Sophia opened the door to her house, and the dog and Adam followed her inside. “Are you sure Nell doesn’t know where Autumn and Logan are?” she asked him.
After the truck towed away her SUV, Adam had driven her to Sugar and Spice. Autumn wasn’t there, and there was no sign she had been. She wasn’t in the apartment upstairs either; nor was she answering her cell. Sophia couldn’t shake the feeling there was more going on than an early-morning booty call.
“Nell swears she doesn’t know where they are. Gramps says the same, and so did the kids. And it’s not like there was a reason for them to lie. I said I was checking in because we had plans to go fishing.” Closing the door behind him, he looked around. “Nice place, Soph. Might be a good idea to lock the door when you go out though.”
“I usually do, but I was in a hurry.” She lifted a slippered foot as evidence, and the dog came over to sniff it. She would have preferred he stayed in the truck while she changed, but she felt sorry for him. As sorry as she felt for his new owner.
The loss of his friend and his own near-fatal injury had taken a toll on Adam. He was pale, the angles of his handsome face more pronounced, but it wasn’t just the physical changes that concerned her. His reflexes were off. In the past, he would have been between her and Zeus before the dog had taken a step in her direction. She didn’t think his surprise at how Zeus responded to her explained it away. There was more going on than he let on.
“I won’t be long.” Sophia pointed to the kitchen. “If you want something to eat or drink, the kitchen is in there, and the living room is that way. You can sit on the couch, but you stay on the floor,” she told the dog as she removed her trench coat. Catching a glimpse of the look on Adam’s face as she hung it in the closet, she rolled her eyes.
Ty had given her the adorable pj’s as a joke gift when he’d found out about her brief stint as a Playboy Playmate. She’d been Miss January. A job the Danes had never let her live down. Still, she didn’t allow herself to regret the decision. The money had paid her college tuition after all.
But it wasn’t like she was parading around in a merry widow and a thong. The lingerie set was hardly risqué. The pink camisole imprinted with the Playboy logo and pink tap pants decorated with tiny bunny ears covered all her parts.
“Some women would wear this outside in the summer, and no one would bat an eye.”
Adam scrubbed a hand over his beard-stubbled jaw. “Pretty sure you’re not one of those women, Dimples.”
Suddenly conscious she wasn’t wearing a bra, she turned and walked to the stairs. “Go to Christmas’s Facebook page and ask if anyone has seen Autumn and Logan.”
“To do that, I’d have to be on Facebook, which I’m not.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Twitter?” He raised an eyebrow. “Instagram?” He raised the other eyebrow. She sighed and gave him her Facebook log-in information. “I’m an administrator on Autumn’s page, so you can access hers through mine. Check Instagram too. Autumn posts all the time. But be careful who you like or respond to. People will think it’s me.”
“Got it. I promise not to try to pick up hot women.”
“If you do, I’ll tell Yvonne.”
“You’ll have to do better than that. Yvonne and I ended things in January.”
The girl she used to be cheered, and so did the woman she was now. Although she wished she’d known sooner. Yvonne was the reason she’d stayed away from San Francisco. She’d been afraid the judge would see through her. She’d pictured them laughing at his brother’s silly widow and her pathetic crush. “I’m sorry. She seemed perfect for you.”
“Yeah, well…Zeus, heir. Come here.”
Sophia bowed her head at the clicking of nails on the hardwood floor. Adam called the dog again, but the clicking continued unabated.
“What is it with you and this dog?” Adam said as he came to get Zeus.
“Typical male. They always want the woman who doesn’t want them.” She shouldn’t judge. She was a silly woman lusting after a man who’d never wanted her. “It’s okay,” she relented when Adam tried once again to get Zeus to come, feeling some empathy toward the animal, who now bounded up the stairs ahead of her. “But you’re not coming in my bedroom.”
“I promise I’ll get him out of there so you can change. He just needs to make sure you’re safe before he can relax.”
“Okay.” She stood beside Adam outside her bedroom, watching the dog at work. “I didn’t get a chance to make my bed.”
“This isn’t the same setup you had when you were married to Bryce, is it?” he asked in a tone of voice that made his thoughts on her overly feminine room perfectly clear.
“No. I decorated it for me, and I love it.” Her gaze moved fondly over the mirrored bedside tables and dresser, gray velvet headboard and bedframe, and pink bedding and chandelier. “It makes me smile every time I walk in my room.”
It was true. Though, ever since New Year’s, she’d been fantasizing about Adam standing right where he was now, looking at her bedroom with that same half smile on his face. Only in her fantasy, he didn’t lean on her doorframe for long. He swept her into his muscular arms, carried her into her room, tossed her on her bed, and then covered her with his big body.
“I’m glad it makes you happy, Soph.” He held up his phone. “I should get on this.”
“You’re not pretending to help like last time, are you? You really are trying to find Logan and Autumn?”
“Like I told you at New Year’s, I agreed to keep you occupied but never got a chance. Nell, Ty, and my grandfather took care of that all on their own. Couldn’t pretend then and can’t pretend now that I’m mad at them for setting us up though. I enjoyed spending New Year’s with you.”
“I enjoyed spending it with you—” She broke off when the dog jumped on her bed. “Zeus, down. Now.” He got off immediately and came to her side, sitting at her feet. “I wish all men listened as well as you. Okay.” She waved both the dog and Adam off. “I’m getting changed.”
“You have anything casual?” he asked as he glanced doubtfully in the direction of her open closet. “Jeans, maybe? I have a feeling my brother took Autumn on an adventure, so we’ll be taking one of our own if you want to find them.”
“How adventurous?”
His mouth lifted at the corner. “Horseback riding, hang gliding, white-water rafting. That kind of thing.”
“Oh, I thought you meant something really adventurous.” She waved her hand like she took part in activities such as those all the time and then shut the bedroom door in Adam’s laughing face.
While Sophia searched her closet for something outdoorsy to wear, Adam updated her on the activity on her Facebook account.
“Soph, when was the last time you checked Facebook?”
“A couple of days ago. Why?”
“Because there’s a bunch of guys thanking you for accepting them, and you sound, ah, really friendly.”
She growled low in her throat and heard an answering rumble on the other side of the door.
“Relax, Zeus,” Adam said. “Stop pacing. She’ll be out in a minute. Zeus, sitz.”
At Adam’s frustrated sigh, she said, “Zeus, sit,” and then picked up her cell phone to call Ty. It went straight to voice mail. “Just because you have spring fever doesn’t mean I do, Ty. Stop pretending you are me on my Facebook page and stop screening your calls. Autumn is missing.”
“Don’t worry. He won’t get on your account anymore. I took him off as an administrator. I also got rid of the guys he accepted. I’m on Autumn’s page now. She hasn’t updated her status in a couple days…”
“What? What do you see? Don’t pretend you don’t. I can hear it in your voice.”
“It’s not what she says. It’s some of my brother’s recent comments. He’s been messaging her too. Okay, I’m not really comfortable with this, Soph. But I will tell you that there’s no doubt they’re dating. And I know you don’t want to hear this, but it sounds like they’re serious.”
She whipped open the door. Adam, who’d been sitting on the floor leaning against her door, fell on his back at her feet. He stared up at her and gave his head a slight shake. “Next time, do me a favor and wait until you’re fully dressed before opening the door.”
She looked down at herself. She had on a long-sleeve cream thermal top, a faux-fur vest, and a thong. She turned, ignored his groan, and went to grab the black jeans off the end of her bed. “You can’t say things like that to me and expect me not to react.”
“And you can’t parade around in your underwear and expect me not to react.”
“I’m not parading around in my underwear,” she said, hopping with one foot in her jeans.
“Can you stop that, please? I’m already having trouble thinking straight.”
She stopped to stare at him. “You’re worried. Don’t try to deny it. I can see it on your face. You get a line here.” She rubbed her index finger between the bridge of her nose and right eyebrow. He couldn’t fool her. She’d studied his face for years, mostly searching for some sign he liked her as much as she liked him.
He walked into her room with the dog on his heels. Zeus skirted around him, reaching her first. He sat at her feet. All but positive Adam was about to deliver bad news, Sophia slowly lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. Adam joined her there, which caused the flutter of nerves in her stomach to increase. The girl she used to be cheered, Adam Dane is sitting on my bed!
“Okay, I could be wrong, but I do think something’s going on, and that’s why Nell and Calder came up with this story about Rick to get me home this weekend. I tried to push them off to next weekend, but they were insistent.”
He’d filled her in about Rick when they were driving around Christmas looking for Autumn and his brother. “Not five minutes ago you said you believed them when they said they didn’t know where Autumn and Logan are.”
“I don’t think they do. But I do think they know what they’re doing wherever they are.”
“Even I know they are having sex, Adam.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Trust me, the two of them having sex is the least of our worries.”
Because they were sitting on the end of her unmade bed and talking about sex, it took a moment for Sophia to stop thinking about Adam naked in her bed. Once she did, her eyes widened. “You think he’s proposing to her?”
* * *
Adam stood on the back deck of his grandfather’s log house nursing a beer as the sun slowly sank behind the Aspen trees. He’d been right. Logan had taken Autumn up to the top of Blue Mountain at sunrise and proposed to her. She had said yes. Around the time Sophia had been getting rear-ended on Main Street, the newly engaged couple were at the Rocky Mountain Diner with his niece and nephew. About ten minutes after Adam had shared his theory about the couple with Sophia, Autumn arrived home to break the news.
Only she hadn’t shared where the couple intended to spend their life as man and wife. Logan asked Adam to keep the couple’s plans for their future to himself for at least a week. They wanted a chance to slowly ease Sophia and the family into the idea of them moving halfway around the world.
He lifted the beer bottle to his mouth and took another deep pull. Before the night was over, he’d need something a lot stronger than a bottle of beer. So would Sophia. He couldn’t keep Logan and Autumn’s plans from her. He’d tell her tonight.
As he’d suspected, Nell and his grandfather had wanted him home for a reason. They knew damn well Logan planned to propose this weekend, no matter how hard they tried to deny it. His evidence: the impromptu engagement party they were hosting tonight at seven. Nell assured them only close friends and immediate family would be there, but it sounded like half the town had been invited.
A rustle in the undergrowth and the snap of a branch brought Adam’s head up. His grandfather’s house was on an isolated part of the old mountain road, and it wasn’t uncommon for a big cat, bear, deer, or elk to end up near the place. He glanced back at Zeus, who lay practically comatose at the back door. Neither his tail nor his ears perked at the sounds coming from the bush.
Adam had made the mistake of thinking Sophia had somehow gotten through to him and the Zeus he remembered was back. Sophia had worked her particular brand of magic on both of them. Adam had felt better today than he had in weeks, but now the feelings of guilt returned, weighing him down. He’d failed Manuel the day of the shooting, and now he was doing it again.
His mood darkened, which might have been why he growled, “You’ve got two minutes to show yourself or I shoot.”
A wild animal wouldn’t be as noisy as whoever was in there. A dark-haired man wearing camouflage stumbled out of the woods with his hands up. “Don’t shoot.”
“What are you doing, Rick?” Adam asked his cousin at the same time he checked on Zeus. The dog didn’t lift his head, but his eyes followed Rick from the woods to the deck.
Rick held up a camera. “I heard the news about Autumn and Logan and wanted to offer my congratulations.”
“Try again.”
There was something about the defensive lift to Rick’s chin that reminded Adam of his baby brother. There was no denying the strong family resemblance. “Does no one remember I’m family? I didn’t get an invitation. That hurts, you know. I’m a changed man, and I’m trying to get back on my feet. It’s not easy around here. All anyone does is throw my past in my face.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, Rick. You should have gone somewhere where no one knows you. Start over with a clean slate.”
“How? I have nothing. The Danes are real good at helping everyone else, but I haven’t seen any of you offering me a hand up.”
“Is that why you stole the snowmobile, ski equipment, and petty cash?”
His face flushed, but his chin once again went up. “You know as well as I do that the lodge is as much mine as it is yours and Logan’s.”
“I know that’s what you believe, but that’s not what the judge ruled. You have to move past this, Rick.” Adam reached in his back pocket for his wallet and pulled out a couple hundred-dollar bills. “This isn’t the time for it now. I’ll talk to Gramps and Logan in the morning. I can’t make you any promises, but if you give me your word that you’ll clean up your act, there might be a job for you at the lodge.”
“Doing what? Lift operator? I’m a Dane. I—”
“And that’s your problem, Rick.” Zeus came to his feet and began whining at the back door. Adam frowned. No one was expected for at least a couple hours. It had to be Sophia. “Look, I can’t deal with this or you right now. Drop by tomorrow. I’m sure there will be leftovers—”
“I don’t want your handouts. I want what is due to me.” He stormed off the deck and into the woods.
And not a moment too soon. The back door opened, and Sophia stepped out. She wore her pink trench coat and shiny black boots that disappeared under the hem of her coat. Her hair was disheveled, her glasses askew, and he couldn’t help but wonder what she had on under her coat. When images of her in her Playboy Bunny pj’s filled his mind, he had to fight the urge to walk across the deck and check for himself.
“Hello, Zeus,” she said to the dog dancing at her feet. Her voice sounded like she’d been crying for a week. She surprised him by kneeling beside Zeus and throwing her arms around the dog. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t kinder to you. I forgot what it was like to lose your best friend, and now I remember.”
If she was this bad off because Autumn was marrying his brother, he didn’t want to think what she’d be like when she learned the truth.
“Come on, you’re going to get your coat dirty.” He went to help her up. Zeus looked like he wanted to tear him limb from limb. Totally get where you’re coming from, pal, he thought. But he couldn’t let the dog’s reaction go. He repeated the Spanish phrase Manuel used when he wanted to remind Zeus who was the alpha in the partnership. And there was the problem—Adam and Zeus weren’t partners. As though aware of the battle for dominance playing out around her, Sophia waved Adam off and gave the dog one more hug.
Just when Adam was thinking he wouldn’t mind taking Zeus’s place, Sophia rose to her feet and walked to him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she sobbed her heart out. He guided her to a wooden rocker and sat down, pulling her onto his lap. Zeus sidled over and put his head on her knee.
“You’re worrying me, Dimples. Zeus too.”
“They’re leaving Christmas, Adam. Logan has a job opportunity in Switzerland, and they’re leaving in six weeks.”
“How did you find out? Logan said they weren’t going to say anything for at least a week.”
“Oh, but he tells you. He doesn’t think his fiancée’s best friend, her business partner, the woman she owns a home with deserves to know that he’s about to upend her life completely?”
“I wouldn’t let you be blindsided, Soph. I planned to tell you tonight. Is there any chance you can buy Autumn out of the house and business?”
“No. And Autumn will need her equity from the house and the business if she plans to open an online candy store.”
“What did she say when you talked to her about this?”
“She doesn’t know I know.”
“How did you find out?”
“I knew she wasn’t telling me everything, so I followed the crumbs they left on social media.” She looked at him through fogged-up glasses, her face splotchy and tear-stained. “What am I going to do?”
“We’re in this together, Soph. I don’t want them to move any more than you do. If they do, I have to take over the lodge or Rick will inherit, and that would kill my grandfather.”