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Chapter Five
Jasper
Iwouldhavelikedto make a quick escape, but that wasn’t possible.Mom had to pee again.She refilled her water bottle while I also peed, which basically guaranteed another bathroom stop in about an hour.Then I had to carry her down the stairs in the growing darkness.
“I can’t believe you offered to buy this house,” my mother hissed.For the trip down, I was carrying her piggyback style, which she found even more embarrassing than being carried in my arms.
“And everything in it,” I reminded her.“Did you see her father’s research?He knows way too much about us.”
“I was convincing her to throw it out,” she said.Her head was right next to my ear, which made it easy for her to vent her displeasure.“We discussed this, Jasper.We need to reinvest in the Lodge, in the town.”
“There’s no more room to build cabins on the public section of the property,” I said, pausing to get my balance on a landing.We’d been having this argument, in one form or another, for years.Mom had spent thirty-plus years building Twisted Pines from the ground up, and it had given her tunnel vision.“Unless you want to build the cabins closer—“
“No.”
“We’re butting up against clan land as it is.It makes sense for us to expand the business into other areas.Property development and management is a natural fit for us.”
She blew out a breath.“You could have talked to me about it before making the offer.”
“Like I had a chance.You were getting all buddy-buddy with Edie.”
“I was trying to figure out what she knew,” my mother said.
“She doesn’t know anything, and we have to keep it that way,” I said over my shoulder.It turned out that a few hours in the gym every week wasn’t enough to keep me from panting as I staggered down the last few steps.“She’ll leave soon.That’ll be for the best.”
Gratefully, I set Mom down.This time, I ended up kneeling on the sidewalk as I braced myself solid enough for her to lean on.She waited until she was comfortably seated in the passenger side of my SUV before she said, “Don’t forget my pizza.”
I inhaled for strength.“Are you really gonna make me climb those stairs again?”
“I thought it was my fault you missed your cardio,” my mom said, then sighed.“This afternoon didn’t work out at all like we’d intended.”
I exhaled for patience.Mom had pinned her hopes on Professor Matthews, and she’d pushed hard for this visit despite objections from my brother Flint and her Beta, Dominic Thorne.No one else, even our own doctor, could tell us why she started feeling so poorly in the last few months.“I’ll go get it,” I said, tasting every flavor of bitterness that came with being the eldest son.
When I reached the top of the stairs, Edie was waiting with the pizza.“I was going to bring it down to you.”
I waved her off, sinking down on the top step.After climbing the stairs for the fourth time, I didn’t feel at all ashamed of taking a moment to catch my breath.
It was a miscalculation.She sat down beside me, setting the pizza box on the deck behind us.When her knees bumped mine, a thrill of awareness came over me that I couldn’t deny.“I cannot believe how gorgeous it is here.”
“Yes,” I said, too stunned to think.This couldn’t be happening.She was a beautiful woman, and I found her compelling, but that had to be the end of it.It had to be.
Darkness was already spreading on the hills in the distance, but Edie’s hair caught the last glints of sun like veins of gold.From here, sitting on the top step of the stairs high above the street, I couldn’t see the car below where my mother waited.It felt like we were as alone as we could get in the city.
Edie seemed to feel the privacy too.She sighed, “It’s been a weird day.”
“Tell me about it.”When she shrugged, I found myself leaning closer to her.Her hair had a light floral scent that made me dizzy.“Tell me,” I said again, my voice lower than I’d intended.
She turned, her skin lighting up in the glow of the sunset over the mountains on the other side of the valley.Her mouth was inches from mine, but her eyes were a thousand miles away.“Well, when I woke up this morning with a call from a Montana area code, I genuinely had a moment where I thought, ‘I don’t know anyone in Montana.’That’s how long it had been since I thought about my dad.I think it was the guilt of that, more than anything else, that made me feel like I had to come out here.”
The line of her throat hypnotized me as she swallowed.“So I feel guilty, but I also feel angry.Like, it is so damned typical that anything my father gives me is an enormous mess that I have to clean up.But I also feel…”
She took a deep breath, gazing out over the mountains.Colors were spreading like melted sugar across the sky.“I feel like I’ve been lifted out of myself.Like right now, I should be starting up a 24-hour rotation at the hospital.My boss made it pretty clear that my bereavement leave was an inconvenience to his schedule.I was supposed to have lunch with some friends, but I had to cancel on them, again.At least I have a better excuse than work this time.The group text went from pissed to sympathetic real quick when I said my dad had died.”She shook her head, leaning into me.“My mother went the other way, from sympathetic to pissed, when I told her I was coming out here.So basically, everyone in my life who matters is at least a little bit pissed off at me, but right now…I just don’t care.That’s someone else’s life.I can turn those problems back on when I get back.”
“There’s no significant other on that list.”I shouldn’t have mentioned it.I shouldn’t have even been this close to her.My heartstone was buzzing against my wrist in a way that could only be a warning.
Her eyes focused on mine.They were as honeyed and depthless as amber.Her lips parted as she took a deep breath and tilted infinitesimally closer.“No, there’s not.”
There were a thousand reasons not to kiss her, and only one reason to do it.I had to know how those soft pink lips tasted.
