by Cindy Dees
The whole time he spoke, Finn was petting the dog easily, trailing his fingers through the dog’s thick coat. Rachel could hardly tear her eyes away from the magic his hand wove. What would it feel like if he did that across her skin? The idea made her shiver.
Finn glanced up and caught her red-handed staring at him like he was a two-inch-thick, sixteen-ounce prime rib cooked to perfection. She ripped her gaze away hastily. “Uhh, ready to go?” she mumbled.
He stood up leisurely, which put him about a foot from her in her little kitchen. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I’m ready if you are.” His voice rolled over her, smooth and masculine. And it didn’t sound at all like he was talking about leaving. He sounded distinctly like he was talking about staying.
Her breath hitched. Then her heart hitched. And then her brain hitched. Was it possible? In a fog of lust and disbelief, she grabbed her keys and her briefcase and led the way out the back door. Last night’s snow was mostly gone, but patches of it remained in the grass.
“Winter’s coming,” Finn commented.
“My favorite time of year,” she commented back.
“I remember that about you. You like the holidays and curling up under a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate and watching it snow.”
She all but dropped her keys. He remembered that about her? After all these years? What did it mean? In a lame effort to cover her shock, she said, “Yeah, but now that I have to drive in it, the romance of snow has worn off somewhat.”
He grimaced at her compact car. “You need to get yourself something bigger and heavier. With four-wheel drive. You live in Montana, after all.”
Like she could afford something like that. Maybe in a year or two after she’d dug out from under the bills. Finn looked comical folded into the passenger seat of her little car. The roads in town were wet, and as they headed east into the hills toward the Colton spread, the pavement started to get slippery.
To distract herself from visions of driving off the side of a mountain and killing them both, she asked, “Did you get roped into going to the Honey Creek High anniversary celebration next Saturday?”
“Only reason I’m sticking around town this week. Couldn’t let Coach Meyer down.”
Rachel swallowed hard. She should’ve put it together that he’d be at the dance. The daring gown that was being altered for her right now flitted through her mind. Ohmigosh. She’d fallen in love with the dress precisely because it was a defiant statement of sensuality. She’d tried for years to be the person everyone in Honey Creek wanted her to be, and the gown was a big, fat announcement that she was done chasing respectability—or paying penance for a crime they’d never bothered to tell her about. If they thought she were a tart, why not be one? Surely tarts had more fun than she’d had for the past fifteen years.
Maybe she could find a burlap sack at the Goodwill store before Saturday.
Or maybe she’d just skip the dance. Although she’d promised Carly she’d go. No way would her cousin let her back out of it without raising a huge stink. Crud.
She fell silent, contemplating ways to duck both the dance and Carly but coming up empty. Finn stared out the window as the mountains rose around them. The high peaks wore their first caps of snow and wouldn’t lose them again until next spring. As the roads grew narrower and steeper, she concentrated carefully on her driving. She might not have a fancy truck like Finn, but she knew how to handle winter road conditions. She took it easy and finally turned into the familiar driveway. The big, wrought-iron arch over the entrance still held up the elaborately scrolled letter C. Yup, the Coltons were royalty in this town.
A wash of old memories swept over her: amazement that someone who lived in this palatial place could be interested in her; the excitement of imagining herself a member of the Colton clan someday, dreaming of living in the magnificent log mansion that sprawled forever along a mountaintop; her intimidation at meeting Finn’s parents for the first time. She’d so wanted to make a good impression on them. But then Maisie had been nasty to her, and she’d gotten tongue-tied and ended up standing in front of Finn’s family red in the face and unable to form complete sentences. It had been the most humiliating experience of her life…until the night of prom, of course, when Finn had dumped her.
“Pull around back by the kitchen entrance,” he directed.
She nodded and to make conversation added, “This place is still as beautiful as ever.”
He shrugged. “It’s a house.” She didn’t think he was going to say anything more, but then he added, “You know what they say. A house isn’t necessarily a home.”
“Your home’s in Bozeman for good, then?”
Another shrug. “I haven’t found a home yet.”
Now what did he mean by that? She was fairly certain he wasn’t talking about finding a house. Her impression was that he was talking about having found love. Companionship. Family. Roots. Her father might be gone and her mother gone in all but body, but at least they’d been a close family. They’d stuck together through thick and thin and been there for each other. Heck, they’d had fun together.
Finn interrupted her thoughts. “Come in while I get the pills for you.”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll wait in the car.”
His head whipped to the left. “You scared, Blondie?”
Her spine stiffened. “No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are. You’re chicken to face my family,” he accused. He looked on the verge of laughing at her.
“Wouldn’t you be?” she shot back.
That wiped the grin off his face. “Yeah, I suppose I would be.”
“All right then. So, I’ll come inside and show you I’m braver than you ever were. I’m not scared to face the mighty Coltons.”
Except she was scared. And for some reason, Finn went grim and silent as he climbed out of the car. Had he caught her veiled barb about being afraid to stand up to his family? She didn’t like the practice of taking pot shots at other people, but it was hard not to take a swipe or two at him after all the years of pain and suffering he’d caused her. Vaguely nauseous, she marched toward the back door behind him, praying silently that none of the other Coltons would be around.
Her prayer wasn’t answered, of course. Finn held the back door for her and she stepped through a mud room the size of her living room and into a giant rustic kitchen that could grace the pages of a home-decorating magazine. A big man sat on a bar stool with his back to her, hunched over a mug of something steaming. He turned at their entrance and she started. Although he’d changed a great deal, he was still clearly Finn’s older brother.
“Hi, Damien. Welcome home,” she said.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“It’s good to have you back,” she added sincerely.
He glanced up again, surprise glinting in his hard gaze for a moment. “It’s good to be back.”
“I’ll go get the drugs, Rachel. Stay here,” Finn ordered. He strode out of the kitchen for parts unknown in the mansion.
“You two dealing drugs now?” Damien asked wryly.
“Yup. Thought we’d corner the market on doggie painkillers.”
“Come again?”
Rachel grinned. “A stray dog wandered up to my house night before last. He’d been shot and was bleeding and half starved. I couldn’t get him to a vet, so Finn came down to town to help him. Did surgery on my kitchen table to remove the bullet and repair his leg.”
“Finn did that for you?” Damien asked in surprise. She nodded and he gestured at the bar stool beside her. As she slid onto it he asked, “Coffee?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
He poured her a mug and sat back down beside her. Great. Now what were they supposed to talk about? The guy had never been the chatty type, even before he went to jail for half his adult life. She resorted to, “Finn says you’ve been doing a lot of work around this place.”
He shrugged.
“Do you know what you’re going to do next?”
H
e looked at her questioningly.
“I mean, are you planning to stick around Honey Creek long term?”
He raised his mug to her. “You’re the first person with the guts to ask me that outright.”
“It’s not about guts. I’m just interested. I can speak from experience that it sucks to be an outcast among people you thought were friends.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she replied, warming to the role of advice giver about something she was an expert in. “You stick by your guns, Damien, and do exactly what you want to do. Ignore the funny looks and snarky comments. I wish I had done it sooner.”
He surprised her by mumbling, “Do they ever stop? The looks and the comments?”
She looked him dead in the eye and answered candidly, “I’ll let you know when they do.”
He grunted. She wasn’t sure what the sound meant. Maybe agreement. Maybe disgust.
She said reflectively, “The thing about small towns is no one ever forgets.”
He muttered into his mug, “Don’t need ’em to forget. Just need ’em to forgive.”
She laid her hand on his arm and it went rock hard under her palm. “You don’t need anyone’s forgiveness. You did nothing wrong. You hold your head high in this town, Damien Colton.”
“Maybe before I take off I’ll stick around long enough to see Walsh’s real killer caught.”
“I sincerely hope Wes catches the killer for you. And soon.”
An actual smile lit Damien’s eyes. “You’re not so bad, you know. Finn was a fool to—”
A female voice cut sharply across his words. “What in blue blazes are you doing in my house? We don’t cotton to white trash sluts around here.”
Rachel looked up, stunned at the attack, and her heart fell to her feet. Maisie. The woman had always hated Rachel’s guts for no apparent reason.
Damien surprised her by cutting in. “Don’t be a bitch, Maisie. Rachel brought Finn home.”
“Are you telling me he was with her all night last night?” Maisie screeched. “Just couldn’t wait to get your hooks back into him, could you? After all these years you still don’t get it, do you? You’ll never be good enough to be a Colton, missy. You leave my brother alone. You broke his heart but good the last time, and I’ll not stand for you doing it to him again, you hear me?”
Rachel eyed the back door in panic. If she was quick about it, she could make the mud room and be outside before the other woman could catch her.
Damien spoke up mildy. “Shut up, Maisie. What Finn and Rachel do or don’t do is none of your business.” There was steel behind his words, though. Rachel blinked. At the moment, he didn’t sound like a guy she’d want to cross in a dark alley.
“Here they are—” Finn burst into the kitchen, took in the scene of Rachel eyeing the back door, Maisie glaring at Rachel and Damien glaring at Maisie, and fell silent.
Hands shaking, Rachel took the brown plastic bottle from Finn and slid off the stool. “Thanks for everything, Finn. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.” How she got the words out with any semblance of composure, she had no idea.
“Any time,” he replied. Whether he actually meant that or just said it out of automatic politeness, she had no idea. If only she could get out of here without any more collateral damage from Maisie Colton. Folks in Honey Creek were about equally split over whether she was just a spoiled bitch or a little bit crazy. Either way, Rachel usually steered well clear of her. And it was time to do that now.
“Nice talking with you, Damien,” Rachel said.
“You, too.”
She didn’t know how to say goodbye to Finn, so she just nodded at him and turned to leave.
“Be careful driving home, Blondie,” he murmured quietly enough that she doubted Maisie heard.
For some inexplicable reason, tears welled up in her eyes. She just nodded mutely and fled like the big, fat chicken she was. So much for being braver than Finn Colton.
Chapter 6
The next few days were busy ones for Rachel. She visited her mother at the nursing home and cried in her car afterward at how delighted her mother had been that the nice young woman had brought her a cup of chocolate pudding. Her mother was continuing to lose weight and looked so frail that a strong wind might blow her away.
Rachel did a volunteer shift at the Goodwill store and was dismayed to discover the place was plumb out of burlap sacks. It didn’t even have any conservative dresses that would remotely fit her, either. She was stuck with the one Edna was nearly done altering.
At work, she commenced revising the Walsh Oil Drilling financial statements, a job that was going to take her weeks to complete. Craig Warner was out of the office for a couple of days but had stopped by to say hello to her on Thursday morning. She took that as a sign that maybe she wasn’t going to lose her job over exposing the company founder’s embezzlement, after all. At home, she slept and ate around caring for Brownie, who was gradually recovering. She thought he might be putting on a bit of weight, too.
The weather was strange all week. After the snow, the next day the temperature went up to nearly eighty degrees. Mother Nature was as unsettled as Rachel felt.
She didn’t run into Finn around town again, but she was vividly aware of his presence. It was as if she felt him nearby. Every now and then she got a crazy notion that he was within visual range. But whenever she turned to look for him, he wasn’t there. It was probably the lack of sleep making her hallucinate. Either that, or she was as big a lovesick fool as she’d ever been. She tended to believe it was the latter.
Her rational mind argued that she was insane to entertain any thoughts of Finn at all. Maisie was right. Hadn’t she learned her lesson the first time around? She would never be good enough to be a Colton. But her heart stubbornly refused to listen to reason. She dreamed of him. The kinds of dreams that made her wake up restless and hot and wishing for a man in her bed. Finn Colton, to be exact.
Why, oh why, did he have to come back to Honey Creek?
She rushed home after work on Thursday to take care of Brownie and change clothes. Walsh Enterprises was throwing a barbecue to kick off the centennial homecoming weekend celebration, and as a Walsh employee, she was invited.
She’d never been out to the Walsh spread other than to drive by at a distance. It looked homey and charming from the main road. The Walsh house turned out to be deceptive, though. It looked like a fairly normal country-style home with a broad front porch and dormer windows in the steep-pitched roof. But when she stepped inside, she was startled at the size of the place. Nothing but the best for one of the town’s other royal families, she supposed. These people lived in a world different from hers entirely.
Lucy Walsh, who was only a couple of years older than Rachel, ushered her out back to where easily a hundred people milled around the swimming pool balancing plates of food and drinking tall glasses of beer from the Walsh brewery.
He was here. She knew it instantly. Finn’s presence was a tingling across her skin, a sharp pull that said he was over by the bar. She looked up, and there he was. Staring across the crowd at her like he’d felt her walk into the party the same way she’d felt him.
He was, of course, the only Colton at this Walsh barbecue. Frankly, she was surprised he had come. The two families weren’t exactly on friendly terms. But then, Finn always had been the good Colton. The diplomat. The one who smoothed things over.
He wore a pale blue polo shirt and jeans and looked like a million bucks. It was all she could do to tear her gaze away from him. But in a gathering like this, she dared not look like she bore any interest at all in him. The rumors would fly like snowflakes in January if she did.
In fact, she assiduously avoided him for the next hour. Thankfully, Carly arrived and took her in tow. Her cousin was outgoing and popular and made lively conversation with dozens of people. It allowed Rachel to nod and smile and act like she was having fun, when mostly she was concentrating on keeping tabs on Finn and
forcing herself not to look at him. When the strain became too much for her, she went inside in search of a restroom and found a long line of people waiting to use one.
Jolene Walsh, Lucy’s mom, stopped to speak to Rachel in the hall. “Why don’t you go upstairs, dear? There are several bathrooms, and you won’t have to wait.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Walsh.”
“Call me Jolene, dear.”
She thought she detected a hint of sadness in the woman’s voice. She’d had a rough go of life, too. It was no secret that Mark Walsh had cheated on his wife and been a rotten husband until his first death. By all accounts, Jolene had kept to herself for years afterward and let Craig Warner mostly run Walsh Enterprises. Then Mark had shown up dead for real and plunged Jolene into yet another scandal. Poor woman.
“Thanks, Jolene,” Rachel murmured. She headed upstairs and went in search of a bathroom. She ducked into a bedroom and saw a door that looked promising. She headed toward it and started when it opened.
Finn stepped out.
“Oh! Hi,” she murmured, flustered.
“Hi. Enjoying the party?” Finn asked. He glanced warily toward the open bedroom door.
“Uhh, yeah. Food’s great.”
“How’s Brownie?”
“Getting better slowly. He’s started trying to put weight on his leg, but he cries every time he tries it.”
Finn frowned. “Femurs are intensely painful bones to break in humans. I suspect it’s similar in dogs. Let me know if the pain doesn’t seem to subside in a few days.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He took a step closer and asked quietly, “How are you doing, Blondie?”
She looked up at him, startled. “Tired, actually. Taking care of Brownie around the clock is hard work.”
He nodded and reached out to trace beneath her eye with the pad of his thumb. She froze, stunned that he would touch her voluntarily. “Get some rest. He’s depending on you.”
She nodded, her throat too tight to speak. He was talking about the dog, right?
Finn took a step forward, his fingers still resting lightly on her cheek. His head bent down toward hers slightly. Ohmigosh. He was going to kiss her!