by Cora Seton
“How?” Avery dropped to her knees by Nora’s side. “Did he hit you?”
“No! He… kissed me,” Nora admitted.
Riley made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “And you clobbered him with a paperweight?” She gestured to the piece of jade Nora had dropped back onto the desk.
“I don’t know why. It was a reaction—”
“Clay probably got the message,” Avery said seriously. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about him again.”
Nora met Riley’s gaze and pleaded with her for understanding.
“Is that the message you meant to send?” Riley asked gently.
“I don’t know.” Nora fought against the tears that threatened to fall. She refused to cry when the cameras were on her. Or ever, for that matter.
Why was she suddenly so jumpy when she’d left her stalker a thousand miles away? She was safe here. Everyone had told her that. Were her instincts so warped now that she’d mistake friendliness and attraction for a brutal attack from here on in?
Shame burned through her again at the thought of what she’d done to Clay. In a few minutes, everyone in camp would know about it. Soon enough, the entire viewing audience would, too. She could imagine the comments she’d receive then.
Was her face bright red? Was it clear she was fighting off tears? She wasn’t sure how to get out of the parlor and away from the cameras, but Riley came to her rescue. She nudged Avery and said, “It’s probably time for a snack. Should we bake some cookies, Avery?”
“Cookies? But…” Avery trailed off, got the message and started again. “Yes, that sounds terrific. Let’s make double chocolate chip.” She suddenly sounded as breezy as June Cleaver.
“Come on, Nora. Let’s go wash up.” Riley took Nora’s hand, squeezed it meaningfully and pulled her to her feet.
Bless Riley and Avery, Nora thought as they all retreated to the kitchen.
“Do you remember the time you challenged Dean Boslow to beer pong back at school?” Avery said to Riley in that same chipper voice she’d used in the parlor.
“How could I forget?” Riley said. Nora saw the cameraman focus on her and hoped her friends could come up with enough college stories to keep his attention while she got herself together.
A half-hour later, when their stories had degenerated into general, stilted conversation, the camera crew finally packed things in.
“See you down at Base Camp for dinner,” one of the men said as they left.
“See you,” Avery chirped and shut the door behind them. “Fuckers.”
Chapter Seven
‡
“Get those cameras out of my face before I smash them to hell,” Dell Pickett said as Clay tried to urge him away from the bunkhouse. A tall man, broader in the shoulder and thicker in the chest than Clay, Dell’s short, dark hair stood on end as if he’d run his hand through it in exasperation more than once today. He had the swarthy coloring of someone who’d worked outdoors all his life, and he was dressed in a battered old pair of dungarees and a Chance Creek High wrestling team shirt—his go-to outfit when life was getting him down.
Clay had managed to duck into the bathroom and clean the blood from his wound. It was a shallow cut but he was getting a bump on the side of his head. He hoped like hell it didn’t show up on camera.
“Dad, you’re on the set of a reality TV show. That means you’re going to be filmed if you stay here. The show runs for the next twelve months. I told you that.” He was worried about his father’s sudden appearance—and that ratty old T-shirt. The man was thirty pounds heavier than he’d been in high school. The shirt had stretched with him over the years, but it was in rough shape, and Clay’s mother never let Dell wear it out in public. Something was wrong.
“I’m not going to be on any TV show. You all can talk to my lawyer if you don’t like that.” Dell spoke with an authority that snapped like a whipsaw. Clay had always joked with his friends that the officers the Navy had appointed to train him should have gone to Dell for lessons. His friends had agreed.
“You are if you’re around me between now and next June.” He knew from past experience he had to meet his father’s aggression head on. Once Dell made up his mind about the way something should be, there was no changing it. Clay had to head him off at the pass. “Come on, let’s take a walk.” He led the way toward the rutted track that led to Pittance Creek. Hopefully, the cameras would fall back and he could find out why his father was here. Dell had dropped his suitcase in front of the bunkhouse, as if he planned to move right in. He’d been disgusted to see there were no bunks in there.
“Those men are still following us,” Dell said a minute later.
“And they’ll keep following us, so say what you have to say. What gives, Dad? What’s with the suitcase?”
If Dell’s shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch, Clay figured he was the only one who’d notice. A stranger would have thought Dell was the one in charge, the way he was marching through Base Camp, but that little sag told Clay a lot.
“It’s your mother. She’s lost her mind.”
“I doubt that.” Clay’s mother was the most rational woman he knew. As office manager of a local walk-in clinic, organization was her strong suit. Unfortunately Dell saw any opposition to his opinions as akin to lunacy, so this wasn’t the first time Clay had heard him dismiss his mother that way.
“She told me to get out, so I got out.”
“What happened before that?” He couldn’t imagine Lizette kicking anyone out without a good reason.
“Well…” Dell muttered something. Clay caught the words “job” and “disagreement” and “parting of the ways.” Still, it took him a minute to put it all together.
“You lost your job?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” Dell growled.
Shit. That was a new one. No wonder his dad was so close to blowing his stack. Clay knew he’d have to do some damage control, fast. “When?”
More grumbling. “April,” Dell finally said.
“You’ve been out of work for two months?” He didn’t blame his mother for throwing in the towel. Clay shuddered as he remembered childhood vacations, the only time Dell didn’t work ten or more hours at a shot. The man could barely stand to relax for a day, let alone the week-long camping trips his mother had organized with her two sisters and their families in the mountains. While Lizette lounged with the other women and the kids had raced around and played pick-up games of football, baseball, badminton and more, or splashed in whatever creek or lake they camped next to, Dell had tried to expunge his extra energy collecting firewood, fishing or climbing every peak in a fifty-mile radius. Soon he would run out of excursions to make and patience with fishing and kids, and become so irritating that Lizette would threaten to send him home. Instead, she’d make up reasons for him to travel to Bozeman and pick things up at the shops there. Dell would happily jump in his truck and be gone for hours hunting down the obscure items on her list, thrilled to be doing anything other than sitting still. He’d visit three stores to find the lowest price for his purchases, although he’d only save pennies. Without a challenge, the man was lost. Clay had come by his own excess energy honestly.
“I’ve looked for work.”
Clay could guess what the problem was. Dell was a whiz at carpentry. He also could be an annoying son-of-a-bitch and he’d had run-ins with other contractors in the past. His previous employer had kept him on a long time, so if he’d finally kicked him to the curb, Dell must have pushed him past his limit. Now Dell wouldn’t have a good reference when he applied for other jobs.
“Maybe you need to broaden your search.”
“Broaden it? Where? To Wyoming?”
“What about Abe or Chris? Can’t they help find you work?”
“No.”
“Rachel? Naomi?”
He exhausted his list of siblings, and when Dell shook his head after Clay said each name, Clay began to understand how dire the situation was
. When Dell settled into a simmering silence, he realized he might be his father’s last stop.
“Mom really threw you out?” he ventured.
“Yes, she did.” Beneath the bluster, Clay heard his father’s pain. Gruff and hardheaded as he was, Dell was a family man. Without Lizette he had no reason for being. He wasn’t one for flowery speeches or declarations of love, but Clay had never doubted his father loved his mother. He showed it by all he did to support the family. And if he couldn’t support his family, Dell would be questioning his place in the world. It was all he knew.
“How long do you think you’ll stay?”
Dell shrugged again.
“All we’ve got are tents, but I’m sure there are extra ones.”
“I’m obliged to you,” Dell said stiffly. “I’ll help out to pay my way. Looks like you’ve got a project going.”
Clay’s heart sank. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess I do.”
Chapter Eight
‡
Clay shifted uncomfortably in his tent later that night, all too aware of Dell a few feet away in a separate one. When he’d left his father to get set up earlier in the day, he’d expected him to choose a site some yards away, since everyone else had given each other a little room. But his father had lined up his tent right next to Clay’s and barely left any ground between them. It was embarrassing. This wasn’t a Cub Scout camp out, and he wasn’t some sniveling six year old who needed to be close to his daddy.
Apparently his dad needed to be close to him.
After Dell had placed his suitcase in his tent, he’d roamed Base Camp, poking his nose into the various projects just getting underway and offering his unsolicited opinion in that gruff, no-nonsense tone he had until Clay had been goaded to use his mother’s old distraction technique when he noticed a cameraman trailing Dell intently. It would be too easy for Renata’s minions to make his father a laughingstock on the show in his present condition. Clay had quickly composed a list, included an item or two he didn’t think it possible to find in Chance Creek, and passed it to his father. Dell had brightened, just like in the old days, and made a beeline for his truck.
All too conscious of the fuel he was wasting in exchange for some peace and quiet, Clay had gotten some work done before he returned, but not as much as he’d hoped. Meanwhile, Nora was on his mind. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and get four. Nora’s hesitance—and the way she’d clouted him with that paperweight—could only mean one of two things. Either she really, truly disliked him, or she’d been spooked badly by the man who’d stalked her, and she’d overreacted when Clay had surprised her. Clay was beginning to understand that in his haste to get Nora to the altar, he’d vastly underestimated how much her stalker had spooked her, and his urge to steal a kiss had only made things worse. His only consolation was that she’d welcomed his kisses at the wedding, even though he’d frightened her badly only a few mornings before. His advances weren’t the real problem; the television show was. Clay could understand that. Before, she’d felt anonymous here in Chance Creek. Now her location would be broadcast to the world. No wonder she was anxious. If he wanted any chance with her, he needed to soothe those fears.
In Clay’s mind, spending more time with Nora was the obvious solution. He was a Navy SEAL, after all. He could be her bodyguard. Unfortunately he could predict her reaction to that. She’d say he was only motivated by Fulsom’s deadlines, and his unwanted attentions would end up making her feel less safe, not more. All day long his problems twisted and turned in his brain, and by the time he went to bed, they’d created so many knots he couldn’t unravel them.
He must have drifted off to sleep at some point, though, because when Clay woke up again he found sunlight shining on his tent. He’d overslept. A series of shudders in the canvas around him alerted him that Dell was awake and moving about in his tent. Clay figured he’d better get up, too. His one shot was his date with Nora tonight. It had to go off smoothly.
Clay sat up, groaned at his throbbing temple, touched the sore spot and winced. First he needed to apologize, then he needed to make sure they were still on track for tonight. He’d do that now, before the filming started.
When he met up with Dell and the other men at the morning campfire, however, he got a taste of things to come. For one thing, the cameras were everywhere. It was later than he’d judged it to be—no time to go and talk to Nora now. For another, Dell was already riling up the other men in that inimitable way he had.
“Whoever made this coffee needs to learn how to do it right,” Dell was saying to Jericho when he reached them. His father went on to explain a complicated process that had Jericho giving him the side-eye. Clay hastened to step in.
“Dad. What are your plans today? Do you have any interviews lined up?”
With an uneasy glance toward Jericho, Dell edged away from the fire. “I already told you, I contacted the employers around here. No one’s hiring.”
“You’ll have to find work somewhere. Are you sure you can’t convince Mr. Silverton to take you back?”
“I wouldn’t go back,” Dell snarled. “I don’t need his money.”
Clay pulled him farther aside as the camera crew closed in again, hoping to conduct this conversation in private, but Ed broke off from the others and followed them. “Look,” Clay said in a low voice. “You need someone’s money.”
“Looks like there’s plenty of work here. Half this crew are loafers—you can tell by the way they—”
“Dad, these are hand-picked men. All ex-military. Show some respect.” His tone had grown sharper than he’d meant it to. Dell puffed up like a rooster, and Clay knew he had to head him off. “This isn’t a paid gig,” he continued. “We’re getting room and board, such as it is. Our materials and food are covered. Once we’ve got our community up and running, we’ll have to figure out how to make it profitable. A big part of that will be ranching. You’ve never liked that.”
“Ranching. Fat lot of good that’ll do you.”
Clay knew his father hated ranching for two reasons. First, because his old man had wanted him to take up the family business, something Dell refused to do. Second, because he was only two years into the architecture degree he’d wanted so badly when his parents lost their ranch in a combination of bad practices and worse luck. Dell had to quit school and go to work to help them out as they sold off the property and struggled to cover their debts. He’d gone straight into construction, and never made it back to finish his degree. Despite his temper, he’d done well for himself over the years—until recently. As cussed as he was, he was a good worker. Clay doubted he had enough saved for the future to retire now, though.
“You’re telling me you’re not getting any money for this?” Dell demanded.
“Not yet.” Clay was all too aware of Ed filming their conversation. “Anyway, I can put you to work today just for something to do, but it won’t be paid. You need to look for a job.”
“I’ll check the listings.” Dell stalked off, but all too soon he was back at Clay’s side on the building site.
“Nothing new,” he said tersely, which meant Clay spent his day finding tasks for him to do around Base Camp instead of finding a way to patch things up with Nora. When he noticed Walker walk past and head up toward the manor, an ugly streak of jealousy surged through him. Was he going to see Avery?
Or Nora?
“Job’s yours,” Walker said when Nora opened the front door to the manor and found him on the steps. Dressed in her work gown, a large white apron covering most of it, she had been cleaning the first-floor bathroom when he’d arrived. Savannah was upstairs making up the bedrooms. Avery and Riley had gone down to Base Camp to consult with Boone about plans to make the manor more energy efficient.
“What does that mean?” She stood back to let him come in, but though he stepped into the doorway, he didn’t come in any farther. Behind him she could see a camera crew waiting to come inside and film the proceedings. She was su
re he knew they were there, but he didn’t acknowledge them.
“My grandmother will come by tomorrow after school.”
“Doesn’t she want to interview me before hiring me for the job?”
Behind Walker, a cameraman Nora thought was named Craig Demaris cleared his throat.
Walker shook his head, keeping his position.
“What about references—does she want a list of them to call?”
He shook his head again.
Nora eyed him. This wasn’t the way things were done in Baltimore. “She doesn’t even know if I am who I say I am!”
Craig cleared his throat again. “Walker? You’ll have to move, buddy.”
Walker ignored him. “Got some ID?” He leaned against the doorjamb and waited as if he expected her to fetch it.
“Yes. Upstairs.” That was more like it. With a copy of her ID, at least his grandmother could verify a few things. Nora liked everything to be done by the book. This loosey-goosey way of hiring made her nervous. She climbed the two flights to her room to fetch her purse. Downstairs again, slightly out of breath, she pulled out her driver’s license. Walker looked it over. Handed it back.
“Good.”
Nora blinked. He couldn’t be serious. Wasn’t he going to photocopy it or something—?
Wait. Had the corner of his mouth hitched up a fraction of an inch, just for a second? Was Walker… teasing her?
No, she decided. Not him. Although…
No.
“That can’t be it,” she exclaimed, disconcerted by this whole situation. “This isn’t any way to hire a person.”
“Walker!” Craig said. “Let us in, man.”
“This is Chance Creek.” Walker seemed to think that explanation enough. “Three o’clock. Be ready.”
Three o’clock was right in the middle of her writing time. There wasn’t anything for it, of course. She wanted the job. She’d have to write in the evenings. If Walker’s grandmother left by five, she’d be on time for dinner down at Base Camp, anyway. She knew Renata would have things to say if she was late.
