do about the stage?”
“We just laid the boards up there. It’ll be okay.”
Jack eyed the makeshift plywood bridge between the small stage and the borrowed flatbed trailer. The board dipped in the middle where someone had affixed a microphone stand with crisscrossing layers of duct tape. “It’ll probably be okay if nobody stands on it,” he said.
But his words were drowned out by the chorus—something about a woman treating a man like a dog.
He glanced at Tanya. Annie had stopped crying and now snuggled in Tanya’s arms. Tanya balanced her daughter on one jutted hip, seemingly intent on the music.
As Jack was about to turn away, she looked over and he stared into the same blue eyes that had taught him everything about the joy and pain of first true love. But there was more in this gaze than memories. The woman that looked at him now had known pain of her own. She’d done and seen things about which he had no clue.
He saw no bitterness in her now, though he thought he recognized regret, and maybe a bit of the hope that had so fired her spirit when they were younger.
He felt the impact of that gaze deep in his chest. He knew he couldn’t let Tanya walk away from him again, not before he’d had a chance to solve the mystery of what had really happened between them. Had she gone to Hollywood to flee him and the life he offered here, as he’d once decided, or had she been searching for something there she could find nowhere else?
More important, had she found whatever it was she’d been looking for?
He started toward her, intending to suggest they find somewhere to talk quietly, but just as he reached her, the song reached its climax. Zephyr leaped into the air and came crashing down on—and through—the plywood bridge.
Chapter Three
While the crowd rushed forward to pull Zephyr from the wreckage of splintered boards and equipment, Tanya decided this would be a good time to make her escape. Annie had momentarily forgotten about the puppy and Jack was distracted by all the commotion.
She’d panicked earlier when Annie had disappeared into the crowd. In the crush of people attending the festival, Tanya had quickly lost sight of her daughter. Visions of Annie running unheeded into traffic or being stolen away by some pervert had crowded Tanya’s mind. She’d reminded herself this was Crested Butte, Colorado, not downtown Los Angeles, and Annie was perfectly safe.
But such reassurances had done little to quell her rising fear. Crested Butte wasn’t the same sleepy place it had been when she was a child; the world had discovered the town, so who knew what dangers had followed?
Only when she’d spotted Annie with Jack had she relaxed. Her first reaction upon seeing them together had been relief that Annie wasn’t with a stranger. Annoyance soon followed. Why had Annie run to Jack of all people?
Then, as Tanya drew closer to Jack, unexpected longing and regret had washed over her. She’d watched for a brief moment, unnoticed by man or child, as he crouched, his head close to the little girl’s. This was the sort of snapshot she’d once pictured for her family album. Of all the things she wanted to give Annie, a complete family with a loving father was the one wish that had eluded her.
Jack might not be Annie’s father, but at this moment he certainly looked the part. An expression of gentle solicitude transformed the intimidating, powerful man of Thursday evening into a knight errant whose strength lay in his gentleness. The boy who had taught her everything about love had become a man who embodied every woman’s fantasy—he had good looks, brains, a close family and a successful business.
He was a man who had once known her—both her body and her mind—better than anyone.
But those days were long past. Her time in Hollywood had taught her that fantasy wasn’t real. She’d returned to Crested Butte determined to focus on what was genuine and important—family and security and the kind of life she’d once abandoned, but that now seemed the most valuable thing in the world.
“Jack said I could come play with his puppy,” Annie said.
“His puppy?” Tanya blinked at her daughter. “Jack has a puppy?”
“Yes. And he said I could come play with it. Can I, Mom? Please?”
Unprepared to be on the losing side of yet another argument with her daughter, yet equally unwilling to agree to a situation that might involve being alone with Jack, even with her daughter and his dog as de facto chaperones, Tanya hedged. “We’ll see,” she said.
She didn’t trust her emotions right now where Jack was concerned. She’d left town determined to make a name for herself in Hollywood—to make everyone, and most of all, herself—proud of her. She’d wanted more than the little world her hometown had been able to offer her and had had to do a lot of maturing to see how precious that world really was.
Here she was now, home, if not with her tail tucked between her legs, certainly with a lot of tarnish on the golden-girl image she’d lived with most of her growing-up years. It had been tough enough admitting to her parents that she’d failed to realize her dreams; the thought of explaining herself to Jack was too much to bear.
BY THE TIME JACK had helped deliver Zephyr into the hands of the Gunnison County paramedics and pitched in to clean up the mess, it was well past noon. He snagged an extra-large chicken burrito from the Teocali Tamale booth and took it back to his office. He ate at his desk while he reviewed the specs for the condo project, but he had trouble keeping his mind on his work. Columns of figures kept morphing into the image of a certain shapely blonde.
Maybe a walk would clear his head. He lifted Nugget’s leash from its hook by the door, and the dog bounded to him, eager for an outing. Jack thought again of Annie and her desire for a puppy. Would she tell her mother about his offer to let her visit Nugget? Would Tanya want to take him up on that offer or would she avoid him?
He set out on a popular hiking and biking trail into the foothills, pausing from time to time to let out the leash to allow Nugget to wade the creek or stick his snout down a ground squirrel hole. Jack suspected if an actual ground squirrel were to appear, Nugget would flee in terror.
He drew in a deep breath of clean mountain air and felt the tension ease from his shoulders. The fields around him were a riot of color—scarlet paintbrush, deep violet bluebells, yellow daisies and dozens of other flowers he couldn’t name. The spectacular display brought tourists from around the country to explore the trails in the area on foot or by bicycle; Jack felt privileged to get to enjoy the sight every day.
The world was full of people who were searching for a place like Crested Butte, a place with beautiful scenery, friendly people and plenty to do in any season of the year. He had never understood why Tanya had wanted to leave. Here in Crested Butte, she’d had a loving family, lots of close friends and the local version of fame. From childhood she’d been involved in the theater group and she’d starred in some of its most-loved productions.
And she’d had him, a man who’d loved her.
Obviously that hadn’t been enough. That knowledge, even more than the reality of her leaving, had cut deep. “I have the chance to be a real star,” she’d told him. “Why would you want to deprive me of that?”
He’d never meant to deprive her of anything. In fact, he would have given up the only life
