See Jane Fall (4 page)

“Oh, I agree.” He glanced at her, then back
to the road, smiling. “They’re sweet, right? Heartfelt.”

“Yeah. Like, the music now is all so cool
and slick. These songs were
all
heart. I mean, two men
singing about how they can’t bear to live in a world without love?
Can you imagine now?”

Lars chuckled. “Wouldn’t happen.”

“And the harmonies. Speaking of”—she
shuffled the CDs on her lap—“do you have the Kingston Trio
here?”

“I do at home. But, um, I think I have The
Fleetwoods if you’re looking for more harmony. Check your lap.”

“Yes!”

“Give it to me.”

Suddenly the voices of the late-’50s trio
filled the car.

“I love this one,” Lars sighed, gently
beating his fingers along to “Come Softly.”

Jane leaned back in her seat, letting the
soft harmonies and sweet tune envelop her.
Come softly, darling.
Come to me, stay. You’re my obsession forever and a day…

Her afternoon was not turning out as
planned. She should be doing work on her phone, not listening to
obscure music with a hot tour guide. But she was so tired, and the
music was so nice. It was such a relief to be far away from New
York, and it had been weeks, maybe months, since her father felt so
real
to her.

She glanced at Lars and felt her stomach
flutter. His lips were moving as he sang softly, but she couldn’t
actually hear any sound. She watched his lips, almost mesmerized,
wondering what it would be like to—

“Take a picture, it lasts longer.”

“A harbinger of our shared youth. How very
sophisticated of you to quote Pee Wee Herman,” she muttered,
looking down quickly, feeling her face flush hot.

“Do you need a camera? I could loan you one.
I bet your—your, uh, fancy-pants phone there has one. Doesn’t it?
Do you want me to smile? Pose?”

She squirmed in her seat, peeking at him
with an embarrassed grimace, wishing he didn’t look so
adorable.

“I admit it. I was staring. You were
mouthing the words, but no sound was coming out.” It was mostly the
truth.

He flicked a glance to her. “Smooth.”

“Conceited.”

“Quick.”

“Forgiven.”

“Intriguing.”

She grinned. Since when was Jane Mays
intriguing to anyone? Especially anyone as hot as Lars Lindstrom?
She felt a little chuffed, a little saucy, maybe even a little
sexy.

Or maybe she was feeling sexy because of the
ass massage her phone was giving her. She’d been so distracted by
Lars, she hadn’t realized it was buzzing. She shifted to pull it
out of her back pocket.

Samara.
Jane stared at her name and
beautiful face on the iPhone screen, the familiar heaviness of
servitude compressing her chest. She clenched her jaw, knowing that
if she answered, she was going to have to listen to some long
tirade that required
immediate
attention, Jane
. Jane
was tired. She was tired of being at the beck and call of a fully
grown woman who had no appreciation, respect or understanding of
what Jane did for her every day.

Maybe it was time Samara found out.

For one day, after five years in manacles,
she wanted to be free. She just wanted to be Jane, with her own
thoughts, her own experiences, a conversation with a handsome blond
and a little ’60s music. Was that too much to ask? She was sick and
tired of being an extension of Samara, a nobody, a shadow.

Oh, she wouldn’t get involved with Lars.
This wasn’t
about
Lars, and the memory of Ben was still
fresh enough to sting. No, this was about Jane. This was about Jane
having a few hours to herself.

In a second the phone would start playing
Samara’s favorite song, Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” whose
meaning had been totally lost on Samara, but which she had
programmed into Jane’s phone as her ringtone anyway.

Jane’s finger hovered over the green Talk
button, trembling, but she impulsively hit the red End button
instead, exhaling loudly, then almost giggling with the outlandish
reality that she had just hung up on Samara Amaya. Throwing all
caution and sanity to the wind, she pressed hard on the power
button until the phone powered down completely. She stared at the
screen for three seconds, realizing she’d never seen it so black
and still while on the ground in five years.

“Anything important?” asked Lars, turning
down the radio.

“No,” answered Smooth, Quick, Intriguing
Jane. She turned the radio back up and tossed the phone into the
outer pocket of her backpack.

Right now I’m just going to be Jane Mays.
Nobody’s assistant. Nobody’s cousin. Nobody’s niece. Sadly,
nobody’s daughter. Today is for me. Just for me.

She turned to Lars and smiled, feeling a
thousand-pound weight slip off her shoulders. Oh, she’d pay for her
rash decision later. But, for now, as Ray had kindly pointed out,
she had three days to herself.

And damn if Jane wasn’t going to make the
most of them.

***

Lars pulled up in front of Samara’s
on-location housing in Gardiner, Montana, and all Jane could think
was:
Samara is going to have a fit
.

A month ago, after looking at the four or
five motel options in Gardiner, and as politely as possible, Jane
had insisted that
Trend
rent a house for the entirety of
Samara’s stay. She reminded
Trend
that Samara Amaya was
accustomed to a two-bedroom suite at the finest hotels in the world
when on location, and she would not be comfortable in a motel room.
The magazine had graciously arranged for a house to be leased while
Samara was in Gardiner, and while they didn’t have a photo for
Jane, they had assured her it would be the local equivalent of a
two-bedroom suite.

Jane lowered her Chanel sunglasses, looking
up at the shiny, new fluorescent sign over her head that read “Kozy
Kabins” with a jaunty red arrow that blinked cheerfully toward the
four brand new housekeeping cottages.

On one hand, she could see why they had been
chosen. The construction was new, that was obvious. Obvious by the
fact that there was not one blade of grass, bush or tree to be seen
around the full perimeter of the solitary four cottages, whose
medium-toned, orange-hued logs were almost a perfect match to the
dust at her feet. There was no driveway, no patch of grass, no
other sign of life. Just four log cottages with green metals roofs
plopped down in the middle of nowhere with a view to an expansive
meadow that extended to a faraway mountain range.

“This is…for
Samara
?”

“Yep,” he nodded, standing next to her. “Got
it all fixed up just in time too.”

Oh, my God, he doesn’t even realize how
unacceptable this is.

“Are those,” she gestured to the other three
cottages, “for her staff?”

Lars shook his head. “Nope. We were only
asked to secure a cottage for Miss Amaya. Those three aren’t even
finished yet. I’m not sure they even have the electric wired in
yet.”

Jane turned to face him, her eyes wide.
“This is a vacation cabin.”

Lars furrowed his brow, and then shrugged.
“We don’t exactly have six-bedroom, million-dollar houses lying
around Gardiner waiting for someone to come rent for a week. The
travel department at
Trend
said that the minimum requirement
was a two-bedroom suite. None of the local hotels
have
suites, let alone a two-bedroom suite. We figured if we fixed this
up, it’d be the closest to what Ms. Amaya requires.”

“Yes, but—” Jane rooted around in her bag
until she found a Tootsie roll pop, unwrapped it, jamming it into
her mouth and letting herself out of the van. She cringed at the
dust and dirt that surrounded the small cottage and swirled around
her feet.
This is a disaster.

She made her way toward the front door of
the cottage, waggling her lollipop at Lars. “You want one?”

“Umm, a
lollipop
?”

“Yeah. They’re not just for kids. There’s a
secret in the center…” she cajoled, in a sing-song, husky
voice.

“I don’t remember the last time I had a
lollipop.”

She fished another out of her bag. “Then
you’re missing out.”

While he unwrapped his treat, Jane took a
better look around.

“So those are…empty?”

“Yep. This one here’s the only one that’s
furnished. It’s brand new. Wasn’t supposed to even be open until
next spring. They rushed this one and got it all set up nice for
Ms. Amaya.”

Jane looked up and noted two satellite
dishes on the roof, shiny and garish in the mid-afternoon sun, they
looked ridiculously large on the small roof. She gestured to them
with her lollipop. “What’s with those?”

“TV and Internet. Said you needed them.”

She glanced at him and realized he was
staring at her, so she nodded. Samara would have plenty to say
about that, starting with the fact that they weren’t
aesthetically
pleasing perched on the green tin roof over
the front door. That was after she got finished screaming about the
Kozy Kabins, in general. Jane shuddered.

“Do you have the keys?”

While Lars unlocked the door, Jane watched
him from where she stood in front of the house, arms crossed,
sucking on her lollipop, glad her sunglasses shielded her eyes. For
all he knew, she was evaluating the cottage. But, she wasn’t. She
already knew everything she needed to know about this disaster of a
housing debacle. And she had a feeling it wasn’t going to get any
better when he unlocked the door and showed her around the inside.
No, Jane was checking out his long legs in worn jeans and the way
the muscles in his back flexed when he reached forward to unlock
the door. She sighed, finally removing her sunglasses and heading
up two concrete steps into the living room of the small
cottage.

She couldn’t help it. She had this sudden
mental picture of Samara’s face in her head and she burst out
laughing.

The room had a cream, low-pile, wall-to-wall
carpet, a living room set from JCPenney or Sears, a modest dining
room table with four chairs, and a kitchen area with a white
linoleum floor. The two cheaply paneled walls in the living room
had several stock photographs of elk, deer and wolves blown up and
framed without mats in serviceable medium-wood frames.

Lars crossed his arms, his eyes wide and
surprised, a sour expression puckering his lips.

Jane stopped laughing.

She gestured to the four picture windows
that spanned the length of the room, offering sweeping views of the
vast meadow and mountains beyond.

“The view is very nice,” she said quietly,
putting the lollipop back in her mouth.

“It’s brand new,” he answered coolly. “It
was just an empty cottage before. We had it…fixed up.”

“Yes. So you said.” She swallowed, looking
at him. She felt ashamed of herself for laughing, for making him
feel bad.

He turned toward the door. “Maybe I should
start bringing your stuff in.”

“Lars,” she started gently, stopping him,
but he didn’t turn around. She took the lollipop out of her mouth
and crossed the room, touching the bare skin of his upper arm with
her free hand. He turned around slowly, looking down at her hand
first, then into her eyes. “Just so you know…If it were
me
staying here, I’d be thrilled. The views are beautiful, and”—she
spread her arms, gesturing to the furnishings and decoration—“I
have pretty simple tastes.
I’d
be happy here. Very happy.
Very pleased.”

“
She
won’t like it?”

Jane shook her head slowly, adjusting her
cap and putting the lollipop back in her mouth.

“Anything we can do about it?”

Jane sighed and walked to the back of the
cottage, peeking into the small bathroom, master bedroom and
smaller guest bedroom. Lars leaned against the front door, probably
trying
to look nonchalant, his feelings betrayed by his arms
still crossed protectively over his chest.

The simple answer was no. No, there was no
way in a million years that Samara Amaya was going to
happily
stay in this 600-square-foot, flimsy, third-class
vacation cottage. Didn’t matter that the carpet smelled new, and
the linoleum was spic and span. Didn’t matter that no one had
probably dared sit on the toilet yet, and the views were gorgeous.
Didn’t matter that good people had gone out of their way to make it
as comfortable for her as possible.

Lars tilted his head to the side, raising
his eyebrows in question, and she couldn’t bear to disappoint him.
She smiled at him with unforced warmth.

“We’ll just have to make it work.”

***

In the end, Lars upended the bed in the guest
bedroom and put all of Samara’s luggage in there. It would serve as
her dressing room, and Jane told him that she would get a room at
the motel with the rest of the crew, coming back to the cottage
early in the morning to be on-hand for Samara before she woke up
each day. Lars said he’d have an extra key made so that Jane could
come and go freely.

To save his life, Lars couldn’t understand
the fuss. For heaven’s sake, it was a perfectly nice little place,
not to mention Miss Amaya would only be staying there for three
nights before relocating to the resort in Jackson Hole next
weekend. He sensed that Jane was still uneasy about the
arrangements, but he had been honest about the lack of options.
There was simply nowhere else for Miss Amaya to stay that would
meet her demands.

Since Jane had a good hour or two of
unpacking to do, Lars said he’d be back to pick her up at 5 p.m. to
take her to dinner and then to the Best Western to check into a
room of her own.

Frankly, he was glad to get back in the
empty van and drive away from the cottage. Aside from the fact that
he was uncomfortable and embarrassed by Jane’s reaction to the tidy
little cottage, two burning questions had been driving him crazy
for almost an hour: