Kitabı oku: «Sugar Pine Trail»

CHAPTER ONE

THIS WAS GOING to be a disaster.

Julia Winston stood in her front room looking out the lace curtains framing her bay window at the gleaming black SUV parked in her driveway like a sleek, predatory beast.

Her stomach jumped with nerves, and she rubbed suddenly clammy hands down her skirt. Under what crazy moon had she ever thought this might be a good idea? She must have been temporarily out of her head.

Those nerves jumped into overtime when a man stepped out of the vehicle and stood for a moment, looking up at her house.

Jamie Caine.

Tall, lean, hungry.

Gorgeous.

Now the nerves felt more like nausea. What had she done? The moment Eliza Caine called and asked her if her brother-in-law could rent the upstairs apartment of Winston House, she should have told her friend in no uncertain terms that the idea was preposterous. Utterly impossible.

As usual, Julia had been weak and indecisive, and when Eliza told her it was only for six weeks—until January, when the condominium Jamie Caine was buying in a new development along the lake would be finished—she had wavered.

He needed a place to live, and she did need the money. Anyway, it was only for six weeks. Surely she could tolerate having the man living upstairs in her apartment for six weeks—especially since he would be out of town for much of those six weeks, as part of his duties as lead pilot for the Caine Tech company jet fleet.

The reality of it all was just beginning to sink in, though. Jamie Caine, upstairs from her, in all his sexy, masculine glory.

She fanned herself with her hand, wondering if she was having a premature-onset hot flash or if her new furnace could be on the fritz. The temperature in here seemed suddenly off the charts.

How would she tolerate having him here, spending her evenings knowing he was only a few steps away and that she would have to do her best to hide the absolutely ridiculous, truly humiliating crush she had on the man?

This was such a mistake.

Heart pounding, she watched through the frothy curtains as he pulled a long black duffel bag from the back of his SUV and slung it over his shoulder, lifted a laptop case over the other shoulder, then closed the cargo door and headed for the front steps.

A moment later, her old-fashioned musical doorbell echoed through the house. If she hadn’t been so nervous, she might have laughed at the instant reaction of the three cats, previously lounging in various states of boredom around the room. The moment the doorbell rang, Empress and Tabitha both jumped off the sofa as if an electric current had just zipped through it while Audrey Hepburn arched her back and bushed out her tail.

“That’s right, girls. We’ve got company. It’s a man, believe it or not, and he’s moving in upstairs. Get ready.”

The cats sniffed at her with their usual disdainful look. Empress ran in front of her, almost tripping her on the way to answer the door—on purpose, she was quite sure.

With her mother’s cats darting out ahead of her, Julia walked out into what used to be the foyer of the house before she had created the upstairs apartment and now served as an entryway to both residences. She opened the front door, doing her best to ignore the rapid tripping of her heartbeat.

“Hi. You’re Julia, right?”

As his sister-in-law was one of her dearest friends, she and Jamie had met numerous times at various events at Snow Angel Cove and elsewhere, but she didn’t bother reminding him of that. Julia knew she was eminently forgettable. Most of the time, that was just the way she liked it.

“Yes. Hello, Mr. Caine.”

He aimed his high-wattage killer smile at her. “Please. Jamie. Nobody calls me Mr. Caine.”

Julia was grimly aware of her pulse pounding in her ears and a strange hitch in her lungs. Up close, Jamie Caine was, in a word, breathtaking. He was Mr. Darcy, Atticus Finch, Rhett Butler and Tom Cruise in Top Gun, all rolled into one glorious package.

Dark hair, blue eyes, and that utterly charming Caine smile he shared with Aidan, Eliza’s husband, and the other Caine brothers she had met at various events.

“You were expecting me, right?” he said, after an awkward pause. She jolted, suddenly aware she was staring and had left him standing entirely too long on her front step. She was an idiot. “Yes. Of course. Come in. I’m sorry.”

Pull yourself together. He’s just a guy who happens to be gorgeous.

So far she was seriously failing at Landlady 101. She sucked in a breath and summoned her most brisk keep-your-voice-down-please librarian persona.

“As you can see, we will share the entry. Because the home is on the registry of historical buildings, I couldn’t put in an outside entrance to your apartment, as I might have preferred. The house was built in 1880, one of the earliest brick homes on Lake Haven. It was constructed by an ancestor of mine, Sir Robert Winston, who came from a wealthy British family and made his own fortune supplying timber to the railroads. He also invested in one of the first hot springs resorts in the area. The home is Victorian, specifically in the spindled Queen Anne style. It consists of seven bedrooms and four bathrooms. When those bathrooms were added in the 1920s, they provided some of the first indoor plumbing in the region.”

“Interesting,” he said, though his expression indicated he found it anything but.

She was rambling, she realized, as she tended to do when she was nervous.

She cleared her throat and pointed to the doorway where the three cats were lined up like sentinels, watching him with unblinking stares. “Anyway, through those doors is my apartment and yours is upstairs. I have keys to both doors for you along with a packet of information here.”

She glanced toward the ornate marble-top table in the entryway—that her mother claimed once graced the mansion of Leland Stanford on Nob Hill in San Francisco—where she thought she had left the information. Unfortunately, it was bare. “Oh. Where did I put that? I must have left it inside, in my living room. Just a moment.”

The cats weren’t inclined to get out of her way, so she stepped over them, wondering if she came across as eccentric to him as she felt, a spinster librarian living with cats in a crumbling house crammed with antiques, a space much too big for one person.

After a mad scan of the room, she finally found the two keys along with the carefully prepared file folder of instructions atop the mantel, nestled amid her collection of porcelain angels. She had no recollection of moving it there, probably due to her own nervousness at having Jamie Caine moving upstairs.

She swooped it up and hurried back to the entry, where she found two of the cats curled around his leg while Audrey was in his arms, currently being petted by his long, square-tipped fingers.

She stared. The cats had no time or interest in her. She only kept them around because her mother had adored them, and Julia couldn’t bring herself to give away Mariah’s adored pets. Apparently no female—human or feline—was immune to Jamie Caine. She should have expected it.

“Nice cats.”

Julia frowned. “Not usually. They’re standoffish and bad-tempered to most people.”

“I guess I must have the magic touch.”

So the Haven Point rumor mill said about him, anyway. “I guess you do,” she said. “I found your keys and information about the apartment. If you would like, I can show you around upstairs.”

“Lead on.”

He offered a friendly smile, and she told herself that shiver rippling down her spine was only because the entryway was cooler than her rooms.

“This is a lovely house,” he said as he followed her up the staircase. “Have you lived here long?”

“Thirty-two years in February. All my life, in other words.”

Except the first few days, anyway, when she had still been in the Oregon hospital where her parents adopted her, and the three years she had spent at Boise State.

“It’s always been in my family,” she continued. “My father was born here and his father before him.”

She was a Winston only by adoption but claimed her parents’ family trees as her own and respected and admired their ancestors and the elegant home they had built here.

At the second floor landing, she unlocked the apartment that had been hers until she moved down to take care of her mother after Mariah’s first stroke, two years ago. A few years after taking the job at the Haven Point library, she had redecorated the upstairs floor of the house. It had been her way of carving out her own space.

Yes, she was an adult living with her parents. Even as she might have longed for some degree of independence, she couldn’t justify moving out when her mother so desperately needed her help with Julia’s ailing father.

Anyway, she had always figured it wasn’t the same as most young adults who lived in their parents’ apartments. She had an entire self-contained floor to herself. If she wished, she could shop on her own, cook on her own, entertain her friends, all without bothering her parents.

Really, it had been the best of all situations—close enough to help, yet removed enough to live her own life. Then her father died and her mother became frail herself, and Julia had felt obligated to move downstairs to be closer, in case her mother needed her.

Now, as she looked at her once-cherished apartment, she tried to imagine how Jamie Caine would see these rooms, with the graceful reproduction furniture and the pastel wall colors and the soft carpet and curtains.

Oddly, the feminine decorations only served to emphasize how very male Jamie Caine was, in contrast.

She did her best to ignore that unwanted observation.

“This is basically the same floor plan as my rooms below, with three bedrooms, as well as the living room and kitchen,” she explained. “You’ve got an en suite bathroom off the largest bedroom and another one for the other two bedrooms.”

“Wow. That’s a lot of room for one guy.”

“It’s a big house,” she said with a shrug. She had even more room downstairs, factoring in the extra bedroom in one addition and the large south-facing sunroom.

Winston House was entirely too rambling for one single woman and three bad-tempered cats. It had been too big for an older couple and their adopted daughter. It had been too large when it was just her and her mother, after her father died.

The place had basically echoed with emptiness for the better part of a year after her mother’s deteriorating condition had necessitated her move to the nursing home in Shelter Springs. Her mother had hoped to return to the house she had loved, but that never happened, and Mariah Winston died four months ago.

Julia missed her every single day.

“Do you think it will work for you?” she asked.

“It’s more than I need, but should be fine. Eliza told you this is only temporary, right?”

Julia nodded. She was counting on it. Then she could find a nice, quiet, older lady to rent who wouldn’t leave her so nervous.

“She said your apartment lease ran out before your new condo was finished.”

“Yes. The development was supposed to be done two months ago, but the builder has suffered delay after delay. I’ve already extended my lease twice. I didn’t want to push my luck with my previous landlady by asking for a third extension.”

All Jamie had to do was smile at the woman and she likely would have extended his lease again without quibbling. And probably would have given him anything else he wanted, too.

Julia didn’t ask why he chose not to move in to Snow Angel Cove with his brother Aidan and Aidan’s wife, Eliza, and their children. It was none of her business, anyway. The only thing she cared about was the healthy amount he was paying her in rent, which would just about cover the new furnace she had installed a month earlier.

“It was a lucky break for me when Eliza told me you were considering taking on a renter for your upstairs space.”

He aimed that killer smile at her again, and her core muscles trembled from more than just her workout that morning.

If she wasn’t very, very careful, she would end up making a fool of herself over the man.

It took effort, but she fought the urge to return his smile. This was business, she told herself. That’s all. She had something he needed, a place to stay, and he was willing to pay for it. She, in turn, needed funds if she wanted to maintain this house that had been in her family for generations.

“It works out for both of us. You’ve already signed the rental agreement outlining the terms of your tenancy and the rules.”

She held out the information packet. “Here you’ll find all the information you might need, information like internet access, how to work the electronics and the satellite television channels, garbage pickup day and mail delivery. Do you have any other questions?”

Business, she reminded herself, making her voice as no-nonsense and brisk as possible.

“I can’t think of any now, but I’m sure something will come up.”

He smiled again, but she thought perhaps this time his expression was a little more reserved. Maybe he could sense she was uncharmable.

Or so she wanted to tell herself, anyway.

“I would ask that you please wipe your feet when you carry your things in and out, given the snow out there. The stairs are original wood, more than a hundred years old.”

Cripes. She sounded like a prissy spinster librarian.

“I will do that, but I don’t have much to carry in. Since El told me the place is furnished, I put almost everything in storage.” He gestured to the duffel and laptop bag, which he had set inside the doorway. “Besides this, I’ve only got a few more boxes in the car.”

“In that case, here are your keys. The large one goes to the outside door. The smaller one is for your apartment. I keep the outside door locked at all times. You can’t be too careful.”

“True enough.”

She glanced at her watch. “I’m afraid I’ve already gone twenty minutes past my lunch hour and must return to the library. My cell number is written on the front of the packet, in case of emergency.”

“Looks like you’ve covered everything.”

“I think so.” Yes, she was a bit obsessively organized, and she didn’t like surprises. Was anything wrong with that?

“I hope you will be comfortable here,” she said, then tried to soften her stiff tone with a smile that felt every bit as awkward. “Good afternoon.”

“Uh, same to you.”

Her heart was still pounding as she nodded to him and hurried for the stairs, desperate for escape from all that...masculinity.

She rushed back downstairs and into her apartment for her purse, wishing she had time to splash cold water on her face.

However would she get through the next six weeks with him in her house?

* * *

HE WAS NOT looking forward to the next six weeks.

Jamie stood in the corner of the main living space to the apartment he had agreed to rent, sight unseen.

Big mistake.

It was roomy and filled with light, that much was true. But the decor was too...fussy...for a man like him, all carved wood and tufted upholstery and pastel wall colorings.

It wasn’t exactly his scene, more like the kind of place a repressed, uppity librarian might live.

As soon as he thought the words, Jamie frowned at himself. That wasn’t fair. She might not have been overflowing with warmth and welcome, but Julia Winston had been very polite to him—especially since he knew she hadn’t necessarily wanted to rent to him.

This was what happened when he gave his sister-in-law free rein to find him an apartment in the tight local rental market. She had been helping him out since he had been crazy busy the last few weeks flying Caine Tech execs from coast to coast—and all places in between—as they worked on a couple of big mergers.

Eliza had wanted him to stay at her and Aidan’s rambling house by the lake. The place was huge, and they had plenty of room, but while he loved his older brother Aidan and his wife and kids, Jamie preferred his own space. He didn’t much care what that space looked like, especially when it was temporary.

With time running out on his lease extension, he had been relieved when Eliza called him via Skype the week before to tell him she had found him something more than suitable, for a decent rent.

“You’ll love it!” Eliza had beamed. “It’s the entire second floor of a gorgeous old Victorian in that great neighborhood on Snow Blossom Lane, with a simply stunning view of the lake.”

“Sounds good,” he had answered.

“You’ll be upstairs from my friend Julia Winston, and, believe me, you couldn’t ask for a better landlady. She’s sweet and kind and perfectly wonderful. You know Julia, right?”

When he had looked blankly at her and didn’t immediately respond, his niece Maddie had popped her face on to the screen from where she had been apparently listening in off-camera. “You know! She’s the library lady. She tells all the stories!”

“Ah. That Julia,” he said, not bothering to mention to his seven-year-old niece that in more than a year of living in town, he had somehow missed out on story time at the Haven Point library.

He also didn’t mention to Maddie’s mother that he only vaguely remembered Julia Winston. Now that he had seen her again, he understood why. She was the kind of woman who tended to slip into the background—and he had the odd impression that wasn’t accidental.

She wore her brown hair past her shoulders, without much curl or style to it and held back with a simple black band, and she appeared to use little makeup to play up her rather average features.

She did have lovely eyes, he had to admit. Extraordinary, even. They were a stunning blue, almost violet, fringed by naturally long eyelashes.

Her looks didn’t matter, nor did the decor of her house. He would only be here a few weeks, then he would be moving in to his new condo.

She clearly didn’t like him. He frowned, wondering how he might have offended Julia Winston. He barely remembered even meeting the woman, but he must have done something for her to be so cool to him.

A few times during that odd interaction, she had alternated between seeming nervous to be in the same room with him to looking at him with her mouth pursed tightly, as if she had just caught him spreading peanut butter across the pages of War and Peace.

She was entitled to her opinion. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t need everyone to like him.

His brothers would probably say it was good for him to live upstairs from a woman so clearly immune to his charm.

One thing was clear: he now had one more reason to be eager for his condo to be finished.