Page 24 of The Bitterroot Inn (Jamison Valley 5)
Maisy Holt was under my skin.
Hell, I’d almost kissed her today.
I’d been in Prescott for less than a week and she was all I could think about. I’d stare at her loft window each night, wondering what she was doing and praying that she wasn’t with another man. Luckily, she didn’t seem like the type to bring random men around her son.
Coby Holt didn’t know how lucky he was to have Maisy as his mother.
Or Marissa as his grandmother.
Grinning as I walked from my truck to my room, I replayed Marissa’s blatant setup. Her insistence had been unnecessary. The second she’d mentioned me taking those pictures, I’d wanted that job so badly it had been nearly impossible to pretend to resist.
I wasn’t doing the job for the photographs. I wanted it for the time spent with Maisy.
This was the perfect opportunity to get to know her before I left. The chance for me to do something special, just for her. This would give me time to memorize her smiling face before she learned the truth and never smiled at me again.
Maisy
“Are you sure this is how you want to be spending your Friday off?” I asked Gigi.
She was on the other side of the bed I was making, tucking the white sheet under the mattress’s corner.
“I’m sure.” She smoothed out the cotton. “We haven’t had much time with just the two of us lately.”
Between the kids, friends and work, I couldn’t remember the last time Gigi and I had done something alone. “True story. But we could plan something special instead, like a lunch date or afternoon pedicures. Do you really want to spend the day helping me clean and do laundry?”
“Yep. I miss working with you, so today, we’ll work together.”
I smiled and whipped the comforter onto the bed. “I miss working with you t
oo.”
Years ago, I’d been a nurse at Jamison Valley Hospital with Gigi. We’d met on her first day of work and instantly hit it off. But after everything that had happened that year, after that horrific night, I’d quit my job and given up my nursing career.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked.
“Yeah. Always.”
Gigi stopped straightening the comforter and shook her head. “I had a nightmare about it the other night. About . . . you know.”
Yeah, I knew.
“I haven’t had a dream like that in years,” she continued. “It kind of messed with me. Does that ever happen to you?”
I nodded. “Sometimes.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” There was a hesitation in her voice.
Gigi and I hadn’t spoken about that time much. Instead of hashing it out together, she’d confided in Jess and I’d seen a therapist for a while. It had been traumatic, for both of us, and instead of dwelling on the bad memories, we’d chosen to make the best of it and move on. We even held a party each year to mark the anniversary of our kidnapping. But after all this time, the pain from that night was still fresh. The bad memories I tried to trap in a bottle kept leaking out.
Maybe it was time to open the lid and empty the bottle dry.
I walked around to the foot of the bed and sank down on the mattress. “I don’t have nightmares but I have these weird flashes sometimes. Like déjà vu, but worse. They’re more real. I don’t know how to describe them without sounding like a crazy person.”
Gigi sat by my side. “You’re not a crazy person.”
I shrugged. “I try not to think about it at all. It’s too easy to go back to the dark place, but lately it seems to be popping into my head more. I don’t like to talk about it, but maybe we should.”
Gigi reached out to hold my hand. “We don’t have to.”
