Copper Lake Secrets

“Come on, buddy, let’s get settled.” Jones climbed out and stood back, but Mick didn’t stir. “Mick. Out.”

The dog gave a great sigh, but didn’t move.

“C’mon, Mick, out of the truck now.” He stared at the dog, and the dog stared back.

He’d never had a battle of wills with an animal that he hadn’t won, and today wasn’t going to be the first. He snapped his fingers, an unspoken command that Mick always responded to, but the mutt just whined once and hunkered in lower.

“I guess we know who’s the boss in this family.”

Jones started. He’d been so intent on the dog that he hadn’t even heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and apparently neither had Mick. He reacted now, though, stepping onto the seat, sniffing the air that brought a faint hint of perfume and smiling, damn it, as he jumped from the truck and landed at Reece’s feet.

She offered her hand for Mick to sniff, then crouched in front of him, scratching between his ears. “You’re a big boy, aren’t you? And a pretty one. I don’t blame you for wanting to stay in the truck. I don’t much like this place, either. But we do what we gotta do, don’t we, sweetie?”

Jones watched her slender fingers work around Mick’s ears, rubbing just the way the dog liked. Hell, Jones liked a pretty woman rubbing him the same way, and Reece certainly was pretty crouched there, her khaki shorts hugging her butt, her white shirt shifting as her muscles did. For the first time since she’d climbed out of her car a few hours ago, she looked almost relaxed, and he doubted he’d ever seen her look that trusting.

Did she ever offer that much trust to a human being? To a man?

“He’s usually not that stubborn,” Jones remarked, leaning against the truck while Mick offered a toothy smile. It was almost as if the mutt was gloating: I’ve got her attention and you don’t.

“Animals are sensitive.”

“You have dogs?”

“Three. All throwaways. Like me.” The last two words must have slipped out, because her gaze darted to him, guarded and a bit anxious, and a flush colored her cheeks. He knew from Glen that she’d had abandonment issues that summer. Her father hadn’t chosen to die in that accident, but the end result was the same: he was gone. And her mother had preferred Europe with her friends over taking care of her daughter.

Jones could sort of relate, except from the other side of the matter: he was the one who’d done the abandoning. Had it cost Reece’s mother as much as it had him? Did she share even a fraction of his regret?

“Mick was dumped near a job site. When he got tired of waiting for his owners to come back, he decided to live with me.”

“Lucky you. After I fed the first stray outside the store where I work, he brought two more with him the next day. They’ve been living with me ever since.”

“Too bad you couldn’t bring them with you.” Traveling with dogs could be a hassle, but their company was worth it.

“Dogs in Grandmother’s house? And not even purebreds?” She scoffed as she stood.

Reaching into the bed of the truck, he took out his suitcase and laptop, then started for the porch. To his surprise, the rustle of plastic told him she’d taken out the grocery sacks and was following.

Mick jumped onto the low porch while Jones and Reece went to the steps in the center. He propped open the screen door, unlocked the door, then stood back so she and the dog could enter first.

The door opened directly into the living room, with the kitchen a few feet to the right. To maximize space, there was no hallway, just a door off the living room that went into a bedroom. He guessed the bathroom could only be reached from that room.

“I always wanted to see this place.” Reece set the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and automatically began unpacking them.

He laid his own bags against the wall. “You lived here and never came inside?”

The refrigerator, a recent model, closed with a thud after she put the milk and eggs inside. “Did I say I lived here?”

The undercurrent of wariness to her voice stirred its own undercurrents in Jones. He, who’d always been cautious of what he said to country people, never should have made such a stupid slip. “I just assumed you grew up around here.”

She considered the words a moment as she crumpled the plastic grocery bags together, then shrugged. “I stayed here for a few months when I was thirteen. My cousin Mark was here, too, that summer. This cottage was off-limits to us. Grandmother said it was for guests, not hooligans who ran wild.”

He forced a grin. “Hooligans? She actually called you hooligans?”

Her own smile was half-formed. “She did. Grandmother had—has—very exacting standards that we often failed to meet.”

Jones didn’t know about Mark, but apparently Reece was still something of a failure in Miss Willa’s opinion. The old woman certainly didn’t approve of Reece’s long absence or missing her grandfather’s funeral. That was the sort of thing that got a person disinherited by a prideful woman like Willadene Howard.

Was that why Reece had come now, because her grandfather was dead and her grandmother was nearing eighty? Did she want to get back in Miss Willa’s good graces before she passed and left everything to cousin Mark?

Or maybe she’d heard about Glen’s stuff being found. Maybe she wanted to make sure there was no suspicion, no effort to find out what happened to the boy who’d saved her life and, apparently, lost his own as a consequence.

Jones watched her wander through the living room, giving Mick on the sofa an affectionate pat as she passed, and hoped neither suspicion proved to be true. Maybe she had come to realize over the years that family was important. Maybe she regretted not making peace with old Arthur before his death and didn’t want similar regrets when Miss Willa was gone.

God knew Jones had regrets about his family. He liked his life. He loved his job. But if he could do it all over again, he couldn’t say he would make the same choices. There was a lot he hated about his family’s way of life, but … he’d missed so much. He hadn’t gotten to stand up at his brothers’ and sisters’ weddings. He had nieces and nephews he’d never met. Birthdays and holidays and anniversaries, celebrations and funerals, good times and bad …

Reece broke the silence. “The furniture looks like it’s been here since the cottage was built.”

“It probably has. There’s a fortune in Chinese antiques in this room alone.” He opened the drapes, letting in the afternoon light, before sitting on an unpadded imperial rector’s chair. “The Howard who originally settled here was a sea captain. There’s a maritime phrase, Fair winds and following seas. A wish for good weather. That’s where the name comes from.”

Head tilted to one side, she sat beside Mick, resting her hand on his back. “I didn’t know that. I told you, I didn’t learn the family history.”

“He acquired treasures from all over the world. I’m sure Miss Willa’s given you the rundown of some things in the house.”

“Some. I was always terrified, using lamps and dishes and furniture that were irreplaceable. Being afraid made me feel clumsy and insignificant.”

There it was again—that hurt. Vulnerability. She’d grown up. She’d gone from cute and awkward to beautiful, from a child to a capable woman, but it didn’t seem as if time had done a thing to change that part of her.

Seem. Which meant it wasn’t automatically true. She could be a world-class manipulator. After all, she still hadn’t acknowledged that they’d met before. She hadn’t asked the obvious question: How is your brother? After all, she’d spent a lot more time with Glen that summer than with Jones.

Leaning back in the chair, he rested his ankle on the other knee. “Those months you stayed here … this must have been a great place to run wild. All the woods, the creek, the river … you and Mark must have had some fun times.”

“Not particularly.”

“You didn’t get along?”

A jerky shrug. “He was a fourteen-year-old boy. I was his thirteen-year-old girl cousin. I think we were genetically predisposed to not get along.”

“So what did a thirteen-year-old girl do for fun out here alone?”

Her expression shifted, darkness seeping into her eyes, caution into her voice. “I read a lot. Spent as much time away from the house as I could.”

The reading part was true; she’d been lying in a patch of sunlight near the creek reading the first time he and Glen had seen her, and she’d always brought books along every other time.

“Didn’t you have someone to play with? A neighbor’s kids?”

The caution intensified before she answered on a soft exhalation. “No.”

Realizing he was holding his own breath, Jones forced it out and did his best to ignore the disappointment inside him. Okay. So she was a liar. It wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t even a real disappointment. She was a Howard, and Howards were part of that segment of rich, powerful people who felt money raised them above everyone else. They weren’t bound by the rules that applied to everyone else. They were, as Miss Willa made clear at every turn, better.