A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise. RaeAnne Thayne

she mumbled, sounding more disoriented

      “Hi, Sarah.” Taft knelt down to her and immediately went to work assessing vitals. “Can you tell me what happened?”

      “I’m...not sure. I fell.”

      “Judging by the garbage at the top of the stairs, I think she fell just about the whole way,” Ridge offered. “She was unconscious for maybe two or three minutes and has kind of been in and out since. My unofficial diagnosis is the obvious broken arm and possible concussion.”

      “Thank you, Dr. Bowman,” Taft said, his voice dry.

      His brother quickly took control of the situation and began giving instructions to the other emergency personnel.

      Ridge was always a little taken by surprise whenever he had the chance to watch either of his younger brothers in action. He still tended to think of them as teenage punks getting speeding tickets and toilet papering the mayor’s trees. But after years as a wildlands firefighter, Taft had been the well-regarded fire chief in Pine Gulch for several years, and his twin, Trace, was the police chief. By all reports, both were shockingly good at their jobs.

      Ridge gained a little more respect for his brother as he watched his patient competence with Sarah: the way he teased and questioned her, the efficient air of command he portrayed to the other EMTs as they worked together to load her onto the stretcher with a minimum of pain.

      As they started to roll the stretcher toward the front door, Ridge followed, grabbing his coat and truck keys on the way.

      Taft shifted his attention away from his patient long enough to look at Ridge with surprise. “Where are you going?”

      He was annoyed his brother would even have to ask. “I can’t just send her off in an ambulance by herself. I’ll drive in and meet you at the clinic.”

      “Why?” Taft asked, clearly confused.

      “She doesn’t have any friends or family in the area. Plus she was injured on the River Bow, which makes her my responsibility.”

      Taft shook his head but didn’t argue. The stretcher was nearly to the door when Sarah held out a hand. “Wait. Stop.”

      She craned her neck and seemed to be looking for him, so Ridge moved closer.

      “You’ll be okay.” He did his best to soothe her. “Hang in there. My brother and the other EMTs will take good care of you, I promise, and Doc Dalton at the clinic is excellent. He’ll know just what to do for you.”

      She barely seemed to register his words, her brow furrowed. Taft had given her something for pain before they transferred her, and it looked as if she was trying to work through the effects of it to tell him something.

      “Can you... There’s a case on the...backseat of my car. Can you bring it inside? I shouldn’t have left it out in the cold...for this long. The keys to the car are...in my coat.”

      “Sure. No problem.”

      “You have to put it...somewhere safe.” She closed her eyes as soon as the words were out.

      Ridge raised an eyebrow at Taft, who shrugged. “It seems important to her,” his brother said. “Better do it.”

      “Okay. I’ll meet you at the clinic in a few minutes. I’ll bring her coat along. Maybe I can find a purse or something in the car with her medical insurance information.”

      She hadn’t been carrying anything like that when she came to the door, he remembered. Perhaps she found it easier to leave personal items in her vehicle.

      He found her coat and located a single key in the pocket, hooked to one of the flexible plastic key rings with a rental car company’s logo on it. He frowned. A rental car? That didn’t make any sense. He headed outside to her vehicle, which was a nondescript silver sedan that did indeed look very much like a rental car.

      He found a purse on the passenger seat, a flowered cloth bag. Though he was fiercely curious, he didn’t feel right about digging through it. He would let her find her insurance info on her own.

      In the backseat, he quickly found the case she was talking about. It was larger than he expected, a flat portfolio size, perhaps twenty-four inches by thirty or so.

      Again, he was curious and wanted to snoop but forced himself not to. As she had requested, he set it in a locked cupboard in his office, then locked the office for good measure before heading to the clinic in town to be with a strange woman with columbine-blue eyes and the prettiest hair he’d ever seen.

      As far as weird days went, this one probably just hit the top of the list.

      * * *

      Sarah hurt everywhere, but this was a muted sort of pain. She felt as if she were floating through a bowl of pudding. Nice, creamy, delicious chocolate pudding—except every once in a while something sharp and mean poked at her.

      “All things considered, you got off easy. The concussion appears to be a mild one, and the break is clean.” A man with a stethoscope smiled at her. No white coat, but white teeth. Handsome. He was really handsome. If she didn’t hurt so much, she would tell him so.

      “Easy?” she muttered, her mind catching on the word that didn’t make sense.

      The doctor smiled. “It could have been much worse, trust me. I’ve seen that staircase inside the River Bow. It has to be twenty feet, at least. It’s amazing you didn’t break more than your arm.”

      “Amazing,” she agreed, though she didn’t really know what he was talking about. What was the River Bow?

      “And it’s a good thing Ridge didn’t move you right after you fell. I was able to set the arm without surgery, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to do if you had been jostled around everywhere.”

      “Thank you,” she said through dry lips, because it seemed to be the thing to say. She just wanted to sleep for three or four years. Why wouldn’t he let her sleep?

      “Can I go home?” she asked. Her condo, with its four-poster bed, the light blue duvet, the matching curtains. She wanted to be there.

      “Where, exactly, is home?”

      She gave the address to her condo unit.

      “Is that in Idaho Falls?”

      “No!” she exclaimed. “San Diego, of course.”

      He blinked a little. “Wow. You traveled a long way to take a cleaning job.”

      She frowned. Cleaning job? What cleaning job?

      She wanted to rub away the fierce pain in her head even as she had a sudden image of a garbage bag with cups and napkins spilling out of it.

      She had been cleaning something. Why? Is that when she fell? Her memories seemed hazy and abstract. She remembered an airplane. An important suitcase. Hand-screen it, please. An inn.

      “I’m staying at the Cold Creek Inn,” she said suddenly. Oh, she should have told them pain medication made her woozy. She always took only half. How much had they given her?

      And how had she hurt her arm?

      “The Cold Creek Inn.” The nice doctor with the white teeth frowned at her.

      “Yes. My room has blue curtains. They have flowers on them. They’re pretty.”

      He blinked at her. “Good to know. Okay.”

      Oh, she was tired. Why wouldn’t he let her sleep?

      She closed her eyes but suddenly remembered something important. “Where’s my car? Have you got my car? I have to take it back to the airport by Monday at noon or they’ll charge me a lot.”

      “It must still be at the River Bow. I’m sure your car is fine.”

      “I have to take it back.”

      The