Holiday in Stone Creek: A Stone Creek Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

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СКАЧАТЬ a rhinestone cowboy,” he said. “What else have you decided about me?”

       She considered the question, evidently drawing up a list in her head.

       Tanner was fascinated—and still pretty scared.

       “Brad told me you were widowed,” she said finally, after mulling for a while. “I’m sorry about that.”

       Tanner swallowed hard, nodded. Wondered how much detail his friend had gone into, and decided not to ask. He’d told Brad the whole grim story of Kat’s death, once upon a time.

       “You’re probably pretty driven,” Olivia went on, concentrating on the horse again. “It’s obvious that you’re successful—Brad wouldn’t have hired you for this project if you weren’t the best. And you compartmentalize.”

       “Compartmentalize?”

       “You shut yourself off from distractions.”

       “Such as?”

       “Your daughter,” Olivia said. She didn’t lack for nerve, that was for sure. “And this poor little horse. You’d like to have a dog—you like Ginger a lot—but you wouldn’t adopt one because that would mean making a commitment. Not being able to drop everything and everybody and take off for the next Big Job when the mood struck you.”

       Tanner felt as though he’d been slapped, and it didn’t help one bit that everything she’d said was true. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t deny it.

       “I love Sophie,” he said grimly.

       She met his gaze again. “I’m sure you do. Still, you find it easy enough to—compartmentalize where she’s concerned, don’t you?”

       “I do not,” he argued. He did “compartmentalize”—he had to—but he sure as hell wouldn’t call it easy. Every parting from Sophie was harder on him than it was on her. He was the one who always had to suck it up and be strong.

       Olivia shrugged, patted the pony affectionately on the neck and set aside the brush. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told the animal. “In the meantime, think good thoughts and talk to Shiloh if you get too lonesome.”

       Tanner racked his brain, trying to remember if he’d told Olivia the gelding’s name. He was sure it hadn’t come up in their brief but tempestuous acquaintance. “How did you…?”

       “He told me,” Olivia said, approaching the stall door and waiting for him to step out of her way, just like before.

       “Are you seriously telling me I’ve got Mr. Ed in my barn?” he asked, moving aside so she could pass.

       She crossed to Shiloh’s stall, reached up to stroke his nose when he nuzzled her and gave a companionable nicker. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said, with so much smug certainty that Tanner found himself wanting to prove a whole bunch of things he’d never felt the need to prove before.

       “Because I compartmentalize?” Tanner gibed.

       “Something like that,” Olivia answered blithely. She turned from Shiloh, snapped her fingers to attract the dog’s attention and started for the barn door.

       “See you tomorrow, if you’re here when I come by to look in on Butterpie.”

       Utterly confounded, Tanner stood in the doorway watching as Olivia lowered a ramp at the back of the Suburban for Ginger, waited for the dog to trot up it, and shut the doors.

       Moments later she was driving off, tooting a merry “so long” on the horn.

      THATNIGHTHEDREAMED of Kat.

      She was alive again, standing in the barn at Butterpie’s stall gate, watching as the pony nibbled hay at its feeder. Tall and slender, with long dark hair, Kat turned to him and smiled a welcome.

       He hated these dreams for being dreams, not reality. At the same time he couldn’t bring himself to wake up, to leave her.

       The settings were always different—their first house, their quarters in the American compound in some sandy, dangerous foreign place, even supermarket aisles and gas stations. He’d be standing at the pump, filling the vehicle de jour, and look up to see Kat with a hose in her hand, gassing up that old junker she’d been driving when they met.

       He stood at a little distance from her, there in the barn aisle, well aware that after a few words, a few minutes at most, she’d vanish. And it would be like losing her all over again.

       She smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes, in the set of her full mouth. “Hello, Tanner,” she said very softly.

       He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Somehow he knew that this visit was very different from all the ones that had gone before.

       She came to stand in front of him, soft as summer in her white cotton sundress, and touched his arm as she looked up into his face.

       “It’s time for me to move on,” she told him.

      No.

       The word swelled up inside him, but he couldn’t say it.

       And Kat vanished.

      Chapter Four

      OLIVIAAWAKENED on the following Thursday morning feeling as though she hadn’t slept at all the night before, with Ginger’s cold muzzle pressed into her neck and the alarm clock buzzing insistently. She stirred, opened her eyes, slapped down the snooze button, with a muttered “Shut up!”

       Iridescent frost embossed the window glass in intricate fans and swirls, turning it opaque, but the light got through anyway, signaling the arrival of a new day—like it or not.

      Thanksgiving, Olivia recalled. The official start of the holiday season.

       She groaned and yanked the covers up over her head.

       Ginger let out an impatient little yip.

       “I know,” Olivia replied from under two quilts and a flannel sheet worn to a delectable, hard-to-leave softness. It was so warm under those covers, so cozy. Would that she could stay right there until sometime after the Second Coming. “I know you need to go outside.”

       Ginger yipped again, more insistently this time.

       Bleary-eyed, Olivia rolled onto her side, tossed back the covers and sat up. She’d slept in gray sweats and heavy socks—less than glamorous attire, for sure, but toasty and loose.

       After hitting the stop button on the clock so it wouldn’t start up again in five minutes, she stumbled out of the bedroom and down the hall toward the small kitchen at the back of the house. Passing the thermostat, she cranked it up a few degrees. As she groped her way past the coffeemaker, she jabbed blindly at yet another button to start the pot she’d set up the night before. At the door she shoved her feet into an old pair of ugly galoshes and shrugged into a heavy jacket of red-and-black-plaid wool—Big John’s chore coat.

       It still smelled faintly of his budget aftershave and pipe tobacco.

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