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She had done her very best to strike the proper tone the day of the fire, polite but cool, as if they were distant acquaintances instead of once having shared everything.
If she told her mother she didn’t want to have Taft here, he would know her demeanor was all an act.
She was trapped. Well and truly trussed, just like one of the calves he used to rope in the high-school rodeo. It was a helpless, miserable feeling, one that felt all too familiar. She had lived with it every day of the past seven years, since her marriage to Javier Santiago. But unlike those calves in the rodeo ring, she had wandered willingly into the ropes that bound her to a man she didn’t love.
Well, she hadn’t been completely willing, she supposed. From the beginning she had known marrying him was a mistake and had tried every way she could think short of jilting him also to escape the ties binding them together. But unlike with Taft, this time she’d had a third life to consider. She had been four months pregnant with Alexandro. Javier—strangely old-fashioned about this, at least—wouldn’t consider any other option but marriage.
She had tried hard to convince herself she was in love with him. He was handsome and seductively charming and made her laugh with his extravagant pursuit of her, which had been the reason she had finally given in and begun to date him while she was working at the small, exclusive boutique hotel he owned in Madrid.
She had tried to be a good wife and had worked hard to convince herself she loved him, but it hadn’t been enough. Not for him and not for her—but by then she had been thoroughly entangled in the piggin’ rope, so to speak, by Alex and then by Maya, her sweet-natured and vulnerable daughter.
This, though, with Taft. She couldn’t control what her mother had done, but she could certainly control her own response to it. She wouldn’t allow herself to care if the man had suddenly invaded every inch of her personal space by moving into the hotel. It was only temporary and then he would be out of her life again.
“Do you want me to call him?” her mother asked again.
She forced herself to smile. “Not at all, Mama. I’m sorry. I was just … surprised, that’s all. Everything should be fine. You’re right—it’s probably a great idea. Free labor is always a good thing, and like you said, the only thing we’re giving up is a room that probably wouldn’t have been booked anyway.”
Maya wandered into the kitchen, apparently tired of playing, and gave her mother one of those generous hugs Laura had come to depend upon like oxygen and water. “Hungry, Mama.”
“Gram is fixing us something delicious for dinner. Aren’t we lucky to have her?”
Maya nodded with a broad smile to her grandmother. “Love you, Gram.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.” Jan beamed back at her.
This—her daughter and Alex—was more important than her discomfort about Taft. She was trying her best to turn the hotel into something that could actually turn a profit instead of just provide a subsistence for her mother and now her and her children.
She had her chance to live her lifelong dream now and make the Cold Creek Inn into the warm and gracious facility she had always imagined, a place where families could feel comfortable to gather, where couples could find or rekindle romance, where the occasional business traveler could find a home away from home.
This was her moment to seize control of her life and make a new future for herself and her children. She couldn’t let Taft ruin that for her.
All she had to do was remind herself that she hadn’t loved him for ten years and she should be able to handle his presence here at the inn with calm aplomb.
No big deal whatsoever. Right?
If some part of him had hoped Laura might fall all over him with gratitude for stepping up to help with the inn renovations, Taft would have been doomed to disappointment.
Over the next few days, as he settled into his surprisingly comfortable room in the wing overlooking the creek, a few doors down from the fire-damaged room, he helped Mrs. Pendleton with the occasional carpentry job. A bathroom cabinet repair here, a countertop fix there. In that time, he barely saw Laura. Somehow she was always mysteriously absent whenever he stopped at the front desk.
The few times he did come close enough to talk to her, she would exchange a quick, stiff word with him and then manufacture some excuse to take off at the earliest opportunity, as if she didn’t want to risk some kind of contagion.
She had dumped him, not the other way around, but she was acting as if he was the biggest heel in the county. Still, he found her prickly, standoffish attitude more a challenge than an annoyance.
Truth was, he wasn’t used to women ignoring him—and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to Laura ignoring him.
They had been friends forever, even before that momentous summer after her freshman year of college when he finally woke up and realized how much he had come to care about her as much more than simply a friend. After she left, he had missed the woman he loved with a hollow ache he had never quite been able to fill, but he sometimes thought he missed his best friend just as much.
After three nights at the hotel with these frustrating, fleeting encounters, he was finally able to run her to ground early one morning. He had an early meeting at the fire station, and when he walked out of the side entrance near where he parked the vehicle he drove as fire chief—which was as much a mobile office as a mode of transportation—he spotted someone working in the scraggly flower beds that surrounded the inn.
The beds were mostly just a few tulips and some stubbly, rough-looking shrubs but it looked as if somebody was trying to make it more. Several flats of colorful blooms had been spaced with careful efficiency along the curvy sidewalk, ready to be transplanted into the flower beds.
At first, he assumed the gardener under the straw hat was someone from a landscaping service until he caught a glimpse of honey-blond hair.
He instantly switched direction. “Good morning,” he called as he approached. She jumped and whirled around. When she spotted him, her instinctive look of surprise twisted into something that looked like dismay before she tucked it away and instead gave him a polite, impersonal smile.
“Oh. Hello.”
If it didn’t sting somewhere deep inside, he might have been amused at her cool tone.
“You do remember this is eastern Idaho, not Madrid, right? It’s only April. We could have snow for another six weeks yet, easy.”
“I remember,” she answered stiffly. “These are all hardy early bloomers. They should be fine.”
What he knew about gardening was, well, nothing, except how much he used to hate it when his mom would wake him and his brothers and Caidy up early to go out and weed her vegetable patch on summer mornings.
“If you say so. I would just hate to see you spend all this money on flowers and then wake up one morning to find a hard freeze has wiped them out overnight.”
“I appreciate your concern for my wallet, but I’ve learned in thirty-one years on the earth that if you want to beautify the world around you a little bit, sometimes you have to take a few risks.”
He could appreciate the wisdom in that, whether he was a gardener or not.
“I’m only working on the east- and south-facing beds for now, where there’s less chance of frost kill. I might have been gone a few years, but I haven’t quite forgotten the capricious weather we can see here in the Rockies.”
What had she forgotten? She didn’t seem to have too many warm memories of their time together, not if she could continue treating him with this annoyingly polite indifference.
He knew he needed to be heading to the station house for his meeting, but he couldn’t resist lingering a moment with her to see if he could poke and prod more of a reaction out of her than this.
He looked around and had to point out the obvious. “No kids with you this morning?”
“They’re inside fixing breakfast with my mother.” She gestured to the small Craftsman-style cottage behind the inn where she had been raised. “I figured this was a good time to get something done before they come outside and my time will be spent trying to keep Alex from deciding he could dig a hole to China in the garden and Maya from picking every one of the pretty flowers.”
He couldn’t help smiling. Her kids were pretty darn cute—besides that, there was something so right about standing here with her while the morning sunlight glimmered in her hair and the cottonwood trees along the river sent out a few exploratory puffs on the sweet-smelling breeze.
“They’re adorable kids.”
She gave him a sidelong glance as if trying to gauge his sincerity. “When they’re not starting fires, you mean?”
He laughed. “I’m going on the assumption that that was a fluke.”
There. He saw it. The edges of her mouth quirked up and she almost smiled, but she turned her face away and he missed it.
He still considered it a huge victory. He always used to love making her smile.
Something stirred inside him as he watched her pick up a cheerful yellow flower and set it in the small hole she had just dug. Attraction, yes. Most definitely. He had forgotten how much he liked the way she looked, fresh and bright and as pretty as those flowers. Somehow he had also forgotten over the years that air of quiet grace and sweetness.
She was just as lovely as ever. No, that wasn’t quite true. She was even more beautiful than she had been a decade ago. While he wasn’t so sure how life in general had treated her, the years had been physically kind to her. With those big eyes and her high cheekbones and that silky hair he used to love burying his hands in, she was still beautiful. Actually, when he considered it, her beauty had more depth now than it did when she had been a young woman, and he found it even more appealing.
Yeah, he was every bit as attracted to her as he’d been in those days when thoughts of her had consumed him like the wildfires he used to fight every summer. But he’d been attracted to plenty of women in the past decade. What he felt right now, standing in the morning sunshine with Laura, ran much more deeply through him.
Unsettled and more than a little rattled by the sudden hot ache in his gut, he took the coward’s way out and opted for the one topic he knew she wouldn’t want to discuss. “What happened to the kids’ father?”
She dumped a trowel full of dirt on the seedling with enough force to make him wince. “Remind me again why that’s any of your business,” she bit out.
“It’s not. Only idle curiosity. You married him just a few years after you were going to marry me. You can’t blame me for wondering about him.”
She raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t agree with that particular statement. “I’m sure you’ve heard the gory details,” she answered, her voice terse. “Javier died six months ago. A boating accident off the coast of Barcelona. He and his mistress du jour were both killed. It was a great tragedy for everyone concerned.”
Ah, hell. He knew her husband had died, but he hadn’t heard the rest of it. He doubted anyone else in Pine Gulch had or the rumor would have certainly slithered its way toward him, given their history together.
She studiously refused to look at him. He knew her well enough to be certain she regretted saying anything and he couldn’t help wondering why she had.
He also couldn’t think of a proper response. How much pain did those simple words conceal?
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, although it sounded lame and trite.
“About what? His death or the mistress?”
“Both.”
Still avoiding his gaze, she picked up another flower start from the colorful flat. “He was a good father. Whatever else I could say about Javier, he loved his children. They both miss him very much.”
“You don’t?”
“Again, why is this your business?”
He sighed. “It’s not. You’re right. But we were best friends once, even before, well, everything, and I would still like to know about your life after you left here. I never stopped caring about you just because you dumped me.”
Again, she refused to look at him. “Don’t go there, Taft. We both know I only broke our engagement because you didn’t have the guts to do it.”
Oh. Ouch. Direct hit. He almost took a step back, but he managed to catch himself just in time. “Jeez, Laura, why don’t you say what you really mean?” he managed to get out past the guilt and pain.
She rose to her feet, spots of color on her high cheekbones. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You completely checked out of our relationship after your parents were murdered. Every time I tried to talk to you, you brushed me off, told me you were fine, then merrily headed to the Bandito for another drink and to flirt with some hot young thing there. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that I married a man who was unfaithful. You know what they say about old patterns being hard to break.”
Well, she was talking to him. Be careful what you wish for, Bowman.
“I was never unfaithful to you.”
She made a disbelieving sound. “Maybe you didn’t actually go that far with another woman, but you sure seemed to enjoy being with all the Bandito bar babes much more than you did me.”
This wasn’t going at all the way he had planned when he stopped to talk to her. Moving into the inn and taking the temporary carpenter job had been one of his crazier ideas. Really, he had only wanted to test the waters and see if there was any chance of finding their way past the ugliness and anger to regain the friendship they had once shared, the friendship that had once meant everything to him.
Those waters were still pretty damn frigid.
She let out a long breath and looked as if she regretted bringing up the past. “I knew you wanted out, Taft. Everyone knew you wanted out. You just didn’t want to hurt me. I understand and appreciate that.”
“That’s not how it happened.”
“I was there. I remember it well. You were grieving and angry about your parents’ murder. Anyone would be. It’s completely understandable, which is why, if you’ll remember, I wanted to postpone the wedding until you were in a better place. You wouldn’t hear of it. Every time I brought it up, you literally walked away from me. How could I have married you under those circumstances? We both would have ended up hating each other.”
“You’re right. This way is much better, with only you hating me.”
Un-freaking-believable. She actually looked hurt at that. “Who said I hated you?”
“Hate might be too big a word. Despise might be a little more appropriate.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t feel either of those things. The truth is, Taft, what we had together was a long time ago. I don’t feel anything at all for you other than maybe a little fond nostalgia for what we once shared.”
Oh. Double ouch. Pain sliced through him, raw and sharp. That was certainly clear enough. He was very much afraid it wouldn’t take long for him to discover he was just as crazy about her as he had always been and all she felt in return was “fond nostalgia.”
Or so she said anyway.
He couldn’t help searching her expression for any hint that she wasn’t being completely truthful, but she only gazed back at him with that same cool look, her mouth set in that frustratingly polite smile.
Damn, but he hated that smile. He suddenly wanted to lean forward, yank her against him and kiss away that smile until it never showed up there again.
Just for the sake of fond nostalgia.
Instead, he forced himself to give her a polite smile of his own and took a step in the direction of his truck. He had a meeting and didn’t want to be later than he already was.
“Good to know,” he murmured. “I guess I had better let you get back to your gardening. My shift ends to night at six and then I’m only on call for the next few days, so I should have a little more time to work on the rooms you’re renovating. Leave me a list of jobs you would like me to do at the front desk. I’ll try my best to stay out of your way.”
There. That sounded cool and uninvolved.
If he slammed his truck door a little harder than strictly necessary, well, so what?
Chapter Four
When would she ever learn to keep her big mouth shut?
Long after Taft climbed into his pickup truck and drove away, Laura continued to yank weeds out of the sadly neglected garden beds with hands that shook while silently castigating herself for saying anything.
The moment she turned and found him walking toward her, she should have thrown down her trowel and headed back to the cottage.
Their conversation replayed over and over in her head. If her gardening gloves hadn’t been covered in dirt, she would have groaned and buried her face in her hands.
First of all, why on earth had she told him about Javier and his infidelities? Taft was the last person in Pine Gulch with whom she should have shared that particular tidbit of juicy information.
Even her mother didn’t know how difficult the last few years of her marriage had become, how she would have left in an instant if not for the children and their adoration for Javier. Yet she had blurted the gory details right out to Taft, gushing her private heartache like a leaky sprinkler pipe.
So much for wanting him to think she had moved onward and upward after she left Pine Gulch. All she had accomplished was to make herself an object of pity in his eyes—as if she hadn’t done that a decade ago by throwing all her love at someone who wasn’t willing or capable at the time of catching it.
And then she had been stupid enough to dredge up the past, something she vowed she wouldn’t do. Talking about it again had to have made him wonder if she were thinking about it, which basically sabotaged her whole plan to appear cool and uninterested in Taft.
He could always manage to get her to confide things she shouldn’t. She had often thought he should have been the police officer, not his twin brother, Trace.
When she was younger, she used to tell him everything. They had talked about the pressure her parents placed on her to excel in school. About a few of the mean girls in her grade who had excluded her from their social circle because of those grades, about her first crush—on a boy other than him, of course. She didn’t tell him that until much later.
They had probably known each other clear back in grade school, but she didn’t remember much about him other than maybe seeing him around in the lunchroom, this big, kind of tough-looking kid who had an identical twin and who always smiled at everyone. He had been two whole grades ahead of her after all, in an entirely different social stratosphere.
