The Virgin and Zach Coulter

by Lois Faye Dyer

  Zach parked and he and Cynthia left the truck, climbing the shallow, wide steps to cross the porch and reach the front door.

  “The windows and doors had lumber nailed over them. That’s where the piles of wood came from.” Zach pointed at the planks stacked at intervals along the porch. “Cade and I ripped them off last week so we could get inside.”

  “Did anyone ever break in over the years?” Cynthia asked with curiosity.

  “Cade said there was an attempt since he’s been home but he thought it was probably kids being curious and not a serious attempt at theft. J.T. came along and scared them off so they didn’t actually get inside.” Zach pulled a key ring from his pocket and slid the key into the hole with only minimal jiggling; it turned with a faint squeal. “I have to oil this lock,” he commented as he shoved the door inward and stepped aside, waving Cynthia ahead of him.

  She complied and halted abruptly just over the threshold.

  Zach joined her, standing silently at her side as she swept her gaze over the big lobby.

  Sunlight slanted through the open door behind them, throwing a bar of gold across the dust-covered wooden floor. Cobwebs hung from the wagon-wheel chandeliers at both ends of the long room and festooned the ironwork sconces along the walls. Dust lay inches deep on the wood and leather sofas and chairs, piled atop end tables and lampshades, and layered along the upper curve of logs that made up the walls.

  At first, all Cynthia saw was the dust. But as she moved to walk farther into the lobby, she realized mice had used the upholstered furniture for beds. Stuffing poked out of the corners of sofa cushions and was strewn over the floor beneath. One corner of the thick Oriental carpet under her feet was shredded as if it had been chewed.

  “That couldn’t have been mice,” she commented, pointing at the corner of the rug.

  “No.” Zach looked around. “I suspect raccoons broke in. The damage to some of the furniture looks like their work.”

  “Oh, my.” Cynthia caught her breath, staring in amazement at the wall over the long reception counter. “Is the sculpture one of your mother’s?”

  Beneath a layer of dust and tarnish, a four foot tall, six foot long silver, copper and brass sculpture of mustangs in full gallop dominated the heavy log wall. Even covered in dirt, the horses seemed alive and ready to leap from the wall to race across the room. The breathtaking piece was vivid testimony to the depth and breadth of Melanie Coulter’s incredible talent. Due to her research, Cynthia knew Zach’s mother had been on the cusp of fully realizing her potential as an artist when the tragic accident took her life. She’d fallen while playing with her four sons in the creek, struck her head on a half-submerged rock and died within a week.

  And apparently, Joseph Coulter had never recovered from her death. He’d sealed up her art studio, this Lodge she’d designed and loved, and a warehouse holding her collections of Western memorabilia.

  “Yes, that’s Mom’s work.” Zach’s voice was devoid of emotion. “The horses are Kiger mustangs—she bred and raised a herd of them. She used them often as subjects for her art—she loved horses. After she died, Dad rode out early one morning, leading Mom’s favorite saddlehorse. He returned hours later, without the mare. I always assumed he shot her but Dad wouldn’t discuss it, so no one knows what he did with her.”

  “That’s terrible.” Cynthia didn’t know what else to say. She guessed Zach must have been around eleven years old when his mother died. The articles Cynthia had read online speculated that Joseph Coulter had gone mad with grief. From the few comments Zach had made about his father and mother, she suspected the speculation might have been too close to the truth.

  She turned in a slow circle, her gaze sliding over the lobby interior, amazed that until Zach removed the boards and entered, it would have been more than twenty-three years since anyone had set foot inside the lobby.

  She shook her head and glanced sideways at Zach. “Given how long it’s been since anyone’s been inside, the condition doesn’t seem that terrible.”

  Zach nodded slowly, his gaze sweeping the ceiling. “Yeah, I admit, I was surprised the damage wasn’t worse down here.” He pointed at a stain on the ceiling in the back corner. “The second floor didn’t fare as well, though. You can see where water leaked through from the damage upstairs.” He gestured toward the stairs. “Let’s go up and I’ll show you.”

  The upper story with its rooms and suites had multiple problems, chief of which was water damage from several leaks in the roof over the years. In several of the rooms, ceilings had fallen in, wood furnishings were warped and stained, and evidence of mice was everywhere. Several of the rooms were also ransacked, the damage consistent with a raccoon invasion. Cute though Cynthia thought they were, the animals could be incredibly destructive.

  Two hours later, Zach locked the doors behind them and they left the Lodge to drive back to the ranch house, where they found a carafe filled with fresh coffee in the kitchen and a note from Mariah telling them she and Cade had gone into town.

  “The Lodge is structurally sound,” Zach continued when they sat at the table. “But as you say, the inside is a wreck. It’s going to take a lot of work to restore it to the point where we can reopen it to guests again.”

  “And a lot of money,” Cynthia added.

  Zach shrugged. “That goes without saying. But in my experience, those two usually go hand in hand.”

  “Have you lined up financing?” she asked, accepting a mug from him. When their fingers brushed, she felt the quick zap of electricity she’d felt before, and her cheeks heated with awareness.

  “Yes. My boss practically twisted my arm to give him the project.” Zach shook his head, a slow smile tilting the corners of his mouth. “I warned him this is Montana, not San Francisco, but he said he believed in my gut instinct about the Lodge.”

  “And what does your gut tell you?” Cynthia asked, eyeing him curiously over the rim of her cup. His eyes were alive with energy, warming as his gaze focused on her mouth for a heart-stopping, intent moment.

  “That it can be just as big a draw in the future as it was in the past,” he told her with conviction. “I was at a conference in L.A. a few years ago and ran into an old friend of my parents. He’s a movie executive and said he used to stay at the Lodge several times a year with his friends. They’d fly up from L.A. to take fly-fishing lessons from Dad in the summer and come back in the fall to hunt pheasant and grouse. He told me several times how much they loved coming here and how sorry they all were to hear about Mom’s accident.” He paused and sipped his coffee, his eyes going unfocused for a moment as if he were remembering the older man’s words. Then his gaze sharpened once more. “And he told me to let him know if Dad ever decided to reopen the Lodge, so he could be the first returning guest. I think Angela still has his card filed away somewhere. I’ll bet he could tell us the names of some of the other guests who’d be glad to hear the Lodge was open again.”

  “If we could find the old guest register and create a contact list, then let them know you planned to reopen, it’s possible the Lodge could have a full reservation schedule this summer.”

  “Maybe by midsummer,” Zach told her. “I don’t know how long it will take the construction crew to repair the roof, gut the damaged rooms and finish renovations.”

  “Given the layout of the Lodge, I don’t think we could partially reopen,” she said thoughtfully. “It would be difficult to keep the ongoing construction noise and dust from disturbing the guests.”

  “I agree.” Zach leaned back in his chair, long legs stretched, booted feet crossed at the ankle. “You said ‘we’—that sounds as if you’ve made up your mind to come on board.”

  She considered him for a moment. “I guess I have.” She sipped her coffee, noting the glint of satisfaction in his green eyes. “And you knew I would, didn’t you?”

  “I hoped you would,” he corrected her. “You seemed like the kind of woman who likes a challenge.” He shook his head. “And the
Lodge is definitely going to be a test of endurance.”

  “Oh, I can handle the endurance requirement,” she said drily. “I’m just not sure how I’m going to keep my laptop running in all that dust I saw in the office.”

  He grinned. “We’ll set you up in the dining room here at the house until I can get the guys to scrub out the office at the Lodge. I’ll move all the file boxes you need from there to here—and the internet connection is good, so you can have access to the web whenever you need it.”

  “You seem to have thought of everything. Tell me,” she said, genuinely curious about his answer, “did it ever occur to you that I might say no?”

  “Oh, it occurred to me,” he assured her. “But I never planned to accept it. I would have kept showing up on your doorstep until you either took pity on me or got so tired of answering the door that you gave in.”

  She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help smiling.

  By the time she drove back to town two hours later, they’d hammered out a compensation package that included an interim salary sufficient to cover her current expenses, a bonus scale based on the Lodge’s growth in income once it opened, and incremental increases in her base salary over the next two years.

  Cynthia was satisfied with the deal. Zach had been generous but not a pushover—they’d both made concessions, which was exactly how she liked negotiations to conclude.

  As she stepped into the shower to wash away the dust that had inevitably sifted onto her during the tour of the Lodge, she felt good about their agreement and was looking forward to beginning work.

  And to seeing more of Zach Coulter on a regular basis.

  Cynthia’s first day of work began at the Lodge two days later, sorting files into boxes before stacking them along a wall in the office. Finished with the preliminary sorting, she carried the first of the cartons through the lobby, heading outside and away from the interior’s dust-filled air. A crew of twenty-plus carpenters, plumbers and electricians swarmed over the building as she reached the porch.

  “Here, I’ll take that.” Zach left a group of men in hard hats studying architectural drawings, and took the box out of her arms. He strode to the back of his pickup, parked across the lot and away from the Lodge, and slid the carton onto the tailgate before shoving it deeper into the truck bed. “Tell me what you want moved and I’ll do the heavy lifting,” he told her when he’d jogged back to join her on the porch.

  “All right,” she said mildly.

  “You’re not going to argue with me?” he asked with amusement as she led the way back into the Lodge and down the hallway to the office area.

  “Not when you’re offering to move heavy boxes for me,” she said over her shoulder as she entered the office. “But give it time, I’m sure we’ll have lots of disagreements in the future.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” he said drily. “Which ones do you want in the truck?”

  She pointed out the stack of file boxes she’d separated from the rest of the shambles that was the office, and Zach shouldered one, striding across the room and disappearing through the doorway.

  While he was transferring boxes, Cynthia thumbed through the contents of a filing cabinet with the only drawers remaining that she hadn’t had time to check.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind working at the house?” he asked her when he returned after carrying off the last box.

  “No, not at all.” She glanced around at the room. “The dining room table at the ranch house will be much more convenient and I can get started right away. If I stayed here—” she waved at the room “—we’d have to spend a few days cleaning and even then, I wouldn’t be able to keep the dirt and sawdust from filtering back in and covering everything. Plus, I’ll need to use my laptop and you have internet access at your house.”

  “All good reasons,” he agreed. Hands on hips, he swept the room with an assessing glance. “Anything else you want carried out to the truck?”

  “I think that’s it.” She walked ahead of him out of the office and down the hall to the lobby. “Oh, wait. I wanted to check something.” She detoured around the end of the registration counter. The Kiger mustang sculpture no longer hung on the wall behind the counter, but the outline where it had been was clearly visible—the cleaner wood beneath, lighter than the dust-covered wall that surrounded it.

  Cynthia quickly opened and closed the drawers below the counter, riffling through the papers inside.

  “They’re not here,” she said, disappointed.

  “What’s not there?” Zach asked.

  “The registration records. I was hoping to find sign-in cards, or lists, or…something.” Cynthia rejoined him and they crossed the lobby to step out on the porch.

  Zach cupped her elbow to draw her out of the path of a workman pushing a wheelbarrow filled with the metal sconces that had been removed from the lobby’s interior.

  They zigzagged around a bright yellow dump truck parked beneath second-story windows that stood open. They didn’t talk. The noise from workmen tossing discarded furniture, mattresses, fallen ceiling tiles, chunks of plaster and ruined drywall was deafening as the items landed in the bed of the big truck.

  Zach walked with her to her car and held the door while she got in. He bent, raising his voice to be heard. “I’ll follow you to the house with the boxes.”

  She nodded, not bothering to reply since she doubted he’d hear her. He closed the door to stride off and Cynthia couldn’t resist watching him walk away in her rearview mirror.

  She waited until he stepped into his truck before driving away from the Lodge and the hive of activity around it. Trucks were parked along the grassy verge of the lane and she drove slowly, avoiding a battered pickup that had been left jutting out onto the road.

  By the time she reached the house and carried her purse and laptop inside, Zach joined her with two file boxes stacked in his arms.

  “Where do you want these?” he asked.

  “Against the wall is fine,” she replied, slipping the strap of her purse over the back of a chair and setting her laptop on the polished cherrywood table. “I feel guilty using this beautiful table for work. What if I spill coffee on it?”

  Zach glanced at her and shrugged. “I’m sure it’s seen worse over the years.” He paused, hands on hips and fingers splayed over his jeans pockets, and studied the table. “Come to think of it, we never used the dining room after Mom was gone. I remember it being piled high with stock magazines and newspapers, but that’s about it.”

  “Maybe that’s why it survived so well,” Cynthia commented, smoothing her palm over the satiny surface. “It’s beautiful.”

  “That must be due to Mariah. She took care of the house the last few years for Dad.”

  Cynthia looked around the room with it’s long cherrywood table and chairs, the highboy against one wall and the living room visible through the door opposite the entry to the kitchen.

  “It’s a lovely house. Whoever designed it did a wonderful job.”

  “My grandfather built it for my grandmother.” Zach’s gaze followed hers. “When they were newlyweds, he built the cabin down by the creek where Mariah lives. When they were older and he had more money, he had this house built. When Dad and Mom got married, my grandparents moved back into the cabin and insisted my parents move in here.”

  “So you were born in this house and grew up here?” Cynthia said.

  He nodded. “It’s kind of funny that Cade’s pretty much moved into the cabin with Mariah. I told him that I’d be glad to stay there and they could have the house since there’s only one of me. But Mariah’s attached to the cabin and wanted to stay there, at least until they get married.”

  “Will they live in this house after their wedding?” Cynthia asked.

  “I expect so—Cade loves raising cattle and running a ranch. The place belongs to all of us and I’m sure he’d like my brothers to stay. But if they do, there’s plenty of room to build a house or two.”

  “What ab
out you? Are you going to stay on the Triple C after you restore the Lodge?” Cynthia said, not sure why his answer was so important to her.

  “I never thought I would,” he told her. He frowned and his eyes held a shadow. “I have a great job, but since I’ve been back on the ranch…” He paused before continuing. “I’ve been reminded just how much I always liked the life of a cattleman. When I leave, I’ll miss this place and the day-to-day rhythm of working with Cade here on the Triple C. I’ve been spending hours in the saddle, moving cattle or riding fence lines and checking for breaks. There’s something about being out there, just me and the horse, with all that space around me…” He paused, his gaze flicking to her before his eyes narrowed, his thick lashes concealing his thoughts.

  “It sounds like coming home has been good for you,” she said gently. Something inside her sang with delight that he wasn’t anxious to leave Montana and return to his life in San Francisco.

  He nodded, shoulders lifting in a shrug of acceptance.

  “So,” she said with a smile, “maybe you’ll decide to stay and be a cowboy instead of a corporate shark?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes twinkled, his drawl teasing.

  Cynthia knew the moment of stark honesty was gone and he was back to keeping his emotions locked tight. She mourned the loss of the rare glimpse into Zach’s deeper feelings.

  “I enjoy being a shark, sometimes,” he continued. “And my work sends me all over the country, sometimes around the world. I can’t imagine giving up a job that’s so perfect for me. And there’s the added plus that I can choose my own working hours, which means I decide when I want time off and allows me to indulge in my hobbies.”

  “You mean like climbing really high, very cold, very snowy mountains?” Cynthia teased, smiling at him.

  “Yeah, like climbing mountains.” His eyes lit, warming as he looked at her. “Or running marathons or surfing the North Shore in Hawaii or…”