by Julia London
She usually avoided it with careful planning. It was Madeline’s experience that when things were planned, when events unfolded according to schedule, that expectations were managed. Yes, it was all about managing expectations, and Jackson sucked at it. For example, this day would have gone a lot smoother if he’d just put some thought into how to present the issues. But between his glib attempts to appease them, and Libby’s enthusiasm for that damn reunion, and Emma’s cool indifference, Madeline had felt like she was treading water.
At some point, they’d agreed to take a break—Emma was determined to find some booze in that house. Madeline had sat on the porch, rubbing her temples, and Luke had come to sit next to her. God, but that man was good-looking. He looked like he’d jumped right out of an ad for Dinty Moore stew. He sat closely, his leg lightly touching hers. Madeline was fixated on his leg. Thick and powerful, dwarfing hers, and oh, so sexy.
He’d bent his head to look at her. “Are you okay?”
Beside the fact that her head was exploding, her feet were numb, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of fatigue or chill, she was perfectly fine. “I’m good,” she’d said, and forced a smile.
He’d nodded, squinted out over the landscape and had said, “I gather this is a little like having a tornado touch down in your life.”
“Yes,” she’d said, relieved that someone understood. “Yours too?”
“A little,” he agreed.
“Who was it who said, life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans?” She smiled brightly, even though she was cringing inwardly. Not only did she never say things like that, she didn’t believe it for a minute. Life happened when she made plans.
Neither did Luke believe it, because he’d smiled wryly in a way that had made his gray eyes shine, and he’d put his hand on her arm. His strong, big hand on her arm. It was a workingman’s hand, with the little nicks and marks of his life. “John Lennon, I think. Hang in there, Madeline. Today is probably the worst of it.” He’d squeezed her arm and let go.
Madeline had appreciated his assurance, she had, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he knew what two hundred Johnsons would look like. Madeline knew—she’d worked enough of the office client appreciation days to have an idea.
What was very clear to Madeline at the end of the torturous day was that this situation would not be neatly resolved in one or two meetings.
She walked into the lobby of the Grizzly Lodge, with its rustic furniture carved from enormous tree trunks, a fire blazing in a cavernous hearth, and, naturally, the bearskin rugs. Yesterday, when she’d finally rolled into town, it was the only place she could find to stay. When she’d checked in, the proprietor of the establishment, Danielle Boxer, had asked if she wanted the Bear Cub or the Aspen Forest room.
Danielle was a large woman, probably six feet tall, with unusually bright red hair piled high on her head. She wore a pink Guayabera shirt—one of Madeline’s “dads” had worn those shirts on Sunday when he kicked up the footrest of her grandfather’s old recliner to watch football. “I’d give you the Mockingbird room, but someone had a bit of a party in there if you know what I mean,” she’d said, and had waggled her brows.
Madeline didn’t know what she meant and didn’t want to know. She thought the Bear Cub room sounded like the smaller of the two and chose that one.
“How long will you be staying?” Danielle asked—or Dani, as she insisted Madeline call her, as if Madeline would be staying for a time, long enough that they would know each other on a first name basis.
“I’ll be leaving first thing Monday morning.”
“That, I can accommodate. But I’ve got a big group of snowbirds coming through next week. They like to take the bus tours when the spring thaw starts.”
Madeline would be long gone before the mad rush to Pine River, that was for sure.
“License and credit card, please,” Dani had said. She glanced at Madeline’s license when she handed it to her. “Oh! You’re one of Grant’s girls!”
Madeline had been stunned by that. “How—”
“Jackson Crane,” she said with a laugh. “He has his breakfast here most days. I should have known it was you—you look just like your father.”
Madeline’s hands had gone instantly to her face.
“He was a good-looking man, I always thought so. And such a flirt!” She had laughed at that. “I tell you, if Big Ben hadn’t still been kicking, I would have considered it. But Ben and I were married for thirty-eight years.” She’d offered that up proudly.
“Impressive,” Madeline had agreed, but her mind was whirling around the idea that she somehow looked like the man who had abandoned her.
Dani had beamed and handed her the keys to her room. “Sorry about your dad, sugar. That must have been a blow.”
Madeline had merely taken the keys and smiled.
This afternoon, however, Madeline walked into a deserted lobby. The door to the coffee shop that faced the street was closed, the interior dark. That was not a good sign, as Madeline had hoped to grab a bite there.
Dani appeared from the office behind the front desk, dressed in a blue Guayabera shirt. Her hair hung in a long red ponytail down her back. “Oh, hey!” she said brightly when she saw Madeline standing in front of the closed door to the coffee shop. “Did you have a good day in our little village?”
No, it had been a disaster of a day. The worst. “It was okay.” She rubbed her forehead.
“Are you all right?”
Madeline dropped her hand and smiled. “I have a bit of a headache, that’s all. And I’m starving. Where’s the best place to get some dinner?”
“My coffee shop,” Dani said proudly. “But it’s closed.” She reached under the counter and produced a bottle of Bayer aspirin. “Take two of these. You probably have a little altitude sickness.”
“What?”
Dani smiled. “Sugar, have you never been to the mountains? You’re up in thin air. There’s less oxygen here than what you’re used to. Don’t worry, it passes in a day or two. You’ll get acclimated and hear those mountains call to you, I promise.”
Crazy old bat, Madeline thought.
“Take two of these, get something to eat, and get some rest. The Stakeout is open.”
The Stakeout, Madeline assumed, was a restaurant. “Is it very far? My feet are killing me,” she admitted as she accepted the aspirin bottle from Dani.
“Just pull on a pair of jeans. Living in the mountains is a whole lot easier if you leave the heels in your closet.” She winked at Madeline.
But Madeline hadn’t brought jeans. She had another pair of slacks in her bag. Slacks that went with these shoes and this blazer. She hadn’t planned on recreational wear, she’d planned on three days of what she thought would be meetings. “It’s okay,” she said, and forced a smile. “I’m not staying long. Thanks for the aspirin,” she said, shook two from the bottle, and made her way to her room.
The Bear Cub was definitely a lodge room, with low, beamed ceilings, an adobe fireplace, and a four-poster bed with a quilt cover. And, naturally, the obligatory bearskin rug. The room was certainly cozy, just as Dani had said when Madeline had checked in. Perhaps too cozy—Madeline felt as if she were sleeping in a bear’s den.
She kicked off her shoes first, and one of them ended up on the snout of the bearskin. She took the aspirin, then collapsed back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
She was exhausted. Emotionally, physically, all of it.
Madeline, who always had a plan, who had every moment of her day mapped out, didn’t know where to go from here.
She did not like the way uncertainty felt.
She, Emma, and Libby had argued about what to do, punctuated by generally unhelpful advice from Jackson Crane. Luke hadn’t said much. She could sense he wanted to hold someone responsible for his father’s poor decisions, and she felt for him in that regard, she truly did—she was no stranger to a parent making bad decisions. But she’d been mak
ing up for bad parents all her life, and she didn’t want, or even know how, to make up for his.
A faint beeping filtered into her thoughts. Madeline dug her cell phone out of her purse and noticed that she had missed two calls.
Both from Stephen.
She winced, tossed the phone into her purse.
She would call him, she would. But right now she was starving. Madeline sat up, looked at her shoes, and with a wince, stuffed her feet back into them.
She could hear the din of the Stakeout before she realized it was coming from the blue western building with the wooden porch and the swinging saloon doors. From the look of the packed gravel parking lot across the street, everyone in Pine River was here. Madeline dreaded going to restaurants alone; it seemed to give off a lonely, cat lady vibe. But then, she couldn’t remember ever being this hungry before. Ravenous! With a little salt and pepper, she would eat the railing.
She stepped in through the swinging saloon doors to the hostess desk.
“Table for two?” the hostess asked without looking up.
“One,” Madeline said.
The young woman glanced up, her gaze flicking over Madeline. “This way.” She picked up a menu and started walking through the crowded room, past the bar where people stood shoulder to shoulder, past tables where food had been served family style.
She finally stopped at a small two-top near the back of the restaurant, just outside the kitchen and next to the wait station. “Drink?” she asked, and put a menu on the table as Madeline squeezed into a chair between the table and the wall.
“Wine,” Madeline said. “A big glass of red wine.”
“You got it,” the woman said, and disappeared into the crowd.
Only a few minutes later, a young man appeared carrying a bowl of wine on a stem. “Would you like to hear the specials?” he asked. “We have buffalo steaks tonight.”
As Madeline had been raised on cans of Chef Boyardee and ramen noodles, she was not particular about food—anything was good. And buffalo sounded wildly exotic. “I’ll have that,” she said.
The waiter whipped out his pad and jotted it down. “How would you like it cooked?”
“Umm… medium?”
“Sides?”
“Whatever you have,” she said, smiling. “Thanks.” She picked up the enormous glass of wine and sipped. She closed her eyes, felt the wine filtering down to her toes. She’d relaxed from the pent-up explosion of anxiety she’d felt building in her all day. Now, she felt nothing but a low-grade headache and a bone-deep exhaustion.…
Until the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle.
Madeline suddenly felt as if someone was standing just beside her. She opened her eyes and let out a small gasp of surprise—there was someone standing beside her. His arms were crossed, and a beer bottle dangled from two fingers. His weight was all on one hip, and his gray eyes shone with a hint of amusement.
Madeline couldn’t help herself; she smiled. Those eyes inspired a lot of internal fluttering. A lot. “Hello, Luke.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “Hello, Madeline.” He lifted his beer bottle in a sort of half salute, then drank. “Seems like you and I had the same idea.”
There was something about Luke Kendrick that made her feel quivery. Madeline definitely understood that he was the kind of guy who, under much different circumstances, could make a woman like her do backflips. But the circumstances weren’t different, and Madeline dropped her head back and looked at the ceiling with a loud sigh. All she wanted to do was eat and then collapse into bed and nurse her head.
She slid her gaze to Luke again. He was calmly staring down at her, one brow cocked with amused curiosity above the other. Madeline wasn’t a fool. Luke was, in essence, an adversary. This was a real estate deal—he knew it, and she knew it. He was standing here because he wanted her and her sisters to sign that ranch back to him for a fraction of its value. But Madeline had not flown all the way to Colorado to just hand it back to this guy—okay, well, the jury was still out on why, exactly, she had flown out here—but nevertheless, the realtor in her would not allow it, not without a few questions, a few understandings, a few beneficial agreements.
Luke gestured with his head to the empty chair at her table, then shifted, leaning over her so a waiter with a full tray could pass. “Mind if I join you?”
“I knew you were going to ask that.”
“I will take that as a yes,” he said congenially. He plopped himself down in the chair, stretching one muscular leg out alongside the table, effectively trapping her between the wall and his motorcycle boot. “Are you having dinner?”
“I already ordered,” she said quickly, lest he have any ideas about dining together.
“Great. So did I.” He lifted his hand; a waitress appeared from thin air. Luke reached for his wallet. “Would you do me a favor? Would you transfer my ticket from the bar over here? I’m going to have dinner with my friend.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re exactly friends,” Madeline pointed out.
“Not yet,” he said confidently, and handed the waitress a five.
“Sure,” the waitress said, all gooey-eyed as she smiled at Luke. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
“I’ll do that,” Luke said, and he winked. Winked. As if he were some handsome lead in a romantic comedy movie. He watched the woman hurry off to do his bidding before looking at Madeline again.
“That,” Madeline said, gesturing between him and the waitress, “will not work on me.”
His smile turned into a grin. “Duly noted—a five-buck tip will not work on you.” His gaze wandered over her a moment, lingering a little too long on the vee of her shirt. “So what does work on you?”
A stronger fluttering began to tease the bottom of her belly. “What are you doing here, Luke?”
“Me? I’m from here.”
“You know what I mean. What are you doing in this restaurant? At my table? You keep showing up wherever I happen to be.”
“Someone could say the same about you, Maddie—”
“Madeline—”
“No,” he said, his gaze wandering over her face and hair. “You are definitely a Maddie parading around in Madeline’s clothes.”
Why would he say that? Madeline self-consciously glanced down at herself and then up.
Luke was grinning. “I can picture you in a frilly dress.”
That caught her off guard because Madeline actually had a frilly dress at home. It was chiffon and it was blue, and she loved it. But she had never worn it anywhere. There never seemed to be a moment that she could be that Madeline. The Madeline of frilly, flirty dresses.
“And by the way, from where I stand, you are the one showing up on my turf. On the road to Pine River, in my town, and at my family home. But you’re cute, so I’m not going to make a big deal out of it.”
Madeline blinked. She laughed. “Are you flirting with me?” she asked incredulously.
“Nope,” he said, but he was smiling.
Madeline laughed again. “You are.”
“It’s just an honest observation.” He winked, took a swig of his beer. “I wanted a drink after the ordeal of this afternoon, just like you.” He made a point of looking at the boat of wine at her elbow.
“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, and picked up her wine and sipped. It felt good. It felt warm. Or was that his smile and the fact that he’d just called her cute?
Luke leaned across the table, glanced around them and said low, “Between you and me—is Jackson Crane a little nuts?”
Madeline laughed. “Oh my God, thank you! He is completely nuts. Or very good at what he does.” She paused. “What does he do, anyway?”
“Hell if I can figure it out.”
“And then,” Madeline said, leaning in, too, “he shows up to a meeting like that with Diet Coke and potato chips. Seriously?”
Luke laughed. “He should have at least come with chocolate and bourbon. As it was, I thought Emm
a was going to start building her own distillery.”
Madeline laughed. It felt good to laugh after the day she’d had. “Do you know Emma?” she asked.
“Never met her before today,” he said. “Don’t you?”
Madeline shook her head. “I never met her before today, either. What about Libby?”
“I know who she is,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t know much of anything other than she recently broke up with a man here in town she dated for a long time. But that’s it,” he said. He eased back in his chair. “So you’re a realtor, huh?”
“I am. What about you?” she asked. “What do you do?”
“I’m a builder.”
“Here? In Pine River?”
He chuckled. “By the disbelieving tone of your voice, I think that you are underestimating our charming little town. But no, not here—in Denver. I went to school there and ended up staying for the time being.”
Madeline had so desperately wanted to go to college, but her mother had blown through the small trust fund her grandparents had set up for Madeline’s education. The jobs Madeline had held barely covered rent, much less tuition. “So what do you build?”
“Houses,” he said, and helped himself to some bread the waiter put on the table as he breezed by. “I’m just starting out. I have an architecture degree and I’m working on my MBA. I was lucky enough to apprentice with a large builder as an undergrad, and now, in exchange for a share of the profits, they are partnering with me on three housing starts to help me get my feet and my business on the ground.”
Madeline’s interest was definitely piqued. She would not have guessed him to be a builder, much less an architect. Rancher, yes. Lumberjack, maybe. He had a muscular build, a virility that she did not associate with architects, at least none she knew. “Tell me about your houses,” she said, earning a curious look from Luke. “No, really. I love the idea of a house.”
“You love the idea of a house?”
“You know, what they represent.” She thought about her ten-year-old self and the shoebox. In her imagination, the house was full of her children, and the pictures they drew were tacked on the walls, and the dogs they insisted on adopting were sleeping in the patches of sun on the floor, and their rain boots and sports equipment littered the entry.
