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

by Mara Jacobs

  She thought about her day yesterday, spent in her pajamas going from her bed to her couch just so she felt like she’d moved. She wasn’t sure if the light box would be enough if spring made such a late showing this year.

  She’d done a lot of thinking, though. About Sawyer not coming home with her. And more about what would have happened if he had.

  And even more about what would have happened after that.

  “Hey, girl,” she said, bending down and pulling off her leather glove to give the beauty a good scratch. Which prompted the dog to assume a submissive position and give Deni her belly, an expectant look on her face.

  “Lucy, don’t be so easy. Play a little hard to get,” Sawyer said as he met them. “Hey, guys,” he said loudly in greeting to Charlie and Mac, who looked up from their clipboards and instruments and gave him a wave before returning to their task.

  Deni finished scratching Lucy’s belly, gave her a couple of sturdy pats, and then stood back up and faced Sawyer. “She’s a gorgeous dog.”

  He nodded, looking down at Lucy, a soft smile crossing his hard face as he watched his pet. “She’s been a good friend.”

  Maybe she should get a dog. But then she thought about having to getting out of bed to let the dog out or not being able to go to bed at eight because the dog would need to go out after that. The whole thought suddenly felt very daunting to her. Her arms became weighted down, and the heaviness seemed to seep up her limbs.

  Okay, not a dog. Don’t worry. Shake it off. Stop the cycle of thought. It was what she told herself when just thinking about certain tasks made the fog creep up. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

  She met Sawyer’s gaze and saw something that looked like puzzlement in his eyes. Nuts. Had she said the whole “clear your mind” thing out loud?

  But no, it wasn’t puzzlement. The quick glance at her mouth that he snuck looked very much like the look he gave her right before he kissed her.

  But then let her go home alone.

  As if he remembered it at the same time, he cleared his throat and looked around the terrain.

  “Well, he can cut his prep costs down. No trees or anything to get rid of. In those terms, it’s a good location. Halfway between Hancock and Calumet, so you could pull both areas in.”

  “Do you know why he bought this property? It’s commercially zoned and close to the airport, but there’s nothing much else that’s great about it.”

  The land was a blanket of snow now, a huge parcel not far from the county’s airport. Slightly higher elevation would have given a fantastic view of the Portage canal. At this level, though, all you could see was the airport and a tree line at the edge of Petey’s property.

  “No, I’m not sure what he was thinking. I don’t know if he knew at the time. I remember that a few years after he went pro he bought up some vacant property around here. I was paying attention to that type of thing then.”

  What was left unsaid was that Sawyer Beck didn’t pay attention to that sort of thing now. A flash of Sawyer with a long beard dancing in front of a ramshackle shack floated through her mind. Lucy would be there, prancing around beside him, hopping up on him.

  “What?” he said, bursting her hermit vision.

  “Huh?”

  “What were you thinking? Just now?” His head tilted as if trying to read her mind.

  She was grateful for the blistering wind, which had surely already turned her cheeks pink, hiding the blush she felt creeping up her face.

  Ducking her head, she said, “I was thinking that the wind up here may make this thing more expensive. The material for the dome is going to have to be heavier than it would elsewhere.”

  “That’s what you were thinking?”

  “Yes,” she said, meeting his skeptical eyes.

  “Okay. If you say so.” There was a teasing in his voice, and she couldn’t help but smile at him, which he returned.

  “Hey, Deni,” Charlie said, startling her. She hadn’t even realized he and Mac had approached them. Her buddy’s eyes shifted from her to Sawyer and back again. “I think we’ve got everything.” He turned to Sawyer. “It’s a good site for what Ryan and Luna want to do. It’s going to be a bitch to heat, though.”

  She heard the sigh come from Sawyer as he put his hands on his hips and looked over the vast expanse of white again. “Yep. I don’t know that it’s going to be a viable idea for them, as little revenue as it will bring in. Too bad. It’d be nice for the golfers in the area.”

  “Yeah. I’d be up here once a week all winter for sure,” Mac said, a bit of regret in his voice. “Wouldn’t be able to swing a club wearing a parka, though.”

  They all nodded and looked around again, as if trying to find some solution.

  “The guys we met in Green Bay didn’t give us much hope either,” Sawyer said. “They lost their place to a fire, and the city doesn’t want them to rebuild due to the huge amounts of power the place used up.”

  “They were barely making a go of the place, anyway,” Deni added. “And their average snowfall is a lot less than ours. Not to mention the average winter temperatures, which aren’t as low as ours.”

  “You went to Green Bay together?” Charlie asked.

  Sawyer had turned away from them, slowly moving in a circle, hands still on his hips. Lucy nudged his side. “Yeah. Saturday. It was good to talk to them. They didn’t really tell us anything we hadn’t already been thinking, but it did drive home the potential risks and costs of this type of thing.”

  She could feel Charlie watching her. She hadn’t told him or Mac that she’d gone with Sawyer to Green Bay. And now it felt like a thing. She took a peek at Charlie, but couldn’t make out his expression. Her closest work friend, and probably her best friend in the whole area, was looking at her with puzzlement. And was that disappointment?

  “Well, we don’t have to figure out whether or not the business can make it. All we can do is give them a bid and build the thing. The rest is for Ryan and Luna to figure out.” Sawyer had made his slow circle and was now facing them again. “But if we can figure out a way to keep building costs down, and a way to help out with ongoing costs to heat it…”

  “And build it so snowfall doesn’t collapse it every year,” Mac added.

  “Well, there are heavier, sturdier materials,” Deni said, though she knew they all knew this.

  “Cost,” Mac said, and they all nodded.

  “And structural reinforcements. Putting double the beaming in,” Charlie added, another point that they all probably knew.

  “Cost,” they all chimed in.

  “But if there was a way to work both those in…” Deni added.

  They stood in a circle, all thinking, all visually surveying the land. Though it had been windy all day, a huge gust blew up at that moment, nearly knocking Deni from her feet. She took a step back and Charlie, being the closest one to her, reached out a hand and grabbed on to her arm, as if to keep her from taking flight. She smiled at her friend, and he chuckled and dropped his hand.

  Glancing at Sawyer, she froze at the look in his eyes. She didn’t fool herself that it was jealousy, but it was intense and burned into her. He then looked at her coat, where Charlie had grabbed her. Then his eyes went upward, to the sky. She could see his gaze follow snow that had been kicked up from the—

  “Wind,” she and Sawyer said at the same time. His glance came back to hers and locked on. It was if they were reading each other’s minds. The feeling was so strong, so deep, that it penetrated the fog and numbness, making her brain snap to attention.

  It was almost more stirring than grinding against him in his truck.

  Almost.

  Suddenly, Deni wanted this project to come to fruition. She told herself that it was good for the Copper Country to have a new business and that the golfers would love it. But deep down she knew that working on this project—the type that did not interest her in the least—might be the most interesting project of her life.

 
“Yeah, sure is,” Mac said, thinking he was agreeing with their simple statement.

  Sawyer grinned at her. Dear Lord, when that man smiles… Their simultaneous brainstorm was a shared secret between them. He nodded at her, wanting her to speak up.

  “Wind power,” she said, and his grin turned to a genuine, wide smile.

  “What?” Mac said. Charlie looked between her and Sawyer again and seemed to get the connection between them.

  Connection. Yes, that was exactly what it was. And on a more elemental level than the physical. It was the harmony of a great idea shared. Of knowing someone thinks like you do, even if you’re the only two that do.

  “Wind turbine. Or turbines, more likely. Power the damn thing with wind. Hell, there’s enough of it up here.”

  Mac was looking around again, as if seeing the property in a new light. Charlie was watching her, she could feel it. And yet she could not take her eyes from Sawyer’s.

  “Holy wah,” Mac said, “That just might work.” She smiled at her coworker’s Yooper accent slipping through, but her eyes never left Sawyer’s.

  “Mac,” he finally said, breaking the spell. “Can you start researching it?” Mac was nodding, still turned from them, his mind already working it through. “And Charlie”—Sawyer turned to him—“can you check out any restrictions there might be on turbines? We might have some compliance issues because we are so close to the airport. Height restrictions, zoning stipulations, that sort of thing? Sue probably has most of that stuff.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get on that,” Charlie said. Whatever hesitation he might have had evaporated, and he too looked at the area again, mentally calculating, taking in the height of the tree line. He was no doubt measuring the distance to the airport in his head with pinpoint accuracy.

  After a moment, they all faced each other in the circle again, smiles of anticipation on their faces.

  Engineers were such geeks.

  “Let’s get going,” Mac said, excitement in his voice.

  They started moving toward the cars. Sawyer put a hand on her arm, stopping her. “You guys go ahead. We’ll meet you at the office in a bit,” he called. Mac just waved over his shoulder, but Charlie turned around and glanced at Deni.

  “See you in a bit,” she said, then made her way to Sawyer’s car instead of Mac’s. She could feel Charlie’s eyes on her as she got into Sawyer’s old Bronco—thankfully not the truck they’d taken to Green Bay. She pushed the seat up so Lucy could hop into the back onto what was obviously her blanket.

  Once they were in the car, Sawyer cranked the heat and followed Mac’s car to the highway. Mac turned left, heading back to Hancock. Sawyer turned right, heading to Calumet.

  “There’s something I’d like to show you,” he said.

  She burrowed into her coat, letting the hot air warm her. But his words, and being alone again with him, had her hot well before the heater did.

  Chapter Eleven

  Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

  ~ Louis Kahn

  He pulled onto Sixth Street in Calumet. Nothing but silence in the car since they’d left the site. When he pulled over and parked, he saw Deni’s shoulders drop. She was biting her lip, which he now knew meant she was debating saying something.

  He didn’t want to think about how well he knew her in such a short time or how much he’d rather be biting on said lip.

  “Um,” she said, and he waited. “Thank you for thinking of this, but I’ve already seen the theater.” He started to open his mouth, but she rambled on. “I mean, it’s beautiful, of course, and I’d love to see it again. It’s just…I thought I should mention that I’ve been in it before. Several times, in fact.” She looked at him almost apologetically.

  He eyed the famed Calumet Theater, then looked at her and smiled. “That’s not where we’re going,” he said. He got out of the car, folding his seat forward to let Lucy out on his side.

  He rounded to her side, but she was already out by the time he got there.

  “So where are we going?”

  He pointed to the run-down building next to the historic theater. “There.”

  “A bar?”

  “Not just any bar. Tootie’s.”

  “Looks like a neighborhood bar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But why bring me here on a Monday”—she took a quick look at her watch—“afternoon?”

  “Just wait.” He led the way and held the door open for her. He had a moment of wondering if the bar would even be open on a Monday just after noon, but yep, it was.

  He recognized the woman behind the bar as a Kilpela girl and knew one of her sisters had been in his class at Calumet. Damn if he could remember his classmate’s name, though, let alone that of her younger sister.

  He nodded to the old-timer at the end of the bar, already through half a glass of beer. Leading Deni to a stool at the bar, he took in the room, trying to see it from her perspective. The establishment was long and narrow, with Formica tables on one side and the bar running the entire length of the other. At the end of the room, three steps took you up to a smaller area that housed two pool tables and the restrooms.

  “This is what you wanted me to see?” Deni asked him as she settled onto the stool. She surveyed the room as he just had, confusion on her face. Typical dive bar, nothing worth seeing here.

  He reached to her stool as he sat down on his and turned her so she was facing forward, toward the bar.

  “This is what I wanted you to see.” He waited while her eyes scanned the woodwork of the bar—nice and well kept, but nothing special—the obligatory rows of bottles of booze, and the mirror above it. She almost turned back to him when she—

  “Holy cow,” she said.

  “Honey, ’round here it’s ‘holy wah,’” the bartender said to Deni as she made her way to them.

  “I can’t quite seem to master ‘holy wah,’” Deni said, her eyes still on what Sawyer had brought her here to see. “I don’t have enough Yooper cred to pull that one off yet,” she added.

  He watched her eyes scan and examine, her head turning this way and that. Finally she looked at him. “Is that Tiffany glass?”

  He smiled. “Yep. Well, the experts think so. No one knows for sure.”

  She turned from him and studied the stained-glass hood that ran the length of the bar and was mounted above the mirror on the wall opposite where they sat.

  “It’s amazing,” she said in a soft voice.

  Something clenched in Sawyer’s gut. Somehow he had known she’d get it. See how special it was.

  “The village owns it. Not the bar owners, who have changed hands over the years. It can’t be removed. It has to be kept as part of any deal. The canopy, bar, and bar back area.”

  The bartender was looking at it now. “Is that right?” she said. “What can I get you two?”

  “Just a Coke,” Sawyer said. Deni nodded her agreement.

  Before the Cokes were brought to them, Deni left her stool and walked to the end of the bar. “Would it be okay if I came back and took a closer look?”

  “Um… We’re really not supposed to.” Sawyer gave the bartender a “come on, please?” look, one he hadn’t pulled out since he’d been married and in the dog house for one thing or another. Apparently he still had it, because the woman nodded for Deni to go ahead.

  “You’re Sawyer Beck, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And you’re a Kilpela, but I’m sorry—I can’t remember your first name.”

  She seemed proud that he’d gotten that much right. “I’m Linda. I was in Twain’s class.”

  “Right. And how’s…your sister?”

  Although there were at least five Kilpela girls that he could remember, Linda knew which one he meant. “Sarah. She’s good. She just had a baby.”

  “How many does that make for her?”

  “Six.”

  Not entirely unusual in the U.P., but still. Sawyer couldn’t imagine having six kids. Then the familiar pang hi
t him as he remembered Molly teasing him that she wanted three boys, just like his mother had and him bantering back that he wanted only girls.

  “Good for Sarah,” he said automatically, not really aware anymore. “Tell her I said hi.” He turned away from Linda, took a drink of Coke, and willed himself not to fall down the rabbit hole of regret right now.

  Instead, he looked at Deni, who was by now examining the glass on the canopy, standing on a stool that must have been under the bar. Linda had backed away to the other end of the bar, as if distancing herself from the proceedings.

  She needn’t have worried. Deni revered the glass with the same delicate touch that Sarah probably had with every one of those six babies. Tapping the glass ever so slightly, she put a finger on each side of a corner piece as if judging its density. Then she stuck her head up under the canopy so that all he could see was her lithe body—once again dressed in gray and black work clothes that hung on her.

  Her head came back into view, and his breath caught as he saw the look of pure passion on her face.

  “This is amazing,” she said, looking at him. “I’m not an expert in stained glass or anything. But…but…” She didn’t finish, instead sticking her head back under the canopy and rotating slowly on the step stool.

  He had the urge to go over and stand next to her, beneath her, lest she lost her balance, but he didn’t. Her tiny movements were surefooted, and although he really would have liked to put his hands on her hips and steady her, Deni was a woman who didn’t need steadying.

  And, God, that appealed to him.