Chapter 25
O
ne week later, Harlee maneuvered her rolling carry-on through Reno-Tahoe International. She needed to find an apartment in Seattle, stat. Jerry wanted her to start as soon as possible. The moving company was coming in six days and she still hadn’t packed.
The move was happening so fast—maybe too fast—that Harlee could barely catch her breath. The whole thing felt a little like déjà vu. Only five months earlier, she’d impulsively hitched a U-Haul to the back of her Mini Cooper and made the trek to Nugget. Now she was doing it all over again. At least this time, the
Seattle Times
was footing the bill.
Shortly after Jerry had offered her the job, she’d hit the Seattle classifieds online and set up a bunch of appointments to see apartments in Queen Anne, a neighborhood of mostly young singles. Today, if all went well, she planned to plunk down a deposit on something, stop in at the newsroom to shake a few hands and meet a few people, and fly home to ready for the move.
Harvey and Leigh had promised to deliver the furniture she’d stowed in their garage and stay in Nugget a few days to help box up her belongings. People had already started a slow trickle through her cabin to wish her well. And Darla planned a big send-off bash at the Ponderosa.
But there hadn’t been a sound out of Colin. The fact that everyone in town knew she was leaving and he hadn’t said so much as congratulations, solidified her belief that a serious relationship between them had never been in his plans. Just a winter fling. Still, the possibility of never seeing him again, never feeling his arms around her, made her ache so desperately that she’d had to stop herself a dozen times from going to him.
Seattle was the right thing to do. At least that’s what she told herself. She intended to bury herself in the job, break big stories, and make the
Call
sorry for sacking her. And in no time at all she’d forget Colin Burke. Except for she knew she wouldn’t. She’d never forget him.
Ever.
Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, regretting that she’d looked up his damned tattoo or his prison record. It made her wonder how many other women’s lives she’d ruined the same way. She used to think that information was power; now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe if Harlee had minded her own business, she and Colin would still be together. Well, hindsight was twenty-twenty.
She found a Starbucks and waited in the long line, thinking that at least in Seattle there would be good coffee. After getting her latte, she wended her way to the gate, grabbed a seat, and tried to distract herself with the sights and sounds of the airport. It seemed like the whole world planned to travel today. Families and business people, tugging their suitcases and overnight bags, clogged the terminal.
Harlee watched as one irritated traveler looked ready to throw a temper tantrum because she didn’t like her seat assignment. Even from the sidelines, Harlee could tell the woman was higher maintenance than a toy poodle, and prayed she wouldn’t have to sit next to her.
The call came for first-class passengers to board the plane. Harlee got her ticket out of her purse and joined the economy-class hordes elbowing for priority. As everyone else did, she worried that all the overhead space would be taken before she could claim a seat.
In the distance, a man jogged toward the gate. He looked so much like Colin, Harlee did a double take. Like the time in the square, she was still seeing visions of him everywhere. At the Nugget Market. The Bun Boy. Main Street. Sometimes she conjured him out of thin air.
Ridiculous, because the one thing Harlee could be sure of was that Colin wouldn’t step foot in a packed airport. Not with his demophobia.
She turned away, trying desperately to block Colin from her cranium, and waited for her section to be called. People rudely tried to cut in before their turns. This is why she hated airports and flying. The couple next to her stuffed airport sandwiches into their knapsacks, making her kick herself for not doing the same. Maybe, if she was lucky, there would be pretzels or peanuts on the flight.
A jostling from the tide of people made her lose balance, and in her haste to keep from falling she clutched the person next to her. When she looked up, it was him.
Colin.
Suspended in time, they stood stock-still, staring at each other. All around them babies cried, people pushed luggage, and muffled voices came over the loudspeaker. But for her, there was only him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, finally breaking the spell.
“I bought a ticket,” he said, out of breath, like he’d run the whole way. It explained how he’d managed to get through security.
He pulled her out of line and near one of the big windows that looked out onto the runway. That’s when she noticed that his face was covered in sweat. “God, Colin, you okay?”
“I screwed up,” he uttered. His eyes, pleading and flooded with emotion, met hers. “I love you. I always have. Don’t go. But if you have to go, let me come with you.”
Through her peripheral vision, she could see her group boarding. “What are you saying? You’ll come with me to Seattle?”
“I’ll go with you to the moon, if you’ll take me back. Give me a second chance.” He looked about ready to pass out.
She glanced around the terminal. It seemed as if the number of people had swelled in the last forty minutes. “I’ll miss my flight, but do you want to go outside?”
“Say you’ll take me back, first. The last week has been freakin’ miserable, Harlee.” Colin rested his forehead against the glass. “Do you still love me? Darla says you do.”
She nodded, becoming teary eyed. “I do.” Despite his deceit, she’d never stopped. “But—”
“My history’s a deal breaker, right?” he said, staring out past the airplanes, past the runway, into the Nevada desert, looking beaten. “Goddamn Al.”
“Your history was never an issue.”
“Then come back to me,” he said.
She looked away, afraid to meet his eyes. “You’re the one who sent me away, Colin. The whole time we were together you never seemed all in. Right off the bat you tried to sabotage us by keeping the truth from me.” He’d made her doubt her judgment and worst of all, he’d lost her trust.
“Not intentionally, Harlee. I was scared. I didn’t feel worthy. But I’m all in now. One hundred percent. No more secrets. Not ever again. Please, give me a second chance.”
“Why?” Harlee demanded, absently finding a tissue in her purse and blotting Colin’s face with it. From the start, all she’d ever wanted him to do was put this right and rebuild her faith in him. Make her believe again. “Why now?”
“Because you make me feel worthy. For the first time since I got out of Donovan, you made me the man I want to be . . . the man who, given even half a chance, will love you forever. I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning, Harlee. But I was so damned ashamed.”
“Colin, you have nothing to be ashamed of. And you have always been worthy.”
“I know it’s selfish,” he said. “I know that living down my past and my phobias will be a struggle—for both of us. But I’ve had time to think about it and I know, if you let me, I can make you happy, Harlee. Really, really happy.”
“You did make me happy.” The happiest she’d ever been.
He regarded her with such hope that it made Harlee long for the life they could have together. “Does that mean we’re gonna do this? You and me?”
She didn’t answer, just walked into his arms and held him tight. “I love you.”
And there, in the middle of Reno-Tahoe International, standing amid the crowds, as groups of travelers zigzagged around them, stopping to check flight statuses, find gates, or readjust luggage straps, as the constant cacophonous buzz of conversation permeated the terminal like a symphony of bees, he kissed her. And kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, stopping just long enough to say, “Let’s get out of here . . . figure out a game plan.”
The only game plan Harlee cared about was spending her life with Colin. He grabbed her hand, and with single-minded determination, followed the overhead signs to the exit.
“Colin?” She raced to keep up with his long-legged strides. “Who’s Al?”
“Who?” He looked at her, confused.
“Al. You said something about goddamn Al.”
“Oh, that Al. He’s my parole officer.” He continued to maneuver them through the throngs of people.
But she forced him to stop and cocked her head in surprise. “You told your parole officer about us?”
“Of course I did,” he said. “You’re the most important person in my life.”
“What did he say?”
“To man up and stop acting like a wuss.”
“He actually said that?” Harlee asked.
“Yeah.” Colin chuckled. “He’s kind of a dick.”
“He sounds smart to me.”
Colin shrugged. “He’s a pain in my ass, but at least he made me realize that I was trying too hard to protect you. That you’re a tough woman, capable of making your own decisions.”
“I’m pretty sure I told you that myself,” Harlee said, trying not to roll her eyes.
“I guess I needed to hear it from a third party.”
She looked around the crowded terminal. Although perspiration still beaded Colin’s forehead and his breathing seemed erratic and his color looked paler than usual, he wasn’t the chalk white he’d been at the restaurant. She pointed to the masses surrounding them. “You okay with this?”
His lips quirked up into a giant grin that made his whole face glow. “Now that I have you, I am, but I wouldn’t mind getting out of here. Like soon.”
By the time they made it home, Harlee knew exactly what she planned to do. One look at the town’s welcome sign, proclaiming Nugget The “Pride of the West,” and she teared up. At the sight of the square, where she’d made so many memories, Harlee melted. But it was Colin’s house, with its thick log walls that he’d stacked by hand, that made the decision final.
“We’re not going to Seattle,” Harlee told Colin.
“We’re not?” He seemed surprised. “What about Jerry and the newspaper?”
“I love being a reporter. But I love you and this town more.”
He gathered her up in his arms and once again kissed her breathless. Max, who’d been lying by the hearth, sensed something monumental and joined their huddle, dancing around them, swinging his tail like a maniac.
“There’s always the
Nugget Tribune
,” Colin joked, and folded her against the back of the couch.
“I thought the Addisons bought it.”
“Nope,” he said. “Lila Stone won’t sell it to them. Word is they’d planned to turn it into some kind of circular and that pissed her off.”
“Good for her.” Harlee started for his office.
“Where you going?” Colin called after her.
“First to call Lila, then Jerry.”
“Come here.” He pulled her gently by the arm and cleared his throat. “Harlee, you think you’d want to marry me?”
She froze. “Seriously?”
“You don’t have to answer right now. Just think about it.”
“I don’t have to think about it. Yes! Yes!” She threw her arms around his neck and held him as tight as she could, because she was never letting him go.
“Colin,” she said. “Uh, that parole officer . . . Al. You know we’re inviting him to the wedding, right?”
“Unfortunately,” he murmured, and began kissing her all over again. “Nothing can keep him away.”
Epilogue
“W
e’ve gotta tear up the front page,” Harlee told her new webmaster. “Ten minutes ago, Maddy Shepard gave birth to a baby girl. We’re putting the story above the fold.”
There was no fold.
Since taking ownership of the
Nugget Tribune
, Harlee had gone completely digital. But old newspaper lingo had been burned, like hot lead type, into her lexicon. The town had overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of an online newspaper, and as a promotion to celebrate the new format Harlee had given away e-readers to the first twenty subscribers. At only ten bucks a year, she’d had no trouble selling subscriptions. So far, advertisers had also embraced the online format. She’d already increased revenue 15 percent from Lila’s previous year.
Clay had offered to do a monthly ranching column, which appealed to the local cattlemen. And Portia Cane, who owned a Nugget adventure-tour company, wrote the fish and game report. Harlee had even found a former world champion bronc rider to cover rodeo season, a big pastime in Plumas County. In early summer, Virgil Ross, the hometown historian, was going to do a five-part series on the Donner Party, which would coincide with a new documentary about the tragedy, debuting in Nugget. And next week, Emily planned to run a few recipes from her upcoming Sierra cookbook.
Harlee was still trying to persuade Colin to tell his story, but so far he wanted to keep it private. She suspected that besides Rhys and Darla, there were some in town who already knew but were keeping it on the QT.
Jerry blew a gasket when he found out she wasn’t coming to Seattle. “Legs, I went to the mat for you.”
After he’d had a while to calm down, he gave his blessing to Harlee’s buying the
Trib.
“Hold me a job there,” he’d said. “No telling what’ll happen here the way the industry is going. They’ll probably hire someone from the state mental hospital to run this place.”
“Hey, you hear about Maddy?” Darla waltzed into Harlee’s storefront newsroom, sporting a lime-green wig. While Wyatt still grappled with the many shades of Darla’s hair, the couple had come to terms with what happened all those years ago and were going hot and heavy.
“Six pounds, seven ounces,” Harlee called, as she wrote a headline to plunk on top of the baby story.
“Awesome, right! You guys book the Lumber Baron for the wedding yet?”
“August,” Harlee said. In the meantime, Emily and Clay’s big day was just two months away. “Sam’s my wedding consultant and Sophie and Mariah are hosting us a shower at their new house.”
“Okay, but I’m doing your hair.” Darla looked up at the clock on the wall. “Shoot, I’ve got a hair straightening in five minutes and two cuts after that. Happy hour?”
“As long as no news breaks, I’m good to go. Let’s invite Griff.”
“He might be busy. He won’t say, but I think he’s seeing someone.”
“No kidding?” Harlee looked up from her computer. “That’s great.”
“Anything that will help him get over Lina.” Darla raised her head to the heavens in mock prayer. “I better get back to the barbershop. See you later.”
As Darla walked out, Colin walked in.
“You hear about Maddy?” Harlee hopped up and kissed him.
“Yep. Just saw Donna.” He looked over her shoulder at the article on the screen. “You better get that up before the mouth of the Sierra scoops you on the story.”
“Spoken like the true fiancé of a newswoman.” She clicked a few buttons and within seconds the Maddy article led the
Nugget Tribune
’s homepage.
“Bix called,” Colin said. “He still wants you to consult on DataDate. He says he’ll be here in a couple of weeks for a fishing trip and wants to take us to dinner. He also wants three of my rockers.”
She looked up to fill her eyes with the hunk of man who would soon be her husband. God, she loved every inch of him. “I guess he really fell for the place. But then who can resist? Any chance you’d be up for happy hour at the Ponderosa with Darla and me?”
“I could be persuaded.”
They’d been working on getting Colin to overcome his fear of crowds. He’d begun seeing a therapist in Sacramento who specialized in demophobia and had helped Colin make significant strides. The panic attacks were less extreme and fewer and far between. They hoped that by their wedding, he’d be ready to stand in the receiving line.
She’d already moved into his place so her family could use the cabin again. Every day seemed like a dream—waking up to Colin. As much as she loved the Sierra and all the wonderful friends she’d made here, he was the best part of her life. Solid and true. And to think that she had almost lost him.
All she could say was thank goodness for second chances.