by Cindy Gerard
“Regardless,” J.D. added, playing devil’s advocate. “He planted the seed in the minds of the decision makers, and now that it’s planted it’ll grow.”
“Just like the tax revenues, if the project proceeds. Hey, don’t glare at me,” Colin protested, when all three women shot daggers in his direction. “I’m just stating the obvious. Money is the lowest common denominator. I’m sorry, but the way I see it, money is going to decide the issue.”
“Unfortunately, Colin is probably right.” Typically, Abel had been silent up until this point. Also typically, when he spoke people listened to what he said. “You did what you could, Scarlett. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will be enough.”
But they all feared it wouldn’t be.
“You think she’s going to be okay?” J.D. asked, as Colin walked with him and Abel to the lakeshore. Maggie and Mackenzie strolled along behind with Scarlett. Casey and Mark, along with Nashata and Hershey and the puppies, were far ahead of them as the strung-out procession made its way to the dock where the Hazzards’ float plane and the Greenes’ boat were moored.
Colin shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and shrugged. “With the probable decision? No. Can she handle it? Yeah. She’s a survivor.”
“Didn’t I tell you she was one special lady?”
Colin made sure the women were out of earshot. “You know, Hazzard, I ought to rearrange that pretty face of yours for the meddling you’ve done in our lives.”
Beside them, Abel chuckled. “Sorry. I was just remembering having some thoughts of my own in that direction at one point.”
“I am wounded. Truly wounded that either of you would think I’d meddl—”
“Stow it,” both Colin and Abel said in unison, which prompted an involuntary grin from all three of them.
“So...what’s the plan, Stan?” J.D. asked, cutting right to the heart of the issue.
Colin angled him a look.
“Oh, come on. I see the way you two look at each other. What I want to know is what are you going to do about it?”
It was useless to deny it, pointless to protest.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Colin said honestly.
“What are you talking about? One look at you together and anyone can see you two were made for each other.”
Colin avoided J.D.’s probing stare. “It’s complicated.”
“And your point is?” J.D. prompted, his tone implying Life is complicated deal with it.
“My point is, we’re compatible, but our lives aren’t.”
“So find a way to compromise. Figure it out, man. She’d make a beautiful bride.”
Colin snorted. “And here I gave you some credit for subtlety.”
“Think about it,” J.D. advised sagely, all nonsense gone from his tone. “Think about what you’d be giving up if you let her go.
“Besides,” he added, when the tension threatened to take over. “I want to be able to come back again without living in fear of Scarlett taking after me with one of her kitchen knives.”
“Her knives are the least of your worries, pal. The lady has far-less-civilized plans for dealing with you. The only reason she didn’t carry them out today was her preoccupation with the condo issue.”
While he’d been silent during their discourse, Abel’s mouth twisted into that fleeting facsimile of a smile that Colin now equated to amusement.
“She’ll mellow out,” J.D. said with confidence. “In the meantime, there’s got to be a solution for the two of you. My money’s on you to figure it out.”
Colin wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist and took one final swing with the ax. With a cracking sound, the dead birch fell. The thud of the trunk and the splintering of limbs as it hit the ground were at odds with the stillness of the morning, but in complete harmony with the way he felt.
He’d spent the night thinking about what J.D. had said. He was right. There ought to be a way for him and Scarlett to be together. But he’d be damned if he could come up with it.
“I don’t know why you don’t use the chain saw,” Casey said from her perch on a boulder beside him. “Sure would be a lot easier. Faster, too.”
Colin didn’t want easy. He didn’t want fast, either. What he wanted was to work himself into a state of fatigue so complete he’d sleep tonight from exhaustion.
He couldn’t blame his lack of rest on Belinda’s room anymore. Since the night he and Scarlett had made love, the room had been as quiet as a tomb. No shaking bed. No restless windows. No shadows dancing on the wall. And no problem getting out of the room. No more dreams.
He wasn’t sure what Casey’s reasons for that turn of events would be, but he knew his. He’d fixed the room with hammer and nails and a plane. He didn’t need to dream because he’d lived out his fantasy.
If only he could fix his other problem as easily.
“Hello-o-o,” Casey singsonged, a playful reminder that she was still there and waiting for his response. “The chain saw? Do you want me to get it?”
He shook his head. “I need the workout.”
“You and my mom,” she said in that way teenagers have of letting adults know that the teens would never understand what motivated them. “She can’t keep busy enough. Always running. Baking this. Cleaning that. What’s with you two, anyway?”
Thwack. He buried the ax in the trunk and tried to ignore her.
“I kind of had the idea you liked her,” Casey persisted, hiking her knees to her chest and propping her chin on them.
Thwack.
“I was...I don’t know. I guess I was wishing you liked her a lot. She gets lonesome sometimes. She doesn’t say it. But I can tell.”
He stalled his swing midair then let the ax head hit the ground. “Your mom’s a very special woman, Casey. And I like her just fine.”
“But not enough to...you know. Make her someone important in your life.”
Leave it to a child to reduce convoluted to plain and simple. “Your mom is important to me.”
“So how come you always go the other way when you see her coming?”
Giving it up, he dropped to the ground beside the boulder. He leaned back on his elbows, stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. Letting the lake breeze cool his brow, he stared at the toe of his shoe. “Is that how it looks?”
“That’s how it looks.” A long pause followed. “Is that how it is?”
Reluctantly he looked up at her, squinting against the sunlight. He saw her need to know and decided to level with her. “We have feelings for each other, Casey, but we both know they can’t go anywhere.”
Her face scrunched up in thought. “Because she’s not a sophisticated lady?”
“No. No,” he was quick to assure her. “Because we live different lives. Her life is you and the hotel. Mine is my business.”
“I bet it would be different if I wasn’t in the way.”
Her summation was so quick, her expression so vulnerable, he was just as quick to set her straight.
“Don’t even think it. You’re just as special as your mother, Casey. The two of you together are a pair any man would find hard to resist.”
She gave a little sniff then fussed with the frayed hem of her cutoffs. “My dad didn’t find it so hard.”
It took all of his control to curb his disgust with the man who ignored a child as unique as Casey. For her sake, though, he gave her father the benefit of the doubt. “Your dad probably knows by now that he made a very big mistake when he let you and your mother go.”
She slipped down from the boulder and gave him a quelling look. “So how come you haven’t figured out yet that you’re going to do the very same thing?”
With that insightful little indictment, and a last, soulful look from her big, brown eyes, she walked away.
It was that look that made him sit up and take notice. That look and her straightforward assessment. Why was he going to walk away? Because he was so sure Scarlett wouldn’t go
with him? Or because he was afraid to find out that she would?
He’d never thought of permanency with a woman. Never contemplated commitment of the forever kind.
But then, he’d never been in love. And he’d never had a woman like Scarlett at stake. Maybe it was time he listened to what Hazzard and Casey and his heart were trying to tell him.
“Come with me.”
Startled, Scarlett jumped at the sound of Colin’s voice. She startled at just about everything these past few days. Shadows. Memories. Regrets.
How long had it been since she’d had a full night’s sleep? Since making love with him. Since the hearing.
It felt like a month instead of just a few days.
Putting on her best face, she turned away from the stove and the bread she was baking to see him standing just inside the doorway. His arms were crossed over his chest One shoulder was propped oh so casually against the doorjamb. Only his expression, serious and pensive, betrayed the intensity he’d brought with him into the room.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, and fought her heart’s reaction to go to him. He looked so beautiful, so serious, so much the man she loved and had worked so hard to avoid.
“Come with me, Scarlett,” he said again, his face somber, his eyes searching.
She tried for a throwaway smile. “I’m in the middle of preparing dinner. I can’t go anywhere right now.”
His jaw clenched with impatience. “I’m not talking about right now, this very minute. I’m talking about five days from now when I leave.” A long, thick silence passed. “I want you to come with me.”
Stunned, her forced smile collapsed. She searched his face, her heart running haywire, her mind spinning a hundred revolutions a second, and struggled to comprehend the significance of the request he was making.
Before she could catch her breath, or gather her thoughts, he was beside her, his hands on her shoulders, staring deep into her eyes.
“Come with me. You and Casey.”
She covered shock with panic. “Colin...we can’t go anywhere right now. The hotel—I’ve got guests. I’ve got several bookings coming in next week. I’ve got—”
“Forget about the hotel. We’ll find someone to take care of it. Think about yourself for a change. Think about what you want. What you need.”
What she wanted was Colin. What she needed was to remember that she couldn’t have him. “Colin, I don’t know what to say. This...this is really special that you’d invite us to...to visit, but I can’t leave my business.”
He pulled her closer. “I’m not asking you to come to visit,” he growled. Import laced through every word.
With the same passion that he’d held her, he let her go. He paced to the back kitchen door, dragged a hand through his hair, then whirled on her again.
“Do you need to hear the words? Can you possibly not know what I’m asking?”
She blinked once...twice. Then, in defense against an avalanche of emotions, she answered his questions with denial. “No. I don’t know what you’re asking. I’m not sure you do, either,” she added, softly challenging him.
When he swore under his breath and didn’t deny it, she sensed she’d hit on the truth.
Her already battered heart broke a little more—this time for him. How she loved this kind, caring man who was trying to do the right thing, but wasn’t yet sure of his reasons.
“Scarlett...I’ve never asked a woman to share my life. I’ve never even come close.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, but with such urgency he stopped and listened. She couldn’t bear to hear him say any more. Couldn’t bear to live with the knowledge once he went away. “Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for. Don’t start something else we can’t finish.”
She turned away from him so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming. Driven by the conviction that she was right, and the fear that she’d give in if he pressed her, she made herself hold the line.
“I can’t go with you. I can’t leave here—not with so much to be done. Crimson Falls is my home. New York is yours. I wouldn’t fit in there, and I couldn’t ask you to live here. You wouldn’t be content. We’ve both known that from the beginning. And we’ve both known what we shared couldn’t last.”
She flinched when he came up behind her, resting his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Couldn’t we at least try to figure out a way to make it work?”
His voice was a caress. A promise to please. A plea to bend.
“Please,” she begged, more sharply than she’d intended. But she was running scared, and she had to make him see. “Please don’t say any more. And if you care anything about me, you won’t bring it up again.”
He was still standing there when she all but ran out of the kitchen, away from him, away from the wanting, but not away from the tears she’d tried so hard to keep at bay.
He’d blown it. He wasn’t sure yet how, he just knew he had. At first he’d felt defeated. Now he was just plain mad. At himself for botching it. At her for running away. But he wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
By the next evening, fueled by conviction, driven by excitement, and with the help of the shortwave radio and a conversation with Abel Greene, everything was in place.
Everything but confronting Scarlett with what he’d done. He knew the fur was about to fly when he saw her storming down the path to the lake toward him.
Braced with his arguments, he waited for her there.
“Would you mind telling me what this is about?” she demanded, waving a sheet of paper under his nose.
Undaunted, he cast a sideways glance at the paper and shrugged. “It’s a little order I placed.”
“A little order? There are several thousand dollars worth of materials listed here. I can’t afford to pay for this! And whatever made you think you had the right to order it in the first place?”
He’d known she’d be angry. He’d known she’d have to work it through. What he hadn’t known was that he’d feel so guilty over his heavy-handedness, but he hadn’t seen any other way. She was one proud, headstrong woman. If he’d asked if he could do this for her, she’d have nixed the idea in a heartbeat.
“First, you don’t have to pay for it,” he said reasonably. “I’m footing the bill. And second, winning the raffle gives me the right. In case you’ve forgotten, I am part owner.”
She stared, her expression incredulous, and he knew he hadn’t made any points reminding her of that bit of fact.
“Part owner, yes. Emphasis on part,” she pointed out hotly. “A small one. One raffle ticket at a thousand dollars hardly gives you the right to make these kind of decisions.”
“No, those rights don’t come with one ticket.” He waited a beat, then lobbed his little bomb. “But forty tickets should count for something more than a passing interest.”
He waited, watching her carefully. Her face went as white as chalk.
“You...bought forty tickets?” Much more than surprise made her breathless. There was panic in the question, panic and a desperate wanting to not believe what she’d just heard. “Why would you do that?” She stared at him as if he were some kind of a monster. “Why would you spend money like that on something you didn’t need and didn’t know anything about? Why would you buy every ticket?”
One word hit him with the impact of a sledge. “What do you mean—every ticket? I bought forty, not all eighty.”
“Eighty? There weren’t eighty tickets.”
A sickening sense of foreboding stuck in his throat like sludge. “Not according to J.D. He said he’d sold the first forty and wheedled me into buying the last forty so he could call it a wrap.”
Even before the words were out, he knew Hazzard had nailed him again.
The shock on her face had turned to denial, denial, to stunned defeat. “There were no other tickets.” Her voice sounded hollow and weak. “J.D. wanted to sell eighty thousand dollars worth but I drew the line at forty. I couldn’t bring myself to d
o more. I felt like I was selling my soul as it was.”
She met his eyes again, this time with a wistful, wild desperation. “You really bought every ticket?”
He would have lied and told her no if he thought it would strip the anguish from her eyes. But it was too late for lies and too late to change things. “Apparently.”
She clutched a hand to her throat, looked despairingly toward the hotel. “Well... what does it matter now? Congratulations, Colin.” She met his eyes with a look of defeat so devastating he physically felt her pain. “It looks like I’m working for you now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that Crimson Falls is more yours than mine. Your forty thousand dollars is more than I’ve got paid off on the mortgage.”
With a moisture glistening in her eyes that did strange, tugging things inside his chest, she turned to go.
“Scarlett, wait.”
“For what? For you to tell me more about how things are going to be run around here with you in charge? For you to call some more shots?”
“I don’t have any intention of taking over.”
“No? That’s not what this is telling me.” She shoved the list of materials against his chest.
“You don’t understand,” he insisted, staying her with a hand on her arm when she whirled away. “I did this for you. I did it for us. I want Crimson Falls to be everything you want it to be, so that you don’t have to worry about it any more.
“Scarlett, you work too hard. You deserve to be cared for. We can hire someone to help you run the hotel.”
“I don’t want to hire someone to run the hotel. The hotel is mine. Or it was.” With a determination that was a physical effort, she blinked back tears. “But that’s not the only issue. Are you and your money so removed from the real world that you can’t see what’s important here? It’s not just about me. It’s not just about the hotel. If I don’t stay here and fight, Dreamscape won’t just move in, they’ll take over.”
He shook his head sadly. “You’re one small woman. You can’t fight everything.”
