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On the 4th of July, Jacie, Darby and Lil took advantage of a gorgeous Montana day to drive to the recreation area on Flathead Lake for a picnic. They arrived early enough to get a spot on the grass, where they could look out over the wide lake and watch the swimmers and boaters. Jacie brought potato salad, made from her mother’s recipe, and brownies that she and Darby had baked the night before. Lil brought fried chicken and a cooler loaded with soda. She also brought exactly two beers. Lil rarely drank, so Jacie couldn’t help but tease her about cutting loose.
“Well, it is the Fourth of July,” Lil said with a mock sniff. “And I like beer—just not in quantity. You know...the way Dad liked it?” Jacie knew.
The park quickly became crowded, and after lunch Darby found friends picnicking nearby. Soon she and her friends were playing in the water, leaving Jacie free to seek advice from Lil without constantly checking to see if her daughter was listening.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Lil said after Jacie had poured out her frustrations regarding a certain blue-eyed guy. “You’re severely out of practice.”
“I was never in practice,” Jacie muttered.
“There’s that,” Lil agreed, putting covers onto the food containers. “I wish I had an easy answer. I don’t.”
“Some best friend.” Jacie shaded her eyes with one hand, checking to make certain she could still see Darby.
Lil laughed. “Look. All I can tell you is that Brett is hot, he’s trustworthy and he’s a nice guy.”
“I agree on all counts.” Jacie opened the cooler and pulled out the two beers, twisting the top off before handing Lil a long-neck bottle.
“Then lay it out to him. Tell him what you’re looking for. Maybe he’s looking for the same thing. He is a guy, after all. You can have your summer fun and then go back home. Unless you might be looking for more than that?”
“No.” And the answer was that simple. She wanted to indulge herself with a guy who wanted the same thing as she did. And she wanted to do it quietly, so that Darby was unaware.
“Total honesty is the ticket, then.”
“Have I told you lately what a wise woman you are?” Jacie reached out to tap her beer against Lil’s.
“All I did was to tell you exactly what you wanted to hear,” she said, bringing the bottle to her lips.
Jacie couldn’t argue with that. Lil had told her exactly what she wanted to hear. Now she had to do something about it.
When Jacie went to pick up Darby on Monday morning, she caught sight of Brett working in his shop, and since the students had yet to finish cooling their horses, she ambled over. He smiled at her as she stopped in the doorway. “Did you have a good Fourth of July?”
“Lil and I took Darby to the lake and had a small picnic. Nothing big, but it was fun. How about you?”
“Old Betsy,” he patted the tractor fender, “and I spent the day in the fields. I even saw some fireworks from her.”
“You hay farmers sure know how to have a good time.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You have no idea. So how’s the project going? I haven’t heard any blowback lately.”
“Not bad. We’ve hit a few snags, but nothing out of the ordinary.” She gestured at the tractor he was working on. “Is that the same one that stranded you at Old Man Crenshaw’s place?”
“It is.” He moved a few steps closer, wiping the wrench he was carrying with a rag.
“It’s broken down again?” she asked when he stopped very, very close to her. So maybe she’d been stressing about nothing. So he ran off into the night after kissing her. He seemed fine now. Beyond fine.
“Maybe a little,” he replied with an amused glint in his eye. “You don’t happen to know anything about tractors do you?”
Jacie cocked her head. “I’ve driven one...once...a long time ago.”
“Want to drive mine?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, meeting his gaze, enjoying the shift in his expression.
“Is that a fact?” Brett continued to wipe the wrench with the rag, even though it was now sparkling clean. He didn’t say anything, but the air around was practically vibrating with things that needed to be said. Finally he leaned in, closing the distance between them, and she was certain she was going to taste the amazing mouth again when there was a clattering outside the door and she jumped guiltily.
“Mom! Mom!”
A girl Jacie didn’t know burst into the shop and then stopped, staring blankly at her and Brett. “I thought my mom was in here.”
Out the kid went again and all Jacie could think was that she was so glad it wasn’t Darby who’d rushed in, because her kid was very good at picking up on vibes and right now she felt as if she were wearing a blinking hat that said, “Yes, I was going to kiss him.”
“Well, so much for privacy at horse camp,” Brett said in an amused voice.
“Uh...yeah.”
He set the wrench down and hooked a thumb in his pocket. “Maybe we can talk tractors some other time.”
Voices sounded just outside and this time it was Darby. Jacie smiled at him. “We’ll talk later. Okay?”
He gave a smiling nod before she turned to the door.
They’d talk later. Jacie had no idea exactly what she was going to say, but things obviously couldn’t continue as they were or she’d be a hot puddle on the floor. So as she walked home with Darby, she kept half an ear on her daughter’s conversation and focused the remainder of her attention on how to deal with the Brett situation. The almost-a-virgin situation. The have-to-scratch-this-itch situation.
She simply had to be careful how she did that. With a daughter as inquisitive as Darby, it wasn’t going to be easy. Therefore trusting the guy who would...help her out...was imperative.
Brett was the perfect candidate. Again.
As Glenna had predicted, the owners wanted a look at the beams which were throwing a monkey wrench in their summer plans. After conducting the tour through the upper floors of the hotel, showing them both the progress that had been made and the area where the beams had to be replaced, Jacie escorted them back downstairs to the meeting room.
“Well, that was edifying,” Georgia said, pulling off the hardhat and gingerly fluffing her hair. Hardhats and coiffed hair did not go together well and she had a significant hat mark that would no doubt horrify her later. “Thank you for showing us the problem.”
“You’re welcome,” Jacie said as she pulled off her own hat and set it on the floor beside her desk.
After they’d taken their seats around the table, Lars said, “I for one am glad we decided to go ahead with the replacement work. It’s worse than I’d thought it would be. Clinton’s consultant was off base.”
Jacie froze. “Clinton’s consultant?”
Earl waved a hand dismissively. “Not a true consultation. It was very informal. Mr. Calloway had a friend of his stop by and inspect the beams,” Earl said. “Two days ago.”
“On the 4th of July?”
“He was in town for the celebration.”
Jacie took a deep breath. “Is Mr. Calloway’s friend a structural engineer?”
“Geological engineer.”
Do not roll your eyes. Control yourself. You are a professional...who’s about to blow a gasket.
She cleared her throat and said, “Since you have a contract with Kestrelle Engineering, in the future, I’d like to be advised of any...consultants...who are called in.”
“It was an informal visit,” Lars assured her again.
An informal visit. Instigated by Clinton, who bore her no goodwill.
“What’s our time frame for repair?” Brian asked and Jacie turned to him.
“I have the schedule here.” She pushed a paper toward him. “As it stands, we were able to get construction grade beams from Great Falls. They’ll be here day after tomorrow and Neil tells me that he can have them installed in less than two days, but he has to disrupt the kitchen. There will be some ceiling repairs, then we’re back in business.”
Earl and Brian left shortly after receiving the schedule, but Georgia approached Jacie at her desk to say, “I have a few ideas about the second floor that I’ll be discussing with Lars and Brian. A bit of a redesign. Would you be able to clear a spot in your calendar during the beam replacement to discuss it if we come to a consensus?”
“Certainly,” Jacie said, even though she instantly had a bad feeling about the redesign. Georgia smiled and headed toward the door, leaving her with Glenna and Lars, who said, “We only agreed to let Clinton’s friend take a look as a courtesy. It made Georgia happy and it was free.” He shrugged. “We saw no harm.”
“I knew nothing about this,” Glenna said after Lars had taken his leave. She might not be likeable, but she was professional and Jacie appreciated that. “I’m certain they only wanted a cheap second opinion. No harm done.”
No harm other than Clinton chipping away at her professional integrity. She had to admit...she hadn’t seen this one coming. A geological engineer.
Jacie had a pounding headache by the time she arrived home. A headache and renewed determination not to let Clinton get the best of her. He wanted her to fail, and she refused to oblige him. She’d avoided Cherry Lake because of Clinton for too many years, and now that she’d made her decision to return, she was not going to let him drive her away again, or sabotage her project.
The kids were still on their horses when she walked down the driveway, gathered around Molly who stood in the center of the arena. Darby, whose attention tended to wander during school, was fully engaged. Jacie walked past the arena to the shop, where there was a lot of clanging and banging going on.
“Hey,” Brett called as she walked in through the bay door. He was hammering on a fender that appeared to belong to the ancient truck parked at the far side of the shop. He put it aside and came to the door.
“Just waiting for class to end,” she said, motioning with her head toward the kids.
“And you look stressed.” He raised an aluminum water bottle to his lips, keeping his eyes on her as he drank.
“Probably because I am.”
“Dare I ask?”
“It’s a long story.” She pushed her fingers through her hair on both sides of her face. “The owners called in a geological engineer to double check my rotted beams.”
“A geological engineer? Really?”
“It’d be comical if I wasn’t involved.” Jacie tore her eyes away from the moisture clinging to his lips. No good could come of focusing on it. “He’s a friend of Clinton’s and looked at the beams for free.”
Brett put the cap on the bottle and turned to set it on the workbench, giving her an opportunity to distract herself by noticing how his jeans hugged his thighs. Thank goodness for jeans hugging thighs. Her blood pressure actually seemed to drop a notch—until he looked up suddenly, surprising her mid-stare. Jacie shifted her gaze toward the door as if checking on the kids. When she looked back he was smiling a little, indicating that she hadn’t fooled him. Oh well. He had to be used to being stared at.
“It’s really just business,” she said, hoping he realized that she was talking about the engineer now and not about ogling him. “I need to put it out of my head.”
He gave a nod, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “How long’s it been since you’ve been to the Cherry Festival?”
“Wow. I think I was fourteen or fifteen. It was before Mom married Clinton.” After Clinton, her social life had taken a dive because he had been crazed about Jacie not tarnishing his image by running wild. She found her life was easier when she didn’t attend social functions, especially the ones where Clinton was working the crowd.
“It hasn’t been that long for me, but it’s been a while. I always had a rodeo that weekend.” He folded his arms over his chest as he spoke and she couldn’t help but appreciate the way his shirt was sticking to him in all the right places.
“Are you going this year?”
“I think my mother would kill me if I didn’t.” He smiled a little. “Which brings me to...hey, would you and Darby like to go to the festival with me? Make a day of it?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” He sounded mystified, probably because he was not a parent and didn’t understand the knee-jerk protective instinct that could kick in at any time.
“Because I don’t want Darby to think that there’s anything between us—or that there might be anything.” She smiled after she spoke, hoping he’d understand.
“Why would she think that?”
Because her kid was good at reading people and coming to conclusions? “Because she’ll wonder what’s up. I haven’t really hung with a lot of guys.”
“Even as friends?”
“I work in engineering, so of course I have guy friends, but...”
“But?” he prompted.
Tired of dragging the conversation out, she said simply, “I didn’t kiss any of them.”
“You think she’s going to pick up on...” he pointed to her and back to himself.
“The vibe between us?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
She almost asked what he wanted to call it, but caught herself.
“I suppose the dance Saturday night is out, too.”
“I need to play it safe while Darby’s around.”
“So...no social life?”
How to make him understand? She doubted that she could. There was so much she hadn’t understood until the nurse put the little pink bundle in her arms. “I’m protective of Darby. She’s all I have. I’m all she has. I don’t want her to get attached to anyone that won’t stay in her life.”
“I can understand that.”
She could tell that he was making an attempt anyway.
She reached out to touch his upper arm, trying to let him know that she did appreciate the offer. And trying also to ignore her body’s reaction to the hard muscle beneath her palm. “Thanks for understanding.” Then she stepped back and beat a retreat.
The walk home seemed longer than usual after she and Darby had said goodbye to Molly.
“We’re practicing on cavalettis tomorrow to get ready for jumping in the advanced intermediate camp.” Darby skipped a few steps ahead of her. “This is the best summer ever. I can’t wait to come back next summer.”
Jacie sucked in a breath, but kept her mouth shut. Next summer she would no doubt be working on a project far from Cherry Lake, but one thing nine years of motherhood had taught her was that there was no need to correct an assumption about the future until a little closer to that future. After Darby was back in Seattle, with her friends there, she would have an easier time understanding why they weren’t going back for the entire summer next year.
“Do you know Ashley’s mom?” Darby asked.
“Which one is Ashley?”
“She has the really long ponytail. Her mom is kind of bossy.”
Tina Carson. “A little. Why?”
“Her mom is dating one of Molly’s cousins. Ashley said he has a lot of money. He might buy her a horse!”
“Ah.” Jacie blew out a breath. Shades of Clinton. He’d bought her things, too. Not large ticket items like a horse, mainly because he’d been financially strapped, but she hadn’t known that at the time.
Darby gave her a sideways look, but Jacie didn’t look back. This was why she wasn’t going to the Cherry Festival with Brett, even though she would have loved to. Darby was showing more and more interest in her friend’s mother’s dating habits. Isabella’s mom had already married and divorced a second time, giving Isabella a baby brother that Darby found fascinating. And even though Izzy seemed unfazed by her mother’s romantic antics, Jacie wondered.
How secure could a kid be when people popped in and out of their lives?
On Tuesday it rained. Horse camp was cancelled due to a sloppy arena, so Jacie dropped Darby at Lil’s house, where she would spend the day helping to assemble cherry-themed potholders for Lil’s Aunt Tilde’s Cherry Festival booth. Lil topped off Jacie’s coffee and then she headed back out into the wet morning. When she got to the Montreau she took the back hallway to her office, so as not to track mud and water over the marble floor of the foyer, pushed her door open, then jumped a mile when she saw that someone was sitting in the chair opposite her desk.
And he was smoking. The smell took her instantly back to their dysfunctional past, but she was not going to fall into the role of powerless stepdaughter.
Jacie set her damp purse on her desk. “Put that out.”
Clinton made a show of looking around the room for a place to stash the small cigar. Jacie waited. Finally he said, “You don’t seem to have an ashtray.”
She stepped back so that the door was accessible. “Feel free to put it outside. There’s no smoking in this building. Surely you knew that.”
Instead he leaned back in his chair and brought the cigar up to his lips, drawing in, making the tip glow red.
“Put it out, Clinton.”
“Or?”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and snapped a picture of him, framing in the old photo of the Montreau hanging above his head. There would be no doubt as to where he was sitting while blowing smoke. “I guess I’ll email the fire marshall.”
He pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “Delete the photo.”
“Put out the cigar.”
With a dark look, Clinton wet his fingers and pinched the end. In return, Jacie pushed the delete icon, then turned the phone for him to see.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
He casually studied her, using the same stare that used to make her squirm. “Do you think that you can come to my town and cast aspersions and not have to answer for it?”
It took her a moment to come up with the aspersions in question. “Do you mean my conversation with Glenna? Well, guess what? You are manipulative and I don’t see any reason that I should keep that to myself when you’re screwing with my livelihood.”
“I screwing with your livelihood?” he said as if he were the injured party.
“You had another engineer check my beams and report back to the owners? I’d say that qualifies. And it’s also a pathetically transparent attempt to stir up trouble for me, considering the fact that he was a geological engineer.”
“He was free.” Clinton tossed the cigar into her trash can. “You purposely scheduled the restaurant closing during my event.”
“It’s not all about you, Clinton. Reschedule.”
“The people coming in for the event can’t reschedule.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Now how was she going to get him the hell out of her office short of calling 911? “I can’t reschedule either. I have a budget and a schedule to manage and my first concern is to the owners.”
“The owners of this building are also my partners in the restaurant.”
“Yet you’re not a partner in the hotel? Is that because you haven’t found a sugar mama to fund you to that extent?” She shouldn’t have said that, but had to admit it felt damned good. It’d also hit its mark, judging from Clinton’s expression.
“You always were a conniving little bitch.”
Jacie didn’t flinch. “And you’re a bullying asshole.”
He flushed, but his voice was steady and his gaze was cold and snakelike as he said, “I was fine with live and let live until you started badmouthing me to Glenna—”
“Oh? That wasn’t you in the hallway outside the restroom at the reception dropping threats?”
“Let me tell you how it’s going to be from now on,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “You treat me with respect. And you tell Glenna that you were...shall we say, overwrought...when you made those disparaging remarks about me. You feel bad about making them.”
She’d be damned if she was going to recant one word of what she’d said to Glenna, who was, of course, related to money people. Clinton never wanted money people to know what kind of man he really was.
“One day,” he said. “That’s how long you have to talk to Glenna. She’ll be over for a meeting this afternoon. You can do it then.”
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway and Jacie put the pen down and placed her palms flat on her desk, leaning on it as she met Clinton’s gaze and said, “The contractors are here. Are we done?”
“Far from it,” he said mildly, once again shrugging into his urbane cloak. “Very far from it. You have one day to make things right with Glenna. One.” He pushed himself to his feet and took a few steps forward so that she had to look up at him. “If you don’t, then I’m going to see to it that you fall flat on your sweet face.”
She made a dismissive gesture and walked around the desk to her chair. She was done letting him control her life. He stalked out of her office, closing the door behind him with a careful click. Had the workers not been there, he would have slammed it, as he’d often slammed her bedroom door when leaving it after a “talk”.
Jacie ran her hands over her arms. She needed to get a grip, not let the past rule her present. But it was pretty damned hard to shake off the Clinton Effect.
The next few hours were pretty much a loss. Jacie pushed papers around her desk, trying to bring her focus back and hating that Clinton could still so thoroughly ruin her day. Just when she was finally getting back into the groove in the late afternoon, Georgia arrived unannounced. She walked in and took the seat Clinton had sat in earlier. Then she sat a set of plans on the desk in front of Jacie.
“I would like to discuss some changes to the second floor.”
“All right,” Jacie said, picking up her pencil to take notes and wondering why Glenna wasn’t there.
“I would like a second floor lobby.” She pulled a photo out of the folder she held and set it down next to the plans. Jacie pulled it closer and studied it. The lobby in the photo was indeed lovely, opening up off the top of the staircase and providing an attractive common area with hallways leading off it.
“You’d lose rooms.”
“But look how light and bright it is. I’ve been to this hotel and the second floor was a marvelous getaway area for guests who wanted to get together causally, yet it provided more privacy than the lobby allowed.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Would you mind whipping up a revised plan for this area?”
Whipping up. Right. Jacie gave her head a small shake. “Let’s go over exactly what you’re looking for.”
“First of all, the windows need to be enlarged. Bay windows would be lovely.”
“You know that might affect overall cost, correct?”
“Surely glass is less expensive than two-by-fours and wood?”
Jacie blinked at her, trying to grasp that the woman had actually said that. “I mean in general. The redesign, etcetera.”
Georgia waved her hand. “I’d like the area to come off the stairs and extend to the west wall...”
After taking notes on Georgia’s changes, Jacie broached the question that had been niggling at her throughout the conversation. “The other owners are aware of these prospective changes, correct?”
The shift in Georgia’s demeanor was both swift and startling. Apparently one did not question Georgia Duncan. “When can you have the design done? Would you be able to have something by the day after tomorrow?”
“Possibly. Umm...next time we have a discussion such as this, we should have Glenna here, too. She is your representative and she needs to be involved in every step of this process.” It was bad business to keep secrets from the person representing your interests.
Georgia stretched her peach-shaded lips into a smile. “Of course. Day after tomorrow?”
“I’ll try,” Jacie said. A few seconds later, Georgia was gone, but from the way Neil fanned the air as he walked into the room, she assumed that her expensive perfume lingered on. Jacie’s nose had become numb to it not long after the meeting began.
“That took forever,” he said.
Jacie gave a weak nod. “I think I have a prima donna on my hands.”
“Every project manager’s dream.”
When the rains came, Brett only had one field of hay cut and down. The other fields were behind schedule due to his issues with the tractor, so in that regard, he owed his Uncle Robert a debt of gratitude. And since the tractor was running—for now, anyway—and the rain was beating on the roof of the shop, he took the cover off the ’46 Ford truck his grandfather had given him for his twenty-fifth birthday.
Nate had been as hard on Brett as his father had been for dropping out of college and hitting the rodeo circuit, but he was also a sucker for his grandkids and when he learned that the antique truck Brett had long admired during high school was for sale, he’d bought it for him as a project. If it hadn’t been for the tractor, he’d have dived into the truck weeks ago. As it was, he’d done a little body work but had yet to take a good look at the engine. Nothing like a rainy day in the shop to find out what a guy was facing.
A few hours later, Brett had the engine partially dismantled and was beginning to understand the scope of the project ahead of him. This was going to take months, not weeks and he had a sneaking suspicion that some of the parts he needed would have to be custom machined. Since the rain wasn’t letting up, he decided to drive down to Brand Automotive and see if Damon Brand could help him locate some of the more obscure parts.
He’d just turned onto Main Street when he had to slow for a woman who stepped out into the street in front of him, coming from the direction of the Montreau. Georgia held her umbrella high and she did not look right or left before stepping out into the street, because all traffic stopped for her obviously. Once she’d reached the other side of the street she continued down Main until she turned and marched into the city hall.
Brett had the feeling that it was more than the rain hurrying her steps. He stepped on the gas and drove on to the automotive store, wondering what his aunt was doing at city hall, and hoping she wasn’t there to see Calloway.
Even if she was, it wasn’t his affair. Jacie hadn’t gotten where she was by letting people walk over her. She’d be all right. He was the one who was going to have to learn to back off and not instinctively rush in to the rescue.
And that wasn’t easy.
