Snowed in with the Single Dad

by Melinda Curtis

  She hesitated on the bottom step.

  “Business isn’t pretty.” Grandpa Harlan’s voice filled her head. “And life isn’t always easy. Sometimes you’ve gotta hug your enemy and sometimes you’ve gotta punch back.”

  Mitch stood at the fireplace in blue jeans and a blue knit sweater, back to her, lean body silhouetted by the banked embers. “You don’t want to hear what I’m trying not to say to you, Miss Laurel.”

  “Last I heard, a jury doesn’t deliberate without hearing both sides of the story, Counselor.” Laurel sat on the couch, curling her feet beneath her and draping the brown-and-blue quilt over her legs. She laid the magazine that had documented the whole pink dress mess on the cushion next to her.

  Mitch faced her. “What kind of person brings a dress like that to Idaho in winter? I can’t demand you get rid of it but...”

  “You’ll hear me out.” Laurel shored up her shoulders and her resolve. “Gabby and the dress... It was my fault. I’m not arguing that. I just... I just wanted you to have my side of the story.”

  His gaze dared her to back down. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you to be angry at Gabby. Because I don’t want to think of you pacing the floors and unable to sleep.” Because she’d liked the way he’d looked at her when morning sickness sidelined her and he hadn’t looked at her that way since. Because if she could get through to him about the dress there was hope that she could get through to Ashley and her mother about Wyatt. “Please. Sit.”

  He didn’t. But he didn’t leave, either.

  Laurel hesitated. That scowl... Until today, she’d given him no reason to dislike her other than the fact she was one of Harlan Monroe’s heirs. She wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Grandpa Harlan. Something unlocked inside her head, fitted pieces together. Suddenly, she understood Mitch and why they couldn’t reach common ground. “My grandfather gave you a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”

  “Oh, let’s not go there.” His scowl deepened.

  She leaned forward. “I wouldn’t go there if you didn’t look at everything I do and everything you think I am through a fear-tinted lens.” She purposely softened her tone. “You’re afraid.”

  The embers crackled, flamed briefly, all before Mitch’s expression turned wary, but he said nothing.

  “You think my generation of Monroes is entitled, that we’ve been given every opportunity to succeed.” All true. “My grandfather didn’t leave me money. He hit a reset button, had my dad fire me and left me a share in Second Chance.” She let her gaze roam the common room. The antique bed warmer on the wall Sophie was so fond of. The thick log walls scarred from a hundred-year-plus history. The big wood mantel above a fireplace large enough for Andrew and Alexander to stand in. They hadn’t inherited a cash cow. “I have savings. We all do, but Grandpa Harlan is forcing us all to start over.”

  Her stomach churned. Baby didn’t like drama any more than she did. Her gaze landed back on Mitch, on determined shoulders, stern features and dark eyes that reflected concern. “But you forget my grandfather gave you every opportunity to succeed, as well. A large check and a small lease. His death is a reset button for you, too. And now you’re scared that things will change, that Shane will take this all away when your lease runs out. That your daughter will wear dresses and like boys and—”

  “That’s enough.” Mitch ran a hand over his hair. “This is supposed to be about your dress and your side of the story.”

  “It’s about Second Chance and family and a dress you’d like to see gone. A dress I can’t let go of.” Laurel grimaced, thinking of another dress, a blue princess dress, toddler size. She drew a deep breath and tapped the magazine next to her, tapped the photo of the pink dress. “That’s me. Not my sister.”

  He leaned closer to peer at the picture and headline but said nothing.

  Perhaps, like the rest of the world, he couldn’t distinguish Laurel from Ashley.

  The thought pressed on her chest, testing her composure.

  The dress. This was about Ashley and the dress.

  “You have to be tough to make it in Hollywood.” Laurel searched for words, but there was no sugarcoating the truth. “And Ashley... She’s always been in tune with the emotions of others, fragile.” It was why she was able to draw from a deep emotional well in a performance. “When she was sixteen, she fell for a singer in a popular boy band. She didn’t know he was taking pills to handle the stress of the spotlight. When she found out and broke up with him, he overdosed. Ashley couldn’t drag herself out of bed for a week. She was replaced on a film.”

  Mom had been livid but unable to shout her daughter back to work.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Laurel had told Ashley.

  “It was. He’d be alive if I pretended his addiction didn’t matter. If I acted...”

  “If you enabled,” Laurel had corrected.

  “How will I know what a guy’s hiding? How can I trust anyone?” Ashley’s voice was a thin, taut thread about to snap.

  “I’ll vet every man for you,” Laurel had promised, forcing the words past the fear clogging her throat. Fear that her sensitive sister wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of Hollywood.

  Laurel’s gaze found Mitch’s. “With help, she put herself back together again, determined to focus on her career and steer clear of emotional entanglements, but—”

  “Is there a point in here somewhere?”

  “Yes. You can’t survive in Hollywood without being seen at least occasionally out with someone, preferably powerful someones, but Ashley won’t go.” Laurel closed the magazine, which resulted in Wyatt Halford, the sexiest man alive, staring up at her from the cover. She turned the magazine over. “So because she and I are identical twins, and I would do anything to protect her, I pretend to be famous sometimes.”

  I pretend Laurel doesn’t exist.

  Mitch’s closed-off expression turned cynical. “How could that be? Ashley must have assistants. An agent. People who’d know her and leak the story.”

  Laurel shook her head. “My mother is both Ashley’s agent and her assistant. I wore that dress the week before we came to Second Chance.” Privately, she’d been thrilled with the reaction of the crowd. It’d been the first time anything she’d made had been embraced publicly. “I wasn’t feeling quite right, because, you know, morning sickness.” Her awkward laugh, so unlike Ashley’s, couldn’t reach through his closed-off demeanor. “And when someone shouted the question—who designed your dress?—the truth came tumbling out. Me.”

  In that moment, like the night with Wyatt, she’d been seen. She’d received accolades for her talent.

  Mitch frowned. “You shouldn’t be telling me this.”

  “Why not? I know you appreciate candid conversation.” And her days as Ashley’s double were over. “Later, when I showed up at my mother’s house, Mom was furious. She reminded me about Ashley’s carefully crafted reputation—which didn’t include a fashion brand.” Because the plan was for child star Ashley to be taken as a serious actress, not another celebrity dabbling in fashion. “When Ashley didn’t say anything—” which had hurt more than Mom’s harsh words “—I left, still wearing the evening gown. I didn’t want that dress to stand between my relationship with Ashley, but I couldn’t leave it behind. That dress...”

  “You shouldn’t be telling anyone this,” Mitch amended, sounding like a lawyer advising his client.

  Did he think she was going public with her past?

  “I’m not telling you this because I want you to leak it to the press, Counselor.” She thought a bit of attorney-client privilege was in order, implied though it might be. “I’m telling you this so you understand why I can’t just ship the dress somewhere else. It stays until I go.”

  He took a step back and crossed his arms.

  “Not everything in life is cut-and-dried or right and wrong. Because
of Grandpa Harlan’s will—” Ashley had lost a role on a Monroe Studios film “—and because of my actions in Hollywood—” sleeping with Wyatt “—I have to go back and support Ashley. And I promise I’ll take the dress with me when I leave.” Just as soon as she had the medical all clear to travel.

  His expression was still as hard as the rock on the fireplace.

  Laurel reminded herself she could spill her guts all over the floor and Mitch still might not care.

  “You’re afraid, too,” he accused in the same voice he’d used to point out she was bored earlier.

  “Yes.” Why deny it? “I’m afraid my relationship with my sister will be changed forever. I’m afraid I screwed up my one chance to be a fashion designer. But that doesn’t mean we’ll have more Second Chance fashion shows.”

  He made that grumpy noise, accented by disbelieving brows.

  “Gabby was curious. She volunteered. And for the record, I protested the entire time. At least, until Gabby walked out of the bathroom and did the dress justice.”

  “But you did her hair and makeup.” The jaded attorney trying to poke holes in Laurel’s testimony.

  “No. She didn’t.” Gabby appeared behind the check-in desk wearing a faded pink flannel nightgown. “I did.”

  “Impossible.” Mitch scoffed. “You’re just a kid.”

  “Dad, I keep telling you...” The teen rolled her big brown eyes. “You can learn how to do anything on the internet.” She scurried back inside the apartment and closed the door.

  “Or with a cell phone...” Mitch’s butt landed on the arm of the couch. He stared at the closed door, looking shell-shocked. “She grew up so fast.”

  “Or maybe she’s been growing up all along.” Laurel stood, heading for the stairs. “And you didn’t see it coming.”

  “We may both have our fears, but that doesn’t mean I forgive you, Miss Laurel,” Mitch called after her.

  So much for world peace.

  “I can’t control whether you forgive me or not, Counselor. I can only ask that you look at things from my perspective. Because like it or not, you have to deal with the Monroes. Wouldn’t it be easier if we all got along?”

  He didn’t answer her.

  * * *

  “HEY, MITCH.” ZEKE bumped his wheelchair through the door and into the common room after Laurel went up to bed. “Want some company?”

  Mitch stopped pacing, stopped thinking about fear and promises bent close to breaking, about Laurel and her grandfather, and turned.

  Laurel had made some good points about the leg up that Harlan Monroe had given Mitch and others in Second Chance. And there had been tears in her eyes when she’d talked about how fragile her sister was. But that didn’t change the fact that Gabby needed grounded people around her. Now more than ever.

  Zeke brought his wheelchair to a stop a few feet away from Mitch. “You’ve got some thin walls in here...Counselor.”

  “Don’t tell me you heard all that.” Mitch’s conversation with Laurel. The second revelation of the day about Gabby. The secret life of Ashley Monroe. He rubbed his face with both hands. He clung to the hope that Laurel would leave as soon as the doctor allowed her to. “Why is no one in bed?” The morning was coming far too soon.

  Zeke rubbed his hands over his leg brace. “Since you woke me up, is there anything you feel you need to get off your chest?”

  Mitch stared into the bright red embers in the fireplace.

  Zeke undid the Velcro straps on his leg brace, shifted and refastened them. “I’m not gonna lie. Ashley Monroe is my celebrity crush. When I first met Laurel, I could barely speak. And now my mind is blown.” Zeke’s eyes widened. “I was having dinner at the Clarks’ a year ago when that movie award show was on. And Ashley Monroe was on the red carpet, except...” The cowboy lowered his voice. “It might have been Laurel.”

  Mitch fixed Zeke with a hard stare.

  “I’m just saying...” Zeke held up his hands in mock surrender. “I feel a little conned.”

  “Which is exactly why you can’t tell anyone.” Mitch shook his head. “They do look exactly the same, except—”

  “Laurel’s got a soulful look in her eyes,” Zeke finished for him.

  “As if she’s been hurt.” Mitch nodded. “And her laugh...”

  Zeke chuckled. “Like a drunken donkey.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” But Mitch smiled, not that it lasted for long. “Gabby’s going through a lot right now and I need good role models around here.”

  “Deep down, you know Laurel’s a good person.”

  Mitch agreed, but he wasn’t going to admit it, not when the dress debacle was so new.

  “Besides...” Zeke adjusted his leg brace again, slipping his fingers beneath the stiff sides to scratch. “Don’t they own this place?” At Mitch’s nod, he added, “Kind of makes it hard to kick her out.”

  Well, there was that.

  “You know,” Zeke said slowly. “I had a friend who was a little wild during her teenage years. Rebellious. Boy crazy. Why one time—”

  “Gabby is not wild.” How Mitch prayed that was true. “She’s twelve and pushing for a little independence is all.”

  Zeke shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  They watched the dying flames in silence. Zeke scratching. Mitch uncomfortable in his own skin.

  Try as he might, Mitch couldn’t help but think all his troubles traced back to one man. “Did you ever meet Harlan Monroe?”

  The cowboy shook his head. “That was before I came to Second Chance.”

  “Family was important to him. And he made it sound as if everything would be all right if I accepted his offer and stayed in town.” They’d had long discussions about life and family sitting on the back porch, drinking beer and watching the local herd of elk graze in the meadow on the other side of the Salmon River.

  He’d found Laurel out on that same porch a few days after she’d arrived.

  She’d stared at the snowy meadow, tears in her eyes. “I bet this was one of Grandpa’s favorite places.”

  True. What she didn’t know—what he couldn’t tell her because he’d signed that stupid confidentiality agreement—was that Harlan had told Mitch about himself and his grandchildren. Including Laurel.

  “You can’t escape being a twin,” Harlan had said once as the sky turned purple during a summer sunset. “But you can cast your own shadow. Now, my granddaughter Laurel... She’s a twin and she doesn’t realize she has a big shadow of her own.”

  Laurel was living in her sister’s shadow. Was that why her eyes were sometimes sorrowful? Or was it because her design career had crashed and burned? The magazine headline had stated Ashley Monroe had made her dress, but Laurel claimed it was her work.

  There was more drama between Laurel and her family than she let on.

  Mitch ran a hand through his hair. He had his own problems to deal with thanks to one rich old man. “Harlan Monroe was something else.”

  “Uh, Mitch. From what I hear tell about old Mr. Monroe and his relationship with folks in town—which is not much, but the Clarks at the Bucking Bull did mention something about a legal gag order...” Zeke drew a breath. “Should you be telling me about the man?”

  There were two low stone ledges for sitting on either side of the cooking fireplace.

  Mitch sat down on one. “It’s no secret the dearly departed Harlan Monroe was a savvy businessman.” There were things Mitch knew about Harlan Monroe, things he hadn’t been told, things he’d looked up on the internet as if he were Gabby doing a report. Harlan Monroe had been a ruthless businessman. Had his buyout offer given Mitch the short end of the stick?

  “Hey, uh...” Zeke fiddled with his leg brace again. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “I’m not in the mood for granting favors.” For being nice. For being a hospitable innkeep
er. “It’s late and we should both be asleep.” Mitch stood, grabbed a fireplace poker and spread the coals thin.

  Zeke shifted in his chair. “Hear me out. Please.”

  It was the urgent way the cowboy said please that caught Mitch’s full attention.

  Zeke’s face was pinched, and he wasn’t smiling. “Everything in my brace itches. My knee, my ankle, my toes.” Zeke raised his gaze to Mitch’s. “I can’t remove my brace completely or bend my knee at all—trust me, it’s excruciatingly painful. I need a pen or a ruler to scratch without moving my leg around.”

  Mitch went to the check-in desk for a pencil.

  “Except...” Zeke sounded pained. “You’re not going to like this, but I can’t reach the undersides of my toes.”

  Mitch turned to look at Zeke. “What are you asking?”

  “I need you to scratch the sole of my foot.” He made his request in a voice barely above a whisper.

  The head shake was a natural, masculine, knee-jerk reaction. “Sorry, Zeke. No can do.”

  Zeke couldn’t hold Mitch’s sturdy stare. It was clear he felt as bad about asking as Mitch felt about being asked. “Have pity on me, man. At this point if you handed me a bent toilet brush I’d use it on my toes if I could.”

  Mitch paused, studying the tension on Zeke’s face. “You’re that desperate?”

  “I’m that desperate,” Zeke confirmed with a nod.

  Mitch glanced toward the staircase and then toward his apartment door. “When I first bought this inn, I never imagined I’d be asked to scratch a guest’s toes.” Mitch retrieved a new pencil from the check-in desk. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”

  If Shane knew, he’d have a field day.

  “My lips are sealed,” Zeke said.

  Mitch held the pencil at arm’s length as if Zeke’s digits might bite. “Just... Promise me this. Don’t ask me for a sponge bath.”

  Zeke managed to look both horrified and relieved. “Never.”

  * * *

  “WHAT’S WITH THE do-not-disturb sign?” Sophie asked when Laurel granted her entry the next morning. She wore a comfy pair of gray sweats and a preppy yellow-and-gray-striped sweater.