Going Home (Nugget Romance 1)

by Stacy Finz

  “I couldn’t tell you. But as soon as I know something, I’ll share it with you.”

  After Nate took off, Maddy walked over to Owen’s Barber Shop.

  Earl barely looked up from his newspaper. A few of the other guys merely glanced at her.

  Steve sat in Owen’s chair with a hot towel wrapped around his face. In all the times she’d walked by the shop, there’d never been a woman inside—just lots of men standing around Owen’s forty-two-cup coffee urn, shooting the breeze.

  “What can I do for you, missy?” Owen asked as he whetted a straight-blade razor on a suspended strop.

  “I need a trim.”

  That got Earl’s attention. He put his paper down, took a sip from his foam cup and sat back, eyes wide.

  “Maddy, honey, this is a barber shop, not a beauty parlor,” Owen said, removing the towel from Steve’s face and reapplying a fresh coat of hot lather.

  “There are no beauty parlors in Nugget.” Maddy hadn’t heard the term beauty parlor since her mom used to get her weekly wash and blowout. “And I don’t have time to go all the way to Reno or Quincy.”

  Owen scraped his razor blade a little close to Steve’s ear for Maddy’s peace of mind, but she supposed he knew what he was doing.

  “Sorry, honey, I don’t do women.”

  “I just need my lines crisped and my ends trimmed. Come on, Owen, it’s not like I’m asking for highlights.”

  “Wait until my daughter Darla gets her cosmetology license. She’ll cut your hair.”

  “When will that be?” Maddy didn’t know Owen had a daughter.

  “At least a few months.” Owen chuckled. “She’s living in Roseville to go to beauty school.”

  “That’s nice. Is she moving back here?” Maddy took a seat away from the door. Even if she couldn’t convince Owen to trim her hair, she’d brought the report and planned to start campaigning before the Addisons successfully spread more of their venom.

  “She says she is, but with Darla you never know.” Owen finished up with Steve, and Maddy searched his face for scrapes and cuts. Not one. The town barber knew his stuff.

  When Steve got out of the chair, Owen cleaned it with a towel and motioned for Maddy to hop up. She didn’t know whether to be surprised or scared. In San Francisco she got her hair cut at one of the city’s top salons by a stylist named JauJou. If the stares from the peanut gallery were any indication, they, too, had been stunned by Owen’s sudden change of heart.

  Owen didn’t shampoo her, just snapped a cape around her neck, grabbed a pair of shears and started snipping. Thank goodness he had her facing away from the mirror.

  “This is a good cut you got here, Maddy.”

  Well, it ought to be. Maddy paid JauJou, before tip, a hundred and twenty dollars for a trim alone. “Thanks.”

  “Sophie and Mariah pick someone yet?”

  Maddy snorted. “How much you have riding on this, Owen?”

  “Hundred bucks says they ditch Lithuanian Man and go with a local.”

  “Oh, yeah. And who would that be?” They couldn’t possibly know about Nate. But then again, the Nugget Mafia seemed to know everything in this town.

  “I would’ve gone with Clay McCreedy,” Owen said. “But he’s got his hands full with those two boys of his. So my money’s on the police chief.” The others agreed.

  “Is that who you’re going with, Earl? Rhys Shepard?”

  “I’m still leaning toward Lithuanian Man. Best to go with an anonymous donor, no strings that way.”

  “You fellows really need to get a life,” Maddy said.

  Clippings of her hair fell to the floor as Owen trimmed away. “I guess you’ll be waiting for the council’s decision on your inn before continuing construction,” he said.

  That was her cue. “No. Why would we wait? The sooner we open for business, the sooner everyone starts benefiting.”

  “And how’s that?” Owen asked.

  “You know that shave you just gave Steve? Men up from the city would kill for a service like that.” She sighed. “Nowadays it’s these chichi salons taking over. They don’t know the first thing about a custom shave like that.”

  Maddy wished she could see Owen’s reaction, but he was standing behind her, trimming the back of her hair. “At the inn we’ll want to play up the fact that in Nugget old-fashioned luxuries like hot-towel wraps still exist. And we’ll be sending them over here, Owen.”

  She turned her attention to her now rapt audience. “Steve, you and Portia have got to know how many new clients the inn could bring your tour business . . . Couples who want to learn how to fly-fish . . . Families interested in river rafting. We’ll keep all your literature right there at the desk.”

  Earl harrumphed. “So, Maddy, your guests gonna want sheep wormer from my feedstore?”

  “No. But I’d definitely say order more of these jeans I’m wearing.” She tried to turn back and look at the label on her butt, but Owen told her to stop squirming.

  “The brand’s Cowgirl Up,” he said, turning red as a pomegranate. “Lucinda’s been ordering ’em. Seem to do well with the younger ladies.”

  “I can see why. I’ll be back to buy a few more pairs.”

  Earl got a bewildered look on his face. “Ever since I let my daughter do the buying we’ve got more women in the store shopping than men.”

  “Well, people on vacation like to shop, too, Earl.” She wanted the focus to be on the inn, not designer jeans. “Study after study shows that consumers are more likely to part with their hard-earned cash when they’re on holiday. Here, up in cattle country, they’ll likely want a little taste of the West—especially when they go on one of Steve’s trail rides. That’s where the Nugget Feed Store comes in. They’ll want boots, cowboy hats, and some of those cute fringe jackets.”

  “We’re clear on the other end of town, Maddy. They won’t even know we’re here,” Earl argued.

  “Of course they will, because we’ll tell them. We’ll even shuttle them over.”

  “Tell them what? Shuttle them where?” Everyone was too involved in the conversation to hear Clay come in the door.

  “Maddy, here, is telling us how her inn’s going to make us all rich,” Owen said.

  “That a fact?” Clay swung around one of the white plastic stack chairs, straddled it, and winked at Maddy. The guy was almost as good-looking as Rhys. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

  “The inn’s going to play up the storied history of this town,” she said. “Virgil Ross and I are already working with a Stanford filmmaker who’s making a documentary about the Donner Party. Who knows, some of you might even get interviewed for it,” she continued. “Anyway, this filmmaker has agreed that the best place to debut the movie is right here in Nugget. Do you know what kind of exposure that will bring this town—us? How many people will come to see the very place where it all happened—especially if there is a nice place for them to stay?”

  “Sounds smart.” Everyone turned to Clay, who looked at his watch. “You almost done there, Owen? I need a trim, but have to be out of here in forty.” He made it seem perfectly normal to find a woman in Owen’s chair.

  “Yep. You’re next.” Owen brushed Maddy’s neck with a soft fat brush, took off her cape, and spun the chair around so she faced the mirror.

  “Wow! It looks great.” And it really did. “How much I owe you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Maddy blinked. “Seriously?”

  “That’s the going rate, missy,” Owen said as he swept up Maddy’s locks into a pile on the floor and shoveled them up with a dustpan.

  She got to her feet. “Are you kidding me? I’m going to a barber from now on.”

  Grabbing her wallet out of her purse, Maddy paid her bill, but lingered.

  “Gracie wouldn’t let me sign that petition,” Earl said. “But how much good will all that extra business do us when the town’s pipes start backing up?”

  It was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.

>   “I’m glad you asked that.” Maddy pulled the report from her purse. “Nugget’s waste system still has plenty of capacity left. When the Addisons started this whole hullabaloo, we got pretty worried—overflowing toilets are bad for the hotel business. So we called our own experts to conduct an inspection. You know what they found?” That the Addisons are big fat liars.

  She spread the report out near the cash register and a few of the men started thumbing through it.

  “Look at page eleven.” Maddy pointed. “The system’s got a quarter of its capacity left. Even twenty Marriotts couldn’t fill that.”

  “But right here,” Earl pulled out a page, “it says that the plant’s equipment could crap out at any minute—excuse the pun.” That earned him a few chuckles from the guys.

  “The plant’s been living on borrowed time for years,” Maddy continued. “One flush from you, Owen, could send it into overdrive. So you’re going to hold up commerce until the city gets off its ass? Lose out on a windfall? The Addisons don’t have your best interests at heart.”

  When they all stared at her questioningly, she said, “The Lumber Baron is bound to give their little rental cabins some competition. Too bad they’re only thinking about themselves, instead of how, together, both our lodges could bring a hell of a lot more business to this town.”

  When she walked out the door she saw Clay up in Owen’s chair, smiling.

  Rhys bolted into a sitting position. At first, he’d thought the incessant pounding was part of a dream. More like a noisy nightmare. But having grown used to these all-hours-of-the-morning calls, he quickly came out of a sleep-induced fog, hung over the side of the bed to collect his clothes, and hurriedly pulled them on.

  “Coming,” he yelled at the continued banging.

  When he opened the door, Sam stood at the entry, his face paper-white. “There’s been an accident. Papa isn’t breathing.”

  Rhys didn’t wait to hear more. He ran for the house and found Shep lying on the kitchen floor, his pajama pants twisted around his ankles. It looked like he’d collided with a kitchen chair. Given the mess, he’d mistakenly thought it was the toilet.

  Rhys placed two fingers on the side of Shep’s neck and counted for fifteen seconds.

  Lina stood over them, fear in her eyes, and if Rhys had to guess, self-condemnation. “Ay Dios mio, please let him be okay.”

  Rhys nodded. “Pop, you with us?” He was rewarded with a loud groan. “What hurts?”

  “My head. My arm. Where the hell is Rosa?”

  “You checked out on us for a second there.” Rhys examined both arms and, sure enough, the left ulna bone was poking out at a frighteningly unnatural angle and the skin was broken.

  They got him cleaned up as best they could and Rhys loaded him into the Tahoe.

  “Can we put the siren on?” Sam asked.

  “Nah,” Rhys said. “We’ve had enough drama for one morning. Let’s not wake the neighbors, too.”

  By the time they got to Plumas District, sunlight was peeking through the waiting room blinds. Besides a broken arm and a slight concussion, the doctors feared pneumonia. So they decided to run tests and keep him for observation.

  Sam had managed to curl up in one of the straight-back wooden chairs and fall asleep. Lina spent most of her time pacing.

  “Sit.” Rhys patted the chair next to him.

  She wearily plopped down. “It’s my fault. I should’ve been watching him better.”

  Rhys shook his head. “You can’t stay up all night, escorting him to and from the bathroom, Lina.”

  “Why do you dislike him so much?” she asked.

  “I don’t dislike him.” Which wasn’t precisely true. “It’s complicated. He didn’t have the same bond with me that he has with you guys.”

  The truth was Rhys didn’t know diddly about the dynamics of their relationship, only that Shep went back and forth to Stockton and then abruptly stopped.

  “Did he come to see you a lot?” Rhys asked.

  She nodded. “When he worked for the railroad, he came all the time. Sometimes he’d bring presents for me and Sam. But he only stayed a few days.”

  It was infinitely more than Rhys ever got, but as far as fatherhood went, it sucked. At least he’d paid for their school.

  “How come you never knew about us?” Lina asked.

  “Because he never told me.”

  “He used to talk about you. All the time.”

  Rhys did a double take. “He did?”

  As if to prove it to him, Lina said, “You cut your hand when you were six and had to get eight stitches.”

  Rhys looked at the faint scar that ran from the base of his thumb to his wrist and cleared his throat. He’d gotten that cut trying to peel an apple with Shep’s pocketknife. His father used to do it in one long, curly strip, and Rhys had wanted to be just like him. But the old man had never wanted anything to do with him. For a long time, he’d wondered if his father’s disdain had something to do with Rhys’s mother having left Shep. Then Rhys stopped caring.

  “After I moved away, we didn’t really keep in good touch. I’d call him occasionally—came to see him when a friend died—but we didn’t share our lives with each other. It just wasn’t that kind of relationship, Lina.”

  Lina felt sorry for him. Rhys could see it in her eyes. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee,” he said brusquely. “You want something?”

  “No.”

  When he came back, he found her staring off into the distance. She looked so small and lost. “We’ve got to talk about this, Lina,” he told her. “It’s time to make some decisions here.”

  “No facility!”

  “We’re not set up for taking care of him. He needs to be in a place where he’s right next to a bathroom and doesn’t have to walk through a kitchen. He needs twenty-four-hour care. Lina, I have a job that requires me to be on call day and night. And you should be going to college.”

  “Where I come from we don’t give our family to strangers to care for,” she snapped.

  He was so weary of arguing with her. “I’m sorry. But as the adult here, I have to make the decision. I’ll find him a good place.”

  “And where will we go?” she asked angrily. But there were equal parts of fear in her voice, too.

  “We’ll find you a school, get you settled in, and I guess Sam can come live with me in Houston.”

  “So now you’re taking my brother from me, too?”

  “Lina, don’t be so dramatic. You can go to school in Houston. There are a lot of good colleges there, and, if you want, you can even live with us. We’ll call Annie from Social Services—get the whole thing worked out,” he said with resignation.

  “And then we’ll never see Papa again.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. We’ll find him a care facility in Houston. You can visit him every day.”

  She sat there weeping and Rhys felt lower than pond scum.

  It had been a week, and the most Maddy had seen of Rhys was the exhaust from his truck as it came and went up and down the driveway. That’s how busy he’d been investigating Colin’s attack and the robbery at the Nugget Market.

  While juggling a takeout carrier from the Bun Boy, she knocked on his trailer door.

  Rhys answered, sweeping his hand across the entry for her to come in. He kicked the door closed behind her with his foot. No boots, Maddy noticed, just white athletic socks.

  “What do you have there?” He eyed the bag.

  “Food,” she said, putting the sack on the counter and grabbing two beers out of the refrigerator.

  “Yeah?” Rhys tore into the package, shoving a couple of fries into his mouth. “I knew I liked you.”

  “Really? Because it seems like ever since we slept together, you don’t want to be my friend anymore,” Maddy said teasingly, but a part of her wondered whether Rhys had regrets.

  He kissed the top of her head—even when she wore high heels, the man towered over her. “I’m always your friend.”


  “Good,” she said, knowing that she was pouting. “Because I could really use one right now.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Uh, where should I start? The person beating up my workers and breaking into my inn has yet to surface. Our expert’s report is favorable, yet most of the town still hates my guts and wants to put the kibosh on the project to which I’ve dedicated my entire heart and soul—not to mention both mine and Nate’s life’s savings. Did your friend Clay tell you about the barber shop?”

  Rhys took her beer, put both bottles on the counter, and enveloped her in his arms. “No one hates your guts.”

  They just stood in the middle of the trailer’s small kitchen while Rhys held her. Maybe two, three minutes passed; Maddy lost track of time. But she felt like she could breathe again, like the earth had suddenly found a sense of balance.

  She wanted him to keep holding her, to soothe her with his words. But he seemed to have other ideas.

  He walked her backward the ten or so feet to the bedroom and flopped her onto the bed. “I like you.” He nuzzled her neck and she felt the pressure of his growing arousal. “Want me to show you how much?”

  “I came to talk,” Maddy said, turning her head to give him better access. She moaned with pleasure as he circled her ear with his tongue.

  “We’ll talk later.”

  “I suppose I can be flexible,” she murmured, trying to catch her breath. The man made her hotter than the Mojave Desert.

  “I know firsthand how flexible you can be. It’s all that yoga.” Rhys worked his way to her mouth, clamped down, and devoured her like a ravenous man. When he was finished plundering, he started undressing her with those nimble fingers of his.

  Soon, their clothes fell in a heap on the floor and his hands roamed every inch of her body until she burned and her heart raced. He moved over her with an urgency. It was like their short time apart had spanned a thousand years and they were racing to make up for lost time.

  Rhys pulled her panties off, and unlike the first time, when he’d slowly taken her to heaven, they moved together frantically. Somewhere in the background she heard a drawer scrape open and a wrapper crinkle. And before she knew it, Rhys slipped inside her, moving with those glorious strokes that made all the world’s troubles melt away.