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Holiday Homecoming
Pamela Tracy
Their history can't be rewritten. But their future… Bears, eagles and wolf dogs she could handle. But ten years after their split, Nature Times journalist Jimmy Murphy still had the power to rattle Meredith Stone. One look at him and a lifetime of memories came flooding back–and a decade of carefully constructed defenses came crumbling down. Defenses she'd need in order to deal with her grandpa's latest turn for the worse, her sister's upcoming wedding and Jimmy's persistent questions. Why was he probing into her work at the animal rescue? And why did she care so much about what he thought? She'd buried her feelings for him a long time ago…
Their history can’t be rewritten. But their future…
Bears, eagles and wolf dogs she could handle. But ten years after their split, Nature Times journalist Jimmy Murphy still had the power to rattle Meredith Stone. One look at him and a lifetime of memories came flooding back—and a decade of carefully constructed defenses came crumbling down. Defenses she’d need in order to deal with her grandpa’s latest turn for the worse, her sister’s upcoming wedding and Jimmy’s persistent questions. Why was he probing into her work at the animal rescue? And why did she care so much about what he thought? She’d buried her feelings for him a long time ago…
“You need any help?” Jimmy asked, his voice a different kind of serious.
“No.” She certainly didn’t need any help with the prescriptions. She might, however, need a prescription to get rid of a very real headache named Jimmy Murphy.
“How is Ray?”
Ever the calculating journalist out for information any way he could get it. She’d dealt with people like this before. They had agendas; she had animals to take care of. They had deadlines; she had animals to feed.
Still, it felt different when the one asking the questions happened to be the one who got away.
Dear Reader (#u73e85be5-12de-512a-8c9d-b9f5a24df9a7),
I’ve long been an animal lover. Growing up, I had cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, birds, guinea pigs, turtles and fish. Every Christmas from age six to about twelve, I asked for a horse. We lived in the city, and boarding a horse would have cost about the same as what we paid to rent our house. The closest I came to getting a horse was the Christmas I got a bike. My dad said the bike could take me to “almost” all the same places as a horse could. In my twenties, I was a kindergarten teacher. My classroom had birds, fish, hamsters, lizards and, for a short while, ferrets. One night the hamster escaped and attended a school board meeting. Apparently, Goober wasn’t recognized right away for the hamster that he was. We had new rules about pets in the classroom after that. Right now, I’m typing with a cat pressed against my arm. What a great life.
The heroine in Holiday Homecoming is Meredith Stone. She introduced herself to me in Katie’s Rescue, the first Scorpion Ridge book. We’ve all met that person at work, school, church, who is the powerhouse that gets things done. Well, that’s Meredith. She gets things done, mostly when it comes to the animals under her charge. But now, she has to slow down to help care for her grandfather. It’s a time for reflection. Of course, nothing’s that easy.
Jimmy Murphy’s whole world changed when his wife died, and he realized that a vagabond life didn’t work well for his daughter. Now he’s caught between the old and the new. His career still means a lot to him, but his latest story is in direct opposition to what Meredith believes in. Jimmy’s first love was Meredith, and sometimes first loves are meant to be forever loves.
I hope you enjoy Holiday Homecoming. If you’d like to meet some of the Mills & Boon Heartwarming authors, please visit www.heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com (http://www.heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com). If you’d like to learn more about me, please visit www.pamelatracy.com (http://www.pamelatracy.com). I love to hear from readers!
Pamela
Holiday
Homecoming
Pamela Tracy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PAMELA TRACY
is an award-winning author who lives with her husband (who claims to be the inspiration for most of her heroes) and son (who claims to be the interference for most of her writing time). She started writing at a very young age (a series of romances, all with David Cassidy as the hero, though sometimes Bobby Sherman would elbow in). Then, while earning a BA in journalism at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, she picked up writing again—this time it was a very bad science-fiction novel.
She went back to her love and was first published in 1999. Since then, Pamela has had more than twenty romance novels in print. She’s a winner of the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award and has been a RITA® Award finalist. Readers can find her at www.heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com (http://www.heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com) or www.pamelatracy.com (http://www.pamelatracy.com).
To Aimée Thurlo,
a gifted author who opened her heart to both
people and animals.
We miss you, Aimée.
Contents
Cover (#u190f46c0-6150-5c40-b846-227e3f8f11dd)
Back Cover Text (#ufa0800ed-88d6-558e-ade5-9001936aee87)
Introduction (#u9b0abaa5-e11d-5a79-a1e6-4f5d2c3d9c43)
Dear Reader
Title Page (#u85fda8f9-047f-5bb1-8d60-32763b280921)
About the Author (#u53ac83e5-b8f1-5722-a49c-90b8372753fd)
Dedication (#u65fd2c66-d4b7-53e5-9c11-b788bf3f47f9)
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u73e85be5-12de-512a-8c9d-b9f5a24df9a7)
“I CAN’T GET a hold of Grandpa. He’s not answering the phone—again.” Meredith’s brother’s tone was more annoyed than frantic. For the last three months, Grandpa Stone had been acting more like a teenager—disappearing for hours, not answering questions directly, grumpy.
“You are still coming, right?” Zack asked.
“I’m just ten minutes from his house.” Meredith pressed on the gas pedal while assessing the dirt road that was more dirt than road. A few miles back some idiot in an old black truck—its windows so darkly tinted she couldn’t see the driver—had almost run her off the road. That was the last thing she needed if Grandpa truly was in trouble.
If...
Raymond Stone was eighty-two, born a little more than two decades after Arizona had become a state. He was hard of hearing, so the phone was more miss than hit lately. Thus her brother’s exasperation.
It was Grandpa’s forgetfulness and wandering, however, that had led to a recent powwow between the two oldest Stone siblings. They had agreed that someone had to stay with him for a while. Family emergencies weren’t Meredith Stone’s forte anymore. But this time it was her grandfather who needed her, and she was the best choice.
The only choice her grandfather might tolerate.
She put her cell phone on speaker so she could talk more easily. “I really hope we’re just overreacting and this isn’t necessary.”
Her brother, Zack, didn’t hesitate. “It’s necessary.”
Ah, the theme of her youth. Necessary was an important word in a household that had a father and mother who were gone too much. Both had been high-end real estate agents working a three city area. When Meredith was young, they’d worked seven days a week because it was necessary. By the time the real estate bubble burst, Meredith was a junior in high school and it was too late to suddenly have mother/ daughter chats or attend father/daughter dances on a Friday night.
Zack and Susan, being the middle and youngest children, had those memories, but not Meredith, the eldest.
Meredith had been raised in an atmosphere where chaos reigned. She, of all the siblings, craved order and control. The drive to excel, make goals and persevere had been necessary for her, as way too often, she’d been the parent. It had gotten her to where she was today: head animal keeper at a small but well-known habitat and at only twenty-eight years of age.
Only once had “necessary” been too high a price. The repercussions from that disaster still kept her awake at night, and it was the biggest reason she’d left her hometown of Gesippi.
She hadn’t gone far.
Zack obviously wasn’t going to say anything else, so Meredith tried once more. “You really think Grandpa needs someone with him all the time? He seemed fine at his birthday party. And he’s made it clear he really doesn’t want me living with him.”
“That party was five months ago.” Zack’s tone changed from worried to resigned. “Plus, he had the whole family doting on him. Even Dad showed up. With the Fourth of July celebration going on, nobody else noticed anything amiss, just me. You didn’t come home two weeks ago for Thanksgiving...”
No, she’d worked instead so that the other employees, the ones with spouses and children, could take the day off.
“All night, Grandpa kept looking over his shoulder as if he was expecting someone. I’m worried he was looking for Grandma. And in the last week, it’s gotten worse.”
Yikes, it was the beginning of December already. Time to decorate for Christmas. Had it really been five months since she’d visited? Bad granddaughter. Bad.
But it was Zack’s nature to fret. As middle child, Zack knew his job description. When they were kids, Meredith had made the rules: bed at nine, lights out at nine-fifteen. Zack had been the nurturer. He’d read Susan her bedtime stories; he checked under beds for monsters. His whole life, he’d expected to find one. He’d have battled it; Meredith would have fed it. Susan would have handed it her doll and ordered, “Play.”
Her parents would have sold it a haunted high-end mansion. The house, of course, would be in foreclosure now.
Zack continued, “Yesterday morning, I stopped by to see how he was doing, and he was clear out past the field. Claimed he was searching for Rowdy. I’m not sure how far he’d have gone if I’d not have showed up.”
Okay, now Meredith understood his worry. Rowdy had been her grandpa’s beloved border collie. Hadbeen being the operative words. Rowdy had died when Meredith was eighteen: a decade ago. He’d died the week after her almost wedding.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I reminded him that Rowdy had gone on to greener pastures and led him back to the house.” Zack was in his second year of community college and determined to be a doctor no matter how long it took. He’d know how to gently break the news of Rowdy’s passing to Grandpa again.
Raymond Stone had never been without animals, both wild and tame. Under his tutelage, she’d learned how to work with the wild ones: how to mend broken wings, sew stitches in a rabbit’s side and bottle-feed a baby white-tailed deer. She had always been drawn to animals that had no one looking out for them. Maybe because back then, at home, no one had been looking out for her, and she very much wanted someone to.
On Grandpa’s farm, she’d also learned to milk cows, groom horses and feed chickens.
This past week, Meredith, as head keeper at a zoo, had been stepped on by an ostrich, kissed by an orangutan and sneezed on by a bear. She loved it, and she had Grandpa to thank for pushing her toward doing what she loved.
“The dog is another thing we have to worry about. Twice now Grandpa’s gotten up in the middle of the night and tripped over Pepper.”
Pepper was a big, old black-and-white dog. He was hard of hearing, like Grandpa, and no longer had the oomph to do much more than follow Grandpa around and sit and wait. Meredith figured the mutt was part golden retriever, part shepherd and possibly a bit standard poodle. Big dog; big heart.
“Grandpa would be miserable without a dog.” Meredith had no idea how she’d manage it, but she’d make sure Grandpa kept this one. Grandpa needed Pepper just as Meredith needed all of her animals. At last count, she’d cared for one hundred and eleven different species. All of which needed her, many of which loved her. But canines were what she did best.
Right now, she didn’t own a dog. Not really. Yoda, her favorite at the zoo, wasn’t really a pet she should keep in the backyard or take to dog parks. Yoda was a high-content wolf dog: half wolf, half German shepherd. He came when he was called and walked on a leash, but he was a little too wild to keep in her tiny apartment. He required space to run and dig and howl.
Plus, Yoda was the property of Bridget’s Animal Adventure, BAA for short. Except that he, like Meredith, didn’t really belong anywhere. At the moment, he was being sequestered in a barn off the property, away from the other two wolves BAA had because of a territorial battle between them that had resulted in a torn ear, twenty-nine stitches and new digs for Yoda.
But she shouldn’t be worrying about Yoda right now. She had her grandpa to think about. Still chatting with her brother, Meredith turned off the main road and drove past a dozen barbed-wire gates that guarded farms full of greasewood, paloverde trees and dirt. It took a good three miles before the tiny town of Gesippi came into view. A minute later, she drove by her parents’ house—the biggest in town—and tried to listen while Zack filled her in on the rest of the family.
By the looks of things at her parents’ house, only her mother was home. No surprise, since Mom rarely left. Her job now was cutting coupons and cleaning the house. Dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Instead of real estate, he now sold medical products at trade shows, traveling four out of every five weeks, often to different states. Today, she knew, he’d driven into Phoenix for a meeting and Zack said he wasn’t answering his cell phone.
Zack had just given her the update on Susan, who apparently was in the throes of young love, when Meredith pulled into the driveway of her grandfather’s house.
“I’m glad Susan’s happy,” Meredith said. “But I’m here now, and you know how Grandpa gets if you talk to a phone instead of him. I’ll call you in a bit.”
While his grandchildren were busy grabbing at life with both hands, Grandpa was hard pressed to find things for his hands to do. The end of his story was nearing, and no one in the family—especially him—was prepared for the conclusion.
Meredith turned off her phone and pocketed it, then took a deep breath and tried to figure out what to do first. Should she act as if this was just another visit? No, that wouldn’t work. She’d never stayed overnight...not in a decade, anyway.
At eighteen, thanks to Grandpa’s insistence and money, she’d traveled an hour away to Tucson and the university there. After earning her degree in zoology—in three years instead of four—she’d secured a job at a major zoo in California. As the new kid on the block, her responsibilities hadn’t been as hands-on as she desired. Plus, she hadn’t liked being so far away from Gesippi and her family. What if she were needed?
So, after just one year, she returned to Arizona and found work at BAA in Scorpion Ridge, only seventy-five miles from her home. Far enough away so she didn’t keep bumping into her past; close enough to be available to help her family if they needed her.
