A Kiss to Build a Dream On Page 23

  “No,” they chorused, clinking their glasses.

  “And haven’t you all thought it was odd that he kept up the house where she used to live?”

  “Yes,” they chorused again.

  Anna was really getting whipped up now. “So don’t throw your dreams away yet. This isn’t over.”

  Willa was so overwhelmed with the outpouring of support, she found she could hardly speak. When her throat was finally working again, she could only utter a simple “Thank you.”

  “Don’t say thank you,” Betty said. “Say that Stephanie has to do that impression of her twins eating lemons, and crack up before we get to work here.”

  Next thing they knew, Stephanie was stuffing apple slices in her face to mimic her twins’ lemon debacle, and the Knots and Bolts crew was laughing so hard, they were holding their sides. Betty’s mascara ran down her face in black tracks and Audrey laugh-snorted so much, Willa thought she might never recover.

  And amid the giggles and guffaws, Willa felt something else, too. It took her a while to place exactly what it was, but then, suddenly, she knew.

  It was hope.

  * * *

  It was after two o’clock in the morning when Willa finally made it home. She struggled out of her Volvo, not only because she was weary, but because she was carrying a heavy glass dish filled with warm casserole and a manila file folder with the draft of a business plan inside.

  While the business plan had been all numbers and columns—with Betty using Knots and Bolts as the blueprint for how to do things—the hot dish had been a much more creative endeavor. As a group, they’d filed into the kitchen to see what odds and ends they could throw together. “This is the best kind of hot dish,” Audrey said. “You don’t necessarily have a recipe. You just see what’s there, and try to be creative. It’ll totally work for the B and B because you’ll figure out a way to feed your guests no matter what you have on hand.”

  “Sometimes more successfully than other times,” Stephanie said, smiling. “I made a chicken, Brussels sprouts, and curry hot dish that my husband still talks about. And not because it was good.”

  They’d chopped up an onion, with Anna teaching her to sauté it on the stove in a bit of butter until it caramelized. Then, they’d mixed it with some wild rice they’d found. “I’m not sure how old that is,” Betty had admitted when they’d boiled it up. They added some frozen broccoli—brushing off the frostbite—and pulled it all together with heaps of cheddar cheese.

  “That’s pretty much the secret,” Betty said, watching Willa grate until her arm was sore. “Cheese. Tons of it.”

  While the hot dish had baked, the women had opened another bottle of wine—this time a cabernet from France—and talked until the timer dinged. Willa thought they’d all get out forks and taste it, but Betty had insisted Willa take it home intact.

  “You’re going to need it more than we will,” she said, bundling back into her coat.

  Now, Willa realized she had no refrigerator in which she could put the casserole. She supposed she could always pack it in some of the remaining snow on the back deck, and pray the raccoons didn’t get it.

  As she climbed up the steps to her dark, empty house, she fought a pang of longing. She’d so badly wanted to see the whole thing completed and renovated. She’d wanted to serve margaritas on the porch in the summer and plant flowers along the front walk. She’d wanted to have bonfires in the backyard, handing out s’mores to guests. With Burk’s help, she’d wanted to transform the whole place. She still could, but she’d have to finish her business plan first, and then find a new contractor if things didn’t work out with Burk.

  It’s all doable, she told herself. She lifted her chin and thought about her friends, the way they’d helped her tonight. With this much support behind her, there was no way she’d fail.

  Willa was fumbling for her keys, trying to balance the hot dish, when a sudden throat clearing startled her. She jerked to attention, and the hot dish tilted out of her arms. It shattered on the porch’s frozen boards, sending steaming casserole and broken glass everywhere. Willa gave a startled cry.

  “I’m sorry to alarm you,” Lance murmured, stepping forward out of the shadows on the porch’s edge. “But I couldn’t leave without seeing you again.”

  Instinctively, she took a step back. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her heart hammering at Lance’s steady advance. She could perceive a glint in his eyes, even in the deep night.

  “I’m here to get you to change your mind about helping me,” he said, reaching into his pocket. Was there some kind of weapon in there? Willa wondered. She felt her whole body begin to tremble.

  “Please, open your door, and we’ll go inside and talk.”

  Willa stopped cold. Her mind raced. There was a look on Lance’s face she’d never seen before. Desperation, she realized. If she went in that house with him, no good would come out of it. But what else could she do?

  There was only one alternative.

  She reached a foot out, as if stepping forward, then turned at the last minute and bolted down the front steps. “Help!” she screamed into the night as she raced toward her car. Her hands shook violently as she tried to press the panic button on her keys.

  She’d almost reached the car when her heeled shoes hit a patch of ice and flew out from under her. The air whooshed from her lungs as she landed hard on the concrete. Bright light exploded in front of her eyes.

  And then everything went black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Saturday, October 13, 3:36 a.m.

  Burk twisted in his sheets, hoping to find a comfortable position but knowing it was useless. Sleep was never going to come. Not until he talked to Willa anyway.

  He sat up and raked a hand through his hair. The red lights on his bedside alarm clock told him it was too late—or too early—to go over to her house. But he suddenly didn’t feel like he could wait. He had to talk to her.

  He’d lain in bed with her and made a house more important than her. More important than her dreams and her feelings, even. What an ass he was.

  He got out of bed and pulled on his shirt and jeans. In the early-morning darkness, his brain was as tangled as his sheets.

  She’d told him the reality of her situation, and he’d tried to use it to his advantage. Really, he should have taken her face in his hands and kissed her senseless. He should have told her the house didn’t matter to him—not without her in it. Why he hadn’t was beyond his own logic.

  If he could do it over again, he’d tell her to forget about paying him. He’d tell her that he’d finish the project for free if it meant she’d realize how much he cared about her. He’d take her lips in his mouth, suck on them, and run his tongue over their dewy sweetness. And that was only the beginning.

  Instead, he’d acted like a jerk. He’d prioritized a structure over her heart.

  Because the alternative was…what?

  His heart hammered recklessly.

  The alternative was feeling more for Willa Masterson than he had for any woman. The alternative was letting every emotion he had for her course through him, unabated, until he was consumed. Overtaken. Swept under with feelings that had never really gone away since high school. And now he had the chance to feel them anew—and even more deeply.

  The prospect was terrifying. If he let himself love her, Willa Masterson could wreck him all over again.

  But the alternative was worse.

  If he didn’t let himself love her, he’d wreck himself.

  Burk strode to the front door, pulling on his workman’s boots. He had to tell Willa how he felt. And he had to apologize. He didn’t care what time it was.

  He didn’t care if he had to pound on her door for hours, or climb up the back trellis, or wait on the front steps until the first pale streaks of dawn lit the sky. It didn’t matter anymore. Willa had left White Pine once, taking his heart with her.

  He’d be damned if he was going to give her any reason t
o leave again.

  In fact, he was going to give her a reason to stay.

  * * *

  Willa awoke to a pounding head and burning arms. She tried to move and immediately discovered the reason for the pain in her extremities: Her hands had been bound to a chair.

  Panic surged through her as she recalled Lance and the confrontation on the porch. A release of adrenaline helped clear away her fog of unconsciousness. Her mind sharpened; her thoughts crystallized in spite of the pain at the back of her head. She held perfectly still, trying to see around her. Trying to put together what had happened.

  She’d fled. Slipped. Lance must have carried her somewhere. But where?

  Willa squinted in the darkness, trying to see. She saw a tiny orange light close to the floor, and tried to make sense of it. She wasn’t cold, so she couldn’t be outside. She had to be indoors and—

  The water heater! It dawned on her suddenly that she was staring at the base of the tank. The orange glow was the flame from the pilot light. She was in her own basement.

  Her ears strained for the sound of footsteps, but everything was silent all around her. She wiggled slightly, testing the bonds at her hands, but they held fast. She closed her eyes, trying to picture the basement. Was there a tool anywhere she could grasp and use to free herself? Could she scoot her chair to any part of the room and—

  “I can hear you thinking.” Willa’s head snapped up at the sound of Lance’s voice. He was in the room with her, but she couldn’t see him.

  “Your breathing always gets deeper when you’re trying to puzzle something out.” He clicked on a flashlight from a few feet away. Willa shuddered at how near he’d been, and she hadn’t even realized it. The flashlight beam illuminated his face in an eerie play of light and shadow. His eyes looked hollow. His face seemed gaunt.

  “I’m sorry I had to tie you up,” Lance said, taking a step toward her. “I truly am. This hasn’t gone at all like I’d hoped. It’s rather—barbaric. I’m hoping we can do away with the drama and just talk. You and me.”

  Willa locked her lips together and nodded, even as cold dread seeped into every muscle. The same look of desperation she’d seen on the front porch was beginning to creep back into his face.

  “Lance,” she whispered, “what is happening? What’s so bad that you have to tie me up in a basement?” She pleaded for a glimmer of her old lover to emerge—the same one who had once rubbed aloe into her back when she’d been badly sunburned in Mexico.

  “I told you, Willa,” he said, a cold finger reaching out to trace her cheek. She shuddered at his touch. “I am on the cusp of losing everything. Of going to prison. So I’m going to need you to help me.”

  “I will help you. I will. But you need to untie me.”

  Lance nodded. “I know.” He knelt in front of her so she was eye to eye with his black pupils, his aquiline nose, “Except not just yet. You see, I tried to give you a rational way to fix this. You give me cash; I leave and start a new life somewhere else. But since you shunned my offer, and then tried to run away from me on the porch, we’re moving to Plan B.”

  He sat back on his heels. As he spoke, Willa tried her hand restraints again, desperately trying to loosen them with subtle movements he wouldn’t notice. They were tied tightly, but she could feel them sliding back and forth. He’d tied her too close to the edge of the chair, she realized suddenly. If she worked them a bit more, she might be able to slide them off the end of the armrest completely.

  “Are you all right? Do you need some water or anything?”

  Water? She shook her head, wondering how Lance could be so polite and so ruthless at the same time. She supposed it was the dichotomy that had allowed him to steal from people and justify it somehow.

  “I’m—I’m fine,” she said quietly. “Just please think about what you’re doing here. You don’t want to get into more trouble than you’re in already. If you let me go now, I won’t say anything. You can head back to New York and we can pretend like this never happened.”

  “I would love that,” Lance said, his face dark with something like remorse, “but it’s just not possible.”

  Willa tested the ropes once more as he turned his back and continued his pacing.

  She was almost there.

  “I’m not an unreasonable man, Willa, but I need money. And I’m not going to leave until you give it to me.”

  Willa licked her lips, inching the ropes farther once more. “How much do you want?”

  “Sadly, as much as you have. I know it must seem so unfair for me to take what you have left, but it’s the only way.” Willa’s pulse hammered in her neck. “I have a Swiss bank that will accept the transfer you’re going to make in my name. Right now.”

  He turned his back, reaching for a bag. He was getting his laptop, Willa realized. His attention diverted, she moved quickly. She pushed her wrists forward with all the strength she had, willing the rope to stretch and fall off the end of the chair. Twisting and inching, she finally set one hand free, then the other. She dropped them back into place, unmoving, just as Lance turned back around.

  “I’ll need the name of your banking institution,” he said as the laptop powered to life. “The one you so cleverly hid from me. I have to hand it to you, I never once thought you still had any money in this town.”

  The basement was suddenly illuminated with the computer screen’s eerie blue glow. “And of course, I’ll need your passwords.” He typed a few keystrokes. Then he looked up at her.

  Willa froze. She couldn’t run away while he was just staring at her. And even if she did, there was no guarantee she could get away to safety. If she fled again, would he hurt her?

  The desperate look on his face told her anything was possible at this point.

  Which meant only one thing. She had to bring him closer.

  Dropping her eyes, she mumbled the name of her bank. He scowled, the shadows above his eyes like horns in the light. “What was that?”

  She mumbled the name of the bank again, more quietly this time. Shoving the laptop to the side, Lance stood and towered over her. “You need to speak up,” he said, his voice hard with frustration.

  “I’ll whisper it to you,” she said quietly.

  Lance exhaled, then dropped his head even closer. “All right. What is it?”

  She could feel his breath on her skin, he was so close. Quaking with fear, she summoned all her courage and grasped his face in her hands. His eyes widened as he realized she was free. Before he could pull away, she laced her hands in his hair and pulled downward with all her might. His forehead smacked the arm of the chair.

  He groaned in shock and pain. Not wasting any time, Willa bolted from the chair. Behind her, Lance lurched and grabbed for her. He caught her lower leg and she went down hard, cracking her jaw on the basement’s cement.

  White stars crackled briefly in her vision. She shook her head and kicked with all her strength. She connected with something, though she wasn’t sure what. Lance howled as she scrambled to her feet, fleeing up the stairs. Her chest was heaving, her adrenaline racing. She ran through the dining room and into the living room. She glanced at the front door, knowing she should get out of the house now, but uncertain if she’d make it any farther than she had last time. Her shoes were gone. The neighborhood was quiet. Who would she run to for help, assuming she could make it anywhere in the cold?

  No. If she was going to get out of this, it was going to be by her own doing.

  Vomit threatened the back of her throat, but she pushed it down. Think, she demanded. Glancing around, she picked up the only thing she could find—the blue table. It was heavier than she realized, and awkward. She placed herself at the corner where the living room met the dining room, and waited.

  Moments later, Lance was hurtling through the house, swearing and crying. “Why are you doing this? Don’t make me hurt you. I just need you to help me.” She braced herself as he rounded the corner. This was it.

  Just as he came in
to sight, she mustered all her strength and swung the table as hard as she could. It collided with his face. There was a sickening thud, and splintered wood flew in all directions. Lance stepped back, his nose smashed and bleeding, his dark eyes startled and shocked. And then he crumpled to the floor.

  Willa barely had time to process the fact that he was unconscious when she heard a thump upstairs. There was more thundering as someone else raced toward her. Her stomach roiled with the sickening realization. Lance had company. He wasn’t acting alone.

  Panicked, she grabbed thickest piece of wood she could find, and sprinted toward the door. “I’m armed!” she cried as she fumbled with the latch. She was out of options—she had to run. She’d just managed to yank the ancient wooden thing open when someone grabbed her from behind. She wheeled around, eyes wide, arm poised to strike, when a familiar hand stayed her wrist.

  “Willa! Stop! It’s me.”

  The sound of Burk Olmstead’s voice washed over her. She reared back, disbelieving that he was actually there, in her home. But no—his storming eyes were blazing into hers, his massive chest heaving with confusion.

  “I heard shouting. What happened?”

  Willa dropped the wood. Her whole body began to tremble. She jerked her head in the direction of Lance’s still body.

  “I need you to tie him up.”

  Burk’s face went white. “What in holy hell?” He released her and flipped on a light switch. She blinked in the brightness.

  He looked from Willa to the unconscious form of Lance, back to Willa. “Did he try to hurt you? Did he—did he do that to your face?”

  Lance stirred and Willa strode past Burk to give him a hard kick. Lance didn’t move again.

  “I’ll explain later,” Willa said. “Tie him up. Now. I need to call the police.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Saturday, October 13, 6:51 a.m.

  Burk placed a cup of hot coffee in Willa’s trembling hands and watched as she drew a deep breath. As she steeled herself to answer still more questions from the Dane County Police, Burk wanted nothing more than to spirit her away to someplace quiet and warm. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and murmur promises in her ear to always keep her safe.