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Jacie propped her elbows on her knees as she sat, letting her eyes adjust to the twilight and breathing in the sweet scents of the Montana summer. Scents she’d forgotten, but which now brought memories rushing back. When she’d left home a week after her eighteenth birthday, with no way to support herself other than depending on the generosity of Lil’s older cousin, she’d sworn she’d never come back to Cherry Lake, Would never put herself back in her ex-stepfather, Clinton Calloway’s, sphere of influence. Yet Clinton was now the mayor of Cherry Lake and here she was. Only this time it was on her terms. When Kestrelle Engineering had won the bid on the Montreau Hotel renovation, her supervisor had nominated Jacie as principal because she’d grown up in Cherry Lake. He had no way of knowing that she’d had little desire to return and indeed, her first instinct had been to say no.
Her second had been to wonder why she was allowing that bastard, Calloway, to continue to control her life ten years after she’d shut him out of it. Why not take the job? Introduce Darby to the area where she’d grown up. Hang out with Lil again in their hometown instead of meeting in Spokane for girls’ weekends. Lay old ghosts to rest.
It was time and now that she was here, she was glad she’d taken the project—even if she had come face to face with Brett before she was ready. Not only was it good for her professionally, it was good for her mental health. She hadn’t realized how much she’d resented the way she’d had to leave Cherry Lake until she’d come back.
The sound of boots on gravel brought her head up and the instant she saw the silhouette of the man walking down the road toward her house, she knew it was Brett—not because he was the only guy within shouting distance, but because she remembered how he moved, all long legs and masculine grace. And that, in turn, stirred other more uncomfortable memories.
He’d been a junior when she’d joined the high school rodeo team, the same age as his long time girlfriend, Leslie Ann Stark. Jacie had been a sophomore. She hadn’t been a big talker back then, but Brett had always taken the time to initiate conversations while they were on rodeo trips or if he found her sitting alone on campus. She’d come to trust him and to eventually use him as a sounding board. He’d never once given off a vibe of being interested in anything more than friendship, so of course she’d fallen head over heels in love with him—the unattainable guy with the girlfriend.
And because of his girlfriend, who was a truly nice person, she’d kept her feelings strictly to herself. Even Lil hadn’t known about the Brett Crush. She still didn’t know. It had seemed so deeply personal. And somehow dangerous. A secret to be guarded, because she didn’t want to ruin the closeness she and Brett shared. Or to have him feel sorry for her if he found out.
Pity would have killed her.
So in the name of maintaining her pride, she’d given denial a stab, telling herself that she saw him as a brother figure, someone to whom she could vent about her stepfather and the fact that her mother was more devoted to her new husband than to her daughter. Someone she trusted and therefore felt close to.
The lie had not stood up to scrutiny.
One didn’t feel all hot and edgy around a brother figure. Or notice how his cheeks creased and his eyes crinkled when he smiled. Or how he smelled so damned good. Nope. And they certainly didn’t have hot dreams about him. Which was why it had been stupid to involve him in the scheme she and Lil had cooked up.
Jacie’s only excuse was that she’d been so panic stricken and terrified of what Clinton, who had been running for state legislature on a family values platform, would do once he found out she was pregnant, that asking Brett to marry her had seemed almost reasonable. He’d broken up with Leslie Ann several months before. He was free. She was desperate. Perfect solution.
It wasn’t until the eleventh hour that she’d acknowledged the flaw in the plan. Brett was helping her out—as a friend—yet he was also the kind of guy who would take on the burden of being a father to her baby. He would essentially be trapped by his sense of duty and friendship.
She couldn’t do that to him. Or to herself.
So at the last minute, she’d disappeared with the help of Lil’s crazy cousin, Shelly, essentially leaving Brett at the altar in Polson. With no explanation. The fewer people who knew the truth, the better, and that included Brett.
Not her best moment and now she was Brett’s neighbor. Jacie had never believed in karma, but this seemed beyond coincidental and she got the strong feeling that she was about to get some cosmic payback.
She could live with that, but Darby was not going to experience any kind of collateral damage. She’d explain to Brett and apologize. No big deal.
But it felt like one.
Jacie stood up as Brett approached, wiping her hands down the sides of her pants in a nervous gesture that she caught mid-swipe. She forced her hands to still, waiting until he walked into the porch light before she nodded a hello. He’d always been rather devastating in the looks department, which was probably why he’d never been without a girlfriend—except for that small window of time when she and Lil had talked him into helping her escape the wrath of Clinton.
“Hey,” he said as he approached, his voice low, as if he didn’t want to risk Darby hearing him. And she appreciated that even as her heart started to beat a little faster. He came to a stop a few feet away from the bottom step. “I thought I’d drift over and we could have a private conversation—if your daughter’s in bed, that is.”
“She is.” She was supposed to be anyway. Jacie had the feeling she might be reading one of her horse books, but she wouldn’t want her mother to know she was violating lights out, so Jacie and Brett were safe to talk. As long as they kept it down.
He leaned on the post that supported the end of the handrail. “It’s been a long time, Jace.”
It had been a long time, yet in some ways it didn’t feel like it. Again she got the odd sensation of her body recognizing him, welcoming him back.
“You’re probably wondering why I left you hanging at the courthouse,” she said, diving in head first.
He gave a slow nod. “All Lil would tell me was that you were safe.”
“I was.” Jacie fingered the edge of her t-shirt in a nervous movement that she forced herself to stop. And because she was nervous, as well as feeling guilty, she felt herself start to shut down, as she tended to do in stress situations. Her voice sounded cool and stilted as she said, “I apologize deeply for leaving you like that. It was my only window and I had to take it.”
She had no excuse, though, for not contacting him later, after her life had settled down. He’d always been there for her—as a friend—and she hadn’t been a decent friend in return. She’d been too afraid of her feelings. Too afraid of the truth.
“You want to tell me about it?” he asked. When she didn’t answer immediately, he said, “I won’t push, but I almost think you owe me that.”
Jacie’s gaze never wavered—Brett would give her that—but it took her a moment to say, “You’re right. I do.”
She gave a small shrug, a seemingly nonchalant motion that was anything but, judging from the stiff set of her shoulders, the way her fingers kept working the edge of her shirt.
“I began to have a case of conscience about...well...using you. Lil and I talked the night before we were supposed to meet at the courthouse and on impulse she called an older cousin who lived near Seattle. The cousin, Shelly, finally called back just before we left for Polson and said sure, why not? So I bought a bus ticket to Seattle and Lil went to Polson to tell you what happened. We agreed that it would be best if no one but Lil knew exactly where I went.”
“Lil’s cousin took in a pregnant runaway? No questions asked?”
“I was of legal age.”
By a whole week, if he recalled correctly.
She gave another small shrug. “Technically I wasn’t running away. I just had no way to support myself.”
“No recipe for trouble there.”
She met his eyes, a rueful smile tugging at her lips, and for a moment he saw the old Jacie. The one who had trusted him, had come to him when she needed help, spilled her guts at times. She dropped her gaze then looked up again, once again becoming the Jacie he didn’t know.
“I got a fast food job with a whopping twenty hours a week.” Her mouth quirked a little. “Shelly was kind of...out there...but she gave me a place to live until my mom tracked me down. Granted, it wasn’t a great place. People in and out. A lot of recreational drug use. I’m lucky my mom did find me.”
Brett’s jaw tightened at the thought of Jacie living like that. “I don’t see where that plan was any better than the other.” The one in which he married her and she went to Las Vegas with him, where he was attending UNLV and studying agriculture. Her stepdad would have been furious, but at least she would have been able to tell him the baby was legitimate and Brett would have been there to deflect Calloway’s anger and his neverending concern about how Jacie’s behavior affected his political aspirations. Calloway would have made her life a living Hell had she stayed and, from what he’d seen, her mother wouldn’t have done much to stop him. Anne Calloway was the embodiment of codependence, and there were times when Brett had disliked her more than he disliked Clinton, because she always took her husband’s side.
“It wasn’t a better plan,” Jacie said. “It was stupid, like our first plan, but it turned out better. If we’d been married, then the aftermath would have been so much messier than having my mom swoop in and rescuing me from a hippie house.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper by the time she finished speaking and she glanced over her shoulder at the house as if making certain her daughter wasn’t in hearing range.
“I guess.” Brett and Jacie had planned to break up after she got the training she needed to support herself and perhaps that could have gotten messy, what with them being legally married. And then there’d been the part where, stupid as it seemed in hindsight, he’d half-hoped they could make something of the sham marriage.
He’d been attracted to Jacie since the first day she’d walked into the rodeo club meeting as a sophomore, all big gray eyes and wavy brown hair that fell to her waist. The problem was that even though they’d talked—a lot—she’d never appeared remotely interested in him. Not as a guy anyway. She’d treated him like a friend, a confidante, and since he’d been involved with Leslie Ann, he’d never made a move in her direction. It would have been wrong on many levels, but when she and Lil asked him to be part of the pregnancy-escape-plan a few months after he and Leslie Ann had broken up, he’d agreed to the crazy scheme.
How better to get to know a girl he’d been admiring from afar than marrying her? And more than that, he’d wanted to protect her and her baby, the father of which, Lil and Jacie both assured him, was long gone.
“I didn’t want to mess up your life,” Jacie said in a low voice. She spoke with sincerity, but Brett had the feeling that she was also leaving something out.
None of his business. The past was just that. The past. He’d been involved in a small piece of Jacie’s life and, now that he knew what had happened, it was time to move on. See about the present.
“I never thought you’d come back,” he said. “Not with Clinton in the area.”
“My company was hired to renovate the old Montreau Hotel.”
“You’re part of that?” His aunt, Georgia Duncan, owned a third of the property. She’d purchased the share to rescue her nitwit son, Brock, from his own financial stupidity.
“In charge, actually. I’ll be here for at least two months overseeing the retrofitting and solving any structural problems they have.”
“Solving structural problems?”
“I’m an engineer.”
“No kidding.” She’d been a serious student when he’d know her before, aceing classes despite a hectic rodeo schedule, but an engineer? Huh.
She smiled ironically. “Yes. Runaway pregnant teen makes good.”
He smiled back, felt an unexpected jolt of connection as their gazes met, something beyond trust and friendship, and Jacie must have felt it, too, because her smile disappeared...as if she had to protect herself. He felt the need to address the situation.
“You know, Jacie. I’m not a threat. I’m not going to say a word to anyone about what happened ten years ago. I never have and I never will.”
“I appreciate that.” But her defenses were back in place and it was obvious from the cool yet polite look on her face that she had no interest in reconnecting. “For the record, I don’t see you as a threat.”
“However...?”
She lifted a shoulder in a casually dismissive gesture as she got to her feet. “No however.”
Yeah. Right.
“It’s great to see you and I don’t think I can ever adequately thank you for agreeing to be my emergency groom. Darby and I will be here for a couple months, so I’m sure we’ll see each other every now and then.”
In other words, don’t call me. I’ll call you. She’d changed since leaving Cherry Lake, had become more guarded. He was certain she had her reasons, but she didn’t need to be that way with him.
Apparently she saw things differently.
He took a step back, put his hands in his back pockets. “Good seeing you, Jacie.”
It was time to walk away. Go back to his house and put his neighbor, and the past, out of his mind.
Jacie remained on the porch as Brett disappeared into the night. Once she could no longer see him or hear his boots on the gravel, she let herself into the house and snapped off the porch light.
He’d said he wasn’t a threat. Jacie begged to differ. There was something about the way he’d looked at her, and the sense of edgy awareness that’d grown inside of her as they talked, despite her best efforts to remain cool and aloof, which made her wonder if she’d been wrong about him only seeing her as a friend a decade ago.
And if she’d also been wrong about her school girl crush on him having withered and died. It certainly hadn’t felt dead tonight.
That was threatening.
Especially to a woman who had made a conscious decision to give her daughter the most secure life possible. A secure life meant that men didn’t pop in and out. That her kid didn’t grow attached to someone who might not be there in a few months. And it certainly meant that her kid was never going to wonder for one instant who the most important person in her mother’s life was.
Had her trauma with Clinton left a mark? Yes, it had.
Was she being overly cautious because of it? A little, but nothing over the top. She’d watched as several of Darby’s friends became attached to their mothers’ boyfriends du jour only to have the guy disappear. That wasn’t going to happen to Darby and that meant that she didn’t care how Brett looked at her, she had to keep things on a friendly, yet not-too-personal level. For all of their sakes. Surely she could walk that thin line.
The next morning Jacie and Darby negotiated a truce. If Darby gave up on the idea of bonding with the horses next door, Jacie would find a place where she could trail ride as part of a group. Darby was instantly all smiles again and agreed to watch the neighbor horses from afar before commencing an internet search for stables and dude ranches in the immediate area that offered day rides.
Jacie smiled to herself as she finished ironing her meet-with-owners-and-important-people clothing and hanging it in the small closet. Problem solved...or so it seemed until Darby gave out a shout. Discovery? Outrage? As it turned out, it was a bit of both.
“Mom!”
Jacie walked into the living room carrying a blouse on a hanger. “What?” she asked, matching her daughter’s urgent tone.
“I found a horse day camp.”
Jacie crossed to the computer. That might not be a bad thing, if it was safe and run by reputable people.
“It’s next door! See?” Darby pointed at the screen and Jacie’s stomach dropped. “Those are the same horses I visited yesterday. And the same barn!”
So they were. The muscles in Jacie’s jaw tightened as she sorted through possible answers, excuses and scenarios.
“They’re probably all booked up if it starts in a few days.”
“No. See? Openings available.”
“I don’t see this happening, Darby.”
“Why?” her daughter demanded.
“Because I said so,” she replied, retreating behind the tried and true and getting a fierce look in return.
“When we came here, you said I would get to go riding.”
“And you will.”
“But it’s right next door!”
Jacie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Darby’s arguments were legitimate. She had promised riding. The day camp was right next door. She leaned closer to the screen. The owner of the camp was Molly Duncan, Brett’s cousin, whom she remembered from high school. According to the blurb about Molly, she was now a teacher. And a volunteer for just about everything. In other words, trustworthy.
Jacie pushed her hair back as she straightened from the computer. She was overreacting. Nervous because of the past—and last night. Nervous because she still found Brett attractive and because she didn’t want to deal with that attraction. Again.
But she could and would. She was being controlled by a knee-jerk fear response and it was ridiculous. Really it was.
She let out a slow breath. “All right,” she heard herself say. “I’ll call Molly. Ask some questions.”
Darby whirled in the chair and grabbed her around the waist. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you, thank you!”
“No promises,” Jacie said, smoothing Darby’s hair, “but I’ll look into it.”
“All right.” Her kid was once again all smiles and Jacie felt a rush of love, as she always did when she met her daughter’s earnest blue gaze, so happy, so trusting. Darby was going to continue to be trusting, because she, Jacie, was not going to let her down in the mom-trust department as she’d been let down.
“I filled my last horse camp slot,” Molly said as she walked into the barn.
“Yeah?” Brett poked his head out from under the tractor.
“The new neighbor. You remember Jacie Rose?”
“Ran into her yesterday,” he said, picking up a wrench and trying again to loosen a stubborn bolt from an awkward position without knocking out his teeth. “Her daughter was in the pasture petting the mares.”
“Well, that daughter is my final camper. I guess Jacie’s back to consult on the Montreau. She’s some kind of engineer.”
“Ah,” he said as if he were unaware. He was surprised, though, after the way they’d parted, that she’d let Darby anywhere near the place. Perhaps the kid had worn her down. Brett smiled grimly as the bolt turned a fraction of an inch. She had that never-say-die look about her. He grunted as the bolt slipped a little more, then finally turned.
“You okay down there?” Molly asked on an amused note.
“Fine. Just regretting buying a used tractor from the orchard.”
“Hey, they gave you a good price.”
“Because it needs a lot of work.” He slid out from under the mechanical beast and sat up, wiping his hands on a rag. “All set for launch?” he asked, referring to the camp. Molly had no problem following his meaning.
“My helpers and I go to the hospital in Polson for our EMT training today and then it’s all systems go.” She smiled broadly. “So excited.”
“Why you want to teach for most of the year, then spend your summers with kids, too...” he shook his head. “It’s beyond me.”
“You love kids,” she chided. “How many of your friends’ kids call you ‘uncle’ even though you’re not related?”
“Two.”
“That’s more than the national average,” Molly said with a toss of her head. “I’ve got to run.”
She was almost to the door when he called to her. “How involved is Aunt Georgia with the Montreau?”
“No idea. All I know is that she bought Brock’s share to save him. As usual.” Not being able to afford something never slowed their cousin from buying or investing, and their aunt was forever rescuing her only son from self-inflicted financial ruin. It was a good thing that Georgia had very deep pockets. She’d been borderline wealthy when she’d married their uncle and after he passed away, she’d inherited a good chunk of the Duncan Ranch, which made her full-on wealthy.
Molly gave a considering nod. “But if they renovate the place, who knows? It may not be such a bad investment after all.”
“That’ll piss off Brock.”
Molly smiled. Neither of them had a lot of respect for their spoiled cousin. “He needs to be pissed off.”
After Molly left, Brett sat for a moment before tackling the tractor again. So Jacie’s daughter was going to be part of horse camp.
Which meant that he might get a chance to see Jacie every now and again. He wondered, as he idly wiped grease off his hands, how long it was going to take her to realize he honestly wasn’t a threat. Because last night he’d gotten the feeling that she’d rather not see him again. Ever.
