A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise. RaeAnne Thayne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “Where, exactly, is home?”

      She gave the address to her condo unit.

      “Is that in Idaho Falls?”

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

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

      She frowned. Cleaning job? What cleaning job?

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

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

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

      And how had she hurt her arm?

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “I have to take it back.”

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

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

      “My head hurts,” she informed him.

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

      “Monday. Noon.”

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

      Oh.

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

      He would take care of it.

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

      Chapter Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      The doctor grinned at him. “On second thought, sure you wouldn’t like to trade? How about I come out to the СКАЧАТЬ