A Stone Creek Collection, Volume 2

by Linda Lael Miller

  “What in the world got into you?” Olivia scolded the dog. “Don’t you ever do that again!”

  Ginger crossed the fence line and slunk toward the house.

  When Olivia turned back to Tanner, she caught him looking her over.

  Wise guy.

  “It would be mighty neighborly of you to offer a poor way-faring cowboy a hot cup of coffee,” he said. He sat that horse as if he was part of it—a point in his favor. He might dress like a dandy, but he was no stranger to a saddle.

  “Glad to oblige, mister,” Olivia joked, playing along. “Unless you insist on talking like a B-movie wrangler for much longer. That could get old.”

  He laughed at that, rode to the rickety gate a few yards down the way, leaned to work the latch easily and joined Olivia on her side. Taking in the ramshackle shed and detached garage, he swung down out of the saddle to walk beside her, leading Shiloh by a slack rein.

  “Looks to me like you don’t have a whole lot of room to talk about the state of my barn,” he said. His eyes were twinkling now under the brim of his hat, though he still looked wan.

  It was harder going for Olivia—her legs were shorter, the galoshes didn’t fit so they stuck at every step, and the snow came to her shins. “I rent this place,” she said, feeling defensive. “The owner lives out of state and doesn’t like to spend a nickel on repairs if he can help it. In fact, he’s been threatening to sell it for years.”

  “Ah,” Tanner said with a sage nod. “Are you just passing through Stone Creek, Doc? I had the impression you were a lifelong resident, but maybe I was wrong.”

  “Except for college and veterinary school,” Olivia answered, “I’ve lived here all my life.” She looked around at the dismal rental property. “Well, not right here—”

  “Hey,” Tanner said, quietly gruff. “I was kidding.”

  She nodded, embarrassed because she’d been caught caring what he thought, and led the way through the yard toward the back door.

  Tanner left Shiloh loosely tethered to the hand rail next to the porch steps.

  Inside the kitchen, Olivia fed a remorseful Ginger, washed her hands at the sink and got two mugs down out of the cupboard. The coffeemaker was just flailing in for a landing, mission accomplished.

  “Excuse me for a second, will you?” Olivia asked after filling mugs for herself and Tanner and giving him his. She slipped into the bedroom, closed the door, put down her coffee cup and quickly switched out the chore coat and her sweats for her best pair of jeans and the blue sweater Ashley had knitted for her as a Christmas gift. She even went so far as to splash her face with water in the tiny bathroom, give her teeth a quick brushing and run a comb through her hair.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Tanner was sitting in a chair at the table, looking as if he belonged there, and Ginger stood with her head resting on his thigh while he stroked her back.

  Something sparked in Tanner’s weary eyes when he looked up—maybe amusement, maybe appreciation. Maybe something more complicated.

  Olivia felt a wicked little thrill course through her system.

  “Thanksgiving,” she said without planning to, almost sighing out the word.

  “You don’t sound all that thankful,” Tanner observed.

  “Oh, I am,” Olivia insisted, taking a sip from her mug.

  “Me, too,” Tanner said. “Mostly.”

  She bit her lower lip, stole a glance at the clock above the sink. It was early—two hours before she needed to check in at the clinic. So much for excusing herself to go to work.

  “Mostly?” she echoed, keeping her distance.

  “There are things I’d change about my life,” Tanner told her. “If I could.”

  She drew nearer then, interested in spite of herself, and sat down, though she kept the width of the table between them. “What would you do differently?”

  He sighed, and a bleak expression darkened his eyes. “I’d have kept the business smaller, for one thing,” he said. The briefest flicker of pain contorted his face. “Not gone international. How about you?”

  “I’d have spent more time with my grandfather,” she replied after giving the question some thought. “I guess I figured he was going to be around forever.”

  “That was his coat you were wearing before.”

  “How did you guess that?”

  “My grandmother had one just like it. I think they must have sold those at every farm supply store in America, back in the day.”

  Olivia relaxed a little. “How’s Butterpie?”

  Tanner sighed, met Olivia’s gaze. Held it. “She’s not eating,” he said.

  “I was afraid of that,” Olivia murmured, distracted.

  “I thought my grandmother was going to live forever, too,” Tanner told her.

  It took Olivia a moment to catch up. “She’s gone, then?”

  Tanner nodded. “Died on her seventy-eighth birthday, hoeing the vegetable garden. Just the way she’d have wanted to go—quick, and doing something she loved to do. Your grandfather?”

  “Heart attack,” Olivia said, running her palms along the thighs of her jeans. Why were they suddenly moist?

  Tanner was silent for what seemed like a long time, though it was an easy silence. Then he finished his coffee and stood. “Guess I’d better not keep you,” he said, crossing the room to set his cup in the sink.

  Ginger’s liquid eyes followed him adoringly.

  “I’d like to look in on Butterpie on my way into town, if that’s okay with you?” Olivia said.

  One side of Tanner’s fine mouth slanted slightly upward. “Would it stop you if it wasn’t okay with me?”

  She grinned. “Nope.”

  He chuckled at that. “I’ve got some things to do in town,” he said. “Gotta pick up some wine for Thanksgiving dinner. So if I don’t see you in my barn, we’ll meet up at Brad and Meg’s place later on.”

  Of course her brother and sister-in-law would have invited Tanner to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. He was a friend, and he lived alone. Still, Olivia felt blindsided. Holidays were hard enough without stirring virtual strangers into the mix. Especially attractive ones.

  “See you then,” she said, hoping her smile didn’t look forced.

  He nodded and left, closing the kitchen door quietly behind him. Olivia immediately went to the window to watch him mount Shiloh and ride off.

  When he was out of sight, and only then, Olivia turned from the window and zeroed in on Ginger.

  “What were you thinking, running off like that? You’re not a young dog, you know.”

  “I just got a little carried away, that’s all,” Ginger said without lifting her muzzle off her forelegs. Her eyes looked soulful. “Are you wearing that getup to Thanksgiving dinner?”

  Olivia looked down at her jeans and sweater. “What’s wrong with my outfit?” she asked.

  “Touchy, touchy. I was just asking a simple question.”

  “These jeans are almost new, and Ashley made the sweater. I look perfectly fine.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Well, what do you think I should wear, O fashionista dog?”

  “The sweater’s fine,” Ginger observed. “But I’d switch out the jeans for a skirt. You do have a skirt, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I have a skirt. I also have rounds to make before dinner, so I’m changing into my work clothes right now.”

  Ginger sighed an it’s-no-use kind of sigh. “Paris Hilton you ain’t,” she said, and drifted off to sleep.

  Olivia returned to her bedroom, put on her normal grubbies, suitable for barns and pastures, then located her tan faux-suede skirt, rolled it up like a towel and stuffed it into a gym bag. Knee boots and the blue sweater went in next, along with the one pair of panty hose she owned. They had runs in them, but the skirt was long and the boots were high, so it wouldn’t matter.

  When she got back to the kitchen, Ginger was stretching herself.

  “You’re coming with me today, aren’t you?�
� Olivia asked.

  Ginger eyed the gym bag and sighed again. “As far as next door, anyway,” she answered. “I think Butterpie could use some company.”

  “What about Thanksgiving?”

  “Bring me a plate,” Ginger replied.

  Oddly disappointed that Ginger didn’t want to spend the holiday with her, Olivia went outside to fire up the Suburban and scrape off the windshield. After she’d lowered the ramp in the back of the rig, she went back to the house for Ginger.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Olivia asked as Ginger walked slowly up the ramp.

  “I’m not used to running through snow up to my chest,” the dog told her. “That’s all.”

  Still troubled, Olivia stowed the ramp and shut the doors on the Suburban. Ginger curled up on Rodney’s blanket and closed her eyes.

  When they arrived at Tanner’s place, his truck was parked in the driveway, but he didn’t come out of the house, and Olivia didn’t knock on the front door. She repeated the ramp routine, and then she and Ginger headed into the barn.

  Shiloh was back in his stall, brushed down and munching on hay.

  Olivia paused to greet him, then opened the door to Butterpie’s stall so she and Ginger could go in.

  Butterpie stood with her head hanging low, but perked up slightly when she saw the dog.

  “You’ve got to eat,” Olivia told the pony.

  Butterpie tossed her head from side to side, as though in refusal.

  Ginger settled herself in a corner of the roomy stall, on a pile of fresh wood shavings, and gave another big sigh. “Just go make your rounds,” she said to Olivia. “I’ll get her to take a few bites after you’re gone.”

  Olivia felt bereft at the prospect of leaving Ginger and the pony. She found an old pan, filled it with water at the spigot outside, returned to set it down on the stall floor. “This is weird,” she said to Ginger. “What’s Tanner going to think if he finds you in Butterpie’s stall?”

  “That you’re crazy,” Ginger answered. “No real change in his opinion.”

  “Very funny,” Olivia said, not laughing. Or even smiling. “You’re sure you’ll be all right? I could come back and pick you up before I head for Stone Creek Ranch.”

  Ginger shut her eyes and gave an eloquent snore.

  After that, there was no point in talking to her.

  Olivia gave Butterpie a quick but thorough examination and left.

  * * *

  Tanner bought a half case of the best wine he could find—Stone Creek had only one supermarket, and the liquor store was closed. He should have lied, he thought as he stood at the checkout counter, paying for his purchases. Told Brad he had plans for Thanksgiving.

  He was going to feel like an outsider, passing a whole after noon and part of an evening with somebody else’s family.

  Better that, though, he supposed, than eating alone in the town’s single sit-down restaurant, remembering Thanksgivings of old and missing Kat and Sophie.

  Kat.

  “Is that good?” the clerk asked.

  Distracted, Tanner didn’t know what the woman was talking about at first. Then she pointed to the wine. She was very young and very pretty, and she didn’t seem to mind working on Thanksgiving when practically everybody else in the western hemisphere was bellying up to a turkey feast someplace.

  “I don’t know,” Tanner said in belated answer to her cordial question. He’d been something of a wine aficionado once, but since he didn’t indulge anymore, he’d sort of lost the knack. “I go by the labels, and the price.”

  The clerk nodded as if what he’d said made a lick of sense, and wished him a happy Thanksgiving.

  He wished her the same, picked up the wine box, the six bottles rattling a little inside it, and made for the door.

  The dream came back to him, full force, as he was setting the wine on the passenger seat of his truck.

  Kat, standing in the aisle of the barn, in that white summer dress, telling him she wouldn’t be back.

  It was no good telling himself he’d only been dreaming in the first place. He’d held on to those night visits—they’d gotten him through a lot of emotional white water. It had been Kat who’d said he ought to watch his drinking. Kat who’d advised him to accept the Stone Creek job and oversee it himself instead of sending in somebody else.

  Kat who’d insisted the newspapers were wrong; she hadn’t been a target—she’d been caught in the cross fire of somebody else’s fight. Sophie, she’d sworn, was in no danger.

  She’d faded before his eyes like so much thin smoke a couple of nights before. The wrench in his gut had been powerful enough to wake up him up. The dream had stayed with him, though, which was the same as having it over and over again. Last night he’d been unable to sleep at all. He’d paced the dark empty house for a while, then, unable to bear it any longer, he’d gone out to the barn, saddled Shiloh and taken a moonlight ride.

  For a while he’d tried to outride what he was feeling—not loss, not sorrow, but a sense of letting go. Of somehow being set free.

  He’d loved Kat, more than his own life. Why should her going on to wherever dead people went have given him a sense of liberation, even exaltation, rather than sorrow?

  The guilt was almost overwhelming. As long as he’d mourned her, she’d seemed closer somehow. Now the worst was over. There had been some kind of profound shift, and he hadn’t regained his footing.

  They’d been out for hours, he and Shiloh, when he was crossing the field between his place and Olivia’s and that dog of hers came racing toward him. He’d have gone home, put Shiloh up with some extra grain for his trouble, taken a shower and fallen into bed if it hadn’t been for Ginger and the sight of Olivia standing on the bottom rail of the fence.

  She’d been wearing sweats and silly rubber boots and an old man’s coat, and for all that, she’d managed to look sexy. He’d finagled an invitation for coffee—hell, he’d flat out invited himself—and thought about taking her to bed the whole time he was there.

  Not that he would have made a move on Doc. It was way too soon, and she’d probably have conked him over the head with the nearest heavy object, but he’d been tempted, just the same.

  Tempted as he’d never been, since Kat.

  At home he left the wine in the truck and headed for the barn.

  Shiloh was asleep, standing up, the way horses do. When Tanner looked over the stall door at Butterpie, though, his eyes started to sting. Butterpie was lying in the wood shavings, and Olivia’s dog was cuddled up right alongside her, as though keeping some kind of a vigil.

  “I’ll be damned,” Tanner muttered. He’d grown up in the country, and he’d known horses to have nonequine companions—cows, cats, dogs and even pygmy goats. But he’d never seen anything quite like this.

  He figured he probably should take Ginger home—Olivia might be looking for her—but he couldn’t quite bring himself to part the two animals.

  “You hungry, girl?” he asked Ginger, thinking what a fine thing it would be to have a dog. The problem was, he moved around too much—job to job, country to country. If he couldn’t raise his own daughter, how could he hope to take good care of a mutt?

  Ginger made a low sound in her throat and looked up at him with those melty eyes of hers. He made a quick trip into the house for a hunk of cube steak and a bowl of water, and set them both down where she could reach them.

  She drank thirstily of the water, nibbled at the steak.

  Tanner patted her head. He’d seen her jump into Olivia’s Suburban the day before, so she still had some zip in her, despite the gray hairs around her muzzle, but she hadn’t gotten over that stall door by herself. Olivia must have left her here, to look after the pony.

  When he spotted an old grain pan in the corner, overturned, he knew that was what had happened. She must have found the pan in the junk around the barn, filled it with water and left it so the dog could drink. Then one of the animals, most likely Butterpie, had stepped on the
thing and spilled the contents.

  He was pondering that sequence of events when his cell phone rang.

  Sophie.

  “This parade bites,” she said without any preamble. “It’s cold, and Mary Susan Parker keeps sneezing on me and we’re not allowed to get into the minibar in our hotel suite! Ms. Wiggins took the keys away.”

  Tanner chuckled. “Hello and happy Thanksgiving to you, too, sweetheart,” he said, so glad to hear her voice that his eyes started stinging again.

  “It’s not like we want to drink booze or anything,” Sophie complained. “But we can’t even help ourselves to a soda or a candy bar!”

  “Horrible,” Tanner commiserated.

  An annoyed silence crackled from Sophie’s end.

  “Butterpie has a new friend,” Tanner said, to get the conversation going again. In a way, talking to Sophie made him miss her more, but at the same time he wanted to keep her on the line as long as possible. “A dog named Ginger.”

  He’d caught Sophie’s interest that time. “Really? Is it your dog?”

  It was telling, Tanner thought, that Sophie had said “your dog” instead of “our dog.” “No. Ginger lives next door. She’s just here for a visit.”

  “I’m lonely, Dad,” Sophie said, sounding much younger than her twelve years. She was almost shouting to be heard over a brass band belting out “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” “Are you lonely, too?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “But there are worse things than being lonely, Soph.”

  “Right now I can’t think of any. Are you going to be all alone all day?”

  Crouching now, Tanner busied himself scratching Ginger’s ears. “No. A friend invited me to dinner.”

  Sophie sighed with apparent relief. “Good. I was afraid you’d nuke one of those frozen TV dinners or something and eat it while you watched some football game. And that would be pathetic.”

  “Far be it from me to be pathetic,” Tanner said, but a lump had formed in his throat and his voice came out sounding hoarse. “Anything but that.”

  “What friend?” Sophie persisted. “What friend are you having dinner with, I mean?”

  “Nobody you know.”

  “A woman?” Was that hope he heard in his daughter’s voice? “Have you met someone, Dad?”