by Cassie Hayes
No, no, no, no, no!
As he tried to pull away, she tightened her hold on his jacket. “Whatever I said, I take it back. Just don’t stop the kissing, Grayson!”
He peeled her fingers loose and stepped back, shaking his head and raking his hands through his hair. Her heart sank deeper and deeper with each step he took away from her. The distance couldn’t have been more than a few feet, but it might as well have been a mile.
“What just happened?” she panted, trying to put her clothes — and her dignity — back together.
“I’m sorry, Lex. What you said… I don’t think you are.”
What? What didn’t he think she was? She’d be whatever he wanted if he’d just go back to kissing her like that. “What?”
“All mine. I know you said it in the heat of the moment, but I have to wonder. Are you? All mine?”
“I… Grayson, I…um…” Thinking proved impossible. She couldn’t form words, much less coherent sentences. She took a deep breath and tried again. “What are you asking me?”
He looked at her from across the great abyss that had mysteriously opened between them. “Why didn’t you tell me about the loan?”
If her mood hadn’t chilled before, his question was more effective than a cold shower. “How do you know about that?”
“It’s a small town,” he said with a shrug. “Word gets around. Why didn’t you come to me for help?”
Lex pushed aside her feelings of betrayal and anger that her family’s private business was now fodder for gossip. “That’s it right there. That’s why I can’t stay here. This is my business, no one else’s. Yet apparently, the entire world knows.”
Grayson’s lips pressed into a thin, grim line. “So you’ve made a decision. You’re leaving.”
Lex slumped into a nearby desk and buried her head under her arms. When she looked up, he still stood there staring at her, and looking as hot as ever. This was going to be hard, very hard.
“I don’t have a choice. According to our accountant — who I’m firing first thing tomorrow, by the way — we have two options: burn the place down for the insurance, which I hear never turns out the way people expect, or sell it. No bank is going to touch us for a loan unless we’re on some historic building registry, which we’re not. So that’s that.”
“But—“
She held up a hand to stop him. “None of that even matters, Grayson. My mom wants to sell, and quite frankly, I’m tired of fighting her. She’s made it clear that she doesn’t want me in her life, and she wants to scrub away every memory we have of my dad. I’m tapped out.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and for the first time, she didn’t try to hide them. Knowing there was no reason to impress him anymore made it so much easier to simply be herself.
“So you’ll go back to LA?” The desk next to her creaked as he crammed himself into the tiny seat. If her heart wasn’t breaking, she would have laughed.
“My life’s there. I always dreamed of living in a big city. I couldn’t be happier there.”
Then why was she so miserable at the idea of going back?
“What will you do? Last I heard, you were unemployed.”
“Maybe I’ll apply at The Conrad Group. I hear they’re good to their employees.”
The smile he attempted didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll put in a good word for you, but be careful what you wish for. You might find yourself being transferred to a small town in the Sierra.”
“Maybe you and Sophia could come visit?” A spark of hope glowed dimly in her heart until one shake of his head snuffed it out.
“Lex, I built The Eyrie here for a reason. My dad hated the idea — which I can’t deny was part of the allure — but I saw the direction my life, and more importantly, Sophia’s was taking. I know I’ll have to travel for work occasionally, but my life is here now. In Yosemite Flats. Where you don’t want to be.”
Lex nodded, letting the tears flow. If she couldn’t cry at a moment like this, when could she? “I understand. I’m sorry.”
They held hands between desks, savoring each other’s touch while they could. It would end all too soon, and neither wanted that moment to come. Grayson broke the spell by clearing his throat and standing.
“I have a proposition for you then. I’ll buy the Alpine Inn.”
She was too shocked to speak for several seconds. “Excuse me?”
“I’d prefer loaning you the money you need, but that doesn’t seem to be what you want. Is it?”
What did she want? Too many thoughts zipped around in her brain to make sense of any of them. An offer to buy? An offer to loan? But then she’d have to stay. What about her mom? Why did she even care?
His normally soft eyes hardened as he tried to see into her heart, a pointless endeavor, as she didn’t know herself what was there. Grayson and Sophia had become important to her, that much she knew. But they’d only shared one kiss — hardly enough to base such an enormous life decision on. No, she had to move forward with the information she had right now, not what might be in the future.
“That’s not a viable option at this juncture,” she said stiffly, not meeting his gaze. She might waver if she did, so it was safer to avoid it altogether.
“Right. Well then, my offers stands. I have to consult with the company accountants, but as long as your asking price is reasonable, consider it a done deal.”
The Alpine Inn had been her home, her entire life, and in the blink of an eye, it was gone. Not gone, but no longer theirs. It happened so fast that she was caught completely off-guard. Sort of like when her dad died. That phone call from Brett had rocked her world. This was almost as bad.
“What will you do with it?” she whispered. She picked at a chipped thumbnail and tried to hold on to her rampant emotions.
He kneeled in front of her and pulled her hands apart. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she looked up. His eyes softened and he swept away a tear with the pad of his thumb. His hand felt so nice, so comforting, that she leaned into it and closed her eyes. If only…
“I promise you this, Lex. I’ll take good care of your father’s legacy. Trust me.”
When she opened her eyes, she tried to remember what was so important back in LA. Then all the reasons came flooding back and left a bittersweet hole in her heart. As sad as this all was, his offer might just solve all their problems. Most of them anyway.
“I do trust you, Grayson. Thank you.”
His eyes dropped to her lips. The connection between them was undeniable, so when he leaned in for a last kiss, she let her eyelids fall closed. When his lips pressed against her forehead instead of her mouth, she smiled and tried not to let on that her heart had just broken.
Grayson pulled into the job site in a foul mood. He and Lex had spent the morning explaining to Sophia why Lex would no longer be her nanny. Thank goodness they’d had the conversation in Lex’s office and not the lobby. What a scene that would have been. As expected, there were quite a few tears — and not all of them from Sophia.
“But why,” she’d cried, clinging to Lex for dear life and sobbing into her shoulder.
This was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid in the first place, and yet here they were anyway. He had to admit that Lex handled it as well as could be expected.
“Sophia,” she’d said, pulling away and brushing the tears from Sophia’s cheeks. “Do you remember when I first started watching you? How I told you I’d be going home sooner or later?”
Sophia had nodded miserably and sniffed. “I remember.”
“Well, later has come. It’s time for me to go home.”
“I thought this was your home.”
Lex had flicked a glance up at him, a glance that showed she was as conflicted as he was, then pressed on. “It used to be, when I was your age. But I live in Marina del Rey now, remember?”
“Can I come visit? We could go watch all those silly muscle men on the beach!”
That had been the hardest part, but he and Lex were prepared.<
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“Maybe one day, Sophia, but I think your dad is too busy to take any trips right now, and when I get home” —her emphasis on the word felt like a knife to his hear— “I’ll be very busy looking for a new job.”
They both knew “one day” would never come. Such a visit would only confuse Sophia — and each other — even more. Best to cut this thing off at the knees, no matter how painful. Sophia hadn’t looked convinced either, but at least she stopped crying. Except what replaced the tears had pained him even more. Apathy.
“Whatever. As long as I don’t have to go to that biotch again.” With that, she’d pulled her phone out of her sparkly pink clutch and started playing a game, wiping her eyes occasionally, but never looking up at them.
Since Lex had taken over caring for her during the day, Sophia had almost turned into a normal six-year-old. She’d played and giggled and danced. Most importantly, she hadn’t acted like a sixteen-year-old doing you a favor by saying hello. He hoped like hell he could find a nanny or daycare that could bring that out in her again.
Jacob startled him out of his thoughts by knocking on his window. “Morning, boss. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” he lied, joining his foreman on their daily walk of the grounds. Construction was complete and his crew were putting the final touches on the exterior. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“Same as every day lately. Paint, lay carpet, plant flowers, accept deliveries. And of course, worry about that parking lot. I’ve got everybody ready to roll the minute we can start. Any word?”
Grayson’s chest constricted and he thought he might deposit his morning cup of coffee and bagel into a beautiful patch of freshly planted poppies. He managed to choke down the bile, but not the sense of guilt that spurred it.
“You know how last week Tassie James said the only way she would issue the permit was if I somehow got permission from the Luther family to build an overflow lot on their property?”
“Yeah,” Jacob said, giving him the side-eye.
“Well, as soon as we can make it happen, their property is going to be mine.”
“Yours. As in, you’re buying it?”
“Yup.”
Grayson tried to keep his expression neutral, but Jacob knew him too well. As gruff as the man seemed, he had a heart of gold. He also had a soft spot for Lex.
“What about Lex?”
Grayson ground his teeth together, trying to stay in control. Regret wasn’t something he spent a lot of energy on, but right now, in this moment, he regretted falling for Alexandria Luther.
“She’s going back to LA. Her mom doesn’t want the place anymore, and she doesn’t want to be here anymore. So I’m buying it. She gets to go back to her old life, and we get our parking lot. Win-win.”
Then why did it feel so much like lose-lose?
Jacob shook his head and muttered something under his breath as he turned away in disgust.
“What did you say?” Grayson asked.
Jacob wheeled around, his face red with frustration. “I said, ‘Idiot!’ This isn’t a win-win, not even close. If she goes back to LA, you’ll never see her again. Tell me, boss, how does that make you feel inside? Hmm?”
Grayson couldn’t speak, but the answer must have been written on his face because Jacob nodded knowingly.
“Thought so. You listen to me, son, if you let this one slip away, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. She’s special. She’s not like those others you used to bring around.”
While he never brought women home to meet Sophia, that didn’t stop him from dating occasionally. An easy way to impress his dates was to take them to whatever construction site The Conrad Group had running at the moment. Of course, most of them balked at having to mess up their hair with hardhats, and tiptoeing over bricks and boards and equipment must not have been easy in high heels. It was always fun to watch though. Apparently, Jacob had been watching as well.
“If Lex wants to leave Yosemite Flats, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Jacob rolled his eyes as if he was talking to the dumbest of dummies that lived on Dummy Planet. “You could loan her the money for the repairs.”
Grayson shook his head grimly. “Already offered. She turned me down.”
“Oh.”
They stood in silence as Jacob scratched his head, thinking. Grayson let him. If he could come up with a solution, Grayson was all ears. He finally looked up.
“Well…shit.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Jacob. Now maybe we should start working on a plan for the overflow lot.”
Chapter Nine
Lex ran her fingers along the curve of the roll top desk in her father’s old office. Through her efforts over the last month and a half, it looked more like her tidy office at work — her old work — but her father’s presence was too strong for her to ever really feel ownership. No matter where she looked, everything in and around the inn flooded her with memories.
At first, they’d been overwhelming, too painful. But she’d grown rather fond of them. The past two years had been spent avoiding thinking of her father. It was no small part of why she hadn’t been home since his funeral. Now her heart broke that she might never see this place again.
She sighed and printed the last financial document Grayson’s lawyers needed to draw up papers for the Alpine Inn to become the latest — and probably smallest — addition to The Conrad Group’s massive holdings. If he kept his word about recommending her for a job to his father, maybe she could keep an eye on it and come for a site visit now and again.
Probably not, she decided. A team of contractors and interior decorators would undoubtedly come in and transform her childhood home and playground into something unrecognizable. No trace of Russell Luther would remain. That would gut her.
So would seeing Grayson and Sophia. It would have been all too easy for her to fall head over heels for him, and she already loved his daughter so much it hurt. They’d made the smart decision, the adult decision, to not pursue a romantic relationship. Seeing them too often would only confuse matters.
A knock on the door preceded a man’s head poking into the room. For a split second, the brown hair tricked her into thinking it was Grayson, which caused a surge of adrenaline that took her breath away.
“Oh!” She gasped when she saw it was George, the older gentleman who drove the weekend shuttle to Nelder Grove — and who happened to have the world’s worst toupee. “You startled me, George. What’s up?”
“Got something for lost and found, Miss Lex. Woulda brought it in sooner, but I wanted to gas up for later. Plus, the bus needed a bath something awful.”
George was a doll. A retired fireman from Fresno, he and his wife had moved to Yosemite Flats for retirement. As it turned out, George quickly bored of looking at trees and found no-pressure odd jobs around town to keep himself busy. She felt lucky to have such a kind and dedicated man working for them, and she made a mental note to ask Grayson to keep him on, if possible.
“No worries, George. I’ll keep it safe till you bring everyone back at the end of the day.”
When Lex reached for what George held out to her, her heart stopped. The item looked familiar, but out of context, her brain couldn’t connect the dots. A good five seconds passed before she realized that she’d seen it every day for the past month and a half.
Snatching Sophia’s sparkly pink clutch from George, she sprinted to her room, where she’d left Sophia to take a nap. What time was that? She couldn’t think, couldn’t remember. Ten! That’s about when the shuttle left the inn. Glancing at her watch, she was horrified to find that it was almost noon.
“George, a little girl with curly brown hair left this behind, right? She was wearing a pink dress. Do you remember her?”
Poor George looked scared. “‘Course I do, but she was with a whole family. Even sat with them.”
“Who? Which family?”
George shook his head. “I don’t know, M
iss Lex. They weren’t guests. They paid two bucks each. Which is funny, now that I think on it, because the dad paid for all except her. She paid for herself. I just thought she wanted to feel grown up.”
Lex’s heart hammered in her chest. How had she not realized Sophia’s nap had gone on too long? Who were these people she was with, and did she go of her own free will or had they abducted her? Panic tried to get a toehold, but she fought it off. Sophia’s safety depended on her keeping her head.
Unsure she’d be able to speak past the ball lodged firmly in her throat, Lex pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. Her fingers shook so badly that she had a hard time tapping the numbers in correctly. She held her breath as it rang.
“Grayson? Sophia’s missing.”
Less than an hour later, no fewer than a dozen people were gathered in the parking lot of the Nelder Grove, with more coming in as fast as the rough road would allow. Rick Mason, former mayor and the sheriff’s Search and Rescue team leader, instructed them on how they would conduct the search.
The family of six who rode with Sophia to Nelder Grove joined in, holding hands. Turns out they were tourists on vacation from Utah and were adamant about joining the search. Sophia had told them that her mother was a park ranger named Zoe Branigan, and she was meeting her there. It was their weekend ritual, she’d said.
“The average adult walks three miles per hour,” Rick said, waving newcomers into the group. “It’s highly unlikely that a six-year-old could sustain that speed for any longer than a few minutes, but to err on the side of caution, I created a search grid that extends nine miles out from this point.”
Grayson squeezed Lex’s hand. “That’s what? Over two hundred miles to search?” The fear in his voice made her want to fall on the ground crying and beg his forgiveness. It would hardly matter if he did though, because she’d never be able to forgive herself.
“A little over two-fifty,” Rick agreed, “but she’s most likely on or very close to one of the trails, which narrows our primary search area considerably. In fact, I doubt she’s more than a mile from this very spot.”
