LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      “YOU’RE HOME!”

      The thin, reedy voice whispering from the frail woman on the bed was nothing like Quinn Southerland remembered.

      Though she was small in stature, Jo Winder’s voice had always been firm and commanding, just like the rest of her personality. When she used to call them in for supper, he and the others could hear her voice ringing out loud and clear from one end of the ranch to the other. No matter where they were, they knew the moment they heard that voice, it was time to go back to the house.

      Now the woman who had done so much to raise him—the toughest woman he had ever known—seemed a tiny, withered husk of herself, her skin papery and pale and her voice barely audible.

      The cracks in his heart from watching her endure the long months and years of her illness widened a little more. To his great shame, he had a sudden impulse to run away, to escape back to Seattle and his business and the comfortable life he had created for himself there, where he could pretend this was all some kind of bad dream and she was immortal, as he had always imagined.

      Instead, he forced himself to step forward to the edge of the bed, where he carefully folded her bony fingers in his own much larger ones, cursing the cancer that was taking away this woman he loved so dearly.

      He gave her his most charming smile, the one that never failed to sway any woman in his path, whether in the boardroom or the bedroom.

      “Where else would I be but right here, darling?”

      The smile she offered in return was rueful and she lifted their entwined fingers to her cheek. “You shouldn’t have come. You’re so busy in Seattle.”

      “Never too busy for my best girl.”

      Her laugh was small but wryly amused, as it always used to be when he would try to charm his way out of trouble with her.

      Jo wasn’t the sort who could be easily charmed but she never failed to appreciate the effort.

      “I’m sorry to drag you down here,” she said. “I...only wanted to see all of my boys one last time.”

      He wanted to protest that his foster mother would be around for years to come, that she was too tough and ornery to let a little thing like cancer stop her, but he couldn’t deny the evidence in front of him.

      She was dying, was much closer to it than any of them had feared.

      “I’m here, as long as you need me,” he vowed.

      “You’re a good boy, Quinn. You always have been.”

      He snorted at that—both of them knew better about that, as well. “Easton didn’t tell me you’ve been hitting the weed as part of your treatment.”

      The blankets rustled softly as her laugh shook her slight frame. “You know better than that. No marijuana here.”

      “Then what are you smoking?”

      “Nothing. I meant what I said. You were always a good boy on the inside, even when you were dragging the others into trouble.”

      “It still means the world that you thought so.” He kissed her forehead. “Now I can see you’re tired. You get some rest and we can catch up later.”

      “I would give anything for just a little of my old energy.”

      Her voice trailed off on the last word and he could tell she had already drifted off, just like that, in mid-sentence. As he stood beside her bed, still holding her fingers, she winced twice in her sleep.

      He frowned, hating the idea of her hurting. He slowly, carefully, released her fingers as if they would shatter at his touch and laid them with gentle care on the bed then turned just as Easton Springhill, his distant cousin by marriage and the closest thing he had to a sister, appeared in the doorway of the bedroom.

      He moved away from the bed and followed Easton outside the room.

      “She seems in pain,” he said, his voice low with distress.

      “She is,” Easton answered. “She doesn’t say much about it but I can tell it’s worse the past week or so.”

      “Isn’t there something we can do?”

      “We have a few options. None of them last very long. The hospice nurse should be here any minute. She can give her something for the pain.” She tilted her head. “When was the last time you ate?”

      He tried to remember. He had been in Tokyo when he got the message from Easton that Jo was asking for him to come home. Though he had had two more days of meetings scheduled for a new shipping route he was negotiating, he knew he had no choice but to drop everything. Jo would never have asked if the situation hadn’t been dire.

      So he had rescheduled everything and ordered his plane back to Pine Gulch. Counting several flight delays from bad weather over the Pacific, he had been traveling for nearly eighteen hours and had been awake for eighteen before that.

      “I had something on the plane, but it’s been a few hours.”

      “Let me make you a sandwich, then you can catch a few z’s.”

      “You don’t have to wait on me.” He followed her down the long hall and into the cheery white-and-red kitchen. “You’ve got enough to do, running the ranch and taking care of Jo. I’ve been making my own sandwiches for a long time now.”

      “Don’t you have people who do that for you?”

      “Sometimes,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how.”

      “Sit down,” she ordered him. “I know where everything is here.”

      He thought about pushing her. But lovely as she was with her delicate features and long sweep of blond hair, Easton could be as stubborn and ornery as Jo and he was just too damn tired for another battle.

      Instead, he eased into one of the scarred pine chairs snugged up against the old table and let her fuss over him for a few moments. “Why didn’t you tell me how things were, East? She’s withered away in the three months since I’ve been home. Chester probably weighs more than she does.”

      At the sound of his name, Easton’s retired old cow dog that followed her or Jo everywhere lifted his grizzled gray muzzle and thumped his black-and-white tail against the floor.

      Easton’s sigh held exhaustion and discouragement and no small measure of guilt. “I wanted to. I swear. I threatened to call you all back weeks ago but she begged me not to say anything. She said she didn’t want you to know how things were until...”

      Her voice trailed off and her mouth trembled a little. He didn’t need her to finish. Jo wouldn’t have wanted them to know until close to the end.

      This was it. For three long years, Jo had been fighting breast cancer and now it seemed her battle was almost over.

      He hated this. He wanted to escape back to his own world where he could at least pretend he had some semblance of control. But she wanted him here in Cold Creek, so here

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