Holiday in Stone Creek (13 page)

Olivia shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

To her utter surprise, Tanner leaned in, cupped his hand at the back of her head and planted a gentle but electrifying kiss on her mouth. Then he stepped away, and she put the Suburban into gear and drove out.

T
ANNER STOOD IN THE COLD
, watching Olivia's taillights disappear in the thickening snowfall.

The shimmering colors on the Christmas tree in the front room seemed to mock him through the steam-fogged glass. Whatever Olivia's problem was, he probably couldn't make it right. It was a "family thing," according to Sophie's breathless report, and he wasn't family.

He shoved his hands into his hip pockets--he hadn't bothered with a coat--and thought about, of all things, the puppies. There was no way he could ask Olivia to find them homes after he moved on. Tessa might or might not be willing to stay on at Stone Creek and look after Snidely and Whiplash.

He'd dug himself a big hole, with Sophie
and
with Olivia, and getting out was going to take some doing. Fast-talking wouldn't pack it.

Inside the house, Sophie was making a bed for the puppies in a cardboard box fluffed up with an old blanket.

"Did somebody die?" she asked when Tanner entered the living room.

The question poleaxed him. Sophie had lost her mother when she was seven years old. Did every crisis prompt her to expect a funeral?

"I don't think so, honey," he said gruffly. He should have hugged her, but he couldn't move. He just stood there, like a fool, in the middle of the living room.

Sophie looked at the Christmas tree. "Maybe we could finish decorating tomorrow," she said. "I don't feel much like it now."

"Me, either," Tanner admitted. "Let's take the puppies outside before you bed them down."

Sophie nodded, and they put on their coats and each took a puppy.

The dogs squatted obediently in the thickening snow.

"I like Olivia," Sophie said.

"I do, too," Tanner replied.
Maybe a little too much.

"It was fun having her here to eat supper with us."

Tanner nodded, draped an arm around Sophie's small shoulders. She felt so little, so insubstantial, inside her bulky nylon jacket.

"I showed her my new saddle."

"It's a nice piece of gear."

The puppies were finished. Tanner scooped one up, and Sophie collected the other. They plodded toward
the house, with its half-decorated Christmas tree, peeling wallpaper and outdated plumbing fixtures.

Flipping
this
house, Tanner thought ruefully, was going to be a job.

Once Sophie and the dogs were settled upstairs, in the room she'd declared to be hers, Tanner unplugged the tree lights and wandered into the kitchen to log on at his laptop. He had some supply invoices to look over, fortunately, and that would keep his mind occupied. Keep him from worrying about what had happened in Olivia's family to knock her off balance like that.

He could call Brad and ask, of course, but he wasn't going to do that. It would be an intrusion.

So he poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee, drew up a chair at the table and opened his laptop.

The invoices were there, all right. But they might as well have been written in Sanskrit, for all the sense he could make of them.

After half an hour he gave up.

It was too early to go to sleep, so he snapped on the one TV set in the house, a little portable in the living room, and flipped through channels until he found a weather report.

Snow, snow and more snow.

He sighed and changed channels again, settled on a holiday rerun of
Everybody Loves Raymond.
Here, at least, was a family even more dysfunctional than his own.

In a perverse sort of way, it cheered him up.

M
ELISSA ARRIVED WITH AN
overnight case only twenty minutes after Olivia got home. Her blue eyes were red rimmed from crying.

Of all the O'Ballivan siblings, Melissa was the least emotional. But she stood in Olivia's kitchen, her shoulders stooped and dusted with snowflakes, and choked up when she tried to speak.

Olivia immediately took her younger sister into her arms. "It's okay," she said. "Everything will work out, you'll see."

Melissa nodded, sniffled and pulled away. "God," she said, trying to make a joke, "this place is
such
a dive."

"It'll do until I can move in above the new shelter," Olivia said, pointing toward the nearby hall. "The guest room is ready. Put your stuff away and we'll talk."

Melissa had spotted Charlie Brown, still standing in his nondescript pot in the center of the kitchen table. "You bought a Christmas tree?" she marveled.

Olivia set her hands on her hips. "Why is that such a surprise to everybody?" she asked, realizing only when the words were out of her mouth that
Ginger
had offered the only other comment on the purchase.

Melissa sighed and shook her head. Ginger escorted her to the spare room, and back. Melissa had shed her coat, and she was pushing up the sleeves of her white sweater as she reentered the kitchen.

"Let's get the poor thing decorated," she said.

"Good idea," Olivia agreed.

The tree was fairly heavy, between the root system and the pot, and Melissa helped her lug it into the living room.

Olivia pushed an end table in front of the window, after moving a lamp, and Charlie was hoisted to eye level.

"This is sort of--cheerful," Melissa said, probably
being kind, though whether she felt sorry for Olivia or the tree was anybody's guess.

Olivia pulled the bubble lights and ornaments from the hardware-store bags. "Maybe I should make popcorn or something."

"That," Melissa teased after another sniffle, "would constitute
cooking.
And you promised you wouldn't try that at home."

Olivia laughed. "I'm glad you're here, Mel."

"Me, too," Melissa said. "We should get together more often. We're always working."

"You work more than I do," Olivia told her good-naturedly. "You need to get a life, Melissa O'Ballivan."

"I
have
a life, thank you very much," Melissa retorted, heading for Olivia's CD player and putting on some Christmas music. "Anyway, if anybody's going to preach to me about overdoing it at work and getting a life, it isn't going to be you, Big Sister."

"Are you dating anybody?" Olivia asked, opening one of the cartons of bubble lights. When they were younger, Big John had hung lights exactly like them on the family tree every year. Then they'd become a fire hazard, and he'd thrown them out.

"The last one ended badly," Melissa confessed, busy opening the ornament boxes and putting hangers through the little loops. So busy that she wouldn't meet Olivia's gaze.

"How so?"

"He was married," Melissa said. "Had me fooled, until the wife sent me a photo Christmas card showing them on a trip to the Grand Canyon last summer. Four kids and a dog."

"Yikes," Olivia said, wanting to hug Melissa, or at
least lay a hand on her shoulder, but holding back. Her sister seemed uncharacteristically brittle, as though she might fall apart if anyone touched her just then. "You really cared about him, huh?"

"I cared," Melissa said. "What else is new? If there's a jerk within a hundred miles, I'll find him, rope him in and hand him my heart."

"Aren't you being a little hard on yourself?"

Melissa shrugged offhandedly. "The one before that wanted to meet Brad and present him with a demo so he could make it big in showbiz." She paused. "But at least
he
didn't have children."

"Mel, it happens. Cut yourself a little slack."

"You didn't see those kids. Freckles. Braces. They all looked so happy. And why not? How could they know their dad is a class-A, card-carrying schmuck?"

Once again Olivia found herself at a loss for words. She concentrated on clipping the lights to Charlie Brown's branches.

"Par-ump-pah-pum..." Bing Crosby sang from the CD player.

"I might as well tell you it's the talk of the family," Melissa said, picking up the conversational ball with cheerful determination, "that you skipped out of Thanksgiving to sneak off with Tanner Quinn."

Olivia stiffened. "I didn't 'sneak off' with him," she said.

Not much,
said her conscience.

"Don't be so defensive," Melissa replied, widening her eyes. "He's a hunk. I'd have left with him, too."

"It wasn't--"

"It wasn't what I think?" Melissa challenged, smiling now. "Of course it was. Are you in love with him?"

Olivia opened her mouth, closed it again.

Bing Crosby sang wistfully of orange groves and sunshine. He was dreaming of a white Christmas.

He could have hers.

"Are you?" Melissa pressed.

"No," Olivia said.

"Too bad," Melissa answered.

Olivia looked at her watch, pretending she hadn't heard that last remark. By now Brad was probably in the air, jetting toward Tennessee.

Hold on, Ashley,
she thought.
Hold on.

The call didn't come until almost midnight, and when it did, both Melissa and Olivia, snacking on leathery egg rolls snatched from the freezer and thawed in the oven, dived for the kitchen phone.

Olivia got there first. Home-court advantage.

"She's okay," Brad said. "We'll be back sometime tomorrow."

"Put her on," Olivia replied anxiously.

"I don't think she's up to that right now," Brad answered.

"Tell her Melissa's here with me, and we'll be waiting when she gets home."

Brad agreed, and the call ended.

"She's all right, then?" Melissa asked carefully.

Olivia nodded, but she wasn't entirely convinced it was the truth. The only thing to do now was get some sleep--Melissa needed a night's rest, and so did she.

In her room, with Ginger sharing the bed, Olivia stared up at the ceiling and worried. Across the hall, in the tiny spare room, Melissa was probably doing the same thing.

T
ANNER
,
WATCHING FROM HIS
bedroom window, saw the lights go out across the field, in Olivia's house. He went to look in on Sophie and the puppies one more time, then showered, brushed his teeth, pulled on sweats and stretched out for the night.

Sleep proved elusive, and when it came, it was shallow, a partial unconsciousness ripe for lucid dreams. And not necessarily good ones.

He found himself in what looked like a hospital corridor, near the nurses' desk, and when a tall, dark-haired woman came out of a room, wearing scrubs and carrying a chart, he thought it was Kat.

She was back, then. The last dream hadn't been a goodbye after all.

He tried to speak to her, but it was no use. He was no more articulate than the droopy Christmas garlands and greeting cards taped haphazardly to the walls and trimming the desk.

The general effect was forlorn, rather than festive.

The woman in scrubs slapped the chart down on the counter and sighed.

There were shadows under her eyes, and she was too thin. No wedding ring on her left hand, either.

"Nurse?" she called.

A heavy woman appeared from a back room. "Do you need something, Dr. Quinn?"

Dr. Quinn, medicine woman. It was a joke he and Sophie shared when they talked about her career plans.

Sophie. This was
Sophie
--some kind of ghost of Christmas future.

Tanner tried hard to wake up, but it didn't happen for him. During the effort, he missed whatever Sophie said in reply to the nurse's question.

"I thought you'd go home for Christmas this year," the nurse said chattily. "I'd swear I saw your name on the vacation list."

Sophie studied the chart, a little frown forming between her eyebrows. "I swapped with Dr. Severn," she answered distractedly. "He has a family."

Tanner felt his heart break.
You
have a family, Sophie, he cried silently.

"Anyway, my dad's overseas, building something," Sophie went on. "We don't make a big deal about Christmas."

Sophie,
Tanner pleaded.

But she didn't hear him. She snapped the chart shut and marched off down the hospital corridor again, disappearing into a mist.

My dad's overseas, building something. We don't make a big deal about Christmas.

Sophie's words lingered in Tanner's head when he opened his eyes. He ran the back of his arm across his wet face, alone in the darkness.

So much for sleep.

O
VER WHAT WAS LEFT
of the weekend, the snow melted and the roads were lined with muddy slush. It made the decorations on Main Street look as though they were trying just a shade too hard, by Olivia's calculations.

Brad and Ashley didn't get back to Stone Creek until Monday afternoon. Melissa and Olivia were waiting at Ashley's, along with Ginger, when Brad's truck pulled up outside. They'd considered turning on the outside lights to welcome Ashley home, but in the end it hadn't seemed like a good idea.

Olivia had brewed fresh coffee, though.

Melissa had brought a box of Ashley's favorite doughnuts from the bakery.

As they peered out the front window, watching as Brad helped Ashley out of the truck and held on to her arm as they approached the gate, both Olivia and Melissa knew coffee and doughnuts weren't going to be enough.

Ashley looked thinner--was that possible after only a couple of days?--and even from a distance, Olivia could see that there were deep shadows under her eyes.

Melissa rushed for the door and opened it as Brad brought Ashley up the steps. He shot a look of bruised warning at Melissa, then Olivia.

"I don't want to talk about it," Ashley said.

"You don't have to," Olivia told her softly, reaching for Ashley and drawing back when her sister flinched, huddled closer to Brad, as though she felt threatened. She wouldn't look at either Olivia or Melissa, but she did stoop to pat Ginger's head. "I just want to sleep."

Once Ashley was inside the house, Melissa urged her toward the stairs. The railing was buried under an evergreen garland.

"That must have been a very bad scene," Olivia said to Brad when the twins were on their way upstairs, followed by Ginger.

He nodded, his expression glum. Now that Olivia looked at him, she realized that he looked almost as bad as Ashley did.

"What happened?" Olivia prompted when her brother didn't say anything.

"She wouldn't tell me any more than she just told you." There was more, though. Olivia knew that, by Brad's face, even before he went on. "A desk clerk at Ashley's hotel told me she checked in, all excited, and a woman came to see her--the two of them met in the hotel restaurant for lunch. The woman was Mom, of course. She swilled a lot of wine, and things went sour, fast. According to this clerk, Mom started screaming that if she'd wanted 'a bunch of snot-nosed brats hanging off her,' she'd have stayed in Stone Creek and rotted."

The words, and the image, which she could picture only too well, struck Olivia like blows. It didn't help that she would have expected something similar out of any meeting with her mother.

"My God," she whispered. "Poor Ashley."

"It gets worse," Brad said. "Mom raised such hell
in the restaurant that the police were called. Turns out she'd violated probation by getting drunk, and now she's in jail. Ashley's furious with me because I wouldn't bail her out."

A sudden headache slammed at Olivia's temples with such ferocity that she wondered if she was blowing a blood vessel in her brain. She nodded to let Brad know she'd heard, but her eyes were squeezed shut.

"I tried to get Ashley to stop at the doctor's office on the way into town a little while ago--maybe get some tranquilizers or something--but she said she just wanted to go home." He paused. "Liv, are you okay?"

"I've been better," she answered, opening her eyes. "Right now I'm not worried about myself. I should have known Ashley would have done something like this--tried to stop her--"

"It isn't your fault," Brad said.

Olivia nodded, but she probably wasn't very convincing, to Brad or herself.

"I've got to get home to Meg and the baby," Brad told her. "Can you and Melissa take it from here?"

Again Olivia nodded.

"You'll call if she seems to be losing ground?"

Olivia stood on tiptoe and kissed her brother's unshaven, wind-chilled cheek. "I'll call," she promised.

After casting a rueful glance toward the stairs, Brad turned and left.

Olivia was halfway up those same stairs when Melissa appeared at the top, a finger to her lips.

"She's resting," she whispered. Apparently Ginger had elected to stay in Ashley's room.

Together, Olivia and Melissa retreated to the kitchen.

"Did she say anything?" Olivia prodded.

"Just that it was terrible," Melissa replied, "and that she still doesn't want to talk about it."

Olivia's cell phone chirped. Great. After the slowest weekend on record, professionally speaking anyway, she was suddenly in demand.

"Dr. O'Ballivan," she answered, having seen the clinic's number on the ID panel.

"There's a horse colicking at the Wildes' farm," the receptionist, Becky, told her. "It's bad and Dr. Elliott is on call, but he's busy...."

Colic. The ailment could be deadly for a horse. "I'm on my way," Olivia said.

"Go," Melissa said when she'd hung up. "I'll look after Ashley. Ginger, too."

Having no real choice, Olivia hurried out to the Suburban and headed for the Wildes'.

The next few hours were harrowing, with teenaged Sherry Wilde, the owner of the sick horse, on the verge of hysteria the whole time. Olivia managed to save the bay mare, but it was a fight.

She was so drained afterward that she pulled over and sat in the Suburban with her head resting on the steering wheel, once she'd driven out of sight of the house and barn, and cried.

Presently she heard another rig pull up behind her and, since she was about halfway between Stone Creek and Indian Rock, she figured it was Wyatt Terp or one of his deputies, out on patrol, stopping to make sure she was okay. Olivia sniffled inelegantly and lifted her head.

But the face on the other side of the window was Tanner's, not Wyatt's.

She hadn't seen him since supper at his place a few nights before.

He gestured for her to roll down the window.

She did.

"Engine trouble?" he asked.

Olivia shook her head. She must look a sight, she thought, with her eyes all puffy and her nose red enough to fly lead for Kris Kringle. She was a professional, good under pressure, and it was completely unlike her to sit sniveling beside the road.

"Move over," he said after locking his own vehicle by pressing a button on the key fob. "I'm driving."

"I'm all right--really..."

He already had the door open, and he was standing on the running board.

Olivia scrambled over the console to the passenger side once she realized he wasn't going to give in.

"Where to?" he asked.

"Home, I guess," Olivia said. She'd called the bed-and-breakfast before leaving the Wildes' farm, and Melissa had told her Ashley still wanted to be left alone. The family doctor had dropped by, at Brad's request, and given Ash a mild sedative.

Melissa planned to stay overnight.

"When you're ready to talk," Tanner said, checking the rearview mirror before pulling onto the road, "I'll be ready to listen."

"It might be a while," Olivia said, after a few moments spent struggling to get a grip. "Where's Sophie?"

Tanner grinned. "She stayed after school to watch the drama department rehearse for the winter play," he said. "We'll pick her up on our way if you don't mind."

It went without saying that Olivia didn't mind, but she said it anyway.

Sophie was waiting with friends when they pulled up in front of the middle school. She looked puzzled for a moment, then rushed, smiling, toward the Suburban.

"We really should go back and get your truck," Olivia fretted, glancing at Tanner as Sophie climbed into the rear seat.

"Maybe it will get dirty," Tanner said cheerfully. Then, when Olivia didn't smile, he added, "I'll send somebody from the construction crew to pick it up."

"Can we get pizza?" Sophie wanted to know.

"We have horses to feed," Tanner told her. "Not to mention Snidely and Whiplash. We'll order pizza after the chores are done."

"Our tree is all decorated," Sophie told Olivia. "You should come and see it."

"I will," Olivia said.

"Are you coming down with a cold?" Sophie wanted to know. "You sound funny."

"I'm all right," Olivia answered, touched.

They were about a mile out of town, on the far side of Stone Creek, when they spotted Ginger trudging alongside the road. Olivia's mouth fell open--she'd thought the dog was still at Ashley's.

"What's Ginger doing out here all alone?" Sophie demanded.

"I don't know," Olivia said, struggling in vain to open the passenger-side door even as Tanner stopped the Suburban, got out and lifted the weary dog off the ground. Carried her in his arms to the back of the rig and settled her on the blankets.

"I don't think she's hurt," Tanner said once he was behind the wheel again. "Just tired and pretty footsore."

A tear slipped down Olivia's cheek, and she wiped it away, but not quickly enough.

"Hey," he said, his voice husky. "It can't be that bad."

Olivia didn't answer.

Ashley would be all right.

Ginger would be, too.

But she wasn't so sure about herself.

At some point, without even realizing it, she'd fallen in love with Tanner Quinn. Talk about a dismal revelation.

Reaching her place, Tanner let Sophie stay behind with Olivia and Ginger while he went on to Starcross to feed Butterpie and Shiloh and see to the puppies, as well.

Holding off tears with everything she had, Olivia peeled off her vest, turned up the heat and gave Ginger a quick but thorough exam. Tanner's diagnosis had been correct--she was worn out, and she'd need some salve on the pads of her feet, but otherwise she was fine. "Why didn't you stay at Ashley's?" she asked. "I would have come back for you."

Ginger just looked up at her, eyes full of exhaustion and devoted trust.

"Can I order pizza?" Sophie asked, hovering by the phone.

Olivia smiled a fragile smile, nodded.
Keep busy,
she thought.
Keep busy.
She filled Ginger's water and kibble bowls and dragged her fluffy Ashley-made bed into the kitchen. Ginger turned a few circles and collapsed, obviously spent and blissfully happy to be home.

Sophie placed the pizza order and sat down cross-legged on the floor to pet Ginger, who slumbered on.

"Did Ginger run away?" she asked.

Olivia was making coffee. Maybe Santa would bring her a new percolator. Was it too late to write to him? Did he have an email address?

Was she losing her ever-loving
mind?

Yes, if she'd fallen for Tanner. He was as unavailable as Melissa's last guy.

"She and I were visiting my sister in town earlier," Olivia explained, amazed at how normal she sounded. "Ginger must have decided to come home on her own."

"I ran away once," Sophie confessed.

"So I heard," Olivia answered, listening more intently now. Watching the girl out of the corner of her eye.

"It was a stupid thing to do," Sophie elaborated.

"And dangerous," Olivia agreed.

"I just wanted to come home," Sophie said. "Like Ginger."

Olivia's throat thickened again. "How do you like Stone Creek Middle School?" she asked, forging bravely on.
Oh, and by the way, I'm hopelessly in love with your father.

"They're doing
Our Town,
the week between Christmas and New Year's," Sophie said. "I would have tried out for the part of Emily if I lived here."

"They do
Our Town
every year," Olivia answered. "It's a tradition."

"Were you in it when you were in middle school?"

"No. I had stage fright. So I worked sets and costumes. But my older brother, Brad, had a leading role
one year, and both my sisters, Ashley and Melissa, had parts when their turn came."

"You have stage fright?"

"I didn't get the show-business gene. That went to Brad."

"Dad has some of his CDs. I kind of like the way he sings."

"Me, too," Olivia said.

"Did you always want to be a veterinarian?"

Olivia left the coffeepot and sat down at the table, near Sophie and the sweetly slumbering Ginger. "For as long as I can remember," she said.

"I want to be a people doctor," Sophie said. "Like my mom was."

"I'm sure you'll be a good one."

Sophie looked very solemn, and she might have been about to say something more about her mother, but the Suburban rolled noisily up alongside the house just then. A door slammed.

Tanner was back from feeding horses and puppies, and the pizza would be arriving soon, no doubt.

Maybe I'm over him,
Olivia thought.
Maybe fighting for a horse's life made me overemotional.

He knocked and came inside, shivering. Flecks of hay decorated his clothes. "It's cold out there," he said.

Nope, she wasn't over him.

Olivia's hand shook a little as she gestured toward the coffeepot. "Help yourself," she told him. She was ridiculously glad he was there, he and Sophie both.

Sophie got up from the floor while Tanner poured coffee, and wandered into the living room.

"Hey," she called right away. "Your little tree looks pretty good."

"Thanks," Olivia called back as she and Tanner exchanged low-wattage smiles.

I love you,
Olivia said silently.
How's that for foolish?

"How come there aren't any presents under it?"

"Soph," Tanner objected.

Sophie appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

"There are a lot of guys at our house, fixing up the barn," she told Olivia. "It's a good thing, too, because Aunt Tessa's horses will be tired when they get here."

"Are they on their way?" Olivia asked Tanner.

He nodded. "Tessa's bringing them herself," he said. "I wanted her to fly and let a transport company bring them, but she has a head as hard as Arizona bedrock."

"I think I'm going to like her," Olivia said.

Sophie beamed, nodding in agreement. "Once she's out here with us, she'll get over her break-up in no time!"

Olivia looked at Tanner. "Break-up?"

"Divorce," he said. "None of them are easy, but this one's a meat grinder."