A Cold Creek Noel (The Cowboys of Cold Creek) (13 page)

“Des!” she called. “The first pizza’s ready. Can you pause the
show and bring everybody in here?”

The herd of children galloped in a moment later, a few more
than he expected. Ava was deep in conversation with Destry and Gabi while Jack
was chattering away with Caidy’s nephew, Alex, and niece Maya.

“Hi.” Maya grinned at him in her adorable way and he couldn’t
help smiling back.

“Hi there.”

“Did I mention I was babysitting Maya and Alex for a few hours
tonight? Taft and Laura had some last-minute Christmas things to take care of.
Laura’s mom usually helps them out but she had a party tonight so I offered. I
figured, what’s a few more? And when Gabi heard Ava was coming over, of course
she had to come too.”

Now he understood why she was making so many pizzas.

Six kids. How did she handle it? He was overwhelmed most of the
time with his own two, but Caidy seemed to juggle everything with ease. After
transferring the other pizza from the peel to the stone in the oven, she poured
drinks for the younger children, handed plates to the older girls and passed out
napkins to everyone.

“Better grab a slice fast or it’s going to be gone,” she
advised him. He snagged one of the few remaining pieces and a glass of frothy
root beer and took a place at the kitchen table next to Jack.

All the children seemed ramped up for the holidays but Caidy
managed to keep them distracted by asking about the show they were watching,
about their school parties that day, about what they wanted Santa to bring
them.

He was too busy savoring the pizza to contribute much to the
conversation but after the first blissful moments, he decided he had to try.
“This is really delicious. I grew up in Chicago so I know pizza. The sauce is
perfect.”

“Thank you.” She probably meant her pleased smile to be
friendly and warm but he was completely seduced by it, by her, by this warm
kitchen that seemed such a haven against the harsh, cold world outside.

“What about the third one? What’s your pleasure?”

He could come up with several answers to that, none of them
appropriate to voice with six children gathered around the table. “I don’t
really care. What’s your favorite?”

“I like barbecue chicken. The kids generally tolerate it in
moderation, so that only leaves more for me.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a devious woman, Caidy
Bowman.”

“I have my moments.”

She smiled at him and he was struck by how lovely she was, with
her dark hair escaping the ponytail and her cheeks flushed from the warmth of
the stove.

He was in deep trouble here, he thought. He didn’t know what to
do about this attraction to her. He was hanging on with both hands to keep from
falling hard for her, and each time he spent time with her, he slid down a few
more inches.

“Do you know my dog?” Maya asked him earnestly. “His name is
Lucky.”

Grateful for the diversion, he shifted his gaze from Caidy to
her very adorable stepniece. “I don’t think I’ve met Lucky yet. That’s a very
nice name for a dog.”

“He
is
nice,” Maya declared. “He
licks my nose. It tickles.”

“We have a dog named Tri,” Jack announced.

“My dog’s name is Grunt,” Gabi said. “Trace says he’s ugly but
I think he’s the most beautiful dog in the world.”

“Lucky’s beautiful too,” Alex said. “He has superlong
ears.”

“Tri only has three legs,” Jack said, as if that little fact
trumped everything else.

“Cool!” Gabi said. “How does he get around?”

“He hops,” Ava, who usually only barely tolerated the dog,
piped in. “It’s really kind of cute. He walks on his front two and then hops on
the one back leg he’s got. It takes
forever
to go on
a walk with him, but I don’t mind. Maya, you drank all your root beer. Do you
want some more?”

Maya nodded and Ben smiled at his daughter as she poured a
small amount of soda for the girl. All the children treated Maya with sweet
consideration and it touched him, especially coming from Ava. Though she could
be self-absorbed sometimes, like most children, she had these moments of
kindness that heartened him.

“Here’s pizza number two!” Caidy sang out to cheers from the
children. While they had been talking about dogs, he had missed her pulling his
pepperoni-and-olive creation out of the oven. Now she set it on the middle of
the table and expertly sliced it. As before, the children each grabbed a slice.
He nabbed a small one but noticed Caidy didn’t take one.

“Want me to save you a piece? You’d better move fast.”

She sat down on the one remaining chair at the table, which
happened to be on his other side. “I’m saving my appetite for the barbecue
chicken.”

“It’s all delicious. Especially this one, if I do say so
myself.” He gave a modest shrug.

“You’re a pro.” She smiled and he felt that connection between
them tug a little harder.

“I love pizza. It’s my favorite,” Maya declared.

“Me too!” Alex said. “I could eat pizza every single day.”

“It’s my triple favorite,” Jack, not to be outdone, announced.
“I could eat it every day and every night.”

Ava rolled her eyes. “You’re such a dork.”

The kids appeared to be done after finishing most of the second
pizza.

“Can we go finish the show now?” Destry asked.

Caidy glanced at him. “As long as Dr. Caldwell doesn’t mind
sticking around a little longer.”

He should leave. This kitchen—and the soft, beautiful woman in
it—were just too appealing. A little fuel had helped push away some of the
exhaustion, but he still worried his defenses were slipping around Caidy.

However, that barbecue chicken pizza currently baking was
filling the kitchen with delicious, smoky smells. She had gone to all the effort
to make it. He might as well stay to taste it.

“How much time is left on the show?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Not that much, I’m sure,” Destry said, rather
artfully, he thought.

Caidy looked doubtful but she didn’t argue with her niece.

“We can stay awhile more,” he finally said. “If it goes on too
much longer, we might have to leave before the show ends.”

Despite the warning, his ruling was met with cheers from all
the children.

“Thanks, Dad,” Ava said, gifting him with one of her rare
smiles. “We’re having too much fun to go yet.”

“I love this show,” Jack said. “It’s
hilarious.
”

A new word in kindergarten apparently. He smiled, feeling
rather heroic to give his children something they wanted. As soon as all the
kids hurried out to start the show again, he realized his mistake. He was alone
again with Caidy, surrounded by delicious smells and this dangerous connection
shivering between them.

She rose quickly, ostensibly to check on the pizza, but he
sensed she was also aware of it. As she slid the third pizza onto the peel and
then out of the oven, he racked his brain to come up with a topic of polite
conversation.

He could only come up with one. “What happened to your
parents?”

The words came out more bluntly than he intended. Apparently,
they startled her too. She nearly dropped the paddle, pizza and all, but
recovered enough to carry it with both hands to the table, where she set it down
between them.

“Wow. That was out of the blue.”

He was an idiot who had no business being let out around
anything with less than four feet. Or three, in Tri’s case.

“It’s none of my business. You don’t have to tell me. I’ve been
wondering, that’s all. Sorry.”

She sighed as she picked up the pizza slicer and jerked it
across the pie. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing. Only what you’ve said, which isn’t much. I’ve
gathered it was something tragic. A car accident?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, busy with slicing the pizza and
lifting a piece to a plate for him and then for herself. He was very sorry he
had said anything, especially when it obviously caused her so much sadness.

“It wasn’t a car accident,” she finally said. “Sometimes I wish
it were something as straightforward as that. It might have been easier.”

He took a bite of his pizza. The robust flavors melted on his
tongue but he hardly noticed them as he waited for her to continue.

She took a small bite of hers and then a sip of the root beer
before she spoke again. “It wasn’t any kind of accident,” she said. “They were
murdered.”

He hadn’t expected that one, not here in quiet Pine Gulch. He
stared at the tightness of her mouth that could be so lush and delicious.
“Murdered? Seriously?”

She nodded. “I know. It still doesn’t seem real to me either.
It’s been eleven years now and I don’t know if any of us has ever really gotten
over it.”

“You must have been just a girl.”

“Sixteen.” She spoke the word softly and he felt a pang of
regret for a girl who had lost her father and mother at such a tender age.

“Was it someone they knew?”

“We don’t know who killed them. That’s one of the toughest
aspects of the whole thing. It’s still unsolved. We do know it was two men. One
dark-haired, one blond, in their late twenties.”

Her mouth tightened more and she sipped at her root beer. He
wanted to kick himself for bringing up this obviously painful topic.

“They were both strangers to Pine Gulch,” she went on. “That
much we know. But they didn’t leave any fingerprints or other clues. Only, uh,
one shaky eyewitness identification.”

“What was the motive?”

“Oh, robbery. The whole thing was motivated by greed. My
parents had an extensive art collection. I know you saw the painting in the
dining room the other day and probably figured out our mother was a brilliant
artist. She also had many close friends in the art community who gave her gifts
of their work or sold them to her at a steep discount.”

A brazen art theft here in quiet Pine Gulch. Of all the things
he might have guessed, that was just about last on the list.

“It was a few days before Christmas. Eleven years ago tomorrow,
actually. None of the boys lived at home then, only me. Ridge was working up in
Montana, Trace was in the military and Taft had an apartment in town. No one was
supposed to be here that night. I had a Christmas concert that night at the high
school but I...I was ill. Or said I was anyway.”

“You weren’t?”

She set her fork down next to her mostly uneaten pizza and he
felt guilty again for interrupting her meal with this tragic topic. He wanted to
tell her not to finish, that he didn’t need to know, but he was afraid that
sounded even more stupid—and besides that, he sensed some part of her needed to
tell him.

“It’s so stupid. I was a stupid, selfish, silly
sixteen-year-old girl. My boyfriend, Cody Spencer—the asshole—had just broken up
with me that morning in homeroom. He wanted to go out with my best friend, if
you can believe that cliché. And Sarah Beth had wanted him ever since we started
going out and decided dating the captain of the football team and president of
the performance choir was more important than friendship. I was quite certain,
as only a sixteen-year-old girl can be, that my heart had broken in a million
little pieces.”

He tried to picture her at sixteen and couldn’t form a good
picture. Was it because that pivotal event had changed her so drastically?

“The worst part was, Cody and I were supposed to sing a duet
together at the choir concert—‘Merry Christmas, Darling.’ I couldn’t go through
with it. I just...couldn’t. So I told my parents I thought I must have food
poisoning. I don’t think they believed me for a minute, but what else could they
do when I told them I would throw up if I had to go onstage that night? They
agreed to stay home with me. None of us knew it would be a fatal mistake.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I know that intellectually, but it’s still easy to blame
myself.”

“Easy, maybe, but not fair to a sixteen-year-old girl with a
broken heart.”

She gave him a surprised look, as if she hadn’t expected him to
demonstrate any sort of understanding. Did she think him as much an asshole as
Cody Spencer?

“I know. It wasn’t my fault. It just...feels that way
sometimes. It happened right here, you know. In the kitchen. They disarmed the
security system and broke in through the back door over there. My mom and I were
in here when we heard them outside. I caught a quick glimpse of their faces
through the window before my mother shoved me into the pantry and ordered me to
stay put. I thought she was coming in after me so I hid under the bottom shelf
to make room for her, but...she went back out again, calling for my father.”

She was silent and he didn’t know what to say, what to do, to
ease the torment in her eyes. Finally, he settled for resting a hand over hers
on the table. She gave him another of those surprised looks, then turned her
hand over so they were palm against palm and twisted her fingers in his.

“The men ordered her to the ground and...I could hear them
arguing. With her, with themselves. One wanted to leave but the other one said
it was too late, she had seen them. And then my father came in. He must have had
one of his hunting rifles trained on them. I couldn’t see from inside the
pantry, but the next thing I knew, two shots rang out. The police said my dad
and one of the men must have fired at each other at the same moment. The other
guy was hit and injured. My dad...died instantly.”

“Oh, Caidy.”

“After that, it was crazy. My mom was screaming at them. She
grabbed a knife out of the kitchen and went after them and the...the bastard
shot her too. She...took a while to die. I could hear her breathing while the
men hurried through the house taking the art they wanted. They must have made
about four or five trips outside before they finally left. And I stayed inside
that pantry, doing nothing. I tried to help my mother once but she made me go
back inside. I didn’t know what else to do.”