Too Hot to Handle (25 page)

“I love you, too,” Grace whispered, one of the few times she’d ever said it back.

Merry heard Cole’s voice, speaking softly, and then the bedroom door closed, and she drifted happily through a haze of denial and liquor. She’d take a page from Scarlett O’Hara’s book and think about this another day. Specifically, tomorrow.

Or maybe she’d just stay drunk for twenty-four hours. Or forty-eight! She had options, so maybe things weren’t as hopeless as they seemed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

M
ERRY
DIDN
’
T
WAKE
up at 4:00 a.m. in a complete panic. She woke up at 5:30, heavy with hopelessness. She wasn’t hungover. She wasn’t even fuzzy about what had happened. Four shots of tequila in the space of fifteen minutes was enough to knock her out, but it was long gone from her system now, and she was left with nothing but reality.

Reality, and the sad, sorry news that the board had approved the press kit and wanted to schedule a time for Merry to meet with the reporter.

That was no longer an option. Merry couldn’t be the face of Providence, because the entire operation would be tainted by the next story. The one where she was profiled for going rogue and spending money without approval and possibly being in cahoots with the man trying to kill the ghost town. She wondered if that could be framed as embezzlement of some kind. After all, she’d spent a couple hundred dollars without the board’s approval and she’d meant to funnel another two thousand or so to Shane for a complete overhaul of the saloon. Then there was the fact that she’d been sleeping with him. That was pretty damning.

Of course, the most explosive part of the story would be the tale of how Merry Kade had vandalized a board member’s property and manufactured a false threat to the trust. Oh, boy. That kind of story might even be picked up by one of the big online news sites. Local Museum Curator Vandalizes Precious Historical Site. She’d be accused of trying to pin it on her lover. She’d be painted as some kind of ghost-town black widow with a hunger for hand-forged nails and full-color glossy brochures.

She was going to have to resign. There was no question. That wouldn’t be enough to offset all the damage she’d done, but it would be a good start. And she definitely couldn’t spearhead this press push. She’d need to remove her name from everything. All the contact information and documents she’d put together. She’d wipe it clean, and then she’d turn it all over to the board with her apology and resignation letter.

But before any of that, before she lost any right to it at all, she wanted to spend one last day at Providence. So she dressed as quietly as she could, brushed her teeth and wrote a note for Grace so she wouldn’t worry. Then she tiptoed out the door and raced to her car in the gray dawn light.

The air was icy and a little moist with dew, and it felt good. Refreshing. It made the day feel promising instead of doomed.

But that promise fell away when she got to her car and saw the envelope stuck beneath the wiper. It was sealed, the paper slightly swollen with moisture, but she knew who’d left it as soon as she saw it. She pulled it free and dropped it on the ground before she got into her car and started the engine.

She felt guilty before she’d even shut the door. She might be a crazy ghost-town black widow, but she wasn’t a litterer, so she got out and tossed it onto the passenger side floor. The door sounded horrifically loud when she shut it, so Merry pulled away quickly to avoid being stopped by Grace or caught by Shane.

She needed to be alone. She loved Providence, and she needed these last few hours with it. She wouldn’t be able to return until it was open to the public as a museum. And hell, her picture might be next to the cash register even then, like a girl who’d passed too many bad checks.

Rolling down all the windows despite the cold, she drove slowly through town, passing only a few joggers and the poor folks who had to get up and make breakfast for tourists. A ragged bus rumbled through, empty and ready to pick up rafters for the all-day floats down the Snake River. Maybe she’d try that one of these days. She was about to have a lot of free time.

She knew it was stupid to feel so prematurely nostalgic as she drove north toward Providence. She wouldn’t be banned from the highways. She could take this drive anytime she wanted, as long as she could afford gas. But she still felt choked with grief as she watched the familiar landmarks pass. The wetlands where she always spotted beaver dams but no beavers. The grass fields that usually sheltered a herd of deer or antelope. The little sign for Warm Springs that still made her smile.
Warm
springs. Not exactly hot, but still pleasant. Another place she could still explore, but somehow knew she never would.

By the time she got to the town, the sun was just starting to peek over distant hills. Merry got out of her car and sat on the hood to watch morning come to Providence.

It was so quiet out here, but if you really stayed still, the sounds could overwhelm you. Birds, dozens of them, sang and whistled and called. They hopped through the dry grass looking for food and making a surprisingly loud racket. Every time she watched a clump of rattling grass, expecting a raccoon or weasel to pop out, a tiny little finch would expose itself.

Then there was the wind, even the faintest hint of it swaying the long grass and shushing the seeds against each other. And the sound of the stream… It was hardly even worthy of that name now, but she could still hear it when the wind calmed. The faintest little ring of water as it jumped over stones and carved around plants. She wondered what it had been like when the town was settled. It had been almost a proper river then, before it had been forced into a half dozen different channels that probably snaked down the mountain miles apart.

She knew this place wasn’t hers. Logically she knew that. She was only a curator, brought in from out of town and never even meant to be permanent. This place didn’t belong to her. It wasn’t even her heritage. She had no family here and no ties except a best friend from L.A. who was just as much a stranger to Wyoming as she was.

So she’d be okay. She was almost sure of it.

Merry slid off the car and moved slowly through town. She marked each building with her eyes. Her favorites she walked into or she just touched the walls if they weren’t stable enough to hold her weight. She didn’t even dodge away from the spiders. She was too damn heavy for that kind of fear.

She’d have to find another way to prove herself to the people who loved her, if that was possible. She was beginning to think it wasn’t. She was beginning to think she had nothing to prove, not because she was too great for it, but because there was nothing there. No core. No strength. Just a futile hope that she wasn’t a loser.

The wind rose then, sweeping over her skin, picking up her hair and floating it behind her. Merry closed her eyes and pictured herself as that bit of dandelion fluff she’d feared she was. Any second now she’d break away and be swept off.

But not yet. She took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh, then headed to her little makeshift office to clean it up.

Two hours later, she had everything organized for the person who’d replace her, and she’d made a tiny pile of the things that belonged to her. Everything else belonged to someone else. Or it belonged to the Providence Historical Trust. Not even a person, but a group that would never love this place as much as she did.

She meant to get up then. To leave. But her hand went to the biography notes she’d taken about Gideon Bishop. In those notes was the information about his family. His descendants. About Shane.

Before she could start reading, she heard a car door slam and she sat straight with a terrified start.

Whoever it was, she didn’t want to see them. Not even Grace. An ungracious thought, considering her friend would only be worried for her. Merry hung her head for a moment, took a deep breath and then stood.

But when she stepped out onto the little porch, she froze and that breath she’d taken flew from her lungs on a choked cry. It wasn’t Grace. It was Shane walking toward her, his face half-hidden by the shade of his hat.

In that moment, she hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone in her life. She shook her head, but he kept coming.

“Go away,” she ordered. He ignored her. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she shouted.

That stopped him, at least, but he was only ten feet away now. Way too close.

“Merry, please. I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you. I wanted to, but by then it was too late. I didn’t know how to—”

“I said I don’t want to talk to you!”

He took off his hat and rubbed a hand over his hair. “I know you don’t. That’s fair. You can just stand there. But I need you to understand that what happened between us didn’t have anything to do with Providence.”

“You’re a liar. And I don’t care about that. It didn’t mean anything to you and it didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Merry, that’s not true—”

“Why are you here? To rub it in? To gloat about how you’re going to ruin all my plans? Just do it!”

“Do what?”

“Tell the board. Tell the press. Tell the judge. Just get it over with. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to wait to be fired. I’m resigning.”

He shook his head. “No. Didn’t you read my letter?”

“Of course not. I threw it away.”

“Merry, I don’t want to get you fired. I don’t care about this damn ghost town. My grandfather was going to leave that money to me, but I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. He wanted to punish me. He didn’t give a shit about Providence…he only created that trust to teach me a lesson. The money belongs to me.”

“That’s up to the courts to decide.”

“Fine. Then let the courts decide it. Don’t let it affect our friendship.”

She couldn’t believe it. She shouldn’t have skipped coffee this morning, because her brain was clearly not working correctly. “Are you suggesting that I just let it go?”

“Yes. When you asked if I’d work for you, I didn’t know you. And I didn’t have some big espionage planned. I just figured I’d hang around a little…see if I could find out what was going on with the trust, what the plans were. But then I got to know you better. I liked you. And it all got mixed up.”

“Mixed up,” she murmured.

“Yes. And the sex…that has nothing to do with this. That wasn’t a lie.” He offered a tentative smile. “It was damn real, Merry.”

A smile. He had the nerve to
smile
at her. Like she was that gullible. That stupid. That lacking in self-esteem. She walked down the stairs and the worry in his eyes lightened as she approached. Unbelievable.

“Who do you think I am?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“You think I’m someone sweet and nice and sunny? You look at me and you see someone who wants an apology? Someone who’ll forgive you?”

“That’s what I hope, yes. I’m sorry, Merry. You’re special. I know we don’t have a permanent thing, but—”

“I’m
special?
” she snarled. “Am I cute, too? And funny and kind?”

“Um…” He finally seemed to recognize that his smile may have been premature. “Yes?”

Merry poked a finger into his chest, hard. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You know
nothing,
do you understand?”

He stepped backward, hands raised.

“If I’m sweet, it’s because I choose to be. If I’m ridiculously positive, it’s because life is easier that way. A
hard
life is easier that way. I am not stupid, Shane.” She followed his retreat, drilling her finger into his chest again. “I am not fucking
stupid
. I trust people because I choose to, because if you fuck me over, it says something terrible about you, not me. I see the good in people, because that makes me happy, not because I live in fairy-tale land where bad things don’t happen. Bad things happen, Shane. I’ve spent my whole life well aware of that. Bad things like
you
.”

“No, I—”

“You lied to me. You used my happiness as a way to manipulate information from me. You let me trust you when you knew I shouldn’t have. And then you fucked me. I told you something secret about myself and you saw that as an
in
.”

“That is not true. I swear it’s not true, Merry.”

“Oh, you swear?” She poked him again. “You promise? Who the
fuck
do you think I am? I have seen bad shit my whole life. People have been cruel. Life has been scary. My own father never even wanted to
meet
me. So if you think I can’t recognize unforgivably shitty behavior, you are sadly mistaken. I’m awkward and nerdy and ridiculous and maybe even foolish, but I’m not an idiot. And I am not weak.”

She spread her arms. “Look at me. I’m strong. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m not curled up in bed. I’m not crying. I wasn’t even standing around hoping you’d give me an explanation I could latch onto to feel less stupid. You lied, you lied while we were friends, and you lied when it became more than that. And now I’m going to lose my job because of you. So fuck you, Shane Harcourt.
Now
you know who I am, and I am not the kind of girl who’d put up with being used and disrespected and violated.”

She gave him one good shove with both hands and then walked backward. “Go away. I don’t want you here, and I’m still in charge of this place for the next few hours.”

He watched her. When he didn’t move, she turned her back on him and walked up the steps. She even closed the door of the house, plunging herself into a sudden darkness before her eyes could adjust.

She held her breath, waiting. He couldn’t come after her. He couldn’t follow her into the house, because she was frozen on the verge of tears. Just waiting. Waiting. She couldn’t possibly stop them at this point, she could only hold them off, but if he made her speak again, she was lost. And if he touched her, she’d fall apart. Her big words would mean nothing then.

But she finally heard his boots crunch across the dry ground, and the sound was moving away. The solid
thunk
of his door gave her the right news. He was leaving.