over and sat down. With a little sigh, she took a spoon off the tray and plunged it into a bright-blue crockery bowl. “Open up,” she told him.
Jack resisted briefly, pressing his lips together—he still had some pride, after all—but his stomach betrayed him with a long and perfectly audible rumble. He opened his mouth.
The fragrant substance turned out to be chicken soup, with wild rice and chopped celery and a few other things he couldn’t identify. It was so good that, if he’d been able to, he’d have grabbed the bowl with both hands and downed the stuff in a few gulps.
“Slow down,” Ashley said. Her eyes had softened a little, but her body remained rigid. “There’s plenty more soup simmering on the stove.”
Like the kitten, the soup seemed to possess some sort of quantum-level healing power. Jack felt faint tendrils of strength stirring inside him, like the tender roots of a plant splitting through a seed husk, groping tentatively toward the sun.
Once he’d finished the soup, sleep began to pull him downward again, toward oblivion. There was something different about the feeling this time; rather than an urge to struggle against it, as before, it was more an impulse to give himself up to the darkness, settle into it like a waiting embrace.
Something soft brushed his cheek. Ashley’s fingertips? Or the mutant kitten?
“Jack,” Ashley said.
With an effort, he opened his eyes.
Tears glimmered along Ashley’s lashes. “Are you going to die?” she asked.
Jack considered his answer for a few moments; not easy, with his brain short-circuiting. According to the doctors at Walter Reed, his prognosis wasn’t the best. They’d admitted that they’d never seen the toxin before, and their plan was to ship him off to some secret government research facility for further study.
Which was one of the reasons he’d bolted, conned a series of friends into springing him and then relaying him cross-country in various planes and helicopters.
He found Ashley’s hand, squeezed it with his own. “Not if I can help it,” he murmured, just before sleep sucked him under again.
Their brief conversation echoed in Ashley’s head, over and over, as she sat there watching Jack sleep until the room was so dark she couldn’t see anything but the faintest outline of him, etched against the sheets.
Are you going to die?
Not if I can help it.
Ashley overcame the need to switch on the bedside lamp, send golden light spilling over the features she knew so well—the hazel eyes, the well-defined cheekbones, the strong, obstinate jaw—but just barely. Leaving the tray behind, she rose out of the chair and made her way slowly toward the door, afraid of stepping on Mrs. Wiggins, frolicking at her feet like a little ghost.
Reaching the hallway, Ashley closed the door softly behind her, bent to scoop the kitten up in one hand, and let the tears come. Silent sobs rocked her, making her shoulders shake, and Mrs. Wiggins snuggled in close under her chin, as if to offer comfort.
Was Jack truly in danger of dying?
She sniffled, straightened her spine. Surely Tanner wouldn’t have agreed to bring him to the bed-and-breakfast—to her—if he was at death’s door.
On the other hand, she reasoned, dashing at her cheek with the back of one hand, trying to rally her scattered emotions, Jack was bone-stubborn. He always got his way.
So maybe Tanner was simply honoring Jack’s last wish.
Holding tightly to the banister, Ashley started down the stairs.
Jack hadn’t wanted to live in Stone Creek. Why would he choose to die there?
The phone began to ring, a persistent trilling, and Ashley, thinking of Olivia, dashed to the small desk where guests registered—not that that had been an issue lately—and snatched up the receiver.
“Hello?” When had she gotten out of the habit of answering with a businesslike, “Mountain View Bed and Breakfast”?
“I hear you’ve got an unexpected boarder,” Brad said, his tone measured.
Ashley was unaccountably glad to hear her big brother’s voice, considering that they hadn’t had much to say to each other since their mother’s funeral. “Yes,” she assented.
“According to Carly, he was sick enough to arrive in an ambulance.”
Ashley nodded, remembered that Brad couldn’t see her, and repeated, “Yes. I’m not sure he should be here—Brad, he’s in a really bad way. I’m not a nurse and I’m—” She paused, swallowed. “I’m scared.”
“I can be there in fifteen minutes, Ash.”
Fresh tears scalded Ashley’s eyes, made them feel raw. “That would be good,” she said.
“Put on a pot of coffee, little sister,” Brad told her. “I’m on my way.”
True to his word, Brad was standing in her kitchen before the coffee finished perking. He looked more like a rancher than a famous country singer and sometime movie star, in his faded jeans, battered boots, chambray shirt and denim jacket.
Ashley couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged her brother, but now she went to him, and he wrapped her in his arms, kissed the top of her head.
“Olivia…” she began, but her voice fell away.
“I know,” Brad said hoarsely. “They’re inducing labor in the morning. Livie will be fine, honey, and so will the baby.”
Ashley tilted her head back, looked up into Brad’s face. His dark-blond hair was rumpled, and his beard was growing in, bristly. “How’s the family?”
He rested his hands on her shoulders, held her at a little distance. “You wouldn’t have to ask if you ever stopped by Stone Creek Ranch,” he answered. “Mac misses you, and Meg and I do, too.”
The minute Brad had known she needed him, he’d been in his truck, headed for town. And now that he was there, her anger over their mother’s funeral didn’t seem so important.
She tried to speak, but her throat had tightened again, and she couldn’t get a single word past it.
One corner of Brad’s famous mouth crooked up. “Where’s Lover Boy?” he asked. “Lucky thing for him that he’s laid up—otherwise I’d punch his lights out for what he did to you.”
The phrase Lover Boy made Ashley flinch. “That’s over,” she said.
Brad let his hands fall to his sides, his eyes serious now. “Right,” he replied. “Which room?”
Ashley told him, and he left the kitchen, the inside door swinging behind him long after he’d passed through it.
She kept herself busy by taking mugs down
