Thunder Canyon Homecoming / A Thunder Canyon Christmas: Thunder Canyon Homecoming

Pushing all thoughts of Erin Castro from his mind, at least for the time being, he pulled out his laptop and got to work reviewing the reports he needed for his meetings on Wednesday. The information he’d seen so far had been in complete and often contradictory, warning him that the evaluation he’d expected to finish within a couple of weeks might take a lot longer than that.

At first, he’d been frustrated by this realization, but now—thinking of Erin—the idea of extending his stay in Thunder Canyon didn’t bother him at all.

Erin called home on Sunday and spoke to both of her parents. Betty and Jack still didn’t know her real reasons for going to Thunder Canyon, but they tried to be supportive of her decision. They asked about her new job and her friends and, as usual, when she would be coming home for a visit.

She had originally planned to go back to San Diego for Thanksgiving, certain she would have all of the answers she sought by then, but she warned her parents now that a trip at that time might not be possible. The holiday was the start of one of the busiest seasons at the resort and she wasn’t sure that she would be able to get any time off. But she had another reason for changing her plans—she didn’t want to leave Thunder Canyon just when Grant Clifton’s sister would be arriving.

She continued to battle against the guilt she felt for not sharing her suspicions with them. She’d never really kept secrets from them before, and certainly never anything of this magnitude—if there could be anything else of such magnitude. Although she’d always felt a little disconnected from her parents and her brothers—as if they shared a deeper bond that somehow eluded her—she’d never been deceitful or dishonest, and the lie that she’d been living for the past several months was weighing heavily on her conscience.

When her mother said, “I love you, Erin,” as she always did at the end of a conversation, Erin’s eyes filled with tears.

They had always loved her. She didn’t doubt that. And she wondered now if the feeling that there was something missing in their relationship was actually indicative of some thing missing within herself. Maybe she was chasing after something that didn’t exist except inside her own imagination.

The original seed had been planted by Erma, but her aunt was gone now and Erin was starting to wonder what purpose could possibly be served by continuing to nurture the old woman’s suspicions. And if there was no purpose, then maybe it was time for her to forget everything Erma had said and just go home.

As she readied herself for bed, Erin realized the doubting and confusion had become as much a part of her Sunday night ritual as her call to her parents. Because talking to them inevitably made her realize how much she missed them, and missing them made her question why she was willing to upset the status quo.

Her family wasn’t perfect, but they were hers.

Weren’t they?

With a sigh, she pulled back the covers and crawled into bed.

As she settled back against her pillows, she acknowledged that it was entirely possible that her birthday being on the same day as Elise Clifton’s was nothing more than a coincidence. And both of them being born in the same hospital was probably just another coincidence. But the physical resemblance she’d noticed in Elise’s photo and her own brothers was a little harder to ignore.

Or maybe she’d just been looking for answers for so long that she was grasping at straws.

Determined to push these thoughts out of her mind, she picked up the Stephanie Plum novel she’d just started reading. But she was too distracted to focus on the story and she set the book down again after reading only a few pages.

It took her a long time after that to fall asleep, and when she finally did, she had the strangest dream.

She was in the hospital, and the cry of a baby slowly penetrated the thick fog of pain that surrounded her.

No, not a baby. Her baby.

She struggled to sit up but felt as if she was strapped to the bed, unable to move.

“My baby.” She tried to shout, but the words were barely a whisper.

“Your baby is fine. We’re going to take her to the nursery so that you can rest.”

She couldn’t see the speaker, but the gentle tone both soothed and reassured her.

A short while later, after she’d rested, she wanted to see her baby. But the hall that led to the nursery seemed to stretch ahead of her forever. She walked faster but made no progress. So she started to run. She ran until her legs were weak and her lungs ached, and still she hadn’t reached the end of the long, narrow corridor.

Then suddenly she was there, standing in the middle of the nursery, and her baby was crying again. But there were dozens of bassinets, dozens of crying babies, and she didn’t know which one was hers. She ran from one to the next, desperately hoping for some sense of recognition, but they were all the same, all strangers to her.

But then another woman came into the room, and she went directly to one of the bassinets and picked up the crying baby and carried it away. Then another, and another, and another. Until it seemed as if a whole parade of women had come into the room and, one by one, taken away the crying babies until there was only one left.

She tried to rationalize that the one remaining had to be her own, but she wasn’t certain. She didn’t know how each of the other new mothers had been sure that the baby she was taking belonged to her. What if someone had taken her baby?

She lifted the last infant from its bed, yearning for some sense of connection. But there was nothing. Her eyes scanned the room frantically, searching for someone, anyone, to help her. But she was alone. And when she looked at the baby again, it was gone, too.

Erin awoke with a start. She struggled to sit up and pushed her hair away from her face. Her hands were shaking, her heart was pounding. It was easy to tell herself that it was only a dream. It wasn’t so easy to shake the feelings of helplessness and fear that lingered.

There was no reason to believe that the scenario played out by her imagination had any foundation in reality, but she knew that the questions would continue to haunt her until she’d figured out the truth.

Maybe she should go home. Not forever, just for a while. If nothing else, the disturbing dream had proved that she definitely needed a distraction, something to stop her from thinking about hospitals and babies and questions that might never be answered. As if anything could distract her from these thoughts.

Unbidden, an image of Corey Traub came to mind.

Okay, there was a man who could make a woman forget her own name. Just one kiss had proved that. But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—let him get that close again. She snuggled under the covers, reminding herself that he would probably be heading back to Texas soon anyway, disappearing from her life as abruptly as he’d appeared.

She drifted back to sleep. But this time when she dreamed, she dreamed of Corey.

* * *

Corey wasn’t used to chasing women. If anything, he’d become accustomed to being chased by them. Prior to his fifteenth birthday, he’d been short and scrawny and mostly overlooked by everyone. But in that magical year, things had started to change. He’d shot up in height, put on some muscle, started to shave. And when he’d gone out for football the next fall, he’d made the team.

By the time he’d started college, he was a first-string receiver and his family was known across the great state of Texas for the fortune they’d made in oil. Corey had been so caught up in the thrill of being popular that he hadn’t questioned what he’d done to earn the attention. Truthfully, the reasons hadn’t mattered. All that mattered was that the skinny kid who had been mostly ignored by the girls and laughed at by the older boys was no more.

Corey Traub was now in the spotlight. Guys wanted to hang with him, girls wanted to be seen with him, and he’d reveled in the attention. And then he’d met Heather, and everything had changed. He hadn’t needed the adulation of fans so long as he had her attention; he hadn’t wanted to be with anyone else so long as he was with her.

They’d dated for a year and a half. She was the first girl he ever loved, and she claimed to love him, too. And then he discovered that, during the entire time they’d been dating, she’d been lying to him, deliberately keeping certain parts of her life a secret from him. When he finally found out and confronted her, she cried and apologized, but learning the extent of her deception had destroyed his trust, and her tears didn’t sway him.

It didn’t take long for news of their split to make its way around campus, and the girls started coming around again. In the decade that had passed since his college graduation, little had changed. He was as successful in the business world as he’d been on the football field. And although there weren’t any shy giggling girls hanging around outside of his locker room, there were plenty of bold, sexy women sneaking into his office after hours or slipping hotel room keys into his pocket.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to take the first step with a woman. And it had been a heck of a lot longer than that since any female had told him “no.” But somewhere along the line, sometime within the last few years, he’d started to grow weary of empty relationships and meaningless hookups. He wanted what Dillon had found with Erika.

His brothers liked to tease that he fell in love too easily, but the truth was, Heather’s deception had taught him to be careful with his heart. Not that he’d given up on falling in love. He was still hopeful that would happen, but the next time he opened up his heart completely, it would be to a woman who he could trust was capable of loving him the same way. Openly and honestly, without any secrets or lies between them.

There was something about Erin Castro that made him think she might be that woman.

Maybe he was putting the cart before the horse, considering that she hadn’t even agreed to have lunch with him. But he refused to be dissuaded. If he’d believed that she was honestly not interested, he would have backed off. But he couldn’t forget the way she’d looked at him when they danced, the way she’d trembled in his arms, the way she’d responded to his kiss. No way was the attraction one-sided.

When Monday morning came around and he still hadn’t managed to put her out of his mind, he decided to track her down. Because he was staying in one of the resort’s condo units, it would be easy enough to stop by the front desk of the main building and invite her to lunch and see where things went from there. Except that when he went down to the desk, he didn’t see her anywhere.

“Erin isn’t in today,” Trina told him.

“Will she be in later?” he asked, wondering if she’d switched her shift for some reason.

“I doubt it. She called in sick.”

Sick?

He knew she hadn’t been feeling well Saturday night, but she’d sounded okay when he’d spoken with her Sunday morning. Did she have a touch of the flu or some other kind of bug and had suffered a relapse?

“Is there something I can help you with?” Trina’s long lashes fluttered, the invitation in those green eyes obvious.