Tender Absolution

  “You don’t what? Hate me?” She almost laughed. But her heart soared at the thought that there was a chance they could, at the very least, be civil to each other. “You have a funny way of showing it.” Shoving her hands in her pockets, she walked through the tiny drifts of snow to get closer to him. “It would be a lot easier if we could get along.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’d rather despise me.”

  He raked fingers through his hair and squared his cap on his head. “It just makes things easier.”

  “You don’t believe that,” she said, feeling suddenly bold. There was anger in his dark gaze but something else, as well. Doubts? Passion? Memories of the love they’d shared? She wondered what he’d think if he knew the truth—all of the painful truth.

  “I don’t think it matters.”

  “How long are you staying in Gold Creek?”

  He wanted to lie, to tell her that he’d be on the next bus out of town, but the deceit would catch up with him. “I don’t know.”

  “A few days?” She stepped closer. Too close. The scent of her perfume wafted through the cold air. “A week?” Her face turned up to his, defying him, challenging him to lie to her. “A month?” She was so near that he saw the reflection of the Christmas lights in her eyes.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “I just wonder how often I’ll run into you and how I’m supposed to act? Like a complete stranger? Or maybe just an acquaintance, someone you’ve heard of but don’t really know? Or maybe a friend? No—that wouldn’t be right, now would it? We’d be bending the rules.” Her nostrils flared just a fraction. “I know,” she said, tossing from her face the few strands of hair that had fallen out of her braid. “I’ll act like a jilted ex-lover. You know, a girl who had all her hopes and dreams pinned on the boy she loved only to find out that he didn’t care about her at all. Yeah, that’s it. Like someone who was unjustly accused of something and who didn’t even get the chance to defend herself.” There was more she wanted to say, but thoughts along those particular lines were dangerous, made her vulnerable, which, right now, she could ill afford.

  His back teeth ground together, and as she stared up at him with those damned blue eyes it was all he could do not to touch her, not to grab her by the arms and shake some sense into her, not to drag her body close to his and shut her up by kissing her so long and hard, she could barely breathe. Instead he just stared down at her, like a statue, the trained soldier he was, his face a mask of disinterest. “Act any way you like, Carlie,” he said harshly and winced a little inside when he saw the color drain from her face. “You can do whatever you want, ’cause I really don’t give a damn.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THOMAS FITZPATRICK SWIRLED a drink in his hand and stood near the window of his office. He tossed back a large swallow of Scotch, felt the alcohol hit the back of his throat and burn all the way down to his stomach. It was still morning. Ten-fifteen. Too early for a drink except on special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, the signing of a particularly good deal. Or the day a man’s served with divorce papers. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the neatly typed documents from some high-powered lawyer in San Francisco. James T. Bennington. A tiger. The best. June was going for blood.

  He swallowed the rest of his drink and poured another. Two would be his limit. Sitting at the desk, he stared down at the divorce papers. Signed, sealed and delivered. His wife had actually filed. She had more guts—and pride—than he’d ever given her credit for.

  Being served had been humiliating, but not surprising. His reconciliation efforts with June had been feeble. They’d just gone through the motions of seeing a marriage counselor, engaging in a few “dates,” trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. All that time and money had been wasted. June wanted out. She was tired of Thomas’s deals and his women. When Jackson Moore had come back to town and discovered that Thomas was really his father, all hell had broken loose. June had known the truth, of course, but it had been a well-kept secret. The boy had even been kept in the dark and Thomas had continued his on-again, off-again affair with Sandra Moore, Jackson’s sexy, loose-moraled mother. He smiled as he thought of her. Sandra, of all his mistresses, had most touched his heart.

  June had found the strength to move out and take their daughter, Toni, with her. Though Toni was old enough to be on her own, she’d still been living at home, here in Gold Creek. Thomas’s baby. His little girl. His princess.

  He sighed. He didn’t really blame his wife. The love they’d once shared had died a long time ago. Sandra Moore wasn’t his first mistress, nor had she been his last.

  There had been lots of other women. Bosomy, beautiful females he’d met when he’d been out of town. Young women who had pretended an interest in him but were really impressed with his wealth.

  He sipped this drink slowly and set the glass on the table as he settled deeper in his chair. The old leather creaked.

  He thought of Carlie Surrett. Lord, she’d turned into a beauty. His fingers moved slowly up and down his sweaty glass. Years ago she’d caught his eye, but he’d drawn the line at girls still in their teens. If he remembered correctly, she’d left town because of that scandal with the older Powell boy, Ken or Conrad…no, Kevin. That was it. He’d committed suicide, or so everyone thought, because he’d loved Carlie and she’d broken up with him and become involved with his younger brother—that arrogant kid who ended up joining the army. There had even been some scandal about pregnancy, but no one knew for sure if that was true. Carlie certainly hadn’t come back to town with a kid tagging behind her.

  Pulling on his mustache, he thought long and hard, as he always did when he considered something he wanted. Without realizing what he was doing, he shoved back his chair, walked to the bar and plopped a couple of ice cubes into his glass. He caught his reflection in the mirror and scowled. Age was creeping up on him. Age and disappointment. He hadn’t wanted to lose Roy years ago, and he didn’t want to suffer the pain and financial strain of a divorce now. He’d hoped Jackson would forgive him and that somehow he’d end up with Turner Brooks’s ranch. He’d even tried to wrangle the sawmills from his nephew, Hayden. Nothing had worked. He seemed to have lost the Midas touch he’d once possessed.

  So now he wanted Carlie. She was old enough, and he was soon to be single. Nothing was standing in his way. Unless she was involved with someone; he’d have to check. It wouldn’t be hard to find out all about her.

  Carlie’s father, Weldon, worked for him as a foreman at the logging company. Good man. Steady worker. Company man. Carlie was Weldon’s only daughter and he’d disapproved when she’d taken off for the city. Weldon had grumbled about her getting too big for her britches though Thomas suspected that Weldon was covering up because he was hurt that his only daughter had run off to the city.

  Rumor had it that she’d been married, briefly, but that wasn’t confirmed. Thomas didn’t really know much about her except that she and Rachelle Tremont had backed up Jackson Moore to prove that he hadn’t killed Thomas’s eldest son, Roy. Grief stole into his heart as it always did when he thought of Roy. God, he’d loved that boy. So had June. He’d been so bright, so athletic, and Thomas was sure there wasn’t anything Roy couldn’t do if he set his mind on it.

  While Roy was alive, June had been a different person. Afterward, she was a shell of the woman she had been—a bitter shell. She had no longer turned a blind eye to Thomas’s affairs.

  The whole family had started to unravel when Roy was killed. Brian… Hell, Brian was never half the boy Roy had been and then he’d married that tramp, Laura Chandler, who’d trapped him into marriage and who, it turned out years later, had actually killed Roy.

  So Carlie Surrett had been right, and grudgingly Thomas admired her principles. Among other things. Her long legs, her blue eyes, her perfect face. No wonder she’d b
een a model. He felt a restless stirring between his legs, something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time and in his mind’s eye he saw himself seducing Carlie, lying with her on silk sheets.

  It didn’t matter that she was less than half his age. She was an adult, a gorgeous adult, and she was single. Rumor had it that she wasn’t rich and after all, her father was still working at the mill, struggling to make ends meet.

  He folded the neatly typed documents and shoved them into his desk drawer. He decided to find out everything there was to know about Carlie and her family. The strengths and, more importantly, the weaknesses. He pushed the button on his intercom and told Melanie, his secretary, to get Robert Sands, a slick private investigator, on the line. For the right amount of money, Sands would leave no stone unturned and would find out all the dirt there was on the Surretts—finances, illegitimate children, affairs and any other little skeleton they’d like to keep locked in their closets.

  For the first time all morning, Thomas Fitzpatrick smiled.

  * * *

  “WE’LL SEND A crew over to clean up the debris at the lakeside site.” Ralph Katcher, Ben’s foreman, reached into the back pocket of his jeans for his tin of chewing tobacco and propped one leg on the small step stool in the trailer Ben used as the official offices of his new company. It had been nearly two weeks since Nadine’s wedding—two weeks since he’d seen Carlie—and Ben had spent that time buried in his work, trying to start his own construction business. “The Hardesty brothers are looking for work and they’ll be able to salvage whatever’s left,” Ralph added.

  “It’s not much.” Ben stood and stretched. He’d been sitting behind his beat-up desk for hours and his neck ached. He reached for the coffeepot still warming on a hot plate. “Nothin’ much but the chimney. I was over there the other day.”

  “Leave it to Lyle and Lee. Believe me, they can find something out of nothing. ’Sides, the Hardestys work cheap. Best scrappers in the county.”

  “Good enough. Coffee?”

  Ralph shook his head, and chuckled. “I’ll pass. I’m about to head out for a beer. Besides, that sludge looks deadly.”

  “It is,” Ben agreed, pouring the coffee into a chipped cup and taking a sip. Scowling at the bitter taste, he set his cup on the clutter of paperwork strewn over his desk and picked up his pencil again. The best decision Ben had made since he’d returned to Gold Creek was to hire Ralph. A hard worker who was supporting an ex-wife and a son, Ralph was glad for the work and had pointed Ben in the direction of several potential jobs.

  Ralph pinched out some tobacco and laid it against his gum.

  Ben pointed to the tin with his pencil. “That’s the stuff that’ll kill you.”

  “Yeah, but if it’s not this, somethin’ else will,” Ralph replied with a grin that showed off flecks of brown against incredibly white teeth.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “What about the house on Bitner? Mrs. Hunter’s place?”

  “It’s a go. I’ll start looking things over today and let you know what needs to be done. She seems to know what she wants.”

  “That’s Dora for ya.”

  Ben rotated his neck and heard some disquieting pops. “I’ll talk to Fitzpatrick tomorrow. There’s got to be some repair work at the camp.” Ben hated to ask for work from old Thomas. Ever since seeing him with Carlie at Nadine’s wedding… The pencil he’d been holding snapped between his fingers.

  “It would be nice to get a little money out of that old skinflint.” Ralph had been out of work for nearly a year since a back injury had sidelined him from his last job with a major construction company, which was owned in part by Thomas Fitzpatrick. Since the accident, the company had laid off more people than it hired and Ralph hadn’t been offered his old job because it had no longer existed: the company had gone out of business. Since then, Ralph had worked doing odd jobs—carpentry, chopping wood, even general yard work before he’d been introduced to Ben over a beer at the Silver Horseshoe. They’d struck a deal and he’d been working for Ben ever since. Ralph was grateful for the job and Ben was sure that he’d found the best foreman in the county. A burly man with muttonchop sideburns and slight paunch that hid his belt buckle, Ralph worked hard and was honest. Ben couldn’t ask for more.

  Ralph grabbed a dusty Mets cap off the rack near the door, then slung his denim jacket over his shoulder. “Well, it looks like we’re gonna be busy.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You won’t hear me complainin’.” Ralph stepped out of the old trailer and jogged to his pickup.

  Ben took another swallow of bitter coffee, before dumping the rest of the foul stuff down the toilet. He’d start a fresh pot in the morning.

  Stretching so that his back creaked, he thought about leaving, then sat down again in the worn swivel chair behind his metal desk. He shuffled a few papers, and wondered when he’d feel confident enough to hire a secretary. Not right away. He picked up a manila folder and let the check fall into the mess that was his desk. Fifty-thousand big ones. More money than he’d ever seen in his life and he hadn’t even had to sign for it. All because he was now related to Hayden Monroe IV. Ben shouldn’t take it—just stuff the damned piece of paper into an envelope and send it back, but he was too practical not to realize the value of this—a peace offering—from his sister’s new husband.

  “I just want to set things straight,” Hayden had told him when he and Nadine had returned from their week-long honeymoon in the Bahamas. “For the past.”

  “That had nothing to do with me,” Ben had replied.

  Hayden’s jaw had clamped tight. “This was my idea, not Nadine’s. Hell, she doesn’t even know about it.”

  “Deal with my dad.”

  Hayden had leveled him a gaze that could cut through solid steel. “I did, Powell. Now this is between us. Just you and me. Think of this money as an advance or a loan or a damned gift, I don’t care, but rebuild Nadine’s cabin the way she wants it. You can take your profit off the top, then pay me back when you can.” Hayden’s gaze had brooked no argument and the nostrils of his nose—a nose Ben had nearly broken just a few weeks ago—had flared with indignation.

  It was a generous offer, one Ben could hardly refuse, so he’d agreed, but he’d had the proper legal papers drawn so that it was duly recorded that he was borrowing money from Monroe and the debt would be repaid within four years.

  Ben had grown up believing that a person earned his way in the world, that he couldn’t expect something for nothing, and he wasn’t going to accept Hayden Monroe’s money just to ease his new brother-in-law’s conscience. This was a business matter. And a chance to rebuild his sister’s cabin, so family loyalty was involved. However, the sooner he paid back the debt, the better he’d feel.

  Satisfied, he filled out the deposit slip for his new business and stuffed the paperwork into his briefcase. His father had called him a fool, referred to Hayden’s investment as “blood money.” Well, maybe George was right. It didn’t matter. For once Ben wasn’t going to kick the golden goose out of his path.

  He’d been frugal, picking up this old trailer from Fitzpatrick Logging for a song, and putting it on an empty lot on the outskirts of town zoned for commercial use. He’d bought the weed-infested lot from a man who lived in Seattle and who had once planned to retire in the area. Later, because of the downturn in the California economy, the owner had changed his mind about his retirement plans and gladly sold the piece of ground to Ben. Once the lot was paid off, Ben planned to build himself an office complex, but that dream was a long way off. First he needed to line up more work than just the construction of a lakeside cabin for his sister and the renovation of the old Victorian house on Bitner Street.

  Ben’s bid for the Bitner job had been lower than any of his competitors’ because he was hungrier and he wanted a real job, not a handout from
his brother-in-law. Mrs. Hunter, the owner of the building, wanted it to be brought up to date: cleaned, repaired, remodeled, “whatever it takes” to get it ready to sell. She was a sly woman who had a vacancy that she hoped to fill and she’d decided Ben would make a perfect tenant for her downstairs studio. “We could do a trade. You get free rent and I get a little knocked off the bill?” She’d smiled sweetly, bobbing her head of blue-gray curls, but Ben had declined, preferring to keep a little distance between himself and the people who hired him.

  However, Dora Hunter wasn’t to be outmaneuvered. “You think about it,” she’d told him during their last conversation. “It could be mighty convenient and I could come up with a deal you’d be a fool to pass up.”

  Ben had decided right then and there that there was a shrewd businesswoman with a will of iron lurking behind the grandmotherly persona of apple cheeks and rimless spectacles. At seventy-eight, Mrs. Hunter was tired of the problems associated with owning and managing an apartment building and was ready to retire to Palm Springs to be closer to her daughter and good-for-nothing son-in-law. She’d confided in Ben as she’d signed their contract. “He’s a bum, but Sonja loves him, so what does it matter what I think? Besides, there’s the grandchildren…” She’d clucked her tongue. “Hard to believe that man could father such adorable boys. Ahh, well…” She’d put down the pen, looked up at Ben with a twinkle in her blue eyes and stuck out her hand. “Looks like we have a bargain, Mr. Powell.”

  “Ben.” Her grip was amazingly strong.

  “Only if you call me Dora.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  So Ben had a contract for his first “real job,” and it felt good, damned good, even if he wouldn’t make a ton of money. He had a chance to prove himself and, if Mrs. Hunter—Dora—was satisfied with the quality of his work, word would get out. In a town the size of Gold Creek word of mouth was worth more than thousands of dollars of paid advertising in the Clarion.