A Cold Creek Reunion. RaeAnne Thayne

they announced their engagement, he felt weird and more than a little off-balance.

      Seeing Laura and her kids the other day had only intensified that odd feeling.

      He had never been a saint—he would be the first to admit that and his family would probably stand in line right behind him—but he tried to live a decent life. His general philosophy about the world ran parallel to the premier motto of every emergency medical worker as well as others in the medical field: Primum Non Nocere. First, Do No Harm.

      He did his best. He was a firefighter and paramedic and he enjoyed helping people of his community and protecting property. If he didn’t find great satisfaction in it, he would find something else to do. Maybe pounding nails for a living because he enjoyed that, too.

      Despite his best efforts in the whole do no harm arena, he remembered each and every failure.

      He had two big regrets in his life, and Laura Pendleton was involved in both of them.

      He had hurt her. Those months leading up to her ultimate decision to break things off had been filled with one wound after another. He knew it. Hell, he had known it at the time, but that dark, angry man he had become after his parents’ murder seemed like another creature who had emerged out of his skin to destroy everything good and right in his life.

      He couldn’t blame Laura for calling off their wedding. Not really. Even though it had hurt like the devil.

      She had warned him she couldn’t marry him unless he made serious changes, and he had stubbornly refused, giving her no choice but to stay true to her word. She had moved on, taken some exotic job in hotel management in Spain somewhere and a few years later married a man she met there.

      The reminder of her marriage left him feeling petty and small. Yeah, he had hurt her, but his betrayal probably didn’t hold a candle to everything else she had lost—her husband and the father of her children, whom he’d heard had drowned about six months earlier.

      “Are you planning on eating any of that or just pushing it around your plate?”

      He glanced up and, much to his shock, discovered Ridge was the only one left at the table. Everybody else had cleared off while he had been lost in thought, and he hadn’t even noticed.

      “Sorry. Been a long couple of days.” He hoped his brother didn’t notice the heat he could feel crawling over his features.

      Ridge gave him a long look and Taft sighed, waiting for the inevitable words of advice from his brother.

      As the oldest Bowman sibling left after their parents died, Ridge had taken custody of Caidy, who had been a teenager at the time. Even though Taft and Trace had both been in their early twenties, Ridge still tried to take over the role of father figure to them, too, whether they liked it or not—which they usually didn’t.

      Instead of a lecture, Ridge only sipped at his drink. “I was thinking about taking the girls for a ride up to check the fence line on the high pasture. Want to come along? A little mountain air might help clear your head.”

      He did love being on the back of a horse amid the pine and sage of the mountains overlooking the ranch, but he wasn’t in the mood for more questions or sympathy from his family about Laura.

      “To tell you the truth, I’m itching to get my hands dirty. I think I’ll head over to the house and put in a window frame or something.”

      Ridge nodded. “I know you’ve got plenty to do on your own place, but I figured this was worth mentioning, too. I heard the other day at the hardware store that Jan Pendleton is looking to hire somebody to help her with some renovations to the inn.”

      He snorted. As if Laura would ever let her mother hire him. He figured Ridge was joking but he didn’t see any hint of humor in his brother’s expression.

      “Just saying. I thought you might be interested in helping Laura and her mother out a little.”

      Ah. Without actually offering a lecture, this must be Ridge’s way of reminding Taft he owed Laura something. None of the rest of the family knew what had happened all those years ago, but he was pretty sure all of them blamed him.

      And they were right.

      Without answering, he shoved away from the table and grabbed his plate to carry it into the kitchen. First, do no harm. But once the harm had been done, a stand-up guy found some way to make it right. No matter how difficult.

       Chapter Three

      Laura stared at her mother, shock buzzing through her as if she had just bent down and licked an electrical outlet.

      “Sorry, say that again. You did what?”

      “I didn’t think you’d mind, darling,” her mother said, with a vague sort of smile as she continued stirring the chicken she was cooking for their dinner.

      Are you completely mental? she wanted to yell. How could you possibly think I wouldn’t mind?

      She drew a deep, cleansing breath, clamping down on the words she wanted to blurt out. The children were, for once, staying out of trouble, driving cars around the floor of the living room and she watched them interact for a moment to calm herself.

      Her mother was under a great deal of strain right now, financially and otherwise. She had to keep that in mind—not that stress alone could explain her mother making such an incomprehensible decision.

      “Really, it was all your idea,” Jan said calmly.

      “My idea?” Impossible. Even in her most tangled nightmare, she never would have come up with this possible scenario.

      “Yes. Weren’t you just saying the other day how much it would help to have a carpenter on the staff to help with the repairs, especially now that we totally have to start from the ground up in the fire-damaged room?”

      “I say a lot of things, Mom.” That doesn’t mean I want you to rush out and enter into a deal with a particular devil named Taft Bowman.

      “I just thought you would appreciate the help, that’s all. I know how much the fire has complicated your timeline for the renovation.”

      “Not really. Only one room was damaged and it was already on my schedule for renovations.”

      “Well, when Chief Bowman stopped by this morning to check on things after the excitement we had the other day—which I thought was a perfectly lovely gesture, by the way—he mentioned he could lend us a hand with any repairs in his free time. Honestly, darling, it seemed like the perfect solution.”

      Really? Having her daughter’s ex-fiancé take an empty room at the inn for the next two weeks in exchange for a little skill with a miter saw was perfect in what possible alternative universe?

      Her mother was as sharp as the proverbial tack. Jan Pendleton had been running the inn on her own since Laura’s father died five years ago. While she didn’t always agree with her mother’s methods and might have run things differently if she had been home, Laura knew Jan had tried hard to keep the inn functioning all those years she had been living in Madrid.

      But she still couldn’t wrap her head around this one. “In theory, it is a good idea. A resident carpenter would come in very handy. But not Taft, for heaven’s sake, Mom!”

      Jan frowned in what appeared to be genuine confusion. “You mean because of your history together?”

      “For a start. Seeing him again after all these years is more than a little awkward,” she admitted.

      Her mother continued to frown. “I’m sorry but I don’t understand. What am I missing? You always insisted your breakup was a mutual decision. I distinctly remember you telling me over and over again you had both decided you were better off as friends.”

      Had she said that? She didn’t remember much about that dark time other than her deep despair.

      “You