A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain)

AVA

Fifteen minutes later, Reed steers my Subaru down a quiet road just past the center of town. Snow accumulates quickly on the windshield, and Reed has to run the wipers in order to see where he’s going.

Then he drops his speed and douses the headlights, so we’re driving through the dark.

“Omigod!” I squeak. “There are scary movies that start like this!”

Reed chuckles. “There’s a half moon. I can see fine.”

After my eyes adjust to the dark, I have to admit that it’s true. I’m honestly not afraid for my life. I’m in a warm car with a hot guy I never quite got over.

A hot guy who has me very confused.

Even worse, it’s just dawning on me that—outside of last night’s fun in the bedroom—stalking a trio of Texan businessmen is the most excitement I’ve had in a long time.

What does that say about my life? Nothing good.

Reed eases the car into a parking lot beside an attractive but utilitarian building. It’s a big garage, full of tractors, each in its own stall, tucked behind an arched doorway. He cuts the engine.

“Um, Reed?” I whisper. “This place looks deserted, and I don’t see your SUV.”

“Block’s house is the next building over. Let’s walk from here.”

Oh. Duh.

We get out of the car, both of us careful not to slam the doors. “Come on,” he says. “Stick with me.”

I find myself taking that instruction literally. I get close to him, so close that our hands bump as we circle the building.

After the second bump, Reed takes my cold hand in his warm one. I like the way his long fingers close over mine.

I always have.

“Sure hope they don’t have any motion-detecting lights,” Reed murmurs. “Hey, look.”

When we round the building, Reed’s rental SUV is visible beside a large house. There are two other vehicles, as well. One of them is a white van from Penny Ridge Catering.

“Looks like someone is throwing a dinner party,” Reed whispers.

“I wonder if they brought the moonshine,” I whisper back. I glance at him to find him looking back at me.

Suddenly, we’re both trying really hard not to laugh. I have to clap a hand over my mouth.

“I think you drank it all, Ava.”

“You shut up.”

My stomach shakes with the threat of nervous laughter until Reed’s hand tightens on mine. I take a gulp of cold mountain air and master myself, and we edge closer to the house.

But the window is a good five feet off the ground, I can’t see inside. “What do you see?”

“A kitchen,” he says, standing on tiptoe. “We haven’t found them yet.”

“I hope they’re not upstairs,” I point out. “My free climbing gear is at home.”

“Wait,” he whispers as we edge around the back of the building. “You like to go rock climbing?”

“Of course,” I whisper back. “I live in Colorado, Reed. I had to learn some new tricks.”

He gives me an appreciative glance, his brown eyes glinting in the moonlight.

But this is no friendly stroll, so when we arrive at the next set of lit-up windows, he drops my hand and edges closer to peer inside. “Bingo.”

“What are they doing?” I mouth.

“Talking,” he whispers into my ear. “There are maybe eight guys around the dining table. There’s a projector pointed at this wall.” He indicates the wall we’re standing against. “Let’s walk around to the front and try to see what’s on the screen?”

“Okay, 007.”

He flashes me a grin and then takes my hand. Quietly, we duck below the window and follow the wall to the front corner. There’s another window here, but it’s higher off the ground, and he can’t get a good view inside. “Ava, let me boost you up.”

A nervous thrill runs down my spine. “All right. But if we get arrested, this was all your idea.”

“Sure, sure.” He squats down in front of me. “Let’s do this piggyback style. Or climb onto my shoulders.”

“All right. But this pencil skirt was a mistake.”

He snickers as I tug my skirt up my thighs and then throw one leg over his shoulder, and then the other. A moment later I’m rising into the air, my heart pounding. I grab the window frame to steady myself and peer into the room.

On the projector screen, there’s an architectural drawing. It shows a big development with downtown Penny Ranch in one corner of the screen. I count five big buildings, many smaller ones, and a parking garage. I take a deep breath. “It’s…a development. A big one. Looks awful, honestly. And the whole spread is labeled Sharpe Chalet at Penny Ridge.”

“No lie?”

I tap his shoulder, asking to be put down. “You have to see this.”

“How big?” he asks after lowering me to my feet.

“Like, five hotel towers. It would look ridiculous and destroy the whole town’s view of the mountains.”

“Shit.” Reed looks around, as if a stepstool might suddenly appear. He braces his shoe against the stone foundation. “I’m going to grab the window frame. Will you steady me?”

“Um…”

Before I can finish that thought, he pushes up, grabbing the window frame like a monkey on a climbing wall. I hurry to brace him, but there’s no good place to hold onto, and I end up clamping my hands to his muscular ass.

I’ve had worse jobs, honestly.

Reed holds the position long enough to let out a curse before dropping back down again. “Quick—back up there. Take a photo.”

“Great idea,” I say, fumbling for my phone.

After he lifts me to the window again, I spend a tense moment focusing the camera on the projection screen. I take several shots, praying that one of them will be crisp enough to read when we enlarge it.

When I’m down again and busy straightening out my skirt, Reed picks through the photos I took. “Block must be selling them land—the foothills acreage on this side of Madigan Mountain. The Sharpes will connect to it with ski trails over the peak. And they’ll build a monstrosity of a resort on this side, too.”

My mind reels. “Would that even pass the planning board?”

“Hard to say. But if you owned the land, you could devote a lot of time to tweaking your plan and wearing them down.”

“Why would the Sharpes reveal their plan to Block but not to us?”

Reed looks up. “Maybe Block doesn’t want an outright sale. Maybe he wants in on the profits. The Sharpes would have to show him where the money is coming from. The bigger they build, the bigger the potential profit.”

“Oh,” I say again.

He continues to flip through the photos, but then stops suddenly, taking a sharp breath.

“What is it?”

“My mother made these.” He hands me the phone.

“Wait, what?” The screen is zoomed in on the first photo I’d taken.

“These bookends on the shelf. My mother made them. I’m sure of it.”

They’re bronze statuettes of female figures. Each one is seated on a block of granite.

I’m about to tell Reed how cool they are, when I hear a nearby door open. I give his arm a hard tug.

We both drop down quickly, against the house, and behind a cedar shrub.

Someone dumps a cooler of melted ice into the snow.

Oh shit, Reed mouths. Then he grins.

I clap a hand over my mouth to hold back laughter. Our little escapade is possibly illegal, definitely ridiculous, and potentially embarrassing. And yet I’m more amused than rattled.

Who am I anymore?

Reed holds a finger to his lips. Then he parts the shrubbery so we can get a better look. A guy wearing a white chef’s smock is standing by the backdoor. He pulls a vape out of his pocket and lights up.

So now we’re stuck here.

Beside me, Reed eases down until he’s seated on the snow.

I’m still crouching, my ass inches from the ground, and wishing I’d worn something warmer than a skirt and tights today.

Reed solves this problem by scooping me into his arms and depositing me in his lap. The down jacket I borrowed from him makes a noise as I land, and our gazes lock in an uh-oh expression.

He grins, and once again, I feel as if the last decade of my life has been shed like a lightweight jacket. Looking into Reed’s sparkling eyes is like staring right into my past, when we were both carefree twenty-one-year-olds and life was simpler.

I wish he didn’t have that effect on me, but nostalgia is a powerful drug, and we had some fun capers in Vermont. I see Reed dancing on a table in nothing but his underwear at a ski-team party, while I played DJ. And it was Reed who taught me how to play the ultimate prank—he bought three hundred Solo cups, spent hours filling each one halfway with water, and then covered his teammates’s dorm-room floor with them.

When his friend got home that night, the only free space was the semi-circle where the door swung open. I’d helped Reed tape a wildlife camera to the ceiling beam so he could catch his teammate’s utter confusion as he stood there for several minutes, befuddled, before eventually removing the cups one by one and carrying them into the bathroom to dump out.

Years have gone by since I let myself remember any of the fun times we had. After Reed broke my heart, I’d pushed those thoughts from my memory. It was a survival technique. Yet I never stopped carrying the bad ones around with me like a heavy weight on my soul.

I don’t like to think of myself as a bitter person, but if the boots fit…

Reed eases the branches aside again to peer at the caterer. The guy is still standing there, the vape in his hand, looking up at the cloudy sky. He’s having a leisurely smoke while snow slowly floats down on the two people hiding behind a shrubbery.

Reed doesn’t look the least bit put out by this development. He’s sitting in the snow as comfortably as another man would sit on a couch. When his gaze returns to mine, there are snowflakes on his eyelashes.

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he leans in and kisses me.

It’s a soft, slow kiss, as if we aren’t hiding like thieves in the night. As if Reed weren’t the last man on earth I should be kissing.

But tell that to my heart, which is thumping wildly against his. He tastes me slowly. His kiss is full of promises that he can’t keep.

And I don’t even care, because the only man I ever loved is kissing me in the snow on a moonlit night, and romantic moments are as fleeting in my life as shooting stars. I’ve been waiting years to be kissed again like this, and I didn’t even know it.

Our moments of bliss last for a few lovely minutes before the bang of the backdoor lets us know that the coast is clear again.

When Reed pulls back, I feel dazed. I quickly stand up, brushing new-fallen snow off my head. Reed hands me my phone. Then he squeezes my shoulder and points at the window. “One more peek?” he asks.

“Sure,” I whisper. What’s one more minute of stalking between friends?

Reed hoists me up for another glimpse into the conference room, but the presentation is over.

“They’re having pulled-pork sandwiches,” I hiss. “Nothing more to see here.” Reed starts to lower me down, but I gasp, “Wait!” And, yup, I guess I should have seen this coming. “They’ve opened that same leather case, and it’s filled with fresh bottles of moonshine and whiskey.”

Reed snorts. “Does this mean I’m really not all that special?”

Misplaced outrage prompts me to take a photo of the velvet-lined case before Reed lowers me back to the snowy ground. “Who are these assholes?” I whisper. “What is their game?”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Reed says. “Let’s go home and figure it out.”

Home. The word choice is interesting. But I don’t call him on it.

The car ride back is quiet, because Reed has to concentrate on keeping the car on the snowy road, and I’m busy forwarding the photos we took to Reed’s phone. “Should I send this photo to your dad?” I ask.

“Sure,” he grunts. “Unless you’d rather have me do it. If you don’t want to deal with him.”

“I deal with him all the time. Actually, I’ll stop in our office and print it out for him. He doesn’t like to look at documents on his phone, and he doesn’t bring his laptop home in the evenings. It’s a deal he has with Melody. No work after supper.”

“Wow.”

“I know. He’s a new man these days. I’m sorry you didn’t get that version of him.”

Reed’s eyes are steady on the snowy road. “You know, I once did. Right up until the moment I didn’t.” He puts on the blinker for the turn up Old Mine Road. “Where do you want me to drop you?”

“Let’s just put the car back in the employee lot. I really need to change out of this skirt and into dry clothes.”

“I’ll bet.” He gives me a quick smile before returning his attention to the winding road. “Thanks for being a trouper. Tell you what—I’ll sweet talk that bartender friend of yours into giving us a bottle of wine and then take it up to the suite and open it.”

“You can try,” I say with a laugh, wondering what Halley will say to that request. “Tell her it’s for me so she doesn’t pour salt into it.”

“Good tip. Maybe I’ll order us another pizza.”

“You and your pizza.”

His chuckle is low and dirty as he hits the power button on my car’s radio.

My most recent playlist starts up automatically, and, whoops, it’s a selection of music from our college era. The song is “I Will Wait” by Mumford and Sons, which played on heavy rotation during our senior year. We probably had sex to this song a dozen times.

Reed doesn’t say anything about my musical choices, thankfully. We drive on in silence, but the car feels cozy even as the snow flies outside our windows.

Sitting next to him makes me feel irrationally happy. Emphasis on irrational.

Reed and I have no future. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Madigan Mountain now. Everything in my life is suddenly uncertain. Even the snowy road is potentially hazardous.

But with Reed humming along to the radio, his strong hands at two and ten on the wheel, I feel as safe as I’ve ever been.

A half an hour later, I’ve got that printout for Mark, and I’ve changed into jeans and a comfortable sweater. And, fine, in a burst of optimism—or foolishness, depending on your worldview—I may have put on some very nice lingerie and tucked my toothbrush and a clean T-shirt into my shoulder bag. Just in case I end up spending the night in Reed’s hotel room.

But first, I stop at the Madigans’ A-frame family home and knock on the door.

Mark answers the door in flannel pants, a Patterson thriller tucked under his arm, and his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. “Evening, Ava. Is everything okay?”

“Yes and no,” I say as he steps back to let me in. “Reed and I made a discovery, and I wanted you to see it.”

“Would you like to sit down?” Melody asks from a chair by the fireplace. “I could put the kettle on.”

“No thank you. I just need to give you this photo of a presentation that the Sharpes were giving to Block tonight. They have a huge development planned in town. And it looks like they want to erase the Madigan name off the resort entirely.”

Melody makes a noise of surprise, but Mark growls. “Goddamn it, Reed. He just had to stick his nose in.”

“Mark,” Melody gasps.

Her husband looks down at the page I’ve handed him, a grim expression on his face. “This is grotesque.”

“Exactly,” I quickly agree.

He sighs. “All right. Thank you for bringing this by. But Ava?”

“Yes?” My hand is already on the doorknob. Reed was right—it sucks to be the bearer of difficult news.

“Please don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. If the town gets wind of this, it could tank my sale agreement with the Sharpes.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. And now I’m both confused and a little offended. “I would never tell anyone your private business. I never have.”

He rubs his forehead. It’s a gesture that he shares with his son. “I know, Ava. Sorry. This is just stressful. I hope Reed doesn’t have any foolish ideas about confronting the Sharpes.”

“No,” I say quickly, giving my head a shake. “He said it made sense to play it cool. No reason to let on that we know what they’re up to.”

“Right.” His voice is gruff. “I need to do some thinking.”

“Of course. Reed has some good ideas…”

“I just bet he does,” he grumbles. “Night, Ava. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

After bidding Melody a good night, too, I step outside and close the door behind me. Then I force myself to take a deep breath. Okay, that wasn’t a great conversation. He was so prickly.

Then again, I’d just delivered some terrible news. The men he’d chosen to carry on his legacy were obviously dishonest about their intentions.

He’s hurting, I remind myself. He needs time to get his head around this.

I shoulder my bag and head for the hotel, which is lit up brightly against the falling snow. I quicken my steps.

Reed is waiting. I feel a flutter in my belly.

A smarter girl would go home to her own apartment now.

But I guess I’m not as smart as I thought I was.