Caroline looked down at the sable brush she held in her hand, which was faintly dusted with Exquisite Perle Mineral Eye Shimmer in “Nude Belle.” It was true: she spent two Saturdays a month traveling to visit cancer patients and teach them how to use makeup to feel better during their treatment, and she was constantly emphasizing color and drama and encouraging her Divas, as she called them, to have fun with their cosmetics.
But when it came to her own makeup, she was pursuing an impossible ideal, one she would never admit to, not even to her very best friend: the porcelain-perfect look of great-great-great-grandmother Bonny on her wedding day, ornamented only with the glow of true love. And that was a look she would never achieve.
“Look, let me try.” Jennie put down the ribbon and scissors and came to stand next to Caroline at the mirror.
“Try what?”
“Try to add a little…something.” She gestured at Caroline’s face, her hand hovering over the makeup brushes and compacts laid out on the dresser.
“Oh no you don’t,” Caroline exclaimed in mock horror. “Besides, I’m late. I have to run by the Main Street Diner. I ordered sandwiches.”
“From the diner?”
“The tour comes with refreshments,” Caroline said defensively.
“Yeah, your dad sold lemonade from a mix for two bucks and pretended it was fresh-squeezed,” Jennie said. “And Ho Hos, if I remember right.”
“Dad hasn’t sold Ho Hos since the nineties,” Caroline protested. “When was the last time you were on the tour, anyway?”
“In fourth grade, like every other kid in this town.” Jennie smirked. “You make a good point. Maybe I should come along.”
“Tour’s full,” Caroline said, running for the door. “Too bad.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” Jennie said, sounding like it was anything but, as she returned to her gift wrapping.
***
The hike was steeper than Lance had anticipated. His foot was no longer hurting, the cut having healed nicely, but the ski trip had left him exhausted. Sleeping in the Cornelius’s personal guest room hadn’t helped, either; he and Mrs. Cornelius and the boys had played penny poker until the wee hours and then Mr. Cornelius had been up before dawn to make his famous cinnamon rolls, and since the family guest room was right off the kitchen of the old inn, he’d had almost no sleep.
But he wasn’t about to tell Caroline Bonny to slow down. Not when he had a fantastic view of her delectable rear end, outlined nicely in stretchy snow pants, as she strode up the path in front of him.
Caroline pointed out the occasional scenic overlook or geological feature, and Lance attempted to catch his breath enough to at least grunt in response, but the trip was marked by long stretches of silence. Oddly, the silence was a comfortable one. Caroline wasn’t the sort of woman who made you feel like you had to fill every second with conversation.
Lance kept thinking they were near the top of the steep ascent, but every time they rounded what was surely the final bend, there was the sheer rock face with a frozen waterfall, and the tree line along the top remained tantalizingly out of reach. The brush grew more sparsely up high, but the slope was studded with rocky outcroppings that took one’s full attention if one didn’t wish to end up taking a header into a granite boulder. Regular mortals, at any rate; Caroline bounded ahead as though she was part mountain goat.
Lance was trying to convince himself it was only Caroline’s familiarity with the route that accounted for her kicking his ass, when he took a sharp hairpin turn through a stand of trees and found himself looking at the most spectacular view he’d ever seen. They’d finally crested the top of the peak and arrived at a meadow through which the mountain stream meandered. In the spring, it would carry snowmelt from the mountains beyond, but now the stream was frozen over in places, a lazy trickle sparkling in the sun elsewhere.
In the middle of the meadow, a charming wooden millhouse still stood. It's wheel stood motionless, but it was easy to imagine it turning when the water flowed, the trees surrounding the building in full flower. Lance would have taken some pictures to show the kids, if he wasn’t busy staring at the other feature.
On a wooden footbridge built over the stream not far from the mill, Caroline was stretching, one leg up on the railing, her fingertips touching the toe of her boot. She’d released her long hair from its elastic, and it shimmered in glorious waves in the sun, cascading around her shoulders. She’d also taken off not just her jacket, but her sweater, and all she had on underneath was some sort of yoga-type bra that clung to her curves and revealed acres of sun-kissed shoulders and arms. Even in the middle of winter, she looked like she’d been sunning herself on a rock, and Lance wondered if her skin would taste like fresh air.
Caroline twisted her body, switching feet, and caught sight of him. Immediately she tried to stand up straight and nearly fell over, one foot getting stuck in the rails. Lance jogged over to help, but by the time he got there she’d managed to fall flat on her ass.
“You okay, Princess Grace?” he teased, offering her his hand. “I know how these flat boards can be a real challenge when you’re not used to them.”
She looked utterly mortified as she got to her feet, and Lance regretted teasing her. She bit her lip and refused to look at him, but Lance held onto her hands. They were only inches apart, and a thin sheen of perspiration lit up her face. Her long lashes shadowed her eyes, and her full lips were curved in a pout. She smelled like a combination of spice and flowers and fresh rain.
Caroline closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “This used to be my favorite place in the world,” she said softly. “I came up here every spring with my mom to clear the spider webs and get it ready for the tourists. We brought buckets and washed the stand down with water from the creek. After we were done, Dad and Fiver would come up and fix any shingles and boards that had come loose over the winter. Mom did most of the work and I just looked for the treasure. She never seemed to mind.”
“You said it used to be your favorite place. What happened?”
Caroline opened her eyes and looked at him sadly. “When I was nine, I heard Dad and Mom joking around about the tourists, and all of a sudden I understood that the treasure wasn’t real. That there was nothing under the mill but the stream, and my great-great-great-grandpa had never buried any gold. And that if there wasn’t any treasure, then I’d never break the family curse.”
Lance caught his breath. He put a finger under her chin and tipped it up so she was looking right at him. “Do you really believe in a curse?”
“Of course not,” she said too quickly, blinking. She was a terrible liar. “And it was stupid anyway, just…that we’d never get rich. I mean, who cares? We do fine.”
She looked absolutely miserable, and Lance’s heart broke for the girl who grew up believing she’d never find love, whose own brother called her an old maid.
“I think you do more than fine,” he said, and he was well on his way to working up the nerve to kiss her when a deer shot out of the woods and raced across the meadow. It took the stream at a full leap and had disappeared into the trees on the other side when a pair of hunters came crashing into view. They wore camouflage pants and jackets and bright orange knit caps, and from their lurching pursuit Lance figured they’d been nipping at the brandy to stay warm.
Caroline twisted away from him, placing her hands on the bridge rail. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she called. “This is private land!”
“It is?” one of the hunters called. Neither one of them had their rifles pointed anywhere near the mill, but Lance still had to resist the urge to throw Caroline down and lie on top of her. Come to think of it, he’d been fighting that urge even before their arrival.
Caroline strode to the edge of the meadow. “You need to head back the way you came and take the path the other direction. Public land’s off that way.”
She snatched her sweater and jacket off the rail and started putting them back on. “I don�
��t think the deer are in much danger today,” she muttered. “Those two couldn’t hit a barn from fifty feet.”
The moment that had been so full of promise was lost now. Caroline wouldn’t look at him as she buttoned and zipped. The sun had gone behind an encroaching bank of clouds and the wind was kicking up.
“Did I say something?” he asked gently.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. It’s just….” Caroline bit her lip and toed a bit of snow flat. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Just because you stayed over. I mean, tons of people stay over. We have guests all the time." She blushed. “And not just Fiver’s.”
“You think…that I brought you up here because I felt indebted?”
“You’re very polite,” she said accusingly. “A real gentleman,” she added.
A gunshot echoed through the air, making them both jump. Caroline picked up her backpack and shouldered it while she strode away from him.
“Keep up if you can,” she called. “If one of ‘em shot the other one, it’s going to take both of us to carry him to the clinic. They're both too drunk to help.”
***
The hunters, who, it turned out, hailed from Ohio and were in town for the holidays at their cousin’s, had not shot each other. They had merely wandered off the path and couldn’t figure out which direction they’d come from.
“Thought that might get your attention,” the taller one said. “Don’t worry though, I shot straight up.”
“I feel responsible,” she murmured to Lance. “And there’s the issue of the liability. I think I’d better walk them back.”
“I’ll come with you,” he offered.
Lord knew it was tempting. Even with his hair barely a quarter inch long, Lance was the most appealing man to have arrived in Snow Creek in a very long time. Every time she caught him looking at her, she wanted to melt into that blue-eyed, crooked-grin gaze.
Of course he was there because he felt obligated. But not because he wanted to repay the hospitality of a single night on her living room couch—and not because he wanted to make amends for breaking a two-hundred dollar jar of face cream, either. He was under the obligation that every decent, kind man with old-fashioned manners felt when confronted with a spinster.
Such an old-fashioned word, spinster—but that’s what she was, when it came down to it. Even Jennie, her best friend in the world, knew better than to suggest that she could escape the curse. Maybe, if she was willing to move away from Snow Creek. Maybe, if she were to start over in Sonora or Sacramento or even San Francisco, she could cast off her family history and become someone entirely new. She could work for one of the studios in Los Angeles—or even open her own salon. She could live on her own for the first time in her life.
She could date.
She could date men that Fiver had never met, that Jennie hadn’t vetted, that the whole town didn’t know by name. And that was another thing. Lance had been in town for less than a week, and already everyone knew him. The old ladies loved him. The single girls ogled him. Hell, the married women ogled him. He had charisma to spare. It was ridiculous to think that a man like him could fall for her. If she were ever to date for real, she would start much smaller. Well, not smaller, exactly, though—remembering the way Lance had looked in that towel that wasn’t quite enough to cover up his…well, his excitement the other morning—most men would probably fit that category.
“Are you all right?” Lance demanded. “You’re all red.”
“From running,” Carolyn snapped, mortified. Even the hunters, in their inebriated state, were staring at her as if they could tell she’d just been picturing Lance naked, the towel sliding to the floor in a damp pile as he stepped toward her and— “I’m fine. You go home. I’ll take these clowns back to wherever they came from.”
“Hey,” the shorter one said, as he began lurching down the path. “We got frozen pizzas. You should stay for dinner.”
***
When Lance got back to town, he discovered that the high winds had taken the power out. Mr. Cornelius was working a crossword puzzle when Lance arrived. “Take a load off, son,” he said, motioning to the couch. “Mrs. C and the boys went out for manicures, and it’s going to take a while since the power’s out at the nail shop, too. I’m by myself, and there’s no way I can eat all these snacks Johnny made.”
Lance sank into the soft cushions of the couch and reached for a cracker. It was layered with a dollop of something creamy, spiked with chopped nuts and finished with a tiny herb leaf—more beautiful than the cover of a food magazine.
“So, get any action with Caroline?” Mr. Cornelius asked.
Lance nearly choked on the cracker. Carefully, he chewed and swallowed, then wiped his mouth with one of the “Matt & Johnny” napkins left over from the party. “Uh, Mr. Cornelius, is every single person in town betting on my relationship with Caroline?”
Mr. Cornelius shrugged. He set aside the puzzle and took off his half-moon specs, sliding them into his shirt pocket. “Now, son, we all got sorts of vested interest in that family. Why, they’re the backbone of our history. Local legend and all. Damn shame about the curse.”
“There is no curse!” Lance exploded. “For otherwise reasonable people, I can’t believe that in the twenty-first century, the residents of this town still believe in curses and buried fortunes—what’s next, unicorns?”
“Well, the treasure’s real, anyway,” Mr. Cornelius said mildly, picking up his pipe, fiddling with the bowl, and tamping down the tobacco. “You’re not going to tell Mrs. C if I have a little smoke, now are you?”
“I won’t need to, she’ll smell it,” Lance said, rolling his eyes and wondering if he should point to the No Smoking signs posted at the doorway to each room. “How can you say that?”
“Oh, the first Ernesto Bonny was no dope. He was quite a smart fellow, a visionary. He helped lay out the plan for the town, brought in investors, even went to Sacramento to convince them to run the rail line close to town. Without him, I dare say, there wouldn’t be a Snow Creek. And he was a shrewd businessman, made a fortune with his moonshine. People came from all over to buy it, called it ‘Fool’s Gold.’ He donated the land for the municipal park and left money to start the library. Managed all of that even though he was so dyslexic he could barely read—had to have an assistant go over all his papers and documents and make corrections. Anyway, if he says he left treasure, why, you can bet he did.”
“Well, I still think you’re all nuts, but it doesn’t matter. Caroline pretty much made it clear she isn’t interested.” He gave a brief summary of the aborted picnic, the encounter with the hunters, and Caroline’s cool brush-off.
“Well, there’s always the ball tomorrow night,” Mr. Cornelius said, helping himself to another cracker. “Sweep her off her feet there, eh? Bust a move or two, isn’t that what you kids say?”
“I appreciate the encouragement, Mr. C—but I’ll probably just make things worse. Seriously, you should have seen the way she looked at me when—”
A thought struck him. At first, it was just a wayward notion that tripped him up mid-sentence, but then he realized what it might imply. “I have to run, Mr. C,” he said, jumping up from the couch so fast he jostled the plate of snacks, knocking the garnish off several. Johnny would not be pleased. “So sorry, I don’t mean to be rude—”
“Go, go, son, I’ll hold down the fort here,” Mr. Cornelius said, picking up his crossword puzzle and putting on his specs.
***
An hour later, Lance was climbing the steep trail for the second time that day. It was even more difficult this time, since he was carrying a pick and a shovel strapped to his pack, and the wind whipped at him with each step. His calves were aching, his heart pounding in protest, and he’d managed to lose his hat over a scenic overlook, but if he was right, it would all be worth it.
He finally reached the clearing. He hurried past the mill and Caroline’s father’s souvenir stand, and set out across the frozen field without
stopping to catch his breath, struggling against the strong winds. He dug the treasure map from his pocket. But this time, he turned it in his hands so that the arrows pointing east and west were reversed.
Great-great-great-grandpa Bonny—being dyslexic—had transposed the letters.
There. The squared-off sketch that generations of Snow Creek residents had assumed was the mill could easily be that stand of poplars, anchored on two sides with rock outcroppings. And the oval that everyone assumed was the mill wheel—well, it was a not-bad match for that boulder in the center, the one with the vein of quartz running along exactly where Earnest the first had bisected his drawing.
Which meant—Lance’s heart started to pound, and it wasn’t from exertion—that the ‘x’ which everyone thought marked a spot under the rushing water of the mill stream was actually right over….there, under the beautiful old oak.
Lance took his pack off and laid it down on the ground, wondering what the tree looked like all those years ago, when Ernesto was a young man. He laid his hand on the trunk, nearly missing the faint outline of a heart under his fingers.
Lance looked closer. He would have missed the heart if he hadn't been looking straight at it. Carved by a pocketknife long ago, the initials EB and RB were joined inside the heart.
Ernesto Bonny and his bride Ruby, just as legend had it.
With growing excitement Lance approximated the spot where the map indicated. There was a patch of ground between the rocks on one side and trees on the other. Lance picked up his shovel and was about to dig when he had a thought.
He dug his own pocketknife out of the pack. Found a smooth spot on the bark on the other side of the tree. Carefully carved their initials.
LC & CB.
He added a heart, and stepped back to survey his handiwork. Satisfied, he picked up the shovel and turned over the first shovelful of earth.
Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas Page 35
