Timber Creek

“Get out.” She stepped away to get a better look at his face. “Seriously? You built this?”



“Yeah, sure.” He laughed at her dumbstruck expression. “Where do you think homes come from, sugar? Men build them.”



“You did it all by yourself?”



“Jack and Scott helped.”



“You’re close with your brothers,” she said. “It’s nice.”



“I guess it is.” He nodded thoughtfully. It wasn’t something he thought about much, but his brothers were part of who he was. “The four of us, we’re tight. Though we don’t see Doctor Mark nearly enough—he spends most of his time in his condo in Silver City. And then there’s Jack…working with him every day, well, we do our share of bickering.”



“Like fighting about whether you should remeasure the property line?” Something in her eyes had shuttered as she said it.



They’d had a moment where they’d actually connected, but that was it. Just a moment was all it would ever be with Laura, and it was too bad. He headed inside. “Come on. We don’t have much time. If you’re going to have a reaction, it’ll set in quick.”



He felt her follow him into the bathroom and grabbed the special scrub from the cabinet. When she didn’t say anything, he gave her an urging look, gesturing toward the tub. “Go ahead. Sit on the edge there.” She looked like a trapped animal, so he clarified, “I promise this isn’t some elaborate way to get in your shorts.”



Wasn’t it?



She sat warily on the edge of the tub, and those shorts tugged higher than should’ve been legal. Suddenly, his tiny bathroom wasn’t nearly big enough to contain him, her, and those mile-long legs. He went and ran the bathwater, shoving his whole arm into the cold stream as he waited for it to warm up. It didn’t help.



He opened the tube and rubbed the gritty cream between his hands. At her questioning look, he said, “This breaks up the oil. We’ve got only a few minutes before it sinks in for good. If you scrub with this stuff before the poison soaks in, sometimes it can minimize the allergic reaction.”



“How do you know?”



“I’ve had poison oak more times than I can count,” he said, happy to have something he could reasonably answer.



She smiled wickedly, asking in a singsong voice, “Don’t you know the saying?” Mimicking his words from earlier.



“City girl visits one creek bank and suddenly she’s an expert.” The cream was warmed in his palms. He held his hands out. “You ready?”



“Don’t call me that,” she said quietly.



“What?” He replayed his words in his head. “What did I do wrong now?”



“‘City girl.’” She wore a peculiarly bereft look on her face. “Please don’t call me that.”



“Okay,” he told her cautiously. He took a calf in his hands and began to rub. “I won’t.”



It took every effort of concentration to keep his face a careful blank. With the cream in his hands, his touch slid up those tight calves, and he fantasized what might happen in another lifetime, if Laura didn’t hate him, if he were the sort of man she’d let slide his hands up her legs, to get a peek at what she hid under that cute little outfit.



“Mmm,” she moaned, and thank God she’d shut her eyes, because his jeans just pulled way tighter than usual. “That feels great.”



He managed some sort of grunt in response, but clearly she wasn’t aware of his situation, because she blithely continued, “So, you never answered my question.”



“Question?” With her eyes shut, he could stare unabashedly, and damn, she was pretty. So pretty. Normally her hair was done to perfection, but the wind had blown it into sexy wisps framing her face, with errant strands on her forehead and tucked behind her ears. It was a little darker than Sorrow’s, with brown streaks among the yellow. He imagined gently twining his fingers through it. He’d cup her cheeks and kiss her, long and slow.



“How come you’ve gotten so much poison oak?”



“What?” He came to, registering her question. “Oh, that. Well, sometimes, hiking, you know, you miss it. Or, if I’m on my mountain bike and hit a patch, I can’t help it.” He rubbed the cream over her knee, on up to her thigh. It was as smooth and sleek and taut as it looked. “Damn,” he whispered, then caught himself.



He hadn’t meant to say it, and it’d been under his breath, but she’d heard. She opened her eyes, focusing instantly on him. “What?”



“I said, uh, damn, because…” Meeting her gaze like that, he realized just how close he’d edged to her. He glanced down and smudged aside a bit of the cream, revealing a swatch of skin. It already looked an angry red. “Aw, damn, darlin’. A rash is appearing.”



“Oh.” She slouched forward for a peek, looking defeated. “Damn is right.”



He wanted to kiss her forehead and tell her she’d be okay. He’d put her on his bed, and bring her a tray of food, and ice her skin, and massage her with creams, and keep her company, taking care of her till she was better.



His cell buzzed, and he quickly washed off his hands, happy for an excuse to grab a little air. “Keep rubbing. We’ve got to break down the oil.”



He gave a quick check to the Caller ID. Hell. It was Hunter Fox, with impeccable timing. “Mister Fox,” he answered quietly.



He was painfully aware of Laura’s eyes on him, and how the one-sided conversation would’ve sounded to her:



“A what?



“In the Sierras?



“No, sir, I don’t—



“Don’t you mean a hot tub?”



As the conversation progressed, the clouds in Laura’s expression grew darker. She was rinsing off her legs, looking angry as a wet cat.



“That, too?



“Yes, sir.



“Yeah, I suppose we can dig for a pool.”



He flipped the phone shut, silently cursing those stupid dot-com people who’d sold to Fairview in the first place. There was a ton of young Internet money in the foothills, parcels of land owned by people who didn’t remember how many houses they owned or where. Why couldn’t Fairview have pursued them instead? Why’d they have to come sniffing around Sierra Falls?



Laura verbally accosted him the moment he’d clicked off. She’d clearly understood the gist of the call. “They want you to add a pool? Who swims in a pool in the Sierras? They’ll be able to use it, what, one, maybe two months a year? Have they ever been here in the winter? It’s cold.”



And so was the tone of her voice. Cold enough to chill him to his bones.



He sighed heavily, back to square one. “Then it doesn’t matter if there’s a pool, now does it, Laura?”



But when he dared risk meeting her eyes, what he saw there speared him. Laura stood, a towel clenched in her hands, visibly holding herself together. She looked so sad, so alone in her despair.



“Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “I can’t lose. I need this. The past few years have been such a mess. I need to succeed. For once.”



“Laura, you have a TV network coming to film here. If that’s not success, then I don’t know what is.”



“But Fairview has all the money in the world to throw at this project. Whatever I do, they’ll come in and do better. Bigger. How can I ever compete?”



He didn’t know the answer. There was no beating a competitor like Fairview. He just wished he could make her see how, to him, whether she was wildly successful didn’t matter. “You’re a winner, Laura. You always have been. Losing against Fairview won’t change that.”



His intentions had been good, but it was obvious his words weren’t.



She bristled. “A winner? Seriously? What are you, a motivational speaker? You don’t get it, Eddie. I can’t lose.” She tossed the towel on the bathroom floor and strode down the hall to the front door. “Take me back to my car.”



He checked the time on his cell. “I gotta go, anyway.”



“What? Back to Reno for you? You’re always running off. The mistress getting impatient?”



“There’s no mistress, Laura.” Was that really what she thought of him? The only thing she’d ever think of him? He met her at the door with a tired sigh. “Maybe one of these days you’ll open your eyes and see things for how they really are.”



Thirteen



Laura was driving probably a little faster than she should’ve been, but she knew these roads as only a local would, anticipating the exact moment to downshift to second for the turn, when to pop it back to third, and smoothly into fourth.



The scent of grocery store flowers overpowered the car and made her nose twinge. She cracked a window. She was anxious, at sea, over her head, not to mention ready to crawl out of her skin. She was too proud to admit the full extent of her despair to her family, and yet she craved comfort. She longed to be someplace she could feel like a kid again. A safe place.



Lately, with Eddie sniffing around, and Helen having tantrums, and Dad hassling her, and Sorrow and Billy taking every spare moment to play kissy-face, the lodge and tavern felt far from safe. But she did know one place she could find it.



Finally she slowed way down to pull into the Kidds’ driveway—it’d do no good to shock the sisters with peeling tires and spitting gravel. As it was, the last time she’d seen them, she’d been agitated and impatient, and she regretted it. She owed them an apology, and a thanks, too.



Though nothing had come from having Eddie remeasure the property line, it’d stalled him a little, and for that she was grateful. The idea had come from Ruby and Pearl. She got the feeling that despite the fact Eddie was their grandnephew, they didn’t look askance at badgering a man every once in a while.



Girl power, the old-fashioned way.



Ruby had heard her drive up and came to stand on the front porch to greet her. She clutched the zippered front of her pastel blue seersucker housedress as if bracing a winter’s chill instead of a pleasant July morning. “Laura Bailey, you tell me everything’s okay with your poppa.”