Worth The Effort (The Worth Series Book 4: A Copper Country Romance) (22 page)

Then she closed her mouth over his cock, and he dropped his head back against the cedar wall, not sure that he could stand the heat.

T
hey did roll in the snow to cool off, the crystalline texture of the white stuff prickling her sensitized skin. Deni couldn’t tell if the sensation was more pain or pleasure, but she liked it.

Sawyer had put several buckets of snow in the sauna room when he’d started the fire so they had plenty of warm water to shower with when they were finally ready.

Deni sat on the bottom bench while Sawyer poured dippers of water over her hair and then shampooed and rinsed it. He then lathered up a loofa and scrubbed her back—and other places.

When it was his turn, she knelt next to him on the bottom bench instead of sitting above him, and gave him the same treatment. He wrapped an arm around her waist, caressing her butt as she shampooed him. She returned the distraction by
accidently
shoving her boobs in his face as she rinsed conditioner out of his hair.

Squeaky clean, she kept only her towel on, hanging on to his flannel shirt as he wrapped the blanket around her after he’d dressed and donned the snowshoes.

As he carried her back to the glass house, she wrapped her arms around him and burrowed her face into his neck, breathing him in deeply.

He smelled of pine trees and soap, as she supposed she did, but it was incredibly sexy on him and just utilitarian on her.

It was dark now, the daylight hours in such short supply this time of year. (And she knew to the minute how much daylight they gained each day—she’d Googled it during a particularly SAD day.)

He set her on the steps inside the door and then called for Lucy, who happily went outside with her master.

“There are candles and matches on the mantel. Once you light a few of them, you’ll be able to see the other candles that are in one of the cabinets. Light a bunch of them.”

“Got it,” she said, and made her way to the mantel, led by the glow of the dying fire. She threw the blanket off, tossing it on the bed. Dressed only in the long bath towel, she slid her hands along the mantel until she felt a pillar candle with a box of matches next to it.

She lit each of the candles on the mantel and then found the others—all thick pillar candles on holders—and lit those as well. She placed two of them on Sawyer’s glass desk and one on the glass side table that was next to the leather chair and ottoman.
 

The glow from the candles bounced off the glass walls, creating an atmosphere of shadows and reflections.

She took the towel off and found her pile of clothes. She started to put on the red bra and panties, but decided to go with just the long johns top and bottom.
 

Something glinted from the mantel as she put a log onto the fire and stirred up the coals. Putting the poker back into its holder, she took the candle closest to her and held it up to what was a large glass vase filled nearly to the brim with stones. Turning the candle, the stones shone different colors and sizes, though none were more than the size of a quarter. Some were the size of pebbles. Agates, what looked to be more than a few greenstones, and some just plain-old-pretty rocks.

“I pick those up on my walks on the beach,” said Sawyer from behind her. Lucy bounded up the stairs and came to rub herself against Deni’s leg.

Deni absently petted the dog while still shining the candle along the collection of stones. “They’re beautiful.”

“Some are. Some are real finds. Most are just junk from the beaches around here.”

“Are you a gemologist, too? If not certified, do you study them?”

“Not really, no. I bought a couple of books on it when I first started showing up with them in my pockets. More for identification than anything, but that’s about the extent of my studying.”

“‘First started showing up with them’?”

He crossed the room and sat in the old leather chair, pulling the ottoman up and placing his feet on it. The glow from the candle on the table beside him was slightly below him and gave what she could see of his face a haunted glow.

“Come here,” he said softly, patting his lap.

She placed the candle back on the mantel and walked to him. The chair was large and there was room for her butt to one side of him. She climbed in with him and started to lay her legs down next to his, but he scooped them up and spread them over his, turning her at a slight angle.

He put his arms across the back of the chair and dropped his head back, looking up. Deni snuggled into the crook of his shoulder and did the same.

“Wow,” she whispered, seeing the vast black sky and glowing stars above her.

“Yeah,” he said just as softly.

She wanted to nudge him about the weird turn of phrase he’d used about the stones, but sensed he was working up to something. Staying silent, she kept her eyes up. On one of the panes directly above them, there was a faint cast from the candle and she could see the white of her long johns and the clean long-sleeved tee-shirt Sawyer had put on after their sauna.

Sawyer took a deep breath and let it out. One hand left the back of the chair and settled in her still-wet hair, stroking through it, not unlike the absent petting she’d just given Lucy.

“I’d go on these long walks along the shore. Here, at Eagle Harbor, lots of places. Just thinking. And I’d get home and throw my jeans in the dirty clothes and they’d be so heavy. I’d look in the pockets, and they would be full of stones. Pretty ones. Always really nice ones.”

“But
you
collected them?” She was kind of confused and had this quick flash of a little man who looked like her vision of Rumplestiltskin, surreptitiously putting pretty stones in Sawyer’s pockets while he was walking.

“Yeah, of course. But I never had any recollection of doing it. I always just thought of it as a nice long walk to get some air. To clear the memories.” He paused. “Or maybe
to
remember.”

“How long did this go on?”

“Oh, a long time. Sometimes I would remember bending down and looking for stones. But there were lots of times that I got home and put my hands in my pockets and there they’d be.”

“Well, it was hard to see by candlelight, but they look beautiful.”

“They are, most of them. I mean, people take vacations to come up here and hunt for agates and greenstones. And here I was not even fully aware I was collecting them.”

“That’s a pretty big container, and it’s nearly full.”

“I don’t do it too much anymore. And, of course, I can’t during the winters. When I built this place, I thought they’d look nice on the mantel.”

“So, Molly never saw this place?” She felt him tense for a second but then relaxed.

“No. I bought the property before Molly died, but she never got to even see it. I hadn’t started building this place or anything. I didn’t end up doing that for a few years after.
 

“But I knew exactly what I was going to build, so when this piece of property went on sale, I jumped on it. Things were good at the firm, a lot of business coming in. We were crazy busy.”

“Was Molly an engineer, too?” She’d never had any feelings of jealousy about Sawyer’s wife, but for some reason she knew it would hurt if Molly had shared with Sawyer the main thing that had brought Deni and Sawyer together.

“No,” he said, and she felt herself relax further into him. “We met at Tech, but she was a business major. Her mother was originally from Baraga, and Molly’s grandmother was still here. She just really liked the area, so she chose Tech.”

Deni knew the feeling, although for her it was also about the top-rated engineering program.

“Her parents died in a house fire during our senior year. Molly was devastated.”

“Of course she was.”
 

“We knew we wanted to get married, and that we wanted to stay in the Copper Country, but we hadn’t made any timeline or concrete plans. Her parents’ death kind of sped that up. We got married after graduation. I worked at one of the construction companies in town as a draftsman, but by then Andy and I had hatched our plan of opening our own shop. Thank God Molly had that business degree—Andy and I were just a couple of engineering geeks who wanted to build cool things.”

“Andy seems to be quite the businessman now.”

She could feel him nodding, his chin grazing the top of her head. His hand moved from her hair to her neck, which he gently rubbed. “We always knew Andy had the personality to get the clients. Molly had the business end of it covered…”

“And you built the cool stuff.”

She felt the small rumble of a chuckle in his chest. “Something like that. We got the startup money from Molly’s inheritance and the insurance payout from her parents’ death.”
 

There was just a tiny bit of tone in his voice as he said this. She could imagine Sawyer balking at using that money for his own business. “I’m sure it meant a lot to Molly to be able to turn her parents’ death into something good.”

“That’s exactly how she put it. Anyway, business was good. We had a little place in Houghton that we loved. Molly wanted to start a family, but I wanted to wait a couple more years until the business was really solid. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who didn’t have time for their kids.”

And then she died in a car accident, and they ran out of time. He didn’t say it, but Deni knew that would be the next sentence out of his mouth.

“And then she started to change.”

Those were not the words she had been expecting. She leaned forward to look up at him, but he held her neck in place, as if he didn’t want her watching him. So she didn’t. She dug her head into his chest and wrapped an arm around his waist, as if to protect him from where he was going.

From where he was taking her.

“She stopped going to the office. Which was fine, because by then Sue had pretty much taken over for the day-to-day stuff. I’d come home and she’d still be in her pajamas. Stuff like that.”

Depression. A wave of discomfort spread through Deni.
 

“It got pretty bad. We saw a couple of doctors, and they tried a couple of different meds, but they didn’t seem to help.” He let out a long sigh. “She always loved Lake Superior, so I thought if I built a place that had a great view, it would help or something.” She felt his head shake. “I was pretty uneducated about it all. And so fucking…helpless.”

“I’m sure you were very supportive,” she said, meaning it.
 

“No, not really. I mean, I wanted to be, but I also wanted to fix her, you know? That’s what I do—fix things. Build things. Create. And I couldn’t fix her.”

“You get that you couldn’t, right? On some level you get that?”

“Sure, now. With hindsight and education. But when you’re in it? When the person you love is in pain or totally checked out? No, I couldn’t see beyond my own failure to help. Totally selfish.”

“Totally human.”

He didn’t answer that. And then she got a sick feeling in her gut.

“Sawyer? The accident? Was it an accident?”

The room seemed to chill. He must have felt it too, because he pulled the throw from the corner and draped it around them both.

“I don’t know. We’ll never know for sure. I was up here—at the spot where the pole barn is now—waiting for her to meet me so I could show her the property. I wanted to get up here first and unload the snowmobile from the trailer.” He shifted in his seat. “God, if I’d just waited and we’d gone up together…”

Ten years later and he was still beating himself up. Probably always would.

“Anyway, it got pretty late and still no Molly. I couldn’t get cell service up here, so I finally started back to town. I was concerned but not freaked out or anything. She’d missed meeting me—or others—at places lots of times and then I’d go home and she’d be safe and sound, sleeping at two in the afternoon.”

Deni had mild SAD, not severe depression like Molly apparently had. It made her tired and irritable with a few other nasty side effects, but she knew it was temporary, and it didn’t really affect her day-to-day life. She couldn’t imagine wearing the lead jacket she felt at times day after day, but twenty times heavier.

“I knew she always took the Covered Drive way when coming up here, so I started back.”

“Oh, God, were you the one who found her?”

“No, somebody else had and had already called the cops. I could see the flashing of the lights through the bare trees well before I came around the curve. As soon as I saw the red lights, I knew. And I knew it wasn’t an accident.”

“Oh, Sawyer.” She wrapped her arm tighter around him, wanting to take away his pain, to ease his burden. But just like he couldn’t for Molly, Deni was unable to do that for him.

“But the roads that time of year can be so iffy. There are so many accidents. Why don’t you think it was just that—an accident?”

He shrugged, and the hand that was on her neck dropped to her back. “We’ll never know, but there was a light snowfall—”

“See, she could have easily just…what? Slid into a ditch?”

“A tree. She hit a tree head on. And there were no signs in the snow of her losing control, or trying to right the car or anything. It looked…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat.