He’d been on her mind way too much lately, and no wonder. Over a month ago, she’d told him she was leaving Denver to take a fantastic job as the head of catering at Dare Valley’s famous The Grand Mountain Hotel, part of a chain of upscale boutique hotels stretching across the west. Blake had freaked out and promptly retired from the NFL. Moments after his press conference, he’d texted her to say they weren’t finished. Even if they were legally divorced.
No word had come from him since that monumental day, but the press had dug deep for a reason for his retirement and found it. His brother had died shortly before Blake’s announcement. Adam had been ill for the better part of a year, afflicted with the cardiac issues so common in people with intellectual disabilities. And she hadn’t even known he was sick.
She’d reached out to Blake—his last text message be damned—but he hadn’t called back or even texted. Worried, she’d called his parents to give her condolences and had learned Blake was taking some time off to deal with his grief. They hadn’t mentioned what he had planned for her, and she hadn’t asked.
He was going to make another play for her, and she knew it. Despite herself, her heart shook like the pom-poms the cheerleaders for his old Denver Raiders squad used. She had enormous compassion for his loss, and an undeniable desire to see him, but she kept reminding herself that they were done and their relationship was in the past.
Perhaps she could figure out what to do if it didn’t sound like a flock of giant woodpeckers was hammering on her head. She rolled out of bed and dug her arms into her rose silk robe. Time to find out what her neighbor was doing.
She stepped out into the warm June morning. The sun was beaming golden shafts of light through the towering pines overhead, the ones that crawled up the mountains all around her. Dew teased her bare feet, and she wiggled her toes in the grass to savor the sensation. Though her family was from Dare Valley, they’d relocated to over-crowded Denver when she was in high school. Being back home felt liberating, and she couldn’t stop marveling over how it felt to have Mother Nature right outside her door.
When she spied the reason for the racket, she skidded to a halt. There was a new bridge across the creek that marked her property line! A bridge that hadn’t been there yesterday.
Eight men with orange hard hats were hard at work. What. The. Hell.
Her neighbors hadn’t consulted her about this. Her brother, Matt, had told her they were nice people, and he had reason to know. She’d bought this house from him so he could move in with his fiancée.
Undeterred by the fact that she was wearing a flimsy robe, she strode across her yard toward the bridge. Oh, she was going to give them a piece of her mind.
“Hey!” she shouted at the construction workers who were securing the final beam to the posts anchored to her side of the creek. “Stop that! Stop that right now. You’re trespassing. All of you.”
The men cursed under their breath, but the warm breeze carried the words to her. She frowned as she stalked closer, not caring if she was giving them a show in her robe.
“We’re under orders to finish this,” one of the men called out, pushing back his orange helmet. “Any issues you have, you can take up with the owner.”
Her gasp of outrage made them all duck their heads, but they immediately started pounding long nails into the wooden beam, hammering at an almost frantic pace now.
“Ohhhh,” she screamed in silent rage, skidding to a halt a good distance away from them.
Take it up with the owner? She didn’t care what Matt had said about her neighbors being a nice, laid-back family of four. If they didn’t take this bridge down, she’d take them to court over it. She liked her privacy, and the only possible use for such a bridge was to access her property.
She stayed where she was, plotting her next move. The men finished up, and then scurried like cockroaches back across the bridge to her neighbor’s land. Running over there half-cocked wasn’t going to get her anywhere, so she took a few cleansing breaths and studied the bridge. Nearly twenty feet long and eight feet wide, the bridge was already stained and varnished. Something was carved into the posts, but she couldn’t make it out. She scratched her head. How had they built such an elaborate bridge overnight without her knowing?
Something wasn’t right.
Then she heard the joyful bark of a dog.
And she knew.
Her heart broke open in her chest before she even saw him. Touchdown! Then the little six-year old beagle came barreling across the bridge toward her.
Blake.
Even though the hair on her neck prickled with anticipation, she squatted in the grass and opened her arms to the dog she loved. Touchdown yipped as he streaked across the bridge and jumped into her embrace. She hugged him close and let him lap at her face, not caring that his body was streaked with sweat and dirt from playing in the surrounding woods. God, she had missed this dog.