A Cold Creek Noel (The Cowboys of Cold Creek) (4 page)

That must have been why he had cleared away the snow around the
sidewalk. She had wondered why that had been a priority, especially because he
had told her the clinic would be closed that day.

She fought the little burst of warmth in her chest.
Get a grip,
she told herself. She wasn’t interested in
some prickly veterinarian who jumped to conclusions and made snap judgments
about people before he knew the facts.

Even if he did have a flat stomach she wanted to trail her
fingers along...

She blushed and looked away. Her dog. That’s why she was
here—to check on Luke. Not to engage in completely inappropriate fantasies about
a man who would be living just a stone’s throw away from her.

“I can take him out if you’re sure he’s up to it.”

“We made one trip out in the night. He seemed to handle it
okay. Let’s try again.”

She headed to the crate where Luke lay. As if sensing her
presence, his eyes opened and he tried to wag his tail, which just about broke
her heart. “Shhh. Easy. Easy. There’s my boy. How’s my favorite guy?”

The dog’s black tail flapped again on the soft blankets inside
the crate. He tried to scramble up, then subsided again with a whimper.

“He’s due for pain meds again. I was planning to try to slip a
pill in some peanut butter.”

She unlatched the door of the crate and reached in to rub his
chin. “I hope you didn’t keep Dr. Caldwell up all night.”

“Not too bad.” Ben hadn’t shaved yet and the dark shadow along
his jawline gave him a rugged, rather disreputable air. He probably wouldn’t
appreciate her pointing that out—and he
definitely
wouldn’t be interested in knowing about her unwilling attraction to him.

“We had a few rough moments.” He paused, giving her a careful
look. “To tell the truth, I wasn’t completely convinced he would make it through
the night. He’s a tough little guy.”

“It helps to have a good vet,” she said. Even Doc Harris
wouldn’t have stayed all night. It was a hard admission, but honesty compelled
her to face it. As much as she loved the old veterinarian, she had noticed he
sometimes had a bit of a cavalier attitude about the seriousness of some
cases.

Apparently that wasn’t the case with Dr. Caldwell.

“Sometimes all the veterinarian skills in the world aren’t
enough. I guess you would know that, as an animal lover.”

That was her big worry right now with Sadie. Her old border
collie, the very first dog who had been only hers, was thirteen. In border
collie terms, that was ancient. As much as she loved her, Caidy knew she
wouldn’t be around forever.

“Luke seems alert now. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

He joined her in petting the dog. Their fingers accidentally
touched and she didn’t miss the way he quickly lifted his hands. “You can call
him Lucky Luke.”

“My brother and his family already have a dog named Lucky Lou,”
she said with a smile. “He survived being hit by a car.”

“Your brother?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, but there was a time plenty of the
scorned women of Pine Gulch would have gladly tried to run him down. No, Lou. He
was a stray, a little corgi-beagle mix who used to wander around our ranch. I
was trying to lure him in so I could find his owner, but he was pretty skittish.
Then one afternoon he didn’t move fast enough and some speeder hit him. He’s
doing great now and is extremely spoiled by Taft’s kids.”

Stepchildren, actually, but Maya and Alex had quickly been
absorbed into the Bowman clan.

“Well, you can add this one to your collection of lucky
pups.”

“When can I take him home?”

“Maybe later today, as long as he remains stable.”

“That would be great. Thank you for everything.”

He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

She owed him now. It was an uncomfortable realization—she
didn’t like being beholden to anyone, especially not very attractive
veterinarians.

In this case, she could even the playing field a little bit. “I
talked to Ridge last night. He says you and your family are more than welcome to
move into the foreman’s cottage until your house is finished.”

“Did he?” he asked, his expression pleased and more than a
little relieved. “That would make the holidays much more comfortable all the way
around.”

“You may want to come out to the ranch and take a look at the
place before you agree. We’ve kept it up well, but it could probably use a
remodel one of these days.”

“Three bedrooms, you said?”

“Yes. And Ridge suggested we work something out with rent in
trade for vet services, if you’re agreeable. I’ll still probably owe you my
firstborn but maybe not my second.”

He smiled—not a huge smile but a genuine one. Her stomach
flip-flopped again and she remembered that moment when she had walked into the
clinic and found him half-dressed.

What in heaven’s name had come over her? She did
not
react to men this way. She just didn’t. Oh, she
dated once in a while. She wasn’t a complete hermit, contrary to what her
brothers teased her about. She enjoyed the occasional dinner or movie out, but
she usually worked hard to keep things casual and fun. The few times a guy had
tried to push for more, she had felt panicky and pressured and had done her best
to discourage him.

She couldn’t remember having such an instant and powerful
reaction to a man, this immediate curl of desire. She certainly wasn’t used to
this jittery, off-balance feeling, as if she were teetering in the loft door of
the barn, gearing up to jump into the big pile of hay below.

Ridiculous. She wasn’t even sure she
liked
Ben Caldwell yet. She certainly wasn’t ready to jump into any
pile of hay with him, literally or figuratively.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he answered. “If it has three bedrooms
and a halfway decent kitchen for Mrs. Michaels, I don’t care about much
else.”

She drew in a breath and subtly shifted to ease her shoulder
away from his. “For all you know, it might be a hovel. You would be surprised at
the living conditions some ranchers force on their workers.”

“I would like to think you wouldn’t have suggested it if you
didn’t think it would work for my family.”

“That’s trusting of you. You don’t know anything about me. For
all you know, maybe I make it a habit of bilking unsuspecting newcomers out of
their rent money.”

“Since we’re talking about trading veterinary services for
rent, that’s not an issue, is it? But if you insist, I guess I could stop by
your ranch later this morning after Joni comes in to relieve me. She’s coming in
around ten.”

“That should work. I should have just enough time to rush back
there and hide all the mousetraps and roach motels.”

This time he laughed outright, as she had intended. It was a
full, rich sound that shimmied down her spine as if he’d pressed his lips
there.

This was a gigantic mistake. Why had she ever opened her big,
stupid mouth about the foreman’s cottage in the first place? The last thing she
needed on the ranch right now was a gorgeous man with a sexy chest and a
delicious laugh.

“Should I help you take Luke outside before I go?”

He seemed to know she was doing her best to change the subject.
“No. I can handle it.”

She nodded. “I’ll see you in a bit, okay?” she said, rubbing
the dog’s head again. “You need to stay here just a little longer and then you
can come home.”

Luke whined as if he knew she were going to leave. It was tough
but she shut the crate door again.

“You know he’ll probably never be a working dog now. I set the
bones as well as I could, but he’ll never be fast enough or strong enough to do
what he used to.”

“We’re not so cruel that we’ll make him sing for his supper,
Dr. Caldwell. We’ll still find a place for him on the River Bow, whether he can
work the cattle or not. We have plenty of other animals who live on in
comfortable retirement.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he answered.

She firmly ignored his disreputable smile and the jumping
nerves it set off in her stomach.

“Thanks again for everything. I guess I’ll see you later.”

She headed to the door, but to her dismay, he beat her to it
and held it open, leaving her no choice but to brush past him on her way out.
She ignored the little shiver of awareness, just as she had ignored all the
others.

She could do this, she told herself. It would only be for a few
weeks and she likely would see far more of his housekeeper and children than she
would Ben, especially if he consistently maintained these sorts of hours.

Chapter Four

“B
ut I
like
staying at the hotel. We have Alex and Maya to play with there and someone makes
breakfast for us every day. It’s kind of like Eloise at the Plaza.”

Ben swallowed a laugh, certain his bristly nine-year-old
daughter wouldn’t appreciate it. If there was one thing Ava hated worse than
eating her brussels sprouts, it was being the object of someone else’s
amusement.

Still, as lovely as the twenty-four room Cold Creek Inn was,
the place was nothing like the grand hotel in New York City portrayed in the
series of books Ava adored.

“It has been fun,” he conceded, “but wouldn’t you like to have
a little more room to play?”

“In the middle of nowhere with a bunch of cows and horses? No.
Not really.”

He sighed, not unfamiliar with Ava’s condescending attitude. He
knew just where it came from—her maternal grandparents.

Ava wasn’t thrilled to be separated from his late wife’s
parents. She loved the Marshalls and tried to spend as much time as she could
with them. For the past two years, since Brooke’s death, Robert and Janet had
filled Ava’s head with subtle digs and sly innuendo in an ongoing campaign to
undermine her relationship with her father.

The Marshalls wanted nothing more than to take over
guardianship of the children any way they could.

He blamed himself for the most part. Right after Brooke’s
death, he had been too lost and grief-stricken to see the fissures they were
carving in his relationship with his children. The first time he figured it out
had been about six months ago. After an overnight stay, Jack had refused to give
him a hug.

It had taken several days and much prodding on his part, but
the boy had finally tearfully confessed that Grandmother Marshall told him he
killed dogs and cats nobody wanted—a completely unfair accusation because he was
working at a no-kill shelter at the time.

He had done his best to keep distance between them after that,
but the Marshalls were insidious in their efforts to drive a wedge between them
and had even gone to court seeking regular visitation with their
grandchildren.

He knew he couldn’t keep them away forever, but he had decided
his first priority must be strengthening the bond between him and his children,
and eventually he had decided his only option was to resettle elsewhere to make
the interactions between them more difficult.

“It’s only for a few weeks, until our house is finished,” he
said now to Ava. “Haven’t you missed Mrs. Michaels’s delicious dinners?”

“I have,” Jack opined from his booster seat next to his sister.
“I looove the way she makes mac and cheese.”

Ben’s mouth watered as he thought of the caramelized onions she
scattered across her gooey macaroni and cheese.

“If we move into this new place, that will be the first thing I
ask her to make,” he promised Jack and was rewarded with a huge grin.

“It hasn’t been bad going for dinner at the diner or having
stuff from the microwave in the hotel room,” Ava insisted. “I haven’t minded one
single bit.”

He sighed. Her constant contrariness was beginning to grate on
every nerve.

“What about Christmas? Do you really want to spend Christmas
Eve in the hotel, where we don’t even have our own tree in our rooms?”

She didn’t immediately answer and he could see her trying to
come up with something to combat that. Before she could, he pursued his
advantage. “Let’s just check it out. If we all hate it, we can stay at the hotel
through the holidays. With any luck, our new house will be done by early
January.”

“Will I have to ride the bus to school for the last week of
school before Christmas vacation?”

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He supposed he should have
considered the logistics before considering this option. “You can if you want
to. Or we can try to arrange our schedules so I can take you to school on my way
to the clinic.”

“I wouldn’t want to ride a bus. It’s probably totally
gross.”

That was another lovely gift from his late wife’s parents,
thank you very little. Janet Marshall had done her best to turn his daughter
into a paranoid germaphobe.

“You can always use hand sanitizer.” This had become his common
refrain, used to combat her objections for everything from eating in a public
restaurant to sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall.

She sniffed but didn’t have a response for that. Much to his
relief, she let the subject go and subsided into one of her aggrieved silences.
He had a feeling Ava was going to drive him crazy before she made it to the
other side of puberty.

A few moments later, he pulled into a side road with a log arch
over it that said River Bow Ranch. Pines and aspens lined the drive. Though it
was well plowed, he was still grateful for his four-wheel drive as he headed up
a slight hill toward the main log ranch house he could see sprawling in the
distance.

Not far from the house, the drive forked. About a city block
down it, he saw a smaller clapboard home with two small eaves above a wide front
porch.

He couldn’t help thinking it looked like something off of one
of the Christmas cards the clinic had received, a charming little house nestled
in the snow-topped pines, with split rail fencing on the pastures that lined the
road leading up to it.

“Can we ride the horses while we’re here?” Jack asked, gazing
with excitement at a group of about six or seven that stood in the snow eating a
few bales of alfalfa that looked as though they had recently been dropped into
the pasture.

“Probably not. We’re only renting a house, not the whole
ranch.”

Ava looked out the window at the horses too, and he didn’t miss
the sudden light in her eyes. She loved horses, just like most nine-year-old
girls.

But even the presence of some beautiful horseflesh wasn’t
enough. “You said we were only looking at it and if we didn’t like it, we didn’t
have to stay,” she said in an accusatory tone.

Oh, she made him tired sometimes.

“Yes. That’s what I said.”

“I like it,” Jack offered with his unassailable kindergarten
logic. “They have dogs and horses and cows.”

A couple of collies that looked very much like the one
currently resting in his clinic watched them from the front porch of the main
house as he pulled into the circular drive in front.

Before he could figure out what to do next, the door opened and
Caidy Bowman trotted down the porch steps, pulling on a parka. She must have
been watching for them, he thought. The long driveway would certainly give
advance notice of anybody approaching.

She wore her dark hair in a braid down her back, topped with a
tan Stetson. She looked rather sweet and uncomplicated, but somehow he knew the
reality of Caidy Bowman was more tangled than her deceptively simple appearance
would indicate.

He opened his door and climbed out as she approached his
vehicle.

“The house is just there.” She gestured toward the small
farmhouse in the trees. “Why don’t you drive closer so you don’t have to walk
through the snow? Ridge plowed it out with the tractor this morning so you
shouldn’t have any trouble. I’ll just meet you there.”

“Why?” He went around the vehicle and opened the passenger
door. “Get in. We can ride together.”

For some reason she looked reluctant at that idea, but after a
weird little pause, she finally came to where he was standing and jumped up into
the vehicle. He closed the door behind her before she could change her mind.

The first thing he noticed after he was once more behind the
wheel was the scent of her filling the interior. Though it was a cold and
overcast December day, his car suddenly smelled of vanilla and rain-washed
wildflowers on a mountain meadow somewhere.

He was aware of a completely inappropriate desire to inhale
that scent deep inside him, to sit here in his car with his children in the
backseat and just savor the sweetness.

Get a grip, Caldwell,
he told
himself. So she smelled good. He could walk into any perfume counter in town and
probably get the same little kick in his gut.

Still, he was suddenly fiercely glad his house would be
finished in only a few weeks. Much longer than that and he was afraid he would
develop a serious thing for this prickly woman who smelled like a wild
garden.

“Welcome to the River Bow Ranch.”

He almost thanked her before he realized she was looking in the
backseat and talking to his children. She wore a genuine smile, probably the
first one he had seen on her, and she looked like a bright, beautiful ray of
sunshine on an overcast day.

“Can I ride one of your horses sometime?”

“Jack,” Ben chided, but Caidy only laughed.

“I think that can probably be arranged. We’ve got several that
are very gentle for children. My favorite is Old Pete. He’s about the nicest
horse you could ever meet.”

Jack beamed at her, his sunny, adorable self. “I bet I can ride
a horse good. I have boots and everything.”

“You’re such a dork. Just because you have boots doesn’t make
you a cowboy,” Ava said with an impatient snort.

“What about you, Ava? Do you like horses?”

In the rearview mirror, he didn’t miss his daughter’s eagerness
but she quickly concealed it. He wondered sometimes if she was afraid to hope
for things she wanted anymore because none of their prayers and wishes had been
enough to keep Brooke alive.

“I guess,” she said, picking at the sleeve of her parka.

“You’ve come to the right place, then. I bet my niece Destry
would love to take you out for a ride.”

Ava’s eyes widened. “Destry from my school? She’s your
niece?”

Caidy smiled. “I guess so. There aren’t too many Destrys in
this neck of the woods. You’ve met her?”

Ava nodded. “She’s a couple years older than me but on my very
first day, Mrs. Dalton, the principal, had her show me around. She was supernice
to me and she still says hi to me and stuff when she sees me at school.”

“I’m very glad to hear that. She better be nice. If she’s not,
you let me know and I’ll give her a talking-to until her ears fall off.”

Jack laughed at the image. Ava looked as if she wanted to join
him but she had become very good at hiding her amusement these days. Instead,
she looked out the window again.

“Here we are,” Caidy said when he pulled up front of the house.
“I turned up the heat earlier when I came down to clean a little. It should be
nice and cozy for you.”

How much work had she done for them? He hoped it wasn’t much,
even as he wondered why she was making this effort for them when he wasn’t at
all sure she really wanted them there.

“So all the rattraps are gone?” he asked.

“Rats?” Ava asked in a horrified voice.

“There are no rats,” Caidy assured her quickly. “We have too
many cats here at the River Bow. Your father was making a joke. Weren’t
you?”

Was he? It had been quite a while since he had found much to
joke about. Somehow Caidy Bowman brought out a long-forgotten side of him. “Yes,
Ava. I was teasing.”

Judging by his daughter’s expression, she seemed to find that
notion just as unsettling as the idea of giant rodents in her bed.

“Shall we go inside so you can see for yourself?” Caidy
said.

“I want to see the rats!” Jack said.

“There are no rats,” Ben assured everybody again as Caidy
pushed open the front door. It wasn’t locked, he noticed—something very
different from his security-conscious world in California.

The scent of pine washed over them the moment they stepped
inside.

“Look!” Jack exclaimed. “A Christmas tree! A real live one of
our very own!”

Sure enough, in the corner was a rather scraggly pine tree as
tall as he was, covered in multicolored Christmas lights.

He gazed at it, stunned at the sight and quite certain the tree
hadn’t been there a few hours earlier. She had said the house was empty, so
somehow in the past few hours Caidy Bowman must have dragged this tree in, set
it in the stand and strung the Christmas lights.

She had done this for them. He didn’t know what to say.
Somewhere inside him another little chunk of ice seemed to fall away.

“You didn’t need to do that,” he said, a little more gruffly
than he intended.

“It was no big deal,” she answered. In the warmth of the room
he thought he saw a tinge of color on her cheeks. “My brothers went a little
crazy in the Christmas tree department. We cut our own in the mountains above
the ranch after Thanksgiving, and this year they cut a few extras to give to
people who might need them. This one was leftover.”

“What about the lights?”

“We had some extras lying around. I’m afraid this one is a
little on the scrawny side, but paper garland and some ornaments will fix that
right up. I bet your dad and Mrs. Michaels can help you make some,” she told Ava
and Jack. As he might have expected, Jack looked excited about the idea but Ava
merely shrugged.

He wouldn’t know the first thing about making ornaments for a
Christmas tree. Brooke had always taken care of the holiday decorating and his
housekeeper had stepped in after her death.

“Come on. I’ll give you the grand tour. It’s not much, as you
can see. Just this room, the kitchen and dining room and the bedrooms
upstairs.”

She was too modest. This room alone was already half again as
big as one of the hotel rooms. The living room was comfortably furnished with a
burgundy plaid sofa and a couple of leather recliners, and the television set
was an older model but quite large.

One side wall was dominated by a small river rock fireplace
with a mantel made of rough-hewn lumber. The fireplace was empty but
someone—probably Caidy—had stacked several armloads of wood in a bin next to it.
He could easily imagine how cozy the place would be with a fire in the hearth,
the lights flickering on the tree and a basketball game on the television set.
He wouldn’t even have to worry about turning the volume down so he didn’t wake
Jack. It was an appealing thought.