Mary Wilson - Holiday Homecoming

Cain smiled at the title they’d given themselves so many years ago. Joshua, Jack, Cain and Gordie. “Yeah, the Great Four,” he murmured, and sipped the amber liquid. Brandy—good, smooth brandy—and it hit the spot. “But Joshua did it before with Sarah.” Cain shrugged. He’d only met his friend’s wife once, yet he’d known right away why Joshua had fallen in love with her. But that didn’t mean he understood why Joshua’d had chosen marriage then, or why he was choosing it again.

Jack lifted his glass, drank a bit, then sat back, crossing one leg over the other, his stockinged foot resting on his knee. “I didn’t think he’d ever get married again, but you never know.” He settled his glass on his thigh. “I’m aware of your aversion to weddings. You’ll be here for it, won’t you?”

He’d return for it. He’d decided that he would. “Sure, I’ll be here.”

Jack appeared pleased. “Good, so you’ll be here through Christmas. Great, great,” he murmured.

“No.” Cain shook his head, cutting off that assumption as quickly as he could. “I’ll come back for it. I can’t stay.”

Jack sat forward abruptly. “The deal was—”

“I’d come here around the holidays, and I have. I’m here and I’ll spend a couple of days around town, then I have to get back. This is the busiest time of the year for the Dream Catcher and—”

“Oh, stop,” Jack said with a frown. “Spare me. I remember the drill. You’re busy. You’re irreplaceable. You’re indispensable. You made the damn place, and it can’t stay standing without you there to support it.”

“That about sums it up,” Cain said with a smile, trying to lighten the tension starting in his neck and shoulders.

Jack wasn’t smiling. “I’m not joking.”

Cain shrugged and finished off the last of his drink. “Then my question is, why aren’t you joking? What’s so important that you need me here?”

He expected Jack to get angry again, or to pass the question off. He never expected him to say, “I’m not sure.”

He twirled his empty glass. “Why not?”

Jack shrugged and exhaled on a heavy sigh. “At first I just thought we’d have a good time, relive our glory days.” He did smile then, but fleetingly. “But lately I’ve been thinking that I need to change my life.”

That was when Cain remembered the woman he’d faced in the elevator. The woman with fiery hair and amber eyes. “Who is she?”

Jack seemed genuinely perplexed by the question. “What?”

“The woman?”

“What woman?”

Cain sat forward and put his glass on the huge leather ottoman between the couches. He met Jack’s gaze. “Does red hair, gold eyes and a look that could stop you in your tracks mean anything to you?” Jack was either a good actor or honestly confused. “Tiny? Madder than a wet hen? What did you do—break up with her, tell her to get out and she took off?”

Jack sat forward, suddenly intent. “When did you see her?”

“When I was coming up, she was leaving.”

Jack glanced at his watch, then muttered, “Oh, damn, I thought I told her four.”

“A missed date?”

“A missed appointment,” Jack said, tossing back the last of his brandy. “She was here on business and I wasn’t.”

Cain didn’t ask what “business.” “Does she have anything to do with you wanting to change your life?”

“Not directly,” Jack said as he got up and carried both empty glasses to the bar. He came back, handed Cain a new drink, then sat to face him again. “To the future…to whatever it holds,” he said as he raised his own glass.

Cain answered his salute. “Yes, to whatever it holds.”

HOLLY MARIE WINSTON felt flushed, and even though it was freezing outside, she turned the heater in her small blue car to its lowest setting. She drove out through the entry gates of the Inn at Silver Creek and went north, heading away from the Inn’s almost oppressive luxury.

She’d all but decided not to meet with Jack Prescott, but had known she had to. She’d called up to Jack Prescott’s suite from the front desk, and a man named Malone had met her at the private elevator. He’d let her in, said that Mr. Prescott would be right with her, then left through the private side entrance.

She’d waited for half an hour, horribly uncomfortable in the suite that had been empty when she’d arrived. She’d stood amid Jack Prescott’s luxury, and gazed out the windows toward the ski runs and beyond to the mountain. Her mountain. That wouldn’t change. She’d known that she shouldn’t have come. She wasn’t even going to stay to tell Prescott the mountain wasn’t for sale. She’d left and that was when she’d come face-to-face with Cain Stone.

Her heart was still beating faster than it should from the brief encounter with the man, from the moment her eyes had met his. Cain Stone. Light snow started to fall, and she flipped on her windshield wipers, then her headlights to cut into the gray failing light of late afternoon.

She’d felt relieved that Jack hadn’t kept their appointment, and she’d felt a sense of freedom, resolving to call him later and tell him her land wasn’t for sale. The euphoria had lasted until the elevator door had opened and Cain Stone had stood in front of her.

She’d never seen him in person, only in pictures, but she hadn’t been prepared for the height of the man—a few inches over six feet—or the width of the shoulders covered by an obviously expensive leather jacket. Long legs were encased in dark slacks, and he’d had a presence that had almost stopped her breathing when she’d first met his blue eyes.

Burning anger had surged through her. And it had grown when she saw him studying her, almost smiling, as if he were going to exchange pleasantries with her. The anger had overwhelmed her; all she’d thought about was getting out of there as quickly as she could, to get to anyplace she could breathe. She grimaced when she thought about how she’d almost run from him and about her last look back at him.

She flexed her hands on the steering wheel when she realized she was holding it in a death grip. She slowed as she passed the last of the property that Jack Prescott owned and kept going north. After a few minutes, she took a left turn onto a narrow road that climbed high up the mountain.

Cain Stone had obviously been going to see Jack Prescott, and that made sense. They’d been friends for years. Or maybe they were two big wheelers and dealers doing business. That was the only reason she’d been there. Business.

She slowed even more as the climb increased and stared straight ahead, thankful that the road had been cleared enough for her to use it. Then she saw her turnoff, went left again, onto a narrow road that had been plowed only on one side, so that just a single car at a time could use it. The snow was pilled high on the right, where the mountain soared into the sky. There was little to no bank of cleared snow on her left, because the land dropped away, out of sight.

She went as far as the snowplow had cleared, then stopped, shut off the motor and got out. The air was bitingly cold up here, and a wind had come up, sweeping in a strange moaning sound across the deep snow, through the blanketed pines and into the gorge. She pulled her hat lower and pushed her hands into her pockets. She hadn’t been up here since she’d gotten back in town. She hadn’t thought about the place until Jack had contacted her. Now she wanted to see it again.

She walked into the untouched snow that covered the roadway, thankful she had on her calf-high boots. As the ridges swept back farther from the road she spotted what she was looking for. The snow all but obscured the driveway to the cabin, but a huge single pine at the road marked it for her. The same tree, feet taller now, but still there under the heavy weight of snow.