Saratoga Falls: The Complete Love Story Series Read online

  “Oh,” I breathe, feeling a pang of disappointment. “Okay.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. It was a pleasure getting to know you a bit more. Maybe next time we can finish the tour, and who knows, maybe I’ll even ride.” He winks at me.

  Though I smile, I’m sure it fades when he hesitates before he offers me his hand. I glance down at it, then slide mine into his. The soft sensation of his thumb grazes the back of my hand, and I still—my breathing hitches and my body temperature rises enough I’m worried he can tell. There’s no mistaking his touch for anything other than what it is—flirting.

  My gaze shoots from our conjoined hands to the smile on his face. “Hopefully I’ll be seeing you soon,” he says, then he turns to leave.

  Sixteen

  Reilly

  Just as I’m pulling on a clean t-shirt, Sam’s truck comes up the drive. I drop my pillow and duffel by the door, and I’m headed to the kitchen to grab my ice chest when I hear Sam and Nick’s banter and the slam of two car doors.

  “. . . you wish, buddy,” Sam finishes, and I like that I don’t hear any creaking as they step up onto the porch.

  “Nice!” Nick says as he comes into the house. “I like the new porch. Now she just needs a paint job.”

  “Doesn’t everything?” I say, and when I look up, Sam’s paused in the doorway. Her mouth’s agape. Her light brown eyes are lined with black make-up as usual, but they’re wide, and her blonde wavy hair hangs over her shoulders as she peers around at the demolished living room, lacking furniture or even a decent floor.

  “Wow,” she says, “this place looks . . .” She scans everything—the bare wood beams, the plywood, the water stains on the ceiling.

  “Better than it did before,” I finish for her. Over the last fifteen days I’ve torn everything out of the house, save for the kitchen, the bathroom, and the exterior walls.

  When her eyes meet mine, I think I notice a flick of sympathy—which I don’t understand—but she offers me a shy smile and shoves her hands into her back pockets.

  “Have you decided if you’re changing anything up?” Nick asks, knowing I have zero plans yet for the inside.

  “I think I’ll just leave it. Make it new, but leave the bare bones. I don’t want this to be a year-long project,” I say, and pull a bottle of water from the fridge.

  “That’s right, you’re a man with a timeline,” Nick says.

  “You started tearing the place apart without a plan?” Sam asks, incredulous. Her gaze still scours the space, and I wonder if she’s reconciling it with the images she remembers from before. Maybe she’s remembering the last time we were in this house together, right before I left for the Army. Unwanted memories of her crying in my arms on the porch, telling me how much she loves me, how much she’ll miss me fill my head. She’d said she was willing to wait for me, forever, if that’s what it took.

  “I mean . . .” She tears her gaze away from the house and finally meets my eyes. “What now?”

  I shrug. “It all needed to come out anyway.” I don’t mention that the demolition has proved extremely therapeutic since I’ve been home. I’ve needed mind-numbing exhaustion and busywork more than I’ve needed much of a remodeling plan.

  Sam walks around the living room slowly, like she’s taking in every missing detail. “I guess I’m not surprised, all the commotion I’ve been hearing the past couple weeks.” A small smile curves her lips, and I like that I put it there and not that sleazy, Audi-driving banker she was batting her eyes at. Beating the hell out of that board needlessly wasn’t one of my most shining moments, but it made me feel better nonetheless.

  “Just think,” Nick says. “Once everything is finished, it will be a whole new house, and probably just the way you want it. Maybe you’ll decide not to leave after all.”

  I double-check my duffel bag for a toothbrush, paste, and soap. “Or maybe I’ll be so sick of it I won’t be able to leave fast enough.”

  Sam tears her gaze from the hole in a broken living room window long enough to look at me, considering something before she looks away again.

  “Or maybe that,” Nick says, but my focus settles back on Sam.

  I step up beside her and nod to the window she can’t seem to peel her eyes away from. “He was probably drunk one night and fell into it or threw something at it,” I explain, because I know she’s wondering why it’s broken. I have nothing to hide from her. She knew my father, she knew the kind of man he was.

  Nick grunts and picks up my ice chest to take it outside.

  “We should probably—” I start, but a small smile on Sam’s face gives me pause. “What?” I ask.

  Sam looks at me and blushes. She clears her throat. “I was just remembering the daybed that was here, like the one in my room. I liked it,” she says quickly and turns to leave. I don’t tell her that the cushions were eaten through by a rodent, no doubt, when I first arrived.

  Sam walks over to the door and picks up my pillow. “Is this going, too?” she asks and points to my duffel.

  I wonder if the color on her cheeks is the remnant of a scandalous memory, the time we made out on the daybed and she ran giggling out the back door once we’d heard my dad’s El Camino pulling up the drive. I have the sudden urge to kiss her right here as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ll get it,” I say and shrug my duffle over my shoulder. She heads out the front door and toward her truck.

  “Do we need the Rumbler?” I ask, picking up the tent and sleeping bag I found in the attic as I step outside.

  Sam’s shoulders tense as she tosses my pillow in the cab of her truck. “No, it’s fine. Everything’s already loaded in my truck,” she says.

  Just when I’m about to ask where Mac is, incessant honking and blaring country music booms up my driveway.

  “We’re taking the Jeep, too?”

  “Ha!” Nick laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, Reilly . . . how funny you are. Mac takes the Jeep up because she has too much shit. She needs her own car.”

  “Hey, fellas!” Mac calls. “Time to get this party started!” She climbs down from the Wrangler, shorts too short and her chest almost pouring out of her tank top. Other than looking more like a woman than the girl I met in high school, she hasn’t changed much. Despite the fact that we’re going camping, she’s still as beautiful and manicured as ever—not a chocolate-colored wisp of hair is out of place, and her shiny lips glisten in the sunlight as she smiles that mega-white smile that would make any man stumble, maybe even fall.

  Sam tries to hold Mac at arm’s length, but Mac’s taller and smacks a kiss on Sam’s cheek without breaking a sweat. But it’s Sam’s soft, pink lips I can’t get out of my mind.

  “Great, thanks,” Sam says, wiping the goop off her cheek. “I already need a shower,” she teases, and Mac flicks her, both of them looking at the Jeep, loaded to the gills with bags and boxes.

  The sound of Sam’s giggle stirs something inside me, even if it’s been years since I’ve heard it directed at me. My gut clenches as I realize what’s happening to me.

  “You still got it bad,” Nick says as he steps up beside me. He shakes his head. “You poor bastard.”

  Though I elbow him, I know he’s right, and it pisses me off a little bit. She broke my heart, and it doesn’t matter anyway because I’m leaving eventually. A small, distant voice tells me that there might still be a chance for us, though, and I want to believe it, even if I know I shouldn’t.

  “You get a chance to talk to her yet?” And I know what Nick means.

  I let out a deep breath and cross my arms over my chest. “No, and I’m not sure this weekend is good timing, either,” I say, worried any conversation deeper than the state of my house or the weather might create even more tension between us, especially when we’re stuck together for the next two days.

  “Got it,” Nick says and whistles for the girls. “Load up, people. We’ve got an hour ’til we get over the mountain, and the sooner I can
start drinking, the better.”

  “He’s anxious because Savannah’s coming,” Mac says, and she punches him in the shoulder.

  “Ouch!”

  I’m glad to hear Nick’s finally gotten over the unattainable Bethany.

  “Give me a sec,” I say, and head back inside to make sure all the lights are off and the windows are closed. I peek through the window, making sure Petey has enough food and water, and step outside. I lock the front door behind me out of habit, and Mac’s already squealing with glee.

  “He asked you out! How could you not have told me that, like immediately?”

  “Excuse me, Miss I-can’t-answer-the-phone-while-I’m-packing-in-case-I-forget-anything-because-it-would-be-the-end-of-the-world. Besides, he called right as I was leaving my house.”

  I glance behind me, jiggling the handle once to make sure it’s locked, and then head toward Nick, who’s checking that everything’s secured in the back of the truck.

  Mac squeals again and throws her arms around Sam. “It’s about freakin’ time, Sam. I thought you were going to be celibate for the rest of your life at the rate you were going.” Mac pauses. “You said yes, didn’t you?”

  Although I’m not certain, I assume I know who they’re talking about, and even though I try not to let it bother me, my jaw aches with tightness.

  Mac looks at me, and when her gaze lingers, Sam looks back at me, too. The easy expression on her face falters. “We can talk about it later.”

  “Sam.” I can’t help but say it. “You know that guy’s a tool, right?”

  Her gaze hardens on me. I know I’m digging myself into a hole, but I can’t help it.

  “I know it shouldn’t be my business, but that guy?” It’s Mike all over again.

  “The ladies don’t care what we think, man,” Nick says, and he pushes me toward the truck.

  “Do you like him?” I ask Nick, but he throws his hands up. “I do not get involved in these kinda things.” Nick gestures to the truck. “Ladies, please. This train’s a-leaving.” He climbs into the driver’s seat.

  “Well, you’re definitely riding with me,” Mac says, ushering Sam toward the Jeep. “I need more details about Mr. Dreamboat.”

  “I’ve mentioned him like, once.”

  I frown and open the passenger door of Sam’s truck. That no one can see what I see baffles me. I’m about to step into the cab when I sense her right behind me.

  “I, uh . . .” I smell sunblock and vanilla before I even turn around. Her eyes shift from mine and her expression is fixed again, less open than before.

  “I need my bag,” she says and tries to reach past me. She’s five foot six to my six foot two, so I reach in and grab her bag from the bench seat. “Thanks,” she says, and doesn’t look at me when she accepts it, but her fingers brush against mine before she jogs back over to the Jeep. I’m relieved when the F-250 rumbles to life, drowning out the giggling girls in the Jeep behind us.

  Seventeen

  Sam

  With all of our tents up, our beds rolled out, our bellies full, and Mac’s famous hot toddies brewing on the camping stove, I stretch in my seat in front of the campfire I’ve built to blazing. I’m not used to the listlessness of not being at home with my chores and horses to tend to.

  I spot Reilly’s oversized flip-flops by the fire, and I wonder how I’ve come to find myself on a camping trip with the one person I thought I’d never see again—and the one person who makes me crazy confused.

  He’s only here for a short while. I keep telling myself this because if I don’t, my mind starts wandering, and I start thinking about unrealistic possibilities and my mind spirals into the past all over again.

  Mac curses quietly to herself at the camping stove, and a laugh bubbles out of me; with it, all of my concerns evaporate too, at least for now. With the guys gone fishing, us ladies have some girl time to ourselves, and I try to take comfort in the fact that it’s just Mac and me, watching the sunset.

  “Almost ready,” Mac says from her cauldron at the stove. I catch her sniffing the vapors rising from it as she methodically stirs the contents. It’s funny to see Mac at a stove, though I know it shouldn’t be. She’s the glue that keeps her family together at home, and she probably cooks for her dad and brother every single night. But here she looks more like the twenty-three-year-old that she is—she’s the picture of an enchantress or wielder of the dark arts more than a Susie Homemaker.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask, not comfortable with the idleness of sitting there just watching.

  “Nope . . . I think you get to relax.”

  “Thanks for putting all of this together again this year, Mac,” I say, more than grateful to have a friend that loves me enough to force me out of my routines. My camping chair squeaks and settles as I curl my legs beneath me and impatiently wait for Mac to finish our drinks. “Even if I’d wanted to miss this,” I say, quickly adding, “and I didn’t, I know you would never let me. I appreciate that.”

  “Good.” Finally, Mac looks up and winks at me before she leans over to inhale the steam rising from the pot of intoxicating libations once more. “I know you’re trying to get as much done as you can while Nick’s out of school, but you guys need some fun time, too. Otherwise, what’s the point of being crazy, unpredictable twenty-year-olds? You only live once, right?” Picking up a bottle of brandy, she removes the cap and dumps another cup inside.

  “You wouldn’t, by chance, be trying to get me drunk tonight, would you?” I raise an eyebrow because I know she is.

  She balks. “I would never.”

  I snort. “Right.” Knowing she’s around to keep me laughing and distracted—having a good time for once—makes me feel lighter. “Tomorrow’s going to be so fun,” I say. “I can’t wait to get out on the water.” I rub my forehead and gaze up at the pale blushing sky.

  “Yeah, we should probably turn in somewhat early tonight, otherwise we’ll get a late start tomorrow morning.” Mac peers around the campsite. “Where are the guys, anyway? They sort of just . . . disappeared after grub,” Mac says as she ladles a mug of her famous brew.

  “Fishing,” I say. “Which reminds me . . .” I lock eyes with her as she hands me my cup. “You forgot to mention Bethany would be joining us this weekend. It must’ve slipped your mind.”

  Mac straightens, her brow furrowing and her eyes turning round and guilt-ridden, the way they do when she feels like absolute shit. “I didn’t know until this morning,” she’s quick to say, and her palms fly up. “I promise. I don’t want her here any more than you do. Trust me, the way she fucks with Nick’s head . . .” Mac waves the thought away, one hand on her hip. “At least she’s staying with a friend at a different site.”

  Reilly and Bethany, together with me all weekend . . . “Awesome,” I mutter. When Mac’s expression grows more apologetic and pitiful, I can’t help but forgive her. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” Repositioning the hot mug in my hands, I blow on its contents and take a sip. I close my eyes and let the warm liquid ease the tightness in my body. “God, these are so damn good,” I say, feeling the honey and tinge of lemon coat my throat and flow down into my stomach.

  In a few steps, Mac is back at the stove, smiling to herself as she ladles a mug full for herself. “There’s an art to it, you know.”

  I take another sip and lick the sweetness from my lips, savoring every last trace of it. “I’m not surprised.” The ladle clangs against the metal pot as she drops it inside. “What’s your secret?”

  Mac’s eyebrows dance as she saunters over to sit with me beside the fire. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  I raise an eyebrow, and she waves my feigned impatience away.

  “Two tea bags and use brandy—and only brandy. Not rum or whiskey. Brandy has a smoothness to it that the others don’t. Although whiskey and honey is a really nice combination, if you’re in the mood.”

  I analyze my mug, watching the steam rise from it, before I bring it to m
y nose to breathe in the scent. Yep. It’s spicy, but doesn’t burn the nostrils. “It’s sooo good.” I take another sip and gaze out at the red glow our campsite is bathed in as the sun sets.

  Once again, we’ve commandeered the best camping space in Snake Canyon. A stretch of redwoods and pine trees are the only things separating us from the river; they provide shade during the sweltering afternoons and act as a windbreaker at night when the breeze picks up.

  It’s not long before the sun disappears behind the surrounding mountains and the sky turns the color of midnight. A drove of stars shine bright in the sky. With bated breath, Mac and I wait for a comet to fall from the endless space above. I briefly wonder if I could come up with a different wish for each and every star I saw falling, or if it would always be the same, unanswered one.

  Exhaling thoughts of Papa, I watch the stars flutter and dance above me and realize I’ve had more than my share of hot toddies for one night. I’m too much of a lightweight to keep up with Mac, or any of them for that matter.

  “We can never stop doing this,” Mac whispers. “No matter what. We have to do this every year . . . forever.”

  I smile happily. “You got it.”

  “I’m serious,” Mac says, her voice more staid. “If we didn’t do this every year, we’d never spend time together, not real, uninterrupted time.”

  Trying to squelch the guilt that lingers with the truth of not being an attentive friend the past few years, I change the subject. “Who’s running the show while you’re up here, relaxing in the mountains with me and acting your own age, instead of doing your usual head-mistress-of-the-shop routine?”

  “Just Dad, I guess. It’s the weekend—he’ll do fine, as long as he doesn’t answer the phones.”

  We both start laughing, knowing that Cal’s probably losing his mind, although it’s only the first day of our trip.

  Mac peers around the campsite. “Are Reilly and Nick still fishing, seriously? How boring.”