The Pines Of Winder Ranch: A Cold Creek Homecoming / A Cold Creek Reunion. RaeAnne Thayne

eyes?

      This was Tess, he reminded himself. He didn’t give a damn what she’d been up to, even if she looked hauntingly lovely in the low light of the kitchen.

      “So you married old Scott, huh? What’s he up to? All that quarterback muscle probably turned to flab, right? Is he ranching with his dad?”

      She pressed her lips into a thin line for just a moment, then gave him another of those tiny smiles, this one little more than a taut stretch of her mouth. “None of those things, I’m afraid. He died almost two years ago.”

      Quinn gave an inward wince at his own tactlessness. Apparently nothing had changed. She had always brought out the worst in him.

      “How?”

      She didn’t answer for a moment, instead crossing to the coffeemaker he had assumed Easton must have forgotten to turn off. Now he realized she must have left a fresh pot for the hospice worker, since Tess seemed completely comfortable reaching in the cabinet for a cup and pouring.

      “Pneumonia,” she finally answered as she added two packets of sweetener. “Scott died of pneumonia.”

      “Really?” That seemed odd. He thought only old people and little kids could get that sick from pneumonia.

      “He was...ill for a long time before that. His immune system was compromised and he couldn’t fight it off.”

      Quinn wasn’t a complete ass, even when it came to this woman he despised so much. He forced himself to offer the appropriate condolences. “That must have been rough for you. Any kids?”

      “No.”

      This time she didn’t even bother to offer a tight smile, only stared into the murky liquid swirling in her cup and he thought again how surreal this was, standing in the Winder Ranch kitchen in the middle of the night having a conversation with her, when he had to fight down every impulse to snarl and yell and order her out of the house.

      “Jo tells me you run some big shipping company in the Pacific Northwest,” she said after a moment.

      “That’s right.” The third biggest in the region, but he was hoping that with the new batch of contracts he was negotiating Southerland Shipping would soon slide into the number two spot and move up from there.

      “She’s so proud of you boys and Easton. She talks about you all the time.”

      “Does she?” He wasn’t at all thrilled to think about Jo sharing with Tess any details of his life.

      “Oh, yes. I’m sure she’s thrilled to have you home. That must be why she was sleeping so peacefully. She didn’t even wake when I checked her vitals, which is unusual. Jo’s usually a light sleeper.”

      “How are they?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Her vitals. How is she?”

      He hated to ask, especially of Tess, but he was a man who dealt best with challenges when he gathered as much information as possible.

      She took another sip of coffee then poured the rest down the sink and turned on the water to wash it down.

      “Her blood pressure is still lower than we’d like to see and she’s needing oxygen more and more often. She tries to hide it but she’s in pain most of the time. I’m sorry. I wish I had something better to offer you.”

      “It’s not your fault,” he said, even as he wished he could somehow figure out a way to blame her for it.

      “That’s funny. It feels that way sometimes. It’s my job to make her as comfortable as possible but she doesn’t want to spend her last days in a drugged haze, she says. So we’re limited in some of our options. But we still do our best.”

      He couldn’t imagine anyone deliberately choosing this for a career. Why on earth would a woman like Tess Jamison—Claybourne now, he reminded himself—have chosen to stick around tiny Pine Gulch and become a hospice nurse? He couldn’t quite get past the incongruity of it.

      “I’d better go,” she said. “I’ve got three more patients to check on tonight. I’ll be back in a few hours, though, and Easton knows she can call me anytime if she needs me. It’s...good to see you again, Quinn.”

      He wouldn’t have believed her words, even if he didn’t see the lie in her vivid green eyes. She wasn’t any happier to see him than he had been to find her wandering the halls of Winder Ranch.

      Still, courtesy drilled into him by Jo demanded he walk her to the door. He stood on the porch and watched through the darkness until she reached her car, then he walked back inside, shaking his head.

      Tess Jamison Claybourne.

      As if he needed one more miserable thing to face here in Pine Gulch.

      * * *

      QUINN SOUTHERLAND.

      Lord have mercy.

      Tess sat for a moment outside Winder Ranch in the little sedan she had bought after selling Scott’s wheelchair van. Her mind was a jumble of impressions, all of them sharp and hard and ugly.

      He despised her. His rancor radiated from him like spokes on a bicycle wheel. Though he had conversed with at least some degree of civility throughout their short encounter, every word, every sentence, had been underscored by his contempt. His silvery-blue eyes had never once lost that sheen of scorn when he looked at her.

      Tess let out a breath, more disconcerted by the brief meeting than she should be. She had a thick enough skin to withstand a little animosity. Or at least she had always assumed she did, up to this point.

      How would she know, though? She had never had much opportunity to find out. Most of the good citizens of Pine Gulch treated her far differently.

      Alone in the quiet darkness of her car, she gave a humorless laugh. How many times over the years had she thought how heartily sick she was of being treated like some kind of venerated saint around Pine Gulch? She wanted people to see her as she really was—someone with hopes and dreams and faults. Not only as the tireless caretaker who had dedicated long years of her life to caring for her husband.

      She shook her head with another rough laugh. A little middle ground would be nice. Quinn Southerland’s outright vilification of her was a little more harsh than she really wanted to face.

      He had a right to despise her. She understood his feelings and couldn’t blame him for them. She had treated him shamefully in high school. Just the memory, being confronted with the worst part of herself when she hadn’t really thought about those things in years, made her squirm as she started her car.

      Her treatment of Quinn Southerland had been reprehensible, beyond cruel, and she wanted to cringe away from remembering it. But seeing him again after all these years seemed to set the fragmented, half-forgotten memories shifting and sliding through her mind like jagged plates of glass.

      She remembered all of it. The unpleasant rumors she had spread about him; her small, snide comments, delivered at moments when he was quite certain to overhear; the friends and teachers she had turned against him, without even really trying very hard.

      She had been a spoiled, petulant bitch, and the memory of it wasn’t easy to live with now that she had much more wisdom and maturity and could look back on her terrible behavior through the uncomfortable prism of age and experience.

      She fully deserved his contempt, but that knowledge didn’t make it much easier to stomach as she drove down the long, winding Winder Ranch driveway and turned onto Cold Creek Road, her headlights gleaming off the leaves that rustled across the road in the October wind.

      She loved Jo Winder dearly and had since she was a little girl, when Jo had been patient and kind with the worst piano student any teacher ever had. Tess had promised the woman just the evening before that she would remain one of her hospice caregivers until the end. How on earth was she supposed to keep that vow if it meant being regularly confronted with