At Home in Stone Creek

Jack waited, wondering if he’d be able to stand on his own. After fumbling unsuccessfully with the buckle on his seat belt, he decided not.

When it was safe, the EMTs came forward, following Vince, who opened Jack’s door.

Jack hauled off his headphones and tossed them aside.

His old friend Tanner Quinn stepped around Vince, his trademark grin not quite reaching his eyes.

“You look like hell warmed over,” he told Jack cheerfully.

“Since when are you an EMT?” Jack retorted.

Tanner reached in, wedged a shoulder under Jack’s right arm, and hauled him out of the chopper. His knees immediately buckled, and Vince stepped up, supporting him on the other side.

“In a place like Stone Creek,” Tanner replied, “everybody helps out.”

“Right,” Jack said, stumbling between the two men keeping him on his feet. They reached the wheeled gurney—Jack had thought they never would, since it seemed to recede into the void with every awkward step—and he found himself on his back.

Tanner and the second man strapped him down, a process that brought back a few bad memories.

“Is there even a hospital in this hellhole of a place?” Vince asked irritably, from somewhere in the cold night.

“There’s a pretty good clinic over in Indian Rock,” Tanner answered easily, “and it isn’t far to Flagstaff.” He paused to help his buddy hoist Jack and the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “You’re in good hands, Jack. My wife is the best veterinarian in the state.”

Jack laughed raggedly at that.

Vince muttered a curse.

Tanner climbed into the back beside Jack, perched on some kind of fold-down seat. The other man shut the doors.

“I’m not contagious,” Jack said to Tanner.

“So I hear,” Tanner said, as his partner climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “You in any pain?”

“No,” Jack struggled to quip, “but I might puke on those Roy Rogers boots of yours.”

“You don’t miss much, even strapped to a gurney.” Tanner chuckled, hoisted one foot high enough for Jack to squint at it and hauled up the leg of his jeans to show off the fancy stitching on the boot shaft. “My brother-in-law gave them to me,” he said. “Brad used to wear them onstage, back when he was breaking hearts out there on the concert circuit. Swigged iced tea out of a whiskey bottle all through every performance, so everybody would think he was a badass.”

Jack looked up at his closest and most trusted friend and wished he’d listened to Vince. Ever since he’d come down with the illness, a week after snatching a five-year-old girl back from her noncustodial parent—a small-time drug runner with dangerous aspirations and a lousy attitude—he hadn’t been able to think about anyone or anything but Ashley. When he could think.

Now, in one of the first clearheaded moments he’d experienced since checking himself out of the hospital the day before, he realized he might be making a major mistake—not by facing Ashley; he owed her that much and a lot more. No, he could be putting her in danger, and putting Tanner and his daughter and his pregnant veterinarian wife in danger, as well.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said, keeping his voice low.

Tanner shook his head, his jaw clamped down hard, as though irritated by Jack’s statement. Since he’d gotten married, settled down and sold off his multinational construction company to play at being an Arizona rancher, Tanner had softened around the edges a little, but Jack knew his friend was still one tough SOB.

“This is where you belong,” Tanner insisted. Another grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “If you’d had sense enough to know that six months ago, old buddy, when you bailed on Ashley without so much as a fare-thee-well, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Ashley. The name had run through his mind a million times in those six months, but hearing somebody say it out loud was like having a fist close around his insides and squeeze hard.

Jack couldn’t speak.

Tanner didn’t press for further conversation.

The ambulance bumped over country roads, finally hit smooth blacktop.

“Here we are,” Tanner said. “Ashley’s place.”

“I knew something was going to happen,” Ashley told Mrs. Wiggins, peeling the kitten off the living room curtains as she peered out at the ambulance stopped in the street. “I knew it.”

Not bothering to find her coat, Ashley opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. Tanner got out on the passenger side and gave her a casual wave as he went around back.

Ashley’s heart pounded. She stood frozen for a long moment, not by the cold, but by a strange, eager sense of dread. Then she bolted down the steps, careful not to slip, and hurried along the walk, through the gate.

“What…?” she began, but the rest of the question died in her throat.

Tanner had opened the back of the ambulance, but then he just stood there, looking at her with an odd expression on his face.

“Brace yourself,” he said.

Jeff Baxter, part of a rotating group of volunteers, like Tanner, left the driver’s seat and came to stand a short but eloquent distance away. He looked like a man trying to brace himself for an imminent explosion.

Impatient, Ashley wedged herself between the two men, peered inside.

Jack McCall sat upright on the gurney, grinning stupidly. His black hair, military-short the last time she’d seen him, was longer now, and sleekly shaggy. His eyes blazed with fever.

“Whose shirt is that?” he asked, frowning.

Still taken aback, Ashley didn’t register the question right away. Several awkward moments had passed by the time she glanced down to see what she was wearing.

“Yours,” she answered, finally.

Jack looked relieved. “Good,” he said.

Ashley, beside herself with surprise until that very instant, landed back in her own skin with a jolt. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Jack scooted toward her, almost pitched out of the ambulance onto his face before Tanner and Jeff moved in to grab him by the arms.

“Checking in,” he said, once he’d tried—and failed—to shrug off them off. “You’re still in the bed-and-breakfast business, aren’t you?”

You’re still in the bed-and-breakfast business, aren’t you?

Damn, the man had nerve.

“You belong in a hospital,” she said evenly. “Not a bed-and-breakfast.”

“I’m willing to pay double,” Jack offered. His face, always strong, took on a vulnerable expression. “I need a place to lay low for a while, Ash. Are you game?”

She thought quickly. The last thing in the world she wanted was Jack McCall under her roof again, but she couldn’t afford to turn down a paying guest. She’d have to dip into her savings soon if she did, and not just to pay Brad.

The bills were piling up.

“Triple the usual rate,” she said.

Jack squinted, probably not understanding at first, then gave a raspy chuckle. “Okay,” he agreed. “Triple it is. Even though it is the off-season.”

Jeff and Tanner half dragged, half carried him toward the house.

Ashley hesitated on the snowy sidewalk.

First the cat.

Now Jack.

Evidently, it was her day to be dumped on.

Chapter Two

“What happened to him?” Ashley whispered to Tanner, in the hallway outside the second-best room in the house, a small suite at the opposite end of the corridor from her own quarters. Jeff and Tanner had already put the patient to bed, fully dressed except for his boots, and Jeff had gone downstairs to make a call on his cell phone.

Jack, meanwhile, had sunk into an instant and all-consuming sleep—or into a coma. It was a crapshoot, guessing which.

Tanner looked grim; didn’t seem to notice that Mrs. Wiggins was busily climbing his right pant leg, her infinitesimal claws snagging the denim as she scaled his knee and started up his thigh with a deliberation that would have been funny under any other circumstances.

“All I know is,” Tanner replied, “I got a call from Jack this afternoon, just as Livie and I were leaving the clinic after her checkup. He said he was a little under the weather and wanted to know if I’d meet him at the airstrip and bring him here.” He paused, cupped the kitten in one hand, raised the little creature to nose level, and peered quizzically into its mismatched eyes before lowering it gently to the floor. Straightening from a crouch, he added, “I offered to put him up at our place, but he insisted on coming to yours.”

“You might have called me,” Ashley fretted, still keeping her voice down. “Given me some warning, at least.”

“Check your voice mail,” Tanner countered, sounding mildly exasperated. “I left at least four messages.”

“I was out,” Ashley said, defensive, “buying kitty litter and kibble. Because your wife decided I needed a cat.”

Tanner grinned at the mention of Olivia, and something eased in him, gentling the expression in his eyes. “If you’d carry a cell phone, like any normal human being, you’d have been up to speed, situationwise.” He paused, with a mischievous twinkle. “You might even have had time to bake a welcome-back-Jack cake.”

“As if,” Ashley breathed, but as rattled as she was over having Jack McCall land in the middle of her life like the flaming chunks of a latter-day Hindenburg, there was something else she needed to know. “What did the doctor say? About Olivia, I mean?”

Tanner sighed. “She’s a couple of weeks overdue—Dr. Pentland wants to induce labor tomorrow morning.”

Worry made Ashley peevish. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

“As I said,” Tanner replied, “get a cell phone.”

Before Ashley could come up with a reply, the front door banged open downstairs, and a youthful female voice called her name, sounding alarmed.

Ashley went to the upstairs railing, leaned a little, and saw Tanner’s daughter, Sophie, standing in the living room, her face upturned and so pale that her freckles stood out, even from that distance. Sixteen-year-old Carly, blond and blue-eyed like her sister, Meg, appeared beside her.

“There’s an ambulance outside,” Sophie said. “What’s happening?”

Tanner started down the stairs. “Everything’s all right,” he told the frightened girl.

Carly glanced from Tanner to Ashley, descending behind him. “We meant to get here sooner, to set up your computer,” Carly said, “but Mr. Gilvine kept the whole Drama Club after school to rehearse the second act of the new play.”

“How come there’s an ambulance outside,” Sophie persisted, gazing up at her father’s face, “if nobody’s sick?”

“I didn’t say nobody was sick,” Tanner told her quietly, setting his hands on her shoulders. “Jack’s upstairs, resting.”

Sophie’s panic rose a notch. “Uncle Jack is sick? What’s wrong with him?”

That’s what I’d like to know, Ashley thought.

“From the symptoms, I’d guess it’s some kind of toxin.”

Sophie tried to go around Tanner, clearly intending to race up the stairs. “I want to see him!”

Tanner stopped her. “Not now, sweetie,” he said, his tone at once gruff and gentle. “He’s asleep.”

“Do you still want us to set up your computer?” Carly asked Ashley.

Ashley summoned up a smile and shook her head. “Another time,” she said. “You must be tired, after a whole day of school and then play practice on top of that. How about some supper?”

“Mr. Gilvine ordered pizza for the whole cast,” Carly answered, touching her flat stomach and puffing out her cheeks to indicate that she was stuffed. “I already called home, and Brad said he’d come in from the ranch and get us as soon as we had your system up and running.”

“It can wait,” Ashley reiterated, glancing at Tanner.

“I’ll drop you off on the way home,” he told Carly, one hand still resting on Sophie’s shoulder. “My truck’s parked at the fire station. Jeff can give us a lift over there.”

Having lost her mother when she was very young, Sophie had insecurities Ashley could well identify with. The girl adored Olivia, and looked forward to the birth of a brother or sister. Tanner probably wanted to break the news about Livie’s induction later, with just the three of them present.

“Call me,” Ashley ordered, her throat thick with concern for her sister and the child, as Tanner steered the girls toward the front door.

Tanner merely arched an eyebrow at that.

Jeff stepped out of the study, just tucking away his cell phone. “I’m in big trouble with Lucy,” he said. “Forgot to let her know I’d be late. She made a soufflé and it fell.”

“Uh-oh,” Tanner commiserated.

“We get to ride in an ambulance?” Sophie asked, cheered.

“Awesome,” Carly said.

And then they were gone.

Ashley raised her eyes to the ceiling. Recalled that Jack McCall was up there, sprawled on one of her guest beds, buried under half a dozen quilts. Just how sick was he? Would he want to eat, and if so, what?

After some internal debate, she decided on homemade chicken soup.

That was the cure for everything, wasn’t it? Everything, that is, except a broken heart.

Jack McCall awakened to find something furry standing on his face.

Fortunately, he was too weak to flail, or he’d have sent what his brain finally registered as a kitten flying before he realized he wasn’t back in a South American jail, fighting off rats willing to settle for part of his hide when the rations ran low.

The animal stared directly into his face with one blue eye and one green one, purring as though it had a motor inside its hairy little chest.

He blinked, decided the thing was probably some kind of mutant.

“Another victim of renegade genetics,” he said.

“Meooooow,” the cat replied, perhaps indignant.

The door across the room opened, and Ashley elbowed her way in, carrying a loaded tray. Whatever was on it smelled like heaven distilled to its essence, or was that the scent of her skin and that amazing hair of hers?

“Mrs. Wiggins,” she said, “get down.”

“Mrs.?” Jack replied, trying to raise himself on his pillows and failing. This was a fortunate thing for the cat, who was trying to nest in his hair by then. “Isn’t she a little young to be married?”

“Yuk-yuk,” Ashley said, with an edge.

Jack sighed inwardly. All was not forgiven, then, he concluded.

Mrs. Wiggins climbed down over his right cheek and curled up on his chest. He could have sworn he felt some kind of warm energy flowing through the kitten, as though it were a conduit between the world around him and another, better one.

Crap. He was really losing it.

“Are you hungry?” Ashley asked, as though he were any ordinary guest.

A gnawing in the pit of Jack’s stomach told him he was—for the first time since he’d come down with the mysterious plague. “Yeah,” he ground out, further weakened by the sight of Ashley. Even in jeans and the flannel shirt he’d left behind, with her light hair springing from its normally tidy braid, she looked like a goddess. “I think I am.”

She approached the bed—cautiously, it seemed to Jack, and little wonder, after some of the acrobatics they’d managed in the one down the hall before he left—and set the tray down on the nightstand.

“Can you feed yourself?” she asked, keeping her distance. Her tone was formal, almost prim.

Jack gave an inelegant snort at that, then realized, to his mortification, that he probably couldn’t. Earlier, he’d made it to the adjoining bathroom and back, but the effort had exhausted him. “Yes,” he fibbed.

She tilted her head to one side, skeptical. A smile flittered around her mouth, but didn’t come in for a landing. “Your eyes widen a little when you lie,” she commented.

He sure hoped certain members of various drug and gunrunning cartels didn’t know that. “Oh,” he said.

Ashley dragged a fussy-looking chair over and sat down. With a little sigh, she took a spoon off the tray and plunged it into a bright-blue crockery bowl. “Open up,” she told him.

Jack resisted briefly, pressing his lips together—he still had some pride, after all—but his stomach betrayed him with a long and perfectly audible rumble. He opened his mouth.

The fragrant substance turned out to be chicken soup, with wild rice and chopped celery and a few other things he couldn’t identify. It was so good that, if he’d been able to, he’d have grabbed the bowl with both hands and downed the stuff in a few gulps.

“Slow down,” Ashley said. Her eyes had softened a little, but her body remained rigid. “There’s plenty more soup simmering on the stove.”

Like the kitten, the soup seemed to possess some sort of quantum-level healing power. Jack felt faint tendrils of strength stirring inside him, like the tender roots of a plant splitting through a seed husk, groping tentatively toward the sun.

Once he’d finished the soup, sleep began to pull him downward again, toward oblivion. There was something different about the feeling this time; rather than an urge to struggle against it, as before, it was more an impulse to give himself up to the darkness, settle into it like a waiting embrace.

Something soft brushed his cheek. Ashley’s fingertips? Or the mutant kitten?

“Jack,” Ashley said.

With an effort, he opened his eyes.

Tears glimmered along Ashley’s lashes. “Are you going to die?” she asked.

Jack considered his answer for a few moments; not easy, with his brain short-circuiting. According to the doctors at Walter Reed, his prognosis wasn’t the best. They’d admitted that they’d never seen the toxin before, and their plan was to ship him off to some secret government research facility for further study.

Which was one of the reasons he’d bolted, conned a series of friends into springing him and then relaying him cross-country in various planes and helicopters.

He found Ashley’s hand, squeezed it with his own. “Not if I can help it,” he murmured, just before sleep sucked him under again.

Their brief conversation echoed in Ashley’s head, over and over, as she sat there watching Jack sleep until the room was so dark she couldn’t see anything but the faintest outline of him, etched against the sheets.

Are you going to die?

Not if I can help it.

Ashley overcame the need to switch on the bedside lamp, send golden light spilling over the features she knew so well—the hazel eyes, the well-defined cheekbones, the strong, obstinate jaw—but just barely. Leaving the tray behind, she rose out of the chair and made her way slowly toward the door, afraid of stepping on Mrs. Wiggins, frolicking at her feet like a little ghost.

Reaching the hallway, Ashley closed the door softly behind her, bent to scoop the kitten up in one hand, and let the tears come. Silent sobs rocked her, making her shoulders shake, and Mrs. Wiggins snuggled in close under her chin, as if to offer comfort.

Was Jack truly in danger of dying?

She sniffled, straightened her spine. Surely Tanner wouldn’t have agreed to bring him to the bed-and-breakfast—to her—if he was at death’s door.

On the other hand, she reasoned, dashing at her cheek with the back of one hand, trying to rally her scattered emotions, Jack was bone-stubborn. He always got his way.

So maybe Tanner was simply honoring Jack’s last wish.

Holding tightly to the banister, Ashley started down the stairs.

Jack hadn’t wanted to live in Stone Creek. Why would he choose to die there?

The phone began to ring, a persistent trilling, and Ashley, thinking of Olivia, dashed to the small desk where guests registered—not that that had been an issue lately—and snatched up the receiver.

“Hello?” When had she gotten out of the habit of answering with a businesslike, “Mountain View Bed and Breakfast”?

“I hear you’ve got an unexpected boarder,” Brad said, his tone measured.

Ashley was unaccountably glad to hear her big brother’s voice, considering that they hadn’t had much to say to each other since their mother’s funeral. “Yes,” she assented.

“According to Carly, he was sick enough to arrive in an ambulance.”

Ashley nodded, remembered that Brad couldn’t see her, and repeated, “Yes. I’m not sure he should be here—Brad, he’s in a really bad way. I’m not a nurse and I’m—” She paused, swallowed. “I’m scared.”

“I can be there in fifteen minutes, Ash.”

Fresh tears scalded Ashley’s eyes, made them feel raw. “That would be good,” she said.

“Put on a pot of coffee, little sister,” Brad told her. “I’m on my way.”

True to his word, Brad was standing in her kitchen before the coffee finished perking. He looked more like a rancher than a famous country singer and sometime movie star, in his faded jeans, battered boots, chambray shirt and denim jacket.

Ashley couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged her brother, but now she went to him, and he wrapped her in his arms, kissed the top of her head.

“Olivia…” she began, but her voice fell away.

“I know,” Brad said hoarsely. “They’re inducing labor in the morning. Livie will be fine, honey, and so will the baby.”

Ashley tilted her head back, looked up into Brad’s face. His dark-blond hair was rumpled, and his beard was growing in, bristly. “How’s the family?”

He rested his hands on her shoulders, held her at a little distance. “You wouldn’t have to ask if you ever stopped by Stone Creek Ranch,” he answered. “Mac misses you, and Meg and I do, too.”

The minute Brad had known she needed him, he’d been in his truck, headed for town. And now that he was there, her anger over their mother’s funeral didn’t seem so important.

She tried to speak, but her throat had tightened again, and she couldn’t get a single word past it.

One corner of Brad’s famous mouth crooked up. “Where’s Lover Boy?” he asked. “Lucky thing for him that he’s laid up—otherwise I’d punch his lights out for what he did to you.”

The phrase Lover Boy made Ashley flinch. “That’s over,” she said.

Brad let his hands fall to his sides, his eyes serious now. “Right,” he replied. “Which room?”

Ashley told him, and he left the kitchen, the inside door swinging behind him long after he’d passed through it.

She kept herself busy by taking mugs down from the cupboard, filling Mrs. Wiggins’s dish with kibble the size of barley grains, switching on the radio and then switching it off again.

The kitten crunched away at the kibble, then climbed onto its newly purchased bed in the corner near the fireplace, turned in circles for a few moments, kneaded the fabric, and dropped like the proverbial rock.

After several minutes had passed, Ashley heard Brad’s boot heels on the staircase, and poured coffee for her brother; she was drinking herbal tea.

As if there were a hope in hell she’d sleep a wink that night by avoiding caffeine.

Brad reached for his mug, took a thoughtful sip.

“Well?” Ashley prompted.

“I’m not a doctor, Ash,” he said. “All I can tell you for sure is, he’s breathing.”

“That’s helpful,” Ashley said.

He chuckled, and the sound, though rueful, consoled her a little. He turned one of the chairs around backward, and straddled it, setting his mug on the table.

“Why do men like to sit like that?” Ashley wondered aloud.

He grinned. “You’ve been alone too long,” he answered.

Ashley blushed, brought her tea to the table and sat down. “What am I going to do?” she asked.

Brad inclined his head toward the ceiling. “About McCall? That’s up to you, sis. If you want him out of here, I can have him airlifted to Flagstaff within a couple hours.”

This was no idle boast. Even though he’d retired from the country-music scene several years before, at least as far as concert tours went, Brad still wrote and recorded songs, and he could have stacked his royalty checks like so much cordwood. On top of that, Meg was a McKettrick, a multimillionaire in her own right. One phone call from either one of them, and a sleek jet would be landing outside of town in no time at all, fully equipped and staffed with doctors and nurses.