The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(10)

She was dying. Of horror.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, her drink passed across the counter just as he finished making his order. He started to come toward her, and she ducked around the other side of the post, holding her coffee. Then around to the other side. Her heart was thundering fast, and she could swear that she felt him. His presence. And she did a side step toward the front door, letting it swing shut behind her, her heart lodged firmly in her throat. She started down the sidewalk, trying to move as quickly as her legs could carry her, when she nearly ran into her sister-in-law.

“Mallory?”

“Oh,” Mallory said.

“Mallory, what are you doing here?”

Mallory scrunched her nose and tried to smile, but she had a feeling she’d only just achieved a grimace. “Surprise?”

Iris shook her head. “It’s crazy, but Rose told me that she thought she saw you the other night in the Gold Valley Saloon, and I told her that was impossible because you were in California.”

“I was,” Mallory said quickly. “In California. I’m here. Today.” She was a liar. But hey, she was fiercely guarding her fantasy. Her fantasy that was currently right on her heels. And what small-town hell was this?

“I just... I was coming to talk to you and Griffin today. I... Have made some changes. And I... Need to talk to you about them.” She finished extremely lamely.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah. I... If you’re around later... I’d like to come and talk to you and Griffin.”

“Sure,” Iris said. “I mean, you know you can always talk to me.”

She didn’t know her sister-in-law that well, but she loved her. Loved her effortlessly because she had brought Griffin back from the brink of the darkest pit any person could have ever been in. Griffin wasn’t really living when he’d met Iris. Griffin was a man with one foot in the grave. His detachment from the family, his misery had been so intense that Iris had wondered if he would ever be able to come back from it. But he had. Through loving her. And because of that, Mallory loved her without question and without fail. But, this wasn’t really a conversation she wanted to have twice.

“I better save it. I need to be caffeinated. Is there a... A time that would be good or...”

“Yeah, sometime this afternoon. Really, anytime. Griffin and I spend the later part of the day together. I’m just... Headed to the bakery. Did you want some cake?”

The door to the coffee shop swung open and she tried not to panic. Because it might be her man.

“Yes,” she said. “Cake.” And crossed the street quickly, arm in arm with Iris, toward the Cookie Jar, her sister-in-law’s amazing bakery that she had just opened a few months earlier.

Griffin owned the building, and that was how the two of them had met. Mallory had a feeling that the version of the story they told was heavily censored, but it was okay. She didn’t need all the gritty details. She sipped her coffee while Iris put together a box full of goodies.

“I’m staying by myself,” she said, looking at the cookies, cupcakes and pastries that her sister-in-law had put into the box.

“Well. I don’t know. Consider it a welcome gift? How long are you going to be here? Can you at least tell me that?”

“Awhile,” she said. “I... Like I said, I’m making some changes.”

“Well, I hope they’re good changes,” Iris said.

“I think they are. I hope they are. No, I know they are. I do. I’m... Oh, I really need them to be.”

“Well we’ll see you this afternoon.”

“I’ll be completely sugared up by then.”

“Works for me.”

But, she would need to tell Griffin that she was here. She couldn’t just roll into his family dinner. And that was how she found herself driving up the long, winding dirt road that led to Echo Pass and the new house that her brother had finished building for himself and his wife.

Just the thought of it made her happier. Griffin being happy made her happy. When they’d been separated, when she’d been back in California and he’d been here, and she’d called him all the time, and sometimes he didn’t answer... She had been sure she would lose him. She really had.

She hadn’t believed that he could ever climb out of the hole he was in, and who could blame him? Who could even judge him? To lose his wife and child the way that he had... It was horrible. Beyond horrible. She wasn’t sure if she would have been strong enough to make the decision to keep on going. But he had.

In the grand scheme of things, what she was going through was nothing. Particularly by comparison to the things that Griffin had endured.

The first thing that came into view was a small cabin, which she knew that Griffin was going to mention. And she knew that he was going to ask why she wasn’t renting it. And then she was going to have to have an honest talk with him about... Everything. That was the problem. She had been interested in his life, in his recovery from his pain when he was out here hiding from the world, and he wasn’t going to be any less interested in hers. That cabin, he had explained, was where he had lived while he was slowly building the house that he had never really intended to finish or live in.

Griffin had first purchased this lot of property when he was married to his previous wife. They’d had plans to leave California and move to Oregon, live in a house at the top of the mountain. When she died, Griffin had taken it upon himself to build the house as a memorial. Or rather, a punishment. Taking himself off-grid so that no one could get in touch with him, embroiling himself in a project he would never be able to finish. And then, Iris Daniels had come along, and somehow had pulled him out from the grave he was living in. He had finished the house for her. Had brought a whole team of men out to finish it, because the house was no longer a punishment, but a symbol of hope.