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She wanted to comfort her daughter, kiss away the pain that had settled on her small fragile shoulders. But Delia didn’t know how.
She didn’t know how they were going to get through the day, much less tomorrow or the day after. She’d bought herself a few more days with the lie about Jared being at a conference.
But what then?
Those books she’d read had no answers about this sort of situation and all she had to go on were her faulty instincts.
“Oh, sweetie—” Delia hesitated, reluctant to add another lie to the heaping pile, but knowing she had no choice.
“What?”
“If anyone asks, our last name is Johnson.”
MAX SPENT AN HOUR after the females had left his clearing trying to stop smiling. Delia had her hands full with Josie, he thought, cinching on his tool belt then carrying the two-by-fours over to the house.
He slid the wood to the ground and hoped Josie was occupied by something. School. Dance or whatever. Because kids that smart, when left to their own devices, found other ways to occupy their time. And those other ways were never good.
Framing out the roof was a two-person job, but his dad, who had been his primary second throughout the building of all the cabins for the inn, was downstate dealing with his lawyer.
Gabe was useless with carpentry, besides being far too preoccupied acting the nervous husband over his pregnant wife and—
Again, the skin on his neck shimmied in sudden warning that he wasn’t alone and he whirled, crouched low, his hand at his hip.
But instead of his standard issue, he had a palm full of hammer.
“Old habits, huh, Max?” Sheriff Joe McGinty stepped into the clearing.
“Careful, grandpa.” Max dropped the wood and stepped out of the building, his hand outstretched. “It’s getting icy.”
“Grandpa? Don’t make me hurt you.” Joe grabbed his hand and shook it mightily. They might have hugged if they were different kind of men. Instead they clapped each other’s shoulders and grinned.
“How you doing?” Joe asked, his thin, wrinkled face chapped by the elements. “Working on your dollhouse.” “It’s a shed,” Max said, compelled to defend his building. “Want to help me frame out that roof?”
“It’s too cold to be working out here.” Joe shuddered and rolled up the floppy fur collar on his shearling coat. “Too cold for anything but going inside.”
“You come out here to give me a weather report?” Max asked.
Joe ran his tongue over his teeth and appeared to be slightly torn about something, which was more than odd for the old law enforcer. He was like a winter wolf. Scrawny and tough and too stubborn to give up and head for greener pastures. And Max liked him for all those reasons.
“Problems with more kids?” Max asked, pulling his gloves on since it seemed this conversation might take a while.
“Nah.” Joe swiped at his dripping nose. “The afterschool program you ran out here in the summer set a lot of ’em straight.”
Max had had ten kids working here over the summer and fall. Kids who’d gotten in trouble, were failing out of school—some of the worst of them had been headed for the halfway house for teens out by Coxsackie. Two of them still worked here as full employees, no longer the atrisk kids they’d been.
“Sue’s still going to school?” he asked about the most stubborn of the kids.
Joe nodded. “She’s getting straight D’s, but she’s there.”
“Good,” Max said and waited a little longer for Joe to get to the topic he’d traveled out here to discuss.
“You know I’ve never pried, right?” Joe asked, and Max felt his gut tighten. “I know you were on the force in some capacity. I mean the way you move, the way you keep grabbing for your gun, the way you handle those kids—it tells me you’re law enforcement all the way.” He paused and Max could feel the old man’s eyes on his face.
“You investigating me?” Max asked, kicking snow off his boots, where it had gathered.
“No. That’s what I’m saying. I could look you up. Ask around. It wouldn’t take much to figure out where you’ve been.”
“So? Why don’t you?” Max squinted up into the sky. Here he was outside, no ceiling, no walls. Nothing but trees and clean air and snow. Still, he felt his failure like a weight on his chest. He hauled in a deep breath. Another.
“I keep hoping someday you’ll tell me.” Joe’s voice dropped an octave and was coated in uncomfortable pity.
Max didn’t say anything.
“Were you FBI? Undercover? Vice?” Joe asked.
“I was just a cop. That’s all.”
“I get that it was bad, but—”
“Nothing worse than usual.” Max faced Joe and got to the heart of the matter. “Why are you asking?”
“Ted Harris is retiring.”
Max smiled. “You’re here to celebrate? That idiot’s been a thorn in your side for—” Something in Joe’s face, a stubborn mix of hope and concern, made Max stop and shake his head. “I don’t want the job, Joe.”
“Juvenile Parole Officer. You’d be perfect.” Joe put his hand on Max’s shoulder and Max struggled not to shake it off. Joe continued, “We’ve got a juvenile crime problem in this county and Ted didn’t do jack—”
“I don’t want the job, Joe.”
“But between the program you ran here and the help you gave me with the break-ins over at the community center, you’re perfect. And from what I can gather, you’re qualified.”
Max nearly laughed. He was qualified. More than qualified. But he was utterly unwilling.
“I don’t want the job.”
“You like this?” Joe asked, flinging an arm out at the half-built building and the barely visible lodge through the trees. “This is satisfying?”
Max blinked. Satisfying. He didn’t think in those terms anymore. This, what he did here with his dad and brother, it was easy. If something went wrong, everyone still woke up in the morning.
Those were the terms he lived by these days.
“Sorry, Joe.”
Joe stared at him for a long time and Max avoided his gaze. The guy was too wily and he didn’t want or need the man as a surrogate father—he had a great one kicking around. And he didn’t need a counselor, or a friend from the force. He needed to be forgotten, left alone.
“I just thought you might be interested. It’s a chance to do some real good,” Joe said, the disappointment like a neon sign in his voice.
Max couldn’t stop the harrumph of exasperated, black humor. He’d been told that once before, three years ago. And maybe he’d done some good—he just didn’t care anymore.
“Son—” The pity was back in Joe’s voice.
“Gotta frame that roof, Joe. So?” Max faced the old sheriff, kept his eyes empty, his heart bleak. “Unless there’s something else you need.”
Joe tried to wait him out, no doubt looking for a crack he’d never find.
“Stubborn cuss,” Joe grunted.
“I could say the same.”
Joe brushed his hands together like he was cleaning Max off of him. A good decision, all in all. “I’ll see you around.” Joe tipped his head and turned, heading back up the trail toward civilization.
Max wondered if he’d burned a bridge there. He liked Joe. Liked helping him in the small ways he was willing to take on.
Max opened his mouth to call him back, to apologize or explain why he couldn’t take the job. But just the thought of saying the words shut his mouth for him.
He watched Joe walk away until he was replaced by snow, by gray sky, by the isolation Max cultivated like a garden.
Chapter Two
“HI,” DELIA SAID to Gabe Mitchell as she entered the dining room from the kitchen, her daughter in tow. “Sorry about the interruption.”
“No apologies necessary,” Gabe said with a smooth smile. The man had a dangerous charm and was painfully easy on the eyes—a potentially lethal combo and one that in the past would have had her panting at his feet.
Thank God she’d grown up some in the past few years.
From what she could tell, the two brothers could not be more different. Max had been kind enough but she’d bet her car he didn’t know how to roll out the red carpet like Gabe. Stupidly, she found herself liking Max’s quiet intensity better. But she’d married her husband thinking the same thing and look where that had gotten her.
Delia would make a point to stay away from Max if she landed this job.
“I would have done the same thing if my daughter had run off.” Gabe smiled at Josie, who had the good sense to look chagrined.
“Did you see anything interesting?” he asked Josie.
“Max.”
Gabe nodded. “Well, he’s interesting all right. Did he scare you?”
Yes, Delia thought. He scares me.
“No,” Josie said. “He was nice.”
“Nice?” Gabe pretended to be doubtful. “We’re talking about the same guy? Big and tall with black hair and—?”
“That’s him.” Josie was smiling.
Gabe leaned forward and whispered, “Did he show you his scar?”
Josie’s eyes went wide and she shook her head.
Gabe lifted his chin and drew a line across part of his throat. “Pirates got him.”
Immediately Josie looked dubious and Delia stifled her own smile. Gabe had just insulted Josie’s tenuous status as a big kid.
“There are no such things as pirates.” She looked scornful. “You’re fooling around.”
Gabe sighed and straightened. “You’re too smart, Josie Johnson. Too smart for me. I think we’ve got some coloring books around here somewhere. My wife’s idea.” Gabe’s eyes twinkled.
Ah, yes. The wife.
Smooth smiles or not, there was no way any woman could combat the love Gabe clearly had for his wife, Alice.
Delia hadn’t met Alice yet, but Gabe’s feelings for her practically filled the room.
Gabe turned to the cabinets near the bar to look for the coloring books and Josie rolled her eyes at Delia.
Josie thought she was too old for such things and maybe she was, but Delia lifted her eyebrow anyway. The kid would sit and play with rocks or stare quietly into space or whatever it took for Delia to finish this interview.
They needed this job. They needed it bad. They had no cash and nowhere to go.
Gabe turned around armed with puzzles, books, coloring books and big boxes of crayons and colored pencils.
“After a few dinner-hour disasters, Alice bought this stuff for the guests with kids,” he said, handing everything over to Josie, who perked up at the sight of the puzzles.
The girl was a sudoku fanatic.
Josie settled herself at one of the tables and Delia gripped her hands together behind her back, in an attempt to stem the anxiousness whirling through her stomach.
“Where were we?” she asked, while Gabe watched Josie.
“Sorry.” Gabe shook his head and laughed. “My wife and I are expecting and I just…It’s nuts to think I’m going to have an eight-year-old kid at some point.”
He’d told her about the baby maybe a million times when they should have been talking about the inn’s new spa services. But Delia smiled. “It goes by fast, that’s for sure.” She paused for a moment and channeled some of her mother’s graceful social niceties. “You were talking about the new addition to the lodge—”
“Right, right. Sorry.” Again the lethal smile and she hoped this Alice woman knew how lucky she was. “Follow me.” He led her to a door in the back corner of the dining room, next to the elegant desk, where guests checked in. The door had a discreet sign on it: Spa.
“We’re still adding the finishing touches, but here it is.” He pushed open the door to a dimly lit hallway, painted a soothing gray-green. “There’s a little bit of paint and electrical work to do. We wanted to leave it fairly unfinished so whoever we hired could make the space their own.”
Delia stood on the threshold and let the chills run through her. Her gut, her head, her heart—they all said, This is it.
Daddy always said his momma had the sight. Delia didn’t believe in those things anymore—not since Jared had taken a sledgehammer to her life—but she could see herself here. Working. Raising Josie.
This couldn’t be a better situation.
Autonomy and security, at least for the time being.
Gabe stepped down the hallway and Delia turned to shoot her willful daughter a look then followed him through the door.
“Our reservations fell so dramatically once the fall colors ended we knew we had to do something.” He opened the door to a massage room with a big padded table positioned in the center. There was a shelf for her lotions and even an outlet so she could plug in her hot pot to do hot-stone massages. “We’re getting a few cross-country skiers but it’s still not enough. So—”
