by Cara Colter
“I’m not sure how we missed this when we looked earlier,” Ward said. “I may have to surrender my Boy Scout badge in woodsmanship.”
“They have Boy Scouts in Scotland?” Maddie asked. Did he hesitate ever so slightly before he answered? No, she must have imagined it.
“Aye,” he said, “and they wear kilts.”
“They don’t!”
“Scout’s honor,” he said, and they laughed easily together. Given her resistance to coming in the first place, it was terrible to be so glad that she had!
It had been a long time—way too long—since she had done anything just for fun. The walk to the pools, like the drive, reminded her of more-carefree days. The forest was a soothing, serene place.
Lancaster, carrying the huge picnic basket as effortlessly as if it was a doll’s purse, strode up ahead, with Sophie having to skip along to keep up with him. This did not stop her breathless chatter from drifting back to them.
“I’m worried she’s giving him entirely the wrong impression,” Maddie confided in Ward. “She’s acting as if she’s far more worldly than she is.”
“Don’t worry,” Ward said easily. “You will never meet a man with more honor than Lancaster. He sees her as a foolish young girl with a crush. He would never take advantage.”
“Oh? Also Scout’s honor?” Maddie asked.
“Something like that.”
Again, she felt he was ever so deftly sidestepping something. But what? She chided herself for being way too serious, as always.
She was going to ask him a bit about where he came from and what he did for a living, but he beat her to it.
“Tell me a little about your town,” he said.
This seemed like safe ground, conversationally.
“You said you know a little bit already.”
“A little,” he agreed.
“That transition you mentioned this morning? From resource based to tourist and ecology is not much more than a pipe dream at the moment. Many of the old-timers here resist the idea of tourists, even if it could save the town, and that’s a big if. They see it as unspoiled around here. And they’re protective of that. I think they’d rather let the town die a natural death than see a paved path into these springs, or a hotel sitting at the trailhead.”
“That’s understandable. What happened to the economy?”
“By the time I was born, the mine, the town’s biggest employer had already shut down. There was still logging and a bit of trapping. They were dangerous, dirty professions—my dad was killed in a logging accident.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, with such genuine sympathy she felt an unexpected prick behind her eyelids. “I can see the pendant must have extra meaning for you. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
He made a sound at the back of his throat, sympathetic and distressed, a man who wanted to protect others from the tragedies of life.
“The work in Mountain Bend attracted hardworking honest people who invested in the town. But now everyone’s kind of watching helplessly as the town disintegrates a little more every year, and the only things they own, their houses and businesses, are becoming a little more worthless.
“There is a big hope that the Ritz concert will bring people here who wouldn’t normally come. That they’ll see what a special place it is and snap up some of the empty houses. If they did, businesses like the Black Kettle would be more viable, even if we could just have a summer season.
“I’m hoping the scones will take off. If people liked them enough, they might be willing to place online orders, though the logistics of shipping from here I haven’t quite worked out. If we could attract a few people here who could work online...”
Her voice drifted away. She suddenly felt as if she was talking too much, almost chattering, but there was something about Ward—an intent way of listening—that made that so easy to do.
“Why does a young woman come back to a town with so few prospects?” he asked. “This morning Sophie suggested you had worked in New York.”
She sighed. She had tried to give herself over to being carefree, but maybe it was impossible to be carefree when you carried burdens like she did.
She was already sorry she had confided so much, but she couldn’t take it back, and it felt somehow good to share what was going on with the town, as if a burden she had carried silently was lightened. Why not go for broke? There was something about Ward that inspired confidences. And there was something in her, alone with all of this for so long, that she felt almost compelled to unburden. Maybe there was something about Ward being a near stranger, someone she would likely not see again, a safe person to share with.
“Kettle fell off his roof last year shoveling snow. I can’t believe he was up there. He’s in his sixties, for Pete’s sake. He broke his hip. He needed help. Not that he asked for it.”
“You gave up your aspirations to help him?”
“Aspirations might be a little grandiose. I was a clerk at a bank, baking a few scones on the side, which my friends were willing to pay for. But I came back to look after the Black Kettle. I’d worked my way up starting as a teenager there. I knew the ropes and no one else was available.”
They walked silently for a while, and then he said, “So you were repaying a favor by coming back?”
“Not at all,” she said quickly. “It’s not a balance sheet. It’s loving people. It’s doing what needs to be done.”
“Will you go back to your old life when Kettle is fully recovered?”
Sophie had already revealed her old life was a disaster, but she wasn’t going to pursue that with a complete stranger. She had already talked way too much.
“This is my life now,” Maddie said, determined and cheerful. “Kettle didn’t have great medical coverage. I don’t know how he’s managing to keep the café open, but as long as he does, I’ll help him in any way I can. We all have a great deal riding on the concert.”
“You’re so young to be carrying the worries of the world,” he said softly. “Look, you’re getting a little worry knot right here.” He stopped and touched her forehead.
His finger pressed gently into her brow. She felt herself leaning into it. The weakness that overcame her was swift.
This was always her problem. When she most needed to be strong, she was not! But she would not fail herself this time.
Maddie stepped back from him and away from the odd comfort of the physical connection between them. “You caught me on a bad day,” she said crisply. “I usually don’t confide my life story to strangers.”
“I’m glad you did. Sometimes, just to tell someone, can make your troubles seem smaller, aye?”
“Yes,” she agreed, but grouchily. What would he know about it? This self-possessed man did not look as if he would have a problem in the world!
He regarded her thoughtfully. It seemed as if he could see her lonely nights, and her fret-filled days. Maddie had the uncomfortable feeling her heartbreak was an open book.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you could leave them now? Your troubles. Just for this moment. Just for this beautiful spring afternoon. Here. Hang them on the branch of this tree.”
It was silly. But also endearing. He took imaginary worries from around her neck, as if they were leis, his fingertips tickling briefly on that sensitive skin—touch number three—and hung them carefully on a low-hanging branch of the tree.
“You can pick them up again on your way out.”
Ridiculously, she felt lighter! His casual contacts were making her feel as if she had been drinking champagne. But beneath the kind of tingling awareness of him, she felt wariness. He was very smooth. The kind of man who could make a woman believe in dreams again. And really, wasn’t that the scariest thing of all?
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “It always is.”
He sai
d this with utter confidence. Again, she felt the wariness of wanting to trust him. He was a man you could believe in. He was a man who could make you believe such a thing, even when the world, her world, had presented her with a great deal of evidence to the contrary.
But for this moment, with this powerful, self-assured man at her side in a forest that had stood strong for a thousand years, that had survived fires and storms and endless winters and the black hearts of greedy men, it felt as if maybe, just maybe she could believe it.
For one second, she put her wariness away and allowed herself to believe that everything would be okay.
CHAPTER SIX
WARD STOOD VERY still as Maddie searched his face, looking, he knew, for a truth she could hold on to. That everything would be all right.
She had no way of knowing that, as a prince, he often had the power and the resources to make everything right, and so when her shoulders dropped ever so slightly, and her forehead relaxed and a light came on in the deep green pools of her soulful eyes, he felt gratified.
She trusted him. Not the Prince of Havenhurst, but him. It was a first for him, to be trusted not for his influence and status—for what he could do for someone—but for something she saw in him. Ward felt some deep pleasure unfurl within him.
Of course, it was complicated. The very fact that she had no idea who he really was probably negated the heady trust he saw shining in her mossy eyes.
But he shook that off, and he took an imaginary necklace of worries from his own neck and hung it on the branch beside hers.
“You have worries?” she said.
“Aye, everyone has worries.”
“And what are yours?”
It was a simple question. It occurred to him he had never confided his worries to anyone, except maybe ever so casually, every now and then, to Lancaster. What she was offering was different. And dangerous.
He backed swiftly away from the sanctuary he saw in her eyes. They were strangers. He was going to enjoy a day of reprieve from his true identity. End of story.
He tapped the branch. “I’ve left them here. Today isn’t a good day for worries of any kind. Perhaps when I pick them back up, I’ll share them with you.”
This, of course, was a lie. Still, hanging up his worries did not feel like a lie. It felt as if he had also hung up the remaining threads of who he was. Today, he was just an ordinary man. It felt like a gift.
For this brief moment in time—Prince Edward Alexander of Havenhurst—could be normal, experience normal, delight in normal. No one was watching his every move; the mantle of duty had been removed.
And he suspected Maddie needed normal as much as he did at this point in her life. Could they just be two ordinary people, enjoying each other, and these moments they had been given, before surrendering to the rigors and demands of the lives that would call them back?
They came to a part of the trail that narrowed, and they had to scramble over some rocks. Like an ordinary guy he went up first, and then he held out his hand to her. She hesitated, but then, her eyes never leaving his face, she took it.
Her hand felt small in his. And surprisingly strong. He helped her up over the rocks. She let go swiftly, as soon as the obstacles had been overcome.
Oddly, he missed the sensation of her hand in his. Perhaps because, as a prince, this was one of the things he had not experienced often: casual physical contact with other people, and particularly not pretty people!
To him, everything felt more intense than it had even moments previously. He drank it in with all the appreciation of a person who knew how relentlessly the clock ticked, as if he had been told he had days left to live.
They smelled the familiar earthy mineral smell of the pools before they arrived. Still, he was not prepared for the grotto when the forest opened up to it. It was breathtaking, like a mystical paradise. The growth was almost tropical, the steaming pools surrounded by lush greenness and ferns.
“It’s like this even in the wintertime,” Maddie told him. “The pools heat the air around them, allowing tropical plants to grow.”
They had entered at the upper end by the highest of the three pools. Each pool was connected to the one beneath it by a small waterfall. The pools, where they were visible through thick shrouds of rising steam, were amazing colors, jade green and deep turquoise swirling into indigo blue.
“This top pool is the smallest and the hottest. Each pool gets progressively larger and cooler.”
“And do you like it hot or cool, Miss Maddie?”
The words were out before he could stop them. Another first, an ordinary man flirting lightly with an ordinary girl. He had made her blush. But also, her eyes darkened with sudden and unexpected heat.
Stand down, he ordered himself. There was danger in uncharted territory. And that should not feel nearly as enticing as it did.
* * *
Maddie stared at Ward. What made a man so sure of himself? It was aggravating. That kind of confidence was just plain off-putting.
Or so she tried to tell herself, a flimsy defense against what she was feeling. Which was what?
Attraction.
“I prefer the water cool,” she said primly.
And then she was annoyed with herself. It was a little harmless flirting! She had hung up her worries, and hopefully with them, that little voice that was constantly chiding and trying to see the future. Ward was here until tomorrow night after the concert. She didn’t always have to be the serious one, she didn’t always have to try and ferret out future disaster in a little harmless flirting and she did not have to live by the mantra doom is imminent.
“I like it hot,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to start in the cool pool. It’s not for the faint of heart. You do what you want.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Are you questioning my manliness?”
Good grief, no. “Yes,” she said. And then added, “Bok-bok-bok.”
“Are you calling me a chicken?” He looked so genuinely aggrieved that she found herself laughing.
She could just have fun. For once in her life she could just give herself over to having fun. She could listen to the voice of her father, suggesting she be bold.
“If that’s a challenge, I’ll beat you into the water.”
“No, you won’t.” She took off running, unbuttoning her shirt as she went. She looked ahead, but could hear him pounding up the path behind her. She tried to struggle out of her shorts while still running. He caught up to her, but when he surged by her, she caught his shirt in her fist and nearly fell over as her shorts tangled around her legs. He pulled his shirt over his head and she found herself holding it. The broadness and utter male beauty of his naked back nearly made her lose her focus. But no, she stepped out of her shoes and shorts and raced after him. He stopped at the edge of the pool and sloughed off his own shorts and shoes.
For a moment, she froze, drinking in the sculpted perfection of his body, the broadness of his back and neck, the muscled strength of his naked thighs. She wasn’t entirely sure those were swim trunks!
He froze, too, staring at her. And then he smiled ever so slightly. It occurred to Maddie he was hypnotizing her with his gorgeousness on purpose to win the challenge!
He broke her gaze and jumped.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Maddie came out of her trance and made one final grab for him. Instead of evading her, he reached back and captured her hand and pulled her into the pool right after him.
The water was freezing! His hand felt as if it was sizzling where it was touching hers.
“I think I like it hot, after all,” she said, breaking his grip, and thinking that his hot hand in the cold water was frighteningly sensual.
“Bok-bok-bok!”
“Oh!” She cupped her hands and sent a mighty splash into his face. “I’m not! Take that!”
“Be careful, Maddie,” he said in warning. “You shouldn’t start things you can’t finish.”
How true was that? Still, she couldn’t resist splashing him again, this time swiping her whole forearm on the top of the water, sending a wave of the freezing water over top of him.
“Lion versus gazelle,” he said wickedly, and reached for her.
Maddie glanced at the bank. There was no way she could get to it and scramble up it without him catching her.
He twirled an imaginary mustache and laughed villainously.
She threw herself away, swam with all her might, dived under the water and came up to find him right on her heels. She tried to back away, but she was laughing so hard she was choking on the mineral-laden water. She couldn’t put much distance between them.
He splashed her with such force her nose filled up with water, and then while she was sputtering, swam away. But she quickly went after him, backed him against some rocks and unleashed a flurry of water at him. They went back and forth like that, filling the pools with the sounds of their shouting and laughter.
She recognized her defenses tumbling, one by one. She recognized she needed this, probably more than she knew. A giving over to playfulness, letting the lightness of her spirit rise to meet the lightness of his.
When the pool was too cold to stand a minute longer, they chased each other up the slope and jumped into the warmer one, and then into the one above that. Tired, and literally played out, they finally floated side by side in the hottest pool.
Finally, they found Sophie and Lancaster on a warm rock above the pools.
Lancaster was fully clothed. Sophie was sunning herself in a very skimpy bathing suit, while Lancaster pointedly ignored her.
“I’m glad someone is having fun,” Sophie said snippily.
“You’re not having fun?” Ward asked her.
“He didn’t even get wet,” Sophie sulked. “He seems to think he’s the lifeguard.”
Lancaster cast her a narrow-eyed glance, stood up and wordlessly left them. Moments later he was perched on a rock high above them that jutted out over the hottest pool. Somewhere along the way, he had lost most of his clothing.
