Holiday in Stone Creek (17 page)

He smiled, leaned across the console and kissed her lightly. "Meet you inside," he said.

Rodney's stall was empty, and Olivia felt a pang at that.

She stood there for a while, marveling at the mysteries of life in general and Christmas in particular, and was not surprised when Brad joined her.

"When I came out to feed the horses," he told Olivia, "there was no sign of Rodney the reindeer. I figured he got out somehow and wandered off, but there were no tracks in the snow. It's as if he vanished."

Olivia dried her eyes. "It's Christmas Eve," she said, repeating Ginger's words. "He has work to do." She turned, looked up at her brother. "He's all right, Brad. Trust me on that."

Brad chuckled and wrapped an arm around her
shoulders. "If you say so, Doc, I believe you, but I'm going to miss the little guy, just the same."

"Me, too," Olivia said.

Brad took her hand, examined the ring. "That's quite the sparkler," he said gravely. "Are you sure about this, Liv?"

"Very sure," she said.

He kissed her forehead. "That's good enough for me," he told her.

Together they went into the house, where there was music and laughter and a tall tree, all alight. Olivia spotted Ashley and Melissa right away, and some of Meg's family, the McKettricks, were there, too.

Sophie rushed to greet Olivia. "I get to stay in Stone Creek!" she confided, her face aglow with happiness. "Dad said so!"

Olivia laughed and hugged the child. "That's wonderful news, Sophie," she said.

"I've been thinking I might want to be a veterinarian when I grow up, like you," Sophie said seriously.

"Plenty of time to decide," Olivia replied gently. Just as she'd fallen in love with Tanner, hard, fast and forever, she'd fallen in love with Sophie, too. She'd never try to replace Kat, of course, but she'd be the best possible stepmother.

"Dad told me he was going to ask you to marry him," Sophie added, her voice soft now as she took Olivia's hand and smiled to see her father's engagement ring shining on the appropriate finger. "He wanted to know if it was okay with me, and I said yes." A mischievous smile curved the girl's lips. "I see you did, too."

"I've never been a stepmother before, Sophie," Ol
ivia said, her eyes burning again. "Will you be patient with me until I get the hang of it?"

"I'm almost a teenager," Sophie reminded her sagely. "I suppose you'll have to be patient with me, too."

"I can manage," Olivia assured her.

Sophie's gaze strayed, came to rest on Tessa, who was off by herself, sipping punch and watching the hectic proceedings with some trepidation, like a swimmer working up the courage to jump into the water. "I'm a little worried about Aunt Tessa, though," the child admitted. "She's been hurt a lot worse than she's letting on."

"This crowd can be a little overwhelming," Olivia replied. "Let's help her get to know some of her new neighbors."

Sophie nodded, relieved and happy.

Arm in arm, she and Olivia went to join Tessa.

"You're coming to my open house tomorrow, right?" Ashley asked hopefully, sometime later, when they'd all had supper and opened piles of gifts, and the two sisters had managed a private moment over near the fireplace.

"Of course," Olivia said, pleased that Ashley looked and sounded like her old self. "Did you manage to get rid of Jack McCall yet?"

Ashley's blue eyes shone like sapphires. "The man is impossible to get rid of," she said, nodding toward the Christmas tree, where Jack stood talking quietly with Keegan McKettrick. As if sensing Ashley's gaze, he lifted his punch cup to her in a saucy toast and nodded. "But I'm having fun trying."

Olivia laughed. "Maybe you shouldn't try
too
hard," she said.

Soon after that, with little Mac nodding off, ex
hausted by all the excitement, people started leaving for their own homes.

Merry Christmases were exchanged all around.

Olivia left with Tanner, delighted to see a soft snow falling as they drove toward home.

"I meant to congratulate you on how dirty this truck is," Olivia teased.

"I finally found a mud puddle," Tanner admitted with a grin.

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.

"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.

"Y
OU 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?"

For Karen Beaty, with love.

A
SHLEY
O'B
ALLIVAN
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 good-bye.

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, Ashley.
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.

"Talk to me," Olivia prodded, trundling toward the counter.

Ashley's vision seemed to narrow to a pinpoint, and when it widened again, she swayed in her chair, suddenly dizzy. If her blond hair hadn't been pulled back into its customary French braid, she'd have shoved her hands through it. "It must be an awful thing," she murmured, "to die the way Mom did."

Cups rattled against saucers at the periphery of Ashley's awareness. Olivia returned to the table but stood beside Ashley instead of sitting down again. Rested a hand on her shoulder. "Delia wasn't in her right mind, Ashley. She didn't suffer."

"No one cared," Ashley reflected, in a miserable whisper. "She died and no one even
cared.
"

Olivia didn't sigh, but she might as well have. "You were little when Delia left," she said, after a long time. "You don't remember how it was."

"I remember praying every night that she'd come home," Ashley said.

Olivia bent--not easy to do with her huge belly--and rested her forehead on Ashley's crown, tightened her grip on her shoulder. "We all wanted her to come home, at least at first," she recalled softly. "But the reality is, she didn't--not even when Dad got killed in that lightning storm. After a while, we stopped needing her."

"Maybe
you
did," Ashley sniffled. "Now she's gone forever. I'm never going to know what she was really like."

Olivia straightened, very slowly. "She was--"

"Don't say it," Ashley warned.

"She drank," Olivia insisted, stepping back. The invisible barrier dropped between them again, a nearly audible shift in the atmosphere. "She took drugs. Her brain was pickled. If you want to remember her differently, that's your prerogative. But don't expect me to rewrite history."

Ashley's cheeks were wet, and she swiped at them with the back of one hand, probably leaving streaks in the coating of attic dust prickling on her skin. "Fair enough," she said stiffly.

Olivia crossed the room again, jangled things around at the counter for a few moments, and returned with a pot of steeping tea and two cups and saucers.

"This is getting to me," she told Ashley. "It's as if the earth has cracked open and we're standing on opposite sides of a deep chasm. It's bothering Brad and Melissa, too. We're
family,
Ashley. Can't we just agree to disagree as far as Mom is concerned and go on from there?"

"I'll try," Ashley said, though she had to win an inner skirmish first. A long one.

Olivia reached across the table, closed her hand around Ashley's. "Why didn't you tell me you were having trouble getting the computer up and running?" she asked. Ashley was profoundly grateful for the change of subject, even if it did nettle her a little at the same time. She hated the stupid contraption, hated anything electronic. She'd followed the instructions to the letter, and the thing
still
wouldn't work.

When she didn't say anything, Olivia went on. "Sophie and Carly are cyberwhizzes--they'd be glad to build you a website for the B&B and show you how to zip around the internet like a pro."

Brad and his wife, the former Meg McKettrick, had adopted Carly, Meg's half sister, soon after their marriage. The teenager doted on their son, three-year-old Mac, and had befriended Sophie from the beginning.

"That would be...nice," Ashley said doubtfully. The truth was, she was an old-fashioned type, as Victorian, in some ways, as her house. She didn't carry a cell phone, and her landline had a rotary dial. "But you know me and technology."

"I also know you're not stupid," Olivia responded, pouring tea for Ashley, then for herself. Their spoons made a cheerful tinkling sound, like fairy bells, as they stirred in organic sugar from the chunky ceramic bowl in the center of the table.

The kitten jumped back into Ashley's lap then, startling her, making her laugh. How long had it been since she'd laughed?

Too long, judging by the expression on Olivia's face.

"You're really all right?" Ashley asked, watching her sister closely.

"I'm better than 'all right,'" Olivia assured her. "I'm married to the man of my dreams. I have Sophie, a barn full of horses out at Starcross Ranch, and a thriving veterinary practice." A slight frown creased her forehead. "Speaking of men...?"

"Let's not," Ashley said.

"You still haven't heard from Jack?"

"No. And that's fine with me."

"I don't think it
is
fine with you, Ashley. He's Tanner's friend. I could ask him to call Jack and--"