One Hot Summer

by Melissa Cutler

  He took the blankets from her and spread them out one on top of the other for cushion against the hard ground, right to the edge of the riverbank’s drop-off. Then he stuck the unopened bottle of champagne right into the water and lodged it in place between two twisted roots so it could cool.

  Remedy’s head was on a swivel, drinking it all in.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “So pretty. Even more beautiful than the creek by my house.”

  He nodded to the MG in the tree trunk. “This is my tree, since I was a boy. This is where I came to be alone with my thoughts and catch the occasional tadpole or two.”

  She traced the M of his initials. “It wasn’t affected by the Knolls Canyon Fire?”

  “No. Isn’t that a miracle? The fire crews set up a firebreak about five miles from here and were able to contain the blaze before it ruined this place. Wish I knew which fire crews made that happen, so I could thank them.”

  Her attention roved over the trees and past the opposite bank of the creek. “Did the resort make restitutions for the fire?”

  He released the deep breath her question dredged up. “In some ways. The Briscoes or their lawyers never acknowledged their role in the fire, but they did shovel out heaps of money to the forest service to improve fire roads and build wilderness fire response outposts.”

  She rubbed her arms. “I don’t know how I’d ever make peace with it if sparklers from a wedding I planned were the cause of so much destruction and pain.”

  Victory achieved. For the first time in all his years as a firefighter he’d managed to impress upon a Briscoe Ranch executive how much was at stake when fire safety measures weren’t heeded and why the resort should be an ally with Micah instead of treating him like the enemy. But Remedy’s understanding of the stakes said far more about her compassion and selflessness than it did about Micah’s efforts. All it said about him was that he’d made some pretty terrible assumptions about her based on nothing but his own prejudices.

  He brushed a hand over her back. “Let’s sit, drink this champagne before it gets warm.”

  He’d forgotten to pack glasses, so when she’d settled on the blankets he handed her the open champagne bottle, then settled across from her, the strawberries between them.

  They passed the bottle between them. The champagne wasn’t that cold, but it was tasty. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had champagne. Probably at a wedding. He got invited to most weddings around town but was rarely able to indulge in more than a sip or two of alcohol, since he was usually on call for work.

  “The firefighter ball is in three weeks,” she said. “Are you going?”

  She sounded hopeful. He took that as a good sign that she was on the road to forgiving him. “Me and all my crew. Wouldn’t miss it. Are you working the ball?”

  She bit into a strawberry. The juice stained her lips pink and dripped down the side of her hand. She licked it off. “Not only working it. I’m planning it. It’s my first solo event for the resort.”

  “Are you nervous about that?”

  She polished off the rest of the strawberry, tossed the stem in the creek, then took her time licking the tips of her fingers. Micah’s body stirred to life at the sight. He couldn’t decide if she was consciously flirting or if it was part of the whole chemistry thing they had going on, but either way, he approved.

  “I’m a little nervous,” she said. “Everything’s ready and there’s no way to predict what’s going to go wrong, so there’s no sense getting too anxious yet. Better to reserve my energy for when the problems actually start popping up, which they always do.”

  “Bet you’re not even going to have time to dance with me.”

  “I might be able to work that out.”

  He handed her another strawberry. This time, if any strawberry juice found its way onto her hand he wanted to be the one to lick it off. Meanwhile, he pulled her foot onto his lap and removed her sandal. He loved women’s feet. Not in a kinky fetish kind of way, but because they embodied some of the things he loved most about women. Women’s feet were soft and slender and graceful, with tiny toes and brightly colored polish, and they were sensitive and responsive to skilled caresses.

  Remedy’s toenails were polished a quiet pink that brought out the pink tones of her skin. Her heel was rough with calluses, probably because she spent the majority of her job on her feet. He massaged down her arch, then brushed a thumb over her heel. “You need more comfortable shoes for work.”

  She reclined back, propping herself up on her arms. “Comfortable shoes don’t match my outfits.”

  He rubbed his way back up her arch and watched her squirm in response. “Are you ticklish?”

  “A little.”

  He started a methodical massage of her foot, beginning with her toes. “I will file that nugget of information away to hold against you some other time. But not today.”

  When her foot had been thoroughly tended to and the worry lines on her face had disappeared, he removed her other sandal and started the process all over again.

  She sank into her arms, her chin tipped back and her face basking in a patch of sunlight in the mottled shade. “Is this your way of apologizing?”

  He slid both his thumbs up her arch. “Depends. Is it working?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, then, how about this. The next phase of my grand plan. Scoot to the edge of the riverbank and put your feet in the water.”

  She shifted to her knees and leaned over the edge of the bank, eyeing the creek suspiciously.

  “I promise that there aren’t any foot-eating monsters down there.”

  “You said there are tadpoles in the creek.”

  Good grief. “There were also tadpoles in the Frio River, and I’ve witnessed you splashing around in that.”

  “That was before I knew about the tadpoles.”

  “You really are a princess.” He took off his shoes and socks. His feet looked like pterodactyl talons compared to her pretty little feet. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  He got his butt right up to the edge of the blankets, then dropped his feet into the water. The cool temperature gave his skin a bite, probably because the air was so warm in contrast. “See? No foot-eating tadpoles.”

  She scooted close to him and dipped a toe in. “That’s cold.”

  “That’s a good thing on such a hot summer day.”

  She eased her foot the rest of the way in, then the other. “If something wiggly starts to nibble at my toes, I’m done.”

  “Deal.”

  He fished the second bottle of champagne out of the water, popped it open, and handed it to her. They were quiet for a while, together, each alone with their thoughts.

  Micah got to thinking again about what different worlds they were from. Remedy was acting like this was her first time lying creek-side, her toes in the water, something Micah had done on a near-daily or weekly basis for his entire life. “During our fight, you said that where you’re from doesn’t define you, and even though I was off-base with almost everything I said, I’ve still got to disagree about that one point. I think where we came from has a huge impact on who we turn out to be, for better or worse.”

  She drank from the bottle, her expression turning distant. “I’ve fought for my whole life not to let my parents’ fame or their larger-than-life personalities and career successes define me, but it did anyway. How could it not? They raised me in their own incredible insulated bubble of a world, so of course that made me who I am. But you know what? It was such a relief coming here to Texas where nobody seems to realize or care who my parents are. In Dulcet, I’m just Remedy the new Briscoe Ranch executive. Not Remedy the daughter of Virginia Hartley and Preston Lane.”

  She was too vivacious a personality to ever be “just Remedy,” even though he understood the point she was trying to make. “You might not believe there are many parallels to our lives, but it’s not so different in a small town. Everybody knows everything about
you and your family, and they’ve been making assumptions and drawing conclusions about everybody else. My dad’s a deacon at his church and sits on the town council, so living up to his reputation hasn’t been easy. And even though he did a great job raising me and my brother and sisters, there will always be townsfolk who bring up stupid choices I made as a teenager.”

  “What happened to your mom?” Remedy asked gently.

  He gave her a weak smile. “A story for another time.”

  “Got it.” She tangled her toes with his in the water. “So back to how you described small towns, think about that, except imagine that happening to you everywhere you go, even on vacation. There’s no escaping the recognition, or the unsolicited opinions about my life. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, it doesn’t make any difference where I go. When your birth announcement photo makes the cover of People magazine, the whole world thinks they’ve watched you grow up.”

  “People magazine? Seriously?”

  “You didn’t find that one in your research?” she said.

  He reached into his back pocket and found his phone. “This I’ve got to see.”

  It took two attempts to get the wording right for the Internet search engine to find the cover shot, but there it was, Virginia Hartley and baby Remedy on the cover of a magazine. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Told you. Try living that one down, especially with such a unique name like Remedy. Everybody knows who I am.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Now you do.”

  Yes, he did. But it didn’t feel like he was spending the morning with the rich and famous Remedy Lane. This was Remedy the burger-hungry, golf cart–crashing, klutzy wedding planner who had a fire for life that he was fast becoming addicted to. This was the woman he’d made love to in his bed, whose body trembled like mad when she came, and the woman who presently had the most alluring strawberry stains on her lips.

  When she noticed him watching her, he turned his attention back to his phone. “Your mom looks like you. The eyes and the shape of your cheeks.”

  “I love that I look like her. She’s one of the most beautiful women in the world and she’s such a great mom. She’s a free spirit, but she’s always been there for me, no matter what.”

  Must be nice. “You two are close?”

  “We are. Not as much as when I was younger, but we still talk a few times a week.”

  The love in her eyes as she was talking about her family hit him right in the heart. Family was his everything, and he could see it was Remedy’s everything, too. “Your parents still live in Los Angeles?”

  “Yes. My mom in Burbank and my dad in Malibu.”

  “Do you miss home, Los Angeles?”

  She was a long time in answering. “Yes. Some parts. Others, not so much.”

  “From everything I read this morning, you were all but forced out of Hollywood because of that Zannity scandal.”

  She swirled her feet in the water, causing enough waves to splash water up the sides of Micah’s calves. “You can’t believe what you see online. There is very little ethical concern for reporting the truth in celebrity gossip news.”

  “I may be a quaint country boy, but even I knew that.”

  She pinned him with a weary smile. “You aren’t a quaint, simpleton country boy, no matter how badly you want me to believe that.”

  “Touché.” He drank deeply of the champagne, gathering his gumption for the next question he was going to ask. “How long do you give yourself in Texas before you go back to L.A.?”

  “What makes you think I want to go back?” But he could tell in her wry smile and the sharp glint in her eyes that she did want that. “Briscoe Ranch Resort is one of the most acclaimed destination wedding locations in the world. I’ve only been here six weeks and I can already see why.”

  Yes, it was, but that didn’t mean squat. “Look at the facts. You were the victim of a scandal, so you got the hell out of Dodge to bide your time in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, until everything blew over. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She didn’t. Hunching forward, she rubbed her arms, her gaze turning distant. Micah sensed the disquiet his question had stirred up in her and was sorry all over again for causing her more distress. “I don’t understand the accusation in your tone. Is it because you think I belong here in Dulcet? Because I don’t. Any more than I ever fit in in Los Angeles. Neither is my home, so picking one over the other isn’t a moral judgment. It doesn’t matter where I go, my whole life I’ve felt like a foreigner or some freak alien on a covert mission to Earth. Everyone is slightly foreign and everything is off just enough that I can’t catch my bearings. It doesn’t matter what I do or how I act, I can’t figure out how to fit in. But I have something to prove to everyone who wrote me off in L.A., so that’s what I’m going to do. That’s the plan.”

  “Asking again. How long will you be here in Texas?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “A few months, a few years. I’ll know when it’s time.”

  Her words hung in the breeze. Was that what his mom had done? Waited for years until her instincts told her to go, like some sadistic internal alarm clock? Or had the fire made the decision for her in an instant? He forced the questions out of his mind. “Even in Los Angeles, even after high school, you never felt like you fit in there, ever? Because in all those pictures I saw online you looked absolutely in your element,” he said.

  “I was never part of that world, the Hollywood scene. I didn’t belong. It was so much easier to work for them, to plan their parties and be a sober observer to their extravagance.”

  The image of that struck his sense of irony. “And all the while you were richer than any of them, I bet.”

  “Some of them, not all.”

  “Oh, please. With who your parents are? I bet you outrank every person at those richie rich weddings you plan. Every single one of them.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  A knot of frustration lodged in his gut. “You’re missing mine, too.”

  “What’s your point, then?”

  He ate a strawberry, trying to figure out how to articulate the complex jumble of thoughts pinging around his head about her. “I guess my point is, What does it matter if you fit in or not? Or prove people were wrong about you? Why bother? You’re above them all. You have enough power and money to never have to worry about what anyone thinks about you.”

  He watched a welling of sadness overtake her. “It’s isolating, okay? It gets really damn lonely sometimes.”

  He reached for her hand as he registered the longing in her words, the pain etched into her face. He hated that he’d brought that about. During their fight she’d been full of fire, but this look could only be described as defeat. “You’ve been hurt. Deeply.”

  She swallowed hard, then stalled, her mouth open, as though picking her words carefully. “It’s hard to have friends or boyfriends when you’re never sure who’s using you for your trust fund or your family, which guys are angling for an invite to A-list parties or hoping you’ll give their screenplay to your parents.” She shook her head. “There’s been so many stupid boys. You have no idea.”

  No, he hadn’t had any idea that having fame and money could cause a person so much pain. No idea at all. “I hate that I was just like all those assholes who judged you for your money.”

  She touched his face, offering him a tentative smile. “You’re coming around, though. Don’t you see? That’s what’s been so nice about Dulcet. I still don’t fit in, but at least people are taking me at face value. I’m judged on my own merits for a change. I’m out of my parents’ shadows finally.”

  Protectiveness flared inside him. She wasn’t out of their shadows, because Ty Briscoe was fully planning to exploit her connections. She deserved to know, even though now wasn’t the time to alert her to Ty’s motives. Micah had distressed her enough as it was. But the hard truth was that she was correct about how isolating her wealth and family name was.

  He was s
tarting to see how it’d be impossible to trust that people weren’t using her. Even if she ended up leaving Texas when the clouds of scandal parted, that didn’t change her fate of being someone other. Anywhere else she went next, it would be the same. She was right; that sounded damn lonely. He would’ve kept his background a secret, too, if he’d been in her shoes.

  “You need to know something about your job and Ty Briscoe. He’s using you, Remedy. He met me at the range this morning to talk about you. He thinks you’re going to be bringing in a whole lot of celebrity clients.”

  She was quiet. “That’s not a surprise, even though I haven’t brought in a single celebrity wedding to the resort—and I don’t have any plans to. I’m so over navigating the media circus and security details and flagrant narcissism of celebrity weddings. No thank you.”

  “Even still, be careful. Ty Briscoe is a dangerous man with no scruples.”

  She fiddled with a button on his shirt. “Sounds like he should’ve been a movie producer.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I am, too. Listen, I’ve grown up learning how to deal with men like him. I’ve got this.”

  She sounded so self-assured, he believed her. “Okay. But for the record, the overdeveloped hero complex that Xavier keeps telling me I’m cursed with is not keen on leaving you to handle Ty Briscoe yourself.”

  “I can’t wait to meet Xavier. It’s good to know you have a friend to keep your ego in check.”

  “He treats that like his number-one job.”

  “This is getting so complicated. You, me. Our jobs,” she said.

  He stroked her hair. “We knew that when we started down this road. Do you regret it? Do you want to stop?”

  “God, no.” She brought his hand to her lips for a kiss. “But this is your home, your life, and your livelihood. Are you sure you’re okay with all of these complications?”

  “It’s your life and livelihood, too.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  A corner of his lips kicked up into a melancholy grin. “Because you’ve got a trust fund cushion?”