“I can’t do this. I can’t watch them come in here and look at me like I’m…”
“Damaged?”
“Yeah. That.” He exhaled heavily. “You’re the only one brave enough to say it. The rest give me platitudes. They tell me I’ll heal, when they have no idea if I will or not. I see it in their eyes. They think I deserve this.”
“No one deserves this,” Lana told him softly. “Especially not you. But you’re the one going through it. No one can tell you how to feel, least of all the rest of our family. Focus on what you need, not what they say.”
“Is that how you’ve survived them so long? Tuning them out?”
Lana didn’t answer. Killian craned his neck around as much as the brace would allow. “Where’s Rick?”
“He left.”
“Left Chicago or left you?”
Her expression, so carefully schooled into calmness, still gave her away.
“So that’s it? You’re going to sit there with that fake-ass pleasant smile pasted on your face and let him go? That idiot’s in love with you. Whatever his reasoning, he’s not leaving because he wants to.”
“Would you suggest I make a grand gesture? Beg him to take me back?”
Killian snorted. “Well, what grand gesture could Rick possibly make? Here, surrounded by them? We all feel like we aren’t enough. Even Aunt Jessica and Uncle Langston. None of us are good enough to run this place. None of us are as skilled as we need to be. The only one close is you. You’re the prodigal child, succeeding when the rest of us are silently screaming at the top of our lungs.”
“That’s not true,” Lana protested.
“Please, Cousin. I’m the court jester at best. The fool who is rolled out whenever strangers need entertainment.” Killian ran a hand over his face, scrubbing bruised skin roughly. “Do you think they’ll stick me in an office so I can pretend to have a job? Or set me up with a caretaker and forget about me except for the holidays?”
Her heart broke at the certainty in his voice.
“Don’t give up, Killian. You’re strong enough to get through this.”
“You’re the only one of us worth anything. If you’re giving up, what’s the point?”
Killian rested his head back on his pillow, staring up at the ceiling. Lana sat in her chair silently for a very long time. Then she rose to her feet, moved to the edge of his bed, and leaned over.
“If you hate it here, then heal.” When he wouldn’t look at her, Lana ignored his bruises and took his chin in her hand, forcing him to. “Heal enough to get out of here. I don’t know what happens next, but I know you don’t have to stay here. When it’s safe to travel, I have a whole town where you can go, where you won’t have to deal with them.”
There was enough of Killian left to pull his face out of her hand before holding her eyes challengingly. “I thought Moose Springs wasn’t your town.”
“Places don’t belong to us because of money. They belong to us because we love them. My heart is in Moose Springs. It’s my home, and I’m going home. When you’re ready, come home with me too.”
Pressing a kiss to his bruised forehead, Lana left Killian to decide for himself what he needed to do.
Her mother was leaning against the wall outside Killian’s room, within easy earshot of their conversation.
“I’m going back to Alaska,” Lana told Jessica. “I’ll be working out of the office I set up in Moose Springs for the foreseeable future.”
Jessica took her hands. “Lana, are you sure this is the right choice for you? Rick seems like a good man, but will this be enough?”
“This isn’t about him. It’s about me. I stood on a mountain, and I looked down at the problem. Do you know what I found? We’re the problem. I’m selling the Moose Springs properties to the business owners. Any of them who want to buy, I’ll negotiate with them myself. I’m putting control back in their hands.”
“And if I put in a vote to stop you?”
“It’s not your company,” Lana said. “It belongs to all of us. I’ll do what I have to and get the votes I need to push it through. I’m not sacrificing the town to Silas’s greed. He’s welcome to live his life as a pawn of the Montgomery Group’s revenue, but I’m more than that. Moose Springs is worth more than that. And if you’re smart, you’ll realize that the Montgomery Group is worth more than his greed too.”
For too many decades, the fate of Moose Springs had been in the hands of the wrong people. The Shaws, sitting in their gilded tower of a resort. The commercial property companies, sitting in Anchorage, counting their dollars. Her own hands and the hands of her family. People who simply didn’t understand.
It was time for Moose Springs to be in the right hands again: their own.
“You’re playing a dangerous game with your future, Lana. Are you sure he’s worth it?”
There wasn’t cruelty in her mother’s voice, just an honest question.
“I don’t know,” Lana said honestly. “But I know I am.”
“The town will shut your condos down, Lana,” her mother told her as Lana walked away. “All your work will have been for nothing.”
On the contrary. This might be the first business deal in her life that would be worth it.
* * *
The next time Lana offered to fly him first class, Rick was taking her up on it.
After a miserable trip back home in coach—in which his longest flight had been spent wedged in between two people his own size in the row closest to the rear bathroom—all Rick wanted to do was go home. Every single minute since leaving her in Chicago, Rick had questioned whether he’d done the right thing. Shouldn’t doing the right thing feel better? Because this felt like he’d been shredded from the inside out. He’d left her there to deal with her family alone. He’d left her there to deal with her hurt cousin alone. Instead of standing by her side, he’d bailed the first chance things looked like they could be tough.
What the hell was he thinking? What the hell was he doing? He should be on a plane back to Chicago right that minute.
But his choice had been made. Going back now would only make things worse, because nothing had changed. She still deserved better than having him and his town come between her and her family. No, Rick had to stay this course, no matter how terrible it made him feel.
After his flight finally landed in Anchorage, Rick got his snow-covered car out of the airport’s short term parking and drove back to Moose Springs, barely seeing the road.
He only started to notice his surroundings when he reached town. The Santa Moose had made it to the center of Moose Springs, where up to this point, the best decorations had remained safe. Now, the town’s Christmas tree was tipped over, its ornaments crushed and scattered. Plastic snowflakes lay broken and battered.
Only one poor inflatable elf remained standing, staring at the carnage with haunted eyes.
If Diego had been home, Rick would have kept driving instead of turning off at Graham’s driveway. But Diego had his own plans, having not expected Rick to be back so soon. Since Diego was at some holiday party with a group his own age, Rick figured he might as well do the same. He wasn’t ready to spend Christmas Eve alone.
When he arrived, Graham’s house was stuffed full of people, so at first, Rick was able to slip in the door and blend in without anyone noticing. He hadn’t told anyone what had happened in Chicago, and he’d hoped to avoid talking about it tonight. Losing Lana was causing a slow bleed in his heart that he couldn’t stanch, and he wasn’t ready to discuss this with anyone yet.
So of course a sloshy little person stumbled his way, her voice slurring with the effects of the Lockett family eggnog.
“I talked to Lana,” Zoey said, eyes flashing. Rick could smell the alcohol on Zoey’s breath from three feet away.
“How is she?” He couldn’t help but ask. Ending their fling…rela
tionship…whatever it was with Lana’s cousin still in intensive care had been terrible timing. He’d felt like the biggest jerk alive since leaving Chicago.
Zoey actually growled, which would have been cute under other circumstances. “She got dumped on Christmas.”
“Christmas Eve, darlin’,” Graham murmured helpfully, coming up behind his fiancée.
“Christmas Eve. You big…big…meanie.”
“Zo’s pulling out the big guns,” Graham said jokingly, giving Rick an apologetic look. “Pretty sure there are two sides to every breakup, honey.”
“Lana deserves better than I can give her,” Rick said quietly. “It’s wrong to keep pretending otherwise.”
Rick really wished he didn’t have to deal with an angry protective friend right now. He felt terrible enough.
No one had ever rolled their eyes harder than Zoey at his statement. “Gimme a break. Chicken. You’re a big…chickenman. One look at her family and boom. You bailed. Cluck cluck. Like your family is sooooo easy to get along with. Hi, Imma Diego. I grunt ’nstead of speaking.”
Graham draped an arm over Zoey’s shoulders, steadying her. “Sorry, she’s a little bit drunk, buddy, and it brings out her protective side. Zo, maybe we should leave Rick here to consider his life choices without our running dialogue.”
Zoey shoved Graham’s arm off her, giving Rick her mightiest death glare. Her slurring grew worse with every word. “You’restupid. S’stupid, chickenman.”
When she stumbled in his direction, Rick reached out to steady her. He ended up with Zoey’s nose mere inches from his own, the alcohol on her breath making his eyes sting. Sloppy drunk had never been his style, so he couldn’t imagine why Graham looked so amused. Graham sat on the arm of the couch, grinning as Rick tried to avoid the finger waggling in his face or her clucking at him. Drunken burps weren’t cute.
“Lana’s smarter than you. No chickenmen for her. Imma sit down.”
Zoey stepped back, flopping down to Graham’s knee, and promptly fell asleep.
“Well, that’s one way of putting it.” Graham wrapped a secure arm around Zoey’s waist. “The other way is ‘Hello, Rick. How was Chicago?’”
“It could have been better,” he said shortly.
Graham gave him a concerned look. “What’s the real story? Because you two were pretty solid when you left here.”
Rick really didn’t want to talk about it, and not in the middle of a party.
“Lana deserves someone who won’t trap her in the middle of nowhere,” Rick said, dropping his voice as quiet as he could.
Graham gave him a sideways glance. “She’s a woman who hides out in Moose Springs every chance she gets. I’m not sure you and she are on the same page here, buddy.”
There were too many curious eyes and perked ears in that crowd. Heading outside to the porch for some space, Rick sat down. He looked up at the mountain, the warm glow of the resort lights making it appear like an ornament against the evergreens. Somewhere behind all the tree cover was the last remainder of a snow penis, with everything but the jingle bells filled in with snow. She’d never taken it down, as if she understood that the town needed to get their frustrations out somehow.
Had it only been two weeks since the town hall meeting? It felt like a lifetime.
The door opened again, and two bodies joined him on the porch steps. They’d spent a lot of time sitting on porches, him and Easton and Graham. Sometimes, in a town like theirs, there wasn’t a lot else to do. In Moose Springs, momentous decisions were made on porch steps. Drunken ridiculousness happened on porch steps, first teenage kisses and marriage proposals, grieving the loss of a family member, falling in love, or losing someone you loved.
This was where lives happened. Where his life had happened. And apparently where his friends would help him pick up the pieces.
“You want to talk about her?” Easton asked in a low rumble.
Rick shook his head. There was nothing to say. He’d lost the woman he loved, again. Only this time? This time, Rick wasn’t sure he was coming back from it.
“Someone needs to check on Lana,” Rick finally said. “I hurt her.”
“You’re not looking too hot yourself,” Graham replied, clapping a hand to his shoulder.
Easton took a drink of his beer. “We’ll check on her. We’re just checking on you too.”
Rick continued to stare up at the soft glow coming off the mountain. Following his line of sight, Graham frowned up at the resort too.
“You know anything about that place I don’t?” Graham asked.
Rick turned his eyes away from the mountains, where he no longer knew if the resort would last. Getting rid of the resort was something they’d always wanted. If he asked Lana to stand back and do nothing, to let Silas have his way, they might finally have their wish. But at what cost?
“Graham, if I told you that the Shaws aren’t going to stay in business much longer, what would you say? If this place could be a ghost town in a couple of years, us included?”
Graham was quiet for a long time. “I’d say that Zo wants kids. Not soon but someday.”
“Lot harder to have kids when we’re all out of work.”
With a sigh, Graham nodded. “Yeah.”
“Lana’s trying, but she’s going to have to make some big decisions soon. My place is proof a business can barely stay open here serving locals only. I have to open it to the tourists, or I’ll have to shut the doors by the end of January.”
Easton and Graham grimaced. “I didn’t know things were that bad.”
“Without the tourism dollars, a lot of us just can’t keep afloat. We’ve tried.” Rick scuffed his shoe on the wooden porch step. “I still don’t like it. I still hate what they did to Jen and Diego, but it’s hard to watch everyone else fill their wallets, knowing mine is empty and will stay that way.”
“I’ll call Lana. See what we can work out.”
Rick tried. He tried to sit there and shut off what he felt. He tried to believe what he’d told himself over and over again since he’d walked away. But really, when it came down to it, Rick had been wrong.
“Guys…I think…I think I really screwed up. Someone needs to check on her. She’s going to need a friend.”
“More than you do?” Easton asked quietly.
Maybe…maybe not. But for right now, within their small friend group, Rick was going to make sure Lana had dibs.
* * *
Lana spent the last hours of Christmas Eve on a red-eye flight from Chicago to Anchorage. There was no point in chartering a private jet to get her there faster.
At thirty thousand feet, draining a glass of champagne as she looked down at the darkness outside her window, Lana wondered at what point she’d lost all her perspective. Probably the day she’d walked into the town hall meeting and Rick Harding had smiled at her. Close or far, it didn’t matter. There was no perspective, not when all she could see was him.
It would be easy to simply let him go. Painful, but easy. He wasn’t wrong—she would always feel a pull back to him when she was working abroad. The difference was Lana wanted that pull. She wanted a place and a person to come home to. Someone and someplace that wanted her there too.
A layover in Seattle gave Lana an hour to kill. She didn’t bother to check the time before calling her mother. No matter what else their failings, Montgomerys always answered at any hour. Jessica picked up on the third ring.
“It’s a long flight alone, isn’t it?” Jessica said sympathetically, skipping a greeting. “How are you holding up?”
“Longer than usual.” Lana was grateful for her mother’s voice. “Mom, how do you do it? You and Dad? How do you make it work when you’re always gone? Don’t you resent each other?”
Jessica was quiet for a very long time. Then she said simply, “We love each other. That’s always been
enough.”
Closing her eyes, Lana asked softly, “And you don’t regret it?”
“Not for one second of one day. He gave me you, Lana.”
The love her mother felt for her came through so strong and so certain, Lana couldn’t help but feel hope welling through her. Of course, her parents had married for love instead of business.
Lana knew what she was picking, if the choice was still on the table. She’d never know until she tried.
When the plane landed in Anchorage early on Christmas morning, Lana switched to a smaller aircraft to fly her to Moose Springs. For once, she didn’t feel guilty about splurging. Lana drove straight to Rick’s house before she lost her nerve. She didn’t want to waste one more second without telling Rick the things she should have told him when he left. If he still didn’t want to be together, then…well…Lana would simply deal with that when it happened.
It took every ounce of her courage to drive to Rick’s place. So of course, he wasn’t there. All Diego could tell her was that Rick had gotten home from a Christmas party and gone out into the woods. He invited her to wait inside, but Lana stayed out on the porch instead. Since Rick’s car was parked in its spot, he’d be back eventually.
Feeling chilly and ridiculous, Lana was still waiting on the front porch steps half an hour later when Rick emerged from the woods behind his barn. He seemed lost in thought as he trudged through the snow, head down, so he didn’t notice her car until he was almost to the house. When he realized her vehicle was in the drive, he stopped in his tracks, head snapping around. Lana’s heart stopped too, at least for the moment it took for him to offer her that quiet smile of his. It was worn but real. Like him.
They had only been apart a few hours, but Lana had missed him so much.
Rick crossed the drive and approached the steps, looking at her with a confused expression.
“I took a red-eye,” she said, feeling as if she should explain. “I wanted to be back here for Christmas. Diego said I could wait inside, but I didn’t know if you wanted me here. Showing up after a breakup is kind of a stalker move.”
“You’re always welcome here,” Rick said in a rough voice. “I’ll never make you leave.”
Mistletoe and Mr. Right Page 32