he’d been working on for the last couple of months despite himself: a lodge for Witt Matlock. He had decided to fly in the face of the conventional for this one. Instead of following the Vail and Aspen trend toward Alpine looks in redwood and cedar, he’d chosen to carry the Victorian charm of Whisper Creek into the hotel. High spires, lots of gingerbread, a porch that wrapped around. Beautiful.
Lines that sang. A creation that deserved to be realized.
He stretched out his arm and prepared to knock the whole thing to the floor, to wipe out the insane dream that Joni had planted in his brain.
But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he dropped onto a stool and simply sat staring at the model. Seeing it not as it was, but as it could be when finished. Somebody else could build it, he told himself. It didn’t have to be Witt. Some other investor would come along, especially if Witt built a lodge.
That was what Witt probably wanted. A long, low building, the rustic log-cabin type. A male sort of retreat. That would be like Witt, to want something of that kind, not this Victorian froufrou.
But he knew he was lying to himself. He was lying to himself about a lot of things, and had been for many years. It was a poor excuse, realizing that deluding himself was the only way he could remain sane.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he clenched his fists and wondered why he couldn’t just keep on pretending. Wondered why Joni had suddenly decided she had to take action when this whole mess had been carefully buried years ago.
Did she suspect? he wondered. Had she always suspected at some unconscious level? And if Joni had, had Karen? And maybe Witt?
It was something he’d never really admitted to himself, and sometimes, over the past twelve years, he’d managed to convince himself he was imagining the whole thing.
But the heavy weight of guilt in his heart didn’t let him fool himself that easily. It wouldn’t let him forget for long.
The night he’d taken Karen out, the night she’d been killed…he’d begun thinking about breaking up with her.
Because he’d just started to realize that he was falling for someone else.
And that someone else had been Joni.
4
The drive to Denver took nearly four hours, even with the high speed limit on the interstate highway. Witt was impatient all the way, and glad of Hannah’s company to keep him distracted.
“I still don’t understand why you want me to come with you,” Hannah said as they were at last traveling through the suburbs, passing the Westminster exits.
“It’s simple,” he said, as he had yesterday when he’d insisted she ride shotgun. “I want a second opinion on the proposals.”
“But I don’t know anything about hotels, Witt.”
“But you know the kind of place you’d like to stay in if you were taking a vacation in the mountains.”
“I doubt that.” She looked at him with a vaguely amused smile. “It’s one woman’s opinion, Witt.”
“It’s one more than just mine.”
“Aren’t these things decided on the basis of cost?”
“Partly. That has to be taken into account, of course. But whatever it costs, I want to be sure it’s appealing.” He didn’t want some boxy-looking place that could be any one of a hundred other motels and hotels in the state. “I want something special.”
She nodded and settled back in her seat. Out of deference to her, Witt had troubled to lay a metal sheet across the floorboards so the wind of their travel wouldn’t be blowing up through the holes.
Hannah had never criticized his truck, unlike Joni, who was apt to tease him mercilessly about it. But Hannah didn’t seem to have very high expectations, which he found a little strange in a woman who’d been married to a doctor. Instead, she seemed content with whatever she had, meager though it might be. And she never criticized his truck.
“I’m still gonna get that new truck,” he told her, for some reason needing to know how she would react.
“I imagine you’ll enjoy that,” she said.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable?”
Her dark gaze settled on him. He could feel it, even though he wasn’t looking at her. He’d always been able to feel Hannah’s gaze. “If I was worried about that, we could have taken my Jeep.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Seems like you could worry a little more about such things, Hannah. Look after your comfort a bit better.”
“I’m content.”
That was what she always said, that she was content. And he always wondered whether to believe her. Maybe she was just trying to convince herself. Or maybe she meant it. God knew he had no way of knowing the truth.
The lawyer’s office was on a quiet street, in a professional building full of doctors and other lawyers, and surrounded by older residences. Jim Loeb’s office was on the second floor, a spacious suite that suggested he did quite well in business and real estate law. A very ordinary man with brown hair and eyes, his wide smile saved him from being plain.
He shook Witt’s hand warmly and didn’t even blink when Witt introduced Hannah as his business partner. Hannah did, though. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue the point, then closed it tightly.
“How do the bids look?” Witt asked when they were all seated with cups of coffee.
“Well…” Jim sighed. “I was hoping for a larger response. Apparently a lot of firms don’t want to get tangled up in jobs in such a small, out-of-the-way town. But we did get three, and they all look pretty good to me.”
He opened a large portfolio on his desk and passed some eleven-by-seventeen color drawings to Witt. “These are from the first bidder.”
“Not too bad,” Witt muttered as he looked at the half-timbered Tudor-style structure. “But not exactly exciting.”
Jim nodded. “I know. But given the price constraints…well, I think this bid was off-the-shelf, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Something these folks have done before. What’s next?”
The next was a log cabin-style structure, two stories high, looking like a piece of Fort Laramie. Witt actually liked that better. At least it had rustic charm. Hannah wasn’t exactly thrilled, though. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t seem especially interested. “Okay. And the last one?”
“This one’s interesting,” Jim said. “It came from someone we didn’t approach. I guess one of the other prospectives must have turned it over to him. Anyway, I checked on him. He’s solid, even if he is relatively new to the business. And he seems downright eager. Come on, I’ll show you.”
He took them down a short hall into another room where a polished conference table held a scale model of a two-story Victorian structure that looked like a grand hotel out
