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“I need to speak to you,” said Junior. “I want to show you something.”
Her smile disappeared. The contrast was amusing, yes. But the proximity between the two men, and the frightening possibility that discovering Jack here might jeopardize the deal, sobered her instantly.
“Sure. Can you just give me a couple minutes? I’m just getting out of the uh…shower.”
“Need some help getting dressed?” He pretended to push the door open, and she panicked for a moment, thinking the gesture in earnest. Pushing back against the door, she said, “I need a moment, Brian!” She heard the urgency in her tone, and she also heard Jack stirring behind the bed. So she tempered her voice and mustered her friendliest, “Great, thanks! How about I meet you in the great room in ten?”
“Dress for outside,” he said as she shut the door in his face.
“Like hell you’re meeting him,” said Jack, standing up behind the bed, stark naked.
She dragged her eyes away from his magnificent chest. “Don’t worry. Let me just see what he wants. I can feel him out regarding the sale.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No! He likes me. It’s better for me to go alone.”
“I thought we agreed that he whatevers you,” Jack snarled.
Cassie just rolled her eyes and started getting dressed.
Fifteen minutes later she and Brian were hiking away from the house, down the main road, the only one that was plowed this time of year. Uncharacteristically silent, he trudged ahead of her, the crunch of the icy snow beneath their boots the only sound. After they’d gone maybe half a mile, he stopped abruptly and turned toward the woods that abutted the road. “We turn here.”
Cassie shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold. Maybe Jack had been right. “Where are we going?” she asked, though she knew that if he was planning something sinister, he probably wasn’t going to furnish her with the details ahead of time.
“I want to show you my tree house.”
Huh? Was that a euphemism for something?
“My father had it built in a giant tree just a little way in. When I was seven.”
Curiosity got the better of her. “Okay, lead the way.”
Five minutes later she stood at the base of a huge oak tree, looking up at an amazingly elaborate two-story structure perched fifteen feet up in its branches.
“It’s easier to climb if you take your gloves off,” Brian called down. When she hesitated, he said, “Don’t worry, this thing is rock solid. My father hired an architect and an engineering firm.”
She almost laughed at that. Okay, well, what the heck?
Gingerly, she made her way up, grabbing one wooden crossbar after another as she scaled the trunk.
“Wow,” she exclaimed once inside. She’d emerged into a room that was bigger than it seemed from the outside. The floor was covered with snow, but the wooden walls were smooth and polished. There were some old folding chairs, a small table, and some empty beer cans in one corner. And, startlingly, some remnants of the boy Brian had been endured. A half-finished model airplane that had seen better days lay in a corner and a fishing rod rested against the wall.
Well, if she thought finding herself in Muskoka this week was unexpected, obviously she’d never given any consideration to the idea of finding herself in a tree house in Muskoka.
“There’s a sleeping platform up there.” Brian pointed over his shoulder, wagging his eyebrows only slightly—almost self-mockingly.
“This place is amazing,” she said. “You must have loved it here as a kid.”
“It was all right.” He shrugged. “I’m really more of a city person.” He looked like he wanted to say more, so she practiced her bartender silent treatment. “Actually, I pretty much hated this island,” he added.
Hope sparked in her chest. Hated it enough to let his father sell it?
“I was an only child. At least in the city I had friends. Stuff to do. Here I had this.”
She wanted to snort her disbelief, her outrage at what he had taken for granted. What wouldn’t she have given to have had access to this place? To beaches and trails and snowmobiles and forests? And stars.
“I want you to tell me how much money Jack Winter will give us for the company.”
She blinked rapidly, her initial surprise followed by annoyance that he’d used the word “us,” when Wexler Construction was clearly the product of hard work by Wexler Senior alone.
“No one seems to want to name a figure, and I’d like to know how much.”
There was a figure being bandied about, a ballpark. But if neither Wexler nor Jack had told Junior, maybe they didn’t want him to know.
