Evergreen Springs

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Damn, it was hard being a parent, having to eat his own words sometimes. The whole thing would be much easier if he didn’t have to put his money where his mouth was.

  He didn’t want to be decent to his father. As far as he was concerned, Stanford Barrett didn’t deserve so much as a handful of pine needles from him.

  They could always find someone who deserved the other Christmas tree far more than the jackass who’d sired him, but Cole was afraid Jazmyn might have something to say about that. She would push and push until he caved.

  If he stood his ground and refused to give his father the tree, she might end up thinking he expected her and Ty to be decent only when it suited their purposes—not the message he needed to impart to an impressionable girl who had spent her first eight years in an environment of chaos and mixed signals.

  Though he wasn’t crazy about Christmas in general terms, it was supposed to be the season of giving, of hope. How hard could it be to do this one simple thing and give his father a stupid Christmas tree?

  He released a heavy breath, furious all over again that Stan had put him in this position by showing up out of the blue right before Thanksgiving, as if they were one big happy family.

  As if he didn’t have enough to stress about, between his grieving kids and his troubled—and heavily pregnant—sister.

  What he hated most about the situation with Stan was Cole’s own helplessness to fix it. He couldn’t kick him out, as much as he wanted to—at least according to his attorney. His grandmother’s will gave Stan a quarter share of the ranch, just like Tricia. While Cole had the biggest share, his attorney warned him he didn’t have the right to refuse occupancy to Stan except in the main house.

  Stan didn’t appear to want to go anywhere. Cole couldn’t figure out how in the hell he thought he could saunter back onto the ranch and pick up with the children and grandchildren he had abandoned, just as if the past twenty-plus years had never happened.

  Needles quivered as he yanked the four-foot tree out of the truck bed and hauled it up to the porch. Cole shoved it against the side of the house and stomped back down the steps without bothering to knock.

  He made it to the bottom step when he heard the squeak of the screen door and then his father’s unwelcome voice.

  “What’s this?”

  He wanted to ignore the man—that was the pattern of their relationship, after all, the one Stan himself had established—but he forced himself to turn around. “It’s a Christmas tree. What does it look like?”

  Stan looked stunned, his eyes that were so similar to Cole’s clouded with confusion.

  “We were cutting a tree for our place and my observant daughter commented that you didn’t have one,” Cole said gruffly. “She wanted us to cut one for you and I was too tired to argue with her. That’s all. Let’s get one thing straight. This was for Jazmyn, not you. It’s not a peace offering or an olive branch or whatever damn thing you want to call it. It’s just me trying to keep my daughter happy.”

  Stan looked at the pickup truck and Cole did his best to harden his heart against the wistfulness he saw on his father’s expression.

  “She’s right,” Stan said. “I haven’t had the chance to get a tree yet. Please tell Jazmyn thank you for thinking of me.”

  He wanted to tell his father to go to hell, that he wouldn’t tell Jazmyn anything, but that would just make him look small so he nodded curtly and made his way back to the pickup.

  “What did he say?” Jaz asked eagerly once he climbed inside.

  “Thanks,” he muttered. “He said to tell you thanks. That was it.”

  He shoved the truck in gear and drove back to the ranch house without looking back, aware the whole time of Devin’s sidelong glances.

  He had told himself all these years that he didn’t care what his father did, that he felt nothing for the man. A few weeks in the same zip code as Stanford revealed that for yet another lie.

  He cared.

  After all these years, the pain of that abandonment felt as strong and real as the day his father dumped him and Tricia on people they barely knew and drove away.

  More than anything, it pissed him off, especially when he’d been forced into the position of fighting with everything he had just to stay in his own kids’ lives.

  He put away the anger for now and focused on finishing the task at hand, dealing with the kids’ Christmas tree.

  Everybody piled out as soon as he pulled in front of the house.

  “I need to go find the tree stand,” he said. “I think it was in the garage last I checked. Go ahead inside and warm up while I go hunt it down, then we’ll haul the tree inside.”

  “Hurry, okay?” Jazmyn said. “I can’t wait to see it all set up.”

  Always the little boss. He refrained from rolling his eyes as he headed for the garage. When he finally located the tree stand on one of the shelves—the last place he remembered seeing it, since he hadn’t bothered with a tree since his grandmother’s death two years earlier—he carried it into the family room, where they always set up the tree, then returned to his pickup truck. He pulled the tree out of the pickup bed, then gave the trunk several hard smacks down on the driveway again to shake off as much remaining moisture as he could from the branches.

  A few moments later, he had to enlist Devin’s help guiding the trunk of the tree into the tree stand and then holding the trunk straight while he tightened the screws.

  It was a strange and unsettling domestic scene that seemed to add to the growing connection between them.

  There was no connection between them, Cole reminded himself harshly. How could there be? She was the kind, compassionate, respected physician and he was an ex-con recovering alcoholic. Better to push her away now, while he still could.

  “The branches are still pretty wet,” he said once he was satisfied the tree was straight and wasn’t going to tip out of the stand. “It probably needs to dry out for a while longer before we string any lights or decorations on it. Don’t worry about sticking around. I’m sure you’ve got things to do. The kids and I can hang the ornaments on tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Oh! I wanted to decorate it now!” Jazmyn complained.

  “I don’t mind waiting,” Devin assured him. “I don’t have anything planned today, which is a minor miracle. I wanted to go check on your sister later, even though I’ve handed her care over to Obstetrics, but that’s the only thing on my plate.”

  “It might be an hour or more and I’m supposed to be meeting the vet down at the barn in about twenty minutes.”

  “No problem. I’m good here with the children. While we wait for the tree to dry a little, we could make a few other decorations to hang on the tree and around the house. Snowflakes, paper chains, that sort of thing.”

  “Oooh!” Jazmyn lit up at that idea. “Great-grandma had a whole box of shiny paper and markers. I found them in the closet in my room. We can use that! Come help me carry them down, Ty.”

  She marched out of the room with her brother close behind. Cole really was going to have to do something about her bossiness and about Ty’s too-amenable nature. If things continued in this manner, neither of them would be destined for a happy life.

  As soon as the children left the room, he turned on Devin. “Okay. Tell me. Why are you doing this? Giving up a whole Saturday to help me and my kids? First the food and now this. You don’t even know us.”

  Her cheeks were a delicate pink but he didn’t know if she was blushing or if they still held color from the cold outside.

  “Originally, I helped you because Tricia asked me to, then because I wanted to after I spent a few minutes with your children. Now—” She paused with an embarrassed-sounding laugh. “What would you say if I offered you a proposition?”

  It didn’t take much for his brain to jump into an instant
fantasy of the two of them ripping up the sheets, of covering her mouth with his and touching those lush little curves and losing himself inside her...

  He jerked himself back to the moment, quite certain that wasn’t what she meant.

  “A proposition. What’s the fine print?”

  “Okay, maybe not a proposition. Let’s call it a barter of sorts.”

  Again, his imagination flashed into overtime. But while he could list many things he wanted from her, he couldn’t come up with a single thing he might have to offer in return.

  “A barter of what sort?” he asked warily.

  “Without Tricia here, you’re going to need help with the kids. Believe it or not, I have an unusually light docket for the next few days, since I’m scheduled to work straight through the holidays. I can step in for a couple of days to help you out with the children after school and in the early evenings until you can hire someone.”

  On the surface, the idea was tempting. Under ordinary circumstances, this was a relatively slow time of year on the ranch, when he could work around the children’s school schedule and take them down to the barn with him.

  He could still do that, try to juggle everything, but right now he had several horses in various stages of training and he just simply wasn’t finding enough hours in the day to finish everything.

  He had planned to register the children in the after-school program at the school but Jazmyn was already complaining about how boring it was likely to be and begging him to let her babysit for her brother—which wasn’t happening anytime soon.

  It would be wonderful if he could put at least one worry out of his mind, knowing the children were cared for after school for a few days. He had a feeling this wouldn’t be that easy, that she would attach strings that were likely to strangle him.

  “And in exchange? What do you want out of the deal?”

  She gave him a winsome smile. “You grant me and a few of my patients access to Evergreen Springs. The actual spring, I mean, not the ranch in general.”

  Yeah. Always check the fine print.

  “No,” he answered bluntly.

  She blinked a little. “Why not? It’s the perfect solution.”

  “For you, maybe,” he retorted. “I don’t want a bunch of strangers wandering around the ranch, poking their noses into my business.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Nobody will wander anywhere or poke anything! I teach a yoga class of a dozen senior citizens with varying stages of age-related conditions. Lovely people, each of them. They’re not interested in your business. Though, to be fair, I have a feeling Eppie and Hazel might be.”

  He didn’t know who Eppie and Hazel were or why the thought of them seemed to amuse Devin so much.

  He frowned. “I don’t care about your yoga class. The answer is still no.”

  “You haven’t even heard the question!” she exclaimed. “At least not all the reasons I want to use your mineral spring.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe. I believe there are inherent healing properties to the mineral waters around the lake—or at least palliative properties. You’ve got one of the only free-flowing natural mineral springs left. If some of my patients could just soak in it even a few times, I believe they would see improvements in mobility, flexibility and comfort.”

  He found the water soothing, certainly, both physically and mentally. But healing? That he didn’t quite buy.

  “That would be very nice for them, I’m sure. But they’re not doing it at my ranch.”

  “Why not? We would completely stay out of your way—I promise! You won’t even know we’re here.”

  “Who’s going to plow the road to the spring? And how are they going to get up there? It takes a pretty sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicle in the snow.”

  “I can plow it,” she answered.

  “With what?”

  “I’ve got a truck with a plow. I traded it for some medical work a few winters ago.”

  “Seriously?” He gave her a long look, trying to imagine this delicate-looking woman driving a big, beefy pickup truck.

  “Believe me, it comes in very handy for a small-town doctor in the rural Idaho mountains. I’ve become something of an expert. I could plow the road and a couple of the older gentlemen in the class have four-wheel-drive vehicles and are very used to driving on these mountain roads in winter. We can get up there. That’s not a problem.”

  She seemed very earnest about it. He didn’t want to come across as a jerk but he had enough to deal with right now without worrying about a bunch of strangers wandering around the ranch.

  “It’s not maintained at all,” he tried again. “What you saw is all there is. Just the one changing hut, heated by a woodstove.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not looking for some sort of fancy resort. It’s about the water, not the amenities.”

  She gave him a steady look. “Anyway, a couple of those delicious casseroles in your freezer came from some of the kind ladies in my yoga class. Letting them soak away their arthritis pain in your hot spring would be a very small way to repay them for their efforts on your behalf.”

  He snorted. “What kind of reasoning is that? I didn’t ask anybody to fill up my freezer with delicious casseroles. While I’m grateful for it, I’m not sure it puts me under any contractual obligation.”

  She gave a rueful smile. “It was worth a try, wasn’t it?”

  He thought of all she had done for him and his family in the past twenty-four hours. Her concern and care of his frightened sister topped the list but she had been showing him kindness after kindness since then.

  Now she was offering to help him out of a bind with Jazmyn and Ty after school for a few days. Would it really be a big deal to let some of her patients come out and soak in the spring?

  “You said a few times,” he said.

  Her vivid green eyes lit up as she must have seen the weakening of his resolve. “Yes. No more than three.”

  “Fine. Two or three times. That’s it. Don’t get any ideas that you can wriggle your way into making it a regular thing after the holidays.”

  “I wouldn’t dare.”

  With that smile and her eyes bright with excitement, she was just about the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He knew he was staring but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Something about her just seemed to reach through all his careful defenses. He was having a tough time resisting her—which was stupid, since he could never let this attraction go anywhere.

  For a moment, he wondered what it would feel like to be the sort of man who deserved a woman like her, then his kids came pounding down the stairs, both carrying large boxes.

  “We looked everywhere and brought down every craft thing we could find,” Jazmyn announced. “Scissors, stamps, paper, glue. We brought everything.”

  Devin, her color a little pink, looked away from Cole and focused on the children. “Perfect. I think we can find a place to use it all.”

  “Can I put some Christmas decorations in my room?” Ty asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to see what we can find and what we need in other places of the house.”

  “I want a Christmas tree of my very own,” Jazmyn said.

  He should have thought of that and cut a small sapling for each of the kids. He would do that next year, he resolved.

  Assuming they all survived this Christmas together and then the next twelve months.

  “This should all be perfect.” Devin pulled off her coat and set it over one of the kitchen chairs. “Set everything on the table and we’ll take a look and see what we’ve got to work with.”

  “I carried the biggest box because I’m the oldest,” Jazmyn said, which, of course, didn’t sit well with her brother.

  “Only because you stole it out of my hand
s.”

  “It doesn’t matter who brought down the bigger box. The important thing is that now we can get busy,” Devin said. She glanced over at Cole. “Where will we find the lights and ornaments for the tree?” she asked.

  “In the attic, in a bunch of red boxes marked Christmas. I’ll carry them down.”

  “We can do that. Don’t worry about it.”

  He gave her a look. “My house. My Christmas decorations. I’ll get the boxes.”

  She rolled her eyes but turned her attention to the craft supplies the children had brought down.

  When he carried the last box down and set it in the family room near the tree, he headed back into the kitchen to find Jazmyn cutting out snowflakes from shiny paper and Ty frowning in concentration as he cut out strips for a paper chain garland.

  “That should be it. I have to go down to the barn. The vet finally texted that he’s on his way.”

  Devin smiled and he forced himself not to stare again like some creepy stalker dude.

  “We might be a while,” he said. “Just bring the kids down when you’re done here. They can hang out at the barn. I put a little TV and DVD player with movies in the tack room or they can always play with the barn kittens. They like that.”

  “I can stay for a while,” she said. “I’d like to head over to the hospital to check on a couple of patients around seven, but I’m free until then.”

  When she was here with his children, looking so soft and adorable, it was tough to remember she had a high-powered career and went around saving lives. “You don’t have time to decorate my Christmas tree and hang snowflakes in my windows. I can’t ask this of you.”

  “If you’ll recall, you didn’t ask. I offered. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to do it. This is going to be a blast. Don’t worry about us. We’re going to be busy decorating for at least a few hours, anyway. In fact, now that you’ve done all the heavy lifting, you’ll probably only be in the way—isn’t that right, kids?”

  Ty smiled and even Jaz giggled a little. It was a sound he didn’t hear very often from his daughter and the sweetness of it seemed to curl through him like a sparkly ribbon.