by Dani Collins
But still a one-off. She didn’t allow herself to expect anything from her affairs and good thing, because nothing ever came of them.
“You promised you would intervene if this happened.” Glory sounded really bitter. “What the fuck? Why couldn’t he keep it in his pants?”
“I’ll speak to Vivien.” So flat and unaffected. “Ask her to help your father find someone else.”
“Oh, it’ll be three weeks before this gets sorted out and we both know what I’ll be doing all that time. I didn’t move back here to run this place. Your fucking brother’s unstoppable dick is ruining my life and you don’t care.”
A thick pause where Ilke could imagine one of Rolf’s dead-eyed looks dissecting Glory into tiny pieces for daring to get strident with him.
“Any other day I would give you the fight you’re begging for,” Rolf said in a voice that was calm and—was she crazy? Did he sound gentle? Tender? “Today you get a free pass to blame me for Trigg’s dick and Vivien hiring a woman who couldn’t stay off it and your father’s inability to solve his own problems. If you want to stay here and work, I’ll stand here and listen to how much you resent it.”
Another loaded silence, then Glory spoke again, voice choked. “If I don’t yell, I’ll cry.”
“I know.”
“She’s not even my mom.”
“I know.”
“I hate funerals.”
“Come here.”
“I can’t. I’ll ruin my makeup.” She sniffed. “We should go or we’ll be late.”
A resigned feminine sigh and the scuff of footsteps.
Ilke smoothly retreated to the desk in time to watch the door swing inward.
Glory emerged, Rolf behind her. He gently pulled her around to face him and they exchanged a brief make-up kiss. They were dressed for a service, Rolf in a dark suit, Glory in a black dress and heels. He wasn’t as lean as he’d been when he’d been racing and waving flags on podiums, but his increased bulk was all muscle. He was ruggedly handsome and a gorgeous foil for Glory’s slender, redheaded femininity.
Their somber expressions flickered into surprise as they noticed her. Rolf’s expression darkened and his hand went to Glory’s waist, drawing her closer to his side.
Ilke wanted to smirk at how protective he was, but she felt a weird pang instead. She doubted he felt any guilt for their hookup. She never gave more than a passing thought to the time they’d collided body parts, but now he and Glory were a thing, he betrayed that caution whenever he saw her, wary of their extremely brief history hurting his beloved fiancée.
The idea she had designs on him was laughable, but she found his concern for Glory endearing. Something to envy even, which was odd since Glory wasn’t someone she aspired to be, especially if she had a man dominating her life. Ilke admired her, though. She was funny and had a cool side job. She also didn’t take shit from a man who didn’t seem to possess a human bone in his body.
Rolf’s reaction to Ilke’s coming here had been dead last on her list of worries when she had booked her flight, but she belatedly realized he could become a problem if he felt his relationship with Glory was threatened.
“Ilke.” Glory frowned in confusion.
“Shouldn’t you be in Norway?” Rolf asked.
You could take the racer off the circuit, but you couldn’t take the schedule out of his head. She had to admire his economy, too. He managed to scold her for Korea while trying to get rid of her in five short words. True precision. That’s why he was a champion, she supposed.
“I believe Vivien will have a room for me.” She deliberately made it sound as though she was here at Vivien’s invitation when she hadn’t even told her she was coming. “Is—” She had forgotten the manager’s name and realized that’s who had probably fallen victim to Trigg’s relentless libido. “Shall I wait in the lounge for Vivien?”
“We’re locking up for a funeral.” Rolf’s gaze told her to wait in her car, preferably in Billings.
Ilke showed no reaction, even though his hostility stung. Even though an anxious sweat rose on the back of her neck. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“We don’t have any finished rooms available,” Glory warned. “Rolf has a heli-tour group coming in late tonight. Paula’s up there now, prepping for them.” She tapped into the computer. “Your contractors are in these three, aren’t they?” She pointed at the screen while glancing at Rolf.
He shrugged.
“Oh, screw it,” Glory muttered and pushed the mouse away. “I’ll register you when I get back. We’re already late. Here.” She grabbed a key from behind the desk. “I think that room’s habitable. If not, ask Paula to find you one that is. Oh, the sign for the door.” Glory spun and hurried back to the office.
“Who—?” Ilke started to ask about the funeral.
“Why are you here?” Rolf asked, blunt and confrontational enough she had to fight taking a step back.
Ilke licked her lips. Fortunately, Glory came back with a piece of paper and moved to pull a piece of tape off the dispenser, which gave a little screech as she did.
“We’ll be in Haven most of the day, but Dad and Vivien are coming back right after the service. Suzanne Adams passed away. Do you remember her?”
“I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“She owned the bistro in town. We’re friends with the family.” Glory’s face darkened as she moved to stick the sign on the door and turn the lock. Her shoulders lifted and fell as she took a bracing breath before she came back to Rolf. “Oh, do you need to go out for your luggage? Can you lock up when you come back in?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
Rolf set his arm across Glory’s back and they moved down the hall, passed the kitchen where there was a back exit to the staff parking lot.
Ilke hated when a man threw his arm around her. It always felt very possessive and controlling to her. She had loathed it since she’d been fourteen and had had to pry herself out from under her stepfather’s thumb and the rest of his straying hands.
Glory wasn’t a teenager or a wilting violet like Ilke’s mother, though. Watching the pair, she thought Rolf’s hold seemed protective and supportive. Loving.
Not that she cared, she reminded herself, heading out into the snow. She didn’t want or need a man in her life. She was independent. Cold, tough. A pragmatic bitch.
Although, as she pulled her heavy case from the back of the SUV and carried it across the thickening snow, she had a worrisome thought that she might be hurting the baby with her exertion. It would be nice to have a man do things like this as her pregnancy progressed. And what about the coming months? She would burn through her savings. Why was that all on her when it had taken two to conceive this kid?
As she walked back into the hotel, and she was surrounded by silence, she told herself being alone was the way she preferred it.
Except she wasn’t alone. She was pregnant.
What was Nate going to say when she told him she wanted him to raise it so she could continue competing?
*
“You look like you’re running a day care out here.”
Nathaniel Hart glanced away from the four kids playing in the snow to Eden Adams. She had pulled on what had to be her father’s jacket since it swamped her and had the police crest on its shoulder. Her green pom-pom hat was already turning white from the short walk from the porch to the hillock where the kids were taking turns with plastic toboggans.
“The other dads said they would be right back.”
“And you fell for it?”
Nate had had his keys in his hand when he’d walked Aiden over to join his son’s preschool friends, but he didn’t say anything about the men who would rather drink beer out of the weather than spend time with their kids. He kept his opinions to himself as a rule, mostly because he had a superiority complex, according to his ex-wife. Which makes me better than those with an inferiority complex, had been his response, very much not to her great a
musement.
The take-away had been to keep his trap shut over pointing out the rest of humanity’s failings. And the very fact he had an ex-wife scorched the perfectionist in him enough to instill some circumspection, if not actual humility.
“You would think they could PVR the game on a day like today.” Disgust replaced the grief that lined her expression, but only for a moment. She quickly found a smile for the children dressed in brightly colored snowsuits, hoods pulled tight around their faces, hands bound in waterproof mittens, feet clumsy in insulated boots.
“Auntie Eden, come slide with us.” That was Zuzu, named for her grandmother Suzanne, the woman whose loss had brought what looked like all of Haven to the community hall and now the Adams’s home.
“I’m still in my skirt, sweetie. See?” Eden pointed to where her knees were shaking in thick black nylons beneath the band of her black skirt and above the oversized green galoshes she had stepped into.
Aiden looked at Eden as if she’d run over his dog, then kicked the remains. “Please?” he asked with a blink, blink, blink of his long-lashed eyes. Poor kid had the same problem Nate did—lashes so long the snow stuck to them.
“Sweet Lord, how do you say no to that face?” Eden asked Nate in a beleaguered tone. “Next time, buddy. I promise.”
Nate had taken Aiden last night and this morning, which wasn’t his usual day, but Wanda was close with Eden’s sister and Nate hadn’t thought a funeral service was something their just-turned four-year-old needed to attend. Not if they could shield him from harsh reality a little longer.
He had only intended to stop by here long enough to express his condolences and hand off Aiden to Wanda, but he didn’t view spending time with his kid as a chore. Work tasks might be swirling in his brain as thick as this falling snow, but listening to children’s laughter went a long way on a day like today.
Maybe that’s why Eden had come out here, but he still said, “You don’t have to stand around in this.” It was cold and she was having a rough enough day. “I’m fine.”
“I needed a break.” She pushed her fists deeper into the jacket pockets. “You want to get a coffee, though?”
He had wondered sometimes if she was hitting on him, being so friendly all the time. It wasn’t pure conceit. He worked out, kept his clothes clean, and was paid well. In this town of limited prospects, being single and possessing all his teeth made him Haven’s most eligible bachelor. Even so, he had chalked up the impression to her naturally outgoing personality.
Yet here he was, fielding a legitimate invitation.
Weirdly, the image of a lithe blonde flashed into his brain along with the compulsion to say, I can’t. He hadn’t been in a monogamous relationship since his marriage and he was never going to see Ilke again, so why—?
“Oh, my God.” Eden dipped her head and covered her eyes. “I meant do you literally want to go inside and get yourself a coffee. You’ve been out here a while and I thought you might be cold. I wasn’t asking for a date.”
Okay, then. He scratched his cheek through his beard. “Dang. I’m always picking up bereaved women at funerals. No reason you should be the exception.”
That made her chuckle and he was glad. She looked like she needed a laugh.
Of course, now he should say something like, But if you do want to get a coffee sometime, give me a call.
She glanced up at him with a smile of anticipation as if she expected him to say it and would agree.
For some reason, the words stalled in his throat.
After a beat of silence, her mouth twitched philosophically.
Now he felt like he had rejected a woman who had enough going on she didn’t need a man turning up his nose at buying her a coffee.
“Listen—”
“No, it’s fine. Honestly.”
“It’s the small-town thing,” he insisted on explaining, thinking he really shouldn’t be so fastidious. She was cute and funny. A genuinely nice person. “Not that you’re small-town. I know you’re not.” She was pretty worldly for this otherwise backwoods, white-bread town, but he saw her all the time. He bumped into her at the lodge if she came out to see Glory and they exchanged a few words at the preschool if he happened to pick up Aiden and she was getting her niece. “People know enough of my business as it is. I thought this kind of overlapping of lives was a made-up TV cliché until I moved here and started to live it. It makes me cautious about giving people things to talk about. That’s all.”
Having nowhere to hide in this town probably wouldn’t bother him so much if his life looked the way he had always planned, but it didn’t. The least Wanda could have done was stay in Sacramento where they would have had some anonymity, but no. She had pressed him to move here, where she could hang their laundry to air-dry in front of people they had to talk to every day.
“It chafes, I know. Why do you think I moved away soon as I finished high school and only came back kicking and screaming? ‘When are you going to get married? When are you going to have kids?’” she sing-songed.
“Exactly.”
Eden was giving him the look, though. The one that told him she was speculating on what kind of marriage he’d had if his ex had left him to shack up with another woman. Why had he followed them here?
“So you’re not going to remarry and have more kids?” she joked.
He snorted, but answered truthfully, thinking he might as well make his position crystal clear.
“If Wanda and I had stayed together, it would be different, but…” He shrugged. “My sister’s ex has kids with someone else and her current boyfriend has kids with his first wife… It gets complicated.” His sister’s situation wasn’t even contentious, just a juggling act and more drama than he wanted or needed in his own life. He was happy to keep his personal life neat and simple. Him and his son.
“Yeah, and if Wanda is thinking about having more kids—”
“What?”
His tone was so sharp, it made all the kids stop and look.
Eden widened her eyes. “I didn’t mean—It was just something she said the other day. We were chatting when I was picking up Zuzu. Honestly, it sounded like a someday thing. Not like it was happening.”
“Yeah, well, she would have a problem making it happen, wouldn’t she?” The sperm count in Wanda’s girlfriend, Frankie, was zero.
He wouldn’t put it past Wanda to visit a bank, though.
Fuck.
“Nate.” Eden touched his arm. “I’m babbling about other people because I don’t want to think about my own life right now. Don’t take anything I say seriously.”
Too late. His temper was lit.
Not because he was holding out for a reconciliation, either. He was one hundred percent over his marriage, but he was one million percent protective of his son. Couldn’t Wanda keep one single thing stable for half a minute before forcing Aiden to adapt to new circumstances?
Before forcing Nate to do the same?
“I have to pee,” one of the little ones said, ruddy face all that was showing in the tightly drawn hood of a neon green snowsuit.
“I’ll take you in, sweetie.” Eden offered her hand. “And I’ll start some cocoa for everyone. One more slide each, then you all come in, okay?” she said to the kids, then glanced at Nate.
He nodded curtly. “I’ll bring them.”
He wouldn’t hang around, though. Wanda and Frankie were inside. He wasn’t ready to be civil to either of them if they were thinking about bringing another child into their broken family. No way. Not if he had any say in the matter.
Which he probably didn’t.
Fuck.
Chapter Two
“Marvin.”
His name said in that particular baritone made Marvin Cormer feel like the literary Mr. Bennet every single time. He is the kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything.
“Rolf.” Marvin smiled and handed his future son-in-law one of the floral arrangements from the back of his SUV.
Marvin was late arriving at the Adams’s home, having hung back to help with gathering up the flowers and putting away chairs with the handful of volunteers at the community hall.
Rolf gave the spray of white roses and baby’s breath a perplexed look.
That wasn’t even the half of it. Marvin handed him the tripod that would hold the enormous wreath with a satin ribbon imprinted with a goodbye message. He and Glory had had the sickly scent of dying flowers in the house for two weeks before Glory had finally had a fit about it and threw them all out in one day. But how did one ask a freshly bereaved family if they’d prefer not to watch beautiful bouquets shrivel metaphorically, day-by-day. If Marvin had known how depressing it was, he would have sent all of their bouquets directly to a senior center or some other place where the living and unaffected could enjoy them.
“Lovely service,” he said, as he had a dozen times already. People didn’t know how to process something like this. Best to help them along with easy conversation. That was his specialty, after all. “Good to see the local florist does such a nice job. We can trust them with the wedding.”
“That’s what we need to discuss. If the lodge won’t be ready, tell me now. I’ll make other arrangements.” So blunt.
Was Glory out of her senses to be accepting this man? She had always been such a sensitive girl. Marvin couldn’t fathom how these two had ended up together.
But they had.
Like every other parent in history, he had to let go and watch her stand or fall—while doing everything he could to keep her standing.
“The lodge will be ready,” Marvin assured Rolf with a magnanimous smile.
“Your manager quit. Again.”
“She did,” Marvin confirmed, but left it at that. Rolf’s brother, Trigg, the little turd, was the reason women kept departing in various states of anger, disappointment, heartbreak, and disgust. Trigg was Marvin’s only ally in this endeavor with renovating Blue Spruce Lodge, however, and the brothers locked horns enough as it was. Marvin didn’t want to—as the kids said these days—throw Trigg under the bus.