Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(2)
“Yes, two sons, Josh and Jerod. They’re seven and five. He wants them to see where he grew up and to meet all of us. I know how hard you took it—the things he did. You above all, but it’s my wedding day, and a father should give his daughter away. Don’t you want to patch things up and see him again?”
Kate almost said that she’d much rather have a long-dead Adena warrior resurrected from one of their burial mounds around here, but she managed to keep her mouth shut on that.
“So,” Kate said, her voice calmer now. “He’ll be at the center of things, not just a guest.”
“You mean everyone will talk about the Lockwoods again?”
“I don’t care what people around here say. Really. And obviously, Gabe is okay with this.”
“Yes, he is. He understands, and we’ve told his mother. But I really wanted you to understand, just the way my future mother-in-law does. With Mom gone now, I do see you as the head of the family, so it’s important to me.”
Kate couldn’t keep from rolling her eyes. “Head of the family until Jack Lockwood arrives with wife and kids in tow and takes over. Oh, sure, I guess I’m curious about him, but then, I’m curious about everything.”
“Like especially what’s buried in local Adena mounds, right?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. For you, of course, I’ll honor your wishes for your guests and who you choose to be in your wedding party. But don’t expect your maid of honor to forgive that man. Can’t do it, though I’ll be civil to him and them. If we’ve got our crazy cousins coming from that strange religious sect they’re in, we might as well have the ghost of childhood past there, too.”
Tess breathed an audible sigh of relief; she seemed to deflate as her stiff stance relaxed a bit and she leaned back. “Once you meet Grant Mason, I don’t think you’ll be looking at Dad anyway,” she said, trying another tactic. “Tall, handsome, deep voice. A Viking revisited, so too bad you’re not studying them. Best man, for sure.”
“I remember him. But he was older than me, and I didn’t really know him. So he’s stayed best friends with Gabe all these years?”
Tess nodded and wiped under her eyes. “Right. Even when Gabe was in the service and Grant went to college, then lived out West for a while, working with logging crews so he’d have that background when he took over his family’s lumber mill. He’s got a gorgeous house with a great view. You’ll see that at the party tonight. Wish Char would be here for that, too, but we’ll all be together soon.”
At least, Kate thought, Jack Lockwood, alias former father, would not be here tonight, so she could enjoy herself. Not only was she curious to see Grant Mason, but she also couldn’t wait to examine the Adena burial site she’d found on an old map in the university archives when she was back in the States at Christmas. The so-called Mason Mound was about twenty yards behind Grant’s house, and she was much more eager to see it than him.
*
The caterers Grant had hired from the upscale Lake Azure area had taken over the kitchen, and he didn’t want to disturb the setup for the buffet or the bar at the far end of the living room. So he sat in his favorite chair looking out over the back forest view through his massive picture window.
The guests for the party he was throwing for his best friend, Gabe, and his fiancée, Tess, would be here soon—eighteen people, a nice number for mixing and chatting. He’d laid in champagne for toasts to the happy couple.
Gabe and Grant had been best friends since elementary school, when a teacher had seated them in alphabetical order by first names. Grant had been the first to marry. Lacey had been his high-school sweetheart, head of the cheerleaders, prom queen to his king. How unoriginal—and what a disaster.
Four years into the marriage, she had wanted out of what she called “the boondocks,” while he intended to make his life here running the lumber mill that had been in his family for three generations. He mingled with the movers and shakers in Columbus and D.C., lobbied politicians to pass green laws and made sure his loggers planted two trees for every one they cut, so it wasn’t as if he was always in little Cold Creek. But Lacey’s tastes ran to fancy restaurants, import shops and exotic places—probably a life like Tess’s oldest, world-traveling sister was used to.
The divorce had been Lacey’s call, though he knew he was better off without her. She’d kept insisting she was too young to get tied down with children, too, and he’d love to raise a family here. Yet, when it came to women, he, too, felt caught between two worlds. He might wear work jeans and steel-toed boots and fit in with his good-old-boy loggers and cutters, but he liked tailored clothes and a bit of glitz and class in his playtime—and in a woman.
And he did like this time of year, since the days were getting longer. Not only did they get more done at the mill, but when he came home, he could also look out at this view while he ate or took a run on the path through the thirty acres of hardwood forest he owned. Occasionally, he’d even climb into the great, old tree house Grandpa and Dad had made for him and his brother, Brad, and survey the stunning scene of treetops and, above and beyond that, the blue-green foothills, which fringed the Appalachians.
From that vantage point, he could look almost straight down on the low, conical prehistoric Indian mound—Mason’s Mound, the locals called it. Years ago when he was twelve and Brad was ten, with their friends Todd and Paul, right beneath the huge bird’s-eye maple that held the tree house in its limbs and guarded the mound, they had done the forbidden and seen such wonderful and terrible things....