You're the One That I Want (21 page)

“The whole thing?” Owen leaned on the counter, inhaling the smell. “Mom, please. Just one piece. Casper can’t eat the entire thing. Besides, Grace brought him cookies this morning
 
—”

“How would you feel if you were sitting in jail, unjustly accused?” she said. “If we lived in a town with its own judicial service, he would have been out yesterday. It’s not fair we have to wait for the circuit judge to arraign him before we can bail him out. And I can’t believe I’m even saying that.”

She picked up a towel. Sighed. “This whole thing stinks.”

Now he felt like a bum. Owen slipped his arm around his
mother’s shoulders. It seemed she’d gotten smaller since he’d left. “I know, Mom. You’re right. Casper will love it
 
—all of it. And he’ll be home tomorrow.”

“You can’t really be hungry,” Scotty said, sliding onto a kitchen stool. “The girls at the coffee shop gave him a free cookie with our lattes. It seems half the town had a crush on Owen. They greeted him like a war hero.”

“Not exactly,” Owen said, but he couldn’t help but be surprised at the welcome he’d received. And not just from the handful of girls he could barely remember, but locals at Pierre’s Pizza and a number of patrons at the Java Cup, where he’d bought Scotty a pumpkin latte.

“Exactly. Signe Netterlund practically threw herself into his lap when we questioned her.”

“What
 
—? No, she didn’t.” He shot Scotty a look.

She rolled her eyes. “Owen seems to be the town catch.”

He stared at her, incredulous. Had she completely deleted the debacle on the ice rink from her memory?

He wasn’t sure why they’d gone from sitting at the counter at the VFW, about to devour mouthwatering burgers, to her claiming she didn’t know him. She did know him
 
—she just didn’t know how despicably far he’d fallen to get there.

You want to see the guy I left behind?

His impulses had simply taken over. He operated on a sort of furious autopilot as he drove to the ice rink, intending to show her the guy who’d had it all and lost it.

Then he’d hit the ice and everything clicked into place. He’d probably pushed himself too hard because his incision burned after so many shots on goal. But the cool breath of the rink slicking down his shirt, the delicious ache in his legs as he flew over the
ice, the power in his shots . . . In those moments, he could hear the roar of the crowd and feel the sweet adrenaline that sluiced through him before a game.

As he skated, missing it had reached in and turned him inside out.

He hadn’t expected the enormity of his loss to buckle him onto the ice, but the pain had crashed over him. The taste of getting what he’d worked so hard for had turned to ash in his mouth.

Shoot, he’d even cried. Like a child.

He hadn’t heard Scotty approach until suddenly there she was, her arms around him, saving him again. Always saving him, not seeing the wreck before her, but believing in some guy he barely knew.

Stop listening so hard to your failures. And to the echo of a future that will never be. Live right now, be the guy I know and . . .

He’d let the curiosity of what hung on the end of that sentence niggle at him all day.

Care for? Saved?

Love?

He shook that last word away. But it could still undo him, along with the memory of her in his arms, fitting so perfectly, her long hair down and caressing his hands, her beautiful lips parting just a little like she hoped . . .

He’d nearly chucked the rules, pulled her to himself, and dived in, slaying the image of the guy in the middle of a hockey rink, his life in debris around him.

Except that’s who he’d become, and no amount of belief or pep talking or even pretending she loved him could help him figure out how to put it back together.

Which had made him put her away from him and remind
himself that he had one shot at this second chance
 
—rescuing Casper
 
—and he couldn’t blow it by breaking the rules.

“How was your sleuthing?” Ingrid asked, pulling out a Tupperware container.

“According to my notes, there were three restraining orders against Monte, including Raina’s. Five people who say he stole estate money from them; Rhino and Kaleigh, who have a personal complaint; and a slew of people who say Monte Riggs should have been run out of town long before he disappeared.” Scotty set the notebook she’d purchased to keep track of the names on the counter.

Ingrid moved over to peer at Scotty’s list. “Do you think any of these people might have killed Monte?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You have to have means and opportunity as well as motive. It will take a lot more digging.”

From the office, the door opened and Owen’s nephew, Tiger, barreled in. “Dad says he needs a cookie or he’ll die right now!”

He stopped when he spotted Owen, his eyes wide. “Oh.”

Owen squatted in front of him. Wow, kids grew fast. The Tiger he remembered had teeth missing, the chubby face of a kindergartner. This Tiger was taller, his big teeth coming in, his hair shorter. “I’m your uncle Owen. Remember me?”

Tiger nodded. “Dad has a picture of you on our refrigerator.”

Huh, really?

“Dad said you played hockey. I play hockey. I’m in the peewees.”

“Dude, that’s great.”

Ingrid came over, holding a baggie of cookies. “Tell your dad that I’m onto his tricks. And yours, big guy.”

“Thanks, Nana!” Tiger scooted back out and Owen watched him go.

“Darek’s working on his house,” Ingrid said. “I think he’s painting with your father. Poor man, it’s taking about four times as long as he’d hoped to finish it. Resort projects come first.”

Owen glanced at Scotty. “You okay?”

She was searching through her notes, her finger caught in her cute mouth. She looked up. “What?”

“I’m going outside.”

She had returned to the list before he closed the door behind him.

He hadn’t walked through the resort since returning home. The recently planted evergreens towered between the resort, with its seeded grass and newly rebuilt cabins, and the wasteland of baby scrub brush to the north, scars from the wildland fire that had nearly decimated their livelihood.

Darek and Casper had managed to rebuild. They’d winterized the cedar-sided cabins, updated from their previous counterparts with Internet and cable television. Darek had planted chrysanthemums along the walkways to each cabin, blooming yellow, crimson, and ocher.

Beyond the cabins, the lake lapped at the shore. The fire had cleared the view, and Darek had built up the shoreline with boulders and woodchips. Adirondack chairs perched at the edge of the water, inviting guests to linger.

If possible, Evergreen Resort, like the pinecones and seedlings that survived the fire, had blossomed in the aftermath.

Owen wound his way through the resort and found himself at Darek’s A-frame cabin. Freshly roofed with green tiles and covered in dark-red cedar siding, with a deck framing two sides and a hand-carved plaque on the door that said
Darek and Ivy
, probably to direct guests away from private quarters.

Tiger sat on the deck, his hand in the plastic bag, rooting for a cookie.

“I thought those were for your dad.”

“They are. Dad said I could have one.”

Owen tousled Tiger’s hair as he headed inside and called, “Hello? Need some help?”

Darek perched on a ladder, screwing a bulb into the recessed lights of the arching, pine-paneled ceiling.

“Wow,” Owen said as he stood taking in Darek’s hard work. The front room ceiling soared two stories over an open floor plan that included a granite-countered kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a knotty pine hardwood floor, and a hand-built stone fireplace. A stairway led to a loft that overlooked the room, bordered by a railing with hand-hewn balusters.

It looked like a bathroom and two smaller bedrooms were tucked under the lofted area, and from one of these, his father emerged, holding a paint roller. “Great. We could use another hand. Take your coat off and grab a roller.”

Owen followed the cardboard taped to the floor to a back room, where his father stood at one wall, covering it in pale blue. Plastic and cardboard protected the floor, blue painter’s tape over the light sockets and window frames.

“I think this second coat will do it. We’re nearly done.”

Owen rolled up his sleeves, winced as he bent over to soak a roller in paint. But he hid it from his father
 
—his own fault for showing off today in front of Scotty. “Tiger’s room, I assume?”

“We’re trying to get them in by Halloween. Darek’s getting antsy in his rental. Had hoped to be in the house a month ago.”

“I can’t believe all the hard work he’s done on the resort. It looks brand-new.”

“It
is
brand-new. And upgraded. He talked me into the Internet in every cabin, although I’m not so sure
 
—”

“Trust the next generation, Dad.”

“I just don’t want our guests to miss out on the purpose of Evergreen
 
—to get away. To find a moment of peace outside the bustle of the city. People need silence to hear their own thoughts, even God’s voice. That was my dad’s thinking, at least. He said that sometimes people needed to even escape church. There was a quote he loved: ‘God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees and in the flowers and clouds and stars.’”

Owen refilled his roller. “Sometimes we worked through the night on the boat, and I’d be awake when the sun came up. I’d watch the sunrise splashing over the water, turning the spray to crystals. It was like God was there, reminding me that He . . . well, maybe that He hadn’t forgotten me.”

His dad’s voice was low, gentle. “He didn’t, Owen. You were never lost to Him.”

“I don’t know, Dad. I . . . wasn’t . . .” He couldn’t finish because really, how did he tell his father how abysmally far he’d fallen from his own
 
—or anyone’s
 
—expectations?

John rolled the blue paint on the wall. “‘I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.’” He dipped his roller in for a refill. “Psalm 139. No matter how far you run, you can’t hide from God.”

No. He got that finally. It was what to do with the grace he’d been given that had him stymied. Shaken.

“Dad, when I was out there on the raft, I . . . I wasn’t afraid.
Not really. I mean, I didn’t want to die, and I wanted to come home, but I wasn’t afraid. I even told Scotty to have faith
 
—me, the guy who can’t seem to figure out how to do anything right. The guy who . . .” He stopped painting but couldn’t look at his dad. “The guy who’s been scared pretty much since I signed that Blue Ox deal.”

Behind him, his dad painted in silence.

Which made it easier to just . . . talk. “Ever since I signed that contract with the Blue Ox, I’ve been afraid of screwing up. People were looking at me as if I could be the next Wayne Gretzky, and it freaked me out. I started listening to them and everything went south. But I’m still . . . Well, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now. Other than trying to figure out how to clear Casper, I’m completely lost.” And frankly, scared out of his head that he would somehow let Casper down, but he wasn’t going to say that to his dad.

Especially with Darek in the next room. Darek, who had his life together, had managed to scrape new life from the Evergreen ashes and reseed the family legacy.

Even Casper had managed to land on his feet, despite his current circumstances
 
—Owen still couldn’t get the word
millionaire
through his head.

Apparently only one son had crashed and burned. Ironically, the one with the most potential.

He felt sick.

Finally John broke the silence. “God is not surprised by what happened to you, Owen. He didn’t look down from heaven and think,
Uh-oh, now what?
There are no chance happenings with God. God does not stumble around, wondering what He’s doing. He has everything under control, and you are always safe with
Him. Even when you’re in the middle of the ocean . . . or coming home to face the child you didn’t know you had.”

Yeah. Just another of his colossal bumbles. “You have to know how much I . . . I wish I’d played that differently. I’d do anything not to have . . .” He shook the image from his head, hating that it would always reside there, that night with a woman who didn’t belong to him. “I think I’m going to let Casper raise her.”

His father stayed silent beside him.

“Casper and Raina are right
 
—it would just be confusing for her to have me in the picture. And Casper loves her like a father.” He hadn’t expected his eyes to burn with the confession, but even as he said it, the words landed, settled, soaked through him. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Again, silence.

Owen looked at his father, who had turned, met his gaze, his own dark, unsettled. “You should know that I haven’t exactly known what to say in this, Owen. She is your daughter. But Casper loves Raina. Still, I just need to ask . . . are you sure you don’t want to marry Raina, try to make it work?”

“Dad. Seriously. Raina doesn’t love me. And . . .”

“And you’re in love with Scotty.”

Owen stilled.

His father raised an eyebrow.

“No, I mean . . . yeah, but . . .”

“What do you mean, Son?”

“She’s not making it easy.”

“Didn’t you propose?”

That again. Owen turned back to his wall. “Sort of. But . . . it was stupid. Impulsive. Which I guess is my worst flaw because now she’s set up rules.”

“Rules?”

“Like I’m not allowed to . . . well, propose.”

He heard a chuckle from his father.

“Or kiss her. Or touch her in any way. She says we have to keep it professional because she’s planning on leaving as soon as we can clear Casper.”