Linda Lael - Holiday In Stone Creek

When the pony came to the gate, clearly ready to return to the barn, Tanner led her back to her stall and got her settled in. Olivia and Ginger followed, waiting nearby.

“So what happened with Sophie?” Olivia asked when Tanner came out of the stall.

“I’ll explain it over coffee and pie,” he said, holding his figurative breath for her answer. If Olivia decided to go home, or make rounds or something, he was going to be seriously disappointed.

“This place used to be wonderful,” Olivia said, minutes later, when they were in his kitchen, with the coffee brewing and the pie sitting on the table between them.

Tanner wished he’d taken down the old calendar, spackled the holes in the wall from the tacks that had held up its predecessors. Replaced the flooring and all the appliances, and maybe the cupboards, too. The house still looked abandoned, he realized, even with him living in it.

What did that mean?

“I’ll fix it up,” he said. “Sell it before I move on.” It was what he always did. Buy a house, keep a careful emotional distance from it, refurbish it and put it on the market, always at a profit.

Something flickered in Olivia’s eyes. Seeing that he’d seen, she looked away, though not quickly enough.

“Did you know the previous owner well?” he asked, to get her talking again. The sound of her voice soothed him, and right then he needed soothing.

“Of course,” she said, turning the little tub of whipped cream, stolen along with the pie and the leftovers for Ginger, in an idle circle on the tabletop. “Clarence was one of Big John’s best friends. He was widowed sometime in the mid-nineties—Clarence, I mean—and after that he just lost interest in Starcross.” She paused, sighed, a small frown creasing the skin between her eyebrows. “He got rid of the livestock, cow by cow, horse by horse. He stopped doing just about everything.” Another break came then. “It’s the name, I think.”

“The name?”

“Of the ranch,” Olivia clarified. “Starcross. It’s—sad.”

Tanner found himself grinning a little. “What would you call it, Doc?” he asked. The coffee was finished, and he got up to find some cups and pour a dose for both of them.

She considered his question as if there were really a name change in the offing. “Something, well, happier,” she said as he set the coffee down in front of her, realized they’d need plates and forks for the pie and went back to the cupboards to rustle some up. “More positive and cheerful, I guess, like The Lucky Horseshoe, or The Diamond Spur. Something like that.”

Tanner had no intention of giving the ranch a new name—why go to all the trouble when he’d be leaving in a year at the longest?—but he enjoyed listening to Olivia, watching each new expression cross her face. The effect was fascinating.

And oh, that face.

The body under it was pretty spectacular, too.

Tanner shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Don’t you think those names are a little pretentious?” he asked, cutting into the pie.

“Corny, maybe,” Olivia admitted, smiling softly. “But not pretentious.”

He served her a piece of pie, then cut one for himself. Watched with amusement and a strange new tenderness as she spooned on the prepackaged whipped cream. She looked pink around the neck, perhaps a little discomforted because he was staring.

He averted his eyes, but a moment later he was looking again. He couldn’t seem to help it.

“You took the first chance you could get to bolt out of that Thanksgiving shindig at your brother’s place,” he said carefully. “Why is that, Doc?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Doc’?” She was nervous, then. Maybe she sensed that Tanner wanted to kiss her senseless and then take her upstairs to his bed.

“Because you’re a doctor?”

“I have a name.”

“A very beautiful name.”

She grinned, and some of the tension eased, which might or might not have been a good thing. “Get a shovel,” she said. “It’s getting deep in here.”

He laughed, pushed away his pie.

“I should go now,” she said, but she looked and sounded uncertain.

Hallelujah, Tanner thought. She was tempted, at least.

“Or you could stay,” he suggested casually.

She gnawed at her lower lip. “Is it just me?” she asked bluntly. “Or are there sexual vibes bouncing off the walls?”

“There are definitely vibes,” he confirmed.

“We haven’t even kissed.”

“That would be easy to remedy.”

“And we’ve only known each other a few days.”

“We’re both adults, Olivia.”

“I can’t just—just go to bed with you, just because I—”

“Just because you want to?”

Challenge flared in her eyes, and she straightened her shoulders. “Who says I want to?”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said, after a very long time. Then, quickly, “But that doesn’t mean I will.”

“Of course it doesn’t.”

“People ought to say no to themselves once in a while,” she went on, apparently grasping at moral straws. “This society is way too into instant gratification.”

“I promise you,” Tanner said drily, “it won’t be instant.”

Color flooded her face, and he could see her pulse beating hard at the base of her throat.

“When was the last time you made love?” he asked when she didn’t say anything. Nor, to his satisfaction, did she jump to her feet and bolt for the door.

Tanner’s hopes were rising, and so was something else.

“That’s a pretty personal question,” she said, sounding miffed. She even went so far as to glance over at the dog, sleeping the sleep of the innocent on the rug in front of the stove.

“I’ll tell if you will.”

“It’s been a while,” she admitted loftily. “And maybe I don’t want to know who you’ve had sex with and how recently. Did that ever occur to you?”

“A while as in six months to a year, or never?”

“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”

“Good,” he said.

“I’m leaving,” she said. But she didn’t get up from her chair. She didn’t call the dog, or even put down her fork, though she wasn’t taking in much pie.

“You’re free to do that.”

“Of course I am.”

“Or we could go upstairs, right now.”

She swallowed visibly, and her wonderful eyes widened.

Hot damn, she was actually considering it.

Letting herself go. Doing something totally irresponsible, just for the hell of it. Tanner went hard, and he was glad she couldn’t see through the tabletop.

“No strings attached?” she asked.

“No strings,” Tanner promised, though he felt a little catch inside, saying the words. He wondered at his reaction, but not for long.

He was a man, after all, sitting across a table from one of the loveliest, most confusing women he’d ever met.

“I suppose we’re just going to obsess until we do it,” Olivia said. Damn, but she was full of surprises. He’d expected her to be talking herself out of going to bed with him, not into it.

“Probably,” Tanner said, very seriously.

“Get it out of the way.”

“Out of our systems,” Tanner agreed, wanting to keep the ball rolling. Watching for the right time to make his move and all the time asking himself what the hell he was doing.

He stood up.

She stood up. And probably noticed his erection.

Would she run for it after all?

Tanner waited.

She waited.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked finally. “We could decide after that.”

“Good idea,” Olivia said, but her pulse was still fluttering visibly, at her temple now as well as her throat, and her breathing was quick and shallow, raising and lowering her breasts under that soft blue sweater.