A Cold Creek Reunion

Chapter Two

“Guess who I saw in town the other day.”

Taft grabbed one of his sister’s delicious dinner rolls from the basket being passed around his family’s dining-room table and winked at Caidy. “Me, doing something awesome and heroic, probably. Fighting a fire. Saving someone’s life. I don’t know. Could be anything.”

His niece, Destry, and Gabrielle Parsons, whose older sister was marrying Taft’s twin brother, Trace, in a few months, both giggled—just as he had intended—but Caidy only rolled her eyes. “News flash. Not everything is about you, Taft. But oddly, in a way, this is.”

“Who did you see?” he asked, though he was aware of a glimmer of uneasy trepidation, already expecting what was coming next.

“I didn’t have a chance to talk to her. I just happened to see her while I was driving,” Caidy said.

“Who?” he asked again, teetering on the brink of annoyance.

“Laura Pendleton,” Caidy announced.

“Not Pendleton anymore,” Ridge, their older brother and Destry’s father, corrected.

“That’s right,” Trace chimed in from the other side of the table, where he was holding hands with Becca. How the heck did they manage to eat when they couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other? Taft wondered.

“She got married to some guy while she was living in Spain and they had a couple of kids,” Trace went on. “I hear one of them was involved in all the excitement the other day at the inn.”

Taft pictured her kid solemnly promising he wouldn’t play with matches again. He’d picked up the definite vibe that the kid was a mischievous little rascal, but for all that, his sincerity had rung true.

“Yeah. Apparently her older kid, Alex, was a little too curious about a lighter he found in an empty room and caught some curtains on fire.”

“And you had to ride to her rescue?” Caidy gave him a wide-eyed look. “Gosh, that must have been awkward for both of you.”

Taft reached for more mashed potatoes, hoping the heat on his face could be attributed to the steaming bowl.

“Why would it be? Everything was fine,” he muttered.

Okay, that was a lie, but his family didn’t necessarily need to know he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Laura for the past few days. Every time he had a quiet moment, her blue eyes and delicate features would pop into his head and some other half-forgotten memory of their time together would emerge like the Tetons rising out of a low fog bank.

That he couldn’t seem to stop them annoyed him. He had worked damn hard to forget her after she walked away. What was he supposed to do now that she was back in town and he couldn’t escape her or her kids or the weight of all his mistakes?

“You’ll have to catch me up here.” Becca, Trace’s fiancée, looked confused as she reached for her glass. “Who’s Laura Pendleton? I’m taking a wild guess here that she must be related to Mrs. Pendleton at the inn somehow—a client of mine, by the way—but why would it be awkward to have Taft put out a fire at the inn?”

“No reason really.” Caidy flashed him a quick look. “Just that Taft and Laura were engaged once.”

He fidgeted with his mashed potatoes, drawing his fork in a neat little firebreak to keep the gravy from spreading while he avoided the collective gaze of his beloved family. Why, again, had he once enjoyed these Sunday dinners?

“Engaged? Taft?” He didn’t need to look at his future sister-in-law to hear the surprise in her voice.

“I know,” his twin brother said. “Hard to believe, right?”

He looked up just in time to see Becca quickly try to hide her shocked gaze. She was too kindhearted to let him see how stunning she found the news, which somehow bothered him even more.

Okay, maybe he had a bit of a reputation in town—most of it greatly exaggerated—as a bit of a player. Becca knew him by now. She should know how silly it all was.

“When was this?” she asked with interest. “Recently?”

“Years ago,” Ridge said. “He and Laura dated just out of high school—”

“College,” he muttered. “She was in college.” Okay, she had been a freshman in college. But she wasn’t in high school, damn it. That point seemed important somehow.

“They were inseparable,” Trace interjected.

Ridge picked up where he’d left off. “And Taft proposed right around the time Laura graduated from the Montana State.”

“What happened?” Becca asked.

He really didn’t want to talk about this. What he wouldn’t give for a good emergency call right now. Nothing big. No serious personal injury or major property damage. How about a shed fire or a kid stuck in a well or something?

“We called things off.”

“The week before the wedding,” Caidy added.

Oh, yes. Don’t forget to add that little salacious detail.

“It was a mutual decision,” he lied, repeating the blatant fiction that Laura had begged him to uphold. Mutual decision. Right. If by mutual he meant Laura and if by decision he meant crush-the-life-out-of-a-guy blow.

Laura had dumped him. That was the cold, hard truth. A week before their wedding, after all the plans and deposits and dress fittings, she had given him back his ring and told him she couldn’t marry him.

“Why are we talking about ancient history?” he asked.

“Not so ancient anymore,” Trace said. “Not if Laura’s back in town.”

He was very much afraid his brother was right. Whether he liked it or not, with her once more residing in Pine Gulch, their past together would be dredged up again—and not by just his family.

Questions would swirl around them. Everybody had to remember that they had been just a few days away from walking down the aisle of the little church in town when things ended and Laura and her mother sent out those regrets and made phone calls announcing the big celebration wasn’t happening—while he had gone down to the Bandito and gotten drunk and stayed that way until about a month or two after the wedding day that didn’t happen.

She was back now, which meant that, like it or not, he would have to deal with everything he had shoved down ten years ago, all the emotions he had pretended weren’t important in order to get through the deep, aching loss of her.

He couldn’t blame his family for their curiosity—not even Trace, his twin and best friend, knew the full story about everything that had happened between him and Laura. He had always considered it his private business.

His family had loved her. Who didn’t? Laura had a knack for drawing people toward her, finding commonalities. She and his mother used to love discussing the art world and painting techniques. His mother had been an artist, only becoming renowned around the time of her murder. While Laura hadn’t any particular skill in that direction, she had shared a genuine appreciation for his parents’ extensive art collection.

His father had adored her, too, and had often told Taft that Laura was the best thing that would ever happen to him.

He looked up from the memory to find Becca’s eyes filled with a compassion that made him squirm and lose whatever appetite he might have had left.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured in that kind way she had. “Mutual decision or not, it still must have been painful. Is it hard for you to see her again?”

He faked a nonchalant look. “Hard? Why would it be hard? It was all a decade ago. She’s moved on. I’ve moved on. No big deal.”

Ridge gave what sounded like a fake cough and Trace had the same skeptical expression on his face he always wore when Taft was trying to talk him into living a little, doing something wild and adventurous for a change.

How was it possible to love his siblings and at the same time want to throw a few punches around the table, just on general principles?

Becca eyed him and then his brothers warily as if sensing his discomfort, then she quickly changed the subject. “How’s the house coming?” she asked.

His brother wasn’t nearly good enough for her, he decided, seizing the diversion. “Good. I’ve got only a couple more rooms to drywall. Should be done soon. After six months, the place is starting to look like a real house inside now.”

“I stopped by the other day and peeked in the windows,” Caidy confessed. “It’s looking great.”

“Give me a call next time and I can swing by and give you the tour, even if I’m at the fire station. You haven’t been by in a month or so. You’ll be surprised at how far along it is these days.”

After years of renting a convenient but small apartment near the fire station, he had finally decided it was time to build a real house. The two-story log house was set on five acres near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon.

“How about the barn and the pasture?” Ridge asked, rather predictably. Over the years, Taft had bred a couple mares to a stallion with excellent lines he had picked up for a steal from a rancher down on his luck up near Wood River. He had traded and sold the colts until he now had about six horses he’d been keeping at his family’s ranch.

“The fence is in. I’d like to get the barn up before I move the horses over, if you don’t mind keeping them a little longer.”

“That’s not what I meant. You know we’ve got plenty of room here. You can keep them here forever if you want.”

Maybe if he had his horses closer he might actually ride them once in a while instead of only stopping by to visit when he came for these Sunday dinners.

“When do you think all the work will be done?” Becca asked.

“I’m hoping by mid-May. Depends on how much free time I can find to finish things up inside.”

“If you need a hand, let me know,” Ridge offered quietly.

“Same goes,” Trace added.

Both of them had crazy-busy lives: Ridge running the ranch and raising Destry on his own and Trace as the overworked chief of police for an understaffed small-town force—in addition to planning his future together with Becca and Gabi. Their sincere offers to help touched him.

“I should be okay,” he answered. “The hard work is done now and I only have the fun stuff to finish.”

“I always thought there was something just a little crazy about you.” Caidy shook her head. “I must be right, especially if you think finish work and painting are fun.”

“I like to paint stuff,” Destry said. “I can help you, Uncle Taft.”

“Me, too!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “Oh, can we?”

Trouble followed the two of these girls around like one of Caidy’s rescue dogs. He had visions of paint spread all over the woodwork he had been slaving over the past month. “Thanks, girls. That’s really sweet of you. I’m sure Ridge can find something for you to touch up around here. That fence down by the creek was looking like it needed a new coat.”

“There’s always something that needs painting around here,” Ridge answered. “As soon as the weather warms up a little at night, I can put you both to work.”

“Will you pay us?” Gabrielle asked, always the opportunist.

Ridge chuckled. “We can negotiate terms with your attorney.”

Caidy asked Becca—said attorney—a question about their upcoming June wedding and attention shifted away from Taft, much to his relief. He listened to the conversation of his family, aware of this low simmer of restlessness that had become a familiar companion.

Ever since Trace and Becca found each other and fell in love, he had been filled with this vague unease, as if something about his world had shifted a little. He loved his brother. More than that, he respected him. Trace was his best friend and Taft could never begrudge him the happiness he had found with Becca and Gabi, but ever since they announced their engagement, he felt weird and more than a little off-balance.

Seeing Laura and her kids the other day had only intensified that odd feeling.

He had never been a saint—he would be the first to admit that and his family would probably stand in line right behind him—but he tried to live a decent life. His general philosophy about the world ran parallel to the premier motto of every emergency medical worker as well as others in the medical field: Primum Non Nocere. First, Do No Harm.

He did his best. He was a firefighter and paramedic and he enjoyed helping people of his community and protecting property. If he didn’t find great satisfaction in it, he would find something else to do. Maybe pounding nails for a living because he enjoyed that, too.

Despite his best efforts in the whole do no harm arena, he remembered each and every failure.

He had two big regrets in his life, and Laura Pendleton was involved in both of them.

He had hurt her. Those months leading up to her ultimate decision to break things off had been filled with one wound after another. He knew it. Hell, he had known it at the time, but that dark, angry man he had become after his parents’ murder seemed like another creature who had emerged out of his skin to destroy everything good and right in his life.

He couldn’t blame Laura for calling off their wedding. Not really. Even though it had hurt like the devil.

She had warned him she couldn’t marry him unless he made serious changes, and he had stubbornly refused, giving her no choice but to stay true to her word. She had moved on, taken some exotic job in hotel management in Spain somewhere and a few years later married a man she met there.

The reminder of her marriage left him feeling petty and small. Yeah, he had hurt her, but his betrayal probably didn’t hold a candle to everything else she had lost—her husband and the father of her children, whom he’d heard had drowned about six months earlier.

“Are you planning on eating any of that or just pushing it around your plate?”

He glanced up and, much to his shock, discovered Ridge was the only one left at the table. Everybody else had cleared off while he had been lost in thought, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry. Been a long couple of days.” He hoped his brother didn’t notice the heat he could feel crawling over his features.

Ridge gave him a long look and Taft sighed, waiting for the inevitable words of advice from his brother.

As the oldest Bowman sibling left after their parents died, Ridge had taken custody of Caidy, who had been a teenager at the time. Even though Taft and Trace had both been in their early twenties, Ridge still tried to take over the role of father figure to them, too, whether they liked it or not—which they usually didn’t.

Instead of a lecture, Ridge only sipped at his drink. “I was thinking about taking the girls for a ride up to check the fence line on the high pasture. Want to come along? A little mountain air might help clear your head.”

He did love being on the back of a horse amid the pine and sage of the mountains overlooking the ranch, but he wasn’t in the mood for more questions or sympathy from his family about Laura.

“To tell you the truth, I’m itching to get my hands dirty. I think I’ll head over to the house and put in a window frame or something.”

Ridge nodded. “I know you’ve got plenty to do on your own place, but I figured this was worth mentioning, too. I heard the other day at the hardware store that Jan Pendleton is looking to hire somebody to help her with some renovations to the inn.”

He snorted. As if Laura would ever let her mother hire him. He figured Ridge was joking but he didn’t see any hint of humor in his brother’s expression.

“Just saying. I thought you might be interested in helping Laura and her mother out a little.”

Ah. Without actually offering a lecture, this must be Ridge’s way of reminding Taft he owed Laura something. None of the rest of the family knew what had happened all those years ago, but he was pretty sure all of them blamed him.

And they were right.

Without answering, he shoved away from the table and grabbed his plate to carry it into the kitchen. First, do no harm. But once the harm had been done, a stand-up guy found some way to make it right. No matter how difficult.

Chapter Three

Laura stared at her mother, shock buzzing through her as if she had just bent down and licked an electrical outlet.

“Sorry, say that again. You did what?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind, darling,” her mother said, with a vague sort of smile as she continued stirring the chicken she was cooking for their dinner.

Are you completely mental? she wanted to yell. How could you possibly think I wouldn’t mind?

She drew a deep, cleansing breath, clamping down on the words she wanted to blurt out. The children were, for once, staying out of trouble, driving cars around the floor of the living room and she watched them interact for a moment to calm herself.

Her mother was under a great deal of strain right now, financially and otherwise. She had to keep that in mind—not that stress alone could explain her mother making such an incomprehensible decision.

“Really, it was all your idea,” Jan said calmly.

“My idea?” Impossible. Even in her most tangled nightmare, she never would have come up with this possible scenario.

“Yes. Weren’t you just saying the other day how much it would help to have a carpenter on the staff to help with the repairs, especially now that we totally have to start from the ground up in the fire-damaged room?”

“I say a lot of things, Mom.” That doesn’t mean I want you to rush out and enter into a deal with a particular devil named Taft Bowman.

“I just thought you would appreciate the help, that’s all. I know how much the fire has complicated your timeline for the renovation.”

“Not really. Only one room was damaged and it was already on my schedule for renovations.”

“Well, when Chief Bowman stopped by this morning to check on things after the excitement we had the other day—which I thought was a perfectly lovely gesture, by the way—he mentioned he could lend us a hand with any repairs in his free time. Honestly, darling, it seemed like the perfect solution.”

Really? Having her daughter’s ex-fiancé take an empty room at the inn for the next two weeks in exchange for a little skill with a miter saw was perfect in what possible alternative universe?

Her mother was as sharp as the proverbial tack. Jan Pendleton had been running the inn on her own since Laura’s father died five years ago. While she didn’t always agree with her mother’s methods and might have run things differently if she had been home, Laura knew Jan had tried hard to keep the inn functioning all those years she had been living in Madrid.

But she still couldn’t wrap her head around this one. “In theory, it is a good idea. A resident carpenter would come in very handy. But not Taft, for heaven’s sake, Mom!”

Jan frowned in what appeared to be genuine confusion. “You mean because of your history together?”

“For a start. Seeing him again after all these years is more than a little awkward,” she admitted.

Her mother continued to frown. “I’m sorry but I don’t understand. What am I missing? You always insisted your breakup was a mutual decision. I distinctly remember you telling me over and over again you had both decided you were better off as friends.”

Had she said that? She didn’t remember much about that dark time other than her deep despair.

“You were so cool and calm after your engagement ended, making all those terrible phone calls, returning all those wedding presents. You acted like you didn’t care at all. Honey, I honestly thought you wouldn’t mind having Taft here now or I never would have taken him up on his suggestion.”

Ah. Her lying little chickens were now coming home to roost. Laura fought the urge to bang her head on the old pine kitchen table a few dozen times.

Ten years ago, she had worked so hard to convince everyone involved that nobody’s heart had been shattered by the implosion of their engagement. To her parents, she had put on a bright, happy face and pretended to be excited about the adventures awaiting her, knowing how crushed they would have been if they caught even a tiny glimmer of the truth—that inside her heart felt like a vast, empty wasteland.

How could she blame her mother for not seeing through her carefully constructed act to the stark and painful reality, especially when only a few years later, Laura was married to someone else and expecting Jan’s first grandchild? It was unfair to be hurt, to wish Jan had somehow glimpsed the depth of her hidden heartache.

This, then, was her own fault. Well, hers and a certain opportunistic male who had always been very good at charming her mother—and every other female within a dozen miles of Pine Gulch.

“Okay, the carpentry work. I get that. Yes, we certainly need the help and Taft is very good with his hands.” She refused to remember just how good those hands could be. “But did you have to offer him a room?”

Jan shrugged, adding a lemony sauce to the chicken that instantly started to burble, filling the kitchen with a delicious aroma. “That was his idea.”

Oh, Laura was quite sure it was Taft’s idea. The bigger question was why? What possible reason could he have for this sudden wish to stay at the inn? By the stunned look he had worn when he spotted her at the fire scene, she would have assumed he wanted to stay as far away from her as possible.

He had to find this whole situation as awkward and, yes, painful as she did.

Maybe it was all some twisted revenge plot. She had spurned him after all. Maybe he wanted to somehow punish her all these years later with shoddy carpentry work that would end up costing an arm and a leg to repair….

She sighed at her own ridiculous imaginings. Taft didn’t work that way. Whatever his motive for making this arrangement with her mother, she had no doubt he would put his best effort into the job.

“Apparently his lease was up on the apartment where he’s been living,” Jan went on. “He’s building a house in Cold Creek Canyon—which I’ve heard is perfectly lovely, by the way—but it won’t be finished for a few more weeks. Think of how much you can save on paying for a carpenter, all in exchange only for letting him stay in a room that was likely to be empty anyway, the way our vacancy rate will be during the shoulder season until the summer tourist activity heats up. I honestly thought you would be happy about this. When Taft suggested it, the whole thing seemed like a good solution all the way around.”

A good solution for everyone except her! How would she survive having him underfoot all the time, smiling at her out of those green eyes she had once adored so much, talking to her out of that delicious mouth she had tasted so many times?

She gave a tiny sigh and her mother sent her a careful look. “I can still tell him no. He was planning on bringing some of his things over in the morning, but I’ll just give him a ring and tell him never mind. We can find someone else, honey, if having Taft here will make you too uncomfortable.”

Her mother was completely sincere, she knew. Jan would call him in immediately if she had any idea how much Laura had grieved for the dreams they had once spun together.

For an instant, she was tempted to have her mother do exactly that, call and tell him the deal was off.

How could she, though? She knew just what Taft would think. He would guess, quite accurately, that she was the one who didn’t want him here and would know she had dissuaded her mother from the plan.

Her shoulder blades itched at the thought. She didn’t want him thinking she was uncomfortable having him around. Better that he continue to believe she was completely indifferent to the ramifications of being back in Pine Gulch with him.

She had done her very best to strike the proper tone the day of the fire, polite but cool, as if they were distant acquaintances instead of once having shared everything.

If she told her mother she didn’t want to have Taft here, he would know her demeanor was all an act.

She was trapped. Well and truly trussed, just like one of the calves he used to rope in the high-school rodeo. It was a helpless, miserable feeling, one that felt all too familiar. She had lived with it every day of the past seven years, since her marriage to Javier Santiago. But unlike those calves in the rodeo ring, she had wandered willingly into the ropes that bound her to a man she didn’t love.

Well, she hadn’t been completely willing, she supposed. From the beginning she had known marrying him was a mistake and had tried every way she could think short of jilting him also to escape the ties binding them together. But unlike with Taft, this time she’d had a third life to consider. She had been four months pregnant with Alexandro. Javier—strangely old-fashioned about this, at least—wouldn’t consider any other option but marriage.

She had tried hard to convince herself she was in love with him. He was handsome and seductively charming and made her laugh with his extravagant pursuit of her, which had been the reason she had finally given in and begun to date him while she was working at the small, exclusive boutique hotel he owned in Madrid.

She had tried to be a good wife and had worked hard to convince herself she loved him, but it hadn’t been enough. Not for him and not for her—but by then she had been thoroughly entangled in the piggin’ rope, so to speak, by Alex and then by Maya, her sweet-natured and vulnerable daughter.

This, though, with Taft. She couldn’t control what her mother had done, but she could certainly control her own response to it. She wouldn’t allow herself to care if the man had suddenly invaded every inch of her personal space by moving into the hotel. It was only temporary and then he would be out of her life again.

“Do you want me to call him?” her mother asked again.

She forced herself to smile. “Not at all, Mama. I’m sorry. I was just … surprised, that’s all. Everything should be fine. You’re right—it’s probably a great idea. Free labor is always a good thing, and like you said, the only thing we’re giving up is a room that probably wouldn’t have been booked anyway.”

Maya wandered into the kitchen, apparently tired of playing, and gave her mother one of those generous hugs Laura had come to depend upon like oxygen and water. “Hungry, Mama.”

“Gram is fixing us something delicious for dinner. Aren’t we lucky to have her?”

Maya nodded with a broad smile to her grandmother. “Love you, Gram.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.” Jan beamed back at her.

This—her daughter and Alex—was more important than her discomfort about Taft. She was trying her best to turn the hotel into something that could actually turn a profit instead of just provide a subsistence for her mother and now her and her children.

She had her chance to live her lifelong dream now and make the Cold Creek Inn into the warm and gracious facility she had always imagined, a place where families could feel comfortable to gather, where couples could find or rekindle romance, where the occasional business traveler could find a home away from home.

This was her moment to seize control of her life and make a new future for herself and her children. She couldn’t let Taft ruin that for her.

All she had to do was remind herself that she hadn’t loved him for ten years and she should be able to handle his presence here at the inn with calm aplomb.

No big deal whatsoever. Right?

If some part of him had hoped Laura might fall all over him with gratitude for stepping up to help with the inn renovations, Taft would have been doomed to disappointment.

Over the next few days, as he settled into his surprisingly comfortable room in the wing overlooking the creek, a few doors down from the fire-damaged room, he helped Mrs. Pendleton with the occasional carpentry job. A bathroom cabinet repair here, a countertop fix there. In that time, he barely saw Laura. Somehow she was always mysteriously absent whenever he stopped at the front desk.

The few times he did come close enough to talk to her, she would exchange a quick, stiff word with him and then manufacture some excuse to take off at the earliest opportunity, as if she didn’t want to risk some kind of contagion.

She had dumped him, not the other way around, but she was acting as if he was the biggest heel in the county. Still, he found her prickly, standoffish attitude more a challenge than an annoyance.

Truth was, he wasn’t used to women ignoring him—and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to Laura ignoring him.

They had been friends forever, even before that momentous summer after her freshman year of college when he finally woke up and realized how much he had come to care about her as much more than simply a friend. After she left, he had missed the woman he loved with a hollow ache he had never quite been able to fill, but he sometimes thought he missed his best friend just as much.

After three nights at the hotel with these frustrating, fleeting encounters, he was finally able to run her to ground early one morning. He had an early meeting at the fire station, and when he walked out of the side entrance near where he parked the vehicle he drove as fire chief—which was as much a mobile office as a mode of transportation—he spotted someone working in the scraggly flower beds that surrounded the inn.

The beds were mostly just a few tulips and some stubbly, rough-looking shrubs but it looked as if somebody was trying to make it more. Several flats of colorful blooms had been spaced with careful efficiency along the curvy sidewalk, ready to be transplanted into the flower beds.

At first, he assumed the gardener under the straw hat was someone from a landscaping service until he caught a glimpse of honey-blond hair.

He instantly switched direction. “Good morning,” he called as he approached. She jumped and whirled around. When she spotted him, her instinctive look of surprise twisted into something that looked like dismay before she tucked it away and instead gave him a polite, impersonal smile.