Fascination. Кэрол Мортимер

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       CHAPTER THREE

      SHAY TOOK THE highway turnoff that led to the family land and traveled the four miles of private road, all the while pushing the Deerpoint Inn adventure into the far recesses of her mind. It was time to go back to normal, become the unruffled, circumspect woman who mostly kept to herself—and who held her fears and dreams close to the chest, too. A precocious and sometimes impossible fifteen-year-old was under her care and Shay needed a calm temperament to do her best for the girl.

      Maybe she’d done something out-of-character on her birthday, something self-indulgent and possibly a little reckless, but it was over now. In the very short period of their acquaintance, Jay couldn’t have made any permanent change to her.

      Pressing her foot to the accelerator, her car climbed the steep drive that led to the cabins. Her sister Poppy had exchanged her battered SUV for another in decent shape—at the insistence of her fiancé, Ryan—and it was parked near a cluster of five cabins. Shay braked beside it.

      Climbing from her vehicle, she took in the view. The last time she’d been out here had been weeks ago, just as winter was giving way to spring, when the snow was melting on the ground around the dwellings, but still abundant on the tree-free slopes rising above them. It was the last of the property held by the Walkers that had been secured one hundred and fifty years before, when the pioneering men and women came to the area in search of timber to harvest. In recent times, before the fire that took out the chairs, lifts and lodge, the family had run a small but popular ski resort.

      While the snow was completely gone now, the cabins didn’t look much different than in March. They were run-down, with dirty windows and sagging porches. Shay assumed the seven she couldn’t see, those nestled in the surrounding woods, weren’t in any better shape. Still, she smiled as her sister emerged from the closest bungalow. Poppy and her five-year-old son, Mason, had lived there until a torrential rainstorm had destroyed part of its roof and sent her into the arms of the man she was now promised to marry.

      “Hey,” Poppy said, the smile that, of late, seemed to reside permanently on her face brightening a few more degrees as she caught sight of Shay. Her honey-and-brown hair hung around her shoulders and she slipped dark glasses over her gray eyes as she stepped into the sun. “You made it.”

      Shay nodded. “Once the roads reopened I left as quick as I could.”

      “Did you get my Happy Birthday text?” her sister asked as she came closer. Then she hesitated, tipping up her shades to send Shay a sharp look. “What’s happened?”

      “Happened?” She hoped guilt—and why should she feel guilty about a single night of commitment-free passion?—wouldn’t show on her face like a blush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “You look different,” her sister said, now nearly toe-to-toe with her.

      Shay shuffled back. “How was the premiere?”

      “We talked to you on the phone about that,” her sister reminded her.

      “Yes, but I only heard about it from Mason’s little-dude, naturally hyperbolic point of view. How’s London?”

      Poppy propped her glasses on top of her head, an appraising light in her eyes. “Let’s see. She was Memphis the first day, Raleigh the next. Today she’s Omaha.”

      Meaning she was much the same. The teen had taken a keen dislike to her first name and Shay had indulged her request to try out different city names as alternatives, telling herself it was good geography practice. Not to mention she would be heeding the old adage about choosing one’s battles. “Where is...Omaha, did you say?”

      “She and Mason are exploring the woods.”

      Shay looked over her shoulder to peer in the direction of the close-growing trees. Pines and oaks and dogwoods covered the landscape surrounding the cabins. As a girl, she’d loved to hike among them herself. Until the fire thirteen years before. A shiver rolled down her spine and she rubbed her hands over her suddenly cold arms. She still had ugly dreams about that day.

      “Shay, what’s wrong?” Poppy demanded.

      “Not a thing,” she lied. “What’s been going on around here?”

      With СКАЧАТЬ