was also a lot tougher than she looked, and she was having a bad day. If he got cute, she’d hustle his puny self out so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.
“Mr. Baker.” She knocked again, loudly enough to wake the dead, and then she shoved the door open, ready for anything.
To her surprise, the room appeared to be empty.
The man was nowhere in sight.
“Mr. Baker?” It was a simple room, without a lot of hidey-holes, but she checked every spot she could imagine a man’s body would fit into. Cupboards, the closet, even under the massage table, though she felt a pure fool doing so.
She straightened, her hands on her hips, and stared at the windows, which let in a soft light through their muslin shades.
Marley Baker was gone. And, now that she had a chance to think through the details, she had to wonder whether he’d ever intended to stay. The sheets on the table hadn’t been touched, hadn’t been wrinkled or shifted by a fraction of an inch.
Even more mystifying—how had he managed to leave without her realizing it? It made her skin crawl to think he might have tiptoed inches behind her as she picked out lotions and powders, and headed surreptitiously for the front door.
Her nerves prickling, she stopped by the nail tech room, where Jean was now giving a pedicure to a middle-aged woman talking volubly on her cell phone.
Tess signaled to Jean, who excused herself and came to the door.
“You didn’t happen to see a man walk by in the past few minutes, did you? Dark-haired? Kind of short and wiry?”
“No.” Jean frowned. “Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t think so.” Tess shrugged, keeping her tone light. “My client left unexpectedly. I guess he got a call or something.”
Jean’s frown deepened, but she returned to her post.
Tess did the same. The phone was ringing. Plus, she had another client coming in half an hour, and she had to change the sheets, in case Marley Baker had touched them, however briefly.
She tried not to dwell on the unpleasant morning, concentrating instead on her afternoon clients. Her massages were therapy for her, too. And, as usual, turning her attention to other people helped. By the end of the day, she was exhausted, but in a good way, and utterly relaxed.
And 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
