Holiday in Stone Creek: A Stone Creek Christmas

Tanner nodded, liking Brad even more than before. Look out for the womenfolk—it was the cowboy way. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he replied.

He and Olivia left Stone Creek Ranch at the same time, he in his too-clean red truck, she in that scruffy old Suburban. The drive to Starcross took about fifteen minutes, and Olivia was out of her rig and headed into the barn before he’d parked his pickup.

Butterpie was on her feet, Ginger rising from a stretch when Tanner caught up to Olivia in front of the stall door. Olivia opened the plastic container, revealing leftover turkey.

“Tell Butterpie Sophie’s coming home,” he said, without intending to say any such thing.

Olivia smiled, inside the stall now, letting Ginger scarf up cold turkey from the container. “I already did,” she replied. “That’s why Butterpie is up. She could use a little exercise, so let’s turn her out in the corral for a while.”

Tanner nodded, found a halter and slipped it over Butterpie’s head. Led her outside and over to the corral gate, and turned her loose.

Olivia and Ginger stood beside him, watching as the pony looked around, as if baffled to find herself outside in the last blaze of afternoon sunlight and the heretofore pristine snow. The dog barked a couple of times, as if to encourage Butterpie.

Tanner shook his head. Ridiculous, he thought. Dogs didn’t encourage horses.

He recalled finding Ginger huddled close to Butterpie in the stall earlier in the day. Or did they?

Butterpie just stood there for a while, then nuzzled through the snow for some grass.

Whether the little horse had cheered up or not, he certainly had. Butterpie hadn’t eaten anything since she’d arrived at Starcross Ranch, and now she was ready to graze. He went back into the barn and came out with a flake of hay, tossed it into the corral.

Butterpie nosed it around a bit and began to nibble.

Olivia watched for a few moments, then turned to Tanner and took smug note of the hay stuck to the front of his best suit. “You might be a real cowboy after all,” she mused, and that simple statement, much to Tanner’s amazement, pleased him almost as much as knowing Sophie was safe with his best friend, Jack McCall.

“Thanks,” he said, resting his arms on the top rail of the corral fence and watching Butterpie eat.

When the pony came to the gate, clearly ready to return to the barn, Tanner led her back to her stall and got her settled in. Olivia and Ginger followed, waiting nearby.

“So what happened with Sophie?” Olivia asked when Tanner came out of the stall.

“I’ll explain it over coffee and pie,” he said, holding his figurative breath for her answer. If Olivia decided to go home, or make rounds or something, he was going to be seriously disappointed.

“This place used to be wonderful,” Olivia said, minutes later, when they were in his kitchen, with the coffee brewing and the pie sitting on the table between them.

Tanner wished he’d taken down the old calendar, spackled the holes in the wall from the tacks that had held up its predecessors. Replaced the flooring and all the appliances, and maybe the cupboards, too. The house still looked abandoned, he realized, even with him living in it.

What did that mean?

“I’ll fix it up,” he said. “Sell it before I move on.” It was what he always did. Buy a house, keep a careful emotional distance from it, refurbish it and put it on the market, always at a profit.

Something flickered in Olivia’s eyes. Seeing that he’d seen, she looked away, though not quickly enough.

“Did you know the previous owner well?” he asked, to get her talking again. The sound of her voice soothed him, and right then he needed soothing.

“Of course,” she said, turning the little tub of whipped cream, stolen along with the pie and the leftovers for Ginger, in an idle circle on the tabletop. “Clarence was one of Big John’s best friends. He was widowed sometime in the mid-nineties—Clarence, I mean—and after that he just lost interest in Starcross.” She paused, sighed, a small frown creasing the skin between her eyebrows. “He got rid of the livestock, cow by cow, horse by horse. He stopped doing just about everything.” Another break came then. “It’s the name, I think.”

“The name?”

“Of the ranch,” Olivia clarified. “Starcross. It’s—sad.”

Tanner found himself grinning a little. “What would you call it, Doc?” he asked. The coffee was finished, and he got up to find some cups and pour a dose for both of them.

She considered his question as if there were really a name change in the offing. “Something, well, happier,” she said as he set the coffee down in front of her, realized they’d need plates and forks for the pie and went back to the cupboards to rustle some up. “More positive and cheerful, I guess, like The Lucky Horseshoe, or The Diamond Spur. Something like that.”

Tanner had no intention of giving the ranch a new name—why go to all the trouble when he’d be leaving in a year at the longest?—but he enjoyed listening to Olivia, watching each new expression cross her face. The effect was fascinating.

And oh, that face.

The body under it was pretty spectacular, too.

Tanner shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Don’t you think those names are a little pretentious?” he asked, cutting into the pie.

“Corny, maybe,” Olivia admitted, smiling softly. “But not pretentious.”

He served her a piece of pie, then cut one for himself. Watched with amusement and a strange new tenderness as she spooned on the prepackaged whipped cream. She looked pink around the neck, perhaps a little discomforted because he was staring.

He averted his eyes, but a moment later he was looking again. He couldn’t seem to help it.

“You took the first chance you could get to bolt out of that Thanksgiving shindig at your brother’s place,” he said carefully. “Why is that, Doc?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Doc’?” She was nervous, then. Maybe she sensed that Tanner wanted to kiss her senseless and then take her upstairs to his bed.

“Because you’re a doctor?”

“I have a name.”

“A very beautiful name.”

She grinned, and some of the tension eased, which might or might not have been a good thing. “Get a shovel,” she said. “It’s getting deep in here.”

He laughed, pushed away his pie.

“I should go now,” she said, but she looked and sounded uncertain.

Hallelujah, Tanner thought. She was tempted, at least.

“Or you could stay,” he suggested casually.

She gnawed at her lower lip. “Is it just me?” she asked bluntly. “Or are there sexual vibes bouncing off the walls?”

“There are definitely vibes,” he confirmed.

“We haven’t even kissed.”

“That would be easy to remedy.”