Kitabı oku: «A Cold Creek Secret», sayfa 3

She had never understood why she enjoyed it so much and always been a little ashamed of what she considered a secret vice until one of her more insightful therapists had pointed out those hours spent with Gert at some mundane task or other were among the most consistent of her life. Perhaps cleaning her surroundings was her mental way of creating order out of the chaos that was her life amid her father’s multiple marriages and divorces.

Here in Major Western’s house, it was simply something to pass the time, she told herself, digging in a little harder on a particularly tough stain.

“What would you be doing?”

Mimi jerked her head around and found Major Western standing in the kitchen doorway watching her with an expression that seemed a complicated mix—somewhere between astonished and appalled.

Simone—exceptional watchdog that she was—awoke at his voice and jumped up from her spot on a half-circle rug by the sink. She yipped an eager greeting while Mimi flushed to the roots of her hair.

“Sorry. I was…bored.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Bored. And so, out of the blue, you decided to wash out my kitchen cabinets.”

“Somebody needed to. You wouldn’t believe the grime on them.”

She winced as soon as the words escaped. Okay, that might not be the most tactful thing to mention to a man she was hoping would keep her around for a few days.

“You’ve been busy with your Army career, I’m sure,” she quickly amended. “I can only imagine how difficult it is to keep a place like this clean when you’re not here all the time.”

He looked both rueful and embarrassed as he moved farther into the kitchen and started taking off his winter gear.

“I’ve been renting it out on and off for the last few years and tenants don’t exactly keep the place in the best shape. I’m planning on having a crew come in after I return to Afghanistan to clean it all out and whip it into shape before I put it on the market.”

She paused her scrubbing, struck both that he had been in Afghanistan and that he would put such a wonderful house on the market. “Why would you sell this place? I can’t see much out there except snow right now but I would guess it’s a beautiful view. At least Gwen always raves about what inspiration she finds here for her work.”

He unbuttoned his soaked coat and she tried not to notice the muscles of his chest that moved under his sweater as he worked his arms out of the sleeves.

“It’s long past time.”

He was quiet for several moments. “The reality is, I’m only here a few weeks of the year, if that, and it’s too hard to take care of the place long-distance, even with your friend Gwen keeping an eye on things for me. Anyway, Gwen’s leaving, too. She told me she’s buying a house outside Jackson Hole and that just seemed the final straw. I can’t even contemplate how daunting it would be to find someone to replace her. Not to mention keeping up with general maintenance like painting the barn.”

It was entirely too choice an opportunity to pass up. “This is perfect. I’ll help you.”

Again that eyebrow crept up as he toed off his winter boots. “You want to paint the barn? I’m afraid that might be a little tough, what with the snow and all.”

She frowned. “Not the barn. But this.” She pointed with her soapy towel. “The whole place needs a good scrubbing, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

He stared at her. “Let me get this straight. You’re volunteering to clean my house?”

She set the soapy towel back in the bucket and perched on the top rung of the ladder to face him. “Sure, why not?”

“I can think of a few pretty compelling reasons.”

She flashed him a quick look, wondering what he meant by that, but she couldn’t read anything in his expression.

“The truth is, I need a place to stay for a few days.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he murmured, looking fascinated.

“Trust me,” she said firmly. “I need a place to stay for a few days—let’s just leave it at that—and you could use some work done around here to help you ready the place for prospective buyers.”

“And you think you can help me do that?”

The skepticism in his voice stung, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too carefully. “Believe it or not, I’ve actually helped a friend stage houses for sale before and I know a little about it. I can help you, I swear. Why shouldn’t we both get something we need?”

He leaned against the counter next to the refrigerator and crossed his arms over his chest. As he studied her, she thought she saw doubt, lingering shock and an odd sort of speculation in his eyes.

After a moment he shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that, Ms. Howard.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

Five days. That was all she needed to avoid Hollywood’s biggest wedding in years. With a little time and distance, she hoped she could figure out what she was going to do with the mess of her life.

“I really do need a place to stay, Major Western.”

She thought she saw a softening in the implacable set to his jaw, a tiny waver in his eyes, so she whipped out the big guns. The undefeated, never-fail, invincible option.

She beamed at him, her full-throttle, pour-on-the-charm smile that had made babbling fools out of every male she’d ever wielded it on. “I swear, you’ll be so happy with the job I do, you might just decide not to sell.”

Though she saw obvious reluctance in his dark eyes, he finally sighed. “A few days. Why not? As long as you don’t make any major changes. Just clean things out a little and make the rooms look better. That’s all.”

Relief coursed through her. Simone, sensing Mimi’s excitement, barked happily.

“You won’t regret it, I promise.”

He shook his head and reached into the refrigerator for a bottled water. In his open, honest expression, she could see he was already sorry. She didn’t care, she told herself, ignoring that same little sting under her heart. Whether he wanted her here or not, somehow she knew that Major Brant Western was too honorable to kick her out after he’d promised she could stay.

Chapter Three

What kind of game was she playing?

That seemed to be the common refrain echoing through his brain when it came to Mimi Van Hoyt. He still hadn’t come any closer to figuring her out several hours after their stunning conversation, as they sat at the worn kitchen table eating a cobbled-together dinner of canned stew and peaches.

First she was pretending to be someone else—as if anyone in the world with access to a computer or a television could somehow have been lucky enough to miss her many well-publicized antics. The woman couldn’t pick up her newspaper in the morning without a crop of photographers there to chronicle every move and she must think he was either blind or stupid not to figure out who she was.

But that same tabloid darling who apparently didn’t step outside her door without wearing designer clothes had spent the afternoon cleaning every nook and cranny of his kitchen—and doing a pretty good job of it. Not that he was any great judge of cleanliness, having spent most of his adult life on Army bases or in primitive conditions in the field, but he had grown up with Jo Winder as an example and he knew she would have been happy to see the countertops sparkling and the old wood cabinets gleaming with polish.

He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself—Mimi Van Hoyt, lush and elegant, scrubbing the grime away from a worn-out ranch house with no small degree of relish. She seemed as happy with her hands in a bucket of soapy water as he was out on patrol with his M4 in his hands.

She had even sung a little under her breath, for heaven’s sake, and he couldn’t help wondering why she had dabbled in acting instead of singing since her contralto voice didn’t sound half-bad.

That low, throaty voice seemed to slide down his spine like trailing fingers and a few times he’d had to manufacture some obvious excuse to leave the house just to get away from it. He figured he’d hauled enough wood up to the house to last them all week but he couldn’t seem to resist returning to the kitchen to watch her.

The woman completely baffled him. He would have expected her to be whining about the lack of entertainment in the cabin, about the enforced confinement, about the endless snow.

At the very least, he would have thought her fingers would be tapping away at some cell phone as she tweeted or whatever it was called, about being trapped in an isolated Idaho ranch with a taciturn stranger.

Instead, she teased her little dog, she took down his curtains and threw them in the washing machine, she organized every ancient cookbook left in the cupboard.

She seemed relentlessly cheerful while the storm continued to bluster outside.

Somehow he was going to have to figure out a way to snap her picture when she wasn’t looking. Otherwise, his men would never believe he’d spent his mid-tour leave watching Mimi Van Hoyt scrub grease off his stove vent.

But he was pretty sure a photograph wouldn’t show them how lovely she looked, with those huge, deep green eyes and her long inky curls and that bright smile that took over her entire face.

Though he knew it was dangerous, Brant couldn’t seem to stop watching her. Having Mimi Van Hoyt flitting around his kitchen in all her splendor was a little overwhelming for a man who hadn’t been with a woman in longer than he cared to remember—sort of like shoving a starving man in front of one of those all-you-can-eat buffets in Las Vegas and ordering him to dig in.

He’d had an on-again, off-again relationship with a nurse at one of the field support hospitals in Paktika Province, but his constant deployments hadn’t left him much time for anything serious.

Not that he was looking. He would leave that sort of thing to the guys who were good at it, like Quinn seemed to be, though he never would have believed it.

Brant treated the women he dated with great respect but he knew he tended to gravitate toward smart, focused career women who weren’t looking for anything more than a little fun and companionship once in a while.

Mimi was something else entirely. He didn’t know exactly what, but he couldn’t believe he had agreed to let her stay at his ranch for a few days. Hour upon hour of trying to ignore the way her hair just begged to be released from the elastic band holding it back or the way those big green eyes caught the light or how her tight little figure danced around the kitchen as she worked.

He shook his head. Which of the two of them was crazier? Right now, he was willing to say it was a toss-up, though he had a suspicion he just might be edging ahead.

“Would you like more stew?” she asked, as if she were hosting some fancy dinner party instead of dishing up canned Dinty Moore.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Though he knew she had to be accustomed to much fancier meals, she did a credible job with her own bowl of stew. He supposed all that scrubbing and dusting must have worked up an appetite.

“Have you had the ranch for long?” she asked, breaking what had been a comfortable silence. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember what you told me the name was.”

“The Western Sky. And yeah, it’s been in my family for generations. My great-great-grandfather bought the land and built the house in the late 1800s.”

“So you were raised here?”

He thought of his miserable childhood and the pain and insecurity of it, and then of the Winders, who had rescued him from it and showed him what home could really be.

Explaining all that to her would be entirely too complicated, even if he were willing to discuss it, so he took the easy way out. “For the most part,” he answered, hoping she would leave it at that.

Because he was intensely curious to see how far she would take her alternate identity, he turned the conversation back in her direction. “What about you, Maura? Whereabouts do you call home?”

The vibrant green of her eyes seemed to dim a little and she looked away. “Oh, you know. Here and there. California. For now.”

“Oh? Which part of the state, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Southern. The L.A. area.”

He didn’t really follow entertainment gossip but he thought he read or heard something once about her having two homes not far from each other, one her father’s Bel Air estate and the other a Malibu beachhouse.

“Is that where your parents live?”

Her mouth tightened a little and she moved the remaining chunks of stew around in her bowl. “My mom died when I was three, just after my parents divorced. My dad sort of raised me but he…we… moved around a lot.”

He had to take a quick sip of soda to keep from snorting at that evasive comment—probably Mimi’s way of saying her father had residences across the globe.

“And you said you work for a charitable foundation?”

Her wide, mobile mouth pursed into a frown. “Yes. But you probably wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“And what sort of things do you do there?” He wasn’t sure why he enjoyed baiting her so much but it was the most fun he’d had in a long time.

If nothing else, her presence distracted him from the grim events he had left behind in Afghanistan.

“Oh, you know. This and that. I help with fundraising and…and event planning. That sort of thing.”

“I don’t see a ring, so I’m assuming you’re not married.”

If he remembered right, she’d been engaged a few years ago to some minor European royalty but he couldn’t remember details, other than he thought the breakup had been messy and had, of course, involved some sort of scandal.

“No. Never. You?”

“Nope. Did you ever tell me how you knew Gwen?”

That, at least, was genuine curiosity and not baiting, since his artistic, eclectic, reclusive tenant didn’t seem the sort to hobnob with debutantes.

“She was…friends with my father. Years ago. We’ve always stayed in touch.”

Now that was interesting. Apparently Gwen Bianca had a few secrets she’d never divulged in the eight or so years she’d been living at the ranch. A past relationship with Werner Van Hoyt? He would never have suspected.

Mimi finally seemed to tire of his subtle interrogation and while he was still digesting the surprising insight into Gwen, she turned the tables on him.

“So how could you possibly want to sell a piece of beautiful land that’s been in your family for generations?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s fair to say I want to sell.”

“So don’t. The house might be a little worse for wear but it’s not falling down around your ears.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“A few more years and you’ll be retiring from the military, won’t you? You’ll need a place to settle then, right?”

He had always planned exactly that. But after a half-dozen close calls in his deployment, he’d come to accept that he probably wouldn’t live long enough to retire. He didn’t have a death wish by any means but he was also a realist.

Since the ambush a month ago, he’d also begun to formulate another motive, one he didn’t feel like sharing with a flighty celebrity who spent more on a pair of shoes than some of his men made in a month of hard combat.

“You don’t have any other family who might want to do something with the ranch to keep it in the family?” she pressed.

“No. Just me. I…had a younger brother but he died when we were kids.”

As soon as he heard his own words, he wanted to take them back. He never spoke about Curtis or his death. Never.

The twenty-year-old guilt might be an integral piece of him, as much a part of the whole as his blue eyes and the crescent-shaped birthmark on his shoulder, but it was private and personal.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her eyes mossy green with a compassion he didn’t want to see. “What happened?”

He wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but since he had been the one to open that particular doorway into the past, he couldn’t very well slam it in her face. “He drowned in the creek when I was eleven and he was nine,” he finally said.

“The same creek I crashed into?”

He nodded. “There’s not much to it now and it might be a little hard to believe, but it’s a far different beast in late spring and early summer during the runoff. You know how your SUV went down a slope about five or six feet? During the runoff, that’s all full of fast-moving water. So we were being kids and throwing rocks in the creek, even though we weren’t supposed to play around it in the springtime. Curtis got a little too close and the bank gave way. I ran downstream and tried to go in after him but…he slipped past me and I couldn’t grab him.”

“You could have been killed!”

He should have been. That’s what his mother had said once in the middle of a bender. Better you than my sweet baby, she had said in that emotionless voice that seemed all the more devastating. He wanted to think she hadn’t meant it. Curtis had been the funny, smart, adorable one, while Brant had been big and awkward, far too serious for a kid.

After Curtis’s death, what had been a tense home life degenerated to sheer misery. The ranch was falling into chaos, his parents fought all the time and both drank heavily. The fighting and the yelling had been one thing. Then his mother had left them and his father had turned all his anger and grief and bitterness against Brant.

That life might have continued indefinitely until one of two things happened—either he grew large enough to pound back or until the old man killed him. He didn’t know which would have happened first because Guff and Jo Winder had stepped in.

He sipped at his soda pop, remembering the events that had changed his life. He had felt the Winders’ scrutiny a few times when he’d been in town with his father and once Guff had even said something to J.D. when his father climbed up his grill about something or other at the farm implement store, but his intervention had only earned Brant a harsher beating when they got home.

Then one day Guff had stopped at the Western Sky to pick up a couple of weaned calves and his visit just happened to coincide with one of J.D.'s bad drunks. Brant had tried to hide the bruises but his T-shirt had ridden up when he’d been helping load one of the calves into the Winder stock trailer.

Guff had taken one look at the welts crisscrossing his back and Brant would never forget the instant fury in his gaze. He had been conditioned over the years to shrink from that kind of anger, but instead of coming after him, Guff had picked up a pitchfork and backed J.D. against the wall.

“You son of a bitch,” he had said in a low, terrible voice. “You’ve lost one son through a terrible accident. How are you going to live with yourself if you lose the other one at your own hand?”

J.D. had blustered and yelled but Guff had kept that pitchfork on him while he turned to Brant. “You know me and my wife, Jo, have taken in a relative, a boy about your age. I think he goes to school with you. Quinn Southerland. We’ve got plenty of room at Winder Ranch and I swear on the soul of your brother that no one there will ever lift a hand to you. Would you like to come stay with us for a while?”

He had been as dazed and shocked as his father. Part of him had desperately wanted to leave the Western Sky, to get as far away as he could. But even then, he’d known his duty.

“I’d best stay with my dad, sir. He’s got no one else.”

Guff had studied him for a long moment, tears in his eyes, then he had dropped the pitchfork. While his dad slid down the wall of the barn to sit in a dazed stupor, Guff had hugged Brant hard and he had realized in that moment that it had been two long years since he’d been touched with anything but malice.

“You’re a good boy, son,” Guff had said. “I know you love your dad, but right now you have to protect him and yourself. If I promise to see your dad gets the help he needs, will you come?”

In the end, he had agreed, though it had been the toughest choice of his young life, much more difficult than Ranger training or his first combat mission.

He had spent those first few months at Winder Ranch consumed with guilt but certain he would be back with his father at Christmas. True to his word, Guff had paid for his dad’s rehab and told J.D. he had to stay sober six months before they would trust him with his son again.

J.D. had lasted only a month before he’d bought a bottle of Jack Daniels, consumed most of it, then wandered into the corral with their meanest bull, where he’d been gored to death.

“I’m sorry.”

He jerked his mind from the past to find Mimi watching him across the table with that sympathy in those big green eyes. It took him a moment to register that she was still talking about his brother’s death that had changed everything.

“Thanks. So, yeah. In answer to your question, I’m the only one left in my family. And since I’ve been here a total of maybe three weeks in the last five years, it seems foolish to hang on to the place.”

She looked as if she didn’t agree, which he found odd. Still, after a moment, she shrugged. “It should sell easily, especially if you clear out some of the clutter and maybe put a few fresh coats of paint in some of the rooms.”

“I don’t want to put too much energy into the house,” he said, finishing off the peaches. “The only ones who can afford this kind of acreage these days are, uh, Hollywood types who will probably tear down the house and build their own in its place. That’s what’s happened to several nearby ranches.”

As he expected, she ignored the Hollywood jab. How could she do otherwise without revealing her true identity? “You never know. The house has a rustic kind of charm and some people are looking for that. With a little effort, you can show off the lovely old bones of the house. A small investment now could help you set a nice asking price for both the house and the land.”

He stared at her. “I thought you said you worked for a charitable organization. For a minute there, you sounded like a real estate agent.”

Her cheeks turned pink. “No. I just watch a lot of late-night TV infomercials. You know the ones. How to make a fortune in real estate.”

“A dream of yours, is it?” he asked in what he hoped was a bland tone. “To make a fortune?”

“Of course,” she said with a tiny smile. “Who wouldn’t want to have a fortune?”

Though her words were light, he thought he sensed a ribbon of bitterness twining through them. Maybe being a trust fund baby wasn’t all parties and private jets.

“Anyway, right now I don’t need a fortune,” she said, in what he knew was a vast understatement. “Only a place to stay for a few days and something to do while I’m here. I’m grateful you’ve been kind enough to give me both.”

Yeah, he was going to have a hell of a story when this was all over.

By the next day, Mimi was beginning to think stripping naked and tap-dancing in front of the paparazzi might be easier in the long run than the chore she’d set in front of herself.

She coughed at the cloud of dust that erupted as she yanked down the old-fashioned gingham curtains in the second bedroom upstairs. Simone sneezed, shaking her fuzzy little head. Her formerly pristine little white poochie was now the washed-out, yellow-gray of fading newsprint.

“You are going to need a serious bath,” she told the dog ruefully. “Both of us are, I’m afraid.”

Simone yipped and continued sniffing around the corners of the room, her tail wagging a mile a minute.

At least her dog was enjoying this little adventure of theirs. Mimi sighed. She wasn’t hating it, it was just a bigger task than she had envisioned the day before.

The house wasn’t filthy, exactly, just filled with the sort of grime that settled in homes where no one lived. Her father kept full-time staff at each of his residences but even then, dust tended to collect.

After a full day of cleaning and organizing, she was beginning to fear she had taken on a job too big for her to handle. Performing small housekeeping jobs under Gert’s supervision in a well-maintained mansion with a large staff was a much different proposition than cleaning out a house that had been largely empty for the past several years.

She felt as grimy as these curtains and she had to wonder what her friends would say if they could see her now, with her hair covered by a particularly ugly Hermès scarf her latest stepmother had given her for Christmas and her skin covered in the same film as the walls.

This had been one of her more harebrained ideas—and that was saying something, since she’d had more than her share.

A few days ago when she flew from L.A. to Jackson Hole, she had expected to find herself being pampered by Gwen, coddled and taken care of by the one person in the world she counted on to care that she was pregnant and frightened and alone.

Instead, here she was dusting out corners and scrubbing baseboards for a man who had hardly said a half-dozen words to her since dinner the night before.

While the storm raged outside after dinner, he had mostly avoided her until she had fallen asleep on the sofa watching a DVD of a romantic comedy she’d seen twice already. He had rather tersely awakened her after nine and suggested she go sleep where she could stretch out.

This morning, he had been awake and out taking care of the horses and checking Gwen’s pipes when Mimi awoke, at least according to the brusque note he’d left propped on the kitchen table.

“Help yourself to food,” he had instructed, and Mimi had made a face at the note before grabbing a yogurt and a piece of toast.

That was the sum total of her interaction with another human being all day.

She wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. That was the old Mimi. The new Mimi was all about finding her own inner strength, taking care of herself. She was twenty-six years old and going to be a mother in six months, responsible for another human being. It was long past time she took that terrifying step into adulthood.

She wadded up the dingy curtains into a bundle in her arms and was just about to carry them downstairs to the washing machine in the mudroom off the kitchen when she heard the front door open.

“Hey, Brant?” a distinctively feminine voice called out. “You know you’ve got a Mercedes stuck in your creek?”

Oh, crap. Mimi’s arms tightened on the curtains. Despite her best efforts at avoiding the outside world, she supposed it was inevitable that Brant might have a visitor.

Her heart pounded as she backed against the wall, out of sight from the foot of the stairs. What should she do? Hide up here and hope whoever it was just went away? Or take her chances that she could bluff her way through and Brant’s visitor wouldn’t drive away from the Western Sky and immediately call TMZ?

A moment later, Simone took the choice out of her hands. Before Mimi could even think to stop her, the little dog bulleted out of the bedroom and scampered down the stairs, yipping the whole way.

“Well, hello,” Mimi heard the woman say in surprise to the dog. “Where did you come from? Brant? What’s going on? Whose car and whose dog?”

Mimi drew in a deep breath, dropped the curtains into a heap and walked to the landing at the top of the stairs.

“Mine,” she called down. “I slid off the road during the storm the night before last. I haven’t had a chance to get a tow out here yet to take care of it. And that little bundle of noise is Simone.”

The woman was slim and blonde, dressed in bright red snow pants and a heavy matching parka with navyblue stripes. She looked at the dog and then looked back at Mimi, her jaw sagging. “You’re…”

“A mess,” Mimi said quickly. “I know. I was cleaning out one of the rooms upstairs and I’m afraid I tangled with some cobwebs.”

She walked down the staircase and held out her hand. “I’m Maura Howard,” she said firmly.

The other woman finally closed her mouth, though Mimi could see suspicion still clouding her blue eyes.

“I’m Easton. Easton Springhill. I’ve got a ranch down the canyon a ways.” Her gaze narrowed and she tilted her head. “This is going to sound crazy, but has anyone ever told you that you look remarkably like that silly woman in the tabloids? Mimi something or other? The one with all the boyfriends?”

Mimi forced a smile she was far from feeling. “I get it all the time. It’s a curse, believe me. Ridiculous, isn’t she?”

Easton Springhill snickered a little. “I think she’s great.”

“Really?”

“Sure. She always makes me laugh. No matter what kind of a lousy day I’m having, I can always be glad at least that I’m not as dumb as a box of rocks.”

Mimi kept her smile on by sheer force of will. She couldn’t really be annoyed. She wasn’t stupid, but plenty of her choices certainly had been.

“How did you get here?” she asked instead of snapping at the woman. “Has the snow stopped?”

“It seems to be slowing a little bit. The roads still are a mess but that’s not a problem with the snowmobile. I figured I’d better make sure Brant has enough essentials to live on. He doesn’t always remember to buy everything he needs for the pantry between visits. I brought over a couple of casseroles from my freezer as well as a few staples I thought he might need. Bread, milk, that sort of thing.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” Mimi murmured, won- dering just what sort of relationship they shared. It must be a close one if the other woman felt comfortable just walking into his house without knocking.

Easton continued gazing at Mimi with that same slightly stunned look in her eyes.

“It’s uncanny. The resemblance, I mean.”

“Even with the layer of grit I’m wearing from scrubbing the walls upstairs?”

Drawing attention to her less than sleek appearance seemed to convince Easton that she couldn’t possibly be Mimi Van Hoyt.