A Cold Creek Secret. RaeAnne Thayne

on when he made up the bed and a huge claw-foot tub in the bathroom.

      The main house had been mostly empty for the past two years except for his occasional visits between deployments. Since he left Cold Creek a dozen years ago for the military, he had rented the house out sporadically. Gwen Bianca stayed in the small cabin on the property rent-free in exchange for things like keeping the woodpile stocked and the roof from collapsing in.

      His last tenants had moved out six months ago and he hadn’t bothered to replace them since the rent mostly covered barebones maintenance and county property taxes on the land anyway and was hardly worth the trouble most of the time.

      Now that Gwen had announced she was moving away, he didn’t know what to do with Western Sky.

      “It’s not much but you should be warm and comfortable.”

      “I’ll be fine. Thank you again for your hospitality.”

      “I don’t know if this is a warning or an apology in advance, but I’ll be checking on you occasionally in the night.”

      “Do you think I’m going to run off with your plasma TV?”

      He fought another smile, wondering where they were all coming from. “You’re welcome to it, if you think you can make a clean getaway on foot in this storm. No. There’s a chance you had a head injury. I don’t think so but you were in and out of consciousness for a while there. I can’t take any chance of missing signs of swelling or unusual behavior.”

      She sat on the edge of the bed with a startled sort of work. “I appreciate your…diligence, but I’m sure I don’t have a brain injury. The air bag protected me.”

      “I guess you forgot to mention you were a neurologist.”

      She frowned. “I’m not.”

      “What are you, then?” he asked, curious as to how she would answer. Heiress?Aimless socialite? Lousy actress?

      After a long pause, she forced a smile. “I work for a charitable organization in Los Angeles.”

      Nice save, he thought. It could very well be true, since she had enough money to rescue half the world.

      “Well, unless your charitable organization specializes in self-diagnosing traumatic brain injuries, I’m going to have to err on the side of caution here and stick to the plan of checking on you through the night.”

      “Don’t tell me you’re the neurologist now.”

      “Nope. Just an Army Ranger who’s been hit over the head a few too many times in my career. I’ll check on you about every hour to make sure your mental status hasn’t changed.”

      “How would you even know if my mental status has changed or not? You just met me.”

      He laughed out loud at that, a rusty sound that surprised the heck out of him.

      “True enough. I guess when you stand on your head and start reciting the Declaration of Independence at four in the morning, I’ll be sure to ask if that’s normal behavior before I call the doctor.”

      She almost smiled in return but he sensed she was troubled about more than just her car accident.

      None of his concern, he reminded himself. Whatever she was doing in this isolated part of Idaho was her own business.

      “I put one of my T-shirts on the bed there for you to sleep in. I’ll bring your little purse pooch back after I let her out. Let me know if you need anything else or if you get hungry. The Western Sky isn’t a four-star resort but I can probably rustle up some tea and toast.”

      “Right now I only want to rest.”

      “Can’t blame you there,” he answered. “It’s been a strange evening all the way around. Come on, pup.”

      The little dog barked, her black eyes glowing with eagerness in her white fur, and followed him into the hallway.

      The wind still howled outside but he managed to find a spot of ground somewhat sheltered by the back patio awning for her to delicately take care of business.

      To his relief, the dog didn’t seem any more inclined to stay out in the howling storm than he did. She hurried back to where he stood on the steps and he scooped her up and carried her inside, where he dried off her paws with an old towel.

      He refused to admit to himself that he was trying to spare Mimi four cold, wet paws against her when the dog jumped up on her bed.

      When he softly knocked on the guest room door, she didn’t answer. After a moment, he took the liberty of pushing it open. She was already asleep, her eyes closed, and he set the dog beside her on the bed, thinking she would need the comfort of the familiar if she awoke in a strange place in the middle of the night.

      From the dim light in the hallway, he could just make out her high cheekbones and that lush, kissable mouth.

      She was even prettier in person, just about the loveliest thing he had ever seen in real life.

      She was beautiful and she made him forget the ghosts that haunted him, even if only for a little while. For a guy who only had a week before he had to report back to a war zone, both of those things seemed pretty darn seductive right about now.

      Not the most restful sleep she had ever experienced.

      At 6:00 a.m., after a night of being awakened several times by the keening wind outside and by her unwilling host insistent on checking her questionable mental status, she awoke to Simone licking her face.

      Mimi groaned as her return to consciousness brought with it assorted aches and pains. The sting of the cut on her forehead and the low throb of a headache at the base of her skull were the worst of them. Her shoulder muscles ached, but she had a feeling that was more from the stress of the past two days than from any obvious injury.

      She pushed away her assorted complaints to focus on the tiny bichon frise she adored. “Do you need to go outside, sweetie?” she asked.

      Instead of leaping from the bed and scampering to the door as she normally would have done, Simone merely yawned, stretched her four paws out, then closed her eyes again.

      “I guess not,” Mimi answered with a frown at that bit of unusual behavior. Simone usually jumped to go outside first thing after a full night of holding her bladder. Mimi could only hope she hadn’t decided to relieve herself somewhere in this strange house.

      She looked around the bedroom in the pale light of predawn but couldn’t see any obvious signs of a mishap in any corner. What she did find was her entire set of luggage piled up inside the door, all five pieces of it, including Simone’s carrier.

      The sight of them all stunned her and sent a funny little sparkle jumping through her. Somehow in the middle of the raging blizzard, Major Western had gone to the trouble of retrieving every one of them for her.

      In the night, more vague recollections had come together in her head and she vividly remembered he had been forced to wade through the ice-crusted creek to reach her after the accident. In order to retrieve her luggage from the SUV, he would have had to venture into that water yet again. She could hardly believe he had done that for her, yet the proof was right there before her eyes in the corner.

      No. There had to be some catch. He just seemed entirely too good to be real. The cynical part of her that had been burned by men a few dozen too many times couldn’t quite believe anyone would find her worth that much effort.

      She pressed a hand to her stomach, to the tiny secret growing there.

      “Are you okay in there, kiddo?” she murmured.

      She had bought a half-dozen pregnancy books the moment she left the doctor’s office but hadn’t dared read any of them on the plane, afraid to risk that someone would see through her disguise and tip off the tabloids about her reading choices. Instead, she’d had to be content with a pregnancy week-by-week app on her cell phone, and she had devoured every single word