The Secrets of Bell River. Kathleen O'Brien

maybe a little proud of herself. She’d pulled off another miracle, and kept the spa humming almost single-handedly.

      Marley Baker was the furthest thing from her mind. At least...until she was leaving and noticed a tiny rectangle of paper tucked inside the chic plaque that read Bell River Ranch.

      Though it could have been left by anyone, for a dozen perfectly innocent reasons, she felt her hair follicles rise. With her clumsy gloved fingers, she pried the paper out and awkwardly unfolded it.

      Two short words were scrawled there. Just a dozen bright red, simple block letters, more like a random shout from a passing car than a true message. But for a minute, though she stood with snow fluttering down the collar of her coat, then melting disagreeably against her neck, she couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes off the angry, red words.

      DIRTY, it said.

      And then on the next line, BITCHES.

      * * *

      OVER THE PAST couple of days, while Tess had been wearing blinders that prevented her from seeing anything but the spa’s most immediate needs, she’d almost forgotten about all the other holiday festivities going on elsewhere on the ranch.

      The ugly note she held in her hand felt even more obscene here, as she stood at the front door of the main house, which was framed in pine-scented garland and sparkling with fairy lights. She wished she could turn around and go back to the hotel. She was extraordinarily tired, suddenly. She needed to get off her feet. She needed something to eat. She needed—

      The door opened. One of the men she’d met the night they offered her the job—she thought this one was Gray, Bree’s husband—stood there, smiling.

      “Hey, Tess,” he said easily, as if she’d worked there for years. If she hadn’t been paying close attention, she might have missed the subtle surprise in his eyes. “Everything okay?”

      “Yes.” Too late, she wondered whether uniformed employees were supposed to use the rear entrance. “I think so,” she amended. “But there is something I should talk to Rowena about, if she’s free.”

      “Well, Ro isn’t ever really free, but I think we can snag her. Come on in.” He stepped back from the door, and through the garland-swagged foyer Tess could see that the living room was in shadows. The only lights came from a twinkling Christmas tree by the windows, and a projector’s beam hitting a big screen at the front. A crowd of people perched on folding chairs, and they seemed to be watching a slide presentation.

      “Oh. I’ve come at a bad time.”

      “Not at all.” Gray smiled. “On Monday night, Penny shares the nature shots taken during her photography classes. Ro isn’t a part of that. She’s in the great room dealing with a totally different minicrisis. Barton has a sing-along starting in about half an hour in there, but right now we’re all trying to get Alec off the wall without breaking anything.”

      Tess frowned, wondering if he was kidding. “The...the wall?”

      He gave her a wry look over his shoulder. “Yeah. It’s okay, though. He can’t hold on much longer, so he’ll be down in the next couple of minutes, dead or alive.”

      They had reached the entrance to the lovely great room, with its cathedral ceiling, huge fireplace trimmed in red candles and green fir, and impressive river-rock surround.

      The room was full of people. In front of the fireplace, Bree, Mitch, Barton and Max, Penny’s husband, stood in a perfect square, holding the corners of a thick blanket above a layer of sofa cushions and quilts, as if they were making a safety net of sorts.

      Their faces tilted toward the ceiling. Tess followed their gazes, and to her horror spotted Alec a foot or two from the upper edge of the river rock. From this distance, he looked small, skinny and awkward, his arms and legs splayed like a superhero as he tried to hold on to the lumpy rock.

      Tess glanced around, wondering how everyone was maintaining such calm. Over at the end of the room near the kitchen, Dallas and a young man in a Bell River uniform were rapidly assembling an articulating ladder. An ordinary stepladder would never reach high enough.

      “Where’s the damn mattress?” Dallas glanced toward the foyer doorway once, then refocused on the ladder.

      “Isamar and Carrie are bringing it now,” Rowena said.

      “I’ll go help.” Gray touched Tess’s arm. “Hang on. Ro will be free soon.”

      Tess felt her mouth hanging open slightly. Her stupid anonymous note seemed absurdly trivial. The boy was at least twelve feet in the air. If he fell...

      She shivered. He probably wouldn’t die, not with the people below, and the pillows, and the blanket. But he might miss. Even a partial miss could be catastrophic. He might well break half a dozen bones.

      And he must be scared to death.

      “Dang it,” the little boy said, his voice and words a touching echo of his father’s. He sounded very far away, but was full of bluster, clearly reluctant to reveal fear. “Too bad Jude’s not here. A stunt man would know what to do. My hands are getting sweaty.”

      A little girl piped up from the corner. “I told you it wouldn’t be as easy to come down as it was to go up.”

      Max gave the girl a hard look. “Really? You think this is the right time to say I told you so?”

      She blushed and hung her head, but didn’t say another word.

      Two seconds later, Gray showed up, the large, thick mattress, which must have weighed a ton, carried over his head as if it were light as a feather.

      “Coming through,” he called, and plopped his burden as near the safety net as he could. Then he dropped to a squat and muscled the mattress until it lay directly under the blanket. A couple of Bell River staffers rearranged the pillows and quilts on top of the mattress with lightning speed.

      “This’ll be faster than the ladder, Dallas,” Gray said, putting his hand on Dallas’s shoulder. “And just as safe. Tell him to let go.”

      Dallas glanced at the pile of cushioning, the outstretched blanket and his team of helpers. He looked up at his son, then down, clearly calculating the geometry of the placement. And then he nodded.

      “Keep going,” he said quietly to his assistant beside the ladder. “Just in case.”

      Then he moved closer to the fireplace. “Okay, buddy. Time to give those arms a rest. We’ve got you covered. Let go, and try to fall on your rump, okay?”

      The little boy was silent for a moment. He twisted his neck for one second, trying to get a look at his dad, but swiveled it back quickly, as if the motion scared him.

      “Come on, Alec.” Dallas’s voice was utterly calm. “It’s all good. You’ll be fine.”

      A tiny voice floated to them. “You sure?”

      Tess found herself holding her breath, and the room spun a little, as if she might faint, which surprised her, because she wasn’t the fainting type.

      “Yep,” Dallas said, projecting complete confidence. “I’m sure.”

      “Well, then. Okay.”

      As though someone had pulled a lever, the boy dropped from the wall. Tess’s knees seemed to liquefy. She touched the wall for support. As if in slow motion, the blanket dipped as his scrawny form hit it, rump first, just as his father had requested, and then bounced up.

      Thank God. Alec’s smiling face emerged from over the edge of the blanket, beaming and laughing, as if it were all a grand game.

      Strangers and staffers who apparently had been watching from the margins of the room broke out in scattered applause, which then tapered off as Dallas glared, obviously not wanting them to encourage the boy.

      The four people who had held the blanket’s corners moved toward each