of the Daltons here in town?”
He nodded, tugging the brim of his hard hat a bit lower. “Charles and Rita Dalton are my folks.”
“Oh, my goodness! What a small world!” Vanessa hugged her sketch pad to her chest. “Your parents are the sweetest people. I mean, your whole family is so nice. I’m renting a cabin on the Circle D Ranch.”
“You don’t say.”
“Do you know the place? When I was looking to move out of the boardinghouse in town, you mom insisted she had the perfect cabin and she was right! The living room has this one wall that’s a huge single pane of glass—” she waved a hand at the windows that filled the other side of the room “—nothing like that, of course, but the views of the ranch and the mountains are amazing. I’m still learning how to work the woodstoves, the nights have been getting chilly, but the best thing is the claw-footed tub in the bathroom.” Vanessa closed her eyes for a moment a sighed. “Oh, fill that baby with foamy bubbles, give me a good book and I’m soaking for hours up to my—”
The sound of choking had her eyes flying open in time to see Jonah thumping at his chest with his fist. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” One more thump and then he cleared his throat. “Last mouthful of coffee went down the wrong way. Yes, I know the cabin. I grew up on the Circle D Ranch.”
“So, are you a cowboy like your brothers?” It wasn’t hard to picture him in a classic Stetson instead of the hard hat he wore. “Although, I’m guessing from your current chapeau you’re working here on the renovation?”
Both Nate and Callie laughed, reminding Vanessa she wasn’t standing here alone with this long lost Dalton son she’d now recognized from the numerous family photos in the main house on the Dalton’s ranch.
“Yes, Jonah is working on the resort. He’s the lead architect on this project,” Nate explained. “All the innovative building techniques we’re putting into this place to turn it into a premier resort are his. He’s also the lead on all of the interior design so you’ll be working for him. In a way.”
“She will?” Jonah asked, clearly confused. “As what?”
“An artist,” Nate said. “I’ve commissioned Vanessa to paint a mural over the registration desk in the front lobby.”
“You have?” The confusion on his face gave way to something closer to annoyance. “When?”
“Just today,” Vanessa chimed in. “But I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
“Well, that’s good.”
Hmmm, interesting response. One arched eyebrow from her told him he was free to continue.
“No, that came out—what I meant was we’ve already got the designs for the interior furnishings in place.” Jonah’s gaze darted from Vanessa to Callie and back to Nate. “I mentioned earlier this week that Rothschild—the firm in Denver we hired—is sending a representative in a few weeks to give the team a final presentation on everything from furniture to curtains to...well, artwork.”
An emotion that hovered between resentment and relief filled Vanessa’s chest. It seemed Nate and his architect weren’t on the same page when it came to this so-called mural. Good. While the idea of taking on the commission scared her more than anything had in years, she’d admit she had been leaning toward saying yes, confident her talent hadn’t deserted her completely.
Now it didn’t seem to matter.
“Are you telling me you honestly didn’t know Nate had hired Vanessa to paint a mural in the resort?” Eli asked.
They’d managed to find an empty table with a couple of tall stools—one with a trio of half-finished drinks still sitting there—in the back corner of the Ace in the Hole, the local bar that catered to everyone from cowboys to bikers. Between the cracking of the pool balls against each other to the country music blaring from the jukebox for the dancers on the crowded parquet floor, the place was loud and noisy and Jonah had to lean forward to hear his brother. “No, I honestly didn’t know.”
Eli looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
“I didn’t.” Jonah dropped his gaze and fixed it on the icy longneck beer he turned in slow circles against the table top. “Not that it matters now.”
“Why’s that?”
Because Vanessa had walked out this morning with Callie following close behind, leaving Nate to make it clear the mural was going to happen and since the man owned fifty-one percent of the resort, he was going to get his way.
“I missed the email explaining Nate’s vision,” Jonah said. “Add the fact the rest of the investors had already approved the idea and it’s a done deal.”
“So your vote wouldn’t have made any difference?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean—” Jonah looked at his brother again. “Wait, what makes you think I had a vote on the subject?”
Eli’s mouth rose into a half grin. “You’re one of the investors, aren’t you?”
Jonah glanced around. No one seemed interested in their conversation, but he kept his voice low. “Why would you think I’d be—”
“Give me some credit, little brother. You’ve been in love with that old place from the moment it was built back when we were kids. You used to ride all the way from the ranch just to watch it being constructed. Even when it sat empty for years, you’d sneak in and hang out there. Remember that night with the football players from Kalispell?”
It took him a moment, but then Jonah smiled. “Yeah, we just about had them out of there, convinced the place was haunted, until Derek tried to steal their beer. That was a heck of a fight.”
“Only because that one guy had a can of spray paint aimed at one of the walls. You took him out with a flying karate leap and the fists started flying.”
It’d been him, his two brothers and three cousins—the Dalton gang as they’d been known back then—against the entire offensive line from the nearby high school, but they’d won. At least until word got back to the town sheriff and their folks. “I never shoveled so much horse manure in my life as we did that fall.”
“Anyway, I figured a rich and famous architect would have plenty—”
“I’m not famous.” Jonah cut off his brother and sat back in the tall stool, the heel of his steel-toed cowboy boot caught on the bottom rung. “Or rich.”
Eli toasted him with his now empty bottle. “You better be tonight. You’re buying and I could use another beer.”
Jonah watched his brother turn away and attempt to flag down a waitress. He never confirmed Eli’s suspicions, but the man was right. When Nate had contacted him about his plans for the forgotten log mansion and he’d found out about the investor team Nate was putting together, Jonah had insisted on buying in, easily parting with a healthy chunk of his savings.
Still, would
