It felt good to laugh with him.
They parted reluctantly, on Olivia’s back porch. She’d be going to Ashley’s tomorrow, while Tanner spent Christmas Day with Tessa and Sophie, at Starfire Ranch.
He kissed her thoroughly and murmured a Merry Christmas, and finally took his leave.
Olivia went inside, found Ginger waiting just on the other side of the kitchen door.
“Did your visitor show up?” Olivia asked as Ginger went past her for a necessary pit stop in the back yard.
“See for yourself,” Ginger said as she climbed the porch steps again, to go inside with Olivia.
Puzzled, Olivia looked around. Nothing seemed different—and yet something was. But what?
Ginger waited patiently, until Olivia finally noticed. A brand-new coffeemaker gleamed on the countertop, topped with a fluffy red bow.
Tanner couldn’t have brought it, she thought, mystified. Perhaps Tessa and Sophie had dropped it off? But that wasn’t possible, either—they’d already been at Stone Creek Ranch when Tanner and Olivia arrived.
“Ginger, who—?”
Ginger didn’t say anything at all. She just turned and padded into the living room.
Olivia followed, musing. Brad? Ashley or Melissa?
No. Brad and Meg had given her a dainty gold bracelet for Christmas, and the twins had gone together on a spa day at a fancy resort up in Flagstaff.
The living room was dark, and Christmas Eve was almost over, so Olivia decided to light the tree and sit quietly for a while with Ginger, reliving all the wonderful moments of the day, tucking them away, one by one, within the soft folds of her heart.
Tanner, proposing marriage on one knee, in her plain kitchen.
Sophie, thrilled that she’d be a permanent resident of Stone Creek from now on. She could ride Butterpie every day, and she was already boning up on Emily’s lines in Our Town, determined to be ready for the auditions next fall.
Ashley, so recently broken, now happily bedeviling a certain handsome boarder.
Olivia cherished these moments, and many others besides.
She leaned over to plug in Charlie Brown’s lights, and that was when she saw the card tucked in among the branches.
Her fingers trembled a little as she opened the envelope.
The card showed Santa and his reindeer flying high over snowy rooftops, and the handwriting inside was exquisitely old-fashioned and completely unfamiliar.
Happy Christmas, Olivia. Think of us on cold winter mornings, when you’re enjoying your coffee. With appreciation for your kindness, Kris Kringle and Rodney.
“No way,” Olivia marveled, turning to Ginger.
“Way,” Ginger said. “I told you I was expecting company.”
And just then, high overhead, sleigh bells jingled.
“YOU LOOK MIGHTY HANDSOME in that apron, cowboy,” Olivia said, joining Tanner, Tessa and Sophie behind the cafeteria counter at Stone Creek High School on Christmas Day. It was almost two o’clock—time for the community Christmas dinner—and there was a crowd waiting outside. “You’re understaffed, though.”
Tanner’s blue-denim eyes lit at the sight of Olivia taking her place beside him and tying on an apron she’d brought from home. Tessa and Sophie exchanged pleased looks, but neither spoke.
A fancy catering outfit out of Flagstaff had decorated the tables and prepared the food—turkey and prime rib and ham, and every imaginable kind of trimming and salad and holiday dessert—and they’d be clearing tables and cleaning up afterward. But Olivia knew, via Sophie, that Tanner had insisted on doing more than paying the bill.
A side door opened, and Brad and Meg came in, followed by Ashley and Melissa, fresh from Ashley’s open house at the bed-and-breakfast. They were all pushing up their sleeves as they approached, ready to lend a hand. Meg was especially cheerful, since Carly had shared in the festivities, via speaker-phone. She’d be back in Stone Creek soon after New Year’s, eager to take Sophie under her wing and ‘show her the ropes.’
Of course, having spent the morning at Ashley’s herself, Olivia had been expecting them.
Tanner swallowed, visibly moved. “I never thought— I mean, it’s Christmas, and…”
Olivia gave him a light nudge with her elbow. “It’s what country people do, Tanner,” she told him. “They help. Especially if they’re family.”
“Shall I let them in before they break down the doors?” Brad called, grinning. He didn’t seem to mind that he looked a little silly in the bright red sweater Ashley had knitted for his Christmas gift. On the front, she’d stitched in a cowboy Santa Claus, strumming a guitar.
Tanner nodded, after swallowing again. “Let them in,” he said. Then he turned to Olivia, Tessa and Sophie. “Ready, troops?”
They had serving spoons in hand. Sophie even sported a chef’s hat, strung with battery-operated lights.
“Ready!” chorused the three women who loved Tanner Quinn.
Brad opened the cafeteria doors and in they came, the ones who were down on their luck, or elderly, or simply lonely. The children were spruced up in their Sunday best, wide-eyed and shy. Some carried toys they’d received from Brad and Meg in last night’s secret-Santa front-porch blitz, others wore new clothes and a few of the older ones were rocking to MP3 players.
Ashley, Melissa and Meg ushered the elderly ladies and gentlemen to tables, took their orders and brought them plates.
Everyone else went through the line—proud, hardworking men who might have been ashamed to partake of free food, even on a holiday, if the whole town hadn’t been invited to join in, tired-looking women who’d had one too many disappointments but were daring to hope things could be better, teenagers doing their best to be cool.
As she filled plate after plate, Olivia felt her throat constrict with love for these townspeople—her people, the home folks—and for Tanner Quinn. After all, this dinner had been his idea, and he’d spent a fortune to make it happen.
She was most touched, though, when the mayor showed up, and a dozen of the town’s more prosperous families. They had fine dinners waiting at home, and Christmas trees surrounded by gifts—but they’d come to show that this was no charity event.
It was for everybody, and their presence made that plain.
When the last straggler had been served, when plates had been wrapped in foil for delivery to shut-ins, and the caterers had loaded the copious leftovers in their van for delivery to the nursing home, the people of Stone Creek lingered, swapping stories and jokes and greetings.
This, Olivia thought, watching them, seeing the new hope in their eyes, is Christmas.
Inevitably, Brad’s guitar appeared.
He sat on the edge of one of the tables, tuned it carefully and cleared his throat.
A silence fell, fairly buzzing with anticipation.
“I’m not doing this alone,” Brad said, grinning as he addressed the gathering. All these people were his friends and, by extension, his family. To Olivia, it was a measure of his manhood that he could wear that sweater in public. He knew how hard Ashley had worked to prepare her gift, and because he loved his kid sister, he didn’t mind the amused whispers.
A few chuckles rose from the tables. It was partly because of his words, Olivia supposed, and partly because of the sweater.
He strummed a few notes, and then he began to sing.
“Silent night, holy night…”
And voice by voice, cautious and confident, old and young, warbling alto and clear tenor, the carol grew, until all of Stone Creek was singing.
Olivia looked up into Tanner’s eyes, and something passed between them, something silent and fundamental and infinitely precious.
“Do I qualify?” he asked her when the song faded away.
“As what?”
“A real cowboy,” Tanner said with a grin teetering at the corners of his mouth.
Olivia stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly. “Yes,” she told him happily. “You’re the real deal, Tanner Quinn.
”
“Was it the muddy truck?” he teased.
She laughed. “No,” she answered, laying a hand to his chest and spreading her fingers wide. “It’s that big, wide-open-spaces heart of yours.”
He looked up, frowned ruefully. “No mistletoe,” he said.
Olivia slipped her arms around his neck, right there in the cafeteria at Stone Creek High School, with half the town looking on. “Who needs mistletoe?”
AT HOME IN STONE CREEK
For Karen Beaty, with love.
CHAPTER ONE
ASHLEY O’BALLIVAN dropped the last string of Christmas lights into a plastic storage container, resisting an uncharacteristic urge to kick the thing into the corner of the attic instead of stacking it with the others. For her, the holidays had been anything but merry and bright; in fact, the whole year had basically sucked. But for her brother, Brad, and sister Olivia, it qualified as a personal best—both of them were happily married. Even her workaholic twin, Melissa, had had a date for New Year’s Eve.
Ashley, on the other hand, had spent the night alone, sipping nonalcoholic wine in front of the portable TV set in her study, waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square.
How lame was that?
It was worse than lame—it was pathetic.
She wasn’t even thirty yet, and she was well on her way to old age.
With a sigh, Ashley turned from the dusty hodgepodge surrounding her—she went all out, at the Mountain View Bed and Breakfast, for every red-letter day on the calendar—and headed for the attic stairs. As she reached the bottom, stepping into the corridor just off the kitchen, a familiar car horn sounded from the driveway in front of the detached garage. It could only be Olivia’s ancient Suburban.
Ashley had mixed feelings as she hoisted the ladder-steep steps back up into the ceiling. She loved her older sister dearly and was delighted that Olivia had found true love with Tanner Quinn, but since their mother’s funeral a few months before, there had been a strain between them.
Neither Brad nor Olivia nor Melissa had shed a single tear for Delia O’Ballivan—not during the church service or the graveside ceremony or the wake. Okay, so there wasn’t a greeting card category for the kind of mother Delia had been—she’d deserted the family long ago, and gradually destroyed herself through a long series of tragically bad choices. For all that, she’d still been the woman who had given birth to them all.
Didn’t that count for something?
A rap sounded at the back door, as distinctive as the car horn, and Olivia’s glowing, pregnancy-rounded face filled one of the frost-trimmed panes in the window.
Oddly self-conscious in her jeans and T-shirt and an ancient flannel shirt from the back of her closet, Ashley mouthed, “It’s not locked.”
Beaming, Olivia opened the door and waddled across the threshold. She was due to deliver her and Tanner’s first child in a matter of days, if not hours, and from the looks of her, Ashley surmised she was carrying either quadruplets or a Sumo wrestler.
“You know you don’t have to knock,” Ashley said, keeping her distance.
Olivia smiled, a bit wistfully it seemed to Ashley, and opened their grandfather Big John’s old barn coat to reveal a small white cat with one blue eye and one green one.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Ashley bristled.
Olivia, a veterinarian as well as Stone Creek, Arizona’s one and only real-deal animal communicator, bent awkwardly to set the kitten on Ashley’s immaculate kitchen floor, where it meowed pitifully and turned in a little circle, pursuing its fluffy tail. Every stray dog, cat or bird in the county seemed to find its way to Olivia eventually, like immigrants gravitating toward the Statue of Liberty.
Two years ago, at Christmas, she’d even been approached by a reindeer named Rodney.
“Meet Mrs. Wiggins,” Olivia chimed, undaunted. Her china-blue eyes danced beneath the dark, sleek fringe of her bangs, but there was a wary look in them that bothered Ashley…even shamed her a little. The two of them had always been close. Did Olivia think Ashley was jealous of her new life with Tanner and his precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Sophie?
“I suppose she’s already told you her life story,” Ashley said, nodding toward the cat, scrubbing her hands down the thighs of her jeans once and then heading for the sink to wash up before filling the electric kettle. At least that hadn’t changed—they always had tea together, whenever Olivia dropped by—which was less and less often these days.
After all, unlike Ashley, Olivia had a life.
Olivia crooked up a corner of her mouth and began struggling out of the old plaid woolen coat, flecked, as always, with bits of straw. Some things never changed—even with Tanner’s money, Olivia still dressed like what she was, a country veterinarian.
“Not much to tell,” Livie answered with a slight lift of one shoulder, as nonchalantly as if telepathic exchanges with all manner of finned, feathered and furred creatures were commonplace. “She’s only fourteen weeks old, so she hasn’t had time to build up much of an autobiography.”
“I do not want a cat,” Ashley informed her sister.
Olivia hauled back a chair at the table and collapsed into it. She was wearing gum boots, as usual, and they looked none too clean. “You only think you don’t want Mrs. Wiggins,” she said. “She needs you and, whether you know it or not, you need her.”
Ashley turned back to the kettle, trying to ignore the ball of cuteness chasing its tail in the middle of the kitchen floor. She was irritated, but worried, too. She looked back at Olivia over one stiff shoulder. “Should you be out and about, as pregnant as you are?”
Olivia smiled, serene as a Botticelli Madonna. “Pregnancy isn’t a matter of degrees, Ash,” she said. “One either is or isn’t.”
“You’re pale,” Ashley fretted. She’d lost so many loved ones—both parents, her beloved granddad, Big John. If anything happened to any of her siblings, whatever their differences, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“Just brew the tea,” Olivia said quietly. “I’m perfectly all right.”
While Ashley didn’t have her sister’s gift for talking to animals, she was intuitive, and her nerves felt all twitchy, a clear sign that something unexpected was about to happen. She plugged in the kettle and joined Olivia at the table. “Is anything wrong?”
“Funny you should ask,” Olivia answered, and though the soft smile still rested on her lips, her eyes were solemn. “I came here to ask you the same question. Even though I already know the answer.”
As much as she hated the uneasiness that had sprung up between herself and her sisters and brother, Ashley tended to bounce away from any mention of the subject like a pinball in a lively game. She sprang right up out of her chair and crossed to the antique breakfront to fetch two delicate china cups from behind the glass doors, full of strange urgency.
“Ash,” Olivia said patiently.
Ashley kept her back to her sister and lowered her head. “I’ve just been a little blue lately, Liv,” she admitted softly. “That’s all.”
She would never get to know her mother.
The holidays had been a downer.
Not a single guest had checked into her Victorian bed-and-breakfast since before Thanksgiving, which meant she was two payments behind on the private mortgage Brad had given her to buy the place several years before. It wasn’t that her brother had been pressing her for the money—he’d offered her the deed, free and clear, the day the deal was closed, but she’d insisted on repaying him every cent.
On top of all that, she hadn’t heard a word from Jack McCall since his last visit, six months ago. He’d suddenly packed his bags and left one sultry summer night, while she was sleeping off their most recent bout of lovemaking, without so much as a goodbye.
Would it have killed him to wake her up and explain? Or just leave a damn note? Maybe pick up a phone?
“It’s because of Mom,” Olivia said. “You’re grieving for the woman she never was, and that’s okay, Ashl
ey. But it might help if you talked to one of us about how you feel.”
Weary rage surged through Ashley. She spun around to face Olivia, causing her sneakers to make a squeaking sound against the freshly waxed floor, remembered that her sister was about to have a baby, and sucked all her frustration and fury back in on one ragged breath.
“Let’s not go there, Livie,” she said.
The kitten scrabbled at one leg of Ashley’s jeans and, without thinking, she bent to scoop the tiny creature up into her arms. Minute, silky ears twitched under her chin, and Mrs. Wiggins purred as though powered by batteries, snuggling against her neck.
Olivia smiled again, still wistful. “You’re pretty angry with us, aren’t you?” she asked gently. “Brad and Melissa and me, I mean.”
“No,” Ashley lied, wanting to put the kitten down but unable to do so. Somehow, nearly weightless as that cat was, it made her feel anchored instead of set adrift.
“Come on,” Olivia challenged quietly. “If I weren’t nine and a half months along, you’d be in my face right now.”
Ashley bit down hard on her lower lip and said nothing.
“Things can’t change if we don’t talk,” Olivia persisted.
Ashley swallowed painfully. Anything she said would probably come out sounding like self-pity, and Ashley was too proud to feel sorry for herself, but she also knew her sister. Olivia wasn’t about to let her off the hook, squirm though she might. “It’s just that nothing seems to be working,” she confessed, blinking back tears. “The business. Jack. That damn computer you insisted I needed.”
The kettle boiled, emitting a shrill whistle and clouds of steam.
Still cradling the kitten under her chin, Ashley unplugged the cord with a wrenching motion of her free hand.
“Sit down,” Olivia said, rising laboriously from her chair. “I’ll make the tea.”
“No, you won’t!”
“I’m pregnant, Ashley,” Olivia replied, “not incapacitated.”
Ashley skulked back to the table, sat down, the tea forgotten. The kitten inched down her flannel work shirt to her lap and made a graceful leap to the floor.
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