Holiday in Stone Creek (7 page)

Olivia felt bereft at the prospect of leaving Ginger and the pony. She found an old pan, filled it with water at the spigot outside, returned to set it down on the stall floor. "This is weird," she said to Ginger. "What's Tanner going to think if he finds you in Butterpie's stall?"

"That you're crazy,"
Ginger answered.
"No real change in his opinion."

"Very funny," Olivia said, not laughing. Or even smiling. "You're sure you'll be all right? I could come back and pick you up before I head for Stone Creek Ranch."

Ginger shut her eyes and gave an eloquent snore.

After that, there was no point in talking to her.

Olivia gave Butterpie a quick but thorough examination and left.

T
ANNER BOUGHT A HALF CASE
of the best wine he could find--Stone Creek had only one supermarket, and the liquor store was closed. He should have lied, he thought as he stood at the checkout counter, paying for his purchases. Told Brad he had plans for Thanksgiving.

He was going to feel like an outsider, passing a whole afternoon and part of an evening with somebody else's family.

Better that, though, he supposed, than eating alone in the town's single sit-down restaurant, remembering Thanksgivings of old and missing Kat and Sophie.

Kat.

"Is that good?" the clerk asked.

Distracted, Tanner didn't know what the woman was talking about at first. Then she pointed to the wine. She was very young and very pretty, and she didn't seem to mind working on Thanksgiving when practically everybody else in the western hemisphere was bellying up to a turkey feast someplace.

"I don't know," Tanner said in belated answer to her cordial question. He'd been something of a wine aficionado once, but since he didn't indulge anymore, he'd sort of lost the knack. "I go by the labels, and the price."

The clerk nodded as if what he'd said made a lick of sense, and wished him a happy Thanksgiving.

He wished her the same, picked up the wine box, the six bottles rattling a little inside it, and made for the door.

The dream came back to him, full force, as he was setting the wine on the passenger seat of his truck.

Kat, standing in the aisle of the barn, in that white summer dress, telling him she wouldn't be back.

It was no good telling himself he'd only been dreaming in the first place. He'd held on to those night visits--they'd gotten him through a lot of emotional white water. It had been Kat who'd said he ought to watch his drinking. Kat who'd advised him to accept the Stone Creek job and oversee it himself instead of sending in somebody else.

Kat who'd insisted the newspapers were wrong; she hadn't been a target--she'd been caught in the cross fire of somebody else's fight. Sophie, she'd sworn, was in no danger.

She'd faded before his eyes like so much thin smoke a couple of nights before. The wrench in his gut had been powerful enough to wake up him up. The dream had
stayed with him, though, which was the same as having it over and over again. Last night he'd been unable to sleep at all. He'd paced the dark empty house for a while, then, unable to bear it any longer, he'd gone out to the barn, saddled Shiloh and taken a moonlight ride.

For a while he'd tried to outride what he was feeling--not loss, not sorrow, but a sense of letting go. Of somehow being set free.

He'd
loved
Kat, more than his own life. Why should her going on to wherever dead people went have given him a sense of liberation, even exaltation, rather than sorrow?

The guilt was almost overwhelming. As long as he'd mourned her, she'd seemed closer somehow. Now the worst was over. There had been some kind of profound shift, and he hadn't regained his footing.

They'd been out for hours, he and Shiloh, when he was crossing the field between his place and Olivia's and that dog of hers came racing toward him. He'd have gone home, put Shiloh up with some extra grain for his trouble, taken a shower and fallen into bed if it hadn't been for Ginger and the sight of Olivia standing on the bottom rail of the fence.

She'd been wearing sweats and silly rubber boots and an old man's coat, and for all that, she'd managed to look sexy. He'd finagled an invitation for coffee--hell, he'd flat out invited
himself
--and thought about taking her to bed the whole time he was there.

Not that he would have made a move on Doc. It was way too soon, and she'd probably have conked him over the head with the nearest heavy object, but he'd been tempted, just the same.

Tempted as he'd never been, since Kat.

At home he left the wine in the truck and headed for the barn.

Shiloh was asleep, standing up, the way horses do. When Tanner looked over the stall door at Butterpie, though, his eyes started to sting. Butterpie was lying in the wood shavings, and Olivia's dog was cuddled up right alongside her, as though keeping some kind of a vigil.

"I'll be damned," Tanner muttered. He'd grown up in the country, and he'd known horses to have nonequine companions--cows, cats, dogs and even pygmy goats. But he'd never seen anything quite like this.

He figured he probably should take Ginger home-- Olivia might be looking for her--but he couldn't quite bring himself to part the two animals.

"You hungry, girl?" he asked Ginger, thinking what a fine thing it would be to have a dog. The problem was, he moved around too much--job to job, country to country. If he couldn't raise his own daughter, how could he hope to take good care of a mutt?

Ginger made a low sound in her throat and looked up at him with those melty eyes of hers. He made a quick trip into the house for a hunk of cube steak and a bowl of water, and set them both down where she could reach them.

She drank thirstily of the water, nibbled at the steak.

Tanner patted her head. He'd seen her jump into Olivia's Suburban the day before, so she still had some zip in her, despite the gray hairs around her muzzle, but she hadn't gotten over that stall door by herself. Olivia must have left her here, to look after the pony.

When he spotted an old grain pan in the corner, overturned, he knew that was what had happened. She must have found the pan in the junk around the barn, filled
it with water and left it so the dog could drink. Then one of the animals, most likely Butterpie, had stepped on the thing and spilled the contents.

He was pondering that sequence of events when his cell phone rang.

Sophie.

"This parade bites," she said without any preamble. "It's cold, and Mary Susan Parker keeps sneezing on me and we're not allowed to get into the minibar in our hotel suite! Ms. Wiggins took the keys away."

Tanner chuckled. "Hello and happy Thanksgiving to you, too, sweetheart," he said, so glad to hear her voice that his eyes started stinging again.

"It's not like we want to drink
booze
or anything," Sophie complained. "But we can't even help ourselves to a soda or a candy bar!"

"Horrible," Tanner commiserated.

An annoyed silence crackled from Sophie's end.

"Butterpie has a new friend," Tanner said, to get the conversation going again. In a way, talking to Sophie made him miss her more, but at the same time he wanted to keep her on the line as long as possible. "A dog named Ginger."

He'd caught Sophie's interest that time. "Really? Is it your dog?"

It was telling, Tanner thought, that Sophie had said "your dog" instead of "our dog." "No. Ginger lives next door. She's just here for a visit."

"I'm lonely, Dad," Sophie said, sounding much younger than her twelve years. She was almost shouting to be heard over a brass band belting out "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." "Are you lonely, too?"

"Yes," he replied. "But there are worse things than being lonely, Soph."

"Right now I can't think of any. Are you going to be all alone all day?"

Crouching now, Tanner busied himself scratching Ginger's ears. "No. A friend invited me to dinner."

Sophie sighed with apparent relief. "Good. I was afraid you'd nuke one of those frozen TV dinners or something and eat it while you watched some football game. And that would be
pathetic.
"

"Far be it from me to be pathetic," Tanner said, but a lump had formed in his throat and his voice came out sounding hoarse. "Anything but that."

"What friend?" Sophie persisted. "What friend are you having dinner with, I mean?"

"Nobody you know."

"A woman?" Was that
hope
he heard in his daughter's voice? "Have you met someone, Dad?"

Damn. It
was
hope. The kid probably fantasized that he'd remarry one day, and she could come home from boarding school for good, and they'd all live happily ever after, with a dog and two cars parked in the same garage every night, like a normal family.

That was never going to happen.

Ginger looked up at him in adoring sympathy when he rubbed his eyes, tired to the bone. His sleepless night was finally catching up with him--or that was what he told himself.

"No," he said. "I haven't met anybody, Soph." Olivia's face filled his mind. "Well, I've met somebody, but I haven't
met
them, if you know what I mean."

Sophie, being Sophie,
did
know what he meant. Exactly.

"But you're dating!"

"No," Tanner said quickly. Bumming a cup of coffee in a woman's kitchen didn't constitute a date, and neither did sitting at the same table with her on Thanksgiving Day. "No. We're just--just friends."

"Oh." Major disappointment. "This whole thing bites!"

"So you said," Tanner replied gently, wanting to soothe his daughter but not having the first clue how to go about it. "Maybe it's your mind-set. Since today's Thanksgiving, why not give gratitude a shot?"

She hung up on him.

He thought about calling her right back, but decided to do it later, after she'd had a little time to calm down, regain her perspective. She was a lucky kid, spending the holiday in New York, watching the famous parade in person, staying in a fancy hotel suite with her friends from school.

"Women," he told Ginger.

She gave a low whine and laid her muzzle on his arm.

He stayed in the barn a while, then went into the house, took a shower, shaved and crashed, asleep before his head hit the pillow.

And Kat did not come to him.

O
LIVIA HAD STOPPED BY
Tanner's barn on the way to Stone Creek Ranch, hoping to persuade Ginger to take a break from horsesitting, but she wouldn't budge.

Arriving at the homeplace, she checked on Rodney, who seemed content in his stall, then, gym bag in hand, she slipped inside the small bath off the tack room and grabbed a quick, chilly shower. She shimmied into those
wretched panty hose, donned the skirt and the blue sweater and the boots, and even applied a little mascara and lip gloss for good measure.

Never let it be said that she'd come to a family dinner looking like a--
veterinarian.

And the fact that Tanner Quinn was going to be at this shindig had absolutely
nothing
to do with her decision to spruce up.

Starting up the front steps, she had a sudden, poignant memory of Big John standing on that porch, waiting for her to come home from a high school date with Jesse McKettrick. After the dance all the kids had gone to the swimming hole on the Triple M, and splashed and partied until nearly dawn.

Big John had been furious, his face like a thunder-cloud, his voice dangerously quiet.

He'd given Jesse what-for for keeping his granddaughter out all night, and grounded Olivia for a month.

She'd been outraged, she recalled, smiling sadly. Tearfully informed her angry grandfather that
nothing had happened
between her and Jesse, which was true, if you didn't count necking. Now, of course, she'd have given almost anything to see that temperamental old man again, even if he
was
shaking his finger at her and telling her that in his day, young ladies knew how to behave themselves.

Lord, how she missed him, missed his rants.
Especially
the rants, because they'd been proof positive that he cared what happened to her.

The door opened just then, and Brad stepped out onto the porch, causing the paper turkey to flutter on its hook behind him.

"Ashley's going to kill me," Olivia said. "I forgot to pick up salads at the deli."

Brad laughed. "There's so much food in there, she'll never know the difference. Now, come on in before we both freeze to death."

Olivia hesitated. Swallowed. Watched as Brad's smile faded.

"What is it?" he asked, coming down the steps.

"Ashley's looking for Mom," she said. She hadn't planned to bring that up that day. It just popped out.

"What?"

"She's probably going to announce it at dinner or something," Olivia rushed on. "Is it just me, or do you think this is a bad idea, too?"

"It's a very bad idea," Brad said.

"You know something about Mom, don't you? Something you're keeping from the rest of us." It was a shot in the dark, a wild guess, but it struck the bull's-eye, dead center. She knew that by the grim expression on Brad's famous face.

"I know enough," he replied.

"I shouldn't have brought it up, but I was thinking about Big John, and that led to thinking about Mom, and I remembered what Ashley told me, so--"

"It's okay," Brad said, trying to smile. "Maybe she won't bring it up."

Olivia doubted they could be that lucky. Ashley was an O'Ballivan through and through, and when she got on a kick about something, she had to ride it out to the bitter end. "I could talk to her..."

Brad shook his head, pulled her inside the house. It was too hot and too crowded and too loud, but Olivia
was determined to make the best of the situation, for her family's sake, if not her own.

Big John would have wanted it that way.

She hunted until she found Mac, sitting up in his playpen, and lifted him into her arms. "It smells pretty good in here, big guy," she told him. There was a fragrant fire crackling on the hearth, and Meg had lit some scented candles, and delicious aromas wafted from the direction of the kitchen.