A Cold Creek Reunion (3 page)

The reminder of her marriage left him feeling petty and small. Yeah, he had hurt her, but his betrayal probably didn’t hold a candle to everything else she had lost—her husband and the father of her children, whom he’d heard had drowned about six months earlier.

“Are you planning on eating any of that or just pushing it around your plate?”

He glanced up and, much to his shock, discovered Ridge was the only one left at the table. Everybody else had cleared off while he had been lost in thought, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry. Been a long couple of days.” He hoped his brother didn’t notice the heat he could feel crawling over his features.

Ridge gave him a long look and Taft sighed, waiting for the inevitable words of advice from his brother.

As the oldest Bowman sibling left after their parents died, Ridge had taken custody of Caidy, who had been a teenager at the time. Even though Taft and Trace had both been in their early twenties, Ridge still tried to take over the role of father figure to them, too, whether they liked it or not—which they usually didn’t.

Instead of a lecture, Ridge only sipped at his drink. “I was thinking about taking the girls for a ride up to check the fence line on the high pasture. Want to come along? A little mountain air might help clear your head.”

He did love being on the back of a horse amid the pine and sage of the mountains overlooking the ranch, but he wasn’t in the mood for more questions or sympathy from his family about Laura.

“To tell you the truth, I’m itching to get my hands dirty. I think I’ll head over to the house and put in a window frame or something.”

Ridge nodded. “I know you’ve got plenty to do on your own place, but I figured this was worth mentioning, too. I heard the other day at the hardware store that Jan Pendleton is looking to hire somebody to help her with some renovations to the inn.”

He snorted. As if Laura would ever let her mother hire him. He figured Ridge was joking but he didn’t see any hint of humor in his brother’s expression.

“Just saying. I thought you might be interested in helping Laura and her mother out a little.”

Ah. Without actually offering a lecture, this must be Ridge’s way of reminding Taft he owed Laura something. None of the rest of the family knew what had happened all those years ago, but he was pretty sure all of them blamed him.

And they were right.

Without answering, he shoved away from the table and grabbed his plate to carry it into the kitchen. First, do no harm. But once the harm had been done, a
stand-up guy found some way to make it right. No matter how difficult.

Chapter Three

L
aura stared at her mother, shock buzzing through her as if she had just bent down and licked an electrical outlet.

“Sorry, say that again. You did
what?
”

“I didn’t think you’d mind, darling,” her mother said, with a vague sort of smile as she continued stirring the chicken she was cooking for their dinner.

Are you completely mental?
she wanted to yell.
How could you possibly think I wouldn’t mind?

She drew a deep, cleansing breath, clamping down on the words she wanted to blurt out. The children were, for once, staying out of trouble, driving cars around the floor of the living room and she watched them interact for a moment to calm herself.

Her mother was under a great deal of strain right now, financially and otherwise. She had to keep that in mind—not that stress alone could explain her mother making such an incomprehensible decision.

“Really, it was all your idea,” Jan said calmly.

“
My
idea?” Impossible. Even in her most tangled nightmare, she never would have come up with this possible scenario.

“Yes. Weren’t you just saying the other day how much it would help to have a carpenter on the staff to help with the repairs, especially now that we totally have to start from the ground up in the fire-damaged room?”

“I say a lot of things, Mom.”
That doesn’t mean I want you to rush out and enter into a deal with a particular devil named Taft Bowman.

“I just thought you would appreciate the help, that’s all. I know how much the fire has complicated your timeline for the renovation.”

“Not really. Only one room was damaged and it was already on my schedule for renovations.”

“Well, when Chief Bowman stopped by this morning to check on things after the excitement we had the other day—which I thought was a perfectly lovely gesture, by the way—he mentioned he could lend us a hand with any repairs in his free time. Honestly, darling, it seemed like the perfect solution.”

Really? Having her daughter’s ex-fiancé take an empty room at the inn for the next two weeks in exchange for a little skill with a miter saw was
perfect
in what possible alternative universe?

Her mother was as sharp as the proverbial tack. Jan Pendleton had been running the inn on her own since Laura’s father died five years ago. While she didn’t always agree with her mother’s methods and might have run things differently if she had been home, Laura knew Jan had tried hard to keep the inn functioning all those years she had been living in Madrid.

But she still couldn’t wrap her head around this one. “In theory, it is a good idea. A resident carpenter would come in very handy. But not Taft, for heaven’s sake, Mom!”

Jan frowned in what appeared to be genuine confusion. “You mean because of your history together?”

“For a start. Seeing him again after all these years is more than a little awkward,” she admitted.

Her mother continued to frown. “I’m sorry but I don’t understand. What am I missing? You always insisted your breakup was a mutual decision. I distinctly remember you telling me over and over again you had both decided you were better off as friends.”

Had she said that? She didn’t remember much about that dark time other than her deep despair.

“You were so cool and calm after your engagement ended, making all those terrible phone calls, returning all those wedding presents. You acted like you didn’t care at all. Honey, I honestly thought you wouldn’t mind having Taft here now or I never would have taken him up on his suggestion.”

Ah. Her lying little chickens were now coming home to roost. Laura fought the urge to bang her head on the old pine kitchen table a few dozen times.

Ten years ago, she had worked so hard to convince everyone involved that nobody’s heart had been shattered by the implosion of their engagement. To her parents, she had put on a bright, happy face and pretended to be excited about the adventures awaiting her, knowing how crushed they would have been if they caught even a tiny glimmer of the truth—that inside her heart felt like a vast, empty wasteland.

How could she blame her mother for not seeing through her carefully constructed act to the stark and painful reality, especially when only a few years later, Laura was married to someone else and expecting Jan’s first grandchild? It was unfair to be hurt, to wish Jan had somehow glimpsed the depth of her hidden heartache.

This, then, was her own fault. Well, hers and a certain opportunistic male who had always been very good at charming her mother—and every other female within a dozen miles of Pine Gulch.

“Okay, the carpentry work. I get that. Yes, we certainly need the help and Taft is very good with his hands.” She refused to remember just
how
good those hands could be. “But did you have to offer him a room?”

Jan shrugged, adding a lemony sauce to the chicken that instantly started to burble, filling the kitchen with a delicious aroma. “That was his idea.”

Oh, Laura was quite sure it
was
Taft’s idea. The bigger question was
why?
What possible reason could he have for this sudden wish to stay at the inn? By the stunned look he had worn when he spotted her at the fire scene, she would have assumed he wanted to stay as far away from her as possible.

He had to find this whole situation as awkward and, yes, painful as she did.

Maybe it was all some twisted revenge plot. She had spurned him after all. Maybe he wanted to somehow punish her all these years later with shoddy carpentry work that would end up costing an arm and a leg to repair… .

She sighed at her own ridiculous imaginings. Taft didn’t work that way. Whatever his motive for making this arrangement with her mother, she had no doubt he would put his best effort into the job.

“Apparently his lease was up on the apartment where he’s been living,” Jan went on. “He’s building a house in Cold Creek Canyon—which I’ve heard is perfectly lovely, by the way—but it won’t be finished for a few more weeks. Think of how much you can save on paying for a carpenter, all in exchange only for letting him stay in a room that was likely to be empty anyway, the way our vacancy rate will be during the shoulder season until the summer tourist activity heats up. I honestly thought you would be happy about this. When Taft suggested it, the whole thing seemed like a good solution all the way around.”

A good solution for everyone except
her!
How would she survive having him underfoot all the time, smiling at her out of those green eyes she had once adored so much, talking to her out of that delicious mouth she had tasted so many times?

She gave a tiny sigh and her mother sent her a careful look. “I can still tell him no. He was planning on bringing some of his things over in the morning, but I’ll just give him a ring and tell him never mind. We can find someone else, honey, if having Taft here will make you too uncomfortable.”

Her mother was completely sincere, she knew. Jan would call him in immediately if she had any idea how much Laura had grieved for the dreams they had once spun together.

For an instant, she was tempted to have her mother do exactly that, call and tell him the deal was off.

How could she, though? She knew just what Taft would think. He would guess, quite accurately, that she was the one who didn’t want him here and would know she had dissuaded her mother from the plan.

Her shoulder blades itched at the thought. She didn’t want him thinking she was uncomfortable having him around. Better that he continue to believe she was completely indifferent to the ramifications of being back in Pine Gulch with him.

She had done her very best to strike the proper tone the day of the fire, polite but cool, as if they were distant acquaintances instead of once having shared everything.

If she told her mother she didn’t want to have Taft here, he would know her demeanor was all an act.

She was trapped. Well and truly trussed, just like one of the calves he used to rope in the high-school rodeo. It was a helpless, miserable feeling, one that felt all too familiar. She had lived with it every day of the past seven years, since her marriage to Javier Santiago. But unlike those calves in the rodeo ring, she had wandered willingly into the ropes that bound her to a man she didn’t love.

Well, she hadn’t been completely willing, she supposed. From the beginning she had known marrying him was a mistake and had tried every way she could think short of jilting him also to escape the ties
binding them together. But unlike with Taft, this time she’d had a third life to consider. She had been four months pregnant with Alexandro. Javier—strangely old-fashioned about this, at least—wouldn’t consider any other option but marriage.

She had tried hard to convince herself she was in love with him. He was handsome and seductively charming and made her laugh with his extravagant pursuit of her, which had been the reason she had finally given in and begun to date him while she was working at the small, exclusive boutique hotel he owned in Madrid.

She had tried to be a good wife and had worked hard to convince herself she loved him, but it hadn’t been enough. Not for him and not for her—but by then she had been thoroughly entangled in the piggin’ rope, so to speak, by Alex and then by Maya, her sweet-
natured and vulnerable daughter.

This, though, with Taft. She couldn’t control what her mother had done, but she could certainly control her own response to it. She wouldn’t allow herself to care if the man had suddenly invaded every inch of her personal space by moving into the hotel. It was only temporary and then he would be out of her life again.

“Do you want me to call him?” her mother asked again.

She forced herself to smile. “Not at all, Mama. I’m sorry. I was just…surprised, that’s all. Everything should be fine. You’re right—it’s probably a great idea. Free labor is always a good thing, and like you said, the only thing we’re giving up is a room that probably wouldn’t have been booked anyway.”

Maya wandered into the kitchen, apparently tired of playing, and gave her mother one of those generous hugs Laura had come to depend upon like oxygen and water. “Hungry, Mama.”

“Gram is fixing us something delicious for dinner. Aren’t we lucky to have her?”

Maya nodded with a broad smile to her grandmother. “Love you, Gram.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.” Jan beamed back at her.

This—her daughter and Alex—was more important than her discomfort about Taft. She was trying her best to turn the hotel into something that could actually turn a profit instead of just provide a subsistence for her mother and now her and her children.

She had her chance to live her lifelong dream now and make the Cold Creek Inn into the warm and gracious facility she had always imagined, a place where families could feel comfortable to gather, where couples could find or rekindle romance, where the occasional business traveler could find a home away from home.

This was her moment to seize control of her life and make a new future for herself and her children. She couldn’t let Taft ruin that for her.

All she had to do was remind herself that she hadn’t loved him for ten years and she should be able to handle his presence here at the inn with calm aplomb.

No big deal whatsoever. Right?

* * *

If some part of him had hoped Laura might fall all over him with gratitude for stepping up to help with the inn renovations, Taft would have been doomed to disappointment.

Over the next few days, as he settled into his surprisingly comfortable room in the wing overlooking the creek, a few doors down from the fire-damaged room, he helped Mrs. Pendleton with the occasional carpentry job. A bathroom cabinet repair here, a countertop fix there. In that time, he barely saw Laura. Somehow she was always mysteriously absent whenever he stopped at the front desk.

The few times he did come close enough to talk to her, she would exchange a quick, stiff word with him and then manufacture some excuse to take off at the earliest opportunity, as if she didn’t want to risk some kind of contagion.

She
had dumped
him,
not the other way around, but she was acting as if he was the biggest heel in the county. Still, he found her prickly, standoffish attitude more a challenge than an annoyance.

Truth was, he wasn’t used to women ignoring him—and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to
Laura
ignoring him.

They had been friends forever, even before that momentous summer after her freshman year of college when he finally woke up and realized how much he had come to care about her as much more than simply a friend. After she left, he had missed the woman he loved with a hollow ache he had never quite been able to fill, but he sometimes thought he missed his best friend just as much.

After three nights at the hotel with these frustrating, fleeting encounters, he was finally able to run her to ground early one morning. He had an early meeting at the fire station, and when he walked out of the side entrance near where he parked the vehicle he drove as fire chief—which was as much a mobile office as a mode of transportation—he spotted someone working in the scraggly flower beds that surrounded the inn.