A Cold Creek Reunion (2 page)

But this could have been a potentially serious situation, a crumbling old fire hazard like the inn.

He hated to come off hard-nosed and mean, but he had to make the kid understand the gravity. Education was a huge part of his job and a responsibility he took very seriously. “That was a very dangerous thing to do. People could have been seriously hurt. If your mother hadn’t been able to get to the room fast enough with the fire extinguisher, the flames could have spread from room to room and burned down the whole hotel and everything in it.”

To his credit, the boy met his gaze. Embarrassment and shame warred on his features. “I know. It was stupid. I’m really, really sorry.”

“The worst part of it is, I have told you again and again not to play with matches or lighters or anything else that can cause a fire. We’ve talked about the dangers.” Laura glowered at her son, who squirmed.

“I just wanted to see how it worked,” he said, his voice small.

“You won’t do it again, will you?” Taft said.

“Never. Never, ever.”

“Good, because we’re pretty strict about this kind of thing around here. Next time you’ll have to go to jail.”

The boy gave him a wide-eyed look, but then sighed with relief when he noticed Taft’s half grin. “I won’t do it again, I swear. Pinky promise.”

“Excellent.”

“Hey, Chief,” Lee Randall called from the engine. “We’re having a little trouble with the hose retractor again. Can you give us a hand?”

“Yeah. Be there in a sec,” he called back, grateful for any excuse to escape the awkwardness of seeing her again.

“Excuse me, won’t you?” he said to the Pendleton women and the children.

“Of course.” Jan Pendleton gave him an earnest look. “Please tell your firefighters how very much we appreciate them, don’t we, Laura?”

“Absolutely,” she answered with a dutiful tone, but he noticed she pointedly avoided meeting his gaze.

“Bye, Chief.” The darling little girl in Jan’s arm gave him a generous smile. Oh, she was a charmer, he thought.

“See you later.”

The girl beamed at him and waved as he headed away, feeling as if somebody had wrapped a fire hose around his neck for the past ten minutes.

She was here. Really here. Blue eyes, cute kids and all.

Laura Pendleton, Santiago now. He had loved her with every bit of his young heart and she had walked away from him without a second glance.

Now she was here and he had no way to avoid her, not living in a small town like Pine Gulch that had only one grocery store, a couple of gas stations and a fire station only a few blocks from her family’s hotel.

He was swamped with memories suddenly, memories he didn’t want and didn’t know what to do with.

She was back. And here he had been thinking lately how lucky he was to be fire chief of a small town with only six thousand people that rarely saw any disasters.

* * *

Taft Bowman.

Laura watched him head back into the action—which, really, wasn’t much action at all, given that the fire had been extinguished before any of them arrived. He paused here and there in the parking lot to talk to his crew, snap out orders, adjust some kind of mechanical thing on the sleek red fire truck.

Seeing him in action was nothing new. When they had been dating, she sometimes went on ride-alongs, mostly because she couldn’t bear to be separated from him. She remembered now how Taft had always seemed comfortable and in control of any situation, whether responding to a medical emergency or dealing with a grass fire.

Apparently that hadn’t changed in the decade since she had seen him. He also still had that very sexy, lean-hipped walk, even under the layers of turnout gear. She watched him for just a moment, then forced herself to look away. This little tingle of remembered desire inside her was wrong on so many levels, completely twisted and messed up.

After all these years and all the pain, all those shards of crushed dreams she finally had to sweep up and throw away, how could he still have the power to affect her at all? She should be cool and impervious to him, completely untouched.

When she finally made the decision to come home after Javier’s death, she had known she would inevitably run into Taft. Pine Gulch was a small town after all. No matter how much a person might wish to, it was generally tough to avoid someone forever.

When she thought about it—and she would be lying to herself if she said she
hadn’t
thought about it—she had foolishly imagined she could greet him with only a polite smile and a
Nice to see you again,
remaining completely impervious to the man.

Their shared history was a long time ago. Another lifetime, it seemed. She had made the only possible choice back then and had completely moved on with her life, had married someone else, given birth to two children and put Pine Gulch far in her past.

As much as she had loved him once, Taft was really just a small chapter in her life. Or so she told herself anyway. She had been naively certain she had dealt with the hurt and betrayal and the deep sense of loss long ago.

Maybe she should have put a little more energy and effort into making certain of all that before she packed up her children and moved thousands of miles from the only home they had ever known.

If she’d had a little energy to spare, she might have given it more thought, but the past six months seemed like a whirlwind, first trying to deal with Javier’s estate and the vast debts he had left behind, then that desperate scramble to juggle her dwindling bank account and two hungry children in expensive Madrid, and finally the grim realization that she couldn’t do it by herself and had no choice but to move her little family across the world and back to her mother.

She had been focused on survival, on doing what she thought was right for her children. She supposed she really hadn’t wanted to face the reality that moving back also meant dealing with Taft again—until it smacked her upside the head, thanks to her rascal of a son and his predilection for finding trouble wherever he could.

“What are we going to do?” Her mother fretted beside her. She set Maya down on the concrete sidewalk, and the girl immediately scampered beside Alex and stood holding her brother’s hand while they watched the firefighters now cleaning up the scene and driving away. “This is going to ruin us!”

Laura put an arm around her mother’s plump shoulders, guilt slicing through her. She should have been watching her son more carefully; she certainly knew better than to give him any free rein. She had allowed herself to become distracted checking in some guests—the young married couple on spring break from graduate school in Washington who had found more excitement than they had probably anticipated when their hotel caught fire before they had even seen their room.

While she was busy with them, Alex must have slipped out of the office and wandered to the wing of the hotel they were currently renovating. She still couldn’t believe he had found a lighter somewhere. Maybe a previous guest had left it or one of the subcontractors who had been coming in and out the past week or so.

It really
was
a miracle her son hadn’t been injured or burned the whole place down.

“You heard Chief Bowman. The fire and smoke damage was contained to only one room, so that’s good news.”

“How is any of this good news?” In the flash of the emergency vehicles as they pulled away, her mother’s features looked older somehow and her hands shook as she pushed a stray lock of carefully colored hair away.

Despite Taft and all the memories that had suddenly been dredged up simply by exchanging a few words with the man, she didn’t regret coming back to Pine Gulch. The irony was, she thought she was coming home because she needed her mother’s help only to discover how very much Jan needed hers.

Care and upkeep on this crumbling twenty-room inn were obviously wearing on her mother. Jan had been deeply grateful to turn some of those responsibilities over to her only daughter.

“It could be much worse, Mom. We have to focus on that. No one was hurt. That’s the important thing. And outdated as it is, the sprinkler system worked better than we might have expected. That’s another plus. Besides, look at it this way—now insurance will cover some of the repairs we already planned.”

“I suppose. But what are we going to do with the guests?” Her mother seemed defeated, overwhelmed, all but wringing her hands.

Laura hugged her again. “Don’t worry about anything. In fact, why don’t you take the children back to the house? I think they’ve had enough excitement for one afternoon.”

“Do you think Chief Bowman will consider it safe?”

Laura glanced over at the three-bedroom cottage behind the inn where she had spent her childhood. “It’s far enough from the action. I can’t see why it would be a problem. Meantime, I’ll start making phone calls. We’ll find places for everyone and for our reservations for the next few nights while the smoke damage clears out. We’ll get through this just like everything else.”

“I’m so glad you’re here, my dear. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

If she
hadn’t
been here—along with her daughter and her little firebug of a son—none of this would have happened.

“So am I, Mom,” she answered. It was the truth, despite having to confront a certain very sexy fire chief with whom she shared a tangled history.

“Oh, I should go talk to poor Mr. Baktiri. He probably doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.”

One of their long-term guests stood in the middle of the lawn, looking at the hectic scene with confusion. She remembered Mr. Baktiri from when she was a girl. He and his wife used to run the drive-in on the outskirts of town. Mrs. Baktiri had passed away and Mr. Baktiri had moved with his son to Idaho Falls, but he apparently hated it there. Once a month or so, he would escape back to Pine Gulch to visit his wife’s graveside.

Her mother gave him substantially reduced rates on their smallest room, where he stayed for a week or two at a time until his son would come down from Idaho Falls to take him back home. It wasn’t a very economically feasible operating procedure, but she couldn’t fault her mother for her kindness.

She had the impression Mr. Baktiri might be suffering from mild dementia and she supposed familiar surroundings were a comfort to him.

“Mommy. Lights.” Maya hugged her legs and looked up, the flashing emergency lights reflecting in her thick glasses.

“I know, sweetie. They’re bright, aren’t they?”

“Pretty.”

“I suppose they are, in a way.”

Trust Maya to find joy in any situation. It was her child’s particular skill and she was deeply grateful for it.

She had a million things to do, most pressing to find somewhere for their guests to spend the night, but for now she gathered this precious child in her arms.

Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Alex edge toward them somewhat warily.

“Come here,
niño,
” she murmured.

He sank into her embrace and she held both children close. This was the important thing. As she had told her mother, they would get through this minor setback. She was a survivor. She had survived a broken heart and broken engagement and then a disaster of a marriage.

She could get through a little thing like a minor fire with no problem.

Chapter Two

“G
uess who I saw in town the other day.”

Taft grabbed one of his sister’s delicious dinner rolls from the basket being passed around his family’s dining-room table and winked at Caidy. “Me, doing something awesome and heroic, probably. Fighting a fire. Saving someone’s life. I don’t know. Could be anything.”

His niece, Destry, and Gabrielle Parsons, whose older sister was marrying Taft’s twin brother, Trace, in a few months, both giggled—just as he had intended—but Caidy only rolled her eyes. “News flash. Not everything is about you, Taft. But oddly, in a way, this is.”

“Who did you see?” he asked, though he was aware of a glimmer of uneasy trepidation, already expecting what was coming next.

“I didn’t have a chance to talk to her. I just happened to see her while I was driving,” Caidy said.

“Who?” he asked again, teetering on the brink of annoyance.

“Laura Pendleton,” Caidy announced.

“Not Pendleton anymore,” Ridge, their older brother and Destry’s father, corrected.

“That’s right,” Trace chimed in from the other side of the table, where he was holding hands with Becca. How the heck did they manage to eat when they couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other? Taft wondered.

“She got married to some guy while she was living in Spain and they had a couple of kids,” Trace went on. “I hear one of them was involved in all the excitement the other day at the inn.”

Taft pictured her kid solemnly promising he wouldn’t play with matches again. He’d picked up the definite vibe that the kid was a mischievous little rascal, but for all that, his sincerity had rung true.

“Yeah. Apparently her older kid, Alex, was a little too curious about a lighter he found in an empty room and caught some curtains on fire.”

“And you had to ride to her rescue?” Caidy gave him a wide-eyed look. “Gosh, that must have been awkward for both of you.”

Taft reached for more mashed potatoes, hoping the heat on his face could be attributed to the steaming bowl.

“Why would it be? Everything was fine,” he muttered.

Okay, that was a lie, but his family didn’t necessarily need to know he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Laura for the past few days. Every time he had a quiet moment, her blue eyes and delicate features would pop into his head and some other half-forgotten memory of their time together would emerge like the Tetons rising out of a low fog bank.

That he couldn’t seem to stop them annoyed him. He had worked damn hard to forget her after she walked away. What was he supposed to do now that she was back in town and he couldn’t escape her or her kids or the weight of all his mistakes?

“You’ll have to catch me up here.” Becca, Trace’s fiancée, looked confused as she reached for her glass. “Who’s Laura Pendleton? I’m taking a wild guess here that she must be related to Mrs. Pendleton at the inn somehow—a client of mine, by the way—but why would it be awkward to have Taft put out a fire at the inn?”

“No reason really.” Caidy flashed him a quick look. “Just that Taft and Laura were engaged once.”

He fidgeted with his mashed potatoes, drawing his fork in a neat little firebreak to keep the gravy from spreading while he avoided the collective gaze of his beloved family. Why, again, had he once enjoyed these Sunday dinners?

“Engaged? Taft?” He didn’t need to look at his future sister-in-law to hear the surprise in her voice.

“I know,” his twin brother said. “Hard to believe, right?”

He looked up just in time to see Becca quickly try to hide her shocked gaze. She was too kindhearted to let him see how stunning she found the news, which somehow bothered him even more.

Okay, maybe he had a bit of a reputation in town—most of it greatly exaggerated—as a bit of a player. Becca knew him by now. She should know how silly it all was.

“When was this?” she asked with interest. “Recently?”

“Years ago,” Ridge said. “He and Laura dated just out of high school—”

“College,” he muttered. “She was in college.” Okay, she had been a freshman in college. But she wasn’t in high school, damn it. That point seemed important somehow.

“They were inseparable,” Trace interjected.

Ridge picked up where he’d left off. “And Taft proposed right around the time Laura graduated from the Montana State.”

“What happened?” Becca asked.

He really didn’t want to talk about this. What he wouldn’t give for a good emergency call right now. Nothing big. No serious personal injury or major property damage. How about a shed fire or a kid stuck in a well or something?

“We called things off.”

“The week before the wedding,” Caidy added.

Oh, yes. Don’t forget to add that little salacious detail.

“It was a mutual decision,” he lied, repeating the blatant fiction that Laura had begged him to uphold. Mutual decision. Right. If by
mutual
he meant
Laura
and if by
decision
he meant
crush-the-life-out-of-a-guy blow.

Laura had dumped him. That was the cold, hard truth. A week before their wedding, after all the plans and deposits and dress fittings, she had given him back his ring and told him she couldn’t marry him.

“Why are we talking about ancient history?” he asked.

“Not so ancient anymore,” Trace said. “Not if
Laura’s back in town.”

He was very much afraid his brother was right. Whether he liked it or not, with her once more residing in Pine Gulch, their past together would be dredged up again—and not by just his family.

Questions would swirl around them. Everybody had to remember that they had been just a few days away from walking down the aisle of the little church in town when things ended and Laura and her mother sent out those regrets and made phone calls announcing the big celebration wasn’t happening—while he had gone down to the Bandito and gotten drunk and stayed that way until about a month or two after the wedding day that didn’t happen.

She was back now, which meant that, like it or not, he would have to deal with everything he had shoved down ten years ago, all the emotions he had pretended weren’t important in order to get through the deep, aching loss of her.

He couldn’t blame his family for their curiosity—not even Trace, his twin and best friend, knew the full story about everything that had happened between him and Laura. He had always considered it his private business.

His family had loved her. Who didn’t? Laura had a knack for drawing people toward her, finding commonalities. She and his mother used to love discussing the art world and painting techniques. His mother had been an artist, only becoming renowned around the time of her murder. While Laura hadn’t any particular skill in that direction, she had shared a genuine appreciation for his parents’ extensive art collection.

His father had adored her, too, and had often told Taft that Laura was the best thing that would ever happen to him.

He looked up from the memory to find Becca’s eyes filled with a compassion that made him squirm and lose whatever appetite he might have had left.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured in that kind way she had. “Mutual decision or not, it still must have been painful. Is it hard for you to see her again?”

He faked a nonchalant look. “Hard? Why would it be hard? It was all a decade ago. She’s moved on. I’ve moved on. No big deal.”

Ridge gave what sounded like a fake cough and Trace had the same skeptical expression on his face he always wore when Taft was trying to talk him into living a little, doing something wild and adventurous for a change.

How was it possible to love his siblings and at the same time want to throw a few punches around the table, just on general principles?

Becca eyed him and then his brothers warily as if sensing his discomfort, then she quickly changed the subject. “How’s the house coming?” she asked.

His brother wasn’t nearly good enough for her, he decided, seizing the diversion. “Good. I’ve got only a couple more rooms to drywall. Should be done soon. After six months, the place is starting to look like a real house inside now.”

“I stopped by the other day and peeked in the windows,” Caidy confessed. “It’s looking great.”

“Give me a call next time and I can swing by and give you the tour, even if I’m at the fire station. You haven’t been by in a month or so. You’ll be surprised at how far along it is these days.”

After years of renting a convenient but small apartment near the fire station, he had finally decided it was time to build a real house. The two-story log house was set on five acres near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon.

“How about the barn and the pasture?” Ridge asked, rather predictably. Over the years, Taft had bred a couple mares to a stallion with excellent lines he had picked up for a steal from a rancher down on his luck up near Wood River. He had traded and sold the colts until he now had about six horses he’d been keeping at his family’s ranch.

“The fence is in. I’d like to get the barn up before I move the horses over, if you don’t mind keeping them a little longer.”

“That’s not what I meant. You know we’ve got plenty of room here. You can keep them here forever if you want.”

Maybe if he had his horses closer he might actually ride them once in a while instead of only stopping by to visit when he came for these Sunday dinners.

“When do you think all the work will be done?” Becca asked.

“I’m hoping by mid-May. Depends on how much free time I can find to finish things up inside.”

“If you need a hand, let me know,” Ridge offered quietly.

“Same goes,” Trace added.

Both of them had crazy-busy lives: Ridge running the ranch and raising Destry on his own and Trace as the overworked chief of police for an understaffed small-town force—in addition to planning his future together with Becca and Gabi. Their sincere offers to help touched him.

“I should be okay,” he answered. “The hard work is done now and I only have the fun stuff to finish.”

“I always thought there was something just a little crazy about you.” Caidy shook her head. “I must be right, especially if you think finish work and painting are fun.”

“I like to paint stuff,” Destry said. “I can help you, Uncle Taft.”

“Me, too!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “Oh, can we?”

Trouble followed the two of these girls around like one of Caidy’s rescue dogs. He had visions of paint spread all over the woodwork he had been slaving over the past month. “Thanks, girls. That’s really sweet of you. I’m sure Ridge can find something for you to touch up around here. That fence down by the creek was looking like it needed a new coat.”

“There’s always something that needs painting around here,” Ridge answered. “As soon as the weather warms up a little at night, I can put you both to work.”

“Will you pay us?” Gabrielle asked, always the opportunist.

Ridge chuckled. “We can negotiate terms with your attorney.”

Caidy asked Becca—said attorney—a question about their upcoming June wedding and attention shifted away from Taft, much to his relief. He listened to the conversation of his family, aware of this low simmer of restlessness that had become a familiar companion.

Ever since Trace and Becca found each other and fell in love, he had been filled with this vague unease, as if something about his world had shifted a little. He loved his brother. More than that, he respected him. Trace was his best friend and Taft could never begrudge him the happiness he had found with Becca and Gabi, but ever since they announced their engagement, he felt weird and more than a little off-balance.

Seeing Laura and her kids the other day had only intensified that odd feeling.

He had never been a saint—he would be the first to admit that and his family would probably stand in line right behind him—but he tried to live a decent life. His general philosophy about the world ran parallel to the premier motto of every emergency medical worker as well as others in the medical field: Primum Non Nocere. First, Do No Harm.

He did his best. He was a firefighter and paramedic and he enjoyed helping people of his community and protecting property. If he didn’t find great satisfaction in it, he would find something else to do. Maybe pounding nails for a living because he enjoyed that, too.

Despite his best efforts in the whole
do no harm
arena, he remembered each and every failure.

He had two big regrets in his life, and Laura
Pendleton was involved in both of them.

He had hurt her. Those months leading up to her ultimate decision to break things off had been filled with one wound after another. He knew it. Hell, he had known it at the time, but that dark, angry man he had become after his parents’ murder seemed like another creature who had emerged out of his skin to destroy everything good and right in his life.

He couldn’t blame Laura for calling off their wedding. Not really. Even though it had hurt like the devil.

She had warned him she couldn’t marry him unless he made serious changes, and he had stubbornly refused, giving her no choice but to stay true to her word. She had moved on, taken some exotic job in hotel management in Spain somewhere and a few years later married a man she met there.