Holiday Homecoming by Jillian Hart Page B

cacti, with their arms stretched toward heaven, and the stubborn green of the palm trees and the rocky camel-back ridges of the Superstition Mountains were a form of beauty, too.
    It just wasn’t Montana.
    Ryan wasn’t sure if it was Montana he missed or thewoman he’d reunited with there. Kristin had been on his mind since he’d left the McKaslins’ home to carve Mom’s turkey. He didn’t know why he kept thinking about her. Probably because she was really something, that’s why. Just because he planned on being unattached forever didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a fine woman.
    It didn’t help matters that Mom had done nothing else but talk up Kristin. Through their Thanksgiving meal, Mom kept peppering the conversation with comments about Kristin, even if she had to change the subject back to the pretty Montana girl. She was so successful that she’d bought her own place. She was smart with money. She wasn’t dating anyone. She had a lot in common with him. She loved movies and books and she jogged, too.
    Poor Mom. He knew it was hard for her to understand why he stayed single. That really perplexed him because she’d lost Dad, too. She’d never dated. She’d never considered getting remarried. So, why did she want him to? Both of them knew there was no sense in going through that kind of pain again. People died. Life ended. As a doctor, he couldn’t deny how frail life was.
    He wasn’t about to get close to anyone again. No. He couldn’t take that kind of devastation one more time. He was just fine alone. It hadn’t been easy for the eight-year-old he’d been to attend his dad’s funeral. To try to pick up the pieces shattering all around him—his mom’s grief, his own heartbreak, the gaping hole that Dad had left behind. To live every day without him, tocomfort his mom and sister, to worry about money, to know that if he lost one parent, then he could just as easily, just as suddenly, lose the other.
    No, he’d lived with enough of that uncertainty. Swiping the sweat from his brow, he stopped in front of the mailboxes and bent down to give his hamstrings a good stretch. He’d missed a few days of running, with the holidays and the long office hours. He was paying for it now.
    He looked in his mailbox—the standard stuff. The water bill. Pizza ads. A flyer for free windshield-crack repairs. And a bonus—an envelope from Tim, his buddy in Boise. The E.R. doc. Ryan ripped that one open.
    â€œHey, Ryan,” he read in Tim’s typical hurried, doctor’s scrawl. “Samantha Fields was discharged last week, and she asked me to pass these notes on to you. I didn’t know the woman you were with, but I figure you’ll know how to reach her.”
    Ryan looked in the envelope at the two note cards, one addressed to him and the other simply to Kristin.
    There he was, thinking about her again. How there’d been steel in her that night—how she’d worked without complaint in the bitter cold to help him tend to Samantha. And there was light in her, the kind that shone as true as the sun. A kindness that moved even a grouchy old bachelor like him, who was so set in his ways.
    The trouble was, he didn’t have her address in Seattle. If he called his mom, boy, would she make a big deal about it. She’d think she was making progress on her campaign to match him up with a suitable woman. No, he couldn’t call his mom. A call to Kristin’s mom was out, too.
    One of her sisters. Yeah, he’d give Kirby a call. Kirby was a nurse. She understood about confidentiality. He’d get her number from information. Yep, that was a good idea. This way his mom would never know he wanted to write Kristin.
    It wasn’t his idea to write her, after all. Nope. It was his duty to forward the note from Samantha Fields. And, being an honorable man, what else could he do?
    December 8
    Rain