A Stone Creek Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

cheer, and Olivia flushed with embarrassment, but Tanner seemed untroubled.

      He wore too-new, too-expensive boots, probably custommade, to match his too-new hat, along with jeans, a black silk shirt and a denim jacket. He seemed as at home getting up in front of all those people as Brad did—his grin dazzled, and his eyes were bright with enjoyment.

      Drugstore cowboy, Olivia thought, but she couldn’t work up any rancor. Tanner Quinn might be laying on the Western bit a little thick, but he did look good. Way, way too good for Olivia’s comfort.

      Brad introduced them both: Tanner as the builder, and Olivia—“You all know my kid sister, the horse doctor”—as the driving force behind the project. Without her, he said, none of this would be happening.

      Never having thought of herself as a driving force behind anything in particular, Olivia grew even more flustered as Brad went on about how she’d be heading up the shelter when it opened around that time next year.

      More applause followed, the good-natured, hometown kind, indulgent and laced with chuckles.

      Let this be over, Olivia thought.

      “Sing!” someone yelled. The whole audience soon took up the chant.

      “Here’s where we make a run for it,” Tanner whispered to Olivia, and the two of them left the stage. Tanner vanished, and Olivia went back to stand with her sisters and Meg.

      Brad grinned, shaking his head a little as one of his buddies handed up a guitar. “One,” he said firmly. After strumming a few riffs and turning the tuning keys this way and that, he eased into “Meg’s Song,” a ballad he’d written for his wife.

      Holding Mac and looking up at Brad with an expression of rapt delight, Meg seemed to glow from the inside. A sweet, strange alchemy made it seem as though only Brad, Meg and Mac were really there during those magical minutes, on that blustery day, with the snow crusting hard around everybody’s feet. The rest of them might have been hovering in an adjacent dimension, like actors waiting to go on.

      When the song ended, the audience clamored for more, but Brad didn’t give in. Photographers and reporters shoved in close as he handed off the guitar again, descended from the stage and picked up a brand-new shovel with a blue ribbon on the handle. The ribbon, Olivia knew, was Ashley’s handiwork; she was an expert with bows, where Olivia always got them tangled up, fiddling with them until they were grubby.

      “Are you making a comeback?” one reporter demanded.

      “When will you make another movie?” someone else wanted to know.

      Still another person shoved a microphone into Brad’s face; he pushed it away with a practiced motion of one arm. “We’re here to break ground for an animal shelter,” he said, and only the set of his jaw gave away the annoyance he felt. He beckoned to Olivia, then to Tanner, after glancing around to locate him.

      Then, with consummate showmanship, Brad drove the shovel hard into the partially frozen ground. Tossed the dirt dangerously close to one reporter’s shoes.

      Olivia thought of the finished structure, and what it would mean to so many stray and unwanted dogs, cats and other critters, and her heart soared. That was the moment the project truly became real to her.

       It was really going to happen.

      There were more pictures taken after that, and Brad gave several very brief interviews, carefully steering each one away from himself and stressing the plight of animals. When one reporter asked if it wouldn’t be better to build shelters for homeless people, rather than dogs and cats, Brad responded that compassion ought to begin at the simplest level, with the helpless, voiceless ones, and grow from there.

      Olivia would have hugged her big brother in that moment if she’d been able to get close enough.

      “Hot cider and cookies at my place,” Ashley told her and Melissa. She was already heading for her funny-looking hybrid car, gleaming bright yellow in the wintry sunshine. “We need to plan what we’re taking to Brad and Meg’s for Thanksgiving dinner.”

      “I have to get back to work,” Melissa said crisply. “Cook something and I’ll pay you back.” With that, she made for her spiffy red sports car without so much as a backward glance.

      Olivia had rounds to make herself, though none of them were emergencies, and she had some appointments at the clinic scheduled for that afternoon, but when she saw the expression of disappointment on Ashley’s face, she stayed behind. “I’ll change clothes at your house,” she said, and got into the Suburban to follow her sister back through town. Ginger had elected to stay home that day, claiming her arthritis was bothering her, and it felt odd to be alone in the rig.

      Ashley’s home was a large white Victorian house on the opposite side of Stone Creek, near the little stream with the same name. There was a white picket fence and plenty of gingerbread woodwork on the façade, and an ornate but tasteful sign stood in the snowy yard, bearing the words “Mountain View Bed-and-Breakfast” in elegant golden script. “Ashley O’Ballivan, Proprietor.”

      In summer, the yard burgeoned with colorful flowers.

      But winter had officially come to the high country, and the blooming lilacs, peonies and English roses were just a memory. The day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas lights would go up outside, as though by the waving of an unseen wand, and a huge wreath would grace the leaded-glass door, making the house look like a giant greeting card.

      Olivia felt a little sad, looking at that grand house. It was the off-season, and guests would be few and far between. Ashley would rattle around in there alone like a bean in the bottom of a bucket.

      She needed a husband and children.

      Or at least a cat.

      “Brad was spectacular, wasn’t he?” Ashley asked, bustling around her big, fragrant kitchen to heat up the spiced cider and set out a plate of exquisitely decorated cookies.

      Olivia, just coming out of the powder room, where she’d changed into her regulation jeans, flannel shirt and boots, helped herself to a paper bag from the decoupaged wooden paper-bag dispenser beside the back door and stuffed the pantsuit into it. “Brad was—Brad,” she said. “He loves being in the limelight.”

      Ashley went still and frowned, oddly defensive. “His heart’s in the right place,” she replied.

      Olivia went to Ashley and touched her arm. She’d removed the patchwork jacket, hanging it neatly on a gleaming brass peg by the front door as they came in, and her loose-fitting beige cashmere turtleneck made Olivia feel like a thrift-store refugee by comparison.

      “I wasn’t criticizing Brad, Ash,” she said quietly. “It’s beyond generous of him to build the shelter. We need one, and we’re lucky he’s willing to help out.”

      Ashley relaxed a little and offered a tentative smile. Looked around at her kitchen, which would have made a great set for some show on the Food Channel. “He bought this house for me, you know,” she said as the cider began to simmer in its shiny pot on the stove.

      Olivia nodded. “And it looks fabulous,” she replied. “Like always.”

      “You are planning to show up for Thanksgiving dinner out at the ranch, aren’t you?”

      “Why wouldn’t I?” Olivia asked, even as her stomach knotted. Who had invented holidays, anyway? Everything came to a screeching stop whenever there was a red-letter day on the calendar—everything except the need and sorrow that seemed to fill the world.

      “I know you don’t like family holidays,” Ashley said, pouring steaming cider into a copper serving pot and then into translucent china teacups waiting in the center of the round antique table. Olivia would have dumped it straight from the kettle, and probably spilled it all over the table and floor in the process.

      She just wasn’t domestic. All those genes had gone to Ashley.

      Her