Second Chances (Nugget Romance 3) (3 page)

Fine, she’d just have to eat with company. Harlee bit into her egg sandwich and hash browns and chased it with a swig of coffee. The combination of grease and caffeine made her moan with pleasure.

“So good, right?” the woman said, taking a sip of the Bun Boy’s famous hot chocolate. “At least you can afford the calories. Me, not so much.”

“You look great,” Harlee lied. Although the woman did have one of those to-die-for curvy bodies. If she just wore clothes that fit her and ditched the hairpiece, Harlee thought she’d be quite attractive.

“I’m Darla.” Harlee nearly choked. Dolly. Darla. Close enough.

“Harlee.” She went to shake her hand, thought better of it, and pulled a wad of napkins from the dispenser in the center of the table to clean up first.

“You just passing through?” Darla asked.

“No. My folks own a cabin up on Grizzly Peak. I’m moving in for the winter.”

“No kidding? Are you rich or something?”

Harlee laughed because the absurdity of it was hilarious. She couldn’t even afford to pay her own rent. “No. I own a home business.”

“What kind?”

For some inexplicable reason Darla was starting to grow on Harlee. Maybe because she reminded her a little bit of herself, sans the hairpiece of course. The woman was fantastically nosy.

“I’m a cyber-sleuth,” Harlee said. “I investigate the prospective mates people meet on dating sites.”

The idea for the business had been born out of a how-to piece she’d written for the
Call
on navigating the complications of online dating services and vetting potential life partners. Instead of following tips in the article, readers had sent Harlee money, begging her to run background checks on their supposed dream matches.

Given her work at the paper it was easy to run the inquiries during her downtime. She used the same battery of databases she relied on for her stories, including the obvious ones—county records, court filings, and the registry of voters—to find out everything from a prospect’s true date of birth to his or her political party. If something came up that wasn’t traceable in the public domain, she sicced Brad on it in exchange for free babysitting. Brad was a cop with a stay-at-home wife, a two-year-old, and a mortgage. He’d do just about anything for free babysitting.

Darla’s brown eyes grew wide. “Seriously? That’s an actual business?”

“Yeah, it’s an actual business.” Harlee pulled her coat tighter to ward off the cold. “You’d be surprised how much people lie. Especially men. I’m not just talking posting ten-year-old pictures of themselves.” They lied about their weights, about their ages, their careers, their sexual orientations, and sometimes they even lied about where they lived—like the man who failed to mention that his Folsom residence was actually a state prison.

“Do you have a special license to do it, like a private investigator’s license?” Darla wanted to know.

“Nope. Not necessary.” To shield herself from lawsuits, Harlee required that her clients sign a waiver that a lawyer friend had drafted, releasing her from liability.

“How do people find out about you?”

“Word of mouth.” Harlee finished her sandwich and tossed the wrapper in a nearby wastebasket. “I also have a website.”

“Wow.” Darla acted like Harlee was doing something groundbreaking, which, for the first time since she’d been “downsized,” gave her a nice burst of confidence.

“What about you?” Harlee asked. “Why’d you decide to cut hair in Nugget, besides the fact that your dad owns the barbershop?”

“To tell you the truth, I wanted to stay in Sacramento,” Darla said. “I’d finished a two-year internship at one of the most prestigious salons in town. But renting a chair there would’ve been astronomical. I haven’t built up much of a client list yet. Plus, my dad wants to go part-time so he can start easing into retirement. I thought I’d fill in on his days off.”

“You must’ve grown up around here then?”

“No,” Darla said. “My parents divorced when I was young and my mother and I moved to Sacramento. I used to come for visits, but other than . . . well, you’re my first friend.”

It didn’t take a crack reporter to figure out that there was something Darla wasn’t saying. But Harlee didn’t know her well enough to press. Harlee had to confess that despite her initial impression, Darla was turning out to be good company. So good that Harlee spent an hour telling Darla her life story. Before parting ways, Harlee promised to visit Darla at the barbershop the next time she came into town.

On her way home, she swung by the grocery store to pick up provisions. Unfortunately, the Nugget Market was no Whole Foods. Fortunately, unlike at Whole Foods, she could actually afford to buy food in the no-frills grocery store. Harlee filled her shopping cart with enough staples to get her through the week, including ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies. She was going to thank that nice neighbor of hers and bribe him to fix her pilot light.

“Looks like you’re planning to do some baking,” the checkout clerk, a plump woman who reminded Harlee of her grandmother, said. “You new around here? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Sort of. My family’s had a cabin here for ages. We used to come up for vacations and weekends. Now I’m moving in full-time.” At least until Harlee landed a reporter job.

“Welcome back.” The woman introduced herself as Ethel, the market’s owner. “You prepared? The weather here gets pretty nasty.”

“I think so.” Why tell her about the pilot light? It would only make Harlee look like a clueless city slicker and she’d bet anything Colin could fix it. The scruffy mountain man seemed extremely capable and willing to help out. Hopefully she could at some point return the favor.

 

At home, she got started on the baking project. At least her electric stove worked and had warmed up the kitchen, because the rest of the cabin felt like an icebox. Two hours later, Harlee trekked up the hill, found Colin’s driveway, and hiked down, carrying a neatly tied package of two dozen cookies.

“Holy moly,” Harlee said aloud when Colin’s house came into view. “Grizzly Adams is living large.”

His log home reminded her of a ski resort with its enormous porch, massive picture windows, and a two-story stone chimney. She knocked on his door. When no one answered, she peeked inside the windows. The interior was just as lovely as the exterior—lots of cozy rugs and muted paint colors. Not what she would’ve expected from a man who drove a beat-up pickup and looked like he’d been hibernating in a cave for the winter.

He even had a porch swing. How sweet was that? She figured it was as good a place as any to leave the cookies and the thank-you note she’d written. Hopefully bears wouldn’t be enticed by the smell. One summer, when she and Brad were still in their teens, a bear had turned over their barbecue to lick out remaining food bits. They’d thought it was the coolest thing ever and had hung out the window to take pictures. Looking back on it, not such a safe idea.

While here, Harlee decided to scope the place out a little more. Everything from the flagstone walkways to the hand-forged iron fixtures was stunning. Not at all what she expected from her rugged neighbor. A bachelor like him she figured more for a simple one-room cabin.

She could see through the window that the garage was spotless. Half the space had been dedicated to the Harley-Davidson he’d said he owned. Gleaming and safely stowed away for winter. Now that she thought about it, Colin did have a bit of a biker look, especially the long brown hair and bushy beard.

She strolled around back to check out the yard and found an outbuilding similar in structure to the main house, including a soaring roofline. Smoke from the chimney and the buzz of machinery drew her closer to investigate.

Between the power tool and loud music, Colin didn’t hear Harlee knock. Finally, she let herself in and nearly stumbled over a farm table. Colin stood next to it in a pair of goggles, cutting wood on a band saw. When he saw her, he stopped, flipped up his goggles, and turned off the music. The Lumineers.

Gorgeous pine rockers and gliding benches lined one wall. A potbelly stove sat in the corner, a fire burning.

“Wow,” she said, turning in place, not knowing where to look first. There were finished pieces and works in progress stacked everywhere. She ran her hand over the smooth logs of a four-poster bed frame. “You made all of this?”

“Uh-huh,” he said stiffly, stuffing his hands in his pockets while she examined the log bed closer. “That was an experiment.”

“It looks perfect to me.” To which he shrugged.

“It’s beautiful. Your house . . . this shop . . . Amazing.” She continued turning in circles trying to take it all in. Nightstands, coffee tables, and porch swings like the one on Colin’s deck.

He merely nodded, removed the goggles from around his neck, and set them down on a workbench. She couldn’t tell whether he was peeved about her intruding into his private world or bashful about her seeing his work.

But why hide it? The man was an artist.

“Where do you sell it all?” she asked.

“Mostly on the Internet. In the summertime, I set up at the weekly farmers’ market on the square.” He swiped at the sawdust on his sweatshirt. “I returned the U-Haul. You come for the firewood contacts?”

“I brought you cookies,” she said. “I didn’t know you were home, so I left them on your swing.”

“The crew on my construction site had to leave early.” He cocked his head to the side. “Cookies?”

“To thank you,” she said. “And to bribe you for another favor.”

“What’s that?”

“You think you could look at my pilot light? It’s off and I couldn’t get it going. The heat’s not working and the water’s ice-cold. I nearly froze to death in the shower this morning.”

The corner of his lip lifted in a half grin and for the first time she noticed that he was handsome. Not Brad Pitt handsome, but nice looking with a chiseled nose, straight white teeth, and eyes the color of caramel. All the facial hair made it difficult to know what the rest of his face looked like. Or his age. But he was in good shape—tall, broad, and muscular—leading Harlee to believe he couldn’t be too old.

“Yeah, okay,” he said.

He opened the door on the cast-iron stove, snuffed out the fire, and they walked back to her cabin. She led him inside the garage, where the hot-water heater was strapped to the wall in a corner. He crouched down to get closer to the switch and pulled his sleeves up. That’s when she noticed his tattoo. Five black dots arranged in a quincunx on his forearm. Harlee had seen plenty of body art, but the geometric pattern was so stark and simple that it piqued her curiosity.

She was just about to ask him the significance of the tattoo, when he caught her looking at it and abruptly pulled his sleeve down.

“Could you hand me the flashlight and the matches, please?” She’d found both in the garage earlier when she’d tried to light the pilot herself, and handed them to him.

Colin continued to fiddle at the base of the hot-water heater. “Hmm. It’s not working,” he said, and stood up. “You said the heat’s giving you trouble? Where’s the furnace?”

She showed him, and he fidgeted with the heater for a while. “Brad didn’t say that I had to light both,” Harlee said.

“Yep,” he grunted. “Where’s your propane tank?”

She took him outside to the front of the house, where the tank sat in a small enclosure, hidden on three sides by lattice fencing.

“You got a bucket I can fill with water?”

She didn’t bother to ask why. “I’ll find one.”

Harlee came back shortly, hefting a mop pail full of water.

He grabbed it from her and poured it over the tank. “You’re out of propane.”

“How can you tell?” she asked.

“See that frost line?” He pointed to the lower part of the tank. “It’s less than a quarter full.”

“Crap! The Nugget Propane Company is closed for the next four days. The sign says the owner went fishing. Maybe I can find him and get him to open for just one tank.”

Colin lifted his brows. “How do you plan to do that?”

“I don’t know. But I’m a reporter. I’m good at finding people.”

“A reporter?” he asked, slanting her a glance. “Like on television?” Clearly he was trying to remember if he’d ever seen her on CNN.

“No. Newspaper. The
San Francisco Call
. But not anymore.” Man, it hurt to say that. She waited for him to ask the obvious question, but he didn’t. Thank God. “Is there any other place around here I can get propane?”

“Reno,” Colin said. “But they won’t deliver to California on a day’s notice.”

“I’ll go there and haul it myself.”

“In that?” He nudged his head at her Mini Cooper in the driveway and choked on a laugh. “No one lugs around a five-hundred-gallon tank of propane. You have to get it delivered. And that may take a few days. In the meantime, you can use my shower. I’ve got lots of hot water.”

“Seriously? Isn’t that kind of weird?” She didn’t even know the guy.

“Probably,” he admitted. “But you can come over when I’m not there.”

“Where will you be?” she asked.

“Construction site—I’m building a house. You’ll have the whole place to yourself.”

“Wow. That’s so amazingly nice of you. I might take you up on it.”

But more than likely she’d take sponge baths instead. Or hit up Darla. Even though she didn’t know her any better than Colin, it seemed more kosher to shower at another woman’s house. Although she was dying to see more of the inside of that fancy abode of his. Just not naked. “In the meantime, can I borrow some firewood?”

“Yup,” he said, and she could tell that he thought she was a dope for not being better prepared. “I’ll hook you up.”

“Thank you. And, Colin, I want to take you to dinner for helping me out like this.” She couldn’t afford it, but the guy was a total saint.