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He really was annoyed with her now, annoyed enough that he said scornfully, “You won’t last the winter. You’ll be hightailing it back to the Windy City before the snow melts.”
“Is that a challenge, Nate?” The woman did not back down. “I never could resist a challenge.”
Damn, but he was riled now. Out of proportion and for no reason he could understand. Maybe it was because she was slowing him down from getting where he needed to be. Or maybe because he found her way too easy on the eyes—and then there was her perfume. A little sweet, a little tart. Even mixed with the faint smell of gasoline from the red can between her feet, he liked her perfume.
And it wasn’t appropriate for him to like it. It wasn’t appropriate for him to be drawn to some strange woman. Not today.
She was watching him, waiting for him to answer her question, to tell him if his mean-spirited prediction had been a challenge or not.
He decided to keep his mouth shut.
Apparently, she thought that was a good idea because she didn’t say anything more, either. They rode in tense silence the rest of the way to the gas station. She filled up her can, paid cash for it and got in the pickup again.
He drove her straight back to her waiting SUV.
When he pulled in behind the U-Haul, he suggested grudgingly, “Maybe I’d better just follow you back to town, see that you get there safely.”
“No, thanks. I’ll be okay.”
He felt like a complete jerk—probably because he’d been acting like one. “Come on.” He reached for the gas can. “Let me—”
She grabbed the handle before he could take it and put on a stiff smile. “I can do it. Thank you for your help.” And then she leaned on the door, jumped down and hoisted the gas can down, too. “You take care now.” In the glow of light from the cab, he watched her breath turn to fog in the icy air.
It was still pitch-dark out. At the edge of the cleared spot behind her, a big, dirty For Sale sign had been nailed on a fence post. Beyond the fence, new-growth ponderosa pines stood black and thick. Farther out in the darkness, perched on a high ridge and silhouetted against the sky, loomed the black outline of a house so enormous it looked like a castle. Built by a very rich man named Nathaniel Bledsoe two decades ago, the house had always been considered a monstrosity by folks in the Rust Creek Falls Valley. From the first, they called the place Bledsoe’s Folly. When Bledsoe died, it went up for sale.
But nobody ever bought it. It stood vacant to this day.
Who was to say vagrants hadn’t taken up residence? And anyone could be lurking in the close-growing pines.
He didn’t like the idea of leaving her there alone. “I mean it, Callie. I’ll wait until you’re on your way.”
Unsmiling now, she gazed at him steadily, her soft chin hitched high. “I will last the winter.” The words had steel underpinnings. “I’m making myself a new life here. You watch me.”
He should say something easy and agreeable. He knew it. But somehow, she’d gotten under his skin. So he just made it worse. “Two hundred dollars says you’ll be gone before June first.”
She tipped her head to the side then, studying him. “Money doesn’t thrill me, Nate.”
“If not money, then what?”
One sleek eyebrow lifted and vanished into that bright wool hat. “Let me think it over.”
“Think fast,” he muttered, perversely driven to continue being a complete ass. “I haven’t got all day.”
She laughed then, a low, amused sound that seemed to race along his nerve endings. “Nate Crawford, you’ve got an attitude—and Rust Creek Falls is a small town. I have a feeling I won’t have any trouble tracking you down. I’ll be in touch.” She grabbed the outer handle of the door. “Drive safe now.” And then she pushed it shut and turned for her SUV.
He waited as he’d said he would, watching over her until she was back in her vehicle and on her way. In the glare of his headlights, she poured the gas in her tank. It only took a minute and, every second of that time, the good boy his mama had raised ached to get out and do it for her. But he knew she’d refuse him if he tried.
In no time, she had the cap back on the tank, the gas can stowed in the rear of the SUV, and she was getting in behind the wheel. Her headlights flared to life, and the engine started right up.
When she rolled out onto the road again, she tapped the horn once in salute. He waited for the red taillights of the U-Haul to vanish around the next curve before turning his truck around and heading for Bismarck again. As he drove back through Kalispell, he was shaking his head, dead certain that pretty Callie Kennedy would be long gone from Rust Creek come June.
Ten and a half hours later he rolled into a truck stop just west of Dickinson, North Dakota, to gas up. In the diner there, he had a burger with fries and a large Dr Pepper. And then he wandered through the attached convenience store, stretching his legs a little before getting back on the road for the final hour and a half of driving that would take him into Bismarck and his first stop there, a certain florist on Eighth Street.
Turned out he’d made good time after all, even with the delay caused by giving mouthy Nurse Callie a helping hand. This year, he would make it to the florist before they closed. And that meant he wouldn’t have to settle for supermarket flowers. The thought pleased him in a grim sort of way.
Before heading out the door, he stopped at the register to buy a PayDay candy bar.
The clerk offered, “Powerball ticket? Jackpot’s four hundred and eighty million now.”
Nate never played the lottery. He was not a reckless man, not even when it came to something as inexpensive as a lottery ticket. Long shots weren’t his style. But then he thought of pretty Callie Kennedy with her pom-pom hat, her gas can and her twinkly eyes.
Money doesn’t thrill me, Nate.
Would four hundred and eighty million thrill her?
He chuckled under his breath and nodded. “Sure. Give me ten dollars’ worth.”
The clerk punched out a ticket with five rows of numbers on it. Nate gave it no more than a cursory glance as she put it in his hand.
He had no idea what he’d just done, felt not so much as a shiver of intuition that one of those rows of numbers was about to change his life forever.
Chapter One (#ulink_73130d9a-9fac-5f33-9243-2f56d232a28b)
At seven in the morning on the first day of June, Callie Kennedy knocked on the front door of Nate Crawford’s big house on South Pine Street.
Nate hadn’t shared two words with her since that cold day last January. But he’d seen her around town. He’d also kept tabs on her, though he would never have admitted that. Word around town was that she was not only a pure pleasure to look at, she was also a fine nurse with a whole lot of heart. Folks had only good things to say about Nurse Callie.
He pulled the door wide. “Well, well. Nurse Callie Kennedy,” he drawled. Then he hooked his fingers in the belt loops of his Wranglers. “You’re up good and early.”
She gave him one of those thousand-watt smiles of hers. “Hello, Nate. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
He knew very well why she’d come. It wasn’t to talk about the weather. Still, he leaned on the door frame and played along. “Mighty nice. Not a cloud in the sky.”
“Happy June first.” She beamed even wider, reminding him of a sunbeam in a yellow cotton dress with a soft yellow sweater thrown across her shoulders and yellow canvas shoes on her slim little feet.
“Let me guess....” He wrinkled his brow as though deep in thought. “Wait. I know. You’re here to collect on that bet I made you.”
“Nate.” Her long lashes swept down. “You remembered.” And then she looked up again. “I love your new house.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s some front door.”
“Thanks. I had it specially made. Indonesian mahogany.” It had leaded glass in the top and sidelights you could open to let in a summer breeze.
“Very nice.” She looked at him from under impossibly thick, dark lashes. “And the porch wraps all the way around to the back?”
“That’s right, opens out onto a redwood deck.” And they might as well get on with it. “Come on in.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
He stepped out of the doorway and bowed her in ahead of him. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.” She waited for him to take the lead and then followed him through the central foyer, past the curving staircase, to the kitchen at the back. He gestured at the breakfast area. She took a seat, bracing an elbow on the table and watching him fiddle with his new pod-style coffeemaker.
“I’ve got about a hundred different flavors for this thing....”
The morning light spilled in the window, making her skin glow and bringing out auburn gleams in her long dark hair. “Got one with hazelnut?”
“Right here.” He popped the pod in the top and turned the thing on. Thirty seconds later, he was serving her the steaming cup. “Cream and sugar?”
“I want it all. How many bedrooms?”
He got her the milk and the sugar bowl. “Three to five, depending.”
“On what?”
“I have an office down here in the front that could be a bedroom. The master also has a good-sized sitting room with double doors to make a separate space. That sitting room could be a bedroom, too.” He got a cup for himself and sat opposite her. “Not a lot of bedrooms, really, but all the rooms are nice and big.”
“More than enough for a man living alone, I’d say.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the way she’d said that. Was she goading him? “What? A single man is only allowed so many rooms?”
She laughed. “Oh, come on, Nate. I’m not here to pick a fight.”
He regarded her warily. “Promise?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She stirred milk and sugar into her cup. “I heard a rumor you’re planning on leaving town.”
“Who told you that?”
“You know, I don’t recall offhand.” She sipped. “This is very good.”
“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly.
She sipped again. “It’s odd, really. Three months ago, you moved from the ranch into town, and now people say that you’re leaving altogether.”
“What people?” He kept his expression neutral, though his gut twisted. How much did she know?
No more than anyone else, he decided. To account for his new, improved lifestyle, he’d started telling folks that he’d had some luck with his investments. But as for the real source of his sudden wealth, even his family didn’t know. Only the Kalispell lawyer he’d hired had the real story—which was exactly how Nate wanted it.
“You know how it is here in town,” she said as though she’d been living in Rust Creek Falls all her life. “Everybody’s interested in what everyone else is doing.”
“No kidding,” he muttered wryly.
“Several folks have mentioned to me that you’re leaving.”
Why not just admit it? “I’m looking for a change, that’s all. My brothers can handle things at the ranch, so my bowing out hasn’t caused any problems there. At first, I thought moving to town would be change enough.”
“But it’s not?”
He glanced out the sunny window, where a blue jay flew down and landed on the deck rail and then instantly took flight again. “Maybe I need an even bigger change.” He swung his gaze to her again, found her bright eyes waiting. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be heading back the way you came, making myself a whole new start in Chicago. I’m just not sure yet. I don’t know what the next step for me should be.”
She studied his face with what seemed to be honest interest. “You, living in Chicago? I don’t know, Nate. I’m just not seeing that.”
He thought, You don’t know me well enough to tell me where I might want to live. But he didn’t say it. She’d seemed sincere just now. And she was entitled to her opinion.
She wasn’t through, either. “I heard you ran for mayor last year—and lost to Collin Traub. They say you’re bitter about that because of the generations-long feud between the Traubs and your family, that it really hurt your pride when the town chose bad-boy Collin over an upstanding citizen like you. They say it’s personal between you and Collin, that there’s always been bad blood between the two of you, that the two of you once got into a knock-down-drag-out over a woman named Cindy Sellers.”
“Wow, Callie. You said a mouthful.” He actually chuckled.
And she laughed, too. “It’s only what I’ve heard.”
“Just because people love to gossip doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about.”
“So none of it’s true, then?”
He admitted, “It’s true, for the most part.” Strangely, today, he was finding her candor charming—then again, today he wasn’t on his way to North Dakota to keep his annual appointment with all that he had lost.
She asked, “What parts did I get wrong?”
He should tell her to mind her own business. But she was so damn pretty and she really did seem interested. “Well, the mayor’s race?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m over that. And it’s a long story about me and Collin and Cindy, one I don’t have the energy to get into right now—and your cup’s already empty.”
“It was really good.” She smiled at him coaxingly.
He took the hint. “More?”
“Yes, please.”
Each pod made six cups. All he had to do was put her mug under the spigot and push the brew button. “You’ve collected a lot of information about me. Should I be flattered you’re so interested?” He gave her back her full cup.
She doctored it up with more sugar and milk. “I think about that day last winter now and then....”
He slid into his seat again. “I’ll just bet you do.” Especially today, when it’s time to collect.
Her big eyes were kind of dreamy now. “I wonder about you, Nate. I wonder why you had to get to Bismarck, and I keep thinking there’s a lot going on under the surface with you. I love this town more every day that I live here, but sometimes people in a small town can get locked in to their ideas about each other. What I think about you is that you want...more out of life. You just don’t know how to get it.”
He grunted. “Got me all figured out, don’t you?”
“It’s just an opinion.”
“Yeah, and that and five bucks will get you half a dozen cinnamon buns over at the doughnut shop.”
She shrugged, her gaze a little too steady for his peace of mind. Then she asked, “So, what about Bismarck?”
