he is willing to work for practically nothing, which is about what I’ve got left in the budget. Because a month will get me through the soft opening and give me time to replace him. Because he’s handsome and smart and charming, and the guests will be eating out of his hand.”
“But, Ro, he—”
“I’m not finished.” Rowena’s syllables were crisp and staccato, and Bree subsided. “Most important, I’m hiring him because no one else will. Because I know what it’s like to try to outrun a reputation that got tied to your tail so long ago it feels grafted to you. In a town like Silverdell, that’s pretty darned hard to do.”
Gray watched as Bree tried to swallow her opposition—a self-control that seemed to be something of a struggle. As complex emotions swept across her classically beautiful features, rendering them infinitely more interesting than perfection ever could, his curiosity was piqued.
Though of course everyone had gossiped about their mother’s murder, Gray hadn’t really known the Wright sisters very well. Rowena had been older, too sophisticated to bother with a boy like him, and Bree had always seemed too deadly wholesome to be worth his time. The little one...he couldn’t remember her name...hadn’t registered at all.
Now, though, he sensed layers and textures in Bree’s personality that went far beyond “prissy” or “icy” or “dull.” And layers between the two sisters, too. Undercurrents both deep and powerful—and touchingly human.
He suspected that, at its heart, this mini-confrontation had very little to do with Rowena’s choice for a job as insignificant as the part-time assistant social director...and much more to do with years of unresolved family baggage.
Well, okay, then, maybe he knew them better than he had realized. They all belonged to that sorry club—the children who had survived the unsurvivable and didn’t really know why. Or where to go from there.
A large bird, maybe an eagle, landed somewhere high in the pines over their heads, causing the sunlight to shift as the branches swayed. For an instant, the light seemed to catch on two crystal sparkles at the outer edges of Bree’s cool blue eyes.
Tears? Gray frowned. Was the ice princess fighting back tears?
She blinked, then, and the illusion disappeared. But he was left with a sudden, inexplicable hunger to know her better, to find out more about her.
A lot more.
And...just his luck. He had only four weeks to do it.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHILE ROWENA WENT over the payroll paperwork with Gray, Bree decided to head up to her room and regroup. In the early planning stages, they’d all agreed that one of the upstairs rooms should be set aside for family, always to be left unrented, in case Penny or Bree wanted to visit.
The sister suite, Penny had called it. Because of its size, the space they’d chosen was Rowena’s old room. All the upstairs bedrooms had been subdivided to create more guest space. In this one spot, though, they hadn’t formed two separate rooms, but one suite with a connected sitting area and a bedroom.
Bree entered slowly. In the old days Rowena had been possessive about her private sanctuary. Her younger sisters had been forbidden to enter without permission, which she rarely granted. Even now, the remnants of inhibition were so strong that Bree felt odd waltzing in as if she belonged there.
Once in, Bree almost imagined she could detect a hint of Balenciaga Paris in the air. Rowena had received a bottle of the expensive perfume from some secret admirer that Christmas—the last they’d ever celebrated in Silverdell.
Ro had pretended to scoff at girly things like perfume, insisting that she preferred natural scents...wildflowers, the wind coming off the river or rain. But Penny, who sometimes crawled into one of her sister’s beds after a nightmare, had innocently told Bree that she chose Rowena now, because Ro always smelled of the pretty perfume while she slept. Ro had denied it, but she had clearly felt embarrassed and exposed. She’d been huffy, even with Penny, for days.
Bree knew the smell was only her imagination, of course. Old ghosts were stirring.
She went to the window of the sitting room. It overlooked the back parking lot, but it also had a peaceful view of the misty salmon-and-sapphire-tinted mountain line in the distance, and the view called to her. The physical beauty was shockingly different from anything in Boston, and at the same time it was deeply, hauntingly familiar.
She was still standing there when Gray and Rowena came strolling outside, their paperwork obviously completed. She moved an inch to the right so that the curtain veiled her, embarrassed to be caught watching.
But she needn’t have worried. Neither Rowena nor Gray looked up toward the second-floor windows. They seemed completely engrossed in their conversation. Bree couldn’t make out words, but occasionally Rowena pointed to various buildings, as if describing the activities planned on the property. Gray occasionally pointed, too, clearly adding suggestions of his own.
Lots of nodding and smiling, interspersed with laughter. They seemed to communicate awfully well for people who hadn’t seen each other in more than a decade.
But then, Gray had chatted comfortably with Bree, too, in spite of their touchy history. Obviously the man possessed formidable people skills. He always had, even in high school, which was probably what had allowed him to be so rough and rebellious without ending up expelled or slapped in jail.
Leaning easily against the driver’s door of his white truck now, he suddenly tilted his head back and laughed at something Rowena said. Bree smiled wryly, aware of a quick, supremely female reaction deep in her own body.
Okay, so it wasn’t just his people skills that gave him power. He was also dangerously sexy. His body was a six-four, athletic arrangement of rippled muscles and animal grace. She wondered what he did for a living, when he wasn’t in Silverdell, trying to vacuum out his grandfather’s wallet. Did he do some kind of serious labor? Or did he simply live at the gym?
And his face...she studied it now, trying to pinpoint where exactly its appeal lay. His golden-brown whisker stubble, square jaw and sun-weathered smile lines were all male, hinting at long days on horseback or wielding a jackhammer. But his lush eyelashes, the waves of chestnut hair that tumbled over his broad forehead and those sensually bowed lips belonged in an art gallery, a pirate ship or an eighteenth-century duchess’s boudoir.
Above the rest, his intelligent, honey-brown eyes simply said he found the whole question absurd. He was who he was.
Finally, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and beeped open the truck’s auto lock. For the first time, Bree actually paid attention to his vehicle. It was nice, a shiny new model, but somehow she’d expected something glitzier. Like maybe a purring silver Jag with a vanity plate that read GRAYT.
He and Rowena hugged goodbye—Bree couldn’t help shaking her head at that. When had her prickly older sister developed a warm fuzzy side? Then he climbed into the truck’s cab, cranked the engine, executed a deft three-point turn and guided it out of the parking lot and around the house, heading back to the main street.
She wondered where he was staying...and where he would stay, once he reported for work. Phase One of the dude ranch had included creating staff quarters out of the old stable, but she had the impression that, with at least a dozen employees already hired, those bunks were full.
Minutes
