She pursed her lips. “Given my history—thanks for that, by the way—if I do like him, we can pretty much take it on faith he’s got skeletons doing a jig in a closet somewhere.”
“Oh, hon.” More sympathy. “It’s not you, you know. It’s where we are. The gender ratio is all out of whack. There are a dozen men for every female. You attract them like flies with your Snow White appeal.”
Sadie despised the nickname. Her short black bob ended at her jawline. She kept it perpetually tucked behind her ears so the ends flipped out like little raven wings on the side of her head. She didn’t particularly care for that, but the ear-tucking habit wasn’t going anywhere, and she didn’t have time to wrestle with long hair.
“Besides,” Nina continued, “I have to admit. Blake sounded awfully formal on the phone. He’s probably a boob. Not your type. In fact, we ought to do Amanda a favor and send her to the airport. They’d probably hit it off.”
Amanda Avery was the daughter of Iris, the Avery half of Avery & Thorp. The boss’s daughter. She was the head of the bookkeeping team and the most boring, sedate, mundane, unruffled human being Sadie had ever met in her life, the woman’s wacky wardrobe notwithstanding.
Sadie slumped in her chair. “Just what we need—another humdrum accountant to make us all look bad.”
* * * *
Blake scanned the sidewalk for his name on a sign or someone waving from one of the three vehicles parked curbside. A topless Jeep, a red Ford pickup, and a minivan were his options so far. In his mind’s eye, he was waiting for a newer model black sedan with tinted windows to pull up—a vehicle suited to a well-to-do accountant in one of the country’s wealthiest counties.
The Jackson airport defied his expectations. The sidewalk out front for loading and picking up passengers was no larger than an L.A. bus stop, and the parking lot for the whole airport hardly competed with a Kmart’s. Small and a little rundown, it had one major redeeming quality—the mighty, massive Tetons rising up in the distance, jagged peaks thrusting into thin wispy clouds as if they were too intimidated to hold their fluffy shape in such grand company.
Blake peered at the imposing summit of the Grand Teton—ten thousand feet in the air, a swift four thousand foot rise from the valley—and shook his head slightly in awe. Pictures hadn’t prepared him for seeing the stunning, commanding mountains in real life, up close. In hollows between the razor sharp pinnacles sat white masses. Snow. In early September. Supposedly, a glacier lived up there somewhere, but he’d have to see it to believe it.
He swallowed and gave Seth his full attention. Difficult, between fumbling with his rolling suitcase, his cell phone, and the impossible view of the mountains. He turned his back on them, eyes toward the loading zone. “Look, bud, I think your mom will understand if you decide to go to Purdue in the spring.”
Of course Quinn would mind, but she wouldn’t tell Seth that.
Seth sighed wearily into the phone. “I know she will, but—Maddie, no! Sorry, Dad, she’s trying to take the phone.”
Blake grinned to himself as his eighteen-year-old son explained to his two-year-old half sister why she couldn’t play with his pone right now.
Quinn’s child with her new husband, Jack Decker, little Maddie had plowed into her terrible twos with gleeful impishness. A charming troublemaker, she’d give a winsome smile while putting JELL-O in your loafers, which made getting angry an impossibility. Annoyed, at times. Exasperated, definitely. Mostly amused.
She had her uncle Blake, and just about everyone else in the family, wrapped around her tiny, sticky fingers. “Sounds like Maddie’s keeping you on your toes.”
“Yeah, well, you were here two weeks ago when she learned to walk.” Seth’s wry tone held a hint of amusement. “Since then, she’s discovered her range has expanded. She grabs everything. Last night, she went for Jack’s glass of wine, and it spilled inside his guitar. I thought he would freak out, but he laughed and said his guitar would probably only play Irish pub songs from now on.”
Against his will, Blake cracked a smile.
As much as he wanted to hate the guy for being his ex-wife’s new love, Jack had a certain quality that made him impossible to dislike—women adored him, children loved him, and men envied him. The British accent thing probably didn’t hurt.
Blake rubbed his forehead and refused to think too hard about Jack, Quinn, and Maddie. They defined a whole world of regret. Instead, he focused on his son, the one thing he’d gotten right. “Seth, if your heart says go to Purdue, then go. Your mom will be happy as long as you are. You know that.”
Maddie’s happy squawk echoed in the background.
Seth shushed her, almost politely. “That’s exactly what Jack said.”
A wrench to the gut. Well, why wouldn’t Seth go to his stepdad for advice? A few short years ago, the kid hadn’t wanted anything to do with Blake. That he’d asked Blake’s advice at all was a testament to how far Blake had come as a father. Not far enough, however, when he stopped to consider the years he’d wasted being too busy for his son.
And it’s not like it wasn’t my own fault.
Unhappy thoughts of an unhappy time. It seemed like in the last decade, all Blake had were unhappy times. Which was exactly what had landed him in remote Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Fewer than ten thousand full-time residents, but elitist enough for him to have no trouble finding work suited to his résumé. His job was the one thing in his life he hadn’t managed to completely screw up.
An arm shot out of the driver’s side window of the Ford pickup. A few dents and dings, but waxed to a perfect shine, the truck gleamed in the September sunlight. The hand waved.
A second later, the door opened and a woman stepped out. She looked right at him and waved again. She had on a dirty navy blue baseball cap. Short black hair tufted out on the sides. Her eyes were wide-set and almond-shaped, like a cat’s. Hard not to notice the way she gazed at him as she came around the bed of the truck, openly curious.
Attractive.
Blake’s stomach curled into itself instinctively, and a bone-deep desire to run back the way he’d come struck him like a blow.
Why is this happening to me? What have I done this time? Blake stared at the woman, a ghost from his past. One he’d long considered vanquished. The resemblance made the short hairs on his neck dance.
“Dad?” Seth’s inquisitive voice brought Blake back around.
Blake swallowed and gave the woman a hollow smile and perfunctory nod of greeting. “Hey, kid, I’m going to let you go. I think my ride is here.”
“Wait.” A pause while Seth shuffled with something in the background. “Maddie wants to say good-bye.”
Blake gave the woman another half-assed smile and a what-can-you-do shrug and turned so she couldn’t watch his face. “Okay, put her on the pone. I mean, phone.”
Seth snorted. “Yeah, don’t let Mom catch you encouraging the baby talk.” Another scrabble that sounded like someone scratching their nails over the phone’s tiny microphone.
“Uckle Bake!”
The garbled shriek made Blake jerk back from his cell phone with a wince. “Heeey, Maddie. Are you gonna tell me bye?”
“Bye, Uckle Bake!”
“Bye, sweetie. I love you—” A loud crack told him the phone had been dropped on Maddie’s end. He waited patiently for Seth to rescue the call. He was in no hurry to confront the woman behind him.
Seth came back to the line, sounding harassed. “Sorry, Dad. I better go. She’s headed for the coffee table at full speed.”
A sudden sensation of loss hit Blake like a quick pellet shot to the chest. He didn’t want to say good-bye. When would they see each other again if Seth went to college in Indiana? It was like a hole opening up inside him that loneliness rushed in to fill.
Blake cleared his throat to dislodge the emotion growing thick in his esophagus. “No problem, Seth. Just, uh…you know. Keep in touch. Whatever you decide to do.” They s
igned off.
Reluctantly, Blake turned back to the woman. He wracked his brain for the right thing to say. She was a stranger, and he shouldn’t let his first impression become a permanent mark against her. After all, it wasn’t her fault she was a dead ringer for his old mistress, the one responsible for his split from Quinn years ago.
She saved him the trouble by speaking first. “Uckle Bake, huh? Your niece sounds cute.” A wide grin split her face. Her eyes, a striking shade of pale gray, like pools of clear water, seemed to tease him from beneath the bill of her cap.
It would’ve been better if she hadn’t said anything. Blake kept a straight face and his gaze trained on the generic symbol stitched onto her ball cap. He determined to cling to the one thing about this woman that didn’t remind him of Kira, who wouldn’t have worn a baseball cap if he’d paid her in solid gold bars engraved with her name. “Blake Cobb.”
Her smile faltered at his stiff introduction. It didn’t disappear but turned wry. “Sadie Felix.” She stood up straighter and renewed Blake’s attention with the subtle change a few calculated adjustments made to her demeanor. Authority flooded her sharp gaze, and Blake was once again reminded of Kira in a bad way. “Senior accountant at Avery & Thorp.” Her smile changed yet again, this time into something plastic and false. “I’m here to take you to your temporary housing, Mr. Cobb. May I take your luggage?”
Ah. Emasculation. He’d missed the feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing Kira had always inspired within him. Ms. Felix apparently had the same withering touch.
Blake reevaluated his coworker. Mud-crusted, ankle-high, tawny hiking boots, rumpled khaki shorts with a tear in one pocket, a dirty ball cap, and still she wore her title like armor over it all. She’d hold her chin high in a potato sack. She was his equal, not someone he could get away with talking down to. Not that he’d meant to be a jerk.
I never mean it, do I? Quinn’s dry response snapped across his brain like a horse-whip, a trained response anytime Blake thought about feeling sorry for himself or making excuses.
“I apologize if I seem short,” he offered Sadie. “Long flight.” Ever an excuse but an honest one, at least.
Mostly honest. Was he supposed tell his new coworker he could hardly stand to look at her because it was like a waking nightmare? At least her eyes were a different color, very unlike Kira’s coffee-brown ones. Blake cleared his throat and tried again. “Not my niece, actually. More like stepdaughter.” Or so he liked to think. His relation to Maddie was complicated.
Blake lifted his luggage and swung it into the bed of the truck, denying Sadie further opportunity to emasculate him. He didn’t doubt she’d get his luggage for him, just to remind him to feel small for talking down to her. He made for the passenger door after another halfhearted smile for his host. It wouldn’t repair the damage, but maybe he’d look inoffensive enough for her to let it go.
A different yet equally abrasive emotion gripped him now, familiar and as old as little Maddie, who had Quinn’s pale blond hair and looked out at the world through Jack Decker’s remarkable aquamarine eyes.
Blake had been there when she was born in L.A., been one of the first to hold her in the nursery. He’d changed diapers, scrubbed spit-up off hundred-dollar silk ties, and fed her in the small hours of the night when Quinn and Jack had both been hit with the flu. Since Quinn worked from home, they didn’t have a nanny to call on in an emergency, but Blake hadn’t minded. He’d been Uncle Blake since the moment she was born.
But he should’ve been Daddy.
Sadie Felix was no litterbug.
Blake could tell by the crumpled sandwich baggies, drained soda cans, empty water bottles, wadded napkins, discarded gum wrappers, and other assorted garbage scattered across the floor and dashboard of her pickup.
He climbed into the truck with what he hoped was less than a grimace as his feet made loud, crunchy work of the trash. A four-foot long hiking pole was wedged into the cab at an angle so it made a barrier between him and Sadie. It appeared to be sanded down to perfect smoothness and glazed with some sort of sealant.
Sadie noticed his gaze, smiled, and patted it as she got in behind the wheel. “Pine. I carved it myself.”
She carved it herself? Blake resisted giving her a once-over, but an unmistakable zing of curiosity made it a test of will. Not because she sported a Snow White black bob he historically found attractive, but because any man might look twice at an accountant who minored in woodworking. He snuck a peek, despite himself.
She gave him a slightly apologetic look and turned the key, the Ford’s engine rumbling to life. “I bet I’m not what you expected. You’ll have to excuse my attire. I’d already asked for the day off to hike Cache Creek before the fall weather sets in. Duncan didn’t see the point in sending someone on company time.”
Carving and taking off weekdays from the office to hike? A cultural thing, or a Sadie thing?
Blake experienced his first dash of doubt since his plane kissed down on the tarmac runway. He wasn’t mountain man material, and the upcoming winter loomed over him like an ominous, hulking giant. Friend or foe, he wouldn’t find out until he was in the thick of it. He squelched his uneasiness, something he’d done many times since making the big decision to come north.
A few minutes south on a two-lane highway led them down into Jackson Valley with a dramatic drop in elevation, visible in the wide open space on either side of the road. A rocky, sagebrush-dotted hill sprung up on the right as the highway descended on a curve. On the other side, Blake spotted the sign for a fish hatchery, and then a great expanse of fenced land stretched all the way to the streets of town in the distance.
“The Elk Refuge,” Sadie helpfully explained. One hand left the steering wheel to indicate the massive acreage beyond the fence. “You can take a sleigh ride out to feed the herds when they come down from the higher elevations for winter. It’s pretty incredible.”
Straight ahead, beyond the buildings that marked the beginning of town, a small mountain—small compared to the Tetons, at any rate—rose up. Two strips were cleared through the trees, as though someone had taken a razor to it. Blake lifted his chin toward it. “What’s with that mountain?”
“Oh, that’s Snow King, both the ski slopes and namesake resort. The big ski resort is about fifteen miles from here, a few peaks over from the Tetons, but this place works for the townies.” Sadie gamely played host, all the while taking no pains to hide her curious glances and critical studies of him at every chance.
By now the rumor of his previous position would’ve moved through Avery & Thorp like wildfire. She was probably curious. Maybe he’d appease her some other day, but today all he wanted was to get somewhere quiet to call Quinn. For Seth’s sake, to talk about his Purdue ambitions. And to hear her voice. And to give himself another reason to pity his fool self when he heard Jack’s loud, happy voice in the background, gregariously living the life Blake had given up.
They cruised into town. Sadie took a right once they passed the famous town square with its four deer-antler arches, explaining how they were reconstructed each year. She pointed out the Cowboy Bar across the street, famous for its saddle barstools. And The Silver Dollar, named so for the bar inlaid with 2,032 uncirculated 1921 Morgan Silver Dollars.
“Great.” Blake tried to nod with some enthusiasm but didn’t quite pull it off. “If I want to get hammered, I have a number of renowned drinking establishments to choose from.” The thought didn’t lift his spirits any. If it gets so bad I turn to the bottle, I’ll give up and move back in with my mother.
“Welcome to the Wild West.” Sadie’s tone had lost some of its amiability.
Blake let a few blocks of silence pass while he tried to force himself into a better frame of mind. If Sadie could be accommodating, he could manage a little interest.
Sadie’s cheeks puffed out as if capturing unsaid words. Finally, she loosed a sigh, drummed restless fingers across the steering wheel, and r
egarded him again. No intake of breath to warn him, just a rush of words spoken precise and direct. “You’re in Jackson Hole. You realize that, right? People save money their whole lives to visit this place. Don’t let me kill your joy buzz over there, but you could be a little more impressed. If it’s really so ho-hum, at least fake it for my sake. We locals have our pride.”
He smiled at her forthright manner. Now, that bit reminded him of Quinn, which was a nice departure from her eerie likeness to Kira. “Sorry. Jet lag.”
She nodded but didn’t smile back. “Right. Anyway, we’re here.” She pulled into a hotel parking lot.
Blake squinted at the double doors, glass framed in glossy fake pine. “A hotel? That’s what they call ‘temporary housing’ these days?”
This time she did smile, but it was back to the plastic version. “The room you have comes equipped with a kitchenette, a small living area, and a terrace, as well as room service. I’m sure it has everything you need, but if not, feel free to contact Mr. Perry at your earliest convenience.”
Oh, right. Blake was going to call Duncan to complain about five-star accommodations. He bit his tongue as a reminder to keep it from flapping next time. He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I just left L.A. this morning, and I had this stupid idea in my head of a quiet place. I don’t mean to be”—now, what was that word? The one Quinn loved to use…
“A jerk?” Sadie supplied without apology.
Prick, actually, but no need to fill her in. Uncomfortable with her unflinching stare, he shifted and opened the door to let himself out. “Yeah. That.” He shut the truck door and reached for his suitcase. He walked around the truck so he could pass Sadie’s window on his way toward the hotel lobby, meaning to utter yet another weak apology.
It buzzed as she rolled it down before he had a chance to rap his knuckles across the glass.
Her face seemed awfully near. Under those wide, inquisitive eyes was a straight, patrician nose, small on her face and sweeping thinly to a point above an uneven mouth. Her top lip was plumper than her bottom, giving her the perpetual impression of biting her lip. Kind of adorable.
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