LITMIR.BIZ

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hesitated, then shrugged. “Things have been different the last few years and the farm has been run by managers. It has been on a downward slide ever since.”

      Then she seemed to realize she did not want to confide in him after all, and bit down on that plump bottom lip.

      Hanna pulled herself to her full height, which was not very high, maybe five foot four or five, and said with graceful polish, “And you, Sam? What are you doing in the driveway of Christmas Valley Farm on a night when it would seem wiser to stay inside and drink cocoa? Are you shopping for your Christmas tree?”

      “I’m not exactly the stay-inside-and-drink-cocoa kind of guy,” he said with a snort. “And I’m even less of a shopping-for-a-Christmas-tree kind of guy.”

      And he saw something flash through her eyes. Crazy to think it might be a memory of that one kiss they had shared so many years ago.

      “I understand you’ve put the farm up for sale,” he said. “I’m here as a prospective buyer.”

      * * *

      “You?” Hanna could hear the disbelief in her voice, and she saw the hardness settle around his features at her tone.

      Still, it was shocking. Sam Chisholm buying Christmas Valley Farm? The shock of it took her mind off the throb of dull pain in her hand that had been caused by hanging on to the pony’s rope when she should have let go.

      Though, now, too late, after the disbelieving words had come from her mouth, Hanna saw there were differences between this man and the one she remembered from years ago.

      Sam Chisholm’s shoulders, gathering snow on them already, were immense under a tailored long coat that was not buttoned. It was the kind of coat people around here did not wear: a beautiful dark leather, turned up at the collar. He had a plaid scarf casually threaded under the collar of the coat.

      Would she have recognized this man if she had passed him on the street? Of course, she had the fleeting thought that if they were going to meet unexpectedly, she would have much rather passed him on the street.

      In her rush to get home to deal with the Molly emergency, Hanna had not packed proper farm wear.

      So she stood before this gloriously attractive man in a too-large mackinaw of her father’s, and boots that may have been her father’s too, which she had found still standing at the back door of the farmhouse though he had been gone for years.

      Her fault that her father, too young for such things, had collapsed in his tracks, hands over the heart that had exploded in his chest? The heart that she had broken.

      The thought blasted through Hanna. Her life in the city was so full, so busy. Planning for the wedding, her pace had become even more frantic. She hadn’t had time for thoughts like that. And she had loved the fact that her life was too full for thoughts of the past. Maybe that was why, even now, she filled every spare second with work...

      The guilt she had been running from seemed to have settled over her like a cloud as soon as she had opened the back door of the farm, stuffy from being shut up for so long.

      Easier to focus on the distraction of Sam Chisholm than the guilt she knew had been waiting for this moment: her return to her childhood home after a six-year absence.

      Sam looked deeply sophisticated, and gave off the unconscious air of wealth and control. He also radiated a certain power that went beyond the perfection of his physique, that perfection obvious even beneath the line of that expensive jacket.

      His hair was devil’s food-dark, cut short and neat. His face was clean-shaven and exquisitely handsome: wide-set eyes, straight nose, honed jawline, strong chin with just the faintest and sexiest hint of a cleft in it. His lips were full and sensual, and there was something faintly intimidating about the set of them.

      But right underneath those surface impressions of strength and confidence lurked a certain roguish charm—of a pirate or a highwayman. In fact, that remembered rogue seemed to dance in the darkness of those eyes, so brown they appeared black in the shadowed light of the snowy night.

      “You don’t think I’m a suitable buyer for your farm?” he asked, those dark eyes piercing her. His voice was faintly amused, but challenging at the same time.

      His voice reminded her of a large cat: a growl that could be pure sensuality, or could be danger, or some lethal combination of both. It had an almost physical quality to it, as if sandpaper had whispered across the nape of her neck.

      Hanna registered, as a sad afterthought to her sizzling awareness of how damned attractive Sam was, that she had managed to insult the only prospective buyer the farm had seen since it was listed six months ago. And she’d unwittingly revealed its slow decline to him, as well.

      “I’m sorry,” Hanna said hastily. “No insult was intended.”

      “None was taken,” he said, but his voice remained the pure raw silk of a gunslinger just as prepared to draw as to smile.

      “I can see you’ve changed,” she said, but the brightness in her voice felt forced. In truth she felt a certain unfathomable loss at the change in him. “You are certainly not the renegade boy I remember, though I must say you don’t strike me as any kind of a farmer.”

      The sense of him having changed in some fundamental way was underscored by the deep confidence in his voice. And by the way he was dressed, which backed up what she had just said about him not being a farmer.

      She had a sense of being very aware of him, as if she was tingling all over, maybe because of the jolt she had felt when he had taken her hand.

      Likely just static, she told herself firmly. Or the chill of the night penetrating her clothing.

      Or maybe not. The lights from the headlamps of his car had illuminated them in an orb of pure gold. His breath was making puffs in the crisp air.

      Hanna had the oddest and most delicious sense of breathing him in.

       CHAPTER THREE

      SAM DID CUT a breathtaking picture, standing here in the crisp chill of a winter evening, his hands deep in his coat pockets. His coat was undone, and his look underneath it was casual, but not casual in the way that was interpreted around here, certainly not farmer-casual.

      No, around here, in the rural community that surrounded the upstate New York village of Smith, casual was plaid shirts and faded jeans, work boots and ball caps.

      Sam’s casual was more in keeping with Hanna’s life in the city, a look that could have taken him for drinks at an upscale club after work or to the theatre or to dinner at any of New York’s finest restaurants.

      He was wearing a long-sleeved, creamy shirt, which looked to her like fine linen. With its thin blue pinstripe, the perfectly pressed shirt looked casually expensive. It was open at the strong column of his throat, and tucked into knife-creased, belted, dark slacks that definitely did not look as if they had come off the rack at a chain store.

      “Renegade?” he asked, lifting a dark slash of an eyebrow at her.

      Was there a nice way to say he looked very respectable now? Back then, respectability was what she—or anyone else—would have least predicted for him.

      They had done a silly thing in the Smith High School Annual every year: under each photo of a graduating student, it had said Most likely to...sometimes flattering, but mostly not.

      Most likely to become president, most likely to make a million, most likely to rob a bank.

      She recalled Sam’s had said Most likely to sail the seven seas.

      Just a silly thing, and yet, those few words had captured something of him: a restlessness, a need for adventure, a call to the unknown.

      Of course her own, in her senior year, before she had left Smith forever, had said

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