A Cold Creek Homecoming

by RaeAnne Thayne

  "You want to fix everything. That's understandable. It's what you do, isn't it?"

  "Not this time. I can't fix this."

  The bleakness in his voice tore at her heart and she couldn't help herself, she rested her fingers on his warm arm again. "I'm sorry. I know how terribly hard this is for you."

  He looked anguished and before she quite realized what he was doing, he pulled her into his arms and clung tightly to her. He didn't kiss her, only held her. She froze in shock for just a moment then she wrapped her arms around him and let him draw whatever small comfort she could offer from the physical connection with another person. Sometimes a single quiet embrace could offer more comfort than a hundred condolences, she knew.

  They stood for several moments in silence with his arms around her, his breath a whisper against her hair. Something sweet and intangible—and even tender—passed between them. She was afraid to move or even breathe for fear of ruining this moment, this chance to provide him a small measure of peace.

  All too soon, he exhaled a long breath and dropped his arms, moving away a little, and she felt curiously bereft.

  He looked astonished and more than a little embarrassed.

  "I…Sorry. I don't know what that was about. Sorry."

  She smiled gently. "You're doing your best," she repeated. "Jo understands that."

  He opened his mouth to answer but before he could, Brant's voice sounded from downstairs, loud and irate.

  "It's about damn time you showed up."

  Tess blinked. In her limited experience, the officer was invariably patient with everyone, a sea of calm in the emotional tumult of Winder Ranch. She had never heard that sort of harshness from him.

  In response, she heard another man's voice, one she didn't recognize.

  "I'm not too late, am I?"

  Quinn's expression reflected her own shock as both of them realized Francisco Del Norte had at last arrived.

  Quinn took the stairs two at a time. She followed with the same urgency, a little concerned the men might come to blows—at least judging by Brant's anger and that hot expression in Quinn's eyes as he had rushed past her.

  In the foyer, she found Brant and Quinn facing off against a hard-eyed, rough-looking Latino who bore little resemblance to the laughing, mischievous boy she remembered from school.

  "Where the hell have you been?" Quinn snapped.

  Fatigue clouded the other man's dark eyes. Tess wasn't sure she had ever seen anyone look so completely exhausted.

  "Long story. I could tell you, but you know the drill. Then I'd have to kill you and I'm too damn tired right now to take on both your sorry asses at the same time."

  The three men eyed each other for another moment and Tess held her breath, wondering if she ought to step in. Then, as if by some unspoken signal, they all moved together and gave that shoulder-slap thing men did instead of hugging.

  "Tell me I'm not too late." Cisco's voice was taut with anguish.

  "Not yet. But she's barely hanging on, man. She was just waiting to say goodbye to you."

  Tears filled Cisco's eyes as he uttered a quick prayer of gratitude in Spanish.

  She was inclined to dislike the man for the worry he had put everyone through these past few days and for Jo's heartache. But she couldn't help feeling compassion for the undisguised sorrow in his eyes.

  "They didn't…I didn't get the message until three days ago. I was in the middle of something big and it took me a while to squeeze my way out."

  Brant and Quinn didn't look appeased by the explanation but they didn't seem inclined to push him either.

  "Can I see her?"

  Both Brant and Quinn turned to look at Tess, still standing on the stairs, as if she was Jo's guardian and gatekeeper.

  "Easton's in with her. I'll go see if she's awake."

  She turned away, but not before she caught an odd expression flicker across his features at the mention of Easton's name.

  She left the three men and walked down the hall to Jo's bedroom. When she carefully eased open the door, emotions clogged her throat at the scene she found inside.

  Easton was the one asleep now, with her head resting on the bed beside her aunt. Jo's frail, gnarled hand rested on her niece's hair.

  Jo pressed a finger to her mouth. Though she tried to shake her head, she was so weak she barely moved against the pillow.

  "It's not time for more meds, is it?" she murmured, her voice thready.

  Though Tess could barely hear the woman's whisper, Easton still opened her eyes and jerked her head up.

  "Sorry. I must have just dozed off."

  Jo smiled. "Just a few minutes ago, dear. Not long enough."

  "It's not time for meds," Tess answered her. "I was only checking to see if you were awake and up for a visitor."

  Though she thought she spoke calmly enough, some clue in her demeanor must have alerted them something had happened. Both women looked at her carefully.

  "What is it?" Easton asked.

  Before she could answer, she heard a noise in the doorway and knew without turning around that Cisco had followed her.

  Easton's features paled and she scrambled to her feet. Tess registered her reaction for only an instant, then she was completely disarmed when the hard, dangerous-looking man hurried to Jo's bedside, his eyes still wet with emotion.

  The joy in Jo's features was breathtakingly beautiful as she reached a hand to caress his cheek. "You're here. Oh, my dear boy, you're here at last."

  Quinn and Brant followed Cisco into the room. Tess watched their reunion for a moment, then she quietly slipped from the room to give them the time and space they needed together.

  Chapter Eleven

  The woman Quinn loved as a mother took her last breath twelve hours after Cisco Del Norte returned to Winder Ranch.

  With all four of them around her bedside and Tess standing watchfully on the edge of the room, Jo succumbed to the ravages cancer had wrought on her frail body.

  Quinn had had plenty of time to prepare. He had known weeks ago her condition was terminal and he had been at the ranch for nearly ten days to spend these last days with her and watch her inexorable decline.

  He had known it was coming. That didn't make it any easier to watch her draw one ragged breath into her lungs, let it out with a sigh and then nothing more.

  Beside him, Easton exhaled a soft, choked sob. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, aware that Cisco, on her other side, had made the same move but had checked it when Quinn reached her first.

  "I'll call Dr. Dalton and let him know," Tess murmured after a few moments of leaving them to their shared sorrow.

  He met her gaze, deeply grateful for her quiet calm. "Thank you."

  She held his gaze for a moment, her own filled with an echo of his grief, then she smiled. "You're welcome."

  He had fully expected the loss, this vast chasm of pain. But he hadn't anticipated the odd sense of peace that seemed to have settled over all of them to know Jo's suffering was finally over.

  A big part of that was due to Tess and her steady, unexpected strength, he admitted over the next hour as they worked with the doctor and the funeral home to make arrangements.

  She seemed to know exactly what to say, what to do, and he was grateful to turn these final responsibilities over to her.

  If he found comfort in anything right now, it was in the knowledge that Jo had spent her last days surrounded by those she loved and by the tender care Tess had provided.

  He couldn't help remembering that embrace with Tess upstairs in his office. Those few moments with her arms around him and her cheek resting against his chest had been the most peaceful he had known since he arrived at the ranch.

  He had found them profoundly moving, for reasons he couldn't explain, anymore than he could explain how the person he thought he despised most in the world ended up being the one he turned to in his greatest need.

  * * *

  He was lousy at doing not
hing.

  The evening after Jo's funeral, Quinn sat at the kitchen table at the ranch with a heaping plate of leftovers in front of him and an aching restlessness twisting through him.

  The past three days since Jo's death had been a blur of condolence visits from neighbors, of making plans with Southerland Shipping for the corporate jet to return for him by the end of the week, of seeing to the few details Jo hadn't covered in the very specific funeral arrangements she made before her death.

  Most of those details fell on his shoulders by default, simply because nobody else was around much.

  He might have expected them to all come together in their shared grief but each of Jo's Four Winds seemed to be dealing with her death in a unique way.

  Easton took refuge out on the ranch, with her horses and her cattle and hard, punishing work. Brant had left the night Jo died for his own ranch, a mile or so up the canyon and had only been back a few times and for the funeral earlier. Cisco slept for a full thirty-six hours as if it had been months since he closed his eyes. As soon as the funeral was over earlier that day, he had taken one of the ranch horses and a bedroll and said he needed to sleep under the stars.

  As for Quinn, he focused on what work he could do long-distance and on these last few details for Jo. Staying busy helped push the pain away a little.

  He sipped at his beer as the old house creaked and settled around him and the furnace kicked in with a low whoosh against the late October cold. Forlorn sounds, he thought. Lonely, even.

  Maybe Cisco had the right idea. Maybe he ought to just get the hell out of Dodge, grab one of the horses and ride hard and fast into the mountains.

  The thought did have a certain appeal.

  Or maybe he ought to just call his pilot and move up his departure. He could be home by midnight.

  What would be the difference between sitting alone at his house in Seattle or sitting alone here at Winder Ranch? This aching emptiness would follow him everywhere for a while, he was afraid, until that inevitable day when the loss would begin to fade a little.

  Hovering on the edge of his mind was the awareness that once he left Winder Ranch this time, he would have very few reasons to return. With Jo and Guff gone, his anchor to the place had been lifted.

  Easton would always be here. He could still come back to visit her, but with Brant in the military and Cisco off doing whatever mysterious things occupied his time, nothing would ever be the same.

  The Four Winds would be scattered once more.

  Jo had been their true north, their center. Without her, a chapter in his life was ending and the realization left him more than a little bereft.

  He rose suddenly as that restlessness sharpened, intensified. He couldn't just sit here. He didn't really feel like spending the night on the hard ground, but at least he could take one of the horses out for a hard moonlit ride to work off some of this energy.

  The thought inevitably touched off memories of the other ride he had taken into the mountains just days ago—and of the woman he had been doing his best not to think about for the past few days.

  Tess had packed up all the medical equipment in Jo's room and had left the ranch the night Jo died. He had seen her briefly at the funeral, a slim, lovely presence in a bright yellow dress amid all the traditionally dark mourning clothes. Jo would have approved, he remembered thinking. She would have wanted bright colors and light and sunshine at her funeral. He only wished he'd been the one to think of it and had put on a vibrant tie instead of the muted, conservative one he had worn with his suit.

  To his regret, Tess had slipped away from the service before he had a chance to talk to her. Now he found himself remembering again those stunning few moments they had shared upstairs in his office bedroom, when she had simply held him, offering whatever solace he could draw from her calm embrace.

  He missed her.

  Quinn let out a breath. Several times over the past days, as he dealt with details, he had found himself wanting to turn to her for her unique perspective on something, for some of her no-nonsense advice, or just to see her smile at some absurdity.

  Ridiculous. How had she become so important to him in just a matter of days? It was only the stress of the circumstances, he assured himself.

  But right now as he stood in the Winder Ranch kitchen with this emptiness yawning inside him, he had a desperate ache to see her again.

  She would know just the right thing to say to ease his spirit. Somehow he knew it.

  If he just showed up on her doorstep for no reason, she would probably think he was an idiot. He couldn't say he only wanted her to hold him again, to ease the restlessness of his spirit.

  His gaze fell on a hook by the door and fate smiled on him when he recognized her jacket hanging next to his own denim ranch coat. He had noticed it the day before and remembered her wearing it a few nights when she had come to the ranch, before she moved into the spare room, but he had forgotten about it until just this moment.

  If he gave it a moment's thought, he knew he would talk himself out of seeing her while his heart was still raw and aching.

  So he decided not to think about it.

  He shrugged into his own jacket, then grabbed hers off the hook by the door and headed into the night.

  * * *

  The nature of hospice work meant she had to face death on a fairly consistent basis but it never grew any easier—and some losses hit much harder than others.

  Tess had learned early, though, that it was best to throw herself into a project, preferably something physical and demanding, while the pain was still raw and fresh. When she could exhaust her body as much as her spirit, she had half a chance of sleeping at night without dreams, tangled-up nightmares of all those she had loved and lost.

  The evening of Jo's funeral, she stood on a stepladder in the room that once had been Scott's, scraping layers of paint off the wide wooden molding that encircled the high ceiling of the room.

  Stripping the trim in this room down and refinishing the natural wood had always been in her plans when she bought the house after Scott's accident but she had never gotten around to it, too busy with his day-to-day care.

  She supposed it was ironic that she was only getting around to doing the work she wanted on the room now that the house was for sale. She ought to leave the redecorating for the new owners to apply their own tastes, but it seemed the perfect project to keep her mind and body occupied as best she could.

  The muscles of her arms ached from reaching above her head but that didn't stop her from scraping in rhythm to the loud honky-tonk music coming from her iPod dock in the corner of the empty room.

  She was singing along about a two-timin' man so loudly she nearly missed the low musical chime of her doorbell over the wails.

  Though she wasn't at all in the mood to talk to anyone, she used any excuse to drop her arms to give her aching muscles a rest.

  She thought about ignoring the doorbell, certain it must be her mother dropping by to check on her. She knew Maura was concerned that Jo's death would hit her hard and she wasn't sure she was in the mood to deal with her maternal worry.

  Her mother would have seen the lights and her car in the driveway and Tess knew she would just keep stubbornly ringing the bell until her daughter answered.

  She sighed and stepped down from the ladder.

  "Coming," she called out. "Hang on."

  She took a second before she pulled open the door to tuck in a stray curl slipping from the folded bandanna that held her unruly hair away from her face while she worked.

  "Sorry, I was up on the ladder and it took me a minute…"

  Her voice trailed off and she stared in shock. That definitely wasn't her mother standing on her small porch. Her heart picked up a beat.

  "Quinn! Hello."

  "Hi. May I come in?" he prompted, when she continued to stare at him, baffled as to why he might be standing on her doorstep.

  "Oh. Of course."

  She stepped back to allow him
inside, fervently wishing she was wearing something a little more presentable than her scruffiest pair of jeans and the disreputable faded cropped T-shirt she used for gardening.

  "Were you expecting someone else?"

  "I thought you might be my mother. She still lives in town, though my father died a few years back. He had a heart attack on the golf course. Shocked us all. Friends have tried to talk my mother into moving somewhere warmer but she claims she likes it here. I think she's really been sticking around to keep an eye on me. Maybe she'll finally move south when I take off for Portland."

  She clamped her mouth shut when she realized she was babbling, something she rarely did. She also registered the rowdy music coming from down the hall.

  "Sorry. Let me grab that music."

  She hurried back to the bedroom and turned off the iPod, then returned to her living room, where she saw him looking at the picture frames clustered across the top of her upright piano.

  He looked gorgeous, she thought, in a Stetson and a denim jacket that made him look masculine and rough.

  Her insides did a long, slow roll but she quickly pushed back her reaction, especially when she saw the slightly lost expression in his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I was stripping paint off the wall trim in my spare bedroom. I…needed the distraction. What can I do for you?"

  He held out his arm, along with something folded and blue. "You left your coat at the ranch. I thought you might need it."

  She took it from him and didn't miss the tiny flicker of static that jumped from his skin to hers. Something just as electric sparked in his eyes at the touch.

  "You didn't need to drive all the way into town to return it. I could have picked it up from Easton some other time."

  He shrugged. "I guess you're not the only one who needed a distraction. Everybody else took off tonight in different directions and I just didn't feel like hanging around the ranch by myself."

  He didn't look at her when he spoke, but she recognized the edgy restlessness in his silver-blue eyes. She wanted to reach out to him, as she might have done with anyone else, but she didn't trust herself around him and she didn't know if he would welcome her touch. Though he had that day at the ranch, she remembered.