“Did your dad kiss her again before she went upstairs?”
“No.” Rachel sighed. “He almost kissed her, but at the last minute he changed his mind. But he kept smiling at her all weird like.”
“Will-you-marry-me weird like?”
“I wish. Do you have any idea how amazing it would be if Dad and Courtney really did fall in love and get married?”
Tiki groaned. “Yes, Rachel, I know how amazing you think that would be. You could finally move back to your precious New York City.”
Rachel frowned at her friend’s snotty comment. But rather than give Tiki the privilege of being right about anything, Rachel said, “Maybe I would still want to move back to New York, maybe not. Courtney and I had such fun tonight, if Courtney married Dad I might not mind staying here in Port Protection until it’s time to go to college.”
Tiki let out an excited squeal loud enough to wake her ancestors. Broadway growled. And Rachel held the phone away from her ear until the ear-piercing scream ended.
“Okay, you’ve finally convinced me inviting Courtney was a good idea,” Tiki said. “So what can I do to help you make sure they get together?”
“Well, I thought of one thing that might help the situation,” Rachel said. “Are you sure you’re willing to help me?”
“Totally,” Tiki assured her.
“Great,” Rachel said. “This is what I think we should do….”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WAKING UP ON HIS fortieth birthday to the smell of fresh coffee was a pleasant surprise for Graham—until he squinted at his bedside clock and groaned. It was only 5:00 a.m.
Obviously, Courtney was still on New York time.
But now that he was awake, he had to get up.
He’d never been one of those people who could lie in bed once he woke. It was lying in bed awake at night that had always been his problem.
Graham headed for the shower. Twenty minutes later he walked out of his bedroom and down the hallway to the kitchen. But instead of finding Courtney, all Graham found was his gurgling coffeemaker, the last stream of brew flowing into the pot.
He took a cup from the cabinet, filled it to the brim and took a long, welcome, wake-me-up sip before he pushed through the swinging doors into the great room. He stopped the moment he saw her through the lodge’s front windows.
Courtney stood outside on the deck, her back to him, leaning against the railing and looking out over the cove. In a flash, another of his journal entries Courtney had saved came to mind:
There’s something about standing on the deck at first light, sipping a cup of hot coffee and watching the early-morning fog roll across the cove, that has a way of making everything right in my world.
Except nothing was right in Graham’s world at the moment. He felt as if he were free-falling every time he looked at Courtney. And when she suddenly glanced over her shoulder, held up her coffee cup and beckoned him to join her, Graham felt the floor disappear beneath his feet again.
He took a deep breath and headed in her direction.
They had another long day ahead of them. And who knew what Rachel was planning next? The only way they were going to survive any more of Rachel’s pranks would be by keeping a united front—as friends, the way it should be.
Graham opened the door and walked onto the deck.
And he told himself it was only the caffeine making his heart race.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” Courtney said when Graham stood beside her.
“Thanks.” He leaned against the railing, facing her. He took a sip from his cup before he said, “I did a little more reading last night. Congratulations on landing your big account.”
“Thanks, Graham, I appreciate that,” Courtney said. “Are you at the point in your reading where you’re convinced I’m really not a crazy cyber-stalker?”
He laughed. “I never thought you were a cyber-stalker. But I was surprised to learn you were Lisa Woods’s daughter.”
“And I was surprised to learn that you were Grant Morrison’s son.”
“So, I assumed right,” he said. “You did check me out before you continued e-mailing Rachel.”
“Just being careful.”
“As you should have been.”
“I am surprised we didn’t cross each other’s paths somewhere along the way. I’m sure we know a lot of the same people. I guess it was our age difference that kept us out of sync.”
“Ouch,” he said, pretending to clutch his heart. “My age is not something I want to think about today.”
“Sorry.”
“I did meet your mother once. Right after college, I hadn’t made my way to Wall Street yet, and I interviewed for a position with your agency. I expected to meet with some personnel assistant, not the legendary Lisa Woods herself. She completely intimidated me. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.”
“That’s my mother, the Queen of Intimidation,” Courtney said. “She’s so hands-on all of her employees have her handprint stamped permanently on their foreheads.”
He leaned forward, pretending to examine Courtney’s forehead. “What happened to your handprint?”
“Oh, it’s still there. It’s beginning to fade a little.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “I know what it’s like to have an overbearing parent. My father wrote the book on the subject. And I also know how hard it is to break that hold. But if it’s any consolation, Courtney, it’s worth it. So don’t give up on yourself.”
“Thanks.”
He turned to look out over the water the way she was doing. And as they silently watched the fog roll across the cove, Courtney realized all was right in her world—at least for the moment. She wasn’t sure if it was the setting, or the man standing beside her.
Courtney suspected it was both.
“So?” he said, breaking the silence. “Any idea what Rachel has planned for us today?”
“Beyond me helping Rachel with the decorations for your party, no,” Courtney said. “But I don’t think we should let our guard down yet.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he said. “Maybe we should think about…”
His voice trailed off when Rachel walked out onto the deck in her pajamas, hugging herself against the chill of the morning. When she walked up beside them, she leaned over and gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday, Dad.”
Then Rachel looked over at Courtney and said, “What’s up? What are you guys talking about?”
“Just talking,” Courtney said.
But Graham said, “We were wondering what other big plans you had in store for us so we could put the rescue squad on notice.”
Courtney sent Rachel an apologetic look.
Rachel put her hands on her hips and said, “You want to know my plans? Okay, I’ll tell you my plans. I’d hoped we could all go to your party tonight and have a good time. And tomorrow I thought Courtney might like to go out in one of the skiffs and take a tour of the island. And tomorrow night, I hoped you would fix Courtney one of your famous venison steaks you like to brag about. Is any of that too much to ask?”
“No,” Graham said. “Those plans pass inspection.”
“Good,” Rachel said, hugging herself as she shivered again. “Then maybe we can all go inside now that you don’t have to alert the rescue squad. It’s cold out here. I’m starving. And Courtney and I have a lot to do before your party.”
“I make a mean omelet,” Courtney offered, trying to get back in Rachel’s good graces.
Rachel’s face brightened.
“Sorry, Courtney. But Rachel has been promoted to our new cook here at the lodge. She’ll be making breakfast for us this morning.”
“Fine!” Rachel snapped. “I hope you both like stale cereal.”
Rachel stomped off, slamming the door behind her.
Courtney looked over at Graham. “Part of Rachel’s punishment, I assume?”
“I might have to rethink that decision,” Graham said as they walked toward the front doo
r together. “If stale cereal is all she’s serving, I’m the one who’s getting punished.”
“Does that mean you won’t object if I show your new cook how to make an omelet?”
Graham grinned as he opened the door for her. “What do you think?”
COURTNEY FINALLY FOUND a cell phone signal on top of the ridge overlooking Port Protection. But she’d made the climb up the Stairway to Heaven with Broadway, not Graham. Rachel had gone ahead to begin decorating for the party. And though Courtney had her doubts, Rachel insisted after Courtney made her calls Broadway would be able to lead her to the general store called The Wooden Nickel, where Graham’s birthday party was being held.
Courtney found ten text messages waiting for her.
Nine were from Beth, dying to know what was going on. And in typical no-nonsense Lisa Woods fashion, the one text message from her mother contained nothing but a single question mark.
Courtney stared at the ominous punctuation mark mocking her, deciding she would deal with her mother later. First, she would call her best friend. She had far too much to tell Beth to put in a text message.
Beth answered on the first ring. “Please tell me the reason I haven’t heard from you is because you’ve been in bed with Graham from the moment you arrived.”
“The reason you haven’t heard from me is the lack of a cell phone signal,” Courtney said.
“And there isn’t a phone at the lodge?”
“Using the guest phone downstairs wasn’t an option. I needed privacy for what I have to tell you.”
“Oh, goody,” Beth squealed. “If you need privacy, the news must be steamy.”
“You want the good news first?”
“Yes.”
Courtney said, “Graham doesn’t have a hearing impairment.” Then she spent the next five minutes telling Beth the bad news about the big surprise she’d found waiting for her when she got off the floatplane at Trail’s End Lodge.
When Beth finally stopped laughing, she said, “I’m sorry, Courtney. I shouldn’t be laughing. You wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Courtney said. “You were joking when you gave me the membership. I’m the one who made things serious. Besides, I’m not in any mess. Graham has been nothing but nice about the whole thing. And regardless of the situation, I’m still glad I came.”
“True,” Beth said. “You could have wasted another three months of your life on this guy. At least now you can come home, patch things up with your mother and everything will return to normal.”
“I’m done with my mother’s version of normal,” Courtney vowed. “Being here has only reinforced that. When I get back, things are going to change.”
“Oh, come on, Courtney. If you aren’t careful, this war you’re waging with Lisa is going to bite you in the ass. You’re at the top of your career. And one day you’ll be running the agency. Focus on that. End this fight with your mother when you come home.”
“Good advice,” Courtney said, “if I gave a flip about running the agency one day.”
“Right,” Beth said and laughed. “You work nonstop 24/7 because you don’t give a flip about the agency. Good one.”
“That’s the problem, Beth,” Courtney said. “I should have been elated for more than five minutes after I landed the biggest account in the agency’s history. But I wasn’t. I just kept thinking, now what?”
“But it’s normal to feel a little let down after you reach a goal you’ve worked so hard for,” Beth argued. “I felt the same way after I landed that part on the TV series that finally got me noticed as an actress. But after the letdown, you set a new goal for yourself like I did. And your new goal needs to be ending the quarrel with Lisa so you can move forward and set your sights on a larger account next time.”
“Speaking of my mother,” Courtney said, ready to change the subject. “Call her for me and tell her my plane went missing. You know she’s never going to let me live this down, Beth.”
Beth laughed. “I’ll pass on calling Lisa. Anything else?”
“Promise you’ll only buy me a card for my birthday next year?”
“Now that’s a promise I can make,” Beth said. “From my lips to God’s ears, I’ll never play a joke on you again.”
“I’ll see you on Monday,” Courtney said, still smiling when she closed her phone.
But her smile faded when the phone suddenly came to life in her hand and she saw the number come up on the screen. Reluctantly, Courtney took a deep breath and answered.
“A simple reply to my text saying you were alive would have been nice,” were her mother’s first words.
“I was just getting ready to call you,” Courtney lied. “I’m having trouble getting a signal here, and—”
“We have a problem. Jackson and Taylor have called an impromptu meeting.”
Courtney tensed. The diet products company had announced they were going with her campaign only days before she left for Alaska. They weren’t scheduled to sign the final contract for two more weeks.
“Don’t tell me they’re backing out,” Courtney prayed.
“Not a deal breaker, just a few minor changes they want in the contract. The meeting is scheduled first thing Tuesday morning. Be ready to hit the ground running when you get back Monday night. I’ll have my driver pick you up at the airport and drop you off at my apartment so we can go over the changes and strategize.”
“Will do,” Courtney agreed.
“I expected no less,” were her mother’s last words.
No “how are things going?” No “are you having a good time?” And definitely no “do you think you could really be interested in the guy you went to meet?” Nothing other than strict instructions to hit the ground running once she returned.
Hit the ground running.
Courtney felt like screaming.
So she did. Standing right there at the top of the Stairway to Heaven, Courtney screamed so loud Broadway threw his head back and howled along with her.
She’d been running to catch up with her mother since the day she was born. Yet she was always one step behind, never quite measuring up.
And Courtney was tired of it.
She was thirty-five years old, and her mother could still reduce her to a sniveling five-year-old. Why hadn’t she had the courage to tell her mother no? That she wasn’t going to come straight from the airport to her mother’s apartment to strategize. That she was going to do the sensible thing and have the meeting rescheduled for Wednesday after she’d recovered from her trip and could be better prepared.
That’s what she should have done.
Instead, she’d chirped “will do” like the faithful minion she’d always been. Of course, she could always call back and tell her mother everything she should have told her before, Courtney reasoned. But Rachel was waiting for her. And poor Broadway still looked a little nervous after her angry primal scream.
Oh, please! Who was she kidding?
She could feel the fight draining out of her at the mere thought of saying anything like that to her mother. And once her anger made its last circle around the drain, she could feel the guilt slowly rising up in its place.
She’d been trying all her life to make up for being her mother’s bastard child, as if that were possible. And maybe that’s why she’d felt such an immediate bond with Rachel.
Courtney knew firsthand what it was like to be the object of a single parent’s domination—the guilt and the desperation you felt for wanting a life of your own. Before she left on Monday, maybe she would talk to Graham on Rachel’s behalf. Maybe it was time someone gave Graham a little insight on how daunting being the only child of a single parent could be.
In fact, maybe fate had placed her in this situation from the beginning, not to meet the man of her dreams, but to help a kindred spirit. And thinking of her kindred spirit now, Courtney looked down at the big dog patiently awaiting her instructions.
“Take me to Rachel,” Cou
rtney told Broadway.
Broadway barked and trotted down the stairs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ON SATURDAY NIGHT, Courtney tapped her foot in time to the lively tune the small band was playing at the front of The Wooden Nickel. The building had originally been a cannery warehouse built in the early 1950s. Hal Dobson joked he’d named the place The Wooden Nickel because that’s exactly what he thought the old building was worth when his wife, Peg, wanted to buy it.
But Peg had obviously been the visionary of the two.
They had converted the building into a general store, and Peg also ran a short-order grill out of one end of the warehouse. The large storage loft upstairs had been transformed into a spacious apartment that served as the older couple’s living quarters.
A space this size in New York City would have cost a fortune to heat. But a large woodstove at each end of the warehouse put out enough heat that—according to the conversation Courtney had with Hal earlier—could run you out of the place even in the dead of winter.
Courtney fanned herself, thankful it was May and neither of those woodstoves was burning. With practically the whole town packed into the space for Graham’s party, the body heat alone had the overhead ceiling fans running full speed.
Courtney applauded along with everyone else when the music stopped, and smiled at the two Barlow brothers grinning at her. The good-looking twins, Mark and Clark, were in their late twenties and talented musicians: Mark, a master on the banjo; Clark, a genius with the fiddle.
Though Courtney had no interest in either of them, the brothers had made it clear they were very interested in her from the moment she’d arrived at the party. Her gaze drifted instead to the far side of the warehouse—to the one man who did hold her interest.
Graham was standing by the pool table with his cue propped on the toe of his hiking boot, watching while his friend Yanoo lined up a shot. When the ball landed easily in the side pocket, Graham threw his head back with a loud groan.
Yanoo walked around the table, considering his next shot. He was a tall man, and lean, and he wore his black hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Like Graham, he had a radio strapped to his belt, telling Courtney he was also a member of the local rescue squad.
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