She would miss this about him. She would miss him.
“Queasy” didn’t begin to describe how Finn felt on Saturday morning. “Queasy” wasn’t even in the same neighborhood, county, or state. “Terrified,” “petrified,” and “scared to death” scratched the surface, but the English language hadn’t come up with the right word. If there was a word describing how a nail felt right before the hammer fell, it might be close.
He slipped out of bed as quietly as he could with his new brace, dressed, and went into Steamboat. He used crutches because it was faster than limping, and he wanted to burn off some of this damn nervous energy that made his teeth itch. In the cool bright of the early morning, he went over his plan for the day. He turned onto Lincoln Avenue. The shops and restaurants blurred by, or at least that’s how it felt. After about fifteen minutes he was winded, his arms and shoulders burned, and he felt more human. He turned around and retuned at a more relaxed pace, wishing he could bring coffee back to Bethany. He was good on crutches, but not that good.
Bethany must’ve thought he was good, because when Finn entered their room, Bethany patted the bed next to her. “Get back in here.”
Shit shit shit. He couldn’t. He was in no condition to make love. He acted like they needed to get a start on the day. As if they were farmhands and daylight was a-burnin’.
“Come on, get up! It’s beautiful out. You want to eat breakfast here? I believe I smelled bacon as I came in.”
She looked at him carnally. “Oh, I’m hungry all right.” Then she rolled her eyes and giggled at her ridiculously bad line. But she slid the sheet down to reveal her naked body.
Christ. Even a naked Bethany, which was his personal kryptonite, couldn’t calm his nerves or change his mind. “You wore me out last night.”
Not quite true. And not the reason he was feeling a million miles from amorous right about now.
Bethany flashed a wicked smile. “Poor baby!” She pouted. “I promise I’ll be gentle.”
Finn went to the bed, leaned down, and kissed her lips.
Bethany grabbed his butt and did that writhing, grinding thing that usually sent him right into bed with her.
“Honey, you are so gorgeous, and I want you like crazy, but this morning . . . I’m just not . . .”
Or was he?
He sure could use the endorphins and stress relief. Plus, Bethany wouldn’t suspect he was tied up in knots, and she’d get her way. It was a win/win/win. And it might be the last time they slept together. A jagged little pang sliced through his heart.
He caved.
After, Bethany looked so pink and happy in the nest of sheets, with her sumptuously messy hair and dove-gray eyes. She is so beautiful. He needed to keep this moment in his mind forever. Her relaxed, contented expression, her luminous eyes like gray pearls. Her perfect face. She slid her hands behind his head and brought his lips to hers for a soft, long, sweet kiss. When she let go, he looked down at her again. So beautiful.
“What?” she asked.
“What, what?”
“What are you thinking?”
“Men hate when women ask that.”
“I don’t care.”
“What am I thinking?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, not much. Just how beautiful you are. How much I love you.”
Those big eyes of hers suddenly went misty. Her mouth tensed at the corners, and then quivered. Damn. Had he hurt her? Because as a rule, Bethany didn’t cry. Shit. “What? What’d I say?”
“Ohhh,” she whined in protest, sounding like a recalcitrant teen ordered to clean her room. “Crap on a cracker, Finn, I love you.”
He laughed. “You don’t sound too happy about it.”
“I’m not. It complicates things.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, honey. Nothing.”
And she hit him in the head with a pillow.
After eating a light breakfast under a giant mounted elk head in the dining room, they tucked their bag into the backseat of Beth’s truck. She helped Finn into the cab, which meant he hoisted himself in with the agility of a mountain lion while she admired his butt in his jeans. She stowed his crutches in the backseat for him, then got behind the wheel. She pulled out of the gravel driveway of the B and B and started toward Ptarmigan.
“Hey,” he said, “You wanna get some coffee?”
“We just ate. I want to see my house.”
“We have all day. What if we get some coffee and then see your house?”
“Why?”
“I saw some sweet little coffee places on my walk. We drove all this way last night—we should enjoy ourselves while we’re here. Visit our old stomping grounds.”
Beth glanced at him. “You really want to stop someplace?”
“Yeah. I do. We can go to Winona’s. They’ve got cinnamon rolls,” he said seductively, as though they were sex toys. “And I’ll buy you all the bacon you want. How ’bout it?”
She sighed. “All right. But only because you mentioned bacon and they didn’t have any at the B and B.” She turned the truck around, and in a few minutes they were seated at a corner table in Winona’s Restaurant & Bakery, Steamboat’s hallowed morning eatery. Finn was being weird, and she sensed it had nothing to do with decadent baked goods, bacon, or coffee. She trusted she’d learn the reason soon.
Finn ate his giant, gooey cinnamon roll with a knife and fork, holding his fork, as usual, like a European. Beth couldn’t help it—she had to tease him as she tore off a warm, buttery, sugary strip of her roll and placed it in her mouth.
“You’re going to get us thrown out of here,” she said, nodding at his utensils. “They probably want to, but they feel sorry for you with the crutches and all.”
“If you want to eat like an animal, that’s up to you.” He grinned.
At least he’s relaxed enough to kid me.
As the waitress poured his second cup of coffee, he said, “You probably figured I didn’t come here just for more coffee.”
“Yeah, no.”
“I have something else to tell you, and I didn’t want to be walking on the crutches, because I’d get out of breath up here and . . . damn, this thing is good, isn’t it?”
“Just tell me,” she said gently.
He yawned. Rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. Then spoke.
“Here goes, Bethany. Listen up. First, I want to marry you, more than I did before. That’s saying a lot. I want you to know that.”
Her lips curved up at that. She felt some errant icing on her upper lip and licked it. “Okay.”
“Second, you were dead-on about me and money. I always felt like I married out of my league, but I loved you so much, I . . . I couldn’t believe you’d marry me. Your dad was this self-made man, like you said the other day. I wanted to win his approval by doing what he did. It was all to make more money and be worthy of you.”
“Finn—”
“Hold on, honey. Let me finish or I might lose my nerve.”
She nodded and sipped her coffee. Don’t interrupt, Beth.
“If I can get this Mitch Frederick project, I’ll be set. I’m doing well now—you can look at my portfolio if you want—so unless you want to own an island or keep fifty warmbloods, I can support you right now in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed, as they say. And, I’d like to.
“Third, this all means I don’t need to work two jobs. I work hard, and sometimes it’s nights and weekends, and sometimes there’s travel, but it’s not like it was when we were married. What I’m saying is, I’ll have more time to spend with you. I won’t be a perfect husband, but I know a hell of a lot more than I did then, and I promise I’ll do my best to be the kind of husband you deserve. I want to raise our kids together, and grow old together, and take car
e of you and nurture you as best I can.”
Beth, to her horror, hiccupped a sob. She was crying in Winona’s. They might throw her out for weeping in front of the famous cinnamon rolls.
She covered her mouth with her hand. I want to raise our kids together . . . She hadn’t yet decided whether she was going to let him back into her life, and he had leapfrogged to their great-grandchildren. She swallowed a few times, then sipped more coffee to ease her aching throat.
When she trusted herself to remain composed, she met his gaze. As she knew he would be, he was looking right at her, that Finn laser that made her feel like the most important person in the world. Things certainly had changed over the past five years. Finn had acquired the courage to be vulnerable.
Could she say the same?
He wasn’t done. “Fourth, I have some land. Now, take a deep breath honey, because this is gonna be rough.”
Blerg! What does that mean? I’m already crying. She dabbed her eyes with the napkin and tried to look encouraging.
“Some of the land I own used to belong to your family.”
What?
“I bought the land around the lake. About a hundred acres.”
“How can that be?” she blurted.
“I’ll get to that. I initially bought it—you’ll see why when we get to Ptarmigan—but I initially bought it to build on it. My houses. My designs. I got a loan. But when you told me about your horse rescue idea, I checked to see if it’s zoned for horses. It is.”
Beth thought she must be suffering from a severe sugar rush. None of this made sense. Finn owned her family’s property? Now he’s talking about her horse rescue? Did he think the horses could live in the houses he planned to build? She gulped some coffee and eyed the maple syrup.
He continued. “There’s not much there—a few small cabins. You might be able to keep some of them and convert them, for barns, storage, garages . . . that kind of thing. Hell, I don’t know if you’d even want your rescue up here. You might want it in Florida. But Amanda and Grady would be relatively nearby in summer. If you don’t want it up here, you’ll make a sizable profit if you sell the land. It’s lakefront property that’s attractive in summer and winter. It’s close to Steamboat. If you sell, you’d be able to offset the cost of purchasing a more suitable tract, if not cover the cost outright.”
“Whoa!” she said. She couldn’t help herself; she had to interrupt. She made a T with her hands. “It’s your land. Not mine. Why are you talking about it like it’s mine?”
“I thought it was obvious. I’m giving you the land for your horse rescue. You can do whatever you want with it, but my thought was, it would make your dream come true.”
15
Beth sat there, stunned and feeling like she’d just been told something outrageous, like Finn was an alien or she was going to cure cancer.
Finn had obviously lost his mind. She’d take all this talk of land with a grain of salt because there was no way he was serious. As he drank his newly refilled coffee, he looked sane enough. But he couldn’t be.
“What do you think?” he asked. Mildly. As if logic prevailed.
“That you’re insane.”
He laughed.
“Don’t worry, Finn, we’ll get you the help you need. I’m sure there are plenty of great shrinks in Aspen and Grady will hook you up.”
“Bethany, this is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You’re just giving me land.” She thrust her upturned palms at him. “You’re just giving me one hundred acres? There must be strings attached. What are they, Finn? Do I have to marry you to get it, like some kind of antiquated reverse dowry? Do you need a kidney or something?” She was almost spitting the words. None of this made any sense.
“No strings, and you don’t have to marry me or lose any organs. The land is yours free and clear. I’ve had the papers drawn up, and they’ve all got your name all over them.”
“What if I don’t want to put the horse rescue there? What if I just want to live in our old summer house on my hundred-acre plot of land?”
“That’s completely up to you.” He tilted his head. “But you probably won’t want to do that.” It felt like a warning. Finn’s jaw moved ever so slightly and he was tapping his front teeth together. Something was up.
And then Beth realized why this felt like she was being given a multimillion-dollar grand prix jumper only to find it was missing a hoof. She leaned toward him. “Why on God’s green earth would my father sell his house to you, of all people?”
Finn’s jaw moved a little more and he looked toward the loaded bakery display case, then at her. “He . . . he didn’t know it was me. His Realtor handled the sale, and I bought it through a third party. It’s perfectly legal. But I knew he wouldn’t sell to me.”
“Why did you want our house?”
“It was exactly what I was looking for—desirable residential mountain property near a resort town. And it’s cheaper than Aspen, Beaver Creek, or Vail.”
“It had nothing to do with me?”
He looked into his coffee mug. “It might have had something to do with you.” His gaze returned to her face. “Obviously you’re the reason I knew about the place. I bought your family’s house several years ago, and have been lucky enough to buy the land around it in the meantime.”
It seemed to make sense, on paper, at least.
“Why are you giving it to me? What about your dream of building your designs?”
This time his lovely blue eyes stayed locked on hers and he shrugged. “I want to. I want to do this for you. It seemed like a golden opportunity, and maybe it will make up for how I treated you while we were married.”
“Isn’t it a little overboard? I’m not complaining; it’s extraordinarily generous, but . . . think about it. Finn, it’s a lot of money to relieve some guilt from a failed marriage that wasn’t all your fault. What if I refuse to take the land?”
“I’ll sell it and donate the proceeds to your horse rescue as soon as it’s set up. My mind is made up. And if you never set up your horse rescue, I guess I’ll donate to another one. I’d like your input on that.”
She molded her hands to her coffee mug, the warmth of the smooth ceramic comforting. “It’s a lot to process,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“This is why you’ve been so weird all morning and almost refused sex.”
“Yes.” Tap, tap, tap went his incisors.
“I’m not going to decide anything now,” Beth said. “I need time to think.”
“Understood.”
Silence hung around the table like morning mist in a summer pasture. They were both very interested in staring at their coffee. Finally, Finn reached for the check and they left Winona’s for Ptarmigan.
Finn looked at Bethany in the driver’s seat. It was a natural spot for her, behind the wheel of her pickup. The only thing that would make her feel more at home would be a horse trailer in the rearview mirror and Mingo next to her. She wore a dusty-blue polo shirt that turned her eyes the same blue-gray as an early-morning sky above a Florida beach, and khaki shorts. She looked fresh and carefree, the same way she looked the summer they’d met.
The truck bounced as they turned onto the dirt road that led to the lake and the house. It was a mile from the paved road to the house, up a gentle grade. When they were almost to the crest of the hill, Finn said, “Why don’t we pull over here?”
“Why?”
“Just . . . would you mind? I want to get something out of the back before you see the lake.”
Bethany squinted at him, but parked on the gravel shoulder.
He said, “Stay there, okay? I’ll come around.”
“You’re a gimp. You don’t have to.”
“Humor me.”
Finn lowered himself out of the truck and opened the back door on h
is side. He removed the box with the window in it, which Harris had wrapped for him in black-and-white paper and tied with a lime-green satin ribbon. Finn needed it to look good. The presentation had to be terrific, because Bethany wasn’t going to like the contents. He adjusted his crutches, slammed the passenger-side doors shut, went around the front, and opened her door for her. She unbuckled her seat belt and jumped down onto the rocky road.
“I want to know what the hell—” She stopped talking because she saw the box under Finn’s arm. “What’s that?”
“It’s for you. Would you mind carrying it? Sorry—not very gallant of me, but under the circumstances . . .”
“No worries.” She took the box, then tilted her head at him. “What is it?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
“Why do we have to walk? Especially you—wouldn’t you rather drive?”
“It’s not so bad with the brace instead of the cast. It’s lighter.”
She twirled around him as they walked, her long hair billowing and shining in the sun.
“When I was little, I used to get so excited at this part in the road, where you crested the hill.” She started to jog.
“Wait! I’m fast, but not that fast.” Please, Bethany. Please stop.
“Okay!” She walked, and continued her train of thought. “When you got to the top and you could see the house and the lake? Hurry up, gimpy! Ooh, can you smell that? The lake? It smells like summer! All it needs is hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, and bug spray. Mom used to marinate us in Skin So Soft. It was like a flea dip.” She faced him, her back to the top of the hill. She was waiting for him so they could see her precious family summer house together.
When he caught up to her, he said, “There’s something else I have to tell you. It’s about the house. It’s . . . uh . . . not . . . the same.” He chickened out. Fucking coward!
Jumped Page 20