Home to Laura

CHAPTER ONE



“WHAT DID YOU do to my granddaughter?” Mort Sanderson stormed into Nick Jordan’s office, indignation pouring from him like lava.

Nick took his time placing his pen beside the documents he’d been perusing and struggled to remain calm. Mort’s behavior was becoming more erratic with age. Sure, Nick could handle it, but Mort’s eccentricities didn’t belong in the office.

He also wished Mort would keep Nick’s private life out of here, too. He worked hard to separate the two.

Mort was Nick’s boss. He was also his father-in-law. Ex-father-in-law.

Too late, Nick had learned the danger of mixing his personal life with business.

He pointed toward the office door. “Would you mind closing that so this conversation can remain private?”

Mort stepped into the room and slammed the door.

That should impress the two clients in the waiting room, Nick thought. Thank you, Mort.

“What’s wrong with Emily?” Nick asked.

“She called me last night in tears.”

“What?” Nick shot out of his chair. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“She’s not happy with you.”

Not happy with him? Why not? Old, familiar acid churned in his gut. His stomach troubles had started with his ex-wife’s defection to another man. Was he about to lose his daughter, too?

Emily hadn’t said a word to him about being unhappy. He reached for the phone and dialed his home number before realizing Emily would still be at school.

His daughter had called Mort in tears.

You should have been there for her. She shouldn’t have to go to her grandfather.

“What did she say?” he asked.

“That you ignore her and never have time for her.”

“I work hard.” Nick owned a beautiful home in a good neighborhood. Emily attended a private school. Every Christmas, he sent her to visit her mother. “That’s what a man does to support his family.”

“My granddaughter deserves to be happy,” Mort shouted, leaning his fists onto Nick’s desk. If he were a tall man, he would loom over Nick, but at five-five, Mort had learned to use the force of his personality to intimidate. At the moment, he leaned close enough for Nick to count the red spider veins on his cheeks—and to smell alcohol on his breath. Damn. It wasn’t yet noon, too early for Mort to be drinking.

After Mort left the office, Nick would get his assistant to find out where he would have to do damage control.

What was happening to Mort? When had he started this slide into...what? Self-indulgence? Self-pity? Where was the astute businessman Nick used to admire, used to emulate? Nick was the one making all of the big decisions in the company these days.

If that involved putting out too many fires that Mort started and not enough time on creativity and problem-solving—the things Nick loved—so be it. That was the cost of running a large corporation—and a small price to pay for the money he raked in.

His stomach roiling, he stared at Mort, eerily afraid that he might be peering into the crystal ball of his future. No way did he want his life reduced to a string of wives and endless days of drinking, of depending on others to fix his mistakes.

How could Nick stop that future for himself? He didn’t know when Mort’s slide had started, or how.

“You couldn’t make Marsha happy.” Mort interrupted his thoughts. “Now you can’t keep Emily happy.”

“Enough,” Nick shouted, anger spurred on by fear that this might be a problem even he didn’t know how to fix. What then? What would happen to Emily? “How is this any different from you? You’re on your fifth wife. Marsha complained about how little attention you gave her as a child. Keep your damn hypocrisy to yourself and stay the hell out of my relationship with my daughter.”

“It’s different because Marsha is my daughter and Emily my granddaughter.”

“Each of your wives was someone’s daughter and granddaughter.”

“That’s beside the point. I want Emily to be happy. That’s your job.”

Nick mimicked Mort, leaning his fists on his desk and pushing forward into Mort’s face. “That hasn’t been my only job, has it? You’ve never once complained when I worked nights and weekends on end to bring in new clients or to complete your projects, have you?” The unfairness of the man’s criticism burned.

“You’ve been my mentor,” Nick continued. “You taught me how to deal in business. I’m following your example. You’re the reason I am the way I am.” He silenced a voice that nagged, that’s not completely true. You wanted so much. You were an ambitious SOB. Mort fit into your plan. “I ignored Marsha and Emily because I was here making money for you and this company. How else do you think I did it? By twiddling my thumbs? By taking vacations with my wife and child? I made you a fortune.” Nick struggled for control. Where was his precious cool head?

“As far as Marsha goes, we divorced as friends,” Nick said, forcing a reasonable tone. “She knew who I was when we married, but wanted someone who could give her more attention. She wanted the money and the big house and me home evenings and weekends.”

That was why she’d had an affair with Harry Fuller and why she’d divorced Nick and married him. Harry came from money—had never had to work and scrape for every penny as Nick had—and gave her the attention she craved. Yes, he’d understood, but it had hurt, which was strange considering it hadn’t been a love match for either of them. Was he more of a dreamer, a romantic, than he’d thought? Had he been fonder of Marsha than he’d realized?

“Marsha wanted too much, just like her mother.” Mort’s voice came out as a growl. “I shouldn’t have spoiled her.”

“You didn’t,” Nick conceded. “She’s a good person and she was right. I never paid her enough attention. I probably never gave Emily enough, either.” He knew in his heart he hadn’t. Now he was making her cry. He’d never figured out why Emily had opted to stay with him in the home she’d grown up in rather than follow her mother to Europe with her new husband four years ago. Maybe to keep her friends?

Had any of her decision been based on wanting to be near her father? He hoped so. Again, he reached for the phone. He needed to talk to her. Again, he remembered she wasn’t home.

“Fix it,” Mort said. “Whatever is wrong with her, take care of it now.”

He planned to. Tonight. There wasn’t a person on earth who mattered more to him than his daughter.

Nick winced. “I honestly never meant to hurt her. I’ll talk to her tonight.”

“That girl means the world to me.”

Nick’s anger softened. Mort had always treated Emily like gold. She was a shining light in his life.

“I’m not sure what can change,” Nick said, but the fight had left him. Emily was his shining light, too. She kept the darkness at bay. “I have to work as hard now on this project as I ever have.”

“Stop it now. Cancel it.”

The Accord Ski and Golf Resort? He couldn’t, and there was no way to explain to Mort why. Mort had been born with money. He would never in a million years understand how Nick had grown up, how poverty had shaped him, how important it was to build the new resort in his old town.

“Make Emily happy,” Mort said, his eyes narrowing. “That’s an order. Do it, or I’ll pull the plug on the resort.”

Nick stilled. Accord Resort was his dream, his baby, part homage to Mom and part revenge against his older brother Gabe—and partly to prove to the town that had barely noticed him when he was growing up that Nick Jordan had become a success and was a force to be reckoned with. His reasons were so confusing and convoluted even he didn’t understand fully what drove him. He only knew that he had to annihilate that old house and build something bigger and grander than the Jordan family had ever owned in the past.

Why he worried about his name, and the family, was anybody’s guess. He wasn’t part of the family anymore, was he? In thirteen years, he’d gone back only twice, four years ago for Mom’s funeral and in January to a town meeting concerning the resort. He spoke to Tyler occasionally on the phone. To Gabe? Never.

Mort couldn’t possibly pull out now. They were about to break ground. Before Nick had even sent his former assistant, Callie, to Accord to work on getting his brothers to sell, he’d been working behind the scenes to have permits pushed through, greasing more palms than he cared to admit to Mort. Once Gabe and Ty had sold their shares to him, he’d increased his efforts. This resort had already cost him a bundle.

“You can’t be serious about pulling the plug,” Nick said.

“Look at me.” Something in Mort changed, as though a crack opened in that gruff exterior he painted on like shellac. “Take a good look at me. Do you like what you see?”

Nick stared for a long moment at things Mort had never laid bare before—unhappiness, regret and enough loneliness to bury a man. No wonder he drinks. The powerful man Mort had been shrank before Nick’s eyes.

With one quick jerk of his head, Nick admitted that he didn’t like this version of Mort, that it scared the daylights out of him. That it confirmed Nick’s fears that he himself was on a slippery slope barreling toward his own version of Mort’s life. And he wanted to stop.

“If you don’t make a real effort to change for that little girl—” Mort pointed a finger at himself “—then you’re looking at your future. You’re going to lose Emily. She told me she’s going to France to live with her mother. I want her to stay here. Make it happen.”

He walked from the room, closing the door without slamming it this time, leaving Nick stunned.

Emily wanted to live with her mother? She was leaving him? He imagined that big beautiful house empty save for him and a housekeeper who came in to cook and clean.

He heard the silence he would live with every day, every evening, without his daughter near to fill it with joyful sound.

Nick. Alone. Truly, truly alone. The thought raised old—positively ancient—feelings in him that he couldn’t name or place, and which made no sense. He’d never been alone. Had never been abandoned.

So why did Emily’s desire to move to Europe leave him feeling so panicked?

How could he imagine coming home from work and Emily not being there to greet him, to share her gossip from school, to relieve the unending emptiness he felt here in his office?

He couldn’t pinpoint when the emptiness had started, but the thought of what he felt at work spreading to his home terrified him.

For long minutes, Nick stood still, the man of action paralyzed, the man who took control in every situation momentarily lost. His heart rate kicked up and a shaky hollowness filled his stomach, as though he’d drunk too much coffee.

You’re looking at your future.

It was true. Old before his time, Nick was plagued with headaches and stomach problems. At only thirty-two, he was already too far along on Mort’s road. He’d skipped his youth, had lost it too early.

He paced to the window. He’d worked his butt off to become CEO of Sanderson Developments. He’d earned his beautifully appointed corner office with the floor-to-ceiling windows in the heart of the business district. He pressed one hand against the window as though he could touch Seattle where it lay far below him. At this height, he had a stunning view of Elliott Bay.

He’d given Marsha and Emily a gorgeous home and all of the best that money could buy. It hadn’t been enough for Marsha. Good Lord, it seemed it wasn’t enough for Emily.

He stared around his office, bewildered. He was known as a brilliant strategist, a problem-solver without peer, but how did he fix what was broken in his personal life?

He stepped away from the window, noting as he did so that he had left his palm and fingerprints.

I am here. This is real.

Then why did so much of his life seem unreal, hollow, ephemeral?

Why did the business no longer fill him with fire? Why did he feel there should be more? That this life of shuffling papers and moving money couldn’t possibly be the end-all and be-all, the sum total of life? When had he become two-dimensional, like those drawings on ancient Greek vases before mankind had figured out how to draw the third dimension? Why did Nick lack depth? Because he’d only ever focused on his job.

Thirteen years ago, when he’d started with Mort, it had meant everything to him, and had been enough.

It no longer was.

Now, he didn’t have a clue what was wrong with him except that he wasn’t happy.

And now he knew that Emily wasn’t, either. His happiness didn’t matter. Hers, though? Oh, yes, it mattered immensely.

He would do anything for Emily, but he couldn’t run around half-cocked. What did she need?

He scrubbed his hands over his face. Damned if he knew. He opened the liquor cabinet built into the bookshelf unit that covered one wall and poured himself a Scotch. He emptied it in two gulps then stared at the empty glass, horrified at what he’d just done.

Was this how it started? He’d already spent thirteen years of his life emulating Mort. Was he about to spend the next thirty continuing to emulate him? To become the man in all of his self-destructive manifestations?

It started as easily as this? His daughter threatened to leave him and he started drinking in the office alone? Not socially with clients or to celebrate a deal, but to obliterate the hollowness, the loneliness?

He was turning into Mort. His wife had left him for another man and now his daughter wanted to leave him, too. It hadn’t been so bad when Marsha had left. After all, how much had they loved each other, really? Not enough to sustain a lifelong commitment.

But Emily? He loved her to distraction. Mort had said she’d complained that Nick didn’t spend enough time with her; therefore, the solution was simple. He would spend more time with her.

She wasn’t happy.

She deserved to be happy.

Starting tonight, she would be. He dropped the bottle of Laphroaig into the trash then called Emily to tell her he loved her and planned to spend more time with her, starting tonight, leaving a message on the machine for when she got home from school. He would let her go to France to visit, but to live? No.

He’d leave the office as soon as he finished with the clients in the waiting room.

He straightened his tie, made sure his hair was in place and asked Rachel to send them in.

* * *

HE COULDN’T GET away until after six and didn’t reach home until six-thirty.

TGIF.

He rubbed the back of his neck, took his overcoat and briefcase from the backseat, closed the door and locked the car. He turned to walk up his driveway...

...and got a snowball full in his face.

“What the—?”

He swiped his hand across his eyes to clear them of wet snow. Emily stood in front of the house with a dare in her eye, and what might be construed as hope.

She’s not happy with you.

So. She’d received his phone message and wondered how sincere he was.

Did he intend to follow through on his promise to spend time with her? You bet!

He tossed his briefcase and coat onto the hood of the car and grinned.

When had he last had a snowball fight? He caught a glimpse of a memory. Ah, yes. Snowball fights with his two older brothers. He’d forgotten about that—a rare good memory.

His cell phone rang, its blare a harsh discord in this quiet neighborhood covered with softly falling wet snow.

“Dad, don’t answer it,” Emily shouted, still with that dare in her eye. She stood ten feet away from him with another snowball in her hand.

Dad? When had his daughter stopped calling him Daddy?

She’d turned twelve this week. He’d missed so much. Where had the years gone? Into building a business. Into making more money than he could ever need.

The phone rang again and it took all of his self-control to stay focused on Emily and ignore it.

If he answered it now, he’d lose her. He sensed it as surely as the snow soaking his shoes. He needed to change. That change started now. This minute.

The wrinkle of his vibrating cell phone required superhuman control on his part to ignore.

She lobbed the second snowball at his head. Bull’s-eye.

“You want a fight, kid?” He laughed and picked up a handful of the wet snow left by a rare late-April snowfall and formed it into a ball with his bare hands, the bite of cold bracing on his palms. “You got it.”

He threw it at her, making sure he didn’t hit her above the shoulders. She hid behind the only tree on the front lawn. A moment later, a snowball hit his chest. He ducked behind the car and lobbed one over the hood. It landed beside the tree.

He watched a pair of hands in fuzzy red mittens build a small stockpile of snowballs beside the tree.

Nick sneaked around the back of the car and made a run for it, swooping around the tree to catch her by surprise from behind.

He lunged at her, picked her up and tossed her into a pile of snow left by the man who had cleared his driveway. She squealed. Emily was getting heavy, too big for this, but fool that he’d been, he’d missed innocent, spontaneous play in her childhood.

He breathed a sigh, feeling young rather than the thirty-two-going-on-fifty that he felt in his office.

Emily giggled and picked up a handful of snow and threw it at him, but he dodged.

“Look what you did to my shoes,” he said, his words harsh, but his tone not. “You could have ruined my suit.” He dumped handfuls of snow onto her, scraping it from the two inches covering the dormant grass until her torso was covered, all the while still dodging snow she threw at him.

“Do you give up yet?” Nick stood arms akimbo laughing down at his daughter.

She lay on her back and panted. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah,” she said, making a snow angel while she talked, “I shouldn’t have thrown snow at you until you changed out of your business clothes.” She sat up. “But, Dad, if I waited for that, we’d never have gotten to play in the snow.”

“That’s not true,” he said, reaching a hand to help her up.

His growing-up-too-fast daughter rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Dad? You’re kidding, right?”

He didn’t have to think about it hard. All he had left of Emily’s childhood was a slim handful of memories.

He loved her more than anyone or anything and yet still he worked too much.

“You’re always working,” she said, her tone accusatory.

Well, not for the next few hours.

“Not tonight,” he said.

He picked up his overcoat and briefcase before wrapping an arm around Emily and opening the front door of his opulent house and tossing his things onto a chair. He stepped out of his ruined Gucci loafers.

“I’m not working tonight. For this evening, I’m all yours,” he said and, still high from their snowball fight, expanded. “In fact, I’m not going to work all weekend. You want a movie and pizza for dinner?”

She threw her arms around his neck. “You mean it about the whole weekend?”

“I mean it.” He hugged her hard, getting a little choked up that it was so insanely easy to make Emily happy. “Go order the pizza and choose a movie.”

She ran to the phone in the kitchen on legs that were growing longer and faster than her coordination could keep up with. Someday soon, though, she was going to be a knockout, model beautiful with her long legs and body, a drop-dead face, blue eyes with an odd ring of hazel around them and a killer smile. And skin that had never known a blemish. Her rich auburn hair flew in every direction courtesy of static electricity and the hat she’d just pulled off.

How did he, Nick Jordan born to poor parents in podunk Accord, Colorado, deserve such a beautiful girl?

He picked up the mail his housekeeper had left on the kitchen counter and leafed through it. His cell rang and he checked the number. His assistant. He sighed.

“Yes, Rachel?”

“There’s a problem at the work site.”

“Which one?” Callie MacKintosh would have rattled off all of the details, the most important ones. In fact, Callie would have just taken care of the problem herself. But she no longer worked for him, thanks to his damned older brother Gabe, and it was taking too long for Rachel to learn the ropes.

Back off, you impatient bastard. A month is hardly long enough to become another Callie. If he weren’t careful, he’d lose this one just as he’d lost the other two he’d hired in the three months since Callie had decamped to marry his brother.

He tried to ignore that Callie had ever existed.

Rachel shuffled papers on the other end of the line. “The problem is at the work site in Accord.”

Great. Just great. The one development he wanted to run more smoothly than the others. He might want the new resort built on the old family land, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be there, overseeing everything and problem-solving.

“Did Rene mention what the problem is?”

“No. He just said that you need to get down there ASAP.”

Rene was a brilliant foreman. If he thought Nick should be there, the problem was serious. He called Rene.

“What’s going on?”

“We got a bunch of Native Americans here blocking access to your land. They said they aren’t moving until they talk to you.”

“Why?”

“There are ancient burial grounds here, sacred to the Utes.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“They accept that your family already owns the land, but you try to build, to expand that house into a lodge or hotel, and you’ll alienate them.”

“They don’t own the land. I do. Build anyway.”

“It was one thing with your brother not wanting to leave, but this is spiritual. I’m Catholic. I wouldn’t want anyone tearing up my cemeteries. You gotta have respect for the dead.”

“If it’s true.”

“Is there any way you can find out?”

Nick thought about it. He could check with the university in Colorado and try to find historians who might know something. No one would be available until Monday. He couldn’t wait that long. Otherwise, he’d be paying Rene’s crew to stand around and do nothing. He needed to go to Accord to reason with the Native Americans.

“I’ll fly down and take care of this. I’ll leave in the morning.” He hung up.

And turned to find Emily watching him.

Even though her expression was closed up tighter than a clamshell, he knew disappointment lurked beneath her careful neutrality. He’d taught her that poker face. Here he was, yet again, disappointing his daughter. Story of his life.

He’d fallen back on his normal pattern and had answered the phone without thinking, because it was part of his life, because the damn thing was part of his hand. He’d answered without thought and was now involved in a problem he could neither ignore nor delegate. He had committed to flying to Colorado without a thought for Emily and his promise to her. He couldn’t turn back now. He had said he would go. He would go. He didn’t break promises. In business at any rate.

He’d made that commitment to Emily, too. But surely she would understand.

“Where do you have to go tomorrow?” All of the teasing had fled her tone, erased by his never-ending need to excel, to have more, especially with this project. If he could just finish this one project, he could spend more time with her.

“To Accord.”

She perked up. “Great! I can go with you. I can meet my uncles and I can see Callie.”

“No!” He hadn’t meant to shout and brought himself back under control. “I told you I don’t want to hear her name mentioned in this house.”

She lost her excitement and closed up again. What did he expect?

“Why not?” she asked. “I don’t get why you’re so mad at her just because she stopped working for you, Dad. She was getting married to your brother and moving to Colorado, for Pete’s sake. It was time for her to get a life. Was she supposed to waste her whole life working for you?”

Nick winced. Waste. That’s probably exactly how Callie had thought of Nick once she’d met Gabe. A waste of her time.

He prided himself on his rational mind, but he was unreasonable where Callie was concerned. Ditto for Gabe.

“Dad? Are you listening to me?”

He dropped the mail he’d been staring at but not really seeing. “I heard you.”

“She was your assistant, not your girlfriend. So what’s your problem?”

No, she wasn’t his girlfriend, and that was the problem, which wasn’t something he could discuss with his daughter.

“I miss Callie,” she said. “She used to be my friend. I want to go with you.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll be busy.”

“So what? I can spend time with—” she crossed her arms and intoned “—the Woman Who Can’t Be Named.”

Her sarcasm hurt, had barbs that surprised him. She used to be sweet. “You want to know the honest-to-God truth, Emily? I don’t want you in Accord.” He saw that he’d hurt her feelings and rushed on. “I don’t have good memories of that town. I don’t want you to see where I grew up.”

Heaven forbid that she should see the poverty he’d grown up with, the boy he used to be compared to the man he’d made of himself. This, here, was him—the Gucci shoes and expensive house and successful business. Not his childhood. Not Accord.

“But—” she started.

“Case closed.” For the third or fourth time that day, he pulled his unruly emotions under control. What was wrong with him? He didn’t do emotion.

Nick approached Emily and put his hands on her shoulders. “Go choose a movie while I change. Let’s not spoil the little time we have together tonight. Okay?”

“’Kay.” She wasn’t happy about it, but he knew Emily. She would bounce back.

Except that she didn’t. Nick didn’t know whether it was teenage hormones kicking in or Callie’s move to Accord, but Emily remained subdued for the rest of the night and through Saturday morning’s breakfast. He knew he was doing the right thing in keeping her away from the town he’d grown up in, from that house he wished he never had to set foot in again, that would be obliterated as soon as he solved this problem.

Before he left for his morning flight, he tried to cajole her. “Maybe I can catch a flight back tonight. We can spend tomorrow together.”

“Sure.” She didn’t sound as if she believed him.

Damn. He didn’t have time for this. “I have to go, honey. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As he got into his car to drive to the airport, he watched her in his rearview mirror standing beside his housekeeper.

Emily looked small and sad and lost, and it was all his fault.

He turned the key in the ignition.

You’re looking at your future, Mort had said.

What if he turned his vivacious daughter into a miniature version of himself, a one-trick pony, a person for whom work was the only thing? A man whose life was passing him by as though someone else was in the driver’s seat? And how weird was that for a man as driven as he, as crazy for control?

With a flick of his wrist, he shut off the engine and stepped out of the car.

“Pack a bag.”

“What?” She stared openmouthed, afraid to hope.

“You’re coming with me to Accord.”

Her face lit up. “Seriously?”

He grinned. “Seriously.” He checked his watch. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

Emily squealed and ran into the house.

While she packed, he called Mort.

“There’s a problem at the work site in Accord. I’m taking Emily with me. We should be back by Sunday evening.”

“Good.” Mort didn’t sound right, his voice low, subdued.

“What’s up?” Nick asked.

“Lesley just left. Another damn woman without the gumption to stick it out, to see things through.”

Mort’s fifth wife was walking out? Man, how rotten would that feel?

“Mort.” Nick hesitated. It was hard to tell the man the truth, but if his drinking affected things at the office, how did it feel to live with? “Maybe you should look at your drinking.”

“I don’t have a problem.”

No? Then why had Nick just heard the clink of ice cubes in a glass? Chances were good that it wasn’t lemonade that Mort was chugging. It was most likely Scotch—and it was only nine in the morning.

“I’ll call when I get back on Sunday. Do you want to come over for dinner one night?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

Nick hung up, but uneasiness clung to him. Despite the drinking, the screwups that Mort caused at work, he was still the world’s best mentor. Over the years, he’d been a good friend to Nick. Nick’s problem, though, was that while he could fix problems at work, he didn’t know how to fix people. Hell, he didn’t even know how to fix himself, so how could he help Mort?

Emily ran out of the house with a knapsack and a big grin.

Maybe he wasn’t completely useless with people. He’d made his beautiful daughter happy.

An awful feeling of doubt screwed up his gut, though. He was about to show her his hometown and his childhood. He’d never exposed his past to anyone outside of Callie, and look what had happened then? He’d lost her.