“You coming?” she called, her voice a little shaky.
“I’ll stay here for a while,” Ginger answered without turning around. She was gazing off toward Sophie and Tanner.
Olivia swallowed an achy, inexplicable lump. “Don’t go chasing after them, okay? Wait on the porch or something.”
Ginger didn’t offer a reply, or turn around. But she didn’t streak off across the field as she had the morning before, either. Short of forcing the animal into the truck, Olivia didn’t know what else to do besides leave.
Her first stop was Stone Creek Ranch. As she had at Starcross, she avoided the house and made for the barn. With luck, she wouldn’t run into Brad, and have to go into all her concerns about Ashley’s mother search.
Luck wasn’t with her. Brad O’Ballivan, the world-famous, multi-Grammy-winning singer, was mucking out stalls, the reindeer tagging at his heels like a faithful hound as he worked.
He stopped, leaned on his pitchfork and offered a lopsided grin as Olivia approached, though his eyes were troubled.
“I see Rodney’s getting along all right,” Olivia said, her voice swelling, strangely thick, in her throat, and nearly cutting off her breath.
Brad gave a solemn nod. Tried for another grin and missed. “I’ll have a blue Christmas if Santa comes to reclaim this little guy,” he said. “I’ve gotten attached.”
Olivia managed a smile, tried to catch it when it slipped off her mouth by biting her lower lip, and failed. “Why the sad face, cowboy?”
“I was about to ask you the same question—sans the cowboy part.”
“Ashley thinks she found Mom,” Olivia said.
Brad nodded glumly, set the pitchfork aside, leaning it against the stable wall. Crouched to pet Rodney for a while before steering him back into his stall and shutting the door.
“I guess the time has come to talk about this,” Brad said. “Pull up a bale of hay and sit down.”
Olivia sat, but it felt more like sinking. Bits of hay poked her through the thighs of her jeans. All the starch, as Big John used to say, had gone out of her knees.
Brad sat across from her, studied her face and said—nothing.
“Where are Meg and Mac?” Olivia asked.
“Mac’s with his grandma McKettrick,” Brad answered. “Meg’s shopping with Sierra and some of the others.”
Olivia nodded. Knotted her hands together in her lap. “Brad, talk to me. Tell me what you know about Mom—because you know something. I can tell.”
“She’s alive,” Brad said.
Olivia stared at him, astonished, and angry, too. “And you didn’t think the rest of us might be interested in that little tidbit of information?”
“She’s a drunk, Livie,” Brad told her, holding her gaze steadily. He looked as miserable as Olivia felt. “I tried to help her—she wouldn’t be helped. When she calls, I still cut her a check—against my better judgment.”
Olivia actually felt the barn sway around her. She had to lean forward and put her head between her knees and tell herself to breathe slowly.
Brad’s hand came to rest on her shoulder.
She shook it off. “Don’t!”
“Liv, our mother is not a person you’d want to know,” Brad said quietly. “This isn’t going to turn out like one of those TV movies, where everybody talks things through and figures out that it’s all been one big, tragic misunderstanding. Mom left because she didn’t want to be married, and she sure as hell didn’t want to raise four kids. And there’s no evidence that she’s changed, except for the worse.”
Olivia lifted her head. The barn stopped spinning like the globe Big John used to keep in his study. What had happened to that globe?
“What’s she like?”
“I told you, Liv—she’s a drunk.”
“She’s got to be more than that. The worst drunk in the world is more than just a drunk….”
Brad sighed, intertwined his fingers, let his hands fall between his knees. The look in his eyes made Olivia ache. “She’s pretty, in a faded-rose sort of way. Too thin, because she doesn’t eat. Her hair’s blond, but not shiny and thick like it was when we knew her before. She’s—hard, Olivia.”
“How long have you been in touch with her?”
“I’m not ‘in touch’ with her,” Brad answered gently, though his tone was gruff. “She called my manager a few years ago, told him she was my mother, and when Phil passed the word on to me, I went to see her. She didn’t ask about Dad, or Big John, or any of you. She wanted to—” He stopped, looked away, his head slightly bowed under whatever he was remembering about that pilgrimage.
“Cash in on being Brad O’Ballivan’s mother?” Olivia supplied.
“Something like that,” Brad replied, meeting Olivia’s eyes again, though it obviously wasn’t easy. “She’s bad news, Liv. But she won’t come back to Stone Creek—not even if it means having a ticket to ride the gravy train. She flat out doesn’t want anything to do with this place, or with us.”
“Why?”
“Damn, Liv. Do you think I know the answer to that any better than you do? This has been harder on you and the twins—I realize that. Girls need a mother. But there were plenty of times when I could have used one, too.”
Olivia reached out, touched her brother’s arm. He’d had a hard time, especially after their dad was killed. He and Big John had butted heads constantly, mostly because they were so much alike—strong, stubborn, proud to a fault. And they’d been estranged after Brad ran off to Nashville and stayed there.
Oh, Brad had visited a few times over the years. But he’d always left again, over Big John’s protests, and then the heart attack came, and it was too late.
“Are you thinking about Big John?” he asked.
It was uncanny, the way he could see into her head sometimes. “Yeah,” she said. “His opinion of Delia was even lower than yours. He’d probably have stood at the door with a shotgun if she’d showed her face in Stone Creek.”
“The door? He’d have been up at the gate, standing on the cattle guard,” Brad answered with a slight shake of his head. “Liv, what are we going to do about Ashley? I think Melissa’s levelheaded enough to deal with this. But Ash is in for a shock here. A pretty bad one.”
“Is there something else you aren’t telling me?”
Brad held up his right hand, as if to give an oath. “I’ve told you the whole ugly truth, insofar as I know it.”
“I’ll talk to Ashley,” she said.
“Good luck,” Brad said.
Olivia started to stand, planning to leave, but Brad stopped her by laying a hand on her shoulder.
“Hold on a second,” he told her. “There is one more thing I need to say.”
Olivia waited, wide-eyed and a little alarmed.
He drew a deep breath, let it out as a reluctant sigh. “About Tanner Quinn,” he began.
Olivia stiffened. Brad could not possibly know what had happened between her and Tanner—could he? He wasn’t that perceptive.
“What about him?”
“He’s a decent guy, Liv,” Brad told her. “But—”
“But?”
“Did he tell you about his wife? How she died?”
Olivia shook her head, wondering if Brad was about to say the circumstances had been suspicious, like in one of those reality crime shows on cable TV.
“Her name was Katherine,” Brad said. “He called her Kat. He won the bid on a construction job in a place where, let’s just say, Americans aren’t exactly welcome. It was a dangerous project, but there were millions at stake, so he agreed. One day the two of them went to one of those open-air markets—a souk I think they call it. Tanner stopped to look at something, and Kat either didn’t notice or didn’t wait for him. When she reached the street…” Brad paused, his eyes as haunted as if he’d been there himself. “Somebody strafed the market with some kind of automatic weapon. Kat was hit I don’t know how many times, and she died in Tanner’s arms, on the sidewalk.”
Olivia put a hand over her mouth. Squeezed her eyes shut.
“I know,” Brad muttered. “It’s awful even to imagine it. I met him a couple of years after it happened.” He stopped. Sighed again. “The only reason I told you was, well, I’ve seen Tanner go through a lot of women, Liv. He can’t—or won’t—commit. Not to a woman, not to his daughter. He never stays in one place any longer than absolutely necessary. It’s as if he thinks he’s a target.”
Olivia knew Brad was right. She had only to look at Sophie, forced to take drastic measures just to visit her father over the holidays, to see the truth.
“Why the warning?” she asked.
Brad leaned forward, clunked his forehead briefly against hers. “I know the signs, little sister,” he answered. “I know the signs.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFTER LEAVING Stone Creek Ranch, the conversation with Brad draping her mind and heart like a lead net, Olivia stopped off at the clinic in town, just in case she might be needed.
She wasn’t, actually, and that was kind of deflating. As the on-call vet for the current twenty-four-hour time slot, she could be sent anywhere in the county, at any moment. But today all was quiet on the Western front, so to speak.
She headed for Ashley’s, fully intending to bite the mother bullet, but her sister’s silly yellow car, usually parked in the driveway at that time of morning after a routine run to the post office, was gone. Crews of local college kids, home on vacation, swarmed the snowy front yard, though, bedecking every shrub and window and eave with holiday lights.
Olivia was momentarily reminded of Snoopy and his decorated doghouse in the cartoon Christmas special she’d watched faithfully since she was three years old. The image cheered her a little.
“Commercial dog,” she muttered, though Ashley didn’t qualify for the term species-wise, waving to the light crew before pulling away from the curb again.
She ought to see if she could swing a haircut, she thought, cruising the slush-crusty main street of Stone Creek. Every street lamp and every store window was decorated, colored bulbs blinking the requisite bright red and green.
The Christmas-tree man had set up for business down by the supermarket—a new guy this year, she’d heard—and a plump Santa was already holding court in a spiffy-looking black sleigh with holly leaves and berries decorating its graceful lines. Its brass runners gleamed authentically, and eight life-size plastic reindeer had been hitched to the thing with a jingle-bell harness.
Olivia pulled into the lot—before she saw Tanner’s red truck parked among other vehicles. She should have noticed it, she thought—it was the only clean one. She shifted into reverse, but it was too late.
Tanner, delectable in jeans and a black leather jacket, caught sight of her and waved. His young daughter, she of the dramatic helicopter arrival, stood beside him, clapping mittened hands together to keep warm as she inspected a tall, lush tree.
Annoyed by her own reticence, Olivia sighed, pulled into one of the few remaining parking spots and shut off the Suburban.
“Hey,” Tanner said as she approached, working hard to smile.
Sophie was a very beautiful child—a Christmas angel in ordinary clothes. She probably looked just like her mother, the woman who had died so tragically, in Tanner’s arms, no less. The one he’d loved too much to ever forget, according to Brad.
While they were making love the day before, had Tanner been pretending Olivia was Katherine?
Olivia blushed. Amped up her smile.
“Olivia O’Ballivan,” Tanner said quietly, his eyes watchful, even a little pensive as he studied her face, “meet my daughter, Sophie.”
Sophie turned, smiled and put out a hand. “Hello,” she said. “Dad says you’re a veterinarian, and you took care of Butterpie. Thank you.”
Something melted, in a far and usually inaccessible corner of Olivia’s heart. “You’re welcome,” she answered brightly. “And so is Butterpie.”
“What do you think of this tree?” Sophie asked next, turning to the massive, fragrant blue spruce she’d been examining when Olivia drove in.
Olivia’s gaze slid to Tanner’s face, sprang away again. “It’s—it’s lovely,” she said.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” bellowed the hired Santa Claus. Apparently the guy hadn’t heard that the line was now considered offensive to women.
“Would you believe this place is run by a man named Kris Kringle?” Sophie said to Olivia, drawing her in somehow, making her feel included, as though they couldn’t buy the tree unless she approved of it.
Tanner nudged Sophie’s shoulder with a light motion of one elbow. “It’s an alias, kid,” he said out of the side of his mouth in a pretty respectable imitation of an old-time gangster.
“Duh,” Sophie said, but she beamed up at her father, her face aglow with adoration. “And I thought he was really Santa Claus.”
“Go get Mr. Kringle, so we can wrap this deal up,” Tanner told her.
Did he see, Olivia wondered, how much the child loved him? How much she needed him?
Sophie hurried off to find the proprietor.
“I take it Sophie will be around for Christmas,” Olivia ventured.
“Until New Year’s,” Tanner said with a nod. “Then she goes straight back to Connecticut. Butterpie’s going along—he’ll board in a stable near the school until Briar wood’s is built—so you won’t have to worry about a depressed horse.”
Olivia’s throat thickened. All her emotions were close to the surface, she supposed because of the holidays and the situation with her mother, which might well morph into a Situation, and the knowledge that all good things seemed to be temporary.
“I’ll miss Butterpie,” she managed, shoving her cold hands into the pockets of her old down vest. It was silly to draw comparisons between her own issues and Sophie’s, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She was entangled.
“I’ll miss Sophie,” Tanner said.
Olivia wanted to beat at his chest with her fists, which just went to prove she needed therapy. She needs you! she wanted to scream. Don’t you see that you’re all she has?
Patently none of her business. She pretended an interest in a small potted tree nearby, a Charlie Brownish one that suited her mood. Right then and there she decided to buy it, take it home and toss some lights onto it.
It was an act of mercy.
“Olivia—” Tanner began, and his tone boded something serious, but before he could get the rest of the sentence out of his mouth, Sophie was back with Kris Kringle.
Olivia very nearly didn’t believe what she was seeing. The man wore ordinary clothes—quilted snow pants, a heavy plaid flannel shirt, a blue down vest and a Fargo hat with earflaps. But he had a full white beard and kind—okay, twinkly—blue eyes. Round red cheeks, and a bow of a mouth.
“A fine choice indeed,” he told Olivia, noting her proximity to the pathetic little tree no one else was likely to buy. Only the thought of it, sitting forgotten on the lot when Christmas arrived, amid a carpet of dried-out pine needles, kept her from changing her mind. “I could tie on some branches for you with twine. Thicken it up a little.”
Olivia shook her head, rummaged in her pocket for money, being very careful not to look at Tanner and wondering why she felt the need to do that. “It’s fine the way it is. How much?”
Kringle named a figure, and Olivia forked over the funds. She felt stupid, being so protective of a tree, and she didn’t even own any decorations, but Charlie Brown was going home with her anyway. They’d just have to make the best of things.
“Dad told me you found a real reindeer,” Sophie said to Olivia when she would have grabbed her tree, said goodbye and made a hasty retreat.
This drew Kris Kringle’s attention, Olivia noted out of the corner of her eye. He perked right up, listening intently. Zeroing in. If he thought he was going to use that poor little reindeer to attract customers, he had another think coming.
Sure enough, he said, “I just happen to
be missing a reindeer.”
Olivia didn’t believe him, and even though she knew that was because she didn’t want to believe him, her radar was up and her antennae were beeping. “Is that so?” she asked somewhat stiffly, while Tanner and Sophie looked on with heightened interest. “How did you happen to misplace this reindeer, Mr.—?”
“Kringle,” the old man insisted with a smile in his eyes. “We did a personal appearance at a birthday party, and he just wandered off.”
“I see,” Olivia said. “Didn’t you look for him?”
“Oh, yes,” Kringle replied, looking like a right jolly old elf and all that. “No tracks to be found. We hunted and hunted. Is Rodney all right?”
Olivia’s mouth fell open. Kringle must be the reindeer’s rightful owner if he knew his name. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. “He’s—he’s fine,” she said.
Kringle smiled warmly. “The other seven have been very worried, and so have I, although I’ve had an idea all along that Rodney was on a mission of some kind.”
Olivia swallowed. She’d wanted to find Rodney’s rightful owner so he could go home. So why did she feel so dejected?
“The other seven what?” Tanner asked with a dry note in his voice.
“Why, the other seven reindeer, of course,” Kringle answered merrily after tossing a conspiratorial glance Sophie’s way. “If Rodney is safe and well taken care of, though, we won’t fret about him. Not until Christmas Eve, anyway. We’ll need him back by then for sure.”
If Olivia had had a trowel handy, she would have handed it to the guy, so he could lay it on thicker. He really knew how to tap into Christmas, that was for sure.
“I thought Santa’s reindeer had names like Prancer and Dancer,” Sophie said, sounding serious.
Tanner, meanwhile, got out his wallet to pay for the big spruce.
“Well, they do,” Kringle said, still in Santa mode. “But they’re getting older, and Donner’s developed a touch of arthritis. So I brought Rodney up out of the ranks, since he showed so much promise, especially at flying. He’s only been on trial runs so far, but this Christmas Eve he’s on the flight manifest for the whole western region.”
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