A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have a daughter?”

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

“Like the movie with James Stewart.”

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

“Where is she?”

“Er, who?”

“Your daughter. Destry.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re a teacher?”

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

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

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

Just like that, she was asleep.

“Sarah? Ms. Whitmore?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You didn’t send someone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No problem. Thanks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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