At Home in Stone Creek (Silhouette Special Edition) Read Free

for the attic stairs. As she reached the bottom, stepping into the corridor just off the kitchen, a familiar car horn sounded from the driveway in front of the detached garage. It could only be Olivia’s ancient Suburban.
    Ashley had mixed feelings as she hoisted the ladder-steep steps back up into the ceiling. She loved her older sister dearly and was delighted that Olivia had found true love with Tanner Quinn, but since their mother’s funeral a few months before, there had been a strain between them.
    Neither Brad nor Olivia nor Melissa had shed a single tear for Delia O’Ballivan—not during the church service or the graveside ceremony or the wake. Okay, so there wasn’t a greeting card category for the kind of mother Delia had been—she’d deserted the family long ago, and gradually destroyed herself through a long series of tragically bad choices. For all that, she’d still been the woman who had given birth to them all.
    Didn’t that count for something?
    A rap sounded at the back door, as distinctive as the car horn, and Olivia’s glowing, pregnancy-rounded face filled one of the frost-trimmed panes in the window.
    Oddly self-conscious in her jeans and T-shirt and an ancient flannel shirt from the back of her closet, Ashley mouthed, “It’s not locked.”
    Beaming, Olivia opened the door and waddled across the threshold. She was due to deliver her and Tanner’s first child in a matter of days, if not hours, and from the looks of her, Ashley surmised she was carrying either quadruplets or a Sumo wrestler.
    â€œYou know you don’t have to knock,” Ashley said, keeping her distance.
    Olivia smiled, a bit wistfully it seemed to Ashley, and opened their grandfather Big John’s old barn coat to reveal a small white cat with one blue eye and one green one.
    â€œOh, no you don’t,” Ashley bristled.
    Olivia, a veterinarian as well as Stone Creek, Arizona’s one and only real-deal animal communicator, bent awkwardly to set the kitten on Ashley’s immaculate kitchen floor, where it meowed pitifully and turned in a little circle, pursuing its fluffy tail. Every stray dog, cat or bird in the county seemed to find its way to Olivia eventually, like immigrants gravitating toward the Statue of Liberty.
    Two years ago, at Christmas, she’d even been approached by a reindeer named Rodney.
    â€œMeet Mrs. Wiggins,” Olivia chimed, undaunted. Her china-blue eyes danced beneath the dark, sleek fringe of her bangs, but there was a wary look in them that bothered Ashley…even shamed her a little. The two of them had always been close. Did Olivia think Ashley was jealous of her new life with Tanner and his precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Sophie?
    â€œI suppose she’s already told you her life story,” Ashley said, nodding toward the cat, scrubbing her hands down the thighs of her jeans once and then heading for the sink to wash up before filling the electric kettle. At least that hadn’t changed—they always had tea together, whenever Olivia dropped by—which was less and less often these days.
    After all, unlike Ashley, Olivia had a life.
    Olivia crooked up a corner of her mouth and began struggling out of the old plaid woolen coat, flecked, asalways, with bits of straw. Some things never changed—even with Tanner’s money, Olivia still dressed like what she was, a country veterinarian.
    â€œNot much to tell,” Livie answered with a slight lift of one shoulder, as nonchalantly as if telepathic exchanges with all manner of finned, feathered and furred creatures were commonplace. “She’s only fourteen weeks old, so she hasn’t had time to build up much of an autobiography.”
    â€œI do not want a cat,” Ashley informed her sister.
    Olivia hauled back a chair at the table and collapsed into it. She was wearing gum boots, as usual, and they looked none too clean. “You only