Deacon

  “And I’ve got nine not-very-good months with you,” I returned.

  “You’d pick a bunch of cabins over me?” he ground out.

  And with that, I knew. I knew the worst thing a woman could know about her man.

  He didn’t get it.

  And that was when that part of my soul died.

  And that hurt so bad, I had no choice but to inform him of that fact.

  “You don’t get it, Grant,” I said, suddenly quiet, my voice sad, beaten, and he heard it. He felt it. I knew it when I saw his body get tight. “It isn’t about the cabins. It’s about sharing with you what I wanted out of life, you agreeing, us taking life on together, and you deserting me. You were around but you deserted me practically the minute we got here.”

  He came toward me but I took a step back.

  He stopped approaching and his voice was quiet too, and cajoling. “Babe, life isn’t about work. I thought we’d come up here and take on these cabins but do it havin’ a good time.”

  “We could have but we couldn’t do it the way you wanted to do it, Grant. We didn’t have the money. And I’ll repeat what I’ve been trying to get through to you for months, I thought us working side by side would be a good time. Not having drinks and laughing and getting frisky, that kind of good time. But the building a life together kind of good time that led to the other stuff that wouldn’t be good. It would be better than good because we earned it.”

  “You talk like your father,” he said and it wasn’t entirely accusatory. It also wasn’t entirely not.

  Then again, Grant had grown up in the town where Obadiah Swallow was well-known and well-respected, because he worked the ranch he inherited, which was a ranch his father had inherited, and his before him, and he loved his family.

  The first was hard work. The second was easy but there weren’t many men like Dad who found it easy to let it show like he did.

  There were men who respected men like that and showed it.

  There were men, like Grant had hidden in the beginning, but it came out more and more, who dated Obadiah Swallow’s daughters and found the specter of a supremely loving father and esteemed man a shadow it wasn’t easy to escape.

  And I was learning the hard way that Grant’s problem was that he didn’t get he didn’t have to escape it. He just had to do whatever it was he needed to do in his own way to create his umbrella of protection over Obadiah’s girl, making her his girl.

  Thus he didn’t mean what he said as a compliment. But I took it as one.

  “That’s because I’m his daughter.”

  And I was Obadiah’s daughter. I could have been Grant’s woman. I wanted to be. I claimed him as my man and he was apparently down with that.

  He just didn’t claim me back.

  Grant took in a breath before he stated, “I’m not ready to throw in the towel, Cassidy.”

  “And I’m not prepared to live the way we’ve been living. If you kick in, we can work on us. If you keep on like you’ve been keeping, Grant, I’ll show you the door.”

  “An ultimatum,” he muttered, staring at me.

  “Yes, but a necessary one,” I replied softly.

  We stood there, neither of us moving, both of us holding the other’s gaze.

  Grant broke the silence, and when he did, I experienced a resurrection.

  “I’ll install those lights tomorrow.”

  I felt my shoulders slump, such was the relief, and Grant caught that too. I knew it when his face got soft and he moved to me.

  This time, I didn’t move away so I was right there when he got there.

  And when he got there, he wrapped his arms around me. “Not sure what I’d do, wakin’ up and not seein’ those eyes first thing.”

  I loved that. I loved it.

  That was my old Grant.

  I leaned in to him and slid my arms around him. “Not sure what I’d do, waking up and not having your arms around me.”

  He touched his nose to mine and murmured, “Not been good of late, cuddlin’ my girl.”

  He hadn’t. And that, maybe more than all the rest, hurt.

  “Missed that, darlin’,” I whispered.

  I watched the look in his eyes change and he whispered back, “I’ve missed a lot of things about you, Cassidy.”

  I leaned deeper in to him, tipping my head back.

  Grant pressed me in to the door and accepted my invitation.

  When he did, hope again filled my heart.

  But I would find out in a variety of ways, all of them hard, that was me. Time and again, not one of them smart, I let hope fill my heart. And my head. And my gut. So much hope, it leaked out my pores.

  Yeah.

  I did that.

  All the time.

  I was a loser that way.

  Chapter Two

  Pie

  “Yo!” a male voice shouted from the other room.

  I was in the bedroom, stripping sheets.

  I left the bed half-stripped and walked into the living room. When I did, I saw John Priest standing in the open front door to cabin four.

  It had been five months since his last visit.

  Five months and nothing had changed.

  Except for the fact that Grant was in Oklahoma and I was still here.

  “Hello, Mr. Priest,” I greeted, moving through the living room, which I had to say, even if it was tooting my own horn, looked fan-freaking-tastic with it’s warm mushroom-colored walls, large, thick braided rugs in muted tones covering the refinished, gleaming wood floors, and interesting prints of buffaloes on the walls.

  In fact, all the prints in this cabin were of buffaloes. This was why I thought of cabin four as the “Buffalo Cabin.”

  What I didn’t see, but knew was there, was the fabulous kitchen behind me.

  Seeing as kitchens in cabins didn’t have extensive countertops, I’d been able to strike a deal with a local contractor to buy his remnants. That meant none of the kitchens were the same. Some of them had butcher block countertops. Some had tile. A couple even had gorgeous slabs of granite.

  The countertops in cabin eleven, though, were a glossy treated cement. I liked the rugged look of them. Actually, the entirety of cabin eleven was rugged and masculine, the only cabin that wasn’t outfitted in a warm and welcoming gender neutral.

  I didn’t allow myself to think about why I did eleven that way. I just did it.

  Grant had gotten around to putting in the light fixtures so that meant there were quiet, but attractive ceiling fans with lights over all the cabins’ living rooms, straight up showstopper pendant lights hanging over the bar portion of the kitchens, and attractive wall lights fixed beside the beds for maximum reading and relaxing potential.

  That was pretty much all Grant got around to doing before I kicked his ass out.

  “Eleven open?” Priest asked without greeting.

  Eleven, by the by, had turned into the Pinto Cabin, seeing as all the prints on the walls there were of pinto horses.

  I didn’t offer this information to John Priest.

  “Indeed it is,” I answered, stopping in front of him.

  As ever, he didn’t look me up and down, not that there was much to see. Still, we were having a warm Indian summer so I was in cutoff jeans shorts, a babydoll tee, and flip-flops. My shorts weren’t Daisy Dukes or anything but I fancied they looked okay on me. My legs were tan, though, and everyone knew that anyone looked better tanned.

  Then again, I’d lost a ton of weight.

  Not meaning to do it, I’d hit on a no fail diet plan. Unfortunately, that included finding out the love of my life wasn’t the love of my life but instead a guy whose greatest skill was breaking promises.

  This caused a woman to throw herself into work—a scary thing when she already threw herself into work—and thus she forgot about eating.

  Further, when she wasn’t working, she was moping and going over every moment of the last year that she could remember, trying to figure out where she went wrong
, which was emotionally taxing and utterly fruitless. Still, it was an excellent appetite suppressant.

  She did, however, drink tons of wine through this.

  And tequila.

  She’d also find she had a taste for bourbon.

  Priest took me out of these thoughts when he looked beyond me into the cabin then he twisted his neck to look over his shoulder up the lane toward my house. Finally, his eyes came back to me.

  “You need me to come back to check in?” he offered.

  I shook my head. “I’ll walk up and get you your key. I can finish in here after.”

  He said nothing and the only way I knew he’d heard me was that he shifted out of the door.

  I moved out of the cabin, closing the door behind me, and heading to the steps that led off the front porch.

  Surprisingly, when I got to the bottom of the steps, John Priest didn’t go to his truck, a colossal, black Suburban that had mud streaming up its sides, more caked on the wheel wells.

  He fell in step beside me.

  Unsurprisingly, he didn’t speak.

  So I did.

  “We have a website now. I don’t know if you noticed coming in, but I had the new sign put up at the top of the lane so people can see it from the street. I finally decided on what to call the place. Glacier Lily Cottages. That’s our web address too. There’s a phone number and e-mail on the site if you want to contact me ahead of time to make sure eleven is open. We’re not full up very often but we’re getting busier.”

  As I was speaking, I put one foot in front of the other. So did he. I quit talking. He didn’t start.

  So I kept going.

  “I can’t take bookings on-line yet but that’s hopefully coming. It’s just a little more complicated to pull things like that off. I can do web design but that kind of thing requires a professional. Or, at least for me it does. But an e-mail is the same thing, if the unit is free.”

  He made no comment.

  I had nothing more to say.

  We arrived at my house and I felt him move in a way that wasn’t walking so I looked up to see him scanning the area outside the house.

  “Grant’s gone,” I shared, guessing at what he was looking for, and his eyes tipped down to me. “It didn’t work out.”

  “Not a surprise,” Priest declared. “He was a dick.”

  I blinked.

  “A lazy one,” he went on.

  “I…” I began but trailed off, shocked not only that he noticed but that he had something to say about it, and further, he said it.

  “Eleven?” he prompted when I said nothing.

  I pulled myself out of my surprised stupor, nodded, and jogged up the steps to my house.

  He followed me, came inside, and did the registering thing while I got his key.

  When he was done, he turned to me.

  “Still sixty?” he asked and I shook my head.

  “Seventy.”

  He said nothing, just pulled out his wallet, took out some bills, and handed me five of them. Four of them hundreds. The fifth, a fifty.

  “Five days,” he stated.

  “Right,” I muttered, not even bothering to offer him change. I knew the drill. A drill which included him shoving the key through the mail slot in my front door as his means of checking out.

  “You want my ID?”

  I smiled at him. “I think we’re good with that.”

  He didn’t look at my mouth to take in my smile. He also didn’t speak further. He reached toward me, took the key from my hand, and walked out the door.

  I walked out behind him, stood on my front porch, and watched him move down the lane.

  He wasn’t graceful, he was too big to be graceful, but he was athletic.

  Men walked the way he walked when they approached the place they’d throw a javelin or when they positioned at the line of scrimmage or moved to the top of the tennis court prior to serving. Loose but prepared. Alert but at ease. It was strange.

  It was also hot.

  And as with all things John Priest, it was a little scary.

  I put John Priest, my top patron and still my only return customer, out of my head, turned to my door, closed it, and then walked across my porch. I hopped down the steps and headed to cabin four to finish stripping the sheets.

  * * * * *

  “Coming!” I shouted from the kitchen after I heard the knock on the front door.

  I hustled out and into my softly lit foyer, going straight to the door. I saw the hulking shadowy figure that was silhouetted by the outside lights through the filmy curtains that covered the windows in the door and knew who it was immediately.

  I turned the locks, threw off the chain, and looked up into John Priest’s aloof but handsome face.

  “Hey,” I greeted.

  “Yo,” he replied.

  “Come in out of the cold,” I invited, stepping aside for him to do just that.

  He did and I caught a glimpse of his Suburban, stark black against the white tufts of snow in January in the mountains of Colorado.

  I closed the door on the chill and turned to him to see he was standing, facing the registration book, but his head was turned toward the kitchen.

  “Cookies,” I explained the scent in the air as I rounded him and his eyes tipped down to me. “I’m in the mood. Christmas does that to me. I’m an extreme baker at Christmas and it doesn’t wear off until after Valentine’s Day.”

  He said nothing. Showed nothing. Just stared at me.

  I forged into the silence.

  “We’re pretty full up but eleven is open.”

  He jerked up his chin then turned to the book.

  I kept talking.

  “We have new flat screen TVs, with Blu-ray players. And cable.”

  He kept scribbling.

  I kept blabbing.

  “And I figured out how to take bookings on-line. I did it all by myself. It works great!”

  I sounded excited because I was. I fiddled with that for-freaking-ever. So long I thought it’d be the death of me. But in the end it worked beautifully.

  He dropped the pen and straightened toward me.

  I didn’t stop blathering.

  “I also have a library of DVDs. There’s a menu in your cabin if you want to check one out. I usually require a credit card for that service but we’ll skip that part seeing as you’re a repeat customer, so I’m guessing I can trust you won’t take off with my copy of Lake House.”

  That got me something. His full, attractive lips twisted in distaste.

  “Not a Sandra Bullock fan?” I asked.

  He shocked me by sharing, “Keanu Reeves.”

  I grinned at him. “This is the difference between men and women. Many men don’t get Mr. Reeves.” I leaned in and finished conspiratorially, “Every woman absolutely does.”

  He made no comment and showed no hint of understanding or humor.

  Instead, he asked, “I take it it’s no longer seventy.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. And it’s high season so it’s a hundred a night.”

  And it was one hundred dollars a night and I added ten dollars a person if there was more than one.

  I had eight of the eleven cabins filled, with Priest there was nine.

  This meant I was doing it.

  Finally.

  Utilities and cable were crippling. Not to mention taxes. The day-to-day work was constant and there was still more to do to get the cabins as I wanted them to be. I wasn’t rolling in it and I could use some help, like someone to help me clean and do laundry.

  But I was doing it. I might not be able to pay my dad off with interest anytime soon, what with all the stuff that needed doing to the house, not to mention the fact that two winters in Colorado running my business with my car were two winters too many without a truck or SUV, so I had to get on that and soon.

  But I was doing it.

  Finally.

  John Priest reached to his wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed me three hundr
eds, saying, “Two nights.”

  “Just two this time?” I asked.

  His gaze sharpened on me but he said nothing. I had no idea how to read this except to think he wasn’t a big fan of me keeping tabs on how long he stayed.

  Which was weird.

  And scary.

  And thus totally John Priest. A man I’d seen repeatedly. A man I did not see at all when he was in one of my cabins, except seeing his SUV drive up and down my lane when he came and went. And once, I watched him carry groceries into cabin eleven.

  That was it.

  Therefore, he was a man I did not know. Not even a little bit. Except for the fact I was pretty certain his name was not John Priest, and since he gave a false name and paid in cash, it was likely he was not an upstanding citizen.

  “Okay, just two,” I muttered.

  “Key,” he prompted and my body gave a slight jerk in response, seeing as I totally forgot about the key. Mostly because he wasn’t there often, months passed in between, but he was the only one who came back time and again and it felt strangely like he should have his own key.

  I moved to the cabinet, got him his key, and walked it back, hand out toward him.

  He took it as I offered, “Would you like to take some cookies with you? I have plenty.”

  He gave me that sharp look again and surprised me by saying firmly and extremely rudely, “Absolutely fucking not.”

  “I…uh, o-okay,” I stammered. “You don’t like cookies.”

  He didn’t confirm this fact.

  He dipped his chin, turned to the door, opened it, and disappeared through it, shutting it behind him.

  I stared at it a moment before I moved to it and locked my three locks again.

  When I looked out my filmy curtains, I saw nothing but porch lit by my outside light, the gray mounds of snow beyond, and the darkness of night.

  No SUV.

  John Priest was heading to eleven to do whatever it was he did in my cabin that was none of business.

  So I was heading to my kitchen to finish baking.

  Which was what I did.

  * * * * *

  Five months later, I threw open the front door, looked up at John Priest’s scary, beautiful face, and declared, “In case you’re cataloguing the goodness, my man, we have Wi-Fi!”