A life without love is like a year without summer.
—Swedish proverb
SHAY WALKER WATCHED the twentysomething man slap a cardboard coaster on the polished wooden surface in front of her. His long sun-streaked hair hung about his shoulders in the careless style of a guy who snowboarded on the nearby peaks in winter and kayaked on the deep lakes in summer. “What can I get you?” he asked.
“A change in the calendar?” she murmured, looping the strap of her purse over the convenient hook on the underside of the bar. The small leather bag brushed her knees, bared by the new summer dress she wore. Though the late May evenings might still be cool in the Southern California mountains, Shay had opted for the filmy floral garment anyway. It was sleeveless, and the hemline was asymmetrical, nearly mini in the front and then flowing to midcalf in the back. It also revealed a minor amount of cleavage, which even in its relative modesty seemed to be captivating the bartender.
“Um, what?” he asked, his gaze slowly lifting from her chest to her face. “I don’t think I know that drink.”
“I was kidding,” she said. “How about a martini? Vodka. Straight up.” Though chardonnay was more often her order, tonight she needed a stronger beverage.
Birthdays didn’t bring out the best in her.
In no time, the boarder-slash-bartender slid the requested drink onto the coaster then watched as she picked it up and sipped. Tiny slivers of ice melted on her tongue and the alcohol pleasantly heated the back of her throat. Okay, she thought, as she took another swallow. Maybe this celebration wouldn’t turn out so bad, after all.
“You here alone?” the guy on the other side of the bar asked.
“For the moment. I’m meeting a friend.” She glanced at the TV mounted above the glass shelves of liquor bottles, pretending a fascination with the news program playing.
Whether Boarder Dude would have taken the hint or not, she didn’t know. A waitress approached and fired off a long order that claimed his attention, allowing Shay to give up her pseudofascination with the consumer reporter’s fight to get a pothole filled in a city thousands of feet below the mountains.
She glanced around, taking in the adjacent restaurant. Exposed wood, an enormous chandelier made of antlers, warm lighting. People were dressed in peaks-and-pines chic, meaning they wore everything from denim to silk. A meal at the Deerpoint Inn’s grill had been her old friend Melinda’s idea. She’d recently moved to a tiny cabin a couple of miles from it and said she’d heard good things about the food.
Since the place was fifteen miles of winding mountain road from where Shay was currently living, in Blue Arrow Lake, she’d decided to book one of the inn’s six rooms in case the birthday blues triggered some overimbibing. Thinking of the key already tucked away in her purse, she took a hefty swallow of her drink. No reason not to get all warm and fuzzy as soon as possible.
It beat the heck out of what she could have been doing tonight—sitting alone in a massive lakefront mansion. And didn’t that just sound whiny and pitiful? But it wasn’t her massive lakefront mansion—she’d always lived in much humbler abodes—and the house would seem much too empty without the presence of the teenager Shay was charged with looking after until the end of summer. For the previous three months, she’d been a governess of sorts for a girl who colored her hair inky black, who exclusively draped herself in dark shapeless garments and who walked around with the jaded air of a thousand-year-old vampire. It made for interesting times.
But the teen was otherwise occupied for the night. In a show of rare enthusiasm, she’d opted to attend the Hollywood premiere of a much-anticipated animated movie with Shay’s sister, her sister’s young son and her sister’s fiancé. They would spend the night down the mountain, too.
So when Melinda called, suggesting a get-together, Shay had agreed.
The bartender strolled by and glanced at her glass, and she gave him the nod. Yes, sir, I’ll have another. She wanted more warm and fuzzy.
Birthdays were her bane not because her age upped a digit, but because the occasion reminded her of the circumstances of her conception. She wasn’t a Walker, really—not by blood. When strained finances had put a rift in Dell and Lorna Walker’s marriage, Dell had headed for a mining job in South America. Lorna’s subsequent affair with a wealthy visitor to the mountain resort area had ended when she found herself pregnant. But not long after Shay was born, Lorna’s husband returned to the States, reconciled with his wife and accepted another daughter into the family as if Shay were his own. There were adoption papers somewhere to prove it.
Still, she’d always felt a step or two outside the family circle, even though her older brother, Brett, and her big sisters, Mackenzie and Poppy, had never once made her feel like only half their sibling.
She lifted the fresh martini and took a swallow. Maybe her throat was numb now, because the burn there was gone. Instead, the drink sparked a bright idea in her brain. She should locate those adoption papers! Frame and display them as a daily reminder that she was actually one of the Walkers. Legally anyway.
With her parents deceased, however, she didn’t know how to find the documents. Maybe Brett would have a clue where to look, she thought, digging her phone from her purse. When he didn’t answer, she sent him a text, realizing her fingers were a little clumsy on the tiny keyboard.
Another swallow of mostly vodka eliminated her concern over it.
She’d nearly drained the second martini when the phone buzzed in her hand. The display read Mel.
“Where are you?” Shay demanded through the device. “It’s my birthday and I’m all alone.”
“Your birthday’s tomorrow,” Melinda pointed out.
“Oh, yeah.” Shay had been going glum a whole day early. But that was okay, she decided, tilting back her head to shake the last drops of her drink into her mouth, because there was enough glum to spread across the calendar. Not all of her sibs could do cake and ice cream—their usual tradition—tomorrow so that was being postponed to yet another time.
Poor Shay. Poor Shay, who was not really a Walker.
“Uh-oh,” she said to Melinda, signaling the boarding bartender that she needed a refill. “You better speed over here, stat. I’m drinking martinis and getting