A January Chill. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ than he could sometimes eat them, ordered two breasts, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits and baked beans.

      They took a table in a quiet corner. The place wasn’t busy, probably because it was the middle of the afternoon. Halfway through his first chicken breast, Witt looked up. “He did it just to tweak my nose.”

      Hannah, who was nibbling at her coleslaw, merely looked at him.

      “Well, what the hell else could he be up to?”

      “Maybe,” she said carefully, “he just wants the job. Or maybe it’s an olive branch.”

      “Olive branch! Hah! He should never have taken Karen out behind my back.”

      “Maybe not. But you need to remember that she was your daughter, and she chose to go with him even when you forbade it.”

      “She wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been urging her.”

      “Mmm.” Hannah said no more. Instead, she filled her mouth with a spoonful of slaw.

      God, Witt thought, he hated it when she went inscrutable on him. That “Mmm” said volumes. She didn’t agree with him but wasn’t going to say so. Ordinarily he could ignore that kind of stuff from her, but today he was itching for a fight so badly he could hardly stand it. And Hardy Wingate was nowhere around to fight with. Which left Hannah. And what did that say about him?

      “Sorry,” he grumbled, and attacked his second piece of chicken. The food, which he ordinarily enjoyed, tasted like sawdust today. For a bit, he stared out the window beside him, noticing that dark clouds were gathering over the mountains to the west. Apparently the clear sunny day was about to give way to some more snow. Well, that was fine by him. The way he was feeling, getting snowed in would suit him just fine.

      He tried to tell himself he shouldn’t feel so bent, but he felt bent anyway. It wasn’t as if Hardy Wingate had done anything new to him. All the guy had done was set himself up for a major disappointment. Asking to get kicked, really.

      So what maggot was gnawing Hardy’s brain, anyway? For all the nasty things Witt had thought about Hardy over the years, he’d never thought the guy was stupid. And this was stupid. Had he thought he was going to slip one by, that maybe Witt wouldn’t notice who the bidder was?

      He would have liked to think Hardy was that underhanded, but in his mind’s eye he could still see the pages of the bid, every one clearly marked Hardy Wingate, Architect.

      No, he hadn’t been trying to pull a fast one.

      “Olive branch?” he said, returning his gaze to Hannah.

      She was holding her foam coffee cup in both hands, her lunch barely touched. “Yes,” she said.

      He sometimes hated her calm and her monosyllabic answers. Sometimes he wished she would get all ruffled. Angry, even. He’d only seen her that way once, but afterward it had been as if all the doors had shut. Probably better that way, for both of them, but a guy could wish.

      “Well,” he said, “it’s a hell of a way to do it. And I don’t give a damn, anyhow. My daughter’s dead, and I’m not likely to forget that fact.”

      “Of course you’re not.”

      He barely heard her agreement, because he could almost, but not quite, hear the three or four sentences she hadn’t spoken. “What are you thinking?”

      Hannah shook her head and sipped her coffee. “It’s a pretty hotel.”

      “Too fuckin’ bad.”

      “Witt, please.”

      “Sorry.” He knew Hannah didn’t like that word, but he was that mad. Mad because he had a feeling someone was trying an end run around him, and he didn’t like that feeling. Mad because he had a gut-deep suspicion that Hardy hadn’t come up with this harebrained idea on his own. Hardy was definitely not that stupid.

      But then, his opinion of Hardy Wingate had never been that low. Even back when he’d objected to Karen dating him, he hadn’t thought Hardy was all that bad. A little wild, like most boys his age, but not as wild as some. It was just that at the time, given Hardy’s background, Witt had feared the boy wasn’t going anywhere, and he hadn’t wanted Karen to tie herself down to some miner. He’d wanted better things for her.

      And he’d feared that Hardy’s character hadn’t been fully set yet, and that he might turn out to be a twig off his father’s tree. A useless alcoholic. Hadn’t turned out that way, obviously, but Witt didn’t have a crystal ball. He’d just wanted what was best for Karen.

      But Karen was dead, and he held Wingate directly responsible, and he wasn’t going to make any excuses for that. None at all.

      And he sure as hell wasn’t going to give the guy a million-dollar job. Jesus, no. Every time he saw Hardy, all he could think of was Karen.

      Hannah stirred, and Witt looked at her, asking, “Aren’t you going to eat?”

      “Somehow I don’t have much appetite when you get mad.”

      “I’m not mad.”

      She shook her head.

      “Okay, so I’m mad. Except that…that’s not exactly the word I would use, Hannah.”

      She sipped her coffee and nodded encouragingly, but he didn’t have any more to say. Finally she said, “Maybe you’re not as angry as you are hurt.”

      He shied away from that. It sounded weak, somehow. “The hurt was a long time ago.”

      “That isn’t what I meant.” But, as usual, she wouldn’t tell him what she had meant. That was Hannah. Like talking to a goddamn riddle.

      He sighed in irritation and shoved his lunch aside, his appetite long since gone. Reaching for the coffee he still hadn’t touched, he popped a hole in the plastic lid, then swore when it burned his tongue. Some days he felt cursed, and this was turning into one of them.

      It didn’t help when he realized Hannah was looking amused. “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

      “Not a thing.”

      “Quit lying to me.”

      Her amusement faded, but she didn’t answer directly. “Sometimes,” she said, “folks start acting like flies caught in a spiderweb. Twisting this way and that and just getting more stuck.”

      Witt didn’t like that image one bit, especially since he had the niggling suspicion she might be right about him. “What are you saying?” The question was truculent, and he expected that in her usual way she would avoid answering. She surprised him.

      “Look into your heart, Witt. Do what you know is right.”

      And the way she said “right” let him know that she didn’t mean he should do what he felt like doing. Funny how doing the right think was often the wrong thing in terms of how you felt about it.

      “I am doing the right thing. I ain’t letting any murderer build my hotel.”

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