Evergreen Springs

He decided gracious gratitude was the only option available to him. “I have room,” he finally said, his voice gruff. “Thank you. I’m...overwhelmed.”

That she had been intuitive and compassionate enough to spearhead the effort to help him out was the most stunning facet of the whole thing.

“You’re welcome.” She smiled again and the warmth of it seemed to seep right through his skin. “Why don’t I put these in your freezer while the children get their winter gear on. I’ll entertain them for a little while out in the snow.”

“Yay!” Ty exclaimed. “I’m gonna get my boots on right now.”

“What about you, Jazmyn?” she pressed. “We sure could use your help. I bet you know all about making snowmen.”

Somehow she also knew just the right button to push with his daughter.

“I am pretty good at rolling the balls,” Jaz said. “I’ll go get my coat.”

She chased after her brother toward the mudroom, leaving him alone with Devin.

“You’ll have to forgive me for being just a stupid cowboy here but...why?” He gestured to the box of food. “I don’t quite get it. You’re probably very busy with your patients and such. You don’t have time to go around making house calls to everyone in need, bearing casseroles and lasagna.”

“Not everyone. No.”

“So why us?”

“Tricia is a friend,” she said simply. “She said you could use the help but that you would never ask. This is our small way of letting you know you don’t have to. Ask, I mean.”

“I... Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I just need you to point me in the direction of your freezer.”

“There’s a large chest in the garage that’s pretty empty except for some steaks and roasts.”

A cattle ranch usually wasn’t scarce on beef. He could grill a steak just fine and had no problem with burgers but he didn’t know the first thing about how to cook a roast. One more thing he was going to have to figure out, he supposed.

“There’s another box in the back of my SUV. I’ll go grab that one.”

“No. I can do it. Just wait here.”

He shoved on his boots left by the door and headed out to her vehicle. On his way, he caught movement out of the corner of his gaze and spotted a figure in a blue parka clearing the sidewalk at the foreman’s cottage fifty yards away.

His jaw hardened just as Stan caught sight of him. His father lifted his hand in a wave and even from here, Cole could see the flash of his teeth as he smiled that damn hopeful smile.

He ignored his father, as he had been doing since Stanford showed up so unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and turned back to Dr. Shaw’s SUV. The box was large, filled to the brim with more containers. This was at least a month’s worth of meals for him and the kids.

Again, he was aware of that warmth seeping through him like the water from the hot spring above his ranch cutting through the frozen landscape.

Amid all the stress with Tricia in the hospital and struggling so much to figure out things with the kids, it would be a relief beyond measure not to have to worry about what he would feed them each night.

In another life, his pride might have pinched that people thought he needed this kind of help but he decided he couldn’t afford that kind of pride under the circumstances. He would take this for what it was, a kind gesture from people in town.

He carried the box back up the steps but neither Devin nor the other box of food waited for him. He headed toward the garage and found her standing over the big chest freezer, trying to find room for things while Ty stood at her elbow, handing her packages.

Jaz, he noted, was nowhere to be seen.

“Thanks,” she said when he carried the box toward her—just as if he were doing her the huge favor.

“Sure.”

She pointed to a container she had left in the box. “That’s the pasta e fagioli soup from Serrano’s along with some of their famous breadsticks. It was made fresh this morning and isn’t frozen. You only need to heat up the soup and cook the pasta in it and warm the bread sticks, too, and you’ll be set for tonight. Instructions are on it. I’ll put that in your refrigerator. The rest of this is easily labeled with instructions so you should know what to do. If you can’t figure something out, you can call me and I’ll track down instructions for you. The trick is to toss one of these in your refrigerator the night before you want to eat it and it should thaw enough to cook the next day.”

“Got it.”

She bent over the chest freezer and he couldn’t help checking out her very shapely ass—then he felt like a jerk for ogling her when she was doing him such a huge favor.

The freezer wasn’t as big as he thought—either that, or she had more food than just a few weeks’ worth. When the freezer was filled to the brim, she still had a couple of containers that wouldn’t fit.

“What are the chances you might have room in your kitchen freezer for these?”

“We can probably find a little space.”

“Excellent. Lead the way.”

He took her back to the kitchen, where the breakfast dishes waited in the sink.

She didn’t say anything about it, just headed for the side-by-side refrigerator and moved a few things around until she found room.

“Done,” she declared after the last plastic container had been stowed in the freezer. “That should at least keep you from having to eat McDonald’s for every meal.”

“I like McDonald’s,” Ty protested.

She smiled and placed a hand on his head. Something about the sight of that slender, pale hand on his son’s dark hair made his chest feel uncomfortably tight.

“McDonald’s is a once-in-a-while treat, not for every day,” she said, then deftly changed the subject before he could argue. “So are we building the world’s greatest snowman or what?”

“Yes! Jazmyn went to get her book that has a picture of a snowman in it. She wants to build one like that, she said. I’ll go tell her to hurry it up.”

“You do that.”

Once more, he was alone with Devin—not a good situation when he had suddenly become aware of a fierce urge to kiss that color from her cheeks.

She was so pretty and soft and he had spent the past half decade forced to wade through everything ugly and hard in the world.

“You don’t have to do this. The snowman thing, I mean,” he said. “They’ll live if I can’t get to it until tomorrow. Or they could always fumble through on their own.”

“I want to,” she assured him. “As long as you don’t mind, that is.”

“Why would I mind?” he asked. “You’re doing something fun with my kids.”

“Well, with one of them, anyway. We’ll see if Jazmyn will cooperate.”

“If Ty is doing something fun,” he said drily, “you can bet Jazmyn will come out to show you all the ways you’re doing it wrong.”