Worth The Effort (The Worth Series Book 4: A Copper Country Romance)

by Mara Jacobs

  “My nail polish?” There was a sly smile on her face that he couldn’t quite read.

  “Not that, exactly.” He took another step back and waved a hand that encompassed her from her cute, striped hats to her furry boots. “You kind of have this tree-hugger vibe going”—she groaned, and Sawyer guessed that maybe she got that a lot—“but then those hot pink nails. I don’t know, they just seemed so…unexpected, I guess.”

  She was looking at him like he was crazy.

  He shrugged. “Now you know why I don’t go out much.”

  She laughed at that, even though he wasn’t truly joking. He liked the sound of her laugh—not a giggle, but not deep and throaty, either. Just a normal, amused laugh.

  He liked normal. Appreciated normal.

  Craved normal.

  And the pink nails were just the tiny twist that made it all so interesting to him.

  “The pink stood out to me,” he said. “And then you stood out to me.” He shrugged. “Plus, my dog liked you, and she usually won’t go to strangers.”

  She started to speak, but he didn’t want to know what she was going to say. “But, I shouldn’t have kissed you. Not because you work for me—which again, by the way, you don’t. But because I have no business starting up anything with you.” He took another step away from her, almost to the curb.

  “I have no business starting anything with anybody.” He looked at her one more time—so adorable, all bundled up—and then turned around and walked to his car.

  What the hell just happened? Deni watched Sawyer get in an old, beat-up Bronco and drive away.

  Her pink nails? That was why he’d kissed her?

  The irony of that washed over her as she made her way to her Subaru. She got inside and turned up the defroster and the seat warmer to the highest setting.

  Most people would have just gotten in their cars and gone. Definitely most Yoopers. But Deni waited until every last vapor of frost disappeared from her front and back windshield before driving to the house she rented in Hancock’s East End. It was a gorgeous Victorian that she was able to afford only because the owners didn’t want to sell, but were living in a place they’d built on the lakefront.

  They were basically looking for a paying caretaker for the place, and Deni fit the bill perfectly, even restoring the original woodwork herself.

  It was tall and picturesque and had an awesome view of the lift bridge. And steps. It had a lot of steps leading from the garage, detached and at street level, down to the house, built into the hill.

  Deni had finally surrendered last winter and hired a kid to come and shovel them at six every morning. Most days, when she came home at six-ish, they were covered again. But today they hadn’t had much snowfall, and the steps weren’t hard to navigate.

  She made her way inside, divested herself of her layers, turned the heat up, and went to her bedroom to change out of her work clothes.

  As she hung her cardigan up in the closet, Sawyer Beck’s words “tree-hugger vibe” came back to her.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been called that. And it was a label she was okay with, though it usually signaled someone much more militant than she was. She barely even recycled.

  She just liked natural fibers, not a lot of bright colors, and really comfy clothes. Which was a good thing, because this past winter her normally baggy clothes were tightening up just a smidge on her.

  She looked down at the shoe rack. And, okay, she liked Birkenstocks. Lots of Birkenstocks.

  It was a fine line between tree-hugger and Yooper dress, with their flannel and Sorel boots.

  She changed into sweats and pulled a different cardigan around her turtleneck. Slipping her feet into her fuzzy slippers, she eyed her bed. It beckoned to her, as it did most evenings when she came home from work.

  “It’s warm in here. Relax. You’ve worked hard. Just curl up in here for a while,” the rich chocolate comforter called out to her. Most nights that was all it took, and Deni would crawl in, sometimes not taking the time to change out of her work clothes, and wrap herself in that delicious comforter like a burrito. Some nights she wouldn’t get out until morning, not even to make some dinner for herself.

  Tonight she bypassed the bed, giving it a wide berth lest she succumb.

  She went downstairs, her hand caressing the oak bannister that she’d lovingly restored two years ago. After unpacking her laptop from her bag, she set it on the kitchen table at the far end from the light box and booted it up.

  She’d cut out her regular cup of strong tea after dinner and instead put the kettle on and plucked a decaf tea bag out of a ceramic pig where she kept all her teabags.

  Once the kettle was ready and her mug was full, she settled in at the table. She started to open her personal email software, but instead opened her browser and got on the company’s webmail site, checking her work email. Nothing since she’d left the office two hours ago.

  Only two hours, and yet it seemed like it had been days since she’d been in her own cubicle, quietly doing her job, thinking about how best to restore a small section of a project that Charlie was working on.

  Now that project—one she’d been delighted to work on—seemed far away and insignificant. A monstrosity in the shape of a billowing, oversized bed sheet now took up her thoughts.

  Well, not all of them. Some corner of her mind—and just a corner, not an inch more!—was thinking about Sawyer Beck. And an even smaller portion—too small to even signify, really—was replaying that kiss.

  She took a sip from her tea, the hot liquid not nearly as scorching as his mouth on hers had been.

  She didn’t know what had gotten into her when she’d pushed him. The irritability that she’d been feeling as part of the SAD had been something that she’d hidden well from friends and coworkers. Certainly she’d felt the urge to snap responses and terse comments whistled through her mind. But she’d held them in check, knowing it was the mood talking, and she had to keep a lid on it for sheer common decency’s sake.

  Well, the lid had blown tonight. And, really, over nothing. She instinctively knew that Sawyer Beck wasn’t really going to offer her sexual favors to Petey Ryan for the job. And putting employees with clients that you think the client will like working with was a part of the job—really just good business.

  Buried under the numbness, her mood had been looking for something to explode over for weeks. And Sawyer had given her the opening she needed.

  Too bad it was with her boss. And that she’d poked him in the chest several times while yelling at him.

  She went to the company’s website. She’d been on it years ago when she’d interviewed, and then again when she’d been added as a project engineer, but she hadn’t poked around too deeply.

  She went to Andy’s bio, and there was a mention of Andy and Sawyer Beck founding the company eighteen years ago when they’d both graduated from Tech. But there was no bio page for Sawyer. No photo, no nothing.

  But that kiss hadn’t been nothing.

  Finally, she got to her personal email and answered the ones from her mother. There was one from Claire asking Deni if she wanted to go cross-country skiing this weekend. A year ago, Deni would not have thought twice and would have quickly responded with a yes. But this year, this winter, thoughts of leaving the house on a weekend when she didn’t have to be anywhere seemed larger than she could handle. The dark blanket started to wrap around her shoulders, and she began to type a response that said she was going to have to work this weekend and asked if she could take Claire up on it some other time.

  She knew she’d refused Claire—and Charlie, and all her other friends—too often. In fact, she was surprised Claire had even made this offer, as frequently as Deni had said no lately.

  She rolled her shoulders, as if trying to dislodge the phantom weight, and deleted her response. Instead, she typed that she might have to work this weekend, and could she get back to Claire on Friday.

  It wasn’t true. That was one of
the things Andy was pretty strict on—family life. If at all possible, his staff kept normal working hours, able to be home on weekends and most nights for dinner. It wasn’t always possible, especially when active construction was going on, but it was something Andy felt strongly about.

  Deni sent the reply off to Claire before she could delete it once again. It was a small step not to say no right away. Even if she’d most likely pass on Friday, she felt like she’d taken a positive step.

  She logged out of the laptop, rinsed out her teacup, and patted the light box as she exited the kitchen.

  Chapter Seven

  The loftier the building, the deeper must the foundation be laid.

  ~ Thomas á Kempis

  “Did I ever tell you about my father bringing us here—to the Copper Country—when I was about eight years old?” Deni said to Alison on Friday.

  Alison was just getting seated, having brought Deni and herself a cup of tea. She seemed taken aback by Deni’s jumping right in before Alison could prod with questions, as was their normal pattern.

  “No, I don’t think you did,” Alison said, nodding for Deni to go on. They both knew that Alison would have remembered if Deni had told a story about her father. She’d barely mentioned him her whole time in therapy. And Alison forgot nothing.

  Deni launched in with the story of standing on top of Brockway Mountain for what seemed like hours trying to find the hermit’s hut, her father patiently waiting for her to do so.

  Her shoulders felt lighter than they had in weeks as she went into minute details of that long-ago day. How she’d tried to see Isle Royale, but couldn’t. How clean the air had been, but she’d been too young to realize how special that was. Even the smell of the grass.

  “And how did you feel that day? Can you remember that?” Alison asked her, then took a sip from her teacup. She set it down on the end table next to her chair and quietly waited for Deni to answer.

  “I felt…I don’t know.”

  “You seem to remember that day pretty clearly. You can’t recall how you were feeling?”

  She was just about to give a pat answer of “happy” or something like that when she stopped. She looked at Alison and said, “Treasured.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, there we were on top of that mountain for, what seemed at the time, most of the day. Although now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t really that long. But it felt like it.” She stopped and took a sip of the tea. It had cooled off some since Alison had handed it to her, and Deni realized she’d spent most of her hour telling the story without taking a break of any kind.

  “My brothers were doing God knows what on the other side. Although my dad probably was checking up on them while I was looking through the telescope thingy. And my mother probably had an eye on them the whole time she waited in the car.”

  “And yet, your father waited with you while you tried to find the hut.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that made you feel treasured?”

  “Yes. But you know what? I felt that way all the time then. I couldn’t have put a name to it, of course, but I knew my world was safe. I knew that I was loved, and that if I desperately wanted or needed something, my father would be there for me.”

  Alison waited patiently, but Deni just sat on the comfortable couch, willing whatever heat was left from the mug of tea to seep into her hand, her arms, her entire body.

  After a moment, Alison said, “And when was it that your father died?”

  “Six months later,” Deni said without hesitation. She took a gulp of the lukewarm tea and looked at her watch. “I guess it’s time to go.”

  Alison didn’t look at the clock that sat on the table and faced away from the patient’s couch.

  “We have a little bit of time if you’d like to—”

  “I really need to get back to work. I do this on my lunchtime so I don’t like to take advantage.”

  Alison nodded and started to ask her the wrap-up assessment questions she asked her most sessions. Sometimes they varied but were basically the same. When they got to the one where she asked about the small thing Deni was going to work on for the following week, Alison said, “I noticed the pink nail polish the other night at dinner. It’s really striking. Did you enjoy that? Shopping for something different? Doing or wearing something different than you normally would?”

  That had been her “assignment” from last week. To spend time shopping for something—and it could be small—that was not something she would typically buy and then to incorporate it into her life.

  She’d thought about sexy lingerie or something like that, but she’d walked out of ShopKo with a bottle of hot pink nail polish instead.

  “It was interesting,” she now said to Alison. “It wasn’t what I thought I’d buy.”

  “I find it interesting that you chose something that you would see as much as somebody else would see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you see your hands all the time—eating, getting ready, working, especially if you work with computers as much as I’m guessing you do.”

  “Yes?”

  “You could have chosen something that you wear outwardly that other people see more than you do, like a necklace or something. Or, you could have chosen something that only you see, but not very often, like different undergarments.”

  Deni should have been embarrassed, but she’d passed that line with Alison a long time ago.

  “But you chose something that you would see as much—or even more—than others would.”

  “What does that mean?” Deni asked. Surely they were over her session time by now, but Deni didn’t dare look at her watch again. She didn’t want to stop Alison’s train of thought.

  “I’m not sure it means anything. I just find it interesting. And”—she started to rise from her chair, causing Deni to do the same—“it’s a very bold choice. I like it.”

  “Sawyer Beck said the reason he kissed me was because of my nail polish.”

  Alison sat back in her chair, a look of shock on her usually composed face. “Sawyer Beck kissed you?”

  “Yes. That night we met you and Petey.”

  Alison waved Deni to sit back down, which she did. “Do you want to talk about that?”

  “Aren’t we out of time?”

  “I don’t have another appointment for an hour.”

  “Oh, okay. Um…what should we talk about? I mean about him kissing me?”

  A devilish smile crossed Alison’s face. One Deni had never seen during therapy but which seemed to go with the woman who’d been Petey Ryan’s date the other night. “Well, what I’d really like to know is what kind of kisser Sawyer Beck is, but I guess that would be unprofessional to ask.”

  Deni laughed, out of shock as well as amusement. “Um…that was so not what I thought you were going to say.”

  “I am a therapist. But I’m also a woman. And Sawyer Beck…Well, let me just say, he was the older bad boy from Calumet, and we Hancock girls thought he was…” She trailed off, but Deni knew what Alison was thinking. She’d thought it herself.

  “Dangerous,” Deni whispered.

  Alison chuckled. “Yes. Exactly. Of course, we all got to know each other as adults, and of course we all changed. But Sawyer Beck was always kind of this elusive figure.”

  “Like some kind of white whale?”

  “A sexy-as-hell white whale.”

  “I guess so,” Deni added, and they both laughed.

  “So, he kissed you the other night. Was that all there was?”

  It was Deni’s turn to flash the devilish smile. “Are you asking as my therapist or because you want to finally know what kind of kisser Sawyer Beck is?”

  “Both,” Alison answered with a smile.

  “Then will you tell me what kind of kisser Petey Ryan is?” Deni teased Alison. They were probably on the fringes of professionalism, but it felt good to joke with someone. Even if that someone knew all her issu
es.

  But apparently Alison was willing to let the boundary shift a little as she smiled and said in a near whisper, “Dangerous.”

  “You seem like such an unusual match,” Deni said, hoping she wasn’t offending Alison.

  “I know. We are. We fought it for a long time because of that.” She glanced away for a second, then looked back to Deni and shrugged. “I got tired of fighting something that made me feel so good.”

  “Is it that easy?” Deni asked. They both knew she wasn’t asking about Alison and Petey any longer.

  “No. It isn’t easy at all. It’s a struggle. It may be a struggle for a long time. Or it might get better once spring is here.”

  Deni nodded.

  “So, last week you spent time out, shopping for something that you don’t typically wear.”

  Deni nodded, one finger tracing across the pink nail of another.

  “This week I’d like you to try going to a place in the area that you haven’t been to before. And take some time planning it. No spur of the moment trip to, like, the hardware store if you’ve never been there.”

  “I go to the hardware store all the time. McGee’s was one of the first places I stopped in when I moved here.”

  Alison chuckled. “I forgot who I was talking to for a moment. So, maybe a restaurant that you haven’t tried. Maybe in Baraga or L’Anse, some place that you have to plan for, think about, and take some time getting to.”

  A sense of dread started to crawl up Deni’s back. “I don’t know if I can. I’m going to be putting in a lot of hours trying to do some research on this indoor driving range thing.” She didn’t know that to be true. Sawyer had said something to Petey the other night about keeping her on the project, though that might have changed since that kiss.

  And the truth was an indoor driving range wasn’t even something she was very interested in.

  Or hadn’t been before…

  “Are you becoming nervous just thinking about doing it?” Alison asked, and Deni realized she’d hit the nail on the head.