A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise

“Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to listen to my messages, with everything that’s been going on. Do you need us to clean her house, too?”

“No. She works for you! She showed up this morning to clean for me. In the process, she tripped and fell down my stairs.”

“This is all very strange.” The woman sounded baffled and a little concerned. “We don’t have anyone named Sarah working for us and, as I said, we had the dates switched.”

“You didn’t send someone.”

“Yes. Just now,” she said patiently. “Not earlier this morning. Kelli Parker. She’s very efficient. One of our very best, I promise you.”

“So if you didn’t send someone to clean my house, who the hell is this woman sitting next to me with the broken arm and the concussion?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. She’s not my employee, I can promise you that. Why would anybody want to pretend to be? Perhaps you had better call the police.”

He pulled up in front of the ranch house and sat in the truck for a moment, the phone still pressed to his ear. He didn’t want to call the police. In Pine Gulch, the police meant his brother Trace. Bad enough that Taft had to come out on the emergency call and find a strange woman crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. Trace would never let him hear the end of this one.

“Okay. Thank you. I’ll watch for your actual employee.”

“I’m sorry again for the mix-up. I don’t want you to think we usually conduct our business in this scatterbrained way. The holidays have been crazy anyway, with everybody wanting sparkling houses for their parties and overnight guests, and six hours without electricity or computers didn’t help matters.”

“No problem. Thanks.”

He hung up and looked across the cab at Sarah. A strand of auburn hair had drifted across her cheek, accentuating the complexion that was still too pale for his liking.

He would sure like to figure out just what the hell was going on, but he wasn’t quite ready to call the police. Trace had an annoying tendency to take over in matters of an investigative nature, and Ridge was feeling oddly territorial about this woman.

He figured he could get her settled and then if she was still out of it, he could go through her purse and try to find out why a woman who claimed she taught first grade at Sunny View Elementary School decided to spend a little time cleaning up the party mess at a ranch house in some small backwater Idaho town.

She didn’t appear to wake even after he shut off the engine and walked around to the passenger door. “Here we are. Let’s get you inside. Can you walk, or do I have to carry you?”

She opened her eyes for just a moment before closing them again. That was apparently all the answer he was going to get. He sighed and scooped her into his arms, thinking again how slight and delicate she was. She hardly weighed more than Destry.

She was definitely a curvy little handful, though. He tried not to notice, tried to remind himself she was a mysterious stranger who had entered his home under false pretenses, tried not to remember how very long it had been since he’d held a sweet-smelling woman in his arms.

He carried her up the stairs to the mudroom and then through the kitchen to the hallway that led to Caidy’s downstairs bedroom.

In contrast to everything else about his hard-riding, horse-training, dog-loving sister, her bedroom was soft and feminine, with a lavender and brown quilt joining a flurry of pillows on the bed and lace curtains spilling from the window.

The room might have been made for Sarah. She had a kind of sweet, ethereal beauty that fit perfectly with all of Caidy’s frills.

She moaned a little when he lowered her to the bed and he quickly propped one of Caidy’s hundreds of throw pillows underneath her casted arm.

“There. Is that better?”

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked around, still with that vaguely unfocused look.

“This isn’t my hotel room,” she said, her voice a husky rasp.

“No. You’re temporarily staying at the River Bow ranch.”

“I need to talk to the Bowman family,” she stated, still dreamily. “It’s really important.”

This whole thing was so strange. What was she doing here? What did she need to talk to his family about? He frowned as he eased away from her, but she had already closed her eyes again.

She didn’t look at all comfortable. After a pause, he reached down and slipped off her shoes, but that was about as far as he dared go.

He grabbed a soft fleece blanket from the foot of the bed and tucked it under her chin, then stood back and studied her.

What an odd day. Why couldn’t he shake the strange feeling that something momentous was happening? He didn’t like it, especially because he didn’t understand it.

After a moment, he gave her one more careful look then turned and walked from the bedroom. The sun went down early on a late-December afternoon. In another hour, it would be dark, which meant he needed to hustle out to take care of chores. He was a rancher, which meant he didn’t have all day to stand and look at his mysterious guest, no matter how lovely she might be.

Chapter Four

Sarah awoke to a mouth as dry as the Mojave in August and, conversely, a desperate need to use the bathroom.

She opened her eyes slowly and tried to make sense of where she was, why the room didn’t look familiar. A lamp glowed beside the bed, illuminating a comfortably feminine room. A plump armchair stood in one corner and just next to it, she could see an open doorway that looked like it contained the facilities she needed.

When she sat up, a grinding wave of pain washed over her. Her head and her left arm seemed to be the focus of most of the pain but the rest of her body felt as if she had just ridden out the permanent press cycle on a front-loading washing machine.

By the time she hobbled back out of the nicely decorated en suite bathroom, vague, rather unsettling memories were beginning to filter through.

She was at the Bowman family’s River Bow ranch—she could tell by the log walls and the general decor of the place. She had fallen down the stairs while she was cleaning the ranch house after Caidy Bowman’s wedding.

She remembered Ridge Bowman, suddenly—piercing green eyes, hard features, broad shoulders. He thought she was from a cleaning company, and she had been too much of a coward to tell him otherwise.

She remembered an ambulance ride with a man who had Ridge Bowman’s same handsome features and those stunning green eyes.

The actual trip from the clinic to the ranch house was mostly a blur of random impressions, pain and confusion and embarrassment. There had been a kind doctor, a painful procedure and then the rest was a blur.

Why was she back at the River Bow and not at her room at the Cold Creek Inn? And how had she ended up in that bed with her shoes off and a pillow tucked under her arm?

It must have been Ridge. Who else? Her stomach trembled when she thought about him taking care of her. Had he carried her inside? Slipped her onto the bed? Covered her with that blanket?

She could hardly imagine it.

She had to talk to him, right away, before things became even more complicated. She wouldn’t be in this mess if only she had been able to find the courage to tell him everything when she showed up on his doorstep, instead of letting her fear at what he might think of her overwhelm all her good sense.

How long had she slept? She couldn’t see anything outside the fragile lace curtains. She found the clock radio beside the bed and was shocked to discover it was after 9:00 p.m. She must have been out of it for hours, though she wasn’t exactly sure how long she had been at the clinic in Pine Gulch.

She was just trying to gather the energy and the courage to go in search of her unwilling host when she heard a knock on the door.

“Ms. Whitmore? Are you awake?”

Nerves trembled through her to join the aches and pains. “Yes. Come in.”

He pushed open the door and stood there wearing a soft-looking blue shirt and jeans.

You are one great-looking cowboy.

The words seemed to echo through her memory, and she frowned, wondering where they came from. Not that it mattered—they were absolutely true. Ridge Bowman was even more handsome than she remembered, tough and rugged, with shoulders that looked as if they could bear the weight of the world.

“I’m under orders from Doc Dalton to keep an eye on you through the night. I guess I’m supposed to make sure you’re not delusional or anything.”

She thought of the crazy choices she had made since she showed up at the ranch that morning. Really. Cleaning the man’s house as an avoidance method. Could she be any more ridiculous?

“I was half hoping this whole thing was some kind of wild nightmare,” she said. “Does that count as delusional?”

The corner of his mouth danced up just a bit as if he wanted to smile, but he quickly straightened it again. “I’m supposed to check. Do you know your name?”

“Yes. Sarah Whitmore.”

“That’s what your driver’s license says.”

He was holding out her bag, which looked incongruously feminine in his big, masculine hand.

“You looked through my purse?”

“I was trying to find a cell phone that had an emergency contact on it. I couldn’t find one.”

She didn’t go anywhere without her cell phone. She frowned, trying to remember. “Did you check the car? It might be there. Otherwise, I probably left it at the hotel.”

“I’ll look through the car again. Maybe it fell on the floor. I can also have Laura look at the hotel.”

“Why don’t you just take me back to the hotel and I can look for myself?”

He looked sternly implacable. “You can’t stay on your own tonight. Doctor’s orders. And as great as the service is now at the Cold Creek Inn since Laura took over, she just can’t send a desk clerk to your room every couple of hours to check on you. I’m afraid you’re stuck here, at least overnight.”

She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t come up with the words, between the pain and her angst.

Some of her distress must have shown on her features. He held out a water glass she hadn’t noticed before, along with a bottle of medication.

“You’re also late for your pain pill. Sorry about that. I was supposed to give it an hour ago, but I had a problem down at the barn and now I’m running late.”

She didn’t want to take it—she and pain medication didn’t always get along—but she could hardly think around the pain in her head and her arm.

“Maybe I had better only take half. I sometimes get a little, er, wacky on pain meds.”

“Do you?”

Again, that little corner of his mouth twisted up, and she had to wonder what had happened during the time she couldn’t remember.

He broke the pill in half and held it out to her. She swallowed it quickly, more grateful for the water than the narcotic, at least right at that moment.

She drained the glass then handed it back to him. “Thank you.”

“Need something to eat? I’ve got plenty of leftover food from the wedding last night and you haven’t had a thing for hours.”

“I’m not really hungry,” she said honestly.

“I’ll bring you a couple of things anyway. That pain medication will sit better in your stomach if you’ve got something else in there.”

He was gone for only a few moments. When he returned, he had a plate loaded with little sandwiches, puff pastries, tiny bite-sized pieces of cake. He was also accompanied by the cute little Chihuahua who hopped in on three legs.

“Your dog is adorable.”

“Destry and I are supposed to be dogsitting, but she stayed another night at her cousin’s. This is Tripod, who belongs to my new brother-in-law and his kids.”

“Hi, Tripod,” she said to the dog, who hopped over to greet her with gratifying enthusiasm, though he might have been more interested in the plate of food on her lap.

She took a little sandwich and nibbled on it, discovering some kind of chicken salad that was quite delicious.

“These are really good.”

“We had a great caterer,” he said.

She suddenly remembered what had started all this. “Oh. I didn’t finish cleaning.”

He gave her a long look. “Happy House Cleaners and I have worked all that out. Their real employee just left about an hour ago. I’m surprised you didn’t hear her vacuuming. I guess you were really out of it.”

Apparently she didn’t need to tell him as much as she thought, if he knew she hadn’t really been hired to help clean his house.

“I’ve made a terrible mess of everything, haven’t I?”

“You’re a woman of mystery, that’s for sure. Who are you, really, Ms. Whitmore?”

She nibbled at another of the little sandwiches. “You looked through my purse. You tell me.”

He gave her a long look, filled with curiosity and something else—something almost like male interest, though she knew she had to be mistaken. From a quick look in the bathroom mirror while she washed her hands, she knew she was a mess. Her hair was flattened on one side where she had been sleeping, she had a couple of really ugly bruises and her eyes looked inordinately huge in her face. Like she was some kind of creepy bug or something.

“Didn’t tell me much, if you want the truth,” he answered. “You like cinnamon Altoids. You live in Apartment 311 of the Cyprus Grove complex in San Diego. You have a school district ID card, and your birthday is March 14, when you’ll be twenty-nine years old. Funny, but I couldn’t find a single thing in your purse that might explain why you showed up at my ranch out of the blue and started cleaning up for me.”

She could feel her face heat with her ready blush, the redhead’s curse. “You assumed that’s why I was here. I tried to tell you otherwise but you seemed in a rush to go back to your office. Besides, I could tell you really did need help.”

“I absolutely did, which is why I hired someone who wasn’t you to take care of it,” he pointed out. “Since you weren’t here to clean, why did you show up on my doorstep?”

She chewed her lip, trying to figure out the best way to explain.

“Oh! I have a case in my rental car,” she exclaimed suddenly, horrified at her negligence. “I need to bring it in from the cold. Oh, I can’t believe I forgot it!”

“Relax. You didn’t forget. It’s locked in my office right now. Don’t you remember telling me to bring it inside just as Taft and the other paramedics were carrying you out to the ambulance?”

She had a vague memory that seemed to drift in and out of her mind like a playful guppy.

She exhaled with relief. “Oh, good.”

“So is the mysterious case the reason you’re here?”

She sighed, knowing she couldn’t avoid this any longer. “Could you get it?”

He eased away from the door frame, his expression wary. After a moment, he left the room. As she waited for him to return, she closed her eyes, dreading the next few moments.

The past five days had been such a blur. From the moment she found the receipt for a storage unit while clearing out her father’s papers, she felt as if she had been on a crazy roller coaster, spinning her in all directions.

After seeing the contents of that storage unit, she had a hundred vague, horrible suspicions but they were all surreal, insubstantial. None of it seemed real—probably because she didn’t want it to be real.

Her research online had unearthed a chilling story, one she still couldn’t quite comprehend, and one she didn’t want to believe had anything to do with her or any member of her family.

She had packed up one piece of evidence and brought it here in hopes of finding out the truth. Now that she was here, she realized how foolish her hopes had been. What was she expecting? That she would find out everything had just been a horrible mistake?

She waited, nerves stretched taut. When he returned, the black portfolio looked dark and forbidding in his arms.

“Here you go.” He handed it to her, and she moved to the bed.

“Did you look inside, like you looked in my purse?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t want to invade your privacy, but circumstances didn’t leave me much choice.”

She was glad for that, at least. With her only workable hand, she opened the case and slid out the contents, resting it on the blanket.

The loveliness still caught her breath—a beautiful painting of a pale lavender columbine so real she could almost smell it, cupped in both hands of a small blonde girl who looked to be about three years old.

Ridge Bowman’s expression seemed to freeze the moment he caught sight of the painting. His jaw looked hard as granite.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded, his voice harsh.

Instinctively, she wanted to shrink from that tone. She hated conflict and had since she was a little girl listening to her parents scream at each other.

She swallowed hard. “My...father recently died, and I found it among his things.”

He wasn’t angry, she suddenly realized. He was overwhelmed.

“It’s even more beautiful than I remember,” he said, his tone almost reverent. He traced a finger over the edge of one petal, and she realized with shock that this big, tough rancher looked as if he was about to weep.

Who was this man who looked as if he could wrestle a steer without working up a sweat but who could cry over a painting of a little girl holding a flower?

“It...belonged to your family, then?”

He looked up as if he had forgotten she was there. “This is why you came to the ranch?”

She nodded, a movement that reminded her quite forcibly of her aching head. “When I found it,” she said carefully, “I immediately did a web search for the artist. Margaret Bowman.”

“My mother.”

He looked at the painting again, his expression more soft than she had seen it.

As she watched him, Sarah was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion, so very tired of carrying the weight of her past and trying to stay ahead of demons she could never escape.

She shouldn’t have come here. It had been foolishly impulsive and right now she couldn’t believe she ever thought it might be a good idea to face the Bowman family in person.

If she had been thinking straight, she simply would have tracked down an email address and sent a photograph of the painting with her questions. Better yet, she should have had her attorney contact the Bowman family.

Her only explanation for the choices that had led her here had been her own reaction to the paintings. She had been struck by all of them, particularly this one—by its artistic merit and the undeniable skill required to make simple pigment leap from the canvas like that, but also by the obvious love the artist had for the child in the painting.

“Do you have any idea where your father obtained this painting?” Ridge asked her.

Suspicions? Yes. Proof, on the other hand, was something else entirely. She shook her head, which wasn’t a lie.

“It means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?” she said carefully.

“If you only knew. I thought we would never see it again. Of everything, this is the one I missed most of all. That’s my sister, Caidy, in the painting. The one whose wedding we had here yesterday.”

She had suspected as much. Somehow that made everything seem more heartbreaking. “She was a lovely child,” she said softly.

“Who grew into an even lovelier woman.” He smiled, and she was suddenly aware of a fierce envy at the relationship between Ridge Bowman and his family members. The family was obviously very close, despite the tragedy that must have affected all of them.

She thought of her half brother and their tangled relationship. She had loved him dearly when she was young, despite the decade age difference between them. In the end, he had become a stranger to her.

“How much do you want for it?” Ridge asked abruptly. “Name your price.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“That’s why you came, isn’t it?” He raised an eyebrow, and she didn’t mistake the shadow of derision in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

He thought she was trying to extort money from the family, she realized with horror. She was so startled, she didn’t answer for several seconds.

He must have taken her silence for a negotiation tactic. His mouth tightened and he frowned. “I should be coy here, pretend I don’t really want it, maybe try to bargain with you a little. I don’t care. I want it. Name your price. If it’s at all within reason, I’ll pay it.”

She shook her head. “I—I don’t want your money, Mr. Bowman.”

“Don’t you?”

“When I read the stories online about your parents and their...” Her voice trailed off, and she didn’t quite know how to finish that statement.

“Their murders?”

She shivered a little at his bluntness. “Yes,” she said. “Their murders. When I read the news reports and realized the artist of that beautiful painting had died, I knew I had to come. The painting is yours. I won’t let you pay me anything. I fully intended to give it back to you and your family.”

“You what?” He clearly didn’t believe her.

“I have no legal or moral claim to it. It rightfully belongs to your family. It’s yours.”

He stared at her and then back at the painting, brow furrowed. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. It’s yours,” she repeated.

She didn’t add the rest. Not yet. She would have to tell him, but he was so shocked about her volunteering this painting to him, she wasn’t quite ready to let him know everything else.

“I can’t believe this. You have no idea. It’s like having a piece of her back. My mother, I mean.”

The love in his voice touched a chord somewhere deep inside. She thought of her own mother, bitter and angry at the world and the cards she had been dealt. Her mother had raised her alone from the time Sarah was very young, working two jobs to support them because she wouldn’t take money from her ex-husband. Sarah had loved her but accepted now that her mother had never been a kind woman. Barbara didn’t have a lot of room left over around her hatred of Sarah’s father to find love for the daughter they had created together.

“Can you tell me,” she asked him, “was this piece part of the...stolen collection?”

After a moment, he nodded, his features dark.

What other answer had she expected? Sarah pressed her lips together. She couldn’t tell him the rest. The dozens of pieces of art she had found in that climate-controlled storage unit.

She also couldn’t tell him what she suspected.

She was suddenly exhausted, so tired her eyes felt gritty and heavy. She wanted nothing but to sleep again, to ease the pain of her injuries and the worse pain in her heart.

“Do you have any idea how your father obtained it?” he asked. “We’ve only found two or three pieces from the stolen collection in all these years. They seem to appear out of thin air, and we can never trace them back to the original seller. This could be just what we need to solve the case.”

She couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t have the strength or the courage right now when she was hurting so badly. She would have her father’s estate attorney deal with all the particulars, as she should have done from the beginning.

He would eventually know everything, but she wouldn’t have to face those piercing green eyes during the telling.

“I’ve told you all I can. I found it among my father’s things, as I said, and now I would like you and your family to have it. Take the painting, Mr. Bowman. Ridge. Please. Consider it a Christmas gift if you want, but it’s yours.”

“I can’t believe this. I’m...stunned.” He smiled at her, a flash of bright joy that took her breath away. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I can’t begin to tell you how happy Caidy, Taft and Trace will be. You’ve given us a gift beyond price.”

“I’m glad.” She mustered a smile, even though it made her cheeks ache. “I’m so tired. Can I rest now?”

“Yes. Of course.” He picked up the painting from the bed and held it gingerly, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was in his hands again. “Caidy left a lot of her clothes here. Would you like me to find a nightgown for you to change into so you can be more comfortable?”