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Laura had dumped him. That was the cold, hard truth. A week before their wedding, after all the plans and deposits and dress fittings, she had given him back his ring and told him she couldn’t marry him.
“Why are we talking about ancient history?” he asked.
“Not so ancient anymore,” Trace said. “Not if Laura’s back in town.”
He was very much afraid his brother was right. Whether he liked it or not, with her once more residing in Pine Gulch, their past together would be dredged up again—and not by just his family.
Questions would swirl around them. Everybody had to remember that they had been just a few days away from walking down the aisle of the little church in town when things ended and Laura and her mother sent out those regrets and made phone calls announcing the big celebration wasn’t happening—while he had gone down to the Bandito and gotten drunk and stayed that way until about a month or two after the wedding day that didn’t happen.
She was back now, which meant that, like it or not, he would have to deal with everything he had shoved down ten years ago, all the emotions he had pretended weren’t important in order to get through the deep, aching loss of her.
He couldn’t blame his family for their curiosity—not even Trace, his twin and best friend, knew the full story about everything that had happened between him and Laura. He had always considered it his private business.
His family had loved her. Who didn’t? Laura had a knack for drawing people toward her, finding commonalities. She and his mother used to love discussing the art world and painting techniques. His mother had been an artist, only becoming renowned around the time of her murder. While Laura hadn’t any particular skill in that direction, she had shared a genuine appreciation for his parents’ extensive art collection.
His father had adored her, too, and had often told Taft that Laura was the best thing that would ever happen to him.
He looked up from the memory to find Becca’s eyes filled with a compassion that made him squirm and lose whatever appetite he might have had left.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured in that kind way she had. “Mutual decision or not, it still must have been painful. Is it hard for you to see her again?”
He faked a nonchalant look. “Hard? Why would it be hard? It was all a decade ago. She’s moved on. I’ve moved on. No big deal.”
Ridge gave what sounded like a fake cough and Trace had the same skeptical expression on his face he always wore when Taft was trying to talk him into living a little, doing something wild and adventurous for a change.
How was it possible to love his siblings and at the same time want to throw a few punches around the table, just on general principles?
Becca eyed him and then his brothers warily as if sensing his discomfort, then she quickly changed the subject. “How’s the house coming?” she asked.
His brother wasn’t nearly good enough for her, he decided, seizing the diversion. “Good. I’ve got only a couple more rooms to drywall. Should be done soon. After six months, the place is starting to look like a real house inside now.”
“I stopped by the other day and peeked in the windows,” Caidy confessed. “It’s looking great.”
“Give me a call next time and I can swing by and give you the tour, even if I’m at the fire station. You haven’t been by in a month or so. You’ll be surprised at how far along it is these days.”
After years of renting a convenient but small apartment near the fire station, he had finally decided it was time to build a real house. The two-story log house was set on five acres near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon.
“How about the barn and the pasture?” Ridge asked, rather predictably. Over the years, Taft had bred a couple mares to a stallion with excellent lines he had picked up for a steal from a rancher down on his luck up near Wood River. He had traded and sold the colts until he now had about six horses he’d been keeping at his family’s ranch.
“The fence is in. I’d like to get the barn up before I move the horses over, if you don’t mind keeping them a little longer.”
“That’s not what I meant. You know we’ve got plenty of room here. You can keep them here forever if you want.”
Maybe if he had his horses closer he might actually ride them once in a while instead of only stopping by to visit when he came for these Sunday dinners.
“When do you think all the work will be done?” Becca asked.
“I’m hoping by mid-May. Depends on how much free time I can find to finish things up inside.”
“If you need a hand, let me know,” Ridge offered quietly.
“Same goes,” Trace added.
Both of them had crazy-busy lives: Ridge running the ranch and raising Destry on his own and Trace as the overworked chief of police for an understaffed small-town force—in addition to planning his future together with Becca and Gabi. Their sincere offers to help touched him.
“I should be okay,” he answered. “The hard work is done now and I only have the fun stuff to finish.”
“I always thought there was something just a little crazy about you.” Caidy shook her head. “I must be right, especially if you think finish work and painting are fun.”
“I like to paint stuff,” Destry said. “I can help you, Uncle Taft.”
“Me, too!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “Oh, can we?”
Trouble followed the two of these girls around like one of Caidy’s rescue dogs. He had visions of paint spread all over the woodwork he had been slaving over the past month. “Thanks, girls. That’s really sweet of you. I’m sure Ridge can find something for you to touch up around here. That fence down by the creek was looking like it needed a new coat.”
“There’s always something that needs painting around here,” Ridge answered. “As soon as the weather warms up a little at night, I can put you both to work.”
“Will you pay us?” Gabrielle asked, always the opportunist.
Ridge chuckled. “We can negotiate terms with your attorney.”
Caidy asked Becca—said attorney—a question about their upcoming June wedding and attention shifted away from Taft, much to his relief. He listened to the conversation of his family, aware of this low simmer of restlessness that had become a familiar companion.
Ever since Trace and Becca found each other and fell in love, he had been filled with this vague unease, as if something about his world had shifted a little. He loved his brother. More than that, he respected him. Trace was his best friend and Taft could never begrudge him the happiness he had found with Becca and Gabi, but ever since they announced their engagement, he felt weird and more than a little off-balance.
Seeing Laura and her kids the other day had only intensified that odd feeling.
He had never been a saint—he would be the first to admit that and his family would probably stand in line right behind him—but he tried to live a decent life. His general philosophy about the world ran parallel to the premier motto of every emergency medical worker as well as others in the medical field: Primum Non Nocere. First, Do No Harm.
He did his best. He was a firefighter and paramedic and he enjoyed helping people of his community and protecting property. If he didn’t find great satisfaction in it, he would find something else to do. Maybe pounding nails for a living because he enjoyed that, too.
Despite his best efforts in the whole do no harm arena, he remembered each and every failure.
He had two big regrets in his life, and Laura Pendleton was involved in both of them.
He had hurt her. Those months leading up to her ultimate decision to break things off had been filled with one wound after another. He knew it. Hell, he had known it at the time, but that dark, angry man he had become after his parents’ murder seemed like another creature who had emerged out of his skin to destroy everything good and right in his life.
He couldn’t blame Laura for calling off their wedding. Not really. Even though it had hurt like the devil.
She had warned him she couldn’t marry him unless he made serious changes, and he had stubbornly refused, giving her no choice but to stay true to her word. She had moved on, taken some exotic job in hotel management in Spain somewhere and a few years later married a man she met there.
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
Laura 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.
