Celebrate the magic of Christmas in Haven Point with New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne, where hope, home and happily-ever-after are as close as your holiday stocking…

Christmas is the last thing on Cole Barrett’s mind this year. He’s barely hanging on trying to care for his two grieving children since his ex-wife died in a tragic accident. For the reclusive Cole, this is no time for gift-giving and celebration—and certainly not for a sunny-natured optimist to blow into his screwed-up life.

Physician Devin Shaw has long researched the curative powers of Lake Haven’s mineral waters. Unfortunately, the hot springs are on Barrett property, forcing Devin to strike a bargain with the ranch’s attractively gruff owner: she’ll give Cole’s children a magical Christmas, and Cole will allow her patients access to the springs. But can she work her holiday magic to heal the Barrett family’s battered hearts—and her own?

Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne

“Hope’s Crossing is a charming series that lives up to its name. Reading these stories of small-town life engages the reader’s heart and emotions, inspiring hope and the belief miracles are possible.”

—Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“RaeAnne Thayne is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.… Once you start reading, you aren’t going to be able to stop.”

—Fresh Fiction on Snow Angel Cove

“A sometimes heartbreaking tale of love and relationships in a small Colorado town…. Poignant and sweet, this tale of second chances will appeal to fans of military-flavored sweet romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

“Thayne, once again, delivers a heartfelt story of a caring community and a caring romance between adults who have triumphed over tragedies.”

—Booklist on Woodrose Mountain

“Thayne pens another winner by combining her huge, boisterous cast of familiar, lovable characters with a beautiful setting and a wonderful story. Her main characters are strong and three-dimensional, with enough heat between them to burn the pages.”

—RT Book Reviews on Currant Creek Valley

“Thayne’s beautiful, honest storytelling goes straight to the heart.… [A] moving yet powerful romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wild Iris Ridge

Evergreen Springs

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In memory of my dear father-in-law, Donald Thayne, who loved me like a daughter from the moment we met. Aloha ’Oe.

As always, I offer my endless thanks to my beloved family for their patience and encouragement, to all the hardworking people at HQN Books who had a hand in bringing this book to life and especially to you, my wonderful readers.

Contents

Cover

Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne

Title Page

Dedication

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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

DEVIN SHAW WAS BORED.

She supposed that particular state of affairs wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in her current role as substitute attending physician at the Lake Haven Hospital emergency department. While a juicy trauma might be professionally stimulating and serve to break up the monotony, she adored all her neighbors in Haven Point and the greater Lake Haven area too much to wish that sort of stress and pain on anyone.

Better to be stuck at the nurses’ station of the small emergency department trying without success—and not for the first time, alas—to learn how to knit.

“No. Your problem here has to do with the amount of tension on the working yarn,” Greta Ward insisted. “If you don’t have the right tension, you’ll end up losing control and making a huge mess you will only have to undo.”

The scarily efficient charge nurse of the emergency department at the Lake Haven Hospital leaned over her and tugged the yarn around her fingers in some kind of complicated way that Devin knew she would never be able to replicate.

“There. That’s better. Try again.”

Devin concentrated, nibbling on her bottom lip as she tried to work the needles that seemed unwieldy and awkward, no matter how she tried.

After her third time tangling the yarn into a total mess, Devin sighed and admitted defeat. Again. Every time they happened to be assigned to work together, Greta took a moment to try teaching her to knit. And every time, she came up short.

“People who find knitting at all relaxing have to be crazy. I think I must have some kind of mental block. It’s just not coming.”

“You’re not trying hard enough,” Greta insisted.

“I am! I swear I am.”

“Even my eight-year-old granddaughter can do it,” she said sternly. “Once you get past the initial learning curve, this is something you’ll love the rest of your life.”

“I think it’s funny.” Callie Bennett, one of the other nurses and also one of Devin’s good friends, smirked as she observed her pitiful attempts over the top of her magazine.

“Oh, yes. Hilarious,” Devin said drily.

“It is! You’re a physician who can set a fractured radius, suture a screaming six-year-old’s finger and deliver a baby, all with your eyes closed.”

“Not quite,” Devin assured her. “I open my eyes at the end of childbirth so I can see to cut the umbilical cord.”

Callie chuckled. “Seriously, you’re one of the best doctors at this hospital. I love working with you and wish you worked here permanently. You’re cool under pressure and always seem to know just how to deal with every situation. But I hate to break it to you, hon, you’re all thumbs when it comes to knitting, no matter how hard you try.”

“I’m going to get the hang of this tonight,” she insisted. “If Greta’s eight-year-old granddaughter can do it, so can I.”

She picked up the needles again and concentrated under the watchful eye of the charge nurse until she’d successfully finished the first row of what she hoped would eventually be a scarf.

“Not bad,” Greta said. “Now just do that about four hundred more times and you might have enough for a decent-sized scarf.”

Devin groaned. Already, she was wishing she had stuck to reading the latest medical journals to pass the time instead of trying to knit yet again.

“I’ve got to go back to my office and finish the schedule for next month,” Greta said. “Keep going and remember—ten rows a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”

Devin laughed but didn’t look up from the stitches.

“How do you always pick the slowest nights to fill in?” Callie asked after Greta left the nurses’ station.

“I have no idea. Just lucky, I guess.”

It wasn’t exactly true. Her nights weren’t always quiet. The past few times she had substituted for the regular emergency department doctors at Lake Haven Hospital had been low-key like this one, but that definitely wasn’t always the case. A month earlier, she worked the night of the first snowfall and had been on her feet all night, between car accidents, snow shovel injuries and a couple of teenagers who had taken a snowmobile through a barbed-wire fence.

Like so much of medicine, emergency medicine was all a roll of the dice.

Devin loved her regular practice as a family physician in partnership with Russell Warrick, who had been her own doctor when she was a kid. She loved having a day-to-day relationship with her patients and the idea that she could treat an entire family from cradle to grave.

Even so, she didn’t mind filling in at the emergency department when the three rotating emergency medicine physicians in the small hospital needed an extra hand. The challenge and variety of it exercised her brain and sharpened her reflexes—except tonight, when the only thing sharp seemed to be these knitting needles that had become her nemesis.

She was on her twelfth row when she heard a commotion out in the reception area.

“We need a doctor here, right now.”

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” Devin heard the receptionist ask in a calm voice.

Devin didn’t wait around to hear the answer. She and Callie both sprang into action. Though the emergency department usually followed triage protocol, with prospective patients screened by one of the certified nurse assistants first to determine level of urgency, that seemed superfluous when the newcomers were the only patients here. By default, they automatically moved to the front of the line, since there wasn’t one.

She walked through the doorway to the reception desk and her initial impression was of a big, tough-looking man, a very pregnant woman in one of the hospital wheelchairs and a couple of scared-looking kids.

“What’s the problem?”

“Are you a doctor?” the man demanded. “I know how emergency rooms work. You tell your story to a hundred different people before you finally see somebody who can actually help you. I don’t want to go through that.”

She gave a well-practiced smile. “I’m Dr. Shaw, the attending physician here tonight. What seems to be the problem?”

“Devin? Is that you?”

The pregnant woman looked up and met her gaze and Devin immediately recognized her. “Tricia! Hello.”

Tricia Barrett had been a friend in high school, though she hadn’t seen her in years. Barrett had been her maiden name, anyway. Devin couldn’t remember the last name of the man she married.

“Hi,” Tricia said, her features pale and her arms tight on the armrests of the wheelchair. “I would say it’s great to see you again, but, well, not really, under these circumstances. No offense.”

Devin stepped closer to her and gave her a calming smile. “None taken. Believe me, I get it. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

Tricia shifted in the wheelchair. “Nothing. Someone is overreacting.”

“She slipped on a patch of ice about an hour ago and hurt her ankle.” The man with her overrode her objections. “I’m not sure it’s broken but she needs an X-ray.”

At first she thought he might be Tricia’s husband but on closer inspection, she recognized him, only because she’d seen him around town here and there over the past few years.

Cole Barrett, Tricia’s older brother, was a rather hard man to overlook—six feet two inches of gorgeousness, with vivid blue eyes, sinfully long eyelashes and sun-streaked brown hair usually hidden by a cowboy hat.

He had been wild back in the day, if she remembered correctly, and still hadn’t lost that edgy, bad-boy outlaw vibe.

In a small community like Haven Point, most people knew each other—or at least knew of each other. She hadn’t met the man but she knew he lived in the mountains above town and that he had inherited a sprawling, successful ranch from his grandparents.

If memory served, he had once been some kind of hotshot rodeo cowboy.

With that afternoon shadow and his wavy brown hair a little disordered, he looked as if he had just climbed either off a horse or out of some lucky woman’s bed. Not that it was any of her business. Disreputable cowboys were definitely not her type.

Devin dismissed the man from her mind and focused instead on her patient, where her attention should have been in the first place.

“Have you been able to put weight on your ankle?”

“No, but I haven’t really tried. This is all so silly,” Tricia insisted. “I’m sure it’s not broken.”

She winced suddenly, her face losing another shade or two of color, and pressed a hand to her abdomen.

Devin didn’t miss the gesture and her attention sharpened. “How long have you been having contractions?”

“I’m sure they’re only Braxton Hicks.”

“How far along are you?”

“Thirty-four weeks. With twins, if you couldn’t tell by the basketball here.”

Her brother frowned. “You’re having contractions? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because you’re already freaking out over a stupid sprained ankle. I didn’t want to send you into total panic mode.”

“What’s happening?” the girl said. “What are contractions?”

“It’s something a woman’s body does when she’s almost ready to have a baby,” Tricia explained.

“Are you having the babies tonight?” she asked, big blue eyes wide. “I thought they weren’t supposed to be here until after Christmas.”

“I hope not,” Tricia answered. “Sometimes I guess you have practice contractions. I’m sure that’s what these are.”

For the first time, she started to look uneasy and Devin knew she needed to take control of the situation.

“I don’t want to send you up to Obstetrics until we take a look at the ankle. We can hook up all the fetal monitoring equipment down here in the emergency department to see what’s going on and put your minds at ease.”

“Thanks. I’m sure everything’s fine. I’m going to be embarrassed for worrying everyone.”

“Never worry about that,” Devin assured her.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to get some information so we can enter it into the computer and make an ID band.” Brittney Calloway, the receptionist, stepped forward, clipboard in hand.

“My insurance information is in my purse,” Tricia said. “Cole, can you find it and give her what she needs?”

He looked as if he didn’t want to leave his sister’s side but the little boy was already looking bored.

Whose were they? The girl looked to be about eight, blonde and ethereal like Tricia but with Cole’s blue eyes, and the boy was a few years younger with darker coloring and big brown eyes.

She hadn’t heard the man had kids—in fact, as far as she knew, he had lived alone at Evergreen Springs the past two years since his grandmother died.

“You can come back to the examination room after you’re done out here, or you can stay out in the waiting room.”

He looked at the children and then back at his sister, obviously torn. “We’ll wait out here, if you think you’ll be okay.”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I’m sorry to be such a pain.”

He gave his sister a soft, affectionate smile that would have made Devin’s knees go weak, if she weren’t made of sterner stuff. “You’re not a pain. You’re just stubborn,” he said gruffly. “You should have called me the minute you fell instead of waiting until I came back to the house and you definitely should have said something about the contractions.”

“We’ll take care of her and try to keep you posted.”

“Thanks.” He nodded and shepherded the two children to the small waiting room, with his sister’s purse in hand.

Devin forced herself to put him out of her mind and focus on her patient.

Normally, the nurses and aides would take a patient into a room and start a chart but since she knew Tricia and the night was slow, Devin didn’t mind coming into her care from the beginning.

“You’re thirty-three weeks?” she asked as she pushed her into the largest exam room in the department.

“Almost thirty-four. Tuesday.”

“With twins. Congratulations. Are they fraternal or identical?”

“Fraternal. A boy and a girl. The girl is measuring bigger, according to my ob-gyn back in California.”

“Did your OB clear you for travel this close to your due date?”

“Yes. Everything has been uncomplicated. A textbook pregnancy, Dr. Adams said.”

“When was your last appointment?”

“I saw my regular doctor the morning before Thanksgiving. She knew I was flying out to spend the holiday with Cole and the kids. I was supposed to be back the next Sunday, but, well, I decided to stay.”

She paused and her chin started to quiver. “Everything is such a mess and I can’t go home and now I’ve sprained my ankle. How am I going to get around on crutches when I’m as big as a barn?”

Something else was going on here, something that had nothing to do with sprained ankles. Why couldn’t she go home? Devin squeezed her hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“No. You’re right.” Tricia drew a breath. When she spoke her voice only wobbled a little. “I have an appointment Monday for a checkup with a local doctor. Randall or Crandall or something like that. I can’t remember. I just know my records have been transferred there.”

“Randall. Jim Randall.”

He was one of her favorite colleagues in the area, compassionate and kind and more than competent. Whenever she had a complicated obstetrics patient in her family medicine practice, she sent her to Jim.

As Devin guided Tricia from the wheelchair to the narrow bed in the room, the pregnant woman paused on the edge, her hand curved around her abdomen and her face contorted with pain. She drew in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Ow. That was a big one.”

And not far apart from the first contraction she’d had a few minutes earlier, Devin thought in concern, her priorities shifting as Callie came in. “Here we are. This is Callie. She’s an amazing nurse and right now she’s going to gather some basic information and help you into a gown. I’ll be back when she’s done to take a look at things.”

Tricia grabbed her hand. “You’ll be back?”

“In just a moment, I promise. I’m going to write orders for the X-ray and the fetal heartbeat monitoring and put a call in to Dr. Randall. I’ll also order some basic urine and blood tests, too, then I’ll be right back.”

“Okay. Okay.” Tricia gave a wobbly smile. “Thanks. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

* * *

HE TRULY DETESTED HOSPITALS.

Cole shifted in the uncomfortable chair, his gaze on the little Christmas tree in the corner with its colorful lights and garland made out of rolled bandages.

Given the setting and the time of year, it was hard not to flash back to that miserable Christmas he was eleven, when his mother lay dying. That last week of her life, Stan had taken him and Tricia to the hospital just about every evening. They would sit in the waiting room near a pitiful little Christmas tree like this one and do homework or read or just gaze out the window at the falling snow in the moonlight, scared and sad and a little numb after months of their mother’s chemotherapy and radiation.

He pushed away the memory, especially of all that came after, choosing instead to focus on the two good things that had come from hospitals: his kids, though he had only been there for Jazmyn’s birth.

He could still remember walking through the halls and wanting to stop everybody there and share a drink with them and tell them about his beautiful new baby girl.

Emphasis on the part about sharing a drink. He sighed. By the time Sharla went into labor with Ty, things had been so terrible between them that she hadn’t even told him the kid was on the way.

“I’m bored,” the kid in question announced. “There’s nothing to do.”

Cole pointed to the small flat-screen TV hanging on the wall, showing some kind of talking heads on a muted news program. “Want to watch something? I’m sure we could find the remote somewhere. I can ask at the desk.”

“I bet there’s nothing on.” Jazmyn slumped in her seat.

“Let’s take a look. Maybe we could find a Christmas special or something.”

Neither kid looked particularly enthusiastic but he headed over to the reception desk in search of a remote.

The woman behind the desk was a cute, curvy blonde with a friendly smile. Her name badge read Brittney and she had been watching him from under her fake eyelashes since he had filled out his sister’s paperwork.

“Hi. Can I help you?” she asked.

“Hi, Brittney. I wonder if we can use the TV remote. My kids are getting a little restless.”

“Oh. Sure. No prob.” Her smile widened with a flirtatious look in her eyes. He’d like to think he was imagining it but he’d seen that look too many times from buckle bunnies on the rodeo circuit to mistake it for anything else.

He shifted, feeling self-conscious. A handful of years ago, he would have taken her up on the unspoken invitation in those big blue eyes. He would have done his best to tease out her phone number or would have made arrangements with her to meet up for a drink when her shift was over.

He might even have found a way to slip away with her on her next break to make out in a stairwell somewhere.

Though he had been a long, long time without a woman, he did his best to ignore the look. He hated the man he used to be and anything that reminded him of it.

“Thanks,” he said stiffly when she handed over the remote. He took it from her and headed back to the kids.

“Here we go. Let’s see what we can find.”

He didn’t have high hopes of finding a kids’ show on at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night but he was pleasantly surprised when the next click of the remote landed them on what looked like a stop-action animated holiday show featuring an elf, a snowman and a reindeer wearing a cowboy hat.

“How’s this?” he asked.

“Okay,” Ty said, agreeable as always.

“Looks like a little kids’ show,” Jazmyn said with a sniff but he noticed that after about two seconds, she was as interested in the action as her younger brother.

Jaz was quite a character, bossy and opinionated and domineering to her little brother and everyone else. How could he blame her for those sometimes annoying traits, which she had likely developed from being forced into little-mother mode for her brother most of the time and even for their mother if Sharla was going through a rough patch?

He leaned back in the chair and wished he had a cowboy hat like the reindeer so he could yank it down over his face, stretch out his boots and take a rest for five freaking minutes.

Between the ranch and the kids and now Tricia, he felt stretched to the breaking point.

Tricia. What was he supposed to do with her? A few weeks ago, he thought she was only coming for Thanksgiving. The kids, still lost and grieving and trying to settle into their new routine with him, showed unusual excitement at the idea of seeing their aunt from California, the one who showered them with presents and cards.

She had assured him her doctor said she was fine to travel. Over their Skype conversation, she had given him a bright smile and told him she wanted to come out while she still could. Her husband was on a business trip, she told him, and she didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving on her own.

How the hell was he supposed to have figured out she was running away?

He sighed. His life had seemed so much less complicated two months ago.

He couldn’t say it had ever been uncomplicated, but he had found a groove the past few years. His world consisted of the ranch, his child support payments, regular check-ins with his parole officer and the biweekly phone calls and occasional visits to wherever Sharla in her wanderlust called home that week so he could stay in touch with his kids.

He had tried to keep his head down and throw everything he had into making Evergreen Springs and his horse training operation a success, to create as much order as he could out of the chaos his selfish and stupid mistakes had caused.

Two months ago, everything had changed. First had come a call from his ex-wife. She and her current boyfriend were heading to Reno for a week to get married—her second since their stormy marriage ended just months after Ty’s birth—and Sharla wanted him to meet her in Boise so he could pick up the kids.

Forget that both kids had school or that Cole was supposed to be at a horse show in Denver that weekend.

He had dropped everything, relishing the rare chance to be with his kids without more of Sharla’s drama. He had wished his ex-wife well, shook hands with the new guy—who actually had seemed like a decent sort, for a change—and sent them on their way.

Only a few days later, he received a second phone call, one that would alter his life forever.

He almost hadn’t been able to understand Sharla’s mother, Trixie, when she called. In between all the sobbing and wailing and carrying on, he figured out the tragic and stunning news that the newlyweds had been killed after their car slid out of control during an early snowstorm while crossing the Sierra Nevada.

In a moment, everything changed. For years, Cole had been fighting for primary custody, trying to convince judge after judge that their mother’s flighty, unstable lifestyle and periodic substance abuse provided a terrible environment for the children.

The only trouble was, Cole had plenty of baggage of his own. An ex-con former alcoholic didn’t exactly have the sturdiest leg to stand on when it came to being granted custody of two young children, no matter how much he had tried to rebuild his life and keep his nose out of trouble in recent years.

Sharla’s tragic death changed everything and Cole now had full custody of his children as the surviving parent.

It hadn’t been an easy transition for any of them, complicated by the fact that he’d gone through two housekeepers in as many months.

Now he had his sister to take care of. Whether her ankle was broken or sprained, the result would be more domestic chaos.

He would figure it out. He always did, right? What other choice did he have?

He picked up a National Geographic and tried to find something to read to keep himself awake. He was deep in his third article and the kids on to their second Christmas special before the lovely doctor returned.

She was every bit as young as he had thought at first, pretty and petite with midlength auburn hair, green eyes that were slightly almond shaped and porcelain skin. She even had a little smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Surely she was too young to be in such a responsible position.

He rose, worry for his sister crowding out everything else.

“How is she? Is her ankle broken? How are the babies?”

“You were right to bring her in. I’m sorry things have been taking so long. It must be almost the children’s bedtime.”

“They’re doing okay for now. How is Tricia?”

Dr. Shaw gestured to the chair and sat beside him after he sank back down. That was never a good sign, when the doctor took enough time to sit down, too.

“For the record, she gave me permission to share information with you. I can tell you that she has a severe sprain from the fall. I’ve called our orthopedics specialist on call and he’s taking a look at her now to figure out a treatment plan. With the proper brace, her ankle should heal in a month or so. She’ll have to stay off it for a few weeks, which means a wheelchair.”

His mind raced through the possible implications of that. He needed to find a housekeeper immediately. He had three new green broke horses coming in the next few days for training and he was going to be stretched thin over the next few weeks—lousy timing over the holidays, but he couldn’t turn down the work when he was trying so hard to establish Evergreen Springs as a powerhouse training facility.

How would he do everything on his own? Why couldn’t things ever be easy?

“The guest room and bathroom are both on the main level,” he said. “That will help. Can we pick up the wheelchair here or do I have to go somewhere else to find one?”

The doctor was silent for a few beats too long and he gave her a careful look.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

She released a breath. “Your sister also appears to be in the beginning stages of labor.”

He stared. “It’s too early! The babies have to be too small.”

Panic and guilt bloomed inside him, ugly and dark, and he rose, restless with all the emotions teeming inside him. She shouldn’t have been outside where she risked falling. He told her she didn’t have to go out to the bus to pick up the children. The stop was only a few hundred yards from the front door. They could walk up themselves, he told her, but she insisted on doing it every day. Said she needed the fresh air and the exercise.

Now look where they were.

“We’re monitoring her condition and I’ve been in consultation with the best ob-gyn in the valley. We’ve given her some medication to stop her contractions and put the brakes on. It’s been less than an hour, but so far it seems to be working.”

He sat back down, relief coursing through him. “Okay. Okay. That’s good. Isn’t it?”

“It’s still too early to tell. We have to keep her overnight up on the obstetrics floor to continue monitoring fetal activity.”

“Sounds wise.”

She paused for a long moment and he tried to sort through her silence for whatever else she might not be telling him.

“There’s a chance she might have to stay longer. I just want to make you aware of the possibility. She’s a complicated case—multiple births are always a little tricky. Add in an ankle injury that’s going to make it tough for her to get around at home and possible premature labor, and her chances of needing hospital bed rest go up. I’m consulting with the ob-gyn but that’s one of the options hanging out there.”

Hospital bed rest. Damn. Could things get more complicated?

“Okay. Thank you for letting me know.”

She glanced at the children, then back at him. “You’re all welcome to go back and talk to your sister. I think she’s feeling pretty alone right now.”

He nodded and rose again. “Thanks. Kids. We can go back now.”

“But, Dad! This one is almost over!” Jazmyn exclaimed. “Can’t we wait ten more minutes to see the end?”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. First she didn’t want to watch the show; now she didn’t want to leave until she saw the end.

That just about summed up their life together. She was never happy with anything he did. If he made pancakes for breakfast, she insisted she wanted French toast. If he tried, in his fumbling way, to put her hair in pigtails, she told him she wanted a ponytail that day.

It was driving him crazy—and he had a feeling that was part of the reason both women he had hired to help him had lasted only a few weeks.

The doc gave him a sympathetic look. “If you’d like, I can stay with the children for a few minutes until the show is over while you have a moment alone with your sister.”

Her thoughtfulness surprised him. In his experience, physicians weren’t usually so solicitous. “It’s just a TV show. She can catch it online later. I’m sure you have other patients to attend to.”

“Right this moment, no. You actually caught us on a slow night. I’ve got to answer a few emails, which I can easily do out here while you talk to your sister for a few minutes.”

He hated needing help. It was the toughest thing about being a single father, but in this case, he decided it would be stupid to argue.

“Thanks. The minute the show is over, you can send them back.”

“No problem. I’ll buzz you back. She’s in room two.”

She swiped her name badge across the door and he walked back into the emergency department. He found the room quickly. Inside, he found his baby sister looking pale and frightened, hooked up to a whole bunch of monitors.

He hurried over and kissed her cheek. “How are things?”

“I’ve been better.” She shifted positions on the bed to try for a more comfortable spot, something that couldn’t be easy given her advanced condition. “Did you talk to Devin?”

“Briefly.”

“So she told you the ankle isn’t broken.”

“Yes. And that you’re in premature labor.”

“The beginning stages, anyway. So far the contractions have stopped.”

“What happens if they start again?” He didn’t even want to think about it.

“I’ll probably be transferred to a bigger hospital in Boise with a higher level obstetrics department and larger newborn intensive care unit. Even if they don’t start again, I’ll likely be put on strict bed rest from now to the end of the pregnancy.”

“Are the babies okay?”

Her mouth quivered a little. “They seem to be. They’re not in distress or anything, at least for now.”

“That’s the important thing. That you’re all okay.”

Her eyes filled up with tears and her hands scrunched up the edge of the blanket. “Their lungs aren’t fully developed yet. They’re still so tiny. If they’re born now, there’s a chance they’ll have to be on ventilators and might even have brain damage. Premature babies have all kinds of complications.”

“Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet.”

“I should have known I would screw this up, too.”

He reached for her hand and gripped it in his, helpless and worried.

“You need to call Sean and let him know what’s going on.”

Tricia’s mouth trembled slightly until she straightened it into a thin line. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Trish.”

“No. Don’t go all big-brother protective and call him. Stay out of it. He made his wishes perfectly clear. He never wanted to be a father. He doesn’t want these babies and he doesn’t want me. If you call him, I’ll never forgive you. I mean it.”

Cole wanted to tear his hair out—or his brother-in-law’s, at any rate. What he really wanted was the chance to take the man to some secluded canyon and beat the shit out of him for whatever he had done to devastate Tricia enough to walk away from their life together in California.

As tempting as it was to jump in his truck and drive from Idaho to California, violence wasn’t always the solution. Cole would just end up in prison, which wouldn’t help anyone.

Arguing with Tricia only served to make her dig her heels in harder, something she was very good at.

He sighed. “I’m only going to say this one more time, and then I’ll let it drop. These are Sean’s kids, too. However mad you might be at him, I believe he has the right to know what’s going on with the three of you.”

“Lecture duly noted,” she said, refusing to meet his gaze. Feeling like an ass at the tremble in her voice, he squeezed her fingers.

“You’ll be okay, kiddo, and so will those little lima beans in there. I have a good feeling about this.”

She sniffled a little and gave him a watery half smile. “Devin is admitting me. I guess she probably told you that.”

“Do you trust this doc? You said you know her from way back, but is that the most important thing here? I’ve been in my share of emergency rooms when I was on the circuit and I do know you have the right to be transferred by ambulance to a bigger hospital in Boise if you want another opinion, maybe from somebody who’s watched a little more water pass under the bridge.”

Tricia shook her head. “I don’t want anybody else. I know she’s young but I trust Devin. In fact, I’m going to ask her if she’ll deliver my twins when the time comes, unless they end up coming early and I need a specialist.”

“Why? You haven’t seen her in years. You know nothing about her on a professional level.”

“I’m not a complete idiot. Everybody who comes into the room raves about her, from the nurses to the receptionist to the ob-gyn we consulted.” She held up her smartphone. “I also looked her up on Google, and she has excellent reviews online.”

“And being married to a tech guy, you know you can certainly trust everything you read online.”

“I trust my gut. That’s the important thing.”

He shook his head. “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

“I have.”

The woman had been very kind to stay with the kids—which reminded him that he needed to find them before they became wrapped up in another show.

“Are you okay here? I’m going to go grab the kids and get them some dinner, and then we’ll be back.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine tonight. Take the kids home to their own beds and I’ll be in touch with you in the morning with an update.”

“Are you sure? I don’t feel good about leaving you here by yourself.”

“I’ll be fine. To be honest, after all this excitement—plus the medicine they gave me—all I want to do is sleep.”

That didn’t completely convince him, but he didn’t know what else to do but take the kids home to preserve as much routine for them as possible. He couldn’t spend all night in the waiting room with them, especially if Tricia didn’t need him.

“You’ll call or text me right away if anything changes, right?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“If you send me a list of what you need to be more comfortable, I can run it back tonight.”

“Just my bag from the car.” She gave him a sheepish look. “I’ve had an emergency hospital bag packed for weeks. Even before I came out here, I brought it with me to Idaho and grabbed it on impulse on the way out the door this afternoon. It’s got my phone charger, a robe and some slippers and a couple of magazines I’ve been meaning to get to.”

This didn’t surprise him. Tricia was just about the most organized person he knew. It was what made her brilliant at her job as director of a nonprofit charity in San Jose.

“I’ll grab your bag. If you think of anything else, call me.”

To his alarm, she started to tear up again. “I will. Thank you, Cole. For everything. You’ve always been the one person I can count on in this world.”

He managed not to snort his disbelief. She must be on some serious drugs if she could say something so ridiculous. He hadn’t been around when she needed him. First he had been too busy partying on the circuit, then he had been paying the price for all that hard living. A good chunk of their relationship over the past decade and a half had been long-distance.

He couldn’t repair all that he had done. If he had learned one thing in prison, it was the lesson that a guy could only fix what was in front of him. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “You know I love you, squirt.”

“I do.”

“Your only job right now is to take care of yourself and those little spudnuts in there, got it?”

“Is that an order?”

“If that’s what it takes. Just rest. I’ll be back in a minute with your bag.”

“Thank you.”

She leaned back against the pillow, looking pale and fragile. Her foot was up on pillows and her big abdomen stretched the sheets.

He again fought the urge to find her SOB husband and knock some sense into the man. Barring that, the only thing he could do was bring her bag back and then take care of his children.

CHAPTER TWO

“THAT WAS A good show,” the adorable boy declared when the closing credits to the animated Christmas show on the television started to roll.

His sister gave a dismissive shrug. “I guess. I thought the elf was kind of stupid. I mean, why didn’t he just give the girl’s letter to Santa in the first place instead of trying to answer it himself because he was trying to be such a big deal?”

“People can make all kinds of crazy choices in stories,” Devin pointed out. “If Elvis had given the letter to Santa, the story would have ended there and he never would have learned to care more about helping other people than about how important he looked to them.”

“Maybe.”

Jazmyn looked doubtful, not particularly swayed by Devin’s thoughtful analysis on the nature of elves in fiction and the character journey of this particular elf.

“When is Aunt Tricia gonna be done here so we can go home?” the girl asked. “We haven’t even had dinner yet and it’s almost Ty’s bedtime. I’m okay, but Ty is starving. He has to keep his blood sugar steady or he gets crazy.”

“I do not,” Ty protested.

“You do. That’s what Mom used to say all the time, remember?”

“I guess.” He looked upset at the reminder. From what she had seen, the boy was extremely sweet, with those big soulful dark eyes and endlessly long eyelashes. “I guess I am hungry.”

“If your dad doesn’t come out in a few moments, I’ll grab some crackers and cheese for you. Maybe that will hold you over until you can get some dinner.”

“But when can Aunt Tricia go home? Is she done with the ’tractions?” Jazmyn asked.

“Did she have to get a big cast on her leg?” Ty asked before she could answer his sister. “My friend Carlos broke his arm on a trampoline and had to get a big cast. It’s camel-flage.”

“Camouflage, you mean,” Jazmyn corrected him.

“That’s what I said.”

“Your aunt has to stay the night so we can take care of her leg—which isn’t going to need a cast but will probably be in a brace that she can take on and off. I’m not sure if we have one in camouflage but I can see.”

“What about her babies?” the girl asked. “She’s not going to have them tonight, is she?”

Devin hoped not. “I don’t think so. They’re a little too small right now.”

“She’s having a boy and a girl,” Ty informed her. “The boy is going to be Jack and the girl will be named Emma. That was my grandma’s middle name. I never met her because she died. Aunt Tricia said I can hold them anytime I want.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a big help.”

“I’m going to. She said I could even feed them a bottle if I wanted.”

“Lucky.”

“You don’t even know how to feed a baby a bottle,” his sister said skeptically. “I do. I fed you when you were little.”

Since Jazmyn was only a few years older than her brother, Devin doubted the veracity of that claim, but she wasn’t about to call her on it.

“With two babies, there will be plenty of chances for everybody to hold them and feed them.”

“Don’t talk about food because I’m starving,” the girl moaned dramatically.

“I’m sure your dad will be out soon to take you back to your house for some dinner.”

“It’s not my house,” she muttered.

“It is so,” Ty argued. “Dad said so. We live with him now.”

“Not for long. Grandma Trixie says she’s going to fight for custody so we can come live with her in California, just as soon as she finds us all a good place to stay.”

Why would a grandparent think she could possibly win a custody fight against a parent? What was the background? Where was their mother, first of all, and why hadn’t they been living with their father before now?

Cole’s life seemed a mad tangle of complications.

“I don’t want to live with Grandma Trixie. I like living with Dad,” Ty said, his voice small. “We have our own rooms now, which we never had before, and a yard to play in and Dad says I can even get a horse of my own after I learn how to ride better.”

“Who wants a stupid horse?” Jazmyn tossed her brother a disgusted look. “With Grandma Trixie in California, we could go to the beach every day, even in the winter, and maybe even see movie stars.”

“I’d rather have a horse and live with Dad,” Ty muttered. Devin had the feeling this wasn’t the first time the two of them had engaged in this particular argument. To keep the peace, she opted for distraction.

“Let’s go see if we can find some crackers and juice. Ty, why don’t you give me a hand?”

The agreeable boy slid off his chair and followed her to the reception desk. “Hey, Brittney. My man Ty here is hungry and so is his sister. Any chance we could grab a few of those cracker packs and maybe some cookies from the food room?”

“Sure, Dr. Shaw.” The young receptionist hopped up. “I should have thought of that. What a dope I can be. I’m sorry. Just give me a sec.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

The receptionist hurried away. While she was gone, Ty became interested in the small Christmas tree on the desk, made entirely of inflated nonlatex gloves cascading down with an elastic bandage garland.

“Are those all balloons? Did somebody have to blow them all up?”

“I would guess so,” she answered.

“I bet that took forever.”

“It’s not that tough. Here, I’ll show you.” She grabbed a glove from the box tacked to the wall and quickly showed him how to bunch the end together and blow it up, then tie the end like a balloon. “And now look.” She grabbed a Sharpie from the canister on the reception desk and doodled a face on it, with the thumb sticking out like a long nose, much to the boy’s delight.

She might not be able to knit, but who said she wasn’t crafty?

She had learned the fine art of glove creature creation during her first surgery, when she’d ended up staying ten days because of an infection. In the children’s hospital in Boise, she had met Lilah, another teenage girl with cancer. It was Lilah, she remembered, who had shown her the trick of creating creatures from surgical gloves. They used to make them for the younger kids receiving treatment.

Lilah had lost her battle just a few months later.

Devin thought a silent prayer for her friend and for the others she had said goodbye to along her cancer journey.

“Can you make one for Jazmyn?” Ty asked.

“You bet.”

In a minute, she had another inflated glove. This face she drew with long eyelashes and puckered lips. Ty quickly took it over to his sister just as the receptionist came out with a handful of treats.

The kids were eating crackers and cheese with enthusiasm—pausing every few moments to bop each other on the head with their inflated glove creatures—when their father walked back into the waiting room.

She suddenly felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room, which she was fully aware was a completely ridiculous reaction to a gorgeous man.

“Hey, kids.”

“Where’s Aunt Tricia?”

Cole glanced at Devin, looking rather endearingly uncertain, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to tell his kids. “She’s sticking around here for the night. Dr. Shaw wants to keep an eye on her and the babies a little longer.”

“Who’s going to fix us breakfast and get us on the bus?” Ty demanded. “We don’t even have Mrs. Lynn to help us anymore.”

“I can do that just as well as Tricia or Mrs. Lynn.”

“Aunt Tricia said you can’t even make toast without burning it,” Jazmyn informed him.

“Aunt Tricia talks too much,” he muttered. “Between you and me, we ought to be able to handle things for a few days, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” she said doubtfully.

“Get your coats and gather up your things so we can take off,” he ordered. “We need to get Aunt Tricia’s bag out of the car, then grab some dinner so I can get you two to bed.”

“Can we take these?” Ty asked Devin, holding out his inflated glove.

“Of course,” she answered. “I’ll warn you, they might start to lose air pretty soon.”

When they were just about ready to go—mittens found, beanies adjusted—Jazmyn turned contrary.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she suddenly declared. The girl was quite a character. She could have gone anytime in the past fifteen minutes but she had waited until she knew her father was in a hurry.

“Can’t you wait until we get home?” Cole asked.

“No. I have to go now.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

She headed to the ladies’ room just off the lobby. “You need to go?” Cole asked his son. The boy shook his head, content to toss the rubber glove balloon into the air and catch it again.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on them,” Cole said to her.

“No problem. They’re fun kids. How old are they? I didn’t have the chance to ask.”

“Jaz is eight going on about thirty-six and Ty just turned six.”

“Those are fun ages at Christmastime. Still young enough to believe in the magic and old enough to appreciate the wonder of it all.”

“I guess. I’m not sure any of us is in the mood for Christmas this year,” he said, his tone rather bleak.

Why? What was the story here? She wanted to ask but decided it wasn’t her business. “You said you had a bag of your sister’s?”

“Yeah. I guess she’s had a hospital bag packed since before she came out to Idaho. She threw it in the truck before we left the house. Mother’s intuition or something. Apparently it contains a few necessities like magazines and slippers.”

“Handy.”

“I guess.” He looked around the empty waiting room, then back at her. “I’ve got to tell you, Doc, I’m still not convinced this is the best place for her and the twins. I can’t help thinking maybe the smartest thing would be to pack her up right now and take her to a bigger hospital in Boise.”

Devin ignored the little pinch to her pride. “I understand your concern. I told Tricia that’s a decision she can certainly make. I will tell you, we have a state-of-the-art facility here, brand-new in the last two years, with every possible advanced fetal and maternal monitoring capability and a couple of excellent specialists in the area who will be taking a look at her tomorrow. If at any time your sister feels uneasy about the care she’s receiving here, I would be the first to encourage her to transfer to a different facility. At this point, we’re dealing with a sprained ankle and contractions that currently appear to be under control. I would advise against moving to another facility far away from her family, but that’s, of course, her choice.”

“Yeah, she was quick to remind me of the same thing,” he said, his voice wry.

“Sisters. What can you do?”

He almost smiled but seemed to catch himself at the last minute as his daughter came out of the ladies’ room, wiping her just-washed hands on her coat.

He unpeeled from the wall. “Thanks for keeping an eye on them for me. Come on, kids. Let’s grab the bag for Aunt Tricia, then take off back to the ranch before that snow gets any deeper.”

Devin watched them walk outside, their faces colored by the blinking Christmas lights around the front door as snow swirled around them.

“I can’t believe how much snow has already fallen,” Brittney said, looking out after them.

Before Devin could answer, Callie appeared. “There you are. We just got a call from Dispatch. Paramedics are on their way to the scene of a three-car accident and they’re warning us to get ready for multiple injuries.”

So much for her relatively quiet evening.

She put the very sexy cowboy and his cute kids out of her mind so she could focus on the job at hand.

* * *

SHE DIDN’T HAVE the chance to check on Tricia again until several hours and two more weather-related accidents later.

Devin’s friend had been moved to a room on the obstetrics floor, the third floor of the hospital, where each room had big windows offering lovely views—in daylight, anyway—of the Redemption Mountains and the beautiful unearthly blue waters of Lake Haven.

On a quick break, Devin took the elevator up and headed to the obstetrics nurses’ desk. She found Tricia’s chart and saw that the contractions appeared to have stopped. Dr. Randall, the ob-gyn, had made a visit a short time ago and Devin sighed when she read his recommendation. As she had feared, Dr. Randall agreed with her and thought this was one of the rare cases when hospital bed rest was indicated.

That wouldn’t be easy for anyone—especially not Tricia.

Thinking she would just take a peek inside to see if her patient was sleeping, she cracked the door only a little. A light was on above the bed, she discovered. Tricia sat upright in the bed with her leg propped on a couple of pillows, hands clasped over her distended abdomen.

When she spied Devin, she gave a small smile and quickly tried to wipe away the tears on her cheeks.

Devin didn’t give another thought to the peanut butter and honey sandwich she had planned to eat during the break. Her patient was in distress and that was far more important.

She pushed the door open and walked inside. “Oh, honey. What’s wrong? Are you having pain? How’s the ankle?”

Tricia shrugged. “It hurts, mainly because I don’t want to take any heavy pain medication that might harm the babies. But at least it’s not broken. Mostly I’m upset because this isn’t the way I planned to spend the last few weeks of my pregnancy. Alone, on bed rest in a strange hospital.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Tricia sniffled and Devin handed her the box of tissues that was just out of reach on her bedside table. She grabbed one and wiped at her eyes. “So you heard?”

“I was just reading your chart.”

“Dr. Randall thinks I should stay here on hospital bed rest for the next week so they can continue monitoring things. I’m dilated to a three and twenty percent effaced, which makes the risk of premature labor high, and now I can’t even walk to the bathroom on my own. The stupid ankle is complicating everything.”

“I know it’s hard but this might be the best thing for all of you. You want to keep those little ones inside there as long as possible, trust me. In just a few weeks, they’ll be considered full-term and the risks of neonatal complications drop considerably.”

“I know. But I don’t have to like it. It stinks.”

“You won’t get an argument from me. I get it, believe me.”

She didn’t, really. She could understand and empathize on a clinical level but she didn’t really know what it was to be pregnant and frightened. That was something she would never be able to appreciate, except theoretically.

The ache in her chest was as familiar as it was unwelcome.

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said quietly. “Sleep is really the best thing for you and those kidlets.”

“I was sleeping until a short time ago, but then I had a bad dream that woke me.”

Devin tried to lighten the mood. “I hate that. A few nights ago, I dreamed I was the grand marshal of the Lake Haven Days parade but instead of riding on a float, I had to do cartwheels the entire parade route, all the way down Lake Street in front of everyone in town. My hands were killing me, even in the dream.”

As she hoped, Tricia smiled a little at the ridiculousness of Devin’s subconscious. “The mind is such a strange thing, isn’t it?”

“You said it, sister.” Devin slipped into the visitor’s chair next to the bed.

She felt a comfortable kinship with the other woman, though they had been separated for years and hadn’t stayed in touch. Some friendships were like that. Despite time and distance, coming together again was like slipping on a favorite shirt you misplaced for a while in the back of your closet.

“Is it still snowing out there?” Tricia asked. “I spoke with my brother before I fell asleep and he said they passed a couple of slide-offs on the way home. He said they already had four or five inches on the road up to Evergreen Springs.”

“We’ve had weather-related accidents all night. This is the first chance I’ve had to slip away to check on you. Your brother and the children made it home safely, though?”

“Yes. He said it was slick and they slid a little, especially going up the driveway, but nothing serious.”

“That’s a relief.”

Tricia was silent, her fingers tangled in the edge of the nubby hospital blanket. “I hate that I’ve complicated everything for him. As if everything wasn’t tough enough already—now he has to worry about me, too.”

“Why are things tough?”

Tricia made a rough sound. “I could paper the walls with all the reasons, starting with the kids. Jazmyn and Ty have only been with him a few months and they’re all still trying to find their way together.”

“Is that right?” She didn’t want to be nosy but she couldn’t deny she was curious about the situation.

Tricia sighed. “Their mom, Cole’s ex, was killed in a car accident just after her third marriage.”

“Oh, no. Those poor children.” Perhaps that explained some of Jazmyn’s surliness and the shadows in poor little Ty’s gaze.

“I know the kids miss her. My heart breaks for them. I don’t think Ty, at least, really gets what’s going on, but Jaz was super close to her mother and she’s devastated. It’s been so tough for all of them. I’m sad for the kids but I can’t honestly say I’m sorry Sharla is dead.”

Devin blinked a little, surprised by the other woman’s rancor. “Okay.”

“I know that makes me sound like a terrible person but I don’t care. She was a vindictive witch who did her best to keep Jaz and Ty away from Cole as much as possible, unless it was convenient for her to dump them off on him. She hopped from man to man, town to town, and put him and those kids through hell.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good situation for anybody.”

“It wasn’t. I hope things will be a little easier for all of them now. Maybe they can have some kind of stable home life for the first time, at least after Cole finds a housekeeper who will stick around for longer than a few weeks. You don’t know anybody looking for a job, do you?”

“As a housekeeper?” Devin asked. “I don’t, but I can certainly ask around.”

“He needs a nanny more than a housekeeper, really. He just can’t keep up with the ranch and the house and the kids by himself. He’s hired a couple of people to help but neither of them really clicked with the kids. Jaz can be...moody and difficult sometimes. As for Ty, he’s the sweetest thing, but he can be energetic when he’s in a mood. Neither of them has ever had any kind of structure or discipline. I’ve been helping him out these past weeks since the last housekeeper left before Thanksgiving. I don’t know how he’s going to juggle everything on his own without me.”

“I’m sure he’ll figure it out.” Cole Barrett struck her as a man used to taking care of business. She ignored the ridiculous little flutter in her stomach as she thought of the man. “You need to let your brother worry about his home life. That can’t be your concern.”

“I can’t help it. I stress about him and the children. If he wasn’t so darn stubborn, the solution to the whole problem is right there at the ranch, staring him in the face. But that would be too easy and require my inflexible brother to bend a little. I mean, Dad is right there on the ranch, living fifty yards away, but Cole will gnaw off his own leg before he asks Stanford to lift a finger.”

“I take it your brother and father don’t get along.” The man really did have a tangled mess of a home life.

Tricia sighed heavily. “That’s an understatement. I’m not saying Cole doesn’t have his reasons for being angry, but people can change, right? Dad is trying.”

Devin didn’t quite know how to answer that, since she didn’t know any of the particulars, so she remained silent.

After a moment, Tricia winced. “Sorry. You didn’t come in here to be bored by my family drama.”

“I’m not bored. I just wish I could help somehow.”

“The housekeeper is the critical need, especially with me stuck here. They’re going to be eating frozen pizzas and cold cereals until I have these babies. He’s the kind of man who will never ask for help. He’ll just muddle through as best he can.”

She knew more than a few of those. “I’ll put the word out. It might be tough to hire someone right before Christmas but I’ll ask my sister if she can think of anybody. McKenzie is the mayor of Haven Point and she seems to know everything that goes on.”

“Thank you. Seriously, Devin. Thank you. I’m so glad you were here when Cole made me come.”

She smiled and rose. “I need to head back downstairs. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You’ve done so much already.” Tears welled up in the other woman’s eyes again and Devin squeezed her fingers. This was a tough situation for anyone, especially when she was pregnant with twins and appeared to be alone.

Tricia hadn’t said anything about her husband, though she still wore a wedding ring. Devin took a chance and though it wasn’t her business as a physician, she wanted to think their old and dear friendship gave her a little more leeway.

“Have you been in contact with the babies’ father? Does he know what’s going on?”

Tricia reached for another tissue. “No. He won’t care, anyway.”

“Ah. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“Sean and I are...estranged, I guess you could say. It’s such a mess.”

“I didn’t mean to distress you, honey. Forget about it.”

“No. You should know what’s going on. It’s a long story but the core problem is he’s angry about the pregnancy. We have always been that couple who told everyone who would listen that they didn’t want children. We were both adamant about it. This was an oopsie of epic proportions...and wouldn’t you know, I’d get pregnant with twins?”

Devin forced a smile, though she felt that familiar little ache in her chest again.

“As soon as I found out I was pregnant, my whole mind-set shifted,” Tricia said, “and suddenly I loved and wanted Jack and Emma desperately, but Sean never came around. I thought he might eventually, but we had another big fight just before Thanksgiving. He couldn’t come to the last ultrasound. This is after weeks of him being too busy to come to other appointments. He was supposed to come out here with me, too, for the holiday, but at the last minute he volunteered for a business trip. It was the last straw, you know?”

She didn’t, but again, she nodded.

“It was plain to me things would never change. I decided I couldn’t raise my children in an atmosphere where they felt unwanted, even for a moment. I know what that’s like and I couldn’t put my children through that, so I decided to stay with Cole and the children, to have the babies here and stay at Evergreen Springs until I figure out what to do now.”

She sniffled a little and wiped at her eyes. “Now here I am in the hospital with a sprained ankle. I’ve made such a mess of things.”

Devin rubbed her arm. “You’re in very good hands here, my dear. We will take great care of you and your babies. I promise.”

“What about Cole and the kids? While I’m in here resting on my butt, he’ll be scrambling to do everything on his own. He’s a dear, dear man but he’s in way over his head with those kids of his. He can barely boil water. They’ll be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every meal.”

Devin took her friend’s hands. “Your concern right now has to be keeping those babies safe and healthy and doing what you can to heal that ankle. I need you to promise me you won’t worry. It’s not good for any of you. We’ll find someone to help your brother.”

“You know, I believe you.” Tricia rested back on the pillows, some of the strain easing from her features. “That was always one of the things I loved best about you, Dev. If you said you would do something, you did it. You always kept your word.”

“You have to believe me about this. Your brother will be fine. We’ll make sure of it.”

She wasn’t sure how, she thought as she bid Tricia good-night and left the room. She didn’t even know the man, but she had promised her friend.

Cole Barrett would receive help, whether he wanted it or not.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN DEVIN FINALLY parked her SUV in the garage and let herself into her house on the lakeshore, it was nearly midnight and most Haven Point residents lay tucked in their beds while the snow continued to fall and the winds blew.

She flipped on the lights of the kitchen, a little light-headed with exhaustion. Her day had started with clinic hours at her practice beginning before 9:00 a.m. Barring those few moments of knitting with Greta, she hadn’t had time to take a breath all day.

Why, again, had she ever wanted to be a doctor?

Oh, yes. Because she wanted to think that some days she was actually making a difference, helping others as she had been helped by so many caring professionals.

Seamus, the friendlier of her two cats, wandered in and rubbed against her leg in greeting.

Devin picked him up. “Hello there, handsome. Anything exciting happen around here? What kind of trouble did you and Simone get into without me?”

He let out a long meow, the tattletale. Both of her cats were rescues from the shelter but Simone had been with her only a few months, a replacement for her dearest and oldest friend, Trina, who had been with Devin since she was a kitten.

The newcomer and Seamus adored each other, which was great, but so far the other cat hadn’t warmed up to Devin.

She was working on it, though. She pulled the kibble out of the pantry and shook the container. A moment later, Simone peeked shyly around the corner. She was still trying to persuade the cat to come closer when her phone rang.

To Devin’s great relief, it was her sister, not an emergency call tugging her back to the hospital.

“Hey, Kenz,” she answered. “What are you doing up so late?”

“I could say the same for you, Dr. Shaw. I was letting Rika and Hondo back inside after their last trip out for the night and saw you drive past. Tell me you’ve been on a hot date.”

She snorted. When was her last hot date? Nothing came immediately to mind. She really needed to do something about that but the dating pool in Haven Point wasn’t very deep at the moment. The town was changing, though, especially now that Caine Tech was developing a new facility on the edge of town at the site of the old boatworks, which had once been owned by the family of McKenzie’s fiancé.

“You know me. I have to fight them off with a scalpel.”

McKenzie laughed. “You would, if you stood still long enough. Have you been working all day?”

“I covered Pat Lander’s shift in the emergency department after work. His grandson had a Christmas concert over in Star and he didn’t want to miss it. Nobody else was available. What are you doing up so late?”

“Ben flew in for the weekend,” she answered. “We went to dinner at Lydia’s place in Shelter Springs and stayed later than we planned. I just checked my email and saw you sent me something about calling out the troops. What’s up?”

Devin slipped off her shoes and sank into her favorite chair in the family room, with wide windows looking out on the lake. Right now she saw only snow drifting past the window but she could imagine it on a summer afternoon with the water gently lapping the dock and clouds rippling past the mountains.

“I wanted to take a couple of quick freezer meals—soups, casseroles, whatever—to a single dad in the area who apparently isn’t very skilled in the kitchen.”

“Oh? Anybody I know?”

This was always a tricky situation. Privacy rules demanded she not discuss her patients, not even when that patient had been a friend to both of them. But how did she let McKenzie know what was needed when she couldn’t give specifics?

“Cole Barrett,” she finally said. “Do you know him?”

“Are you kidding? Yum. Tricia’s brother, right? The sexy rodeo cowboy who lives up at Evergreen Springs. I’ve bumped into him a few times having breakfast when I’m grabbing coffee at Serrano’s. Not a big talker, by the way, but he was one of those on the front lines of the sandbagging during the big flood.”

Earlier in the summer, a dam upriver from Haven Point on the Hell’s Fury had become unstable. The town avoided significant damage, mostly because the town’s mayor—who just happened to be her sister—had quickly mobilized everyone to evacuate and put protective measures around homes in the flood zone.

“Wait a minute,” McKenzie said after a moment. “Cole Barrett is a single father? You’re kidding. I had no idea the guy had a family. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with kids.”

“Apparently his ex-wife had custody of their son and daughter but she died a few months ago so the kids have come to live with him.”

“Oh, the poor kids. This is a terrible season to lose a parent.”

If they had been together in person, Devin would have given her sister a tight hug, suddenly remembering her sister had personal experience in that department. She and McKenzie were half sisters, actually, and McKenzie had come to live with their family when she was ten, after her own mother died. That had been around the holidays, too, she remembered, more determined than ever to help Cole and his children through this rough time.

“He needs a housekeeper. Do you know anybody in town who might be looking for a job?”

“I think everybody who’s in the market is applying at the new Caine Tech facility. I can check with a few people. Anita knows everything,” she said, referring to her assistant at city hall. “She might have some ideas.”

“Thank you. Meanwhile, Tricia has been in town helping him out but she can’t right now.” Devin chose her words carefully, mindful again of patient privacy. “I was thinking it would be very neighborly if we called out the Helping Hands to fill up his freezer with a few things he could fix in a pinch while he’s handling things on his own.”

McKenzie spearheaded a loosely organized group of women who gathered regularly to provide service to Haven Point residents who might be struggling.

“That’s a fabulous idea. I’ll send out an email right now. When would you like me to have people drop off their meals?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead, to actually delivering the meals. That would necessitate seeing Cole again, something that suddenly gave her ridiculous butterflies.

Her tired brain took a moment to scan through her schedule for the next day. “Why don’t we say midmorning tomorrow? That way everybody can see the email first thing and check their freezer inventory. I’ve got yoga class at the senior citizen’s center that won’t be done until ten. Let’s use the store as a central drop-off place, if you don’t mind. I can pick everything up after yoga and take it up to Evergreen Springs. I thought I would make up a spinach lasagna, a chicken and rice casserole and the Gruyère mac and cheese everybody seemed to like at the last potluck.”

“Ooh. That sounds delicious. I wish I had a big bowl of it right now.”

“I’ll save you some,” she promised.

“I was already thinking about throwing together a big batch of burgundy beef stew in the slow cooker tomorrow. Ben loves it and I’ll have plenty of extras for Cole. I’ll just cook it on the stove instead. It’s always better reheated anyway, once the flavors have time to meld.”

“Thanks, Kenz.”

“I’m actually glad to have the chance to do something for Cole. He worked nonstop last summer when the Hell’s Fury flooded and then disappeared before I ever had the chance to say thanks. I don’t think I saw him even take a break for a sandwich. It will be nice to feel like we’re paying him back a little for all his help.”

“That works.”

“And maybe if we’re nice enough to him,” McKenzie went on in a voice that was growing in enthusiasm, “he won’t feel like he has to be such a hermit up there on the mountain. Sexy cowboys hanging around downtown for the tourists to see can only be good for our reputation, right?”

Devin laughed. “You can be the one to tell the man you want to pimp him out for the good of Haven Point.”

“He wouldn’t have to go bare-chested or anything. I would be happy if he just walked up and down Lake Street in his Stetson, tipping it every now and then to the tourists with a random ‘ma’am’ or ‘howdy.’”

She heard a deep voice on the other end—Ben, she assumed. McKenzie said something to him Devin couldn’t hear, then came back laughing.

“Okay, apparently Ben thinks that’s not one of my better ideas. We’ll keep it on the back burner for now.”

“That’s a good place for it. Way, way back,” Devin said with a laugh. “I’ll be by tomorrow to pick up the food.”

She ended the connection, deeply grateful for her sister. McKenzie had come into the family through difficult circumstances but Devin couldn’t imagine her world without her sister’s quirky sense of humor, her creative mind and her deep sense of compassion and loyalty.

Seamus wandered in again and pounced onto her lap. Simone peeked her head around the edge of the door frame, then slunk into the kitchen toward her food bowl with mad ninja skills, as if she were trying to become invisible by being one with the maple heartwood floor.

“Hey, kitty, kitty,” Devin said softly. Simone gave her a wary look, ate a little food, then darted back out of the room.

She petted Seamus for a moment, listening to the quiet sounds of the house where she had been raised—the whoosh of the furnace clicking on, the creak of old joists, the wind moaning under the eaves.

Some people might think it was weird that she still lived in her childhood home. Not only did she still live in it, she had used her inheritance from her father to purchase it from her mother and sister after she decided to come back to Haven Point to practice and went into partnership with Russ Warrick.

The sprawling house was too big for one person, but she didn’t care. She loved it, anyway. How could she not, right here on the lakeshore with a beautiful view of the steep and jagged mountains reflecting in the water?

It had always been a place of refuge. In the midst of all the chemo and radiation and fear—and then later, during the stress and pressure of medical school, residency and internship—this had been her go-to happy place.

She had done a few things to it since she purchased it. The kitchen was all new and she had taken out the old carpet and installed wood flooring throughout the house. She had taken out a couple of walls between two of the smaller rooms on the west side of the house and made one large master suite for herself with vaulted ceilings and huge windows.

It was her retreat, her sanctuary. She headed there now, accompanied by Seamus. Devin flipped the switch to turn on the Christmas tree, one of two in the house that McKenzie had decorated for her.

She was so tired she decided to forgo her usual routine of yoga stretches before bed and just changed into pajamas and sank into her bed. If she was going to help Cole Barrett and his kids, she had a feeling she would need all the sleep she could get.

* * *

HE HAD BROKEN a grand total of thirty-two bones in his body during his rodeo days but none of those injuries compared to the sheer sadistic agony of stepping on one of Ty’s LEGO pieces, even in stocking feet.

Cole bit back a curse but let it slip out anyway when his other foot stepped down on a colored pencil that jabbed at his foot through the sock.

Too bad he didn’t drink anymore, because right now he could really use a whiskey instead of the glass of water he had just about spilled all over the floor.

His house was officially a pigsty. After only a few hours of the kids at home on a Saturday morning without Tricia or his housekeeper, toys, discarded backpacks and cereal crumbs were scattered everywhere. Did they just grab bags of their belongings out of their rooms and run through the house tossing things right and left?

And how did they seem to have so much stuff, anyway? They had come to him with hardly anything. Sharla’s transient lifestyle had precluded them owning much besides some clothes and a few toys.

He reached down and picked up a mini brick figure of Darth Vader before the bad dude could slice off his toe with his plastic light saber.

“I think this guy is yours,” he said to Ty as his son headed in with another handful of dry cereal—which possibly explained the crushed bits on the carpet.

“I almost broke my foot on a couple of your other toys. Sorry I broke your creation.”

Ty winced. “I forgot to pick them up. Sorry. Should I get them now?”

“That would be helpful. And do you remember we talked about only eating in the kitchen and dining room?”

“I forgot that, too.”

“One more thing. Remember the rule about snacks? If you want something to eat, you need to ask me first, and if I say yes, you should put it in a bowl so we don’t trail pieces all over the floor for other people to step on.”

“Okay,” he said with a put-upon sigh.

The poor kid probably felt as if he’d gone from living in Disneyland with no rules and all the junk food he could want to doing hard time in Alcatraz.

Cole mustered a smile. “Thanks.”

“I told him he didn’t need any more cereal, because he already had breakfast and would only ruin his lunch, but he didn’t listen to me,” Jazmyn said in that know-it-all tone that could sometimes grate on his last nerve.

“I don’t mind him having a snack but we all need to work together to keep the place clean. Speaking of which, I believe I asked you to clear the breakfast dishes off the table.”

“I was drawing something,” she answered. Apparently she thought obeying her father was optional—or at least negotiable.

He wasn’t Sharla and the rules at Evergreen Springs were very different from what they were both used to.

He had made the mistake of letting things slide for a while after they first came here, when they were both reeling from their mother’s death.

They were still having a tough time of it—he had a feeling they would for a long time—but he was beginning to realize they needed structure and order to help them feel secure and stable here with him.

“It’s a very lovely picture,” he answered. “You are an excellent artist, Jazmyn.”

“Thanks.”

“Now you need to do what I asked and clear the table, unless you would like to lose the colored pencils for the rest of the day.”

She narrowed her gaze at him and opened her mouth as if to argue, but something in his expression stopped her. Wise girl. Instead, she gave a little huff and started clearing things off with dramatic, jerky movements.

He didn’t know what to do with her. She didn’t want to be here. She told him continually how she couldn’t wait until she lived with her grandma Trixie. Sharla’s mother was threatening a custody battle, and while he didn’t think she would have a leg to stand on, he knew too well how quickly the system could turn on a guy.

Trixie didn’t help the situation at all by constantly telling Jazmyn she wanted his daughter to come live with her in California.

When she was younger, Jazmyn had adored him and thought he could do no wrong. Eight years of her grandmother and mother poisoning her against him had altered their relationship. He didn’t know how to fix things, especially when she could be so frustrating and fought him about even the most basic things, like brushing her teeth or helping out with minor chores.

He had trained plenty of horses and dogs but was discovering training kids was a little more complicated.

She was a tough cookie, his little girl. In a lot of ways, she had been forced to raise herself because of circumstances—particularly her selfish, immature mother with repeated substance abuse problems and the string of men she brought in and out of the kids’ lives.

Jazmyn had been through far too much in her short eight years on the planet. It was no wonder she had become a bossy, difficult little thing.

For now, she seemed to be willing to do something he asked and he decided to enjoy it while it lasted. He returned to his laptop and was deep in the new accounting program he was trying to figure out for the ranch when the doorbell rang.

“Who could that be?” Ty asked, rushing to the door before Cole could even push his chair back from the table.

He really needed to have a talk with the kid about stranger danger and taking a few basic precautions, like waiting for his dad to answer the door. He didn’t want to make his kids paranoid but Cole knew better than most that there were nasty people in the world. He’d lived among the worst for eighteen months.

At least Coco, the old ranch dog who lived inside these days, had padded after him. She was half-blind but she would still go to the wall for everybody she considered part of her pack.

He headed after both of them just as his son opened the door for Devin Shaw.

Cole was struck again by how lovely she was, with her appealing smile, green eyes sparkling in the sunshine and all that delicious creamy skin, a little pink from the cold.

A few random snowflakes spangled the blue-and-silver beanie she wore and the jaunty matching scarf. She looked bright and vibrant and very different from the scrub-wearing professional he had seen at the hospital.

He had just a moment for purely masculine appreciation before the questions began to fly in his mind. What was she doing here? Was Tricia all right? Had there been some kind of complication? He had talked to his sister earlier in the morning but maybe the situation had changed.

No. If there had been a problem, Tricia would have called him. Not only that, but he had a feeling Devin wouldn’t be so calm right now, nor would she be giving such a friendly smile.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Dr. Shaw,” Ty said. “Did you see all that snow?”

She crouched down to talk to him at his level. “I sure did. I just drove through it on the way up here from town. It’s pretty deep. With snow like that, there’s only one thing to do. You have to build a snowman.”

Ty’s face lit up. “Yes! We should! Jaz, don’t you think we should build a snowman?”

While Cole was busy trying not to stare at Devin, Jazmyn had wandered out to see who was at the door.

“It’s too cold,” Jazmyn answered, though Cole didn’t miss the sudden spark of excitement in her eyes. She was so contrary she even argued with herself and didn’t want to admit what she really wanted.

“If you dress warmly, you’ll be so busy having fun, you won’t even feel the cold,” Dr. Shaw assured her.

“Can we, Dad? Can we?” Ty asked.

He didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t want to disappoint his son but he had ranch accounts to finish and then a call scheduled in fifteen minutes with a new client who wanted to discuss a possible lucrative new contract. The vet was supposed to be dropping by sometime that afternoon to take a look at one of the horses he was training who seemed off his feed.

A little resentful of Dr. Shaw for showing up on the doorstep and giving him one more thing to feel guilty about, Cole opened his mouth to tell Ty they could try to build one later in the afternoon but she spoke before he could.

“I’ve got a few minutes,” she offered. “And I’m particularly good at snowpeople. I would love to help you build a snowman, if your dad doesn’t mind.”

What was he supposed to say to that? He couldn’t send her on her way without sounding like even more of a jerk.

“I’m sure you didn’t drive all the way up here just so you could build a snowman with my son,” he said.

She smiled. “No. I would just consider that a bonus. Actually, I came out to bring you something.”

He gazed blankly at her. “You did?”

She opened the front door and pointed to a large cardboard box outside on the porch.

“What is it?” Ty asked.

“Is it a puppy?” Jazmyn asked. “I really want a puppy.”

“We have a dog,” he answered, pointing to Coco, who had eased her tired bones down onto the rug in the foyer.

“She’s old and she doesn’t ever want to play,” Jazmyn answered. “And her breath stinks.”

“It’s not a puppy,” Dr. Shaw assured him. “Stinky or otherwise.”

“Is it a Christmas present?” Ty asked.

“I guess you could call it that. A Christmas present from lots of different people.”

“Can I see what it is?”

“Go ahead.”

Ty opened the flaps, peered inside, then eased away with a confused look. “It’s just bowls and stuff.”

“What is it?” Jazmyn asked, pushing her way forward. If there was anything interesting happening within her orbit, Jaz wanted to be part of it.

“Dinner,” she answered cheerfully. “Several dinners. And maybe some lunches, too.”

He frowned, eyeing the box warily. “What are you talking about?”

She shrugged, but if he didn’t know better, he would say she looked a little embarrassed. “I hope you don’t mind, but your sister told me a little about your situation.”

“My situation,” he said stiffly. How much had Tricia told her?

“She said you recently lost a housekeeper. With her in the hospital now and likely to stay there for at least a few weeks, she’s concerned about you and the children.”

“I’ve got things under control,” he muttered. One look into the living room mess would certainly prove that for a bald-faced lie.

“I’m sure you do,” she answered. “But everybody can use a little help and you’ve got your hands full. My sister helped me put the word out to our sources that we have a neighbor in need and this is the result.”

He gazed down at the box filled with containers. “Food. You brought food.”

“These are ready-made meals that can go in your freezer or fridge. A few soups, some casseroles, even a lasagna in there. All you have to do is heat them, no prep required.”

He couldn’t quite wrap his head around what she was saying. “Who did you say this came from?”

“Lots of people. When somebody needs help in Haven Point, people love the chance to step up.”

People he didn’t know had fixed meals for him and his kids. How was he supposed to react to that? In all his life, he wasn’t sure anybody had ever done something like this for him before.

“I know it’s not much,” she said at his continued silence. “But it should get you through a week or so. They’re all really kid-friendly meals. We tried to make sure of that. I believe you should be able to find a thing or two your kids will like.”

“Food? That’s the present? That’s weird,” Jazmyn said.

“Is there any mac and cheese?” Ty asked. “That’s my favorite.”

She smiled. “As a matter of fact, I made some for you myself this morning.”

She made it? Cole couldn’t quite process the idea of a busy physician spending even five minutes preparing a meal for his family.

“Wow. I don’t know what to say,” he finally answered.

“You don’t have to say anything. Everybody was happy to help. Most of my friends already had a meal in their freezer or just made extra this morning of whatever they were going to make for their own family’s dinner. Oh, and it helps that I’m very good friends with Barbara Serrano, whose family owns the diner in town. She sent over several things in there. I think I saw a meat loaf, some chicken alfredo and some of their fabulous pasta e fagioli soup.”

All of those sounded delicious. His kitchen skills were limited to burgers on the grill, pancakes and a pretty good omelet, which meant the kids—Jaz in particular—would likely be launching a rebellion after another day or two.

“In fact,” Dr. Shaw went on, “so many people offered something that I’ve got another box in my truck. Do you think you have freezer room? Don’t worry if you don’t. I can take it back to my place for now and then come back with another load in a week or so.”

He had been so careful around the people of Haven Point—never rude but not exactly friendly, either. It was easier to stick up here on the ranch, to do his business over the phone or outside Haven Point. That way, people didn’t ask questions and he didn’t have to get into uncomfortable explanations. Even so, when he went to town, he wondered if people were whispering about him. Ex-con. Washed-up. Disaster.

Now they could add struggling, out-of-his-depth single father to the mix.

Despite all his efforts to keep people in town at a distance, somehow they still had been willing to do this for him and for his kids. It defied comprehension.

He decided gracious gratitude was the only option available to him. “I have room,” he finally said, his voice gruff. “Thank you. I’m...overwhelmed.”

That she had been intuitive and compassionate enough to spearhead the effort to help him out was the most stunning facet of the whole thing.

“You’re welcome.” She smiled again and the warmth of it seemed to seep right through his skin. “Why don’t I put these in your freezer while the children get their winter gear on. I’ll entertain them for a little while out in the snow.”

“Yay!” Ty exclaimed. “I’m gonna get my boots on right now.”

“What about you, Jazmyn?” she pressed. “We sure could use your help. I bet you know all about making snowmen.”

Somehow she also knew just the right button to push with his daughter.

“I am pretty good at rolling the balls,” Jaz said. “I’ll go get my coat.”

She chased after her brother toward the mudroom, leaving him alone with Devin.

“You’ll have to forgive me for being just a stupid cowboy here but...why?” He gestured to the box of food. “I don’t quite get it. You’re probably very busy with your patients and such. You don’t have time to go around making house calls to everyone in need, bearing casseroles and lasagna.”

“Not everyone. No.”

“So why us?”

“Tricia is a friend,” she said simply. “She said you could use the help but that you would never ask. This is our small way of letting you know you don’t have to. Ask, I mean.”

“I... Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I just need you to point me in the direction of your freezer.”

“There’s a large chest in the garage that’s pretty empty except for some steaks and roasts.”

A cattle ranch usually wasn’t scarce on beef. He could grill a steak just fine and had no problem with burgers but he didn’t know the first thing about how to cook a roast. One more thing he was going to have to figure out, he supposed.

“There’s another box in the back of my SUV. I’ll go grab that one.”

“No. I can do it. Just wait here.”

He shoved on his boots left by the door and headed out to her vehicle. On his way, he caught movement out of the corner of his gaze and spotted a figure in a blue parka clearing the sidewalk at the foreman’s cottage fifty yards away.

His jaw hardened just as Stan caught sight of him. His father lifted his hand in a wave and even from here, Cole could see the flash of his teeth as he smiled that damn hopeful smile.

He ignored his father, as he had been doing since Stanford showed up so unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and turned back to Dr. Shaw’s SUV. The box was large, filled to the brim with more containers. This was at least a month’s worth of meals for him and the kids.

Again, he was aware of that warmth seeping through him like the water from the hot spring above his ranch cutting through the frozen landscape.

Amid all the stress with Tricia in the hospital and struggling so much to figure out things with the kids, it would be a relief beyond measure not to have to worry about what he would feed them each night.

In another life, his pride might have pinched that people thought he needed this kind of help but he decided he couldn’t afford that kind of pride under the circumstances. He would take this for what it was, a kind gesture from people in town.

He carried the box back up the steps but neither Devin nor the other box of food waited for him. He headed toward the garage and found her standing over the big chest freezer, trying to find room for things while Ty stood at her elbow, handing her packages.

Jaz, he noted, was nowhere to be seen.

“Thanks,” she said when he carried the box toward her—just as if he were doing her the huge favor.

“Sure.”

She pointed to a container she had left in the box. “That’s the pasta e fagioli soup from Serrano’s along with some of their famous breadsticks. It was made fresh this morning and isn’t frozen. You only need to heat up the soup and cook the pasta in it and warm the bread sticks, too, and you’ll be set for tonight. Instructions are on it. I’ll put that in your refrigerator. The rest of this is easily labeled with instructions so you should know what to do. If you can’t figure something out, you can call me and I’ll track down instructions for you. The trick is to toss one of these in your refrigerator the night before you want to eat it and it should thaw enough to cook the next day.”

“Got it.”

She bent over the chest freezer and he couldn’t help checking out her very shapely ass—then he felt like a jerk for ogling her when she was doing him such a huge favor.

The freezer wasn’t as big as he thought—either that, or she had more food than just a few weeks’ worth. When the freezer was filled to the brim, she still had a couple of containers that wouldn’t fit.

“What are the chances you might have room in your kitchen freezer for these?”

“We can probably find a little space.”

“Excellent. Lead the way.”

He took her back to the kitchen, where the breakfast dishes waited in the sink.

She didn’t say anything about it, just headed for the side-by-side refrigerator and moved a few things around until she found room.

“Done,” she declared after the last plastic container had been stowed in the freezer. “That should at least keep you from having to eat McDonald’s for every meal.”

“I like McDonald’s,” Ty protested.

She smiled and placed a hand on his head. Something about the sight of that slender, pale hand on his son’s dark hair made his chest feel uncomfortably tight.

“McDonald’s is a once-in-a-while treat, not for every day,” she said, then deftly changed the subject before he could argue. “So are we building the world’s greatest snowman or what?”

“Yes! Jazmyn went to get her book that has a picture of a snowman in it. She wants to build one like that, she said. I’ll go tell her to hurry it up.”

“You do that.”

Once more, he was alone with Devin—not a good situation when he had suddenly become aware of a fierce urge to kiss that color from her cheeks.

She was so pretty and soft and he had spent the past half decade forced to wade through everything ugly and hard in the world.

“You don’t have to do this. The snowman thing, I mean,” he said. “They’ll live if I can’t get to it until tomorrow. Or they could always fumble through on their own.”

“I want to,” she assured him. “As long as you don’t mind, that is.”

“Why would I mind?” he asked. “You’re doing something fun with my kids.”

“Well, with one of them, anyway. We’ll see if Jazmyn will cooperate.”

“If Ty is doing something fun,” he said drily, “you can bet Jazmyn will come out to show you all the ways you’re doing it wrong.”

She smiled, a little lock of auburn hair slipping out of her beanie. He found his sudden urge to twist it around and around his finger quite appalling.

The silence between them was suddenly thick and rich as his grandmother’s Christmas toffee. She gazed at him for a long moment, then swallowed hard and shifted her gaze away. If he wasn’t mistaken, the color rose a little higher over her cheekbones.

He was almost relieved when his cell phone rang just then.

“This is the call I’ve been waiting for. It’s going to take a few minutes, I’m afraid, and as soon as I’m done, I need to head down to the barn to check on a few things. When you’re done playing around in the snow, just send the kids down there. They know the way.”

She swallowed again as she nodded. “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

He grabbed his cell phone and headed to the ranch office just off the family room, cursing himself for a sex-starved idiot and vowing to put the lovely doctor out of his mind.

CHAPTER FOUR

AS SHE WATCHED Cole walk away with his phone at his ear, Devin took an unsteady breath and leaned against the countertop of his comfortable kitchen.

Holy ever-living wow.

Cole Barrett might just be the most gorgeous man she’d ever met in person, with all that sun-burnished skin, the firm jawline, that indefinable air of danger that seemed to stir and seethe around him. He had the sort of rough and rugged masculinity that made a woman want to whimper.

Too bad he didn’t have the personality to match.

He seemed cool, unapproachable and completely humorless. Maybe even a little arrogant.

That wasn’t necessarily a fair assessment, she corrected herself. He had been grateful enough for the food she had delivered from the Helping Hands and had even cracked a joke or two during their conversation. Those moments seemed few and far between, though, and her overall impression was of a stiff, unfriendly man who didn’t like her much.

He hadn’t smiled once. She had been watching for it.

Was that his natural mien or did she bring out the worst in him somehow?

“I’m ready,” Ty sang out. “Where are you?”

Devin forced herself to move from the kitchen and followed the sound of the boy’s voice to the foyer. He wore a red-and-blue parka that looked a size too big and a pair of gloves that didn’t match each other.

“He should wear a scarf,” Jazmyn said. “And you need to take another scarf out for the snowman. That’s what they wear, you know.”

“Good idea.” Devin couldn’t help being amused by this girl with her strong opinions and her obstinate nature. She wanted to hug her but she had a feeling Jazmyn wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. “It sounds like you know all about snowpeople. It’s a good thing you’re coming with us to show us what to do.”

“I can’t find my gloves so maybe I’ll just watch.”

“I saw them in the mudroom behind the hamper,” Ty said, probably foiling his sister’s master plan to stand by and supervise.

“We’ll start rolling and you can come out when you’re ready,” Devin said.

“Okay.”

As she and Ty headed for the door, the ancient-looking collie climbed slowly to her feet and followed after them.

“Can Coco help us?”

“Is this Coco? Hi there, sweetheart.” Devin scratched the dog’s head. She adored dogs and had always wanted one but her mother had claimed to be allergic when she was young and then she had become too busy with medical school to make it practical. Independent cats were a little more forgiving of the brutal schedules of medical residents and interns than a dog.

Fortunately, her sister had a fabulous dog, a beautiful cinnamon standard poodle named Paprika, and she let Devin hang out with her and take her for a walk whenever she needed that exuberant canine affection.

This dog had gray hairs around her mouth and moved with the slow care of many old creatures. She had kind eyes, though, and Devin fell for her as hard as she had for these two motherless children.

“Coco is my dad’s dog. She was my dad’s grandpa’s dog before that. Dad says she’s about as old as the moon and the stars.”

She smiled at the charming phrase, words she never would have expected from a man who seemed so stiff and somber.

“Hello, Coco. Want to come help us?”

The dog headed straight for the door. Outside, she walked gingerly down the three porch steps and curled up in a little patch of sunshine at the bottom.

Devin wanted to lift her face to it, too, even though it was weak and pale.

The view from up here was spectacular, she had to admit. The ranch house at Evergreen Springs was perched on a hillside overlooking town, with a view of the entire lake and the towns of Haven Point and Shelter Springs up at the northern end of the lake.

She loved living right on the lakeshore. From her bedroom window she could watch geese peddle in for a landing and osprey dive for fish and sunrise over the Redemption Mountains reflected on the shimmering waters of Lake Haven. Even so, there was something to be said for stepping back—in this case up, into the foothills—to gain a fresh perspective. The lake looked stunningly blue against the new white snow around it, especially contrasted with the dark green of the firs and pines surrounding it.

She drew in a deep breath of crisp air scented with pine and snow, with stray hints of hay and livestock.

She had a million things to do on this, the first of a rare few days off, but right now she couldn’t imagine anywhere else she would rather be.

“Why aren’t we building the snowman?” Ty asked, a little frown furrowed between his brows.

Devin snapped herself back to the moment. “Sorry. I was just enjoying the view you’ve got here. It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

He looked down at the lake and the towns. “I guess. I like it here but Jazmyn said she’d rather live by the ocean than a dumb lake that’s too cold to swim in most of the time.”

“Did she?”

He nodded. “But Dad said he’s traveled all over the country when he used to be in rodeos and he’s never seen anything, anywhere, as pretty as our ranch.”

Cole was turning out to be full of surprises. Maybe there was more to him than the taciturn rancher who couldn’t be bothered to crack a smile.

“Dr. Shaw, how do we build a snowman?”

“First of all, you don’t have to call me Dr. Shaw. Call me Devin, okay? People who build snowmen together ought to be on a first-name basis. Second of all, you really haven’t done this before?”

He shrugged. “We never lived in a place with snow before. That I can remember, anyway.”

She found that rather sad, as she loved each changing season. But then, people in warm climates didn’t have to shovel snow or scrape windows. Everything in life had trade-offs.

“Should we get started?”

“Yes!”

Jazmyn bounced down the steps as Devin was demonstrating to Ty how to craft the perfect snowball, the start of every snowman.

The snow was the ideal consistency, wet enough to stick together, but not so heavy it was hard to work. She crafted the first large snowball until it was too big to hold in her hands, then set it down on the ground.

“Okay. This is the fun part. Start rolling it around and around.”

Cole took up the challenge and in just a moment, the snowball had doubled in size.

“How’s that?”

“It’s still not big enough for the bottom ball,” Jazmyn declared. “I’m stronger than you are. Maybe I better do it.”

“If we all three work together, we can make it even bigger,” Devin told her. “We have to figure out where we want to end up. Where do you want the snowman to stand?”

Ty stopped, his cheeks flushed pink from the cold and the exertion. “How about right there, by the front porch, where we can see it from the window?”

“No. that won’t work,” Jazmyn said.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because that’s where we’re going to put our Christmas tree, remember? Aunt Tricia promised we could put one up this weekend.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

Devin didn’t have the heart to tell either of these children their aunt wasn’t coming home this weekend to put up a Christmas tree. She wondered if Cole had told them yet that Tricia would probably have to stay in the hospital until she delivered her twins.

“We’re going to cut down our very own tree,” Ty informed Devin. “We were going to do it last weekend except Dad didn’t have time. He had a horse ’mergency.”

“Our mom liked a fake Christmas tree. It was white with pink lights and it was soooo pretty,” Jazmyn said.

“Aunt Tricia said we can’t put up an artificial Christmas tree here,” Ty said.

Jazmyn sniffed. “I don’t know why not. I want a white tree with pink lights but Aunt Tricia said Evergreen Springs always has to have a real tree. It’s even in the name. Christmas trees are evergreens—did you know that?”

“I did.” Devin smiled, her heart aching a little at the sad note in Jazmyn’s voice when she talked about her mother. Deep compassion seeped through her for these children whose world had been tossed around as if they were pinecones floating in the fast current of the Hell’s Fury.

Personally, she thought a white tree with pink lights didn’t sound appealing, but she supposed it was like the difference between living somewhere like Haven Point or choosing a warmer climate. Everybody had personal preferences, which was what made the world such a crazy, jumbled place of both beauty and tragedy.

“Well, there are tons of evergreens at Evergreen Springs,” Jazmyn informed her. “Just look around.”

“There’s a whole forest of them,” Ty added, grunting a little as he tried to keep rolling the ball that was now up to his chest.

“I wish we had a tree already but Dad hasn’t had time,” Jazmyn said with a little note of disgust in her voice.

“He got four new horses to train this week and maybe two more coming next week,” Ty answered.

So they didn’t only raise cattle here at the ranch, apparently. Cole Barrett sounded like a busy man. Still, that was no excuse for not giving two grieving children as happy a Christmas as possible.

That was the missing element at the house, Devin suddenly realized. She had seen no sign of Christmas anywhere. No stockings hanging over that beautiful hewn-log mantel over the river-rock fireplace in the great room, no evergreen garlands twining down the staircase, no candles or bells or wreaths.

And no Christmas tree.

The holiday was now a little less than two weeks away. Busy or not, Cole would have to find time to give this to his children.

What would he do now, without his sister here to help? She could only imagine how overwhelming he must be finding this, suddenly having custody of two needy, emotionally fragile children.

Had he even bought gifts for Jazmyn and Ty?

Tricia probably would have done a few things to bring a holiday mood to the house but considering her marriage was in trouble and she was pregnant with twins, perhaps she hadn’t quite had the energy.

Not her business, Devin reminded herself. She had done her kind deed for the day, gathering freezer meals for him in an effort to take one thing off his plate until he could hire a housekeeper. She couldn’t jump in and start decorating his house.

Why was she so drawn to help him?

The children, she told herself. It was all about the children. Cole Barrett could sit here in his cold, cheerless house for all she cared, but these children needed more.

“Do you have a Christmas tree?” Ty asked her, his breath coming in puffs as they pushed the big ball across the yard one more time, working together to pat on more snow as they went.

“I do. I have a couple of them, one in my bedroom and one in my family room. They don’t have very many decorations on them. I have two cats named Seamus and Simone, a tiger-striped and a black cat, and they like to knock off the ornaments.”

“You don’t have a little boy or a little girl?” Ty asked.

Devin forced a smile, ignoring the familiar crampy ache around her heart. “No. I’m afraid not.”

“But you have two cats,” Jazmyn said. “I’d like to have a cat. If I did, I would name her Penelope and call her Penny.”

“Sounds like you’ve given it some thought.”

“I have. I’d like a cat or a puppy.” She went on about the time she, Ty and their mother had lived in an apartment building and the lady next door had four cats and let Jazmyn come over sometimes to pet them and help give them food and water. From there, she chattered about how easy school was for her because they were behind the school where she used to go, about her favorite TV show, about the trip to Disneyland her grandmother had apparently promised her.

Whenever his sister stopped to take a breath, Ty interjected his own occasional commentary—about the new brick set he wanted for Christmas, about the horse his father said he could get someday and about his new friends at school.

In the process, they finished the midsection of the snowman and worked together on the final ball.

“That is the perfect snowman head,” Jazmyn declared. “It’s not too square and not too tall.”

“I agree. Can you help me lift it up?”

The two of them worked together to heft the large ball onto the top of the snowman and pat a little more snow in to anchor it in place. Then it was time for the finishing touches.

“What a good idea you had to bring out a scarf. That’s just what he needs,” Devin said, which made Jazmyn preen. Devin wrapped the scarf around, even giving it a jaunty, complicated knot.

“We have to put on a face now! I’m going to go see if there’s a carrot in the refrigerator.”

“Good thinking. While you’re doing that, we’ll look for some sticks for the arms and something to use for eyes and a mouth.”

She and Ty easily found sticks as well as an abundance of pinecones perfect for crafting the snowman’s face and buttons down his front. She was lifting the boy up to wedge in a couple of pinecones for his eyes when Jazmyn returned from the house.

“No carrots,” she said in a tone of deep disgust. “All we had were dinky baby carrots and that would just look stupid. But I did find an orange plastic cup. I thought that might work.”

“Nice save.” Devin smiled. “I think that should do very well.”

“And look what else!” She pulled a battered black cowboy hat from behind her back. “This is the perfect hat for a snowman who lives on a ranch like us.”

“As long as that’s not your dad’s best hat.”

“He never wears it. He has a different one. I think this is an old one.”

She could only hope so. Cole could always take it down if he didn’t want it on the snowman. With a mental shrug, Devin pointed to the cowboy. “You’d better do the honors and put on the finishing touches.”

Looking much less surly than she had when they started, Jazmyn reached as high as she could to shove in the nose but she couldn’t reach the top so Devin scooped her up and held her while she positioned the cowboy hat at a jaunty angle.

“There. Perfect.”

“It’s the best snowman ever,” Ty declared.

“I don’t know if it’s the best one ever but it’s the best one I’ve ever built,” Jazmyn agreed.

Devin fought a smile. Beneath her contrariness, Jazmyn was actually a very sweet girl. She simply had strong opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them. That wasn’t a bad trait at all, only one that perhaps needed tempering. She needed to learn that her viewpoint didn’t necessarily trump all others.

“We should build a friend for him,” Ty said.

“Looks like he already has some.” Devin pointed to a couple of finches who had fluttered to a landing atop the snowman’s hat.

Both children giggled and they stood still for a moment, watching the birds hop around the hat, while the beautiful view of the lake and valley stretched out below them.

“Can we build another snowman?” Jazmyn asked. “That way he won’t have to be alone here when the birds fly away and it gets dark.”

“It can be smaller. Maybe like a big brother and a little brother,” Ty said.

“Of course. Now that we know how to do it, we should be able to make one in a snap.”

They had finished the bottom two balls when she noticed a man come out of the small house not far from the main house. He picked up a snow shovel from the porch and started working on the small driveway and walkway, all of which looked mostly clear.

He seemed to be watching them all intently. When Jazmyn spotted him, he waved. She returned it kind of halfheartedly, then dropped her hand quickly.

Even from here, she thought the man’s shoulders slumped a little.

“Who’s that man?” she asked Jazmyn.

“Oh.” The girl shifted her gaze guiltily. “That’s our grandpa Stan. Don’t tell my dad I waved at him, okay? We’re not supposed to talk to him, never ever ever. We’re supposed to pretend he’s invisible.”

Ty glanced down at the little house. “Dad says if we ignore him, maybe he’ll go away, like a stray dog.”

“But then he said we shouldn’t say that because it’s not very nice to stray dogs,” Jazmyn added.

She remembered what Tricia had said the night before. I’m not saying Cole doesn’t have his reasons for being angry, but people can change, right? Dad is trying.

What problem did Cole have with his father? It must be something intense if he warned his children away from even waving at the man.

This appeared to be yet another tangled strand in the knotted, complicated life here at Evergreen Springs.

They started in on the head and were rolling it in the last untrampled patch of snow when Cole headed around the house. He paused for a moment, watching them with an inscrutable expression on his features.

He wore a ranch coat and a black Stetson—much nicer than the one on their snowman. Devin told herself that little jerky skip in her heart rate was only because of the exertion and the cold.

“You’re not done yet? I thought you’d be all wrapped up out here.”

“Almost,” Jazmyn said. “We decided to make two snowmen.”

“They’re friends,” Ty added.

Devin smiled. “You’re just in time to help us put the head on. That’s the hardest part.”

He didn’t look thrilled at the job but she had to give him credit for at least pretending to get into the spirit of the thing. He lifted up the snowman’s head and set it atop the other two stacked balls. “There you go. Looks great. I see you used my old cowboy hat.”

“I hope that’s okay,” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s so old, it’s a wonder any of the stitching still holds. I’m not sure why it was still hanging around. I thought I threw it away ages ago.”

“We need another hat,” Ty said suddenly. “I want to find one for this snowman.”

“You pick the hat and I’ll find another scarf,” Jazmyn ordered.

Her brother acquiesced—Devin had a feeling he did a lot of that—and the two of them raced into the house.

The ancient border collie lifted her head and watched them go, then went back to sleep while a few more finches fluttered atop the cowboy hat of the bigger snowman.

Devin was ridiculously aware of Cole. She had no idea why she was so drawn to this rough, taciturn rancher; she only knew she didn’t like it. At all.

“Thanks for spending a little time with the kids. They seemed to enjoy it and it helped me get a few things done without having to stop every few minutes to deal with some crisis.”

“We had a good time,” she said. “I think it helps make the place look a little more festive for the holidays, don’t you?”

“Um, sure.”

She thought about keeping her mouth shut, but the kids had mentioned a Christmas tree several times while building the snowmen. It was obviously something that mattered to them and she wasn’t sure their father quite grasped how important it was.

“Jazmyn and Ty were telling me that you always cut a live Christmas tree here at Evergreen Springs.”

“Yeah. It’s on the list. Things have been a little crazy around here the last few weeks. We were planning to go today but with Tricia in the hospital, I’m not sure when we’ll get to it.”

“Is that something I could help you with?”

CHAPTER FIVE

COLE GAZED DOWN at the soft and pretty doctor. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, which ought to clash horribly with her auburn hair. Instead, she somehow looked fresh and sweet and adorable.

He let out a breath. He did not understand this woman. First she brought boxes of food for him, then she spent an hour out building a snowman with his kids. Now she was offering to help him cut down a Christmas tree.

“Have you ever cut down a Christmas tree before?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“Me? No. Heavens, no. My mom always insisted on an artificial tree, though I think one year my dad bought a real one out at the tree lot south of town, just for the smell. How hard can it be, though?”

“Harder than you might think,” he answered. “It’s not just about cutting down the tree. We could be up there and back in a half hour, as long as we find the right one quickly. But then the whole thing always seems to turn into an all-day thing, with setting it in the stand so it’s straight, then finding the lights, checking them for dead bulbs, hanging them on the tree, finding the box in the attic that has the ornaments, then hanging those, too, just so.”

He shrugged. “With the new horses that have come in the last few weeks, I just haven’t had the time to spare.”

“I understand. But can I be blunt?”

He couldn’t help his wry response. “Judging from our short acquaintance, I’m going to go with yes.”

She made a face. “May I be blunt, then.”

This was the part where she was going to tell him what a terrible, neglectful father he was. Yeah. He knew all that.

“The children need a Christmas tree,” she said, confirming his suspicions. “This year, more than ever.”

“They told you about their mother?”

“Tricia told me last night. I’m so sorry.”

Did she think he mourned Sharla? He felt the loss only for his children’s sake. “Then you have to understand the way things are right now. Jazmyn and Ty are still grieving and lost, and they don’t want to be here with me right now. Whatever you might think, a Christmas tree is not going to be some secret healing balm to make us one big happy family.”

“It’s not about the tree,” she insisted. “It’s about the process of cutting it down with them, about helping them build new traditions while still providing the comfort of continuing with old ones.”

He wanted to tell her she was crazy but her words had the resonance of truth. He had to do something about Christmas for the children. Yeah, none of them was much in the mood for Christmas but they needed to go through the motions if they had any chance of returning to a place of normalcy and healing.

“Okay. I get your point. I need to make time, even though it’s tough. Fine. I’ll take them to cut a tree. I’ve got an hour or so before the vet is supposed to be here. We can do it in that time if we leave now. Maybe we can find time to decorate it tomorrow or Monday after school.”

She pursed her lips again, giving him a wild desire to lean down and nibble on them. What the hell was wrong with him? Didn’t he have enough on his plate right now without tossing in inappropriate lust for a curvy little doctor with kissable lips and a tiny smattering of freckles over her nose?

“I’ll tell you what. If you cut the tree down, I’ll stick around and decorate it with the kids. You won’t have to do anything. You can go back to your horses or your ranch accounts or whatever you need to do.”

He frowned. “Nobody told me we’ve become the Haven Point charity project for the month.”

“You can look at it that way and be all grumpy and suspicious. Or you can simply say thank you.”

She was right. He was being an ass. She was being more than nice and he was fighting it every step of the way.

“This whole needing-help gig is tough for a guy like me. I’m not real crazy about it.”

“I get it. They say the first step is the hardest.”

He couldn’t help himself. He chuckled. It wasn’t much of a laugh and sounded a little rusty to him, but she stared at him as if he’d just sprouted stick arms like the snowmen and started waltzing with one of them.

After a startled moment, she smiled, too, and he felt a sharp kick to his gut. Oh, she was lovely. In the sunlight, amid all the fresh snow, she looked as bright and pretty as a gleaming Christmas angel ornament.

Looking at her reminded him of the same feeling he had when he was doing morning chores and walked out of the barn to find a brilliant winter sunrise over the Redemptions—breathless, awed and a little humbled that he had been lucky enough to see it.

“Just think,” she said. “Give your kids an hour of your time right now and then you don’t have to think about the tree again until you take it down after Christmas, except for watering it.”

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