Going Home (Nugget Romance 1)

by Stacy Finz

  “He’s Nate Breyer, Maddy’s brother.”

  “Oh, honey, you’ve picked good. He’s adorable.” Donna stopped herself. “Mariah’s not worried that you and he—”

  “No, no. It’s nothing like that. Mariah fears that unlike with an anonymous donor, who is completely out of the picture, the baby will be more connected to Nate and me. Especially because none of her DNA is involved.”

  “Well, of course she does,” Donna said emphatically. “Nate’ll be around all the time, and that’ll make Mariah feel like the odd parent out.”

  Sophie sucked in a breath. “So I’m being unfair by wanting him?” This is exactly what she needed to hear.

  “No,” Donna said, taking a long sip of her Manhattan. “You’re being unfair by making this baby all by yourself. The solution is simple: Nate’s sperm, your uterus, Mariah’s eggs. Then everyone’s got a horse in the race.”

  Sophie thought about it. Mariah’s eggs. They’d always taken for granted that Sophie would be the birth mother. But they’d never stopped to consider that Mariah could be biologically involved without having to actually carry the baby. With in vitro fertilization it was completely possible for them to use her eggs. Just a little more complicated.

  It was such an obvious solution that Sophie wondered why they’d never thought about it. As long as Mariah was amenable and everything checked out medically, this could be the answer to their dilemma. “Donna, you’re brilliant.”

  “Of course I am.” And modest, too.

  “I smell a conspiracy,” Mariah said, rejoining them at the bar. “What did I miss?”

  “That I’m a genius,” Donna said.

  Mariah cocked her head in question.

  Sophie beamed, looked up at the antique clock hanging over the back bar, and whispered in Mariah’s ear, “I’ll tell you in the New Year.”

  Chapter 18

  Maddy stood on the porch, moving her feet to keep them from turning into blocks of ice. She wanted to catch a ride with Rhys to the inn because driving in this weather was not for the faint of heart. And walking was definitely out of the question. Mostly, however, she wanted to clear the air with him.

  He’d been avoiding her ever since the earring episode, and she missed not having his very broad and muscular shoulder to lean on. But Maddy didn’t know how much longer she could stand the cold. Although she’d bundled up, even put on her snow boots, the temperature had dropped into the low teens and the wind whipped so fiercely that it made her face sting.

  She was just about to give up, when Rhys came out wearing a knit cap, a ski parka, and gloves, holding a thermos.

  “You’re gonna freeze out here, Maddy.”

  “I wanted to see if I could ride in with you.” She shivered, watching the trees bend and sway with the wind until they looked ready to snap like twigs.

  “Yep.” Rhys opened the passenger door for her and lifted her up. Ice covered his windshield, so he turned on the defroster, pulled a scraper from the glove box, and jumped out of the cab.

  Maddy opened her door a crack. “Want me to help?”

  “Stay in the truck,” he grunted.

  When he finished the task, he hopped back in and fastened his seat belt, glancing over at Maddy to make sure she’d done the same. Then he turned away before they could make eye contact—just like he’d done at the meeting.

  “Everything okay? You seem grouchy this morning,” she said.

  “Tired. Hungry.” She ignored his terse, one-word answers.

  “You didn’t have time for breakfast?”

  “I overslept and have to get in to see if our new trucks arrived. Big storm’s due to hit.”

  “It looks like it’s already here, if you ask me.” She hadn’t seen weather this bad since she’d gotten to Nugget.

  “Nope.” He tested the back of his hand against the windshield. “It’s gonna get a lot worse.”

  “Well, drop me off at the Ponderosa. I’ll get you something to eat and bring it over to the station.”

  He looked over at her.

  “Watch the road,” she said.

  “Why? Is it doing tricks?”

  “You’re funny.” Maddy snickered. “What do you want? French toast?”

  “Nah. I don’t want you walking in this.”

  “Okay. Then we’ll go over and eat together.” The construction crew could live without her for an hour or so.

  He didn’t acknowledge her offer, just parked his truck in the spot marked Chief Shepard, turned off the engine, and came around to help Maddy out. When they got into the office Jake and Wyatt were drinking coffee and eating egg sandwiches from the Bun Boy.

  “They come yet?” Rhys asked.

  “Nope,” Jake answered.

  “Dammit!” Rhys walked across the room to his glass office, sorted through a stack of messages, and picked up the phone.

  Jake grabbed a chair from the back and brought it over to Maddy. “Here you go.” He hovered over her, smiling, while she sank down and waited for Rhys, who was barking at someone on the other line.

  “You waiting for the boss?” Jake asked.

  “I’m taking him to breakfast.”

  “He could probably use a good meal.” Jake glanced over at Rhys’s office, then back at Maddy. “The robbery’s gotten the town jittery. Rhys puts a lot of pressure on himself. He’s a top-notch cop, the town’s lucky to have him.”

  Maddy watched Rhys return a few calls and asked Jake, “You think you’ll catch him?”

  Jake shrugged. “Hard to say. The guy could be clear across the country by now.”

  Rhys hung up the phone, crumpled a handful of pink callback slips and tossed them in the garbage. After organizing some paperwork, he walked over to where Maddy, Wyatt, and Jake sat talking. “The rigs are supposedly being dropped off this afternoon. I’ll be over at the Ponderosa if anyone needs me.”

  “You ready?” he asked Maddy and she got to her feet.

  He helped her into his truck like he always did. The guy had the best manners, or maybe it was a he-man thing like the “sugar” endearment he was so fond of using. Dave was too progressive for that. The only time he used the word “sugar” was as a sweetener. Then, again, Dave was a cheating asshole.

  Rhys, for all his swagger, seemed to genuinely respect everything about Maddy—especially how seriously she took her work at the Lumber Baron. He was certainly complimentary enough about it.

  They pulled up in front of the Ponderosa and fought against the wind to make their way inside the restaurant. No usual breakfast crowd today. Maddy suspected that everyone had stayed home with the heat cranked up. Mariah stopped arranging bottles behind the bar, waved a greeting, and gestured for them to take the corner booth.

  “It’s toasty in here.” Maddy stripped off her layers, stuffing her hat, scarf, and gloves into the pockets of her coat and hanging it from a hook on the back wall. When she turned around she found Rhys staring at her.

  “What?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  She scooted into the booth. Instead of sitting across from her, Rhys took the same bench, his thigh resting next to hers. She grabbed a menu, passed it to him, and took one for herself.

  He rubbed the dark stubble that covered his face. “I need to shave.”

  “You need to eat.” Reaching up, she brushed a lock of hair away from his eye. “You look tired, Rhys.”

  “Frustrated,” he muttered, looking around the room for a server. When no one came, he got up, grabbed the coffeepot off the hot plate, and poured both of them a cup.

  When a waiter finally moseyed over, Rhys ordered an omelet, bacon, potatoes, and toast. Maddy got a stack of pancakes.

  “Thank you for the other night,” she said.

  He made a what for? expression. “We do something I don’t know about? You slip me a roofie?”

  She laughed. “For plugging the inn at the meeting.”

  “Oh,” he said, faking disappointment. Rhys gulped his cof
fee too fast and fanned his mouth. “Hot.”

  “What you said last night might really help the inn, and I appreciate it more than you know,” she said. “But your job is political. I don’t want you putting your livelihood on the line for me. It’s not worth it.”

  “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for the town.”

  Their food came. Rhys took a bite of his omelet, washed it down with another slug of coffee. “Before you bought the Lumber Baron, it posed a real problem for Nugget. Not only the threat of dope dealers, but the possibility of kids going in there and getting themselves hurt. It was a liability, Maddy.”

  “But you also took up my cause of starting a business association, when you yourself told me the shopkeepers of Nugget wouldn’t buy in.”

  “Not because I didn’t think it was a good idea, just because I didn’t think that folks here would like having an outsider telling them how to run their town.”

  “And you’re not an outsider?”

  He appeared to contemplate the question while he poured hot sauce on his potatoes. “I used to think I was. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  She smiled up at his handsome face. “That’s good, right?”

  He shrugged. “What’s good is this robbery has motivated the town to make changes. Hopefully, it’ll also change their attitudes toward the inn.”

  “I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I don’t have high hopes. I counted five new banners yesterday. People are starting to put them on their houses.”

  “You hear from your expert yet?”

  “Any day now. The holidays slowed him down, but hopefully he’ll have a good prognosis.”

  “Well,” he said, “if it doesn’t work out, you could always hock the earrings. Or go back to Dave.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “My future with Dave has nothing to do with whether the inn lives or dies.”

  “But he’s a nice little ace in the hole,” he said with cruelty.

  “Is that what you think . . . that I always have my rich husband to fall back on?” She’d never loved Dave for his money. Maybe, at one time, she’d been reliant on him for her identity, her happiness. But in Nugget, that was all starting to change.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “I can’t even believe you’d say something like that.” Did this man to whom she’d confided her worst insecurities know so little about her? She climbed over him to get out of the booth and grabbed her coat off the hook. “I have to get to work.”

  Before she could pull money out of her wallet for the check, Rhys dropped a wad of cash on the table. “I’ve got it and I’ll drive you—it’s too cold to walk.”

  “Not for me.” She fled for the door and was outside, halfway down the street, fighting against the gusts, when she heard snow crunching behind her.

  “What do you expect me to think, Maddy?” Rhys called to her back. “The guy sends you earrings that cost more than my fucking truck?”

  She whirled on him. “I didn’t ask him to send them to me. He’s trying to make amends for loving someone else. You think I don’t know that? I hate them.”

  “Have you sent them back?” he asked, challengingly.

  She looked down at the snowy ground.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said. “What’s really going on here, Maddy? One minute you say you’re divorcing the guy, the next you’re accepting his extravagant gifts. Why are you hanging on to him?”

  Hanging on to him? That was rich. She’d done everything in her power to lose Dave. What did it matter to Rhys anyway? He was leaving in a few months.

  “I’m not hanging on to him,” she barked. “There was no way for me to know the gift was extravagant until I opened it. You seriously think I can be bought for a pair of diamond studs?”

  Maddy didn’t wait for him to answer, just pulled the locket around her neck out from under her layers of clothes to show him. “This is pure and beautiful and means everything to me, but apparently you’re as big an idiot as Dave is.”

  Rhys reached for her and in a voice just loud enough so that she could hear it over the wind, said, “Send the earrings back.” And then he kissed her, pressing his lips so softly against hers that the gentleness of it broke her.

  Hours later, Maddy tried to pay bills in her makeshift office at the inn. But all the crap in her life was making it difficult to concentrate.

  Colin must have sensed her melancholy mood, because he stopped hammering, came down the ladder, and anxiously hovered over her.

  “I’m okay, Col.” But she knew her eyes were watery and her nose pink.

  “You sure?” He timidly grazed her shoulder with his hand and just as quickly withdrew it.

  Maddy got the sense that he didn’t have much experience with women, though he was quite good-looking. And unbelievably sweet. She sniffled. “Yep. You think we’re wasting our time fixing up this old place, Colin?”

  “Nah,” he said, taking in the room the way an explorer might examine a map. “We’re doing a good thing bringing her back.”

  “Why can’t the rest of Nugget see that?”

  “They might come around and surprise you,” he said.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Not quite two years.”

  Maddy realized she knew very little about this carpenter who’d poured what seemed like his entire heart into her project. “Where’d you live before?”

  He frowned and looked away. “A place I don’t like talking about, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m sorry, Colin. I didn’t mean to pry.” But of course her mind ran wild. Prison? War? Prisoner of war? She forced herself to stop—the man deserved his privacy—and changed the subject. “I don’t know if I told you, but Rhys loved the chair.”

  “I’m glad,” he mumbled, and headed back to the ladder.

  “Hey, Colin?”

  He lifted his chin.

  “The furnishings for the inside of the inn really should be period. But what do you think of your rockers for the porch?”

  He stood there for a few seconds as if trying to imagine how his chairs could blend with a Victorian veranda. “It might look okay. I’ll work up a couple of designs on paper . . . See what you think.”

  “Maybe you could—” But before she could say more, a loud banging sound coming from outside made them both jump.

  Colin hurriedly followed the direction of the noise, Maddy trailing behind him.

  That’s when she realized neither of them had on coats. She ran to fetch them, but by the time she returned Colin had already ventured out into the cold. By now a few of the other workers had also come running to seek out the source of the noise.

  She shrugged into her coat, layering Colin’s on top, and slowly made her way down the porch steps. The snow was coming down pretty hard, so Maddy ran her hands along the siding of the house to find her way. “Colin?” she yelled, but her voice was lost in the din of the wind.

  She tripped over something and caught herself before she hit the ground. The frigid air made her face sting, and her hands were so numb she could barely feel her fingers. Colin must be freezing.

  “Where did everyone go?” she shouted. And this time was rewarded with a faint response coming from somewhere in the distance.

  Farther up, at the back of the house, she caught a glimpse of red— maybe someone in a bright jacket. But it was getting tougher to see as the snow came down harder and the winds picked up speed.

  The storm was just getting started, but Maddy could tell it would be a doozy.

  She slowly made her way toward the speck of color, continuing to use the exterior wall of the Victorian as her guide, careful not to slip on black ice.

  It took her nearly ten minutes to make the trek. When she finally reached the destination, Maddy found a few members of her construction crew huddled over something.

  She pushed her way through the circle and her heart sank. “Oh, no—Colin?” Maddy squatted on the ground next to his prone body.


  “He’s breathing,” one of the workers said as he felt Colin’s wrist for a pulse. “But we shouldn’t move him.”

  Someone had covered him with a wool coat and Maddy quickly pulled off Colin’s parka so she could drape it over him as well. She worried about him suffering from exposure.

  “The fire department’s on its way,” said the worker, who cautiously ran his hands up and down Colin’s back, looking for injuries.

  Blood ran from his scalp, through his hair, down his neck, leaving a pool in the snow. It seemed like a lot of bleeding to Maddy.

  Next to Colin lay a sturdy tree branch. She looked up to see where it might have fallen from, but was distracted by the same banging noise they’d heard from the house. She whipped her head around to find the culprit—the trapdoor to the basement had come off its hinges, and the wind violently slapped it against the side of the house. The lock Rhys had told her to put on the hatch remained secured.

  It seemed like forever, but finally Rhys and three paramedics carrying a stretcher came bounding toward them.

  “Step away,” one of the firefighters ordered.

  She and the workers fanned out, giving the paramedics room to get to Colin so they could staunch his head wound.

  Rhys approached Maddy, his gait frantic. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine. But Colin—oh, God, Rhys.”

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. She could feel some of his tension drain as soon as he touched her. “The caller didn’t say who was down—just an accident at the Lumber Baron.” Rhys exhaled. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. We were in the house, heard a noise, Colin came outside to see what it was . . . He must’ve gotten hit in the head by the branch.” She pointed at the tree limb.

  Rhys let go of her and walked over to examine the piece of wood. He looked up, and Maddy could tell he was trying to trace the limb’s possible trajectory the same way she had. “Did anyone see it hit him?” he asked.

  The worker who had checked Colin’s pulse stepped up. “By the time we got here Colin was down.”

  “Is that where y’all found the branch?” Rhys asked.

  The guys in the crew mumbled a collective “Yes.” The paramedics had lifted Colin onto the gurney and were trying to move him without losing their footing in the snow.