KISSING FOR KEEPS — SAMPLE

Prologue

Grace Phillips

 

         Today I graduated from high school.

         Finally.

         It was a beautiful evening. Spring in the Rocky Mountains. When the days were warm and the evenings were cool.

         Outside the convention center where the graduation had been held, the wind was gusty coming off the mountains, bringing the scent of the outdoors with it.

         Fresh pine needles. Wildflowers.

         Car doors slammed as parents and grandparents climbed into their cars, ready to get home or go to one of the restaurants downtown for a celebratory dinner, dragging their newly minted graduate along with them.

         It wasn’t that I didn’t like high school. I did.

         What was not to like? I was… had been a cheerleader and I was on the homecoming court.

         I was insanely popular, everything considered. And yet I’d never had a boyfriend.

         I blamed it on Whiskey Springs. There were no viable dating applicants in town.

         That wasn’t, however, why I was so happy for graduation.

         I was ready for the next chapter in my life.

         I was ready to leave home and live on my own for the first time in my life.

         I would be driving to Boulder on Monday.

         “Grace.” Abigail’s cheeks were flushed with excitement. I wouldn’t say that Abigail was my best friend, but she was one of my best friends. I would say that I was her best friend.

Abigail was one of the most awkward people I knew. How she got to be a cheerleader was something of a mystery. Probably because she could do the splits like nobody’s business and she had no fear of doing cartwheels from heights.

         “Are you ready for the dance?” Grace asked.

         Right. The dance. Our high school graduation dance. Our group had a weekend of activities planned.

         But I had things to do.

         “I can’t go,” I said. “I have plans.”

         “You aren’t going? Why?” Abigail said, looking very unbalanced on her high heels.

         “I have to pack.” I was ready to put Whiskey Springs in my rear view mirror.

         “No.” Abigail shook her head. “You have to come with me.”

         “I don’t—”

         And that was when I saw him.

         Standing next to Arabella St. Clair and her family.

         Arabella was wearing her gradation gown just like mine. I knew her, but I couldn’t technically call her a friend. She’d been homeschooled until the last couple of years, so no one really knew her.

         I recognized three of her older brothers and her older sister. She was the youngest in the family.

         All the St. Clair brothers looked more alike than different. They all had brown hair and they were all good looking. I’d seen them around town enough to recognize them by name.

         But there was another brother with them. The fourth brother.

         With him, I only knew his name and by reputation. His name was Austin St. Clair.

         He had gone away to college and hadn’t moved back.

         I’d never even met him and he was my role model.

         He was standing next to Arabella. Looking in my direction.

         Looking at me.

         Something deep inside me responded. A visceral recognition that shook me to my core.

         “Grace?” Abigail said. “You have to come with me to the dance.”

         “Okay,” I said without even thinking.

         Going home and packing was not perhaps what I wanted to do after all.

 

Chapter 1

Grace

Whiskey Springs, Colorado

February

 

         My waterproof lace-up boots crunched on the icy snow as I walked among a grove of maple trees, their branches bare with the ravages of winter.

Carrying two empty tin pails, I walked off the main trail a few yards from the office following a path I had memorized. The grove was actually the edge of a larger forest of maple trees, but the tree farm didn’t concern me.

Clouds, mixed with firewood smoke, hanging low along the edge of the mountains were a sign of rain to come. It was early, not quite seven a.m. and the air still dripped with moisture from the night.

         The wind was particularly cold this morning. I wore wool lined waterproof gloves and a heavy coat, but the cold damp wind pierced my face like icy needles.

         The trees were Rocky Mountain maple trees, also known as Douglas maple. Botanical name Acer glabrum.

         That was not something I was supposed to know, at least not under normal circumstances. I was a psychology student, not botany.

         I was, however, a quick study.

         Being a quick study with the ability to memorize information and present it in an engaging fashion served me well under the current circumstances.

         Stopping at the first tree on my invisible route, I checked the bucket hanging from a peg hammered into the bark.

         It was only about one third full so I marked it and left it. I only changed out the ones that were three fourths full.

         It wasn’t as complicated as it seemed. A full bucket looked better to the tourists, but it would not only look bad, but it would be wasteful for the sap to spill over.

         I moved on to the next tree. It was nearly full with sap.

         “You were a busy little tree last night, weren’t you?” I removed the full bucket and put up an empty one.

         There were twelve trees on my route. Twelve trees that I was responsible for keeping up with. It wasn’t a hard job.

         Although I didn’t have to, I kept up with how much sap a tree put out from day to day. If I was going to do something, I made it interesting. I refused to do anything that I didn’t find something interesting about.

         I didn’t have to be at work until nine o’clock, but I liked to get here early for a number of reasons.

         First of all, I liked to make sure all the buckets were good to go for the first tour at nine thirty. I hated rushing to work and trying to get oriented right before my tour. It was so much easier when I’d had time to settle in. Get my bearings.

         The second reason was that I liked to watch the sun come up over the mountains. Granted, I didn’t have to come out here in the wilds to see the sun rise, but somehow it was more bright… more spectacular… more everything out here closer to the mountains.

         The view from my grandmother’s house was obstructed by other houses, diluting the natural display of the sunrise.

         And finally, my grandmother’s caregiver arrived at six, leaving me free to head out. It didn’t make sense for me to be there with her when I was paying someone to be there.

         With two full buckets, one in each hand, I walked back toward the cabin that served as an office and warehouse.

         As far as cabins went, it wasn’t all that small. It had a main room, a living room that served as a sort of lobby, with a big fireplace with a fire always going, even in summer. At least that’s what they told me. I’d only worked here for three weeks, so I couldn’t speak about that from experience. There were two offices in the back, one of them mine.

         The other belonged to Wyatt St. Clair, but he was rarely here. He mostly came by the office in the afternoons. His time was spent in the field. He worked closely with the guys who did the real sap collecting.

         Back, out of sight, there were miles of plastic tubing running downhill to a sugarhouse with a vacuum pump and a reverse osmosis machine. I’d seen it, but I didn’t understand it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to.

         It was all quite modern, unlike the picturesque tin buckets hanging from these twelves trees.

         When tourists bought little bottles of syrup from the St. Clair Maple Haven Syrup Company store, they thought it was coming from the twelve trees under my watch, the ones they got to haul buckets of sap from, when in fact, most of it was coming from the thousands of trees behind the scenes.

         The whole thing had been Wyatt’s brainchild. He’d thought it up, implemented it, and now he ran the operations of it.  

         They said he took after his great great great great grandfather Nathaniel St. Clair who built their estate manor back in the 1800s. Might only be two or three greats back to him. If anyone knew, they just enjoyed saying great as many times as they could get away with.

         At any rate, no one corrected them. There was no need to burst the bubble of illusion.

         Everyone in town knew it, of course. The St. Clairs employed more people in town than anyone else.

         They not only had the maple syrup store, they had a Christmas tree farm, a firewood company, and a group of cabins that stayed booked most all the time year round.

         I felt fortunate that I had stumbled into this particular job. It was perfect for me as far as jobs outside of psychology went. Not that I had any particular affinity for trees, one way or the other, but I got to run the tours and that part was right up my alley. Besides, there was no call for psychology professors in Whiskey Springs.

         I’d gone from teaching undergraduates about different personality disorders among hundreds of other things to teaching curious guests how to collect sap from a tapped maple tree. A lot of them went home with little kits including pegs and buckets to tap their own trees.

         I helped Wyatt with his part of the books, inventory mostly, but it was just one small cog in the wheel of the St. Clair businesses. Although Wyatt was officially in charge of the Syrup Office, I pretty much ran everything other than the actual production. That was what Wyatt liked to do.

The oldest, Gregory was the chief financial officer for all the St. Clair ventures. Fortunately Gregory’s new wife, Hallie helped him out quite a bit.

         Interestingly enough, Hallie had also been a college professor of psychology before moving to Whiskey Springs. She had actually given up a tenured faculty position to be here with Gregory.

         That was my goal. To be a tenured faculty at a university. But I had a really long way to go. I was halfway through my master’s degree at the University of Colorado Boulder.

         On an indefinite leave of absence. Since my parents lived in Portugal now, I was the only one available to take care of my grandmother.

         The only way I could take care of her was to be here. I’d quickly learned that I couldn’t take care of her long distance. So I had packed up and come home. Family first and all that. My parents might not live by that creed, but I did. It was something my grandparents had taught me from the time I knew what family was.

         The second dose of reality came when my student loan payments started coming due. That, added to cost of having caregivers in the home sixteen hours a day, something my grandmother could not afford, led to my seeking employment.

         The caregivers did things I couldn’t do. Since I had to have them there anyway, I took advantage of the situation and went to work.

         It helped some.

         I’d dropped my classes last fall and now I was missing spring semester.

         I was a year behind my classmates already.

         Family first.

         The St. Clairs understood that even if no one else did.

         They were family oriented first and foremost.

         They took care of each other, pulling together when needed, and they took good care of their people.

         They hired local first, a practice that endeared them to the community.

         Leaving the buckets outside for now, I stepped into the warmth of the cabin.

         I immediately knew that there was someone else here. I simply sensed the presence of someone else. Since I came in through the back door, I hadn’t seen a car out front.

         Probably an early curious tourist. It had happened before. I should really get a key so I could lock the door when I went out.

         But whoever it was, was in Wyatt’s office.

         Thinking Wyatt had stopped by before joining his men in the field, I went to the door to his office.

         The man sitting behind Wyatt’s desk looked a lot like Wyatt. He had the same lean build. The same straight dark brown hair. The same crease at the center of their brow as they concentrated.

But the man behind the desk was not Wyatt.

 

 Chapter 2

Austin St. Clair

 

         Sometimes my mother made no sense.

         I’d flown in to Whiskey Springs last night, the first time I’d been here since Christmas, and she just assumed that I would immediately go to work.

         I wasn’t afraid of work. St. Clairs were all about work.

         But living alone, working as a pilot, I had my own way of doing things.

         After a day of flying, I allowed myself to sleep in. To take some time to recharge.

         My mother did not understand that way of thinking.

         She had me up before sunrise and tasked with driving out to what they had named the St. Clair Maple Haven Syrup Company.

         Personally, I thought the name was too long. I might be a little biased, though. I worked for Skye Travels. Short and catchy.

         Who was going to remember St. Clair Maple Haven Syrup Company? People would naturally shorten it.

         Maybe St. Clair Maple. Or St. Clair Syrup.

         Either one of those would be far easier to remember.

         But what did I know? My degree was in aviation. My older brother’s degree was in business and Wyatt had a degree in marketing.

         Since the whole maple syrup venture was Wyatt’s brain child, I suppose he got to name it.

         I sat behind Wyatt’s desk in the Maple Syrup office—another good shortened name—and looked for an invoice Mother seemed to think would be here somewhere.

         My brother, Wyatt, was in the field and my mother didn’t have the patience to wait for him to come back.

         Wyatt was organized. I had to give him that as I looked through his file drawer, all the files neatly labeled.

         Unfortunately his organization did not help me to produce the document Mother was looking for.

         Surely he had an electronic copy somewhere.

         But my mother did not want an electronic copy. She wanted the original.

         Closing the file drawer, I sat back in my brother’s chair. Wyatt would know where it was. He was always able to produce anything he needed.

         I supposed I was the same way when it came to my flight records.

         The St. Clair businesses had grown too big in my opinion.

         Big was okay, but they needed to hire someone besides just family to take care of things.

         The front door opened, someone stepped inside, and the door closed behind them.

         Hoping it was Wyatt, I stood up, preparing to seek commiseration about my mother’s insanity. It wouldn’t hurt to explain what I was doing in his office rifling through his desk either.

         Instead, I looked up to see Grace Phillips standing in the doorway.

         I blinked twice, thinking I was seeing things.

         Grace was all grown up now. I hadn’t seen her since she was eighteen. I’d been at her high school graduation. Well, not her high school graduation. That would just be weird. I’d been at my younger sister’s high school graduation.

         Grace just so happened to be there.

         She and my sister weren’t friends. That would be weird, too, all things considered, but they were classmates.

         Actually if they had been friends, I would have met her before that night. That could have been interesting.

         I’d been twenty-three at the time.

         It was five years later now. I was twenty-eight, so Grace would be twenty-three.

         The last I’d heard she was in graduate school in Boulder. In psychology. The same as my new sister-in-law.

          But she was standing right here.

         “Grace?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

         She pulled off one glove, then the other. knocked the coat hood off her head.

         “I work here,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

         “My mother sent me to look for something.” I waved my hand in no particular direction.

         “Got it.” Graced nodded. “And let me guess. You can’t find it.”

         I shrugged. My mother’s reputation preceded her.  

         I studied Grace. Her delicate features and light frame. She would have turned my head on any street in any city.

         I probably wouldn’t have recognized her though, outside of Whiskey Springs.

         She looked that much the same and that much different.

         She still had straight jet black hair and jade green eyes with a depth that didn’t miss anything.

         Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and lips red.

         “What are you looking for?” she asked, jarring my attention back to why I was there in the first place.

         “The original invoice—has to be original—from Glacier Basin Campground. Don’t ask me why she thinks it would be here.”

         Grace stuffed her gloves into her pockets.

         “They bought firewood, but they also bought maple syrup.”

         “Should have been on two invoices,” I said. My brother Gregory was a stickler for that sort of thing. Anything else messed with his bookkeeping. “But I guess it wasn’t.”

         “Yeah. No,” she said, crossing the room to Wyatt’s tall filing cabinet and pulling open the second drawer down.

         Seconds later, she pulled out a single sheet of paper and, bringing it over, held it out to me.

         It was exactly what I had been looking for… exactly what my mother had sent me to find.

         “How did you do that?” I asked. “I looked in there.”

         “You have to know Wyatt’s idiosyncratic filing system,” she said. closing the heavy file drawer.

         “I owe you one,” I said, folding the sheet of paper and sliding it into my inside jacket pocket. “Lunch? Can I buy you lunch?”

         She hesitated. I saw what looked like confusion pass over her features.

         I also saw what I knew was going to be an automatic refusal.

         “Does my brother not let you go to lunch?” I asked.

         “Of course he does. I have a tour at 9:30 and another one at 1:00.”

         “I’ll pick you up at 11:00 then.” I made a show of glancing at my watch. “Okay?”

I held my breath, waiting for her answer.

Somehow it suddenly felt very important.

         “Okay.”

 

Chapter 3

Grace

        

         I stood at the front window of the cabin and watched Austin drive down the dirt road leading away from the Maple Syrup office.

         Five years.

         It had been five years since I had seen him. At graduation. His sister Arabella and I had graduated together.

         Arabella and I had known each other, but we hadn’t been friends. She was rather standoffish, understandable since she had been homeschooled until high school. I, on the other hand, had been popular. Cheerleader. Homecoming court.

         The fire crackled in the fireplace behind me, keeping the cold temperatures at bay.

         The St. Clairs always had an abundance of firewood and since firewood was one of their primary businesses, they were rather expected to keep a fire going in all their fireplaces.

         Austin St. Clair had come in here and, in just five minutes, upset my entire day.

         He wanted to take me to lunch.

         I had a turkey sandwich in the kitchen refrigerator. I always ate a quick lunch here. Then called to check on my grandmother.

         It was too far to drive into town for lunch when I could just easily bring something with me.

         I couldn’t tell him no.

         I worked for his family.

         He wanted to take me to lunch for helping him, but all I had done was locate a sheet of paper. It had taken me two seconds. I knew exactly where it was. I remembered filing it there myself.

         It wasn’t a big deal.

         He didn’t have to repay me.

         The problem was I wanted to go to lunch with him and at the same time the thought was making me nervous.

         I had first met Austin back when I was eighteen. I hadn’t seen him since, but I hadn’t had to. I remembered him on a visceral level.

         Since I’d moved back to Whiskey Springs, I’d heard about him often. And since I’d come to work for Wyatt, I had heard even more about him. People talked and I listened.

         I knew that he was a pilot for a Houston company, a private airline company, named Skye Travels. He was also not married. No one had said anything about whether he had a girlfriend or not.

         It didn’t matter.

It was just lunch.

         After Austin’s car disappeared around a bend in the trees, I went over and stoked the fire.

         I needed to check the office’s phone messages and the website. Answer any questions that came in overnight.

         That was something that as a graduate student, I was quite familiar with. Students loved to send emails and they expected immediate answers.

         Having survived teaching undergrads while I was a teaching assistant, anything customers could throw at me did not scare me.

         I went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee pot.

         Guests at the St. Clair Maple Haven Syrup Company store always had fresh coffee and cookies. That’s how I did it anyway.

         I took a pan of cookies out of the freezer and slid them into the oven. They would be fresh when the guests arrived. The St. Clairs had a cook who batched the cookies up ahead of time and froze them on perfectly sized oven ready trays.

         I straightened up while the coffee brewed, taking the mail and stacking it neatly on Wyatt’s desk, turning to a fresh page in the guest book, then made a cup of coffee for myself and took it with me to the little dining table.

         I opened up my computer and logged into the company website.

         There were only a couple of messages that I answered quickly.

         I kept thinking about Austin St. Clair. I’d thought he was cute five years ago.

         He wasn’t cute anymore. Not really.

         He was drop-dead gorgeous.

         I closed my computer and locked it away in the office I never used. Guests would be arriving soon.  

         I needed to stop thinking about Austin and get my thoughts redirected back on Acer glabrums.

 

Chapter 4

Austin

 

         Snowflakes fell on the windshield as I drove back to my parents’ house.

         I had been annoyed that my mother had sent me all the way out to the Maple House just to pick up an invoice. It did not seem like something urgent. My brother could have brought it home with him at the end of the day.

         But now I was pleasantly pleased that she had sent me out there.

         I had run into Grace Phillips.

         I’d thought about Grace over the years. Not every day or anything, but every time I came home for the holidays I looked for her. I listened. But no one ever said anything about her.

         It was like she just dropped off the radar.

         I didn’t ask about her. Asking about her would lead to speculation and with three brothers and two sisters, it would open me up for being tortured about it.

         I couldn’t say anything. I’d done my share of torturing my brothers about girls.

         Gregory especially. As our oldest brother, Gregory never dated. He, in fact, married the first girl he brought home.

         It was romantic and I was more than a little envious.

         It had been so easy for him.

         He’d avoided all the stresses of dating until he found the girl he wanted. Then he’d just married her and that was it.

         Sometimes when I wasn’t feeling envious, I felt a little sorry for him.

         I’d dated some girls that I’d enjoyed and I honestly couldn’t imagine a life without dating.

         Of course, in all fairness, as a pilot, I had a whole lot more opportunities to date than he did in Whiskey Springs.

         The irony of it all was that the one girl I couldn’t get out of my system was from right here in Whiskey Springs.

         I couldn’t think about that too much.

I was a simple man.

I liked airplanes, football, and women.

The particular order of how much I liked them was fluid and would go up and down by the minute if placed on a graph.

When I got back to my parents’ house, I saw why my mother was so insistent on getting her hands on that invoice.

Our tax accountant, Mr. Richardson sat at the kitchen table with my mother. They had papers and legal pads spread all over the table.

“Where’s Gregory?” I asked, handing her the invoice.

Gregory was in charge of finances. It seemed like maybe he should be here.

“Working,” she said, handing the invoice to Mr. Richardson.

“Huh.” Checks and balances, maybe?

They went on with what they’d been doing, ignoring me.

I was immediately bored. Finances were never my thing. As long as I had enough money to do whatever I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, I was good.

Actually, I should probably start thinking about my own taxes.

With nothing to do at the moment, I went into the living room, stoked the fire in the fireplace, sat down on the sofa, and kicked my feet up on the coffee table.

With a glance over my shoulder, I untied my boots, slipped them off, and put my feet back up.

No need to incur my mother’s wrath for no reason. No telling what kind of errand she would send me on next as payback for putting my boots on the coffee table, even if it was one of those part ottoman, part coffee tables.

I glanced at my watch. I would head back to the Maple Place at about ten thirty. It was a twenty minute drive, so that would give me more than enough time. Maybe I’d leave at ten fifteen.

I closed my eyes and let my thoughts wander back to Grace.

I hadn’t really given her a choice about lunch. She was about to say no—I had a good sense about these things, so I’d had to do something quick.

A lot of girls around here hit their prime around high school, but not Grace. She was even more beautiful now than she had been back then.

“Hey,” Natalie, my older sister, said, walking into the room and sitting down on the oversized chair across from me.

“Hey.” I opened my eyes and reflexively lowered my feet.

She laughed and put her own feet, shoes and all, up on the table.

I gave her a look and put my own feet back up.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Waiting,” I said.

“Waiting. Mother hasn’t put you to work yet?”

         “Oh yeah. She’s already sent me out on my first errand of the day.”

“Where did you have to go?” Natalie asked, picking up a magazine and flipping aimlessly through it.

“She sent me out to the Maple Farm to pick up some paperwork.”

“The St. Clair Maple Haven Syrup Company store?”

“Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do with naming that?”

She closed the magazine and held up a hand. “On my honor, I had nothing to do with that.”

“Yeah… well…”

“So you saw Grace Phillips?”

“Yes. I did. It’s funny how no one told me she was working there.”

“It’s funny how no one thought you would care one way or the other.” She tossed the magazine back onto the table and leaned forward, studying me with interest now.

“I don’t care one way or the other.”

“I see,” Natalie said. “You just wanted to know.” She flipped her hand. “Just for the sake of knowing.”

“Something like that.”

“And if you had known?”

“If I had known, I wouldn’t have startled her when she came inside Wyatt’s office.”

“I see.”

“You see nothing.”

Natalie grinned. “I see more than you could possibly think.”

“That is a frightening thought.”

She continued to study me, but changed the subject anyway.

“How long are you going to be home?”

“Just the weekend.”

I had a very suspicious feeling that for once, a weekend was not going to be nearly long enough.

  

Chapter 5

Grace

 

Only five people showed up for the morning’s tour. A middle-aged couple with their ten-year-old grandson and a couple on their honeymoon.

The little boy grabbed a handful of cookies and stuffed them in his pockets when he didn’t think anyone was looking.

I pretended not to notice.

I would bake new ones for the one o’clock guests anyway.

While I explained how we tapped the trees for sap, then waited for the buckets to fill, the little boy entertained himself playing games on his phone.

Such was the way of the younger generation.

Even bringing them outside couldn’t pull them away from their electronic devices.

We would have been making snow angels or having snowball fights.

It was a good tour though. The young couple bought three bottles of maple syrup and the older couple ordered a box to be shipped to their home in Dallas.

Even though I got no commissions or recognition for selling the syrup—it actually gave me more work since I had to pack up the order and get it ready for the postman—I always felt a sense of pride when someone bought something.

It was probably because it made me feel like I had done a good job on my tour.

They all finally left at ten thirty-five.

I only had twenty-five minutes before Austin would be here.

Going into the restroom, I freshened up. I brushed my hair and smeared on some lip gloss.

It wasn’t like I was going on a date.

It was just lunch.

I wasn’t doing anything different than I did before every tour. Or so I told myself.

After I banked the fire in the fireplace, I sat on the sofa and picked up a book to read. It was a book called “Positive Addiction” by William Glasser. I might not be in classes right now, but I took advantage of the time to do some reading. I had a whole list of psychology books that I was powering through.

Not even ten minutes had passed before I heard Austin’s car pulling up to the front door.

He didn’t park in the parking lot like everyone else.

Of course he didn’t.

He was a St. Clair. He could park wherever he pleased.

I’d known Austin was a St. Clair when I met him, but that wasn’t what had drawn me to him.

He’d had a confident charisma and the luster on that part of him had not faded, not even one little bit.

Not that it mattered. It was just lunch.

I set my book aside and stood up. Should I meet him at the door or should I let him come inside on his own?

Deciding that I should pretend I hadn’t been waiting on him, I went into my office and opened up my computer.

I didn’t power it on though. There was no need.

I kept my gaze glued to the blank screen as I listened to him come in through the front door.

“Hi,” he said, coming to stand at my door.

“Hey.” I looked up. “I just realized that I can’t leave. Not until Wyatt gets here.”

“Why not?” he asked, leaning against the door frame.

“I don’t have keys to the building.”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and held them up.

“I just happen to have keys.”

“How do you—? Never mind.”

“What are you working on?” he asked, crossing the room to where I was sitting.

“Nothing.” I slammed the lid to my computer closed before he saw that I literally was working on nothing.

He shrugged.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Sure.” I hoped I sounded as nonchalant as I was pretending to be. I did not want him to know that I had been waiting for him and he’d been all I could think about since this morning.

I pulled my purse out of the bottom right drawer and secured it over my shoulders.

My hands trembled a bit as I grabbed my wool coat off a peg near the door.

He held it as I slid one arm into it, then another.

Holding a coat for a lady was one of those skills I thought had been lost a long time ago.

“Thank you,” I said, pulling my hair from beneath my collar and letting it fall outside my coat.

Then he held the door open as we stepped outside.

“It snowed some in town,” he said.

“Missed us out here,” I said.

Most days I didn’t mind working outside of town, especially since I got to give tours. It didn’t keep me from being envious of those who worked downtown where all the activity was.

After I climbed into the passenger seat, Austin closed my door and went around to let himself in.

I clasped my hands tightly in my lap to keep them from trembling.

Being alone with Austin in the cabin/office was one thing. Being alone with him in the small confines of his car was another thing entirely.

He climbed into the driver’s seat, buckled in, and smiled over at me.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure.” I nodded. Geez. Five years had passed by. Five years. And I was still the same tongue-tied girl around Austin that I had been back then.

He pulled around and headed down the driveway.

“They should give you keys,” he said.

“I guess they don’t want me to leave,” I said jokingly.

“That’s not right.” Austin looked over me with a frown. “Did you ask about it?”

“Not yet. I haven’t worked here long and I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

“Right.” He nodded. “Your grandmother.”

“How do you know—? Never mind.” Small town. Everybody knew everything about everybody.

He turned onto the highway.

“Is the Hungry Biscuit okay?”

“I guess. I’ve never been there.”

He looked over at me. “Please tell me you’re just kidding.”

“I’m not. I’m either at work or with my grandmother.”

“The Hungry Biscuit it is then. It’s the closest thing to a city-style restaurant in town.”

I had the distinct feeling that Austin knew a lot more about me than I’d thought.

It was probably only fair since I knew quite a bit about him.

Still. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

As far as Austin St. Clair went, all bets were off.

 

Chapter 6

Austin

 

         The ironic thing about being from a small town was that the longer a person stayed away, the fewer people recognized you when you came back.

         Out of sight out of mind perhaps.

         Or maybe it was because there were a lot of young people who were just kids and the older people didn’t recognize the people who grew up.

         I realized all this when I noticed that no one in the Hungry Biscuit restaurant recognized Grace. This was especially interesting because she had not just lived here, she had been a cheerleader and was on the homecoming court. She’d been a big fish in a little pond.

         The same phenomenon would have applied to me, as well, except for one thing.

         I was a St. Clair and there were four of us St. Clair boys. Unfortunately, the four of us looked strikingly similar to those who didn’t know us well.

         “How’s it going, Wyatt?” an older fellow asked as I waited in line with Grace.

         I started to correct him, but he was already walking past, obviously not expecting an answer.

         “He thinks you’re Wyatt.” Grace leaned over and whispered to me, an amused smile on her lips.

         She smelled like lavender and honey. I hadn’t noticed it until she leaned close, not even sitting next to her in the car.

         “Can’t he see I’m much better looking than Wyatt?” I asked, mostly just to keep her near.

         She laughed, but straightened anyway.

         “Wait,” I said, looking at her with an exaggerated expression of shock. “Have you been having lunch with my brother?”

         “No.” Her eyes widened. “Never.”

         “You don’t like St. Clair men?”

         I had her off-balance. I had a feeling that didn’t happen very often.

         “I…” She frowned at me, then glanced away. “I don’t date where I work. Besides. I’m not going to be here long.”

         “You still didn’t really answer the question,” I said. “But I’ll let you off the hook this time.”

         “You’re funny,” she said with a straight face.

         My phone vibrated, telling me that our table was ready.

         As we walked toward the hostess stand, a middle-aged woman stopped me and squeezed my hand.

         “It’s so good to see you,” she said. She smiled over at Grace. “He’s a good one. You should hold on to him.”

         “You’re very kind,” I said.

         “You know I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it, Wyatt.”

         Grace put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing as the woman walked away from us.

         “Alright,” I said, looking sideways at Grace. “You and I need to have a talk.”

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