A Cold Creek Holiday

He unlocked the first cabin and immediately switched on the electric fireplace in the main room and the smaller fireplace in the bedroom. Between the two of them, they did a surprisingly effective job of keeping the place toasty in only a matter of minutes.

He walked back out onto the porch and found the blasted woman trying to wrestle a huge suitcase out of the cargo space of the SUV.

“I said I’d help you with your bags,” he muttered.

Despite the dim light from the porch and the swirl of snow, he didn’t miss the cool look she sent him out of lovely blue eyes he didn’t want to notice.

“I appreciate your…courtesy.”

He didn’t miss the slight, subtle pause before she said the last word. Though he wanted to bark and growl and tell her where to shove that delicate hint of sarcasm, he forced a tight smile.

“Here at Hope Springs, we’re nothing if not courteous,” he said in a benign sort of voice that matched her own.

He reached down and pulled the suitcase away from her then lifted another one out. The back was chock-full with five suitcases and several bags of groceries. At least Joanie must have had the foresight despite her typical ditziness to encourage their guest to shop for food before she arrived. He was grateful for that, at least. The ranch didn’t provide any meals and the nearest restaurant was six miles down the canyon in Pine Gulch, but the cabin was outfitted with a full kitchen.

Between the two of them, it only took a few trips to empty out the back of her vehicle and set everything inside the now-toasty cabin.

When he returned inside with the last load, he found her in the kitchen, putting away food from the grocery bags.

She had taken off her coat and beneath it she wore a pale blue turtleneck that showed just how nicely curved she was in all the right places.

He didn’t want to notice. “The kitchen should have everything you need in the way of pots and pans and that sort of thing. If you’re missing anything you need, you can call up to the main house.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“The reservation said you’re staying until the twenty-seventh. Is anyone else joining you?”

He wondered if he imagined the way she tilted her chin in a rather defiant sort of way. “No.”

She was staying here by herself through Christmas? He wasn’t big on celebrating the holidays himself, but he had to wonder what would make a soft, pretty woman like Emery Kendall leave everything familiar and hide out in the Idaho wilderness alone during Christmas.

None of his business, he reminded himself. He had enough on his plate without spending a minute wondering why she wanted to hole up here by herself.

“If you need anything, the number to the main house is the top button programmed on the phone,” he said.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Thank you for your help.” She paused. “Actually, there is one thing. When I made the initial reservation, I was told I was welcome to use any of the Hope Springs horses during my stay.”

“That’s generally the policy. If you need help saddling a horse, you can usually find me or Bill Higgins, the hired man, somewhere around the place.”

“I shouldn’t need help. I’ve been around horses most of my life. But thank you.”

A woman who sewed fancy hats, wore her clothes with the kind of flair that belonged in a fashion magazine, drove a rented Lexus SUV and apparently had plenty of experience with horses. He gave a mental head shake as he said good-night and walked back into the December night.

He wasn’t sure what to think of her. Nothing, he reminded himself. He didn’t need to spend one more minute than necessary thinking about the woman. She was a guest at the ranch, that was all. One he would be thrilled to send on her way at the earliest possible opportunity.

Chapter Two

She slept better than she had in months.

It was an unexpected boon. She had never been able to sleep well in a strange bed. Coupled with the insomnia that had troubled her since before her mother died, Emery had anticipated a rough night.

Perhaps she had only been exhausted from the long day of travel and the complications of her arrival. Whatever the reason for her deep sleep, she awoke invigorated, her mind racing with ideas for the boutique hotel redesign she was working on for one of her favorite clients, Spencer Hotels.

This is exactly what she hoped might happen, that escaping from her routine in Warrenton might help her recapture some of the joy she had always found when a new project started to click in her head.

What she had taken to be a blizzard the night before left only about three or four inches of new snow on the ground. She opened the rather ordinary beige tab curtains to the alpine scene outside her windows and spent the morning with her sketchbook.

The hotel Eben Spencer had recently purchased was in Livingston, Montana, gateway to the north entrance of Yellowstone. He wanted mountain chic with an edge and custom everything—window coverings, upholstery, bed linens.

By early afternoon, she had filled her sketchbook with several possibilities she thought would work for the property. After a quick bowl of canned tomato soup and half a sandwich, the lure of the brilliant blue sky—the pure clarity of it against the dark green pine topped with snow—was too powerful for her to resist.

She bundled into silk long johns and her warmest outdoor gear and decided to check out the ranch’s equine offerings.

As she walked past red-painted outbuildings toward the large horse barn and corrals she had spied the night before on her way in, she saw no sign of her reluctant host. Her only companion was a magpie who squawked at her from atop the split-rail fence then hopped away in a flash of iridescent wings.

At the horse barn, a half dozen horses munched alfalfa that had recently been spread for them in the snow-covered pasture and it appeared as if that many again preferred the warmth of the barn.

She stood at the railing, admiring the quarter horses. She could see a couple mares were ready to foal and all of them looked well-fed and content.

After a few moments, a strong-boned dappled gray gelding wandered over to her spot and dipped his head for a little love.

“You are a pretty boy, aren’t you,” she murmured and he whinnied and tossed his head as if in complete agreement.

“That one was our mom’s horse.”

She whirled around and found the girls from the night before watching her from the corner of the pasture. Claire and Tallie, she remembered.

They wore jeans and parkas and mismatched gloves and Tallie’s hair was slipping out of her braid. Had her sister fixed it or had Nate? The idea of that dangerous-looking man trying to wrangle his niece’s hair tugged at her emotions.

“Hi,” she greeted the girls.

“That was our mom’s favorite horse,” Claire repeated.

“He’s beautiful,” Emery answered.

“His name is Cielo. It means cloud in Spanish,” the younger girl said. “You can ride him if you want.”

“Oh, I don’t…”

Tallie didn’t wait for her to answer. “Annabelle was our mom’s other favorite horse, but she’s having a baby after Christmas so you can’t ride her.”

“Which one is Annabelle?”

“The black with the white stockings,” Claire said, gesturing to a lovely mare currently drinking from the water trough.

“So do you want to ride Cielo?”

She did, suddenly, but she was wary about riding a horse that had been a favorite of their deceased mother.

“If you’re sure it’s okay.”

“Sure,” Tallie answered, then her gamine features lit up. “Hey, she could come with us! Then we could go now.”

“Where are you going?” Emery asked warily.

“Just a friend’s house,” Claire said.

“By yourselves?”

The girls exchanged glances. “We’re allowed to ride as long as we have someone with us,” Claire finally answered, an explanation Emery didn’t completely buy.

“What were you planning to do before you ran into me here?”

“Wait.” Tallie heaved a put-upon sigh. “We’ve been waiting all morning, and Uncle Nate is still busy with the man who came from Idaho Fall.”

“The lawyer,” Claire said. “He’s talking about our mom and dad’s state.”

It took Emery a moment to deduce their uncle and the attorney must be discussing their parents’ estate. Poor little things, to lose both their mother and their father.

Let that be a lesson to her. Just when she was tempted to wallow in self-pity at the strange journey her life had taken over the past few years, she was completely gob-smacked by someone whose path was even tougher.

“I’m sure they’ll be finished soon.”

“But we have an important mission,” Tallie declared. “We can’t wait much longer. We really can’t.”

Emery couldn’t help her smile. Had she been so dramatic at eight? “What could possibly be so urgent?”

“Our friend Tanner has been home sick from school for three whole days.”

Again, Emery had to swallow a smile at the gravity in the girl’s voice. “Oh my goodness. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“He had the flu and was throwing up and everything. He said it was really gross. But his stepmom said he’s feeling tons better.”

“That’s a relief.” Emery was surprised to find herself enjoying her interaction with these cute girls.

“Yeah, only I brought home all his homework papers yesterday and I just have to get them to his house so he has time to finish them before school on Monday or he’ll be in big trouble.”

“I can see why you’re in such a hurry, then.”

“So will you come with us?” Claire asked. “We can help you saddle Cielo.”

She looked at the powerful horse and then back at the girls. She had been considering a ride. And by the looks of him, riding Cielo would indeed be like riding a cloud. What would be the harm in going along with the girls and saving Nate Cavazos a little work?

“We’d better make sure it’s all right with your uncle.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Claire said. “This way he doesn’t have to find the time to take us.”

“Why don’t you ask him anyway? I would feel better if he gave his okay. Tallie and I will saddle the horses and meet you at the house in a few minutes, all right?”

Claire gave a reluctant sigh, but nodded. “Tallie, you get Junebug for me. And don’t cinch her too tight.”

“I know. I’ve only done it a million times.”

Claire returned to the barn a few moments later, just as they were saddling Tallie’s small paint pony, a pretty little mare she called Estrella.

“Did he say it was okay?”

“Yep,” Claire said, her attention turned to her own horse.

“Good,” Emery answered, surprised at how much she was anticipating a good, hard ride. “Does it take long to reach Tanner’s house?”

“It’s not far. Maybe a mile,” Tallie answered. Before Emery could ask if she needed a hand into the saddle, the girl clambered up like a little monkey and settled easily on the horse’s back.

Both girls looked completely at home in the saddle and Emery, who had been riding since she was younger than either of them, though with an English saddle, felt like a veritable greenhorn in comparison.

“Come on. Let’s go,” Tallie insisted, nudging the heels of her boots into the horse’s side.

The younger girl led the way down the snowy driveway and both of the other horses followed Estrella with alacrity, tack jingling softly and their gaits smart, as if they were thrilled to be out in the cold, invigorating air.

The mountains loomed over them, raw and jagged, their peaks a dramatic contrast of snow and pine.

At the end of the long, curving drive, they followed the canyon road along the creek for perhaps a half mile. In that time, they encountered no vehicles.

“Are we getting closer to Tanner’s house?” Emery asked after a few more moments.

“Not very far. Look, there’s the sign for it.”

She followed the direction of the girl’s outstretched hand and her heart clutched in her chest.

A huge log arch spanned the driveway, much bigger than the sign for the Hope Springs Guest Ranch had been. This one declared Cold Creek Land & Cattle Company in black iron letters.

Oh, dear heavens.

She wasn’t ready. She still hadn’t decided if she would ever be ready. She needed more time to figure out if she wanted to face any of the Daltons yet.

She wanted to whirl Cielo around and ride as fast and as hard as she could back to the relative safety of Hope Springs.

“What’s the matter, Ms. Kendall?” Tallie’s mouth puckered into a concerned frown. “You look funny.”

She didn’t feel funny. Far from it. She felt panicked and vaguely nauseous, the canned tomato soup suddenly turning to greasy sludge in her stomach.

She drew in a breath. She could do this. The Daltons knew nothing about the revelations that had completely rocked her world four months ago. As far as they knew, she was only a guest staying at a neighboring ranch.

“Nothing.” She forced a smile and eased her hands on the reins. “Nothing at all.”

Her heart pounded as they rode under the arch and headed up a long driveway that wound around a stand of lodgepole pine and bare-branched aspens.

The house was a grand, imposing log structure with a long front porch and several gables, surrounded by several outbuildings. Some distance from it, she could see a large, sprawling metal-framed building. She guessed that was the Cold Creek equine training facility she had read about on the Internet.

Her heart felt as if it would pound right out of her chest and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath in the cold air. She hadn’t had a panic attack since she graduated from college, not even during the worst of her pain and loss during the past two years, and she really didn’t want to start again.

Breathe, she ordered herself.

When they neared the house, the girls jumped down from their horses and Emery knew she couldn’t go inside.

“I’ll just wait for you out here with the horses,” she told them. “You go give your friend his homework.”

The implications of the connection began to sink through. Tanner must be one of the Dalton children. Wade’s, probably, since as far as she could determine, he was the only brother with grade-school-age kids, although Seth had older stepchildren. That made Tallie’s friend Tanner her…

She jerked her mind away. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, but we might be a few minutes. You might get cold. I told Tanner I would explain our math assignment to him and I don’t know how long it will take.”

Before she could come up with an answer, a tall, dark-haired man with a definite air of authority walked out of a nearby barn. He stopped short when he spied them, then his handsome features lit up.

“Well, hello there, Miss Tallie and Miss Claire,” he called as he approached them. “What brings you all the way up to the Cold Creek on such a wintry day?”

Emery drew in a calming breath and then another one. He looked just like the picture she had of his father. Which brother was it? Her guess was Wade. He ran the family’s cattle operations, from what she could determine, while the youngest brother, Seth, was in charge of the horse training facility. A third brother, Jake, was a family physician in Pine Gulch.

She could have hired a private investigator to find all this information, but she hadn’t needed to go that far. A few clicks on the computer and she had found all she needed to know and then some.

“I’ve got Tanner’s homework, Mr. Dalton.”

“That is sure nice of you girls to ride over for that. It will give him something to do besides snipe at his brother and sister. He’ll be real glad to see a little company. And who’s your friend?”

“Her name is Ms. Kendall and she’s from Virginia,” Claire answered.

Emery didn’t feel she had any choice but to dismount. She prayed her shaking legs would hold her up.

“I’m Emery Kendall. I’m staying at Hope Springs through the holidays.”

He wore a battered leather work glove, but he removed it and reached out his hand. She shook it then quickly dropped her fingers.

“Nice to meet you, Miz Kendall. You picked a beautiful time of year for a visit. This area of eastern Idaho is pretty year round, but there’s something special about the place during the holidays, as long as you can stand the cold.”

She had only seen the one picture, but she knew his father shared that same smile, that same thick, wavy, dark hair.

“Let’s tie your horses so you can come in out of the cold for a minute and I’ll let Tanner know you all are here,” he said. “And don’t worry, he’s not contagious anymore. Just grumpy as can be.”

The girls giggled at that and followed him back up the porch steps and into the house.

The house was huge and warm and welcoming. Here were the Christmas decorations the girls’ home lacked. A massive Christmas tree decorated with plaid ribbons and hundreds of ornaments brushed the top of the soaring vaulted ceiling and pine garlands with matching ribbons draped the river rock fireplace and hung from the log staircase.

Whoever decorated the place had used a pleasing mix of color and texture to create a sense of brightness and warmth.

She was studying a particularly lovely embroidered sampler on the wall when a woman with blond hair and fine-boned features entered the room.

“Tallie and Claire Palmer. Two of my favorite people!”

“We brought Tanner’s homework assignment. Mrs. Peterson said he can turn it in when he goes back to class.”

“He’ll be so excited to see you,” the woman said with a warm smile. “Come on back to the kitchen. I just took a tray of cookies out of the oven. You’d better come grab one before the hungry little mouths around here gobble them all up.”

“And the hungry big mouths.”

The man owning the hungry big mouth in question swooped the woman into his arms and planted it on hers and kissed her soundly, apparently unembarrassed by the presence of a stranger.

“You’ll have to fight Cody for them, I’m afraid,” she answered after he released her. “He’s already snitched three off the cookie sheet before I could even transfer them to the cooling rack. I’m sure he had to have burned his tongue, but he’ll never admit it.”

Wade Dalton chuckled, then apparently remembered his manners. “Sorry. Carrie, this is Emery Kendall. She’s staying at Hope Springs and was nice enough to ride with the girls over here to bring Tanner’s homework. Emery, this is my wife, Caroline. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go fight off my kids for the cookies. It was nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. Only after he left the room did her heart rate seem to settle down.

“Tanner and Nat are in the family room playing video games,” Caroline said to the girls. “I’m sure Tanner would love some company besides family for a few minutes if you’ve got time to visit.”

The girls looked to Emery as if for permission and she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Right now she didn’t feel in charge of anything, not even her own breathing. “A few moments, I suppose. Then we’d better ride back before your uncle begins to worry.”

“I told Tanner I would explain the math assignment,” Tallie said. “We’re subtracting fractions and stuff and it’s really hard.”

“That is so kind of you to help him,” Caroline said with a warm smile. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

Though it was only a first impression and she could be way off-base, for all she knew, Emery thought the other woman seemed completely sincere in her gratitude, the sort of person who could lift even the most defeated spirit just with her smile.

She would have been very much inclined to like her, even if she hadn’t already read and admired Caroline Montgomery Dalton’s self-help books on finding your life’s direction before she knew of the connection to the Daltons of Cold Creek Canyon.

“Emery, where did you say you were from?” Caroline asked when the girls hurried from the room.

“Virginia. Warrenton, an hour outside Washington, D.C.”

“Lovely country there. Are you in Pine Gulch visiting family?” Caroline asked.

Under the circumstances, Emery didn’t quite know how to respond to that particular question.

“I guess you could say I needed a change this Christmas. It’s been a…difficult year. My mother died of cancer in September.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss. I can only imagine how hard the holidays must be for you.”

Though she didn’t physically touch her, the concern in her voice was somehow just as comforting as an embrace.

“The grief is still very painful, especially as she was my…only family. I wasn’t quite ready to face the parties and celebrations of the holidays and was looking for a change this year. I read about Hope Springs Guest Ranch online and it seemed just the place to spend the holidays.”

“It’s a very peaceful spot,” Caroline said softly. “I’ve always thought it had healing energy. I know Suzi, the girls’ mother, felt the same.”

She didn’t expect to find healing. She only wanted to figure out how everything she thought she had known about herself could turn out to be a lie.

“I’m surprised Nate is taking new guests. I was under the impression he’s working toward closing the place, which is really a shame after all the work and heart and soul Suzi and John put into it.”

“I made my reservation back in September. There was some mix-up with it, but Mr. Cavazos agreed to honor it.”

“He has his hands full, that man.”

Before Emery could answer, a timer dinged from somewhere in the house. Caroline glanced behind her.

“My cookies are just coming out. Listen, do you mind coming back to the kitchen with me? I don’t want to leave you out here by yourself, but if I don’t take them out, they’ll burn. Of course, they’ll still get inhaled around here, no matter how crispy they are.”

“I don’t mind,” she answered. She followed Caroline down a hallway toward the origin of the delicious smells of almond and butter and sugar. The hallway was lined with photographs, old black-and-whites, framed snapshots and some that looked like professionally taken portraits. Emery’s head swiveled as she took in the barrage of images and she had to stop so she could absorb them all.

“This is…your family?”

“Yes.” She noticed the direction of Emery’s gaze, a candid shot of three men in Western-cut suits standing at what looked like a wedding. They were laughing and lighthearted, each of them extraordinarily handsome. “Those are my husband’s brothers, Jake and Seth. That was taken at Seth’s wedding. They both live nearby, which is wonderful for all of them. We’re very close with them and their wives.”

She couldn’t stand here gaping at someone else’s family, not without making Caroline Montgomery Dalton think she was crazy, so she followed her down the hallway into the kitchen, doing her best not to cast longing looks over her shoulder.

In the kitchen, she found Wade Dalton sitting at a long, scarred pine table with a blonde toddler in pink overalls on his lap and a little boy of about five or six chattering a mile a minute at his side.

“I got to help make the holes for the jam, Dad. Only even though they’re called thumbprint cookies, Mom wouldn’t let me use my thumbs to make the dents. I had to use the lid of a marker. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Extremely,” he answered with a grin toward Emery and Caroline. “But probably a little more sanitary.”

“There’s a method to my madness,” Caroline said. “That way the jam doesn’t ooze out the sides as easily. It’s all in how much pressure you apply when you make the hole, isn’t it, bud?”

The boy nodded emphatically. “And I’m just right, aren’t I?”

“You’re perfect.”

Emery stood aside, observing their interaction while Caroline pulled the cookies from the oven in one smooth motion and replaced that tray with another filled with dough cutouts.