A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Her only explanation for the choices that had led her here had been her own reaction to the paintings. She had been struck by all of them, particularly this one—by its artistic merit and the undeniable skill required to make simple pigment leap from the canvas like that, but also by the obvious love the artist had for the child in the painting.

  “Do you have any idea where your father obtained this painting?” Ridge asked her.

  Suspicions? Yes. Proof, on the other hand, was something else entirely. She shook her head, which wasn’t a lie.

  “It means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?” she said carefully.

  “If you only knew. I thought we would never see it again. Of everything, this is the one I missed most of all. That’s my sister, Caidy, in the painting. The one whose wedding we had here yesterday.”

  She had suspected as much. Somehow that made everything seem more heartbreaking. “She was a lovely child,” she said softly.

  “Who grew into an even lovelier woman.” He smiled, and she was suddenly aware of a fierce envy at the relationship between Ridge Bowman and his family members. The family was obviously very close, despite the tragedy that must have affected all of them.

  She thought of her half brother and their tangled relationship. She had loved him dearly when she was young, despite the decade age difference between them. In the end, he had become a stranger to her.

  “How much do you want for it?” Ridge asked abruptly. “Name your price.”

  “What?” she exclaimed.

  “That’s why you came, isn’t it?” He raised an eyebrow, and she didn’t mistake the shadow of derision in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  He thought she was trying to extort money from the family, she realized with horror. She was so startled, she didn’t answer for several seconds.

  He must have taken her silence for a negotiation tactic. His mouth tightened and he frowned. “I should be coy here, pretend I don’t really want it, maybe try to bargain with you a little. I don’t care. I want it. Name your price. If it’s at all within reason, I’ll pay it.”

  She shook her head. “I—I don’t want your money, Mr. Bowman.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “When I read the stories online about your parents and their...” Her voice trailed off, and she didn’t quite know how to finish that statement.

  “Their murders?”

  She shivered a little at his bluntness. “Yes,” she said. “Their murders. When I read the news reports and realized the artist of that beautiful painting had died, I knew I had to come. The painting is yours. I won’t let you pay me anything. I fully intended to give it back to you and your family.”

  “You what?” He clearly didn’t believe her.

  “I have no legal or moral claim to it. It rightfully belongs to your family. It’s yours.”

  He stared at her and then back at the painting, brow furrowed. “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. It’s yours,” she repeated.

  She didn’t add the rest. Not yet. She would have to tell him, but he was so shocked about her volunteering this painting to him, she wasn’t quite ready to let him know everything else.

  “I can’t believe this. You have no idea. It’s like having a piece of her back. My mother, I mean.”

  The love in his voice touched a chord somewhere deep inside. She thought of her own mother, bitter and angry at the world and the cards she had been dealt. Her mother had raised her alone from the time Sarah was very young, working two jobs to support them because she wouldn’t take money from her ex-husband. Sarah had loved her but accepted now that her mother had never been a kind woman. Barbara didn’t have a lot of room left over around her hatred of Sarah’s father to find love for the daughter they had created together.

  “Can you tell me,” she asked him, “was this piece part of the...stolen collection?”

  After a moment, he nodded, his features dark.

  What other answer had she expected? Sarah pressed her lips together. She couldn’t tell him the rest. The dozens of pieces of art she had found in that climate-controlled storage unit.

  She also couldn’t tell him what she suspected.

  She was suddenly exhausted, so tired her eyes felt gritty and heavy. She wanted nothing but to sleep again, to ease the pain of her injuries and the worse pain in her heart.

  “Do you have any idea how your father obtained it?” he asked. “We’ve only found two or three pieces from the stolen collection in all these years. They seem to appear out of thin air, and we can never trace them back to the original seller. This could be just what we need to solve the case.”

  She couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t have the strength or the courage right now when she was hurting so badly. She would have her father’s estate attorney deal with all the particulars, as she should have done from the beginning.

  He would eventually know everything, but she wouldn’t have to face those piercing green eyes during the telling.

  “I’ve told you all I can. I found it among my father’s things, as I said, and now I would like you and your family to have it. Take the painting, Mr. Bowman. Ridge. Please. Consider it a Christmas gift if you want, but it’s yours.”

  “I can’t believe this. I’m...stunned.” He smiled at her, a flash of bright joy that took her breath away. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I can’t begin to tell you how happy Caidy, Taft and Trace will be. You’ve given us a gift beyond price.”

  “I’m glad.” She mustered a smile, even though it made her cheeks ache. “I’m so tired. Can I rest now?”

  “Yes. Of course.” He picked up the painting from the bed and held it gingerly, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was in his hands again. “Caidy left a lot of her clothes here. Would you like me to find a nightgown for you to change into so you can be more comfortable?”

  “I can do that. Thank you.”

  “You have nothing to thank me for. Not after this.” He gestured to the painting in his hands. “I’m supposed to check on you a couple more times in the night. I’ll apologize in advance for waking you.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  He headed for the door. “If you need anything else, call out. I’ll probably sleep on the sofa in the family room off the kitchen.”

  She wanted to tell him that wasn’t necessary, that she would be fine, but she was just too exhausted to argue—especially when she somehow knew he wouldn’t listen anyway.

  Chapter Five

  Ridge closed the door behind him with one hand, the other still holding the miraculously returned painting. He stood in the hallway for a long moment and just gazed down at it, wondering what on earth had just happened in there.

  He felt odd, off balance, not sure what to think or feel.

  Something major had just happened. It wasn’t only that she had returned this painting he thought he would never see again. He had felt a link between them, a tensile connection that seemed to seethe and pulse between them.

  Or maybe that had been a figment of his imagination. Maybe it was simply late and he was tired after a long, strange day.

  He carried the painting to his office and propped it on a chair across from his desk where he could look at it and remember.

  The painting was created with tenderness, out of a mother’s love. That came through in every single brushstroke. Caidy would be so pleased to have it back in the family. She should really be the one to have it. Though he supposed it wasn’t technically his to give, as it belonged to all of them as joint heirs to their parents’ estate, maybe he could talk to Taft and Trace about the three of them giving it to their sister as a wedding present.

  He looked at that sweet little girl in the painting cupping a fragile flower and her whole future in her hands and couldn’t help but think of his own
sweet little girl. Destry had grown up without a mother’s love—though not really, when he thought about it. Caidy had stepped up to play that role after Melinda left, and had done an admirable job.

  He frowned, wondering why his thoughts seemed to be so focused on his ex-wife today. He hadn’t thought about her this much in months, not since early spring when he had finally paid a private detective to track her down, for Destry’s sake.

  As he had half suspected all these years, the trail was cold. The private detective had discovered Melinda had died just a year after she left them, killed along with her then-boyfriend in a car accident in Italy, of all places.

  He hadn’t grieved, only brooded for a few days about his own foolish choices and for a wild young woman who had never wanted to be a mother.

  Any grief for his failed marriage had worked its way out of his system a long time ago, as he had rocked his crying child to sleep or put her on the bus by himself on the first day of school.

  He suddenly missed his daughter fiercely. The house seemed entirely too quiet without her constant activity—either watching something on TV or chattering with Caidy.

  On impulse, he dialed Trace’s number. His brother answered the phone on the second ring.

  “Missing Destry already?” his brother teased.

  “Already?” He stretched back in his chair, suddenly tired from the tumultuous day. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours. I missed her as soon as you drove away last night. Aren’t you like that with Gabi and Will?”

  His wife Becca had given birth over the summer to the most adorable little boy, all big blue eyes and lots of dark hair. Gabrielle wasn’t Trace’s daughter, she was actually Becca’s much-younger sister, but the two of them had legal custody of her and loved her as their own child.

  “I guess you’re right. I was a mess in the fall when she went away for that school trip to the Teton Science School and that was only four nights.”

  “Are the girls having a good time?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been working. I do know everybody’s been sneaking around doing Christmassy things all day.”

  Now that the business of the wedding was over, he supposed he should probably start thinking about Christmas, only three days away.

  He wasn’t crazy about the holidays. None of the Bowman siblings were, considering their parents had been killed just a few days before Christmas.

  Or at least none of them used to enjoy the season. It seemed as each of his siblings found love and moved on with life, each had been able to let go of those ghosts and embrace the holidays again. Caidy had even chosen this weekend for her wedding, claiming she wanted to be able to celebrate the season and not continue to mourn.

  He gazed across the desk at the sweet little girl in the picture as his brother spoke.

  “I hear you had some excitement on the ranch today.”

  “Did you?”

  “I caught the ambulance call on the scanner, and Taft filled me in on the details. What are you doing, trying to kill the hired help?”

  He didn’t want to go into the whole story, but he suddenly realized he had called his brother’s house not just to speak with his daughter but also for Trace’s perspective on the situation.

  “Sarah isn’t the hired help,” he explained. “Turns out, we had a little case of mistaken identity. When she showed up this morning, I made a leap and just assumed she was from the cleaning service. Turns out, she wasn’t. When she saw what a mess the house was in after the wedding, she pitched in anyway to help me out and that’s how she was injured.”

  “Wait a minute. She wasn’t even from the cleaning company?”

  Trace sounded both skeptical and suspicious. Justifiably so, he supposed.

  “No. They had a mix-up in dates, but it’s all been taken care of now. They sent somebody else this afternoon.”

  “So who is the injured lady and why was she there?”

  “That is kind of a long story,” he began, not quite sure how to explain what sounded implausible even to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s the craziest damn thing.” He shifted in his seat. “She brought us one of the paintings.”

  A long pause met his words. “Which one?” Trace finally asked.

  “One of Mom’s. The one she did of Caidy up on the Pine Bend trail, with the columbine.”

  Trace was again silent. When he spoke, his voice was soft, with the same sort of reverence Ridge felt about it.

  “I always loved that one,” he said.

  “Same here. It’s even better than I remembered. She had amazing talent. It’s no wonder her paintings sell for so much now.”

  The few paintings in circulation—those she had sold or given to friends before her death—were beginning to fetch in the high five figures, something that would have astonished their mother.

  They had been able to track down a few pieces from the collection and had purchased what they could over the years but the few available were becoming as valued as they were rare.

  “So let me get this straight,” Trace said, his voice hard. “A woman just shows up out of the blue, almost exactly on the anniversary of the murders, with one of the paintings...and then supposedly injures herself while pretending to be something she isn’t?”

  He instinctively wanted to defend Sarah against the suspicions, even though he understood it and knew just where it originated. He couldn’t blame his brother for questioning the situation.

  Becca and Gabi’s estranged mother, Monica, was an amoral con artist who had played a part, albeit a small one, in the planned robbery of the Bowmans’ extensive art collection twelve years earlier.

  Trace had a right to be mistrustful—though in Sarah’s case, Ridge was quite certain it was unfounded.

  “She broke her arm, Trace. Jake Dalton x-rayed it. If she’s running a con, she certainly ramped things up a level or twelve by purposely fracturing her own arm.”

  He decided not to mention to his brother that too much pain medication made her act like a woozy sorority girl during pledge week. Any savvy con artist likely knew that about herself and would have taken pains to avoid it.

  “I’m just saying the whole thing seems a little odd,” Trace said. “Where did she say she obtained the painting?”

  “Her father recently died and she found it among his things.”

  “Convenient.”

  He frowned, becoming annoyed now at his brother’s tone. “Say what you want, but she came to the River Bow to return the painting to the family. She says it rightfully belongs to us, and she can’t in good conscience keep it. She came all the way from California to give it back to us.”

  Even as he heard the words, he sensed how incredible they sounded. A little doubt began to creep in. Was she keeping something else from them? No. He didn’t believe it. She was lovely and sweet, and he hadn’t had nearly enough lovely, sweet things in his life lately.

  “Where is she staying?” Trace asked. “At the inn?”

  He again shifted in his chair. He wasn’t about to lie to his brother, though he seriously disliked feeling like he was being interrogated here.

  “She’s here. In Caidy’s room. Not only did she break her arm falling down the stairs but she also suffered a concussion. Doc Dalton didn’t want her to stay by herself at the inn.”

  Trace didn’t say anything, but Ridge could still feel the disapproval radiating from him.

  “Be careful,” his brother said. “That’s all. Just be careful.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Mom. You mind if I talk to my daughter now?”

  “I’ll get her.”

  He drummed his fingers while he waited for Destry to come on the line.

  “Hey, Dad! I heard you had some excitement there today. Trace told Aunt Becca you had to
call the ambulance. I’m super glad you weren’t the one who broke your arm! That would have been hard at Christmas.”

  One of his life’s greatest joys was the knowledge that his daughter was growing to be a compassionate human being, who cared more about others than herself. Three Christmases ago, she had wanted to give all the money her family would have spent on her Christmas gifts to Gabi. He grinned at the sudden memory. At the time, Gabi had been a confused and scared young girl, abandoned by a ruthless mother. She had been trying to find her way in the world and had convinced Destry and all her little friends that she was dying and her family couldn’t afford the surgery that would save her life.

  Gabi had come such a long way now that she lived in a safe, comfortable home where she never doubted she was safe. She had become a healthy, well-adjusted young woman, and he loved her as if she were indeed his niece.

  “So the cleaning lady was pretty hurt, huh?” Destry asked now.

  He sighed. Apparently he would have to give the report to everybody in the family. It would have been easier to get them all on a blasted conference call. “She’s doing all right. She’s staying here for tonight, in Caidy’s room. It’s a long story.”

  “Okay,” Destry said. Her easy acceptance made him smile.

  “You really want to stay another night? I can run in and get you, no problem.”

  “We’re in the middle of making a couple of Christmas projects—don’t ask me what because I won’t tell you. They won’t be done until tomorrow. If you really need me, I guess Gabi can finish up on her own.”

  “No. It’s fine. The house is just quiet with both you and Caidy gone.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Well, have a great time. Don’t keep your aunt and uncle up all night with your giggling.”

  “Who us? Gabi and I don’t giggle.”

  Ridge could just picture her batting her eyes innocently. He harrumphed. “Yeah, like I don’t snore.”

  She laughed. “You’re a nut. Good thing I love you, isn’t it?”