Toby propped an elbow on the bar. “Sure thing. What do you want to know, beautiful?”
It was hard to know where to start. “Did she ever confide in you? Tell you what she was doing here or what her plans were?”
Toby laughed. “Her plans, as far as I could tell, were to have a good time. Sometimes she drank a little on the job. I could’ve nailed her for that, but hey, I’m no fool. That woman drew in customers.”
“When did Helena start waitressing for you?”
“What’d you call her? Helena?” Toby shrugged. “She went by plain Helen around here. And she applied for the job the very day she arrived in town. She came into the bar with the ranger who’d stopped her at the gas station. That would be Ralph Carlson, sitting right there, in the corner.”
Toby jerked his head to the left, and Amalie turned accordingly, recognizing the man immediately. Grant had introduced them the first day she’d arrived at Rogers Pass.
“Anyway,” Toby was wound up and needed no prompting, “I had one of those cardboard signs, Help Wanted, you know the kind, and she picked it out from the window and put it on the counter, just as plucky as could be. ‘What kind of help?’ she asked, and damn, if she didn’t have a voice just like Kathleen Turner’s in Body Heat. Kind of husky, you know, only with a trace of an accent…like yours. I hired her on the spot.”
Finally, she’d met someone who actually admired her sister. Too bad the qualities he appeared most drawn to were so superficial. He didn’t seem to have known the real Helena.
“What about after-hours?” she asked. “Did my sister have any other friends she spent time with?”
Toby’s pale-brown eyebrows pushed up against the creases of his forehead. “After-hours was party time. Right, Clinton?”
An older man with yellow hair and a grizzled face had just stepped up to the bar. He nodded at Toby, then turned his head sideways to give her an assessing look.
“Hard to believe there were two of you.” He slapped the counter and placed his order. “Gimme a Natural Blonde, would you, Toby?”
At Amalie’s double take, he shrugged and held up his hands. “What? It’s a beer. Trust me.”
She had to read the label to believe him. Sure enough, it was brewed by Wild Horse in Penticton.
“How about another draft for the lady?” Clinton asked.
Amalie shook her head, holding up her full glass. “This will be fine. Thanks, anyway.”
“Not so much like your sister after all,” was the newcomer’s comment.
“I was just telling the lady about those parties Helen used to have.” Toby popped the top off a brown bottle and slid it across the counter.
Clinton caught it and raised it to his mouth, tipping his head back and guzzling lustfully.
Oh, no. Amalie didn’t think she wanted to hear about the parties that had annoyed Heidi so much.
She turned to Grant, her shoulder bumping into his chest. “I can’t take this…”
“There’s room at Ralph’s table,” he said, speaking inches from her ear. “Want to sit down?”
“Yes.” She followed him gratefully, leaving Clinton and Toby reminiscing about some of Helena’s more memorable antics.
“Hey, Ralph. Mind if we join you?”
Ralph half raised himself from his chair, waiting until Amalie was sitting, before lowering his backside again.
“I’m sorry,” Amalie said to Grant once they were seated. “I’d hoped for so much more. They made my sister sound like some sort of bimbo.”
Grant said nothing, obviously too polite to remind her that he’d warned her she’d hear things she wouldn’t like.
She lifted her glass and pushed at the cardboard coaster left behind, noting the soft, tacky feel of the finish on the pine table.
“How did Helena end up in Revelstoke?” she asked Ralph.
The ranger was no longer wearing his forest-green Parks Canada uniform but was dressed in jeans and a plaid cowboy shirt. The beers he’d consumed up to this point had obviously relaxed him.
“I spotted your sister at the PetroCan gas station off the Trans-Canada. She was driving east, and the snow was really coming down. I took one look at her little Mercedes coupe with summer-tread tires and knew she’d never make it. I told her she’d better get herself a set of all-season radials if she planned to do any more traveling this winter.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she couldn’t afford new tires.”
“What about chains on her tires, instead?” Grant asked.
“I suggested those, too, but she said she wasn’t sure. Anyway—” Ralph stroked his mustache carefully, as if surprised to find it on his face “—I was just coming off duty, and asked her if she wanted any coffee. She said she’d rather have a beer. We ended up here.” At this point, Ralph pulled at the collar of his shirt.
Right away Amalie realized what had happened. The ranger had tried to hit on her sister! Grant, smirking into his beer, had obviously come to the same conclusion.
“It was the strangest thing. One minute I was offering to help install chains on her car, then she got up to visit the restroom, and the next thing she was telling Toby she wanted the job advertised in his window.”
“When was that, Ralph? Do you remember?” she asked.
“A few weeks before Christmas, I think.”
Yes. It had been mid-December, and Amalie had been at a meeting at work, when she’d felt the most dreadful, sinking feeling. Unable to explain the sensation at the time, she’d just pushed it out of her mind. Now she was almost positive something bad had happened to Helena. Something that had sent her fleeing from her life in Seattle.
“Did my sister tell you anything about where she was coming from?”
Ralph shook his head. “Once she’d asked about the job, she was full of questions. Where to find an apartment, how to go about selling her car….”
“What did you tell her?”
“Well, I said put an ad in the paper. And it worked, too, although I don’t imagine she got much for a vehicle like that in a place like this. Especially in winter.”
“I wonder where was she headed.” Amalie wished she could figure it out. Somehow it seemed important. She wanted to believe that Helena had been coming home, to see her and Davin.
If only she’d stuck to her plans and made it. Fixed the tires, persevered with the journey. Maybe they’d be together right now, instead of separated forever.
But wasn’t that so like her sister? For once, what she was hearing about Helena felt right. The smallest problem had always had the ability to knock her off course.
“Well, that’s it for me, I think.” Ralph pushed his empty beer bottle to the center of the table, then nodded farewell.
Amalie watched him leave, suddenly tired and discouraged. Grant was right; she shouldn’t have come. Clearly, Helena hadn’t confided in any of these people.
But she had to have trusted someone. She’d lived here almost two months.
Ramsey. Of course it would’ve been him. Helena’s one true friend was Ramsey Carter, but he couldn’t help Amalie understand what was happening in her sister’s life because he, too, was dead.
Oh, it was all such a mess.
Grant reached out, offering comfort with his touch. “I wish it had worked out differently for her, for the both of you.”
A gentle ballad began playing in the smoky bar. The way Gordon Lightfoot sang about reading his lover’s mind reminded Amalie of the way she’d once been able to read Helena’s.
The sudden shift from fast-paced, raunchy country tunes seemed to catch everyone off guard. The room quietened; the low lighting became dimmer.
“Dance?” Grant was standing, holding out his hand.
Since moving out of her parents’ home, Amalie had danced at a few of her friends’ weddings and gone to a local club a couple of times. But she still wasn’t very confident. “I’m not that good…”
“I don’t really care.” He took her ha
nd and led her to the dance floor. Once there, he placed his other hand at the small of her back. Now they were standing so close just the merest sliver of air separated them.
Turning her face, she could see the curve of his ear, the strong line of his jaw, the windblown bronze of his skin. In the places where her hands rested—on his shoulder and around his waist—she felt dense muscle mass beneath soft textured corduroy.
The music flowed in waves of longing around them. With Grant’s arms to guide her, following his movements was easy. Once she forgot about her nervousness, Amalie realized that Grant was singing. She could just make out his voice, layered over the recorded music, low-timbered and perfectly on key. It seemed natural to close her eyes, and to let him lead her slowly, smoothly, around the perimeter of the small dance floor.
Other couples were dancing, too. Occasionally she felt their bodies brush past, or heard the murmur of their voices, but Grant kept her safe in the fortress of his arms, crooning words in her ear that transported her out of this town, to a place that formerly existed only in her imagination.
Something powerful welled up inside her; it was like magic, lifting her feet from the ground and filling her head with the most exciting anticipation.
This was it, she realized. That special something that she’d always thought people exaggerated, because she’d never felt it once, not on any of her handful of assorted dates. Those men had held her hand, danced with her, kissed her good-night and never had she felt this euphoric pleasure.
Halfway through the song, Grant pulled her closer. Now she felt his chest, his thighs, the metal clasp of his belt. Vague desires became more specific, and she thought in terms of a physical need that she rarely acknowledged.
I want…I want…
She’d been a mother before she’d had the opportunity to lose her virginity. She’d gone from living at home under strict rules to trying to provide a stable home for a helpless infant.
Now she knew those were only excuses for why romance had never swept her off her feet.
The truth was, she’d never met anyone like Grant Thorlow before.
Lifting her head slightly, she brushed her face against his neck, loving the feel and the scent of the man. He responded by tightening his arms and drawing in a breath that expanded his chest into hers.
His opinion about Helena aside, all her instincts told her this was a decent, honest man. Strong and brave, the kind of guy a woman ran to when she needed help.
What really drew her, though, was the way he made her feel when he looked at her. Not like a mother or a daughter, a friend or a sister. And not a good-looking babe he’d like to lure to his bed and forget the next day.
Grant Thorlow made her feel like a desirable, lovable woman.
Amalie wished the song would never end, but of course it did. Within a single beat, a new tune began playing, a raunchy line-dancing song that would have everyone in the room linking arms and do-si-doing.
For a moment she sagged against Grant’s chest. Grant seemed equally reluctant to let her out of his arms. “I hate this song, but I’ll put up with it if you stay here with me.”
“We can’t, Grant. We’ll be trampled.” Already lines were forming, edging them off the small dance floor.
Grant kept his hand at her back as they maneuvered past tables. Just as she was about to turn and sit down, Amalie noticed a man staring at her from a few tables over.
He sat alone, with two glasses—one empty, one half-full. Probably in his midthirties, he had something anxious, almost desperate in his expression, which gave her the shivers.
When he saw that he’d caught her attention, he raised his glass in a silent toast. Then his gaze drifted to Grant and he shook his head as if to show his disappointment in seeing them together.
“Do you know that man over there?” she asked Grant several minutes later. “Sitting by himself, wearing the white shirt and tie.”
Grant cast his eyes over the crowd until he saw who she was talking about. “No,” he said. “He doesn’t look familiar. Why?”
“He was watching me earlier. As though he knew me.” More likely, he’d thought she was Helena. But surely everyone in town had heard of the accident and knew Helena was dead.
Grant was obviously thinking along the same lines. “Maybe he was struck by the resemblance.”
“That must have been it.” And yet she’d had the definite impression he was trying to communicate with her.
“IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT. I had no idea it was so late.” Amalie checked her watch while Grant opened the apartment door for her.
“Should I go down to Heidi’s and get Davin for you?”
“No, he’s staying the night.” Their glances connected, and the longing she’d felt on the dance floor suddenly returned.
“Right.” Grant nodded, broke off eye contact. “You did say that. I’d forgotten.”
“Coffee?” she asked, tilting her head toward the open door.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, that would be nice.”
Too bad Helena’s apartment made for such a dismal setting. They avoided the stark living room and ended up sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee machine to do its thing.
“Thanks for taking me, Grant, and introducing me to those people.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for.”
Amalie nodded. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it was a mistake that I came out here.”
A loud gurgle from the machine on the counter signaled that the coffee was ready. They stood at the same time, with Grant reaching for the mugs while she pulled a carton of milk from the fridge. In front of the coffee machine, they both stopped. Grant put the mugs on the counter, then took the milk from her hands.
“You’ve been disillusioned,” Grant said, laying his hands on her shoulders.
At his touch, Amalie’s heart began a steady hammering against the wall of her chest. “I thought Davin should know the truth about his mother. Now I’m not so sure….”
“Will you be going back to Toronto?”
Amalie considered the idea for only a moment. “Not yet. I don’t feel right about leaving until Helena’s body is recovered. We’ve come this far—we might as well see it through to the end.”
Grant still had his hands on her shoulders. Now she slipped hers around his waist and rested them lightly on the waistband of his jeans. She examined his face, gauging his reaction. “Disappointed you’re not getting rid of us?”
“Hardly.” His chest expanded on a full breath of air, and his head lowered a few inches.
The mouth that had sung love songs next to her ear earlier was slowly moving toward her lips. The possibilities she’d imagined on the dance floor now seemed entirely within reach. So badly she wanted this man’s touch, his warmth…
And yet, she was afraid.
“Grant, I—”
Then his lips were on hers, erasing the words she’d been struggling to find.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GRANT HAD NEVER COMPARED one woman’s kiss with another’s, but if he’d tried with Amalie Fremont, he would’ve failed. When his mouth found hers, tentative yet willing, he knew he’d never experienced anything like it before.
On the dance floor he’d felt such an overwhelming longing. Not just a sexual response, but an aching need that reminded him of how alone he’d been these past few years. Amalie in his arms was so fragile and light. He’d wanted to shield her from the ugly truth about her sister; no, he’d wanted to make her forget about her sister, to think about him. Only him. The way he’d been constantly thinking of her from the moment they’d met…
She was so beautiful. He still found it odd that her identical twin sister had never evoked the same response in him. Which only proved this wasn’t just a physical thing. But he’d already known that. Amalie intrigued him. She was intelligent and strong, yet had this appealing naive side she tried so hard to hide.
He wanted to explore all aspects of thi
s woman. And yes, he wanted to make love to her. The way she yielded in his arms, she wanted the same thing. That ought to make the situation simple, but he knew it wasn’t. The wrong move on his part could send her running.
Still, to hold back was hard. His body was trying to call the shots: Run your hands over the curves of her hips. Pull her closer. Let her know how much you want her.
But all his delicious impulses were thwarted when he considered the emotional angles. Was his desire truly reciprocated? Or was he taking advantage of a woman who was still distraught over the loss of her sister?
He hadn’t been very kind about Helen’s death. He felt sorry about that, now that he knew Amalie better. Even Toby at the bar had managed to come up with more words of sympathy, in a brief meeting, than he himself had managed over several days.
Exercising great restraint, he softened his kisses, while stroking her bound hair with one hand. If only he could go back to their first encounter and play it all out differently this time.
“Amalie.” Her name was like music to him, as potent as the love ballad they’d danced to earlier. He kissed her again, gently taking her head between his hands and allowing his mouth to touch lightly over her cheeks, her brow, the small curve of her nose.
When he paused, Amalie opened her eyes and stared at him. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she whispered.
“Don’t say that.”
“Not even if it’s true?”
Disappointment settled his feet firmly on the kitchen floor. He became aware of his own heavy breathing, the smell of coffee in the air, the knocking from the radiator against the wall.
“I didn’t anticipate this development,” she said.
“Believe me, neither did I.” He’d thought he would hate Helen’s sister. How wrong he’d been.
“Grant, you need to understand something. About me. About tonight…”
That was just it, he thought to himself. He already felt he understood. There was something about this woman that he recognized in himself. That was part of the attraction, the pull….
But Amalie was slipping from his arms. He felt a rush of cold air as she left.
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