in the summer, to live in their home on the lake. Though Hayden’s father still owned this mill, he had several others, as well. He only traveled to Gold Creek a couple of days a week.
Her father had summed it up at dinner one night. “Some job Monroe has, eh?” There had been a mixture of awe and envy in George Powell’s voice. “Garreth takes a company helicopter from his office building in the city, whirs over here, strolls into the office about nine o’clock, glances at the books, signs a few checks and is back in the city in time for his afternoon golf game. Rough life.”
Nadine had never thought much about the Monroes. They, like the Fitzpatricks, were rich. The rest of the town wasn’t. That’s just the way things had always been and always would be as far as she could see.
Her fingers, clenched tightly around Bonanza’s collar, slowly uncoiled. The dog licked her face, but she barely noticed. She spied her father walking from the office to the main gate of the work yard. He waved before entering one of the sheds. Nadine rammed the pickup into reverse, backed up, then shoved the gearshift into first. The truck lunged forward and started to roll toward the road.
“Hey!” A male voice boomed through the opened windows.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, she slammed on the brakes. Her heart did a silly little flip when she saw Hayden, the prince himself, jogging to catch up with her—probably to tell her that the tailgate of the truck had dropped open again.
In a choking cloud of dust, he opened the door to the passenger side of the Ford and Bonanza growled. “Can you give me a ride into—?” His voice stopped abruptly and Nadine realized he thought she was one of the mill workers. He obviously hadn’t expected a girl behind the wheel of the banged-up old pickup.
She glanced at the Mercedes. “Isn’t that your car?”
His eyebrows knotted. “Look, I just need a lift. I’m Hayden Monroe.” He flipped up his sunglasses and extended a hand.
“Nadine Powell.” Self-consciously she reached across Bonanza and shook his hand. His fingers clasped her palm in a strong grip that caused her heart to pound a little.
“Ben and Kevin’s little sister,” he said, releasing her hand.
For some inexplicable reason, she didn’t like to be thought of as a kid. Not by this boy. “That’s right.”
“Are you going into town?”
She wasn’t, but something inside her couldn’t admit it because she knew if she told him the truth he would slam the door of the truck right then and there. She lifted a shoulder. “Uh...sure, climb in. I, uh, just have to stop by the house—it’s on the way—and tell my mom what I’m doing.”
“If this is a problem—”
“No! Hop in,” she said with a smile. She glanced guiltily through the grimy back window and silently prayed that her father wasn’t witnessing Hayden sliding into the cab. As the door clicked shut, Bonanza growled again, but reluctantly gave up his seat, inching closer to her. Nadine let out the clutch. With a stomach-jolting lurch, they bounced out of the lot. She only hoped her mother would understand and let her drive Hayden to Gold Creek. These days, Mom wasn’t very understanding.... Sometimes she wasn’t even rational. And though Dad blamed his wife’s moodiness on her “monthly curse” or the strain of raising three headstrong teenagers, Nadine knew differently. She’d overheard enough of her parents’ arguments to realize that the problems in their family ran much deeper than her mother’s menstrual cycle.
So how would Donna react to her only daughter’s request? Nadine’s hands felt suddenly sweaty. She could just drive Hayden into town, show up late at home and take the consequences, but she didn’t want to risk any more trouble.
“I just have to drop off the dog at the house,” she explained, casting him a glance.
“I’m not in a hurry.” But the tension in his body claimed otherwise. From the first moment she’d seen him screech into the sawmill yard, he’d looked like a caged tiger ready to pounce. His muscles were coiled, his face strained. He snapped his sunglasses back over his eyes.
“Trouble with your car?” she asked.
“You could say that.” He stared out the window, his lips compressed together as Nadine turned onto the main road into town.
“It’s...it’s a beautiful car.”
He flashed her an unreadable look through his sunglasses. “I told my old man to sell it.”
“But—it looked brand-new.” The Mercedes didn’t even have license plates yet.
“It is.”
“I’d kill for a car like that,” she said, trying to ease the tension that seemed to thicken between them.
His lips twitched a little. “Would you?” Quickly his head was turned and his attention was focused completely on her. Her hair. Her eyes. Her neck. Nothing seemed to escape his scrutiny and she was suddenly self-conscious of her faded cutoffs and hand-me-down blouse. Holding her chin proudly, she felt sweat collect along her backbone. Her pulse began to throb as he stared at her with an intensity that made her want to squirm.
“I— You know what I mean.”
“Well, my old man didn’t ask me to ‘kill’ for it, but close enough....” He rubbed the tight muscles in one of his shoulders.
“What do you mean?”
“You ever met The Third?”
“What?”
“Hayden Garreth Monroe ‘The Third.’”
She shook her head. “Not really. But I’ve seen him a couple of times. At company picnics.”
“Oh, right.” Nodding, he turned his gaze back to the dusty windshield. “I even went to a couple of those. A long time ago. Anyway, then you know that my father can be—well, let’s just call him ‘persuasive’ for lack of a better word. Whatever The Third wants, he usually gets. One way or another.”
“What’s that got to do with your car?”
“It comes with a price—not in dollars and cents, but a price nonetheless, and I’m not willing to pay.”
“Oh.” She wanted to ask more, to find out what he was really thinking, but he fell into brooding silence again and she knew by the sudden censure in his expression that the subject was closed.
The pickup cruised by dry, stubble-filled fields of grass and wildflowers, and Nadine turned onto a county road that wound upward through the hills to the little house by the river. Never before had she been embarrassed of where she lived, but suddenly, with this rich boy in the pickup, she was self-conscious. It was bad enough that he’d had to share the tattered seat of a banged-up twenty-year-old truck with a smelly dog, after riding in the sleek leather interior of a new sports car, but now Hayden would see the sagging front porch, rusted gutters and weed-choked yard.
She pulled up to the carport and said, “I’ll just be a minute....” Then, remembering her manners, she added, “Would you like to come in and meet my mom?”
He
