Laura.

He froze and, for the first time in fifteen years as a firefighter, he forgot about the incident, his mission, just what the hell he was doing here.

Laura.

Ten years. He hadn’t seen her in all that time, since the week before their wedding when she had given him back his ring and left town. Not just town. She had left the whole damn country, as if she couldn’t run far enough to get away from him.

Some part of him desperately wanted to think he had made some kind of mistake. It couldn’t be her. That was just some other slender woman with a long sweep of honey-blond hair and big blue unforgettable eyes. But no, it was definitely Laura, standing next to her mother. Sweet and lovely.

Not his.

Dear Reader,

I’ve read romance novels almost as long as I can remember. I think I picked up my first Mills & Boon when I was about eleven and I instantly fell in love. I still love that thrill in my heart as I read about two people who deserve to find happiness together!

As I grew older, I discovered a whole new world of books out there and many fantastic authors whose stories have enriched my life more than I can say.

Once in a while, I still have to pinch myself when I realize I’m actually writing for the line that has given me so many wonderful hours of reading enjoyment over the years.

RaeAnne Thayne

About the Author

RAEANNE THAYNE finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be contacted through her website, www.raeannethayne.com.

A Cold Creek

Reunion

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To romance readers who, like me,

love happily ever afters.

Chapter One

He loved these guys like his own brothers, but sometimes Taft Bowman wanted to take a fire hose to his whole blasted volunteer fire department.

This was their second swift-water rescue training in a month—not to mention that he had been holding these regularly since he became battalion chief five years earlier—and they still struggled to toss a throw bag anywhere close to one of the three “victims” floating down Cold Creek in wet suits and helmets.

“You’ve got to keep in mind the flow of the water and toss it downstream enough that they ride the current to the rope,” he instructed for about the six-hundredth time. One by one, the floaters—in reality, other volunteer firefighters on his thirty-person crew—stopped at the catch line strung across the creek and began working their way hand over hand to the bank.

Fortunately, even though the waters were plenty frigid this time of year, they were about a month away from the real intensity of spring runoff, which was why he was training his firefighters for water rescues now.

With its twists and turns and spectacular surroundings on the west slope of the Tetons, Cold Creek had started gaining popularity with kayakers. He enjoyed floating the river himself. But between the sometimes-inexperienced outdoor-fun seekers and the occasional Pine Gulch citizen who strayed too close to the edge of the fast-moving water, his department was called out on at least a handful of rescues each season and he wanted them to be ready.

“Okay, let’s try it one more time. Terry, Charlie, Bates, you three take turns with the throw bag. Luke, Cody, Tom, stagger your jumps by about five minutes this time around to give us enough time on this end to rescue whoever is ahead of you.”

He set the team in position and watched upstream as Luke Orosco, his second in command, took a running leap into the water, angling his body feetfirst into the current. “Okay, Terry. He’s coming. Are you ready? Time it just right. One, two, three. Now!”

This time, the rope sailed into the water just downstream of the diver and Taft grinned. “That’s it, that’s it. Perfect. Now instruct him to attach the rope.”

For once, the rescue went smoothly. He was watching for Cody Shepherd to jump in when the radio clipped to his belt suddenly crackled with static.

“Chief Bowman, copy.”

The dispatcher sounded unusually flustered and Taft’s instincts borne of fifteen years of firefighting and paramedic work instantly kicked in. “Yeah, I copy. What’s up, Kelly?”

“I’ve got a report of a small structure fire at the inn, three hundred twenty Cold Creek Road.”

He stared as the second rescue went off without a hitch. “Come again?” he couldn’t help asking, adrenaline pulsing through him. Structure fires were a rarity in the quiet town of Pine Gulch. Really a rarity. The last time had been a creosote chimney fire four months ago that a single ladder-truck unit had put out in about five minutes.

“Yes, sir. The hotel is evacuating at this time.”

He muttered an oath. Half his crew was currently in wet suits, but at least they were only a few hundred yards away from the station house, with the engines and the turnout gear.

“Shut it down,” he roared through his megaphone. “We’ve got a structure fire at the Cold Creek Inn. Grab your gear. This is not a drill.”

To their credit, his crew immediately caught the gravity of the situation. The last floater was quickly grabbed out of the water and everybody else rushed to the new fire station the town had finally voted to bond for two years earlier.

Less than four minutes later—still too long in his book but not bad for volunteers—he had a full crew headed toward the Cold Creek Inn on a ladder truck and more trained volunteers pouring in to hurriedly don their turnout gear.

The inn, a rambling wood structure with two single-story wings leading off a main two-story building, was on the edge of Pine Gulch’s small downtown, about a mile away from the station. He quickly assessed the situation as they approached. He couldn’t see flames yet, but he did see a thin plume of black smoke coming from a window on the far end of the building’s east wing.

He noted a few guests milling around on the lawn and had just an instant to feel a pang of sympathy for the owner. Poor Mrs. Pendleton had enough trouble finding guests for her gracefully historic but undeniably run-down inn.

A fire and forced evacuation probably wouldn’t do much to increase the appeal of the place.

“Luke, you take Pete and make sure everybody’s out. Shep, come with me for the assessment. You all know the drill.”

He and Cody Shepherd, a young guy in the last stages of his fire and paramedic training, headed into the door closest to where he had seen the smoke.

Somebody had already been in here with a fire extinguisher, he saw. The fire was mostly out but the charred curtains were still smoking, sending out that inky-black plume.

The room looked to be under renovation. It didn’t have a bed and the carpet had been pulled up. Everything was wet and he realized the ancient sprinkler system must have come on and finished the job the fire extinguisher had started.

“Is that it?” Shep asked with a disgruntled look.

“Sorry, should have let you have the honors.” He held the fire extinguisher out to the trainee. “Want a turn?”

Shep snorted but grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed another layer of completely unnecessary foam on the curtains.

“Not much excitement—but at least nobody was hurt. It’s a wonder this place didn’t go up years ago. We’ll have to get the curtains out of here and have Engine Twenty come inside and check for hot spots.”

He called in over his radio that the fire had been contained to one room and ordered in the team whose specialty was making sure the flames hadn’t traveled inside the walls to silently spread to other rooms.

When he walked back outside, Luke headed over to him. “Not much going on, huh? Guess some of us should have stayed in the water.”

“We’ll do more swift-water work next week during training,” he said. “Everybody else but Engine Twenty can go back to the station.”

As he spoke to Luke, he spotted Jan Pendleton standing some distance away from the building. Even from here, he could see the distress on her plump, wrinkled features. She was holding a little dark-haired girl in her arms, probably a traumatized guest. Poor thing.

A younger woman stood beside her and from this distance he had only a strange impression, as if she was somehow standing on an island of calm amid the chaos of the scene, the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles, shouts between his crew members, the excited buzz of the crowd.

And then the woman turned and he just about tripped over a snaking fire hose somebody shouldn’t have left there.

Laura.

He froze and for the first time in fifteen years as a firefighter, he forgot about the incident, his mission, just what the hell he was doing here.

Laura.

Ten years. He hadn’t seen her in all that time, since the week before their wedding when she had given him back his ring and left town. Not just town. She had left the whole damn country, as if she couldn’t run far enough to get away from him.

Some part of him desperately wanted to think he had made some kind of mistake. It couldn’t be her. That was just some other slender woman with a long sweep of honey-blond hair and big blue, unforgettable eyes. But no, it was definitely Laura, standing next to her mother. Sweet and lovely.

Not his.

“Chief, we’re not finding any hot spots.” Luke approached him. Just like somebody turned back up the volume on his flat-screen, he jerked away from memories of pain and loss and aching regret.

“You’re certain?”

“So far. The sprinkler system took a while to kick in and somebody with a fire extinguisher took care of the rest. Tom and Nate are still checking the integrity of the internal walls.”

“Good. That’s good. Excellent work.”

His assistant chief gave him a wary look. “You okay, Chief? You look upset.”

He huffed out a breath. “It’s a fire, Luke. It could have been potentially disastrous. With the ancient wiring in this old building, it’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t go up.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Luke said.

He was going to have to go over there and talk to Mrs. Pendleton—and by default, Laura. He didn’t want to. He wanted to stand here and pretend he hadn’t seen her. But he was the fire chief. He couldn’t hide out just because he had a painful history with the daughter of the property owner.

Sometimes he hated his job.

He made his way toward the women, grimly aware of his heart pounding in his chest as if he had been the one diving into Cold Creek for training.

Laura stiffened as he approached but she didn’t meet his gaze. Her mother looked at him out of wide, frightened eyes and her arms tightened around the girl in her arms.

Despite everything, his most important job was calming her fears. “Mrs. Pendleton, you’ll be happy to know the fire is under control.”

“Of course it’s under control.” Laura finally faced him, her lovely features cool and impassive. “It was under control before your trucks ever showed up—ten minutes after we called the fire in, by the way.”

Despite all the things he might have wanted to say to her, he had to first bristle at any implication that their response time might be less than adequate. “Seven, by my calculations. Would have been half that except we were in the middle of water rescue training when the call from dispatch came in.”

“I guess you would have been ready, then, if any of our guests had decided to jump into Cold Creek to avoid the flames.”

Funny, he didn’t remember her being this tart when they had been engaged. He remembered sweetness and joy and light. Until he had destroyed all that.

“Chief Bowman, when will we be able to allow our guests to return to their rooms?” Jan Pendleton spoke up, her voice wobbling a little. The little girl in her arms—who shared Laura’s eye color, he realized now, along with the distinctive features of someone born with Down syndrome—patted her cheek.

“Gram, don’t cry.”

Jan visibly collected herself and gave the girl a tired smile.

“They can return to get their belongings as long as they’re not staying in the rooms adjacent to where the fire started. I’ll have my guys stick around about an hour or so to keep an eye on some hot spots.” He paused, wishing he didn’t have to be the bearer of this particular bad news. “I’m going to leave the final decision up to you about your guests staying here overnight, but to be honest, I’m not sure it’s completely safe for guests to stay here tonight. No matter how careful we are, sometimes embers can flare up again hours later.”

“We have a dozen guests right now.” Laura looked at him directly and he was almost sure he saw a hint of hostility there. Annoyance crawled under his skin. She dumped him, a week before their wedding. If anybody here had the right to be hostile, he ought to be the first one in line. “What are we supposed to do with them?”

Their past didn’t matter right now, not when people in his town needed his help. “We can talk to the Red Cross about setting up a shelter, or we can check with some of the other lodgings in town, maybe the Cavazos’ guest cabins, and see if they might have room to take a few.”

Mrs. Pendleton closed her eyes. “This is a disaster.”

“But a fixable one, Mom. We’ll figure something out.” She squeezed her mother’s arm.

“Any idea what might have started the fire?” He had to ask.

Laura frowned and something that looked oddly like guilt shifted across her lovely features. “Not the what exactly, but most likely the who.”

“Oh?”

“Alexandro Santiago. Come here, young man.”

He followed her gaze and for the first time, he noticed a young dark-haired boy of about six or seven sitting on the curb, watching the activity at the scene with a sort of avid fascination in his huge dark brown eyes. The boy didn’t have her blond, blue-eyed coloring, but he shared her wide, mobile mouth, slender nose and high cheekbones, and was undoubtedly her child.

The kid didn’t budge from the curb for a long, drawn-out moment, but he finally rose slowly to his feet and headed toward them as if he were on his way to bury his dog in the backyard.

“Alex, tell the fireman what started the fire.”

The boy shifted his stance, avoiding the gazes of both his mother and Taft. “Do I have to?”

“Yes,” Laura said sternly.

The kid fidgeted a little more and finally sighed. “Okay. I found a lighter in one of the empty rooms. The ones being fixed up.” He spoke with a very slight, barely discernible accent. “I never saw one before and I only wanted to see how it worked. I didn’t mean to start a fire, es la verdad. But the curtains caught fire and I yelled and then mi madre came in with the fire extinguisher.”

Under other circumstances he might have been amused at the no-nonsense way the kid told the story and how he manipulated events to make it seem as if everything had just sort of happened without any direct involvement on his part.

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 side walk, 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

“Guess 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.

The reminder of her marriage left him feeling petty and small. Yeah, he had hurt her, but his betrayal probably didn’t hold a candle to everything else she had lost—her husband and the father of her children, whom he’d heard had drowned about six months earlier.

“Are you planning on eating any of that or just pushing it around your plate?”

He glanced up and, much to his shock, discovered Ridge was the only one left at the table. Everybody else had cleared off while he had been lost in thought, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry. Been a long couple of days.” He hoped his brother didn’t notice the heat he could feel crawling over his features.

Ridge gave him a long look and Taft sighed, waiting for the inevitable words of advice from his brother.

As the oldest Bowman sibling left after their parents died, Ridge had taken custody of Caidy, who had been a teenager at the time. Even though Taft and Trace had both been in their early twenties, Ridge still tried to take over the role of father figure to them, too, whether they liked it or not—which they usually didn’t.

Instead of a lecture, Ridge only sipped at his drink. “I was thinking about taking the girls for a ride up to check the fence line on the high pasture. Want to come along? A little mountain air might help clear your head.”

He did love being on the back of a horse amid the pine and sage of the mountains overlooking the ranch, but he wasn’t in the mood for more questions or sympathy from his family about Laura.

“To tell you the truth, I’m itching to get my hands dirty. I think I’ll head over to the house and put in a window frame or something.”

Ridge nodded. “I know you’ve got plenty to do on your own place, but I figured this was worth mentioning, too. I heard the other day at the hardware store that Jan Pendleton is looking to hire somebody to help her with some renovations to the inn.”

He snorted. As if Laura would ever let her mother hire him. He figured Ridge was joking but he didn’t see any hint of humor in his brother’s expression.

“Just saying. I thought you might be interested in helping Laura and her mother out a little.”

Ah. Without actually offering a lecture, this must be Ridge’s way of reminding Taft he owed Laura something. None of the rest of the family knew what had happened all those years ago, but he was pretty sure all of them blamed him.

And they were right.

Without answering, he shoved away from the table and grabbed his plate to carry it into the kitchen. First, do no harm. But once the harm had been done, a stand-up guy found some way to make it right. No matter how difficult.

Chapter Three

Laura stared at her mother, shock buzzing through her as if she had just bent down and licked an electrical outlet.

“Sorry, say that again. You did what?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind, darling,” her mother said, with a vague sort of smile as she continued stirring the chicken she was cooking for their dinner.

Are you completely mental? she wanted to yell. How could you possibly think I wouldn’t mind?

She drew a deep, cleansing breath, clamping down on the words she wanted to blurt out. The children were, for once, staying out of trouble, driving cars around the floor of the living room and she watched them interact for a moment to calm herself.

Her mother was under a great deal of strain right now, financially and otherwise. She had to keep that in mind—not that stress alone could explain her mother making such an incomprehensible decision.

“Really, it was all your idea,” Jan said calmly.

“My idea?” Impossible. Even in her most tangled nightmare, she never would have come up with this possible scenario.

“Yes. Weren’t you just saying the other day how much it would help to have a carpenter on the staff to help with the repairs, especially now that we totally have to start from the ground up in the fire-damaged room?”

“I say a lot of things, Mom.” That doesn’t mean I want you to rush out and enter into a deal with a particular devil named Taft Bowman.

“I just thought you would appreciate the help, that’s all. I know how much the fire has complicated your timeline for the renovation.”

“Not really. Only one room was damaged and it was already on my schedule for renovations.”

“Well, when Chief Bowman stopped by this morning to check on things after the excitement we had the other day—which I thought was a perfectly lovely gesture, by the way—he mentioned he could lend us a hand with any repairs in his free time. Honestly, darling, it seemed like the perfect solution.”

Really? Having her daughter’s ex-fiancé take an empty room at the inn for the next two weeks in exchange for a little skill with a miter saw was perfect in what possible alternative universe?

Her mother was as sharp as the proverbial tack. Jan Pendleton had been running the inn on her own since Laura’s father died five years ago. While she didn’t always agree with her mother’s methods and might have run things differently if she had been home, Laura knew Jan had tried hard to keep the inn functioning all those years she had been living in Madrid.

But she still couldn’t wrap her head around this one. “In theory, it is a good idea. A resident carpenter would come in very handy. But not Taft, for heaven’s sake, Mom!”

Jan frowned in what appeared to be genuine confusion. “You mean because of your history together?”

“For a start. Seeing him again after all these years is more than a little awkward,” she admitted.

Her mother continued to frown. “I’m sorry but I don’t understand. What am I missing? You always insisted your breakup was a mutual decision. I distinctly remember you telling me over and over again you had both decided you were better off as friends.”

Had she said that? She didn’t remember much about that dark time other than her deep despair.

“You were so cool and calm after your engagement ended, making all those terrible phone calls, returning all those wedding presents. You acted like you didn’t care at all. Honey, I honestly thought you wouldn’t mind having Taft here now or I never would have taken him up on his suggestion.”

Ah. Her lying little chickens were now coming home to roost. Laura fought the urge to bang her head on the old pine kitchen table a few dozen times.

Ten years ago, she had worked so hard to convince everyone involved that nobody’s heart had been shattered by the implosion of their engagement. To her parents, she had put on a bright, happy face and pretended to be excited about the adventures awaiting her, knowing how crushed they would have been if they caught even a tiny glimmer of the truth—that inside her heart felt like a vast, empty wasteland.

How could she blame her mother for not seeing through her carefully constructed act to the stark and painful reality, especially when only a few years later, Laura was married to someone else and expecting Jan’s first grandchild? It was unfair to be hurt, to wish Jan had somehow glimpsed the depth of her hidden heartache.

This, then, was her own fault. Well, hers and a certain opportunistic male who had always been very good at charming her mother—and every other female within a dozen miles of Pine Gulch.

“Okay, the carpentry work. I get that. Yes, we certainly need the help and Taft is very good with his hands.” She refused to remember just how good those hands could be. “But did you have to offer him a room?”

Jan shrugged, adding a lemony sauce to the chicken that instantly started to burble, filling the kitchen with a delicious aroma. “That was his idea.”

Oh, Laura was quite sure it was Taft’s idea. The bigger question was why? What possible reason could he have for this sudden wish to stay at the inn? By the stunned look he had worn when he spotted her at the fire scene, she would have assumed he wanted to stay as far away from her as possible.

He had to find this whole situation as awkward and, yes, painful as she did.

Maybe it was all some twisted revenge plot. She had spurned him after all. Maybe he wanted to somehow punish her all these years later with shoddy carpentry work that would end up costing an arm and a leg to repair….

She sighed at her own ridiculous imaginings. Taft didn’t work that way. Whatever his motive for making this arrangement with her mother, she had no doubt he would put his best effort into the job.

“Apparently his lease was up on the apartment where he’s been living,” Jan went on. “He’s building a house in Cold Creek Canyon—which I’ve heard is perfectly lovely, by the way—but it won’t be finished for a few more weeks. Think of how much you can save on paying for a carpenter, all in exchange only for letting him stay in a room that was likely to be empty anyway, the way our vacancy rate will be during the shoulder season until the summer tourist activity heats up. I honestly thought you would be happy about this. When Taft suggested it, the whole thing seemed like a good solution all the way around.”

A good solution for everyone except her! How would she survive having him underfoot all the time, smiling at her out of those green eyes she had once adored so much, talking to her out of that delicious mouth she had tasted so many times?

She gave a tiny sigh and her mother sent her a careful look. “I can still tell him no. He was planning on bringing some of his things over in the morning, but I’ll just give him a ring and tell him never mind. We can find someone else, honey, if having Taft here will make you too uncomfortable.”

Her mother was completely sincere, she knew. Jan would call him in immediately if she had any idea how much Laura had grieved for the dreams they had once spun together.

For an instant, she was tempted to have her mother do exactly that, call and tell him the deal was off.

How could she, though? She knew just what Taft would think. He would guess, quite accurately, that she was the one who didn’t want him here and would know she had dissuaded her mother from the plan.

Her shoulder blades itched at the thought. She didn’t want him thinking she was uncomfortable having him around. Better that he continue to believe she was completely indifferent to the ramifications of being back in Pine Gulch with him.

She had done her very best to strike the proper tone the day of the fire, polite but cool, as if they were distant acquaintances instead of once having shared everything.

If she told her mother she didn’t want to have Taft here, he would know her demeanor was all an act.

She was trapped. Well and truly trussed, just like one of the calves he used to rope in the high-school rodeo. It was a helpless, miserable feeling, one that felt all too familiar. She had lived with it every day of the past seven years, since her marriage to Javier Santiago. But unlike those calves in the rodeo ring, she had wandered willingly into the ropes that bound her to a man she didn’t love.

Well, she hadn’t been completely willing, she supposed. From the beginning she had known marrying him was a mistake and had tried every way she could think short of jilting him also to escape the ties binding them together. But unlike with Taft, this time she’d had a third life to consider. She had been four months pregnant with Alexandro. Javier—strangely old-fashioned about this, at least—wouldn’t consider any other option but marriage.

She had tried hard to convince herself she was in love with him. He was handsome and seductively charming and made her laugh with his extravagant pursuit of her, which had been the reason she had finally given in and begun to date him while she was working at the small, exclusive boutique hotel he owned in Madrid.

She had tried to be a good wife and had worked hard to convince herself she loved him, but it hadn’t been enough. Not for him and not for her—but by then she had been thoroughly entangled in the piggin’ rope, so to speak, by Alex and then by Maya, her sweet-natured and vulnerable daughter.

This, though, with Taft. She couldn’t control what her mother had done, but she could certainly control her own response to it. She wouldn’t allow herself to care if the man had suddenly invaded every inch of her personal space by moving into the hotel. It was only temporary and then he would be out of her life again.

“Do you want me to call him?” her mother asked again.

She forced herself to smile. “Not at all, Mama. I’m sorry. I was just … surprised, that’s all. Everything should be fine. You’re right—it’s probably a great idea. Free labor is always a good thing, and like you said, the only thing we’re giving up is a room that probably wouldn’t have been booked anyway.”

Maya wandered into the kitchen, apparently tired of playing, and gave her mother one of those generous hugs Laura had come to depend upon like oxygen and water. “Hungry, Mama.”

“Gram is fixing us something delicious for dinner. Aren’t we lucky to have her?”

Maya nodded with a broad smile to her grandmother. “Love you, Gram.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.” Jan beamed back at her.

This—her daughter and Alex—was more important than her discomfort about Taft. She was trying her best to turn the hotel into something that could actually turn a profit instead of just provide a subsistence for her mother and now her and her children.

She had her chance to live her lifelong dream now and make the Cold Creek Inn into the warm and gracious facility she had always imagined, a place where families could feel comfortable to gather, where couples could find or rekindle romance, where the occasional business traveler could find a home away from home.

This was her moment to seize control of her life and make a new future for herself and her children. She couldn’t let Taft ruin that for her.

All she had to do was remind herself that she hadn’t loved him for ten years and she should be able to handle his presence here at the inn with calm aplomb.

No big deal whatsoever. Right?

If some part of him had hoped Laura might fall all over him with gratitude for stepping up to help with the inn renovations, Taft would have been doomed to disappointment.

Over the next few days, as he settled into his surprisingly comfortable room in the wing overlooking the creek, a few doors down from the fire-damaged room, he helped Mrs. Pendleton with the occasional carpentry job. A bathroom cabinet repair here, a countertop fix there. In that time, he barely saw Laura. Somehow she was always mysteriously absent whenever he stopped at the front desk.

The few times he did come close enough to talk to her, she would exchange a quick, stiff word with him and then manufacture some excuse to take off at the earliest opportunity, as if she didn’t want to risk some kind of contagion.

She had dumped him, not the other way around, but she was acting as if he was the biggest heel in the county. Still, he found her prickly, standoffish attitude more a challenge than an annoyance.

Truth was, he wasn’t used to women ignoring him—and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to Laura ignoring him.

They had been friends forever, even before that momentous summer after her freshman year of college when he finally woke up and realized how much he had come to care about her as much more than simply a friend. After she left, he had missed the woman he loved with a hollow ache he had never quite been able to fill, but he sometimes thought he missed his best friend just as much.

After three nights at the hotel with these frustrating, fleeting encounters, he was finally able to run her to ground early one morning. He had an early meeting at the fire station, and when he walked out of the side entrance near where he parked the vehicle he drove as fire chief—which was as much a mobile office as a mode of transportation—he spotted someone working in the scraggly flower beds that surrounded the inn.

The beds were mostly just a few tulips and some stubbly, rough-looking shrubs but it looked as if somebody was trying to make it more. Several flats of colorful blooms had been spaced with careful efficiency along the curvy sidewalk, ready to be transplanted into the flower beds.

At first, he assumed the gardener under the straw hat was someone from a landscaping service until he caught a glimpse of honey-blond hair.

He instantly switched direction. “Good morning,” he called as he approached. She jumped and whirled around. When she spotted him, her instinctive look of surprise twisted into something that looked like dismay before she tucked it away and instead gave him a polite, impersonal smile.

“Oh. Hello.”

If it didn’t sting somewhere deep inside, he might have been amused at her cool tone.

“You do remember this is eastern Idaho, not Madrid, right? It’s only April. We could have snow for another six weeks yet, easy.”

“I remember,” she answered stiffly. “These are all hardy early bloomers. They should be fine.”

What he knew about gardening was, well, nothing, except how much he used to hate it when his mom would wake him and his brothers and Caidy up early to go out and weed her vegetable patch on summer mornings.

“If you say so. I would just hate to see you spend all this money on flowers and then wake up one morning to find a hard freeze has wiped them out overnight.”

“I appreciate your concern for my wallet, but I’ve learned in thirty-one years on the earth that if you want to beautify the world around you a little bit, sometimes you have to take a few risks.”

He could appreciate the wisdom in that, whether he was a gardener or not.

“I’m only working on the east- and south-facing beds for now, where there’s less chance of frost kill. I might have been gone a few years, but I haven’t quite forgotten the capricious weather we can see here in the Rockies.”

What had she forgotten? She didn’t seem to have too many warm memories of their time together, not if she could continue treating him with this annoyingly polite indifference.

He knew he needed to be heading to the station house for his meeting, but he couldn’t resist lingering a moment with her to see if he could poke and prod more of a reaction out of her than this.

He looked around and had to point out the obvious. “No kids with you this morning?”

“They’re inside fixing breakfast with my mother.” She gestured to the small Craftsman-style cottage behind the inn where she had been raised. “I figured this was a good time to get something done before they come outside and my time will be spent trying to keep Alex from deciding he could dig a hole to China in the garden and Maya from picking every one of the pretty flowers.”

He couldn’t help smiling. Her kids were pretty darn cute—besides that, there was something so right about standing here with her while the morning sunlight glimmered in her hair and the cottonwood trees along the river sent out a few exploratory puffs on the sweet-smelling breeze.

“They’re adorable kids.”

She gave him a sidelong glance as if trying to gauge his sincerity. “When they’re not starting fires, you mean?”

He laughed. “I’m going on the assumption that that was a fluke.”

There. He saw it. The edges of her mouth quirked up and she almost smiled, but she turned her face away and he missed it.

He still considered it a huge victory. He always used to love making her smile.

Something stirred inside him as he watched her pick up a cheerful yellow flower and set it in the small hole she had just dug. Attraction, yes. Most definitely. He had forgotten how much he liked the way she looked, fresh and bright and as pretty as those flowers. Somehow he had also forgotten over the years that air of quiet grace and sweetness.

She was just as lovely as ever. No, that wasn’t quite true. She was even more beautiful than she had been a decade ago. While he wasn’t so sure how life in general had treated her, the years had been physically kind to her. With those big eyes and her high cheekbones and that silky hair he used to love burying his hands in, she was still beautiful. Actually, when he considered it, her beauty had more depth now than it did when she had been a young woman, and he found it even more appealing.

Yeah, he was every bit as attracted to her as he’d been in those days when thoughts of her had consumed him like the wildfires he used to fight every summer. But he’d been attracted to plenty of women in the past decade. What he felt right now, standing in the morning sunshine with Laura, ran much more deeply through him.

Unsettled and more than a little rattled by the sudden hot ache in his gut, he took the coward’s way out and opted for the one topic he knew she wouldn’t want to discuss. “What happened to the kids’ father?”

She dumped a trowel full of dirt on the seedling with enough force to make him wince. “Remind me again why that’s any of your business,” she bit out.

“It’s not. Only idle curiosity. You married him just a few years after you were going to marry me. You can’t blame me for wondering about him.”

She raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t agree with that particular statement. “I’m sure you’ve heard the gory details,” she answered, her voice terse. “Javier died six months ago. A boating accident off the coast of Barcelona. He and his mistress du jour were both killed. It was a great tragedy for everyone concerned.”

Ah, hell. He knew her husband had died, but he hadn’t heard the rest of it. He doubted anyone else in Pine Gulch had or the rumor would have certainly slithered its way toward him, given their history together.

She studiously refused to look at him. He knew her well enough to be certain she regretted saying anything and he couldn’t help wondering why she had.

He also couldn’t think of a proper response. How much pain did those simple words conceal?

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, although it sounded lame and trite.

“About what? His death or the mistress?”

“Both.”

Still avoiding his gaze, she picked up another flower start from the colorful flat. “He was a good father. Whatever else I could say about Javier, he loved his children. They both miss him very much.”

“You don’t?”

“Again, why is this your business?”

He sighed. “It’s not. You’re right. But we were best friends once, even before, well, everything, and I would still like to know about your life after you left here. I never stopped caring about you just because you dumped me.”

Again, she refused to look at him. “Don’t go there, Taft. We both know I only broke our engagement because you didn’t have the guts to do it.”

Oh. Ouch. Direct hit. He almost took a step back, but he managed to catch himself just in time. “Jeez, Laura, why don’t you say what you really mean?” he managed to get out past the guilt and pain.

She rose to her feet, spots of color on her high cheekbones. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You completely checked out of our relationship after your parents were murdered. Every time I tried to talk to you, you brushed me off, told me you were fine, then merrily headed to the Bandito for another drink and to flirt with some hot young thing there. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that I married a man who was unfaithful. You know what they say about old patterns being hard to break.”

Well, she was talking to him. Be careful what you wish for, Bowman.

“I was never unfaithful to you.”

She made a disbelieving sound. “Maybe you didn’t actually go that far with another woman, but you sure seemed to enjoy being with all the Bandito bar babes much more than you did me.”

This wasn’t going at all the way he had planned when he stopped to talk to her. Moving into the inn and taking the temporary carpenter job had been one of his crazier ideas. Really, he had only wanted to test the waters and see if there was any chance of finding their way past the ugliness and anger to regain the friendship they had once shared, the friendship that had once meant everything to him.

Those waters were still pretty damn frigid.

She let out a long breath and looked as if she regretted bringing up the past. “I knew you wanted out, Taft. Everyone knew you wanted out. You just didn’t want to hurt me. I understand and appreciate that.”

“That’s not how it happened.”

“I was there. I remember it well. You were grieving and angry about your parents’ murder. Anyone would be. It’s completely understandable, which is why, if you’ll remember, I wanted to postpone the wedding until you were in a better place. You wouldn’t hear of it. Every time I brought it up, you literally walked away from me. How could I have married you under those circumstances? We both would have ended up hating each other.”

“You’re right. This way is much better, with only you hating me.”

Un-freaking-believable. She actually looked hurt at that. “Who said I hated you?”

“Hate might be too big a word. Despise might be a little more appropriate.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t feel either of those things. The truth is, Taft, what we had together was a long time ago. I don’t feel anything at all for you other than maybe a little fond nostalgia for what we once shared.”

Oh. Double ouch. Pain sliced through him, raw and sharp. That was certainly clear enough. He was very much afraid it wouldn’t take long for him to discover he was just as crazy about her as he had always been and all she felt in return was “fond nostalgia.”

Or so she said anyway.

He couldn’t help searching her expression for any hint that she wasn’t being completely truthful, but she only gazed back at him with that same cool look, her mouth set in that frustratingly polite smile.

Damn, but he hated that smile. He suddenly wanted to lean forward, yank her against him and kiss away that smile until it never showed up there again.

Just for the sake of fond nostalgia.

Instead, he forced himself to give her a polite smile of his own and took a step in the direction of his truck. He had a meeting and didn’t want to be later than he already was.

“Good to know,” he murmured. “I guess I had better let you get back to your gardening. My shift ends to night at six and then I’m only on call for the next few days, so I should have a little more time to work on the rooms you’re renovating. Leave me a list of jobs you would like me to do at the front desk. I’ll try my best to stay out of your way.”

There. That sounded cool and uninvolved.

If he slammed his truck door a little harder than strictly necessary, well, so what?

Chapter Four

When would she ever learn to keep her big mouth shut?

Long after Taft climbed into his pickup truck and drove away, Laura continued to yank weeds out of the sadly neglected garden beds with hands that shook while silently castigating herself for saying anything.

The moment she turned and found him walking toward her, she should have thrown down her trowel and headed back to the cottage.

Their conversation replayed over and over in her head. If her gardening gloves hadn’t been covered in dirt, she would have groaned and buried her face in her hands.

First of all, why on earth had she told him about Javier and his infidelities? Taft was the last person in Pine Gulch with whom she should have shared that particular tidbit of juicy information.

Even her mother didn’t know how difficult the last few years of her marriage had become, how she would have left in an instant if not for the children and their adoration for Javier. Yet she had blurted the gory details right out to Taft, gushing her private heartache like a leaky sprinkler pipe.

So much for wanting him to think she had moved onward and upward after she left Pine Gulch. All she had accomplished was to make herself an object of pity in his eyes—as if she hadn’t done that a decade ago by throwing all her love at someone who wasn’t willing or capable at the time of catching it.

And then she had been stupid enough to dredge up the past, something she vowed she wouldn’t do. Talking about it again had to have made him wonder if she were thinking about it, which basically sabotaged her whole plan to appear cool and uninterested in Taft.

He could always manage to get her to confide things she shouldn’t. She had often thought he should have been the police officer, not his twin brother, Trace.

When she was younger, she used to tell him everything. They had talked about the pressure her parents placed on her to excel in school. About a few of the mean girls in her grade who had excluded her from their social circle because of those grades, about her first crush—on a boy other than him, of course. She didn’t tell him that until much later.

They had probably known each other clear back in grade school, but she didn’t remember much about him other than maybe seeing him around in the lunchroom, this big, kind of tough-looking kid who had an identical twin and who always smiled at everyone. He had been two whole grades ahead of her after all, in an entirely different social stratosphere.

Her first real memory of him was middle school, which in Pine Gulch encompassed seventh through ninth grades. She had been in seventh grade, Taft in ninth. He had been an athletic kid and well-liked, always able to make anyone laugh. She, on the other hand, had been quiet and shy, much happier with a book in her hand than standing by her locker with her friends between classes, giggling over the cute boys.

She and Taft had ended up both taking a Spanish elective and had been seated next to each other on Señora Baker’s incomprehensible seating chart.

Typically, guys that age—especially jocks—didn’t want to have much to do with younger girls. Gawky, insecure, bookish girls might as well just forget it. But somehow while struggling over past participles and conjugating verbs, they had become friends. She had loved his sense of humor and he seemed to appreciate how easily she picked up Spanish.

They had arranged study groups together for every test, often before school because Taft couldn’t do it afterward most of the time due to practice sessions for whatever school sport he was currently playing.

She could remember exactly the first moment she knew she was in love with him. She had been in the library waiting for him early one morning. Because she lived in town and could easily walk to school, she was often there first. He and his twin brother usually caught a ride with their older brother, Ridge, who was a senior in high school at the time and had a very cool pickup truck with big tires and a roll bar.

While she waited for him, she had been fine-tuning a history paper due in a few weeks when Ronnie Lowery showed up. Ronnie was a jerk and a bully in her grade who had seemed to have it in for her for the past few years.

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