A Cold Creek Reunion Read Online Free

Taft put out a fire at the inn?”
    “No reason really.” Caidy flashed him a quick look. “Just that Taft and Laura were engaged once.”
    He fidgeted with his mashed potatoes, drawing his fork in a neat little firebreak to keep the gravy from spreading while he avoided the collective gaze of his beloved family. Why, again, had he once enjoyed these Sunday dinners?
    “Engaged? Taft?” He didn’t need to look at his future sister-in-law to hear the surprise in her voice.
    “I know,” his twin brother said. “Hard to believe, right?”
    He looked up just in time to see Becca quickly try to hide her shocked gaze. She was too kindhearted to let him see how stunning she found the news, which somehow bothered him even more.
    Okay, maybe he had a bit of a reputation in town—most of it greatly exaggerated—as a bit of a player. Becca knew him by now. She should know how silly it all was.
    “When was this?” she asked with interest. “Recently?”
    “Years ago,” Ridge said. “He and Laura dated just out of high school—”
    “College,” he muttered. “She was in college.” Okay, she had been a freshman in college. But she wasn’t in high school, damn it. That point seemed important somehow.
    “They were inseparable,” Trace interjected.
    Ridge picked up where he’d left off. “And Taft proposed right around the time Laura graduated from the Montana State.”
    “What happened?” Becca asked.
    He really didn’t want to talk about this. What he wouldn’t give for a good emergency call right now. Nothing big. No serious personal injury or major property damage. How about a shed fire or a kid stuck in a well or something?
    “We called things off.”
    “The week before the wedding,” Caidy added.
    Oh, yes. Don’t forget to add that little salacious detail.
    “It was a mutual decision,” he lied, repeating the blatant fiction that Laura had begged him to uphold. Mutual decision. Right. If by mutual he meant Laura and if by decision he meant crush-the-life-out-of-a-guy blow.
    Laura had dumped him. That was the cold, hard truth. A week before their wedding, after all the plans and deposits and dress fittings, she had given him back his ring and told him she couldn’t marry him.
    “Why are we talking about ancient history?” he asked.
    “Not so ancient anymore,” Trace said. “Not if
Laura’s back in town.”
    He was very much afraid his brother was right. Whether he liked it or not, with her once more residing in Pine Gulch, their past together would be dredged up again—and not by just his family.
    Questions would swirl around them. Everybody had to remember that they had been just a few days away from walking down the aisle of the little church in town when things ended and Laura and her mother sent out those regrets and made phone calls announcing the big celebration wasn’t happening—while he had gone down to the Bandito and gotten drunk and stayed that way until about a month or two after the wedding day that didn’t happen.
    She was back now, which meant that, like it or not, he would have to deal with everything he had shoved down ten years ago, all the emotions he had pretended weren’t important in order to get through the deep, aching loss of her.
    He couldn’t blame his family for their curiosity—not even Trace, his twin and best friend, knew the full story about everything that had happened between him and Laura. He had always considered it his private business.
    His family had loved her. Who didn’t? Laura had a knack for drawing people toward her, finding commonalities. She and his mother used to love discussing the art world and painting techniques. His mother had been an artist, only becoming renowned around the time of her murder. While Laura hadn’t any particular skill in that direction, she had shared a genuine appreciation for his parents’ extensive art collection.
    His father had adored her, too, and had often told Taft that Laura was the best thing that would