First Love

  “I can think of better things.” His gaze locked with hers, and he let his hand slide downward until he felt the weight of one breast in his palm. Nadine moaned softly, and his fingers squeezed. Desire swept through her in a hot torrent as his fingers fondled her through her clothes.

  She closed her eyes, arching back, thrusting out her breasts.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, drawing her down and burying his face against her sternum. “I want you.” He closed his eyes as if to clear his head and didn’t open them again as he said, “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you in your dad’s old pickup. I thought years and time would change that, but I was wrong. The reverse is true. I want you more now than I did as a kid.”

  Her throat closed in on itself so she couldn’t swallow; she hardly dared believe him.

  Pulling her down to him again, he held her tight and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “This is killing me, but we’ll play it your way, Nadine. I don’t know how, but we’ll give it a damned good try.”

  He slapped her playfully on the butt, then forced them both into an upright position. Strain showed in the brackets near his mouth. “Do you really believe we can have a relationship without sex?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Well, I guess we’ll find out. But let me tell you, it’s gonna be hell!”

  * * *

  HAYDEN WAS TRUE to his word. He started showing up at her house on a regular basis and convinced her to keep working for him. He wanted her to hire the carpenters and handymen to oversee the repairs to the summer home while he spent his days at the mill. He never discussed his plans for the future of the company, and Nadine had never asked, though the few times she’d seen Sam, he was convinced that Hayden was going to do his level best to see that every employee of the company got his walking papers.

  Fortunately, the boys hadn’t told Sam about the fact that Hayden visited nearly every night, that sometimes he ate dinner with them or that he had taken them for speedboat rides across the lake. He’d promised to take them skiing as soon as the first storm dumped enough snow onto the mountains.

  And they’d never made love again, though they’d come close a time or two when the boys were asleep upstairs and they were alone in front of the fire, but Hayden had always broken off their embrace and Nadine had been left feeling frustrated and doubting that she would much longer be able to abide by her own moral code.

  As Christmas approached, there was more demand for her funky jewelry. She stopped by the Rexall Drugstore in the middle of town to check her inventory. The store, located on the corner of Pine and Main had a turn-of-the-century charm. It seemed more like an old-fashioned mercantile than a modern pharmacy. Paddle fans rotated to the strains of Christmas carols filling the store with soft music. Red and green tinsel was strung over the aisles, which were more crowded than ever with excess merchandise—cards, wrapping paper, gift ideas, decorations, even fruitcakes.

  The rack that displayed her jewelry was near the front of the store, and as she approached the counter she realized that more than half of the original inventory had already been sold. There was a “lot of interest” in her pieces, the woman behind the counter confided to her.

  Before she left, Nadine decided to buy a cup of cocoa at the back counter. She slid onto a vacant stool and dropped her purse at her feet before she recognized the girl sitting next to her as Carlie Surrett. Their gazes met in the mirror over the soda machine, and Nadine’s insides went cold.

  “Hello, Nadine,” Carlie ventured, and Nadine forced a smile she didn’t feel. Carlie was a beautiful girl with long, straight black hair and deep blue eyes. She’d been a model for some years, then turned photographer before she’d returned to Gold Creek only a few months before.

  And she’d been the cause of Kevin’s death.

  This girl—this woman—had broken Nadine’s oldest brother’s heart, and when he’d discovered his love was unreturned, he’d pulled his car into the garage of his apartment, closed the door and let the engine run until he’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

  Nadine forced a greeting over her tongue. She told herself she couldn’t blame Carlie, but couldn’t fight the rage that burned in her heart. If only Carlie had treated Kevin more kindly, he might still be alive today.

  Carlie’s mother, Thelma, the waitress behind the counter, glanced at Nadine, snapped open her order pad and, without a smile, took her order. The pain between the two families had existed for years, and no one was able, or cared, to bridge the gap.

  In a thunder of footsteps, five-year-old Adam Brooks, dressed in full cowboy regalia, scurried to the counter. His mother, Heather, and her sister, Rachelle Moore, were laughing, dragging shopping bags and obviously breathless as they walked down the aisle toward the back of the store. While Heather was petite and blond, and just beginning to show her pregnancy, Rachelle was tall and willowy, with long red-brown hair that fell to her waist.

  “Rachelle!” Carlie gasped, then sent Heather a friendly glare. “You knew she’d be in town.”

  “I wasn’t sure—” Heather hedged.

  “Liar.” Rachelle slid onto a stool next to Carlie. “I called her yesterday.” She slid her packages under the counter and eyed the fluorescent menu displayed over the back mirror.

  Adam scrambled onto a stool next to his aunt and began ordering a banana split, but Heather spied Nadine. “Just the woman I was looking for,” she said as Rachelle and Carlie caught up on old times. “I need your help.”

  “Mine?”

  “The studio. It needs all sorts of work and the doctor told me that I had to slow down.” She patted her rounding belly. “So, after Christmas sometime I was hoping that you’d help me clean it up, maybe give it a fresh coat of paint—that sort of thing. If you have the time, of course.”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Good. And I have a list of people for you—oh, where is it?” Heather dug through a voluminous purse, yanked out her wallet and dug through a compartment. “Here you go. All of these people showed an interest in some of your jewelry. That woman there—” she pointed a fingernail at the third name on the list “—owns a chain of boutiques around the bay area. She has a store near Fisherman’s Wharf, one in Sausalito and a few sprinkled around Santa Rosa and Sonoma, I think. She displays some of my paintings and was very interested in your work. Give her…for that matter, give them all a call.”

  Nadine could hardly believe her good luck. She folded the scrap of paper into her purse and said, “Thanks.”

  “No trouble,” Heather replied with a smile.

  “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, at least.”

  “You don’t have to—” Heather glanced along the length of the counter where Rachelle, Carlie and Adam were discussing the merits of marshmallow sauce versus pineapple on a sundae.

  “I want to.”

  “All right.” Heather eased onto one of the stools, and Nadine wondered how she’d ever been jealous of this woman who seemed to glow in her pregnancy. Her blond hair shimmered in the lights and her eyes sparkled with good humor. Obviously marriage was good for her and Turner Brooks was a good man, a strong man, a passionate man. A man Nadine had come to realize that she’d never really loved.

  And what about Hayden? Do you love him?

  The thought struck her cold, and she nearly dropped her cup of cocoa, sloshing some of the chocolate onto the counter. Love? Why, the notion was ridiculous! She couldn’t, wouldn’t fall for Hayden.

  “Your father says there’s talk at the logging company of trouble with the mill. Rumor has it that Garreth’s son might sell it or scrap it out,” Thelma said to Carlie as she slid a glass boat filled with bananas, ice cream and syrup toward Adam. With glee, he plucked the cherry from a bed of whipped cream and plopped it into his mouth.

 
“I thought you were going to share,” his aunt Rachelle chided him, and Adam, a smile stretched long on his freckled face, shook his head.

  “The mill’s closing?” Carlie asked.

  “It’s not for certain yet.”

  “But this town will roll up and die,” Heather observed.

  Nadine looked at Carlie’s mother. “Maybe it won’t be shut down.”

  Thelma regarded Nadine with frosty eyes. “You just watch. Hayden Monroe’s always been a pampered rich boy. Never done anyone any good, including that girl he was gonna marry. First he nearly killed her in a boat wreck, then he broke off the engagement.” She clucked her tongue. “A real charmer, that one.” She plucked a pad from the pocket of her apron and tallied the bill for a couple of men who were sitting at the far end of the counter.

  Nadine said goodbye to everyone and thanked Heather again for the list of potential clients. She barely heard the strains of “Silver Bells” as she shoved open the door and walked outside. The cocoa in her stomach seemed to curdle when she thought of Hayden and the power he now had over this town. She’d grown up with the people who worked for him; their children were her own boys’ friends. If Hayden did close down the mill, they might as well close down the town. Even Fitzpatrick Logging would be affected.

  If Hayden sold the sawmill to a rival firm, there would be changes and the people of Gold Creek, God bless them, weren’t all that interested in change. A new owner might bring in his own foremen, his own workers, his own office people and computer system. Jobs could be lost to other men and machinery.

  It wasn’t hard to see why the citizens of Gold Creek liked things to stay the same. They’d been raised in a timber town as their folks had been. Throughout the generations, logging in northern California had dwindled, but in Gold Creek it was a way of life.

  And Hayden Monroe had the power to change it.

  * * *

  “JUST TAKE YOUR father’s viewpoint into perspective,” Thomas Fitzpatrick said, glancing through the window of Hayden’s house to the lake. He’d spent the afternoon with his wayward nephew, trying to convince the boy to maintain a status quo. Hayden didn’t seem to care what his father wanted nor did he seem all that interested in the fate of Fitzpatrick Logging. In fact, there seemed to be a new bitterness to him, a hardening of his features that Thomas hadn’t seen in his previous meeting. As if Hayden knew something he shouldn’t.

  Thomas was sweating. He and Garreth had worked so well together. They’d built a monopoly here in Gold Creek and enjoyed ruling the town’s economy, being Gold Creek’s premier citizens. Well, at least Thomas had. Garreth had been more of a legend—what with living in the city and showing up only a few times a week at best.

  Thomas cracked his knuckles as Hayden leaned back in the recliner. “What is it you really want?” Hayden asked, eyeing his uncle so intensely that Thomas, always cool, felt the need to squirm in his chair.

  “For the time being, until I can come up with more cash, I want you to stay at the helm of Monroe Sawmill.”

  “And keep buying timber from Fitzpatrick Logging?”

  “Of course. We have contracts—”

  “You have a lot of things, Thomas. You and Dad.” Hayden reached into a drawer and yanked out a stack of yellowed documents that had been forwarded to him, upon request, by Bradworth in San Francisco. He tossed them on the coffee table. “An interest in a soccer team that never got off the ground, a racehorse that couldn’t win and oil leases for dry wells, to name just a few. Diversification—isn’t that what you called it?”

  Thomas tented his hands and nodded slightly, managing to hide his annoyance. “We’ve had our share of bad investments.”

  “More than your share, I’d say. In fact, it’s my bet that the sawmill and the logging company are the only legitimate, profitable businesses that you’re involved with.”

  “I’m just suggesting that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Hayden’s smile was cold. “Gift horse? I think the mills are more of an albatross than anything else.”

  Thomas’s eyes snapped. “You always were too stubborn for your own good. Your father only wanted what was best for you.”

  “My father didn’t give a damn for me, and you know it!” Hayden exploded. “I was just another one of his ‘things.’”

  Thomas pushed back his chair. “Just don’t do anything foolish.”

  “You’ll be one of the first to know it if I do,” Hayden replied. “At the board meeting.”

  “What if I come up with an offer before then?”

  Hayden’s nostril’s flared slightly. “Bring it to me. Then we’ll talk.”

  Thomas left, and Hayden searched the den for a bottle of Scotch or bourbon. He needed a drink. Grabbing a dusty bottle, he poured himself a stiff shot, then, with a growl, dumped the liquor down the bar sink and stared through the window into the coming night. His uncle worried him. The man was slick, oily. For the first time, Hayden wondered about selling out to him and giving him a complete monopoly in town—the owner of the only two industries.

  Thomas would have more power than ever over people like Nadine.

  He felt a pull on his gut and wondered what Nadine was doing.

  Hell, why was it he couldn’t stop thinking of her? Whatever his mood—happy, sad, frustrated, elated, worried—he wanted to share it with her. Ever since landing back in this two-bit town and seeing her bending over his bathtub, scrubbing as if her life depended upon it, he’d been fascinated with her.

  Leo whined to go outside, and absently Hayden patted the old dog’s head. “I know,” he said, as he snagged his jacket off the hall tree near the front door. Within minutes he and the dog were driving around the curving road that followed the shoreline of the lake. The night was brisk, stars winked high above the canopy of spruce and redwood branches, but Hayden didn’t notice. His concentration was focused on the twin beams of light thrown by his headlights and the single thought that soon he’d be with Nadine again.

  * * *

  “OKAY, OKAY, WE’LL put up the tree—but just the lights tonight. It’s already late,” Nadine told her boys. Upset over what she’d learned at the counter of the drugstore, she’d started home, passed the Boy Scout sales lot for Christmas trees and, on impulse, stopped and bought a small tree that she’d lashed to the roof of her car.

  She was now holding it up for inspection on the back porch. Hershel growled at the tree, but the boys were delighted. “It’s great, Mom,” John told her, “but you could’ve gotten a bigger one. It’s a little on the puny side.”

  “Yeah, like Charlie Brown’s,” Bobby chimed in, remembering a rerun of a Christmas special they’d seen.

  “It’s not that bad. With a little trimming, a few lights, and tons of ornaments, it’ll be the best tree we’ve ever had,” she insisted. “You’ll see. Come on, Bobby, you help me get it inside, and John, look on the top shelf in the garage for the stand.”

  They wrestled the tree into the dusty stand, though the poor little pine listed to one side.

  “It looks like it might fall down,” Bobby said.

  Nadine, still bent over the stand, shook her head. Pine needles fell into her hair and she had to speak around a protruding branch. “It’ll be fine, once it’s decorated.”

  “I don’t know,” John said, holding up his hand parallel to the wall and closing one eye to measure just how badly the tree leaned. “It could tip over.”

  “Hogwash. We’ll just turn it so that it slants toward the corner. No one will ever know!” Nadine dusted her hands, eyed her handiwork, and had to admit to herself that the tree bordered on pathetic. “Just think Charlie Brown,” she told herself as she poured water into the tray.

  John was testing the lights, seeing which colorful bulbs still glowed after a year in the garage, by plugging the string into a
wall socket, when there was a knock on the door. Hershel, searching the kitchen floor for scraps of food, bolted across the room, growling and snarling and nearly knocking over the tree as he raced by.

  Bobby jumped onto the couch and peered out the window. “It’s the guy from across the lake!”

  “Mr. Monroe?” John asked, and his eyes were suddenly as bright as the string of lights at his feet. “Maybe he wants to take us on a ride in his boat at night! Wouldn’t that be great!”

  “Hershel, shush!” Nadine commanded. “And I doubt that he wants to take you two boys out on the lake tonight,” Nadine added, but her heart seemed to take flight as she opened the door and found Hayden on the front porch. He loomed before her, and his musky male scent wafted on the breeze that crept into the room, billowing the curtains and causing the fire to glow brighter for an instant.

  “Hey, did you bring your boat?” Bobby asked, jumping up and down on the couch in his excitement.

  Hershel barked loudly.

  Nadine snapped her fingers in her youngest son’s direction. “Stop that jumping, Bobby, and you—” she whirled on the dog “—Hush! Right now!” She managed a smile for Hayden as she caught Hershel by the collar. “Welcome to my zoo.” She swung the door open a little farther with her free hand, and Hayden stepped inside, only to kick the door closed behind him.

  Nadine released the dog, and Hayden whispered to her, “This is the nicest damned zoo I’ve been to in a long time.” His gaze found hers again and held. Her breath seemed to stop and time stretched endlessly. In those few seconds Nadine felt as if her future was wrapped up in this man, as if there were some unspoken bond between them.

  “Come on, you can help us with the Christmas tree,” John said, shattering the moment. “I didn’t want to tell Mom that it was crooked, but it really needs some help.”

  Hayden shook his head. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

  “You didn’t. John’s right. You can help,” Nadine said quickly.

  Hayden’s forehead creased. “I don’t think I’m the right one to ask about this sort of thing.”