framed a family picnic in suburbia somewhere, summer, a hot day, with Lexie sitting cross-legged on the grass. She was flanked by four people her own age—two young men, two young women—and then two older adults standing up. Everyone looked related except Lexie. The others were all Nordic blondes, unusually tall and noticeably athletic and broad shouldered. And then there was Lexie—small, slight and dark, a changeling with those exotic oval-shaped eyes….
“Well, Sammy, the reason I don’t look like them is because we’re not related by blood. I’m adopted. I lost my mom and dad when I was really little, like three years old.”
“You’re adopted?” Sammy repeated, making Cash immediately tense, his slice of blackberry pie forgotten. She had no way of knowing this was an uneasy subject for the kid, but he did.
“Yes, hon.”
“So…what happened to your mom and dad? Did they die or leave you or what hap—?”
“Hey, champ.” Cash’s voice was as lazy and easy as a western summer breeze, not clipped, not showing even a trace of nerves. “I’m sure Ms. Woolf understands that you’re just being curious, but it makes most people uncomfortable to be asked personal questions. You can ask her where she lives, stuff like that. General questions.”
Cash tried never to duck a parenting issue just because there were outsiders around, because outsiders were around their lives all the time. So when he had to correct Sammy, he did his best to teach and explain a reason rather than to make him feel criticized. This time, though, Sammy wasn’t up for hearing any lessons.
“But Cash, I just wanted to know how she got to be adopted—”
“It’s all right,” Lexie said swiftly, before Cash could say anything else. And to Sammy, she bent her head again. “It’s not a secret or uncomfortable thing for me, hon, even though your dad’s right. It could be for some people. But I don’t mind answering you. My mom and dad died. They were killed the same night in a robbery—and it was pretty terrible—but after that, a wonderful family took me in, the Woolfs. They loved me as much as my first mom and dad did, and I love them enormously the same way, so everything turned out just fine.”
“Well…” Sammy shoveled in a giant spoonful of mousse, some of which even made it inside his mouth, while he seemed to think this over. “I wasn’t just being curious. I was int’rested because I’m almost an orphan, too, only not exactly. I never had a dad. ’Course, I never wanted a dad, either.”
“No?” Lexie asked gently.
“No. Because I have Cash, and nobody’s dad could ever be better’n Cash. It’s just us guys against the world. We can do anything because we help each other.”
“That sounds really wonderful.” Again, Lexie’s voice had softened to butter.
“Yup. It’s wonderful. But I can’t be an orphan like you because I have a mom. In a way it’s the same, though, because you lost your mom, and my mom doesn’t want me. Sometimes she calls and pretends to be nice and all, but she never comes here. What I think is, I’m so much trouble that she just doesn’t want nuthin’ to do with me—”
Swiftly Cash scraped back his chair and stood up. “Well, I want you, champ. In fact, I couldn’t run this place without you. Come on and help me in the office for a minute, okay? If you’ll all excuse us.”
Sammy charged into the office, his face all lit up as if he were hot-wired to a joy button. Come hell or high water—or work—Cash spent private time with the boy every day, and before Sammy spilled any more private family information to strangers, he figured it was a politically good time to do their male bonding thing. Not that he was protective of Sammy…but he’d have used an elephant gun on a mosquito that dared threaten the boy. And not think twice.
So first, there was Sammy-time. And then he had to sit down with Keegan to go over the week’s schedule. After that, George was driving Whitt into Coeur D’Allene, which meant that Whitt’s bill needed settling and the guest seen off and George given directions. Then the bills needed to be pawed through. Hell, there was always a ton of stuff that needed doing at the end of the day.
But the new guest preyed on Cash’s mind. It wasn’t because he felt any unsettling, special pull for her—at all. In any way. But Sammy seemed to, and Sammy hadn’t talked to a woman like that in three months of Sundays. Probably longer. And since it was her first day, it was natural enough that he’d try to track her down and make sure she was settling in.
Only she wasn’t in her bedroom.
He tried the lodge living room, where the boys were playing pinochle. When he didn’t find her there, he checked the barn, the gym and hot tub building, the general grounds. Sammy had been stashed in bed by then, tucked safely in their private quarters, Cash wearing a pager so the squirt could always reach him…but in the meantime, he was running out of places to track down Lexie.
Eventually he found her—on the third floor in the library. When he first poked in his head, he saw the lights turned on, but no sign of a body. Once upon a time the library had been an attic, but he’d put up skylights and shelves and then a widow’s walk balcony with a mountain view. From then on, the room had become a favorite for everyone. Sammy had unearthed the one-horse sleigh in one of the old barns—which was completely worthless as a sleigh—but they’d fixed it up together to make a couch-type seat for reading. The old claw-foot bathtub was stuffed with giant pillows—that was Sammy’s favorite reading spot. And most of the men seemed to either pick one of the Abe Lincoln rockers or one of the clunky, chunky Morris chairs. Not her.
There was no hearth or wood-burning stove up here, because the threat of fire was too high, but Cash had wired in abundant electric heat and added rugs to warm up the place. It was her feet he spotted first. They happened to be naked feet, distinctly girl sized, with the toenails painted a candy-apple red—such a sassy, sexy red that he had to grin. There was just no way this one was ever gonna go for a flannel-shirt type of lifestyle.
He strode in and peered over the couch edge, his gaze tracking the trail of bare feet waving in the air to where she was lying flat on her back on a scruffy old rug. She’d bunched the couch blanket under her head, making it into a pillow, and her expensive white sweater and fancy slacks looked as out of place as china at a rodeo.
“You had to lay on the floor? All the chairs too big for you?” he asked humorously.
“What can I say? I’ve always been a floor-sitter.” She smiled at him over the spine of a beaten-up old book. “Were you looking for me?”
“Not to bug you if you’re happy reading. But I wanted to be sure you were settled in okay.” Hell, his pulse was already rattling from just looking at her. Those small breasts disappeared completely with her laying flat, but there was just something about that lithe, compact body that made his hormones buck. It wasn’t some out of control thing. He was no adolescent. But damnation, there was something about her that really soared his wings.
“I’m settled in fine. Although I’m glad you stopped by. I was worried about you.”
“Worried about me?” Cash hunkered down in one of the Morris chairs, leaning forward, not getting too comfortable—but the idea that this half-pint city vamp could have worried about him couldn’t help but arouse his sense of humor.
“Yeah.” She eased up to a sitting position, leaning back against the old corduroy sofa. “I picked Silver Mountain carefully. You have an outstanding reputation. The way I heard it, even the most burned-out, exhausted executives leave here feeling recharged and reenergized. Two of the men claimed they felt as if you’d shaved ten years off their lives.”
“Big exaggeration,” he said wryly, “but you’ll get some experiences you can’t get in an office. I promise you that.”
She nodded. “I like your whole program or I wouldn’t be here. But I’m afraid you’re going to fail with me. And I don’t want you to feel badly when that happens. It won’t be your fault.”
He