Mountain Man Next Door

by Ava Grace

  I knew there was more to the story, but I couldn’t imagine how a high school love story could end so tragically with Caroline’s death.

  “What happened then?”

  Faith sighed. “Then it all went to crap.”

  Andrea took a sip of her cocktail then said, “When they graduated high school, Mason and Coop went off to College, but Caroline didn’t go. Her mother couldn’t afford to pay her tuition and Caroline didn’t get the grades she needed for a scholarship so she stayed behind.

  “Her mom owned the beauty salon in town so Caroline ending up working for her. Three months later, Coop dropped out of college and came home so he and Caroline started spending a lot of time together again.”

  I could see where this was headed and right away Violet confirmed my assumption. “Coop and Caroline started seeing each other, of course. Knowing the way Coop had always felt about Caroline, no one was surprised when they got together.”

  “Pretty much everyone thought that that would be it,” Andrea added. “We all thought they’d stand the test of time, you know? But as soon as Mason came home from college, he and Caroline got back together and Coop was history.”

  “Caroline was fickle,” Faith said. “I don’t think she knew who she really wanted.”

  “Or she wanted them both,” Violet said. “And couldn’t choose between them. Either way, within three months Mason and Caroline were married.”

  “That soon?”

  “Yeah, and things were never the same between Mason and Coop,” Andrea said.

  I took another sip of my drink. It was good, but it was nearly empty and I could already feel it starting to have an effect on me.

  “I can imagine. How did they come to buy The Shack together?”

  “Oh, they stayed friends,” Andrea said. “If you can call what they had a friendship, but from then on there was always a sort of rivalry between them. They were in constant competition. Each always tried to outdo the other.

  “Then a few years into Mason and Caroline’s marriage, they had a huge argument over something or other and Caroline went running back to Coop.”

  My jaw practically hit the floor at that revelation. “You’re kidding!”

  Andrea shook her head. “People were furious with Coop, you know, that he would take her back and come between a married couple.”

  “Yes, but he loved her,” Faith said. “It didn’t matter what she did. He would have always taken her back. Just like Mason would have—like he did, several times.”

  Wow.

  My head was spinning with everything I’d learned so far, but I knew the most difficult part of the story was yet to come.

  “So Caroline and Mason weren’t together when Caroline was killed?” I asked.

  Andrea took a sip of her drink then shook her head. “No. No one but Mason and Coop knows the whole of the story after that, but about three months after Caroline and Coop left town, Caroline got caught up in a robbery at a gas station. She was shot.”

  “It happened a couple of towns over,” Violet said. “And both Mason and Coop were there at the time, which was weird. She died before the ambulance got there.”

  When the prickle of tears formed behind my eyes, I quickly blinked them away. “I can’t imagine how heartbreaking that must have been. For both Mason and Coop.”

  “Yeah,” Faith said. “People in town took sides between them. Some said that Coop should have left her be after she got married, others think that he and Caroline were meant for each other, but no one ever seemed to blame Caroline.

  “Yet she was the one who kept going from one to the other, keeping them both dangling and never allowing either one of them to get over her and get on with his life. But I suppose, in the end, she paid the greatest price.”

  “She did,” Faith agreed.

  “That’s so sad,” I whispered.

  They nodded in unison.

  After the story had reached its conclusion, all four of us became quiet and contemplative. My heart went out to both Mason and Coop, but what surprised me most was how differently they seemed to be coping with what had happened to them. Mason had withdrawn himself away from the world, but Coop surrounded himself with lots of people and always had that same, fixed smile on his face. Now, every time that I looked at it I would wonder what it was hiding.

  “Are we going to eat?” Andrea asked, burying her nose in the menu. “I’m starving!”

  I’d been hungry when I arrived at the restaurant, too, but as I scanned the menu, I realized that at some point during the story, I had well and truly lost my appetite. Perhaps I could just get away with picking on a salad. At least my wallet would thank me. In the end, though, I ordered a burger which was surprisingly good, and as our topics of conversation had changed to happier and more upbeat subjects, I regained my appetite and ended up eating every morsel.

  I learned a lot about Andrea, Violet, and Faith during dinner, including the fact that they were all single and had been for quite some time. Violet had been married once and her husband had been a cheating, lying, sleazebag, to use her own turn of phrase. They were separated but hadn’t yet finalized the divorce.

  Andrea had been in several short-term relationships, none of which had worked out for her and Faith, by her own admission, was still looking for Mr. Right. Throughout dinner, she kept shooting surreptitious glances towards Coop’s table which made me wonder if she’d already found him but was unwilling to admit it, even to herself.

  A couple of times during the evening, a shiver rolled over my body, and I got the strangest feeling that someone was watching me. I’d look over my shoulder expecting to see someone staring back at me, but each time I turned, no one was paying me any attention. It was the weirdest thing and made me wonder if I’d imagined it after all. After the second and third time I got the same uneasy feeling, and turned to see Coop looking our way, I decided that it had to have been him all along and hoped it wasn’t me he was staring at.

  I vowed to talk to him the first chance I got. By hook or by crook I was going to have to let him know that nothing was ever going to happen between us. I just hoped our chat wouldn’t have any effect on my job.

  Chapter Eight

  I pulled a nail from between my lips then hammered it into place. The deck was nearly finished and I could already envisage it with some furniture set up on it—a swing or a couple of bench seats. After I’d hammered in the last nail, I swung my legs over the edge of the decking and looked out at the view of the mountains beyond.

  I’d grown up in Creede and had seen that very landscape or some version of it for my entire life, but the mountains still took my breath away each and every time I looked at them. I would never want to live anywhere else.

  I was just about to go inside and fix myself some lunch when an unearthly sound cut through the silence and made all the hairs on my arms stand to attention. I shivered despite the mid-afternoon heat. The sound of a woman screaming had haunted my nightmares for nearly three years.

  It was the sound of terror and I was pretty damn sure that Libby had made it.

  Fear twisted around my heart, constricting it so much that I struggled to breathe. The panic almost had me immobile and just like that, I was taken back almost three years ago to the night that my wife had been killed. Caroline had made the same sort of blood-curdling scream and by the time I’d raced to her aid, I’d been too late to save her.

  Too late.

  I’d replayed that night over and over in my mind’s eye but the outcome was always the same. I watched on in agony as the spark of life bled out of her eyes at the same time that her blood drained from her body.

  Thinking about that time always shattered me, but this time, I didn’t linger on the details of the memory because there was something more pressing demanding my attention.

  I had to get to Libby.

  Duke who had been taking a nap inside, came charging through the doggy door while barking his fool ass off at me. Evidently, he’d heard the scream t
oo and he took off for Libby’s place at a dead run.

  “Duke!” I shouted after him.

  He never looked back.

  Somehow, by the grace of God alone, I managed to put one foot in front of the other to descend the steps of my new decking then I raced around to the front of the house to get to the pathway that led up the mountain towards Harry’s place. As I ran flat out, the same words kept repeating over and over in my mind. Please God no. Not again. Please. No.

  I took the steps to her porch two at a time then burst through the front door with a crash of timber that was too old to withstand the onslaught. Duke who stood barking at the closed door ran in behind me.

  “Libby!” I shouted as I entered the open-plan living area. “Libby!”

  I skidded to a halt on the old rug when I caught sight of her standing on the couch with eyes as wide as dinner plates. All of the color had drained out of her face. I spun around the room looking for the threat but found none. I looked at her again, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  “What’s is it?” I asked. “What happened?”

  Duke skidded to a halt in front of the couch and barked up at her.

  “There’s a spider,” she said in a small voice. “Over there on the wall.”

  I blinked, unsure if I’d just heard her correctly. “Excuse me?”

  “A spider,” she repeated. “Over there.”

  The relief was so sudden and so overwhelming that my knees nearly gave out. When I huffed out an incredulous laugh, she colored fiercely. I should have been furious at her for frightening the damn life out of me and for taking me back to that hideous place of nearly three years ago, but I wasn’t mad at her at all. She looked so small and scared standing there that any anger I might have felt quickly ebbed away before the emotion had the chance to take hold.

  “A spider,” I said, my mouth breaking out into a grin as if on its own accord.

  It had been so long since I smiled that I’d almost forgotten how to do it.

  It took me three long strides to cross the room to the corner she’d pointed at then I bent over at the waist and studied the offending creature.

  “It’s a recluse, isn’t it?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Funnel Web. Completely harmless. See?”

  I captured the spider with my finger and thumb then took it outside and dropped it over the side of the porch. When I went back inside, Libby was still standing on the couch, arms wrapped around her middle as if to protect herself from the threat.

  The grin returned to my face in an instant. I couldn’t help it. She just had that damn effect on me. “I think it’s safe for you to get down from there now.”

  Instead of doing as I’d suggested, she cocked her head to the side, studying me. “You know, I’ve never seen you smile before. It looks good on you. You should do it more often.”

  I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck, feeling suddenly awkward. “Haven’t had much to smile about, I guess.”

  She let out a breathy sigh as she stepped down off the couch. “That’s a shame, Mason. Everyone needs something to smile about. Thanks, by the way, for coming to my rescue.”

  I shrugged nonchalantly, hoping I’d been able to hide my earlier reaction to her scream.

  “You’re welcome, though, it seems strange that you would move to the mountains if you’re afraid of spiders. We get a lot of them around here, especially at this time of year. It’s mating season.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, actually,” she said. “But now, I’m pretty sure it’ll be just about all that I think about.”

  I chuckled. “Sorry about that. If it eases your mind, they’re mostly harmless, but I could pick up some repellant in town to spray the outside of the property if you’d like. Should keep them at bay for a while.”

  She arched a perfectly manicured brow. “You’d do that for me?”

  I frowned. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Why did she look so surprised by my offer? I hadn’t said I was going to build her a house or anything, just that I’d spray the damn thing. Was it really so difficult to believe that I could do something neighborly? When I came to think about it, I supposed it was hard for her to comprehend, especially considering how I’d acted on our first couple of meetings. When I thought back to the way I’d behaved on the first day she’d pulled up into my driveway and then again at the club in front of Coop, her new boss, it was no wonder she was looking at me like I’d grown another head.

  I sighed. Maybe we’d got off on the wrong foot. I hadn’t meant to be rude to her, but about five minutes before she had shown up, I’d taken a call from Coop who’d informed me that the papers were ready for me to sign and speaking to him always put me in a bad mood. I guess I had taken that mood out on her.

  “I’m sorry if I was rude to you when we first met,” I said quietly, scrubbing a hand over my beard. “You caught me on a bad day. I’ll get the stuff later then come by in the morning to spray it around, okay?”

  The smile that spread across her lips made my gut clench and I had to stop myself from crossing the room to kiss her to within an inch of her life.

  “Sure thing. And thanks, Mason. I appreciate it.”

  I needed to leave because the longer I looked at her, the more I could imagine crushing her to me and plundering those soft, perfectly plump lips.

  Jesus, I needed to get laid. Pronto.

  “Yeah, no worries,” I mumbled before turning on my heel and getting the hell out of there as fast as my feet would carry me. “See you tomorrow. Come on, Duke.”

  I turned to see Libby scratching him gently behind the ears. Duke looked like he was in doggy heaven and I knew I had no chance of him coming with me now. I sighed and walked out of the house, leaving my traitorous dog behind. He didn’t even look up as I left.

  “I’ll fix the door tomorrow too,” I told her belatedly.

  Chapter Nine

  “Another beer, Earl?” I asked as I passed by a table occupied by one of our regular customers.

  His weathered face lifted and he shot me a toothy grin. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  I picked up a couple of empty bottles on my way to the bar then deposited them on the counter near the door that led into the kitchen. Mario, the bald-headed bartender who had served me on my first night in The Shack was busy with a customer so I waited for him to finish then placed my order before hurrying off to clear a few more tables. I’d only been at work for a couple of hours, but already I could tell that it was going to be a long night.

  A steady stream of customers had poured in through the door and as the tables filled I worked my way around the room taking orders and delivering drinks and meals. It was a typical Saturday night until Coop called me over to the table he was sitting at with a couple of his biker buddies. One of them, I recognized as Andrea’s older brother, Luke and the other one I’d heard Coop calling Dev.

  “What’s up?” I asked as I reached their table. “Need more drinks?”

  Coop shook his head.

  “One of the men we ride out with sometimes is having a barbecue tomorrow. I want you to come. As my date,” he added leaving me no room to misinterpret his invitation as being anything other than what it was.

  Crap.

  I hadn’t had a chance to have the talk with Coop and this was exactly what I’d hoped to avoid. “Uh, thanks for the invite, Coop,” I said, going over the words in my mind that would let him down gently without making him look stupid in front of his friends.

  Why had he asked me in front of them anyway? Was he that sure I’d say yes? Or was it some kind of dominance thing? Like he was staking a claim.

  Well, he could think again.

  “I c—“

  The bar door swung open loudly, cutting off my words mid-sentence and a tall, skinny man strode into the room, looking for all intents and purposes like a man who had murder on his mind.

  Coop muttered a curse.

  “Hey Al,” he greeted pleasantly as the man approached h
is table. “How’s it shaking?”

  Al?

  As in Arlene’s hubby, Al?

  Aww, Crap.

  That couldn’t be good.

  It had been over a week and half since the night that Arlene had been in asking to get her job back and there had been no sight or sound of her since. I’d hoped that her threat about Al finding out what had happened had been an empty one, but it would seem I’d been wrong about that.

  Coop didn’t seem all that happy about Al’s presence either which I found surprising considering the man looked like he weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds wet and couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.

  “What the hell is going on Coop?” Al thundered. “I got back from my fishing trip today to find out you fired Arlene. You can’t just let her go like that. You’re lucky my brothers are out of town ‘cause I reckon they would have been furious if they’d heard about it. Don’t think I’d have been able to stop them from coming down here to have a word with you.”

  When a muscle in Coop’s jaw ticked and Luke and Dev sat up a little straighter in their seats, it was evident that having Al’s brothers come down for a word was something that Coop and his buddies would rather avoid.

  “What’s the meaning of it?” Al pressed. “Arlene’s been loyal. She’s worked her ass off here for fifteen goddamn years, since long before you bought the bar.”

  “That she had,” Coop agreed quietly. “But I couldn’t have her working here anymore, Al. She’s taking that shit too much and it’s messing up her head.”

  Al’s face distorted into an ugly expression. “She’s got a problem, sure, but to kick a woman when she’s down, makes you a spineless, good for nothing piece of…”

  When Coop got up out of his chair, I knew I had to do something to calm the situation down before it got anymore ugly than it already was so I stepped in between the two men and plastered a smile on my face.