A January Chill

She tossed the envelope on the table and rose, ignoring her tea. But before she could reach the kitchen door, his voice stopped her.

“How are you going to explain to Witt that you don’t have your copy of the bid package?”

She shrugged, refusing to look at him.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he said under his breath. “Drink your damn tea. I’ll make a copy of it.”

She faced him then. “You’re going to bid?”

“No, I’m going to save your altruistic butt.” Snatching up the envelope, he disappeared into the back of the house, where his office was. Moments later, she heard the sound of a photocopier warming up.

He was going to bid, she told herself. There would be no reason for him to make a copy otherwise.

But even as she lied to herself, she knew she was doing it. He was just making sure she didn’t have any excuse to leave without her copy of the request for bids.

He was taking care of her again, the way he’d always tried to in the old days. Part of her wanted to resent it, and part of her was touched that he still cared enough to do it, even after all these long years.

A few minutes later he returned with two sheafs of papers. One was her copy, carefully restapled at the corner. The other, unstapled, was clearly his copy.

“There,” he said, returning hers. “Look, this isn’t some kind of morality attack, is it?”

Confused, she looked at him. “Morality?”

“Yeah. You’re not on some moral high horse, thinking that you’re going to teach us all to be better people, are you?”

“No. God no! I’m not that conceited.”

“No?” He put his palms on the table and leaned toward her, looking straight at her. “Then what is this, Joni? Are you saying our feelings aren’t valid? That Witt doesn’t have a right to be angry with me? That I don’t have a right to feel it’s better to avoid the man?”

She felt hurt, because she didn’t at all like the way he seemed to be seeing her. Her eyes started stinging, and her throat tightened up. Pressing her lips together, she snatched up the envelope, stuffed the papers into it and headed for the door, picking up her jacket as she went.

“Joni…”

She didn’t want to look at him, but something made her turn around anyway. “I think…I think I’m ashamed of my behavior,” she said thickly. “I think I’ve let Karen down. You and I were friends, Hardy. We were friends.”

Hardy stood at his open door, watching her dash down the street. Not until she stopped and pulled on her jacket did he close the door.

Damn her, he thought almost savagely. Damn her eyes. What was she doing, shaking all this old stuff out of the woodwork at this late date? What was she hoping to accomplish? Did she think some miracle was going to occur if he entered his bid? Did she think Witt was going to forget all his anger and bitterness just because Hardy Wingate could build a better hotel?

Not bloody likely.

“Shit!” He swore under his breath so his mother wouldn’t be disturbed. He could almost hate Joni right now. She’d dangled a plum under his nose, something he would have given his eyeteeth to do, something that would have put him in a position to take his mother to Hawaii.

And considering that Barbara wasn’t doing well at all, he desperately wanted to give her that trip. Since her pneumonia she’d been so frail, even needed a wheelchair some of the time. Her lungs had been damaged, leaving her breathless after even mild exertion. He needed to get her to a lower altitude, but she refused to go.

Swearing softly once more, he grabbed the bid packet from the table and went back to his office. A spacious two rooms he’d added to the house, it was like another world: gleaming real-wood paneling, wide picture windows looking out onto a snowy, night-darkened backyard, a freestanding fireplace. Worktables, model tables, drafting boards, two computers…

It was his eyrie. His escape. His dream-place. When he was here, he forgot everything except creating.

On the model table right now was the project he’d been working on for the last couple of months despite himself: a lodge for Witt Matlock. He had decided to fly in the face of the conventional for this one. Instead of following the Vail and Aspen trend toward Alpine looks in redwood and cedar, he’d chosen to carry the Victorian charm of Whisper Creek into the hotel. High spires, lots of gingerbread, a porch that wrapped around. Beautiful.

Lines that sang. A creation that deserved to be realized.

He stretched out his arm and prepared to knock the whole thing to the floor, to wipe out the insane dream that Joni had planted in his brain.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he dropped onto a stool and simply sat staring at the model. Seeing it not as it was, but as it could be when finished. Somebody else could build it, he told himself. It didn’t have to be Witt. Some other investor would come along, especially if Witt built a lodge.

That was what Witt probably wanted. A long, low building, the rustic log-cabin type. A male sort of retreat. That would be like Witt, to want something of that kind, not this Victorian froufrou.

But he knew he was lying to himself. He was lying to himself about a lot of things, and had been for many years. It was a poor excuse, realizing that deluding himself was the only way he could remain sane.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he clenched his fists and wondered why he couldn’t just keep on pretending. Wondered why Joni had suddenly decided she had to take action when this whole mess had been carefully buried years ago.

Did she suspect? he wondered. Had she always suspected at some unconscious level? And if Joni had, had Karen? And maybe Witt?

It was something he’d never really admitted to himself, and sometimes, over the past twelve years, he’d managed to convince himself he was imagining the whole thing.

But the heavy weight of guilt in his heart didn’t let him fool himself that easily. It wouldn’t let him forget for long.

The night he’d taken Karen out, the night she’d been killed…he’d begun thinking about breaking up with her.

Because he’d just started to realize that he was falling for someone else.

And that someone else had been Joni.

4

The drive to Denver took nearly four hours, even with the high speed limit on the interstate highway. Witt was impatient all the way, and glad of Hannah’s company to keep him distracted.

“I still don’t understand why you want me to come with you,” Hannah said as they were at last traveling through the suburbs, passing the Westminster exits.

“It’s simple,” he said, as he had yesterday when he’d insisted she ride shotgun. “I want a second opinion on the proposals.”

“But I don’t know anything about hotels, Witt.”

“But you know the kind of place you’d like to stay in if you were taking a vacation in the mountains.”

“I doubt that.” She looked at him with a vaguely amused smile. “It’s one woman’s opinion, Witt.”

“It’s one more than just mine.”

“Aren’t these things decided on the basis of cost?”

“Partly. That has to be taken into account, of course. But whatever it costs, I want to be sure it’s appealing.” He didn’t want some boxy-looking place that could be any one of a hundred other motels and hotels in the state. “I want something special.”

She nodded and settled back in her seat. Out of deference to her, Witt had troubled to lay a metal sheet across the floorboards so the wind of their travel wouldn’t be blowing up through the holes.

Hannah had never criticized his truck, unlike Joni, who was apt to tease him mercilessly about it. But Hannah didn’t seem to have very high expectations, which he found a little strange in a woman who’d been married to a doctor. Instead, she seemed content with whatever she had, meager though it might be. And she never criticized his truck.