Home to Laura

by Mary Sullivan

  Salem looked taken aback. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I learned the hard way it doesn’t always have to be all my way. Sometimes it pays to listen to other people.” And sometimes you had to give to get.

  This could be a win-win situation rather than a knockdown drag-out fight that could land in the courts and stay there for years.

  He shook Salem’s hand and walked away, secure that he’d found the right man for the job.

  He was a good judge of character and Salem was a good man.

  Back in his car, Nick called his architect and arranged for him to fly down the following day.

  He rolled down the window and called out to Salem. “My architect is flying in tomorrow. Are you available to meet on the Jordan land on Wednesday?”

  Salem smiled broadly. “Yeah.”

  “Good. 10:00 a.m. See you at the Jordan house then.”

  * * *

  OLIVIA CAME OUT of one of Aiden’s bedrooms where she had been changing and walked down the hallway to the garden room at the back of the house. Her knees were shaking. She couldn’t seem to stop them. She’d tried.

  Lord knew she was trying to be sophisticated about this. An artist wanted to sculpt her. It flattered her. It terrified her.

  She wore only a white bedsheet and her bra and panties. The only person who ever saw her in so little, or less, was her doctor, and she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him.

  How was she to get through today without embarrassing herself? Without letting her hopeless infatuation with Aiden show?

  She would have to do what she always did with him—act the prude, like an uptight, classy little prig.

  John had always told her she had an innate elegance, but she turned it into something cold and brittle in her dealings with Aiden.

  She had no choice.

  When she entered the solarium, Aidan approached and placed his hands on top of hers where she had the sheet in a death grip against her chest.

  “Easy,” he whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He urged her to the far end of the glass room where he’d draped a white backdrop from the ceiling and across the floor. She stepped from the carpet and onto the backdrop and found it warm on her bare soles, from the sun that poured in through the windows.

  “Stand right here,” he directed. “Let me drape this differently. Let go.”

  She eased her hold on the bedsheet. When it fell from one shoulder revealing her bra strap, Aiden made a sound that Olivia couldn’t interpret.

  Before she knew what he was about, he reached his hands into the back of the sheet and unhooked her bra.

  “Take it off,” he ordered.

  No. Not at her age. She’d never been a big woman, but she had enough. She’d had a good figure, but even smaller breasts lost the fight with gravity over time.

  “I’m fifty-eight years old,” she said, appalled by how stuffy she sounded. Today, I’m fifty-eight. I’m getting older by the minute.

  He stared for a long time. “You’re beautiful.”

  “For my age, you mean.” There was that bitterness again. Why, oh why, couldn’t she grow old with grace and acceptance? Because she loved a much younger man.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Put words I don’t mean into my mouth. You’re a beautiful woman. When a man gives you a compliment, smile and say thank you.”

  She smiled, but it felt brittle enough to crack her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll turn my back,” he said. “Take off the bra. I won’t see anything.”

  Her fingers trembled but she managed to remove a frothy bit of lavender lace and tossed it onto a settee.

  He turned back around and eased the sheet from one of her shoulders until he could pull one arm out and then the other. He hadn’t wanted her bra straps to show. But did it really matter? He wasn’t photographing her. He was sculpting her. So he could add or take away whatever he wanted.

  Behind her now, he eased the fabric down her back. Farther. And then farther still. She pressed it against the tops of her breasts so it wouldn’t slip down at the front. How low did he intend to go?

  She found out when she felt his wet lips against the small of her back. She yelped and gripped the sheet while his big hands spanned her waist. She started to throb in all of the right places.

  Oh, she hadn’t felt this in such a long time.

  Sunlight warmed her closed eyelids.

  His fingers traveled her spine then around her waist and up until they brushed the bottoms of her breasts. She gasped and her eyes flew open. He was inside the sheet.

  “Let go,” he whispered in her ear, his warm breath feathering her neck and collarbone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Loving you.”

  His fingers moved with authority under her hands and the sheet fell away. She caught it over her stomach and leaned her head back against his chest. He cupped her breasts, his calluses rough and abrasive and delicious against her nipples.

  Then those calloused fingers slid down her stomach, moving quickly. Too quickly.

  When he drew the sheet from her nerveless fingers and the warm sun caressed her skin, all of it, she gasped. Standing in a room drenched with light from floor-to-ceiling windows, her poor body had nowhere to hide. Aiden would see everything, every stretch mark that three children had inflicted upon her, every bump and groove of cellulite, every flaw.

  “I can’t do this,” she cried and ran from the room, hoping that he wasn’t watching her inelegant retreat. In the bedroom where she’d undressed, she grabbed her clothes and put them on, her hands shaking. Her bra was still in the other room.

  She didn’t care. He could keep it—a souvenir of her humiliation.

  She stepped out of the room.

  “Don’t go,” he said, striding down the hallway toward her. “Do you think I care about imperfection?”

  “You’re an artist. You look for beauty.”

  “When I saw you naked—” she cringed but he plowed on “—I saw you, Olivia. You! A mature, beautiful woman. I want to love you. We can do it in the dark. We can do it wherever, however, you want. I want you.”

  “I thought I was here to model, not to be mauled.” Her voice shook, because his mauling had been so delicious.

  “Is that how it felt?” he asked, staring down at her in both puzzlement and understanding. “Like I was pawing you?”

  No! “Answer my question. Did you ask me here to model?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what was all that about?”

  “You’re an attractive woman, Olivia. I’m crazy about you. I want to make love to you.”

  To me! He wants to make love to me.

  Hope arose, but not as quickly as fear. “I’m fifteen years older than you.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Look at you! You’re in your prime while I’m over-the-hill.”

  His expression hardened. “There’s nothing over-the-hill about you.”

  She leaned back against the wall, because the strength of his personality weakened her knees. “What would people think?”

  “I don’t care. There’s passion under that contained poised exterior of yours and I want to unlock it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Does it matter what comes next? We’re a pair of grown-ups. We should be able to love without worrying about age or what society will think. We should be able to burn up the sheets if we want to.” He stepped close, the heat from his expressive body singeing her. “And we could, Olivia. You and me. We could.”

  His hazel eyes bored into her, deep into her quaking cowardly soul. Cowardly, yes, because she couldn’t do this.

  She stepped away from him.

  It was easy enough for him to say age didn’t matter when he looked like a god and had a body that wouldn’t age for years to come.

  When she drove away, she wrapped her shaky equilibrium in ang
er, because it was easier to do than to try to overcome her terror.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NICK WAS ABOUT to beard the lion in his den. He drove to the piece of land Gabe had bought with the money Nick had paid him for his share of the Jordan land.

  He’d written up a contract that would allow his brothers a portion of the annual profits from the resort. His lawyers had thought he was nuts. So did he. He still refused to look closely at why he’d felt compelled to do it, especially considering how much he disliked Gabe.

  Gabe and Callie hadn’t started building yet, but a few trees had been taken down and land marked off for the foundation.

  Nick wondered where he was supposed to find his daughter. There was no house. He got out of the car and stood still, listening. Somewhere in the woods there were people talking. He followed that sound.

  Pockets of not-yet-melted snow coated the forest floor. In a small clearing, Gabe and Emily fed dogs—at least a couple of dozen of them—fastened to a thick rope that ranged the perimeter. The dogs saw him and barked.

  Emily laughed and ran to him. “Dad!”

  She flew into his arms and he caught her and grinned. God, he’d missed her. On Friday, he’d made the decision to spend more time with her and had even brought her to Accord, but then Gabe had whisked her away, and Nick had missed her with an ache that had caught him off guard.

  He hugged her so hard she squealed. “I can’t breathe.”

  “You ready to go?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I want you to meet the dogs first.”

  “I—” he forestalled, but she was already off and running.

  Nick nodded at Gabe and Gabe nodded back, the two of them like a pair of wary dogs.

  Emily introduced him to every single dog, all thirty of them. At the last one, she said, “Daisy doesn’t like to be touched. Don’t pet her.”

  “Okay.” Nick had wanted a dog when he was a kid. Gabe had said no. His mom had supported Gabe on that, the one and only time she hadn’t given in to Nick. Nick had hated Gabe for deciding what Nick could or couldn’t own, as though he were Nick’s father, for God’s sake. He’d hated even more that his mom had sided with Gabe.

  So why did Gabe now own thirty dogs? Obviously, he hadn’t disliked them as Nick had assumed. Nick watched Gabe feed and interact with the dogs. He loved them.

  Nick had known about the dogsledding business, but had thought of it as just that—a business. Now, watching Gabe, he understood that it was a labor of love.

  Gabe had been watching Nick and approached.

  “It was too much work to own one when we were kids.” What? Was the man a freaking mind reader? Or was Nick that transparent? “Plus, we could barely afford food for us, let alone for an animal.”

  It made sense and went a small way toward mitigating Nick’s resentment. In that area.

  And yet, what about that trunk of toys and cars he owned? Mom had made sure there was money for that. The inconsistencies in his childhood and his memories confounded him.

  “Dad, come here,” Emily called. She led him to a large tent, maybe twenty-by-eighteen feet, dirty-white with guy wires extending into the trees.

  She opened the front flap and stepped inside. “This is where I slept both nights. It’s what prospectors used to live in when they were panning for gold.”

  Nick stared around the rugged interior. A rectangular iron box with a pipe that went through the roof constituted a stove. Kerosene lanterns hung from the ceiling. Rolled-up sleeping bags lined the walls along with blankets, pots and pans, plastic storage containers, winter coats, rubber boots. Rudimentary. Basic.

  So why was his daughter so excited?

  Nick had provided her with the best—the best—that money could buy and this was what made her happy? Cheated didn’t begin to describe how he felt.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  He’d been too brusque. At his tone, her face flattened.

  He softened his voice. “On the phone you said you wanted to see the Jordan land. Plus, we have reservations for dinner. We don’t want to be late.”

  “Okay.” She seemed somewhat mollified and picked up her knapsack.

  They said goodbye to Gabe and drove to the Jordan place.

  While they walked, Emily chatted about Gabe’s dogsledding business. Nick had to admit that once you stopped looking at it purely as a business, it had its appeal.

  “Uncle Gabe had amazing photographs and videos of the Iditarod.” In March, he’d entered his first dogsledding race. He hadn’t won, but had finished with he and his dogs all in one piece. Apparently, that was an accomplishment.

  “Where was Callie today?”

  “She’s setting up a home for adults like her mom who have Alzheimer’s and for senior citizens.”

  “A long-term-care facility?”

  “Yeah. Her mom and a woman named Sophie are already living there. That’s where we all showered.”

  Nick hadn’t even thought about how Emily would clean herself at Gabe’s. “You could have come to the B and B.”

  “I know, but I liked doing what they were doing. They’ll keep using the showers at the nursing home until their house is built. Callie does a lot of stuff to get the place ready for residents. She’s getting people and businesses to donate furniture. She’s interviewing nurses, but there aren’t a lot around here.”

  She should get the town to send some of their high school graduates to school to become nurses on the condition they return to Accord to work, as he’d done with the resort.

  “Callie said she really liked your idea of sending kids to college, so she’s trying to convince town council to pay for kids to study nursing.”

  Nick smiled. So, Callie had been thinking the same thing. He’d always thought she was a smart businesswoman.

  They arrived at the old homestead. There were no protestors or construction workers around today. It looked forlorn and abandoned.

  “Let’s go,” he said, leading her around the house and into the woods. Snow coated the ground in shady areas, hanging on by its fingertips until the bitter end of winter. It wouldn’t be long now until it disappeared altogether.

  “It’s so pretty here, Dad. I can’t believe you got to hang around in the country when you were a kid. What kinds of games did you and your brothers used to play?”

  “We had snowball fights.” He’d remembered that much already during his snowball fight with Emily. He would amend the memory now, though. More often than not, Gabe didn’t join him and Tyler. Nick didn’t know why.

  “That’s only one season. What else did you do?”

  They had arrived at the only pond on the property. He caught a glimpse of a memory, struggled then managed to bring it into focus. Gabe, of all people, had taught him how to fish.

  “We used to fish,” he said.

  “What did you catch?” Emily sounded wistful.

  “Trout. Brookies because they were easiest, but I think Gabe caught rainbow trout in this pond.” He glanced down at Emily, who stared at the water with such longing that Nick laughed. “Trout need cold water. The pond looks good, but it’s fed by runoff from Luther. It’s icy cold.”

  “Luther?”

  “Our mountain.”

  “Can we walk to it?”

  “Yep. We can walk up some of it, too. You need to climb to reach the top, though, with climbing gear. As far as I know, no one climbed it after Dad died.”

  They continued their walk until they came to a large clearing. “Judging by photos Callie sent to me, I’d guess this is where Gabe ran his dogsledding business.”

  “Wow, it’s pretty. Look at how tall the trees are.”

  Sunlight poured through the tops of the trees ringing the clearing, sending streamers of gold to the needle-coated earth. Pinecones crunched beneath their feet.

  “These are Rocky Mountain Douglas-firs. We used to have campouts in this clearing. Each of us had our own pup tent.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  To Nick
’s surprise, yeah, it did. He remembered some good times camping. “One night it rained and we found out how leaky the tents were. We ran to the house and Mom dried us and put us into our beds. It turns out the tents were old hand-me-downs from someone who no longer wanted them.”

  “Still,” Emily said, her voice wistful again. “It was an adventure.”

  “Yes, it was that.” Had he kept her childhood too safe? Had he robbed her of adventure?

  They reached the base of Luther in fifteen minutes, a good hike through the woods.

  Twenty minutes later, they had managed to hike a trail partway up Luther. It was cooler up here and snow covered everything.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “No. This is awesome. Wow, what a view.”

  “I’d forgotten about the view.”

  “Dad, I think you forget a lot of things.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re looking at everything like you’ve never seen it before.”

  Out of the mouths of babes.

  He’d spent too much of his adult years trying to ignore his childhood, trying to squelch memories that had seemed all bad, and yet here he was with good memories trying to break through.

  “Is that your land, too?”

  Emily pointed to acres of flat farmland on Luther’s far side.

  “No. That belongs to Ron Porter. I’m in negotiations with him to buy. He’s playing hardball. He knows his land would complement the downhill skiing. It would be great for cross-country-ski fans.”

  “Maybe he just wants to keep farming, Dad. You can’t make people leave their land if they don’t want to.”

  Nick blew a raspberry and Emily laughed. “Ron is past ready for retirement. He just wants to make a lot of money when he sells his land.”

  “He should. Just like you want to make money from all the people who’ll come here. That’s what people do. That’s all they want. They want to make money.”

  Nick would have protested Emily’s cynical tone, but he’d taught her that it was true. That’s all he did. What else had she ever seen him do? Or aspire to? Or plan and plot about?