THREAD - The Christmas Witness

The other day @VerumVulnero1 ask for people to offer up their best pitches for a #RealHallmakXmas movie. I cracked out my pitch in about 5 minutes. I liked it but I could have done better. I've decided to punch it up a bit and tweet it here.

Kyleigh is a Chicago ADA who's gone into the Witness Protection Program and relocated to rural Montana after putting a powerful mobster in prison.

Wyatt is a cattle rancher with a troubled past.

When she moves into the spare cabin on his property their personalities will clash.

Kyleigh struggles with life on the ranch. The sparse condition of the cabin, the brutal realities of the ranch and the loneliness of a small mountain town. For all intents and purposes she is living in a foreign country.

Wyatt can't relate to her concerns and dismisses her as an uppity city girl. Her complaints about his profession, her cool superiority, her aversion to dirt, dust and "real work".

But as the calendar pages fall away and Christmas approaches their unique but complimentary loneliness grows.

He sits in his home, alone before a roaring fire, a glass of whiskey forgotten in his hand. Through the windows he watches the far off cabin and the glow in its windows.

She paces the pine floors of the cabin unnerved by the silence of the cold night. She mises the noise of the city, the crush of the people.

Finally, a shared longing for companionship, even for a few days, drives them to seek out each other's company.

Wyatt randomly drops by the cabin. He stutters his way through a hello, realizing he doesn't have a plan. Finally he rambles out a few questions about her comfort. Does she have enough blankets? Is the water hot enough.

The next day Kyleigh knocks on his door and asks if has some salt she can borrow.

For the next few days they dance around the topic of their isolation. He changes her tire shen she gets a flat. She reciprocates by offering to cook Sunday dinner.

Their budding friendship is damaged though when the small town rumor mill goes to work. Loose talk by the local ladies, threatened by the fancy new girl in town, let drop casual comments about Wyatt's rough past. Still the straight laced ADA she confronts him.

He says he'd made mistakes but that he'd changed. His old life was no more.

In the heat of the night's argument she lets slip her past and that she's living a lie. He recoils, accuses her of manipulating him.

Can she risk her heart with such a man?

Can he learn to forgive?

The ice that decends on their relationship is colder than any Montana winter.

On Christmas Eve both Kyleigh and Wyatt, sitting alone in their homes, come to the reality that they need each other and no one should be along on Christmas.

But when the mob come to the mountains for revenge Wyatt will come to Kyleigh's rescue. In a running battle with hardened hit men from the ranch to the town to the unrelenting, snow covered mountains, Kyleigh & Wyatt will learn the value of loyality, love & the Christmas Season.