she knew we were here discussing her love life over whiskey.”
Beth pushed to her feet. “Not her love life. That’s the problem. Maybe she’s the smart one. Have a fling and walk away. Not everyone has a soul mate out there.” She retied her robe. “Back to bed with me.”
She marched down the hall, shutting her bedroom door hard behind her. She wasn’t the crying type but she found her eyes brimming with tears. She blamed the late hour, the news from home, the whiskey, but she knew it was Scott.
She glanced at her cell phone. He worked odd hours as a trooper. He could be up for all she knew.
“He can call me,” she muttered, brushed the tears out of her eyes and climbed into bed.
Grit finished his whiskey alone in the kitchen. The house was quiet. While he had regarded all the women of Black Falls as sisters since first venturing to Vermont in November, he did entertain a moment’s surprise at his reaction to Beth Harper as she’d tightened her robe over plaid boxer shorts and a tight little T-shirt.
All that up and down the mountains of northern New England had kept her in shape.
But she was clearly worried about what was going on in Black Falls.
He headed to his assigned bedroom in the back. It wasn’t that small. It had its own bathroom. He was used to rats and cockroaches at the apartment he’d given up in D.C. before moving to Myrtle’s place. Before that…
Before that, he’d been someone else.
His leg ached when he took off his prosthesis. The long flight had taken its toll, and probably the whiskey, too. He distracted himself by thinking about firebugs and Beth Harper in her flannel boxers.
Just because he’d thought of her as a sister before didn’t mean anything. She wasn’t his sister.
No, she was the sister of Elijah’s fiancee and on the rebound from her state trooper.
Out of reach. Out of bounds.
Didn’t mean she didn’t have great legs.
“Give it up,” Grit whispered to himself, and emptied his mind. Time for sleep. He had work to do after daylight.
Thirteen
R ose stood at the top of her driveway in the soft, gray morning light and watched Ranger run into the snow after a tennis ball. She noticed he looked stiff in his hindquarters. He was a good dog, eager and fit, but, in-arguably, he was slowing down. She couldn’t face his approaching infirmities now, and whatever his future as a search dog, he still had plenty of life left in him.
A dusting of snow overnight had freshened up the landscape. While Ranger searched for the ball, she shoveled some sand onto the more treacherous sections of her front walk.
Nick came out of the house, his coat open, his hair tousled. Rose hoped he couldn’t see her reaction to him —not that it would be a surprise. He knew. She’d made it plain in June that she found him physically irresistible.
He headed down the steps, not looking as if he’d been attacked twelve hours earlier or had slept on a couch. “Damn,” he said with an exaggerated shiver, “spring didn’t come overnight, did it? It’s still winter.”
“The sunrise is earlier. It was a gorgeous one this morning. The entire sky turned shades of pink and lavender.”
“You have a beautiful spot here.”
“I do. I feel very fortunate.” She emptied her shovel onto a slick spot at the bottom of the steps. “How are you this morning?”
Nick grinned. “I feel like I got hit in the head with a shovel last night.”
She saw that the bloody parts of his scrape had scabbed over and were healing nicely. “I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt. You kept whoever it was—”
“Feehan.”
“You kept him from doing serious damage to you.”
Nick hunched his shoulders against a sudden breeze. “If he’d landed a clean hit, he had time to stuff my body in a snowbank and wait for you to come back from your brother’s place.”
Rose leaned the offending shovel against the garage. “The odds were against him. That’s why he ran. He knew he couldn’t win.”
“I made coffee,” Nick said, not arguing with her. “I figure we can go to the lodge for goat cheese omelets.”
She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic. “They’re good. Goat cheese, fresh chives—”
“I’m sold.”
“You’re just cold.”
“That, too.” Ranger leaped out of the snowbank and catapulted to Nick with a bright green tennis ball in his mouth. He laughed. “If there’s a ball within a mile, a golden retriever will find it. I had a golden as a kid. Bo. He was great company when my dad was at sea.”
“Most of the time Ranger’s all the company I need.”
“I’m not going there,” Nick said, taking the slobbery ball and tossing it into the snow. Ranger leaped after it, more agile now that he’d warmed up.
For a few seconds, Rose let herself imagine that this sexy, confident, successful man had come to Vermont just to see her, with no other agenda. Would she want such a man in her life? Her life would change, that was for sure.
Her golden retriever returned with the tennis ball. She took it from him, lavishing praise as she glanced at Nick. “I want to go back out to the Whittaker place later this morning,” she said.
He gave a curt nod. “I do, too. We can go together.”
Ranger led the way up the front steps, the wind blowing hard now, the sunlight gleaming on his golden coat. Rose paused and smiled back at Nick. “The air feels good, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about a wildfire sparking out here in the snow. That fire last June—I just happened to be in Los Angeles working with firefighters on canine searches. I could just as easily have been here.”
“But you weren’t,” Nick said.
“You never said anything to Sean about us, did you?”
“I kept my promise to you.”
“Ah. A gentleman.”
Nick stood next to her at the front door. “If I’d been a gentleman, I’d have taken you back to his place that night.”
She turned and looked out at the mountains in the distance, felt Cameron Mountain looming behind her. She was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “Derek didn’t like to take no for an answer.”
“Rose,” Nick said, his voice dark.
“I made him take no with me. Not soon enough, but I did it. He was a mistake. A short-lived, stupid mistake. He was a mean drunk, and he wasn’t nice when I refused him. We’d been seeing each other, quietly. Never here.” She kept her tone even, as if she were giving a post-search report. “We went skiing, had dinner together a few times. I thought he was…I don’t know. Interesting. Action-oriented. He wasn’t one of the usual suspects involved in my search-and-rescue work.”
“A fresh face,” Nick said.
She nodded, determined to get this over with. “He was fascinated by what I do, or pretended to be. He loved Vermont. I was in the mood for a little romance in my life.”
“That’s not how it worked out.”
“It never does work out that way, does it?”
“Flowers, chocolates. Romance isn’t that hard.” Nick patted Ranger and shrugged. “It might get tough if I had to write a poem.”
She smiled at him. “I’ll settle for flowers and chocolate.”
“Cutshaw?”
“He was about conquering and control. He assumed I’d go along with him without question, but I said no. He
