The Heart of a Hero

by Janet Chapman

  Spotting the rusty metal wagon half-filled with pinecones sitting in front of another small building, Nicholas headed down the well-worn path through the trees toward it. He wrestled open the door and peered inside, and grinned at the realization he’d found Julia’s workshop. He glanced back to see the mill was blocking his view of the house, then took off his sunglasses and stepped inside.

  The first thing he saw was a large chopping block with two hatchets driven into its center and two smaller blocks on either side of it serving as seats. He grinned again, picturing Julia and Trisha chatting away as they split the short cedar log ends stacked nearby into kindling. He continued snooping and saw some sacks full of pinecones—which were excellent fire-starters for the resort’s fireplaces—leaning against the back wall. He then turned to the bench that ran the length of another wall and dipped his fingers into a bowl of evergreen needles. He held up his hand and sniffed, then brushed the needles back into the bowl and picked up one of the small burlap pillows already filled and sewn closed. He set it down, picked up an even smaller pouch made of a more colorful material, and slid its contents into his hand with a frown.

  Soap, he guessed as he ran his thumb across the tree-shaped cake. He held it to his nose to find it also smelled of balsam, which he liked well enough to slip it in his pocket before he plucked a different colored tree from a nearby box. Finding it smelled of lavender, he tossed it back into the box and picked up another one, which smelled like roses. Another one smelled . . . hell, it could be any one of a dozen plants, because what did he know about scents? It had been centuries since he’d stopped to smell the flowers.

  He set down the soap and looked around again, only to realize that Julia was about to lose access to her supply of cedar. She could collect pinecones on Nova Mare land and dry her balsam needles and package her soaps in her new apartment, but he suspected the kindling was her most lucrative product.

  And since there didn’t appear to be anyone around to stop him, Nicholas pulled out his cell phone to call some of his men to come load up a couple of pickups with the cedar, because what fun was there in bringing a small team of elite warriors with him from Atlantis if they couldn’t do a little neighborly raiding to keep life interesting? It wasn’t like they were attacking Carthage or anything; they’d leave all the buildings and equipment and any stacked stones intact.

  And they’d grab the chopping block and hatchets and pinecones while they were at it, along with the soaps and pillows and balsam needles, and simply move Julia’s little cottage industry up the mountain—which should make the order-issuing, stick-wielding woman deliriously happy that he’d butted into her business.

  But Nicholas suddenly slipped the phone back in his jacket with a snort. It was obviously longer than he remembered since he’d found himself interested in a lovely lady, as he’d apparently forgotten the finer points of a romantic pursuit. Though similar in some ways to mounting a war campaign, he wanted to capture this particular target, not overpower her. And last he knew, women balked at a full-speed, head-on attack, but usually responded quite nicely to a more subtle approach.

  He took one last look around, then walked out and pulled the door shut. How convenient that he happened to have a workshop at his new home that was filled with scraps of lumber he’d intended to cut up for kindling. He also happened to know where several large stands of pines teeming with cones stood, some of the groves requiring a slow, lazy boat ride to reach. Well, slow if they happened to be dragging a couple of fishing lines behind them. And what woman wasn’t attracted to a man who enjoyed long walks in the woods?

  No; he’d never been accused of not taking advantage of a situation, especially when the prize was a lovely lady he wouldn’t mind finding curled up in bed beside him one morning very soon.

  Nicholas made it back to the house in time to grab two large trash bags just as Olivia set them on the porch. “Let me carry anything down from upstairs,” he said, heading to the truck with what felt like clothes.

  He made five trips inside, up the stairs and down, carrying several more trash bags full of Julia’s and Trisha’s belongings. His last trip to the truck, however, found him carrying a large plastic bin of carefully packed items Julia had pulled off the walls and taken from a china cabinet in the living room. Apparently worried she wouldn’t be allowed back in the house, it appeared the woman was taking some of her mother’s more precious possessions.

  “I . . . There’s one more thing I need to get,” Julia said as she set a half-filled trash bag in the rear seat and turned to Olivia. “You can wait here,” she added, heading at a stilted run toward the mill. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Nicholas decided he was going to have to get used to Julia’s concepts of time and distance, however, when ten minutes went by and she still hadn’t returned.

  “Let me go see what’s keeping her,” Olivia said, heading for the mill only to stop halfway there when she realized he was following. “I think I should go alone, Nicholas. Julia’s still pretty embarrassed about what happened today and . . . last night.” She shook her head. “I would have come alone with her this afternoon, but I wanted you here in case Vern suddenly showed up.” She smiled. “And to lug the heavy stuff.” But then she sobered and touched his arm. “Don’t take it personally, okay? Just try to understand that it’s . . . well, it’s humiliating for a grown woman to have a man see her throwing all her belongings in trash bags as she runs away from home.”

  Nicholas shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away to hide his scowl. “I’ll wait at the truck, then. But call me if there’s a problem.” Only he hadn’t even gotten the driver’s door open when Olivia called out to him from the mill.

  “Nicholas, we need you,” she shouted before disappearing again.

  He ran through the mill and practically beat her back to the shed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, following Olivia inside to see Julia cradling a hand wrapped in a rag as she sat on one of the chopping stumps. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she’d made a valiant effort to rub away the evidence that she’d been crying.

  “She was trying to pry up that board,” Olivia said, pointing at the floor where he specifically remembered bags of pinecones had been but were now shoved to the side. “When the hatchet slipped and cut her hand.”

  “The wood is swollen stuck,” Julia said, her voice husky with restrained tears. “But I can’t leave without the box hidden under it.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” Nicholas murmured, crouching in front of her. “After we decide if you need stitches.”

  “I just skinned it, and the bleeding’s already stopped,” she said, even though she allowed him to take her hand and peel the rag away. “It’s mostly my back that hurts. I must have . . . I guess I wrenched it again prying on the board.”

  He shot her a grin. “I’m worried you’re a bit of a walking disaster, Julia.”

  That certainly wiped away those threatening tears. It got rid of the defeat in her eyes, too. He let go of her hand and turned away before she saw his triumph, and grabbed the raised end of the spongy floorboard and popped it free.

  “Apparently muscle also matters,” he drawled as he reached in the cavity and pulled out a plastic container. He turned still crouched to hand it to her, arching a brow when he saw her eyes suddenly narrow. “Not a very creative hidey-hole, though,” he added, taking the box back when she started wrestling with the lid—which he popped off before handing it to her again. “Or safe from a fire if this—” He snapped his mouth shut when she pulled out a large plastic bag stuffed with money.

  “Julia,” Olivia said on a strangled gasp. “What on earth are you doing hiding that much cash under the floorboard of a shed?”

  Her face draining of all color, Julia darted a worried glance at him, then looked at her boss. “I can’t . . . It’s my and Trisha’s savings,” she whispered.

  “But why isn’t it in the bank?” Olivia asked just as softly. “There must be thousands of dollars there.”

>   “Almost eight thousand,” Julia confirmed, her voice having grown husky again. “And I can’t keep it in the bank because Clay’s sister works there, and I don’t want him knowing I have this kind of money.” She darted another glance at Nicholas, then took a deep breath that squared her shoulders as she looked Olivia directly in the eye. “I’m still paying off a credit card bill he stuck me with.”

  “But Julia, bank employees can’t talk about customers’ accounts.”

  She looked down at the bag and merely snorted.

  Olivia sighed. “Then give it to Nicholas to put in the safe in my office until . . . well, we’ll figure it out.” She looked around the workshop and picked up the box of little soaps. “Is there anything else in here you want to bring? I suppose we could come back for the cones and whatever kindling you’ve already split. But what are you going to do for a source of cedar now?”

  “I’ve been paying Reggie to save the butt ends from the mill and stack them in here for me, so I might be able to get him to bring them to the resort. That is, if you don’t mind. I can keep them out in the woods and just cover them with a tarp.”

  “We’ll make it work,” Olivia assured her. “You’re my only source of kindling, and winter’s coming. Maybe we can set you up in the woodshed out behind the barn.”

  And that explained Julia handing her brother money every week, Nicholas decided as he finally straightened to his feet. He reached down, but instead of taking him up on his offer to help her stand, Julia plopped her entire savings in his outstretched hand, then grasped a wall stud and slowly pulled herself up.

  “Who is Clay?” he asked, tucking the bag inside his jacket.

  “My ex-husband,” she said, avoiding eye contact with him by looking around the workshop. “Nothing else is worth coming back for.” She gave Olivia a sheepish smile. “The balsam pillows are a wasted effort if they’re just going to keep lugging them off.”

  “Or we can make the guests buy them in our gift shop,” Olivia said as she headed out the door carrying the soaps. “We might as well get going then, if you’re sure you have everything you want.”

  Julia took one last look around, used her uninjured hand to grab the hatchet driven into the chopping block, and followed. Nicholas closed the door and followed the women with a scowl at the realization that his plan to give Julia his scrap lumber had been thwarted—only for his mood to lighten again when he remembered she still needed a source of pinecones.

  Chapter Five

  Julia woke up to a pounding headache from having cried herself to sleep the night before, the rising sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows making her roll over and bury her face in her pillow with a groan. She wished she still cussed, because if ever there were a time she needed to have a blistering tirade, it was now.

  She’d never been so humiliated in her life, not even when Clay had started those nasty rumors about her. Despite most everyone believing them—she was the daughter of the town drunk, after all—the knowledge that they were lies had still allowed her to hold her head up. But yesterday Nicholas had seen the stark, naked truth about her, and it hadn’t been pretty. She might as well have been wearing a sign that said Julia Campbell is an utter and complete failure.

  But really, what should she care what Nicholas thought about her? He was just another too tall, too blue-eyed, too maddeningly gorgeous guy. No, the really sad truth was she’d humiliated herself in front of her boss, and Olivia would have to be crazy to entrust the well-being of her Inglenook guests to someone who couldn’t even keep her personal life out of the ditch.

  For crying out loud, she was thirty years old, and all her worldly possessions were sitting in trash bags in the second bedroom of Nicholas’s apartment. That had been Olivia’s idea, thinking they might as well not move her stuff twice. Julia had quickly agreed, since she really didn’t want any of her coworkers seeing her lugging a bunch of trash bags from her high-priced hotel room to her temporary apartment after Nicholas moved all of his worldly possessions—most likely neatly packed in boxes—to his likely even more maddeningly gorgeous home.

  Yup, she was a failure with a capital F.

  No, she was a walking disaster.

  Julia rolled over again, threw back the goose-down-filled, seven-hundred-count, Egyptian cotton-encased comforter and sat up with another groan. For as much as she’d love to continue wallowing in self-pity in this luxurious room, she really needed to get up and get going; certain if she just kept moving, the humiliation demons couldn’t bring her down and gobble her up completely.

  Yeah, what did she care what Nicholas thought? She wasn’t interested in catching his interest, partly because men were more trouble than they were worth, but mostly because she didn’t like standing in lines. And Nicholas had a really long line of interested females.

  Heck, just last week, Wanda Beckman had been bragging to anyone who would listen that the director of security had personally driven her down the mountain when she had missed the shuttle. But what Wanda had left out of her story was that she’d actually hidden until the bus had left. Julia knew, though, because she’d watched the divorced mother of three change out of her waitress uniform, contort herself into a tight pair of jeans and low-cut jersey, spray her really impressive cleavage with cologne, then take a magazine and walk into the maintenance room to wait.

  Julia got out of bed with a groan, willing to bet all her worldly possessions that Nicholas had made the trip down the mountain in half the time it had taken him to get her down it yesterday, even as she’d wondered what Wanda had . . . offered the man for thanks. Julia stood in the middle of the hotel room and tried to imagine what it was like to be a walking, talking chick magnet.

  Not that Nicholas seemed to notice. Or if he did, not that he seemed to let any of the chicks ever . . . stick. Since he’d shown up in Spellbound Falls a little over a year ago, Julia had never seen Nicholas in town with a woman. He used to come into the Drunken Moose on the weekends she worked, but always with one of his guards, or with Mac or Duncan, or often alone. She remembered he was a good tipper, but she also remembered that when any of the waitresses had tried flirting with him, he’d either politely brushed them off or pretended not to notice.

  Guessing nobody’s life was perfect, not even walking, talking chick magnets, Julia headed for the bathroom with every intention of trying out the luxurious marble soaking tub. She stopped when she heard a knock on the door—only to spin around when she realized it had come from the rear entrance to the room.

  Even though she cleaned the cottages, she knew about the corridors carved into the granite that ran behind each of the five hotel segments, as well as the tunnels that joined the segments together so the rooms could easily be serviced during the winter months. In fact, there was an entire warren of caves connecting the hotels with the pool, conference pavilion, and restaurant, which the guests were also encouraged to use during foul weather. Not that the corridors felt cavelike, since some of them were actually large enough to drive a cart down and the myriad glass-topped reflective tubes flooded them with natural light.

  “Who is it?” Julia called out when the knock sounded again as she looked at the bedside clock, wondering why housekeeping was so early. Dang it, she really didn’t want any of her coworkers knowing she’d spent the night here, figuring it would be bad enough when they found out she’d been given an apartment.

  “Room service,” a heavily accented male voice answered.

  Really? “Just a minute,” she muttered, sprinting into the bathroom and grabbing the plush robe off the back of the door. She walked back into the room as she belted the robe closed, then opened the rear door a crack. “I didn’t order room service,” she said to a man she didn’t recognize holding a tray of covered dishes. “Oh, is that coffee?” she asked, opening the door wider, only to shake her head. “Never mind. You must have the wrong room. I didn’t order anything,” she repeated.

  The guy glanced to the left of the door, then stepped insid
e. “Numeral seven,” he said, walking over and setting the tray on the table in front of the windows. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. “For a Mademoiselle Campbell?”

  Julia pulled out the card and frowned at the handwritten note.

  Consider this a blatant attempt to persuade you to accept a proposition I have for you, Julia, although in no way should you feel obligated. I’m afraid Olivia was correct in stating that my apartment is in need of a good vacuuming, and if you were to consider performing that particular task, I would enjoy treating you and Trisha to dinner at Aeolus’s Whisper this evening.

  —Nicholas

  How . . . lovely.

  Well, he knew she worked in housekeeping, after all; but dinner at Aeolus’s? Either the man really hated vacuuming or he’d just discovered there was enough cat hair in his apartment to stuff a king-size mattress. The smell of coffee tickled Julia’s nose, and she realized the waiter had poured some into the delicate china cup on the tray and was now looking at her . . . expectantly.

  Oh, he was waiting for his tip! “Just a minute,” she said, going to her purse on the bureau. Dang it, how much did she tip a five-star room service waiter? She pulled out a ten dollar bill, folded it in half, and walked back and handed it to him. “Thank you,” she murmured, opening the front door of the room and smiling at him . . . expectantly.

  He stuffed the money in his pocket, returned her smile with an added nod, and left. Julia closed the door behind him and locked it, then ran over and grabbed the cup of coffee, blew on it briefly, and took a sip. She gave a hum of pleasure and took another sip, figuring there was nothing like caffeine to cure a crying hangover. Another sip, then she lifted the larger of the domes on the tray and actually laughed. Oh yeah, there must be a lot of cat hair, she decided as she sat down and pulled the tray in front of her, if the size of this breakfast was any indication.