A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise Read online

  Yeah, they needed to have a talk. He would listen to her, would try to help with whatever bothered her and then he would tell her he was falling in love with her.

  * * *

  The back door opened just as she was rolling her suitcase one-handed out of her bedroom.

  Her heart sank and her insides roiled. She was very afraid she would be sick—and not from the delicious meal she hadn’t been able to eat much of at the Bowman family party.

  If only she had been ten minutes faster, she would have been gone before they returned from the barn.

  Skulking off in the darkness on Christmas night was a stupid and cowardly thing to do, but then she had spent a week being stupid and cowardly, running from this moment. Why ruin a perfect record?

  Destry came in first, chattering away to her father about a horseback ride she wanted to take the next day.

  She froze when she saw Sarah standing with her suitcase in her hand, stopping so abruptly her father nearly ran into her.

  “Hey,” Ridge said to his daughter, holding a hand to steady both of them. His gaze lifted, and he saw her and then the suitcase she pulled. For one brief instant, she saw a host of emotions she couldn’t read in his gaze, ending in a fierce blaze of anger that he quickly contained.

  “Going somewhere?”

  She wanted to burst into tears, cover her face and run out the door, but she had been cowardly enough for a dozen lifetimes.

  She squared her shoulders. “Yes. I’m driving into Jackson for the night. I...found a hotel and arranged a flight back to California tomorrow.”

  Destry made a little sound of distress. “But why?” she wailed. “We were having such a great Christmas.”

  Her chest ached as if the girl had punched her. Oh, she hated this. “I know, honey. You’ve been wonderful. I’ve enjoyed our time together so much. I just... I have to go.”

  She didn’t know what else to say, even as she heard how lame the words sounded.

  “Why?” Ridge demanded.

  For a fairly innocuous word, it sliced and clawed at her, leaving her emotions in shreds.

  “I just do. I don’t belong here. You’ve been kind enough to open your home to me, but...I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

  “So you’re running off at 9:00 p.m. on Christmas night. That really seemed the best time to leave?”

  “If you’ll remember, I tried to leave a dozen times these past few days. There was always another reason why I should stay.”

  “And now you’ve run out of reasons. Is that what you’re saying?”

  He looked furious again, and something else, something deeper.

  He looked hurt.

  She thought of the kisses between them, all the unspoken feelings in her heart. More than she had wanted anything in her life—more than every dreamed-of Christmas gift thrown together—she wanted to stay here at the River Bow with him, to give these growing feelings a chance to blossom.

  She knew she couldn’t. He wouldn’t want her here after he knew the truth—and if she was running out of anything, it was the dozens of excuses she had cowardly used to avoid exactly this moment.

  “I don’t belong here,” she tried again, but he cut her off.

  “You do and we both know it. You fit into this house—into our lives—perfectly.”

  She sucked in a breath as fresh pain jabbed her. So he sensed it, too, how right they could have been together, if things had been different.

  Tears burned and she blinked quickly to force them back.

  “I don’t. I can’t. If you knew the truth about me, you would agree.”

  “Tell me. You’ve been hiding something since the moment you showed up. What the hell is going on? Don’t you even have the guts to tell me as you’re walking out the door?”

  She pressed a hand to her stomach. She had to tell him. Now. She gazed at Destry, watching the interaction with confused misery on her sweet features, and Sarah’s heart broke all over again.

  Ridge intercepted her look and shifted his attention to his daughter.

  “Destry, will you go to your room, please?”

  “But, Dad!”

  “Please, Des.”

  Though she gave her father a mutinous look, she moved through the kitchen with the three-legged little dog hopping along behind her. Just before she left the room, she turned one more time to glare at Sarah.

  “I thought we were friends. Friends don’t just turn their backs on each other,” she said, with all the dramatic flair of a preteen.

  “I’m so sorry, Destry. I really am.”

  The snake-eyed look she received in return told her plainly the girl didn’t believe her. She could hear Destry racing up the stairs and slamming her door hard behind her. Each sound only added to her guilt and pain.

  “You want to tell me now what the hell is going on?” Ridge said. “You’ve been trying to run away since the moment you stepped onto the River Bow. Is it because I told you last night I was starting to have feelings for you? Because I’m falling in love with you?”

  Joy burned through her, fierce and bright as a Christmas star. For a long moment, she wanted to just bask in it, then reality abruptly doused her elation. Those tears burned harder, and this time she couldn’t seem to force them all back.

  “You’re not in love with me.” Her voice sounded ragged, small. “You can’t be.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you don’t get to decide whether I love you or not.”

  A tiny sound escaped—a gasp or a sob, she wasn’t sure—and then another one. She had to leave soon, while she could still keep her tears contained.

  “I didn’t want this,” she said. “I never should have come here. I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re sorry I love you?” he asked harshly. “Or you’re sorry you love me back? Whatever you think of me, I’m not stupid, Sarah. I know you have feelings for me, too.”

  It would be far easier to tell him he was mistaken, that she didn’t care for him at all. That she was leaving to avoid any further awkwardness between them.

  She had lied all this time, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to make that blatant a falsehood believable to either one of them.

  “Admit it,” he pressed. “You care about me, too.”

  She couldn’t answer, could only gaze at him with her heart aching and misery pulsing through her with a heartbeat of its own.

  Some of her mute distress must have showed on her features. His anger seemed to ease, and he took a step toward her, his eyes dark with concern.

  “Sarah, what’s going on? Just tell me. It can’t be that bad. I love you. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out, I swear.”

  “Not this,” she whispered.

  “Tell me.”

  This was the hardest thing she had ever done. She pressed her broken arm to her stomach, the cold, hard weight of the cast digging into her flesh through her clothes.

  She couldn’t delay anymore. She owed him an explanation, one she should have given the moment she rang the front doorbell of the River Bow.

  She drew in a ragged breath through a throat that sudden burned with emotions and straightened her shoulders.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you,” she said. “I think my brother killed your parents.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ridge heard her, but somehow the words didn’t seem real.

  I think my brother killed your parents.

  He couldn’t think what to say for several long seconds, and she continued to gaze at him with sheer misery in her eyes.

  “What are you talking about?”

  His mouth felt numb suddenly and he could barely get the words out.

  She pressed her lips together. “Sarah Whitmore hasn’t alwa
ys been my name. It was my mother’s maiden name. Until the courts finally allowed us to legally change it when I was twelve, my name was Sarah Malikov. That’s the rough translation, anyway. It’s spelled completely differently, but Sarah is the English pronunciation.”

  “You’re...Russian?”

  “No. I’m American. I was born here and have lived here all my life. My mother was, as well. My father, on the other hand, was from Moscow.”

  She drew in a shaky breath and seemed to press her cast farther into her stomach. “He was a Pakhan in a Russian Bratva. Basically the equivalent of a mob boss.”

  A mob boss. Her father? She taught first grade! How could this even be possible?

  I think my brother killed your parents.

  “And your...brother?” he managed.

  “Followed right along in his footsteps. I told you we were all separated after the divorce. My father raised Josef—Joe—to be exactly like him.”

  “You said he was killed twelve years ago,” he said. The forgotten half memory surged to the surface.

  “He was. Twelve years ago this month, on Christmas Day.”

  That was only a few days after his parents died, he realized. Was there really a connection?

  “He was killed in a hotel room in Boise during an argument with an associate after a criminal operation went wrong. I believe that job was the theft of your parents’ art collection.”

  He tried to put the pieces together, but they were slippery as muddy calves and just as uncooperative.

  “Why would you possibly think so? Because you found a painting in your father’s things?”

  She met his gaze, her blue eyes murky and dark. “Because I found dozens of paintings. A storage unit full of them. Your mother’s work, as well as other Western artists.”

  She spoke in a low, emotionless voice, and he heard her words as if from a great distance, as if she were a stranger.

  Apparently she was.

  Dozens of paintings. It must be his parents’ entire collection, or most of it, anyway. She couldn’t possibly be making something like that up—but could the paintings actually have been squirreled away in a storage unit somewhere, all this time? It made sense and certainly explained why nothing much had ever turned up on the black market.

  Ridge couldn’t seem to think straight. His thoughts and emotions seemed to be racketing around like cats after a recalcitrant ball of string—shock, disbelief, anger. Surely it couldn’t be true. Surely it was unimaginable that he and his brothers had been looking all these years for the murderers and suddenly a relative of a viable suspect just happened to show up on his doorstep.

  Not just happened to show up. This had been planned from the beginning. She had come here on purpose. Suddenly Ridge could focus on only one thing that seemed to push away everything else—his deep, aching sense of betrayal.

  “You’ve known. This whole time you were in my house, sleeping in my sister’s room, laughing with my daughter—kissing me, damn it, letting me come to care about you—you kept this a secret.”

  Her mouth seemed to wobble, but she firmed it into a tight line. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I should have told you that first day. I meant to, but then I fell down your stairs and everything became so tangled.”

  “You still could have told me at any point in the past several days. Instead, you kept your mouth shut. This is one hell of a secret, Sarah. I can’t believe this. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  She had known the answers to all the questions he and his siblings had been asking for a dozen years. He still couldn’t seem to wrap his head around it. What if she was wrong? But why else would her father have all the paintings?

  What a freaking mess.

  “Why did you come here?” he demanded. “Why not just turn the paintings over to the authorities in the first place and let them handle it?”

  * * *

  Sarah didn’t know how to answer. She couldn’t tell him something had been driving her to come here, to meet the family of the woman who had painted such beautiful work. The moment she had seen those paintings, they had haunted her and then when she found out the deadly provenance, she could only think about giving them all back.

  It made no sense, even to her, but it had seemed like the only thing she could do.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, truthfully enough. “I’ve also asked myself how the artwork came to be in my father’s possession in the first place and why he never sold it off, all these years later. Perhaps he sold a piece here or there. I won’t know until your family insurance investigators go through the pieces and see if anything is missing. But whatever else anyone can say about Vasily Malikov, he was generally an astute, if absolutely amoral, businessman. He was always looking at the bottom line—so why would he hang on to everything and not sell it along the way?”

  “You knew him. I didn’t. You tell me.”

  She hadn’t known him. Her father and his lifestyle had been completely foreign to her. She had hated visits with him. She used to suffer stomach cramps for weeks before every visit, but her mother would never have defied a court order.

  “My father loved two things—my brother and vengeance.”

  “Vengeance.”

  He said the word with a grim emphasis that made her shiver.

  “Yes. He lived and died by it. If someone crossed him, they paid the price. I’m positive the man who killed Joe wouldn’t have made it far before my father found him and took back the stolen artwork he believed was his by rights, in his twisted way. As to why he kept it all these years, I can’t say. Perhaps it was some kind of shrine to my brother or a reminder to my father of all that he had lost. Or maybe he was simply waiting until prices went up. I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  “None of that explains why you didn’t tell me the moment I answered the door that first day. You lied to me from the beginning.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Like father, like daughter.”

  Her face felt cold as blood rushed away at his deliberate cruelty. She had earned his disdain, every drop of it. That didn’t make it hurt less.

  “I have been trying to escape that legacy my entire life, but perhaps you’re right. You understand now why I tried to warn you not to open your home to me. I knew you wouldn’t want me here if you had known my family was more than likely involved somehow in your parents’ murders.”

  “You’re right about that,” he snapped.

  She forced herself to breathe around the pain. Her eyes watered, and the family room Christmas-tree lights through the kitchen doorway seemed to glimmer and merge.

  Her beautiful Christmas—the best one ever, just as Destry said—lay in ruins like so much torn and tattered wrapping paper.

  The season of hope and forgiveness was lovely in the abstract. In reality, it could be just as flimsy and insubstantial as that paper.

  “You see now why I was leaving. I knew you would h-hate me when you found out.” Despite all her best efforts, her voice wobbled and she had to fight down a sob again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. After I broke my arm, everything was so tangled, and by the time I could sort it all out, I already cared about you and Destry so much. I’m sorry to hurt you. So sorry, Ridge. I...thank you for everything. Please tell Destry—all your family—that I’m sorry. My attorney will be in touch.”

  “Why?”

  She gripped her suitcase so hard her fingers felt as if they were fused into the handle. “So I can return the rest of the paintings to you, of course. Why else?”

  She didn’t think she had room for any more pain, but the shock in his eyes proved her wrong. “Really, Ridge? You honestly think so poorly of me that you think I would keep stolen property?”

  He didn’t answer, and another arrow found its way home.
>
  “I suppose I can’t blame you,” she managed through the last of her strength. “As you said, I’m my father’s daughter. I hope you can someday see I’m my own person before I am Vasily Malikov’s child.”

  She turned and headed for the door and her rental car. She almost made it outside before he yanked her suitcase away. For one wild, breathless moment she thought he was going to carry it back inside for her.

  I love you. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out, I swear.

  No. Instead, he stiffly walked to her rental car, opened the trunk and shoved the suitcase in.

  He held the driver’s door open for her. Furious as he was at her, the hard, implacable, completely wonderful man held the door open and even helped her inside the car. Then he backed away and stood outside on an ice-cold Christmas night without his coat, arms at his side as he watched her back the rental car out, turn it around and head down the road.

  Only after she was certain he couldn’t see her did the tears finally burst through.

  * * *

  “You want to tell us what’s going on?”

  Ridge looked up from his work to find his annoying-as-hell brothers watching him with matching frowns.

  “I’m cleaning out the stalls,” he growled. “Why don’t you grab a couple of shovels and help instead of standing there with your thumbs up your asses?”

  Taft raised an eyebrow at Trace before turning back to him.

  “You seem to be doing a fine job. Judging by that little remark, I’d say shoveling, er, Shinola is just what you need to be doing right now.”

  After a sleepless night, he had been up as early as he could, looking for any kind of physical labor to hold back the pain.

  “You two don’t have anything better to do than come down here and make stupid comments?”

  “Not really,” Trace said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Taft muttered. “The kids stayed at their grandma Pendleton’s last night. I could be sleeping in with my lovely wife right now. Or not sleeping in.”

  “So why are you here?” he demanded.

  Again, they exchanged looks that made him want to punch one or both of them. In his current mood, he was pretty sure he could take them both without working up much of a sweat.