“I’m Derek,” he said, beginning to feel like things were getting out of his control.
She looked down at the ledger again, then over at Sam. “Is this your son?”
Derek nodded and opened his mouth to ask what this was all about, but she interrupted him. “Okay, since that all checks out, you can move forward.”
“Move on to where?” Derek asked, beginning to lose his patience.
“Here’s a map; follow these directions, and there will be someone waiting for you there,” she said.
When he opened his mouth, she held up her hand. “I’m sorry, that’s all I can tell you.”
Half an hour later, they’d driven out of town and into the mountains to a huge barn with a lot of cars parked next to it. Again, the three of them sat in the car looking at the barn, wondering what they were doing there. “Does anyone else feel like we’ve been sent on a wild goose chase?” he asked, then got out of the car.
Before he even got the door shut, an older man came out of the barn and started walking over to them. “You must be Derek Coleman,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Steven; I’ll be your escort today.”
“I’m sorry to sound rude, but our escort where?” Derek asked.
“To Serendipity, of course,” Steven said, grinning at them. “We’ll just get your things loaded into one of the wagons, and we can be on our way.”
Derek looked back at Gus and Sam in the car. “You want us to get in a wagon with you and go off into the mountains?” he asked, suddenly worried that he’d made a mistake coming here.
“You don’t know where we’re going do you?” Steven asked, nodding to Gus and Sam, who’d finally gotten out of the truck.
“No, and until I do, we’re not going anywhere with you,” Derek said, crossing his arms over his chest, tired of playing games.
Steven studied him for a few minutes. “Would it help if I told you that I knew your father?”
Derek relaxed, but only a little. “Maybe.”
“It’s been almost twenty years since he was here, but I’ll never forget him. He was a good friend,” Steven said. “He came up here for a couple of weeks every year, but the last time I saw him, he was talking about bringing you here with him to live. He never talked much about his life except for you Derek; he talked about you all the time.”
Derek still wasn’t convinced, but his words supported what Gus had told him days before. “That must have been what he was talking about,” Gus said. “Your dad kept talking about changing his life, finding the freedom he’d been missing.”
“And after he died, you thought he meant killing himself,” Derek said.
“It did cross my mind, but I never really believed it,” Gus said.
Derek turned back to Steven. “What else can you tell me about my dad? He died when I was almost thirteen, the same time you’re talking about.”
“Tell you what: we’ve got an hour’s ride to Serendipity, plenty of time for me to tell you what I know about your father,” Steven said. “I’ve got a team hitched up and ready to go.”
***Lynette***
Lynette finished dressing as quickly as she could, then pounded down the stairs and out the front door, smiling when her father yelled at her to slow down. She paused on the porch and let the smell of spring wash over her. There were so many things she loved about her home, and this was one of them. There was nothing like the smell of spring in the air, the warm days and cool nights. It would be one of the few things she’d miss if she ever left.
She’d been trying to figure out how to make her big announcement and fighting the butterflies that erupted in her stomach since her father gave his orders. It felt like the butterflies were winning, and she knew she was going to make a fool of herself in front of the whole camp. A feeling of resentment rose deep inside her that her life had to be an open book to everyone around her: that something as personal as her love life had to be on display for everyone to see.
Pushing it away, she started down the road, but then she saw that the road was scattered with men. Slowing down, she watched as one after another lifted his hand and waved to her, then to her horror, they started walking toward her. There had to be at least ten of them. Panicked, she turned and ran back to the house. She threw open the front door, slipped through, then slammed it shut behind her and leaned against it.
“What have I told you about slamming that door?” her father asked, walking into the entryway.
“Have you looked outside?” she asked.
“Yep, but they’re not bothering me,” he said, trying not to grin. “I told you what to do.”
“But how am I going to get through them?” she asked, peeking out the window.
“I don’t know; you could try running really fast,” her father said.
“Dad, you’re not helping,” she wined.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” he said, then disappeared into his study, leaving her standing there alone.
It didn’t take her long to come up with a solution, and a half an hour later, she was on her way back out the door. After kicking her father out of his study, she’d used the computer to print up invitations to the party, then printed out hundreds, hoping that the word would spread quickly, and she’d have some peace. Invitations in hand, she started down the road, walking as quickly as she could.
When she reached the first man, before he could even open his mouth, she said, “Read this,” and pushed on. It was like walking a gauntlet, and much to her dismay, instead of reading the invitation and going back to their lives, the men were following her.
By the time she got to the lodge, people were looking at her and whispering, so she headed for the only place she knew would be safe. As soon as she walked through the kitchen door, the men trailing behind her; Rosie came to her rescue, as she knew she would.
“You are not coming in here,” she said. “Don’t you all have someplace you’re supposed to be?”
The men all looked at each other and then down at the floor. “We were just hoping to talk to her,” one of them said.
“Introduce ourselves,” another piped up.
“There will be plenty of time for that later; now get out of here and back to where you belong. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, harassing Lynette this way. Shoo, go on,” Rosie said.
They shuffled away, chattering among themselves, and Lynette wanted to sink into the floor right then and there, especially when she saw that the entire kitchen staff was watching. But Rosie came to her rescue, sweeping her to the back of the kitchen and into her office.
“Sit down here,” Rosie said, pushing her into a chair. “I’ll get us some tea; you look like you could use it.”
After filling Rosie in on the abrupt change in her life, and a second cup of tea, she felt better. “Surely by now word has gotten around that I want to be left alone,” she said, getting to her feet. “This is probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I’m sure things will have calmed down,” Rosie said. “If not, you know where I am.”
Lynette laughed. “I think I’ll sneak out the backdoor just in case.”
Slipping around the side of the building, she felt a little bit ridiculous, but she didn’t want to be accosted by the group of men if they were still hanging around waiting for her. When she saw only the normal hustle and bustle of Serendipity, campers doing activities, staff busy with their various tasks, she came out.
Relieved, she decided to hang the invitations up around camp—not that it was probably necessary at this point, but she’d gone to all the trouble to make them. She’d just stapled one on a light post and turned to head over to the barn when she ran straight into a hard chest, knocking the air out of her lungs, and the invitations to the ground.
Stunned, she could only stare at the man she’d run into, a shiver running down her spine when she looked into his green eyes. Sucking in a deep breath, she got a huge whiff of his cologne, and her body began to ting
le in a way it never had before. Even more shocked, she stepped back, her chest rising and falling.
“When will you all get it? You need to leave me alone,” she spat at him, letting anger cover her other feelings. “I don’t want to date you or anyone else. I just broke things off with Tim, and I need some time. Can’t you all just understand that?”
“Oh, I...” he started, but she didn’t let him finish.
“Go away and tell all the rest of them to leave me alone,” she said. When he didn’t move, she pushed past him and started toward the barn. “Don’t even think about following me.”
Chapter Five
***Derek***
Derek knew that he should just turn around and walk away, didn’t have the slightest idea what the woman was talking about, but she’d caught his attention and dropped her papers. Picking them up, he saw that it was an invitation to a party. He read it quickly then ran to catch up with her.
“You dropped these,” he said, holding out the invitations.
“Didn’t I tell you not to follow me?” she asked, then saw the invitations in his hands. Ripping them from his hands, she said, “Thank you; now go away.”
“I just wanted to ask for directions to the store,” Derek said, still following her.
“Sure, I believe that,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked, looking down at the invitation again. “Are you Lynette?”
She stopped and turned around. “As if you didn’t know,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and giving him a challenging look.
“Well, honestly, I didn’t know. I just got here yesterday,” Derek said.
Her cheeks turned pink, and she looked down at the ground. “Oh, um, well then, I guess you know now,” she said.
“Can you tell me where the store is?” he asked, the young woman’s attitude beginning to get on his nerves.
“You’re going the wrong way; it’s on the other side of the valley,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction.
Derek sighed. He felt like he’d been hiking around the valley all day. “Okay, thanks,” he said, turning to go. “It was nice to meet you, Lynette; maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
Wondering if people had been giving him the wrong directions all morning, he thought about going back to the cabin for the map he’d forgotten, then changed his mind. It shouldn’t be that hard to find the store in Serendipity. It was smaller than his home town, but somehow, he kept getting turned around. Sighing, he took a fork in the road that led to the buildings Lynette had pointed to, then realized that he was still holding one of her papers.
Reading it again as he walked down the road, he wondered what kind of place he’d come to. But when he finally walked into the store, it was clear that he wasn’t the only one who thought it was strange. “What does he think he’s doing, introducing her to society?” he heard one woman ask.
“Well, I heard that this morning there were men lined up outside their door,” another said, shaking her head. “Nothing good can come from this; she should have just married Tim like her parents wanted.”
As he made his selections, he began to get a picture of the young woman he’d met earlier, and he actually began to feel a little sorry for her. She couldn’t be much more than her mid-twenties, but it sounded like she was someone important in Serendipity. He was tempted to break into the conversation and ask but didn’t want to attract attention to himself, so he quietly took his purchases up to the counter and set them down.
He was nearly out the door when one of the women stopped him. “Oh my, I don’t think we’ve met,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him.
“You must be new in Serendipity,” the other woman said, sliding up next to her friend, who’d moved a couple of steps closer to him.
“Yes, I umm, just arrived here with my son and my friend Gus,” he said, taking a few steps toward the door.
“I’m Vera, and this is Stephanie,” the first woman said.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” he said, still inching toward the door.
“You look very familiar, like someone I used to know,” Stephanie said, moving a few steps closer. Then she took a deep breath, and her eyes got big. “You know who he looks like, Vera?”
“He looks like Carter Coleman,” she said before Vera could answer. “You remember him. He was so handsome.”
“And very married, if I remember right,” Vera said, a look of disapproval on her face. “I also remember how you chased him that last summer before you married George.”
Stephanie shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing ever happened, but it was fun chasing an older man.”
The women were soon chatting away about the past, allowing him to slip out the door unnoticed. He was still trying to come to terms with all that Steven had told him about his father, hearing yet another side to him just added to the swirling thoughts in his brain. The man he’d known was nothing like the man he’d been hearing about since he’d come to Serendipity: nothing like the silent, cold man who occupied the house when he was a child.
But as he walked to the cabin, he realized that away from home, his father had been a completely different man. Those times had been few and far between since his mother had a tight leash on his father when he was home, and it was no wonder that he sought out something better when he got away. It still hurt to think that all those business trips had really been to Serendipity, that he’d run away from him too.
Pushing the hurt away, he tried to see it from his father’s perspective, understanding all too well what his mother must have been like to live with, and forgave him. In the end, he’d gotten Derek here, and as strange as the camp was, he felt a sense of comfort just being in the valley. He had no idea what the future held, but he and Sam were safe here, and Gus was with them. He couldn’t think of a better place to spend the summer.
Opening the door to the cabin his father had built over the summers he’d visited, he stepped inside, feeling his father’s presence almost immediately. “Well, Dad, I don’t know why you wanted me to come here, but I hope you let me know pretty soon,” he said, taking the groceries to the kitchen.
***Lynette***
As soon as the song ended, Lynette smiled at her partner. “Thank you; it was nice to meet you,” she said, then pulled away and disappeared into the crowd.
But it wasn’t long before there was a trail of men following her, and she wanted to turn around and scream at them to leave her alone. Instead, she headed straight for her parents, knowing that they’d all back off when they saw her father, who’d more than once voiced his displeasure when they got too close.
She sank onto the couch next to her mother and stared into the cold fireplace, trying to catch her breath. “I need a break,” she said, eyeing the men hanging around them. “They won’t go away. Can’t you make them stop, Daddy?”
Her father grinned at her. “I thought you wanted to fall in love,” he said. “You can’t do that unless you kiss a few frogs.”
“That’s more than just a few, and I’m not kissing any of them,” she said, glaring at the largest group. “I’ve been groped and pinched, had several rather shocking suggestions made to me, and twice, one of them tried to kiss me right out there on the dance floor.”
Her mother patted her arm. “You can’t blame them, sweetheart; you’re a pretty good catch,” her mother said. “I did warn you.”
Lynette groaned. “Not well enough,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting.
The longer she sat there, the more the men around them began to mill around. “Looks like they’re beginning to get restless. I think break time is over,” her father said, his face full of disapproval.
“There’s no way I’m going to dance with all of them tonight,” Lynette said, getting to her feet. “I’m leaving as soon as I can.”
But as she joined the fray again, she knew they were empty words; she’d been trained to do her duty, and tonight it was clearly her duty to dance with ev
ery single man in Serendipity. She grabbed the nearest man, listened while he stammered out his name, then pulled him onto the dance floor, his mouth hanging open. But as she danced, her mind was on another man: a man with green eyes and an easy grace that she found exciting. A little thrill of attraction pulsed through her, and she once again looked around the room for him, disappointed when she didn’t see him.
He was too old for her, but she didn’t care; he was the first man who’d stirred her in any way. It wasn’t like she was going to do anything about it, but it might be interesting to see him again, to talk to him, to look into those impossibly green eyes. But she had no idea who he was or what he was doing in Serendipity, and the last thing she wanted to do was start asking around about him.
She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she forgot about the man she was dancing with: that is, until his hands began to roam down her back to her butt. “I think that brings our dance to an end,” she said, shoving him away.
Anger bubbled to life inside her, and she pushed her way through the crowd and off the dance floor, seizing the opportunity to keep going right out the back door. As soon as the door closed behind her, she stepped into the shadows and waited, rewarded when the door burst open, and a string of men came out. They stood outside the door, looking first one way and then the other, then as a group picked a direction and left.
She wanted to laugh out loud but didn’t want to give herself away, so instead, she mumbled, “Are men always so stupid?”
A deep voice answered her: “Only when it comes to women.”
Whirling around, a scream escaping her lips, she stood staring at the man she’d run into the day before. “What are you doing hiding back there?” she demanded, her heart hammering in her chest.
“Well, first of all, I wasn’t hiding: you were,” the man said. “I just came out here to get a little fresh air.”
He was sitting on a bench tucked back against the building, one leg crossed over the other, his arm lying across the back. Even in the darkness, she could see his green eyes, the stubble where his beard would grow in if he didn’t shave, and the wavy blond hair that reached just to his collar.
Daddy Wolves of the Wild Prequel Page 3
