Trouble in Paradise: A Novel

by Robin Lee Hatcher

  “Hmm.”

  He could almost see the wheels turning in his sister’s head.

  “Anything I should know about her?” she asked, sounding both curious and amused.

  “Not at the moment. No.” But he hoped there would be.

  Not that he was having a great deal of success in that department. Ever since the day he kissed her, Shayla had avoided him like the plague. It was obvious that she didn’t want to be alone with him. It would have been plenty easy to assume she disliked him.

  Only he hadn’t imagined her response to his kisses. Whatever the reason was that she wanted to avoid him, it wasn’t because she wasn’t attracted to him.

  Now all he had to do was figure out what obstacle he had to overcome, and then overcome it. And he would overcome it.

  “Hello? Nat? Jim, I think I’ve been disconnected. Nat, are you there?”

  “I’m here, Leigh,” he answered. “Sorry. I got distracted by something. Tell me again what you were saying.”

  “Well, please listen this time.”

  “I’m listening. You’ve got my full attention. Honest.”

  “Write this down so you don’t forget. We’ll arrive in Boise on the twenty-ninth. That’s a Tuesday.” She gave him the airline, flight number and arrival time. “Jim and I won’t be able to go up to the ranch with you and the girls like we’d planned. We have to fly over to Seattle the next morning. The company has accelerated everything. We’ll ship most of the girls’ things to the ranch, but we’ll pack enough for them to get by until the rest is delivered.”

  “Won’t need much until school starts. Boots, jeans, shorts, swimsuits. It’s summer, Leigh. You know what summers are like up here. Lazy, hazy, crazy, like the song says.”

  “I do wish we could stay with you for a few days. At least until they settle in and begin to feel comfortable. It’s going to be such a change for them, and they barely remember you from your last visit to Florida.”

  He tipped his chair back on its hind legs until his shoulders touched the wall. “You gotta quit worrying. Cathy and Angie and I will get along fine. They’ll miss you, but I won’t let them have much time to stew over it.”

  “They’re only six years old.”

  “When you and I were six, we helped Dad round up cattle. You could catch and clean a brook trout all by yourself.”

  “They’re city kids, Nat.”

  “That’ll change.”

  There was a slightly choked sound in her voice as she said, “I’m going to miss them. They grow up so fast. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Maybe I should stay in the States and—”

  “Leigh, you know you want to be with Jim. This will be an experience of a lifetime for you both. Will you trust me to keep my nieces safe and happy? They’ll be loved and cared for. You’ve got my word on it.”

  Somehow, by the time they rang off, he managed to convince his sister everything would be okay. Now if only he was as confident as he’d sounded.

  Things would be different at the ranch once the twins came to stay. He’d been living alone a long time now. He was settled in his ways, used to fending for himself. He couldn’t say he knew much about raising little girls. Maybe he shouldn’t have—

  Shayla knows.

  A smile curved the comers of his mouth as he pictured her in his mind. Yes, Shayla knew plenty about raising little girls. She was the eldest in a large family. She could give him a few pointers on how to care for his nieces.

  Nat’s thoughts shifted and his smile faded. He’d allowed her to avoid him in the days since their ride to Elk Flat. He thought he was doing the right thing, giving her time and space to get used to the idea of him caring for her. Then again, maybe it was the wrong thing to do. It felt wrong. He missed her. He missed seeing her wild curls and the sparkle in her eyes. He missed the sound of her voice. He wanted to see more of her, not less.

  “I’m not falling in love with her. I’ve already fallen.” He closed his eyes. Lord, is Shayla part of the plan You’ve got for me? If not, I sure hope You’ll let me know before I make a fool of myself.

  “You might as well be straight with me.” Ty tipped his hat back on his head and stared at Shayla with a piercing gaze. “Won’t go no further than here.”

  She looked down at the glass of lemonade in her hand. “Of course I like Nat. He’s been a great neighbor. Very helpful.” She motioned toward the cabin. “Look at all he’s accomplished.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  She gave a helpless shrug.

  “Look, I don’t reckon there’s any man I like and respect more’n Nat. He’s my friend. And I know he’s got a hankerin’ for you—”

  “A hankerin’?” she interrupted, amused by his word choice but not the meaning.

  “Unless I miss my guess, you’re feeling the same way about him. So I want to know if I need to clear out. No point standin’ in the way of two folks who want the same thing. Now is there?”

  “No, I don’t suppose there is.” She met his gaze again. “But you’re wrong about it being more than friendship between Nat and me.”

  He glanced down the road leading from the highway. “Am I?” A grin curved his mouth.

  She followed his gaze and saw the teal pickup, followed by a rising cloud of dust.

  “Looks like Nat wouldn’t agree with you.”

  Conflicting emotions—joy, despair, hope, disappointment—raged in her chest. She’d evaded him all week so she wouldn’t have to feel these things. And now he’d come to see her.

  Ty set aside the glass of lemonade she’d given him a few minutes before. “I think I’ll be heading into town.” He bent his hat brim in her direction. “You take care, Shayla. You hear?”

  He went to his Jeep, waiting beside it until Nat pulled into the drive and brought his rig to a halt. Then Ty called out a greeting to his friend before getting into his own vehicle and driving away.

  With her heart tattooing in her chest, Shayla watched as Nat strode toward the cabin, his expression grim.

  When their gazes met, he asked, “Did I interrupt something?”

  “No.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Ty’s got too much free time.”

  He almost sounded jealous—which was about the most ridiculous notion she’d ever had.

  “Shayla, we need to talk.” He came up the steps. “About what happened last week. Up at Elk Flat.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I think we should.”

  With a sigh escaping her lips, she crossed to the opposite side of the deck.

  He wasn’t deterred. “Look, we’re both adults. Why are we acting like a couple of teenagers with their first crush?”

  Good question.

  “I like you, Shayla. More than like you, as a matter of fact.”

  That caused her to turn around.

  He took a step toward her, holding his hat in his hands. “I’d just like to know if you might feel a bit of the same way about me. If not, then we’ll forget I kissed you. But if you do, then I’d like to see where this thing might lead.”

  What did she feel? Where could this lead? She didn’t know. It was all too confusing. Her heart. Her head. They seemed to war within her. Nothing made sense, the way it had before he rode into her life.

  “I’d like to take you to supper tomorrow night, if you’d be kind enough to accept my invitation. There’s a nice Italian restaurant in McCall. We can dine on the deck overlooking the lake. It’s nice this time of year. Not too hot and still early in the season for the mosquitoes to be bothersome. I reckon I’ll have you home by eleven.”

  How did words like reckon and dine fit in the same guy’s vocabulary? One minute he sounded as if he was straight out of an old dime novel and the next he sounded as cosmopolitan as any man she’d met in a corporate setting.

  Who was Nat O’Connell anyway, and why was he attracted to her? She wanted to know. More than anything, she wanted to know.

  “Is that a yes, Miss Vincen
t?”

  Helplessly she nodded.

  “I’ll come for you at five o’clock.”

  Another nod.

  “Evening, Shayla.” He brushed her cheek with a chaste kiss, then strode away.

  “You’ve got it bad for her,” Ty said the next morning as he and Nat stretched a new section of barbed wire between fence posts.

  Nat didn’t deny it.

  “I’d about given up hope you’d find somebody who made you feel this way.”

  “Me, too. It seems the good Lord had other plans.”

  He sure hoped he was hearing God right. Shayla didn’t know squat about ranch work or cattle or horses. Oh, sure, she could learn. She was nobody’s fool. But she’d spent her whole life in a big city and was like a fish out of water in Rainbow Valley. Let that first hard winter roll around when they wouldn’t be able to get out of the ranch for weeks at time. Let her get fed up with the limited selection of items at the small grocery store in town. Let her want to go back to Portland for a visit with her family and have to endure the long drive to Boise to catch a plane, a plane that could be grounded for any number of reasons. Let her be dying to see the hot new movie and have to wait for weeks or months before it made it to the nearest theater where movies were only shown on Fridays and Saturdays for most of the year.

  Those things drove the flatlanders crazy. They might drive Shayla crazy, too.

  That didn’t seem to matter to him. He’d lost his heart to her, and there was no going back now. Come to think of it, he’d probably started falling in love the first time he saw her, marching around on the cabin deck with that trick knife in her hand.

  If he was wrong, if she wasn’t the woman God wanted for him, it was going to hurt and hurt plenty when be found out. But it was too late to change how he felt now. He’d have to ride it out.

  A sense of peace and certainty stole over him. He wasn’t wrong to love her. He wasn’t wrong to try to win her heart.

  “So what’re you gonna do about it?” Ty asked, dragging Nat from his private thoughts. “About how you feel about her.”

  He straightened, met the younger cowboy’s gaze and grinned. “Everything I can.”

  “I got a feelin’ it won’t take much.”

  “Sure hope you’re right, Ty.”

  “Believe me, if she’d given me the time of day, I wouldn’t’ve given up so easy. There’s something special about that one.”

  Nat laughed as he pulled off his work gloves. “Don’t I know it.”

  “Reckon you do.” Ty swept off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. “It’s gonna be a scorcher today. Let’s get that next section done before it gets any hotter.”

  The words hadn’t come right all day long. Crinkled paper surrounded Shayla’s chair. Sheets and sheets of twenty-pound bond. The printer spewed them forth, then Shayla decided they weren’t good enough to line the bottom of a birdcage.

  The problem was with True Barry. She was supposed to be the next murder victim, but suddenly, Chet had developed more than a passing interest in the woman. Maybe True wasn’t such a liar. Maybe she wasn’t deserving of death. Maybe she should have the chance to fall in love with a good and decent guy like Chet Morrison.

  Shayla pressed her forehead against the computer screen and released a groan. “I’m not writing a romance. This is a mystery, for crying out loud.”

  But who said there couldn’t be love in a mystery novel?

  “Focus,” she muttered. “I’ve got to focus.”

  She should concentrate on red herrings, believable motivations, and hidden clues. Instead, she’d written about how pretty True looked in that little red number and how much Chet wanted to kiss her.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” She rolled her chair back from her desk and got up, kicking at the pile of papers around her feet. “At this rate I’ll never get the book written.”

  Still muttering to herself, she walked toward the kitchen, thinking it might help if she fixed herself a sandwich. Her stomach had been growling for at least half an hour. She’d better have some lunch.

  Then her gaze fell on the clock above the stove, and she nearly had heart failure—4:50 p.m.? But it couldn’t be! The last time she’d checked it hadn’t even been noon.

  “No, no, no!”

  She rushed to the bedroom. She didn’t dare glance at the mirror as she whisked her T-shirt over her head and dropped it, alongside her cutoffs, onto the floor. She wished there was time to take a shower and do something special with her hair, but it was too late for that

  Oh, how had she let this happen to her? She’d wanted to look her best for this date.

  Although why it should matter so much, she couldn’t say. She wasn’t fooling herself. Nat’s attraction for her was a temporary thing. He might not realize it yet, but she did. He was lonely. He had as much as told her so. Lonely men were willing to spend time with women like Shayla until someone prettier or smarter or more successful came along. Then they weren’t lonely anymore.

  But still… What if Nat was different? What if…

  She dressed in a loose-flowing, sleeveless summer dress. Then she ran a quick brush through her hair before twisting it into a roll and catching it with a hair claw at the back of her head. Finally she applied a bit of makeup, despairing that it would not make one shred of difference.

  She wished she was tall and beautiful like True Barry. But True was a fictional character and could be changed with a bit of typing on the keyboard. Shayla was stuck with who and what she was.

  A knock sounded at her open front door.

  “Just a moment!” She took one last look at herself in the mirror, sighed and hurried out of the bathroom.

  Nat smiled when he saw her.

  Shayla’s stomach did a cartwheel.

  “Hi.” His voice was low, his eyes appreciative.

  “Hi.” She felt like a teenager about to go to her first prom.

  “You ready?”

  “Yes.” She reached for her purse.

  He motioned for her to come outside. After she did so, he closed the door behind her.

  “Hope you’re hungry.” He took hold of her arm and guided her down the steps. “The restaurant I’m taking you to has great food. Italian. Seafood. Steaks. Salads.”

  Only ten minutes before, she’d thought she was ravenous. Now she didn’t think she could eat a bite.

  He helped her into the pickup, but before he closed the door he said, “You look pretty as a picture, Shayla.” The way he said it, she almost believed him.

  “Thanks,” Nat whispered several hours later as they stood on her deck in the pale light of the last quarter moon. “I had a great time.”

  “So did I,” she confessed, knowing she’d never spoken truer words to anyone.

  “I enjoyed hearing more about your family. I’ll bet they’re fun to be around.”

  “They’d like you, too.”

  “I wish Leigh and Jim could meet you before they leave for Italy.” He leaned closer.

  She smelled his aftershave, a musky scent that made her go all soft and fluttery inside. “Italy?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” His breath was warm on her forehead. “I thought I did. Jim’s job is taking him overseas for a year.”

  “Oh.” She sighed as her eyes drifted closed, knowing he was about to kiss her.

  And he did, tenderly plying her mouth with his. She’d never been kissed the way Nat kissed her now. As if she was precious, fragile, beautiful.

  She wished the evening would never end.

  It seemed a wonderful lifetime later that he raised his head, ending the sweet agony. She opened her eyes, gazed up at him. “Would you like to come in for a while? I could make some decaf.”

  “Well…maybe for just one cup.” He kissed her again, a soft brush of his lips upon hers.

  A few minutes later, Shayla lifted the lid off the can of decaffeinated coffee with shaking fingertips. She wondered if Nat had any idea what he did to her.

/>   The telephone’s sharp peal jerked her from her pleasantly tortured reverie. It was almost midnight. Alarm darted through her as she reached to answer it. “Hello?”

  “Shayla!”

  “Anne? What’s wrong?”

  “Shayla, I need to come stay with you. Oh, please don’t say no. Please.”

  Her sister was crying, making it difficult to understand what she said. “Calm down, Anne.”

  “I can’t bear to stay here. Not another minute.”

  “What happened?”

  Out of the comer of her eye, she saw Nat rise from the sofa and move toward her.

  “I…I can’t talk about it right now. I need to get away from Portland. Please let me come to stay with you. I promise I won’t get in the way.”

  It must have something to do with her latest boyfriend. Anne always overreacted when something went awry in her love life.

  “Anne, there isn’t a lot of room in the cabin. My computer is in the living room and I—”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t let me come. I don’t have anywhere else to go, and I can’t bear to stay here. Not another minute. Shayla, I’m desperate. Please. Please let me come.”

  It would be useless to try to explain her need for privacy, for some time to herself. She knew that as well as she knew her own name.

  Nat’s hand alighted on her arm. She glanced over at him, saw the concern in his gaze, gave her head a slight shake, then closed her eyes. Fear nearly strangled her. What about Nat? They were just beginning to—

  “Shayla, are you listening to me? I’m desperate. Please. You’ve got to let me come.”

  “All right, Anne,” she answered at last. “You can come, if you really need to. Think about it overnight and call me again in the morning.”

  “Thanks. I knew I could count on you. And I won’t change my mind, but I’ll call you in the morning like you want.”

  They each said goodbye, then Shayla hung up the phone.

  “What is it?” Nat asked gently.

  “Nothing. One of my sisters is coming for a visit. That’s all.”

  He pulled her into his arms, pressing her cheek against his chest “I’m here for you, Shayla,” he whispered.