A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise Read online

  “Apparently Gabi received a rather frantic call from Destry this morning that Sarah left and now you’ve gone mental.”

  He kept shoveling, barely looking up at them. Maybe if he worked hard enough, this ache in his chest would ease. “Did she?”

  “Is it true you took down all the Christmas decorations in the middle of the night?” Trace asked.

  He let out a huffing sort of sigh. Okay, that had been a little mental, a crazy impulse he couldn’t really explain. One minute, he’d been sitting by the fire and looking at the Christmas tree, the next, he’d been pulling off ornaments.

  “Not everything. Just the big tree in the great room and the garlands. There’s still plenty of Christmas crap all over the house. It had to come down sometime, didn’t it?”

  He shoveled harder, avoiding their gazes and the concern he didn’t want to see.

  “Why did Sarah leave?” Trace asked, in the same kind of overly solicitous voice a police chief would probably have to use when dealing with people who needed a seventy-two hour hold or something. “Did you two have a fight?”

  His whole body ached as if both brothers had taken turns pummeling him. He didn’t know how the hell he would ever get past it. “You could say that,” he muttered.

  “It must have been a pretty good one if you were taking down your Christmas tree at two in the morning on December 26,” Trace observed.

  He wasn’t obliged to explain any of his actions to his younger brothers, so he opted not to answer.

  “What did you do to her?” Taft pressed.

  He stopped shoveling and gave a steely glare that encompassed both of them. “What makes you think I did anything?”

  “Just a wild guess,” Taft said. “I thought she seemed really sweet. Laura loved her and kept saying how perfect she was for you.”

  “I had the same conversation with Becca,” Trace offered.

  He gritted his teeth as if it took all his force of will and reminded himself it would be juvenile to “accidentally” let a little shit fly on both of his brothers.

  “You both misunderstood,” he said calmly. “She was a guest in my home. That’s all.”

  A guest there under false pretenses, he wanted to add.

  “That doesn’t quite explain why you took down your Christmas tree in the middle of the night and have been shoveling out the stalls since before sunrise,” Taft drawled.

  He wanted to tell them it was none of their damn business, but that would have been a lie. They needed to know about Sarah’s deception and her family history.

  He had to tell them, but didn’t know how. He was ridiculously aware that after everything, part of the reason for his hesitation was a reluctance for them to think poorly of her.

  He was suddenly exhausted, so tired he couldn’t think straight. He leaned against the half wall of the stall, the handle of the shovel loose in his hand.

  “She’s gone.”

  “That’s what Destry said,” Trace said. “She told Gabi that Sarah came home right after our party and packed up her things.”

  “I don’t get it,” Taft said, with more compassion than he would have given his former hell-raising brother credit for. “She seemed to be enjoying herself well enough. We all thought she was great. Was it something we all said?”

  Ridge took off his leather glove and rubbed at his face.

  “No. I guess her conscience just caught up with her, and she was tired of the lies.”

  “What did she lie about?” Trace asked.

  Damn, he didn’t want to do this. He needed air suddenly. Air and sunlight and the pure crystalline beauty of a cold December morning on his ranch.

  He grabbed his Stetson from the hook where he’d hung it, shoved it on and walked outside. After a moment the twins followed.

  “What’s going on?” Taft demanded.

  “You know that painting she brought, the one Mom did of Caidy?”

  “Yes,” Trace said, his tone wary.

  “Apparently, she’s got plenty more where that came from. A whole storage unit full of stolen artwork from the famous Bowman Western art collection.”

  His brothers both stared at him, and he was aware of a horse whinnying somewhere, of the cold puffs of air they were all breathing out, of the hard knot that had lodged in his chest sometime in the past twelve hours and didn’t show any sign of easing.

  Taft was the first to break the silence. “Sorry. She has what?”

  “She has more artwork from the collection. Dozens of items. She doesn’t know if it’s complete or not but it’s in a storage unit somewhere belonging to her father, where it’s apparently been since the murders.”

  “Her father—” Trace began.

  “Was a Russian mafia boss whose only son was apparently killed days after the murders just a few hours from here. Sarah doesn’t think it’s a coincidence. For the record, neither do I.”

  His brothers stared.

  “You’re saying Sarah’s father and brother were involved in the murders?” Trace finally asked. His eyes had that flinty look Ridge recognized. Sometimes he forgot what a damn good cop his brother was.

  “The father, I don’t know. The brother, most definitely. He was murdered in Boise a few days after the murders. Sarah’s theory is, her brother fought with a partner who killed him, then her father took vengeance for his son’s murder and ended up with the artwork. Why he kept it all is a mystery to her. She was estranged from the man and stumbled onto the storage unit while taking care of his affairs after his death.”

  He couldn’t look at either of his brothers, wary at what their reaction must be. Taft had welcomed Sarah into his home. She had played with all their children, had held Trace’s baby, had chatted with their wives—all while keeping this huge secret. He still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it all.

  “She told you all this last night before she left?” Trace asked. Some of the hardness of his features seemed to have eased.

  “Yeah. Not until last night. She was here for days without saying a word. She should have told me when she first showed up at the ranch. She stayed here under false pretenses.”

  “The way I remember it, she stayed here because you insisted,” Taft pointed out. Ridge actually formed a fist and barely refrained from letting it swing—he couldn’t deny the truth of what his brother said.

  “I guess that makes me the idiot, doesn’t it?”

  “Is that why you’re mad at her?” Trace asked after a pause. “Because she didn’t tell you her family might have been involved in Mom and Dad’s deaths?”

  Mad was a mild word for this chaos of emotions broiling under his skin. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Just wondering. How old is Sarah?” Trace asked. “I’m guessing around Caidy’s age, right?”

  “Give or take a year or so.”

  “So she would have been, what, sixteen, seventeen?”

  He narrowed his gaze. “Yeah. And your point?”

  “Do you think she had anything to do with the murders?”

  He stared. “No. Of course not! She was estranged from her father most of her life. She barely knew the man, and she certainly wasn’t some big art thief.”

  Trace shrugged. “In that case, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me you’re not just an idiot. You’re a stupid idiot.”

  He ground his teeth and drew that fist again. “You want to put some muscle behind that, baby brother?”

  “Don’t be an even bigger ass,” Trace said. “Tough as you are, you can’t take on both of us.”

  “Don’t drag me into this,” Taft protested. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  What was he doing? He wasn’t going to fight with his brothers, as angry as he was at the world in general. Ridge raked a hand through his hair
and realized he was suddenly freaking cold.

  Why the hell were they standing outside? Oh, right. He had walked out first. He felt as if he had been in a daze since the moment he had walked into the house the night before and found Sarah holding her suitcase.

  “She lied to me. That’s what bothers me. Or at least she neglected to mention something pretty damn important. She stayed in my house, she hung out with my daughter, she spent Christmas with all of us, for crying out loud.”

  She made me love her.

  Trace raised an eyebrow. “So?”

  “So the whole time, she knew her family had been involved in destroying ours.”

  “She brought us Mom’s painting, though,” Taft pointed out. “She didn’t have to do that. She could have just stayed quiet about the whole thing, and nobody would have known. That says something about her, doesn’t it?”

  He sighed. “She said she’s going to have her attorney work with the authorities to catalog what’s there and return the whole collection to us.”

  His announcement was met with a long, echoing silence, and both brothers looked at him with the same astounded expression.

  “Man, I hate to say this, but Trace is right,” Taft finally said. “You are one stupid idiot. And an ass, to boot. So she didn’t tell you the truth. Sounds to me like she’s intending to do the right thing now. Or do you think she’s lying about giving back the collection?”

  He shook his head. “No! Of course not. If she says she’ll do it, she will. I trust her word.”

  The brothers looked at each other. Taft was the first to snicker, but Trace wasn’t far behind.

  “Wait. Let me get this straight,” Trace said. “You’re saying you trust the word of a woman who has spent the past several days lying to you?”

  Ridge closed his eyes, feeling the pale sunlight on his face as he pondered the ridiculousness of his own words. She had lied to him about her father, her brother. She hadn’t told him about the paintings.

  He had no reason to trust that she was telling the truth now, but somehow he couldn’t make himself believe otherwise.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I believe she fully plans to give us back the rest of the paintings. She had no reason to lie about that part, did she?”

  “So you don’t think Sarah had anything to do with the murders and you believe she’s going to give us back the paintings she found. You trust her word. Explain to me again the part that has you pissed off enough to take down the decorations on an eighteen-foot Christmas tree by yourself last night?”

  As he listened to Trace’s completely reasonable question, that hard knot in his chest seemed to jiggle a little. It didn’t quite break free, but it was close.

  “Because I’m an ass,” he murmured.

  “No,” Taft said cheerfully. “You’re just in love. Welcome to the club, dude. It makes you do all kinds of crazy things.”

  “Like jump in a river to save your ex-fiancee’s children.” Trace jabbed at his twin.

  “Or give up a decade-long quest for justice and vengeance in order to protect a young girl’s future,” Taft countered.

  “Looks like I made the right choice on that one,” Trace said. “Thanks to Sarah, we might find all those answers anyway.”

  Trace was right. Ridge rubbed a hand over his eyes, exhausted all over again. She had brought them more than a painting their mother had created—even more than the dozens of stolen art pieces that might eventually find their way back to the River Bow.

  She had brought them the chance to find answers to the questions that had haunted them all.

  She didn’t have to come in person to deliver the painting. She could have made a phone call. Oh, by the way, I think I have something that might be yours. Or she could have handled the whole thing through attorneys.

  Or she could have kept the artwork and sold it piece by piece on the black market and made a freaking fortune.

  She had done none of those things. Instead, she had taken a plane a thousand miles, had rented a car, then had driven out to the River Bow to speak with Margaret and Frank Bowman’s descendants in person. She had shown amazing courage and strength of character.

  He claimed he loved her but at the first bit of difficulty, he had shoved her away, said horrible things to her. He had carried her lousy suitcase out to the car, for heaven’s sake.

  He wanted a do-over for the entire past twelve hours.

  He opened his eyes to find both of his brothers looking at him with amused, indulgent expressions.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  Taft shrugged. “If it were me, I’d already be in my truck going after her.”

  “Same goes,” Trace said.

  He didn’t know where she had gone, other than Jackson to stay the night then she was catching a flight out today. He didn’t have the first idea how to find her and decided his best bet was to call in reinforcements.

  He headed for the house. “Trace, now you’ve got something to work with. Go do your cop thing. You should be able to track down the brother, Josef Malikov, son of Vasily Malikov, who was some kind of mob boss. See if you can find out details of what happened to him, then look for any known associates who might have disappeared around the same time. Sarah thinks the two fought, and her brother was killed in the process. She also believes her father probably had the man offed who killed his son. Let’s see what else we can discover.”

  “What can I do?” Taft asked.

  “Keep your fingers crossed that I can find her. And that she’ll find it in her heart to forgive me when I do.”

  * * *

  Sarah sat in the café of her hotel, moving her spoon aimlessly through the oatmeal she had ordered but couldn’t eat, lifting up her coffee cup then setting it back down again without a sip, leafing through a magazine without registering a single word on the pages.

  She was a mess. Plain and simple.

  Trying to sleep had been an abject failure. Apparently, eating wasn’t something she was up to handling today, either.

  The busy hotel bustled with people, families eating together or couples wearing what looked like expensive matching skiwear.

  Jackson Hole was packed at Christmastime. She should have expected people would flock here to ski for the holidays. Finding a room had been a challenge, and she had ended up with one that would normally have been way out of her budget.

  She could have just driven around in the rental car all night for all the sleep she ended up getting in that pricey hotel bed.

  Her flight didn’t leave for hours. How would she possibly fill that time? She didn’t feel like shopping on this busy day-after-Christmas return day. It made no sense to pay extra for late checkout at the hotel, only to stare at a TV showing programs she didn’t care about.

  Since she still had the rental car, perhaps she should just take a drive through the raw wintry splendor of the Tetons. She took a sip of her coffee—an actual sip this time—trying to summon the energy to do anything.

  All she really wanted to do was curl up in a ball and weep for days, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  She felt more bruised and battered than the day she fell down the stairs at the River Bow, as if every muscle and sinew had been stretched to the breaking point.

  She deserved the pain and more. A little honesty on her part would have prevented this whole thing. If she had told him that very first day why she had come to the River Bow, she never would have been in this situation. She wouldn’t have fallen in love with the man and wouldn’t now be consumed with the pain of losing him before she had ever really known the joy of being in love with a good man.

  A laughing couple came in with a girl about Destry’s age, dressed in cute brown snow pants and a pink parka that would have looked adorable on Des. She watched them interact for a moment
until the pain became too much.

  She had loved Destry as much as she loved the girl’s father. Her heart felt shattered, knowing she had left without saying a proper goodbye to her.

  She sat for a few moments more, until watching the laughing father, mother, girl became too tired for her then she signed the bill with a healthy tip and left the restaurant to return to her room.

  There was no sense staying here. She would drive around for a while, perhaps make a stop at the elk refuge on the edge of Grand Teton National Park then head for the airport.

  Packing the few things she had used from her suitcase overnight took her all of five minutes. When she finished, she took the elevator down to the lobby and handed her keys back to the polite desk clerks.

  Just as she turned away, she caught sight of a tall man in a cowboy hat charging through the door, and her heartbeat kicked up a notch.

  Settle down, she ordered herself. Tall cowboys in Jackson Hole weren’t exactly an endangered species. She reached for the handle of her suitcase and started for the door when that particular cowboy shifted in her direction and she froze as if he had tossed her out into the snow.

  Her heart began to pound and nerves twirled in her stomach. How had he found her? She hadn’t told him where she was staying, had she?

  More importantly, why was he here? Had he come to fight with her more, to inform her how wrong she was to have kept the truth from him as long as she had?

  Like father, like daughter.

  The words were seared into her psyche. She drew in a shaky breath. She couldn’t do this. Not here, in this bustling lobby. She wasn’t strong enough to face him, not after she had been sobbing all night and probably looked a mess.

  He hadn’t seen her yet. Instead, he was heading to the front desk she had just left, probably looking for her room number—unless this was all a horrible coincidence, which she sincerely doubted.

  She considered her options, none of them very appealing. The best of the lot was to avoid the situation entirely and sneak out a different way, without him spying her.