Care and upkeep on this crumbling twenty-room inn were obviously wearing on her mother. Jan had been deeply grateful to turn some of those responsibilities over to her only daughter.
“It could be much worse, Mom. We have to focus on that. No one was hurt. That’s the important thing. And outdated as it is, the sprinkler system worked better than we might have expected. That’s another plus. Besides, look at it this way—now insurance will cover some of the repairs we already planned.”
“I suppose. But what are we going to do with the guests?” Her mother seemed defeated, overwhelmed, all but wringing her hands.
Laura hugged her again. “Don’t worry about anything. In fact, why don’t you take the children back to the house? I think they’ve had enough excitement for one afternoon.”
“Do you think Chief Bowman will consider it safe?”
Laura glanced over at the three-bedroom cottage behind the inn where she had spent her childhood. “It’s far enough from the action. I can’t see why it would be a problem. Meantime, I’ll start making phone calls. We’ll find places for everyone and for our reservations for the next few nights while the smoke damage clears out. We’ll get through this just like everything else.”
“I’m so glad you’re here, my dear. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
If she hadn’t been here—along with her daughter and her little firebug of a son—none of this would have happened.
“So am I, Mom,” she answered. It was the truth, despite having to confront a certain very sexy fire chief with whom she shared a tangled history.
“Oh, I should go talk to poor Mr. Baktiri. He probably doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.”
One of their long-term guests stood in the middle of the lawn, looking at the hectic scene with confusion. She remembered Mr. Baktiri from when she was a girl. He and his wife used to run the drive-in on the outskirts of town. Mrs. Baktiri had passed away and Mr. Baktiri had moved with his son to Idaho Falls, but he apparently hated it there. Once a month or so, he would escape back to Pine Gulch to visit his wife’s graveside.
Her mother gave him substantially reduced rates on their smallest room, where he stayed for a week or two at a time until his son would come down from Idaho Falls to take him back home. It wasn’t a very economically feasible operating procedure, but she couldn’t fault her mother for her kindness.
She had the impression Mr. Baktiri might be suffering from mild dementia and she supposed familiar surroundings were a comfort to him.
“Mommy. Lights.” Maya hugged her legs and looked up, the flashing emergency lights reflecting in her thick glasses.
“I know, sweetie. They’re bright, aren’t they?”
“Pretty.”
“I suppose they are, in a way.”
Trust Maya to find joy in any situation. It was her child’s particular skill and she was deeply grateful for it.
She had a million things to do, most pressing to find somewhere for their guests to spend the night, but for now she gathered this precious child in her arms.
Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Alex edge toward them somewhat warily.
“Come here, niño,” she murmured.
He sank into her embrace and she held both children close. This was the important thing. As she had told her mother, they would get through this minor setback. She was a survivor. She had survived a broken heart and broken engagement and then a disaster of a marriage.
She could get through a little thing like a minor fire with no problem.
Chapter Two
“Guess who I saw in town the other day.”
Taft grabbed one of his sister’s delicious dinner rolls from the basket being passed around his family’s dining-room table and winked at Caidy. “Me, doing something awesome and heroic, probably. Fighting a fire. Saving someone’s life. I don’t know. Could be anything.”
His niece, Destry, and Gabrielle Parsons, whose older sister was marrying Taft’s twin brother, Trace, in a few months, both giggled—just as he had intended—but Caidy only rolled her eyes. “News flash. Not everything is about you, Taft. But oddly, in a way, this is.”
“Who did you see?” he asked, though he was aware of a glimmer of uneasy trepidation, already expecting what was coming next.
“I didn’t have a chance to talk to her. I just happened to see her while I was driving,” Caidy said.
“Who?” he asked again, teetering on the brink of annoyance.
“Laura Pendleton,” Caidy announced.
“Not Pendleton anymore,” Ridge, their older brother and Destry’s father, corrected.
“That’s right,” Trace chimed in from the other side of the table, where he was holding hands with Becca. How the heck did they manage to eat when they couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other? Taft wondered.
“She got married to some guy while she was living in Spain and they had a couple of kids,” Trace went on. “I hear one of them was involved in all the excitement the other day at the inn.”
Taft pictured her kid solemnly promising he wouldn’t play with matches again. He’d picked up the definite vibe that the kid was a mischievous little rascal, but for all that, his sincerity had rung true.
“Yeah. Apparently her older kid, Alex, was a little too curious about a lighter he found in an empty room and caught some curtains on fire.”
“And you had to ride to her rescue?” Caidy gave him a wide-eyed look. “Gosh, that must have been awkward for both of you.”
Taft reached for more mashed potatoes, hoping the heat on his face could be attributed to the steaming bowl.
“Why would it be? Everything was fine,” he muttered.
Okay, that was a lie, but his family didn’t necessarily need to know he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Laura for the past few days. Every time he had a quiet moment, her blue eyes and delicate features would pop into his head and some other half-forgotten memory of their time together would emerge like the Tetons rising out of a low fog bank.
That he couldn’t seem to stop them annoyed him. He had worked damn hard to forget her after she walked away. What was he supposed to do now that she was back in town and he couldn’t escape her or her kids or the weight of all his mistakes?
“You’ll have to catch me up here.” Becca, Trace’s fiancée, looked confused as she reached for her glass. “Who’s Laura Pendleton? I’m taking a wild guess here that she must be related to Mrs. Pendleton at the inn somehow—a client of mine, by the way—but why would it be awkward to have Taft put out a fire at the inn?”
“No reason really.” Caidy flashed him a quick look. “Just that Taft and Laura were engaged once.”
He fidgeted with his mashed potatoes, drawing his fork in a neat little firebreak to keep the gravy from spreading while he avoided the collective gaze of his beloved family. Why, again, had he once enjoyed these Sunday dinners?
“Engaged? Taft?” He didn’t need to look at his future sister-in-law to hear the surprise in her voice.
“I know,” his twin brother said. “Hard to believe, right?”
He looked up just in time to see Becca quickly try to hide her shocked gaze. She was too kindhearted to let him see how stunning she found the news, which somehow bothered him even more.
Okay, maybe he had a bit of a reputation in town—most of it greatly exaggerated—as a bit of a player. Becca knew