She gazed at him, her eyes soft, and he felt something sparkle to life in his chest as if someone had just plugged in a hundred Christmas trees.

He was falling hard for this lovely woman, who treated his daughter with such kindness.

Fear not.

That little phrase written in his father’s hand seemed to leap into his mind.

Fear not.

He was pretty sure this wasn’t what his father had meant—or the angels on that first Christmas night, for that matter—but he didn’t care. It seemed perfect and right to fearlessly take her mug of cocoa and set it on the side table next to his own, to lean across the space between them, to lower his head, to taste that soft, sweet mouth that had tantalized him all day.

A Cold Creek

Christmas

Surprise

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE finds inspiration in the beautiful northern utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be contacted through her website, www.raeannethayne.com.

To my wonderful readers. You constantly awe

and inspire me with your passion, loyalty and heart.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Excerpt

Chapter One

The River Bow had never seemed so empty.

Ridge Bowman stomped snow off on the mat as he walked into the mudroom of the ranch house after chores. The clomping thuds of his boots seemed to echo through the big rambling log home he had lived in most of his life, but that was the only sound.

He was used to noise and laughter—to his sister Caidy clanging dishes or singing along to the radio in the kitchen, to his daughter watching television in the family room or talking on the phone to one of her friends, to barking dogs and conversation.

But Caidy was on her honeymoon with Ben Caldwell and Destry had gone to stay with her cousin and best friend, Gabi.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had the house completely to himself.

He didn’t much like it.

He slipped out of his boots and walked into the kitchen. A couple of barks reminded him he wasn’t completely alone. He was dogsitting for Ben’s cute little pooch, a three-legged Chihuahua mix aptly named Tripod. Most of the dogs at the River Bow slept in the barn and lived outside, even Luke now—Caidy’s border collie, who had been injured the Christmas before—but Tri was small and a bit too fragile to hang with the big boys.

The dog cantered into the mudroom and planted his haunches by the door.

“You need to go out? You know you’re going to disappear in all that snow out there, right? And by the way, next time let me know before I take off my boots, would you?”

He opened the door and watched the dog hop out with his funny gait to the small area off the sidewalk that Ridge had cleared for him.

Tri obviously didn’t like the cold, either. He quickly took care of business then hopped back to Ridge, who stood in the doorway. The dog immediately led the way back toward the kitchen. Ridge followed, his stomach rumbling, wondering what he could scrounge from the leftover wedding food for breakfast. Maybe a couple of Jenna McRaven’s spinach quiche bites he liked so much, and there were probably a few of those little ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Ham was close enough to bacon, right?

He managed to add a yogurt and a banana, missing the big, hearty, delicious breakfasts his sister used to fix for him. Fluffy pancakes, crisp bacon, hash browns that were perfectly brown on the outside.

Those days were over now that Caidy was married. From here out, he would just have to either fend for himself—and Destry—or hire a housekeeper to cook his breakfast. Too bad Ben’s housekeeper, Mrs. Michaels, wanted to move back to be near her grandchildren in California.

He was happy for his little sister and the future she was building with Pine Gulch’s new veterinarian. She had put her life on hold too long to help Ridge out here at the ranch after Melinda left. At the time—saddled with a baby he didn’t know what to do with, right in the middle of trying to rebuild the ranch after his parents’ deaths—he had been desperately grateful for her help. Now he was ashamed that he had come to rely on her so much over the years and hadn’t tried harder to insist she move out on her own years ago.

She had found her way, though. She and Ben were deeply in love, and Caidy would be a wonderful stepmother to his children, Ava and Jack.

All his siblings were happily married now. He was the last Bowman standing, which was just the way he liked it.

He nibbled on one of Jenna’s delicious potato puffs then had to stop for a huge yawn. The obligations of running a ranch didn’t mix very well with wedding receptions and dances that ran into the early hours of the morning.

“Is it still a disaster out there, Tri?”

The little dog, curled up in a patch of morning sunlight trickling in from the window, lifted his head and flapped his tail on the kitchen tile, then went back to sleep, oblivious.

Ridge knew from his walk down the stairs that morning that the kitchen was just about the only clean part of the house right now. Jenna’s catering crew had done a good job in here and had wanted to go to work on the rest of the house, but he hadn’t let them. He had also had to shove his sisters-in-law out the door at 2:00 a.m. when they started wandering around with garbage bags. He loved Becca and Laura dearly, but by then he just wanted everybody to go before he fell over, knowing he had to get up in three hours to start his day.

Given the choice between sleep and a pristine house, he had opted for the former, especially since he knew damn well that Caidy, ever efficient, had made arrangements for a cleaning crew to come in today to mop up after the big party.

He grabbed his improvised breakfast and whistled to Tri, then headed through the party carnage into his office, doing his best to ignore the mess as the dog hopped along behind him.

Though it was Saturday, Ridge had plenty of work to catch up on, especially since the past few weeks leading up to his sister’s wedding had been so chaotic. He had several emails to deal with, a phone call to a cattle broker he worked with, ranch accounts to reconcile. Finishing off the last bite-sized ham sandwich on his plate sometime later, he glanced up at the clock and was shocked to realize two hours had passed.

He frowned. Where was the cleanup crew? He was positive Caidy had said they would be here at ten, but it was nearly noon.

As if on cue, the doorbell suddenly rang, and Tri jumped up, gave one little well-mannered bark and raced to the front door as fast as his little hoppy, butt-bouncing gait would take him.

The housecleaners really had their work cut out for them, he thought as he walked back through the house. He only hoped they could finish the job before midnight.

With Tri waiting eagerly to see what exciting surprise waited on the other side of the door, Ridge opened it.

Instead of the team of efficient-looking workers he expected to find, he found one woman. One small, delicate-looking woman with big blue eyes and a sweep of auburn hair that reminded him of the maple trees down by the creek at the first brush of fall.

She wore jeans and a short black peacoat with a scarf tied in one of those intricate knots women seemed to like.

Overall, he had the impression of fragile loveliness, and he wondered if the scope of the cleanup job would be too much for her. He pushed the thought away. He had to trust that Caidy had hired a reputable company and that she knew what she was doing. He sure as hell didn’t want to clean the mess up himself, especially after he had rebuffed everybody else’s offers to help.

“Mr. Bowman?”

“Yes.”

“Hello. My name is Sarah Whitmore. I’m sorry to...”

He didn’t wait for her apology, he just opened the door wider for her. “You’re here now. That’s the important thing. Come in.”

She gazed at him for a moment, her mouth slightly open and an odd expression on delicately pretty features. After a slight pause, she walked inside.

“I thought you were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

“I...was?”

The cleaning service must have mixed up the time. While he was usually hard-nosed about punctuality, she appeared so befuddled and a little overwhelmed— probably at the mess confronting her inside the house—that he decided not to sweat it.

“As long as you put in an honest day’s work and do what you were hired to do, I don’t see why I need to tell the company about this.”

“The...company.”

With a slight blush staining her cheeks, she gazed around at the muddle of crumbs, discarded napkins, empty champagne bottles. “Wow. What happened here?”

Man, he would have to talk to Caidy about her choice in cleaning services. The woman’s bosses really should have filled her in about the particulars of the situation.

“Wedding reception. My sister’s, actually. It was after two when the party finally broke up, and since I had ranch chores to deal with early this morning, you can probably tell I just left things as they were.”

“It’s certainly a mess,” she agreed.

“Nothing you can’t handle, though, right?”

“Nothing I can’t...”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he assured her quickly. He really didn’t want to clean all this up by himself. “The catering crew took care of the kitchen, so there’s nothing to do in there. Just this space, a few of the bedrooms where guests changed clothes and the guest bathrooms here and on the second floor. You should be done in three, four hours, don’t you think?

She gazed at him, a little furrow between her brow, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth.

Completely out of nowhere—like a sudden heat wave in January—he had a wild urge to be the one nibbling on that delectable lip.

The urge shocked him to his toes. What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t responded like this to a woman in a long, long time but something about her soft, lovely features, the soft eyes and that silky spill of auburn hair sent raw heat pooling in his gut.

He set his jaw, shoving away the inappropriate, wholly unexpected reaction.

“Cleaning supplies are in the closet in the mudroom, which is just off the kitchen back there. You should find everything you need. I’ll be in my office or out in the barn if you have any questions,” he said, already heading in that direction in his eagerness to get away from her.

He thought the dog would follow him, but Tri seemed more interested in the new arrival. Not that Ridge could blame the dog for a minute.

“But, sir,” she called after him, a slight note of panic in her voice. “Mr. Bowman. I’m afraid—”

The phone in his office rang at just that moment, much to his relief. He didn’t want to stand here arguing with the woman. She was being paid to do a job, and he wasn’t the sort of boss who stood around like a hall monitor, making sure his people did what was expected of them. She could ask any of his ranch workers and they would tell her the same thing.

The phone rang again. “I’ve got to take this,” he said, which wasn’t really a lie, as it was probably the hay supplier he’d been trying to reach. “Thank you for doing this. You have no idea what a godsend you are. Let me know if you need anything.”

He left her with her mouth slightly ajar and that look of dismay still on her features.

Okay, so he had run away like he was twelve years old at a school dance and the girl he liked had just asked him to take a spin around the floor with her. It was strictly self-preservation.

The last time he had been so instantly tangled up by a woman, he had ended up married to her—and look how delightfully that had turned out.

All he could think was that it was a good thing she would only be there for a few hours.

* * *

Sarah now understood the definition of the word dumbfounded.

After Ridge Bowman—at least she assumed it was Ridge Bowman—hurriedly left her alone with a funny-looking little three-legged dog, Sarah stood motionless in the big, soaring great room of the River Bow ranch house trying to catch her breath and figure out what had just happened.

Okay, this did not go the way she had anticipated.

She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she certainly had never guessed the man would mistake her for someone else entirely.

She stood with her hands in her pockets, gazing down at the little dog, who was watching her curiously, as if trying to figure out what move she would make next.

“I would love to know the answer to that myself,” she said aloud, to which the dog cocked his head and studied her closer.

The cold knot that had lodged under her breastbone a week ago as she stood inside that storage unit seemed to tighten.

She ought to chase after the man and explain he had made a mistake. She wasn’t from a cleaning crew. She had flown out from California expressly to talk to him and his siblings, though she would rather have been anywhere else on earth.

She drew in a breath, her nails digging into her palms. Do it. Move. Tell him.

The annoying voice of her conscience urged her forward in the direction the ruggedly handsome rancher had gone, but she stood frozen, her attention suddenly fixed on a wall of framed family pictures, dominated by a smiling older couple with their arms around each other.

Sarah screwed her eyes closed. When she opened them, she looked away from the pictures at the great room, with its trio of oversize sofas and entwined antler light fixtures.

He really did need help. The house was a disaster. The wedding of Caidy Bowman must have been quite a party, at least judging by the disarray left behind.

Why couldn’t she help him?

The thought sidled through her. In that brief interaction, she had gained the impression of a hard, uncompromising man. She couldn’t have said how she was so certain. If she helped him tame some of the chaos in his house, he might be more amenable to listening to her with an open mind.

As a first-grade teacher used to twenty-five six-and seven-year-old children, she was certainly used to cleaning up messes. This wasn’t really all that unmanageable.

Besides that, she wasn’t in a particular hurry to chase after him. If she had her way, she would put off telling him what she had found in that storage locker as long as humanly possible.

The truth was, the man terrified her. She hated to admit it, but it was true. He was just so big, a solid six feet two inches of ranch-hardened muscle, and his features looked etched in granite.

Gorgeous, yes, okay, but completely unapproachable.

He hadn’t smiled once during their brief interaction—though she couldn’t necessarily blame him for that since he thought she was a tardy cleaning service. She dreaded what he would say when she told him why she had really come to the River Bow ranch.

What would it hurt to help the man clean his house for an hour or two? Afterward, they could have a good laugh about the misunderstanding. Who knows? He might even be more favorable to what she had to say.

Okay, good plan.

She tried to tell herself she was only being nice, not being a total wuss. She unbuttoned her coat and hung it on a rack by the door, grateful her extensive wardrobe debate with herself had resulted in simple jeans and a lovely wool sweater. As much as she loved the sweater, wool always made her itch a little so she wore a plain and practical white long-sleeved T-shirt underneath.

She pulled the sweater over her head, rolled up the sleeves of the T-shirt to just below her elbows and headed into the kitchen for the cleaning supplies.

He was right about the kitchen. The big, well-designed space sparkled. She headed into the area she guessed was the mudroom and found an organized space with shelves, cubbies and a convenient bench for taking off boots. A big pair of men’s lined boots rested in a pile of melting snow and she picked them up and set them aside before quickly drying the puddle.

She easily found the cleaning supplies stored in one of the cubbies in a convenient plastic tote. She picked the whole thing up and carried it back through the house. First things first, the clutter of garbage all around, then she could start wiping down surfaces and work on the bathrooms.

As she walked through the big, comfortable great room picking up party detritus, she wondered about the Bowman family.

She knew a little about the family from her initial research, the quick web search she had done after finding that storage unit that had led her to this place and this moment. She had learned a little more after her arrival in Pine Gulch, Idaho last night, thanks to a casual conversation with the young, flirtatious college student working as desk clerk at the Cold Creek Inn where she had stayed the night before.

She knew, for instance, that the charming inn where she stayed was actually owned, coincidentally, by the wife of Taft, one of the Bowman brothers.

From the clerk, she had discovered there were four Bowman siblings. Ridge, the hard, implacable rancher she had just met, was the oldest. Then came twins Taft and Trace, the fire chief and police chief of Pine Gulch, respectively. And finally the daughter, Caidy, the one who had been married the day before—much to the chagrin of the desk clerk, who she quickly deduced had nurtured an ill-fated secret crush on Caidy Bowman, now Caldwell.

The ranch appeared to be a prosperous one. All the buildings were freshly painted, and the big, comfortable log home could easily have doubled as a small hotel itself. It was large enough to host a wedding reception, for heaven’s sake.

The Christmas tree alone was spectacular, at least eighteen feet tall and decorated to the hilt with ribbons, garland, glittery ornaments. More evergreen garlands twisted their way up the staircase and adorned the raw wood mantel of the huge river-rock fireplace.

This was more than just a showplace. She could tell. This was a home, well maintained and well loved.

As she headed up the stairs to collect a pile of napkins she could see on a console table in an upper hallway, Sarah had to fight down a little niggle of envy. She couldn’t help comparing the splendid River Bow ranch house to the small, cheerless apartments where she had lived with her mother after the divorce.

What child wouldn’t have loved growing up here? Sliding down that banister, riding the horses she had seen running through the snow-covered pastures, gazing up at those wild mountains out the wide expanse of windows?

She frowned as she suddenly remembered the rest. A lump rose in her throat.

Oh. Right.

She knew more about Ridge Bowman than how many siblings he had and the outward prosperity of his ranch. She knew he and his brothers and sister had suffered unimaginable tragedy more than a decade earlier, the violent murder of their parents in a home-invasion robbery.

She could only guess how the tragedy must still haunt them all.

That ever-present anxiety gnawed at her stomach again, as it had since she walked into that storage unit, and she pressed a hand there.

She had to tell him. She couldn’t keep stalling. She had come all the way from Southern California, for heaven’s sake. This was ridiculous.

With fresh determination, she gripped the now-bulging garbage bag and started down the stairs.

She wasn’t quite sure what happened next. Perhaps her heel caught on the edge of a stair or the garbage bag interfered with her usual balance. Either way, she somehow missed the second stop down.

She teetered for a moment and cried out, instinctively dropping the bag as she reached for the banister, but her hand closed around air and she lost what remained of her precarious balance.

Down she tumbled, hitting a hip, an elbow, her head—and finally landing at the bottom with a sickening crunch of bone as her arm twisted beneath her.

Chapter Two

At the first hoarse cry and muffled thud from the distant reaches of the house, Ridge shoved back his chair so hard it slid on the wood floor a few inches. He recognized a sound of pain when he heard it.

What the hell?

He jumped up and raced out of his office. The instant he entered the great room, he found a slight form crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, a bag of garbage spilling out next to her and Tripod anxiously whining and licking her face.

“Go on, Tri. Back up, buddy.”

The little dog reluctantly hopped away, allowing Ridge to crouch down beside the woman. Her eyes were closed, and her arm was twisted beneath her in a way he knew couldn’t be right.

What was her name again? Sarah something. Whitmore. That was it. “Sarah? Ms. Whitmore? Hey. Come on, now. Wake up.”

She moaned but didn’t open her eyes. As he took a closer look at that arm, he swore under his breath. Maybe it was better if she didn’t wake up. When she did, that broken arm would hurt like hell.

He had known a couple of broken arms in his day and had enjoyed none of them.

The woman had appeared fragile and delicate when she showed up at his house, too delicate to properly handle the job of cleaning up the wedding mess by herself. Now she looked positively waiflike, with all color washed from her features and long brown lashes fanning over those high cheekbones. Already, he could see a bruise forming on her cheek and a bump sprouting above her temple.

He looked up the stairs, noticing a few pieces of garbage strewn almost at the very top. Must have been one hell of a fall.

All his protective instincts urged him to let her hang out in never-never land, where she was safe from the pain. He didn’t want to be the cause of more, but he knew he had to wake her. She really needed to be conscious so he could assess her symptoms.

A guy couldn’t grow up on a busy Idaho ranch without understanding a little about first aid. Broken arms, abrasions, contusions, lacerations. He’d had them all—and what he hadn’t suffered, the twins or Caidy had experienced. Judging by her lingering unconsciousness, he was guessing she had a concussion, which meant the longer she remained out of it, the more chance of complications.

“Ma’am? Sarah? Can you hear me?”

Her eyes blinked a little but remained closed, as if her subconscious didn’t want to face the pain, either. He carefully ran his hands over her, avoiding the obvious arm fracture as he checked for other injuries. At least nothing else seemed obvious. With that basic information, he reached for his cell phone and quickly dialed 911.

He could drive her to the Pine Gulch medical clinic faster than the mostly volunteer fire department could gather at the station and come out to the ranch, but he was leery to move her without knowing if she might be suffering internal injuries.

As he gave the basic information to the dispatcher, her eyes started to flutter. An instant later, those eyes opened slightly, reminding him again of lazy summer afternoons when he was a kid and had time to gaze up at the sky. He saw confusion there and long, deep shadows of pain that filled him with guilt.

She had been cleaning his house. He couldn’t help but feel responsible.

“Take it easy. You’ll be okay.”

She gazed at him for an instant with fright and uncertainty before he saw a tiny spark of recognition there.

“Mr....Bowman.”

“Good. At least you know my name. How about your own?”

She blinked as if the effort to remember was too much. “S-Sarah. Sarah M—er, Whitmore.”

He frowned at the way she stumbled a little over her last name but forgot it instantly when she shifted a little and tried to move. At the effort, she gave a heartbreaking cry of pain.

“Easy. Easy.” He murmured the words as softly as he would to a skittish horse—if he were the sort of rancher to tolerate any skittish horses on the River Bow. “Just stay still.”

“It hurts,” she moaned.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m afraid you broke your arm when you fell. I’ve called an ambulance. They should be here soon. We’ll run you into the clinic in Pine Gulch. Dr. Dalton should be able to fix you up.”

Her pale features grew even more distressed. “I don’t need an ambulance,” she said.

“I hate to argue with a lady, but I would have to disagree with you there. You took a nasty fall. Do you remember what happened?”

She looked up the stairs and her eyes widened. For a minute, he thought she would pass out again. “I was going to talk to you and I...I tripped, I guess. I’m not sure. Everything is fuzzy.”

“You were coming to talk to me about what?”

A couple of high spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “I...can’t remember,” she said, and he was almost positive she was lying. On the other hand, he didn’t know the woman; she had just suffered a terrible fall and was likely in shock.

She shifted again, moving her head experimentally, but then let it back down.

“My head hurts.”

“I’m sure it does. I’m no expert, but I’m guessing you banged it up, too. You’ve probably got a concussion. Have you had one before?”

“Not...that I remember.”

Did that mean she hadn’t had one or that she just couldn’t remember it? He would have to let Doc Dalton sort that one out from her medical records.

She started to moan but caught it, clamping her lips together before it could escape.

“Just hang on. Don’t try to move. I wish I could give you a pillow or some padding or something. I know it’s not comfortable there on the floor but you’re better off staying put until the EMTs come and can assess the situation to make sure nothing else is broken. Can you tell me what hurts?”

“Everything,” she bit out. “It’s probably easier to tell you what doesn’t hurt. I think my left eyelashes might be okay. No, wait. They hurt, too.”

He smiled a little, admiring her courage and grit in the face of what must be considerable pain. He was also aware of more than a little relief. Though she grimaced between each word, he had to think that since she was capable of making a joke, she would probably be okay, all things considered.

“Is there somebody you’d like me to call to meet us at the hospital? Husband? Boyfriend? Family?”

She blinked at him, a distant expression on her face, and didn’t answer him for a long moment.

“Stay with me,” he ordered. Fearing she would lapse into shock, he grabbed a blanket off the sofa and spread it over her. For some reason, the shock first aid acronym of WARRR rang through his head: Warmth, Air, Rest, Reassurance, Raise the legs. But she seemed to collect herself enough to respond.

“No. I don’t have...any of those things. There’s no one in the area for you to call.”

She was all alone? Somehow, he found that even more sad than the idea that she was currently sprawled out in grave pain on the floor at the bottom of his stairs.

His family might drive him crazy sometimes, but at least he knew they always had his back.

“Are you sure? No friends? No family? I should at least call the company you work for and let them know what happened.”

If nothing else, they would have to send someone else to finish the job. With that broken arm, Sarah would have to hang up her broom for a while.

“I don’t—” she started to say, but before she could finish, the front door opened and a second later an EMT raced through it, followed by a couple more.

Somehow he wasn’t surprised that the EMT in the front was his brother Taft, who was not only a paramedic but also the town’s fire chief.

He spotted the woman on the floor, and his forehead furrowed with confusion before he turned to Ridge.

“Geez. I just about had a freaking heart attack! We got a call for a female fall victim at the River Bow. I thought it was Destry!”

“No. This is Sarah Whitmore. She was cleaning the house after the wedding and took a tumble. Sarah, this is my brother Taft, who is not only a certified paramedic, I promise, but also the town’s fire chief.”

“Hi,” she mumbled, sounding more disoriented

“Hi, Sarah.” Taft knelt down to her and immediately went to work assessing vitals. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I’m...not sure. I fell.”

“Judging by the garbage at the top of the stairs, I think she fell just about the whole way,” Ridge offered. “She was unconscious for maybe two or three minutes and has kind of been in and out since. My unofficial diagnosis is the obvious broken arm and possible concussion.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bowman,” Taft said, his voice dry.

His brother quickly took control of the situation and began giving instructions to the other emergency personnel.

Ridge was always a little taken by surprise whenever he had the chance to watch either of his younger brothers in action. He still tended to think of them as teenage punks getting speeding tickets and toilet papering the mayor’s trees. But after years as a wildlands firefighter, Taft had been the well-regarded fire chief in Pine Gulch for several years, and his twin, Trace, was the police chief. By all reports, both were shockingly good at their jobs.

Ridge gained a little more respect for his brother as he watched his patient competence with Sarah: the way he teased and questioned her, the efficient air of command he portrayed to the other EMTs as they worked together to load her onto the stretcher with a minimum of pain.

As they started to roll the stretcher toward the front door, Ridge followed, grabbing his coat and truck keys on the way.

Taft shifted his attention away from his patient long enough to look at Ridge with surprise. “Where are you going?”

He was annoyed his brother would even have to ask. “I can’t just send her off in an ambulance by herself. I’ll drive in and meet you at the clinic.”

“Why?” Taft asked, clearly confused.

“She doesn’t have any friends or family in the area. Plus she was injured on the River Bow, which makes her my responsibility.”

Taft shook his head but didn’t argue. The stretcher was nearly to the door when Sarah held out a hand. “Wait. Stop.”

She craned her neck and seemed to be looking for him, so Ridge moved closer.

“You’ll be okay.” He did his best to soothe her. “Hang in there. My brother and the other EMTs will take good care of you, I promise, and Doc Dalton at the clinic is excellent. He’ll know just what to do for you.”

She barely seemed to register his words, her brow furrowed. Taft had given her something for pain before they transferred her, and it looked as if she was trying to work through the effects of it to tell him something.

“Can you... There’s a case on the...backseat of my car. Can you bring it inside? I shouldn’t have left it out in the cold...for this long. The keys to the car are...in my coat.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“You have to put it...somewhere safe.” She closed her eyes as soon as the words were out.

Ridge raised an eyebrow at Taft, who shrugged. “It seems important to her,” his brother said. “Better do it.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you at the clinic in a few minutes. I’ll bring her coat along. Maybe I can find a purse or something in the car with her medical insurance information.”

She hadn’t been carrying anything like that when she came to the door, he remembered. Perhaps she found it easier to leave personal items in her vehicle.

He found her coat and located a single key in the pocket, hooked to one of the flexible plastic key rings with a rental car company’s logo on it. He frowned. A rental car? That didn’t make any sense. He headed outside to her vehicle, which was a nondescript silver sedan that did indeed look very much like a rental car.

He found a purse on the passenger seat, a flowered cloth bag. Though he was fiercely curious, he didn’t feel right about digging through it. He would let her find her insurance info on her own.

In the backseat, he quickly found the case she was talking about. It was larger than he expected, a flat portfolio size, perhaps twenty-four inches by thirty or so.

Again, he was curious and wanted to snoop but forced himself not to. As she had requested, he set it in a locked cupboard in his office, then locked the office for good measure before heading to the clinic in town to be with a strange woman with columbine-blue eyes and the prettiest hair he’d ever seen.

As far as weird days went, this one probably just hit the top of the list.

* * *

Sarah hurt everywhere, but this was a muted sort of pain. She felt as if she were floating through a bowl of pudding. Nice, creamy, delicious chocolate pudding—except every once in a while something sharp and mean poked at her.

“All things considered, you got off easy. The concussion appears to be a mild one, and the break is clean.” A man with a stethoscope smiled at her. No white coat, but white teeth. Handsome. He was really handsome. If she didn’t hurt so much, she would tell him so.

“Easy?” she muttered, her mind catching on the word that didn’t make sense.

The doctor smiled. “It could have been much worse, trust me. I’ve seen that staircase inside the River Bow. It has to be twenty feet, at least. It’s amazing you didn’t break more than your arm.”

“Amazing,” she agreed, though she didn’t really know what he was talking about. What was the River Bow?

“And it’s a good thing Ridge didn’t move you right after you fell. I was able to set the arm without surgery, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to do if you had been jostled around everywhere.”

“Thank you,” she said through dry lips, because it seemed to be the thing to say. She just wanted to sleep for three or four years. Why wouldn’t he let her sleep?

“Can I go home?” she asked. Her condo, with its four-poster bed, the light blue duvet, the matching curtains. She wanted to be there.

“Where, exactly, is home?”

She gave the address to her condo unit.

“Is that in Idaho Falls?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “San Diego, of course.”

He blinked a little. “Wow. You traveled a long way to take a cleaning job.”

She frowned. Cleaning job? What cleaning job?

She wanted to rub away the fierce pain in her head even as she had a sudden image of a garbage bag with cups and napkins spilling out of it.

She had been cleaning something. Why? Is that when she fell? Her memories seemed hazy and abstract. She remembered an airplane. An important suitcase. Hand-screen it, please. An inn.

“I’m staying at the Cold Creek Inn,” she said suddenly. Oh, she should have told them pain medication made her woozy. She always took only half. How much had they given her?

And how had she hurt her arm?

“The Cold Creek Inn.” The nice doctor with the white teeth frowned at her.

“Yes. My room has blue curtains. They have flowers on them. They’re pretty.”

He blinked at her. “Good to know. Okay.”

Oh, she was tired. Why wouldn’t he let her sleep?

She closed her eyes but suddenly remembered something important. “Where’s my car? Have you got my car? I have to take it back to the airport by Monday at noon or they’ll charge me a lot.”

“It must still be at the River Bow. I’m sure your car is fine.”

“I have to take it back.”

The car was important, but something else mattered more. Something in the car. But what?

Her head ached again, and one of those hard, ugly pains pierced that lovely haze.

“My head hurts,” she informed him.

“That’s your concussion. Just close your eyes and try to relax. We’ll make sure the rental car goes back, I promise.”

“Monday. Noon.”

She needed something from inside it. She closed her eyes, seeing that special black suitcase again.

Oh.

Ridge Bowman. She had told Ridge Bowman to take it out of the backseat. Too cold. Not safe.

He would take care of it.

She wasn’t sure how she knew, but a feeling of peace trickled over her, washing away the panic, and she let it go.

Chapter Three

“The Cold Creek Inn? Really?” Ridge stared at Jake Dalton, trying to make sense of a situation that seemed to be rapidly spinning out of his control.

“That’s what she said. She was quite firm about it.”

Pine Gulch’s only physician had no reason to make up crazy stories but none of this was making any sense to him. “That’s easy enough for me to verify. I can always give Laura a call.”

Under normal circumstances, Taft’s wife wouldn’t disclose information about her guests, but this certainly classified as an emergency.

“Her car was a rental. I noticed that.”

“Yes, it needs to be returned soon. She was quite emphatic on that score,” Jake said.

“What the hell? She’s staying at the Cold Creek Inn and driving a rental car, and she shows up for a cleaning job? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m only telling you what she said. That’s not the important part, really. The fact is, if she indeed has no friends or family nearby, as she told you, I can’t let our mystery woman go back to a hotel by herself tonight. She’s suffered a concussion. She’s going to need someone close by to make sure she doesn’t suffer any complications. I can’t say she really needs an overnight stay in the hospital in Idaho Falls, but I don’t feel comfortable sending her back to a hotel to spend the night by herself.”

While Ridge might’ve been baffled about the situation and why a woman paying for a decent hotel room and driving a rental car would take a low-paying cleaning job in the middle of nowhere, he wasn’t at all confused about the right thing to do.

“She’ll stay at the ranch house,” he said firmly. “She can take Caidy’s room, no problem. That way she won’t have to tackle any stairs. Destry and I can keep an eye on her.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jake asked in surprise. “You don’t even know the woman.”

True enough. All he knew was that she was lovely, that she smelled like vanilla and June-blooming lavender and that she brought out all his protective instincts.

He didn’t think Jake Dalton needed those particular observations. “She was hurt in my house while technically working for me. That makes her my responsibility. If she had been hurt at the Cold Creek Ranch, you know any of you Daltons would jump up to take care of her. Wade and Seth would probably come to blows over who would help her, unless their wives stepped in first.”

“You’ve got me there. The fact is, if my wife were home, Ms. Whitmore could come stay at our place. But Maggie and her mother took an overnight trip to Jackson to do some Christmas shopping. I’m on my own with the kids and have my hands more than full.”

The doctor grinned at him. “On second thought, sure you wouldn’t like to trade? How about I come out to the quiet River Bow and keep an eye on our concussed woman of mystery and you can head over to my place and entertain three crazy kids hopped up on sugar and Christmas?”

He laughed. Jake and Maggie Dalton had three of the most adorable kids around, but they did have a lot of energy. “Well, that is a kind offer, I’m sure, but I would hate to deprive you of all that father–kid bonding time.”

“Well, you’ve got my cell number. Call me if you have any concerns, particularly if you find any altered mental status or confusion.” He paused and gave a little laugh. “I should probably warn you, though, she’s a little, er, dopey from the pain meds. This doesn’t count.”

Jake’s cautionary words made him more than a little curious. Sarah had seemed so contained back at his house. Even when her arm had to be screaming pain at her, she had fought tears and tried to be tough through it.

He walked into the treatment room, not quite sure what to expect.

Dopey was an understatement. Sarah Whitmore was higher than a weather balloon in a windstorm.

As soon as he walked into the room, she beamed at him like he had just rescued a basketful of kittens from a rampaging grizzly.

“Hi. Hi there. I know you, right?”

He glanced over at the doc, who just barely managed to hide a grin. “Er, yes. I’m Ridge Bowman. You fell down my stairs a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh. Riiiight.” She beamed brightly at him. “Wow, you are one good-looking cowboy. Has anybody ever told you that?”

Jake made a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh. Ridge glared at him before he turned back to Sarah. “Er, not lately. No.”

“Well, you are. Take it from me. Of course, what do I know? I don’t know many good-looking cowboys. Or that many good-looking noncowboys, for that matter.” She frowned, her features solemn. “I really need to get out more.”

Jake laughed out loud, and Ridge gave him a quelling look. “Geez, how much did you give her?”

“Sorry,” the physician said. “The dose was absolutely appropriate, but I’m thinking she must be one of those people who are hypersensitive to certain narcotics. Sometimes you have to titrate to an individual’s particular sensitivities.”

“Apparently. Okay, Sarah. Let’s get you back to the ranch.”

She started to stand up, but Jake laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Easy there. We’ll bring in a wheelchair to get you out to the car.”

“I can walk. I broke my arm, not my legs.” She didn’t precisely call Jake stupid, but her tone conveyed the same message.

“It’s a clinic rule. Sorry, Sarah.”

“Well, it’s a dumb rule.”

He chuckled. “I’ll take it up with the clinic director when she gets back from shopping with her mother in Jackson. Joan, can you bring a wheelchair?” he called out into the hall.

A moment later, one of the clinic nurses pushed in a chair. Jake and Ridge helped her transfer into it, with much grumbling on Sarah’s part.

While Jake and the nurse pushed her toward the front of the clinic, Ridge went out to pull his truck up to the doors. Wishing he had brought the ranch SUV, which had a lower suspension and was easier to climb into, he tried to help her up into the cab. In the long run, he settled on lifting her up when she couldn’t quite manage to navigate the running boards.

When she was settled, he shut the door to keep in all the heat and turned back to Jake.

“What else do I need to know?”

“You’re going to want to make sure she drinks plenty of fluids tonight and keeps on a regular cycle of the pain meds, though you might want to dial that down a little. She’ll probably sleep off most of what we gave her here. You’ll want to check on her every couple of hours, make sure she’s still lucid. Any problems, again, call my cell number. I should be home all night and can run to your place in a minute, though I might be dragging three kids along with me.”

Ridge reached out to shake his hand, grateful for the other man. Jake Dalton had been good for Pine Gulch. He had the skills and the bedside manner that could probably have built a lucrative family medicine practice anywhere. Instead, he had chosen to come back to his own small hometown. In the years since, he and his wife, Magdalena Cruz, had really thrown their hearts into helping the community, sponsoring free clinics out of their own pockets and taking anybody who needed health care.

“I’m not worried. We should be fine.”

“Are you sure? Maybe Becca or Laura can help,” Jake suggested, referring to Ridge’s sisters-in-law.

“I’ll keep trying the cleaning company in Jackson. They might have an emergency contact number on her employment records.”

“Good thinking. Drive safe. I think the storm is going to be here earlier than the weather forecasters said. No question about Pine Gulch having a white Christmas this year, I guess.”

“Is there ever?” he said drily as he climbed into the pickup truck.

After making sure his guest was safely buckled in, he waved to Jake and backed out of the parking lot then headed toward the River Bow, a few miles out of town, through a lightly falling snow.

“Your truck smells like Christmas,” she said, rather sleepily.

He pointed to the little air freshener shaped like an evergreen tree that hung from the rearview mirror. “You can give my daughter credit for that. She complains that it usually smells like shi—er, manure.”

“You have a daughter?”

He nodded. “Yep. Destry’s her name. She’ll be twelve in a couple of months.”

“Like the movie with James Stewart.”

“Something like that.” His late ex-wife had been fascinated with the old western Destry Rides Again, probably because she fancied herself a Marlene Dietrich wannabe. She had loved the name, and at that point, he would have done anything to try saving his marriage.

“Where is she?”

“Er, who?”

“Your daughter. Destry.”

Ah. That was easy. Explaining that his ex-wife took off a few months after their daughter was born would have been tougher.

“She stayed at her cousin’s house last night, but she’s supposed to come home later tonight.”

“Oh, that’s nice. I have twenty-four kids.”

He jerked his gaze from the road just long enough to gape at her. “Twenty-four?”

“Yes. Last year it was only twenty-two. The year before that, I had twenty-five. I had the biggest class in the first grade.”

“You’re a teacher?”

She nodded, though her head barely moved on the headrest and her eyes began to drift closed. “Yes,” she mumbled. “I teach first grade at Sunny View Elementary School. I’m a great teacher.”

“I’m sure you are. But I thought you worked for the cleaning service.”

She frowned a little, opening her eyes in confusion before they slid shut again. “I’m soooo tired. My head hurts.”

Just like that, she was asleep.

“Sarah? Ms. Whitmore?”

She snorted and shifted in her sleep. The mystery deepened. The woman was staying at the inn, drove a rental car and apparently taught first grade.

He knew teachers weren’t paid nearly enough. Maybe she had picked up extra work during the school break, but that didn’t explain the inn or the rental car.

His cell phone rang just as he pulled into the long, winding lane that led from the main road to the ranch house. “Ridge Bowman,” he answered.

“Oh, Mr. Bowman,” the flustered voice on the other end of the line exclaimed. “This is Terri McCall from Happy House Cleaners in Jackson. There’s been a terrible mix-up. I’m so sorry! You would not believe the day we’ve had here.”

He glanced at the woman sleeping on the bench seat beside him. “Mine hasn’t been exactly a walk in the park, either.”

“It’s been chaos from the moment I walked in this morning. Our power was knocked out in the night and we’re only just getting back up. Meantime, all the computers were down. I just saw your name on my caller ID and realized we had your dates wrong, so I’ve been scrambling to find someone else. I had you down for party cleanup tomorrow. I’m so sorry. I’m sending someone right now. She should be there within the hour, I promise, and we’ll have you sorted out.”

He gazed at the woman sleeping beside him. “Wait a minute. What about Sarah?”

He was met with a little awkward pause. “The woman I’m sending is Kelli Parker. She’ll do a fine job. I’m afraid I don’t know a Sarah.”

“Sarah. Sarah Whitmore. I left you a message about her. We’re just coming from the doctor. She broke her arm and had a concussion in the fall.”

“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?”

“I can do that. Thank you.”

“You have nothing to thank me for. Not after this.” He gestured to the painting in his hands. “I’m supposed to check on you a couple more times in the night. I’ll apologize in advance for waking you.”

“Apology accepted.”

He headed for the door. “If you need anything else, call out. I’ll probably sleep on the sofa in the family room off the kitchen.”

She wanted to tell him that wasn’t necessary, that she would be fine, but she was just too exhausted to argue—especially when she somehow knew he wouldn’t listen anyway.

Chapter Five

Ridge closed the door behind him with one hand, the other still holding the miraculously returned painting. He stood in the hallway for a long moment and just gazed down at it, wondering what on earth had just happened in there.

He felt odd, off balance, not sure what to think or feel.

Something major had just happened. It wasn’t only that she had returned this painting he thought he would never see again. He had felt a link between them, a tensile connection that seemed to seethe and pulse between them.

Or maybe that had been a figment of his imagination. Maybe it was simply late and he was tired after a long, strange day.

He carried the painting to his office and propped it on a chair across from his desk where he could look at it and remember.

The painting was created with tenderness, out of a mother’s love. That came through in every single brushstroke. Caidy would be so pleased to have it back in the family. She should really be the one to have it. Though he supposed it wasn’t technically his to give, as it belonged to all of them as joint heirs to their parents’ estate, maybe he could talk to Taft and Trace about the three of them giving it to their sister as a wedding present.

He looked at that sweet little girl in the painting cupping a fragile flower and her whole future in her hands and couldn’t help but think of his own sweet little girl. Destry had grown up without a mother’s love—though not really, when he thought about it. Caidy had stepped up to play that role after Melinda left, and had done an admirable job.

He frowned, wondering why his thoughts seemed to be so focused on his ex-wife today. He hadn’t thought about her this much in months, not since early spring when he had finally paid a private detective to track her down, for Destry’s sake.

As he had half suspected all these years, the trail was cold. The private detective had discovered Melinda had died just a year after she left them, killed along with her then-boyfriend in a car accident in Italy, of all places.

He hadn’t grieved, only brooded for a few days about his own foolish choices and for a wild young woman who had never wanted to be a mother.

Any grief for his failed marriage had worked its way out of his system a long time ago, as he had rocked his crying child to sleep or put her on the bus by himself on the first day of school.

He suddenly missed his daughter fiercely. The house seemed entirely too quiet without her constant activity—either watching something on TV or chattering with Caidy.

On impulse, he dialed Trace’s number. His brother answered the phone on the second ring.

“Missing Destry already?” his brother teased.

“Already?” He stretched back in his chair, suddenly tired from the tumultuous day. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours. I missed her as soon as you drove away last night. Aren’t you like that with Gabi and Will?”

His wife Becca had given birth over the summer to the most adorable little boy, all big blue eyes and lots of dark hair. Gabrielle wasn’t Trace’s daughter, she was actually Becca’s much-younger sister, but the two of them had legal custody of her and loved her as their own child.

“I guess you’re right. I was a mess in the fall when she went away for that school trip to the Teton Science School and that was only four nights.”

“Are the girls having a good time?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve been working. I do know everybody’s been sneaking around doing Christmassy things all day.”

Now that the business of the wedding was over, he supposed he should probably start thinking about Christmas, only three days away.

He wasn’t crazy about the holidays. None of the Bowman siblings were, considering their parents had been killed just a few days before Christmas.

Or at least none of them used to enjoy the season. It seemed as each of his siblings found love and moved on with life, each had been able to let go of those ghosts and embrace the holidays again. Caidy had even chosen this weekend for her wedding, claiming she wanted to be able to celebrate the season and not continue to mourn.

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