CHAPTER NINE

Over what was left of the weekend, the snow melted and the roads were lined with muddy slush. It made the decorations on Main Street look as though they were trying just a shade too hard, by Olivia’s calculations.

Brad and Ashley didn’t get back to Stone Creek until Monday afternoon. Melissa and Olivia were waiting at Ashley’s, along with Ginger, when Brad’s truck pulled up outside. They’d considered turning on the outside lights to welcome Ashley home, but in the end it hadn’t seemed like a good idea.

Olivia had brewed fresh coffee, though.

Melissa had brought a box of Ashley’s favorite doughnuts from the bakery.

As they peered out the front window, watching as Brad helped Ashley out of the truck and held on to her arm as they approached the gate, both Olivia and Melissa knew coffee and doughnuts weren’t going to be enough.

Ashley looked thinner—was that possible after only a couple of days?—and even from a distance, Olivia could see that there were deep shadows under her eyes.

Melissa rushed for the door and opened it as Brad brought Ashley up the steps. He shot a look of bruised warning at Melissa, then Olivia.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ashley said.

“You don’t have to,” Olivia told her softly, reaching for Ashley and drawing back when her sister flinched, huddled closer to Brad, as though she felt threatened. She wouldn’t look at either Olivia or Melissa, but she did stoop to pat Ginger’s head. “I just want to sleep.”

Once Ashley was inside the house, Melissa urged her toward the stairs. The railing was buried under an evergreen garland.

“That must have been a very bad scene,” Olivia said to Brad when the twins were on their way upstairs, followed by Ginger.

He nodded, his expression glum. Now that Olivia looked at him, she realized that he looked almost as bad as Ashley did.

“What happened?” Olivia prompted when her brother didn’t say anything.

“She wouldn’t tell me any more than she just told you.” There was more, though. Olivia knew that, by Brad’s face, even before he went on. “A desk clerk at Ashley’s hotel told me she checked in, all excited, and a woman came to see her—the two of them met in the hotel restaurant for lunch. The woman was Mom, of course. She swilled a lot of wine, and things went sour, fast. According to this clerk, Mom started screaming that if she’d wanted ‘a bunch of snot-nosed brats hanging off her,’ she’d have stayed in Stone Creek and rotted.”

The words, and the image, which she could picture only too well, struck Olivia like blows. It didn’t help that she would have expected something similar out of any meeting with her mother.

“My God,” she whispered. “Poor Ashley.”

“It gets worse,” Brad said. “Mom raised such hell in the restaurant that the police were called. Turns out she’d violated probation by getting drunk, and now she’s in jail. Ashley’s furious with me because I wouldn’t bail her out.”

A sudden headache slammed at Olivia’s temples with such ferocity that she wondered if she was blowing a blood vessel in her brain. She nodded to let Brad know she’d heard, but her eyes were squeezed shut.

“I tried to get Ashley to stop at the doctor’s office on the way into town a little while ago—maybe get some tranquilizers or something—but she said she just wanted to go home.” He paused. “Liv, are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” she answered, opening her eyes. “Right now I’m not worried about myself. I should have known Ashley would have done something like this—tried to stop her—”

“It isn’t your fault,” Brad said.

Olivia nodded, but she probably wasn’t very convincing, to Brad or herself.

“I’ve got to get home to Meg and the baby,” Brad told her. “Can you and Melissa take it from here?”

Again Olivia nodded.

“You’ll call if she seems to be losing ground?”

Olivia stood on tiptoe and kissed her brother’s unshaven, wind-chilled cheek. “I’ll call,” she promised.

After casting a rueful glance toward the stairs, Brad turned and left.

Olivia was halfway up those same stairs when Melissa appeared at the top, a finger to her lips.

“She’s resting,” she whispered. Apparently Ginger had elected to stay in Ashley’s room.

Together, Olivia and Melissa retreated to the kitchen.

“Did she say anything?” Olivia prodded.

“Just that it was terrible,” Melissa replied, “and that she still doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Olivia’s cell phone chirped. Great. After the slowest weekend on record, professionally speaking anyway, she was suddenly in demand.

“Dr. O’Ballivan,” she answered, having seen the clinic’s number on the ID panel.

“There’s a horse colicking at the Wildes’ farm,” the receptionist, Becky, told her. “It’s bad and Dr. Elliott is on call, but he’s busy….”

Colic. The ailment could be deadly for a horse. “I’m on my way,” Olivia said.

“Go,” Melissa said when she’d hung up. “I’ll look after Ashley. Ginger, too.”

Having no real choice, Olivia hurried out to the Suburban and headed for the Wildes’.

The next few hours were harrowing, with teenaged Sherry Wilde, the owner of the sick horse, on the verge of hysteria the whole time. Olivia managed to save the bay mare, but it was a fight.

She was so drained afterward that she pulled over and sat in the Suburban with her head resting on the steering wheel, once she’d driven out of sight of the house and barn, and cried.

Presently she heard another rig pull up behind her and, since she was about halfway between Stone Creek and Indian Rock, she figured it was Wyatt Terp or one of his deputies, out on patrol, stopping to make sure she was okay. Olivia sniffled inelegantly and lifted her head.

But the face on the other side of the window was Tanner’s, not Wyatt’s.

She hadn’t seen him since supper at his place a few nights before.

He gestured for her to roll down the window.

She did.

“Engine trouble?” he asked.

Olivia shook her head. She must look a sight, she thought, with her eyes all puffy and her nose red enough to fly lead for Kris Kringle. She was a professional, good under pressure, and it was completely unlike her to sit sniveling beside the road.

“Move over,” he said after locking his own vehicle by pressing a button on the key fob. “I’m driving.”

“I’m all right—really…”

He already had the door open, and he was standing on the running board.

Olivia scrambled over the console to the passenger side once she realized he wasn’t going to give in.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Home, I guess,” Olivia said. She’d called the bed-and-breakfast before leaving the Wildes’ farm, and Melissa had told her Ashley still wanted to be left alone. The family doctor had dropped by, at Brad’s request, and given Ash a mild sedative.

Melissa planned to stay overnight.

“When you’re ready to talk,” Tanner said, checking the rearview mirror before pulling onto the road, “I’ll be ready to listen.”

“It might be a while,” Olivia said, after a few moments spent struggling to get a grip. “Where’s Sophie?”

Tanner grinned. “She stayed after school to watch the drama department rehearse for the winter play,” he said. “We’ll pick her up on our way if you don’t mind.”

It went without saying that Olivia didn’t mind, but she said it anyway.

Sophie was waiting with friends when they pulled up in front of the middle school. She looked puzzled for a moment, then rushed, smiling, toward the Suburban.

“We really should go back and get your truck,” Olivia fretted, glancing at Tanner as Sophie climbed into the rear seat.

“Maybe it will get dirty,” Tanner said cheerfully. Then, when Olivia didn’t smile, he added, “I’ll send somebody from the construction crew to pick it up.”

“Can we get pizza?” Sophie wanted to know.

“We have horses to feed,” Tanner told her. “Not to mention Snidely and Whiplash. We’ll order pizza after the chores are done.”

“Our tree is all decorated,” Sophie told Olivia. “You should come and see it.”

“I will,” Olivia said.

“Are you coming down with a cold?” Sophie wanted to know. “You sound funny.”

“I’m all right,” Olivia answered, touched.

They were about a mile out of town, on the far side of Stone Creek, when they spotted Ginger trudging alongside the road. Olivia’s mouth fell open—she’d thought the dog was still at Ashley’s.

“What’s Ginger doing out here all alone?” Sophie demanded.

“I don’t know,” Olivia said, struggling in vain to open the passenger-side door even as Tanner stopped the Suburban, got out and lifted the weary dog off the ground. Carried her in his arms to the back of the rig and settled her on the blankets.

“I don’t think she’s hurt,” Tanner said once he was behind the wheel again. “Just tired and pretty footsore.”

A tear slipped down Olivia’s cheek, and she wiped it away, but not quickly enough.

“Hey,” he said, his voice husky. “It can’t be that bad.”

Olivia didn’t answer.

Ashley would be all right.

Ginger would be, too.

But she wasn’t so sure about herself.

At some point, without even realizing it, she’d fallen in love with Tanner Quinn. Talk about a dismal revelation.

Reaching her place, Tanner let Sophie stay behind with Olivia and Ginger while he went on to Starcross to feed Butterpie and Shiloh and see to the puppies, as well.

Holding off tears with everything she had, Olivia peeled off her vest, turned up the heat and gave Ginger a quick but thorough exam. Tanner’s diagnosis had been correct—she was worn out, and she’d need some salve on the pads of her feet, but otherwise she was fine. “Why didn’t you stay at Ashley’s?” she asked. “I would have come back for you.”

Ginger just looked up at her, eyes full of exhaustion and devoted trust.

“Can I order pizza?” Sophie asked, hovering by the phone.

Olivia smiled a fragile smile, nodded. Keep busy, she thought. Keep busy. She filled Ginger’s water and kibble bowls and dragged her fluffy Ashley-made bed into the kitchen. Ginger turned a few circles and collapsed, obviously spent and blissfully happy to be home.

Sophie placed the pizza order and sat down cross-legged on the floor to pet Ginger, who slumbered on.

“Did Ginger run away?” she asked.

Olivia was making coffee. Maybe Santa would bring her a new percolator. Was it too late to write to him? Did he have an e-mail address?

Was she losing her ever-loving mind?

Yes, if she’d fallen for Tanner. He was as unavailable as Melissa’s last guy.

“She and I were visiting my sister in town earlier,” Olivia explained, amazed at how normal she sounded. “Ginger must have decided to come home on her own.”

“I ran away once,” Sophie confessed.

“So I heard,” Olivia answered, listening more intently now. Watching the girl out of the corner of her eye.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Sophie elaborated.

“And dangerous,” Olivia agreed.

“I just wanted to come home,” Sophie said. “Like Ginger.”

Olivia’s throat thickened again. “How do you like Stone Creek Middle School?” she asked, forging bravely on. Oh, and by the way, I’m hopelessly in love with your father.

“They’re doing Our Town, the week between Christmas and New Year’s,” Sophie said. “I would have tried out for the part of Emily if I lived here.”

“They do Our Town every year,” Olivia answered. “It’s a tradition.”

“Were you in it when you were in middle school?”

“No. I had stage fright. So I worked sets and costumes. But my older brother, Brad, had a leading role one year, and both my sisters, Ashley and Melissa, had parts when their turn came.”

“You have stage fright?”

“I didn’t get the show-business gene. That went to Brad.”

“Dad has some of his CDs. I kind of like the way he sings.”

“Me, too,” Olivia said.

“Did you always want to be a veterinarian?”

Olivia left the coffeepot and sat down at the table, near Sophie and the sweetly slumbering Ginger. “For as long as I can remember,” she said.

“I want to be a people doctor,” Sophie said. “Like my mom was.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a good one.”

Sophie looked very solemn, and she might have been about to say something more about her mother, but the Suburban rolled noisily up alongside the house just then. A door slammed.

Tanner was back from feeding horses and puppies, and the pizza would be arriving soon, no doubt.

Maybe I’m over him, Olivia thought. Maybe fighting for a horse’s life made me overemotional.

He knocked and came inside, shivering. Flecks of hay decorated his clothes. “It’s cold out there,” he said.

Nope, she wasn’t over him.

Olivia’s hand shook a little as she gestured toward the coffeepot. “Help yourself,” she told him. She was ridiculously glad he was there, he and Sophie both.

Sophie got up from the floor while Tanner poured coffee, and wandered into the living room.

“Hey,” she called right away. “Your little tree looks pretty good.”

“Thanks,” Olivia called back as she and Tanner exchanged low-wattage smiles.

I love you, Olivia said silently. How’s that for foolish?

“How come there aren’t any presents under it?”

“Soph,” Tanner objected.

Sophie appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

“There are a lot of guys at our house, fixing up the barn,” she told Olivia. “It’s a good thing, too, because Aunt Tessa’s horses will be tired when they get here.”

“Are they on their way?” Olivia asked Tanner.

He nodded. “Tessa’s bringing them herself,” he said. “I wanted her to fly and let a transport company bring them, but she has a head as hard as Arizona bedrock.”

“I think I’m going to like her,” Olivia said.

Sophie beamed, nodding in agreement. “Once she’s out here with us, she’ll get over her break-up in no time!”

Olivia looked at Tanner. “Break-up?”

“Divorce,” he said. “None of them are easy, but this one’s a meat grinder.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia told him, and she meant it. She remembered how broken up her dad had been after Delia skipped out. Knew only too well how she would feel when Tanner left Stone Creek for good.

“Can I plug in your Christmas tree?” Sophie asked.

“Sure,” Olivia said.

Sophie disappeared again.

Tanner and Olivia looked at each other in silence.

Mercifully, the pizza delivery guy broke the spell by honking his car horn from the driveway.

Tanner grinned and started for the door.

“My turn to provide supper,” Olivia said, easing past him.

When she came back with the goods, snow-speckled and wishing she’d taken the time to put on her coat, Tanner was setting the table.

Ginger roused herself long enough to sniff the air. Pizza was one of her favorites, although Olivia never gave her more than a few bites.

Supper was almost magical—they might have been a family, Tanner and Olivia and Sophie, talking around the table as they ate in the warm, cozy kitchen.

Sophie snuck a few morsels to Ginger, and Olivia pretended not to see.

Because Tanner’s truck had been picked up and driven to Starcross, Olivia gave her neighbors a ride home when the time came. She waited until they’d both gone inside, after waving from the porch, and watched as the tree lights sprang to life in the front window.

Sophie’s doing, she supposed.

On the way back to her place, because she still wanted to cry, Olivia called Ashley’s house again.

“She’s fine, mother hen,” Melissa told her. “I talked her into having some soup a little while ago, and a cup of tea, too. She says she’ll be her old self again after a bubble bath.”

Olivia’s relief was so great that she didn’t ask if anybody had noticed Ginger’s escape. Nor, of course, did she announce that she was in love.

“I can’t seem to find the dog, though,” Melissa said. “It’s a big house. She must be here somewhere.”

“She’s home,” Olivia said.

“You picked her up?”

“She walked.”

“Oh, God, Livie, I’m sorry—she must have slipped out through Ashley’s pet door in the laundry room—”

“Ginger’s fine,” Olivia assured her worried sister.

“Thank God,” Melissa replied. “Why do you suppose she put in a pet door—Ashley, I mean—when she doesn’t have a pet?”

“Maybe she wants one.”

“I could stop by the shelter and adopt a kitten for her or something.”

“Don’t you dare,” Olivia said. “Adopting an animal is a commitment, and Ashley has to make that decision on her own.”

“Okay, Dr. Dolittle,” Melissa teased. “Okay. Spare me the responsible pet owner lecture, all right? I was just thinking out loud.”

“Why don’t you adopt a dog or a cat?”

“I’m allergic, remember?” Melissa answered, giving a sneeze right on cue. It was the first sign of Melissa’s hypochondria that Olivia had seen in recent days.

“Right,” Olivia replied.

By then the snow was coming down so thick and fast, she could barely see her driveway. Please God, she prayed silently, no emergencies tonight.

She and Melissa swapped goodbyes, and she ended the call.

A nice hot bubble bath didn’t sound half-bad, she thought when the cold air hit her as she got out of the Suburban. Maybe she’d light a few candles, put on her snuggly robe after the bath, make cocoa and watch something Christmasy and sentimental on TV.

Talk herself out of loving a no-strings-attached kind of man.

Ginger got up when she came in, ate a few kibbles and immediately headed for the back door.

So much for getting warm.

Olivia went outside with the dog.

“It’s not as if I plan to run away, you know,” Ginger remarked.

Through the storm, Olivia could just make out the lights over at Starcross. The sight comforted her and, at the same time, made her feel oddly isolated.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d try to walk all the way home from Stone Creek,” Olivia scolded. “Ginger, it’s at least five miles.”

“I made it, didn’t I?” Having completed her outside enterprise, Ginger headed for the back porch, stopping to shake off the snow before going on into the kitchen.

Olivia tromped in after her, hugging herself. Shut the door and locked it.

“I’m taking a bubble bath,” she said. “Don’t bother me unless you’re bleeding or the place catches fire.”

Ginger took hold of her dog bed with her teeth and hauled it into the living room, in front of the tree. In the softer light, Charlie Brown looked almost—well—bushy. Downright festive, even.

She’d unplugged the bubble lights before leaving to take Tanner and Sophie home. Now she bent to plug them in again, waited until the colorful liquid in the little glass vials began to bubble cheerfully.

She immediately thought of Big John, but tonight the memory of her grandfather didn’t hurt. She smiled, remembering what a big deal he’d always made over Christmas, spending money he probably didn’t have, taking them all up into the timber country to look for just the right tree, sitting proud and straight backed in the audience at each new production of Our Town. In retrospect, she knew he’d been trying to make up for the losses in their lives—hers, Brad’s, Ashley’s and Melissa’s.

The year Brad was in the play, Ashley had cried all the way home to the ranch. Big John had carried her into the house and demanded to know what the “waterworks” were all about.

“All those dead people sitting in folding chairs!” Ashley had wailed. “Is Daddy someplace like that, all in shadow, sitting in a folding chair?”

Big John’s face had been a study in manfully controlled emotion. “No, honey,” he’d said gruffly, there in the kitchen at Stone Creek Ranch, while Brad and Olivia and Melissa peeled out of their coats. “Our Town is just a story. Your daddy isn’t sitting around in a folding chair, and you can take that to the bank. He’s too busy riding horses, I figure. The way I figure it, they’ve got some mighty good trails up there in heaven, and there aren’t any shadows to speak of, either.”

Ashley’s eyes had widened almost to saucer size, but she’d stopped crying. “How do you know, Big John?” she’d asked, gazing up at him. “Is it in the Bible?”

Brad, a pretty typical teenager, had given a snort at that.

Big John had quelled him with a look. “No,” he told Ashley, resting a hand on her shoulder. “It probably isn’t in the Bible. But there are some things that just make sense. How many cowboys would want to go to heaven if there weren’t any horses to ride?”

Ashley had brightened at the question. In her child’s mind, the argument made sense.

Blinking, Olivia returned to the present moment.

“Time for that hot bath I promised myself,” she told Ginger.

“I wouldn’t mind one either,” Ginger said.

And so it was that Olivia bathed the dog first, toweled her off and then scrubbed out the tub for her own turn.

When she finished, she put on flannel pajamas and her favorite bathrobe and padded out to the living room.

Ginger had the TV on, watching Animal Planet.

“How did you do that?” Olivia asked. There were some things that strained even an animal communicator’s credulity.

“If you step on the remote just right, it happens,” Ginger replied.

“Oh, good grief,” Olivia said, glancing in Charlie Brown’s direction.

“I wouldn’t have thought he could look that good,” Ginger observed, following Olivia’s gaze.

She reclaimed the remote. Checked the channel guide.

“We’re watching The Bishop’s Wife,” she told Ginger.

Ginger didn’t protest. She liked Cary Grant, too.

“After it’s over,” the dog said, “we can talk about how you’re in love with Tanner.”

* * *

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ashley said, for the fourth or fifth time, the next morning when Olivia stopped by her house on the way to the clinic, Ginger in tow. Melissa had already gone to work.

Olivia was still in love, but she was adjusting.

“Fair enough,” she replied. Ashley looked almost like her old self, and she was expecting paying guests later in the day. Rolling out piecrusts in preparation for some serious baking.

Some people drank when they were upset. Others chain-smoked.

Ashley baked.

“Tell me about the guests,” Olivia said, trying to snitch a piece of pie dough and getting her hand slapped for her trouble.

“They’re long-term,” Ashley answered, rolling harder, so the flour flew. Some of it was in her hair, and a lot more decorated her holly-sprigged chef’s apron. “Tanner Quinn called and booked the rooms. He said he needed space for four people, and he’d vouch for their character because they all work for him.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “I see,” she said, considering another attempt at the pie dough and doing a pretty good job of hiding the fact that Tanner’s name made the floor tremble under her feet.

“Don’t even think about it,” Ashley said, sounding like her old self. Almost her old self, anyway. She was still pretty ragged around the edges, but if she didn’t want to talk about their mother just yet, Olivia would respect that.

Even if it killed her.

“Nice of him,” she said. “Tanner, I mean. He could have put the crew up at the Sundowner Motel, or over in Indian Rock.”

Ashley pounded at the pie dough and rolled vigorously again. It looked like a good upper-arm workout. “All I know is they’re paying top dollar, and they’ll be here until next spring. Merry Christmas to me. For a few months, anyway, I won’t need any more ‘loans’ from Brad to keep the business going.”

Olivia didn’t miss the slight edge in her sister’s voice. “Ash,” she said. “This will get easier. I promise it will.”

“I should have listened to you.”

“But you didn’t, and that’s okay. You’re a grown woman, with a perfect right to make your own decisions.”

“She’s horrible, Liv.”

“Let it go, Ash.”

“Do you know why she was on probation? For shoplifting, and writing bad checks, and—and God knows what else.”

“Brad said you were miffed because he wouldn’t bail her out.”

Ashley set down the rolling pin, backed away from the counter. Flour drifted down onto Ginger’s head like finely sifted snow. “He was right,” Ashley said. “He was right not to bail that—that woman out!”

“I can stay if you want me to,” Olivia said.

Ashley shook her head, hard. “No,” she insisted. “But I wouldn’t mind if Ginger were here to keep me company.”

Olivia looked at Ginger. Knew instantly that she wanted to stay.

“Don’t you dare try to walk home again,” she told the dog. “I’ll pick you up after I finish my last call.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ashley said. Like Brad and Melissa, she had always taken the Dr. Dolittle thing with a grain of salt. Make that a barrel. Only Big John had really understood—he’d said his grandmother could talk to animals, too.

“Later,” Olivia said, and dashed out through the back, though she did stop briefly to secure the latch on the pet door, in case Ginger got another case of wanderlust.

* * *

Now that he had crews working, the shelter project took off. The barn at Starcross was coming along nicely, too. Tanner was pleased.

Or he should have been.

Sophie loved school—specifically Stone Creek Middle School. She’d already found some friends, and she was making good progress at house-training the puppies, too. She did her chores without being asked, exercising Butterpie every day.

That morning, when he came back inside from feeding the horses, she was already making breakfast.

“I used your laptop,” she’d confessed immediately.

“Is that why you’re trying to make points?”

Sophie had laughed. “Nope. I had to check my e-mail. All hell’s breaking loose at Briarwood.”

He hadn’t been surprised to hear that, since he’d called both Jack McCall and Ms. Wiggins soon after the drug conversation with Sophie that day in the truck, and read them every line of the riot act, twice over.

Ms. Wiggins had promised a thorough and immediate investigation.

Jack had asked if he was sure Sophie wasn’t playing him, so she could stay with him in Stone Creek.

“I really can’t go back there now, Dad,” Sophie had told him, turning serious again. “Everybody knows I’m the one who blew the whistle, and that won’t win me the Miss Popularity pin.”

He’d ruffled her hair. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be going to a new school, anyway.” He’d found a good one in Phoenix, just over two hours away by car, but he was saving the details for a surprise. He wanted Tessa to be there when he broke the good news, and Olivia, too, if possible.

Olivia.

Now, there was a gift he’d like to unwrap again.

As soon as Tessa got there and he had somebody to hold down the fort with Sophie, he was going to ask Olivia O’Ballivan, DVM, out on a real date. Take her to dinner somewhere fancy, up in Flagstaff, or in nearby Sedona.

In the meantime, he’d have to tough it out. Work hard. Take a lot of cold showers.

A worker went by, whistling “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

Tanner almost told him to shut the hell up.