Prologue
Whitefire Lake, California
The Present
NADINE WARNE RUBBED the kinks from the back of her neck and considered taking a bubble bath to soothe her stiff joints. How long had it been since she’d allowed herself the luxury of an hour soaking in a tub of hot water?
Years.
She simply didn’t have the time. With the tiring job of cleaning other people’s houses, a smaller business on the side that she was trying to get off the ground while single-parenting two rambunctious preteen boys, there didn’t seem to be a minute she could call her own.
“Such is life,” she told herself pragmatically.
She carried her mops and pails and boxes of wax and cleansers into the house and stashed them inside the cupboard near the back door of her small cabin. The house wasn’t much, but it was paid for and the land it rested on, on the south side of the lake, would be valuable someday. She was counting on it. This small plot of land was her investment for the future—her boys’ education, and nothing, not heaven or hell, would take it from her. She’d been robbed of the education promised to her, and ever since then she’d vowed to herself that her children wouldn’t have to make that particular sacrifice.
And she wouldn’t be as foolish as her father and believe in a rich man’s dream. She scowled and refused to think about the wealthy bastard who had swindled her father.
She’d put all her hopes and dreams into this little piece of real estate. Even though the prime properties were located on the north shore of Whitefire Lake, soon enough there would be no more land for wealthy people to build dream homes and they would have to search elsewhere; most likely on the south side.
Nadine was convinced that there would come a time when water-frontage upon Whitefire Lake would all be worth a pretty penny. At least she hoped so. That was why, when she and her ex-husband, Sam, had divorced, she’d fought like a terrier to keep this old cottage.
She smiled as she reheated a pot of coffee and glanced at the kitchen. Large enough for a table pushed against one wall, the cozy room boasted a few pine cabinets, a small expanse of wooden counter and one window surrounded by red gingham curtains that matched the three place mats stacked beneath the napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers on the table. Not much, but all she could afford.
In addition to the kitchen there was a living room, single bath, one bedroom, a large pantry converted into her sewing room and “office” and a loft with bunk beds for the boys. Not exactly the Ritz, but comfortable enough, and what John and Bobby lacked in creature comforts was surpassed by the fact that they lived practically in the wilderness, with the lake a bare twenty yards from the front porch. Frogs, deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons and birds were in abundance. Her children, whether they knew it or not, were far from deprived.
They should be returning soon, she thought, and glanced toward the road. Each day after school they rode their bikes to a neighbor’s house where they stayed until Nadine arrived home. John was old enough to protest being “babysat,” but both boys were too young to fend for themselves even for a few hours.
Pouring coffee into a mug, she wondered how things would have worked out if, as she’d hoped, Turner Brooks, a rancher she worked for, had shown her the least bit of interest. She’d been attracted to him for years, even fantasized that he would someday open his eyes and fall in love with her, but it hadn’t happened. He’d found his own true love with Heather Leonetti, a beautiful girl from his past, and Nadine had surprised herself in letting go of her dream so easily. Maybe she hadn’t really loved him after all. Maybe, after the pain of her divorce, Turner had seemed a safe haven—a no-nonsense cowboy who talked straight and didn’t promise her the moon.
Unlike the other men in her life.
Sam, her husband, had been a dreamer who’d spent too many hours drinking to actually make any of his plans come together, and the other man—the one to whom she’d given her heart so many years ago—was a forbidden and bitter thought.
Hayden Garreth Monroe IV. Even his name sounded as if it had been hammered in silver. At one time Hayden had been the richest boy in town, with only the Fitzpatrick boys, his cousins, for rivals to the title. And she’d been silly enough, for a brief period, to think that he cared for her.
Stupid, stupid girl. Well, that was all a long time ago, thank God.
She heard gravel crunching on the drive and knew the boys and their bicycles had arrived. Hershel, the mutt they’d inherited when someone had dumped him as a half-grown pup, yipped excitedly at the back door. With the pounding of quick feet and a few insults hurled at each other, the boys scrambled into the house, Hershel jumping at their heels.
“Shoes!” Nadine said automatically.
“Aw, Mom!” John complained, his face an angry pout as he kicked off a pair of high-tops.
Bobby, her seven-year-old, did the same, black Converse sneakers flying against the wall as he shed the shoes and made a beeline in his stocking feet for the cookie jar.
“Hey, wait a minute!” John ordered, concerned lest he somehow not get as many cookies as his younger brother.
“You both wait a minute,” Nadine interjected, grabbing John by his thin shoulders and hugging him. “The least you could do is say hello and tell me how your day went at school.”
“Hello,” Bobby said cheerily, snatching two peanut-butter cookies before the jar was wrested away from him by John. “I got a B on my spelling test.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, well, I got a ‘biff,’” John retorted with a touch of defiance as he snagged a couple of cookies for himself.
“A what?”
“He got put up against the wall at recess,” Bobby eagerly explained. “By the duty.”
“Why?”
“’Cause she said I said a bad word, but I didn’t, Mom, honest. It was Katie Osgood. She said the S word.”
“I think I’ve heard enough. But I don’t want to hear that you’ve been saying anything that even brushes upon swearing. Got it?”
“Yeah, sure,” John said sullenly, looking at the floor. “Uh, Mrs. Zalinski’s gonna call you.”
Nadine’s lungs tightened at the mention of John’s teacher. “Why?”
“‘Cause she thinks I was cheating on a test, and I wasn’t, Mom, really. Katie Osgood asked to use my pencil and I told her to buzz off and—”
“Stay away from Katie Osgood,” Nadine cut in, and John, now that his admission was over, muttered something about Katie being a dweeb and followed Bobby into the living room. Hershel, eyes fixed on the cookies, bounded after the boys, his black-and-white tail wagging wildly.
The phone rang and Nadine sent up a silent prayer for her confrontation with the teacher. John was always having trouble in school. He, more than Bobby, had shown open defiance and anger since her divorce nearly two years before.
“Hello?” she answered as the theme music for the boys’ favorite cartoon show filtered in from the living room.