A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You’re not going to ask why my wife left? Seems to me, that would be an irresistible follow-up question for most women I know.”

  She shrugged as much as she could with one arm in a sling. “I assumed if you wanted me to know, you would have finished the sentence. ‘We would have been lost without her after my wife took off to swallow flaming knives with the circus. After my wife took off to become a Radio City Music Hall dancer. After my wife took off to shave her head and join a cult.’ That sort of thing.”

  His burst of laughter seemed to surprise both of them. He tried to picture Melinda shaving her head and couldn’t quite pull it off. “Any of those answers would be more interesting than the bare-bones truth. She didn’t like ranch life. She hated the wind and the flies and the dirt.”

  And me, he wanted to add. By the time Melinda walked out, she had hated Ridge for refusing to leave the ranch and had accused him of loving the River Bow more than he loved her. By that point, he had.

  “She left her daughter because of that? Her daughter and the, er, man she loved?”

  He wanted to think she had loved him once, but he wasn’t sure anymore. “We weren’t a very good mix from the get-go. And I think some people make choices they later come to regret. All these years, I thought she just abandoned our daughter, but this year I finally had a private investigator search for her and discovered she died about a year after she took off. I like to think she would have reconsidered and tried to reconnect with Des. Guess we’ll never know for sure.”

  “That must be hard on your daughter.”

  He was touched by her compassion for a girl she didn’t even know. Maybe it stemmed from being an educator.

  “You know, she’s an amazingly well-adjusted young lady. With Caidy’s help and the rest of the family’s, I think we’ve managed to do a pretty good job of giving her all the love she needs to thrive, even without a mother.”

  “She’s lucky to have you all,” Sarah said softly.

  “We’re lucky to have each other,” he said. “My brothers and their families still come home just about every week for Sunday dinner, though we decided to take a pass this week given the wedding on Friday and Christmas in only a few days. We are getting together for Christmas dinner this week. You’ll have a chance to meet them all then.”

  “About that—” she began.

  He knew she was going to argue about staying through Christmas and he suddenly didn’t want her to.

  “They’re going to be so happy to see the painting. I was telling my brother Trace about it last night. We’re both really curious about how your father might have come into possession of it.”

  An odd spark flashed in her eyes, almost like fear, but she quickly looked down at her plate. “I’m...not sure,” she said. “To be honest, I didn’t know my father well. We were virtual strangers most of my life.”

  “Oh?”

  She sighed. “My parents divorced when I was five and he took custody of my brother, who was several years older than I was. They lived mostly in Las Vegas and rarely came to the coast. I had maybe two mandated weeks with him in the summers and not even that, most of the time. I had little to do with him after I turned eighteen, by my own choice.”

  “Divorce can be tough on kids.” He had a very strong suspicion she didn’t talk about this very often, and he was touched that she was willing to discuss it with him. Something about the wind howling under the eaves and the snow falling heavily outside and the homey morning breakfast smells lent a quiet intimacy to the warmth of the kitchen that invited confidences.

  “I see that with my students,” she answered. “It’s only natural for young children to feel like they’re responsible somehow. And situations where children are split up between parents can add a special kind of hell to a child’s psyche. For a long time, I couldn’t understand what I had done wrong that he didn’t want me but he wanted Joey. My mother was...bitter about the divorce and the reasons that led up to it. And you know how some people are quietly bitter? That wasn’t my mother. By the time they finally divorced, she hated my father, and her anger sat at the dinner table with us every night. She hated that he refused to change, even for her. She always said—”

  She broke off the words and suddenly bit her lip. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m rambling on like this. Why should you care about my boring dysfunctional family? Can I get you more bacon?”

  She jumped up from the table. In her rush, she moved too quickly and wobbled a little to regain her equilibrium. Out of instinct, he jumped up to catch her before she fell or bumped her arm.

  They froze that way, with her arms against his chest and his on her upper arms. She looked up at him, eyes huge. He saw her throat move as she swallowed, and he could swear her gaze flickered to his mouth.

  Heat surged through him, wild and urgent. He wanted to kiss her, with an ache that shocked the hell out of him. She felt perfect in his arms, soft and warm, and he knew it was crazy but all he could think about was leaning down, brushing his mouth against hers, tasting those incredibly soft-looking lips....

  She barely knew him, he reminded himself. They were alone in his house. Beyond that, she was stranded here, at least for now. He wouldn’t take advantage of that and probably completely freak her out by kissing her out of the blue.

  He drew on every ounce of self-control hard-won over the past ten years to keep the embrace impersonally helpful instead of yanking her against him as he wanted to do.

  “You okay now?”

  A very adorable pink blush stained her cheeks. “I...think so. I must have stood up too fast.”

  “Not to mention, you pushed yourself too hard making breakfast this morning, considering you broke a bone twenty-four hours ago and you’ve still probably got pain medication on board.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  What the hell was wrong with him? She was injured and hurting, and all he wanted to do was kiss away that soft, sweet brush of color on her cheekbones.

  “You can let go now,” she murmured after another moment. “I think I’m okay.”

  “You sure? This tile floor is pretty hard. Doc Dalton might wonder what’s going on out here if you took a header and cracked your head open, too.”

  “I would tell him it’s only me and my usual clumsiness.”

  She smiled, and he couldn’t seem to look away. Almost against his will, he leaned down just a little. He saw her breath catch, saw her eyes widen. Her mouth parted, and he knew he didn’t misinterpret the way she leaned toward him, ever so slightly.

  A particularly strong gust of wind rattled the windows in the kitchen, and the sound was enough to yank him back to his senses.

  With no small amount of regret, he eased his arms away slowly to make sure she wasn’t going to teeter again.

  “I hate to leave you, but do you think you’ll be okay in here without me for a while? Except for the wind, it looks like the snow is easing up a little. I should really go out and hit the plow again. I might be able to clear the driveway enough for Destry to make it back before dinner.”

  “I should be fine,” she said, quickly veiling her expression, but not before he saw what looked like a little glint of disappointment. “In fact, if your daughter is able to make it out to the ranch, there shouldn’t be any reason why I can’t go back in the other direction and return to the inn.”

  He wanted to argue and invite her again to stay at the ranch for the holidays—but given his crazy response to her, maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

  “We’ll see. Take it easy and get some rest. Let’s see how you feel this afternoon.”

  He headed for the mudroom and his winter gear. For once he figured he would welcome the blast of cold air. He needed something to cool his fevered thoughts.

  * * *

  As soon as she heard the door close behind Ridge
, Sarah covered her overheated cheeks with her palms.

  Wow. What just happened?

  For a moment there, she had been certain he would kiss her. Had it all been some pain reliever–induced figment of her imagination? No. She couldn’t claim to be the most experienced woman on the planet, but he had most definitely leaned closer, until she thought she could feel his heartbeat pulse against her.

  What would she have done? She certainly wouldn’t have resisted. She had wanted him to kiss her, had ached for it. Her own heartbeat had been racing in her ears and her nerves had shivered in anticipation.

  She was fiercely attracted to him, more than she had ever been attracted to anyone in her life. She frowned, astonished at herself and her reaction. This just wasn’t like her.

  She certainly dated in San Diego and had come close to being engaged to a highly successful attorney, until her mother’s debilitating stroke. Michael hadn’t been at all supportive during those long months of stress. He resented the hours she felt obligated to stay with her mother at the care center, as Barbara’s only living relative. Until then, she had never realized how inherently selfish he was, in that and many other ways. Seeing him filtered through the different light of her own stressful situation made her grateful she hadn’t yet agreed to marry him. Breaking up after two years of exclusive dating had been more relief than heartbreak.

  Probably because of the comfortable placidity of her near engagement, she found this wild attraction to Ridge Bowman new and disturbing.

  This place was to blame, she decided. She hadn’t been herself since she showed up at the River Bow. She had this strange sense of belonging here, of homecoming, that made absolutely no sense.

  She needed to push that right out of her head. She didn’t belong here—and the next time she was tempted to kiss the man, she needed to remember what would happen when Ridge found out the truth. He certainly wouldn’t want her in his arms—or anywhere near his ranch or his daughter.

  Fighting off a lingering depression, she stood and began to clear the few breakfast dishes to tidy up. She was loading the last dish in the dishwasher when a familiar ringtone rang through the kitchen. Her phone! He must have found it in the car after all.

  The ringing stopped by the time she made it to her purse and pawed through with one hand for her phone—which was much more difficult than she might have expected.

  When she recognized her best friend Nicole’s name on the recent-call log, she briefly entertained the idea of ignoring it, but perhaps a connection to her regular life might keep her anchored in reality, she thought.

  Anyway, Nicki would probably keep calling until she picked up. Her impatient college roommate had always been that way.

  She quickly dialed her back. While she waited for Nicki to pick up, she tried to formulate how much she could possibly tell her about the past twenty-four hours.

  “There you are! I thought maybe you dropped off the face of the earth,” Nicki exclaimed with the gerbil-on-crack energy and enthusiasm that always made Sarah smile.

  She always figured the gods of college roommates had been particularly kind the day the two of them had been assigned together freshman year at UCLA. Where Sarah tended to be reserved and cautious, Nicki barged into every situation at full tilt. They had been BFFs since the very first day on campus, when they had stayed up all night exchanging life stories.

  “I’m still here.”

  “Where? I ran by your condo last night, and you weren’t home. I stopped again this morning, and you still weren’t there. I’ve got to tell you, my imagination is in overdrive, wondering if you’re with some hot guy you didn’t tell me about.”

  She flushed and looked out the window, where she could see the outline of a certain extremely hot rancher shoveling his sidewalk.

  Nicki knew more than anyone about her tangled family connections—it was hard to avoid telling her when they had lived together for all four years of school—but Sarah hadn’t told her what she found in that storage unit or about her impromptu trip to Eastern Idaho.

  “Why the urgency?” she asked, avoiding the question. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, you know. This and that. Okay, the truth is I have news. Huge news. But I don’t want to tell you over the phone. Wherever you are, meet me in an hour at the Fishwife for brunch so I can spill.”

  She sighed, looking out at the vast expanse of mountains and snow out the window, which seemed far away from their favorite beachside restaurant.

  “I’m sorry, hon. I can’t. I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me over the phone. I just had breakfast.”

  Nicole made a disappointed sound. “Lunch, then. Or coffee. Or pie. I don’t care what. I want to see your face when I tell you.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the certain junior high science teacher you’ve been dating and perhaps any emotionally and socially significant gifts of jewelry that might have been offered and accepted?”

  Nicole snorted. “Forget it. You’re not going to break me that easily with your smarty-pants teacher talk. I won’t spoil the surprise until I can squeal and hug my maid of honor in person. Just tell me where you are and I’ll come to you.”

  “Doesn’t it count if I squeal over the phone and give you a virtual hug?”

  “No!” Nicki exclaimed. “Where the heck are you?”

  She sighed. Like it or not, she was going to have to tell her friend and deal with the fallout. “I’m sorry, Nic. You know I would be there in a minute to celebrate with you if I could, but I can’t. I should have told you, but to be fair, it was a last-minute decision, and anyway, I thought you were going to be spending the holidays in Big Bear with Jason’s family.”

  “Told me what?”

  “I’m in Idaho.”

  A long, echoing silence met her words.

  “Excuse me. We must have a bad connection. Did you just say...Idaho.”

  “Erm, yes.”

  “As in potatoes.”

  She had to smile, as she hadn’t seen a single tuber since she arrived two days earlier. “Yes. Actually, I’m almost to the Wyoming border. A little town called Pine Gulch.”

  “And the rest of the story is...”

  “Long and complicated. Too long and complicated for me to adequately explain over the phone. I’m so sorry I’m not there to celebrate with the two of you, Nic. I really am.”

  “You’re going to leave me hanging like that? So unfair.”

  “This, from the woman who won’t even tell me she’s engaged unless we’re face-to-face?”

  “How do you know whether I’m engaged or not? That’s purely speculative.”

  She laughed, deeply grateful for one of the people she loved most in the world. “You’re right. I know nothing. I’m probably way off base anyway.”

  “And I know less than nothing about what you’re doing there.” Nicole paused. “Wait. Does this have anything to do with your father?”

  She shivered a little at her friend’s unerring guess. Nicole didn’t know the full story of Vasily Malikov’s criminal background—not that Sarah did, either—but she had shared enough details over the years with her friend that she could probably guess. Nicole certainly knew Sarah was left with the difficult task of trying to settle his complicated affairs.

  She didn’t want to talk about her family, so she chose the best method of distraction she could think of on short notice—which happened to be at the forefront of her brain because it was beginning to throb incessantly.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” she said. “When I get back to San Diego, I’m going to have to take a rain check on our Saturday-morning tennis matches for a while. I, um, sort of broke my arm yesterday.”

  “What?” Nicole exclaimed. “What else haven’t you told me? Have you got a new husband you haven’t bothered to mention? And how does someb
ody sort of break an arm?”

  “Okay. I broke my arm. No sort of about it. It is a clean break though, apparently, and I should be okay in about four weeks. No surgery necessary. And no new husband, believe me.”

  To her relief, Nicole let herself be distracted instead of pushing for further explanations about her father and her presence in Pine Gulch, answers Sarah wasn’t yet ready to provide.

  “Oh, you poor thing! Who’s taking care of you? Do you know somebody there in this Pine Gulch? Let me come get you and take you home where you belong. I’ll skip Big Bear. Jason’s family will understand.”

  Her friend’s concern somehow made her feel much better about things.

  “You know, I think I’ll be okay. People here have been very kind. I’ve even had an invitation to spend Christmas with some people I’ve met here, and I’m seriously considering taking it.”

  It was a lie, but she could sort it out with Nicole over waffles at the Fishwife when she returned.

  “I wish you would tell me what’s going on,” her friend said, obvious concern in her voice.

  “I will. And please tell a certain seventh-grade science teacher, who might or might not be engaged, congratulations for me. He’s the luckiest man I know.”

  “You promise you’ll spill everything?”

  “Pinkie promise.”

  “And you’re safe? People are taking care of you?”

  “I’m fine, honey. You go to Big Bear and have a wonderful time. Do me a favor, though. Be careful and don’t break any bones. I can promise, it’s not a great way to spend the holidays.”

  Nicole reluctantly hung up a short time later. After she disconnected, Sarah sat for a moment in the big, comfortable kitchen, listening to the house settle around her.

  Without Ridge’s conversation or Nicole’s cheerful chatter on the phone, her own company somehow seemed unsettling. At loose ends, she wandered into the great room, dominated by that massive Christmas tree and the festive greenery all around.

  Ridge hadn’t turned on any of the Christmas lights before he headed outside to shovel. Though it was late morning already, the day outside was still heavy and dark from the storm and the endless wind. On impulse, she searched until she found a switch. The Christmas tree lights came on as well as the little fairy lights nestled in the greenery above the fireplace and trailing up the staircase.