Thrill Me (Fool's Gold #18)(29)

Maya could have told him the truth, he thought. Been honest. He would have understood. But she’d held back and they’d never had a chance. Ironic that the first woman he fell for kept just as many secrets as his family did. Was there anybody out there who told the truth? Although he supposed he was being hard on Maya. She’d been a kid and scared.

How would things have been different if he’d known she was afraid? If he’d been able to see her breakup as fear talking rather than her heart? Would he have been able to explain that to her? Would she have listened? Told him what she was thinking and feeling? And to what end? Could they have made it, like the old people on the mountain?

Questions that would never have an answer, he told himself. What was done was done.

He continued to head up the mountain. About a half hour later, he paused as he heard an unusual sound. It was man-made. A chain saw? Del swore. Was some moron illegally cutting down trees?

He turned toward the noise. Following it was easy. Fifteen minutes later, he stepped into a clearing and stumbled to a stop. The grinding, biting sound did come from a chain saw, but the person wielding it wasn’t cutting down trees. And he wasn’t a stranger. Del stared as his brother Nick used the machine to make unbelievably delicate cuts in a trunk that had to be at least ten feet high.

Nick was wearing goggles and gloves to protect his eyes, hands and forearms. He stood on a nest of sawdust. Although it was too soon for Del to know what the sculpture was going to be, he knew it would be huge.

Behind his brother he saw a tall building. Wide double doors stood open and inside were dozens of completed sculptures. Bears and deer, each so lifelike that it seemed any one of them could take a single step and be alive. He saw a dancing girl, standing en pointe, her arms held above her head. A woman holding a baby in her arms.

The work was brilliant, and more impressive considering the medium and how the sculptures were achieved.

He thought about his father’s criticism that Nick was ignoring his gift and knew the old man was wrong. Which meant Nick hadn’t told him what he was doing. Based on the location of his work space, Del wondered if anyone knew what was going on.

Slowly, carefully, he backed up until he was in the brush again, then turned into the forest and continued on with his hike. He wasn’t sure if he was going to confront his brother about what he’d seen or let it go. Because not telling anyone was kind of a Mitchell tradition.

* * *

MAYA HAD NEVER had a garden before. Her apartment in Los Angeles had come with a tiny balcony that she’d never once used. Her office had windows and a view, but she’d never been in it long enough to consider a houseplant of any kind. But now that she had a house, she was determined to make the plant thing work.

Her rental came with a perfectly nice yard. There was a lawn, along with hedges and other green plant things. But there weren’t any flowers. So her first week in town she’d gone to Plants for the Planet—a local nursery. She’d bought three big pots and flowers to go in them. The lady at the nursery had promised geraniums couldn’t be killed, so Maya had chosen them.

Now, in the quiet of the evening, she carefully watered her plants. It had been warm and she didn’t want them dying from the heat.

So far the week had been a good one, she thought. She and Del had made progress on the videos, she was caught up in her other work and the house was ready for Elaine to spend a couple of days with her after her surgery in the morning.

As soon as she thought of Elaine, she felt tension in her body. Not only worry about the cancer, but a sense of foreboding about keeping the secret. While she respected Elaine’s reasons, Maya knew in her gut the other woman was wrong not to tell her family. They loved her. They would want to be there for her. Sure Ceallach could be difficult, but as much as he was an artist, his wife was his world. He would be devastated when he finally found out what she’d kept from him.

Maya also knew that she could offer advice, but ultimately the decision was Elaine’s. Maya would be her friend, help where she could and do her best to keep her mouth shut about the rest of it.

Which was what friends did, she reminded herself. This was what she’d come home for. Plants to be watered, friends to hang with. There was a rhythm to her days that was a lot less frantic than it had been back in Los Angeles.

She finished and went back inside. She had her favorite shows she’d recorded and there was a book she’d been wanting to read. But instead of reaching for either, she crossed to the small built-in bookcase and pulled out a worn scrapbook. She settled on the sofa, sat cross-legged and opened the book.

She’d been seven or eight when she’d started the scrapbook and she thought maybe she’d put in the last pictures when she’d been in her early twenties. Probably right after college.

The pages were simple. They were covered with pictures of places in the world she wanted to go. The first choices were obvious. Paris was represented by the Eiffel Tower. London by Buckingham Palace. But as she’d gotten older, her dream destinations had grown little more unexpected. There was a photograph of a café outside of a mountain village in Peru. The shore of the Galápagos Islands. She’d always planned to get there.

But working in local television didn’t exactly lend itself to exotic travel. Vacation plans were often disrupted by unexpected events. She hadn’t minded so much when there was actual news, but she’d had to cut short a trip once because of a rumor that Jennifer Aniston got engaged.