A Cold Creek Homecoming

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Jo laughed and Tess smiled along with her. Jake Dalton was one of her favorite people. He had been a rock to her after she moved back to Pine Gulch with Scott. Though her husband had a vast team of specialists in Idaho Falls, Jake had always been her first line of defense whenever she needed a medical opinion about something.

  He was a good, old-fashioned small-town doctor, willing to make house calls and take worried phone calls at all hours of the day and night and treat all his patients like family.

  She had been thrilled four years earlier when he married Maggie Cruz, a nurse practitioner who often volunteered with hospice. She now considered both of them among her dearest friends.

  "This is all a lot of nonsense for nothing," Jo insisted. "I was a little overexcited when Brant arrived, that's all."

  Jake said nothing, only examined her chart carefully. He asked Jo several questions about her pain level and whether she had passed out any other times she had neglected to tell them all about.

  When he was finished, he smoothed a gentle hand over her hair. "I'm going to make a few changes in your meds. Why don't you get some rest and I'll explain what I want to do with Tess, okay?"

  Tess knew it was an indication of Jo's weakened condition that she didn't argue, only nodded and closed her eyes.

  Jake led the way out into the hall where the others waited. He closed the door behind him and headed for the kitchen, which Tess had learned long ago was really Command Central of Winder Ranch.

  "What's happening?" Easton was the first to speak.

  Jake's mouth tightened and his eyes looked bleak. "Her organs are starting to shut down. I'm sorry."

  Even though Tess had been expecting it for days now, she was still saddened by the stark diagnosis.

  "Which means what?" Brant asked. He looked very much the quintessential soldier with his close-cropped brown hair, strong jaw and sheer physical presence.

  "It won't be long now," Jake said. "A couple of days, maybe."

  Easton let out a long breath that wasn't quite a sob but probably would have been if she had allowed it.

  Tess reached out and gripped her hand and Easton clutched her fingers tightly.

  "I think it's time to think about round-the-clock nursing," Jake said. "I'm thinking more of her comfort and, to be honest, yours as well."

  "Of course," Quinn said. "Absolutely. Whatever she needs."

  Tess's chest ached at his unhesitating devotion to Jo.

  Dr. Dalton nodded his approval. "I'll talk to hospice and see what they can provide."

  Tess knew what the answer would be. Hospice was overburdened right now. She knew the agency didn't have the resources for that level of care.

  "I'll do it. If you'll let me."

  "You?" Brant asked, and she gave an inward flinch at the shock in his voice. Here was yet another person who only saw her as the silly girl she had been and she wondered if she would ever be able to escape her past.

  "Right now the agency is understaffed," she answered. "I know they don't have the resources to have someone here all the time, as much as they would like to. They're going to recommend hospitalization in Idaho Falls for her last few days."

  "She so wants to be here." Easton's voice trembled on the words.

  "Barring that, they're going to tell you you'll have to hire a private nurse. I'd like to be that private nurse. I won't let you pay me but I want to do this for Jo. I'll make arrangements for the others to cover all my shifts and stay here, if that's acceptable to you all."

  Tess refused to look at Quinn as she made the offer, though she could feel the heat of his gaze on her.

  Part of her wondered at the insanity of offering to put herself in even closer proximity with him, but she knew he would be far too preoccupied to spend an instant thinking about a few regrettable moments of shared passion.

  "I think it's a wonderful idea, if you're sure you're up to it," Brant said, surprising her. "Quinn and Easton both tell me you're the best of her nurses."

  "Are you sure?" Easton asked with a searching look.

  "Absolutely. Let me do this for her and for you," she said to her friend.

  "What do you think?" Easton turned to Quinn, and Tess finally risked a glance in his direction. She found him watching the scene with an unreadable expression in his silver-blue eyes.

  "It seems a good solution if Tess is willing. Better than bringing in some stranger. But we will pay you."

  She didn't argue with him, though she determined she would donate anything the family insisted on back to hospice, which had been one of Jo's favorite charities even before she had need of their services.

  "I'll need a little time to make all the arrangements but I should be back in a few hours," she said.

  "Thank you." Easton squeezed her fingers. "I don't know how we'll ever repay you."

  "I'll see you in a few hours."

  She said goodbye to Dr. Dalton and headed for the door. To her shock, Quinn followed her.

  "I'll walk you out," he said gruffly, and her mind instantly filled with images from the last time he had walked her outside, when they had given into the intimacy of the night and the heat simmering between them.

  She wanted to tell him she didn't need any more of his escorts, thanks very much, but she didn't want to remind him of those few moments.

  "Why?" Quinn asked when they were outside.

  She didn't need to ask what he meant. "I love her," she said simply.

  His gaze narrowed and she could tell he wasn't convinced.

  "Have you done this before? Round-the-clock nursing?"

  She arched an eyebrow. "You mean besides the six years I cared for my husband?"

  "I keep forgetting that."

  She sighed, knowing he was only concerned for his foster mother. "I won't lie to you, it's always difficult at the end. The work is demanding and the emotional toll can be great. But if I can bring Jo a little bit of comfort and peace, I don't care about that."

  "I don't get you," he muttered.

  "I'm not that complicated."

  He made a rough sound of disbelief low in his throat. He looked as if he wanted to say more but he finally just shook his head and opened the car door for her.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Tess set her small suitcase down in the guest room on the first floor, right next door to Jo's sickroom.

  "This should work out fine," she said to Easton. It was a lovely room, one she hadn't seen before, filled with antiques and decorated in sage and pale peach.

  She found it restful and calm and inherently feminine, with the lacy counterpane on the bed and the scrollwork on the bed frame and the light pine dresser.

  Where did the others sleep? she wondered. Her insides trembled a little at the thought of Quinn somewhere in the house.

  Why did sharing a house with him feel so different, so much more intimate, than all those other days when she had come in and out at various hours to care for Jo?

  "I hope I'm not kicking someone else out of a bed."

  "Not at all." Easton smiled, though she wore the shadow of her grief like a black lace veil. "No worries. We've got room to spare. There are plenty of beds in this place, plus the bunkhouse and the foreman's house, which are empty right now since my foreman has his own place down the canyon."

  "That's where you were raised, wasn't it? The foreman's house?"

  Easton nodded. "Until I was sixteen, when my parents were killed in a car accident and I moved here with Aunt Jo and Uncle Guff. The boys were all gone by then and it was only me."

  "You must have missed them."

  Easton smiled as she settled on the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. "The house always seemed too empty without them. I adored them and missed them like crazy. Even though I was so much younger—Quinn was five years older, Brant four and Cisco three—they were always kind to me. I still don't know why but they never seemed to mind me tagging along. Three instant older cousins who felt more like brothers was heady stuff for an only child
like me."

  "I was always jealous of my friends who had older brothers to look out for them," Tess said.

  "I loved it. One time, Quinn found out an older boy at school was teasing me because I had braces and glasses. Roy Hargrove. Did you ever know him? He would have been a couple years younger than you."

  "Oh, right. Greasy hair. Big hands."

  Easton laughed. "That's the one. He used to call me some terrible names and one day Quinn found me crying about it. To this day, I have no idea what the boys said to him. But not only did Roy stop calling me names, he went out of his way to completely avoid me and always got this scared look in his eyes when he saw me, until his family moved away a few years later."

  Easton smiled a little at the memory. "Anyway, there's plenty of room here at the house. Eight bedrooms, counting the two down here."

  Tess stared at her friend. "Eight? I've never been upstairs but I had no idea the house was that big!"

  "Guff and Jo wanted to fill them all with children but it wasn't to be. Jo was almost forty when they met and married and she'd already had cancer once and had to have a hysterectomy because of it. I think they thought about adopting but they ended up opening the ranch to foster children instead, especially after Quinn came. His mother and Jo were cousins, did you know that? So we're cousins by marriage, somehow."

  "I had no idea," she exclaimed.

  "Jo and his mother were good friends when they were younger but then they lost track of each other. From what I understand, it took Jo a long time to get custody of him after his parents died."

  "How old were you when they moved here?"

  "I was almost ten when Quinn came. He would have been fourteen."

  Tess remembered him, all rough-edged and full of attitude. He had been dark and gorgeous and dangerous, even back then.

  "Brant moved in after Quinn had been here about four months, but you probably already knew him from school."

  She knew Brant used to live on a small ranch in the canyon with his family. He had been in her grade and Tess always remembered him as wearing rather raggedy clothes and a few times he had come to school with an arm in a sling or bruises on his arms. Just like Quinn, Brant Western hadn't been like the other boys, either. He had been solemn and quiet, smart but not pushy about it.

  She had been so self-absorbed as a girl that she hadn't known until years later that the Winders had taken Brant away from his abusive home life, though she had noticed around middle school that he started dressing better and seemed more relaxed.

  "And then Cisco moved in a few months after Brant." Easton spoke the words briskly and rose from the bed, but not before Tess caught a certain something in her eyes. Tess had noticed it before whenever Easton mentioned the other man's name but she sensed Easton didn't want to discuss it.

  "Jo and Guff had other foster children over the years, didn't they?"

  "A few here and there but usually only as a temporary stopping point." She shrugged. "I think they would have had more but…after my parents died, I was pretty shattered for a while and I think they were concerned about subdividing their attention among others when I was grieving and needed them."

  Her heart squeezed with sympathy for Easton's loss. She couldn't imagine losing both parents at the same time. Her father's death a few years after Scott's accident had been tough enough. She didn't know how she would have survived if her mother had died, too.

  "They have always been there for me," Easton said quietly.

  Tess instinctively reached out and hugged her friend. Easton returned the embrace for only a moment before she stepped away.

  "Thank you again for agreeing to stay." Her voice wobbled only a little. "Let me know if you need anything."

  "I will. Right back at you. Even just a shoulder to cry on. I might be here as Jo's nurse but I'm your friend, too."

  Easton pulled open the door. "I know. That's why I love you. You're just the kind of person I want to be when I grow up, Tess."

  Her laugh was abrupt. "You need to set your sights a little higher than me. Now Jo, that's another story. There's something for both of us to shoot for."

  "I think if I tried the rest of my life, I wouldn't be able to measure up to her. She's an original."

  Chapter Ten

  The entire ranch seemed to be holding its collective breath.

  Day-to-day life at the ranch went on as usual. The stock needed to be watered, the human inhabitants needed food and sleep, laundry still piled up.

  But everyone was mechanically going through the motions, caught up in the larger human drama taking place in this room.

  Forty-eight hours later, Tess sat by the window in Jo's sickroom, her hands busy with the knitting needles she had learned to wield during the long years of caring for Scott. She had made countless baby blankets and afghans during those years, donating most of them to the hospital in Idaho Falls or to the regional pediatric center in Salt Lake City.

  Jo coughed, raspy and dry, and Tess set the unfinished blanket aside and rose to lift the water bottle from the side of the bed and hold the straw to Jo's mouth.

  Her patient sipped a little, then turned her head away.

  "Thank you," she murmured.

  "What else can I get you?" Tess asked.

  "Cisco. Only Cisco."

  Her heart ached for Jo. The woman was in severe pain, her organs failing, but she clung to life, determined to see her other foster son one more time. Tess wanted desperately to give her that final gift so she could at last say goodbye.

  A few moments later, Jo rested back against the pillow and closed her eyes. She didn't open them when Easton pushed open the door.

  Tess pressed a finger to her mouth and moved out into the hall.

  "I came to relieve you for a few moments. Why don't you go outside and stretch your legs for a while? Go get some fresh air."

  She nodded, grateful Easton could spell her for a few moments, though she had no intention of going outside yet. "Thanks. I'll be back in a few moments."

  "Take your time. I'm done with the morning chores and have a couple hours."

  When Easton closed Jo's door behind her, Tess turned toward the foyer. Instead of going outside, though, she headed up the stairs toward the empty bedroom Quinn had taken over for an office while he was in Pine Gulch.

  She approached the open doorway, mortified that her heart was pounding from more than just the fast climb up the stairs.

  She heard Quinn's raised voice before she reached the doorway, sounding more heated than she had heard him since that long-ago day she had accused him of cheating.

  He sat with his back to the door at a long writing desk near the window. From the angle of the doorway, she could see a laptop in front of him with files strewn across the surface of the desk.

  He wore a soft gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up and she could see his strong, muscled forearm flex. His dark hair looked a little tousled, as if he had run his fingers through it recently, which she had learned was his habit.

  She wasn't sure which version of the man she found more appealing. The rugged cowboy who had ridden to Windy Lake, his hands sure and confident on the reins and his black Stetson pulled low over his face. The loving, devoted son who sat beside Jo's bedside for long hours, reading to her from the newspaper or the Bible or whatever Jo asked of him.

  Or this one, driven and committed, forcing himself to put aside the crisis in his personal life to focus on business and the employees and customers who depended on him.

  She gave an inaudible sigh. The truth was, she was drawn to every facet of the dratted man and was more fascinated by him with every passing hour.

  Jo. She was here for Jo, she reminded herself.

  "Look, whatever it takes," he said into the phone. "I'm tired of this garbage. Find him! I don't care what you have to do!"

  After pressing a button on the phone, he threw it onto the desk with such force that she couldn't contain a little gasp.

  He turned at the sound and someth
ing flared in his eyes, something raw and intense, before he quickly banked it. "What is it? Is she…"

  "No. Nothing like that. Was that phone call about Cisco?"

  "Supposed to be. But as you can probably tell, I'm hitting walls everywhere I turn. That was the consulate in El Salvador. He was there a few weeks ago but nobody knows where he is now. I have tried every contact I have and I can't manage to find one expatriate American in Latin America."

  She walked into the room, picking her words carefully. "I don't think she's going to be able to hang on until he gets here, though she's trying her best."

  "I hate that I can't give her this."

  "It's not your fault, Quinn." She curled her fingers to her palm in an effort to fight the impulse to touch his arm in comfort, as she would have done to Easton and even Brant, who, except for those first few moments when he arrived, had treated her with nothing but kindness and respect.

  Quinn was different. Somehow she couldn't relax in his company, not with their shared past and the more recent heat that unfurled inside her whenever he was near.

  She let out a breath, wishing she could regard him the same as she did everyone else.

  "Sometimes you have to accept you've tried your best," she said.

  "Have I?" The frustration in his voice reached something deep inside her and this time she couldn't resist the urge to touch his arm.

  "What else can you do? You can't go after him."

  He looked down at her pale fingers against the darker skin of his arm for a long moment. When he lifted his gaze, she swallowed at the sudden intensity in his silver-blue gaze.

  She pulled her hand away and tucked it into the pocket of her scrubs. "When you've done all you can, sometimes you have no choice but to put your problems in God's hands."

  His expression turned hard, cynical. "A lovely sentiment. Did that help you sleep at night when you were caring for your husband?"

  She drew in a sharp breath then let it out quickly, reminding herself he was responding from a place of pain she was entirely familiar with.

  "As a matter of fact, it did," she answered evenly.

  "Sorry." He raked a hand through his hair again, messing it further. "That was unnecessarily harsh."