Read A Christmas Bride for Free Online Page B

that might even improve the selling price. Come on, David, work with me here.”
    “You’re asking the impossible. If you want my advice, I suggest you save yourself a lot of trouble and elope.”
    Heather almost gasped. “David, you don’t mean that.”
    “I do.” He stood up, the anger still churning in his gut, his throat so constricted he could hardly breathe. “Now, if you don’t mind, Heather and I have work to do.”
    Jeff stood too. “Okay, I’ll tell Melissa precisely what your views are on this subject.”
    David met his cousin’s stare. “You do that.”
    *  *  *
    Serenity Farm, where Willow had grown up, sat on twenty acres of land west of the Shenandoah River. The one-hundred-year-old farmhouse had plenty of character, if you called scraped, creaky floors, an avocado-green kitchen, and a wraparound porch with a few missing balusters charming.
    It was a far cry from the sleek, modern apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where Willow had been living up until a week ago. Moving back to the second-story dormer bedroom had seriously maimed Willow’s self-confidence.
    Even though her current situation was the direct result of doing the right thing, her fall from grace would have been easier to take if she hadn’t been so blindly in love with Corbin. He’d been her lover and her friend and her mentor. She’d even believed that one day she might become his wife.
    But once she’d discovered the cover-up, the only way to keep Corbin would have been to shut her mouth and pretend nothing had happened. She couldn’t do that.
    So here she was earning her keep by shoveling alpaca poop in the old barn.
    Thankfully there were only two alpacas—Bogey and Bacall—the breeding pair that in five years’ time had yet to conceive any babies.
    When she finished her early-morning chores, she headed back to the farmhouse, where she found Mom in the dining room that served as her office. Willow couldn’t remember a time when the dining table hadn’t been piled high with papers relating to Linda’s various business interests. In addition to owning the Jaybird Café, Mom also provided wool to several spinners in the area and produced herbal soaps that were sold at gift shops from Alexandria to Winchester.
    Linda Petersen looked as if she’d stepped right out of the 1960s. She was wearing a blue tie-dye T-shirt and a pair of jeans with holes in both knees. Her gray hair spilled out of the ponytail holder at the top of her head in a mess of unruly curls, while a pair of long feather earrings brushed her shoulders.
    “Hey, Will,” she said as Willow poked her head into the dining room after pouring herself a mug of coffee from the big urn in the kitchen. “You got some free time? I could use some help.”
    “What are you doing?” Willow asked after taking a big gulp of the strong brew her mother made. Thank God coffee was on the approved list for vegans.
    “I’m painting signs,” Mom said.
    Of course she was. Painting protest signs was what Mom did when she wasn’t tending livestock or making soap or booking musical acts for the Jaybird.
    “What corporation are you protesting today?” Willow asked.
    “They want to open up a Holy Cow restaurant downtown.”
    “Mom, I know you’re a militant vegan, but the rest of the human race likes hamburgers. And Holy Cow’s burgers are made with one-hundred-percent kosher beef. They only use animals that are humanely treated.”
    “Humanely? They still slaughter them.” Mom put the finishing touches on her sign. It read, KEEP THE COW OUT OF OUR TOWN.
    Mom scrunched up her face before speaking again. “What do you think about ‘There’s nothing holy about Cow’?” She paused, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. That one will offend people who are Hindus. How about, ‘Stop the unholy Cow alliance’ instead?”
    Willow refrained from pointing out that the population of Hindus in Jefferson County was likely to be minuscule. Instead she said,