A dusting of snow overnight had freshened up the landscape. While Ranger searched for the ball, she shoveled some sand onto the more treacherous sections of her front walk.
Nick came out of the house, his coat open, his hair tousled. Rose hoped he couldn’t see her reaction to him—not that it would be a surprise. He knew. She’d made it plain in June that she found him physically irresistible.
He headed down the steps, not looking as if he’d been attacked twelve hours earlier or had slept on a couch. “Damn,” he said with an exaggerated shiver, “spring didn’t come overnight, did it? It’s still winter.”
“The sunrise is earlier. It was a gorgeous one this morning. The entire sky turned shades of pink and lavender.”
“You have a beautiful spot here.”
“I do. I feel very fortunate.” She emptied her shovel onto a slick spot at the bottom of the steps. “How are you this morning?”
Nick grinned. “I feel like I got hit in the head with a shovel last night.”
She saw that the bloody parts of his scrape had scabbed over and were healing nicely. “I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt. You kept whoever it was—”
“Feehan.”
“You kept him from doing serious damage to you.”
Nick hunched his shoulders against a sudden breeze. “If he’d landed a clean hit, he had time to stuff my body in a snowbank and wait for you to come back from your brother’s place.”
Rose leaned the offending shovel against the garage. “The odds were against him. That’s why he ran. He knew he couldn’t win.”
“I made coffee,” Nick said, not arguing with her. “I figure we can go to the lodge for goat cheese omelets.”
She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic. “They’re good. Goat cheese, fresh chives—”
“I’m sold.”
“You’re just cold.”
“That, too.” Ranger leaped out of the snowbank and catapulted to Nick with a bright green tennis ball in his mouth. He laughed. “If there’s a ball within a mile, a golden retriever will find it. I had a golden as a kid. Bo. He was great company when my dad was at sea.”
“Most of the time Ranger’s all the company I need.”
“I’m not going there,” Nick said, taking the slobbery ball and tossing it into the snow. Ranger leaped after it, more agile now that he’d warmed up.
For a few seconds, Rose let herself imagine that this sexy, confident, successful man had come to Vermont just to see her, with no other agenda. Would she want such a man in her life? Her life would change, that was for sure.
Her golden retriever returned with the tennis ball. She took it from him, lavishing praise as she glanced at Nick. “I want to go back out to the Whittaker place later this morning,” she said.
He gave a curt nod. “I do, too. We can go together.”
Ranger led the way up the front steps, the wind blowing hard now, the sunlight gleaming on his golden coat. Rose paused and smiled back at Nick. “The air feels good, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about a wildfire sparking out here in the snow. That fire last June—I just happened to be in Los Angeles working with firefighters on canine searches. I could just as easily have been here.”
“But you weren’t,” Nick said.
“You never said anything to Sean about us, did you?”
“I kept my promise to you.”
“Ah. A gentleman.”
Nick stood next to her at the front door. “If I’d been a gentleman, I’d have taken you back to his place that night.”
She turned and looked out at the mountains in the distance, felt Cameron Mountain looming behind her. She was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “Derek didn’t like to take no for an answer.”
“Rose,” Nick said, his voice dark.
“I made him take no with me. Not soon enough, but I did it. He was a mistake. A short-lived, stupid mistake. He was a mean drunk, and he wasn’t nice when I refused him. We’d been seeing each other, quietly. Never here.” She kept her tone even, as if she were giving a post-search report. “We went skiing, had dinner together a few times. I thought he was…I don’t know. Interesting. Action-oriented. He wasn’t one of the usual suspects involved in my search-and-rescue work.”
“A fresh face,” Nick said.
She nodded, determined to get this over with. “He was fascinated by what I do, or pretended to be. He loved Vermont. I was in the mood for a little romance in my life.”
“That’s not how it worked out.”
“It never does work out that way, does it?”
“Flowers, chocolates. Romance isn’t that hard.” Nick patted Ranger and shrugged. “It might get tough if I had to write a poem.”
She smiled at him. “I’ll settle for flowers and chocolate.”
“Cutshaw?”
“He was about conquering and control. He assumed I’d go along with him without question, but I said no. He didn’t like it. He was nasty. Threatening, belittling, abusive. He didn’t physically hurt me. He wouldn’t have dared.”
“Verbal abuse can flatten people.”
“Yes, it can. He was very manipulative. Moody and mercurial. I never knew if I would get the Bad Derek or the Good Derek. I didn’t put up with it for long, but I put up with it for too long. I was in a tough place and I wanted to believe in the Good Derek.” She was aware of Nick’s eyes on her, but she concentrated on the view of the mountains she loved. “I don’t like talking about this.”
“Understood.”
“Derek went from calling me at inappropriate times to being openly hostile after I told him I didn’t want a relationship with him. He never left a trail, and I wasn’t sure who’d believe me that he was as awful as he was.” She shifted her gaze to the evergreen shrubs, the trampled snow from last night. “Vivian Whittaker was psychologically abusive toward her husband. I’m not saying that’s why he did what he did.”
“You got away from Cutshaw. Lowell stayed with his wife.”
“Derek and I saw each other for less than six weeks. He thought he was doing me a favor by being interested in me at all. He was used to women falling all over him. He couldn’t believe I would walk away.” She turned back to Nick. “He made sure I knew he didn’t think I was anything special.”
Nick tucked a few windblown strands of hair off her face, out of her eyes. “You’re beautiful, Rose, and you’re sexy as hell.”
“Sure, Nick. I’m out here in one of my father’s old flannel shirts.”
He grinned at her. “With your blue eyes standing out against the snow and your cheeks pink with the wind and the cold.”
She groaned. “Sure, Nick.”
“Cutshaw was a fool if he treated you as anything but a strong, desirable woman.” Pain flashed in his eyes. “Me, too.”
“You’re nothing like he was.” She tugged open the storm door. “I told you about Derek because of what’s happened in the past forty-eight hours. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
She felt her throat tighten. “You’re good-looking, rich, rugged. You can have any woman—”
“No, I can’t. No one can, and who’d want to? Come on. Give me a break. Some guys would say one woman’s plenty.”
“Some women would say no man is fine.”
“From what I remember, that wouldn’t be you.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Bastard.”
He slipped an arm around her middle and drew her close to him. “I’m sorry Derek Cutshaw was such a son of a bitch, but he’s in the past. He was in the past when you and I got together.”
“Got together, Nick?”