Holiday in Stone Creek: A Stone Creek Christmas. Linda Miller Lael
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then located her tan faux-suede skirt, rolled it up like a towel and stuffed it into a gym bag. Knee boots and the blue sweater went in next, along with the one pair of panty hose she owned. They had runs in them, but the skirt was long and the boots were high, so it wouldn’t matter.
When she got back to the kitchen, Ginger was stretching herself.
“You’re coming with me today, aren’t you?” Olivia asked.
Ginger eyed the gym bag and sighed again. “As far as next door, anyway,” she answered. “I think Butterpie could use some company.”
“What about Thanksgiving?”
“Bring me a plate,” Ginger replied.
Oddly disappointed that Ginger didn’t want to spend the holiday with her, Olivia went outside to fire up the Suburban and scrape off the windshield. After she’d lowered the ramp in the back of the rig, she went back to the house for Ginger.
“You’re all right, aren’t you?” Olivia asked as Ginger walked slowly up the ramp.
“I’m not used to running through snow up to my chest,” the dog told her. “That’s all.”
Still troubled, Olivia stowed the ramp and shut the doors on the Suburban. Ginger curled up on Rodney’s blanket and closed her eyes.
When they arrived at Tanner’s place, his truck was parked in the driveway, but he didn’t come out of the house, and Olivia didn’t knock on the front door. She repeated the ramp routine, and then she and Ginger headed into the barn.
Shiloh was back in his stall, brushed down and munching on hay.
Olivia paused to greet him, then opened the door to Butterpie’s stall so she and Ginger could go in.
Butterpie stood with her head hanging low, but perked up slightly when she saw the dog.
“You’ve got to eat,” Olivia told the pony.
Butterpie tossed her head from side to side, as though in refusal.
Ginger settled herself in a corner of the roomy stall, on a pile of fresh wood shavings, and gave another big sigh. “Just go make your rounds,” she said to Olivia. “I’ll get her to take a few bites after you’re gone.”
Olivia felt bereft at the prospect of leaving Ginger and the pony. She found an old pan, filled it with water at the spigot outside, returned to set it down on the stall floor. “This is weird,” she said to Ginger. “What’s Tanner going to think if he finds you in Butterpie’s stall?”
“That you’re crazy,” Ginger answered. “No real change in his opinion.”
“Very funny,” Olivia said, not laughing. Or even smiling. “You’re sure you’ll be all right? I could come back and pick you up before I head for Stone Creek Ranch.”
Ginger shut her eyes and gave an eloquent snore.
After that, there was no point in talking to her.
Olivia gave Butterpie a quick but thorough examination and left.
TANNERBOUGHTAHALFCASE of the best wine he could find—Stone Creek had only one supermarket, and the liquor store was closed. He should have lied, he thought as he stood at the checkout counter, paying for his purchases. Told Brad he had plans for Thanksgiving.
He was going to feel like an outsider, passing a whole afternoon and part of an evening with somebody else’s family.
Better that, though, he supposed, than eating alone in the town’s single sit-down restaurant, remembering Thanksgivings of old and missing Kat and Sophie.
Kat.
“Is that good?” the clerk asked.
Distracted, Tanner didn’t know what the woman was talking about at first. Then she pointed to the wine. She was very young and very pretty, and she didn’t seem to mind working on Thanksgiving when practically everybody else in the western hemisphere was bellying up to a turkey feast someplace.
“I don’t know,” Tanner said in belated answer to her cordial question. He’d been something of a wine aficionado once, but since he didn’t indulge anymore, he’d sort of lost the knack. “I go by the labels, and the price.”
The clerk nodded as if what he’d said made a lick of sense, and wished him a happy Thanksgiving.
He wished her the same, picked up the wine box, the six bottles rattling a little inside it, and made for the door.
The dream came back to him, full force, as he was setting the wine on the passenger seat of his truck.
Kat, standing in the aisle of the barn, in that white summer dress, telling him she wouldn’t be back.
It was no good telling himself he’d only been dreaming in the first place. He’d held on to those night visits—they’d gotten him through a lot of emotional white water. It had been Kat who’d said he ought to watch his drinking. Kat who’d advised him to accept the Stone Creek job and oversee it himself instead of sending in somebody else.
Kat who’d insisted the newspapers were wrong; she hadn’t been a target—she’d been caught in the cross fire of somebody else’s fight. Sophie, she’d sworn, was in no danger.
She’d faded before his eyes like so much thin smoke a couple of nights before. The wrench in his gut had been powerful enough to wake up him up. The dream had stayed with him, though, which was the same as having it over and over again. Last night he’d been unable to sleep at all. He’d paced the dark empty house for a while, then, unable to bear it any longer, he’d gone out to the barn, saddled Shiloh and taken a moonlight ride.
For a while he’d tried to outride what he was feeling—not loss, not sorrow, but a sense of letting go. Of somehow being set free.
He’d loved Kat, more than his own life. Why should her going on to wherever dead people went have given him a sense of liberation, even exaltation, rather than sorrow?
The guilt was almost overwhelming. As long as he’d mourned her, she’d seemed closer somehow. Now the worst was over. There had been some kind of profound shift, and he hadn’t regained his footing.
They’d been out for hours, he and Shiloh, when he was crossing the field between his place and Olivia’s and that dog of hers came racing toward him. He’d have gone home, put Shiloh up with some extra grain for his trouble, taken a shower and fallen into bed if it hadn’t been for Ginger and the sight of Olivia standing on the bottom rail of the fence.
She’d been wearing sweats and silly rubber boots and an old man’s coat, and for all that, she’d managed to look sexy. He’d finagled an invitation for coffee—hell, he’d flat out invited himself—and thought about taking her to bed the whole time he was there.
Not that he would have made a move on Doc. It was way too soon, and she’d probably have conked him over the head with the nearest heavy object, but he’d been tempted, just the same.
Tempted as he’d never been, since Kat.
At home he left the wine in the truck and headed for the barn.
Shiloh was asleep, standing up, the way horses do. When Tanner looked over the stall door at Butterpie, though, his eyes started to sting. Butterpie was lying in the wood shavings, and Olivia’s dog was cuddled up right alongside her, as though keeping some kind of a vigil.
“I’ll be damned,” Tanner muttered. He’d grown up in the country, and he’d known horses to have nonequine companions—cows, cats, dogs and even pygmy goats. But he’d never seen anything quite like this.
He figured he probably should take Ginger home—Olivia might be looking for her—but he couldn’t quite bring himself to part the two animals.
“You hungry, girl?” he asked Ginger, thinking what a fine thing it would be to have a dog. The problem