“Oh…well…that’s… Why didn’t you tell us you were going to be with a man, Suzanne?”

Good question, Suzanne, why didn’t you? “It’s…still new, and I didn’t want to jinx it.” Dig. Dig. Dig. Crap…she was digging herself all the way to hell.

A long pause followed, and Suzanne was happy to let it stretch. At least while they weren’t talking, she wasn’t lying. “Well…okay, then,” her mother finally said. “That’s fine…we’ll come to you.”

Suzanne’s head snapped up, her eyes goggling wide open. What the? If somebody had put a gun to her head and asked Suzanne to guess what her mother would say next, Fine, we’ll come to you wouldn’t even have been in her top one hundred choices.

Her mom and dad coming to Credence? For Christmas? Ah…no.

Big. Fat. No.

And not just because her mom thought she had a rancher boyfriend now, which she very obviously did not, but because she didn’t want them ruining her first-ever real Christmas with all their bah humbug ways. But even more than that was the issue of her paintings. If her mother came, she’d want to see what Suzanne was working on, and Suzanne wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not when she didn’t even know where it was going yet.

Her mother’s tutelage over the years had been the kind of stuff that art students could only dream of, and it had been formative but also…stultifying. Criticism may well have been insightful and well meaning but also unhelpful for the creative process. What Suzanne was creating now was too new for any kind of critical eye.

Grady’s had been bad enough.

“But…but…it blizzards here.” Suzanne honestly did not know what else to say. Her brain had temporarily flatlined.

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed it doesn’t.”

Dear god, if Suzanne didn’t come up with a way to stop this, her parents would really make the trek. Her pulse tapped wildly at her temples. She couldn’t let it happen. “There’s no accommodation in Credence,” she said, panic begetting inspiration. The reason she was out here at the ranch in the first place was lack of paying places to stay.

Thank you, all the single ladies!

“But…we could just stay in the cottage, couldn’t we, as you’re not staying there anymore.”

Crap. The cottage. Damn it, the universe was already punishing her over the fake rancher boyfriend thing. Karma really was a bitch.

“It’s a ways out of town, Mom.”

“I’m sure we’ll cope.”

Yes, but would she? Suzanne’s pulse kicked up as she racked her brain for a suitable reason for them not to make the trip. Something that would put her mother off the idea of coming within a hundred miles of Credence.

Something worse than blizzards.

And then a light bulb flashed on over her head. “Trust me, Mom, you really wouldn’t like it here at all. Grady is a Christmas freak. Honestly, there’s enough tinsel strung about the cabin to go twice around Credence. It’s like…the North Pole exploded overhead. Grady just adores this time of year, and when he knew I was coming, he spent a week getting everything all tinseled up for me. He’s like whatever the opposite is of the Grinch. He’s…the Christmas fairy.”