Read the book: «Holiday Homecoming»

Chapter One

Cain returned to Silver Creek exactly one week before Christmas. He drove through the massive stone-pillar gates of the Inn at Silver Creek and wended his way up the brick drive, banked on either side with plowed snow. He went toward the main lodge, a meandering building that ran north-south and changed in height from three stories to one, then to two and back to three. Against the backdrop of snow, the wood-and-stone structure looked determinedly rustic. No, it looked like a rich man’s version of rustic, from the stained glass windows that rivaled those of Italian cathedrals, to the massive stone chimneys puffing smoke into the late-afternoon air.

He drove past the main entrance and valet parking and headed to the far end of the lodge, which rose three stories into the darkening skies. He pulled his new SUV into a slot marked Private and stopped, then pushed the door. A blast of frigid air hit him as he stepped onto the cleared cobbled pavement. He’d made good on the payment for his bet. He was in Silver Creek. He’d stay for a few days, maybe leave after two, if he could work it out. He’d play things by ear.

He hunched into the chilling wind that whipped off the towering Sierra Nevada, which framed the town on the east and west, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black leather bomber jacket. He looked around at the grounds of the Inn at Silver Creek—Jack’s project that had been going on forever. A posh, expensive, very private ski resort for the rich and sometimes famous or infamous, built on land that Jack’s family had owned since the founding of the town.

The resort now sprawled over acres and acres of mountain terrain, offering secluded cabins for those who could afford them and promising the most precious commodity money could buy: privacy. The main building contained suites, gathering rooms and two separate restaurants, with enough luxury to satisfy the most discriminating guest.

Cain turned to the lodge and took the cleared steps to the door marked Private. Without warning, the door opened and a young guy in slouchy snow gear rushed out. “Sorry, dude,” the guy muttered as he barely avoided a collision with Cain. Then, with a “Merry Christmas!” tossed over his shoulder, he jumped down the steps and loped toward the main trail that led to the scattered private lodges.

“Bah, humbug,” Cain breathed roughly.

He stepped inside, into a wide hallway with stone floors, aged wooden walls in a deep cherrywood polished to a mellow glow and the sense of luxury—from the Persian rug runners to the paintings on the wall, which had their own security system to protect them. Christmas music was piped in, and someone had discreetly nestled small twinkling lights in the crown molding between the wood of the wall and the beamed ceiling.

He never had been comfortable with wealthy trappings, even at the casino, and at this time of year, the extras for the holidays made his discomfort even worse. He suspected that was why he kept his penthouse sparsely furnished, without any great works of art or any antiques. There wasn’t a trace of gold in the place or a trace of Christmas. You could take the orphan out of the orphanage, but you couldn’t take the orphanage out of the orphan, he mused as he undid his jacket and headed toward a barely visible door in the paneling to his left.

He hit a button that exposed a security number panel, put in the code, then stood back, waiting for the elevator. He didn’t want to be here, but he’d see his friends, then he’d leave. For good. He couldn’t think of one reason to come back here again.

The elevator went directly to Jack’s living quarters on the third floor, and when the door finally slid open for Cain to get into the elevator, he wasn’t expecting to encounter anyone. If he had, he would have expected it to be with Jack, or possibly Jack’s second-in-command, a huge man named Malone.

Instead, Cain came face-to-face with a woman. She was tiny, barely five feet in height, he’d guess, almost drowning in a heavy navy jacket, jeans and huge snow boots. Fiery auburn hair was caught back in a high ponytail, and he could make out a suggestion of freckles dusting an upturned nose on a finely boned face. His eyes roamed her face. She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, not even lipstick on provocatively full lips. Then he met her gaze. Amber eyes, and they were staring at him.

For a second, she looked as though she knew him, and for some reason, that didn’t please her. Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth tightened, losing all the softness in her lips. She held his gaze almost defiantly and for what seemed forever, and he knew for a fact he’d never met her before. He had a gift for remembering people. It was in his best interests as a casino and hotel owner, to remember guests and clients. She’d never been either, and he’d never looked into those amber eyes before. He would have remembered. Any man would have remembered her.

The door started to slide shut and she reached out one slender hand to stop it. She exhaled harshly, then moved toward him, never taking her eyes off his. Before he could step out of the way, she veered to her right, ducked her head and was leaving. She headed for the door he’d just come through, and he was shocked that she could cover so much area so quickly without running.

This time, he reached for the elevator door before it could close and grabbed at the edge, but he didn’t glance away. She was at the side door as she pulled a bright yellow knit hat out of her pocket and tugged it on over her brilliant hair. That was when she glanced back at him, giving away no surprise that he was watching her. Then she opened the door and was gone.

He stared at the closed door, feeling oddly off balance from the encounter. He didn’t know why.

He got into the elevator. The door slid shut behind him, and he hit the Up button. He glanced at his reflection in the elevator door, halfway expecting to see that he had transformed into Mr. Hyde, or maybe grown a second head. No horns, no fangs, no warts. He’d had people not like him before, and he hadn’t cared. Maybe she was one of Jack’s friends, and they’d fought. Maybe she hated all men right now. He’d have to ask Jack what was going on.

The elevator stopped, the door slid back and Cain stepped into Jack’s office area. It fronted Jack’s private suite at the back of the turret he occupied. The plush leather, mahogany and leaded-glass windows were as mellow as Cain remembered. But the space was absolutely empty. There were no papers on the desk near the bank of windows that overlooked the slopes far below. There were no open books on the table by the chairs turned to face the massive stone fireplace. There was no fire in the hearth, and no sounds at all.

“Jack!” he called as he strode toward the partly closed door across the room. “Hey, Jack!”

He touched the door and it swung back. Jack was nowhere in sight. The expansive room, with a fireplace that matched the one in the office, was as empty as the rest of the place. Cain went to the right, into the kitchen, which was all stainless steel and ceramic tile, but there wasn’t even the ever-present coffee brewing in the coffeemaker. Back out in the main area, he crossed to the double doors that led into Jack’s bedroom. If Jack was in the bedroom, that meant that the woman had come from—

A noise in Jack’s office cut short his thoughts. Quick footsteps sounded, then Jack came through the door. He stopped and stared at Cain as if he didn’t recognize him for a moment, then his face broke into a huge smile. “Well, I’ll be,” he said as he walked to where Cain stood, his hands outstretched. “I didn’t believe you’d come.”

He grabbed Cain’s shoulders, and although there was no hug or anything that bordered on mush, Cain was touched by Jack’s greeting. “Good to see you, too,” he muttered. As Jack drew back, Cain awkwardly slapped Jack on his shoulder. “I pay off my bets.”

Jack eyed him up and down, then shrugged. “When you didn’t show up earlier, I had my doubts.” It was then that Cain realized Jack was in outer clothes—a denim, fur-lined jacket, with jeans and heavy boots darkened by clinging snow. “Sit, and let me get you a drink, then you can go over to number twenty.” Jack talked as he headed back across the room. He took off the denim jacket and tossed it on the nearest chair, then walked his way out of his boots as he crossed to a bar built into the wall by the bedroom door. “What do you want to drink?” he asked.

“Anything,” Cain murmured.

As a liquor bottle clinked against glasses, he spoke without looking back at Cain, “Did you get my message about Joshua?”

Cain had picked up the message moments before he’d left Las Vegas. Joshua Pierce, former cop in Atlanta and a widower for eighteen months, had suddenly found someone who had won him over so completely and quickly that he was getting married again two days before Christmas, right here at the Inn. “Yeah, I got it.”

“And?” Jack queried as he turned with two glasses in his hands.

“And what?” Cain asked while he shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it on the couch nearest him before sinking into the supple leather cushions.

Jack came to him, held out one of the drinks, and Cain took it, cradling it in his hands as Jack sat on the couch opposite him. “So, what do you think?” Jack spoke as he settled. “One of the Great Four bites the dust.”

Cain smiled at the title they’d given themselves so many years ago. Joshua, Jack, Cain and Gordie. “Yeah, the Great Four,” he murmured, and sipped the amber liquid. Brandy—good, smooth brandy—and it hit the spot. “But Joshua did it before with Sarah.” Cain shrugged. He’d only met his friend’s wife once, yet he’d known right away why Joshua had fallen in love with her. But that didn’t mean he understood why Joshua’d had chosen marriage then, or why he was choosing it again.

Jack lifted his glass, drank a bit, then sat back, crossing one leg over the other, his stockinged foot resting on his knee. “I didn’t think he’d ever get married again, but you never know.” He settled his glass on his thigh. “I’m aware of your aversion to weddings. You’ll be here for it, won’t you?”

He’d return for it. He’d decided that he would. “Sure, I’ll be here.”

Jack appeared pleased. “Good, so you’ll be here through Christmas. Great, great,” he murmured.

“No.” Cain shook his head, cutting off that assumption as quickly as he could. “I’ll come back for it. I can’t stay.”

Jack sat forward abruptly. “The deal was—”

“I’d come here around the holidays, and I have. I’m here and I’ll spend a couple of days around town, then I have to get back. This is the busiest time of the year for the Dream Catcher and—”

“Oh, stop,” Jack said with a frown. “Spare me. I remember the drill. You’re busy. You’re irreplaceable. You’re indispensable. You made the damn place, and it can’t stay standing without you there to support it.”

“That about sums it up,” Cain said with a smile, trying to lighten the tension starting in his neck and shoulders.

Jack wasn’t smiling. “I’m not joking.”

Cain shrugged and finished off the last of his drink. “Then my question is, why aren’t you joking? What’s so important that you need me here?”

He expected Jack to get angry again, or to pass the question off. He never expected him to say, “I’m not sure.”

He twirled his empty glass. “Why not?”

Jack shrugged and exhaled on a heavy sigh. “At first I just thought we’d have a good time, relive our glory days.” He did smile then, but fleetingly. “But lately I’ve been thinking that I need to change my life.”

That was when Cain remembered the woman he’d faced in the elevator. The woman with fiery hair and amber eyes. “Who is she?”

Jack seemed genuinely perplexed by the question. “What?”

“The woman?”

“What woman?”

Cain sat forward and put his glass on the huge leather ottoman between the couches. He met Jack’s gaze. “Does red hair, gold eyes and a look that could stop you in your tracks mean anything to you?” Jack was either a good actor or honestly confused. “Tiny? Madder than a wet hen? What did you do—break up with her, tell her to get out and she took off?”

Jack sat forward, suddenly intent. “When did you see her?”

“When I was coming up, she was leaving.”

Jack glanced at his watch, then muttered, “Oh, damn, I thought I told her four.”

“A missed date?”

“A missed appointment,” Jack said, tossing back the last of his brandy. “She was here on business and I wasn’t.”

Cain didn’t ask what “business.” “Does she have anything to do with you wanting to change your life?”

“Not directly,” Jack said as he got up and carried both empty glasses to the bar. He came back, handed Cain a new drink, then sat to face him again. “To the future…to whatever it holds,” he said as he raised his own glass.

Cain answered his salute. “Yes, to whatever it holds.”

HOLLY MARIE WINSTON felt flushed, and even though it was freezing outside, she turned the heater in her small blue car to its lowest setting. She drove out through the entry gates of the Inn at Silver Creek and went north, heading away from the Inn’s almost oppressive luxury.

She’d all but decided not to meet with Jack Prescott, but had known she had to. She’d called up to Jack Prescott’s suite from the front desk, and a man named Malone had met her at the private elevator. He’d let her in, said that Mr. Prescott would be right with her, then left through the private side entrance.

She’d waited for half an hour, horribly uncomfortable in the suite that had been empty when she’d arrived. She’d stood amid Jack Prescott’s luxury, and gazed out the windows toward the ski runs and beyond to the mountain. Her mountain. That wouldn’t change. She’d known that she shouldn’t have come. She wasn’t even going to stay to tell Prescott the mountain wasn’t for sale. She’d left and that was when she’d come face-to-face with Cain Stone.

Her heart was still beating faster than it should from the brief encounter with the man, from the moment her eyes had met his. Cain Stone. Light snow started to fall, and she flipped on her windshield wipers, then her headlights to cut into the gray failing light of late afternoon.

She’d felt relieved that Jack hadn’t kept their appointment, and she’d felt a sense of freedom, resolving to call him later and tell him her land wasn’t for sale. The euphoria had lasted until the elevator door had opened and Cain Stone had stood in front of her.

She’d never seen him in person, only in pictures, but she hadn’t been prepared for the height of the man—a few inches over six feet—or the width of the shoulders covered by an obviously expensive leather jacket. Long legs were encased in dark slacks, and he’d had a presence that had almost stopped her breathing when she’d first met his blue eyes.

Burning anger had surged through her. And it had grown when she saw him studying her, almost smiling, as if he were going to exchange pleasantries with her. The anger had overwhelmed her; all she’d thought about was getting out of there as quickly as she could, to get to anyplace she could breathe. She grimaced when she thought about how she’d almost run from him and about her last look back at him.

She flexed her hands on the steering wheel when she realized she was holding it in a death grip. She slowed as she passed the last of the property that Jack Prescott owned and kept going north. After a few minutes, she took a left turn onto a narrow road that climbed high up the mountain.

Cain Stone had obviously been going to see Jack Prescott, and that made sense. They’d been friends for years. Or maybe they were two big wheelers and dealers doing business. That was the only reason she’d been there. Business.

She slowed even more as the climb increased and stared straight ahead, thankful that the road had been cleared enough for her to use it. Then she saw her turnoff, went left again, onto a narrow road that had been plowed only on one side, so that just a single car at a time could use it. The snow was pilled high on the right, where the mountain soared into the sky. There was little to no bank of cleared snow on her left, because the land dropped away, out of sight.

She went as far as the snowplow had cleared, then stopped, shut off the motor and got out. The air was bitingly cold up here, and a wind had come up, sweeping in a strange moaning sound across the deep snow, through the blanketed pines and into the gorge. She pulled her hat lower and pushed her hands into her pockets. She hadn’t been up here since she’d gotten back in town. She hadn’t thought about the place until Jack had contacted her. Now she wanted to see it again.

She walked into the untouched snow that covered the roadway, thankful she had on her calf-high boots. As the ridges swept back farther from the road she spotted what she was looking for. The snow all but obscured the driveway to the cabin, but a huge single pine at the road marked it for her. The same tree, feet taller now, but still there under the heavy weight of snow.

She climbed the steep grade, and she knew she wouldn’t see the cabin until she hit the rise in the drive. Moments later it was there, the old cabin, appearing incredibly small, dwarfed by the huge pines that canopied its steeply pitched roof. She made her way to the wraparound porch, the only place with any protection from the snow.

She felt her foot hit the wood stairs, then she went up onto the porch and over to the door. She turned back to glance at the way she’d just walked, seeing her footsteps in the virgin snow. She was probably the first person to be here since her father had died. Her mother had been dead for ten years, and Annie, her half sister, wouldn’t have any reason to trek up here. The place was Holly’s, and now she was here. But as she looked around, she didn’t want to be here alone.

Memories of her as a child driving up here for her weekly visits with her father rushed at her. She shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. Not today, she suddenly decided. She’d return when she was prepared to go inside and walk back into the part of the world she’d left behind her when she’d gone away from Silver Creek.

For a moment, in the frigid silence all around her, she felt an isolation that was almost painful. Maybe she’d thought that coming to the mountain would bring back that slim connection she’d had with her father. But there was nothing like that today. She exhaled, her breath curling into the cold air, then she walked away, stepping in her own footprints as she headed back to her car.