Green Mountain Collection 1

by Marie Force

  “You’re so right about that. Did it work with their dad?”

  “Sure did. He’s the happiest grandpa you’ve ever met. Feel free to borrow that line if you need it with your folks.”

  Max smiled warmly at her as he stood. “I will. Thanks, you guys. I feel a lot better than I did when I got here. You really helped me.”

  Will got up to hug his brother. “That’s what big brothers—and their friends—are for. Let me know what time you want to talk to them tomorrow. I’ll free myself up to go with you.”

  “You’re the best.” Max turned to Cameron. “Can I hug you, too?”

  “Of course you can.” She got up and stepped into his outstretched arms. “It was nice to meet you, Max.”

  “You, too. Sorry to dump all my shit on your night.”

  “It was fine. Glad we could help.”

  “You’re not driving back to Burlington now, are you?” Will asked. “It’s really coming down out there.”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You want to see Mom and Dad in the morning. Just stay here. Crash in the loft. You shouldn’t be driving in the snow, especially when you’re upset.”

  Max glanced at Cameron and then back at Will. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I don’t want to interrupt whatever you guys have going on here.”

  As Cameron turned bright red at the implication, Will slugged his brother’s arm. “Way to be subtle, asshat. We’re talking business, and you’ve already interrupted us so you may as well stay put.”

  “Chloe and I like to talk business, too,” Max said, waggling his brows. “That’s what got us into the current predicament.”

  Will gave Max a shove toward a closed door off the living room. “Go take a shower in my room and get your ass to bed before I kick it.”

  With a smile and a wink for Cameron, he did what he was told.

  “Sheesh,” Will said. “Sorry about that. He’s an idiot.”

  “And you love him.”

  “Always have since the day he was born. I remember thinking we didn’t need any more kids in our family, and then Max came along to prove me wrong. He knows I have a soft spot for him, which is why he came here tonight.”

  “You were good with him.”

  “So were you.”

  Touched by his praise, she said, “I hope it was okay to butt into his business the way I did.”

  “It was more than okay. You were a big help to him—and to me.”

  She shrugged off the compliments, nervous as he moved toward her without seeming to blink. “It was nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing.”

  “Congratulations, Uncle Will,” she said, attempting to ease the tension between them with humor.

  “Sounds funny.”

  “You’ve got time to get used to it.”

  He finally stopped a few inches from her, right when she was about to take a step back. “Sit with me for a few more minutes?”

  “Um, okay.” She took a seat next to him on the sofa. The heat from the fire warmed her toes.

  He turned to face her, resting his head against the back of the sofa. “I like you Cameron Murphy from New York City. I shouldn’t like you, but I do.”

  Unnerved and trying not to show it, Cameron swallowed hard. “Um, why shouldn’t you like me?”

  “I’ve found that people from dramatically different backgrounds don’t often gel.”

  “And you know this from personal experience?”

  “Extremely personal experience.”

  “Hmm, sounds like a story.”

  He shrugged. “Not one worth repeating.”

  “I’d still like to hear it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I seem to like you, too.”

  “You do?”

  Cameron found that there were no words. All she could do was nod.

  He looked at her for a long time before he started speaking. “I met a girl named Lisa in college. She was from Boston and was up here visiting her friend who went to UVM. We started dating, commuting for a long time between here and Boston, getting together when we could. She transferred to UVM after our sophomore year and came up here to live near me. I took that as a positive sign, you know?”

  “I can see why you would.”

  “Anyway, I made the mistake of assuming she knew I was going to stay here after school and work for the family business. She assumed we’d go back to Boston when we graduated.”

  “You never talked about that?”

  “Not really. With hindsight, I think we were both afraid to say what we really wanted because we knew it wasn’t what the other one wanted.”

  “As twisted as that is, it makes a certain bit of sense. How did you find out your plans were out of sync?”

  “When I brought her out here to the place I wanted to build a house for us and she turned down my proposal after telling me she could never live in the woods—or Vermont—permanently. She thought I knew that.”

  “Oh,” Cameron said, wincing. “I’m sorry. That had to be rough.”

  “It wasn’t the best day I ever had, that’s for sure. I guess I had it in my head that if she loved me, she’d understand me a little better after so much time together or that I’d understand her better than I did. I don’t know … It was kind of a mess all the way around.”

  “I’m sorry you went through that.”

  “I guess she didn’t love me the way I thought she did.”

  “That was her loss,” Cameron said indignantly and then instantly regretted the telling statement.

  His sexy smile unfolded slowly. “Is that right?”

  “You’re a nice guy,” Cameron said, flustered. “You deserved better than that from her, especially after a couple of years together.”

  “Have you ever been in love, Cameron Murphy?”

  She stared at him, astounded by the question. “What does that have to do with the website?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” He waited for a moment before he tipped his head to study her more closely—if that was possible. “Aren’t you going to answer the question?”

  Cameron cleared her throat. “I think I’ve maybe been in love three times.” Despite the awkward topic, Cameron didn’t feel awkward telling him that.

  “You think?”

  “Like you said, if it was the real thing it wouldn’t have ended badly.”

  “What happened?”

  “What didn’t happen?” she said, going for levity. She was certainly not about to describe the wreckage she became every time she got her heart broken. “How about you?”

  “Just once, but I don’t look back at her and remember her fondly. That’s for sure.” He paused, as if there was something else he wanted to say. Just when she was sure he wasn’t going to say it, he cleared his throat. “You’re easy to talk to.”

  “So are you.” She forced herself to meet that golden gaze of his. “I didn’t think I was going to like you last night when you were so gruff with me.”

  “You hit Fred!” he said, laughing. “What did you expect?”

  “How was I supposed to know Fred was more important than very expensive cars?”

  “Now you know.”

  The bedroom door opened, and Max emerged wearing a pair of red flannel pajama pants and nothing else, exposing a chest and belly that were ripped with muscles. “Don’t mind me. Just going to bed. Keep doing what you were doing.”

  As Will stared daggers at his brother’s bare back, Max scrambled up the ladder to the loft. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “I heard that. I’m telling Mom.”

  Cameron choked back a giggle that she knew Will wouldn’t appreciate.

  “I guess it’s time to call it a night.” He got up and closed the doors to the wood stove. “Do you mind if the boys come along? They love going for r-i-d-e-s.”

  “Not at all.” Amused that he’d spelled the word, Cameron put on her woefully inadequate coat and prepared to brave the elements
.

  After he put his coat on, he waited for her to join him by the door. “Let’s go for a ride, boys.” The dogs sprinted for the door, which Will opened just in time to keep them from crashing into it. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

  “I heard that, too,” Max said from the loft.

  “Go to sleep, Romeo. I’m taking Cameron to the inn.”

  “I won’t tell Mom if you don’t come back tonight.”

  Cameron couldn’t hold back the laughter.

  Will glowered at her playfully. “I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” he said to Max before he slammed the door closed. “Pain in my ass.”

  “He’s hilarious.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s a real comedian. He certainly snapped out of his ‘I’m going to be a dad’ funk awfully fast.”

  “I think we helped him see it’s not the end of the world.”

  “Just the end of life as he knows it.”

  “I can’t imagine having a kid at twenty-nine, let alone twenty-two,” Cameron said. “I would’ve been a hot mess of a mother back then.”

  Will held the door for her. “Me, too. I’d feel sorry for the kid.”

  “Do you think Max will make a mess of it?” Cameron asked as Will started the truck and gave it a minute to warm up.

  “Nah. We won’t let him.”

  When Tanner’s head came over the seat, Cameron stroked his silky ears. “He’s so lucky to have you all in his corner.”

  “Who do you have in your corner, Cameron Murphy?”

  For some strange reason, Cameron liked how he called her by her full name. “I have Lucy, of course. We’ve been friends for more than ten years. I’m close to her sister Emma and my lawyer friend Troy.”

  “Just a friend?”

  “These days. We dated for a while years ago, but we figured out pretty quickly we worked much better as friends than anything else.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t have friends who are girls?”

  “Do my sisters count?”

  “No,” Cameron said with a chuckle. “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t have any female friends that I actively hang out with who I also used to date, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I bet you’ve had no shortage of dates,” Cameron said, attempting to tease him and apparently falling short as his smile faded.

  “I haven’t dated much since Lisa. Here and there, but nothing serious. That experience kinda turned me off.”

  They rode in silence through the accumulating snow. He handled the truck expertly as if it was no big deal to drive on mountain roads through a mini-blizzard. When the truck slid ever so slightly, Cameron let out a squeak of distress.

  Will reached over to put his hand on top of hers. When his warm hand covered hers, she was really glad neither of them had worn gloves.

  “It’s fine. I promise you’re totally safe with me.”

  Because it was snowing harder by the second, and because she was still sort of scared to be driving in such heavy snow—and only for those reasons—she held on tightly to his hand. Then she realized he probably needed it to keep the truck on the road. “You need two hands on the wheel.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “I’d rather do this.”

  “Will …”

  “Hmm?”

  “We were supposed to talk more about the website, and we ended up talking about everything else but the website.”

  His low, rumbling laugh made her smile in the darkness. “We did get a little sidetracked, didn’t we?”

  “Just a little. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do—stay or go.”

  “Could you give me a little more time to think it over and figure out what’s best for the company?”

  “Sure, I could do that. Of course it would be much easier if I had a reliable Internet connection so at least I could work while you’re figuring things out.”

  “Come over to the office in the morning. We’ll set you up with decent connectivity.”

  “Are you sure that would be okay? I don’t want anyone to think I’m hanging around where I’m not wanted.”

  “I’ll smooth it over. No worries.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  He pulled up to the inn a short time later and insisted on walking her inside. “Stay,” he said to the dogs, who whimpered in protest but did what they were told.

  “They’re such good boys.”

  “Most of the time.” His hand on her back guided her along the snow-covered sidewalk.

  Cameron was deeply grateful for her new boots and his solid presence in the swirling snow. “It’s so pretty.”

  “The first fifty times in one winter it’s pretty. By this point in the season, we’ve all seen more than enough of it.”

  “I’m sure it gets old after a while.”

  “Vermont winters aren’t for sissies.”

  Cameron used her key to gain entrance to the main door, which was locked at this hour. “I can take it from here,” she said, turning to Will. “I had a really nice time tonight. Thank you.”

  “I had a nice time, too. See you in the morning?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be over with my laptop.”

  “How about I buy you some pancakes with Vermont maple syrup, just so you can say you’ve tried it?”

  Irrationally pleased that he wanted to spend more time with her, Cameron smiled at him. “I’ll say yes to the pancakes, but I’ll take your word on the syrup.”

  “I’ll get you to try some,” he said confidently.

  “You’ll be okay driving home?”

  “This is nothing.”

  “I’d tell you to text me so I know you got there safely, but you’d have to have a cell phone to text me.”

  “I’ll be fine, but I do appreciate the concern. I’ll see you a little before nine, okay?”

  Cameron couldn’t wait to see him again. “See you then.” She smiled all the way upstairs.

  Will left the truck parked in front of the inn and walked over to the store, letting himself in through the back door and deactivating the alarm. While he often had reason to be there after-hours, he was still struck by the contrast between the store open and bustling with life and the quiet stillness of night.

  After he turned on the lights, he moved with purpose toward the display of winter coats, which had shrunk to next to nothing as spring approached. He hoped there was a coat left that would keep Cameron warm while also meeting her style standards, which he already knew were exacting.

  As he flipped through the rack, he dismissed a few that were the wrong size and another that wasn’t jazzy enough for her. “Who are you to decide what’s jazzy enough for her anyway?” he muttered as he continued to peruse the choices. “Why are you even doing this? What’s the plan?” He didn’t have a plan. That was the only thing he knew for sure.

  Her father was a freaking billionaire, for crying out loud. She didn’t need him to buy things for her. Except, he liked her. He liked being with her and talking to her and, damn it, he liked bringing her things from the store. It was his store. He could give her things if he wanted to.

  He held up a tan-and-white-checked down coat with faux fur trim on the hood for closer inspection. It was a medium, which seemed about right for her. He’d gotten lucky with the boot size, but he didn’t want to overshoot on the coat and insult her. If it was too big, he could say he wanted her to be able to wear a sweater under it. She’d liked the boots with the fur trim, and her vest had fur trim, so he figured he was safe with that accessory.

  He pulled the price tag off the coat and stashed it in his wallet so he’d remember to note the “sale” in the inventory system, which was necessary to avoid Ella’s wrath as the inventory manager.

  At the front of the store, he grabbed a brown shopping bag with the store’s logo stamped on the front, folded the coat up and put it inside. Returning to the back of the store,
he stopped at the display of hats and gloves and chose a pink chenille set and added them to the bag.

  He shut off the lights, reactivated the alarm and pulled the door closed behind him. Trudging through the snow, he returned to the inn and found the hide-a-key under a flowerpot on the patio. That key was a badly kept secret, dating back to when Missy Hendricks was in high school and had parties at the inn whenever her parents took a rare vacation.

  Will headed up the back stairs and quietly looped the handles of the shopping bag over Cameron’s door. He was in and out in less than two minutes.

  “Here I am, fellas,” he said to the dogs when he got back into the truck, which was still warm from the ride into town. Two silky heads came over the seat to greet him with enthusiastic—and wet—kisses. Will laughed and ducked out of the line of fire. Sometimes he thought no one had ever loved him the way those two knuckleheads did. He’d grown up with dogs that had belonged to the entire family. These were the first two that were his alone, and he adored them.

  “Let’s go see what kind of trouble Max has gotten into while we were gone.”

  The ride home was far more treacherous than the ride into town had been. Will estimated about eight inches had already fallen, and it was still coming down hard. Judging from the snowfall, it might’ve been January rather than late March. He drove slowly down the rutted lane that led to his house, and was relieved to see the lights of home come into view. Even though he’d been driving in snow since he first got his license, he wouldn’t have normally chosen to be out on a night like this.

  If Max hadn’t shown up, he might’ve convinced Cameron to sleep in his bed while he took the couch. Of course she probably would’ve balked at that arrangement as she barely knew him, but now he’d never know how she would’ve reacted.

  He walked into the house, stamping the snow off his boots, which was somewhat futile as the dogs left a trail of wet footprints as they preceded him into the house.

  Max was in the kitchen, downing the last of the pizza along with one of Will’s beers. “What took so long? I was starting to worry about you.”

  “I had something I needed to do while I was in town. I thought you were tired.”

  Max gave him a shit-eating grin. “I only said that in case you wanted to be alone with your ‘friend.’”