“We’ll talk about it later.”
Well. That was never good.
Zoey finished taking off Lana’s earrings and necklace, a ridiculously expensive diamond-encrusted set he would have been afraid to touch, let alone stuff in a jewelry box without looking twice. Clearly, Zoey was more used to Lana’s jewelry, moving on to shed her of a delicate tennis bracelet worth more than Graham’s house and land put together.
Watching Zoey wipe Lana’s streaked makeup clean from her eyes with a makeup remover cloth, it occurred to Graham these two made a strange pairing, but their friendship was real.
“She’ll be horrified if she wakes up with mascara on her face.” Her voice was still clipped, but Zoey’s movements were careful. “It always embarrasses her the morning after, when she’s been upset. Okay, she’s ready. Put her on the left side. That’s the side she sleeps on.”
“Carrying around drunken women in this hotel is starting to become my thing.”
“She’s not drunk, she’s sedated. And that wine was more than half-empty when I left today. She couldn’t have had much more than a glass.”
“She had enough,” Graham drawled.
They pulled the covers over Lana and closed her door most of the way, leaving just enough room for Zoey to be able to check on her. Grabbing his arm, Zoey pulled Graham toward the hotel room door, as far away from Lana’s bedroom as they could get.
“What is wrong with you?” Eyes flashing behind her glasses, Zoey’s voice was pitched quiet, but the anger came through loud and clear. “It’s not real? Look around, Graham. This place is getting more real by the minute. And it’s real enough that some local lowlifes hurt my friend. I want you to get Jonah up here right now and take care of this the right way.”
“I don’t need Jonah. East and I will put the fear of pain in them.”
“I don’t want the fear of pain. I want Jonah to arrest them. I want them behind bars for hurting her, all because of this stupid local versus resort bullshit that you are constantly promoting!”
Tightening his mouth, Graham ground his teeth in frustration. “That’s not fair, Zoey, and you know it. I didn’t hurt her.”
“No, but I would put twenty bucks down that you’ve already started riling everyone up to fight the condos being planned.” Busted. She knew it too, because like a spider monkey, she was all over him. “People listen to you, Graham. They follow you. You think I don’t notice how people react when you’re around? You’re an alphahole.”
“Excuse me?”
“Figure it out. Everyone follows the alphahole. But guess what? Alphaholes don’t get to play innocent when innocent people get hurt. You’re not better than her. You’re not better than me or anyone, Graham. We’re all just people. And tonight, your town took this too far.”
Trying to fight his anger, Graham nearly chewed his tongue off to keep from raising his voice. “You don’t get it, Zoey.”
“No, because I’m not a local. So any loyalty I have known in my life couldn’t possibly compare to what you have here. There’s no way anyone will ever be good enough or belong. You have made that crystal freaking clear from the beginning. But maybe if a bunch of jerks down there had thought a little less like you, maybe my friend wouldn’t be in there like that!”
Graham’s jaw rippled. “Tell me how you really feel.”
The angry little bit pulled herself up to every inch of height she had, so furious she was shaking. “Oh, trust me, I’m going to. You’re not the center of the world. You’re not the ultimately wounded, the epically maltreated. You’re people, living in a town, surrounded by mountains pretty enough that other people come to see them. And as funny as it is to watch you bitch and moan about it, the result of your shitty-ass attitude is you still take the money they put in your tip jar while spitting in their faces.”
Well. That was fun to hear.
“Zoey, you’ve seen—”
“Both sides, Graham. I’ve seen both sides. And no, I’m not comfortable around rich people either. I never know what they’re talking about, and it makes me feel small and foolish. And what happened to Ulysses was wrong. I’m sorry about him, I truly am, but what happened to Lana is so far out of control, I’m ready to skin everyone in this town alive. What is wrong with you? Everyone else I’ve met in Alaska has been warm and kind and inviting, but this toxic little town is its own undoing.”
“You want me to call Jonah? Fine. He can have whatever’s left of these idiots when I’m done. You want me to apologize to L? Sure. But I’m not going to stand here and listen to you rip up something that matters to me.”
“You’ve done that to me since the moment we met! You’ve shredded every experience I’ve had here, but it matters to me. This was what mattered to me.”
“It’s a vacation,” Graham drawled, hearing and hating the sarcasm in his voice.
He saw her flinch, and his heart was screaming at him to stop, to shut his mouth and take a step back. Maybe if he wasn’t so angry because he damn well knew he’d been inflaming his town over the condos as they set off fireworks by the lake, Graham might have held back. Instead, like the fool he was, his mouth kept going.
“This is your vacation, but it’s my life. You’re getting on a plane, and you’re leaving me. So no, none of this is real to any of you. It’s only real to us. What do you want from me?”
“All I wanted from you was not to be a coward.”
This time, he flinched. “You know what, Zoey? I think this thing has run its course. Why don’t we save ourselves some heartache and call time of death?”
As he headed for the door, he could hear her choked voice say after him, “For the record, Graham, right now, you’re the one walking away. Again.”
The moment the door slammed shut between them, he heard her burst into tears. Graham stopped in the hall, shaking with anger and the desire to turn around, to go back in and fix this. He didn’t want to fight with her, but it was clear Zoey didn’t understand. And as much as he cared about her, this vacation romance had to end sometime. If walking away and ending this pain for both of them made him an alphahole, then so be it. In the meantime, Graham had something he needed to do.
He had to see some men about a girl with a scratch on her arm.
Chapter 16
There was a certain amount of visceral satisfaction in taking a really big chainsaw and attacking an even bigger stump of wood with it. Graham didn’t know what he was carving or if he was simply hacking out chunks at random, but for once, he didn’t care. Tired of standing around, unwilling to take chances, Graham was ready to do this or be done.
The irony of that train of thought wasn’t lost on him, but it sure did piss him off.
Wood chips were flying when a pickup pulled into the drive and a massive figure stepped out of it. Graham ignored his visitor in favor of a vertical cut along the grain of the wood in front of him. If it split, he didn’t care about that either.
It was only eight o’clock in the morning, but Easton had a six-pack in his hand. Dropping the beer on the ground next to his boot, Easton settled down in a lawn chair, cracking open a beer, content to wait in silence.
The log had been reduced by more than half its size before the chainsaw sputtered to a stop, gas tank empty.
Graham had been carving so long, his hands had grown numb from the vibrations. Flexing them to regain feeling, he set the chainsaw on the ground next to the stump.
“You all right?” Easton nodded toward Graham’s hands.
“Getting arthritis in my old age.”
Easton snorted, stretching an arm out with a beer, waggling the bottle at him. “If I wanted to drink alone, I would have stayed at home and watched a game.”
“It isn’t even noon.” Graham declined the offer, not caring how surly he sounded. “With Ash and your dad there, you’re never alone.”
“Dad went to vi
sit Grandma in the home. And Ash has a date today, some guy from Whittier.”
Dropping down into a second chair, Graham sighed. “Well, that’s disturbing.”
“The date or the Whittier part?”
“The idea she’s capable of having the kinds of romantic emotions that lead to her actually going on a date. Want to go kill him?”
Raising an eyebrow at Graham’s tone, Easton drained his beer and opened another. “Like you killed those guys last night?”
Graham grunted sourly. He hadn’t killed anyone, but between the two of them, Easton and Graham had put some very serious regret into the people who had messed with Lana. In his frustration, Graham’d had difficulty restraining himself. Easton, however, had been the epitome of cool, calm collectedness.
It was beyond annoying.
“You want to talk about her?”
“Nope.”
Graham stared at the stump. Nothing. It looked like nothing but a busted-up, mangled mess. “The irony of this project isn’t just annoying, it’s becoming prophetic. Remind me to become a hermit.”
There was nothing much to say to that, so Easton didn’t. Instead, he looked up at the sky.
“Storm’s coming in this afternoon. Gonna be a bad one.”
“And?”
“And I saw your woman this morning. I went to the big house to see Jax before he leaves. She looked like she was having a tough time of it.”
Grunting, Graham finally reached for a beer, popping it open on the arm of his lawn chair. “Zoey’s not my woman. And it ended last night, whatever it was. Or wasn’t. Can we talk about something else?”
“She still planning on that ATV tour?”
Apparently, they couldn’t.
“She wouldn’t go out in that. Zoey’s not an idiot.”
“She went out with you.”
Frowning, Graham took a long pull of his beer. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re the idiot. You knew what you were doing.” Easton leveled a look at him. “When you walked over to her in Rick’s, you knew exactly the kind of mess you were stepping in. Punishing her for it now, when things are exactly how you knew they’d be, is cruel.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, but Graham said nothing.
Settling deeper in his chair, Easton scratched a thumbnail under the condensation-softened label. “I suppose picking a fight with her was a lot easier than sticking around until the end. This way, it’s on her.”
“If you’re trying to be an ass, you’re succeeding.”
Easton didn’t even blink at the acid in Graham’s tone.
“Man up. If you care about her, then don’t let her go home feeling bad. It’s not like you can go find her next week and apologize.”
“East, buddy, I want to show you something.” Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, Graham smacked it down on the arm of his lawn chair a little too hard. “It’s this new technology that somehow manages to connect people all across the world. All you have to do is pick it up and make the call.”
“You plan on making that call?”
They both knew he wouldn’t.
“The storm’s going to be real bad.” Easton looked up at the sky as the first streaks of lightning flashed in the distance. “They’ll cancel the tour.”
Of course they would. And like Graham, it would just be one more disappointment for her.
* * *
Zoey had always known ending things with Graham would hurt. How could it not? Whatever this was, it was real. Temporary, maybe, but always real.
Zoey really, truly loved him. Of all the ways she’d thought they would say goodbye, a blowout in her hotel room was not anywhere close to the plan. Instead of bittersweet, there was only bitter tears and pain.
Mostly, there was just pain.
Throughout the worst, Lana stayed by her side. Between the ice cream for breakfast for Zoey and a massive Bloody Mary for Lana, they decided men in general weren’t worth half the amount of annoyance they caused. They plotted the havoc they would wreak on the people who had messed with Lana and spent more than the recommended time in the steam room, sweating away the night before. And not a bit of it did any good, beyond increasing her blood sugar and opening her pores, because there wasn’t an indulgence in the world as good as having Graham Barnett smiling down on her, his hands in her hair, his lips pressing soft kisses along her skin. Seeing Easton and Jax in the lobby had been awkward and awful, both men giving her sympathetic looks that only made her feel worse.
Sometime in the late morning, a mass of heavy storm clouds rolled in, and by the time Zoey should have been getting ready for her final Alaskan adventure—an ATV tour—she was sitting on hold, trying to find out if the tour had been canceled instead. Logic would have assumed Moose Springs Adventurers would have called to let her know, but the helpfulness would have been inconsistent with their consistently bad customer service.
“Well, they canceled it,” Zoey finally said with a sigh, ending the call. “I guess my vacation is officially over.”
“You still have today and tomorrow, love,” Lana answered. “We’ll find something worth doing. What do you think? Should we scooch everything over a bit?”
Lounging in a chair at Lana’s conference table in the penthouse suite, Zoey turned a slow, lazy circle. By scooch, Lana meant move the entirety of the planned condominium complex over, cutting into land Zoey was fairly sure was a national forest.
“Maybe not so much,” she replied, turning another circle. The shadows of dark grays and even darker blues across the mountainsides were as striking as they were ominous. Still, it burned at her to spend today in a hotel, staring out a window instead of being out there, where all the best experiences were.
“Hmm. Killian, I need your advice.”
So far, Zoey had done a decent job of ignoring the three people in the corner of the suite. Like Zoey, they were lounging, but with far more indulgence. Haleigh had called room service twice in the time Zoey and Lana had been there, and Enzo was deep in a bottle of cognac. Sober but clearly bored, Killian craned his neck to see what Lana was doing.
“I’m sure you have it handled.” With a yawn, Killian kicked a foot up on the custom-built gleaming cedar coffee table.
“It’s your investment too,” Lana reminded him. “The Montgomery Group’s holdings affect all of us, cousin, so half an interest on your side isn’t going to kill you.”
“Are you sure?” Killian rolled to his feet. “My father might feel otherwise.” Wandering over, Killian dropped down into the chair next to Zoey, giving her a kind smile. “I heard you and your boyfriend broke up. You okay?”
“We weren’t…” With a soft sigh, Zoey shrugged. “I’m not great. Wishing I could get out of here and do something fun to distract myself. But they cancelled my ATV thing.”
“Then we should uncancel it.”
“Never mind. I’ll just decide all these incredibly expensive plans all on my own,” Lana murmured.
Killian winked at Zoey, knowing he’d annoyed his cousin. The wink was so similar to Graham, Zoey had to look away. Her phone was in her pocket, and she didn’t allow herself to check to see if he’d called. The last twenty times she had, the screen had been blank.
“What do you mean, uncancel it?”
Leaning over, Killian dropped his voice low, nodding his chin at Enzo and Haleigh. “At the risk of coming off like my friends over there, some things, money can buy. A quick trip through the woods in the rain is one of those things. I’d hate for you to miss out, and if we make it quick, we should be back before the worst hits. Assuming you won’t mind getting a little wet and muddy?”
His suggestion was reckless and maybe even a little scary. Definitely not something she’d planned. But maybe Zoey was feeling reckless today. And mud was not something she’d ever been afraid of.
“I don’t have much to help pay for it,” she admitted.
“Consider it my way of saying sorry for your bad day. Us guys suck.” Patting her hand, Killian stood.
“We were just saying the same thing this morning.” Zoey nodded at him in gratitude. “But thank you, Killian. You’re kind. And much better than polo Killian.”
He blinked in surprise. “You’re the only one who thinks so.” Taking hold of the back of Lana’s chair, Killian tugged her just out of reach of her miniature Moose Springs village. “Come with us. You need a break.”
“Sorry, dearest, I have a conference call scheduled with our Realtor. It seems we’re already having offers on the new construction.”
“By all means,” he drawled lazily. “Make us some money then. That’s why the family loves you.”
Was there a note of discontent in Killian’s voice? Zoey didn’t know him enough to tell, but she did know him well enough to not be surprised when ten minutes later, they had a car waiting for them downstairs to take them to an off-site four-wheeling company. Zoey didn’t even care that Enzo and Haleigh came too, Killian’s constant entourage.
Dressed in a borrowed raincoat, her warmest sweater, and a pair of hiking boots, Zoey wished she had something better than a ball cap to keep the light rain off her face. If she’d been thinking clearly—not numb from parting ways with Graham so abruptly and painfully—maybe she would have thought to bring a pair of goggles to cover her glasses. If the rain got worse, seeing was going to be a whole lot harder.
Their guide, Cory, was young, cheerful, and more than happy to take a quick jaunt out into the woods. After explaining how to run the ATVs and giving everyone a few minutes to demonstrate their ability to stop, go, and go faster, Cory led them to a gate. Beyond the gate, a series of trails crisscrossed the mountain’s government-protected lands. Killian went first, followed by Haleigh, then Enzo, with Zoey happy to bring up the rear. Without someone behind her, she was in the best spot to see the wilderness around her. And on such tight paths, often she lost sight of Enzo’s ATV, meaning for a moment, she could enjoy this incredible place all alone.
The Tourist Attraction (Moose Springs, Alaska) Page 29