Reunited with the Billionaire Read online

  Even at eighteen—hell, especially at eighteen—he’d been a cynic, world weary and hard-shelled. At first, he’d scoffed at the town’s old-fashioned setting. Surely it was phony, something carefully constructed for the tourist trade.

  After a couple of months, he’d been surprised to learn that the town was what it seemed, a village whose residents cared about each other and even about him, tough guy that he tried to be.

  Gradually, without him even realizing it, his carefully constructed walls of cynicism started to crumble. Tough guys weren’t supposed to fall in love, but Seth had, with the pretty little town that time seemed to have bypassed. He’d fallen in love with its solid, old-fashioned houses and quiet roads, with its friendly people…

  …with a girl whose hair was the fire of maple leaves in autumn, whose eyes were the blue of a mountain lake in midsummer.

  “Damn it!”

  Seth mouthed a string of four-letter words as the brace broke free and clipped the side of his hand. Well, that was what you got for daydreaming. You worked with tools, you worked on a slippery roof, you had to pay attention. A mistake could be a lot worse than a bruised hand, and what in hell was wrong with him, anyway, thinking about what used to be? Wendy was history. Ancient history. It made more sense to think about the people who’d left the giant stone heads on Easter Island than it did to waste time thinking about the year Wendy had been his girl.

  The giant stone heads, at least, were still around. Wendy sure as hell wasn’t.

  Seth shoved the hammer back into his leather tool belt. He had no idea why she’d been on his mind so much lately. Maybe it was because he’d met her this time of year, and lost her the same time, too. No, he thought as he gathered up his tools, no, that couldn’t be it. Nine Januarys had come and gone since then, and except for the first two—okay, the first two or three, or maybe even four—except for them, the pages of the calendar hadn’t triggered memories of Wendy.

  Not like this.

  He woke up thinking about her, fell asleep the same way. Just last night he’d shot up in bed, yanked from sleep by a dream of her in his arms, her mouth on his, so real that, just for a second, he’d believed she was there.

  “Wendy?” he’d said, and Joanne, curled beside him, had sat up, too, and put her hand on his arm.

  “What’s wrong?” she’d murmured sleepily. “Seth? What is it?”

  The image of Wendy had faded. Joanne’s perfume, a scent still not as familiar to him as the scent that had clung lightly to Wendy’s skin so long ago, filled his nostrils. He’d thrust his hands into his hair, shoving it back from his forehead.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I was dreaming, that’s all.”

  Jo started to put her arms around him, looking to soothe him, he knew, but he’d drawn away, as riddled with guilt as if he’d actually been about to go from holding Wendy to holding another woman.

  “It’s late,” he’d said. “I have an early start in the morning. I might as well get going.”

  He’d felt Jo’s disappointment and couldn’t blame her. He never stayed with her through the night, and even though she hadn’t commented on it, he knew damned well she was aware of it, just as she was surely aware that he’d never asked her to spend the night at his house, never made love to her there.

  “The roads will be bad,” she’d said softly as he dressed in the dark. He’d kissed her temple and assured her that the roads would probably be clear.

  He’d been half-right. The roads were awful, but halfway to the home he’d built for himself on Sawtooth Mountain, he’d lucked out and fallen in behind a state plow going straight up Route 7 to where he made the turnoff onto the long driveway to his house. His truck’s four-wheel drive had seen him safely through those last couple hundred feet.

  Once inside, he’d built a fire in the living-room hearth, poured himself a brandy and sat in the flame-lit darkness, staring out the wall of glass that overlooked the valley until the first, faint light of dawn, telling himself there was no reason in the world he should be thinking about Wendy….

  And thinking about her all the same, just the way he was right now.

  Enough.

  Carefully, Seth made his way across the icy roof, then down the ladder he’d left propped against it. He dumped his toolbox in the truck and headed into the store.

  The bell over the door jingled merrily and Philo came out from the back room, wiping his hands on his denim apron.

  “All finished?”

  Seth handed him the braces and nodded. “That’s it until next Christmas.” He smiled. “Still planning to put up George and Abe for Presidents’ Day, same as always?”

  “Absolutely.” Philo tapped a key on the old-fashioned cash register. “How much do I owe you?”

  “I’ll send you a bill.”

  “You sure? If you want me to pay you now—”

  “No need.” Seth rubbed his hands together. “But I’ll hang around a few minutes and warm up by the stove, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure. One minute, and I’ll join you.”

  Philo disappeared behind the curtain. Seth tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, whistled softly between his teeth and strolled over to the cast-iron, pot-bellied stove that radiated heat throughout the store.

  It was a cozy setting. Half a dozen chairs were drawn around the old stove; prints hung on the nearby walls. Seth recognized some—there were lots of Norman Rockwells. No surprise there, he thought, smiling as he rocked back a little on his heels. Rockwell had lived in these parts and his paintings and illustrations had immortalized the hardworking people of the area. One print in particular, of a boy warily dropping his trousers for a physician holding a hypodermic syringe, made him smile.

  “That’s always been one of my favorites.”

  Seth turned. Philo grinned and eased into one of the chairs.

  “Same here.” Seth sat down, too, and extended his hands toward the stove. “That’s a good fire you have going.”

  “Pretty cold work up on that roof, huh?”

  “Sure was.”

  The men sat in companionable silence. That was another thing Seth liked about Cooper’s Corner. Nobody ever felt the need to fill the air with chatter. If you had something to say, fine. If you didn’t, it was perfectly okay to keep still.

  “So,” Philo said after a minute, “how’re things going?”

  “Fine. Just fine. I’m keeping busy.”

  “Guess that house of yours is almost finished, huh? How long have you been at it, now? Two years?”

  “Three,” Seth said. “I should be done this spring.” He shrugged. “Or this summer, for sure.”

  “Well, it can’t be easy, puttin’ up a place all by yourself, workin’ only weekends.”

  “It’s the only way I could manage to do it.”

  “Uh-huh. Nothing like free labor. Heard tell you got a good price when you bought that land, too.”

  Seth bit back a smile. Philo heard everything sooner or later. “Yeah, I did. I guess I could have hired somebody to help me out, but I enjoy the work.”

  “Figured that.” Philo opened the stove’s fire door and added another maple split. “It’s none of my business, I know….” He cleared his throat. “It’s just, well, the wife and I were talkin’ at breakfast this mornin’ and we were wonderin’… Are things okay between you and the lady?”

  Seth raised one dark eyebrow. This was a small town. What passed for gossip elsewhere was neighborly concern here, but asking him such a personal question about his love life—or what passed for his love life—was, well, unusual.

  “Sure,” he said carefully. “Things are fine.”

  “Ah.” Philo nodded as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “Well, the wife’ll be happy to hear it. Phyllis always liked her. Me, too, for that matter, though I never knew her very well.”

  Seth looked at Philo with curiosity. There was an off-kilter feel to this conversation, not just the sudden interest in his private life and
his relationship with Joanne, but the way Philo was talking about it. Jo had only moved into the area a couple of years back. She lived in New Ashford. As far as Seth knew, she’d never even been into the Coopers’ store.

  “Well,” he said, even more cautiously, “she’s a private sort of person.”

  “Uh-huh. We figured that. Especially now with, you know, all the stuff that went on….” Philo’s Adam’s apple slid up and down. “So,” he said briskly, “is she back for good? Or is it true, like some folks say, that she’s only here to visit?”

  Seth felt his heart give an unsteady thump. They definitely weren’t talking about Joanne. He searched his mind for a “she” who might fit the conversation, a woman he’d know well enough for Philo to ask him such intimate questions. Then he realized from the look in Philo’s eyes, from last night’s dream, from the memories that had been tormenting him…

  He knew who they were discussing, and what it meant.

  Wendy was home.

  Except he didn’t believe that you dreamed about what was going to happen. The images in his head were there because of the time of year, and all this proved was that he’d never quite gotten past thinking about her.

  “Is who back for good?” he said, as if Philo’s question might simply be about one of the winter visitors who’d asked him to do some repairs on her cabin.

  He thought he’d spoken with casual ease. One look at Philo and he knew he hadn’t pulled it off. The other man’s plump cheeks reddened. Even his ears seemed to burn with embarrassment.

  “Damn it,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Seth. I told Phyllis this wouldn’t be a good idea. `Phyl,’ I said, `honey, did it ever occur to you that the man might not want to talk about this? That he just plain might want to avoid—’“

  “I’m not trying to avoid anything. I just don’t understand the question. Who are we talking about, Philo?”

  Philo looked as if he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. He lifted the poker, reached into the fire, made a show of rearranging the burning wood, then stared at the dancing flames as if they held the answer to Seth’s question.

  Finally, he looked up.

  “Wendy Monroe,” he said with a swift exhalation of breath. “And if you want to tell me to mind my own business about why she’s come back to Cooper’s Corner, or how long she’s goin’ to stay, that’s okay with me.”

  * * *

  THE SUN WAS LOW in the sky, the wind had picked up and it had begun to snow again. Main Street was one long sheet of ice. The sanding trucks hadn’t come through yet.

  Seth drove carefully and fought to keep his mind on what he was doing. It wasn’t easy. All he could think about was Wendy. She was back. She was in Cooper’s Corner. The whole town probably knew it.

  Now he knew it, too.

  A car pulled out from the curb, skidded delicately to the left before its tires gained purchase. Seth braked gently, then fell in behind the slow-moving automobile.

  Philo had all the details, though he’d been uncomfortable providing them. She’d flown in yesterday. Alison Fairchild had picked her up at the airport in Albany and driven her to town.

  Seth’s jaw knotted. He’d seen Alison just a couple of days ago, at Twin Oaks, when he’d stopped by to double-check the dimensions of the corner where Clint and Maureen wanted to put the china cabinet he was making for the dining room. On the way out, he’d bumped into Alison. Literally. He’d been trotting down the porch steps, his head full of measurements; she’d been coming up, on her way to visit Maureen, and they’d collided.

  “Whoops,” she’d said with a quick smile, then apologized for having her head in the clouds. They’d had a perfectly normal conversation about how well the B and B was coming along, about the weather and the season and every damned thing in the world except the one that would have mattered to him—that Wendy was returning to Cooper’s Corner. There was no way he’d believe that Alison hadn’t known about it then.

  And what about Gina? He’d kept in touch with Wendy’s mother. They spoke often. Well, not so often now, but for the first few years he’d phoned at least once a week to ask about Wendy’s recovery. To hell with her father. It was Howard’s fault Wendy had the accident. If he hadn’t been pushing her so hard…

  Seth took a deep breath.

  There was no sense in going through all that again. It was over. So was what he’d once felt for Wendy.

  Calmer now, he understood that neither Alison nor Gina felt under any obligation to tell him Wendy was returning. In which case, why had he gotten so upset? Wendy was the past. Joanne was the future.

  His hands flexed on the steering wheel. Okay. Maybe she wasn’t the future. Maybe what he felt for Jo wasn’t what it should be. Maybe it was time to tell her that, before things got any stickier. Maybe…

  The tires spun. Seth felt the truck slewing toward the cars parked along the curb. He managed to recover with only a fraction of a second to spare.

  Maybe, he thought grimly, he needed to get his head together before he ended up breaking his neck.

  He put on his signal light and pulled into an empty parking space just ahead. Climbing out of the truck, Seth turned up the collar of his old leather jacket and trudged toward Tubb’s Caf;aae, just down the street.

  The caf;aae was warm and steamy, fragrant with the aromas of coffee and freshly baked doughnuts. He slid onto a stool near the window, exchanged greetings with the college kid working the counter.

  “Coffee,” he said.

  The kid poured him a mugful. Seth wrapped his hands around it, letting its warmth chase the cold from his fingers. Maybe it was irrational, but it pissed him off that nobody had thought to tell him about Wendy. Hadn’t it occurred to Gina or Alison that he’d be interested? He’d loved her, once.

  No. Damn it, no! He’d been infatuated, that was all. What nineteen-year-old kid who’d come out of nowhere wouldn’t be infatuated with a beautiful girl? Wendy had been the town’s darling. The guy she went with should have been a local product. The captain of the football team. A jock with varsity letters and a family that went back a hundred years. Instead, she’d fallen for him. No family, no background, no varsity letters on his jacket…

  There she was.

  The mug trembled in Seth’s hands. He put it down on the counter, his gaze riveted to the window. Two people had just come out of a store. A man and a woman. Howard Monroe and Wendy. She was bundled in a dark-green anorak; her fiery hair was tucked up under a knitted ski cap so that only strands of it were visible against the pale oval of her face, and her eyes were hidden behind big, dark glasses. But none of that mattered. People hurrying past didn’t recognize her, but Seth did.

  He’d have known her anywhere.

  His heart turned over as she began walking alongside her father. It was the first time he’d seen her on her feet. Until this moment, the damage she’d suffered had been confined to his imagination. Now he could see the reality of it. Instead of her former graceful walk, Wendy’s hip and knee were stiff. Her limping gait after all those years of rehab, was evidence of the severity of the accident.

  They reached her father’s SUV. Howard held out his hand, but she shook her head and said something that looked like “I can do it.” And she did, navigating the icy sidewalk toward the curb and the truck door with studied care.

  Seth’s eyes narrowed.

  Why wasn’t she using a cane? Why wouldn’t she take her old man’s hand? Why was she so damned thickheaded? She could fall. She could go down in the ice and snow and…

  And it was none of his business.

  Except it was. Wendy had meant something to him once upon a time, even if that time was long ago.

  He got off the stool, dug out a bill, tossed it on the counter and zipped up his jacket. What was the matter with people in this town? Didn’t anybody consider what it would be like for him to discover that she was back by stumbling across her?

  He strode toward the door, slapped his hand against the glass. He wasn’t goin
g to let Wendy get away with treating him as if he didn’t matter, the way she’d done nine years ago. He’d go straight up to her, grab her and shake some sense into her. Yeah, that was it. He’d march out of here, take her by the shoulders, shake her…. God, he’d pull her into his arms, tell her that it broke his heart to see her like this, her leg hurting, her dreams shattered….

  “Mr. Castleman?”

  He looked around. The kid who worked the counter was holding out a bunch of bills.

  “You gave me a twenty,” he said. “Here’s your change.”

  Seth turned toward the street again. Wendy was getting into her father’s truck. He watched Howard shut the door, then trot around to the driver’s side and get in.

  “Mr. Castleman?”

  Seth swallowed hard and swung around. “Yeah. Thanks.” He plucked a couple of bills from the kid’s outstretched hand, left the rest behind. “Keep it,” he said. It was the least he could do, considering that the boy had just kept him from making an ass of himself.

  Wendy was back. So what? It didn’t change a thing. Seth whistled through his teeth as he got into his truck and drove along Main Street toward Sawtooth Mountain Road. Yeah, they’d had a thing going for a while there. He’d thought he loved her, thought it enough to have flown to Norway the second her mother phoned in hysterics to tell him that Wendy had fallen during a practice run and nobody knew if she was going to make it or not.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  He hadn’t wanted her to go to Norway to start with. He knew how much it meant to her that she’d made the Olympic team, but he’d wondered if she was really up for it. She had the talent and the determination, but those last few weeks, watching her…

  He shook his head, thinking back, still seeing the exhaustion on her face, the dark circles under her eyes. She’d been tired all the time, and why wouldn’t she be, the way her old man cracked the whip? As part of the American Ski Team, she had the best coaches in the business, but Howard had taught her to ski. He’d been her trainer from childhood on and he wasn’t about to let that change. He’d still been coaching Wendy, taking her out on the slopes early in the morning, bringing her back late at night, working her and working her until she’d looked ready to collapse.