A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise

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

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

“Do you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your dog is adorable.”

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

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

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

“These are really good.”

“We had a great caterer,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She exhaled with relief. “Oh, good.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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