After Hours with Her Ex

by Maureen Child

  And just to prove to herself—and him—that she was willing to trust him, willing to believe, she had decided to tell him about the baby that night at dinner.

  Whoa. Her stomach did a quick twist and spin at the thought. Nervous, yes, but it was the right thing to do. If they were going to work this out between them and have it stick this time, she had to be as honest as he had been the night before.

  She gave the baby a gentle pat, then, smiling, she headed through the lobby. There were guests sprinkled around the great room, enjoying the fire, having a snack, chatting. She ignored them all, stepped outside and took a deep breath of the chill spring air. Tulips and daffodils were spearing up, trees were beginning to green.

  It was as if the snow was melting along with the ice in her heart. Lacy felt lighter than she had in two years. And she was ready to let go of the past and rush to a future that was suddenly looking very bright.

  “Lacy! Hey, Lacy!”

  She turned and grinned at Kevin Hambleton as he jogged toward her. Kevin was young, working his first season at the lodge. He was helping out at the ski-rental shop, but had been angling for an instructor’s position.

  “Hi, Kevin,” she said as he started walking with her toward the ski lift that would take her to the new construction site. Not only did she want to see how the building was coming along, she could admit to herself that she wanted to see Sam, too. And she knew that if he wasn’t at the lodge, working in the office, he would be at the site, watching his plans come to life. “I’m just going up to check on the guys, see what progress they’re making.”

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” His face practically shone with excitement. “A lot of things happening around here now that Sam’s back.”

  “There are, with more to come,” she said, thinking about the gift shop, the portico and the expansion to the lodge. Within a couple of years, Snow Vista would be a premier tourist destination.

  “I know, I read that in the paper this morning.”

  “What?” She looked up at him. As far as she knew, the gift shop hadn’t been announced.

  “Yeah, there was this article, talking about all the changes and how Sam’s going to put in a new beginner’s run on the back side of the mountain and all...”

  Lacy shook her head, frowned and tried to focus on what he was saying. But her heart was pounding and her brain was starting to short-circuit. “He’s building a run on the backside?”

  “Yeah, and I wanted to put my name in with you early, you know?” He grinned. “Get in on the ground floor. I really want to be an instructor and I figured starting out with the newbies would be a good idea, you know?”

  “Right.” Mind racing, Lacy heard Kevin’s excited voice now as nothing more than a buzz of sound. The cold wind slapped at her, people around her shouted or laughed and went about their business. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other.

  “With a new run going in, you’ll need more instructors, so I just, you know, wanted to see if maybe you’d think about me first.”

  He was standing there, staring at her with a hopeful grin on his face, the freckles across his cheeks bright splashes of gold.

  The edges of her vision went dark until she was looking at Kevin as if through a telescope. She felt faint, her head was light and there was a ball of ice in the pit of her stomach. Through the clanging in her brain and the wild thumping of her heart, Lacy knew she had to say something.

  “How did you hear about the new run?”

  “Like I said,” he told her, his eyes a little less excited now, “I saw it in the paper. Well, my mom did and she told me.”

  He was looking worried now, as if he’d done something wrong, so Lacy gave him a smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder to ease him. No reason to punish him just because her world was suddenly rocking wildly out of control. “Okay then, Kevin. I’ll put your name down.”

  “Thanks!” Breath whooshed out of him in relief. “A lot, really. Thanks, Lacy.”

  When he ran off again, she watched him go, but her mind wasn’t on Kevin any longer. It was fixed solely on Sam Wyatt. The lying bastard. God. She thought about the night before—as she had been doing all morning—only now she was looking at it through clearer eyes.

  And heck, it wasn’t just last night, it was the past few weeks. Romancing her. She nearly choked. He’d said he was going to romance her, but that wasn’t what he’d been doing. This whole time, he’d been conducting a sort of chess match, with her as the pawn, to be moved wherever he wanted her. He’d spent weeks softening her up, until he could apply the coup de grâce last night. Then he rolled her up in sympathy, let her shed a few tears for him, for them, then he’d swept her into bed, where rational thinking was simply not an option.

  “Oh, he was good,” she murmured, gaze fixed on the top of the mountain where she knew he was, but not really seeing it. “He actually convinced me. He had me.”

  And wasn’t that a lowering thing to admit? Lacy cringed internally as she remembered just how easily she’d fallen for charm and lies. Sam had slipped beneath her radar and gotten past every one of her defenses. He’d made her feel sorry for him. Made her forgive him for what he’d done to her two years ago. Made her believe again. Last night, he’d convinced her at last that maybe they had a chance of rebuilding their lives.

  But he wasn’t really interested in that at all. Or in her. She was a means to an end. All he wanted from her was the land his family had given her. For his plans. For his changes. He was sweeping her aside just as he had two years ago. And just like then, she hadn’t noticed until she had tire tracks on her back.

  Temper leaped into life and started pawing at her soul like a bull preparing to charge. Well, she wasn’t the same Lacy now. She was tougher. Stronger. She’d had to be.

  And this time, he wasn’t going to get away with it.

  * * *

  She found him at the construction site, just where she’d expected him to be. Sam spent half his time up here, talking to the men, watching the progress of the new restaurant going up. And all the while, he was probably planning his takeover of her property, too.

  The ride on the ski lift hadn’t calmed or soothed Lacy as it usually did. Normally, the sprawling view spreading out beneath her, the sensation of skimming through the sky was enough to ease away every jagged edge inside her. But not today. The edges were too sharp. Cutting too deeply.

  The rage she’d felt when Kevin first stopped her and spilled his news had grown until it was a bubbling froth rising up from the pit of her stomach to the base of her throat. Her hands shook with the fury and her eyes narrowed dangerously against the sun glinting off what was left of the snowpack. Shaking her head, she jumped off the lift when it reached the top and before she could even try to cool down, she followed the steady roar of men and machines to the site.

  Sam stood there, hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, wind tossing his dark hair into a tumble and his gaze fixed on the men hustling around what looked to her like the aftermath of a bombing. He couldn’t have heard her approach over the crashing noise, but as she got closer, he somehow sensed her and turned to smile. That smile lasted a fraction of a second before draining away into a puzzled frown.

  “Lacy?” His voice was pitched high enough to carry over the construction noise. “Everything okay?”

  “Nothing is okay and you know it,” she countered, sprinting toward him until she was close enough to stab her index finger against his chest. “How could you do that? You lied to me. You used my own pain against me. You played me, Sam. Again.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Oh, he was a better actor than she’d given him credit for. The expression of stunned surprise might actually have been convincing if she didn’t already know the truth. “You know damn well what I’m talking about so don’t bo
ther playing innocent.”

  God, she was so furious she could hardly draw a breath.

  But the words clogging her throat didn’t have any trouble leaping out at him. “Kevin told me what’s really going on around here. I should have known. Should have guessed. Romancing me,” she added snidely. “Flowers. Dinner.”

  If anything, the confusion on his face etched deeper until Lacy wanted to just smack him. She’d never been a violent person, but at the moment she sorely wished she was.

  “Why don’t you calm down,” he was saying. “We’ll go talk and you can tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “Don’t you tell me to calm down!” She reached up and tugged at her own hair, flying loose in the wind. “I can’t believe I fell for it. I was this close—” she held up her thumb and index finger just a whisker apart “—to trusting you again. I thought last night meant something—”

  Now anger replaced confusion and his features went taut as his eyes narrowed. “Last night did mean something.”

  “Sure,” she countered, through the pain, the humiliation of knowing it had all been an act. “It was the cherry on top of the sundae of lies you’ve been building for weeks. The grand finale of the Romance Lacy Plan. My God, I went for it all, didn’t I? Your sadness, your grief.” She huffed in a breath, disgusted with him, with herself, with everything. “I’ve got to give you credit—it really did the job on me. Then slip me into bed fast and make me remember how it used to be for us. Make me want it.”

  A couple of the machines went silent and the drop in the noise level was substantial, but she kept going. She was aware of nothing beyond the man staring at her as if she were speaking in tongues.

  “You set this whole thing up, didn’t you? Right from the beginning.”

  “Set what up?” He threw both hands in the air and let them fall to his sides again. “If you’ll tell me what you’re talking about maybe I could answer that.”

  “The backside of the mountain,” she snapped. “My land. The land your folks deeded to me.” Her breath was hitching, her voice catching. “You want it for a new beginner run. Kevin told me he saw it in the paper this morning. Your secret’s out, Sam. I know the truth now, and I’m here to tell you it’s not going to work.”

  “The paper?” he repeated, clearly astonished. “How the hell did—”

  “Hah!” she shouted. “Didn’t mean for the word to get out so soon, huh? Wanted a little more time to sucker me in even deeper?”

  “That’s not what I meant—never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

  She gasped. “You son of a bitch, of course it matters. It’s all that matters. You lied to me, Sam. You used me. And damn it, I let you.” She was so stupid. How could she have been foolish enough to let him get into her heart again? How could she have, even for a moment, allowed herself to hope? To dream?

  “Now just wait a damn minute,” Sam blurted out. “I can explain all of this.”

  She took a step back and didn’t even notice when the last of the construction machinery cut off and silence dropped on the mountain like a stone. “Oh, I bet you can. I bet you’ve got stories and explanations for any contingency.”

  “Just a minute here, Lacy...”

  “How far were you willing to go, Sam, to get what you wanted from me? Marriage?”

  “If you’ll just shut up and listen for a second...”

  “Don’t you tell me to shut up! And for your information, I’m done listening to you.” She backed up a step, lifted her chin and gave him the iciest glare she could manage. “You want the land? Well you’re not going to get it. The one thing you want from me, you can’t have.”

  He moved toward her. “That’s not what I want from you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She shook her head and her gaze fixed with his. “I know the truth now. I know the real reason you’ve been spending so much time with me, reconnecting.”

  “You don’t know anything,” he said, moving in closer. “I admit, I wanted a new beginner run on the backside, but—”

  “There. Finally. Truth.” She jerked her head back as if he’d slapped her. “Did it actually hurt to say it?”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Oh, yes,” she told him, “you are. We are. Whatever there was between us is done.”

  “It’ll never be done, Lacy.” His voice was dark, deep and filled with determination. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “What I know, is that once I believed you when you said you would never leave me. You knew what that meant to me. Because my own mother left me. You promised you wouldn’t. You swore to love me forever.” Oh, God, this was so hard. She couldn’t breathe now. There were iron bands around her chest, squeezing her lungs, fisting around her heart. “And then you left. You walked away. Broke your word and my heart. You don’t get a second chance at that. Damned if I’ll bleed for you again, Sam.”

  “You’re upset,” he said, his voice carrying the faintly patient tone that people reserved for dealing with hysterics. “When you settle down a little, we can talk this out.”

  She laughed and it scored her throat even as it scraped the air. “I’ve said what I came to say to you—and I don’t want to hear another word from you. Ever.”

  Lacy spun around and hurried to the ski lift for a ride back down the mountain.

  * * *

  Sam watched her go, his own heart pounding thunderously in his chest. Silence stretched out around him, and it was only then he noticed all the men had stopped working and were watching him. They’d probably heard every word. He turned his head and caught sight of Dennis Barclay.

  “Seems you’re in some deep trouble there, Sam,” the man said.

  Truer words, he thought, but didn’t let Dennis know just how worried he was. He’d never seen Lacy in a tear like that before. Even when she was furious when he first got home, even when she had yelled at him about past sins, there’d been some control. Some sort of restraint. But today there had been nothing but sheer fury and bright pain. Pain he’d caused her. Again. That thought shamed him as well as infuriated him.

  How the hell had that tidbit about the beginner run made it into the paper? He hadn’t told anyone. Hadn’t said a word.

  “She’ll cool off,” Dennis said, offering hope.

  “Yeah,” Sam agreed, though a part of him wasn’t so sure. The pain and fury he’d just witnessed wasn’t something that would go away quickly. If ever. Had he screwed things up so badly this time that it really was over?

  Misery blossomed in his chest and wrung his heart until the pain of it nearly brought him to his knees. A life without Lacy?

  Didn’t bear thinking about.

  Ten

  Sam’s instincts told him to go to Lacy right away. Follow her. Force her to listen to him so he could straighten all this out. But his instincts two years ago had been damned wrong, so he was hesitant to listen to them now—when it mattered so much.

  He denied himself the urge to go to Lacy and instead went to the lodge and upstairs to the family quarters. He wasn’t even sure why, but he felt as if he needed more than being alone with the black thoughts rampaging through his mind.

  The great room was empty, so he followed his nose to the kitchen. The scent of spaghetti sauce drifted to him, and in spite of everything, his stomach growled in appreciation. Another thing he’d missed while he was gone was his mother’s homemade sauce. Sam stopped in the doorway and watched her at the stove while his father sat at the round oak pedestal table, laying out a hand of solitaire.

  “Sam!” His father spotted him first and his mother whirled around from the stove to smile in welcome. “Good to see you,” his father said. “How’s the work on the mountain going? Tell me all about it since your mother won’t let me go up yet.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Sam said, and wa
lked to the table to take a seat. The kitchen was bright, cheerful, with the sunlight pouring in through windows sparkling in the light.

  “You don’t look too happy about it,” his mother said.

  He glanced at her and forced a smile. “It’s not that. It’s...”

  “Lacy,” his mother finished for him.

  “Well,” Sam chuckled darkly, “good to know that your mother radar is still in good shape.”

  Connie Wyatt grinned at her son. “It wasn’t that hard to guess, but I’ll take the compliment, thanks.”

  “So, what’s going on?” his father asked as Sam sat down opposite him.

  He hardly knew where to start. But hell, he’d come here to talk, to get this all off his chest. He just had to lay it all out for them, so he took a breath and blurted out, “Apparently someone talked to a reporter. It was in the paper today about me wanting to build a beginner run on Lacy’s property.”

  “Ouch.” His father winced.

  “And she found out,” Connie said.

  “Yeah.” Sam drummed his fingers on the table. “She let me have it, too. I just can’t figure out how the reporter heard about it. I mean, I changed my plans when I heard the land was Lacy’s.”

  “That’s probably my fault.”

  “Bob,” his wife demanded, “what did you do?”

  Grumbling, the older Wyatt glanced first at his son, then his wife. “A reporter called here the other day,” he said, with a rueful shake of his head. “Asking questions about all the changes happening around here. Got me talking about the different runs we have to offer, then she said something about how she was a novice skier and I told her we could teach her and that you had wanted to build a brand-new beginner run on the back of the mountain, but that the plans weren’t set in stone so not to say anything...and I guess she did anyway.”

  Sam groaned. At least that explained how it had made the paper. And, it would be a lot simpler if he could just blame this latest mess on his father. But the reality was, if Sam had just been honest with Lacy from the jump, none of this would be happening.