Holiday in Stone Creek Page 24

  Livie chuckled. “The twins aren’t identical, Ashley,” she said. “John is a little smaller than Sam, and he has my mouth. Sam looks like Tanner.”

  Ashley didn’t respond; she was too smitten with young John Mitchell Quinn. By the time she swapped one baby for the other, she could tell the difference between them.

  A nurse came and collected the babies, put them back in their incubators. Although they were healthy, like most twins they were underweight. They’d be staying at the clinic for a few days after Olivia went home.

  Olivia napped, woke up, napped again.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said once.

  Ashley, who had been rising from her chair to leave, sat down again. Remembered the carnations and got up to put them in a water-glass vase.

  “How did you wind up in Indian Rock instead of Flagstaff?” Ashley asked, when Olivia didn’t immediately drift off.

  Olivia smiled. “I was on a call,” she said. “Sick horse. Tanner wanted me to call in another vet, but this was a special case, and Sophie was spending the night at Brad and Meg’s, so he came with me. We planned to go on to Flagstaff for the induction when I was finished, but the babies had other ideas. I went into labor in the barn, and Tanner brought me here.”

  Ashley shook her head, unable to hold back a grin. Her sister, nine and a half months pregnant by her own admission, had gone out on a call in the middle of the night. It was just like her. “How’s the horse?”

  “Fine, of course,” Olivia said, still smiling. “I’m the best vet in the county, you know.”

  Ashley found a place for the carnations—they looked pitiful among all the dozens and dozens of roses, yellow from Brad and Meg, white from Tanner, and more arriving at regular intervals from friends and coworkers. “I know,” she agreed.

  Olivia reached for her hand, squeezed. “Friends again?”

  “We were never not friends, Livie.”

  Olivia shook her head. Like all O’Ballivans, she was stubborn. “We were always sisters,” she said. “But sisters aren’t necessarily friends. Let’s not let the momthing come between us again, okay?”

  Ashley blinked away tears. “Okay,” she said.

  Just then, Melissa streaked into the room, half-hidden behind a giant potted plant with two blue plastic storks sticking out of it. She was dressed for work, in a tailored brown leather jacket, beige turtleneck and tweed trousers.

  Setting the plant down on the floor, when she couldn’t find any other surface, Melissa hurried over to Olivia and kissed her noisily on the forehead.

  “Hi, Twin-Unit,” she said to Ashley.

  “Hi.” Ashley smiled, glanced toward the doorway in case the mystery man had come along for the ride. Alas, there was no sign of him.

  Melissa looked around for the babies. Frowned. She did everything fast, with an economy of motion; she’d come to see her nephews and was impatient at the delay. “Where are they?”

  “In the nursery,” Olivia answered, smiling. “How many cups of coffee have you had this morning?”

  Melissa made a comical face. “Not nearly enough,” she said. “I’m due in court in an hour, and where’s the nursery?”

  “Down the hall, to the right,” Olivia told her. A worried crease appeared in her otherwise smooth forehead. “The roads are icy. Promise me you won’t speed all the way back to Stone Creek after you leave here.”

  “Scout’s honor,” Melissa said, raising one hand. But she couldn’t help glancing at her watch. “Yikes. Down the hall, to the right. Gotta go.”

  With that, she dashed out.

  Ashley followed, double-stepping to catch up.

  “Who was the man who answered your phone this morning?” she asked.

  Melissa didn’t look at her. “Nobody important,” she said.

  “You spent the night with him, and he’s ‘nobody important’?”

  They’d reached the nursery window, and since Sam and John were the only babies there, spotting them was no problem.

  “Could we not discuss this now?” Melissa asked, pressing both palms to the glass separating them from their nephews. “Why are they in incubators? Is something wrong?”

  “It’s just a precaution,” Ashley answered gently. “They’re a little small.”

  “Aren’t babies supposed to be small?” Melissa’s eyes were tender as she studied the new additions to the family. When she turned to face Ashley, though, her expression turned bleak.

  “He’s my boss,” she said.

  Ashley took a breath before responding. “The one who divorced his latest trophy wife about fifteen minutes ago?”

  Melissa stiffened. “I knew you’d react that way. Honestly, Ash, sometimes you are such a prig. The marriage was over years ago—they were just going through the motions. And if you think I had anything to do with the breakup—well, you ought to know better.”

  Ashley closed her eyes briefly. She did know better. Her twin was an honorable person; nobody knew that better than she did. “I wasn’t implying that you’re a home-wrecker, Melissa. It’s just that you’re not over Daniel yet. You need time.”

  Daniel Guthrie, the last man in Melissa’s life, owned and operated a fashionably rustic dude ranch between Stone Creek and Flagstaff. An attractive widower with two young sons, Dan was looking for a wife, someone to settle down with, and he’d never made a secret of it. Melissa, who freely admitted that she could love Dan and his children if she half tried, wanted a career—after all, she’d worked hard to earn her law degree.

  It was a classic lose-lose situation.

  “I didn’t have sex with Alex,” Melissa whispered, though Ashley hadn’t asked. “We were just talking.”

  “I believe you,” Ashley said, putting up both hands in a gesture of peace. “But Stone Creek is a small town. If some bozo’s car was parked in your driveway all night, word is bound to get back to Dan.”

  “Dan has no claim on me,” Melissa snapped. “He’s the one who said we needed a time-out.” She sucked in a furious breath. “And Alex Ewing is not a bozo. He’s up for the prosecutor’s job in Phoenix, and he wants me to go with him if he gets it.”

  Ashley blinked. “You would move to—to Phoenix?”

  Melissa widened her eyes. “Phoenix isn’t Mars, Ashley,” she pointed out. “It’s less than two hours from here. And just because you’re content to quietly fade away in Stone Creek, quilting and baking cookies for visiting strangers, that doesn’t mean I am.”

  “But—this is home.”

  Melissa looked at her watch again, shook her head. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

  With that, she walked off, leaving Ashley staring after her.

  I am not “content to quietly fade away in Stone Creek,” she thought.

  But wasn’t that exactly what she was doing?

  Making beds, cooking for guests, putting up decorations for various holidays only to take them down again? And, yes, quilting. That was her passion, her artistic outlet. Nothing wrong with that.

  But Melissa’s remarks had brought up the question Ashley usually avoided.

  When was her life supposed to start?

  JACK WOKE WITH A violent start, expecting darkness and nibbling rats.

  Instead, he found himself in a small, pretty room with pale green walls. An old-fashioned sewing machine, the treadle kind usually seen only in antiques malls and elderly ladies’ houses stood near the door. The quilt covering him smelled faintly of some herb—probably lavender—and memories.

  Ashley.

  He was at her place.

  Relief flooded him—and then he heard the sound. Distant—a heavy step—definitely not Ashley’s.

  Leaning over the side of the bed, which must have been built for a child, it was so short and so narrow, Jack found his gear, fumbled to open the bag, extracted his trusty Glock, that marvel of German engineering. Checked to make sure the clip was in—and full.

  The mattress squeaked a little as he got to his feet, listening
not just with his ears, but with every cell, with all the dormant senses he’d learned to tap into, if not to name.

  There it was again—that thump. Closer now. Definitely masculine.

  Jack glanced back over one shoulder, saw that the kitten was still on the bed, watching him with curious, mismatched eyes.

  “Shhh,” he told the animal.

  “Meooow,” it responded.

  The sound came a third time, nearer now. Just on the other side of the kitchen doorway, by Jack’s calculations.

  Think, he told himself. He knew he was reacting out of all proportion to the situation, but he couldn’t help it. He’d had a lot of practice at staying alive, and his survival instincts were in overdrive.

  Chad Lombard couldn’t have tracked him to Stone Creek; there hadn’t been time. But Jack was living and breathing because he lived by his gut as well as his mind. The small hairs on his nape stood up like wire.

  Using one foot, the Glock clasped in both hands, he eased the sewing room door open by a few more inches. Waited.

  And damn near shot the best friend he’d ever had when Tanner Quinn strolled into the kitchen.

  “Christ,” Jack said, lowering the gun. With his long outgoing breath, every muscle in his body seemed to go slack.

  Tanner’s face was hard. “That was my line,” he said.

  Jack sagged against the doorframe, his eyes tightly shut. He forced himself to open them again. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Playing nursemaid to you,” Tanner answered, crossing the room in a few strides and expertly removing the Glock dangling from Jack’s right hand. “Guess I should have stuck with my day job.”

  Jack opened his eyes, sick with relief, sick with whatever that goon in South America had shot into his veins. “Which is what?” he asked, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  Tanner set the gun on top of the refrigerator and pulled Jack by the arm. Squired him to a chair at the kitchen table.

  “Raising three kids and being a husband to the best woman in the world,” he answered. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stick around long enough to see my grandchildren.”

  Jack braced an elbow on the tabletop, covered his face with one hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Tanner hauled back a chair of his own, making plenty of noise in the process, and sat down across from Jack, ignoring the apology. “What’s going on, McCall?” he demanded. “And don’t give me any of your bull crap cloak-and-dagger answers, either.”

  “I need to get out of here,” Jack said, meeting his friend’s gaze. “Now. Today. Before somebody gets hurt.”

  Tanner flung a scathing glance toward the Glock, gleaming on top of the brushed-steel refrigerator. “Seems to me, you’re the main threat to public safety around here. Dammit, you could have shot Ashley—or Sophie or Carly—”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Oh, well, that changes everything.”

  Jack sighed. And then he told Tanner the same story he’d told Ashley earlier. Most of it was even true.

  “You call this living, Jack?” Tanner asked, when he was finished. “When are you going to stop playing Indiana Jones and settle down?”

  “Spoken like a man in love with a pregnant veterinarian,” Jack said.

  At last, Tanner broke down and grinned. “She’s not pregnant anymore. Olivia and I are now the proud parents of twin boys.”

  “As of when?” Jack asked, delighted and just a shade envious. He’d never thought much about kids until he’d gotten to know Sophie, after Tanner’s first wife, Katherine, was killed, and then Rachel, the bravest seven-year-old in Creation.

  “As of this morning,” Tanner answered.

  “Wow,” Jack said, with a shake of his head. “It would really have sucked if I’d shot you.”

  “Yeah,” Tanner agreed, going grim again.

  “All the more reason for me to hit the road.”

  “And go where?”

  “Dammit, I don’t know. Just away. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place—I was out of my mind with fever—”

  “You were out of your mind, all right,” Tanner argued. “But I think it has more to do with Ashley than the toxin. There’s a pattern here, old buddy. You always leave—and you always come back. That ought to tell you something.”

  “It tells me that I’m a jerk.”

  “You won’t get any argument there,” Tanner said, without hesitation.

  “I can’t keep doing this. Every time I’ve left that woman, I’ve meant to stay gone. But Ashley haunts me, Tanner. She’s in the air I breathe and the water I drink—”

  “It’s called love, you idiot,” Tanner informed him.

  “Love,” Jack scoffed. “This isn’t the Lifetime channel, old buddy. And it’s not as if I’m doing Ashley some big, fat favor by loving her. My kind of romance could get her killed.”

  Tanner’s mouth crooked up at one corner. “You watch the Lifetime channel?”

  “Shut up,” Jack bit out.

  Tanner laughed. “You are so screwed,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Jack snapped. “But you’re not being much help here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “It’s time to stop running,” Tanner said decisively. “Take a stand.”

  “Suppose Lombard shows up? He’d like nothing better than to take out everybody I care about.”

  Tanner’s expression turned serious again, and both his eyebrows went up. “What about your dad, the dentist, and your mom, the librarian, and your three brothers, who probably have the misfortune to look just like you?”

  Something tightened inside Jack, a wrenching grab, cold as steel. “Why do you think I haven’t seen them since I got out of high school?” he shot back. “Nobody knows I have a family, and I want it to stay that way.”

  Tanner leaned forward a little. “Which means your name isn’t Jack McCall,” he said. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Dammit, you know who I am. We’ve been through a lot together.”

  “Do I? Jack is probably your real first name, but I’ll bet it doesn’t say McCall on your birth certificate.”

  “My birth certificate conveniently disappeared into cyberspace a long time ago,” Jack said. “And if you think I’m going to tell you my last name, so you can tap into a search engine and get the goods on me, you’re a bigger sucker than I ever guessed.”

  Tanner frowned. He loved puzzles, and he was exceptionally good at figuring them out. “Wait a second. You and Ashley dated in college, and she knew you as Jack McCall. Did you change your name in high school?”

  “Let this go, Tanner,” Jack answered tightly. He had to give his friend something, or he’d never get off his back—that much was clear. And while they were sitting there planning his segment on Biography, Chad Lombard was looking for him. By that scumbag’s watch, it was payback time. “I was one of those difficult types in high school—my folks, with some help from a judge, sent me to one of those military schools where they try to scare kids into behaving like human beings. One of the teachers was a former SEAL. Long story short, the Navy tapped me for their version of Special Forces and put me through college. I never went home after that, and the name change was their idea, not mine.”

  Tanner let out a long, low whistle. “Hot damn,” he muttered. “Your folks must be frantic, wondering what happened to you.”

  “They think I’m dead,” Jack said, stunned at how much he was giving up. That toxin must be digesting his brain. “There’s a grave and a headstone; they put flowers on it once in a while. As far as they’re concerned, I was blown to unidentifiable smithereens in Iraq.”

  Tanner glared at him. “How could you put them through that?”

  “Ask the Navy,” Jack said.

  Outside, snow crunched under tires as Ashley pulled into the driveway.

  “End of conversation,” Jack told Tanner.

  “That’s what you think,” Tanner replied, pushing back his chair to stand.
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  “I’ll be out of here as soon as I can arrange it,” Jack warned quietly.

  Tanner skewered him with a look that might have meant “Good riddance,’ though Jack couldn’t be sure.

  The back door opened, and Ashley blew in on a freezing wind. Hurrying to Tanner, she threw her arms around his waist and beamed up at him.

  “The babies are beautiful!” she cried, her eyes glistening with happy tears. “Congratulations, Tanner.”

  Tanner hugged her, kissed the top of her head. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. Then, with one more scathing glance at Jack, he put on his coat and left, though not before his gaze strayed to the Glock on top of the refrigerator.

  Fortunately, Ashley was too busy taking off her own coat to notice.

  Jack made a mental note to retrieve the weapon before she saw it.

  “You’re up,” she told him cheerfully. “Feeling better?”

  He’d never left her willingly, but this time, the prospect nearly doubled him over. He sat up a little straighter. “I love you, Ashley,” he said.

  She’d been in the process of brewing coffee; at his words, she stopped, stiffened, stared at him. “What did you say?”

  “I love you. Always have, always will.”

  She sagged against the counter, all the joy gone from her eyes. “You have a strange way of showing it, Jack McCall,” she said, after a very long time.

  “I can’t stay, Ash,” he said hoarsely, wishing he could take her into his arms, make love to her just once more. But he’d done enough damage as it was. “And this time, I won’t be back. I promise.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It would if you knew what it might mean if I stayed.”

  “What would it mean, Jack? If you stayed, that is.”

  “I told you about Lombard. He’s the vindictive type, and if he ever finds out about you—”

  “Suppose he does,” Ashley reasoned calmly, “and you’re not here to protect me. What then?”

  Jack closed his eyes. “Don’t say that.”

  “Stone Creek isn’t a bad place to raise a family,” she forged on, with a dignity that broke Jack’s heart into two bleeding chunks. “We could be happy here, Jack. Together.”