“You’re welcome. But for the record, I believe in you—your ability to do anything you set your mind to. I forgot to mention it, but the folks at the Global site are psyched about your recommendations. You made a real positive change in their lives.”
“T-thank you.” Arms lowered, she made a half-step forward. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought her on the verge of hugging him. But then she froze in place. “That was a seriously nice thing to say. And thanks again for the rescue. I do appreciate your help.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It would’ve been in about five minutes if I hadn’t got to a bathroom.” She grinned. Hand to her forehead, she looked around, then said, “This place is straight off the pages of a storybook.” A few seconds later, she added with a wince, “A nice, happy storybook, if you’d kindly show me to the facilities.”
“Sure. Right there.” He pointed to a crude path leading off into the trees.
“I’m confused. Is this cabin like a storage shed, and the real house is down that trail?”
“No, I just mean the bathroom is down the trail.”
“Oh—like you’ve got a bathhouse,” she said, already on her way. “That’s cool. A bubble bath would feel fantastic.”
“Just keep walking,” he said. “I want it to be a surprise.”
She grinned over her shoulder. “Maybe this whole kidnapping thing won’t be so bad? Kind of like a spa weekend.”
“Just keep walking,” he said. “You can’t miss it.”
With a perky wave, she rounded a bend in the path. Leaning against the truck, Colby crossed his legs at the ankles, then counted. “Five…four…three…two—”
“An outhouse! Your only bathroom is an outhouse?”
Dot and Brody charged up the other path that led to the lake.
“What’s the commotion?” Brody asked. “There a grizzly?”
Colby let out a snort. “Oh, there’s a grizzly, all right. A big old momma bear who just realized there’s no flush toilet.”
“That’s my cue to beat it,” Dot said, hopping into the back of the truck to grab a box Colby presumed held supplies. “Brody, lend me a hand. I want to be gone before she comes back.”
“For crying out loud.” Colby had his hands on his hips. “You’re not really planning on leaving us here?”
“If we don’t,” Brody said, “Nugget told us he wouldn’t serve us for the next year.”
“And you two actually believe that?”
Brody had already dumped one box onto the dirt at Colby’s feet and was going for another, plus three Yeti coolers.
“Aw, come on, man. Don’t leave me up here with her. She’s scary.”
“Yeah, well you shoulda thought about that before you—”
“Speed it up, Brode—this here’s the last one.” Dot hefted the last box off the truck, yanked the roll door down and secured it, then hightailed it around to the cab.
Brody followed hot on her heels.
Colby wasn’t far behind them. “Come on, guys,” he wheedled. “You know how well this worked with Tanner and Jenny, so what makes you think it would work with—”
They’d shut and locked both cab doors.
Dot started the engine, grinding it into first gear.
“Hey!” Colby pounded on Dot’s door, chasing the truck out of the cabin’s overgrown yard. The place used to have a driveway, but since he’d never used it, sometime over the years it had blended with the forest—a fact made only too evident when a birch sapling whipped his left cheek. “Damn…”
In the time it took to mutter a few more curses, his two supposed friends and their truck vanished behind a dust cloud.
Raking his fingers through his hair, Colby muttered, “Behold, the power of Nugget’s home cooking on a bachelor and an old married woman who between them can’t open a can of soup.” Dot might hold the official title of Global’s caretaker, but she sure wasn’t the cook.
“Where’s the truck?” Rose asked, eyes wide. “All the squirt cheese was back there—and those yummy little crackers with the—”
“Do you like trout?”
“What do you mean?” Gaze narrowed, she folded her arms, resting them atop their baby. “Like they just went off for a quick bite to eat at a restaurant down the road, right? After that, they’ll be back?”
He sighed.
“Colby? They will be back, right?”
“In a few days.”
AFTER ROSE GOT over the initial shock of realizing she wasn’t going anywhere, Colby planted her on a comfy rocker on the cabin’s screened porch, then hauled in the supplies. Thankfully, there were lots, including her suitcase and toiletries from the lodge.
She’d offered to help, but he still seemed under the impression that just because she was pregnant, she was also helpless. Normally, she’d have delighted in proving him wrong, but—she yawned—this was one time when she was happy to abide by his manly suggestion she rest.
Granted, the outhouse thing was a real drag.
And instead of a proper stove, the kitchen had a wood-burning monstrosity that looked as though it had been hauled up here in the gold rush days. But sitting as she was now, gazing out at yet another postcard-perfect lake view, she was surprised that she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather be doing—including working at the job she loved.
The control freak in her should have been railing. Instead, Rose felt an odd sense of peace. If pressed, she couldn’t have even explained why. For whatever reason, this cabin was where she needed to be. For now, anyway, it felt like home—the one she’d secretly always wanted, but never known.
The diamond-shot lake was ringed by spruce. At the far end stood aspen in a field of wildflowers. Behind those towered a snowcapped mountain. In the patch of enchanted forest serving as a yard, a woodpecker had his way with a half-dead cedar, and from over the lake came a flock of geese’s occasional honks.
The sweet smell of wood smoke hung in the air. Colby must’ve gotten the stove to work. He’d explained earlier that he couldn’t light a fire in the rock fireplace because a bird family had moved in for the summer.
“You cold?” Colby asked, strolling through the cabin’s open door with a fuzzy red blanket.
“Maybe a little.” She cuddled into it when he tucked it over her lap. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He pressed a tender kiss to her forehead before heading back inside.
The baby kicked. “Colby?” she called out.
“Yeah?”
“Despite our differences, let’s try having a nice time up here—for however long those so-called friends of yours decide to leave us.”
“Sounds good. Anything you need?”
“Other than that nice, long soak I was wishing for, along with a snack, I’m pretty much content.”
“You really want a bath?”
“It’d be nice, but I’m guessing that the only shower or tub up here is the lake, right?”
He winked. “What do you want for a snack?”
“Colby? What did that wink mean? Do we not even get the lake to bathe in? Is it infested with ultra-winter-hardy piranha or flesh-eating arctic bacteria?”
“Snack?”
“Pizza?”
“How about baby carrots and ranch dip?”
“Yum.”
Yet again avoiding her hygiene question, he disappeared inside the cabin.
Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, she followed him, only to be pleasantly surprised by what he’d done with the place in the past thirty minutes. On her first trip through, the sofa and few chairs had been shrouded in old muslin dustcovers, as had the bed, giving the whole cabin the appearance of ghost central.
But now…
Now it was a cozy haven with a gently worn red sofa and chairs, and a big wrought-iron bed, fluffy and inviting with its mounds of pillows and cheery, red-plaid spread. Above the rock fireplace hung an uncannily accurate watercolor rendition of the lake.
Colby caught her appraising the room and blushed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, admiring the red-calico curtains with their pretty lace trim.
“What’s wrong?” he asked with a slight cough. “I’d forgotten how girly this place is. My mom painted that.” He pointed to the picture Rose had just admired. With any luck, their son would inherit his paternal grandmother’s artistic flair. “I used to spend so much time up here that she redecorated the place for my twenty-fifth birthday. Guess she thought I could use it for a love nest.”
Now it was Rose’s turn to redden. “Well?”
“What?”
“Did you? Use it as a—you know.”
He looked sharply away.
For a second, Rose couldn’t figure out what would make Colby react that way, but then understanding dawned. As much as she wanted to believe he’d never been with any woman but her, she wasn’t that naive. “You came up here with Margot, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“And knowing how well that turned out, you’re figuring the same is about to happen with me?”
“Actually,” he said with a half laugh, “I was thinking more along the lines that at least with Margot I’d had a fighting chance, but with you…”
“Oh—you think I should agree to give up my entire life—my work and friends? Just because you want me to?” He had no idea what she’d lived through. Relinquishing control meant opening herself to the chance—however slim—of once again suffering abuse. Stop. Knowing Colby like she did, that excuse was no longer going to fly. He was a good man. The kind of man who would never hurt her or their baby.
“No, I think you should accept an exciting lifestyle change because our son needs you to. Can you imagine what a kick he’d get out of coming up here? Fishing, camping, learning how trappers and miners used to live off the land.”
“Getting bitten by mosquitoes.” She slapped a little sucker about to tear into her arm.
“God help our kiddo if he’s even half as bullheaded as you.”
“Why am I bullheaded just because I know what I want?” More like what you don’t want.
Chapter Ten
ROSE SHOULD HAVE been enjoying herself.
Here she sat in an antique copper tub that Colby had hauled in from a storage shed. Not only had he cleaned it, then filled it with pot after pot of steaming water, but he’d then added berry-scented oil. A remnant of his time with Margot? From some odd reason, Rose couldn’t bear to ask.
Perched on a table beside her was a vase filled with wildflowers. Some with dainty white petals and others so blue they couldn’t be real, yet were. He’d even been kind enough to assemble snacks—the squirt cheese she’d feared long gone in the truck, and those little round crackers she’d come to adore. Sweet grapes and slightly tart apple slices. Best of all, a tall glass of sweet herbal iced tea Colby had cooled by sticking the whole jug in the frigid lake.
Cheese cracker in one hand, tea in another, the rest of her submerged in sinfully warm water, Rose should have been content. But from just outside the window came the sharp whack and ker-thunk of Colby splitting logs, then the thump of them hitting ground.
Rose closed her eyes.
“Baby…” She curved her hands around her bump. “Your father’s a workaholic, and your mom’s turning into a whine-a-holic.”
Her only answer was the occasional plip-plop coming from the old-fashioned hand pump beside the sink.
Colby was a good man. Judging by what her single friends said, a really good man was an increasingly tough breed to find. He was handsome and loyal and honorable and hardworking. And here she’d been grousing about how she’d never marry anyone, let alone a man like him, when he was working so hard to make her time at the rustic cabin enjoyable. He was about as far from her father or Rick as anyone could be.
So why was she still so scared? Why couldn’t she once and for all release her ugly past to focus on what might be an intriguing new future? Fear. Plain and simple. A potential avalanche of what-if scenarios of all the things that could potentially go wrong if she tried playing this Colby’s way. On the flip side, there were an equal amount of ways things between them could go right. But it could potentially cost her everything to find out.
Okay, so in the meantime she’d established the fact that she was behaving like a spoiled brat, but what was she going to do about it? There was no way he’d let her help cut wood.
Maybe there were other things she could do? Cook or dust or pick berries, or whatever else mountain women did to help their men keep food on the table.
Not that Colby was her man.
Sloshing out of the tub, Rose hastily dried herself on the fluffy white towel Colby had been thoughtful enough to provide, then dressed in black warm-up pants, a white T-shirt, and the matching warm-up jacket. After adding thick white socks and comfy shoes, then securing her ponytail, she headed outside. To her surprise, Colby wasn’t at the neatly stacked woodpile where she’d thought he’d be.
“Colby!” she shouted, swallowing a twinge of panic. What would she do if he’d been eaten by a bear or fallen down some rotted old mine shaft?
“Over here!”
She only exhaled after spotting him at the lake’s edge, fluidly casting a fly rod in and out. He’d changed into a navy-blue T-shirt, and with each cast, the muscles of his shoulders and back flexed. Remembering only too well the feel of those muscles beneath her palms, Rose licked her lips.
Carefully making her way down the dirt path, she called, “Catch anything?” Besides my overactive imagination?
“One. But I figured since you probably want to eat, too, I might need to catch a few more.”
“A few more?”
“Hey, it’s not your fault that kid of mine is always hungry.”
Having reached him on the shore, she landed a light smack to his bicep. A mistake, because it felt too good for a woman holding tight to her resolve to steer clear of all men—in particular, this one.
“Ouch. You’re vicious.” He winked before once again casting out. “Thought you were relaxing in the tub?”
“I was.” She eased onto a smooth-topped boulder, wincing when the cold seeped through the thin fabric of her pants. “But then I got to thinking about how hard you’ve been working ever since we climbed out of that truck, and I feel guilty.”
“Aw, this isn’t work,” he said with another cast and mesmerizing grin. “This is as close to heaven as I figure I’m going to get on this earth.”
“You like fishing?”
“Always have.”
“When did you learn?”
He shrugged. “Seems like I’ve always known. But I guess, looking back on it, I used to tag along with my friend Tanner and his dad. Mr. Muldoon was a pretty cool guy—half Athabascan Indian. Died of a sudden heart attack a few years back.” Colby threw out another cast. “Anyway, he taught us to tie our own flies, and he was a real stickler for not catching more than we could eat. We must’ve fished every river and lake around here for a couple hundred miles.”
“Wow, I’m impressed. Sounds like I’m angling with a pro.”
His expression took on a wistful glow. “I’ll never forget my first big catch—a forty-pound king salmon. Man, did he fight. Toward the end, I was beginning to wonder if that sucker was bigger than me. Brody’s dad put it on ice for me till we got home, so I could show it to Mom. I wanted to save it, but we didn’t have the money to take it to a taxidermist, so Mom thought she’d try tanning it by scooping out the insides, then hanging it on the clothesline.” Still wearing that far-off expression, he chuckled. “After it dried, she moved it to the shed to try making it into a pillow or something, but whatever she’d done didn’t work, and the thing started stinking. One morning I went out to the shed before school to look at it, only to find the shed door had been busted in, and a black bear was munching my poor fish for breakfast.”
“Oh, no!” Rose said, hand to her mouth to hide her horrified smile. “What did you
do?”
Grimacing while throwing another cast, he said, “Truth? Flat-out bawled. Mom let me stay home from school.”
“She sounds sweet.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She still happy with her new husband?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Please tell me if I’m overstepping, but you told me your dad left the two of you. How old were you?”
“Six. He took off the day before my birthday. Mom and Nugget held this great party for me down at the lodge. All the town kids came. My friends Brody and Tanner. Streamers, balloons, cake. But through the whole thing, I stood at one of the lodge windows, just waiting for my dad to get there.”
“How awful.”
“Yeah, well, crap happens.”
“But you were just a little boy. Did he leave a note, or at least call, or what?”
“None of the above. One day I thought we had this perfect family. The next, he was gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Rose swallowed hard, thinking back to the day her father had left. There’d been nothing mysterious about it. He’d been cuffed, riding in the back of a squad car. She and her mother had been transported by ambulance to the nearest hospital. Vivian had needed brain surgery to relieve the swelling. Rose had received one hundred and thirteen stiches.
Sometimes, she harbored guilt for being glad he was dead.
It was easier.
And now here was Colby’s story of his own messed-up father, which proved that even if her dad hadn’t been violent, that didn’t necessarily mean he’d have been a better parent.
So how did that affect her convictions about raising her son without a father? It left her more confused than ever.
“Don’t be sorry, Rose. I’m over it. And anyway, it’s not like it’s your fault.”
“I know, but—oh, look! You caught one!” Rose’s animated cry echoed across the lake.
“Come here…” He edged toward her with the pole. “Reel him in.”
“Oh, no—you do it.”
“Really.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, urging her to her feet, flooding her with heady awareness of his size. “It’s high time you learned how to catch your supper.”
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