A Stranger in the Family (Book 1, Bardville, Wyoming Trilogy)

by Patricia McLinn

  “Like I said, the cabin’s got to have something to hold it up. Should’ve figured on this happening from the start.”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “What is, then?” His intent eyes contradicted his mildly interested tone.

  She shifted her shoulders. “Well, who’s going to pay for this? Him?”

  “I’d say that’s between Boone and me.”

  “But...”

  “Cammy, I suppose you think you’re fightin’ to protect us—the family—but I don’t see any need for protectin’ in this. But if you’re fightin’ to protect yourself...well, sometimes you’re better off losing than winning those battles. Sometimes what you’re fighting to hold off can’t harm you near as much as those defenses you put up to hold it off in the first place.”

  While shock still immobilized her, he patted her arm and walked over to the group of men discussing drying rates and instructions for covering the piers to keep the material moist.

  She was only half conscious of saddling Snakebit and riding him out. By the time she returned, cooled him down and tended him, the pounding in her head had subsided and the tendency to fist her hands had eased. Also by that time, the men and construction vehicles had departed and Irene was ringing the bell for dinner.

  The talk around the table centered on the cabin to be constructed on the newly poured piers. Everyone had something to say about it, except her. She was finding a great deal of fascination in the green peas on her plate when Pete made a comment that caught her attention despite herself.

  “That layout, the way those—what’d you call them, piers?—are set doesn’t look the same as the original cabin.”

  “It’s not,” Boone said. “I, uh, thought I’d change it some. Maybe.”

  That uncertainty was so unlike Boone that Cambria’s gaze left her plate for the first time. But she didn’t learn much more because Boone was staring down at his.

  The thought that there might be something odd about the construction of the cabin crossed her mind and was dismissed. Not only couldn’t she think of any way it could hurt her family, she couldn’t believe Boone would try to hurt them.

  Her fork clattered against her plate.

  “Are you okay, Cam?” Ted asked.

  “Yes.”

  No. She was coming to trust this stranger her family had taken in, without being absolutely certain she should— against her will, against the hard-learned lessons of her past.

  * * * *

  May twilight lingered later and longer here in Wyoming than in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  Boone took advantage of that fact after dinner to look over the piers on the way to his cabin. But his thoughts took another path.

  Cambria had to know at some point. And when she did, however she found out, it wouldn’t be easy.

  If Ted hadn’t come through the way he had this afternoon...A slight frown pulled the muscles of Boone’s face.

  Ted had seemed neutral when Boone had mentioned this morning that he’d arranged for the piers to be poured, telling him there’d be no charge because the company wanted to try a new method. Ted accepted that with a shrug, saying Boone knew more about that sort of thing than he did.

  After Ted had spoken up this afternoon, Cambria had looked mostly confused. But before that...He could still see her face as she’d come toward him. The suspicion. The distrust.

  Maybe if he’d given her an answer—something, anything—when she’d asked why he’d really come here. She’d wanted to believe him then. She’d wanted to trust him.

  He’d fixed that.

  He swore under his breath.

  Hell, maybe it was for the best.

  As soon as he got near her, heated insanity slipped into his bloodstream and burned off every reasoned thought, every promise to himself.

  No way around it, he couldn’t justify pursuing Cambria until he told her he was Pete’s biological father. And that meant telling Pete.

  He would have thought it would be easier after this time working with Pete. He certainly enjoyed getting to know the boy; Pete’s willingness to share his friendship, his dreams, his hopes, humbled Boone.

  His mouth lifted slightly. Damned if he didn’t also derive unexpected pleasure at delegating responsibility—taking Cambria’s advice—and seeing it handled well by his employees in North Carolina, and especially by Pete.

  But the hell of it was, as he got to know Pete, Boone felt even less certain how to tell him of their connection. How would Pete react? Pete felt as strongly as Cambria about their family, even if he wasn’t as protective.

  What would being faced with his biological father do to the boy?

  Maybe, seeing Pete happy and well-loved, Boone could have walked away...if it hadn’t meant walking away from Cambria, too. But how could he stay without telling Pete?

  He looked up from an unfocused study of the northernmost pier to find Cambria three yards off. Their eyes met and held. She took four steps toward him, then stopped.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing all this.” Her gesture indicated the layout for the new cabin, but he suspected she meant more.

  “I’m doing it because I want to and I’m enjoying it.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t answer that any better than I can answer why looking at you makes me feel the way I do.” He reached to touch her hair. She stepped free of the fleeting touch.

  “Don’t.”

  He gave her a twisted smile. “Don’t touch you, or don’t feel this way?”

  Something crossed her eyes, but her voice never wavered. “Either one.”

  From her safe distance her gaze flicked to the stumpy structures that would support a renewed cabin.

  “Thank you, Boone.”

  * * * *

  “Hey, there, I was looking for you.” Boone called out the greeting when he spotted Cambria crossing toward his cabin.

  It was so good to see her, her hair wind-tousled and sun-glinted beneath a straw cowboy hat that shadowed her face, her jeans snug enough to show curves and her shirt open two buttons from the top to show a narrow V of slender throat and creamy pulse point. So good it should have scared him. Too good to worry about fear.

  “I was looking for you, too.”

  Despite a reluctance she’d made no effort to hide this past week, he’d felt her moving step by resistant step closer to trusting him. Even though at this moment she sounded grim.

  “I’m heading into town, you want to go with?” he asked. “We could have lunch at the cafe. Or better yet, pack a picnic and see that meadow Irene talked about last night.”

  “I just got back from town. Wanda gave me these to give to you. They came into the library fax about nine-thirty this morning.”

  She handed him half a dozen sheets of paper. “Somebody forgot the time difference,” he muttered as he glanced through them, thinking they might explain Cambria’s dour expression. Afraid they might, if a mention of his true interest in the Westons had somehow gotten mixed in.

  But they were the usual communications from his office, and no explanation for Cambria’s glower.

  “Well?” Cambria glared at him, hands on hips.

  “Well, what?”

  “Aren’t you going to try to explain this one away like you did before?”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “I might if I knew what I was trying to explain away.”

  “This.” She tapped the top sheet with a stiff finger—right over the company logo of Bodie Smith Enterprises. “We might be in the wilds of Wyoming, but we do get an occasional newspaper and magazine. We have seen articles about Bodie Smith, the sky-rocketing entrepreneur who’s doing for log homes what Bill Gates did for computers—I think I have the quote from Newsweek pretty close, don’t I? Or was it Time? Or the Wall Street Journal?”

  “All right,” he acknowledged slowly. “I’m Bodie Smith of Bodie Smith Enterprises, and my business has been successful. If anything, that should ease your suspicious mind about why I’
m in the market for rest and relaxation. So?”

  “So? So, my family has taken you in like a long-lost friend, and I’ve let myself—” Her mouth clamped, refusing to let the words out. Boone’s gut tightened. “You haven’t been telling the truth, you’ve been hiding things. You’ve—” Her eyes narrowed with a new outrage. “Damn! How did you arrange for those piers to get poured? Did you tell them who you are?”

  “Yeah, I told them, so they’d—”

  “Great, just great! And you asked them to keep your little secret from the idiots you’re staying with, didn’t you? Never mind, I can see the answer in your face. God, they must think us proper fools—”

  “Cambria.”

  “Boone Dorsey. Boone Dorsey Smith. Bodie Smith–how many other identities do you have you’re not telling us about?”

  Pete’s father. It came into his mind so fast he didn’t stand a chance of blocking it completely from his face.

  And Cambria Weston wasn’t one to miss anything.

  “I see.”

  He snagged her arm as she started to turn away. “No, you don’t see, Cambria. None of this has anything to do with what’s happening between us.”

  “Nothing’s happening between us.”

  “You can’t shut it out that easily. You can’t shut me out that easily. All those names, they’re all me.”

  She shook her head. “I make mistakes, but I don’t repeat the same ones.”

  * * * *

  The day after she’d discovered he was Bodie Smith, Cambria reached the cabin a quarter of an hour before Pete’s usual time. Boone glanced up and, identifying the new arrival, stared openly.

  She’d deflected Pete the day before by developing an urgent need to have him drive into Sheridan for shower curtain rings and liners. But she couldn’t prevent him from helping with the cabin forever. As long as Pete went, she would, too.

  No matter how uncomfortable it made her.

  Uncomfortable was exactly how she felt because she’d allowed herself to start to believe in a...a connection between her and this man. What a fool she’d been—again. She’d started to trust a man who hadn’t shared with her even the most basic information about himself—his identity.

  It irritated her to realize that even after a long night of self-lectures she couldn’t think of him any way other than Boone. Bodie Smith was the public figure, the man the outside world knew, so dealing with him would be safe, predictable. That’s how she should think of him.

  Boone Dorsey Smith had lied to her, at least by omission, and had hidden things from her, just as her ex-fiancé had. Though even Tony had used his real name from the start.

  What else had Boone kept secret?

  He sat back on his heels and continued to stare as she started to stack the scrap lumber he’d torn off that morning. His voice made her jump.

  “You ready to listen to me yet?”

  No, because you’re too damn persuasive.

  “If there’s something you’d rather I do on the cabin than clean up, speak right up,” she said.

  He came to his feet fast enough to make her have to issue her muscles a sharp order not to step back. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Dammit, Cambria—” It was the first spurt of temper she’d heard from him. It cooled almost immediately into something she thought might prove more dangerous. “All right.” He raked his hand through his hair and sighed. “All right, you might not listen, but I’m going to say it anyhow.

  “My christened name is Boone Dorsey Smith. That’s it. The whole thing. My father was Boone Hewitt Smith, so they called me Boone Dorsey to keep us straight. But Kenzie, my sister, couldn’t get her tongue around that when she was learning to talk, and it came out Bodie.”

  From three feet Cambria tossed a board onto the scrap pile, but its thud didn’t drown out his voice.

  “The name stuck. Even at school and in the army, everyone called me Bodie. So that’s how I started the business. And then I was Bodie everywhere.” His dark brows dropped as if trying to recall something. “Except, last month Cully came to my office to tell—for a meeting, and he called me Boone. Nowadays he’s about the only one who does. And hearing it...I don’t know, it sounded...Like coming home after months away. It might be dusty and unused, but it’s home.”

  She had a hard time not answering the hint of question in his voice.

  Frustration vibrated in his deep sigh, but he kept going. This man did not give up.

  “Coming here, finding you in the bedroom, I was...I wasn’t really thinking. When you asked my name like that, I don’t know, it seemed natural to tell you Boone Dorsey. Maybe I already knew I wanted to be closer to you than having you call me Mr. Smith. Or maybe I didn’t want to risk being tied to Bodie Smith Enterprises right off.”

  All her determination to pay him no attention couldn’t stifle a response to that.

  “Why? You thought we’d raise the rates? Or sell tickets to the neighbors to see the famous entrepreneur? Let me tell you, you’re not that big a draw.”

  “I just wanted to be liked—or not—for myself. Not for what somebody might’ve read somewhere. You might not think much of my position, Cambria, but some people do. It was kind of flattering at first for a poor mountain boy. Until you realize a lot of nice people shy away from you, and too many of the ones you don’t much like won’t take no for an answer.”

  “The women in your hotel room,” she said before she could stop herself.

  “The—? Oh, yeah. Our great introduction.” He grimaced. “There have been women—”

  “More than one?” She lifted an eyebrow.

  “One at a time,” he said dryly, adding under his breath, “Thank God,” before going on. “But it’s happened more than once. Some executives looking to do business with you still think the way to a man’s company is through his, uh, libido. And some women make it a pastime to chase men who’ve had some success. They’re not real subtle.”

  “Poor baby.”

  That irked him. Really irked him from the darkening of his face. “Look, I’m no saint, but I would like the woman between the sheets with me to want to be there with me, not my corporation’s year-end profits. Oh, hell—why am I trying to explain this to you? If God dropped a miracle in your lap you’d probably want to know what his angle was.”

  With that, he attacked a board with a zeal that made the nails screech.

  Pete arrived to find two people making enough noise for six and doing the work of half of one.

  * * * *

  The next few days took a lot out of Cambria. She was on hand for every minute Pete helped Boone with the final dismantling of the cabin, while keeping her distance emotionally.

  It was like being a swimmer fighting a powerful tide. She almost got sucked under when they discovered hand-hewn logs on the long south wall. A date carved into one put the original structure at a hundred years old. Boone’s interest was contagious. He certainly infected Pete, as they planned how to remove the logs so they could be kept intact and used in a place of honor in the rebuilt cabin.

  His enthusiasm still bubbled when Irene came by and announced that Pete was accompanying her to the barbershop. Now.

  “Aw, Mom. I can go tomorrow.”

  “You’ve been saying that for a month. We’re going now.”

  “But Boone needs my help. And his hair—”

  “Is his business. When you’re his age, you can let your hair grow if you want. Cambria will stay and help Boone. Won’t you, Cambria?”

  Irene’s sneak attack caught Cambria off guard. Her mind had been split between watching Boone squirm over the talk about his hair and thinking of slipping back to her cabin for a sybaritically indulgent nap before supper.

  “I don’t, uh can’t—”

  “Sure, she’ll stick around,” Boone interrupted with a wicked glance. “She’ll want to make sure I don’t try to do anything by myself.”

  Irene gave a satisfied nod and led Pete away. Boone started whistling and went to e
xamine how the logs tied into the rock fireplace. Cambria returned to pulling nails from logs they hoped to reuse.

  She sat on a bench in the shade of a cottonwood by what had once been the door of the cabin. The door was long gone. And the roof. All that remained were the original logs.

  She attacked a nail that was both bent and angled. She couldn’t get the claw end of the hammer around it securely. She gave it another halfhearted yank. It stayed put.

  She couldn’t imagine what Boone had seen in the old cabin. Of course, she supposed if anybody could make something out of it, it was Bodie Smith. Among all the laudatory things those articles she’d reread at the library the day before yesterday had said about his business acumen, they’d all mentioned Bodie Smith’s incredible knack for designing homes people loved to live in.

  She frowned at the memory of Boone’s voice at supper after the piers were poured. His voice saying he thought he might change the cabin’s design some. Maybe.

  Why would a man known for designing be hesitant about changing a ramshackle cabin that would have been pulled down otherwise?

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  She jolted at Boone’s voice. She wouldn’t give him these thoughts for any price, because they revealed too damn much. Hoping he didn’t notice the guilty flush she could feel working up her throat, she yanked at the nail.

  “I was thinking unkind thoughts about the original builders who used so many nails in these logs they rival a steel girder. And on top of that—” She gasped when the hammer jerked free of the nail without budging it. “They couldn’t even hammer them in straight.”

  “They didn’t.”

  Boone took the hammer out of her hand. She released it, but narrowed her eyes as she asked, “Who didn’t what?”

  “The original builders didn’t use all these nails. These are from people who came along afterward, making improvements.”

  He gave the side of the nail a couple whacks with the hammer, partially straightening it.

  “It must have been pretty awful to start with if the way this place ended up was an improvement.”

  “The people who came along later could see it needed something, but they didn’t know what.” He tucked the nail deep into the split in the hammer’s claw and tipped it, drawing full benefit from the leverage. “They lost sight of the balance.”