A Promise to Keep Page 15

  She looked at her phone, scrolling through the various images she’d taken of Rambling Mountain and the Rad until she found the one of her grandmother at the library fund-raiser.

  Her mom and aunt were rallying around their mother, of course. April had spent nearly an hour on the phone with her mom that morning, listening to her rail about the situation.

  To a person, everyone seemed to be blaming Squire.

  April was shooting more for impartiality.

  She brushed her finger over the photo, then nearly jumped out of her skin when the phone vibrated.

  Jed’s number replaced the picture of her grandmother laughing up at Tom Hook, and she quickly put the phone to her ear again. “Hi.” She cringed at her breathy voice. “Pulled any more calves today?”

  “Not so far.” He sounded grim. “Heard from the estate administrator. Court has ruled on the succession. Snead’s getting everything. Lock, stock and barrel. And he wants everything but the mountain itself sold.”

  Knowing that it had been coming didn’t make it any easier to hear. “I’m sorry, Jed.”

  “Wanted to let you know. Now’s your chance to get out your boss’s checkbook.”

  “Not sure he is going to want to measure his checkbook against a mining company’s. Are you okay?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Got a copy of the list Eleanor prepared. I need to get the stuff packed up for the auction.”

  “Some people in your position would just walk away.”

  “I’m not some people.”

  How well she knew it. “I’ll come and help.”

  “Why?”

  Her hand tightened around the phone. “Because I want to.”

  “Bring boxes.”

  She nodded even though he couldn’t see it. Even though he’d already hung up.

  He was like Gage in that respect.

  She returned to the kitchen. The men were still arguing. Jaimie looked miserable. April leaned over her ear. “I’m going out. If I’m not back later—”

  Jaimie patted her hand. “I know. You’ll be at Belle’s.”

  April didn’t feel like explaining that she was not heading to her aunt’s, but to help Jed. “I’ll check in with you later.”

  Instead of heading straight to the Rad, she drove into Weaver first on the hunt for boxes. Stops at Ruby’s and Colbys had both her trunk and backseat full up with flattened cardboard boxes. Armed with packing tape and a package of chocolate cookies from Shop-World, she drove back through town again and headed up the mountain.

  When she reached the barriers, Jed was already there. Sitting on the tail of the four-wheeler.

  Another white T-shirt. Another pair of jeans. His eyes were dark and mesmerizing as he headed her way and she couldn’t imagine why she’d ever thought he was anything less than beautiful.

  A thought that had her insides swimming more than a little. To combat it, she briskly set her parking brake, popped open her trunk and got out to begin unloading the cartons.

  “Strapping tape and chocolate,” she told him as he hopped off the UTV. “In the backseat.”

  “Sounds like a teenage boy’s fantasy.”

  One of the boxes slipped from her grasp and it turned, corner over corner as the wind yanked it back down the road, then sent it toppling right off the edge of the mountain.

  She tightened her grip. “Strapping tape,” she scoffed. “Hate to be that boy’s girlfriend.” She brushed past him to make for the UTV.

  “More the roses and candlelight type?”

  She made herself laugh. “Sure. Why not? With Bollinger Champagne and chocolates purchased firsthand in Belgium.” She shoved the boxes in the utility box.

  They passed each other again—him with the armload of boxes this time. “Expensive type, are you?”

  She spread her arms. “The way my daddy raised me,” she lied lightly on her way back to the car. The trunk and backseat were empty. She grabbed the plastic bag from Shop-World, headed back to the utility vehicle and slid onto the seat beside him.

  “Ever actually been to Belgium?”

  “Ten years ago. High school graduation present. Belgium, Luxembourg, France.” She grabbed the seat rail when he started up the engine and rumbled speedily around the boulders. “Two weeks from Bruges to Marseille.”

  “Fancy gift.”

  She shrugged. “My parents weren’t particularly thrilled, but it was from Alex Senior. My dad’s father,” she elaborated at his look. “They had a rocky relationship. Couldn’t agree on anything except for the fact that they couldn’t agree on anything. In his will, he stipulated a year abroad for me and any other children my dad might have.”

  The look she got from him that time was speculative. “A year.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t spend a year in Europe. I chose two weeks in the fall before I started college and dumped the rest of the money into savings. And—” she lifted her hand “—before any latent investment banker cells come surging to the fore, my dad’s advisers took over handling the account years ago. They take care of the trust fund, too.”

  “Who the hell is your dad?”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t as if she expected everyone in the known universe to know anything at all about her. It smacked of egotism. “Alex Reed. He founded Huffington—”

  “Sports Clinics,” he finished. He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “He’s the guy who took Reed Health Systems public.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Made a fortune on that RHS stock.”

  She made a face. “A lot of people did, evidently.”

  “So what the hell are you doing tramping around small-town USA trying to cut a deal for a developer when you could be doing just about anything else in the world? Anywhere in the world?”

  “Just because I have a healthy trust fund doesn’t mean I have any desire to live off it.” She waggled the Shop-World bag. “That’s not the way I was raised. Everyone in my family knows what the value of a dollar is, because we’ve always had to earn it. Money is never an indicator of quality or worth. And I like paying my own way, thank you very much.”

  He shook his head and gunned the engine up the last bit of pavement. “Unbelievable,” she heard him mutter before he cut the engine and halted the UTV just shy of the cantilevered deck. He grabbed the entire load of boxes and stomped off.

  Irritated, she followed him into the cabin, where he dumped the boxes on the floor. “I don’t know what’s got you so peeved. It’s not like I was hiding anything.”

  “Before he died, Tanya’s father was Chief of Staff at RHS Chicago. And I thought she was the boss’s daughter.”

  Her breath exhaled in a whoosh. The universe had a strangely twisted sense of humor. “I’m not your boss’s daughter, so what are you complaining about?” She pulled the large roll of tape from the bag and grabbed a box from the top of the stack to begin assembling it. “If you want my help packing up the stuff, then get over it and get some scissors or a knife. I forgot to bring one and I can’t tear that strapping tape with my teeth.”

  She preferred the look of annoyance that crossed his face to that stunned look he’d had.

  He left the room and she heard him rummaging in the kitchen. He came back with an ancient-looking pair of metal scissors.

  Old or not, they’d been kept sharp, and they sliced through the filament tape with ease. With the cardboard once more fashioned into a suitable box, she grabbed it in her hand and stood. “What do I pack and where do I start?”

  He produced the copy of Eleanor’s list. April gave it a thorough look, and then silently went into Otis’s bedroom.

  He joined her a few minutes later with another carton and they set to work.

  Packing up everything took longer than she expected and with each box that she sealed with the sturdy
tape, her thoughts returned to her grandmother and Squire.

  They finished the bedroom. Jed left for more than two hours to check the stock while she pulled everything out of a closet, sorting, packing. Discarding very little. It was shocking the variety of items that Eleanor had chosen. Everything from the vintage radio—totally expected—to an ugly smoking pipe. Glassware. Flatware. Boxes of old stamps. Boxes of new stamps.

  Jed returned while she was working on the kitchen.

  They ran out of boxes and got creative. Using the empty drawers from Otis’s dresser. Buckets. An old laundry basket. All stacking up against one side of the cabin.

  Finally, they were finished packing anything that fit in a box, and were sitting in the bare kitchen at the table. A half-empty pack of chocolate sandwich cookies sat between them.

  “It’s going to take a lot of trips getting all of that down the mountain.” Even the furniture, what little there was of it, would be going.

  He nodded. Rubbed his hand down his face. “Yep.”

  She chose another cookie, but held it up, studying the simple perfection of it. “I should have brought milk.”

  He reached out and snatched the cookie from her fingers, downing it in one bite.

  “Hey!” She watched him go to the stack of boxes and drawers and buckets, seeming to look for something.

  “Ah.” He pulled two glasses from the dish towel they’d been wrapped inside and set them on the table in front of her.

  “There’s no milk in the fridge,” she reminded. “There’s nothing in the fridge.” She knew. She’d cleaned it out, scouring the shelves and the sides, because it was one more thing that was going to be auctioned.

  “Got something better.” He disappeared out the back door and returned shortly with a bottle. He unscrewed the cap and tipped it over one glass. Then the other.

  “Not Bollinger, but it’ll do the job.” He set aside the bottle and picked up one glass, clinking the base softly against the rim of the other. “And no. I don’t have a drinking problem.”

  She lifted the glass, sniffed. Took a cautious sip and felt the liquor bloom and warm, heating her throat all the way down. “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought.” He was studying the contents of his glass. “It was never the alcohol that I craved. I stopped drinking when I came here with Otis. Never found what I wanted in the bottom of a bottle.”

  She couldn’t help but think about the wedding ring he kept with his toothpaste. “W-what did you want?” As if she didn’t know.

  “An end.” His lips twisted. “An end that never came. No matter what I did.” He gently swirled the glass. “First day up here, Otis took me up to his ridge. Stood there with me right on the edge of the cliff. Told me if I really wanted to do it, to stop playing at it and do it right. One step and it would all be over.”

  Her hand trembled and she carefully set her glass back on the table.

  “I don’t know how many times I made that hike. Stood right there. Toes of my boots hanging an inch over. Wondering why the universe couldn’t just make it easy for me. Rockslides happen around here. Small ones. Big ones. You’ve seen for yourself. But not a single pebble ever slid out from under my feet. Not at that spot.” His gaze slid over her. “You believe in God?”

  She nodded jerkily. “You?”

  “Sadly. The results of a Scotsman father and a Mexican mother.” He looked back at his drink. “I finally figured out that neither God nor the Devil wanted me.” He stopped swirling the glass and tossed the shot back in one swallow.

  “Ever think that God needed you here more? That Otis coming into your life was less happenstance than divine intervention?”

  He made a sound. A cross between rusty laugh and something else. “Regardless, here I am.”

  She knew what he was thinking. That he was here. And Tanya was not. “I should have realized Dalloway was Scottish,” she said.

  His eyebrow peaked.

  “Reed. Go back enough generations it used to be R-E-I-D.” She spelled it out.

  He made another sound. Less something else. More rusty laugh. “You worried we’re cousins or something?”

  She picked up the glass again. Took another sip. “And your mom?”

  “From Mexico. Crossed the border illegally when she was younger than you were when you were trotting around Belgium. They were both immigrants, but he took the legal route and she didn’t. They met working for—”

  “Tanya’s father,” she concluded.

  So much for her trying to get him to think of someone else.

  “Where my father gardened and my mother cleaned. She was deported when I was nine. I never saw her again.”

  “Oh, Jed.” She couldn’t help herself. She caught his hand in hers and squeezed. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged and reached for the bottle again. Poured another measure for them both, even though she had only taken a few sips. “My dad worked fifteen-hour days making sure I got through school. He never had the means for a proper search for her. Didn’t stop him trying. Said he’d love her forever and that’s what he did. Cleared my first million when I was twenty-two.” He didn’t seem to notice her start. “That’s when I located her family in Oaxaca. She’d already died. Pneumonia. Dad died a year later. Pretty sure it was a broken heart.”

  She looked away, dashing a finger under her lashes before she reached for another cookie. She dunked it in the liquor and took a bite. “You’re right. Just as good as milk.”

  He squeezed her hand and let go. “I owe you more than cookies that you brought yourself and a fair-to-middlin’ sip of Scotch whisky.”

  “No you don’t.”

  But he just pulled her out of her chair. “Yes, I do. Dinner at the very least. Steakhouse over in Braden—”

  “Good grief, we don’t have to drive all the way over to Braden for a decent steak! Colbys is—” She broke off. “Unless you don’t want to go somewhere in town. You know. With me.”

  He gave her a look. “My dad would’ve called you daft.”

  Her stomach fluttered. “Let me at least wash up a little. I’m dusty from all the packing.”

  He waved her off and she quickly went into Otis’s bathroom, only to realize she’d forgotten to pack up the cupboard above the washer and dryer. She darted back to the kitchen to grab one of the big black bags they’d been using for the stuff that needed to be hauled off to the trash. “Forgot to empty the stuff over the washer.”

  “It can wait.”

  “It’ll only take a few minutes, and then it’ll be done.” She grabbed the copy of Eleanor’s list that was sitting on the counter and took it with her.

  Jed followed, reaching above her head to pull down the items crammed on the highest shelf. Like her, he set everything on the top of the dryer. “This is all trash. Just hold open the bag.” With his arm, he swept everything into the bag.

  “Hold on.” She rescued an amber-colored ashtray. “It’s on the list.”

  “He was a smoker, that’s for sure,” Jed muttered. He cleared the next lower shelf. “Always had a pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth when I met him. Didn’t stop until last year. Said he wasn’t gonna get better, so why stop one of his remaining joys. Only reason he quit was because it hurt too much to continue.”

  “Not that one, either.” She snatched the silver box that had contained the bandages and set it aside. “It’s a jewelry box.” She looked at the list. “Circa 1800.”

  He let out a short laugh. “I swear, the only thing that old man didn’t keep above the washer and dryer was actual laundry supplies.” He tossed her the can of peanut brittle. “Nuts.”

  She took the can and shook it. Figuring it would rattle. Surprised when it didn’t. She turned it upside down. Looked at the lid. “Oh, this is one of those novelty things. You open up the can but instead of the treats, one of those sprin
gy snakes flies out.” She twisted the top. “See?”

  But the snake didn’t pop out.

  “Terrifying,” he said dryly.

  “Guess they have a shelf life.” She poked her fingertip at the paper curled inside. Then looked more closely and drew it out. It wasn’t a snake. It was a small white envelope, yellowing around the edges. Holding a perpetual curl from being stored inside a narrow round can.

  “Hold the bag again.” He was waiting to push more garbage inside.

  “Wait a second.” Excitement curled inside her as she slowly uncurled the envelope. There was nothing written on the outside of it, but she knew. She waved it at him and started jumping around like some silly schoolgirl. “This is it! I know it is. Otis’s will.”

  He angled his head closer to her, looking at the envelope. “Nah.”

  She waved the can at him with its colorful peanut brittle image. “He even told me! Called it his sweet will.” She shoved aside all of the stuff on the dryer so she could flatten out the small envelope. “I don’t know if we should open it.”

  “If we don’t, how are we going to prove to you that it isn’t his will?”

  “Don’t be such a pessimist.” She lifted her head. “We need to call Archer. He’ll know what to do.”

  “The estate’s been settled, April.”

  She swatted him with the envelope. “Well they can unsettle it!” She closed her hand around his. “Come on. We have to go.”

  “Thought you wanted to call Archer.”

  She grabbed her hair in both hands and yanked. “Are you trying to make me crazy?”

  His eyes suddenly crinkled. He yanked her close and pressed a fast kiss on her lips. “Seems fair enough to me,” he said when he let her go, just as quickly.

  If he noticed that she swayed a little, he didn’t say.

  “If it is his will,” he told her over his shoulder, “it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll like what it says. He might not be leaving it to your boss.” He snatched up the receiver. “What’s the number?”

  She went still. “I don’t think that. Gage certainly doesn’t.”

  “What about Otis being your boss’s father?”