Cade

 

I did pretty well maintaining my self-control. I waited a full three days before I drove down to the house where I had dropped Mara off. It was one of those bright days that you get in December; not a cloud in the achingly blue sky, and the morning frost burned off before noon.

White Pines had always been a sleepy little town, but there was interest in it now. More and more folks were flying north for the winter, enchanted with the idea of having a classic holiday worthy of a Hallmark movie, and I was interested in taking advantage of it.

The truth was that I had fought going back to my hometown. I knew it was going to be an amazing professional opportunity if I got in on the ground floor, especially for someone knew the town as well as I did. There were a lot of ways to get rich here, and I certainly didn't mind adding to my considerable fortune.

My uncle always said you could never be too rich, and after he taught me everything he knew, I had to agree.

I was surprised that White Pines hadn’t had much of an effect on me. I was prepared to be deluged by bad memories from long ago the minute I drove past city limits at the beginning of December. My dad had died a handful of years ago, and after I cleared out his apartment, I had never given it a second thought. Now I was back, driving past my old high school, Malarky's, all the old haunts, and I didn't feel anything

Well, most of the women who’d ever spent more than a few days with me had called me a cold bastard, and I was fairly comfortable with them being right about that. Then I turned down the street to Mara's house, and I realized that all my musing had been completely wrong.

It felt like all of those emotions I thought I’d left behind as an idiot teenager were just waiting for me there at that house. There was the anger and frustration, of course, but beyond that there was an anticipation I hadn't felt since I was eighteen and head over heels in love with Mara Becker. It was joy and excitement and the complete certainty that I had found the girl who’d been made for me.

In short, it felt like being an eighteen-year-old again; one who knew absolutely nothing about love and nothing about women. That's what I tried to tell myself anyway. 

However, when I pulled up into the driveway, I felt the overwhelming familiarity of being in love with the aloof and ferociously intelligent girl from another state. I choked it back, because technically, I was there on business, and instead of dwelling on my nostalgic feelings I walked up the drive to ring the doorbell.

Mara answered almost immediately, and for a moment we simply looked at each other. Seeing her out of her bulky winter coat, it was even easier to remember her as she was ten years ago. She was still tall and generously curvy, her breasts and her hips filling out her casual green dress and her dark leggings with ease. A dark green cardigan covered her shoulders, and incongruously, pink bunny slippers covered her feet.

"I think that pink doesn't quite go with the rest of it," I pointed out, and she grinned at me briefly.

"Shows what you know. This look is all the rage in Atlanta," she retorted with an affected pompous tone. "What are you doing here, Cade?"

"I come in peace. Can we get out of the cold?"

Mara hesitated for a moment, and that hurt more than I thought it would. Then she nodded, and stepped back to let me in the house.

"I just finished having lunch, but would you like some coffee?"

"I'd love some coffee," I said, following her in to the brightly lit kitchen. As we walked, I couldn't help but notice that her grandmother's house had good bones. It was a classic, solid wood, with hardwood everywhere. It was slightly shabby in the best way, as if people had lived there and loved it for years.

With a faint start, I realized that that was exactly what had happened. It was something that plenty of people would pay to experience, and for a moment I felt oddly ashamed of myself.

"You don't need to worry, you know," Mara said, breaking my reverie. "Grandma's been dead for a few years now. She's not going to pop out of the woodwork to grill you on your intentions."

She stopped a moment, considering her words.

"Though Shannon might. She's away for the moment, though, so you should be safe."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said with a laugh. "And no, I wasn't worried about your grandma. I was just noticing what a beautiful home this is."

Mara nodded as she set up the coffee before turning to look at me. Her green eyes were as sharp as diamonds, and I felt as if she were taking me apart molecule by molecule. It probably says something about me that it turned me on.

"So I spent some time on Google," she said, and I blinked.

"Good for you?"

"I mean, I looked you up. And I found you in some very impressive databases, I have to say."

"What, were you expecting to find a criminal record?"

She shrugged, a faint smile on her face.

"You've done quite well for yourself. Your real estate company is worth billions."

I grinned.

"My uncle got me started. I just went bigger and better."

"I saw. It's impressive, even if it doesn't really jibe with what I remember."

I thought I might have heard a note of censure in her tone.

"People change," I said, and she nodded.

"They do. You did. I certainly did. So do you believe that enough to remove whatever stick you have up your ass about me?"

She looked at me expectantly, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing out loud.

"You really are something, princess," I said. "All right, clean slate?"

A troubled look crossed her face briefly, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss it off of her. Then it passed, and she smiled at me.

"Something like that. And I want to know why you're here. I didn't think you were really the type to linger."

"Ouch. Well, all right, cards on the table. Do you realize that you're sitting on a very lucrative investment property?"

Mara raised her eyebrows.

"You mean the house? Is this about me telling you that we were having some trouble deciding what to do with it?"

"Yeah. White Pines was a sleepy little place when we were teenagers, Mara, but it's not going to stay sleepy. The holiday getaway industry is booming, and when people think about the perfect holiday, White Pines is exactly what they're looking for. White Pines could be on the verge of an enormous boom in seasonal tourism, and people are looking for houses just like this one."

There are plenty of people that would be thrilled to hear news like that, but Mara only gave me a considering look.

"And what are you proposing that Shannon, Chloe, and I do with this gold mine?"

"Not so much what you would do, but what I would do. I can't make any promises, not without an inspection and some forms filled out, but I've been looking for houses in the area that look just like this one."

"And once you have them, what are you going to do?"

"Spruce 'em up a little and then either sell them as vacation homes or lease them out as the same. A little Christmas cheer for the family for the price of a grand or so a day."

She blinked at that amount of cash, and I grinned.

"Oh believe me, there are plenty of people who will pay for the kind of perfect holiday they never got to experience as kids."

"And what about you?"

"What about me? I told you, I'm putting in cash to—"

"No, not that," she said, setting two steaming cups of coffee in front of us and taking a seat. She slipped her bare feet out of her ridiculous slippers and locked them into the bar under her chair.

"I meant, would you pay a grand a day for that kind of perfect holiday?"

I hadn't expected to be ambushed by the long forgotten dreams of my eighteen-year-old self while I was in White Pines, and I sure as hell hadn't expected to be ambushed by the dreams of an even younger self; one whose dad drank away all the money for Christmas presents and who saw people going home with fresh Christmas trees and wondered if he could go with them.

"Well, you know what they say. If you're selling, you probably shouldn't be buying," I hedged, and it felt suddenly as if those green eyes were looking right through me.

"I see. So you're selling an illusion, something that makes you roll your eyes and laugh."

"Can't do much without a sense of humor," I said.

"I think I see our problem," Mara said. "You want people to buy an illusion. What my sisters and I are selling here, well, it's something real."

"Something real?"

"Oh yes," Mara said with a small smile. "Something very real. We came up here every Christmas with our parents, and we spent a lot of summers here as well. We grew up here. I spent my last semester in high school here taking care of my grandma. She got better and enjoyed another five years, and it wasn't because of me, but I know I helped. I fell in love with a boy for the first time here, and I got my heart broken here too. So when you come along talking about selling an illusion...well, it doesn't sit quite right, does it?"

"You have a price," I said flatly. "It might be higher than I'm willing to pay, but you have one."

"Of course I do," Mara said. "Everyone does. But I just want you to know what you are asking for, and why your pitch doesn't do much for me right now."

I had dealt with tough sells before, but Mara wasn't trying to raise the price by playing on my sympathy. She was just telling me what the house actually meant to her, and that plucked a string somewhere in the vicinity of my heart, one that I had thought was permanently stilled. I sipped the coffee—surprisingly good and beautifully hot—and thought for a minute.

"All right, I'm going to do three things. First, I'm going to write a number on this piece of paper. This is the minimum of what we would pay for this house. This is a number that I'm giving you sight unseen. When I see more of it, it could go up.

"The second thing I'm going to do is ask you to come with me and see what we're doing at some of the other properties I've acquired in town. You told me about this house's past, now let me show you what its future might look like."

Mara was nodding thoughtfully. That was always one of the things that had made her stand out, even ten years ago. She was someone who wanted to think about what was coming, what it meant.

"That seems fair. I will tell you, though, that if you're trying to pull a fast one on me I'll say no out of spite, and my sisters can't budge me when I get like that..."

"I'm not trying to pull something, and if I did, you could be as spiteful as you wanted to be. Does that sound good?"

"So far, so good. You said three things. What's the third?"

"Third, I'm sorry to pry, Mara, but when you mentioned the first boy you fell in love with, and the first boy who broke your heart...was that me?"

I wriggled my eyebrows, thinking that I was being funny and that she would laugh and maybe smack my arm, shaking her head. Instead, Mara took on that peculiar stillness that she had, that way of looking more like a statue than a person. It was as if she had gone somewhere far away, with no plans of returning until she knew it was safe.

"Of course it was you, Cade," she said softly. "Of course it was."