Claiming the Single Mom's Heart (Hearts of Hunter Ridge) Page 16

  “I’m not blamin’, I’m just sayin’.”

  Bo looked expectantly at Uncle Doug, then Grady. “Are either of you getting a feel for Elaine’s plans?”

  “I haven’t heard one way or another.” Grady could honestly voice that. Dad wanted Mom to put her health first. That wasn’t for him to share with others, though, not even supporters. Mom and Dad would together make the final decision but, knowing Dad, he wouldn’t point-blank tell her what to do.

  Uncle Doug folded his arms on the table in front of him. “Elaine won’t give up unless she has no choice. I guarantee you that.”

  Arlen didn’t look satisfied with either answer. “I wish we had options, you know? Either Elaine comes through for us, or we’re saddled with four years of Irvin or that artist lady.”

  Dare Grady put in a good word for Sunshine? He cleared his throat to speak, but Bo launched in first.

  “Hopefully we can convince her not to forfeit her all-but-guaranteed victory by pulling out of the election.”

  “But her health, Bo,” Patti reminded. “We don’t want her taking risks she shouldn’t, no matter how much we want her in office.”

  Uncle Doug rapped his knuckles on the oak table, drawing their attention. Then he glanced almost furtively around the café and leaned in, his voice low. “What if we can get her to hang in there for the election, then resign from office at the opening council session in January?”

  He arched a brow, eyes gleaming, and Grady almost groaned out loud. Leave it to Uncle Doug to have a plan. Grandma Jo said that ever since Aunt Char had divorced him, he was always on the alert to avoid being caught off guard again.

  “A belated resignation,” he continued, not meeting Grady’s pointed gaze, “relieves her of council responsibilities to take care of her health, and the city is forced into a special election to replace her.”

  With a satisfied smile, he settled back into his chair. The others nodded thoughtfully, taking in his idea. Mulling it over.

  Would Mom agree to a scheme like that? To deliberately not withdraw prior to the election, knowing full well she intended to resign? It wasn’t illegal by any means, but somehow the proposal smacked of not quite right.

  “Council rules don’t allow for a permanent appointment in her stead,” Arlen inserted, “nor would a runner-up from the November election automatically slide into her empty spot. So you’re right, there’d have to be a special election.”

  “Which means,” Bo added, “we’d need a candidate the town would rally around. Someone sure to trounce Irvin and that Carston woman if they’d throw their hats into the ring again.”

  The gazes of Mom’s four supporters slid to Grady.

  He held up his hands. “Hold on now. Don’t look at me.”

  “You’re a natural,” Patti encouraged. “You’ve filled in admirably for your mother, thoroughly know her platform and people are familiar with your face now that you’re not buried behind the scenes at the Hideaway. Voters will assume you’ll represent them well, just as your mother would.”

  He chuckled uncomfortably. “I appreciate your faith in me, but—”

  “There’s been a Hunter on the town council as long as there has been a town council,” Bo reminded. “How can you refuse to accept your responsibility to the community?”

  His responsibility? Since when?

  Uncle Doug rose to his feet and leveled a look down at him. “Hunters have always stepped up to the plate, Grady. Done their civic duty.”

  Uncle Doug had served several terms himself, but Grady wasn’t into politics, wasn’t interested in trying to keep an entire town pleased with him. Keeping the Hunter clan happy through the years had been hard enough.

  He offered a placating smile. “I think there’s plenty of family to keep the tradition going. I’m sure you could talk any one of the others into it.”

  Patti frowned. “But we want you in that council seat, Grady.”

  “Thanks, but in all honesty, I don’t have time to serve on the town council.”

  Even with Luke assuming more responsibility, his hands were full. The new business demanded time and attention. Then there was his long-dreamed-of plan to add a wildlife-photography element to the Hideaway’s venue. He didn’t want to shortchange that, to risk it failing. And what about Sunshine? Would she tackle the special election, too, and he’d find himself running against her?

  “We believe you can handle it, boy.” Uncle Doug moved to confidently clap him on the shoulder, his voice low but uncompromising. “We want you in that special election—in the town council seat—and we won’t take no for an answer. You owe it to your family and to this town.”

  * * *

  “Sunshine?”

  Grady.

  She frantically closed the lid on her laptop and stuffed the folder of telltale documentation underneath it. When Tori had left to take Tessa to the middle-school musical Saturday evening, Sunshine hadn’t been able to resist opening her computer on the dining table and taking another look at the photos of Walter and Flora and the burgeoning folder of documentation Tori had accumulated.

  Roots. For the first time in her life, she truly had roots. Right here in Hunter Ridge.

  But Candy, working late downstairs to set up a special project, had obviously okayed Grady ascending the stairs, not bothering to give her a heads-up. With a quick breath to still her racing heart, she smoothed her skirt, then opened the door to a smiling Grady, who held out a bouquet of cream and bronze chrysanthemums.

  “Thank you! I love the autumn colors.” She reached for them, then self-consciously spun toward the kitchen to look for a vase. She’d never received flowers from a man before.

  “Tessa here?” He glanced around the apartment, then held up a decorative gift bag. “I brought her something, too.”

  A contented warmth hugged Sunshine. “She’ll be back in another hour. Tori was dying to see a musical she’d helped make the costumes for and borrowed Tessa for the evening.”

  He set the bag on the counter and watched as she arranged the flowers. “You have a knack for that.”

  She viewed it from all angles, then carried it to the coffee table in the living room. “So what brings you here bearing gifts tonight?”

  “I hadn’t seen you in a few days. Although we’ve talked on the phone, it seemed like a good idea to stop in and make sure you weren’t a figment of my imagination.” He caught her hand and tugged her toward him, his eyes dancing.

  A man who obviously had more kissing on his mind.

  She cast him a flirtatious smile. That was all the encouragement he needed, for he immediately stepped in to gently raise her chin with his fingertips and graze his lips across hers. A happy sigh escaped her lips, but before she could slip her arms around his neck he stepped back with a satisfied smile.

  “Nope, not a figment. But now that we have that issue resolved, I have something I want to show you.” He glanced toward the dining table. “Do you mind if I borrow your laptop?”

  Her laptop? With Tori’s research folder wedged beneath it and the photo of her and Grady’s great-great-grandparents set as the desktop image.

  She could explain the photo, though, couldn’t she?

  “Help yourself.” She followed him to the table, where she picked up the laptop and nudged the folder out from under it. Then she lifted the cover and typed in her password. “There you go.”

  He seated himself, then looked at her with a quizzical smile. “What do you know? My great-great-grands front and center. You’re as bad as my mom about old photos.”

  “I am. And speaking of your mother, how is she doing?”

  His forehead creased as he reached for the mouse, then typed something into the web browser. “Not so good today.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” She’d heard speculation around
town, people wondering if Elaine would be up to fulfilling her current town council obligations, let alone a future commitment. “Do you think she’ll take on another four years?”

  Sunshine recoiled from her own words. Did that sound as though she was fishing to find out if she’d have smooth sailing herself with only Irvin to worry about?

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  She wanted to ask how his mother was really doing and how the family was faring in the wake of her diagnosis. But although her concern for Elaine was genuine, any interest felt two-faced. Intrusive.

  “Okay, take a look at this.” He turned the laptop so she could see the screen.

  A background of subtle autumn colors set the tone, inviting the eye to explore, to take in the striking kaleidoscope of wildlife photographs. When she saw Grady’s name in a bold, distinctive font, she gasped. “You have a website?”

  “You like it?”

  “Oh, I love it.” She leaned in closer, acutely aware of his proximity. “You didn’t tell me you were doing this.”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise.” He slipped his arm around her waist. “See what an inspiration you are?”

  “Your photos are for sale?”

  “They are. Or at least they will be when the website goes live.” He clicked on one of the links and guided her through an impressive gallery of elk shots, leaving the other links to be explored. “I’ve been working with the guy who did the website for the wild game supply store. He’s an outdoorsman himself and I think it shows in his design.”

  “Oh, it does.” She lightly touched Grady’s shoulder. “I’m so excited that you’re doing this.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “This is why you didn’t have as much time as you’d hoped to review what I’d put together for your photography proposal, isn’t it?”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “How’s it feel to step out of your comfort zone?” She was proud of him.

  He squinted one eye. “Scary?”

  Laughing, she leaned in for a hug but, when she straightened, her elbow somehow brushed the folder on the table, pushing it over the edge and strewing its contents onto Grady’s lap and the floor.

  Heart racing, she knelt to gather the loose papers. But when she stood, breathless, a frowning Grady was examining one of the documents that she’d knocked into his lap. A slightly crumpled one that she’d earlier carefully smoothed out.

  Then he looked up at her, confusion in his eyes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Grady’s stomach lurched as he again stared down at the handwritten name on the photocopied receipt. Walter Royce. The ungrateful scoundrel who’d taken advantage of Duke Hunter’s generosity. “Where’d you get this?”

  “I—” Sunshine’s gaze locked with his, her eyes wide.

  “Did you get interested in the people in the photograph or something?” He motioned to the laptop. “You do know, don’t you, that the guy listed on this receipt is one of the men in the picture?”

  She nodded.

  He looked down at the wrinkled photocopy again. A tax receipt for land right here in this county. But Walter Royce, to his knowledge, had never owned land around here. Maybe not anywhere. So was this—? It had to be. The infamous receipt for taxes Royce had been sent to pay on behalf of Duke Hunter, who’d been too ill to make the journey himself. A receipt that was written out to the name of Walter Royce.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Tori’s been helping me research.” She glanced at the folder in her hands.

  His gaze held hers, curious. “What were you researching?”

  “My great-great-grandparents.”

  That didn’t make sense. She wasn’t from around here. “What did your great-greats have to do with Walter Royce? No, wait. Don’t tell me. He cheated them, too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He flicked the paper with the back of his hand.

  “This character. He almost cost my great-great-grandparents their land. Fraudulently took out a loan on it, then defaulted.” A document like the one he held in his hands would no doubt have been the evidence of ownership Royce had used to acquire that private loan and purchase a business in a neighboring county. “Did he do your family dirty, too?”

  A troubled look wavered in her eyes.

  “Sunshine?”

  “No, he didn’t cheat my family.” She swallowed, her eyes riveted on his. “He was—is, actually—family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Walter and Flora Royce,” she said, her grip tightening on the folder in her hands, “are my great-great-grandparents.”

  It was his turn to stare. “Are you kidding me?”

  She shook her head.

  “I didn’t think you were from around here. Why didn’t you say something?”

  For a fleeting moment he thought she might not answer. Or might bolt. But she stood her ground.

  “I didn’t have proof of ties to Hunter Ridge, not until you showed me that photograph and told me the names of the people in the picture so I could backtrack to them.” The expression in her eyes remained as cautious as the delivery of her words. “I merely had a story to go on that my grandmother shared with me. A story handed down to her about her grandparents who’d lived in an area referred to as the ridge of the hunter.”

  He’d heard that phrase before. The founders of the town had adapted it when they’d named the fledgling community of Hunter Ridge in the 1920s.

  He sat back in his chair. “This blows me away.”

  In fact, he couldn’t get his head around it. The woman he was falling in love with was the great-great-granddaughter of someone who’d almost cost the Hunters their property? Did God have a sense of humor or what?

  “Flora,” he said softly, studying her. “She was White Mountain Apache. Or at least that’s what I was told growing up. That’s why you bear traces of Native American ancestry?”

  “Considerably diluted, but yes.”

  “And why you volunteer at that church on the rez? Why Native images play a role in your art?”

  She nodded as she placed the folder on the table. “I’m proud of that lineage and want Tessa to be proud of it, too. Working at the church alongside others who share that blood bond gives me a sense of belonging. A sense of my own history, which I knew little of until recently.”

  “Wow.” He shook his head. “I have to admit, this comes as a shock. Not your Apache connection, but your connection to Walter Royce. He’s not well thought of in the annals of my own family history.”

  Her chin lifted. “Wrongly so.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re holding the evidence in your hand.” Her words came softly, the look in her eyes a disquieting mix of apology and determination. “It’s a tax receipt for the land on which Hunter’s Hideaway now stands. Walter Royce owned it, but somehow Duke Hunter managed to disenfranchise Walter and Flora.”

  That was nuts. She’d gotten the story wrong. “You think old Duke cheated the Royces out of their land?”

  “My grandmother told me about it when I was growing up, how they’d been swindled. I didn’t know what to believe.” Her gaze flickered uneasily. “Not until I came to Hunter Ridge to—”

  “To what?” He gave a half laugh, trying to make sense of this. “Prove my family cheated your family out of the Hideaway?”

  Surely he was misunderstanding. She’d been asked to manage the Artists’ Cooperative, right? That was what had brought her here. Brought her into his life. But she didn’t laugh, and something deep in his gut twisted at the guilt stamped on her pretty face.

  “That’s why you came here?” he said softly, an uncomfortable pressure weighing in his chest. “To prove the Hideaway belongs
to your family?”

  Under her startled gaze, he reached for the paper-stuffed folder. Flipped through its contents. Birth certificates. Census and land records. Correspondence. He looked up in disbelief. “Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

  She stood rigidly at his side, her gaze pleading, but she didn’t respond.

  “All this is an attempt to prove my family stole land from your family?” Having the story wrong didn’t excuse the fact that she’d come to Hunter Ridge with an agenda to—what? Hold his family legally liable? To try to wrest the Hideaway from them in court like Aunt Char had attempted when she’d divorced Uncle Doug? To use him and his vulnerable heart to obtain evidence she intended to bring before a judge?

  He pushed back in the chair and stood, gripping the folder. Then tossed the paperwork to the table. Hadn’t she once admitted that with a child to support, the almighty dollar won out every time? He had to get out of here.

  She placed a restraining hand on his arm, finally finding her voice. “Grady, please, I can explain.”

  “I seriously doubt it.” He looked at her, as if into the face of a stranger.

  Her grip tightened. “You have to listen to me.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t come to Hunter Ridge with the express purpose of claiming your fair share of the Hideaway?”

  “I didn’t. Not like that. Yes, I wanted to find out the truth of the family legend, had even hoped that perhaps—”

  “Your family never owned a single inch of Hunter property. I can assure you of that.”

  “But the tax receipt shows—”

  “Duke Hunter was seriously ill, Sunshine. He sent a trusted friend to pay his taxes. A friend who used that receipt to fraudulently acquire a loan and buy a business. A business that subsequently failed, resulting in a default that brought the authorities and an irate lender to Duke Hunter’s doorstep in an attempted foreclosure.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Believe it, Sunshine. When your friend continues her research, she’s bound to find records documenting the whole thing. Of course, by the time the mess was sorted out, Walter Royce had conveniently gotten himself put six feet under.”