Holiday in Stone Creek Read online

  “Yeah,” he said. “Bacon and eggs would be good.”

  Ashley raised one eyebrow. He’d barely managed chicken soup the night before, and now he wanted a trucker’s breakfast? “You’ll make yourself sick,” she told him, hiking her chin up a notch.

  “I’m already sick,” he pointed out. “And I still want bacon and eggs.”

  “Well,” Ashley said, “there aren’t any. I usually have grapefruit or granola.”

  “You serve paying guests health food?”

  Ashley sucked in a breath, let it out slowly. She wasn’t about to admit, not to Jack McCall, at least, that she hadn’t had a guest, paying or otherwise, in way too long. “Some people,” she told him carefully, “care about good nutrition.”

  “And some people want bacon and eggs.”

  She sighed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  “It’s the least you can do,” Jack wheedled, “since I’m paying triple for this room and the breakfast that’s supposed to come with the bed.”

  “All right,” she said. “But I’ll have to go to the store, and that means you’ll have to wait.”

  “Fine by me,” Jack replied lightly, extending his feet and wriggling his toes, his expression curious, as though he wasn’t sure they still worked. “I’ll be right here.” The wicked grin flashed again. “Get a move on, will you? I need to get my strength back.”

  Ashley shut the door hard, drew another deep breath in the hallway, and started downstairs, careful not to trip over the gamboling Mrs. Wiggins.

  Reaching the kitchen, she poured kibble for the kitten, cleaned and refilled the tiny water bowl, and gathered her coat, purse and car keys.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she told the cat.

  The temperature had dropped below freezing during the night, and the roads were sheeted in ice. Ashley’s trip to the supermarket took nearly forty-five minutes, the store was jammed, and by the time she got home, she was in a skillet-banging mood. She was an inn-keeper, not a nurse. Why hadn’t she insisted that Tanner and Jeff take Jack to one of the hospitals in Flagstaff?

  She built a fire on the kitchen hearth, hoping to cheer herself up a little—and take the chill out of her bones—then started a pot of coffee brewing. Next, she laid four strips of bacon in the seasoned cast-iron frying pan that had been Big John’s, tossed a couple of slices of bread into the toaster slots, and took a carton of eggs out of her canvas grocery bag.

  She knew how Jack liked his eggs—over easy—just as she knew he took his coffee black and strong. It galled her plenty that she remembered those details—and a lot more.

  Cooking angrily—so much for her motto that every recipe ought to be laced with love—Ashley nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard his voice behind her.

  “Nice fire,” he said. “Very cozy.”

  She whirled, openmouthed, and there he was, standing in the kitchen doorway, but leaning heavily on the jamb.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked, once the adrenaline rush had subsided.

  Slowly, he made his way to the table, dragged back a chair and dropped into the seat. “I couldn’t take that wallpaper for another second,” he teased. “Too damn many roses and ribbons.”

  Knowing that wallpaper was a stupid thing to be sensitive about, and sensitive just the same, Ashley opened a cupboard, took down a mug and filled it, even though the coffeemaker was still chortling through the brewing process. Set the mug down in front of him with a thump.

  “Surely you’re not that touchy about your decor,” Jack said.

  “Shut up,” Ashley told him.

  His eyes twinkled. “Do you talk to all your guests that way?”

  As so often happened around Jack, Ashley spoke without thinking first. “Only the ones who sneaked out of my bed in the middle of the night and disappeared for six months without a word.”

  Jack frowned. “Have there been a lot of those?”

  Jack McCall was the first—and only—man Ashley had ever slept with, but she’d be damned if she’d tell him so. After all, she realized, he hadn’t just broken her heart once—he’d done it twice. She’d been shy in high school, but the day she and Jack met, in her freshman year of college at the University of Arizona, her world had undergone a seismic shift.

  They talked about getting married after Ashley finished school, had even looked at engagement rings. Jack had been a senior, and after graduation, he’d enlisted in the Navy. After a few letters and phone calls, he’d simply dropped out of her life.

  She’d gotten her BA in liberal arts.

  Melissa had gone on to law school, Ashley had returned to Stone Creek, bought the B&B with Brad’s help and tried to convince herself that she was happy.

  Then, just before Christmas, two years earlier, Jack had returned. She’d been a first-class fool to get involved with him a second time, to believe it would last. He came and went, called often when he was away, showed up again and made soul-wrenching love to her just when she’d made up her mind to end the affair.

  “I haven’t been hibernating, you know,” she said stiffly, turning the bacon, pushing down the lever on the toaster and sliding his perfectly cooked eggs off the burner. “I date.”

  Right. Melissa had fixed her up twice, with guys she knew from law school, and she’d gone out to dinner once, with Melvin Royce, whose father owned the Stone Creek Funeral Home. Melvin had spent the whole evening telling her that death was a beautiful thing—not to mention lucrative—cremation was the way to go, and corpses weren’t at all scary, once you got used to them.

  She hadn’t gone out with anyone since.

  Oh, yes, she was a regular party girl. If she didn’t watch out, she’d end up as tabloid fodder.

  Not. The tabloids were Brad’s territory, and he was welcome to them, as far as she was concerned.

  “I’m sorry, Ashley,” Jack said quietly, when they’d both been silent for a long time. She couldn’t help noticing that his hand shook slightly as he took a sip of his coffee and set the mug down again.

  “For what?”

  “For everything.” He thrust splayed fingers through his hair, and his jaw tightened briefly, under the blue-black stubble of his beard.

  “Everything? That covers a lot of ground,” Ashley said, sliding his breakfast onto a plate and setting it down in front of him with an annoyed flourish.

  Jack sighed. “Leaving you. It was a dumb thing to do. But maybe coming back is even dumber.”

  The remark stung Ashley, made her cheeks burn, and she turned away quickly, hoping Jack hadn’t noticed. “You arrived in an ambulance,” she said. “Feel free to leave in one.”

  “Will you sit down and talk to me? Please?”

  Ashley faced him, lest she be thought a coward.

  Mrs. Wiggins, the little traitor, started up Jack’s right pant leg and settled in his lap for a snooze. He picked up his fork, broke the yolk on one of his eggs, but his eyes were fastened on Ashley.

  “What happened to you?” Ashley asked, without planning to speak at all. There it was again, the Jack Phenomenon. She wasn’t normally an impulsive person.

  Jack didn’t look away, but several long moments passed before he answered. “The theory is,” he said, “that a guy I tangled with on a job injected me with something.”

  Ashley’s heart stopped, started again. She joined Jack at the table, but only because she was afraid her knees wouldn’t support her if she remained standing. “A job? What kind of job?”

  “You know I’m in security,” Jack hedged, avoiding her eyes now, concentrating on his breakfast. He ate slowly, deliberately.

  “Security,” Ashley repeated. All she really knew about Jack was that he traveled, made a lot of money and was often in danger. These were not things he’d actually told her—she’d gleaned them from telephone conversations she’d overheard, stories Sophie and Olivia had told her, comments Tanner had made.

  “I’ve got to leave again, Ashley,” Jack said. “But this time, I wan
t you to know why.”

  She wanted Jack to leave. So why did she feel as though a trapdoor had just opened under her chair, and she was about to fall down the rabbit hole? “Okay—why?” she asked, in somebody else’s voice.

  “Because I’ve got enemies. Most of them are in prison—or dead—but one has a red-hot grudge against me, a score to settle, and I don’t want you or anybody else in Stone Creek to get hurt. I should have thought things through before I came here, but the truth is, all I could focus on was being where you are.”

  The words made her ache. Ashley longed to take Jack’s hand, but she wouldn’t let herself do it. “What kind of grudge?”

  “I stole his daughter.”

  Ashley’s mouth dropped open. She closed it again.

  Jack gave a mirthless little smile. “Her name is Rachel. She’s seven years old. Her mother went through a rebellious period that just happened to coincide with a semester in a university in Venezuela. She fell in with a bad crowd, got involved with a fellow exchange student—an American named Chad Lombard, who was running drugs between classes. Her parents ran a background check on Lombard, didn’t like the results and flew down from Phoenix to take their daughter home. Ardith was pregnant—the folks wanted her to give the baby up and she refused. She was nineteen, sure she was in love with Lombard, waited for him to come and get her, put a wedding band on her finger. He didn’t. Eventually, she finished school, married well, had two more kids. The new husband wanted to adopt Rachel, and that meant Lombard had to sign off, so the family lawyers tracked him down and presented him with the papers and the offer of a hefty check. He went ballistic, said he wanted to raise Rachel himself, and generously offered to take Ardith back, too, if she’d leave the other two kids behind and divorce the man she’d married. Naturally, she didn’t want to go that route. Things were quiet for a while, and then one day Rachel disappeared from her backyard. Lombard called that night to say Phoenix P.D. was wasting its time looking for Rachel, since he had the child and they were already out of the country.”

  Although Ashley had never been a mother herself, it was all too easy to understand how frantic Ardith and the family must have been.

  “And they hired you to find Rachel and bring her home?”

  “Yes,” Jack answered, after another long delay. The long speech had clearly taken a lot out of him, but the amazed admiration she felt must have been visible in her eyes, because he added, “But don’t get the idea that I’m some kind of hero. I was paid a quarter of a million dollars for bringing Rachel back home safely, and I didn’t hesitate to accept the money.”

  “I didn’t see any of this in the newspapers,” Ashley mused.

  “You wouldn’t have,” Jack replied. He’d finished half of his breakfast, and although he had a little more color than before, he was still too pale. “It was vital to keep the story out of the press. Rachel’s life might have depended on it, and mine definitely did.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Hell,” Jack answered, “I was terrified.”

  “You should lie down,” she said softly.

  “I don’t think I can make it back up those stairs,” Jack said, and Ashley could see that it pained him to admit this.

  “You’re just trying to avoid the wallpaper,” she joked, though she was dangerously close to tears. Carefully, she helped him to his feet. “There’s a bed in my sewing room. You can rest there until you feel stronger.”

  His face contorted, but he still managed a grin. “You’re strong for a woman,” he said.

  “I was raised on a ranch,” Ashley reminded him, ducking under his right shoulder and supporting him as she steered him across the kitchen to her sewing room. “I used to help load hay bales in our field during harvest, among other things.”

  Jack glanced down at her face, and she thought she saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes. “You bucked bales?”

  “Sure did.” They’d reached the sewing-room door, and Ashley reached out to push it open. “Did you?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jack’s chuckle was ragged. “My dad is a dentist. I was raised in the suburbs—not a hay bale for miles.”

  Like the account of little Rachel’s rescue, this was news to Ashley. She knew nothing about Jack’s background, wondered how she could have fallen so hard for a man who’d never mentioned his family, let alone introduced her to them. In fact, she’d assumed he didn’t have a family. “Exactly what is your job title, anyway?”

  He looked at her long and hard, wavering just a few feet from the narrow bed. “Mercenary,” he said.

  Ashley took that in, but it didn’t really register, even after the Rachel story. “Is that what it says on your tax return, under Occupation?”

  “No,” he answered.

  They reached the bed, and she helped him get settled. Since he was on top of the blankets, she covered him with a faded quilt that had been passed down through the O’Ballivan clan since the days when Maddie and Sam ran the ranch.

  “You do file taxes, don’t you?” Ashley was a very careful and practical person.

  Jack smiled without opening his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “What I do is unconventional, but it isn’t illegal.”

  Ashley stepped back, torn between bolting from the room and lying down beside Jack, enfolding him in her arms. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “My gear,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Tanner brought it in. Leather satchel, under the bed upstairs.”

  Ashley gave a little nod, even though he wouldn’t see it. What kind of gear did a mercenary carry? Guns? Knives?

  She gave a little shudder and left the door slightly ajar.

  Upstairs, she found the leather bag under Jack’s bed. The temptation to open it was nearly overwhelming, but she resisted. Yes, she was curious—beyond curious—but she wasn’t a snoop. She didn’t go through guests’ luggage any more than she read the postcards they gave her to send for them.

  When she got back to the sewing room, Jack was sleeping. Mrs. Wiggins curled up protectively on his chest.

  Ashley set the bag down quietly and slipped out. Busied herself with routine housekeeping chores, too soon finished.

  She was relieved when Tanner showed up at the kitchen door, looking worn out but blissfully happy.

  “I came to babysit Jack while you go and see Olivia and the boys,” he said, stepping past her and helping himself to a cup of lukewarm coffee. “How’s he doing?”

  Ashley watched as her brother-in-law stuck the mug into the microwave and pushed the appropriate buttons. “Not bad—for a mercenary.”

  Tanner paused, and his gaze swung in Ashley’s direction. “He told you?”

  “Yes. I need some answers, Tanner, and Jack is too sick to give them.”

  The new father turned away from the counter, the microwave whirring behind him, leaned back and folded his arms, watching Ashley, probably weighing the pros and cons of spilling what he knew—which was plenty, unless she missed her guess.

  “He’s talking about leaving,” Ashley prodded, when Tanner didn’t say anything right away. “I’m used to that, but I think I deserve to know what’s going on.”

  Tanner gave a long sigh. “I’d trust Jack with my life—I trusted him with Sophie’s, when she ran away from boarding school right after we moved here, but the truth is, I don’t know a hell of a lot more about him than you do.”

  “He’s your best friend.”

  “And he plays his cards close to the vest. When it comes to security, he’s the best there is.” Tanner paused, thrust a hand through his already mussed hair. “I can tell you this much, Ashley—if he said he loved you, he meant it, whatever happened afterward. He’s never been married, doesn’t have kids, his dad is a dentist, his mother is a librarian, and he has three younger brothers, all of whom are much more conventional than Jack. He likes beer, but I’ve never seen him drunk. That’s the whole shebang, I’m afraid.”

  “Someone injected him with something,” Ashley said in
a low voice. “That’s why he’s sick.”

  “Good God,” Tanner said.

  A silence fell.

  “And he’s leaving as soon as he’s strong enough,” Ashley said. “Because some drug dealer named Chad Lombard has a grudge against him, and he’s afraid of putting all of us in danger.”

  Tanner thought long and hard. “Maybe that’s for the best,” he finally replied. Ashley knew Tanner wasn’t afraid for himself, but he had to think about Olivia and Sophie and his infant sons. “I hate it, though. Turning my back on a friend who needs my help.”

  Ashley felt the same way, though Jack wasn’t exactly a friend. In fact, she wasn’t sure how to describe their relationship—if they had one at all. “This is Stone Creek,” she heard herself say. “We have a long tradition of standing shoulder to shoulder and taking trouble as it comes.”

  Tanner’s smile was tired, but warm. “Go,” he said. “Tuckered out as she is, Olivia is dying to show off those babies. I’ll look after Jack until you get home.”

  Ashley hesitated, then got her coat and purse and car keys again, and left for the clinic in Indian Rock.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OLIVIA WAS SITTING UP in bed, beaming, a baby tucked in the crook of each arm, when Ashley hurried into her room. There were flowers everywhere—Brad and Meg had already been there and gone, having brought Carly and Sophie to see the boys before school.

  “Come and say hello to John and Sam,” Olivia said gently.

  Ashley, clutching a bouquet of pink and yellow carnations, hastily purchased at a convenience store, moved closer. She felt stricken with wonder and an immediate and all-encompassing love for the tiny red-faced infants snoozing in their swaddling blankets.

  “Oh, Livie,” she whispered, “they’re beautiful.”

  “I agree,” Olivia said proudly. “Do you want to hold them?”

  Ashley swallowed, then reached out for the bundle on the right. She sat down slowly in the chair closest to Olivia’s bed.

  “That’s John,” Olivia explained, her voice soft with adoring exhaustion.

  “How can you tell?” Ashley asked, without lifting her eyes from the baby’s face. He seemed to glow with some internal light, as though he were trailing traces of heaven, the place he’d so recently left.