were complex and many.
This week, dinner was Raisin Bran and Cheerios. Next week, it would be Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes. Really, it depended on who did the shopping. There was a kitchen table, but they hadn’t eaten there since Jen had left. It had become Roger’s domain, where he draped himself, tail twitching, judging whatever Rick was up to that day.
“I went to the town hall. Jonah said the Santa Moose is back.”
“No shit. I’ll tell Quinn. She loves crap like that.”
And Diego loved Quinn, the curly-haired young woman he worked with up at the resort. Not that he’d ever told her. Rick supposed opposites could attract. Quinn was bright and sunny and happy, and Diego was…well…Diego.
But still…he’d waited dinner on Rick. And that was progress.
They’d been doing this for three years now. Cereal. Roger. Sitting on the couch to watch TV and eat in silence. Pissed-off cat on one side, pissed-off twenty-year-old on the other, Rick picked up his cereal bowl and took a bite.
Unbelievably grateful for them both.
Chapter 3
Every morning, Lana tried to put her own makeup on. Every morning, she failed.
This morning was like all the rest, but still, she was determined to try. As she stood in front of her bathroom mirror, makeup laid out on her vanity in front of her, Lana didn’t want someone else to take care of this for her. She wanted to pick up the eyeliner and put it on herself. She wanted to feel normal. She wanted to feel competent.
Except…when Lana lifted her hands, they would always shake.
Her hands had been this way for as long as Lana could remember. The best her doctors had come up with was that it was a low-grade stress reaction, starting in her childhood and settling into permanency by the time she had grown. Stressful situations made it worse. Yoga, meditation, and a lot of time in therapy made it better. The result was Lana could control the shaking…to a point. But it was her tell. And when one stepped into boardrooms for a living, it was never good to have a tell.
The hardest part to stomach was the fact that no one ever blinked an eye at her requests to have her makeup done at whatever hotel was home for the week or month. As if she were shallow—or spoiled—enough to insist on having even the smallest lines of liquid liner painted on her lids for her.
But the opposite was worse. When one was a Montgomery, eyes were always watching. And shaky hands didn’t let her achieve the required facade of having herself completely together at all times.
Maintaining the family reputation went hand in hand with maintaining the company’s reputation. Whether it was commercial, industrial, or residential real estate, the Montgomery Group had their hands in it. Hundreds of transactions, thousands of properties. From tiny studio apartments to skyscrapers. Lana had facilitated those acquisitions ever since taking her place at the head table of the family business. Working for her family might have given her premature stress lines, but it had also given her an important position at the top of a powerful company, with all the challenges and personal gratification that came in meeting those challenges. Her job had made her stronger, tougher, and more business savvy. She had seen the world one boardroom at a time, experiencing things most people only dreamed of.
But never once had the Montgomery Group given Lana the one thing she’d always wanted: a home.
Abandoning her makeup, Lana made herself a cup of tea. She liked to start her mornings this way, standing in front of the window, her robe wrapped around her, and her shaky fingers cradling a warm drink. She gazed out at the thick blanket of snow covering the mountainside, evergreens thrusting vertically into the sky, strong and straight trunked even in the harshest of Alaska’s weather.
No matter what was thrown at them, those trees stayed tall and true, refusing to bend and break.
On every city street, on every beach, in every desert estate…no matter where Lana went, she always thought of these trees. Taking her strength from the lifeblood of the place where she one day wanted to stay forever.
A knock on the door of her suite pulled Lana’s attention.
“Ms. Montgomery?” Quinn, her favorite employee at the resort, stuck her curly blond head in through a small opening in the door. “You asked to be woken at seven.”
“You can call me Lana,” she gently reminded the young woman—not that any of her