Page 4

I’m just getting started.”

CHAPTER 4

HANNAH

The ringing of my cell was a welcome distraction. I needed to get my mind off Ross. It had been just two days since seeing him, and I couldn’t shake his intense gaze or the way his fingers caressed my hand.

It was Addy London. Well, Addy Beauchamp now. And we’d been discussing getting together to iron out the art therapy class I wanted to propose for the Triple R clients. “Hi, Hannah. Do you have time this week to meet me at the lodge?”

“Hey there. Um, you sure you don’t want to meet in town? We could go to Salvatore’s for lunch. My treat.” Hopefully, Addy didn’t pick up on the desperation in my voice.

Younger by several years, she hadn’t seen her cousin’s behavior toward me in high school. In fact, I wasn’t sure what her relationship with Ross was now. And I really didn’t want to take the chance of running into him since I’d heard he was staying at Kane’s place on Pineville Mountain.

The sound of Addy’s son filtered through the speaker, a momentary reprieve to reset my nerves.

Her soft tone as she answered her child’s plea for another snack made me smile. “No Matty. Lunch is almost ready. Go clean up your toys, and after my phone call, we’ll track down Daddy, okay?”

Her son let out an enthusiastic “Yes,” followed by the sweetest giggle, and my heart skipped a beat. Hmm. My reaction to overhearing the sweet back and forth between mother and child was unexpected. I looked down to see that I’d been absent mindedly rubbing a hand over my chest.

“Sorry about that. He’s going through another growth spurt, and his appetite has been rivaling his daddy's lately. Okay, so back to business. If you could come up, that would really help me out. With my due date just a couple of weeks away, I’ve promised Ridge I’d keep my trips to town to a minimum and then only with him. He’s so worried that this baby will come just as fast as Matteo did.”

I’d almost forgotten she was pregnant again. Most all the men working at the Triple R Lodge in the last few years had married and begun having kids. A good number of Pineville citizens liked to gossip about the population explosion happening on the mountain.

It seemed that any single woman who visited the Triple R had found herself soon attached to an eligible bachelor working for or with the former Army Rangers as they converted an old hunting lodge and the surrounding acreage into a retreat for veterans and first responders.

In fact, the locals now believed that there was something in the air, or even the water up on Pineville Mountain.

But this was Addy, and I’d been wanting to offer this type of painting class for as long as I could remember. So setting aside my apprehension of running into Ross, I answered, “Of course. What time works best?” Once we agreed on a time and day to meet, I noticed Jett through the front window just before he entered my studio.

The renovation on the first floor of my art studio had finally been completed, and I’d just received sign-off from the building inspector. I hoped to have a grand opening after the New Year.

By way of greeting, my brother in his gravelly voice everyone assumed he’d acquire from smoking, but had resulted from taking a fastball to his larynx when he’d been playing ball in college, looked around the open space and groused, “Remind me again how many windows you had to replace?”

The two-story white brick mid-century building had needed a ton of TLC, and new windows. I’d had his support in buying the run-down warehouse, but why he had to keep harping on the windows, I had no idea other than he was being his usual pain in the ass big brother self.

“Twenty-two.” I sighed with every ounce of sisterly annoyance I could muster.

“Huh, they look good. Okay, so let’s get a move on with the tour. I’ve got to meet Ross in less than an hour. He wants to talk about a design idea he has for a tattoo, and I⁠—”

“What? You’re going to bail out on the grand tour so that you can meet up with the guy who got his jollies putting me down in front of all my friends, and yours in high school?” A flood of unexpected bitterness filled me as those memories hit hard.

I was transported back to two thousand ten, my freshman year, and every school assembly. But the assemblies weren’t the problem. My brother’s best friend was. Ross and his unending catcalls were meant to embarrass or bait me into an argument. “Dudes, here comes Hannah. If you’re thinking of asking her out, just know she’ll bore you to death with her constant chatter about art.”

Then, one particular flashback hit hard. It had been the one time I thought maybe, okay, secretly dreamed that Ross had been hiding his true feelings for me behind his dickhead routine. A guy I’d been kind of crushing on had stopped by my locker, hooked his arm over the top of the metal door and started flirting with me.

Not only was I thrilled, but I was also grateful that we were pretty much alone in the hallway. My excitement was short-lived. Over the guy’s shoulder, I saw Ross turn the corner and spot us. And for a split second, his eyes narrowed, and to my fifteen-year-old brain, I thought I saw a flash of anger in his dark brown eyes directed not at me, but at the guy hanging off my locker.

For one precious moment, hope bloomed. Was the bad boy of my dreams going to confess he actually liked me because someone else was paying attention to me?

As Ross marched closer to us, his expression turned darker. His eyes seemed to drill a hole into the back of the guy’s skull. I held my breath and kept my expression neutral. But somehow I couldn’t hold back a smile as Ross stopped next to the boy whose name I'd now long forgotten.

Then, in true Ross style and with the disdainful smirk he always gave me, he directed his venom at me and not the boy who never did ask me out. I’d learned to hide my feelings for my brother’s friend from that day forward.

As the memory faded, my brain went back to the question I couldn’t shake since seeing him in the deli. Why was he back? And why hadn’t I been able to put him out of my thoughts since he returned? Seeing him again for what amounted to all of two minutes, I’d since become a hormonal mess.

My feelings for the now even sexier tormentor of my youth had once again started messing with my sleep. In fact, my battery-operated boyfriend had been employed last night, and yet I was still on edge.

“Sis? Earth to Hannah. Is there something between you and Ross that I missed back then? You are really acting weird about him. Wait, did you two⁠—?”