Start Me Up

“I’m not sure.” Ben sighed. “But there’s a good possibility that someone attacked your dad from behind. Maybe when he was turning away from an argument, or maybe he didn’t even know someone was there. But that’s not much to go on. No one at the bar admitted to seeing anything after your dad left. He didn’t argue with anyone while he was there, at least not according to the notes. I’m going to have to conduct new interviews, but I’d like to keep it quiet as long as possible.”

“I…Okay. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” Ben answered quickly. “You don’t need to do anything right now. Like I said, I want to keep this quiet. I’ll just be making some inquiries, trying to fit the pieces together. But I didn’t want you in the dark about my suspicions.”

“He’s dead now,” Lori murmured. “It doesn’t matter.”

But of course it did.

L ORI COULDN’T SLEEP that night. She tossed and turned for hours. By four-thirty she felt as if she might implode, as if all the thoughts swirling through her head would finally pull her in on herself and—poof!—she’d be gone. Her father, her life, the things she’d wanted for herself…

She couldn’t take it anymore, so she got up, showered and headed for the garage to change out the fuel pump on Mr. Larsen’s Chevy.

The air outside was perfect and crisp, but Lori only cracked open the garage door a few inches. She didn’t want to take any chances with curious bears. Especially if they were looking for breakfast.

As she worked at wrestling the old pump out, her thoughts became clearer and slightly more painful.

What if Ben Lawson was right? What if her father had been deliberately hurt? His skull fractured, his brain damaged, his life taken away long before he’d died…What if someone had done that on purpose?

She grabbed a rag and wiped sweat—or tears—off her face, then bent back to her task.

She hadn’t complained about the turn her life had taken. Accidents happened. She’d given up on college and travel and dating, but she’d done it for her father, willingly. He would have done as much or more for her. So, no, she hadn’t complained about what she’d given up.

But giving up something was very different than having it taken away.

Her teen years had been filled with books and hopes and a steely-eyed determination to get into the college of her dreams. And she’d done it. She’d gone off to Boston College, and her father had been so proud. Then he’d been hurt, and she’d left that behind, but she was beginning to realize she’d left behind a lot more than her education.

Her twenties had revolved around caring for her dad and keeping his business going to pay for it. Her life had been spent in coveralls and boots, T-shirts and jeans. Any love affairs had been brief and unexciting.

But lately, even before Ben’s news, she’d been restless. She couldn’t just leave Tumble Creek. Couldn’t hop on a plane and start college again. There were simply too many bills that had piled up over the years. Caring for a semivegetative relative wasn’t cheap.

So she couldn’t simply walk away and start over. But she could change her life in smaller ways, and something inside her was calling on her to take action. Perhaps this was just a natural consequence of nearing thirty. But that restless feeling had rapidly grown more intense since Ben had dropped by.

Noticing that the sunlight was now bright yellow instead of pale pink, Lori glanced up at the clock. Seven-thirty. When she raised the garage door the rest of the way, the spectacular clatter echoed through the high-ceilinged garage. She strolled out into the sun and bright birdsong, but the gravel of the lot crunched and popped beneath her boots, distracting her from the beauty of the morning. She thought mournfully of the red polish she’d painted onto her toenails the night before and sighed.

Maybe she should try another fling.

Or maybe she should just order another box of books from Molly’s publisher.

Either way, after she stopped by Quinn’s lot tonight, she’d come home to take a bath and read a dirty story. Then maybe she’d think about going shopping for a pair of open-toed heels that would click against the ground instead of thud. She jogged back in to call Molly.

As she grabbed the phone, her thoughts were interrupted by a startling chirp from the receiver in her hand. She nearly dropped it, which would have pissed her off immensely. As it was, she’d had to replace two phones already this year. One had fallen victim to the big, clumsy hands of her least-favorite plow driver. The other had somehow gotten itself mixed up with a big tub of lube, which wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounded. Not for a phone anyway.

“Love’s Garage,” she snapped into the phone.

“Ms. Love?”

“Yes.”

“Hello! This is Christopher Tipton!” Chris always announced his name as if she’d won a prize.

Lori slumped onto a stool. “Hey, Chris.” She’d known him since grade school, but she had a feeling he wasn’t calling to reminisce. “What’s going on?”

“I was just wondering if you’ve had time to think over selling that parcel of land we discussed in February.”

That parcel of land, he said, as if it hadn’t been everything her dad had ever dreamed of. “Look, Chris, I’m sorry. It’s only been a few mon—” Actually, that wasn’t true anymore. It had been a whole year since her dad had died. Jesus. When had that happened?

“I know it’s difficult to consider. And I know it hasn’t been that long for you, but I think you’ll find that Tipton & Tremaine has put together a very generous offer—”

“I just…I need more time.”

He sighed. “I understand. Just promise you won’t consider any other offers without contacting me first. I can assure you that we want to preserve the natural beauty of the place. We’re not talking a big two-hundred-house development here. Just a small group of sportsmen’s cottages along the river.”

“Yeah, I get it,” she muttered, thinking about the kind of “cottages” his firm usually built. Something more along the lines of a grand hunting lodge that could easily house seven families. Or one enormously rich one. It had always struck her as funny that rich families needed so much space for their one-point-eight children.

“I won’t consider anything without calling you. Promise.”

“Okay, I’ll—”

“Bye.” Lori hung up and kicked the steel beam in front of her, glad she wasn’t wearing heels now.

J EEZ L OUISE , Lori thought as she turned onto Quinn Jennings’s so-called driveway; it looked more like a dirt trail. He really was roughing it up here. She’d never have even slowed if not for the Jennings’s Lot sign tacked to a fence post. The correct placement of the apostrophe made her smile.

Her truck scraped beneath the low branches of lodgepole pines and stirred up the scent of the green aspen. Even in August the air was crisp and cool in the shade. Boy, it would be cold up here in winter. Did he plan to stay year-round?

When she finally emerged from the trees, Lori felt a little shock. She hadn’t known what to expect, but it hadn’t been this. A tiny log cabin stood at the edge of a meadow blooming with wildflowers. The music of running water floated on the air, audible even over the heavy sound of her motor. It seemed more likely she’d find a herd of elk here than a construction site.

But when she drew closer, the backhoe appeared behind the cabin, frozen like a strange giraffe lowering its head in defeat. Lori drove toward it, not even noticing Quinn until she’d parked and gotten out.

He stood at a drafting table set up on the tiny back porch of the cabin, facing the sun-drenched trees to the east. It was no surprise that he didn’t look up when Lori slammed the door of her truck. Quinn had a singular skill of tuning out the whole world when he was working on something important to him. This was clearly important.

“Hey, Quinn,” she called anyway.

“Hey,” he answered, without even a glance.

She smiled at his bent head, noticing the glint of sun against his light brown hair. “I’m just going to check out the backhoe for you.”

“Sure.” He frowned ferociously at something on the big drafting sheet and began to draw. Hunched over like that, he looked shorter than his nearly six feet, but his shoulders seemed wider than she remembered. His hands…Well, his hands moved with that elegant precision she’d noticed even when she was a nerdy teenager.

Lori grinned at the sight of those hands moving over the paper. The nice thing about Quinn was that she could probably stand there for an hour watching him, and he’d never notice. Lovely man. No idle conversation to disturb her daydreaming. Still, she was going to lose her light if she didn’t hurry.

After tucking a brown curl behind her ear, she climbed up into the machine. It was an old model—a strange lemon color, freckled with rust spots and complete with a small dozing shovel on the front. Quinn must have picked it up from one of his contractors for a steal. And what man wouldn’t want to own a big ol’ construction machine? Lori didn’t even need one, but she was tempted to ask if she could borrow it when Quinn was done. Surely she could find some stuff to move around the junkyard behind her house.

The key was already in the ignition, so Lori turned it. There was a faint electric hum, but nothing else. She let out a breath at the sound. Good, this was probably something she could fix. If it had been a problem with the hydraulics, Quinn would’ve had to call in someone more expensive.

She tried again, listening more closely. It was almost certainly the starter, and hopefully this model had an electric starter and not one of those air-start systems. If it was an air-start, she’d have to refer him to a diesel specialist after all. Lori jumped down to take a look.

Half an hour later, she wiped her hands on a rag and spent a few minutes writing down part numbers and brands. She could fix this, no problem.