by Stacy Finz
He reached inside his pocket again and dangled a key in front of Rhys’s face. “Let’s make a deal.”
“Clay,” Rhys said. “I appreciate what you’re doing, I really do. But nothing works for me here, man. I don’t belong in Nugget.”
Clay wanted to tell his friend that everything was working for him here—a family, friends, a great job—but Rhys was so mired in the past, he couldn’t see it. Shit happens, you move on.
But Rhys’s mind was already made up. Nothing would hold him in this town.
Maddy kept looking out her front window, searching for Rhys’s truck. She had stayed up most of the previous night waiting for him to come home. Now it was close to sundown and he still wasn’t back. When she finally heard his tires on the gravel, she grabbed her coat and dashed outside.
“Hey,” he said, climbing out of his truck.
“Where’ve you been? I’ve been freaking out, trying to find you.”
“Where’s Dave?” He headed to the trailer, his gait deceptively easy, like he couldn’t care less about her answer. It was the stiff way he held his shoulders that gave him away.
“I sent him packing less than an hour after he got here, but you were already gone. Dammit, Rhys, I went to the police station, the Ponderosa; I even drove up McCreedy Road looking for your truck. And your phone goes straight to voice mail.”
“I was in Reno,” he muttered, fumbling for his house key.
“Reno? Why’d you go to Reno?”
“I was feeling lucky.” He opened the door of the fifth wheel, seemed to hesitate, and then asked her to come inside.
“You cold?” He turned on the space heater, looking at her for the first time since he’d pulled up. She knew her eyes were swollen, her face mottled from crying and last time she looked, her hair had a serious case of the frizzies. But he was staring at the bruise on her cheek, which had turned a deep black and blue, and she saw him wince.
He untied the scarf that covered her discolored throat and gently caressed it with his thumb. “Hurt?”
“I’m okay. But I had trouble sleeping without you,” she said. “I’m sorry about what Dave said. He’s an ass. I know you think he has this magical pull on me. But it’s over between us. I love you, Rhys.” Tell me that you love me, too.
Leaning against the kitchen counter, he closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. “We need to talk.”
She knew whatever he had to say was not good. He motioned for her to take a seat, so she perched on the edge of one of the recliners, her mouth so dry she was finding it hard to swallow.
“Maddy, I made lieutenant at Houston PD. I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . but . . . there just hasn’t been a good time. I’ve accepted the position.”
The trailer’s walls felt like they were closing in on her and she could hardly breathe, the space heater was so hot. He’d always told her he was leaving. Nothing had changed, he was following his plan. So why then was she hyperventilating?
“Congratulations, Rhys. I’m really proud of you.” She got to her feet and prayed she could make it to the door without bursting into tears.
Like a fool, she’d tricked herself into believing that the shooting had changed everything. That life was too fragile to waste worrying about perfect timing, perfect jobs, and imperfect places. But it wasn’t about her and Dave, or about Houston PD, or even about Nugget. Rhys didn’t love her. At least not enough to stay.
“Maddy, ah, honey, I don’t know what to say.” He looked so uncomfortable, like email would’ve been a better option. Then he wouldn’t have to see her dying inside.
“It’s okay.” She started fanning her face as if that would hold back the tears. “It’s really okay. I have to go now. Nate, Sophie, and Mariah are waiting for me.”
She fumbled with the doorknob and practically ran to her car. Somehow she made it to the Ponderosa without having remembered the drive there. Nate, Sophie, and Mariah lounged in one of the back booths. For an instant, Maddy considered turning around and running out.
“Hey, Mad.” Nate waved to her, and the three made room so she could squish in. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”
Too late.
“My face just stings a little, is all.” She pointed to the bruise and slid into the banquette.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Sophie said, then looked at the others questioningly.
“What?” Maddy asked.
“We have news, but maybe now’s not such a hot time. You’re recuperating.”
Maddy examined all three of them, trying to read their faces. “No. Tell me.”
“We’re having a baby,” Mariah blurted, and the sheer radiance emanating from her nearly blinded Maddy. It was enough to light the entire room.
“Well, not quite yet,” Sophie clarified, but she, too, wore an ear-to-ear smile. She explained that she and Mariah were going to use in vitro fertilization in which Mariah’s eggs would be surgically removed from her ovary, mixed with Nate’s sperm in a petri dish, and transferred to Sophie’s uterus.
“We’ll all be connected to the baby—you, too, Maddy.” Then Sophie went on to praise science and medicine and a lot of things Maddy couldn’t listen to right now. It all buzzed in her head like static.
“When do you start?” Maddy asked, trying to seem as over the moon as everyone else at the table. She really was happy for her friends . . . But Rhys was leaving . . . and she loved him.
“First, Mariah has to take hormones to increase her egg production,” Sophie explained. “And if all goes well, we could be pregnant in a couple of months.”
Nate, who’d been quietly observing her, said, “You okay, Mad? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken up still.”
“Maybe you should call it an early night.” Nate cocked his head with concern. “I’m counting on you to kick us some Addison ass tomorrow.”
Rhys sat inside the trailer, drinking his coffee. He could hear Sam outside, dribbling on the dirt. Every time the ball bounced against the backboard, his head felt ready to explode. He’d spent another quality night with his good friend, Jack Daniels.
Out of habit, he reached for his empty holster and decided to slip it onto his belt anyway. He stuffed his arms into his jacket and went outside.
“You ready?” he called to Sam as he made his way across the makeshift basketball court. Maddy’s Outback still sat on the car pad. Typically on mornings like this she was at the inn when he got to the police station after taking Sam to school. Seeing her sitting on the mansion’s veranda, waving to him from across the square, had lit him up like a bottle rocket. That’s what she did to him.
She loved him and he was just walking away.
“Yep.” Sam tossed him the ball and Rhys did a layup.
Lina came onto the porch with a brown paper bag. “I made you breakfast,” she said, begrudgingly shoving the bag at him and walking away before he could thank her.
He peeked inside the sack to find an egg-and-bacon sandwich neatly wrapped in cellophane, and a banana. Climbing the stairs two at a time, he went inside the house and found her in the kitchen. “Stop being mad at me, Lina. I’m doing the best I can.”
“Nope,” she said. “You can do a lot better.” For a shrimp, the girl was a real ball buster.
He swung his gaze to Shep, who sat at the Formica table, sipping coffee. “Good morning, Pop?”
Shep held up his cast. “Damn thing itches.” He turned to the stove where Lina was cooking oatmeal. “I want eggs, Rosa.”
Rhys caught Lina’s eye, shook his head in frustration and left.
“Let’s get,” he called to Sam and followed the boy up into his truck. “How’s school?”
“Great!” Sam said. At least someone was happy.
“You and Cody getting along?”
Sam nodded. “Since I moved here he’s been my best friend.”
Both boys were mourning the loss of their mothers. It was good that they had each other. When Rhys
was a kid, he’d had Clay. Funny how sometimes life could come full circle.
“We’re joining 4-H,” Sam said. “Cody’s dad said I could have a steer and keep it at their ranch until we show them at the fair.”
Rhys frowned. “Hey, kid, you know we’re moving to Houston, right?”
“Lina doesn’t want to.”
“Well, you guys are certainly free to stay here; maybe you could get yourselves jobs working on the railroad.”
He crossed the trestle bridge leading to Nugget Elementary, flashing on how he used to ride his bike over the short span, intentionally hitting the cattle guards for extra bump.
“Whoa, you see that?” He pulled to the shoulder of the road and pointed at the river. “Big old steelhead jumping.”
He sat there, looking out over the water, remembering sitting on the shore with his pole and bucket. “I caught my first fish in the Feather—Cody’s grandpa took me.”
Sam bounced up in his seat and craned his neck to see. “Can we go?”
“Fishing?” Rhys asked, and Sam nodded. “Too cold. Fall is the best time for catching steelhead. You a pretty good fisherman?” Rhys couldn’t help it; he ruffled the kid’s hair.
“I’ve never been.”
“You’ve never been fishing?” How could a boy make it to eleven and not have had that rite of passage? It tugged at his gut that he wouldn’t teach Sam how to angle in the Feather River, on the banks where he’d spent many a chilly October day as a boy, casting his line.
Sam just shrugged and Rhys shook his head. Can’t play basketball. Can’t fish. Neither kid could drive. Man, he had his work cut out for him.
After he dropped off Sam, Rhys went to the station.
“Congrats, Chief,” Connie called from her desk.
When he gave her a what-the-hell-for look, she said, “You’ve been cleared and reinstated. Welcome back, though you never really left.” Rhys caught her doing an eye roll as she walked away.
“Connie, don’t you have some vacation time you need to take?”
“Nope. You’re a slave driver.”
He hung his jacket on its hook and sorted through the messages on his desk. Connie came into his office and shoved a box under his face.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Your weapon, I presume.”
“Put it over there.” Without looking up he nudged his head at the corner of his desk and went back to his messages. There was one from Dink Caruthers.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” she muttered as she left.
No, someone woke up in an empty bed.
Rhys opened the box, removed his Glock, loaded it with one in the chamber and holstered it to his belt. Then he dialed the mayor.
He had no idea what his honor wanted, but given that tonight was the Lumber Baron hearing, and that he’d had that run-in with Sandy Addison, it couldn’t be good.
Chapter 24
The auditorium was stuffed to the gunwales and Maddy saw no sign of Rhys.
“Quit it!” Nate pulled her down in her seat. “You’re making me a nervous wreck.”
Maddy found it difficult to sit still while Bud Coleman gave a forty-five minute dissertation on the capacity, or lack thereof, of Nugget’s Wastewater Treatment Plant. Several audience members, she’d noticed, nodded off in their chairs.
“What’s the bottom line, Bud?” Mayor Caruthers impatiently interrupted. “Can the system accommodate a twenty-room hotel, or not?”
“It’s not that simple.”
In Maddy’s mind it was, but Bud apparently wanted to cover his ass in case of an ensuing shitstorm. Literally.
“Well, sure it is.” Dink started losing his patience.
“The system’s old,” Bud said. “Maybe it can handle it, maybe it can’t. But there’s no question anything new might tax it.”
Way to be as namby-pamby as possible, Bud. Maddy wanted to tell him to sit down and let their expert have the floor.
Dottie Campbell, one of the council members, dittoed that emotion a few minutes later, stopping his wishy-washy sputter midstream. “Sit down, Bud.”
Bud gathered up his stack of papers from the podium and slunk away from the microphone. Maddy and Nate’s specialist took to the stage, opened his laptop, and directed his laser pointer at a big screen behind the council table. The council members turned their chairs around so they could view his presentation.
Maddy craned her head to look at the back of the room for Rhys, but with the lights dimmed she couldn’t see anything. Their expert spent the next hour methodically highlighting how the city’s wastewater system was more than adequate to take on a small hotel. Although Doug came across much more decisive than Bud, Maddy had to admit that his primer was equally boring.
She caught a council member yawning a few times during his program, Dink stealthily text messaging, and at least one other council member doodling. Not a good sign, she feared. Even she had started to drift before the lights flicked back on.
“Any questions?” their expert asked the council members.
“I have one,” Dottie said. “How much did the Lumber Baron owners pay you for your expert opinion?”
Maddy felt the audience suddenly spring to life as if it had been shocked out of a coma with a cattle prod.
Doug fidgeted with the lapel on his jacket, cleared his throat, and said, “Two hundred and twenty dollars an hour.”
The room let out a collective gasp. Nate muttered a simple “Uh-oh,” and Mariah winced.
“How many hours you figure you have in?” Dottie asked.
Doug appeared to be tallying it up in his head. “At least forty if you don’t include my travel time to and from San Francisco.”
Dottie flashed a snotty little smile. “Shall we take public comments now?” She waited for the other members of the council to agree and suggested that in order to save time, speakers should line up in the center aisle behind the microphone stand.
Sandy Addison was first up. Nate clenched Maddy’s knee to stop her from rattling them out of nerves.
“That man,” she pointed to Nate and Maddy’s expert, “is being paid thousands of dollars to tell you a whole lot of hogwash. You heard Bud, he’s been running Nugget’s wastewater treatment plant for more than a decade. The pipes running underneath your homes and businesses can’t take any more.” Sandy squinted her eyes at Maddy. “They’ll have you believe that it’s only twenty rooms—not enough to break the system. I’m predicting that before long they turn that dining room into a little restaurant as a side business. There’s nothing in their current permits that says they can’t. That’ll produce even more waste. And what about all those outbuildings? How much you wanna bet they turn those into rooms? More waste.
“Despite Mrs. Breyer’s nasty accusations that Cal and I are trying to sabotage her inn because we don’t want competition, we’ve got nothing against a new hotel coming into Nugget. We’ve got a loyal customer base—the same families have been returning to Beary Quaint for generations. But until the city can afford to put in a new sewage system none of us can afford the risk. If we have to shut down our cabins because toilets are backing up we’ll go out of business and so will the rest of you.”
A number of people applauded and Maddy wanted to crawl under her chair. For the next hour it was like open-mic night at the Improv. A steady stream of residents, merchants, and business owners made their way to the podium, some choosing to address issues that had nothing to do with the inn.
One fellow, whom Maddy had never seen before, wanted to discuss passing an ordinance that would fine residents for not cleaning up after their dogs.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Nate muttered.
“Shush,” she said.
Finally, one of the council members told the man that tonight’s hearing was strictly about the inn. A few more people got up, including Carl Rudd from the sporting goods store.
“I don’t have anything against the Lumber Baron,” he told the
council. “In fact, I think it’ll bring money to this town. But until we get the waste plant up to speed, it would be completely irresponsible of the city to allow any new businesses to open.”
Unfortunately, unlike Sandy Addison, who in Maddy’s opinion came off like a harridan with hemorrhoids, Carl sounded reasonable. Even smart. She looked across the room. The Nugget Mafia sat in a cluster and she saw a few of them nodding in agreement. Oh, this was not good. Not good at all.
Someone who didn’t want to wait his turn shouted, “Has anyone looked into what the cost would be?”
Dink cleared his throat. “We’ve never formally opened it for bidding, but unofficial estimates have ranged in the millions—more than the town can afford, I’m afraid.”
“What about putting a bond measure for the money on the June ballot?” someone yelled.
Portia kept muttering to anyone who would listen that the inn was “a hotbed of crime.”
“I’d like to smack her,” Maddy said between clenched teeth.
When it was Clay McCreedy’s turn, Maddy squirmed. He had a lot of sway in this town, including the ear of the mob. She glanced over at the Nugget Mafia again, and this time Owen winked at her. Although Clay had always been absolutely lovely to her, Maddy got the sense he disapproved of a married woman leading on his best friend. And while the rest of the town had made it known whose camp they were in, Clay had steered clear of taking sides.
He didn’t use the microphone, yet his voice boomed through the auditorium. “It’s been a long night, so I’ll keep this brief. My family’s ranched this land since the nineteenth century—been here since the gold rush. As you well know, when Tip died two years ago, I retired from the Navy and moved back from San Diego with my family to take over. Just like he passed it on to his son, I want to pass it on to my boys. But I look around this town and I say, ‘What’ll hold ’em here?’ All around me is decay. I watched you people shun Sophie and Mariah when they first brought the Ponderosa back to life. And now the inn.”