Can't Fight This Feeling. Christie Ridgway

Extract

       Copyright

      Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.

      —Jim Bishop

       CHAPTER ONE

      WHEN BRETT WALKER caught sight of the flashing lights in his rearview mirror, his heart gave a quick jolt and he wondered why he was being pulled over. His DMV tags were for the correct year. He was up-to-date on his bills. The license for his landscaping business was current, too. As he pulled to the side of one of the narrow lanes in the wealthy enclave of Blue Arrow Lake in the Southern California mountains, he thought perhaps one of his three younger sisters might have called the sheriff’s department to execute a welfare check. Poppy was the most likely choice. But Shay might have done it, too.

      It wasn’t that he was avoiding his two youngest sisters exactly, but they were so damn starry-eyed over the men in their lives. While all four Walker siblings were pretty hardheaded, only his other sister, Mackenzie—Mac—had the same hard soul as he. All the smiles and sighs and grins and kisses a person had to witness when hanging around Poppy and Ryan and Shay and Jace rubbed said soul raw.

      So he’d been pacing himself on the Walker fests.

      Brett unrolled his window as a man wearing a tan uniform strolled up to the driver’s side. Placing both hands on the wheel—this wasn’t his first rodeo—he glanced up. “Don.” Even a law-abiding citizen felt a spurt of relief at recognizing a longtime friend. “What is it, a broken taillight?”

      “Naw, nothing like that.” He hitched up the belt bristling with equipment. “I saw you go by and thought I’d take the opportunity to have a little chat.”

      Brett remembered another “chat” he’d been forced to have with a law enforcement officer. His gut curdled at the memory. The result had been a two-day stay in the lockup. “You’re making me anxious here, Don,” he said. “I’m shaking in my boots.”

      The other man snorted. “You’re wearing your usual granite face. How’s the family?”

      He meant Brett’s sisters, since his mother and father had been gone for years. “Poppy and Shay are both engaged now.”

      “I heard that. Flatlanders?”

      It was what the mountain people called those who came from “down the hill” to visit their peaks and pines at 5,000 feet and beyond. Those who usually resided by the beaches and in the cities of SoCal could hardly believe it when they climbed into their cars and took a two-hour drive to discover a place with four actual, authentic seasons. Lakes for summer play. Snow for winter games. The spring and fall were quieter, but no less beautiful to residents like the Walkers who lived here full-time and had done so for one hundred fifty years.

      The full-timers had to share with those flatlanders, though. The resort mountain communities of the area had palatial homes near ski runs and expansive mansions on the banks of private lakes. Wealthy people came up on weekends to their alpine retreats, which gave rise to businesses that provided for the visitors’ needs and tastes: gourmet grocers and house-cleaning services, organic restaurants and landscape-maintenance companies.

      “Yep, flatlanders,” Brett told the other man.

      “Rich?”

      Brett shrugged. “Eye of the beholder, right?” Money didn’t impress the Walkers. The opposite, really, and he’d been inclined to dislike Ryan and Jace on that principle alone. But the men his sisters had chosen had proved themselves, which hadn’t always been the case.

      Shay had been the product of a brief affair between their mother and a wealthy visitor when his parents’ marriage had hit a rough patch and his father had temporarily decamped to South America. But Dell Walker had ultimately returned and treated Shay as his own for the rest of his life—her bio dad had never shown his face again.

      Poppy had become a single mom when her son’s rich-but-shallow father had run back to Beverly Hills.

      Brett had been screwed in his own way by the moneyed. He’d earned the chip on his shoulder.

      “Business good?” Don asked now.

      “Sure.” This time of year, he was still mowing and trimming, but soon enough he’d be planting bulbs for spring and protecting flower beds and shrubbery from the coming harsher weather. “We’ll see what happens in winter.” Then he switched to snow removal. If there wasn’t any white stuff to shovel or plow, he’d be in for a dry spell.

      “But you’re still out and about the area every day, right?”

      Brett’s eyes narrowed. Don wasn’t just shooting the breeze. “Yeah...” He drew out the word, uneasy again.

      Don cleared his throat. “I don’t like to sound an alarm...”

      Except that’s exactly what he was doing. “Spit it out.”

      “Looks like we have a string of burglaries,” he said, frowning.

      “Here?” Brett glanced around. This particular community was gated, and besides the patrolling sheriffs, residents could let a security service know their schedule and request daily checks.

      “Here, there, across the lake, on the mountain ridge. There isn’t a real pattern we’ve detected, other than break-ins and missing valuables. You and I both know there are ways to get to these homes that bypass the gates and kiosks.”

      “Yeah.” Brett ran a hand over his short hair. Thieves could come by boat or zip around on dirt bikes and avoid the paved roads. “We had trouble with kids in our cabins during the summer.”

      “I thought of that,” Don said. “Any trouble since?”

      “No. I’m living out there now.” Four miles off the mountain highway was a tract of Walker land that had once been a successful, though small, ski resort. After a wildfire came through and destroyed nearly everything, it had been left to nature. Then, last spring, Poppy had decided she wanted to refurbish the dozen cabins that remained standing. Despite the initial objections from the rest of the siblings, they were making progress. Slow progress, but progress all the same. “We think the fire in one of the bungalows was set by local kids. This seem the same? Locals?”

      “They’d know how not to get caught.”

      Unless they were naive enough to let themselves be used, Brett thought. But he shook it off because he wasn’t eighteen any longer and at the mercy of a lying little rich girl and her daddy who thought his spoiled darling could do no wrong.

      “Keep your eyes open, will you, Brett?” Don said. “Since you’re cruising around all day, you might catch sight of something or someone that will help us crack this.”

      “Will do.”

      With a wave, Don returned to his car and Brett continued on with his day. But uneasiness continued to dog him. If people suspected area kids were the culprits, it wasn’t a large leap to any local being blamed. If the owners of the vacation homes began distrusting the help they hired, it could impact the bottom line of people like Brett with his landscaping business. His sister Mac, too, who operated a cleaning service.

      This wasn’t good.

      His schedule full, Brett’s day didn’t finish until he was nearly out of daylight. Muscles aching, he pushed the lawn mower up the ramp into his truck’s bed. Then he settled into the driver’s seat and grabbed some water, practically hosing it down his parched throat. He’d brooded over the burglaries while he worked at a handful of properties. The usual mowing and clipping, but he’d also raked up mountains of fallen leaves. The pinecones had seemed to have it in for him. Two of the prickly buggers had fallen directly on his head.

      He