A Cold Creek Reunion (12 page)

“And where was your grandmother while Chief Bowman was letting you play with his dog?” she asked.

The plan had been for Jan to watch the children while Laura went to the grocery store for her mother, but it sounded very much as if they had been wandering through the hotel, bothering Taft.

“She had a phone call in the office. We were coloring at a new table in the lobby, just like Grandma told us to. I promise we didn’t go anywhere like upstairs. I was coloring a picture of a horse and Maya was just scribbling. She’s not a very good colorer.”

“She’s working on it, aren’t you,
mi hija?
”

Maya giggled at the favorite words and the everyday tension and stress of grocery shopping and counting coupons and loading bags into her car in a rainstorm seemed to fade away.

She was working hard to give her family a good life here. Maybe it wasn’t perfect yet, but it was definitely better than what they would have known if she’d stayed in Madrid.

“So you were coloring and…” she prompted.

“And Chief Bowman came in and he was carrying the dog. He has great big ears. They’re like donkey ears!”

She had to smile at the exaggeration. The dog had big ears but nothing that unusual for a corgi.

“Really?” she teased. “I’ve never noticed that about Chief Bowman.”

Alex giggled. “The dog, silly! The
dog
has big ears. His name is Lucky Lou and he has a broken leg. Did you know that? He got hit by a car! That’s sad, huh?”

“Terribly sad,” she agreed.

“Chief Bowman says he has to wear a cast for another week and he can’t run around with the other dogs.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I know, huh? He can only sit quiet and be petted, but Chief Bowman says I can do it anytime I want to.”

“That’s very kind of Chief Bowman,” she answered, quite sure her six-year-old probably wouldn’t notice the caustic edge to her tone. She knew just what Taft was after—a sucker who would take the dog off his hands.

“He’s super nice.”

“The dog?”

“No! Chief Bowman! He says I can come visit Lou whenever I want, and when his cast comes off, I can maybe take him for a walk.”

The decided note of hero-worship she heard in Alex’s voice greatly worried her. Her son was desperate for a strong male influence in his life. She understood that.

But Taft wasn’t going to be staying at the inn forever. Eventually his house would be finished and he would move out, taking his little dog with him.

The thought depressed her, although she knew darn well it was dangerous to allow herself to care what Taft Bowman did.

“And guess what else?” Alex pressed, his tone suddenly cagey.

“What?”

“Chief Bowman said Lucky Lou is going to need a new home once he recovers!”

Oh, here we go,
she thought. It didn’t take a child-behavior specialist to guess what would be coming next.

Sure enough, Alex tilted his head and gave her a deceptively casual look. “So I was thinking maybe
we
could give him a new home.”

You’re always thinking, aren’t you, kiddo?
she thought with resignation, gearing up for the arguments she could sense would follow that declaration.

“He’s a super-nice dog and he didn’t bark one single time. I know I could take care of him, Mama. I just
know
it.”

“I know it,” Maya said in stout agreement, although Laura had doubts as to whether her daughter had even been paying attention to the conversation as she played with a stack of plastic cups at the kitchen table.

How was she going to get out of this one without seeming like the meanest mom in the world? The dog
was
adorable. She couldn’t deny it. With those big ears and the beagle coloring and his inquisitive little face, he was a definite charmer.

Maybe in a few months she would be in a better position to get a pet, but she was barely holding on here, working eighteen-hour days around caring for her children so she could help her mother rehabilitate this crumbling old inn and bring it back to the graceful accommodations it once had been.

She had to make the inn a success no matter how hard she had to work to do it. She couldn’t stomach another failure. First her engagement to Taft, then her marriage. Seeing the inn deteriorate further would be the last straw.

A dog, especially a somewhat fragile one, would complicate
everything.

“I would really, really love a dog,” Alex persisted.

“Dog. Me, too,” Maya said.

Drat Taft for placing her in this position. He had to have known her children would come back brimming over with enthusiasm for the dog, pressing her to add him to her family.

Movement outside the kitchen window caught her gaze and through the rain she saw Taft walking toward the little grassy area set aside for dogs. He was wearing a hooded raincoat and carrying an umbrella. At the dog-walking area, he set Lucky Lou down onto the grass and she saw the dog’s cast had been wrapped in plastic.

She watched as Taft held the umbrella over the little corgi-beagle mix while the dog took care of business.

The sight of this big, tough firefighter showing such care for a little injured dog touched something deep inside her. Tenderness rippled and swelled inside her and she drew in a sharp breath. She didn’t want to let him inside her heart again. She couldn’t do it.

This was Taft Bowman. He was a womanizer, just as Javier had been. The more the merrier. That was apparently his mantra when it came to women. She had been through this before and she refused to do it again.

From his vantage point on top of the counter, Alex had a clear view out the window. “See?” he said with a pleading look. “Isn’t he a great dog? Chief Bowman says he doesn’t even poop in the house or anything.”

She sighed and took her son’s small hand in hers, trying to soften the difficulty of her words. “Honey, I don’t know if this is the best time for us to get a dog. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you yes or no right now. I’m going to have to think hard about this before I can make any decision. Don’t get your hopes up, okay?”

Even as she said the words, she knew they were useless. By the adoration on his face as he looked out the rain-streaked window at the little dog, she could plainly tell Alex already had his heart set on making a home for Lou.

She supposed things could be worse. The dog was apparently potty-trained, friendly and not likely to grow much bigger. It wasn’t as if he was an English sheepdog, the kind of pet who shed enough fur it could be knitted into a sweater.

But then, this was Taft Bowman’s specialty, convincing people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t even consider.

She was too smart to fall for it all over again. Or at least that’s what she told herself.

Chapter Nine

N
early a week later, Laura spread the new duvet across the bed in the once-fire-damaged room, then stepped back to survey her work.

Not bad, if she did say so herself. She was especially proud of the new walls, which she had painted herself, glazing with a darker earth tone over the tan to create a textured, layered effect, almost like a Tuscan farmhouse.

Hiring someone else to paint would have saved a great deal of time and trouble, of course. The idea of all the rooms yet to paint daunted her, made her back ache just thinking about it. On the other hand, this renovation had been
her
idea to breathe life into the old hotel, and the budget was sparse, even with the in-kind labor Taft had done for them over the past few weeks.

It might take her a month to finish all the other rooms, but she would still save several thousand dollars that could be put into upgrading the amenities offered by the inn.

She intended to make each room at the inn charming and unique. This was a brilliant start. The room looked warm and inviting and she couldn’t wait to start renting it out. She smoothed a hand over the wood trim around the windows, noting the tightness of the joints and the fine grain that showed beautifully through the finish.

“Wow, it looks fantastic in here.”

She turned at the voice from the open doorway and found Taft leaning against the doorjamb. He looked tired, she thought, with a day’s growth of whiskers on his cheeks and new smudges under his eyes. Not tired, precisely. Weary and worn, as if he had stopped here because he couldn’t move another step down the hall toward his own room.

“Amazing the difference a coat of paint and a little love can do, isn’t it?” she answered, worried for him.

“Absolutely. I would stay here in a heartbeat.”

“You
are
staying here. Okay, not
here
precisely, in this particular room, but at the inn.”

“If this room is any indication, the rest of this place will be beautiful by the time you’re finished. People will be fighting over themselves to get a room.”

“I hope so,” she answered with a smile. This was what she wanted. The chance to make this historic property come to life.

“Do you ever sleep?” he asked.

“I could ask the same question. You look tired.”

“Yeah, it’s been a rough one.”

She found the weary darkness in his gaze disconcerting. Taft was teasing and fun, with a smile and a lighthearted comment for everyone. She rarely saw him serious and quiet. “What’s happened?”

He sank down onto the new sofa, messing up the throw pillows she had only just arranged. She didn’t mind. He looked like a man who needed somewhere comfortable to rest for a moment.

“Car accident on High Creek Road. Idiot tourist took one of those sharp turns up there too fast. The car went off the road and rolled about thirty feet down the slope.”

“Is he okay?”

“The driver just had scrapes and bruises and a broken arm.” He scratched at a spot at the knee of his jeans. “His ten-year-old kid wasn’t so lucky. We did CPR for about twenty minutes while we waited for the medevac helicopter and were able to bring him back. Last I heard, he survived the flight to the children’s hospital in Salt Lake City, but he’s in for a long, hard fight.”

Her heart ached for the child and for his parents. “Oh, no.”

“I hate incidents with kids involved.” His mouth was tight. “Makes me want to tell every parent I know to hug their children and not let go. You just never know what could happen on any given day. If I didn’t know Ridge would shoot me for it, I’d drive over to the ranch and wake up Destry right now, just so I could give her a big hug and tell her I love her.”

His love for his niece warmed her heart. He was a man with a huge capacity to love and he must have deep compassion if he could be so upset by the day’s events. Hadn’t he learned how to keep a safe distance between his emotions and the emergency calls he had to respond to as a firefighter and paramedic?

“I’m sorry you had to go through that today.”

He shrugged. “It’s part of the job description, I guess. Sometimes I think my life would have been a hell of a lot easier if I’d stuck to raising cattle with Ridge.”

These moments always took her by surprise when she realized anew that Taft was more than just the lighthearted, laughing guy he pretended to be. He felt things deeply. She had always known that, she supposed, but it was sometimes easy to forget when he worked so hard to be a charming flirt.

After weighing the wisdom of being in too close proximity to him against her need to offer comfort, she finally sank onto the sofa beside him.

“I’m sure you did everything you could.”

“That’s what we tell ourselves to help us sleep at night. Yet we always wonder.”

He had been driving back to the ranch after being with her that terrible December night his parents were killed, when a terrified Caidy had called 9-1-1, she remembered now. Taft had heard the report go out on the radio in his truck just as he’d been turning into the gates of the ranch and had rushed inside to find his father shot dead and his mother bleeding out on the floor.

Not that he ever talked about this with her, but one of the responding paramedics had told her about finding a blood-covered Taft desperately trying to do CPR on his mother. He wouldn’t stop, even after the rescue crews arrived.

His failure to revive his mother had eaten away at him, she was quite certain. If he had arrived five minutes earlier, he might have been able to save her.

She suspected, though of course he blocked this part of his life from her, that some part of him had even blamed Caidy for not calling for rescue earlier. Caidy had been home, as well, and had hidden in a closet in terror for several moments after her parents were shot, not sure whether the thieves—who had come to what they thought was an empty ranch to steal the Bowmans’ art collection and been surprised into murder—might still actually be in the house.

After Laura left Pine Gulch, she had wondered if he blocked out his emotions after the murders in an effort to protect himself from that guilt at not being able to do enough to save his parents.

Even though he pretended he was fine, the grief and loss had simmered inside him. If only he had agreed to postpone the wedding, perhaps time would have helped him reach a better place so they could have married without that cloud over them.

None of that mattered now. He was hurting and she was compelled by her very nature to help ease that pain if she could. “What you do is important, Taft, no matter how hard it sometimes must feel. Think of it this way—if not for you and the other rescuers, that boy wouldn’t have any chance at all. He wouldn’t have made it long enough for the medical helicopter. And he’s only one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people you’ve helped. You make a real difference here in Pine Gulch. How many people can say that about their vocation?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time and she couldn’t read the emotion in his gaze. “There you go again. Always looking for the good in a situation.”

“It seems better than focusing on all the misery and despair around me.”

“Yeah, but sometimes life sucks and you can’t gloss over the smoke damage with a coat of paint and a couple new pictures on the wall.”

His words stung more than they should have, piercing unerringly under an old, half-healed scar.

Javier used to call her
dulce y inocente.
Sweet and innocent. He treated her like a silly girl, keeping away all their financial troubles, his difficulties with the hotel, the other women he slept with, as if she were too fragile to deal with the harsh realities of life.

“I’m not a child, Taft. Believe me, I know just how harsh and ugly the world can be. I don’t think it makes me silly or naive simply because I prefer to focus on the hope that with a little effort, people can make a difference in each other’s lives. We can always make tomorrow a little better than today, can’t we? What’s the point of life if you focus only on the negative, on what’s dark or difficult instead of all the joy waiting to be embraced with each new day?”

She probably sounded like a soppy greeting card, but at that moment she didn’t care.

“I never said you were silly.” He gave her a probing look that made her flush. “Who did?”

She wanted to ignore the question. What business was it of his? But the old inn was quiet around them and there was an odd sort of intimacy in this pretty, comfortable room.

“My husband. He treated me like I was too delicate to cope with the realities of life. It was one of the many points of contention between us. He wanted to put a nice shiny gloss over everything, pretend all was fine.”

He studied her for a long moment, then sighed. “I suppose that’s not so different from what I did to you after my parents died.”

“Yes,” she answered through her surprise that he would actually bring up this subject and admit to his behavior. “If not for our…history, I guess you could say, it might not have bothered me so much when Javier insisted on that shiny gloss. But I had been through it all before. I didn’t want to be that fragile child.”

Before she realized what he intended, he covered her hand with his there on the sofa between them. His hand was large and warm, his fingers rough from years of both working on the ranch and putting his life on the line to help the residents of Pine Gulch, and for one crazy moment, she wanted to turn her hand over, grab tightly to his strength and never let go.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Laura. It was selfish and wrong of me. I should have postponed the wedding until I was in a better place.”

“Why didn’t you? A few months—that might have made all the difference, Taft.”

“Then I would have had to admit I was still struggling to cope, six months later, when I thought I should have been fine and over things. I was a tough firefighter, Laura. I faced wildfires. I ran into burning buildings. I did whatever I had to. I guess I didn’t want to show any signs of weakness. It was…tough for me to accept that my parents’ murders threw me for a loop, so I pretended I was fine, too selfish and immature a decade ago to consider that you might have been right, that I needed more time.”

She closed her eyes, wondering how her life might have been different if she had gone ahead with the wedding, despite all her misgivings. If she had been a little more certain he would come through his anger and grief, if she had married him anyway, perhaps they could have worked through it.

On the other hand, even though she had loved him with all her heart, she would have been miserable in a marriage where he refused to share important pieces of himself with her. They probably would have ended up divorced, hating each other, with a couple of
messed-up kids trapped in the middle.

He squeezed her fingers and his gaze met hers. Something glimmered in the depths of those green eyes, emotions she couldn’t identify and wasn’t sure she wanted to see.

“For the record,” he murmured, “nothing was right after you left. It hasn’t been right all this time. I’ve missed you, Laura.”

She stared at him, blood suddenly pulsing through her. She didn’t want to hear this. All her protective instincts were urging her to jump up from this sofa and escape, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move.

“I should have come after you,” he said. “But by the time I straightened out my head enough to do it, you were married and expecting a baby and I figured I had lost my chance.”

“Taft—” Her voice sounded husky and low and she couldn’t seem to collect her thoughts enough to add anything more. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had. He didn’t give her a chance to say a word before he leaned in, his eyes an intense, rich green, and lowered his mouth to hers.

His mouth was warm and tasted of coffee and something else she couldn’t identify. Some part of her knew she should move now, while she still had the will, but she couldn’t seem to make any of her limbs cooperate, too lost in the sheer, familiar joy of being in his arms again.

He kissed her softly, not demanding anything, only tasting, savoring, as if her mouth were some sort of rare and precious wine. She was helpless to do anything but try to remember to breathe while her insides twisted and curled with longing.

“I missed you, Laura,” he murmured once more, this time against her mouth.

I missed you, too. So much.

The words echoed through her mind but she couldn’t say them. Not now. Not yet.

She could do nothing now but soak in the stunning tenderness of his kiss and let it drift around and through her, resurrecting all those feelings she had shoved so deeply down inside her psyche.

Finally, when she couldn’t think or feel past the thick flow of emotions, he deepened the kiss. Now. Now was the time she should pull away, before things progressed too far. Her mind knew it, but again, the rest of her was weak and she responded instinctively, as she had done to him so many times before, and pressed her mouth to his.

For long moments, nothing else existed but his strength and his heat, his mouth firm and determined on hers, his arms holding her tightly, his muscles surrounding her. She wasn’t sure exactly how he managed it without her realizing, but he shifted and turned her so she was resting back against the armrest of the sofa while he half covered her with his body until she was lost in memories of making love with him, tangled bodies and hearts.