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Immediately after Janine’s death, the succession of au pairs had begun.
He dragged himself away from his grim thoughts.
Rory Gorenzi wore a black snowboarding jacket, black snow pants, Sorel-style boots and mittens. Both jacket and pants were patched with duct tape, and the boots had seen more than a few seasons. “Look,” she said, “I’ve got the key to your place, and I’ll take you over there. I just need to quickly run down there…” She indicated an area across the street and half a block up, “and drop off this stuff.”
“Can I help you?” He reached out, offering to relieve her of her package, which seemed not only oddly shaped but heavy.
She sidestepped him. “Oh, I’ll get it. It’s, um, pet food. Just let me…Just—I’ll be right back.” She turned away and tripped over a crack on the sidewalk, and the parcel, envelope and book all flew out of her arms and landed in front of her, the brown paper ripping to reveal what were unmistakably dead rabbits—frozen.
Seamus ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek and bent to pick up the book and envelope while she reached for the rabbits.
“My roommate bought these in Montrose,” she explained. “Usually we have them shipped, but we ran out and had to get some while we’re waiting for our next order to arrive. I realize it looks odd. They’re for a snake. It’s not mine.”
The snake must be large, Seamus thought, to eat full-grown rabbits.
He glanced back toward a sound behind him, to find his two oldest children and Seuss, the puppy, all breathing steam in the frigid air and gazing at the scene before them with a mixture of disbelief and puzzlement.
Seuss had one ear up and one ear down, and Rory Gorenzi suddenly swallowed hard and looked away. Seamus had the strangest feeling that she was about to cry.
She said, shakily, “My dog was just put down yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” Seamus responded politely. Though he couldn’t really imagine crying over a dog. He’d never had one until now, and he’d only agreed to the puppy in order to demonstrate, at least to himself, that he did have a relationship with his kids.
Rory seemed to make up her mind about something. She crouched down and looked at the puppy, who immediately came toward her and sat down beside her as if finally he’d found security. “You’re a handsome guy,” she said.
Eyeing the frozen rabbits with disgust, Lauren looked as though all her suspicions about the residents of Sultan had been confirmed. “What are those for?”
“My roommate has a…well, a Burmese python. She’s sort of all of ours, but…”
“Can we see it?” asked Beau, unusually engaged. “Can we watch it eat?”
“Eating’s maybe not the best time to see her,” Rory said apologetically. “She’s a bit unpredictable then.”
“How big is this creature?” asked Seamus, inexplicably fascinated by Kurt Gorenzi’s daughter.
“Well, almost thirteen feet. And she has a nice disposition. It’s just that, well, the disposition doesn’t exactly matter with a snake that size. If you see what I mean. Because she weighs about sixty pounds, we follow a protocol when we clean the vivarium or feed her. There always have to be two of us, and preferably three on hand. Actually, we’re trying to find a zoo or reptile rescue place to accept her, because she’s really gotten too big for us to care for. That’s probably much more than you wanted to know about Lola.”
Lauren picked up Seuss and gazed at Rory as if she were a python who might suddenly decide to eat the puppy.
Seamus wondered just what Rory’s “roommate” was like. A boyfriend with a Harley and a love of gigantic pythons?
She wrested the frozen rabbits away from him and said, “I’ll just go to my house, and then I’ll be right back. After that, I’ll take you to the place where you’ll be staying—it’s right around the corner from where I live. Across the alley, so it’s on the next street, but…I’ll be back.”
Rory hurried away, stepping carefully over the ice on Solomon Street and imagining Seamus Lee and his two children watching her.
He was handsome. She supposed she should have expected he would be one of those Telluride types, probably a regular speaker at the film festival and probably with his own private jet tucked into a hangar at the airport. If he wasn’t rich, he looked like he should be. Those new hybrid SUVs weren’t cheap, in any case.
His hair was a bit long and so dark brown it was almost black; his features angular. He was six feet, definitely, and dressed in Gore-Tex and Carhartts. Very Telluride. Very Colorado. Very ski resort. His eyes were green, a true green and not remotely hazel. Probably around forty, she thought. Probably divorced, she also thought. Damn it, she hadn’t even had a chance to look at the packet her father had given her. She’d just had time to get the rabbits out of the school freezer, where Desert had left them in a rush the previous afternoon on her way to an appointment. Desert, the founder of Caldera, their dance troupe—was a massage therapist at the local hot springs; her current boyfriend worked at the mountain school. Lola belonged to Desert, and Rory could not believe that Desert had just casually left the rabbits in the freezer here. Is she trying to ruin my working relationship with my father before it even begins?
That wasn’t Desert’s style, though. Desert simply felt that, well, people should be able to cope with just about anything. She thought rabbits in the freezer were not a big deal, and they were no problem for Rory; but other people might not feel that way. Desert also thought it shouldn’t have been a problem for the State of Colorado, if Rory was less than polite when speaking to a U.S. senator.
Her roommates were home.
In fact, they were treating the frigid day as good weather, and spinning poi—firelit balls attached to cables—out in their backyard. Rory wished she could practice with them, as she’d planned to do, but Seamus Lee and his family had arrived sooner than expected. She hadn’t even had time to figure out their course work. Samantha, whose white-blond hair was pulled into a knot at the back of her head and covered with a tight-fitting ski hat, was the spotter, standing by with a fire blanket, just in case. Without taking her eyes from Desert, Samantha edged to the fence to greet Rory.
Desert, whose head was entirely shaven beneath her ski hat, ignored the approach of her roommate and continued spinning the burning balls. Total concentration was required, and still poi spinners got burned. Samantha asked, “Did you bring the rabbits?”
“Yes,” Rory said, with resignation, letting herself in the back gate. She and Samantha were of one mind about Lola—the python had to go. Samantha now refused to have anything to do with the snake beyond assisting—from a safe distance—at feeding time. She’d been bitten the previous summer and she was convinced the snake would have killed her—by constriction—if both Desert and Rory hadn’t been there to pull it off. As it was, she’d needed sixteen stitches to close the bite.
Rory agreed that the snake might have killed Samantha. In fact, Lola had frightened Rory more thoroughly than anything else ever had in her entire life. And Rory was not afraid of snakes.
She wanted to plead with Desert not to do anything that might jeopardize her job. But Desert wouldn’t welcome an interruption to her practice. And on second thought, Rory didn’t think she was up to coping with Desert at the moment.
Desert, christened Naomi Katz, had come to Colorado at the age of eighteen. She’d immediately rechristened herself and had begun living off a trust fund provided by her grandfather, a diamond broker, and also by her mother’s family. Rich and beautiful, she’d trained in Boulder as a massage therapist and as a fire dancer, had moved to Sultan and bought the two-storey Victorian where she, Rory and Samantha now lived. Its exterior was painted bordello pink.
Sometimes, Rory and Samantha asked themselves why they put up with Desert.
But they loved her. And pitied her. And wanted to help her somehow; help her to not make life hard for herself. Desert’s boyfriend was a recent acquisition—they’d been together nine weeks. Rory and Samantha were holding their breaths, dreading the ending. Dreading it for themselves as well as for Desert, who was sensitive and, well, troubled.
Rory said to Samantha, “Can you take these? I’ve got to go show some clients to the Empire Street house.”
“Sure.” Samantha took the rabbits, clutching the bundle against her with one arm. “Go.”
RORY GORENZI WAS ATTRACTIVE, but Seamus had come from Telluride, where beautiful was the norm. He didn’t want another girlfriend; he only wanted to sort through the things his ex-girlfriend had said. He wanted to attend to the flaws she’d pointed out. And they were flaws. He didn’t want to marry again—his experiences with other women reminded him not that Janine had been the perfect wife and mother, but that she hadn’t been. No, that wasn’t fair. She’d been the mother of their kids and, so, the perfect mother for them.
But she’d always needed to prove something. He’d known she was sensitive beneath her sometimes-abrasive exterior. One of his male employees had once said to Janine, “You have more testosterone than I do.”
She’d said, “Thank you!” and had clearly been pleased by the compliment.
She’d been an athlete, but that wasn’t the only thing that had made her challenging. It was the way she’d presented herself. Her certainty that her way was right. She’d been insecure and determined to hide the fact, and in their twelve years of marriage she’d never revealed the source of that insecurity or the reason for it.
She’d been smart—a legal-aid lawyer employed by the Women’s Resource Center, defending the battered and the terrified. And she’d never struck him as particularly maternal, although she’d nursed each child for at least nine months. She’d spoken of it so casually, saying once, “When I get this one off my tits…”
Janine had been difficult, and since her death Seamus had vacillated between the notion that no relationship could be as trying as his marriage had been and the idea that no woman would be as good for his children as Janine had been. And how good was that, really?
Better than you, Seamus.
But that hadn’t been so true, back when his wife was alive. He’d spent time with his kids, talked with them and listened to them.
Janine had listened, too—long enough to get the gist of situations. Then, she’d pronounced judgment. You’re not going to take that from anyone, she would order the seven-year-old who’d just had his lunch money stolen.
Lauren seemed determined to remember her as a sort of warrior mother, an Amazon who had demanded warrior-like behavior from her children, as well. Even these days, Seamus occasionally heard his oldest say, “Mom wouldn’t have stood for that,” or “Mom wouldn’t have put up with that.”
But actually, she might have. To be as much bite as bark required a certain resolve that she lacked. Janine had been a great skier, a hard-riding cyclist, a distance runner, a strong ice-climber and, above all, a fantastic talker. She had talked big. It was the one quality that had come to define her and that Seamus had eventually found most annoying.
Seamus went inside the Sultan Mountain School to see if Kurt was around. Lauren accompanied him, leaving Beau, Caleb and Belle outside with Seuss.
As they stepped into the lobby of the Victorian building, Seamus spotted Kurt, talking to two men in mountaineering clothes and showing them something on a topographical map on one wall. Seamus saw that the map was composed of many geological survey maps joined together.
“You don’t want to go that way,” Kurt was saying. “Too much avalanche danger. I’d recommend taking the V-Dot Road….”
Lauren said, “There’s not going to be anything to do here.”
“You’re going to have plenty to do.”
“I don’t want to spend three months snowshoeing.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Ms. Gorenzi has in store for you.”
“Is she going to be our teacher?” Lauren seemed suspicious. Of what, Seamus couldn’t be sure, until his oldest daughter added, acidly, “Or our new nanny.”
“Seamus.” Kurt had spotted them. Tall, gray-haired, unpolished, he joined Seamus and held out his hand. “Roads clear?”
“Not bad. Snow-packed on the pass. The usual. You’ve met my daughter, Lauren.”
“I think she was a few heads shorter back then. Nice to see you.” Kurt shook Lauren’s hand. “Where are you in school?”
Very politic, Seamus observed, as Kurt knew Lauren’s age.
“Still in high school,” she said, taking the implied compliment—that she was perhaps a college student—in stride.
“In the Sultan Mountain School, no less.” Seamus smiled at his friend, now recognizing traces of Rory in Kurt’s features. “We met your daughter.”
“Where is she?”
Any disapproval was well-concealed, yet Seamus wondered if it was there, nonetheless. Father-daughter tensions? Kurt had high standards—for himself and others.
“She went to feed her snake,” Lauren said.
“Her roommate’s,” Seamus corrected, as if it were important.
“Ah.” Kurt made no further comment.
“And she’s coming back to take us to the house.”
The front door swung open, and Rory came in, curls flying loose from her ponytail, expression mildly agitated. “Hi. Ready to go?” she asked without preamble.
Seamus wondered if Rory was trying to avoid her father’s notice for some reason.
Kurt seemed to sense it, too. “Everything all right?” he asked mildly.
“Yes.” A tight smile. “And here?”
Kurt nodded.
The phone rang, and a young man behind the hotel’s old reception counter picked it up. “Sultan Mountain School,” he said. Then, “She’s here.”
“It’s Desert.”
Irritated, Rory walked to the phone and said, “Hello?”
“When are you going to be able to practice? We’re planning to do our new combo with the staffs on Friday, and we still don’t have it right.”
“I’m at work now, Desert.”
“This is a responsibility, too.”
Rory taught belly dance and fire-dancing at workshops approximately once a month and gave two students weekly private lessons. The troupe was a commitment she’d made, but it wasn’t a job. “I can’t talk now. I’ll see you later.”
“Well…okay.”
Kurt turned away from Seamus Lee and his family, saying, “Let me know if you need anything.”
CHAPTER TWO
THEY SAT in the living room of the Empire Street house. That is, Lauren sat at the dining room table filling out a questionnaire regarding her personal goals in connection to the Sultan Mountain School, while Seamus did the same at the coffee table. Caleb was already off with a group of kids his own age at a snowboarding class, and Belle was in the next room happily watching a video. Rory sounded out Beau on what he wanted from the school, on his interests. Seuss, the puppy, lay in his crate, head tilted to one side.
Seamus heard Rory say to Beau, “Part of our curriculum requires involvement with the local economy. This means doing something like a job. I have one possibility that’s really the ultimate spot, you know? But I can only give it to somebody trustworthy, who respects the need for confidentiality. You have to be prepared to act like an adult. I figured because of the work your dad does, you might understand and be able to do that.”
Seamus couldn’t stop himself from glancing in their direction. Beau was sitting on a Victorian footstool and Rory occupied the end of a fainting couch. The teenager’s gaze was focused on the floor. Janine had been blond, but only Lauren had inherited her coloring. The boys all had dark brown hair, like his, and so did Belle.
Without looking up, Beau asked, “What is it?”
“It’s working for a woman who makes custom skis. This is a highly competitive industry, and designs and manufacturing methods are closely held secrets. But she’s agreed to take on a Sultan Mountain School student. With your background in math and science, you might be some real help to her.”
“Okay,” Beau said, still not lifting his head.
Rory felt Seamus Lee’s eyes on her. She already knew he found her interesting as a woman. It was clear in the way he looked at her and in his behavior toward her. She found him attractive, as well, but that was beside the point. Seamus was a participant in the Sultan Mountain School, and she mustn’t offend him, or worse, become entangled with him. The latter would certainly cause her father to brand her unprofessional and she didn’t need that.
She wasn’t keen for a relationship, in any event. Though she had had more success keeping boyfriends than holding a job, the men she’d been closest to inevitably had disappointed her. She was tired of men who considered skiing as much as possible to be a life goal. They seemed, well, immature. Seamus Lee, being a father, being the person he seemed to be, was probably relatively mature. He had a real life, and a significant vocation as an artist. And any success whatsoever at raising his children meant that he thought of someone other than himself at least part of the time.
She liked this man for spending time with his children, for knowing his children.
But his interest in her just now was inconvenient.
And she had already begun to wonder exactly what his relationship with his children was like. In her presence, he’d revealed his ignorance of the name of his youngest daughter’s stuffed animal. To Rory, Belle had introduced her “stuffy,” as she called it, as Mouse—and she hadn’t bothered to tell her father its name at all.
They were like a family, and not. The children seemed to tiptoe around Seamus, seemed to want to please him, and yet…well, it was a bit strange, that was all.
In any case, she’d never experienced a truly successful parent-child relationship. Her parents’ marriage had been brief and it was still a mystery to her. And, well, her grandmother was one way and her mother had been another, and her father was different, still.
Rory knew that her mother had been athletic, as her father was, and comfortable in the outdoors. Her grandmother said that Rory’s mother had been into everything natural. Rory thought she herself was probably more like Gran. Gran had been a lounge singer, had worked on cruise ships, had been worshipped by many men—admittedly, Rory hadn’t yet experienced that—and was a true free spirit. Rory’s mother, Kristin Nichols Gorenzi, had died after skiing into a tree. Rory’s father hadn’t been there. Another man had—her mother’s lover. Gran had told Rory this.
Rory’s mother had been pretty, small and blond, with a bright, wide smile. Rory couldn’t even imagine what her mother had been like. But she could believe that the fact she’d died while skiing with another man had helped drive Kurt Gorenzi from his daughter’s life.
“Why don’t I call the ski shop,” Rory said to Beau, “and if the owner’s keen, I’ll take you over tomorrow to meet her. She has one other employee. He’s college age, and he’s really nice. He actually helps my fire-dancing troupe a lot.”
“Your what?”
