by Dani Collins
Wren felt her lips part, but didn’t know what to say. There was a part of her that wanted to take Vivien’s words to heart. She had felt so overwhelmed for so long, she desperately longed to lean on someone and rest.
But even though she said a polite, “Thank you,” she knew it wasn’t that easy. Not for her. She was ultra responsible. Plus, Sky was all she had. Giving up any part of Sky’s upbringing was like sectioning off a piece of her own heart.
Vivien smiled and the tension left her shoulders. She set down her tea and clasped her hands in her lap. “Related to that, I have a favor to ask.”
Ah. Here came the other shoe.
“It’s your weekend. If you have other plans, please don’t let me keep you. But I could use your help with the wedding arrangements. I’ve talked to Marvin about paying you overtime. Much of this falls outside the sort of thing we’d ask of you in your capacity as manager.”
“Oh, um,” Wren brushed that aside. “Not necessary.” What else was she going to do while Sky was with her father? “Do you need me to make some calls or something?”
“It’s the seating plan. You’re so methodical and efficient. I know you’ll have some good ideas without scrapping the whole thing and starting again, which is what I’m tempted to do.”
Vivien rose and invited her to the dining room table where a huge drawing had been unrolled. Its curled edges were braced with clean water glasses on each corner.
“I had this finalized a week ago and now everything changes with you and Sky becoming part of the wedding party. I think we need to add a table here. Yes?”
“I—” What now?
Chapter Ten
Trigg had written the book on how to be an obstinate jackass and expected plenty of pushback from Sky, but she went through the box of clothing. Then he showed her the budget figures on previous years’ sales and estimated sales into various markets. When he converted the Euros to show her the dollar values they were playing with, her eyes goggled. He ran the profit margins and went through the rest of the exercise of approving the final styles that would wind up on racks in sportswear shops around the globe a year from now.
“If no one buys them and we go broke, that’s on you.” His father had said the same to him once, except they’d done it with boots and boards. His father had been trying to find common ground with Trigg while motivating him to take an interest in running Wikinger—which requires an education, little girl.
“Ha-ha,” Sky said, but gave the box a second look, maybe rethinking her decisions with this new information under her cap. She’d mostly picked the same things Trigg preferred, though. He was fine with gambling on a few items to see whose instincts were better.
“Every decision matters,” he told her. In this case, he considered the value of piquing her curiosity worth more than any potential dip in their clothing line profits.
Despite his reputation as glib and carefree, Trigg knew where his bread was buttered and took his responsibilities very seriously. If he hadn’t trusted Rolf to run the company while he competed, he would have left the circuit years ago.
He had thought this resort would be his own pet project eventually, but hadn’t properly made the time to get it off the ground. He had needed Rolf to get the money out of Wikinger’s board. Of course, as soon as he got Rolf to take an interest, big brother had moved in and started acting like he owned the place.
There was plenty of work to go around, though.
“Truth is, the biggest risk for Wikinger right now is this resort. It’s a money pit. We have to open this season and it has to be profitable.”
“Or what?”
“Or your aunt goes back to working for a dentist and we all move in with you.”
She wrinkled her nose.
A joke, obviously, but he was tempted to ask her about Wren. His attitude toward Sky’s aunt was undergoing as sharp a shift as his view of Sky, but in a completely different way. He kept seeing that moment of stillness in her. The bracing. It left a scorched sensation behind his breastbone, dry and gritty. And a razor-edged question.
Who?
Sky had never shown a similar timidity. In fact, she was damned bold for a kid in a new environment. Her response to his authority was sulking and defiance, not fear. Which was good, but he didn’t want Wren to fear him, either.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her. His libido knew what it wanted, but he had to ignore that animal. It might have been easier if he wasn’t so closely linked to her through Sky and if her appeal for him was strictly physical. He had a lot of curiosity about her, though, which wasn’t his normal Keep It Simple Stupid approach to women.
It was frustrating. And his daughter was supposed to be his focus. Not her aunt.
“Come on. Let’s go put out some fires.”
He walked her down to where the land had been leveled and prepped for gravel that should have arrived Friday.
“What do you even do here?” she asked.
“This. I walk around and look for things that are behind or not done right. Rolf pushes for things to keep moving forward and signs the checks. Nate hires the contractors and makes sure they’re meeting their deadlines. Chivonne helps him with procurement—finding what we need and buying it, then following up when it doesn’t show up.”
Trigg voiced an email to Chivonne to check on the gravel delivery first thing tomorrow morning. “I bat cleanup.”
“I thought there was a gravel pit down there.”
“Yeah. Basco Construction tried to buy it years ago. Things got nasty when the old guy who owns it refused. Basco opened his own toward Kalispell and ran this guy out of business. Old man Petersen is hanging on to his property out of spite. I’ll bet you our gravel, which is coming from Whitefish now, is running late because Basco made a call, trying to put pressure on us.”
“Why is he doing all these things to stop the resort?”
“If you could Scooby Doo that and get back to me, I’d appreciate it.”
They walked up to what would be a vibrant village come winter, but all the buildings were still in various stages of construction.
“Eventually, our office trailer will be the liftie break room. It might be our ski school first, though, given how this building is coming along.” He showed Sky where the spring runoff had been miscalculated and caused erosion under a corner of the foundation. “Nate’s working on a solve.”
The day lodge was in good shape. The lockers had been installed in the lower change room. The future retail shop was almost at lock-up. “The bar will definitely be ready by the time you’re old enough to drink,” he told her as they walked up to where the restaurant would open onto a patio.
The workmen stopped their power tools long enough to call a greeting. “Is it bring your daughter to work day?” one asked.
Sky stiffened.
“How’d you know she’s my daughter?” Trigg asked. The press release wasn’t supposed to go out until later.
The guy let his drill hand fall to his side. “I was joking. Are you shi—kidding me? I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
“Me either,” Trigg admitted, enjoying the men’s flummoxed expressions.
“Are you serious right now?” the guy with the nail gun asked. “Be real.”
Sky had her hands stuffed deep into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie. Her shoulders were hunched, but she snorted at the men’s confused astonishment.
“It was news to me, but it’s true. This is Sky. Any problems here?”
They shook off their bafflement and one jerked his head to indicate Trigg should follow him. “The plumber fu—udged up. Need you to tell us what to do here.”
They crossed paths with Nate a little later in the operations building, talking to the HVAC contractor in the rooms that would become the daycare.
“They’ll need their own thermostat,” Nate was saying. “The rest of us will come and go in our winter clothes, but they’ll want it warmer in here for the kids.”
They all tr
ailed upstairs to where Trigg’s office had unfinished walls looking into Rolf and Nate’s. All three rooms had views up the slope.
“Where are the secretaries sitting?” the tradesman asked. “The ladies will want their own or you’ll have thermostat wars that won’t quit.”
“Sexist,” Skylar muttered under her breath.
“No kidding. Some of them will work in accounting,” Trigg said.
“Dude,” Nate snorted, shaking his head.
Sky didn’t crack a smile. “Some of them will be running this place,” she said with a lofty arch of her brows. “Which one is my office?”
Trigg grinned. That’s my girl.
*
“Is she staging a hunger strike?”
Trigg’s voice behind her startled Wren. She nearly tipped her Szechuan noodles back into the buffet, onto the bright pink prawns.
He wore a short-sleeved shirt that strained against his biceps. Such a flat stomach. Such broad shoulders and such an intensely blue and all-seeing gaze as he took in her plaid pedal pushers and white sleeveless top.
“Pardon?” She grew even warmer and more self-conscious as she forced her attention off his ripped and animalistic frame to the beef and beans under the sneeze guard.
“I told Sky to join me.” He reached for a plate. “She was supposed to invite you.”
Thank God that wouldn’t be necessary. “Your mother requested her company.”
Wren’s day had been one of riding the emotional rapids he’d thrust her into, from despair to resignation, timid hope, guilt and resentment, loneliness and inadequacy and yearning. She wanted Sky to be happy, she kept reminding herself.
Whatever she felt toward Trigg, and whatever he felt toward her, had no bearing.
What did he feel? Did he hate her? He’d been so overbearing this morning. She hated him a little bit, even though she knew his claiming of Sky was something Sky needed. She had to feel wanted. Wren wanted that for her, since she had never felt it herself. But the net result was Trigg holding enormous power over her. Sky wasn’t just hers anymore. She was theirs.
Wren could feel people staring at them, reading her nerves and making her self-consciousness worse. She didn’t know how the news had traveled so quickly, but she’d been walking toward the service stairs mid-morning, intending to turn over her laundry, when she’d realized the whispers had started.
Ilke had been on her way out, taking a bag of sandwiches to the base. It’s the drawback to living where you work. Everyone knows your business, Ilke had said with an empathetic shrug. It passes.
Like a gallstone.
“Vivien is measuring Sky for a bridesmaid dress.” And giving her a ‘cut the crap’ lecture, if Wren had read between the lines correctly.
She believed Vivien was sincere in her remorse over not welcoming Sky more warmly, however. Plus, much as she might want to, Wren couldn’t limit and manage the relationships Sky was building with Trigg and his family. That was what she had been trying to come to terms with all day.
“I wondered if that would happen,” Trigg said. “Should I go up and make sure Mom hasn’t left any scissors out?”
“Sky prefers to slay with sarcasm. I understand your mother was fitted with a thick skin when you were young.”
“Look at you, getting to know us so well.” His crooked grin was warm enough to put heat in her cheeks. Charming enough to disarm when keeping her guard up with him was more important than ever.
“Inside that fleece armor she calls a hoodie, Sky is a girlie girl. She’ll come around once she sees the dresses. They’re really pretty.”
Sky’s dismay about going upstairs had mostly been over having to endure another meal in Vivien’s apartment, this time alone.
“You’ve had your fitting?”
“For sarcasm, yes. For the dress, I bowed out.” Wren’s plate was full. She took a step and offered a meaningless smile, signaling she was excusing herself from this conversation as well.
“Mom didn’t let you get away with that.”
“I’m not a member of the family,” she pointed out with the same neutral tone she had used on Vivien. “Your mother and Marvin need me at the helm of the lodge during the wedding so they can concentrate on Rolf and Glory and the guests.”
Also, adding only Sky and her escort, rather than assigning a date for Wren and making room for four, had been a simpler fix on the seating plan. Wren had come up with a dozen reasons she didn’t have to be squeezed into the ceremony, but didn’t bother repeating them to Trigg.
“Enjoy your dinner,” she said with a nod, gathering cutlery.
“Wren.”
How did he make her name sound like a caress against her skin?
“Let’s kiss and make up from this morning. Sit outside with me.”
“What—?” Dear Lord. It was a joke. No need to get all flustered like he’d asked her to prom.
He looked briefly unsettled, as if he belatedly heard the words as sexual when he hadn’t meant them that way at all. His crooked grin was rueful. Yeah, that was just the way he talked. He had just never talked to her that way.
Which made her feel stupid for reading more into it, even for a second. It was too much a betrayal of this infernal attraction.
“We need a peace treaty,” he said with the barest brush of his fingertips against her elbow. How did that make her nipples tingle? She was trying very hard to despise him. At least blame him.
For what? Making Sky in the first place? God, this was awful.
He motioned for her to lead him past the bar, through the lounge, and out to the patio. It was mostly empty, just a pair of Canadians and a couple from town. Another cycling club was checking in tomorrow and once the contractors arrived Monday, only the unfinished rooms on the top floor would be empty.
They chose a high-topped table at the rail overlooking the pond. It was a nice evening, cooling off, but the sun was still high since it was nearing the equinox. The pond was glassy as a mirror, offering a perfect reflection of the variegated greens of the trees with dots of wildflower reds and yellows climbing the hill to the dark blue sky. Acoustic music came through the speakers mounted above the open doors.
If this had been a date, which it wasn’t, she would have complimented him on bringing her to a really nice place.
“Beer? Wine?” he asked, ordering a beer for himself.
“Water’s fine.”
The server nodded and walked away.
She started to eat, but he didn’t. She glanced at him.
“I came on pretty strong this morning.” He looked right through her skin into her soul, mortifying her. “I want things to be okay between us, but I don’t know how to get there.”
“Everything’s fine,” she lied, because what was the alternative? Admit she didn’t know how to handle him? “Sky said you told her you’d support her financially if she chose to compete, even after she finished school, but only if she finished school. That she could work or go to school, but Johanssons aren’t bums so she had to do one or the other.”
He looked for a moment like he wouldn’t let her deflect, then started eating. “Do you have a problem with any of that? I was repeating to her what my father said to me when I decided school was beneath me.”
“When was that?” she asked, curious despite her wariness of him.
“I was thirteen. I was competing and Dad threatened to pull my funding if I didn’t bring my grades up. I told him to go for it.”
“What did he do?”
“Caved and let me snowboard. I was skiing because that’s what Johanssons did, but I hated being in Rolf’s shadow. He was eight years older and had just won his first gold in Salt Lake. There was no catching him. I didn’t see any point in trying and was happy to quit the family.”
She spared a pang of empathy for Vivien. No wonder she was such a tough, imperious woman, trying to hold her own against three hardheaded men.
“Vivien said your grandfather was a brakeman on a bobsleigh.”
/> “Yeah, we’re a long line of maniacs who hurl down frozen mountains. But Dad hated snowboards. Thought it was a dumb fad and boarders were ruining the pistes. Then he began seeing the profit in manufacturing the equipment. When I showed talent, he bought this hill, to make a snow park for me.”
Must be nice. “But there was an avalanche?”
“Yeah. Dad’s heart was nothing but sausage and cigars. Losing this investment did him in. All of Wikinger was on thin ice without him. The board took the insurance payout to shore up the company and this project was back-burnered for fifteen years.”
“Did your dad at least see you earn a medal?” She knew Trigg had won his first gold in Canada and had still been winning in South Korea earlier this year.
“He did not.”
“I’m sorry.” She meant it.
“Me, too.” He shrugged fatalistically. Then narrowed his eyes. “What’s your family like?”
A jolt of adrenaline went through her. Oh, he was good. Lulling her like that, then sucker-punching her.
She concentrated on gathering a bite of noodles. Gathered the point-form version of her childhood that she had confided in the odd co-worker over the years.
“My parents had a son between Mandy and me. Neil. He had cystic fibrosis. His illness wiped out my parents financially. My mother was pregnant with me when he died. It colored my upbringing.” She always tried to make allowances for that, trying not to hate them for being broke and broken.
“Are they still alive?”
“My father is. My mother passed a couple of years ago. Diagnosed in September, gone by Christmas. Refused treatment. Wanted to be with Neil and Mandy and God. She was very religious. My father went the other way. Hated God for taking his son. It made for tension between them.”
Layers of ice and silence, disapproval and rejection.
“Are you close to him?”
“My dad? No.” She sipped her water, trying to ease her tight throat.