Beth laughed. “I don’t think jealousy is going to help that leg heal any faster, McNabb. As for my dad, I’m not going to ask him. I need to do this on my own. I’ve let him ‘rescue’ ”—she air quoted—“me too many times in my life, and believe me, nothing is free, no matter what he says. If I can’t make this work, then I can’t. But I have to give it a go, and I have to do it on my terms. Not his. It’s time I grew up. I’ve been playing with horses all my life, and I loved it, but not the way I love this. The rescue idea, I mean.” She hesitated and looked around the room. She scraped her lower lip with her front teeth, and then looked at him again. “It’s different, Finn. It feels like this is what I’m supposed to do.”
“I can tell. Your face lights up when you talk about it. You never looked like this when you’d talk about horse shows, and you don’t look like this when you talk about your shirts. You’re going to do this.”
She laughed nervously, a symptom of the leaden kernel of fear in her stomach. She had to succeed at something. She had to get this clothing thing off the ground, especially now that she had admitted the goal that spoke to her soul. She needed it all to work out. “I sure hope so,” she whispered.
“You are. Trust me. And I’ll help you however I can.”
“Finn . . .”
“Yeah, I know what you’re gonna say. That’s nice of me, but we don’t know what the future holds, blah, blah, blah. And you’re right. If I can help you within whatever parameters you set, I’ll help you. I promise I will not overstep my bounds. And if you don’t want my help, that’s your call. It’s all your call. Also, you’re allowed to change your mind. But I might be able to help you more than you realize.”
Finn leaned across the space between their chaises, covered her knee with his hand and squeezed. “You can do this, honey. I know you can.”
His gesture was nothing, and it was everything. Beth realized anew how much she wanted this as she articulated it to him. His touch nearly undid her, so she clamped her teeth together to keep her emotional keel even.
Beth and Finn fell asleep in the shade on their respective chaises. Beth knew Finn was more tired from recuperating than he let on. She assumed the talk with her father had been what sapped her reserves. Telling Finn about the horse rescue also took its toll. In retrospect, it was no wonder she needed some shut-eye, and the warm afternoon at peaceful Aspen Creek lulled her to dreamland.
Beth woke two hours later, but Finn was still out. She took him in, the beautiful man with the unfortunate cast. “Oh, Finn,” she whispered. “What am I going to do with you?”
She went inside, and left a voice mail for Jack Cormier to set up an appointment, even though it was Saturday, which, truthfully, she had forgotten. He’ll call me back on Monday. She took Mingo with her to the barn to check on Brooke, then retrieved her sketchbook from the house and returned to the cottage.
The beauty of her surroundings and the chic Aspen boutiques had inspired her, and she wanted to keep her momentum. Her pencil and pastels flew over the textured paper. By the time she was done, Finn had woken up and come inside.
“Do you want to go to the house for cocktails?” she asked.
He yawned, raised his eyebrows, and cocked his head. “Sure. Why not?”
He came to her on his crutches and looked over her shoulder at her sketchbook. “You mind?”
“No,” she said, leaning to the side.
“What’s that?”
“An idea for a fabric pattern. I’m just fooling around.”
“No. You’re working. You’re creating. It’s terrific. One more step toward the horse rescue.”
“It’s not done; it’s just an idea.”
“It’s not so different from working on a building scheme. I may understand this more than you think. From little acorns . . .” He paused, then said, “I’d pull you up, but I’d fall down.”
She laughed and stood directly in front of him. He balanced on one leg and took her in his arms. She let him, and allowed pure emotion to again simmer in her head. She put her arms around him and rested her head against his chest. His T-shirt was downy and sun-warm against her cheek. He still smelled freshly showered, the scent of shampoo coming off his hair, which was at her favorite length; it curled over his shirt collar and beckoned her fingers. She stood motionless, her body cautiously connected to his. They were, in this moment, close to what they had been before. When they had believed in each other and taken on the world together.
What a long time ago that was.
Yet she felt his support for her dream. She could imagine a dim spark of hope.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Finn didn’t seem inclined to release her anytime in the next month, so Beth gently pressed her palm against his granite pecs, which must’ve been getting a hell of a workout from the crutches. She loved touching him, that was for sure. If she had any doubts about still being physically attracted to him, they’d been soundly trounced over the past few days. She stepped back and looked up at him. He was just opening his eyes, his expression dreamy and soft. He really hadn’t stopped loving her. He couldn’t look at her this way if he had.
“Hey,” she said. “We should go. Harris gets cranky if you’re late.”
Bethany and Finn were the first to arrive for the traditional Brunswick cocktail hour. It was a casual affair, held outdoors if the weather smiled. It was how Harris and Amanda had become such good friends the summer before. This summer Grady was a regular. Sometimes Wave and Solstice attended, and Harris served them lemonade in pretty glasses. Ben the dog mooched appetizers. Often Harris invented his own libations and used the on-premise barflies as guinea pigs.
Harris had made up a concoction that featured St. Germain and rose petals, which he called the I Beg Your Pardon. Grady, Amanda, Solstice, and Wave joined Finn and Bethany at the big table on the patio. Wave sat next to Finn, drawing on a pad of paper. Mingo lay between Solstice’s and Bethany’s feet and Ben patrolled the perimeter, poised to hoover up any items that succumbed to gravity.
“I’ve been wondering,” Harris said. “How did you two meet?” Bethany and Finn exchanged a look.
“Wellll,” Bethany began, “The summer after I graduated from college I spent three weeks at my family’s summer house in Ptarmigan.”
“Ptarmigan?” Harris asked.
Grady said, “It’s a tiny town north of here. Pretty, lots of lakes.”
“Right,” Beth said. “My dad loved the mountains and fishing, so he bought a vacation house there. There weren’t many mountains in Ohio, where I grew up. Finn was working construction in Steamboat Springs, the nearest town.”
“Did you have a tool belt?” Harris asked, raising his blond eyebrows.
“I did,” Finn said.
“Wish I coulda seen that.”
“A friend saw him working on a house in the middle of town and told me he was cute,” Beth continued. “My friend and I would walk by while he was working, and we’d talk. I invited him out for a beer after work one day, and the rest, as they say, was history.”
“A reversal on the randy construction worker whistling at the pretty girl,” Harris said.
“What’s ‘randy’ mean?” Solstice asked.
“Interested in dating,” Grady said, pointedly looking first at Wave, then at Solstice. He did an effective job, Finn thought, of letting twelve-year-old Solstice know this wasn’t a word her little sister should know. “But it’s not very polite.” He stared at Harris. “Some people should know better.”
“So that’s it?” Harris asked.
“Yep. We started dating. We had our first kiss at that house.”
“Do your folks still go there?” Amanda asked.
Finn’s stomach tightened. He shifted his gaze from Bethany to the frog Wave was drawing.
“No. They sold it a few
years ago. After my brothers and I were out of college, everyone got jobs and nobody could take summers off anymore, and my dad thought Steamboat was getting too developed. He decided to give Florida fishing a try, so he bought a place down there. And, yes, we made fun of him for being a cliché. We’re all waiting for him to get his own golf cart.”
Amanda said, “You should go see it while you’re here. Steamboat’s not that far, is it?”
Grady answered. “It’s not far as the crow flies, but there’s no direct route from here because of the mountains. You have to take I-70 east, then go north from there. It would take more than three hours.”
Finn said, “That sounds like a long haul. You’d spend six hours on the road and spend, what? A few minutes looking at the house?” Going to Ptarmigan was a bad idea. He hoped the time and distance would discourage Bethany.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I’d remember exactly where it is,” Bethany said, and Finn cheered in his head. “I was so sad when they sold it, but there was no way I could have taken care of it. I was too busy and I barely made it up there after I became a trainer full time. It cost a lot, too, although for a while I bet my dad would have taken care of the taxes. But they sold it, and that’s that. That place had a lot of memories from my childhood and, well”—she glanced at Finn—“later.”
“You could ask your dad how to get there and do a drive-by,” Amanda said.
“That would be fun, but it sounds like a lot of driving for very little reward,” Finn said. He looked at Bethany. “Especially since you won’t be here for that long. Do you want to waste an entire day in the car?”
“I don’t know,” Bethany said. “It could be fun. There must be cute little towns on the way, and great scenery.”
The thought of Bethany returning to Ptarmigan and looking for her family’s vacation home made Finn want ten I Beg Your Pardons. He’d even eat the rose petals. When they were married, they’d gone there only once, and she had been as thrilled as a little girl. With luck, now that it had been out of the family for five years, she was resigned to the new reality and had lost her enthusiasm for it. He couldn’t imagine she had changed that much, though. It would be like her deciding she didn’t care about anything equestrian anymore.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me, my dad and I are on speaking terms again,” Bethany said, and the conversation veered off onto this tangent. Finn was relieved.
They stayed for dinner, and for the rest of the evening Finn was better at conversing than he’d been Thursday, when Jack had been there. He was in less pain and wasn’t as loopy from the Percocet. Ptarmigan and that damn house gnawed at him, though. He didn’t want Bethany to go there. At least, not yet.
Not until he could figure out how to explain why her house wasn’t there anymore.
By nine or so, Bethany had had enough I Beg Your Pardons to be officially liquored up. As the three of them—Mingo included—made their way back to the cottage, Bethany stopped Finn in the driveway and nibbled his ear.
“I was thinking it might be sooo super fun to go to the summer house. We could stay in a B and B in Steamboat. Remember when we made out by the ski jump? We could do that again. I hope they still have the wooden sidewalks. They should still have the sidewalks, right?”
“Unless they had a termite problem.”
She laughed.
They could NOT go to Ptarmigan. He had to distract her. He turned her to face him, molded his hand to the back of her neck, and went to work on the skin just behind her ear, nipping and kissing.
“Oh, Finnnnn,” she sighed, and tilted her head to give him better access. They tumbled into the house, and Finn was impressed because even with her coordination compromised by Harris’s mixology, Bethany was exceedingly careful with his crutches and leg. Once they were all inside, Mingo jumped up on the sofa, circled exactly three times, then groaned into a sleepy brown C. Finn took off Bethany’s top and bra, playing his fingertips over her skin until he raised goose bumps and she shuddered. He helped her out of the rest of her clothes.
When she was good and naked, he said, “Tell me what you want. Where you want to be touched. Exactly what you want. In detail.”
If this doesn’t make you stop thinking about Ptarmigan, nothing will.
He smoldered his eyes at her. He knew precisely how to look at her to start an outrageous X-rated movie in her head. Her dove-gray eyes went big as the moon that had shone through the window of their apartment in Ocala. He could still see the way its light silvered her curves as she slept next to him and he could only wonder at his sublime luck that he was with this woman.
“Oh my, Mr. McNabb. Exactly what I want?”
Finn nodded, never taking his eyes off of hers. “Exactly. I’m good with measurements, if that helps. Nine inches to the left. Half a foot up and in.”
She laughed. Throatily.
His ploy worked, because she didn’t mention the summer house—or much else, aside from explicit, super-sexy instructions—again for the rest of the night.
When he was sure Bethany was asleep, Finn slipped out of bed and took some pain meds. The evening’s exertion had taken its toll, but he was still in better shape than he’d been in since The Tackle, as Bethany called it. He grabbed his laptop and sat next to Mingo on the sofa. Finn couldn’t resist scratching the petal-soft ears and waking the dog. Mingo slid Finn a slit-eyed glance, yawned once with a perfectly curled tongue, then licked his privates.
“Nice,” Finn whispered. “You kiss your mother with that mouth.”
The dog finished, closed his eyes, and returned to chasing the slow, fat, mesmerized bunnies in his dreams.
Finn smiled, and then looked up some zoning laws. He needed to know if he could keep livestock on a chunk of land he owned.
Just in case.
“About last night,” Beth said to Finn the next morning as she made scrambled eggs at the stove. Mingo was her sous chef, which meant he sat on the floor in the spot where she was most likely to trip over him. It was a tacit agreement they’d had since the day she’d brought him home.
Finn was drinking orange juice at the table, his leg, as usual, propped up.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I’m a little sore.”
He gave her his slow, sexy smile, the one that caused her hormones to gallop like horses in a pasture on a windy day. “I hope you mean in a good way.”
“In a very good way,” she said, in that tone that made him need to adjust his shorts.
She plated the eggs, grabbed her orange juice, and joined him. Mingo stationed himself on her feet. “It was . . . you having me tell you what to do . . . God, Finn.”
He grinned with pure masculine pride. His effervescent eyes, which she had fallen in love with again, conveyed his satisfaction. “I aim to please, ma’am. Thanks for the eggs.”
“You’re okay with this, right? The sex thing? Us sleeping together?” She took a bite of the eggs. They were too dry. She had never been good at eggs. This was a plus for Mingo, who got what she didn’t eat.
“I am a big fan of the sex,” he said between bites. “Even with this stupid thing,” he knocked on his cast, “I am pro sex.”
She laughed.
He said, “As much as I love this topic—and I do—I’ve got something to show you after breakfast. And I’m going to watch you ride today, right? We still on for that?”
After last night’s bevy of I Beg Your Pardons, Beth’s brain was now begging her pardon. She stared at her ex. He wanted to show her something? Immediately her mind went to the gutter, and she giggled. Ah yes, Beth, you could hold your own with any fifteen-year-old boy.
The fact that he wanted to watch her ride took the edge off her hangover. Finn liked horses, but he’d never loved them or cared much about riding, and for him to want to meet her horse was noteworthy. When they were dating, he’d learned to be a competent horse-
show groom for her, but she knew that was because he wanted to be near her. He’d never caught the bug.
“Yeah, sure, you can watch me ride. We’re jumping, so it should be mildly entertaining. As for what you want to show me . . . for pity’s sake, man, let me at least eat breakfast first.”
He gave her a sidelong look, shook his head, and rolled his eyes.
“You riding right after we’re done eating?”
“No, I’m teaching Wave at nine, so around ten. What, you got a pole dancing class or something?”
“There’s an idea. If we had a pole installed here, would you—”
“No.”
“I don’t think you gave it proper consideration.”
“Again, no.”
“Okay. How about this, then. Would you like to go see the Maroon Bells this afternoon?”
This was out of the blue. He must be feeling better. “With you?”
He pierced her with a stare from beneath his dark lashes. “Yes. With me. That’s what I’d like to show you.”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
He sighed.
“Do I exasperate you, Finn McNabb?”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her heart warmed a degree or two. If he kept throwing all this charm at her, she’d fall in love with him again. If a few other pieces fell into place, that is.
After Bethany and Mingo left to teach Wave, Finn worked. He replied to Melissa’s text asking about his health and scolded her for texting such a handsome man while on her honeymoon. He worked on his proposal for the Mitchell Frederick house. It still floored him that Bethany had talked to her dad on his behalf. He’d have designs that would blow old Uncle Mitch’s socks off to kingdom come.
He also texted Jacqueline to ask if she would take him to his house in the next few days or two so he could pick up a few things—including a small stained-glass window. He thought about asking Harris, but he wanted to keep this a secret, and he trusted Jacqueline more.
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