RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer\Woodrose Mountain\Sweet Laurel Falls (99 page)

They walked in silence toward the lodge for a few moments. The
building loomed above them, big and commanding and oddly elegant. It reminded
him of one of the old national park lodges, with the dark pine and soaring glass
windows.

“Have you had a chance to try any of the restaurants up here
yet?” Maura asked. “They're all very good.”

He shook his head. “Want to know something funny? This is
actually the first time I've even seen the lodge.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously? You've been back in Hope's
Crossing for months. Weren't you at all curious in that time about what your
father has done up here?”

“Not really.” The scent of her, lemony and sweet, drifted to
him and he was strangely comforted by her presence and by the heat of her
brushing against him as they walked. “I didn't need to see it. I knew whatever
had been done up here wasn't at all what my mother intended when she left the
land to me.”

His mother had been a direct descendant of Alice and Harvey
Jackson, who along with the Van Durans had been the original silver barons here.
Bethany had been the
last
descendant, actually, of
her generation. When she gave birth to him,
he
had
become the last descendant. Now that honor went to Sage, he supposed.

Even when her family had lost most of their wealth after the
silver mines played out, the Jacksons, unlike the Van Durans, had managed to
hang on to most of their land and had even managed to buy more. As a result, his
mother had inherited thousands of acres up here, where the original mines had
once dotted this canyon.

Bethany had left the land in trust to him, but Harry and
William Beaumont had conspired together to break the trust, claiming his
mother's undeniable mental illness had left her unfit to make those decisions
for herself before she committed suicide. The land rightfully should have gone
to her husband, not to a teenage boy, Harry had successfully argued in
court.

That final betrayal from his father after a lifetime of
distance and disappointments had been the last straw for Jack. Driven by fury
and pain and a vast, aching helplessness, he had walked away from Hope's
Crossing for good.

Only recently was he beginning to realize all he had left
behind.

“It's not as terrible as you'd feared, is it?” Maura asked. “At
least we don't have any Las Vegas–style casinos right in the middle of
town.”

“No. It's actually quite…pleasing.” It was a grudging admission
but he meant it.

“I've always thought so. For all his faults, I can't deny that
Harry has pretty good taste. For what it's worth, he's also the one who insisted
on the zoning restrictions that help the downtown maintain its historic flavor
instead of turning everything into strip malls and big-box stores.”

He didn't want to hear anything good about his father. As far
as he was concerned, Harry was a cheat and a liar and had manipulated and
schemed his way to defrauding his own son.

The doors opened soundlessly for him, and he and Maura walked
into the lobby, dominated by a massive fireplace and hanging ironwork
chandeliers that probably weighed as much as his SUV. The Silver Strike
Lodge—named for the original mine—apparently appealed to a well-heeled crowd,
judging by the designer après-ski apparel worn by those in the lobby.

“Speak of the devil. Your father is here, just to give you fair
warning,” Maura said in a low voice.

He jerked around in time to see Harry walk out of what looked
like a steak house off the lobby, along with a couple of men who had the same
well-fed look of prosperity.

“Warning duly noted.”

“I don't mind waiting alone for Sage here in the lobby if you
want to get out of here. You could wait out in your car.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I'm a grown man. You really think I need
to run away from my father?”

“Wouldn't be the first time.”

Oh, ouch. He winced a little as the arrow hit home. No doubt
that was just how she saw things—that he had chosen to leave instead of sticking
around to fight for what had rightfully been his. If only the whole situation
had been that simple, but he had been an eighteen-year-old kid with no power,
influence or money to hire the huge team of attorneys it would have taken to
defeat Harry.

He had tried to convince somebody to take on his case on its
merits, but nobody in the entire county—or the next, or the one beyond that—had
been willing to go up against Harry and his consortium, especially when the
developers had started to break ground only minutes after the judge broke the
trust.

Beyond that, Jack had finally decided his mother's memory had
suffered enough through the judicial system. Harry had trotted out every single
diagnosis, every manic episode, every delusion as fodder.

By the time his attorneys were done, all of Bethany's actions
had appeared insane to everyone in that courtroom. Including him. Instead of the
sweet, funny, creative soul he remembered, who used to take him up into these
mountains to hunt for blackberries and pick wildflowers and identify birds,
Harry had tainted Jack's own picture of his mother.

He hated his father for that more than for taking the land.

“I think he saw us. He's coming this way.”

Despite himself, he was amused at Maura's exaggerated stage
whisper. She always used to make him laugh, he remembered, even when his life
had seemed completely miserable.

“Quick. Maybe we can duck down and hide behind the sofa,” he
stage-whispered back.

She frowned but didn't have time for a sharp retort before
Harry joined them.

“This is a surprise. Are the two of you dining at the lodge
tonight?”

Jack's spine stiffened and he felt the hot rush of adrenaline
churning through him, as if his body was gearing up for a fight. His reaction
annoyed the hell out of him, but he supposed it was no different than a person
instinctively brushing away a fly. What
did
surprise
him was the realization that Maura had come to stand next to him, shoulder to
shoulder. He glanced down and found her giving Harry a look that reminded him of
her little dust mop of a dog going to battle against a mountain lion.

“We're waiting for our daughter,” he answered. “She had a
matter of…business to discuss with one of your guests.”

Harry pursed his lips. “Rumor has it she's pregnant.”

Beside him, he could feel Maura tense, but he couldn't see any
good in lying to Harry. No doubt he already knew more about the situation than
Jack did. “For once, the grapevine has it right.”

“She have any plans to marry the father?”

“Absolutely not,” he and Maura said in unison. When he met her
gaze, he thought he saw a little spark of laughter in her eyes before they both
turned back to Harry.

“Of course not. Nobody gets married these days,” Harry
muttered. Jack waited for him to make some kind of asinine comment in the mode
of
like mother, like daughter
so he could deck him,
but Harry wisely refrained.

“I would like to get to know this young lady. She is my
granddaughter, after all. You—” He turned to Maura. “Bring her to my house
tomorrow for dinner.”

“I'm afraid we have plans tomorrow.” She'd answered calmly
enough, but Jack was suddenly completely convinced she was lying.

“Then Sunday evening around six. You may come as well,” he told
Jack peremptorily, then turned and walked away before either of them had time to
come up with another lie.

Jack stared after him, shaking his head. “You know you really
don't have to go,” he said to Maura. “Contrary to popular belief—especially his
own—he's not lord of all he surveys.”

She shrugged. “It probably won't be
completely
miserable and I'll probably be hungry anyway around then.
If it means I don't have to cook, then, yay.”

“I would be willing to cook for you if that's the only way
you'll agree to go.”

“I thought you could only fix omelets and cheese
sandwiches.”

“Maybe, but they're delicious omelets and cheese sandwiches.
Better than the swill you could probably get from Harry's Cordon Bleu–trained
chef.”

She smiled. “Don't ever tell him this, but I've been dying to
see the inside of that mausoleum of his. Word has it he owns a dozen original
Sarah Colville paintings, and nobody ever sees them but Harry. That's just
criminal. Sarah has a vacation home here in Hope's Crossing and I've been a huge
fan for years.”

“Okay. How about this? You take Sage and enjoy your French
feast and the priceless art, and then afterward you can come to my place and
tell me all about it while we roast marshmallows in my fireplace?”

“You never mentioned roasting marshmallows was another culinary
skill.”

“I like to keep a woman guessing. Save a few impressive
accomplishments in reserve, just in case.”

She laughed outright at that, and he was completely entranced
by her. “An enticing offer indeed, but I'm going to have to regretfully decline.
If
I
have to go have dinner with Harry,
you
have to go.”

He sighed. Yeah, he was afraid of that. He could imagine few
things more miserable than sharing a meal and being forced to make conversation
with the old bastard.

On the other hand, he and his father had been circling around
each other like a couple of bull elk on either side of a meadow since he'd
arrived back at Hope's Crossing, each waiting for the other to charge first so
they could tangle antlers.

“Well, maybe Sage will decide she wants nothing to do with
Harry, and we'll both be off the hook,” he suggested.

Maura shook her head. “Nice try. I would think you know our
daughter better than that by now.”

Our daughter. He was pretty sure that was the first time she
had ever said those words together. How could a couple of simple words leave him
breathless?

“I guess we're stuck then,” he said, his voice a little
raspy.

She flashed him a look, and he saw something warm flicker in
her gaze before she looked away. “Don't worry, Jack. I'll hold your hand and
help you through it.”

She was flirting with him, he realized through his shock. He
wasn't even sure she was aware of it.

“I'll hold you to that,” he answered, beginning to think he, at
least, was caught by much more than the prospect of dinner with his father.

* * *

H
ARRY
WALKED
THROUGH
the lobby of the lodge, his
heart pounding in his chest—not the scary, call-the-paramedics kind of pounding.
This was something he wasn't very accustomed to—anticipation, joy and an aching
regret for the years he had lost through his own greed.

Every time he saw Jack, the yearning to permanently have his
son back in his life ate away at him like a lousy case of acid reflux. As far as
he could tell, Jack still wanted nothing to do with him. Could he blame him?
Harry had made stupid choices twenty years ago, had picked power and influence
over what was right, and now he was paying the price for his
shortsightedness.

He was alone and had discovered in recent years he didn't like
it one damn bit.

He didn't like thinking about how very afraid he had been after
his heart attack, lying in that hospital room by himself and knowing that there
was not one single person who cared whether he lived or died, except maybe his
attorneys. Even they would probably prefer their commission managing his estate
to actually having to deal with him.

The way things stood, Jack didn't want to allow Harry back into
his life. So Harry would just have to knock all those obstacles out of his way
and earn his way back in, whatever it took.

He headed for the elevator toward his owner's suite on the top
floor of the lodge. Though he had a home not far from here, the biggest private
residence for twenty square miles, tonight he couldn't face the echoing
emptiness of it. He pushed the button for his floor, grateful nobody else came
in to force him into conversation right now. He might not enjoy being alone, but
that didn't mean he was gung ho to talk to a bunch of idiots, just for the sake
of hearing another human voice.

To his chagrin, the elevator stopped at the third floor. The
doors swung open, and a young woman in a bulky parka walked in and quickly
turned around to face the front, but not before he saw her face, blotchy and
red, and identified her.

His granddaughter.

He knew all about Sage McKnight. Since the moment he had
learned she was his granddaughter in that bookstore, he had made it his business
to discover everything he could about her, from her interest in astronomy, to
her first boyfriend in high school, to what she got on the SATs. He knew she was
an architecture student in Boulder and that, since Christmas, she had been
working as Jack's office assistant.

What he
didn't
know was why she was
so upset.

“What's wrong?” he asked, instantly on alert. He might be an
old man with a bad ticker, but he could still kick some serious ass.

She turned slightly and he saw recognition in her eyes, which
were huge and bruised-looking in her delicate face. “What are you doing
here?”

“It's my hotel. What's wrong?” he repeated, hitting the
emergency-stop button.

She closed her eyes and sagged against the wall of the
elevator. “It's just been a really shitty day and I want to go home. Do you mind
starting this thing again?”

“Who hurt you?”

Her laugh was hoarse and ragged around the edges. “I got myself
into this mess. I can't blame anybody else. Do you mind?” She shot a pistol
finger at the control panel.