“I work here. I teach second grade, or I will be teaching second grade when school’s back in session after the holidays.”
A teacher? He never had a teacher like her when he was here. “Well, I won’t keep you,” he murmured, and went down the stairs.
He couldn’t tell if he heard her say “Goodbye” as he walked away, but he heard the door open, then close, followed by the sound of a lock being set. As he got in his car and settled behind the wheel, he realized he didn’t even know her name. He’d never asked. He glanced back at the school and was taken aback to see the woman with no name looking out the glass top of the door at him. And the woman with no name wasn’t smiling.
Cain read people well. He could size up someone at ten feet and be pretty close to being right about the person. Maybe owning a casino had something to do with having that particular skill, or maybe it was a skill he’d honed throughout his life. Strangers had come and strangers had gone, and it had always been up to him to figure out why anyone was near him, and what they wanted from him.
But this woman baffled him, this woman didn’t fit into any of the categories he used when he labeled people. She was pretty enough, in a small, delicate way. A teacher. And she hated him.
He drove out of the parking lot, even though he had the most overwhelming need to go back and confront her. He just wanted to understand. But he didn’t turn back. He drove north, and by the time he got to the Inn and his cabin, he realized he’d never confront her. He’d never see her again. He’d leave, and she’d be teaching her hellions at the start of the new year. He shrugged as he went in a side door to his cabin, into comfortable heat. What she thought of him just didn’t matter.
AS HOLLY SAT BACK in her chair behind her desk, which was heavy with paperwork, the silence of the empty classroom weighed heavily on her. She wasn’t able to concentrate, not with her thoughts on the one person she didn’t even want to think about—Cain Stone. First the shock of seeing the man in person, then Annie’s reaction to her reaction to Cain Stone.
“That’s just plain irrational,” Annie had said while Sierra destroyed more gingerbread men. “You’ve never even talked to him.”
She had talked to him. Once. When she was seven or maybe eight. He’d been up on the mountain, ready to ski the hard run without permission. It was their land, not some teenagers’, who had seemed to her to take great delight in taunting her father. Her father had yelled at them, and she could remember she’d yelled, too.
The boys, four of them altogether, had waited until she and her father had gotten close; then, one by one, they had taken off down the run. They’d skied out of sight and never looked back. She still remembered their laughter echoing in the cold air. Then one year they didn’t come to ski. She didn’t think they ever were there again.
“He ran away,” Annie had said to her. “He took off when he was sixteen and no one knew for years where he went. Then he showed up in Las Vegas, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Her history, she thought bitterly. She’d heard the name Cain Stone a year ago, and it had changed her whole life. She gave up working at her desk, got up, gathered her things and left the school. She didn’t have far to drive to get to the house she’d rented for herself and Sierra. But by the time she was inside, she was freezing.
Quickly, she lit the fire she’d laid in the fireplace of the old bungalow, then went into her room. The place had been rented furnished, with nondescript pieces. A brown couch, two matching chairs, knotty pine end tables and a braided rug in the living room. Her bedroom had a double-sized, metal bedstead, with a single dresser and another braided rug. Sierra’s room had a single bed, a chest of drawers and about the only thing, besides their clothes, she’d brought with them from Las Vegas—her crib.
Without looking around, Holly stripped, stepped into a hot shower and stood there for a very long time. When she finally got out, the room was fogged with steam. She could hear the phone in the bedroom ringing. She grabbed her robe to put around her, then hurried into the bedroom and picked up the phone by her bed. “Hello?” she said a bit breathlessly.
“Holly, it’s Jack Prescott.”
She sank onto the bed and closed her eyes. After the failed meeting, and the aborted phone call, she’d decided that she’d write him a letter, refusing his offer, and leave it at that. “Yes?”
“Sorry to miss the meeting. I got my times mixed up. And phone service up here is pretty awful. I called you earlier to find out when it would be convenient to meet again.”
“I don’t think we need to.”
“You can come here or we can meet wherever you want to,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
“There’s no reason to meet. The land isn’t for sale.”
He was silent for a moment, then named a figure that made her blink. “How about that?” he asked.
“I really don’t—”
He cut her off. “Think about it, and I’ll call you tomorrow. We can talk then,” he said, and disconnected.
She’d barely hung up, when the phone rang again. She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hey, babe.”
The voice of her ex-husband on the other end made her cringe. “What do you want, Travis?”
“Is that any way to answer the phone?”
Travis never called unless he wanted something, and she just didn’t have any more to give him, in any sense of the word. “What do you want?” she repeated.
“I called to find out how you and the kid are doing. Can’t I do that?”
He could, but he hadn’t. “You’re going to see Sierra on Christmas, aren’t you?”
Travis spoke quickly. “Yeah, sure, of course.” But she knew he wasn’t, and she’d have to explain to her daughter why her daddy wasn’t there. “The thing is, I’m strapped. I want to get the kid something really nice, and if you could send me some money, maybe three hundred, just a loan?”
She fought the urge to slam the phone down. Instead, she bit her lip, then said, “I don’t have it.”
“Oh, come on. Borrow it from your sister or something. She’s got that hotel, and she’s not hurting for money.”
“Travis, I’m not asking Annie for money for you.”
“Hell, she’s crazy about the kid. Tell her it’s for the Christmas present.”
She wouldn’t lie like that, not when the money would go into the nearest blackjack or poker game. “No, I won’t,” she said, hating the slight unsteadiness in her voice. “The locket was the last thing you’ll get from me.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. The locket was long gone, but losing it had been the last straw, what had prompted her to walk out. Travis uttered a harsh expletive and hung up. She fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
She’d left Las Vegas because of Travis and the life they’d had there. She’d returned to Silver Creek, a place that had always been a cocoon of safety for her. But nothing had changed. Not with Travis. He’d violated her peace and so had Cain Stone.
“Damn them both,” she muttered as she turned onto her side. She balled her hand into a fist and hit the pillow over and over. Tears burned her eyes, and she fought them. She wasn’t going to cry. She was going to make a life for herself in Silver Creek, despite Travis, despite Cain Stone.
CAIN HAD ALWAYS BEEN a night person, going to bed near dawn most days. But that night at the Inn, he got into bed around midnight and slept