Waiting Season

Melinda Foster hoped to spend January relaxing by her farmhouse’s fireplace while paging through the seed catalogs’ promises of spring. Instead, she finds herself struggling to keep the worst of winter’s threats from her door. Shoveling snow, thawing her farm’s water lines, and anxiously watching over the pregnant sheep in her barn fill her shorter days and longer nights. She pushes on because Horace’s offer still stands: He’ll sell her the farm in the spring if she still wants to stay. But...