Chapter Six
February stayed cold, got windier, and then rolled straight over into a blustery March with only a few hints of spring here and there.
The northern lights made appearances, the bison down in Yellowstone had a little less snow on their faces, and Tennessee found himself on Matilda’s doorstep one bitterly cold evening with the Milky Way bright above his head and no idea why he was there.
He was sure that he hadn’t meant to come here.
That had definitely not been the plan. He’d gone to the weekly meeting of the LPL Club with his happy new family, the way he had every week without fail.
And the truth was, the more they all hung out, the more they really did seem to get along.
Like they were a pretty easy group of friends instead of complicated siblings with murky pasts. He liked it. He liked them.
And when he’d walked back across the road after dinner, he’d found himself studying the porch of the General Store, like he was waiting for more puppies to appear.
None did.
Matilda had brought the three she’d rescued from there back into the diner a few days after she’d cleaned his house. And he’d… told her about his family when he wasn’t the sort to sit around and share much of anything. He still didn’t know why he had.
It bothered him all the time, to tell the truth.
She had handed over the sweet little puppies to their new families with little care packages that she claimed the vet had put together for them, but Tennessee thought otherwise.
He would have bet anything he had that it was Matilda who made sure the puppies had a little bit of food, a favorite toy, and a soft blanket, the better to settle into their new homes.
She had breezed in with the puppies, spent some time talking to their new owners, and then had sailed out again without so much as a glance his way. And Tennessee had found himself pretty grumpy about that for days now.
Like he’d expected her to sit down with him when he was busy cooking. That was obviously ridiculous. He didn’t like anyone bothering him when he was working. Cat often said his scowl was capable of knocking interlopers back ten paces, no need to otherwise engage.
Still, he kept finding himself rubbing that place on his arm where she’d touched him, sitting there on his couch. It was like she’d left some kind of mark. Yet when he’d looked, there was nothing. No matter how it felt.
Even now, standing on her doorstep, he could feel it throbbing, like a scar.
He hadn’t meant to get into his truck, much less drive up the hill.
He’d told himself that he was getting a lay of the land, that was all.
It was a clear night and he’d driven up toward the old Lodge that the Stark family had been renovating for some time now.
It stood tall, proud, at the crest of the hill.
Over the past year they’d opened a lot of the cottages that dotted the hill in the space between the road that Matilda lived on and the grand old hotel itself.
There were lights on in a lot more of them now that spring hovered near, he’d noticed.
The real grand opening of the Lodge was slated for the summer.
And it looked like it was going to be ready, after all these years.
The Lodge was a holdover from a bygone age, like one of those stately old railroad hotels that were everywhere in the West. This one had been built far away from anywhere a railway might run, but that was the way it had been in the West back then.
Folks arranged their whole lives around a dream and did their best to make it come true.
Tennessee knew that his father would have claimed he did the same, but Patrick Lisle had never managed to do so much as cross the street without hurting someone on the way.
When the old Lodge had been successful, or at least that was the rumor in town, it was because the Starks had focused on service, not themselves. That had ended with Matilda’s grandparents. It was their sons who had never agreed on a damn thing and had let the place fall into disrepair.
Patrick would have sold it for parts.
He turned around on Matilda’s front step with its sweeping view down across Cowboy Point, and over to Copper Mountain where it stood snowcapped and pretty on the far end. Beyond it, there was a smudge of light from farther down in Marietta, like the horizon was candlelit.
It was a clear night, but he felt foggy.
If he was a wise man he would turn right around, get back in his truck, and keep on driving.
But Tennessee had his answer on that, because he didn’t move.
There was something restless in him, so new and strange that he couldn’t name it. All he knew was that before Matilda had shown up on his doorstep the first time, he’d been perfectly fine. Now he was… not.
Not fine at all, and his damn arm kept throbbing.
He turned around again, knocked on the door before he wavered some more, and then waited.
Inside, he could hear some kind of commotion and then Matilda was at the door, throwing it open as what seemed like a whole pack of dogs leaped around, barking enthusiastically.
She scolded them, but in a laughing sort of way.
When she looked up to meet his gaze, he watched as she actually blushed.
And somehow, that set all the restlessness in him on fire.
But even as it did that, even as he burned, he felt something like home.
Because that was already the answer he hadn’t wanted to admit he was looking for, wasn’t it? That was what he’d come here to find out. And now that he had, well.
His arm stopped throbbing. Everything in him stilled.
Now it was all something else.
“Tennessee.” Her eyes were a wild, bright blue with her cheeks so red, but she sounded as matter-of-fact as ever. “What are you doing this far up the hill?”
“I wanted to see what kind of zoo you already have going,” he said, with great confidence, as if that had been his plan all along. And when she looked confused, he frowned. Slightly. “To see what sort of facilities you might need for your rescue,” he clarified, as if that was obvious.
“Oh.” She cleared her throat and stepped back, moving a pair of smaller dogs out of the way with her feet and grabbing the ruff of the bigger one, a squinty-eyed German shepherd that looked as if he would very much like to take a chunk out of Tennessee’s side. “Then you’d better come in.”
Inside, the house was cheerful and chaotic.
Messy to his eye, but not dirty. Everything was a jumble of bright colors and haphazard piles.
Matilda herself looked much the same. She was wearing extremely purple leggings and distinctly patterned socks, though each sock was a different distinct pattern.
The sweater she wore featured an explosion of what looked like forest creatures in a variety of garish shades.
It appeared that she was either colorblind or simply liked all the colors, all the time.
The most interesting thing was that her hair wasn’t in braids tonight. It was loose, and it coiled all around and past her shoulders like a cloud of strawberry blonde, gleaming in the light of her living room.
He thought it looked like some kind of halo, and while he’d accepted over the past few weeks that he for some reason found Matilda Stark confusing, and oddly compelling, he was forced yet again to face the truth.
The old men had called her pretty, but they were wrong. She was beautiful.
She had all that strawberry-blonde hair that looked like a very warm, rose gold.
He wanted to bury his hands in it. Those eyes of hers seemed to change color at will.
She had freckles across her nose. And Tennessee found himself wondering if she had deliberately spent her life dressing like a batty old woman with the express purpose of making sure that no one would ever realize just how beautiful she really was.
Because if all people ever focused on were her eccentricities, that meant she could wander around the town without a whole lot of commentary.
And Tennessee knew from watching his remarkably pretty sister navigate Cowboy Point that a little anonymity was a good thing—that or a pair of overprotective brothers.
Matilda’s sister had turned up pregnant, and then with twins, and that despite all her ornery cousins.
Not to mention Jack Stark, who a wise man knew better than to cross.
It was lucky for Ryder Carey that he’d had no idea what was going on with Rosie while he was away, or someone might have taken it upon themselves to teach him some lessons. Tennessee understood the urge.
And yet somehow, all along, Matilda Stark had also been walking around this pretty. How had he never noticed?
Yet as she buzzed around the living room—talking a mile a minute about the books on the shelves that she said were her sister’s, ignoring the piles of things everywhere that she didn’t excuse or even seem to notice, even the way she pushed her hair back from her face as if she spent most of her time alone with it loose like this—Tennessee had to ask himself if it was true that he’d never noticed.
Because he had always found Matilda… unsettling.
He always seemed to notice when she was around. Maybe his subconscious had been telling him to pay attention all along.
Well. He was sure paying attention now.
Tennessee followed her through the house, back into a kitchen that looked cluttered and lived in—but again, clean.
By the back door, she stamped her feet into a pair of rubber boots and waved for him to follow her.
The dogs stayed in the house. And he thought he saw a tuxedo cat peering at him from the top of the refrigerator, but he followed her outside as she tramped across the frozen yard into the outbuilding out back.
He followed her inside to a door on the side, where they were immediately greeted by a wall of sound.