Tears pricked her eyelids, and Punkin, always sensitive to her emotions, laid his head in her lap, gently nudging her hand until she complied with his unspoken request, stroking the top of his head, crumpling his silky ears between her fingertips, and stroking his outstretched neck.

Finally, at ten, when the setter stood patiently in front of the kitchen door, she let him outside and stood on the covered back porch, shivering and staring up at the deep blue sky, shot through with millions and millions of tiny, twinkling stars.

“Punkin, come!” she called, hearing him tearing through the underbrush. For once, he obeyed, racing back toward her, out of the freezing night air and into the warm house.

Retreating to her bedroom, Ivy stared at the Mrs. Claus dress that she’d draped across the bed. She ran her fingertips across the warm velvet fabric, then tossed it onto a nearby chair. She donned her warmest pajamas and crawled beneath the layer of quilts. Her eyelids drooped, almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Just before she surrendered to her weariness, she heard the farm’s resident owl, hooting from the highest limb of the pecan tree nearest the house.

Tires crunched on the gravel driveway. Punkin raised his head and pricked up his ears. He heard the clump of boots on the porch steps, followed by three hesitant taps at the door. He glanced over at Ivy, whose soft, regular breaths remained untroubled. The dog stood, stretched, turned three times, then resumed his position at the foot of her bed. After a moment, the footsteps retreated.

Chapter 18

Ivy took one look at the ice-covered back porch and the treacherous frozen waterfall that had once been the steps leading down to the yard. “That looks like a one-way trip to the emergency room,” she told her dog. “Let’s try the front door.”

Punkin raced ahead of her. The door stuck slightly, and when she finally managed to open it he bounded outside to relieve himself. When she looked down, she saw a package sitting on the porch floor, beside Phoebe’s Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Even without opening it, she could tell from the shape and heft that it was a bottle of some kind. It was clumsily wrapped in now-damp tissue paper, with a limp bow of red ribbon. A small card was taped to the paper. She ripped the envelope open and found Ezra’s business card. There was a note on the back:

Sorry. Closing documents were a disaster. Like the rest of my day. I knocked, but you must have been asleep. Do-over? Xoxo, Ezra.

“No show, no call? No dice,” she muttered.

Punkin was back, shaking himself and splattering her with icy drops of half-melted snow.

“Men!”

Ezra’s gift was a bottle of Silver Oak Cabernet. It was a very, very nice wine. But it was no balm for her disappointment. She left the wine on the kitchen counter and headed for the shower. Exactly two minutes later her yelp of shock brought the dog running to her closed bathroom door, where she was just emerging, teeth chattering, from the shortest, coldest shower she’d ever endured. This time, she knew, it wasn’t an empty propane tank.