Discovering Duncan

“Yeah,” he murmured, asking no questions.

But that didn’t stop Annie from reading more, and everything he’d avoided for six months hit him in the face. And it hit hard. “Tellgare files for bankruptcy. Stocks plummet. Rivals move in. Sounds like some sharks circling the dead or dying.”

That was closer than she thought, and he looked over at her as she refolded the paper. Sickness hit him hard. His father had destroyed Tellgare. He turned his attention back to the road and realized that he’d wandered onto the shoulder. The tires beat on gravel, the three-foot-high wooden safety rail was close and was the only thing to stop a fifty-foot plunge into a rough ravine below.

He tried not to overcorrect, but to ease his way back onto the road. But he didn’t have time to do it properly. At the same time as Annie said, “Look out!” he saw a disabled car on the shoulder, right in his path. Its hood was up and its taillights on.

He had no choice but to jerk the wheel to the left, back toward the pavement. He felt his wheels spin, then grind in the gravel, shooting rocks everywhere as he slipped past the parked car, barely missing impact. But his relief was short-lived when he felt the back end of the SUV start to fishtail wildly, pushing him into a spin. He steered into it, the world outside a blur and Annie’s screams ringing in his ears. The SUV rammed the safety rail, then an explosion and the sound of tearing metal, acrid smoke everywhere, and with a shuddering finality, everything stopped.

Chapter Three

Lauren saw the SUV come out of nowhere, headed right for her, then, in a surreal moment, it passed by her. Before she could blink, the SUV started to spin, throwing gravel back at her car. Dust rose and the SUV slammed into the safety rail sideways, skidded along the barrier, then stopped in a cloud of dust. In that moment she realized the black SUV belonged to Duncan Bishop.

She was out of her car in an instant, running toward the SUV, coughing from the dust and the smell of burning rubber. She reached the driver’s side, grabbed the door handle and pulled, but it was locked. She pounded on the window, calling out, “Open it, open it, open it!” The door flew back suddenly, almost hitting her before she could jump out of the way.

Then she saw Duncan Bishop. The air bag had ruptured from the center of the steering wheel and the smell of chemicals all but choked her. She grabbed his jacket sleeve, the idea that she nearly got him killed too unbelievable to absorb. “Oh, my gosh, are you okay?” she said, the words spilling out over each other. She let go of his arm. “My gosh, I thought you were going to go over the edge.”

“Me, too,” he muttered as he twisted toward her to get out of the SUV. His feet hit the ground, and she backed up to give him space. He towered over her.

“You just skidded, I mean, the SUV was going all over and I thought—”

“I know what you thought,” he said, straightening in the cold air. “And it’s my fault.”

“Oh, no, if I hadn’t parked my car there, you never would have—”

“I got distracted,” he said.

“I can’t open the door.” A voice came from the car and the next thing Lauren knew, a woman had slid across the driver’s seat and gotten out.

She was of medium height, slender, almost plain. Certainly not an Adrianna Barr type. The woman pressed a hand to her chest and gasped, “Oh, my goodness, now that was a ride.”

Duncan asked if she was okay then headed to the hood of the SUV. Lauren followed. Together they stared at the damage. The front tire on the passenger side was torn to bits and the rim had dug into the gravel. The SUV was butted up against the guardrail. Deep ruts were embedded in the body thanks to the large metal bolts that held the wooden rails in place.

“Holy cow,” she whispered and Duncan turned, almost hitting her in the chin with his arm. She moved back quickly. This was not how the plan was supposed to go. “You really did wreck your car, didn’t you?”

“That about sums it up,” he said. “That tire’s history and we’re stuck.”

“No, no, we’ll put on your spare, and we’ll be fine.”

“No, the spare’s gone.”

The SUV was so new it didn’t even have its regular plates on yet. Lauren had to crook her neck slightly to look up at him. “You don’t have a spare?”

“I tore up a tire a week ago on a strip of metal in the road, and I haven’t picked up the replacement yet.”

The mystery woman appeared, pressing herself between Duncan and Lauren to take a long look at the damage. Then she drew back and looked up at Duncan. “And you don’t have a spare?”

“Ladies, there is no spare tire,” he said with a touch of exasperation. He glanced back down the road where Lauren had parked. “What’s wrong with your car?”

She stuck with the words she’d rehearsed while she’d been waiting for him to show up, when she’d hoped he’d stop to rescue another damsel in distress. “It stalled and I can’t get it started, and my cell phone has no signal.”

He exhaled, his breath curling into the cold air. “Let’s see if I can’t get your car started.”

But as he made his way toward her vehicle, Lauren followed and blocked his path. “I can’t let you mess with that car. It’s a classic. It’s not just some old car.”

In fact, the car was her brother’s, almost forty years old, completely restored, and recently had a new paint job that Alan called “cherry-apple red.” It had taken real bribery to get him to part with it for a week or so, and let her drive it all the way here. But she knew she’d need a car that wouldn’t be overlooked or forgotten by Duncan. “And it’s really temperamental.” That was true, and it was also true that if he knew anything about old cars, he’d know that the coil wire had been pulled out. “It’s got a mind of its own.”

He almost laughed at her. “It’s a car, lady.”

She stood her ground. “It’s my car,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You said it stopped, and you couldn’t get it going. Why do you think you can fix it now?”

“No, I said it stalled and I parked here,” she said, quickly elaborating to cover her tracks. “I didn’t get to finish and tell you that sometimes, if you let it rest for a bit, it’ll start.”

Damn it, he was going to laugh, really laugh. She could see it in the failing light. “So, it’s pouting, and won’t go until you make nice-nice to it?”

She didn’t smile. “No, it’s got a problem with the electrical wiring, and sometimes it reconnects and restarts.”

“Let her try,” the woman said as she came up behind Duncan and grabbed his arm. “It’s freezing and we have to get back.”

He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and nodded to the car. “Go ahead and talk to it nicely and make it understand that we need to have a ride out of here.”

Lauren didn’t wait to be asked twice. She hurried to the car and made a show of tinkering under the hood before reconnecting the wires. Standing, she turned to look at the other two. “That should do it, if we’re lucky.”

“A lady who can fix her own car,” the woman said approvingly. “I love it.”

Lauren reached up to pull the hood closed, then she went around to get behind the wheel. She waited a moment, then turned the key and the strong engine kicked over immediately. Her brother had completely rebuilt the engine and it worked perfectly. She turned on the headlights, drove slowly forward and came even with Duncan as she rolled down the window. “You two need a ride?”

“You’re terrific,” the woman said.

Duncan said, “Annie, get in, and I’ll get our things from the car.” He headed back to the disabled SUV while the woman, Annie, ran around the front of the car and pulled the passenger door open.

She scrambled into the back seat. “Duncan would never fit back here,” she said as she sank onto the white tuck-and-roll upholstery.

“Sorry it’s so small back there,” Lauren said and saw the emergency flashers of the SUV click on. Duncan got back out, closed up the car, then headed back to them with a small bag in one hand and a large envelope in the other. He went around and climbed in, taking the other bucket seat and quickly closing the door after him. He gave Annie the small bag and kept the envelope. “Got everything?” she asked.

He glanced at her and skimmed off his watch cap. His hair spiked slightly around his face, and she could see the beginnings of a beard at his jawline. A rough version of his father, very rough. “I left the luggage. We can get it later,” he said, then asked, “Is it going to keep running?”

“I hope so.” She eased out onto the highway.

“This is a great car,” Annie said, sitting forward to lean between the bucket seats. “And I’m Annie Logan.”

“I’m Lauren,” she said and waited for Duncan to chime in. He didn’t.

Instead, he asked, “Where were you heading, Lauren?”

She started her cover story. “Up the road a ways.”

“Is that a gypsy thing?” he asked.

“Do I look like a gypsy?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She pushed back the hood of the lime-green jacket she’d chosen to make an impact, then glanced at him. “I’ve got freckles and red hair. Gypsies don’t usually have either trait.”

He was studying her intently. “I guess not,” he murmured.

“Now, where am I taking the two of you?”

“Up the road.”

Annie jumped in. “Don’t pay any attention to him. Getting information out of him is like pulling teeth. We’re going to Silver Creek.”

The fact that Duncan Bishop was with a woman shouldn’t have surprised Lauren, not after what his father had told her and what she knew from the checks she’d done into his romantic history. But the type of woman surprised her. Annie Logan seemed warm and friendly, and unassuming. Lauren doubted anyone would have called Adrianna Barr unassuming. She shot Annie a glance in the rearview mirror and said, “Silver Creek it is.”

“Have you ever been there?” Duncan asked.

“No,” she lied. “Why?”

“I thought you looked familiar, but I guess not.”

She looked familiar? He couldn’t remember her from that flashing moment in the diner. He’d barely looked at her, and she’d done everything to be invisible, down to wearing dark clothes and that stupid knit hat. “I guess I’ve got that kind of face.”

“What kind?”

“The kind where you think you saw me before, but you couldn’t have, because I was never where you thought I was, so you couldn’t have seen me.”

“Whew, I can’t argue with that reasoning,” he said.

The car surged slightly, mostly because her foot jerked on the gas. “Sorry, sometimes it’s a little—”

“I know, temperamental,” Duncan finished for her.

Lauren nibbled on her bottom lip as she drove up the grade. Okay, so instead of him doing the rescuing when her car broke down, she’d been the one to rescue him…sort of. She regretted that his SUV was the worse for wear, but she’d made so certain she’d pulled over in a safe spot. Lots of shoulder area. And he should have seen her in this car with its red paint and the parking lights on.

Even though she didn’t know how he could have almost hit her, she took the blame to get talking again. “I’m sorry I parked where I did and almost got you both killed.”

She felt him shift, and she knew he was looking right at her. “I crashed because I was trying to miss your car, but then again, if the car hadn’t been there, I might have kept going and gone right over the rail. I’d say this is the better scenario.”

She shivered at the thought of that happening, and for a moment she thought of her job, of the consequences that came from every action she took to do things right. Thank goodness the consequences this time were relatively minor. And she was with Duncan Bishop. “Much better.”

“Thank goodness we didn’t go over,” Annie said. “And thank goodness you got your car going.”

“So, how did you get this car going?” Duncan asked.

“There’s a wire that goes to the coil, and it…it can come out pretty easily.” She’d barely had to tug to free it after she’d parked on the shoulder.

“It just slipped out of place?”

“I guess so,” she lied. Being the youngest in a family with three brothers had been rough, but it did have its advantages when it came to disabling a car.

“And this happens a lot?” Annie asked.

“Off and on,” she said, looking ahead intently, and not chancing a look at the man close to her.

“Why haven’t you had it fixed?” Duncan asked—the same thing she would have asked.

She took a breath, taking her boss’s advice and sticking to the truth as much as possible when you weave a backstory on assignment. The theory was, you had less to remember, and less to fabricate. “The car was rewired when the engine was rebuilt, and I guess that the new wires were just that, new. And the car’s old. The match isn’t perfect.” He didn’t comment, so she guessed he bought the explanation. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she tried to reroute the conversation. “You live in Silver Creek?”

“We both do,” Annie said before Duncan could say anything.

Annie was making this difficult, a talker who picked up when Duncan hesitated for any reason. So she tried to work around that by glancing at Duncan and making eye contact so he knew she was talking to him. “You like it?” she asked.

As she looked back at the road, he said, “Sure.”

One-word answers weren’t what she’d hoped for, so she regrouped and said, “You never told me your name.”

“Duncan,” he said, and that was that.

He didn’t say anything else, but Annie did, chattering on about Silver Creek and how she’d lived there all her life. She never said how she knew Duncan, but told her everything else about the town. She would have made a good tour guide, Lauren thought, trying not to be annoyed with the woman. She listened, waiting for Annie to stop. They were less than five miles from the town, and the glow from the ski slopes was starting to show in the night sky. Once they got there, she knew he’d be out of the car and gone before she could say goodbye.

“Duncan,” she said when Annie took a breath, trying to find something to say as she tapped the top of the steering wheel with the tip of her forefinger. Then she heard herself saying something totally ludicrous, but she couldn’t take it back once it was out there. “So, are you a highlander?”

“What?”

She looked at him, making a smile form on her lips. “A Scottish highlander. You’re in the right setting, a wild, cold country. Like the Highlands of Scotland, and your name, Duncan, it fits.”

“Sorry, my mother was Irish, and my father is…” He hesitated, then finally said, “Whatever he wants to be.”

D. R. Bishop would be whatever he wanted to be. That was dead on. “Good or bad?” she asked, hoping to get him to talk a bit about his father, but he gave his usual condensed one- or two-word answer.

“That depends.”

Thankfully, Annie had sat back in her seat, apparently gathering her strength for another bout of conversation. So Lauren kept going, trying to get Duncan to say something she could connect with. “So, are you a ski champion or something?”

“No.”

“I thought with all the snow and cold, that being a skier around here was a no-brainer.”

“There isn’t any snow,” Annie said, active again as she sat forward. “Not a flake. Nothing.”

Lauren glanced at the woman in her rearview mirror, then at Duncan. His eyes were narrowed on her, a look he shared with his father, that way of studying what was in front of him intently, and intensely. “There’s no snow?” she asked, the lament that had been everywhere on her short visit to Silver Creek.

Annie jumped in again, earnestly saying, “It’s the driest season yet, and the slopes are all being filled by machine.” She said that as if it were something horrible. “The skiing’s just awful, and the slopes are all but shut down.”

“What about that fancy resort?”

“They can have snow in July up there,” she said.

“I guess money buys just about anything,” she said, waiting to see how Duncan responded.

He didn’t. Annie did, giving a long tirade about how the resort had tried to eat up the town, and how it drew so many outsiders. But not once had Annie said anything personal to Duncan. There hadn’t been any “connection” between them, no touching, no smiles, nothing intimate at all. And Lauren wondered what they were to each other. Obviously they were close enough to go to Las Vegas together, but there was something missing between them.

“Do you need me to take you someplace to get your car towed?” she asked Duncan.

“Rollie’s Garage on the main street,” he said. “It’s just as you get into the old section of town.”

Lauren was tired of all this dancing around with words and decided time was short, so she went for a direct hit. “So, how long have you been in Silver Creek, Duncan?”

She felt Duncan look back at her, but it was Annie who spoke up once again, answering for him. “He walked in two, maybe three months ago. He came and never left.”

That told her nothing, except that there were three or four months unaccounted for. She stared ahead at the glow from the ski runs that was spreading in the dusky sky. Talking to Duncan with Annie around was next to useless, and she figured she had to take a different tack before the car stopped at Rollie’s Garage.

They were close to town now, going past the first scattering of houses digging into the foothills at the base of the soaring mountains on either side, their lights flashing in the night. Then more buildings, a huge stone structure to the right with a lit sign near the road, Silver Creek Clinic. A few small businesses were closing for the day at the beginning of the main street. The old-fashioned lampposts lined the way, and the Christmas lights twinkled everywhere.

“There’s Rollie’s,” Annie said, motioning just ahead of them to the left.

Lauren saw the sign set between the street and an island of gas pumps. Beyond the pumps was an older building with a false-wood fronted office and to the right, three service bays with their metal doors closed tightly. A neon red Closed sign shone in the window of the office.

“It’s closed,” Lauren said, grateful for the opportunity to buy more time and take Duncan to another garage.

“Just pull in. He’s there,” Duncan said, so she had no choice but to swing off the street and over toward the office.

She had to think fast because otherwise she’d lose even this weak connection. So she kept talking, making every attempt to draw him into a meaningful conversation. “The town is bigger than I thought it would be.”

“It’s huge,” Annie said. “Just huge. When I was growing up, there were only two hundred residents, and now look at it. Although it’s not all residents, not at all. I mean, I told you about the influx of all those people for skiing and the rich ones who go straight through and hide behind the walls at the inn.”

She’d told her that three times, Lauren thought, but who was keeping count? She stopped by the door of the closed offices, let the car idle and spoke off the top of her head to buy time. “I’ll wait for you.”

“You don’t have to,” Duncan said, his hand on the door handle. “We can walk.”

“Oh, no,” she said, glancing at Annie to include her in what she said, hoping she’d help her this time. “I can’t just drop the two of you off here.”

But Annie wasn’t an ally this time. “We’ll be just fine,” Annie said quickly, before Duncan could respond. “We’re just going down the street a bit.”

While Annie spoke, Duncan opened his door to get out, and Lauren did the same thing. She knew Annie was scrambling out of the back, then heard the door close, but she never took her eyes off Duncan who was striding to the offices. She caught up with him as he raised his hand to rap on the glass window.

“You don’t know for sure if anyone’s in there, and I feel responsible. It’s so cold, and—”

He looked down at her, his face shadowed by the lights behind him. “Rollie is here twenty-four seven.”

“But he’s not here. It looks empty,” she said.

“He lives out the back. He’ll be here,” he said and rapped on the window, harder this time.

“You could have whiplash or something.” She spoke quickly, and included Annie in what she was saying. “You could both have whiplash.”

He rotated his head, then shrugged. “Nothing.” And, damn it, Annie chimed in, cheerfully saying, “I’m just fine.”

“Well, the car’s all messed up, and I feel as if I’m responsible for that.”

He narrowed his eyes even more. “You’ve got an overdeveloped guilt complex, don’t you?”

If she did, she wouldn’t be playing this game with him. “I just believe in taking responsibility.”

Annie patted her arm. “Oh, it’s not your responsibility. If anything, I was reading that darn newspaper to him about the national forests being in trouble, then businesses going belly up. I’m the one at fault if you want to lay blame.”

A light inside flashed on without warning and its glow exposed the face of Duncan Bishop. His father’s son. The same look. No neatly trimmed beard or white hair, but the strong features, the dark-as-night eyes and a size that seemed almost overwhelming. He turned to the window, exposing his profile and a peculiar arrogance in the way he held his jaw. Like his father. But the rough clothes weren’t like D.R.’s expensive, tailored suits, and for him to be standing in front of a gas station waiting for help wasn’t like his father at all.

Lauren turned to the light and saw the office was just a small room, cut in two from side to side by a scarred counter, and with walls lined with oils and greases and small car parts. A single figure was coming around the counter, a man of medium height, unremarkable in greasy overalls and with little hair on his head. He squinted at the three of them through the hazy glass, then reached for the door and unlocked it.

“Duncan? What’s going on?” he asked as the barrier swung open.

“I almost went off the road back down the way near Elder’s Curve. It tore up my tire and cut into the side of the car.”

“An accident?” he asked as his gaze flicked from Annie to Lauren, then back to Duncan. “Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine, Rollie,” Annie said for all three of them. “And I’m late.” She looked at Duncan. “I’ll get my bag out of the car and walk on home. Thanks for an interesting trip.”

He nodded. “I’ll be along as soon as I take care of this.”

Annie touched Lauren on the arm. “Nice running into you,” she said, then realized what she’d said and laughed out loud. “Didn’t mean that,” she said. “But it was nice meeting you.”

She went back to the idling car, got her bag out, then with a wave, she took off down the street. “I should have driven her,” Lauren said.

“She’s not going far,” Rollie said. “She’s used to Silver Creek. Been here all her life.” He looked to Lauren again, then past her to her car. “This car was in an accident?”

“No, I swerved to miss hitting it, and went off the road,” Duncan said.

Rollie went toward the car, reached out and touched the fender reverently. Then he grinned back at Duncan. “Well, damn it, man, aren’t we all thankful you didn’t scratch her up? What a beauty,” he said in a low voice, then leaned down as if listening to the engine. “She’s got a V-8, overhead, don’t she?” he asked Lauren as he straightened up.

“Completely rebuilt,” Lauren said.

He stood back. “Not original paint, is it?”

“No, it’s redone.”

He emitted a low whistle as he slowly circled the car. “Great job.” He came back around to where they stood in the cold. “Where’d you get her?” he asked Lauren.

“My uncle bought it new, and my brother restored it a year or so ago.”

“He’s a gifted man,” Rollie said.

“Rollie,” Duncan said, interrupting the man’s rapture over the car. “Do you think you can tear yourself away to get the tire?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rollie said, as if he’d forgotten Duncan existed for a moment. “You coming with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, give me a minute, and I’ll be right out,” Rollie said. But he didn’t go inside right away. Instead, he looked back to Lauren. “You want to sell that baby?”