A Stone Creek Collection, Volume 2

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Yeah,” Jack said, trying to accept what was probably inevitable. “I know. And you’re here to say goodbye?”

  The old man’s jaw clamped down hard, the way it used to when he was about to give one of his sons hell for some infraction and then ground him for a decade. “I’m here,” he said, almost in a growl, “because you’re my son, and I thought you were dead.”

  “Like Mom.”

  Bill’s eyes, hazel like Jack’s own, flashed. “We’ll talk about your mother another time,” he said. “Right now, boy, you’re in one hell of a fix, and that’s going to be enough to handle without going into all the other issues.”

  “It’s a bone marrow thing,” Jack recalled, but he was thinking about Ashley. She wasn’t much for media, but even she had probably seen him on the news. “Something to do with a toxin manufactured especially for me.”

  “You need a marrow donor,” Bill told him bluntly. “It’s your only chance, and, frankly, it will be touch and go. I’ve already been tested, and so have your brothers. Bryce is the only match.”

  A chance, however small, was more than Jack had expected to get. He must have been mulling a lot of things over on an unconscious level while he was submerged in oblivion, though, because there was a sense of clarity behind the fog enveloping his brain.

  “Bryce,” he said. “The baby.”

  “He wouldn’t appreciate being called that,” Bill replied, with a moist smile. His big hand rested on Jack’s, squeezed his fingers together. “Your brother will be ready when you are.”

  Jack imagined Ashley, the way she’d looked and smelled and felt, warm and naked beneath him. He saw her baking things, playing with the kitten, parking herself in front of the computer, her brow furrowed slightly with confusion and that singular determination of hers.

  If he got through this thing, he could go back to her.

  Swap his old life for a new one, straight across, and never look back.

  But suppose some buddy of Lombard’s decided to step up and take care of unfinished business?

  No, he decided, discouraged to the core of his being. There were too many unknown factors; he couldn’t start things up with Ashley again, even if he got lucky and survived the ordeal he was facing, until he was sure she’d be in no danger.

  “So when is this transplant supposed to go down?” he asked his dad.

  “Yesterday wouldn’t have been too soon,” Bill replied. “They were only waiting for you to stabilize a little.”

  “I’d like to see my brothers,” Jack said, but even as he spoke, the darkness was already sucking him back under, into the dreamless place churning like an ocean beneath the surface of his everyday mind. “If they’re speaking to me, that is.”

  Bill dashed at his wet eyes with the back of one large hand. “They’re speaking to you, all right,” he replied. “But if you pull through, you can expect all three of them to read you the riot act for disappearing the way you did.”

  If you pull through.

  Jack sighed. “Fair enough,” he said.

  * * *

  Reaching deep into her mind and heart in the days after Jack’s leaving, Ashley had found a new strength. She’d absorbed the media blitz, with Jack and Chad Lombard playing their starring roles, with a stoicism that surprised even her. After the first wave, she’d stopped watching, stopped reading.

  Enough was enough.

  Every sound bite, every news clip, every article brought an overwhelming sense of sorrow and relief, in equal measures.

  Two days after the Tombstone Showdown, as the reporters had dubbed it, a pair of FBI agents had turned up at Ashley’s door.

  They’d been long on questions and short on answers.

  All they’d really been willing to divulge was that she was in no danger from Chad Lombard’s organization; some of its members had been taken into federal custody in Arizona. The rest had scattered to the four winds.

  And Jack was alive.

  That gave her at least a measure of relief.

  It was the questions that fed her sorrow, innocuous and routine though they were. Something about the tone of them, a certain sad resignation—there were no details forthcoming, either in the media or from the visiting agents, but she sensed that Jack was still in trouble.

  Had Jack McCall told her anything about his association with any particular government agencies and if so, what? the agents wanted to know.

  Had he left anything behind when he went away?

  If Mr. McCall agreed, would she wish to visit him in a location that would be disclosed at a later time?

  No, Jack hadn’t told her anything, beyond the things the FBI already knew, and no, he hadn’t left anything behind. Yes, she wanted to see him and she’d appreciate it if they’d disclose the mysterious location.

  They refused, though politely, and left, promising to contact her later.

  After that, she’d heard nothing more.

  Since then, Ashley had been seized by a strange and fierce desperation, a need to do something, but she had no idea where Jack was, or what kind of condition he was in. She only knew that he’d collapsed in Tombstone—there had been pictures in the newspapers and on the web.

  Both Brad and Tanner had “their people” beating the bushes for any scrap of information, but either they’d really come up with nothing, as they claimed, or they simply didn’t want Jack McCall found. Ever.

  Melissa was searching, too; even though she wasn’t any fonder of Jack than Brad and Olivia were, she and Ashley had the twin link. Melissa knew, better than any of the others, exactly what her sister was going through.

  The results of that investigation? So far, zip.

  After a week, Jack disappeared from the news, displaced by accounts of piracy at sea, the president’s latest budget proposal, and the like.

  By the first of February, Ashley was very good at pretending she didn’t care where Jack McCall was, what he was doing, whether or not he would—or could—come back.

  She’d decided to Get on with Her Life.

  Carly and Sophie had spent hours with her, after school, when they weren’t rehearsing their parts in the drama club’s upcoming play, fleshing out one of the websites Jack had created, showing her how to surf the Net, how to run searches, how to access and reply to email.

  In fact, they’d both managed to earn special credit at school for undertaking the task.

  Slowly, Ashley had begun to understand the mysteries of navigating cyberspace.

  She quickly became proficient at web surfing, and especially at monitoring her modest but attractive website, already bringing in more business than she knew what to do with.

  The B&B was booked solid for Valentine’s Day weekend, and the profit margin on her “Hearts, Champagne and Roses” campaign looked healthy indeed.

  With two weeks to go before the holiday arrived, she was already baking and freezing tarts, some for her guests to enjoy, and some for the annual dance at the Moose Lodge. This year, the herd was raising money to resurface the community swimming pool.

  She’d agreed to serve punch and help provide refreshments, not out of magnanimity, but because she baked for the dance every year. And, okay, partly because she knew everybody in town was talking about her latest romantic disaster—this one had gone national, with CNN coverage and an article in People, not that she’d been specifically mentioned—and she wanted to show them all that she wasn’t moping. No, sir, not her.

  She was O’Ballivan tough.

  If she still cried herself to sleep once in a while, well, nobody needed to know that. Nobody except Mrs. Wiggins, her small, furry companion, always ready to comfort her with a cuddle.

  As outlined in the piece in People, Ardith and Rachel were back home, in a suburb of Phoenix, happily reunited with the rest of the family.


  Yes, Ashley thought, sitting there at her computer long after she should have taken a bubble bath and gone to bed, day by day, moment by moment, she was getting over Jack.

  Really and truly.

  Or not.

  Glancing out the window, she saw Melissa’s car, a red glow under the streetlight, swinging into her driveway.

  “Good,” Ashley said to Mrs. Wiggins, who was perched on her right shoulder like a parrot. “I could use a little distraction.”

  Melissa was just coming through the back door when Ashley reached the kitchen. Her hair was flecked with snow and her grin was wide. Looking askance at Mrs. Wiggins, now nestling into her basket in front of the fireplace, Ashley’s twin gave a single nose twitch and carefully kept her distance.

  “It happened!” she crowed, hauling off her red tailored coat. “Alex got the prosecutor’s job, and I’m going to be one of his assistants! I start the first of March and I’ve already got a line on a condo in Scottsdale—”

  “Wonderful,” Ashley said.

  Melissa narrowed her beautiful eyes in mock suspicion. “Well, that was an enthusiastic response,” she replied, draping the coat over the back of one of the chairs at the table.

  Ashley’s smile felt wobbly on her mouth, and a touch too determined. “If this is what you want, then I’m happy for you. I’m going to miss you a lot, that’s all. Except for when you were in law school, we’ve never really been apart.”

  Melissa approached, laid a winter-chilled hand on each of Ashley’s shoulders. “I’ll only be two hours away,” she said. “You’ll visit me a lot, and of course I’ll come back to Stone Creek as often as I can.”

  “No, you won’t,” Ashley said, turning away to start some tea brewing, so she wouldn’t have to struggle to keep that stupid, slippery smile in place any longer. “You’ll be too busy with your caseload, and you know it.”

  “I need to get away,” Melissa said, so sadly that Ashley immediately turned to face her again, no longer concerned about hiding her own misgivings.

  “Because?” Ashley prompted.

  Melissa rarely looked vulnerable—a good lawyer appeared confident at all times, she often said—but she did then. That sheen in her eyes—was she crying?

  “Because,” Melissa said, after pushing back her spirally mane of hair with one hand, “things are heating up between Dan and the waitress. Her name is Holly and according to one of the receptionists at the office, they’ve been in Kruller’s Jewelry Store three times in the last week, looking at rings.”

  Ashley sighed, wiped her hands on her patchwork apron, her own creation, made up of quilt scraps. “Sit down, Melissa,” she said.

  To her amazement, Melissa sat.

  Of the two of them, Melissa had always been the leader, the one who decided things and gave impromptu motivational speeches.

  Forgetting the tea preparations, Ashley took the chair closest to her sister’s. “That’s why you’re leaving Stone Creek?” she asked quietly. “Because Dan and this Holly person might get married?”

  “‘Might,’ nothing,” Melissa huffed, but her usually straight shoulders sagged a little beneath her very professional white blouse. “As hot and heavy as things were between Dan and me, he never said a word about looking at engagement rings. If he’s shopping for diamonds, he’s serious about this woman.”

  “And?”

  Melissa flushed a vibrant pink, with touches of crimson. “And I might still be just a little in love with him,” she admitted.

  “You can’t have it all, Melissa,” Ashley reminded her sister gently. “No one does. You made a choice and now you either have to change it or accept things as they are and move on.”

  Melissa blinked. “That’s easy for you to say!”

  “Is it?” Ashley asked.

  “What am I saying?” Melissa immediately blurted out. “Ash, I’m sorry—I know the whole Jack thing has been—”

  “We’re not talking about Jack,” Ashley said, a mite stiffly. “We’re talking about Dan—and you. He’s probably marrying this woman on the rebound—if the rumors about the rings are even true in the first place—because he really cared about you. And he might be making the mistake of a lifetime.”

  “That’s his problem,” Melissa snapped.

  “Don’t be a bitch,” Ashley replied. “You didn’t want him, or the life he offered, remember? What did you expect, Melissa? That Dan would wait around until you retire from your seat on the Supreme Court someday, and write your memoirs?”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” Melissa asked peevishly.

  “Yours,” Ashley said, and she meant it. “Just talk to Dan before you take the job in Phoenix, Melissa. Please?”

  “He’s the one who broke it off!”

  “Don’t you want to be sure things can’t be patched up?”

  “Have you been paying attention? It’s too late, Ashley.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Ashley said, getting up to resume the tea making. “You’ll never know if you don’t talk things over with Dan while there’s still time.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Melissa demanded, losing a little steam now. “Drive out there to the back of beyond, knock on his door, and ask him if he’d like to live in a city and be Mr. Melissa O’Ballivan? I can tell you right now what the answer would be—and besides, what if I interrupted—well—something—?”

  “Like what? Chandelier-swinging sex? Dan has kids, Melissa—he and Holly Hot-Biscuits probably don’t go at it in the living room on a regular basis.”

  Melissa sputtered out a laugh, wholly against her will. “Holly Hot-Biscuits?” she crowed. “Ashley O’Ballivan, could it be that you actually have a racy side?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Ashley said, recalling, with a well-hidden pang, some of the sex she and Jack had had. A chandelier would have been superfluous.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t,” Melissa teased. At least she’d cheered up a little. Perhaps that could be counted as progress. “You miss Jack a lot, don’t you?”

  “When I let myself,” Ashley admitted, though guardedly, concentrating on scooping tea leaves into a china pot. “The other night, I dreamed he was—he was standing at the foot of my bed. I could see through him, because he was—dead.”

  Melissa softened, in that quicksilver way she had. Tough one minute, tender the next—that was Melissa O’Ballivan. “Jack can’t be dead,” she reasoned, looking as though she wanted to get up from her chair, cross the room, and wrap Ashley in a sisterly embrace, but wisely refraining.

  Ashley wasn’t accepting hugs these days—from anybody.

  She felt too bruised, inside and out.

  “Why not?” she asked reasonably, over the sound of the water she ran to fill the kettle.

  “Because someone would have told Tanner,” Melissa said, very gently. “Come to Scottsdale with me, Ash. Right now, this weekend. Help me decide on the right condo. It would be good for you to get away, change your perspective, soak up some of that delicious sunshine—”

  The idea had a certain appeal—she was sick of snow, for one thing—but there was the B&B to think about. She had guests coming for Valentine’s Day, after all, and lots of preparations to make. She’d even rented out her private quarters, planning to sleep on the couch in her study.

  “Maybe after the holiday,” she said. Except that she’d have skiers then, with any luck at all—she’d been pitching that on her new blog, on the website. And after that, it would be time to think about Easter.

  “Can you handle Valentine’s Day, Ash?” Melissa asked, with genuine concern. “You’re still pretty raw.”

  “And you’re not?” Ashley challenged, but gently. “Yes, I can ‘handle’ it, because I have to.” She brought two cups to the table, along with milk and sugar cubes. “What is it with us,
Melissa? Brad got it right with Meg, and Olivia with Tanner. Why can’t we?”

  “I think we’re romantically challenged,” Melissa decided.

  “Or stubborn and proud,” Ashley pointed out archly. Her meaning was clear: Melissa was stubborn and proud. She would have crawled over broken glass for Jack McCall, if it meant they could be together.

  Not that she particularly wanted anyone else to know that.

  All of which probably made her a candidate for an episode of Dr. Phil, during Unhealthy Emotional Dependency week. She would serve as the bad example. This could happen to you.

  “Don’t knock pride,” Melissa said cheerfully. “And some people call stubbornness ‘persistence.’”

  “Some people can put a spin on anything,” Ashley countered. “Are you going to clear things up with Dan before you leave, or not?”

  “Not,” Melissa said brightly.

  “Chicken.”

  “You got it. If that man looks me in the eye and says he’s in love with Holly Hot-Biscuits, I’ll die of mortification on the spot.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re too strong. And at least you’d know where you stand.” I’d give anything for another chance with Jack.

  “I know where I stand,” Melissa answered, pouring tea for Ashley and then for herself, and then warming her hands around the cup instead of drinking the brew. “Up the creek without a paddle.”

  “That’s a mixed metaphor,” Ashley couldn’t help pointing out.

  “Whatever,” Melissa said.

  And that, for the time being, was the end of the discussion.

  * * *

  A week after the transplant, the jury was still out on whether the procedure had been successful or not, but by pulling certain strings Jack had been reluctantly released from the hospital, partly on the strength of his well-respected father’s promise to make sure he was looked after and did not overexert himself. He went home to Oak Park, Illinois, his old hometown, and let Abigail and the old man install him in his boyhood bedroom in the big brick Federal on Shady Lane.

  Not that there were any leaves on the trees to provide shade.