Winter in Mason Valley

by Eliza Bennetts

  Winter in Mason Valley

  Seasons Book 3

  Eliza Bennetts

  Contents

  Untitled

  Also by Eliza Bennetts:

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Also by Eliza Bennetts:

  Summer at Urchin’s Bluff

  Autumn at Blaxland Falls

  Author’s Note

  Untitled

  Acknowledgments

  SEASONS BOOK 3

  WINTER

  in

  Mason Valley

  ELIZA BENNETTS

  Copyright © 2019 by Eliza Bennetts

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Mila Book Covers

  Editing: Perfect Pear Editing

  www.elizabennetts.com

  Also by Eliza Bennetts:

  Seasons Series

  Summer at Urchin’s Bluff

  Autumn at Blaxland Falls

  Winter in Mason Valley

  For Gus and Eddie. Love Mumma x

  1

  On the back of the office door hung a couple of highly fashionable accessories—a bright yellow, high-visibility vest and an orange hard hat. Dee shrugged. She’d never been overly enamoured by women’s fashion. She preferred simple, well-cut clothes that looked great and did the job, over the expensive and excessive trends some of her friends favoured. It stood to reason then that she wouldn’t think twice about wearing a hard hat if the need ever arose, and here she was, with both the need and the hard hat.

  She donned the fluorescent garb. There was no time like the present. She figured she might as well go and behold all she’d inherited.

  Dee peeled away her black jacket, teaming her white shirt, pencil skirt and heels with the most recent additions. Her stomach lurched, a typical and telling sign. She bit down against the flesh inside her mouth, feeling in symphony both the need to steel herself and be brave, and the need to retreat to her comfort zone.

  She was the boss, the new captain of the ship. The first female general manager of the recycled paper factory in a town called Mason Valley, and it was this fact that urged her to try for an air of confidence as she walked away from her office and towards the factory floor.

  The minute she swung open those double doors, Dee’s senses were assaulted.

  She heard so much noise, a steady and metallic hum, interspersed by a louder, harsher noise that punctuated the air like an assault rifle. She’d done some reading and knew a little about how paper recycling plants worked; she supposed the sound to be the press.

  In front of her, towers of pallets held recycled copy paper, shrink-wrapped and gleaming, ready to be sent off into the world. It was behind these pallets, deep in the working bowel of the factory, where most of the movement, heat and pace were steaming. The heavy-duty machines loomed and spoke their angry language, and surrounding them all, like a swarm of bees serving a queen, were men. Hot, sweaty men, and a few women, too.

  Dee rolled her eyes over the scene, taking it in, her brain trying to process the enormity of what she’d just inherited. One of the workers wandered close by and she reached out her hand and tapped his bare arm.

  He looked at her and his eyes grew wide as he stood taller. ‘Are you …?’

  Dee could tell the man was surprised. His expression became one of bewilderment and his eyes rolled over her figure like he’d just spied a gazelle in a field of cows. She supposed he had a good enough reason. She would be the first woman to ever run this factory, and even if the workers had expected a woman, they may not have been expecting one who looked like her.

  ‘Yes,’ she called over the noise. ‘I’m the new general manager. Can you tell me where the foreman is?’

  ‘I’ll go get him,’ he said, his own words acting to snap him out of a heavy trance-like state.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, sealing the deal with her trademark I’m friendly enough but I’m also your boss smile.

  As he walked away, Dee’s stomach turned and flipped. That man’s reaction was just the beginning. She knew to expect plenty of looks that said you don’t belong here, honey, but I know where I’d like to see you. She braced herself for meeting the foreman.

  She knew what was coming and prepared for the same body scan, the same incredulous look the factory worker had just given her. Examining the scene again, she tried to muster the courage and spirit she’d need to be a believable boss of a paper recycling factory. As she looked around, she spied a similarity in all the workers—they were all wearing hard hats. Great. That should be a given, but she noticed something else, too, and unlike the hard hats, this something was an anomaly, something she hadn’t expected. All the workers—men, women, everyone—wore sleeveless tank tops.

  Dee felt pressure building inside her throat. This was something she’d need to change and she’d need to change it soon. Not only was it against safety regulations, it was … “hot” was the first word that came to mind—after all, most of the exposed arms were muscular—“unprofessional” was the next.

  Somewhere, someone whistled, and the noise around her dulled as one of the machines was shut off and the sleeveless mass of workers gathered towards her like the clouds of an impending storm. The bees had begun to swarm and she assumed the man leading them was the foreman.

  Dee swallowed and found her throat to be papery dry.

  The foreman was tall and lithe, but broad-shouldered and extremely well-built, a result of what Dee could only assume was a mixture of a physical job and a loyal commitment to working out. Just like the mob around him, this man’s arms were bare, devoid of fabric, and like his arms, the exposed wedges of his chest were tattooed.

  He pulled his hard hat from his head and Dee flinched, an involuntary response to the blue of his eyes, the heavy set of his stubbled jaw and the strength of his hairline. His hair was pulled back from his face, but one stray slither of deep brown hung against his cheekbone. The body scans and looks of interest and scrutiny came, just as expected, but they didn’t come from him. Dee was the culprit.

  He looked straight into her eyes, his expression unreadable, his muscles unflinching. All around him, though, it was a different story. The workers eyed her up and down, appraising her with swift judgement, and if Dee read their expressions correctly, they didn’t think much of wh
at they saw. They took her in with a peculiar mix of curiosity and disgust.

  ‘I’m Travis,’ the foreman said, his voice hurried, a little breathless from the exertion of hard physical work.

  The definition of the muscles in his arms, the tenor of his voice, his eyes—all of it unsettled her. She hadn’t been expecting the foreman to look like … that. She was off her game and felt almost every muscle from her stomach to her inner thighs clench, and she didn’t like it at all.

  Dee should have made a professional choice then. She should’ve said, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Dee Lovelace,’ but she didn’t. She let the heat under her neck, the unexpected physical reaction to the sight of her foreman and the appraising eyes get to her.

  ‘Why are all your workers wearing tank tops?’

  A small smile brewed on Travis’s face, but he suppressed it. Instead, he looked around at the men and women behind him.

  ‘It is in breach of Occupational Health and Safety standards, and frankly, I’m appalled. This is the first thing that needs to be changed. The tank tops need to go. I can’t believe you’ve been able to get away with it.’ The minute the words were out of her mouth, and she heard the condescending tenor of her own voice, she knew it was a mistake. This wasn’t how she wanted her first day at the factory to begin.

  Travis smiled, seemingly without censor this time. He looked right at Dee, his eyes unmoving from hers as he called to the people behind him. ‘You heard the boss, ladies and gents. You’ll need to take your tank tops off.’

  Dee’s jaw slackened and blood stilled in her veins as laughter bubbled behind Travis. She watched the scene unfold in horror. Slowly, a few at a time, the workers slid their hard hats from their heads, placed them on the ground and took off their tank tops. They stood there, men bare-chested, women in bras.

  Dee stared at them in turn until movement in the centre of her field of vision commanded her focus. Travis tossed his hard hat to the side, grabbed the fabric around his waist and whipped the shirt over his head, exposing a broad, defined torso. Dee swallowed and her breath held still. It was the most magnificently masculine chest and arms she’d ever seen—heavy, hard and pulsing. He was adorned with tattoos, his arms heavily, his chest sparingly. He was perfect. And she was staring at it him like a dumbstruck teenager.

  Travis’s words broke her trance and she shifted her gaze so that her eyes met his.

  ‘Your wish is our command, boss,’ he said lightly, his voice little more than a rumble.

  Dee took a step back and Travis’s eyes sparked with playfulness. The corners of his mouth turned up into an almost-but-not-quite smile.

  The bastard was smirking at her. Dee wanted to respond. As the boss, she should be able to deal with an act of disrespect. It was just that she couldn’t stop looking at his eyes, or his mouth, or his chest. Also, she’d forgotten to take a breath. Air lingered in her lungs and her throat without a sense of purpose.

  She edged backwards, hoping a miracle had occurred and a black hole had opened up behind her. No such luck. She was left with only one option. She took a purposeful breath, a precaution against fainting, turned on her heel and walked through the double doors, leaving a crowd of topless, unproductive workers behind her.

  Travis watched his new boss slip back through the factory door and into the office, where—in Travis’s good opinion—was exactly where all bosses should stay. Around him, laughter rang out, a mixture of sounds ranging from sporadic chuckles to outright raucous mirth. He smiled as he pulled his tank back on and placed the hard hat on his head. He was pleased with the little joke, yes, but other things pleased him more, like the turn of his new boss’s buttocks moving beneath that tight black skirt as she walked away.

  This new boss was nothing like the other bosses, not in the looks department at least. Their last boss, Gary, had been a balding, bellied grump. This new one had a small, tight, curvy figure, gorgeous pale skin and wavy blonde hair. Travis supposed if he had to have a boss, if he had to look at and talk to them at all, he’d rather look at and talk to this new boss, even if she was a stuck-up princess.

  ‘She’s a looker at least, Trav,’ said his friend Pete as he came to stand alongside him. Pete could always read his mind, the by-product of a friendship that had spanned almost the full thirty years Travis had been alive.

  Travis looked at his friend and saw a glint in his eye, one that foretold of meddling and trouble.

  ‘You should look into that,’ Pete said with a wink.

  The other workers had drifted away, leaving Pete and Trav in the dispatch area surrounded by shrink-wrapped towers of packaged paper.

  ‘Not a chance,’ Trav beamed. ‘I’m a one-woman man.’

  Pete chuckled. ‘I know how much you love Annie, but a six-year-old is no replacement for a woman.’

  ‘My little ray of sunshine is all I need,’ Travis said. ‘And mum, of course. Other than those two angels, I’m set thanks. Women are nothing but trouble.’

  Pete cocked his head to the side and gave Travis one of those sympathetic looks that got on his nerves and reminded him of other times. Times when the world had not been so easy to understand and enjoy.

  ‘The women you’ve chosen have been,’ Pete argued. ‘They’re not all the same, mate. Look at Chloe.’

  Travis smiled at the mention of Chloe. Pete had married her eighteen months ago and since then, he had been living in a loved-up bubble. Trav was happy for him. He loved Chloe like a sister and he thought his friend had done well, really well. He just didn’t see himself having what they had. He didn’t want the trouble. And women, in his experience, were always trouble. Hell, Annie’s mother’s middle name should’ve been trouble. Her first name should’ve been flake. Since her, he’d done just fine in the hook-up department, but his record in the relationship department continued to be atrocious.

  ‘You got lucky, mate. The rest of us are left to suffer with the creepers and crazies.’

  ‘You just don’t know how to pick 'em,’ Pete argued.

  ‘Don’t need to. I’ve got mum and my princess, they’re all I need.’

  Trav knew his words were one hundred percent true. He and Annie had created a home and a life, and he really didn’t want some psycho woman coming in and disturbing the status quo. Annie didn’t need it, either; she’d been through enough with her mum, poor kid. Even so, Trav couldn’t deny that his first meeting with the new boss had made his blood stir, especially in some key areas of his body. That, coupled with the way she’d come in all heavy, throwing her weight around, pissed him off.

  Trav wiped any thought of Dee Lovelace from his mind and took in the humming sound of a smooth-running factory. They’d make their production target for the day and then some. Trav gave Pete a satisfied wink.

  They walked away from the dispatch area and deeper into the factory where the paper presses lay. Beyond them were the slurry vats.

  As they wandered past the foreman’s office, Kerri, the older woman who tracked the production and maintenance schedules, stuck her head out, her mad blonde curls framing her weathered face.

  ‘Hey, Trav,’ she called.

  ‘What’s up, Kerri?’

  ‘I’ve got a call for you from head office.’

  Trav looked pointedly at Pete. Since this Olsen crew had taken over the factory, there’d been lots of phone calls from head office. The bigwigs hovered like flies at a picnic, and it was beginning to grate on him. He wished they’d just let them get on with their work.

  Trav wandered closer to the office. ‘Know what they want, Kerri?’

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Probably just want to know your star sign or something.’

  He gave her a knowing smile and walked into the office, the sound of his boots heavier in the quieter space. He parked his butt on Kerri’s desk and picked up the handset as Kerri bowed her head and continued with the paperwork.

  ‘Travis Parker speaking,’ he said.

  ‘Travis, this is Tim Gibbons from the Melbourne office. How
are you doing?’

  Travis thought about telling Tim that he’d be better if head office would just let him get on with his work, but …

  ‘I’m good thanks, Tim. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well,’ Tim began, ‘the reason for my call is somewhat unusual.’

  Travis’s eyebrows lifted. His interest was piqued. ‘Okay.’

  ‘You have a new general manager arriving today, Dee Lovelace.’

  Travis smiled. ‘Oh, I know. She just, ah, met the staff.’

  ‘Great, so you can obviously see that she is a lovely person,’ Tim sounded relieved.

  Travis was silent.

  ‘So, we’ve actually struck a little dilemma with regard to Ms Lovelace.’

  Travis was all ears. He wondered if perhaps Dee had already made contact with head office regarding his stunt with the tank tops. Maybe Tim was about to reprimand him. Or perhaps Dee had realised this gig was not for her. That thought should’ve made Trav happy. It annoyed him that it didn’t.

  ‘Ms Lovelace was supposed to be provided with accommodation for twelve months. The company had planned to secure her a rental property in the area, but the person charged with that responsibility didn’t quite get to it.’