A Dark Lure Read Online Free PDF Page B

Asians. Brits. This wilderness gives them something they simply cannot find back home.”
    She stared at the Old Man. It was fatigue, whisky, painkillers talking, yet it afforded her a rare window into his thoughts, one she had not expected.
    “I had no idea you’d even thought about it—a winter business.”
    “It would never work.”
    “But it could . If there was a will.” She couldn’t help saying it. This was something she’d dreamed about so often that she’d even created spreadsheets, broken down potential staffing costs, called around for quotes and estimates, because . . . well, because she didn’t have a life, that was why. This place had become her life. Because she’d had a stupid fantasy that she might one day present Myron with the paperwork and formally propose something. But then had come his diagnosis.
    “I could see a higher-end lodge experience,” she said. “Expansion of the guided trips—even horseback rides to fish the steelhead runs up in the Tahkena River; float-plane companies flying in executive guests; excellent organic and ranch-grown produce, top-end cuisine. Fresh lake trout, venison from the forests. Add to that a winter experience with a focus on Christmas. I believe it would work. I know it would.”
    He regarded her for a long while, an inscrutable look entering his eyes. He shook his head.
    “Forget it.” He set his glass down and wheeled himself across the carpet, the effort twisting his features. “I need to hit the sack early tonight. Can I leave you to lock up?”
    She came to her feet, took the handles of his chair.
    “No. I can do this myself.”
    But this time she overrode him. “Forget about it, Old Man. I need you to live a few more days.” She pushed him toward the library door.
    “Why do I let you boss me around like this?”
    “ ’Cause I’m nice,” she said with a smile. “And I don’t cost much.” She wheeled him out into the hall and up to the small elevator that had been installed last spring. She reached over to press the elevator button.
    “You come from a ranching background yourself, don’t you, Liv?”
    She tensed. “You’ve never asked about my past.”
    “But you do—the hunting, fishing, horsemanship, it has to come from somewhere. Where’s home to you, Olivia? Were you raised in BC? Another province?”
    The elevator doors opened.
    She hesitated. Trapped. She owed him some kind of truth after all he’d done for her. Myron had made it so easy for her to stay here on Broken Bar, to fit in, to begin to heal, to finally find a measure of peace. And it was easy because he never did ask where she was from, beyond the basic résumé stuff when he first hired her. He’d seen the scars on her wrists. But not once had he ever mentioned them. This was a man who knew about secrets, and reasons for keeping them.
    “Yes.” She wheeled him into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The doors closed, and the elevator hummed upward. “A ranch. Farther north.”
    He was silent, thank God, as she steered him out the elevator and along the corridor to his room, a corner suite that afforded him views over the lake and the mountains to the south, and the rolling aspen-dotted hills to the west.
    “Thanks,” he said as they reached his bedroom door. “I can handle it from here.”
    “You sure?”
    “Not goddamn dead yet. Like I told you, the day I need someone to brush my teeth, wipe my ass, put me to bed in diapers, is the day I stop living.”
    She snorted. Yet an uneasiness coiled in her gut at the look of determined ferocity in the Old Man’s eyes—she feared suddenly he might take his own life, on his own terms. Using all those pills.
    “Well . . . ” She hesitated, reluctant to leave him alone. “Night, then.” She started down the passage.
    He startled her by calling after her. “Why do you do this, Olivia?”
    She turned. “Do what?”
    “Push a dying old man around. Humor him. What do you want from