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air was charged with excitement and civic pride and the welcome prospect of construction jobs to tide over the laid-off workers from the sawmill.
    Meg's eyes shone as she gazed up at her husband. "Isn't he something?" she marveled, giving Olivia alittle poke with one elbow as she shifted Mac to her other hip.
    Olivia smiled but didn't reply.
    "Sing!" someone shouted, somewhere in the surging throng. Any moment now, Olivia thought, they'd all be holding up disposable lights in a flickering-flame salute.
    Brad shook his head. "Not today," he said.
    A collective groan rose from the crowd.
    Brad put up both hands to silence them.
    "He'll sing," Melissa said in a loud and certain whisper. She and Ashley, being the youngest, barely knew Brad. He'd been trying to remedy that ever since he'd moved back from Nashville, but it was slow going. They admired him, they were grateful to him, but it seemed to Olivia that her sisters were still in awe of their big brother, too, and therefore a strange shyness possessed them whenever he was around.
    Brad asked Olivia and Tanner to join him on stage.
    Even though Olivia had expected that, she wished she didn't have to go up there. She was a behind-the-scenes kind of person, uncomfortable at the center of attention. When Tanner appeared from behind her, took her arm and hustled her toward the wooden steps, she caught her breath. Stone Creekers raised an uproarious cheer, and Olivia flushed with embarrassment, but Tanner seemed untroubled.
    He wore too-new, too-expensive boots, probably custom-made, to match his too-new hat, along with jeans, a black silk shirt and a denim jacket. He seemed as at home getting up in front of all those people as Brad did--his grin dazzled, and his eyes were bright with enjoyment.
    Drugstore cowboy, Olivia thought, but she couldn't work up any rancor. Tanner Quinn might be laying on the Western bit a little thick, but he did look good. Way, way too good for Olivia's comfort.
    Brad introduced them both: Tanner as the builder, and Olivia--"You all know my kid sister, the horse doctor"--as the driving force behind the project. Without her, he said, none of this would be happening.
    Never having thought of herself as a driving force behind anything in particular, Olivia grew even more flustered as Brad went on about how she'd be heading up the shelter when it opened around that time next year.
    More applause followed, the good-natured, hometown kind, indulgent and laced with chuckles.
    Let this be over, Olivia thought.
    "Sing!" someone yelled. The whole audience soon took up the chant.
    "Here's where we make a run for it," Tanner whispered to Olivia, and the two of them left the stage. Tanner vanished, and Olivia went back to stand with her sisters and Meg.
    Brad grinned, shaking his head a little as one of his buddies handed up a guitar. "One," he said firmly. After strumming a few riffs and turning the tuning keys this way and that, he eased into "Meg's Song," a ballad he'd written for his wife.
    Holding Mac and looking up at Brad with an expression of rapt delight, Meg seemed to glow from the inside. A sweet, strange alchemy made it seem as though only Brad, Meg and Mac were really there during those magical minutes, on that blustery day, with the snow crusting hard around everybody's feet. The rest of themmight have been hovering in an adjacent dimension, like actors waiting to go on.
    When the song ended, the audience clamored for more, but Brad didn't give in. Photographers and reporters shoved in close as he handed off the guitar again, descended from the stage and picked up a brand-new shovel with a blue ribbon on the handle. The ribbon, Olivia knew, was Ashley's handiwork; she was an expert with bows, where Olivia always got them tangled up, fiddling with them until they were grubby.
    "Are you making a comeback?" one reporter demanded.
    "When will you make another movie?" someone else wanted to know.
    Still another person shoved a microphone into Brad's face; he