Finding Hope (Nugget Romance 2)

by Stacy Finz

  But for some inexplicable reason he’d just wanted to lie next to her.

  Chapter 8

  The following weekend Lina flipped through the pages of a boring adventure magazine. The periodical had a feature story extolling the recreational virtues of Plumas County, so her sister-in-law had bought dozens of copies to keep around the Lumber Baron for guests.

  A good mystery or romance would’ve been a better choice, but the phone had been ringing all morning, leaving no time for Lina to borrow a book from the inn’s library. Instead she’d been stuck at the front desk in front of a computer, making reservations, answering inane questions—“Are we guaranteed to see a bear this time of year?”—and setting up event consultations.

  She’d volunteered to work the reservation desk to give Maddy a break and to earn extra pocket change for college. But the truth was she loved working in the inn. She’d grown up poor, living in subsidized housing. Although her brother had bought them a beautiful home, nothing could compare to the Lumber Baron’s graceful staircase, grand rooms, and chic furnishings.

  Lina also enjoyed talking to the guests, people from all over the world who came to Nugget to experience the wonders of the Sierra. Maddy and her brother, Nate, complained that they were still a blip on the map compared to Truckee or Tahoe, but it seemed to Lina that tourism had picked up since the inn was restored.

  Between the Feather River, Davis Lake, and the Graeagle Mill Pond, a few miles away, visitors and locals could spend their summer days swimming, tubing, boating, and fishing. There were hiking, biking, and riding trails aplenty, cowboy poetry readings at the Sierra Valley Grange, and legal gambling just across the Nevada border.

  After her mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident last winter, she and her little brother, Sam, had come to live in Nugget with her father and half brother. Her dad was already in the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s when they got here. It had been the worst time of Lina’s life. But now, in good part due to Rhys and Maddy becoming her and Sam’s surrogate parents, Nugget had given her roots. Her father had been buried here, and soon, so would her mother. It had been Rhys’s idea to have her moved from the cemetery in Stockton, four hours away.

  Although she adored San Francisco and was thrilled about attending USF, Lina would miss this town like crazy.

  She was printing invoices when the hot guy from Sierra Heights—Griffin something or another—came down the stairs and did a double take when he saw her.

  “I didn’t know you were staying here,” she said.

  “I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “My sister-in-law and her brother own the inn. I help out every once in a while.”

  “No kidding,” he said, propping a hip against the check-in counter. “Miss Maddy’s related to you?”

  “Yep,” she said.

  “So that makes your big brother the police chief. I knew you were trouble.” He winked at her, and she nearly melted. “You get that tune-up?”

  “My brother took the Scout to Quincy and got the works.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m guessing she’ll run much better now.”

  He looked like he was about to leave and she wanted him to stay, so she kept talking. “Where you off to?”

  The chain tattoo flexed with his muscle when he ran his hand through his hair. “Just being a tourist.”

  “Have you seen the railroad museum yet?” Lame, Lina. A guy like him doesn’t care about hokey railroad museums.

  “As a matter of fact, I took a little tour yesterday. I’m on my way over to the Bun Boy. You want me to bring you something back?”

  Nate came around the counter and flashed her a sly smile. “I’ll relieve you, if you want to take lunch.” He usually came on weekends to help out. Last night, he’d stayed up at the house because the inn had no vacancies.

  She looked at Griffin to make sure she wouldn’t be intruding and he gave her an affirmative nod. They walked across the square to the Bun Boy and ordered burgers, shakes, and fries from the window. When she tried to pay for her own, he wouldn’t let her.

  “Call me a caveman, but I think the guy should pay.”

  “But we’re not even on a date,” she said, sitting across from him at one of the picnic tables while they waited for their order to be called.

  “Nope. I’m twenty-six years old and you’re the police chief’s sister. So we’re definitely not on a date.”

  “I’m almost nineteen and I have a boyfriend,” Lina said, but even to her ears she’d sounded like a tween, bragging backstage at a One Direction concert. Okay, she didn’t have a boyfriend, but the guy she’d met at orientation had asked her on a date. And so what if her nineteenth birthday was eight months away?

  “Then we’re all good.” Griffin’s name got called over the loudspeaker. He went to the pickup counter and returned with their food. “Who’s the boyfriend?”

  “A graduate student at USF.” She watched him squirt half a bottle of ketchup on his fries.

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s twenty-two,” Lina said, and unwrapped her burger.

  “He’s too old for you,” Griffin said with his mouth full.

  “Says who?” Rhys, for one.

  “It would be different if you were like twenty-five and he was twenty-nine. But you’re barely legal.”

  “Whatever.” She rolled her eyes.

  “So let me ask you something. You think I’d like living here?”

  She nearly choked on her fry. “You’re considering moving to Nugget? Why?”

  “What’s wrong with the place? It seems great to me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, it is great. But unless you’re independently wealthy, it’s not like there are a lot of job opportunities here.”

  He was quiet for a long time, took another bite of his burger, and said, “I’ve got some savings and I might buy the Nugget Gas and Go.”

  “Get out.” She took a sip of her chocolate shake. “Do you even know anything about running a gas station?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But the place has a garage and I’m a great mechanic. Seems like the gas end of the business would be a piece of cake—and a good investment. People have to fill their tanks, right?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose. But how much savings do you have? Even in Nugget a gas station has to cost a lot of money.”

  “The owner wants to make a deal,” Griffin said, rolling up his burger wrapper and shooting it into a nearby trash can. “I think I can work something out.”

  “Wow.” He would be here while she was in San Francisco. Lina was almost tempted to change her plans. Anthony was great and all, but Griffin . . . he was a girl’s bad-boy dream. All that scruffy facial hair, bulging biceps and tattoos. “You ready for our winters? Nugget’s like the fourth coldest place in the nation.”

  “Bring it on.” He gave her a cheeky grin.

  “Where will you live? It’s not like you can stay at the Lumber Baron forever.”

  “Slow down,” he said. “I still have to buy the place and settle up in LA.”

  She thought about their guest cottage on McCreedy Road. Up until a few days ago it had been where her father’s caretaker lived. But it would be vacant soon. “When you’re ready, I might have a place for you. Something not too expensive.”

  “Oh yeah?” His lips quirked. “When are you going to San Francisco?”

  “School doesn’t start until September.” He was definitely flirting with her. No reason she couldn’t make the first move. “Maybe we can catch a movie sometime in Quincy.”

  “What about your grad student?” He gave her an assessing look.

  “It’s not like we’re engaged.” She laughed, then saw Donna Thurston come out of the Bun Boy and made sure Griffin blocked her from the woman’s view.

  Nate was cool, but Donna was a giant gossip. Nugget didn’t get a lot of babes like Griffin coming through town. Donna, the mouth of the Sierra, would wind up giving Lina the third degree and taking out a full-page ad i
n the Nugget Tribune. Luckily, she got in her car and drove away.

  Griffin collected their cups and condiments and piled them on the tray. “I’ve gotta bounce,” he said. “Thanks for the lunch company.”

  “Thanks for the burger,” she replied, and cleared her throat. “So, what about that movie?”

  With his hand at the small of her back, he guided her toward the order window, where he set the ketchup and mustard bottles down. “Maybe in seven years?”

  Convinced he was teasing her, she said, “You’re kidding about the age thing, right?”

  “Afraid not.” He dumped the rest of the garbage in the recycle bin and continued to walk her across the square to the Lumber Baron.

  At the entrance of the inn, she stood there dumbfounded while he got on his bike and waved goodbye.

  “Dad, we’ve got to make them homemade,” Cody told Clay as they scanned the baking aisle of the Nugget Market.

  “This is homemade.” Clay held up a cake mix and silently scolded his youngest for making more work for him. Baking twenty-six cupcakes for Cody’s last day of camp wasn’t on his to-do list. He had spreadsheets to fill out and audits to do. The spring’s crop of four hundred calves wasn’t going to record itself.

  “No, Dad, from scratch. Charlie’s mom says these are crap.” Cody took the box away and put it back on the shelf.

  If Amanda was such an expert, she could go ahead and bake the freakin’ cupcakes. “Mandy doesn’t have a cattle ranch to run.”

  “Come on, Dad. How hard can it be?” he asked, and with determination stuck a five-pound sack of flour in their cart. “We can get instructions on YouTube.”

  Clay looked at Cody and grinned. The kid went straight to his heart. “All right. But we’re buying the frosting.” He pulled a can off the shelf and went directly to the check-out stand before Cody could stop him.

  When they got home, Cody went on the Internet, searching for recipes. “These look good.” Cody pushed the laptop at Clay while he put away the groceries.

  Justin came through the mudroom, smelling like a barn, grunting something about being starved.

  “Leave your boots outside, take a shower, and I’ll make you supper,” Clay told him. The boy had been working his tail off. Clay figured it was a ploy to get early parole. Justin wanted to hang out with that Haley girl, and as far as Clay was concerned nothing good could come of that.

  Justin stowed his boots on the porch and came back in. “Can I go to the Hot Spot after dinner?”

  “By yourself?” Clay raised his brows. Did the kid think he was born yesterday?

  Justin vacillated, and Clay could see the wheels in his head turning while he worked out his end game. He decided to save Justin the trouble. “Nope. We’re baking cupcakes.”

  Justin had definitely not seen that one coming. “Uh . . . I’m not baking any goddamn cupcakes.”

  “Suit yourself,” Clay said. “But the swear word just earned you dishwashing duties. Report to work at eighteen hundred hours.”

  Justin sulked out of the kitchen, muttering more curse words under his breath. Clay considered a trip with his son to the woodshed, but decided he needed his tack cleaned instead. Tomorrow, he’d wake Justin at the crack of dawn and get him started on the chore. Nothing more tedious than polishing saddles.

  He glanced at the computer screen Cody kept sticking in his face. “Are you kidding me?” It was a picture of a checkerboard cupcake. Perfect squares of chocolate and vanilla.

  “It’s so cool,” Cody said.

  “Let’s stick with something simple. Okay, Code?”

  “Mom would’ve liked these,” he moped.

  Yeah, Mom would’ve liked buying them at an expensive bakery so everyone would see the box. “What else you got? The frosting’s chocolate, so maybe we should stick with white cake. What do you say?”

  Cody searched on Google. “How about these?”

  “Now you’re talking, kid.” Run-of-the-mill vanilla cupcakes.

  He read the instructions, which seemed simple enough, and told Cody to line up all the ingredients on the kitchen counter. Cody studied the list and gathered what he needed from the pantry and refrigerator, while Clay dug into a cabinet and got out a large batter bowl.

  “Uh-oh,” Cody said. “We don’t have the paper liners.”

  Clay turned the laptop so he could better read the instructions again. “We don’t need ’em. We’ll pour the batter directly into the muffin tins.” He grabbed a few of those from the cupboard and preheated the oven to the specified temperature.

  He and Cody worked together like a well-oiled machine, measuring and stirring. By the time Justin returned, the sink brimmed with a nice pile of dishes. Clay told him to get to work.

  “Can’t we eat first?” Justin whined.

  “Let’s get these in the oven, then I’ll make spaghetti.” Clay looked at the clock. At this rate there might still be time for him to get those spreadsheets done and turn in at a decent hour.

  “We add everything?” he asked Cody, who nodded. “You sure?” Clay did a quick review. Dry ingredients, milk, butter, and eggs. Check. Vanilla extract. Check.

  He gave the bowl another stir, poured even portions of batter into the muffin tins, popped them into the oven, and set the timer.

  Justin continued to act annoyed about having to help. “Are we ever going to eat?”

  Clay put a pot on to boil for the spaghetti, knowing damn well that he needed to increase his cooking repertoire. Pasta and grilling burgers and steaks weren’t going to cut it indefinitely. He’d ask Emily for a few tips.

  Ever since she’d told him about her daughter, he’d been tempted to do a little Googling. But it seemed like an invasion of privacy—even if the case had been highly publicized. At least now he knew the reason for her distance. A tragedy like that turned a person inside out.

  He’d seen the aftermath of war in battle-ravaged soldiers. But something horrible like that happens to your kid . . . it was beyond imagining. Especially the not knowing. Honestly, the likelihood of the little girl still being alive was next to nil. But no parent would ever stop praying for a miracle.

  The woman obviously had backbone. To come here, the middle of nowhere, without family or friends for support, took guts. He admired the hell out of her, but wondered at the loneliness of the life she’d chosen.

  It was a shame.

  Clay wouldn’t mind them getting closer. Not in a romantic way—she wasn’t his physical type at all. But he didn’t have any close female friends and there was something about Emily that appealed to him. Perhaps it was the fact that she seemed completely immune to him as a man. And that she had zero interest in being the center of attention. Now isn’t that a novelty?

  Or maybe he just had a soft spot for strong women. In his estimation, anyone who’d survived what she had was tough as barbed wire, even if she was a little bitty thing.

  Clay broke the spaghetti into the boiling water and when the oven bell went off, pulled out the cupcakes.

  “You’re supposed to test them with a toothpick,” Cody said, digging through a drawer. The best he could find was a wooden barbecue skewer.

  “That’ll work.” Clay stuck the pointed edge inside one of the cupcakes and it came up clean. “Done. We’ll let them cool while we eat.”

  He drained the pasta, heated frozen meatballs in the microwave, and dumped a jar of marinara sauce into the spaghetti pot. “One of you guys want to make the salad?” He had one of those bag deals in the refrigerator.

  “I hate salad,” Justin muttered. What didn’t the kid hate?

  Cody got out the package, poured the lettuce into a wooden bowl and tossed the salad with dressing. They ate silently at the counter, Justin’s dark mood ruining any chance for camaraderie.

  “You ready to frost the cupcakes?” Clay asked Cody, trying to lighten the air.

  “Yep.” Cody jumped off his stool.

  Clay tried to remove one of the cupcakes from its tin with his hand, but
it wouldn’t budge. Grabbing a knife from the drawer, he loosened the edges of each cake, upended the tin and banged on the back. Nothing came out but crumbs. When he used the knife to pry out the cupcakes, they came apart in chunks.

  “Why isn’t this working, Cody?”

  Cody flipped the laptop back on. “We were supposed to grease the tins before we poured in the batter.”

  Shit.

  He took one of the remaining pans, turned it upside down, and slammed it against the counter. A few tops came tumbling out, but the bottoms stuck firmly to the inside of the tins. Clay should’ve known it couldn’t be this easy.

  “They’re ruined,” Cody said, his face falling.

  “Now don’t give up yet.” Clay tried to scrape out the bottoms, figuring he could glue the tops on with frosting. No dice. By the time he finished with the knife, the bottoms disintegrated into dust.

  Clay looked at Cody. “We can stop at the Nugget Market in the morning on the way to camp and pick up doughnuts. Everyone loves doughnuts.”

  Cody rolled his eyes. “That’s so lame, Dad. I’m gonna look like a total loser.”

  Clay doubted anyone would give packaged doughnuts a second thought. But Cody was hypersensitive these days. Any little thing went wrong and it was apocalyptic. “What do you want me to do, Cody? The store is closed and we don’t have those paper things.”

  “Maybe Miss Mathews has some. She’s a professional cook, Dad.”

  He glanced at the clock. “It’s eight o’clock, Son.”

  “I’ll call her.” Cody grabbed the cordless and speed dialed the barn before Clay could stop him. After explaining the situation to her, Cody handed Clay the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “It’ll just be faster if I do it for you,” she said without ceremony.

  “That’s real nice of you, but I don’t want to put you out.”

  “It’s not a problem. It’s the least I can do in return for the milk and eggs. I’ll bring them over first thing in the morning.”

  “No, no.” Clay would be damned before he let her do all that work for his kid. “We’ll be right over to help.” Before she could argue, he hung up.