Safe Harbor: A Cold Creek Homecoming

by Sherryl Woods

  She couldn’t tell her mother the worst of it. Even she couldn’t quite believe the depths to which she had sunk in her teenage narcissism, but she remembered it all vividly.

  A few days later, prompted by guilt and shame, she had tried to talk to him and managed to corner him in an empty classroom. They had argued and he had called her a few bad names, justifiably so.

  She still didn’t know what she’d been thinking—why this time would be any different—but she thought she saw a little spark of attraction in his eyes when they were arguing. She had been hopelessly, mortifyingly foolish enough to try to kiss him and he had pushed her away, so hard she knocked over a couple of chairs as she stumbled backward.

  Humiliated and outraged, she had then made things much, much worse and twisted the story, telling her boyfriend Scott that Quinn had come on to her, that he had been so angry at being kicked off the baseball team that he had come for revenge and tried to force himself on her.

  She screwed her eyes shut. Scott had reacted just as she had expected, with teenage bluster and bravado and his own twisted sense of chivalry. He and several friends from the basketball team had somehow separated Quinn from Brant and Cisco and taken him beneath the football bleachers, then proceeded to beat the tar out of him.

  No wonder he despised her. She loathed that selfish, manipulative girl just as much.

  “So he’s back,” Maura said. “Is he staying at the ranch?”

  She nodded. “I hate seeing him. He makes me feel sixteen and stupid all over again. If I didn’t love Jo so much, I would try to assign her to another hospice nurse.”

  Maura sat back on her heels, showing her surprise at her daughter’s vehemence. “Our Saint Tess making a selfish decision? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Tess made a face. “You know I hate that nickname.”

  Her mother touched her arm, leaving a little spot of dirt on her work shirt. “I know you do, dear. And I’ll be honest, as a mother who is nothing but proud of the woman you’ve become and what you have done with your life, it’s a bit refreshing to find out you’re subject to the occasional human folly just like the rest of us.”

  Everyone in town saw her as some kind of martyr for staying with Scott all those years, but they didn’t know the real her. The woman who had indulged in bouts of self-pity, who had cried out her fear and frustration, who had felt trapped in a marriage that never even had a chance to start.

  She had stayed with Scott because she loved him and because he needed her, not because she was some saintly, perfect, flawless angel.

  No one knew her. Not her mother or her friends or the morning crowd at The Gulch.

  She didn’t like to think that Quinn Southerland might just have the most honest perspective around of the real Tess Jamison Claybourne.

  * * *

  That evening, Tess kept her fingers crossed the entire drive to Winder Ranch, praying she wouldn’t encounter him.

  She had fretted about him all day, worrying what she might say when she saw him again. She considered it a huge advantage, at least in this case, that she worked the graveyard shift. Most of her visits were in the dead of night, when Quinn by rights should be sleeping. She would have a much better chance of avoiding him than if she stopped by during daylight hours.

  The greatest risk she faced of bumping into him was probably now at the start of her shift than, say, 4:00 a.m.

  Wouldn’t it be lovely if he were away from the ranch or busy helping Easton with something or tied up with some kind of conference call to Seattle?

  She could only dream, she supposed. More than likely, he would be right there waiting for her, ready to impale her with that suspicious, bad-tempered glare the moment she stepped out of the car.

  She let out a breath as she turned onto the long Winder Ranch access drive and headed up toward the house. She could at least be calm and collected, even if he tried to goad her or made any derogatory comments. He certainly didn’t need to discover he possessed such power to upset her.

  He wasn’t waiting for her on the porch, but it was a near thing. The instant she rang the doorbell of Winder Ranch, the door jerked open and Quinn stood inside looking frazzled, his dark hair disheveled slightly, his navy blue twill shirt untucked, a hint of afternoon shadow on his cheeks.

  He looked a little disreputable and entirely yummy.

  “It’s about time!” he exclaimed, an odd note of relief in his voice. “I’ve been watching for you for the past half hour.”

  “You...have?”

  She almost looked behind her to see if someone a little more sure of a welcome had wandered in behind her.

  “I thought you were supposed to be here at eight.”

  She checked her watch and saw it was only eight-thirty. “I made another stop first. What’s wrong?”

  He raked a hand through his hair, messing it further. “I don’t know the hell I’m supposed to do. Easton had to run to Idaho Falls to meet with the ranch accountant. She was supposed to be back an hour ago but she just called and said she’d been delayed and won’t be back for another couple of hours.”

  “What’s going on? Is Jo having another of her breathing episodes? Or is it the coughing?”

  Tess hurried out of her jacket and started to rush toward her patient’s room but Quinn grabbed her arm at the elbow.

  Despite her worry for Jo, heat scorched her nerve endings at the contact, at the feel of his warm hand against her skin.

  “She’s not there. She’s in the kitchen.”

  At her alarmed look, he shook his head. “It’s none of those things. She’s fine, physically, anyway. But she won’t listen to reason. I never realized the woman could be so blasted stubborn.”

  “A trait she obviously does not share with anyone else here,” she murmured.

  He gave her a dark look. “She’s being completely ridiculous. She suddenly has this harebrained idea. Absolute insanity. She wants to go out for a moonlight ride on one of the horses and it’s suddenly all she can talk about.”

  She stared, nonplussed. “A horseback ride?”

  “Yeah. Do you think the cancer has affected her rational thinking? I mean, what’s gotten into her? It’s after eight, for heaven’s sake.”

  “It’s a bit difficult to go on a moonlit ride in the middle of the afternoon,” she pointed out.

  “Don’t you take her side!” He sounded frustrated and on edge and more than a little frazzled.

  She hid her smile that the urbane, sophisticated executive could change so dramatically over one simple request. “I’m not taking anyone’s side. Why does she suddenly want to go tonight?”

  “Her window faces east.”

  That was all he said, as if everything was now crystal clear. “And?” she finally prompted.

  “And she happened to see that huge full moon coming up an hour or so ago. She says it’s her favorite kind of night. She and Guff used to ride up to Windy Lake during the full moon whenever they could. It can be clear as day up in the mountains on full moons like this.”

  “Windy Lake?”

  “It’s above the ranch, about half a mile into the forest service land. Takes about forty minutes to ride there.”

  “And Tess is determined to go?”

  “She says she can’t miss the chance, since it’s her last harvest moon.”

  The sudden bleakness in the silver-blue of his eyes tugged at her sympathy and she was astonished by the impulse to touch his arm and offer whatever small comfort she could.

  She curled her fingers into a fist, knowing he wouldn’t welcome the gesture. Not from her.

  “She’s not strong enough for that,” he went on. “I know she’s not. We were sitting out in the garden today and she lasted less than an hour before she had to lie down, and then she slept for the rest of the day. I
can’t see any way in hell she has the strength to sit on a horse, even for ten minutes.”

  Her job as a hospice nurse often required using a little creative problem-solving. Clients who were dying could have some very tricky wishes toward the end. But her philosophy was that if what they wanted was at all within reach, it was up to her and their family members to make it happen.

  “What if you rode together on horseback?” she suggested. “You could help her. Support her weight, make sure she’s not overdoing.”

  He stared at her as if she’d suddenly stepped into her old cheerleader skirt and started yelling, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do.”

  “Tell me you’re not honestly thinking she could handle this!” he exclaimed. “It’s completely insane.”

  “Not completely, Quinn. Not if she wants to do it. Jo is right. This is her last harvest moon and if she wants to enjoy it from Windy Lake, I think she ought to have that opportunity. It seems a small enough thing to give her.”

  He opened his mouth to object, then closed it again. In his eyes, she saw worry and sorrow for the woman who had taken him in, given him a home, loved him.

  “It might be good for her,” Tess said gently.

  “And it might finish her off.” He said the words tightly, as if he didn’t want to let them out.

  “That’s her choice, though, isn’t it?”

  He took several deep breaths and she could see his struggle, something she faced often providing end-of-life care. On the one hand, he loved his foster mother and wanted to do everything he could to make her happy and comfortable and fulfill all her last wishes.

  On the other, he wanted to protect her and keep her around as long as he could.

  The effort to hold back her fierce urge to touch him, console him, almost overwhelmed her. She supposed she shouldn’t find it so surprising. She was a nurturer, which was why she went into nursing in the first place, long before she ever knew that Scott’s accident would test her caregiving skills and instincts to the limit.

  “You don’t have to take her, though, especially if you don’t feel it’s the right thing for her. I’ll see if I can talk her out of it,” she offered. She took a step toward the kitchen, but his voice stopped her.

  “Wait.”

  She turned back to find him pinching the skin at the bridge of his nose.

  “You’re right,” he said after a long moment, dropping his hand. “It’s her choice. She’s a grown woman, not a child. I can’t treat her like one, even if I do want to protect her from...the inevitable. If she wants this, I’ll find a way to make it happen.”

  The determination in his voice arrowed right to her heart and she smiled. “You’re a good son, Quinn. You’re just what Jo needs right now.”

  “You’re coming with us, to make sure she’s not overdoing things.”

  “Me?”

  “The only way I can agree to this insanity is if we have a medical expert close at hand, just in case.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? Can’t your other patients spare you?”

  That would have been a convenient excuse, but unfortunately in this case, she faced a slow night, with only Tess and two other patients, one who only required one quick check in the night, several hours away.

  “That’s not the issue,” she admitted.

  “What is it, then? Don’t you think she would be better off to have a nurse along?”

  “Maybe. Probably. But not necessarily this particular nurse.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not really much of a rider,” she confessed, with the same sense of shame as if she were admitting stealing heart medicine from little old ladies. Around Pine Gulch, she supposed the two crimes were roughly parallel in magnitude.

  “Really?”

  “My family lived in town and we never had horses,” she said, despising the defensive note in her voice. “I haven’t had a lot of experience.”

  She didn’t add that she had an irrational fear of them after being bucked off at a cousin’s house when she was seven, then later that summer she had seen a cowboy badly injured in a fall at an Independence Day rodeo. Since then, she had done her best to avoid equines whenever possible.

  “This is a pretty easy trail that takes less than an hour. You should be okay, don’t you think?”

  How could she possibly tell him she was terrified, especially after she had worked to persuade him it would be all right for Jo? She couldn’t, she decided. Better to take one for the team, for Jo’s sake.

  “Fine. You saddle the horses and I’ll get Jo ready.”

  Heaven help them all.

  Chapter Six

  “Let me know if you need me to slow down,” Quinn said half an hour later to the frail woman who sat in front of him astride one of the biggest horses in the pasture, a rawboned roan gelding named Russ.

  She felt angular and thin in his arms, all pointed elbows and bony shoulders. But Tess had been right, she was ecstatic about being on horseback again, about being outside in the cold October night under the pines. Jo practically quivered with excitement, more alive and joyful than he had seen her since his return to Cold Creek.

  It smelled of fall in the mountains, of sun-warmed dirt, of smoke from a distant neighbor’s fire, of layers of fallen leaves from the scrub oak and aspens that dotted the mountainside.

  The moon hung heavy and full overhead, huge and glowing in the night and Suzy and Jack, Easton’s younger cow dogs, raced ahead of them. Chester probably would have enjoyed the adventure but Quinn had worried that, just like Jo, his old bones weren’t quite up to the journey.

  “This is perfect. Oh, Quinn, thank you, my dear. You have no idea the gift you’ve given me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said gruffly, warmed despite his lingering worry.

  In truth, he didn’t know who was receiving the greater gift. This seemed a rare and precious time with Jo and he was certain he would remember forever the scents and the sounds of the night—of tack jingling on the horses and a great northern owl hooting somewhere in the forest and the night creatures that peeped and chattered around them.

  He glanced over his shoulder to where Tess rode behind them.

  Among the three of them, she seemed to be the one least enjoying the ride. She bounced along on one of the ranch’s most placid mares. Every once in a while, he looked back and the moonlight would illuminate a look of grave discomfort on her features. If he could see her hands in the darkness, he was quite certain they would be white-knuckled on the reins.

  He should be enjoying her misery, given his general dislike for the woman. Mostly he just felt guilty for dragging her along, though he had to admit to a small measure of glee to discover something she hadn’t completely mastered.

  In school, Tess had been the consummate perfectionist. She always had to be the first one finished with tests and assignments, she hated showing up anywhere with a hair out of place and she delighted in being the kind of annoying classmate who tended to screw up the curve for everybody else.

  Knowing she wasn’t an expert at everything made her seem a little more human, a little more approachable.

  He glanced back again and saw her shifting in the saddle, her body tight and uncomfortable.

  “How are you doing back there?” he asked.

  In the pale glow of the full moon, he could just make out the slit of her eyes as she glared. “Fine. Swell. If I break my neck and die, I’m blaming you.”

  He laughed out loud, which earned him a frown from Jo.

  “You didn’t need to drag poor Tess up here with us,” she reprimanded in the same tone of voice she had used when he was fifteen and she caught him teasing Easton for something or other. He could still vividly remember the figurative welts on his hide as she had
verbally taken a strip off him.

  “She’s a big girl,” Quinn said in a voice too low for Tess to overhear. “She didn’t have to come.”

  “You’re a hard man to say no to.”

  “If anyone could do it, Tess would find a way. Anyway, we’ll be there in a few more moments.”

  Jo looked over his shoulder at Tess, then shook her head. “Poor thing. She obviously hasn’t had as much experience riding as you and Easton and the boys. She’s a good sport to come anyway.”

  He risked another look behind him and thought he heard her mumbling something under her breath involving creative ways she intended to make him pay for this.

  Despite the lingering sadness in knowing he was fulfilling a last wish for someone he loved so dearly, Quinn couldn’t help his smile.

  He definitely wouldn’t forget this night anytime soon.

  “She’s doing all right,” he said to Jo.

  “You’re a rascal, Quinn Southerland,” she chided. “You always have been.”

  He couldn’t disagree. He couldn’t have been an easy kid to love when he had been so belligerent and angry, lashing out at everyone in his pain. He hugged Jo a little more tightly for just a moment until they reached the trailhead for Windy Lake, really just a clearing where they could leave the horses before taking the narrow twenty-yard trail to the lakeshore.

  “This might get a little bit tricky,” he said. “Let me dismount first and then I’ll help you down.”

  “I can still get down from a horse by myself,” she protested. “I’m not a complete invalid.”

  He just shook his head in exasperation and slid off the horse. He grabbed the extra rolled blankets tied to the saddle and slung them over his shoulder, then reached up to lift her from the horse.

  He didn’t set her on her feet, though. “I’ll carry you to Guff’s bench,” he said, without giving her an opportunity to argue.

  She pursed her lips but didn’t complain, which made him suspect she was probably more tired than she wanted to let on.

  “Okay, but then you’d better come back here to help Tess.”