CHRISTMAS AT THE CARDWELL RANCH

by B. J Daniels

  He blinked, confused. Last night had happened, right? He thought of their lovemaking. Was it possible he’d only dreamed making crazy, passionate love with this woman last night?

  Lily’s demeanor told him it had only been a figment of his drug-induced imagination and if he wasn’t careful, he would make a fool out of himself. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last, he thought. He had to know.

  “Uh, did something happen between us last night?”

  “Happen?” She took a sip of her coffee, watching him over the rim of her cup. Her hair was still damp from her shower, smelling of jasmine—just as it had last night in his arms. But she was looking at him as if he was crazy.

  He remembered how strong the pain pills had been. Sure, he’d felt groggy, but— “I woke up naked this morning and I thought I remembered you and me...” The look she gave him stopped him from being more specific.

  “Do I seem like the kind of woman who would fall into bed with a man I hardly know?”

  He studied her, considering her words. She wore a turtleneck sweater and jeans. Buttoned up, that was how he would have described her. Nothing like the woman last night.

  “No, you don’t. But last night—” Last night he remembered finding a side of Lily that was as unexpected as the way she was acting this morning. “Sorry. It’s just that I...” He shook his head and warned himself not to get in any deeper.

  “I think you really should see what I found on the thumb drive,” she said, all business, as she moved to the table where she’d left her laptop and the papers she’d been working on.

  He was suddenly more aware of the fact that his body hurt all over and his head felt as if it was filled with lint. He stood looking after her, unable to accept that last night had been nothing more than a dream. He remembered every kiss, every touch. Desire stirred in him.

  “Tag?” Lily glanced back at him, her gaze taking in his bare chest. “Perhaps you’d like to get dressed first.”

  “Yeah.” He touched his scratched shoulder. Was it possible he’d gotten that in the accident? He met her gaze and for just a moment—

  She quickly looked away, busying herself with the calculations she’d made. “We can discuss this when you come back. I’ll pour you a cup of coffee. How do you take it?”

  “Black and strong.” He realized he needed his wits about him. Not only for whatever was going on with his father and this thumb drive, but with this woman.

  * * *

  LILY WATCHED TAG walk to the bedroom and closed her eyes as she fought the images. She couldn’t believe what had happened last night. That hadn’t been her, she told herself just as she’d told Tag.

  All morning, she’d fretted about what they would say to each other once he woke up. She’d never been like that in her life.

  But when she’d realized that he hadn’t remembered...

  “You took the coward’s way out,” she whispered to herself, and felt her face heat with embarrassment. Better than the desire that had burned through her veins at the sight of him this morning dressed only in jeans.

  She was just glad he didn’t remember. What had possessed her to fall into the cowboy’s arms last night? Lily didn’t delude herself. Seeing Gerald again had thrown her into a tailspin. She’d felt all the hurt and betrayal and a part of her had wanted to forget—and possibly even the score.

  Lily laid her head on her arms on the table. She knew it had been a lot more than just escape or getting even with Gerald. She’d wanted Tag. Wanted him in a way she hadn’t even been able to imagine. He was everything Gerald wasn’t. She’d known instinctively that their lovemaking would be nothing like what she’d known with her former fiancé.

  “Boy howdy,” she said, repeating an expression she’d picked up from Tag. As she heard Tag come out of the bedroom, she lifted her head and pushed away those embarrassing thoughts. She hated lying to him. Fortunately Tag had remembered just enough with the pills she’d given him to think he’d dreamed their wanton night of passion. Best leave it that way since it was never happening again.

  The thought gave her a dull ache at her center.

  What made her angry with herself aside from lying to Tag was that she felt as if she’d cheated on Gerald. She knew that made no sense. She owed him nothing—less than nothing. But she also knew that he wouldn’t have come all the way from California and driven up to her house in a blizzard last night if he wasn’t planning on asking her to take him back.

  She told herself that she and Gerald belonged together. They were perfect for each other. Both math nerds, they had their careers in common. Last night had just been one of those crazy things that never happened to a woman like her.

  Lily convinced herself that she would put it behind her. Gerald was her future. She would forgive him and they would get married—just as it was meant to be.

  She quickly straightened as Tag came into the room. But she kept her eyes on the computer screen even though she’d memorized the letters there since she’d looked at them so many times. Remembering she’d said she would pour Tag a cup of coffee, she jumped up and bumped into the edge of the table.

  Her coffee sloshed over onto some of the papers. She lunged for them and, off balance, stumbled into Tag—the very last thing she wanted to do.

  * * *

  “EASY,” TAG SAID as he caught her.

  “I was going to get your coffee,” Lily said, more nervous than he’d ever seen her.

  “I can get my own coffee. Are you all right?” Holding her like this, he could feel her soft, full curves. He recognized every one of them, he thought with a start. His imagination was great, but not this good. Something had happened last night. But why would she lie?

  Because you let her think you couldn’t remember, you damned fool.

  She pulled away as if realizing he was remembering last night. Or was he still deluding himself? She turned her back to him as she poured his coffee. He could see that her hands were shaking.

  Tag wanted to call her on her lie, but when she turned back to him, he saw the glow in her cheeks. Could she be embarrassed about last night? She’d definitely let her hair down, so to speak. How innocent was this woman? Surely there were other men besides dull Gerald.

  “Thank you,” he said as he took the coffee cup she offered him. Lily was clearly rattled. Maybe she regretted last night and really was embarrassed.

  What was it she had said? “Do I seem like the kind of woman who would fall into bed with a man I hardly know?”

  “So, what’s this about a code?” he asked, and took a sip of his coffee. He saw Lily’s instant relief as she hurriedly sat back down at the computer. He could see where she had been writing a series of numbers and letters on scratch paper.

  “After I came back here, I began to play with the letters. I know they appear to be random, but I don’t think they are,” she said, eyes bright. She clearly loved this stuff. “They appear to be part of a code. Julius Caesar invented one like it nearly two thousand years ago. He was invading countries to increase the size of the Roman Empire and he needed a way to communicate his battle plans with his generals without the enemy finding out by intercepting his messages.”

  “How do you know all this?” Tag asked, even more intrigued by this woman.

  “It’s math. Simple addition or subtraction, actually. Caesar, instead of writing the letter A, would write the letter that comes three places further in the alphabet, the letter D. When he got to the end of the alphabet, he would go right back to the beginning so instead of an X, he would write an A. You get the idea.”

  He did, but he wondered how the devil she’d figured that out and said as much.

  “The more I studied the letters, the more they didn’t appear random at all. The spaces made me think they were a list of names.”

  “Written in code?”


  She nodded, her eyes bright. She was in her element. He wondered if he would ever see all the different sides of Lily McCabe. “A version of Caesar shift.”

  “And you can read what it says?”

  “Not completely yet. It’s a case of trial and error with only twenty-five different possible shifts before you can see a pattern. Caesar shifted the alphabet forward three spaces. This code is tougher, but in the end it will come down to simple mathematics.”

  He couldn’t help smiling at her passion. He had a flash of her in his arms, naked, her skin silken and scented with jasmine, her mouth wet as she dropped it to his. Tag shook himself, the image so real he almost kissed her.

  She didn’t seem to notice. She was studying the letters on the page and her scribbles again. “Though I would have thought someone who didn’t want the code deciphered would have used symbols instead of letters,” she said, bending over one of the papers. “That way there could be four-hundred-billion possible combinations instead of only twenty-five. Not that it couldn’t be broken by frequency analysis, though. Mary, Queen of Scots, used symbols for her code when plotting against Elizabeth the First. It got her beheaded.”

  Lily stopped talking and looked up at him, her gaze locking with his. “Your eyes haven’t glazed over,” she said, sounding surprised.

  “This is fascinating. I’m amazed. How did you figure it out?”

  “I’m using the frequency analysis method. Since E, T and A are the most frequently used letters in the English alphabet and there are eighteen Ws and sixteen As...The As are not really As, you understand. Once you have the most-used letters, it is just a matter of figuring out the rest of them.”

  He watched her bite her lower lip in thought.

  “I can’t help thinking whoever made up the code is a novice at this,” she said. “They probably went online, typed in codes and thought ‘here’s one.’ The problem is they must have written this in a hurry because they made mistakes, which is making it harder for me to decode.”

  Nothing about what she was doing looked simple to him. Just staring at the letters made his headache worse.

  “I should be able to break it soon,” she assured him.

  “Lily, I have a bad feeling that the reason Mia’s condo was ransacked and my father’s, too, was that they were looking for this thumb drive.”

  “Then you should take it to the marshal,” she said, handing it to him. “I have a copy of the letters on my computer, so I can keep working on the code.”

  He nodded, although he had no intention of taking it to the marshal. Not until he knew which side of the fence Hud Savage was on.

  “Until we know what’s really on this,” he said, “I wouldn’t mention it to anyone, all right?”

  She nodded.

  “I need to get to the hospital and see my father, but I don’t like leaving you here snowed in alone.”

  She waved him off. “The plows should be along in the next hour or so if you want to take my SUV.”

  He wasn’t about to leave her here without a vehicle even if he thought he could bust through the drifts. “Are those your brother’s cross-country skis and boots by the door? If you don’t mind me borrowing them, I’ll ski down to the road and hitch a ride. My brothers and I used to do that all the time when we were kids.”

  “If you’re sure....” She turned back to the papers on the table. “I’ll keep working on the code and let you know when I get it finished.”

  She sounded as if she would be glad when he left her at it. He was reminded that she also had plans to talk to her former fiancé today. He felt a hard knot form in his stomach. Jealousy? Hell, yes.

  Except he had nothing to be jealous about, right? Last night hadn’t happened. At least that was the way Lily wanted it. He fought the urge to touch her hair, remembering the feel of it between his fingers.

  “I want you to have this.” He held out the pistol he’d taken from his father’s. “I need to know that you are safe.”

  She shook her head and pulled back. “I don’t like guns.”

  “All you have to do is point it and shoot.”

  Lily held up both hands. “I don’t want it. I could never...” She shook her head again.

  “Just in case,” Tag said as he laid it on the table, telling himself that if someone broke into her house and tried to hurt her, she would get over her fear of guns quickly. At least he hoped that was true.

  * * *

  LILY STOOD AT the window, watching Tag cross-country ski down the snowed-in road until he disappeared from sight. He glided through the new snow with no wasted movement. She could practically see the muscles rippling in his arms and back.

  At the memory of the feel of those muscles, she shivered and stepped away from the window, cradling her mug of hot coffee to chase away the chill. Why had she lied to him about last night?

  It wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t the kind of woman to fall into a stranger’s arms. Nor did she recognize that woman who’d made such passionate love to Tag last night.

  What had she been thinking? She was still shaken. True, she’d been thrown completely off balance by finding Gerald at her door.

  In her heart of hearts, she’d dreamed of him coming back, begging her to forgive him. She’d just expected it to happen a lot sooner. That was what he wanted to talk to her about, wasn’t it? He wanted her back. He’d realized what a colossal mistake he’d made. That was what it had to be. Gerald was safe, and right now she wanted safe, didn’t she?

  What would have happened if Tag hadn’t shown up when he had? Would she have let Gerald stay? Would they have made love as they’d done in the past? Or would they have had a wild, passionate night as she had with Tag?

  Wasn’t that what she’d always wanted?

  As hard as she tried, she couldn’t imagine Gerald ever being like that.

  But their relationship was built on intellect and a shared passion for math, she reminded herself.

  She closed her eyes, images of her lovemaking with Tag making her go weak in the knees. She quickly opened her eyes. She’d never get the code finished if she kept letting her mind stray.

  And yet as she headed for the computer again, she couldn’t deny the ache low in her belly. She wanted Tag again.

  That was why she had to see Gerald. She needed to put an end to these thoughts. All last night had been was one wild fling before she took Gerald back.

  And if Tag had remembered last night?

  Lily sighed and glanced toward the open bedroom door and the rumpled sheets. The two of them would be in that bed right now.

  She blew out a sigh that lifted her drying bangs from her forehead. Her skin felt oversensitive as if Tag’s touch was branded on it. She hugged herself for a moment, remembering how wonderful he’d been. She worried though that he was in trouble because of the thumb drive.

  Determined to figure out the code, she had started back toward the table and her laptop when she saw the gun. Stepping to it, she gingerly picked it up with two fingers, then wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  One of the drawers in the kitchen was still open from where she’d gotten a clean dish towel out this morning. She walked over to it and dropped the gun into the drawer and closed it. She wouldn’t need it. Even if she did, she knew she could never fire it.

  She had started back to work on the code when the phone rang not ten minutes later. The sound irritably jerked her out of her calculations. She saw it was Gerald and almost didn’t answer.

  * * *

  ONCE TAG REACHED the main road, he easily caught a ride to his father’s cabin. The day was bright, sunny and beautiful, so there was a lot of traffic coming and going on the road to the ski hills.

  At his father’s cabin, he called the rental company about the wrecked SUV. The cabin was still a mess, but the crime-scene tape h
ad been removed. He changed clothes and headed for the two-car log garage next to the cabin, anxious to get to the hospital and see his father.

  But when the garage door moaned open, he saw something that stopped him dead. His father’s SUV was gone. With a start, he remembered that the SUV had been parked outside yesterday when he’d found his father had been attacked.

  He tried to tell himself that a friend must have borrowed it as he climbed into Harlan’s old pickup. The key was in the ignition. Harlan always left his keys in his rigs as if daring someone to steal them. Maybe that was what had happened, although he feared there was an even simpler explanation.

  When he reached the hospital and walked into his father’s room, Tag wasn’t surprised to find the bed empty.

  “Are you looking for Mr. Cardwell?” a nurse asked as he let the door close with a curse.

  “Yes. Has he been moved to another room?” He knew he was only deluding himself.

  “I’m sorry, but he checked himself out.”

  “Against doctor’s orders, right?”

  The nurse smiled and nodded. “He is a very stubborn man.”

  “Isn’t he?” Stubborn and hiding something. Tag hated to think what.

  There were only two other places he could think of to look for his father. He tried his cousin Dana’s first.

  Tag found her and her two oldest kids putting the finishing touches on the worst-looking Christmas tree he’d ever seen.

  “Do. Not. Say. A. Word,” she warned him, and grinned. “This tree needed a Christmas.”

  “It needs limbs and needles,” Tag said. “Jingle Bells” played on the radio in the kitchen, and he thought he smelled ginger cookies baking. For a moment, he wanted to help string the paper garland the children had made and curl up in front of the fire. This was the Christmas he’d envisioned. Not one involving lies and murder.

  “It’s one of Mama’s orphan trees,” six-year-old Hank said. “It made Daddy laugh.”