A Gift Horse — Beth Carpenter

A Gift Horse is Book 2 in the Christmas Carousel series and part of the 12 Days of Heartwarming Christmas - a 2018 clean romance anthology from some of your favorite Harlequin Heartwarming romance authors.

Luke Mueller has good reasons to keep to himself. After his fiancée and best friend cheated him out of his company three years ago, he moved to Christmas Town and started a business restoring antique farm equipment. His only real friend was the octogenarian next door. Since she had no family around to support her, Luke pitched in to help, especially after she grew ill.

Now her granddaughter, Gwen Heatherton, has inherited the farm, and Luke wants nothing to do with a woman so self-centered she wouldn't even visit her dying grandmother. But when Gwen requests his expertise to restore Christmas Town's carousel in time to celebrate the anniversary of her grandmother's friends, he agrees to help. For her grandmother's sake.

As he works alongside Gwen in the carousel restoration, Luke discovers she's not the selfish person he thought she was. If anything, she's too generous with her time and energy, constantly volunteering for whatever needs doing, and in Christmas Town in December, that's a lot. When Luke gets saddled with a canine escape artist, Gwen is there to help with that too.

The more time he spends with Gwen, the more Luke grows to admire her. He slowly learns to trust again. But Gwen has a secret that involves Luke. If he finds out, the foundation of trust they've built may be destroyed. And trust isn't something that's easy to restore.