closed it again, unable to let out a single syllable, even as his name screamed in her mind.
Ransom.
2
RANSOM
Ransom stared across the moonlit field, convinced for a moment that he must be dreaming.
But the cold wind through his hair and the snow crunching under his boots told him that the sight before him was real.
He’d pictured Hailey Sinclair so many times over the years—not in that fancy get-up she wore on television, but just like this—her long, blonde hair loose and messy, just like all those years ago when they were teenagers in love.
She stared at him, unmoving, and it took him a second to figure out why.
“You’re still scared of dogs, aren’t you?” he asked.
She nodded her head almost imperceptibly.
“Okay,” he said, turning to the dogs. “Elsa, Anna, Olaf, barn.”
The three of them sprang into liquid motion, leapingand flying happily across the snow toward the old barn behind the A-frame.
The rest of the canines Ransom was training lived in that small barn with the attached paddock, which he had transformed into a neat and cozy space as part of his business. But Anna, Elsa, and Olaf were family pets and they normally lived in the house.
When he was satisfied that the dogs wouldn’t cause any more trouble, he glanced back at Hailey.
The fear in her eyes was gone, replaced by a familiar twinkle that transported him back to a time when things were very different between them.
“Anna, Elsa, and Olaf?” she asked, quirking an elegant brow.
“I let the kids name them,” he said, shrugging.
He didn’t mention that he’d done so out of desperation to give them something happy and solid when their mother took off the moment he arrived home.
“Your kids have good taste,” she told him. “I love that movie.”
“Me too,” he admitted. “And I’ve seen it enough times to beverysure how I feel about it.”
She laughed a real laugh this time, and his heart ached. There was a time when he would have done just about anything to hear that sound.
But I messed that up. And there’s no going back.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, unable to think of any reasonable course of events that might lead to Hailey standing outside his house in the snow at night.
“I, um, was just moving into the cottage,” she said, pointing toward the trees. “And the power went out.”
“The cottage?” he echoed, unable to believe what he was hearing.
“I bought your parents’ old place,” she said, looking a little embarrassed. “I’ll be living in the cottage while I fix up the house. I didn’t know you lived right here.”
Ransom knew the place had finally sold. He just didn’t know who’d bought it until now. He would have liked to buy it back himself, but he was already in over his head with the dog training and the kids.
He’d expected to have more time for that. It was a big place and more expensive than most of what Radcliffe had on the market. He’d figured it would sit a while. It had been a surprise when theFor Salesign came down.
