Page 3 of Forever Finds Us
It wasn’t perfume—more like flowers and body heat, and it made my mouth water. The scent fought against my earlier irritation, trying to calm me, but calm wasn’t something I often succumbed to.
Forced calm worked well in business, but real calm—inner peace—wasn’t something I’d gotten the hang of. I hadn’t found anything that could tame the wild anxiety I sometimes felt, especially when things were out of control, like tonight when the brand-new vehicle I’d bought died on the side of the road.
But something about Roxanne Fitts’s truck and her scent leeching into my bloodstream had me taking deep breaths and my muscles relaxing. The knotted kink on the back of my neck I’d felt for the last seven hours on my drive to Wisper disappeared.
Discreetly, I looked for one of those dangling air-freshener trees, but didn’t see one.
No, the scent was coming from Roxanne, and my eyes landed on the side of her face as she drove.
Her skin was smooth, but I noticed a few laugh lines around her eyes, and the way she draped her hand over the steering wheel gave off a nonchalant, laid-back air, but she swallowed, betraying her show of ease, and her throat rippled with the movement.
Was I making her nervous? She was the cop. She had the authority in this situation.
The movement led me to the hollow at the base of her neck, barely visible below her buttoned-up uniform shirt. A simple necklace lay there, with some kind of delicate charm. A small, gold cross.
Her free hand resting on her thigh twitched, and she tapped her fingertip three times against the outside of her leg.
“Abey said you’ll be stayin’ with your mama for a while,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered, startled out of staring at Roxanne by the sound of her voice.
She’d been talking to me, but it wasn’t until now that I noticed the silky sound and the way it traveled around the truck cab, like heat rising from asphalt in the summer, making beads of sweat form at the small of my back. The soothing murmur reminded me of simpler times—long summer days and movie nights in the dark, entangled limbs, bodies entwined, skin slipping over softer skin.
What the hell?
“Hello-o-o?”
“Sorry. What?”
“I asked what your immediate plans are? Do you have a project lined up?”
“Oh,” I said, stuttering to catch up to the conversation I’d zoned out of again, noticing fir trees and rugged land blurring out my window as Roxanne drove us down the road into higher elevation. “Yes, a new subdivision on the east side of town. It won’t start until spring, so I’ll have plenty of time to get set up here, but the county wants to tear down the old Teton Corner mobile home park.”
“What?” Roxanne argued. “What about the residents who’ve lived there for years? They’re your mama’s friends. You’re just gonna throw ’em out?”
“Of course not. They’ll be offered one of the new homes. It’s a low-income development. The county and state will subsidize.”
“Oh.”
“I’m workin’ with the builder on a temporary housing plan while the homes are built, but there’s only a few residents left. The trailers are old. They’re fallin’ apart. Those people deserve better.” Thank God my mother had finally moved out of hers and into the home I’d built for her. Every night for the last several years, I’d gone to bed worrying that it might crumble down around her in her sleep. And then the guilt would set in.
I’d left. Built a life for myself away from my family. I stayed away because I had to. I couldn’t have been the man I’d needed to be in order to build and run my company if I had the tribulations of my family’s lives poking at me every day. And if they knew about some of the choices I’d made, they probably wouldn’t have wanted me around anyway, and they probably wouldn’t be welcoming me home now.
“Hm.”
“What does ‘hm’ mean?” I asked. I hadn’t had anyone around to question my decisions in a long time, and the way it niggled and buzzed under my skin surprised me.
“Nothin’. I’m pleasantly surprised by your answer.”
Was this woman under the impression that I was a monster? I wouldn’t have elderly people displaced with nowhere to go just so I could make more money. But I didn’t say so.
Roxanne turned onto Old Fish Creek Road and it wasn’t another mile until I saw the first sign for Spitfire Ranch at Lee Valley.
The cattle ranch was new, a joint venture I’d bought into with my older brother Bax and our best friend from childhood, Rye Graves. But the Lee Family part had been there for years. My father had tried to make a go at sheep farming and had failed miserably, but the land was rich and good, and alongside Spitfire Ranch, we’d started Lee Valley Cabins, a rental-cabin business that had already begun to bring in a profit.
Sweetie—dammit, Bea—had finished building the cabins for me last year, and this was our first open season. Already, Bax had told me we’d managed to enchant some of the families and adventure enthusiasts who had visited this summer and fall into booking ahead several years, and soon, the B&B-type inn on the property would be open to guests too.
My brother and Rye had big plans to tie the cabins to the ranch side of the property, and then my sister and her new wife, Devo, had started a community garden program that would help feed Teton County, and our renters would have the opportunity to participate in tending the garden and harvesting the vegetables if they wanted to.
