Page 39 of A Mustang River Christmas

“They must not be very good, because I’ve never known another person that it happened to. And it never happened to him again.”

“He was just lucky, I guess,” Cassidy said, smiling at him.

“I guess so,” he responded. “I know I am.”

She tried to pick that apart. To see if there was something hidden under his words. A secret message meant only for her.

Jessie sighed heavily and looked at her phone. “I have to start another round again. Just pounding out a shoe, but look, there’s a crowd coming.”

“You look tired,” Cassidy said, meaning to be helpful.

But Jessie flinched. “Do I?”

“Not in a bad way,” Cassidy said hurriedly. “In a way that suggests you’re very industrious.”

Her older brother Flynn reached over and clapped his hand on her shoulder. “Quit while you’re only a little bit behind, Cass.”

Cassidy felt her smile falter. “Can I help with anything?”

“You can go gather some people,” Jessie said.

“I will,” she said, scampering away and finding a knot of teenagers. “There’s a blacksmithing demonstration starting over there. Free to watch.”

She moved through the group of people, marveling at the strange faces. So many people drove all the way out to Rustler Mountain around the holidays. It was a local tourist attraction. The kind of place that was worth an hour’s drive.

Sometimes Cassidy wondered what it would be like to live close to a movie theater, a chain restaurant or a Walmart, instead of being well over an hour away. But her ultimate conclusion was that it just wasn’t the life for her.

She liked livng here. The sense of community, the traditions.

She had no intention of leaving. She liked stability. The familiarity of Rustler Mountain. The sameness of life here.

Well, a lot of things in her life had changed lately, but she had no intention of changing.

Except, she did want things to change with Dalton. It was what she had always hoped for.

And if he rejects you, then what?

No. She’d had enough bad things happen to her. She had been over this in her mind before. If you were abandoned by your mother, brought to a town you had never even heard of to live with your father, who died right before you arrived, leaving you totally stranded with three feral older brothers, then you were owed some smooth sailing.

She was convinced of that. Or rather, she wanted to be convinced of that.

She gathered quite a crowd to visit Jessie’s booth, where she watched her brother admiring his fiancée’s handiwork.

“She’s something,” said Flynn.

The way he looked at his fiancée, it was just so obvious he was head over heels in love. It was really something. Flynn’s expression brought her back to that earlier interaction with Dalton. What had she seen in his eyes?

She couldn’t be sure.

But then, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She turned her focus on Jessie, who was heating the horseshoe, bringing it out of the forge when it was bright red, and hammering it forcefully, the sound of metal on metal filling the air.

Jessie went on until the shoe was the perfect shape, then doused it in water, cooling the metal. She gave it to a triumphant little girl in the front row.

“I didn’t know girls could do jobs like that,” the little girl said.

“Of course we can,” said Jessie. “And I’m also going to be the mayor of this town. We can do anything we put our minds to.”