First Love

by Lisa Jackson

  “He only talks to the right people.” Thomas accepted Hayden’s silent invitation to walk into the house. As he did, his practiced smile fell. Hayden guessed that a host of memories crept through his mind. Absently Thomas touched the rail of the stairs and his lips rolled inward. Hayden could only guess what Thomas was thinking. This had been where Jackson Moore had hidden out overnight all those years ago when the whole town of Gold Creek thought he’d murdered Thomas’s son, Roy. Just this past summer, the truth had finally come out and not only had Thomas’s younger son’s wife, Laura, confessed to the crime, but the entire town had learned that Jackson was Thomas’s bastard son.

  Hayden, never close to his uncle, was at a loss for words. “Mom told me about Laura,” he said, as much to break the ice as anything. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not half as sorry as I am,” Thomas admitted as they walked into the den. “Brian’s never gotten over it, I’m afraid…. He still works for the company, but…” Thomas shrugged, and his shoulders seemed a little more sloped. His life hadn’t turned out as he had planned, Hayden knew. His son Roy had been killed; Brian had embezzled from the company and his wife had been found to be Roy’s murderess. Toni…well, stubborn, strong-willed Toni was off to college back East and Thomas’s political ambitions had all but died in the scandals involving his children. The rift between Thomas and Jackson, his bastard son, would probably never be repaired and he was estranged from his wife.

  Hayden almost felt sorry for his uncle. Almost. He still didn’t trust the guy. Thomas was as slippery as a seal in a tank of oil. Opening the old liquor cabinet, Hayden found a bottle of Irish whiskey with an unbroken seal. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Thomas nodded. “Guess you can afford it now.”

  Hayden pulled two crystal glasses from the cupboard, wiped them out with the tail of his shirt and splashed amber-colored liquor into each one. “To Roy,” he said, handing his uncle a glass.

  Thomas frowned, then touched his glass to Hayden’s and downed his shot. “I wish that boy would’ve lived,” he said.

  “Me, too.” Roy had been Hayden’s friend. True, they’d oftentimes quarreled, and just before his death, Roy had proved himself to be a royal pain in the backside, but there had been years…many years while Hayden was growing up a lonely rich kid when Roy and Brian had been his only friends.

  Hayden gulped the fiery liquid, feeling the heat slide down his throat. Thomas tossed back his drink, as well, and accepted another shot of whiskey in his glass.

  “To your father,” Thomas said, and Hayden gritted his teeth. “May he rest in peace.”

  “And get what he deserves.” Again the glasses clinked, but Hayden sipped his drink slowly this time.

  “You’re still blaming him.”

  Hayden’s muscles tightened. “I just don’t like anyone trying to run my life.”

  The silence between them stretched to the breaking point before Thomas, in an effort to change the conversation, asked, “Where were you tonight?” He threw off a dustcover and settled into a worn leather chair. Placing the heel of his shoe on the matching ottoman, he eyed his nephew as Hayden opened the damper of the fireplace and lit the dust-dry logs that had sat for years in the grate. “I heard the boat.”

  Hayden tensed a little. For an unnamed reason he didn’t want to discuss Nadine. “Bradworth hired a woman to clean the place. She left a ring here and I took it back to her.”

  “By boat?”

  “She lives across the lake.”

  Thomas scowled and glanced through the windows to the darkness beyond. The lake wasn’t visible through the glass, but lights on the distant shore winked in the night. “Who is she?”

  “Someone Bradworth got from an agency in town. HELP!, I think it was.”

  A shadow flickered in Thomas’s gaze and the corners of his mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. “Nadine Warne?”

  “That’s right.”

  Thomas’s eyes darkened, but he didn’t comment and Hayden was left with the feeling that their conversation was unfinished, that Thomas knew something about Nadine that he didn’t. Not that he cared, he reminded himself. What she did with her life, other than cleaning this damned house, didn’t affect him.

  Finishing their drinks, they discussed his mother and how she was coping since Hayden’s father’s death. Then the conversation turned to the string of mills he’d inherited. Though the largest sawmill was located in Gold Creek, there were other smaller operations in northern California as well as in southern Oregon.

  “Those mills have been in the family for decades,” Thomas said, leaning back in his chair. “Especially the one here, in Gold Creek. It was the first. Monroe Sawmill is a way of life—practically a tradition—to the people of Gold Creek. When times were tough during the depression, the company store or the sawmill and the logging company kept this town afloat. Even employees whose hours had been cut back were given credit to buy food and clothing for their families.

  “Gold Creek depended upon the mill and the logging operation to keep it alive.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  Thomas waved dismissively. “I know. But in the intervening years, through two world wars as well as the troubles in Korea and Vietnam, timber provided for the people of Gold Creek. Generations have depended upon the logging company and the sawmill for their livelihoods. That all may come to a grinding halt soon enough if the government tightens up on clear-cutting and logging old growth—but in the meantime we owe this town.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of political bull to me,” Hayden observed. “I thought you had decided against running for public office a few years back.”

  Thomas placed his hands on his knees and stood. His joints creaked audibly. The fire cast shadows on his patrician face and his expression was stern. “I can’t tell you how to run your life, Hayden. Hell, even your father wasn’t able to do that. But, one way or another, until you find a way to get rid of it, you own a majority interest in some valuable mills. Now, you can look at the corporation one of two ways—either you want it because it makes money for you, or you want it because it’s the lifeblood of this community.”

  “I don’t want it at all.” Hayden studied his uncle a minute. “I thought you’d come here to try to buy me out.”

  Thomas’s lips curved beneath his mustache and his eyes glimmered. “You remind me of Roy. He always cut right to the chase.”

  Hayden rolled his glass in his palms. “So what’s it going to be?”

  “I need a little time. Most of my cash is tied up in oil wells, at least temporarily. I’m still trying to buy some land north of here. I was interested in Badlands Ranch, but the owner is being stubborn.” Thomas’s eyes shadowed. He didn’t like to be bested. “I’m interested in diversifying,” he explained. “I’ve got enough invested in logging and sawmilling and I don’t believe in putting all my eggs in one basket.”

  “Seems to me you’ve diversified a lot. Timber, sawmilling, real estate and oil.”

  “It’s just a start.” He clapped Hayden on the back. “I’m not going to pressure you, though. This company is in your blood whether you like it or not.”

  He walked out to his Cadillac before pausing at the car door. “The woman who Bradworth hired…?” Thomas asked, and Hayden felt his spine stiffen slightly.

  “What about her?”

  “Maybe you should tell me what’s going on with that little piece,” Thomas said, and Hayden’s fists balled as the older man laughed. “Seems as if there’s something more than the company in your blood.”

  * * *

  “I GOT TWO days’ detention,” John announced at breakfast the next morning.

  “For what?” Nadine asked, though she didn’t really want to know. She wasn’t in the best of moods. Ever since seeing Hayden again, she’d been on edge, her nerves jangled. She had to
face him in less than an hour and wasn’t looking forward to the day.

  “Lack of respect,” John answered. “Mrs. Zalinski hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate anyone,” Nadine replied as she bit into a piece of dry toast she really didn’t want.

  “Oh, she hates me all right. Me and Mike Katcher. She hates us both.”

  Nadine chewed thoughtfully. Mike Katcher was trouble. No doubt about it. That kid reminded her a lot of Jackson Moore, a boy she’d gone to school with years before. Jackson, too, had been a troublemaker, a kid who had gotten into more than his share of fights, a boy who was constantly walking a thin line with the law. Years later, he’d risen above his past, returning to Gold Creek as a prominent attorney, a man who had cleared his murky reputation.

  Nadine didn’t think Mike Katcher would ever shape up. Mike’s mother, too, was a single parent and she spent more time looking for another husband than she did with her son. “Look, John, why don’t you give Mrs. Zalinski a break?”

  “You’d better,” Bobby advised. “Her husband’s a cop and he might arrest you.”

  “You don’t get arrested for locking girls in the bathroom,” John said, and then turned a deep shade of red.

  “Is that what you did?” Nadine asked. “John—”

  “It was Mike’s idea.”

  “Well, maybe you should come up with your own ideas.” She glanced at the clock and gritted her teeth. “Look, we’re going to talk this out this afternoon. And I’m going to call your teacher and Principal Strand and Mike’s mother to straighten out this mess.”

  “Aw, Mom, don’t!” John cried, horrified.

  “We’ll talk tonight.”

  “Promise me you won’t call.”

  “Tonight,” she replied, as the boys clambered down from the table and hurried out the back door. Despite the first drops of rain falling from the sky, they climbed on their bikes and headed toward the sitter’s home to wait for the bus.

  Nadine cleared the dishes and stacked them in the sink. John was becoming more and more defiant. Until this point, she’d been lenient with him, convinced that she couldn’t come down on him too hard or he’d want to live with Sam. He couldn’t, of course—she had custody. But Sam had been making noise about wanting more time with the boys and if he went to court again and John pleaded to live with his father… “What a mess!”

  She’d have it out with John tonight and lay down the law. If he brought up living with his father again, then she’d deal with it. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  She placed a call to the school asking for a conference with John’s teacher, then started collecting her cleaning supplies. Before she could concentrate on her son, she had to spend the day dealing with Hayden.

  She passed by the small room that had been the pantry and she frowned. Inside, the shelves were filled with scraps of leather, buttons, paint and beads. In her spare time she created earrings and pins, hair clips, studded jackets and even tie-dyed shirts, whimsical designs of her own making; she’d begun to sell some of her work and had orders stacking up for more of her “wearable art.” But lately it seemed that she didn’t have an extra five minutes in each day, and she needed to devote hours to her craft if she ever wanted to make enough money from it to support herself and the boys.

  “Someday,” she told herself as she shut the pantry door and picked up her bucket of soaps and waxes.

  She climbed into her old Nova, sent up a prayer that it wouldn’t die and smiled wretchedly as the engine turned over on the first try. Wheeling out of the drive, she turned toward the north shore of the lake.

  And Hayden.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HAYDEN’S JEEP, THE one Nadine had seen when she’d left yesterday, wasn’t parked in the drive. Though the electronic gates were open, there was neither hide nor hair of him on the grounds. She knocked on the door, and when she didn’t get a response, let herself in with the key she’d received from Bradworth.

  “Hayden?” she called, and his name echoed back to her through the empty rooms. Strangely, she felt more alone in the house today than she had yesterday. She observed evidence that he’d been in the house. Drink glasses had been left in the den beside an opened bottle of Irish whiskey, a sleeping bag had been tossed across the top of the huge bed in the master suite and the shower stall was still wet with drips of water. She swiped at the shower sides with a towel and wondered how long he planned to camp out here. A couple of days? A week? A month? As long as it took to sell the place? Not that it mattered, she reminded herself.

  Chasing wayward thoughts of Hayden from her mind, she spent three hours on the second floor, sweeping away cobwebs, cleaning two fireplaces and polishing the floors while she washed all the bedding she’d found in the closets. She plumped and aired out pillows and kept notes of repairs that were needed, from the leaky faucet in one of the bathrooms to the gutters that were overflowing with pine needles and downspouts that were clogged and rusted.

  She also created a list of supplies and was oiling the banister leading to the first floor when the front door opened and a rush of winter-cold air swept up the stairs. Startled, Nadine nearly jumped out of her skin.

  Hayden, carrying two sacks of groceries, strode into the foyer and stared up to the landing where she was working. His gaze was cold as a glacier in January. “You lied,” he said, his lips white with rage.

  “I…what?”

  “You lied to me!”

  “I didn’t—”

  He dropped the bags and took the stairs two at a time to loom over her. She felt as if she were stripped bare. “I don’t know what you’re raving about, but you scared the devil out of me just now,” she said, feeling color stain her cheeks. “I didn’t hear your car—”

  Grabbing her wrist, he said, “I think the devil’s still in you, woman.”

  “You’re talking in circles.”

  “You’re not married,” he said flatly, and she stiffened. His gaze raked down her body to glance at her left hand, which was covered with a latex glove.

  So that was it. She braced herself. “Not anymore. But I never said I was married,” she replied hotly. “You jumped to conclusions.”

  “Then what was all that talk about your husband not minding if I stayed for dinner?” His nostrils flared in suppressed rage and his lips tightened in silent fury.

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t!” Hayden whispered hoarsely, his face pushed so close to hers that she could see the movement of his nostrils as he breathed. “He walked out on you two years ago.”

  “I don’t see that it’s any business of yours—oh!” He jerked her roughly to him. He was so close that a wave of his breath, hot and angry, fanned against her skin.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn whether you’re single, married or a bigamist,” he snarled, his nose nearly touching hers. “But, as long as you’re working for me, I expect you to be honest.”

  Her temper grew hot. “You’re a fine one to talk of honesty, Hayden!”

  “I never lied to you.”

  “You left—”

  She heard his back teeth grind together. “Did I promise you differently? Did I say I’d stick around?” His fingers dug into her upper arms. “Damn it, woman, I ended up in the hospital and by the time I was back on my feet you were gone—vanished into thin air!” A cold smile touched his lips. “But you had what you wanted, didn’t you?”

  “I—wha—”

  “The money, Nadine. I know about the money.”

  “What money?”

  Dropping her hand as if it were acid, he hurried down the stairs and kicked the door shut. The door banged against the casing. “Don’t you ever, ever make me look like a fool again!”

  “I don’t think I have to help you. You seem to do a fine job of that yours
elf.”

  “Son of a—” He grabbed his sacks of groceries and stormed into the kitchen.

  “You arrogant, self-serving bastard!” Nadine hissed after him. “How dare you come storming in here full of half-baked accusations and lies!”

  A crash sounded from the kitchen and a string of swear words followed.

  Furious, Nadine told herself to remain calm. Usually, she could keep a level head. Even when she imagined herself in love with Turner, she’d managed to stay composed. But every time she was near Hayden, her emotions were wound tight as a clock spring, her temper ready to explode. She clamped down on her teeth and picked up her dust rag. The smart thing to do, the reasonable thing to do, was to hold her tongue and cool off. Think before she acted.

  But despite her arguments to the contrary, she half ran down the stairs and dashed into the kitchen where he was picking up a coffee cup that he’d knocked over. The ceramic mug had shattered and coffee and chips of pottery had sprayed upon the floor.

  “Watch out!” he warned.

  “I can handle this. I’m used to dealing with spills and broken—”

  “Just leave it the hell alone,” he cut in. “And while you’re at it, leave me the hell alone, too!” He glowered up at her, swept the pieces together with a wet towel and, under his breath, muttered something about pigheaded women.

  “You know, Hayden, if you’re trying to impress me with this macho routine, it’s not working.”

  “I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

  “Good. Now, maybe you can explain about the money you accused me of wanting.”

  He threw her a dark, scornful look.

  “What money?” she repeated, ready to strangle him with her gloved hands.

  “The blackmail money!” He slammed a cupboard door shut. “The damned hush money.”

  “Are you crazy? Blackmail? What’re you talking about?”

  He shoved two sets of fingers through his hair. “You know, Nadine, I told myself that you were different, convinced myself that your family was different, but in the end you proved that you and Trish and Wynona are the same kind of women—cut from the same greedy cloth. Maybe there isn’t any other kind!”