Sarah closed her eyes, counted to ten forwards, then backwards. Lord, help her.

“I want you three out of here pronto,” she ordered them. She hated to send them away like they were misbehaving children, but she did not want them playing spy or Cupid, or whatever other trouble they came up with. “Go home and never ever wear those clothes together again.”

“What?” Claudia’s brow rose, disappearing beneath her green toboggan. “Since when have you ever wanted to get rid of us?”

“I’d say that’s obvious enough,” Rosie pointed out. “Since she started wanting to be alone with Bodie Lewis. And who can blame the girl?”

“I’d say it was more like since you started spying on me and Bodie.”

“Not on you,” Maybelle corrected, waving off her concerns in a wave of ugly greens. “You’re just an innocent bystander. It’s Bodie we’re keeping an eye on. Just in case.”

“I volunteered to do the job without backup, but they insisted,” Rosie informed her, seeming to think that if it had just been her then everything would have been fine, and Sarah wouldn’t have minded.

Sarah gave Maybelle an imploring look. “You’re the one who said he was squeaky clean. Just… just stop spying on him. Please.”

“Oh, all right,” the older woman gave in. “Girls, let’s go get coffee and warm up. We’ll look for our tree later and leave the lovebirds to themselves.”

“We’re not lovebirds,” Sarah insisted as the older women walked away.

They weren’t.

And, despite that almost-kiss, she and Brody weren’t going to be, either.

Chapter Eight

While their tree was being dug up, Sarah and Bodie had gone to Mrs. Harvey’s café to get a late lunch.

“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Bodie said. “You were right.”

“About?” Taking a sip of her hot cocoa, Sarah glanced at him from across the small wooden table where they sat.

“This.” He gestured to the renovated barn with its country store and deli. The owners had even had a fireplace built complete with a large stone hearth, and a braided rug and rocking chairs in front of it.

The feel of the place spoke of times long gone; simpler times when life was good and dark shadows didn’t haunt him.

“Mrs. Harvey’s soup is the best I’ve had,” he continued. Realizing how Sarah might take his comment, he added, “No offense to your own cooking, of course.”

“Of course,” she mimicked, a smile toying on her lips that he recognized from when they’d been painting and she’d dabbed him with paint. Sarah liked to tease him.

Bodie didn’t mind. Sarah was…fun.

In a different time, a different world…no, he wouldn’t go there, either. Just because he was inside a cozy country barn straight off a Christmas card didn’t mean anything had changed. Not really.

She might have called the tree farm enchanted, but there were some things no amount of Christmas magic could fix. His messed-up head and body being two of them.