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Chapter 5
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Harper Lyles was on my mind, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
Or maybe it wasn’t so much that I didn’t like it, it was just that I wasn’t sure it was a good thing.
Maddie said I was busy being a martyr, that I wore the wound of losing my wife like a monk’s robe, keeping people away and sequestering myself emotionally (her words, not mine.) After Harper and Mike dropped by the job site, I wondered if that was changing. I think I’d felt myself wink at Harper without even planning to.
Who winks? Besides weird old uncles and cheesy car salesmen, I guessed I did. Harper had made me a winker, and it felt different and strange. What did it mean when a woman you’d just met had the strange power to make you do things you normally wouldn’t do?
“Not too hard to look at,” Chance commented to me as Harper and Mike disappeared in the rugged golf cart the Inn owned.
“You mean Harper, I’m guessing,” I said, turning to face him, squinting against the midday sun.
He shrugged. “You already know I think Mike’s got ‘em all beat,” he said. “But Harper’s always been cute—even when she was seven. I remember her.”
“Yeah?” I pulled off a glove and wiped the moisture from my brow with the shirt hanging from my waist.
“I mean, I’m not sure how discerning I was at ten,” he continued. “But she was one of those kids who just kind of popped into situations, never hung back, was never shy or anxious.”
“Sounds about right,” I said, pooling my limited knowledge of the version of Harper I knew. “Not that I know much,” I added quickly, pulling my glove back on. “Just met her. She just seems...” I struggled to find a word that would cover it. “Comfortable,” I tried.
Chance looked at me for a beat longer, like he was reading all the words I hadn’t said and could see right inside me to where I was thinking words like: sexy, fascinating, compelling.
I felt an immediate wash of guilt and forced my traitorous mind to the constant movie I kept playing on a screen inside my head, a private viewing of every memory I had of Jess on constant loop in a dark theater built for one.
“Better get back to it or my sister’ll kill us all,” I said, pulling my glove back on and turning away from Chance.
The sound of a power saw came to life then, killing any opportunity for further discussion, and we each went back to our work—Chance no doubt thinking about Mike, or about whatever it was you thought about when your life was going exactly the way you wanted, and I forced my mind to stay locked on Jess, on her happy smile, on the way she’d looked before she’d been sick, on the way things had been when we first met. Even on the way they’d been going downhill before she got sick.
Jess stayed on my mind the rest of that morning, and by the time we’d stopped for lunch, I was back in the same dark hole I’d inhabited for the past couple years.
“Diner?” Dean asked me as he stuck his tools inside the structure and pulled off his gloves. Dean was just a kid, folks up here had expected him to head out to college and conquer the world, but he’d ended up back here sooner than expected, and I’d never gotten the story about why.
“Sure,” I answered, following him down to my truck. A couple of the other guys on the crew were opening packed lunches, lounging on the ground in the shade behind the worksite or sitting on the fallen log near the trail head.
We drove out the dirt road that connected the Outpost to the inn, and then pulled into the main Kings Grove parking lot. The town wasn’t really more than a wide spot in the road, but the part of me that saw everything as a movie appreciated the small town vibe, which had an almost western flair to it—all the storefronts facing the same way, everything oriented around this one spot. I thought—not for the first time since leaving my old life—that it would be a great setting for a movie.
Maddie grinned when she saw us coming in the door of the diner, and Adele pursed her lips at us, probably thinking about how much silty mountain dust was accompanying us into the booth where Maddie put us.
“How’s it going?” Maddie asked, the narrowed eyes indicating that she was not inquiring as to our health but as to the state of her desired reception site.
“We’re doing our best, Ms. Turner,” Dean said, bobbing his head a bit.
“Yeah, Ms. Turner. Please don’t complain to our boss. We’re just the crew.” I parroted, unable to help myself. That earned me a whack on the head with Maddie’s order pad.
“Funny.” She rolled her eyes. “Hurry up and order so I can send you back to work. I’m having the reception there, even if we have to cart food up from the diner to do it.”
Adele cleared her throat loudly at this, making me doubt very much that would be a workable solution. Plus, I didn’t think my former-socialite sister would be pleased with sliders as apps at her fancy wedding. There was a high-end restaurant at the inn, with a chef who’d been hired away from some fancy job in San Francisco. If we didn’t get the outpost finished, we could still have good food—it would just have to be more portable than Maddie might have in mind.
Dean and I had burgers in front of us within a few minutes, and we both settled in to eat. I was just finishing up when my thoughts were snapped immediately back to my new tenant, mostly because she had just come into the diner and was standing uncertainly inside the door. She wore the same clothes she’d had on when she’d come out to the job site, along with a pair of heels that I couldn’t help but like, even though they were wildly inappropriate for the environment. She looked put together and gorgeous. And a little bit lost.
I heard her tell Adele she was waiting for someone, and then watched with interest I tried to hide as Craig Pritchard—of grumpy Post Office fame—came in and the two took a table together across the open floor of the diner. It clicked as I watched them. She sat back, her arms across her chest, her face held still like she was afraid of betraying any emotion. Craig, on the other hand, leaned forward, everything in his posture reaching for her.
Craig had to be Harper’s father. It made sense now, and I marveled at how little I actually knew about the guy. He’d been terse and sharp the few times I’d been into the Post Office. And I knew he rubbed my sister the wrong way, but that was the extent of my knowledge.
“Is Craig getting himself a sugar baby?” Dean asked in a low voice. “Who is that girl? She’s hot.”
