by Mimi Wells
“Receipt,” Rand said, handing it over.
“Hold on a sec,” she said. “Have to get my wallet.”
“Use mine,” Julian told her. Katy headed toward the first-floor master bedroom.
The two men shared an awkward moment, Julian focused on his bacon, Rand leaning, arms crossed, in the corner by the kitchen sink.
“Sleep okay?” Rand finally asked.
“Once we finally got to sleep, sure,” Julian said, a smile in his words. “Last night was the first night I’ve breathed easy in months.”
Rand grunted noncommittally. “The mountains will do that to you.”
“It’s more than that. Everywhere I go in LA, there’s at least one jerk with a camera waiting for me to pick my nose or scratch my junk or something,” Julian explained. “Across the street from my house, trailing me to the gym, popping up in restaurants—I’m surrounded by bloodsuckers.” He stabbed at the bacon.
Rand winced, thinking of Ivy. She might be determined, relentless even, but Rand would never call her that.
Julian looked over the bar counter toward the vista beyond the high windows. “It was great to wake up to nothing but trees.”
Rand followed his gaze to the sloping valley in shades of umber and plum at this morning hour, the blue smudge of the ridge beyond, the wispy white of the clouds in the distance. That view was the main reason he chose to build up the mountain from the family home.
Katy bustled back into the kitchen, pressing yet another crisp hundred into Rand’s hand. “Jules, what have I told you about carting around a bunch of large bills?”
Julian shot Rand a look, and Rand burst out laughing. “Welcome to my world.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Julian leaned over and kissed Katy with a resounding smack.
“And don’t you forget it,” she added.
Julian forked the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towels and added more strips to the pan. Katy took two of the cooked slices and handed one to Rand.
“We love your house,” she told him after nibbling her slice. “You should rent it out more often.”
“I have a whole inn down the mountain, remember?”
“A whole inn I barely had a chance to enjoy,” she teased.
Rand shrugged. “Someday. Right now, you’re better off up here.” Much less likely to run into Ivy. He explained his plan for switching cars, which both Katy and Julian agreed was a good idea. He slipped the key to the Subaru off the carabiner clip he used as a key ring and hooked Katy’s key on in its place.
“With that, I have to go. I have a contractor coming in to give me the bad news about some rooms on the second floor—another reason why you’re better off up here.”
Julian paused while cracking eggs. “What kind of bad news?”
“Renovations. Necessary, unfortunately.”
“That sucks.”
“You’re telling me. I love my grandparents, but they hate spending money. I’m afraid that’s going to bite us all in the butt.”
“Anything we can do to help?” Katy asked.
Rand slapped the pocket where he’d tucked Julian’s new bill. “You already are.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I gotta get back.”
Katy had moved back into Julian’s orbit and was staring up at him with a hunger that had nothing to do with eggs. “Sure you don’t want some breakfast?”
Rand knew how to take a hint. “Thanks, but I’ll leave you to it. Y’all have a good day.”
Julian smiled down at Katy, a wolfish look on his handsome face. “Count on it.”
*
Ivy woke to find the house quiet and the air in the room chillier than before. She grabbed her phone and found a series of texts from Laurel.
Get up, loser!
Hello?
Headed to work. You snore!
Respond before lunch or I’ll assume you died in your sleep.
Ivy texted back an awkward grin emoji, then willed herself out of her nest of quilts and into a quick shower. She toweled off in the blast of the bathroom’s space heater before slipping into jeans and a thermal shirt. Wrestling an old sweater over her head, she padded downstairs in her sock feet in search of coffee.
The kitchen was empty, counters bare. She went for the corner where the coffeemaker usually sat and found a hole like a missing tooth staring back at her. A note on the counter in her mother’s neat handwriting explained, “Coffeepot finally died. Come out to the shed if you need some.”
Ivy shuddered. If she set foot in the kitchen shed, she’d get sucked into the crazy that was last-minute orders. When she was a kid, things weren’t as ridiculous. Orders had to be mailed in, and anything that didn’t make the cutoff date got a note of apology and a jar of apple butter instead of a cake. But nowadays, people used to Amazon Prime and Door Dash pushed that deadline further back until even sleepy Dogwood Mountain got an injection of the twenty-first century. Her dad still held the line at three days before Christmas, though. If a fruitcake couldn’t make it by Christmas Eve, well, they’d just have to fix their own dessert.
This year’s deadline was tomorrow. Ivy felt a sting of guilt at avoiding the shed, but her story was her first priority. Paris certainly wouldn’t wait around for some fruitcakes. Besides, her mother was a master at both efficiency and planning. Ivy walking in would just mess up that system. Might as well take advantage this morning and work on her story.
She unearthed a pair of her old boots from a drawer in the mudroom and laced them on, then stepped outside with her now-dry coat and a stiff boar bristle clothes brush.
The bracing air was clean. The wind soughing through the pines on the slope behind the house carried none of the sour smells of the city. She shivered as she brushed the dried mud off her coat, sweeping it off the boards of the porch with the edge of her boot sole. She stepped back in and gave a shake all over like Laurel’s dog, tossing the brush back into its basket near the door and then shrugging on the coat and her scarf.
The keys to the rental were in the coat’s deep pockets, so she scooped up her big tote and headed out to the now mud-splattered Jetta. The car reminded her of herself. No one saw many Volkswagens this high up. When they did, they immediately thought “out-of-towner.” And she was. She loved the pace of New York. But even so, Dogwood Mountain crept up when she wasn’t looking, like the gravel in the tires and the mud spattered across the previously shiny red paint. She had to watch herself, lest the mountains work their spell on her.
On the way to town, she considered where Julian might take his new flame. Aside from private rentals, there were three main commercial options. The Creekside Cabins were rustic and quiet. They could hole up in one of those with no one the wiser, as long as they were willing to cook on a dual-burner hot plate. Ivy had a hard time imagining a star as big as Julian Wolf fending for himself that way. The Mountain Rest Inn across the street from the Brontosaurus was newer, a small hotel purchased several years back by a chain that promised a personal touch and all the best amenities. Would that be a draw for someone used to staying in five-star resorts with hundreds of staff at their fingertips? It was a possibility.
Then there was the charming, historic, and problematic Cooper House Inn. Ivy rolled her eyes. Logically, that would be the place to go. Cozy? Check. Romantic? Check. Private? She’d be willing to bet that Jessica from Boston knew all about how to keep celebrities happy. The nicest restaurant in town, The Catamount, was right next door. It would be easy to order gourmet meals and have them sent up on silver trays with pressed antique linens. Ivy had never spent much time in the inn herself, but everyone in town knew about the top floor suites. They’d hosted dignitaries of all kinds—writers in seclusion, famous singers, and multiple congressmen. An A-list actor wasn’t out of the question at all.
It took a while to find a parking space with all the crowds, and once she did, she ended up a few blocks away from all of her prime targets. Fine. She’d start with the rentals.
Ivy pushed t
hrough the door of Mountain Getaways, a small real estate office that handled both sales and vacation properties throughout the community. Framed pictures featuring local scenes lined the sage green walls behind the matching oak desks. An unfamiliar woman with a neat blonde bob called out a greeting as the door closed behind Ivy with a jingle of bells.
“Hi,” Ivy said, extending her hand. “I’m interested in your current rental properties. Do you have a list of offerings?”
A practiced smile stretched across the woman’s face. “We represent the finest properties in the area,” she said. She pulled open a file drawer in one of the desks and extracted a folder. “Are there any features you’re looking for in particular?”
“Privacy,” Ivy said, perhaps a bit too sharply, for she saw the woman’s brows pinch together. “Somewhere secluded,” she amended. “Restful.”
“Ah.” The woman nodded and handed over a stapled document. “Many of our listings offer just that. If you’d like a bit more distance from your neighbors, I’d disregard the ones on the second page. They’re all in the new condo buildings on the south end of town.”
Ivy vaguely remembered her parents talking about the new condos and the resulting uproar at the town council meeting once it was revealed the buildings would be four stories high. Ivy, used to skyscrapers, had to hold back her chuckling. Small towns and their small concerns.
She scanned the listing and said, “Which of these are available now?”
Ivy thought she heard an infinitesimal hmph as the woman tilted her blonde head and her smile shifted from bright to brittle. “If you’re looking for something on short notice, I’d have to get back to you. Some of our owners are out of town but might be willing to open their homes.”
Ivy held up her hand. “I’m sorry. I misspoke. Could you tell me which of these are currently occupied?”
The woman’s frown was back. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. But if you’re interested in a particular property, I’m happy to look up the dates you request to see if it’s available.”
Ivy tightened her lips in a polite smile. “I understand. Thank you for this, and for your time. I’ll be in touch.” She nodded and went outside. Glancing past the photocopied listings displayed in the window, she saw the blonde bob disappear through a doorway in the back of the office. “Okay,” Ivy said to herself. She walked farther down the street to a second realty office, where she had similar luck, and then to a third one across the way, her frustration with small-town life growing as the sheaf of listings in her hand accumulated with no concrete idea of who might be staying in any of them.
She stopped at a bench in front of the post office and watched a wave of unfamiliar faces stream in and out of the door with stacks of mail and packages sealed with layers of priority mail tape. An unsettling feeling crept down Ivy’s spine. Dogwood Mountain was a fraction of the size of Brooklyn, and yet she recognized far fewer people here than she did in the city. Yesterday’s confidence began to deflate like a slowly leaking balloon. The hometown network she thought she could count on was as spotty as the cell service up here. She pictured Paris Temperley at one of her society lunches, gabfests featuring young women who made the real housewives look like models of propriety.
Ivy squared her shoulders. No way she was letting Paris get one over on her, even if she had to go door to door in the freezing cold to talk to strangers. She glanced down the street, where the red bows on the porch rails at the Cooper House were fluttering in the breeze, and sighed. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed a better tool than her own stubbornness to pry answers out of this town in a hurry. She needed—ugh, this was hard to say—she needed Rand Cooper.
Chapter Five
Rand stood in the expansive kitchen of the Cooper House with a mug in his hand. He took a sip and grimaced. He’d definitely have to talk to Jessica about the weak coffee. Good coffee was his grandmother’s number one breakfast rule, and this wasn’t it. He set the mug into the farmhouse sink.
The morning’s breakfast had been served and cleared away, and the small staff had left for the day. The lunches he remembered from childhood fell by the wayside while he was in college, so unless a community group rented the dining room for a function that could be catered, the inn functioned more like a bed and breakfast now. Nana handled breakfast for years before her arthritis made even bacon and eggs a chore. Did he really need to continue hiring cooks to come in every morning? Switching to a continental breakfast that could be ordered and delivered the day before would save time, trouble, and money. He sighed. Who was he kidding? Worrying over coffee and croissants was focusing on tiny problems so he didn’t have to look at the big, ugly ones.
As if Rand had conjured him, Hank Baggett thumped down the service stairs tucked by the back door and set his dented toolbox on the bottom step. His face said a bundle before he opened his mouth.
“It’s a lot,” Hank said, pulling a rag from his pocket to wipe his hands.
Rand took a breath. “Tell me.”
Hank grimaced, and Rand braced for the worst. “The pipes are corroded bad. They need replacing before you even think of having guests in there. And that slow leak has been worse than you thought. That upstairs suite isn’t just tired. It’s unsafe. There’s a weak spot in the floor running along a joist. I checked it, too. The whole thing needs rebuilding.”
Rand groaned. “What’s that going to cost?”
“Remember my last estimate? Add on at least six grand.”
Rand scrubbed a hand from his nape up his hair. Gramp and Nana, bless them, had slowly closed off some rooms over the years rather than fix them in order to stretch their dollars. All those years of economizing had proved false economy. Unused, the rooms grew shabbier and more problematic, so their renovation would cost even more. Keeping a historical property up to code and true to its heritage didn’t come cheap.
Every time he called Hank over, Rand thought of those TV renovation shows where the camera-friendly reno couple acted gobsmacked when the contractor came in to announce that their dream house in progress was built on a sinkhole. Then they bickered about having to change tile grades to save money when they should have set aside a contingency so their investment wouldn’t literally end up in a hole in the ground.
But this wasn’t television. Those rooms upstairs had to be ready for summer. Rand did the mental math and coughed at the new figure, which now sported two digits in front of the comma and was sure to go higher. His reserves were close to tapped now. Going back to the bank for a second loan would be tricky, since he wasn’t the inn’s owner and doubted his grandparents would agree to putting it up as collateral if they’d never considered it before. They’d fussed enough over what it was costing to redo the floors in their own house while they were off on their Rand-funded cruise.
He closed his eyes, exhaled, and asked, “Timeframe?”
“A couple of months, depending on how the weather cooperates. I can do the plumbing right away. The joist may have to wait until after the new year.”
Rand nodded. He’d figure it out. The Cooper House was his legacy, and he’d be damned if he’d lose it. “Let me move some money, and I’ll give you a holler.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Hank tucked the rag back in his pocket and shook Rand’s outstretched hand. “Oh—I did fix that squeaky door Jessica mentioned.”
The inn had plenty of problems, but squeaky doors weren’t one of them. “Did you, now.”
Hank grinned and shrugged. “She said something when I got here, so I took care of it for her. Er—you.”
“Uh-huh.” Hank and Jessica, Rand thought. Interesting development. Hank hadn’t had a woman in his life since his wife had left him and moved to Albuquerque a couple of years back. Or so the grapevine reported. Rand had no idea who Jessica might be dating, or if she even was.
There was a short, awkward pause, then Hank picked up his toolbox. “Let me know.”
“Yep.” Rand followed Hank to the door and watched as he set the t
oolbox in the bed of his old blue pickup and backed out of the small gravel parking lot. It needed grading. Just like the siding needed paint and the floors needed stain and that one spot on the roof needed new slates. When Rand was designing renovations, he used to marvel at the little things his clients would cite as a reason for requesting one more change, one more addition.
But now, faced with his own renovation, he could see it. Fresh paint here just highlighted the shabbiness over there. New joists and rotten floorboards meant a trip to the architectural salvage yard to match wood types and ages. Doors out of plumb because of a century’s worth of wear and tear couldn’t always be adjusted without causing a waterfall of problems somewhere else. No wonder his grandparents seemed so relieved when he finally agreed to come home and take over. He’d only been back a few months, and he was ready to scream his way down to Florida with them.
But no. He had a responsibility to them, these people who’d raised him. And to those generations of Coopers who’d built the place, added onto it, risen early and fixed countless breakfasts, and opened its doors in times of trouble to welcome others in.
He couldn’t let them down, either.
Rand understood the weight his grandfather James had shouldered all these years, the occasional dark curtain that drew over his grandmother Ellie’s kind eyes. He’d always assumed they were the result of having to raise him after his parents’ untimely death. Now he knew how much they’d sacrificed for him. It was his turn to pay them back, even if he had to stake his own house to make it happen.
A chill wind punctuated this last depressing thought, driving him back inside. He scraped his boots on the tired Astroturf mat at the back door and walked into the quiet kitchen.
“Hello?”
Rand frowned. That wasn’t Jessica’s voice.
“Oh, hey,” Ivy said, pushing open the door from the dining room. “I was just looking for you.”
Rand’s pulse made an erratic bounce. “Do tell.”
Ivy’s dark eyes glinted below the folded brim of her plain black knit cap. “Mama’s busy, Laurel’s at work, Vi’s not answering her phone, and Daddy’s probably in hiding with Laurel’s dog. You’re pretty much it for local gossip,” she said, unwinding her blue scarf and letting it fall into a messy puddle on the enameled worktable in the center of the kitchen.