CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jack McCall grinned and saluted. “Good to see you again, Ash,” he said, admiring her with a sweep of his eyes. “Are we still going to the dance together tonight?”
Ashley shinnied down the ladder, which was no mean trick in a floor-length Laura Ashley jumper. “I wouldn’t go anywhere with you, you jerk,” she cried. “Get out of my house!”
Olivia’s mouth fell open. Ashley was the consummate bed-and-breakfast owner. She never screamed at guests—and Mr. McCall was clearly a guest, since he had a suitcase—much less called them sons of bitches.
“Sorry,” McCall said, crossing his eyes a little at the finger Ashley was about to shake under his nose. “The deal’s made, the lease is signed and I’m here until spring. On and off.”
The college-student elves had long since fled, but Olivia and Ginger remained, both of them fascinated.
“She’s crazy about him,” Ginger said.
“Look, Ash,” McCall went on smoothly, “I know we had that little misunderstanding over the cocktail waitress, but don’t you think we ought to let bygones be bygones?”
This man worked for Tanner? Olivia thought, trying to catch up with the conversation. He didn’t look like the type to work for anyone but himself—or maybe the president.
Where had Ashley met him?
And what was the story with the cocktail waitress?
“I was young and stupid,” Ashley spouted, putting her hands on her hips.
“But very beautiful.” Jack McCall sighed. “And you still are, Ash. It’s good to see you again.”
“I bet you said the same thing to the cocktail waitress!” Ashley cried.
Jack looked, Olivia thought, like a young, modern version of Cary Grant. Impishly chagrined and way too handsome. And where had she heard his name before?
“She meant nothing to me,” Jack said.
Olivia rolled her eyes. What a charmer he was. But he and Ashley looked perfect together, even if Ashley was trembling with fury.
It was time to step in, before things escalated.
Olivia hurried over and took her sister by the arm, tugging her toward the kitchen and, at the same time, chiming rapid-fire at McCall, over one shoulder, “Hi. I’m Olivia O’Ballivan, Ashley’s sister. Glad to meet you. Make yourself at home while I talk her into building an ice castle out of sugar, will you? Thanks.”
“An ice castle?” Ashley demanded once they were in the kitchen.
“With turrets, and lights inside. I’ll pay you big bucks. Who is that guy, Ash?”
Ashley’s shoulders sagged. She blew out a breath, and her bangs fluttered in midair. “He’s nobody,” she said.
“Get real. I know passion when I see it.”
“I knew him in college,” Ashley admitted.
“You never mentioned dating the reincarnation of Cary Grant.”
“He dropped me for a cocktail waitress. Why would I want to mention that? I felt like an idiot.”
“That was a while ago, Ash.”
“Don’t you have to get back to work or something?”
Ginger meandered in. “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight,” she said.
“Hush,” Olivia said.
“I will not hush,” Ashley said. “And what’s this about a sugar ice castle with lights inside?”
“I need something special to give the Quinns for Christmas, and you’re the only one I know with that kind of—”
“Time on her hands?” Ashley finished ominously.
“Talent,” Olivia said sweetly. “The only one with that kind of talent.”
“You are so full of it.”
Olivia batted her eyelashes. “But I’m your big sister, and you love me. I’m always there for you, and if you ever had a pet, I’d give it free veterinary care. For life.”
“No sugar castle,” Ashley said. “I have a million things to do, with all these guests checking in.” She paused. “If I murdered Jack McCall, would you testify that I was with you and give me an alibi?”
“Only if you made me a few batches of your stupendous Christmas cookies so I could give them to Sophie and Tanner.”
Ashley smiled in spite of her earlier ire, but pain lingered in her eyes, old and deep. Jack McCall had hurt her, and suddenly he seemed a whole lot less charming than before. “I’ll bake the cookies,” she said. “God knows where I’ll find the time, but I’ll do it.”
Olivia kissed her sister’s cheek. “I’m beyond grateful. Are you really going to refuse to rent McCall a room?”
“It’s Christmas,” Ashley said musingly. “And anyway, if he’s here, under my roof, I can find lots of ways to get back at him. By New Year’s, he’ll be begging to break the lease.”
Olivia laughed, held up the armload of clothes. “Thanks, Ash,” she said. “In this getup, I’ll be a regular Cinderella.”
“Shall I stay here and spy, or go back to the clinic with you?” Ginger inquired, looking from Ashley to Olivia.
“You’re going with me,” Olivia said on the way back to the living room. She’d have gone out the back way, as the fleeing elves probably had, but she wanted one more look at Jack McCall.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ashley argued, following. “I’ve still got to tie at least a hundred bows on the branches of the Christmas tree.”
“I was talking to Ginger,” Olivia explained breezily.
“And I suppose she talked back?” Ashley asked.
“Skeptic,” Olivia said.
Jack McCall had taken off his coat, and his bag sat at the base of the stairs. Evidently he was planning to stay on. The poor guy probably had no idea how many passive-aggressive ways there were for a crafty bed-and-breakfast owner to make an unwanted guest hit the road.
Too much starch in the sheets.
Too much salt in the stew.
The possibilities were endless.
Olivia was smiling broadly as she and Ginger descended Ashley’s front steps, headed for the Suburban.
* * *
Fat flakes of snow drifted down from a heavy sky as the entire population of Stone Creek and half of Indian Rock gathered in the town’s tiny park for the annual tree-lighting ceremony.
Sophie stood at Olivia’s left side, Tanner at her right.
Brad had been roped into being the MC, but it was an informal gig, and he didn’t have to sing. He announced that the high school gym was all decked out for the carnival and the dance afterward, and reminded the crowd that all the proceeds would go to worthy causes.
An enormous live spruce awaited splendor, its branches dark and fragrant, strings of extension cord running from beneath it. Roots enclosed in burlap, it would be planted when the ground thawed, like all the other Stone Creek Christmas trees before it.
“Are we ready?” Brad asked, holding the switch.
“YES!” roared the townspeople in one happy voice.
Brad flipped the plastic lever, and what seemed like millions of tiny colored lights shimmered in the cold winter night, like stars trapped in the branches.
The applause sounded like a herd of cattle stampeding.
The din had barely subsided when sleigh bells jingled, right on cue.
Tanner grinned down at Olivia and took her hand. She felt a little trill, though she was a bit nervous because she’d already had to surreptitiously roll up her borrowed palazzo pants a couple of times.
“Could it be?” Brad said into the mic. “Could Santa Claus be right here in Stone Creek?”
The smaller children in the crowd waited in breathless silence, their eyes huge with wonder and anticipation.
It happened every year. Santa arrived on a tractor from the heavy-equipment rental place, bells jingling an accompaniment through a scratchy PA system, the man in the red suit waving and tossing candy and shouting, “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
This year was a little different, it turned out.
Kris Kringle himself drove the fancy tree-lot sleigh, the one with the brass runners, into the center of the park—pulled by seven real live reindeer and a donkey. He wore hands down the best Santa suit Olivia had ever seen, and instead of candy, he had a huge, bulky green velvet bag in the back of the sleigh.
“Very authentic,” Tanner told Olivia, his eyes sparkling.
There were actual wrapped presents in the bag, they soon saw, and Kris Kringle distributed them, making sure every child received one.
Even Sophie, too old at twelve to believe in Santa, got a small red-and-white striped package.
Brad must have been behind the gifts, Olivia thought. Times were hard, and a lot of Stone Creek families had been out of work since late summer. It would be just like her brother to see that they got something for Christmas in a pride-sparing way like this.
“Wow,” Sophie said, staring at the package, then casting a sidelong glance at Tanner. “Can I open it?”
“Why not?” Tanner asked, looking mystified. Olivia knew he was throwing a turkey-and-trimmings feast for the whole community on Christmas Day, down at the senior citizens’ center—Sophie had spilled the beans about that—but he didn’t seem to be in on the presents-for-every-kid-in-town thing.
Sophie ripped into the package, drew in a breath when she saw what it was—an exquisite miniature snow globe with horses inside, one like Shiloh, the other the spitting image of Butterpie.
“Is this from you, Dad?” she asked after swallowing hard.
Tanner was staring curiously at Kris Kringle, who glanced his way and smiled before turning his attention back to the children clamoring to pet the lone donkey and the seven reindeer.
“Gently, now,” Kringle called, a right jolly old elf. “They have a long trip to make on Christmas Eve and they’re not used to crowds.”
“Can they fly?” one child asked. Olivia spotted the questioner, a little boy in outgrown clothes, clutching an unopened package in both hands. She’d gone to high school with his parents, both of whom had been drawing unemployment since the sawmill closed down for the winter. It was rumored that the husband had just been hired as a laborer at Tanner’s construction site, but of course that didn’t mean their Christmas would be plush. The family would have bills to catch up on.
“Why, of course they can fly, Billy Johnson,” Kringle replied jovially.
“Oh, brother,” Tanner sighed.
Mr. Kringle had gotten to know everybody in town, Olivia thought, just since the day after Thanksgiving. Otherwise he wouldn’t have known Billy’s name.
“What about the donkey?” a little girl inquired. Like Billy’s, her clothes showed some wear, and she had a package, too, also unopened. Olivia didn’t recognize her, figuring she and her family must be new in town. “There wasn’t any donkey in the St. Nicholas story.”
“I’ve had to improvise, Sandra,” Kringle explained kindly. “One of my reindeer—” here he paused, sought and unerringly found Olivia’s face in the gathering, and winked “—has been on vacation.”
“Oh,” said the little girl.
Brad, having left the stage after lighting up the tree, had made his way through the crowd, carrying a snowsuited, gurgling Mac on one hip. Like every other kid, Mac had a present, and he was bonking Brad on the head with it as they approached.
“The packages were a nice touch,” Olivia said, drawing her brother aside.
“I was expecting Fred Stevens, stuffed into the chamber of commerce’s ratty old corduroy suit and driving a tractor,” Brad said, looking puzzled. Even when they were kids, Mr. Stevens, a retired high school principal and the grand poo-bah at the lodge, had done the honors. “And I don’t know anything about the presents.”
No one else in Stone Creek, besides Tanner, had the financial resources to buy and wrap so many gifts. Olivia narrowed her eyes. “You can level with me,” she whispered. “I know you and Meg arranged for this, just like when you made a lot of toys and food baskets magically appear on certain people’s porches last Christmas Eve. You put one over on poor Fred somehow and paid Kringle to fill in.”
Brad frowned. Took the present from Mac’s hand, putting an end to the conking. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Fred loves this job. I wouldn’t have talked him out of it.”
“Okay, but you must have bought the presents. I know the town council, the chamber of commerce, both churches and the lodge couldn’t have pulled this off.”
“I haven’t got a clue where these packages came from,” Brad insisted, and his gaze strayed to Kris Kringle, who was preparing to drive away in his sleigh. “Unless…”
“Don’t be silly,” Olivia said. “The man runs a Christmas-tree lot and makes personal appearances at birthday parties. Wyatt ran a background check on him, and there’s no way he could afford a giveaway on this scale. Nor, my dear brother, is he Santa Claus.”
Brad shoved a hand through his hair, scanning the crowd, probably looking for his wife. “Look, I admit Meg and I are planning to scatter a few presents around town this year,” he told her earnestly. “But if I was in on this one, believe me, I’d tell you.”
Sophie stood nearby, shaking her snow globe for Mac’s benefit. The baby strained over Brad’s shoulder, trying to grab it.
Olivia turned to Tanner. “Then you must have done it.”
“I wish I had,” Tanner said thoughtfully. “The turkey dinner on Christmas Day seemed more practical to me.” He grinned, putting one arm around Sophie and one around Olivia. “Let’s go check out that carnival.”
A look passed between Brad and Tanner.
“Have fun,” Brad said, with a note of irony and perhaps warning in his voice.
“We will,” Tanner replied lightly, slugging Brad in the Mac-free arm.
Brad gave him an answering slug.
Men, Olivia thought.
* * *
The carnival, like the tree-lighting ceremony, was crowded. The gym had been decorated with red and green streamers and giant gold Christmas balls, and there were booths set up on all four walls—fudge for sale in this one, baked goods in that one. Adults settled in for a rousing evening of bingo, the prizes all donated by local merchants, and there were games for the children—the “fishing hole” being the most popular.
For a modest fee, a child could dangle a long wooden stick with a string on the end of it over a shaky blue crepe-paper wall. After a tug, they’d pull in their line and find an inexpensive toy attached.
Sophie was soon bored, though good-naturedly so. She kept taking the snow globe out of her purse and shaking it to watch the snow swirl around Shiloh and Butterpie.
Tanner bought her a chili dog and a Coke and asked if she was ready to go home. She said she was.
“Ride along?” Tanner asked Olivia.
“I think I’ll sit in on a round of bingo,” she answered. The ladies from her church were running the game, and they’d been beckoning her to join in from the beginning.
Tanner nodded. “Save the first dance for me,” he whispered into her ear. “And the last. And all the ones in between.”
Feeling like a teenager at her first prom, Olivia nodded.
* * *
“It’s weird that that guy knows about Butterpie and Shiloh,” Sophie commented, munching on the chili dog as she and Tanner headed for Starcross in the truck. The snow was coming down so thick and fast that Tanner had the windshield wipers on. “A nice kind of weird, though.”
“It must have been a coincidence, Soph.”
“Heaven forbid,” Sophie said loftily, “that I might want to believe in one teeny, tiny Christmas miracle.”
He thought of the dreams. Sophie as a lonely adult, working too hard, with no life outside her medical practice. A chill rippled down his spine, even though the truck’s heater was going full blast. “Believe, Sophie,” he said quietly. “Go ahead and believe.”
He felt her glance, quick and curious. “What?”
“Maybe I have been too serious about things.”
“Ya think?” Sophie quipped, but there was a taut thread of hope strung through her words, and it sliced deep into Tanner’s heart.
“Look, I’ve been thinking—how would you like to go to school in Phoenix? There’s a good one there, with an equestrian program and excellent security. I was going to wait until Christmas to bring it up, but—”
“I’d rather go to Stone Creek Middle School.”
What had he expected her to say? The place was still a boarding school, even if it did have horse facilities. “I know that, Sophie. But I travel a lot and—”
“And Aunt Tessa will be here, so I’d be fine if you were away.” Sophie was watching him closely. “What are you so afraid of, Dad?”
He thrust out a sigh. “That you’ll be hurt. Your mom—”
“Dad, this is Stone Creek. There aren’t any terrorists here. There’s nobody to be mad and want to shoot at us because you built some bridge for the U.S. government where the local bomb-brewers didn’t want a bridge.”
Tanner’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. He’d had no idea Sophie knew that much. Did she know about the periodic death threats, too? The ones that had prompted him to hire Jack McCall’s men-in-black to guard Briarwood? Hell, he’d even had a detail looking out for Sophie when she was on the horse farm every summer, with Tessa.
“I feel safe here, Dad,” Sophie went on gently. “I want you to feel safe, too. But you don’t, because Uncle Jack wouldn’t be in town if you did.”
“How did you know Jack was here? He didn’t get in until today.”
“I saw him at the carnival with a pretty blond lady who didn’t seem to like him,” Sophie answered matter-of-factly. “Some kids play ‘Where’s Waldo?’ Thanks to you, I play ‘Where’s Jack?’ And I’m real good at spotting him.”
“He’s here on personal business,” Tanner said. “Not to trail you.”
“What kind of personal business?”
“How would I know? Jack doesn’t tell me everything—he’s got a private side.” A “private side”? The man rappelled down walls of compounds behind enemy lines. He rescued kidnap victims and God knew what else. Tanner didn’t have a lot of information about Jack’s operation, beyond services rendered on Sophie’s behalf at very high fees, and he didn’t want to.
He slept better that way, and Jack, the secretive bastard, wouldn’t have told him anyhow.
Oh, yeah. He was way happier. Except when he dreamed about Dr. Sophie Quinn, ghost of Christmas future, or thought about leaving Stone Creek and probably never seeing Olivia again.
“Soph,” he said, skidding a little on the turnoff to Starcross, “when you grow up, are you going to hate me for making you go to boarding school?”
“I could never hate you, Dad.” She said the words with such gentle equanimity that Tanner’s throat constricted. “I know you’re doing the best you can.”
Sigh.
“I thought you’d be happy about Phoenix,” he said after a pause. “It’s only two hours from here, you know.”
“What will that matter, if you’re in some country where they want to put your head on a pike because you build things?”
It was a good thing they’d reached the driveway at Starcross; if they’d still been on the highway, Tanner might have run the truck into the ditch. “Is that what you think is going to happen?”
“I worry about it all the time. I’m human, you know.”
“You’re way too smart to be human. You’re an alien from the Planet Practical.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in the sound. “I watch CNN all the time when you’re out of the country,” she confessed. “Sometimes really bad things happen to contractors working overseas.”
Tanner pulled the truck up close to the house. He was anxious to get back to Olivia, but not so anxious that he’d leave Sophie in the middle of a conversation like this one. “What if I promised not to work outside the U.S.A., Soph? Ever again?”
The look of reluctant hope on the face Sophie turned to Tanner nearly broke him down. “You’d do that?”
“I’d do that, shorty.”
She flung herself across the console, after springing the seat belt, and threw both arms around his neck, hugging him hard. He felt her tears against his cheek, where their faces touched. “Can I tell Aunt Tessa?” she sniffled.
“Yes,” he said gruffly, holding on to her. Wishing she’d always be twelve, safe with him and Tessa at Starcross Ranch, and never become a relationship-challenged adult working eighteen-hour days out of loneliness as much as ambition.
It would be his fault if Sophie’s life turned out that way. He’d been the one to set the bad example.
“I love you, Soph,” he said.
She gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek and pulled away. “Love you, too, Dad,” she replied, turning to get out of the truck.
He walked her inside the house, torn between wanting to stay home and wanting to be with Olivia.
Tessa had the tree lights on, and she and the puppies were cozied up together on the couch, watching a Christmas movie on TV.
“Dad is never going to work outside the country again!” Sophie shouted gleefully, bounding into the room like a storm trooper.
“Is that so?” Tessa asked, smiling, her gaze pensive as she studied Tanner. Was that skepticism he saw in her eyes?
“Dad’s going back to dance the night away with Olivia,” Sophie announced happily. “How about some hot chocolate, Aunt Tessa? I know how to make it.”
“Good idea,” Tessa said.
Sophie said a quick goodbye to Tanner as she passed him on her way to the kitchen.
“I hope you’re going to keep your word,” Tessa told him when Sophie was safely out of earshot.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“It’s tempting, all that money. All those adrenaline rushes.”
“I can resist temptation.”
Tessa grinned. “Except where Olivia O’Ballivan is concerned, I suspect. Go ahead and ‘dance the night away.’ I’ll take good care of Sophie, and if the place is overrun by revenge-seeking foreign extremists, I’ll be sure and give you a call.”
Tanner chuckled. Something inside him let go suddenly, something that had held on for dear life ever since that awful day on a street thousands of miles away, when Kat had died in his arms. “I have been a little paranoid, haven’t I?” he asked.
“A little?” Tessa teased.
“There’s a lady waiting at the bingo table,” he told his sister. “Gotta go.”
“See you tomorrow,” Tessa said knowingly.
He let that one pass, waggling his fingers in farewell.
“Later, Soph!” he called.
And then he left the house, sprinting for his truck.
* * *
“I need to get out of these pants before I kill myself,” Olivia confided several hours later, when they’d both worn out the soles of their shoes dancing to the lodge orchestra’s Christmas retrospective.
Tanner laughed. “Far be it from me to interfere,” he said. Then he tilted his head back and looked up. “Is that mistletoe?”
“No,” Olivia said. “It’s three plastic Christmas balls hanging from a ribbon.”
“Have you no imagination? No vision?”
“I can imagine myself in something a lot more comfortable than my sister’s clothes,” she told him. “I really hate to face it, but I’m going to have to shop.”
“A woman who hates shopping,” Tanner commented. “Will you marry me, Olivia O’Ballivan?”
It was a joke, and Olivia knew that as well as he did, but an odd, shivery little silence fell between them just the same. She seemed to draw away from him a little, even though he was holding her close as they swayed to the music.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. Not exactly a mood enhancer, he reflected ruefully, but it was an honest sentiment.
She nodded. The pulse was beating at the base of her throat again.
The snow hadn’t let up—it was worse, if anything—and Tanner drove slowly back over the same course he’d followed with Sophie earlier that evening.
“Seriously,” he began, picking up the conversation they’d had on the dance floor as though there had been no interval between then and now, “do you plan on getting married? Some day, I mean? Having kids and everything?”
Olivia gnawed on her lower lip for a long moment. “Some day, maybe,” she said at last.
“What kind of guy would you be looking for?”
She smiled, until she saw that he was serious. The realization, like the pulse, was visible. “Well, he’d have to love animals, and be okay with my getting called out on veterinary emergencies at all hours of the day and night. It would be nice if he could cook, since I’m in the remedial culinary group.” She paused, watching him. “And the sex would have to be very, very good.”
He laughed again. “Is there an audition?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” she said. “Tonight.”
Heat rushed through Tanner. If she kept talking like that, the windshield would fog up, making visibility even worse.
When they arrived at Olivia’s place Ginger greeted them at the door, wanting to go outside.
He’d have to love animals…
Tanner took Ginger out and waited in the freezing cold until she’d done what she had to do.
Olivia was waiting when he got back inside. “Hungry?” she asked.
It would be nice if he could cook….
Was she testing him?
“I could whip up an omelet,” he offered.
She crossed to him, put her arms around his neck. “Later,” she said.
And the sex would have to be very, very good.
Five minutes later, after some heavy kissing, he was helping her out of the palazzo pants. And everything else she was wearing.