1
Kelsey Porter had always feared that the lies she told would one day come back to bite her in the ass. She'd just never expected the bite would come in the form of work she had no business doing for a man she wanted nothing to do with. But lies were cruel. They built on themselves-words turning into sentences and sentences into paragraphs, until Kelsey had written a novel of falsehoods about who she was and what she did for a living. So when her father volunteered her labor to Ian Roth, Kelsey was triply screwed.
One, she wasn't about to confess that her alleged work experience was a lie.
Two, she was already extremely busy.
Three, and perhaps most important, Ian was a jerk who didn't deserve what little free time she had.
Despite never having spoken to Ian, Kelsey was absolutely positive of number three. The man had shown zero interest in her dogs, and that spoke of a cold, unfeeling heart.
Kelsey had tried convincing her father she was too busy to help Ian, but her reasoning had been brushed off as easily as the death glare she'd given him. That was no surprise. Kelsey's glare had a tendency to make people, particularly male people, want to pat her on the head and tell her how cute she was. Cherubic, even. Being taken seriously was hard when you were short. Add in her blond curls and blue eyes and it was damn near impossible. Her twin brother, Kevin, who shared her general appearance, at least had the advantage of being male. No one thought Kevin was cute when he scowled at them.
And no question, her father wouldn't have volunteered Kevin to do unpaid labor. That was the sort of BS demanded only of women. Her father hadn't cared one bit that Kelsey had deadlines to meet and a house she was renovating. Making Ian happy had been more important to him.
"You know I'm right," Kelsey said as she pointed out this last incontrovertible fact.
Josh had the good sense not to argue, which was why he was her favorite cousin. "You're probably right, yes. But try not to be so negative. Ian doesn't know your situation. It's not his fault."
So that was who the nagging Be nice voice in her head sounded like. She'd been telling it to shut up since her father had dropped this bomb on her yesterday, and Kelsey turned the full force of her glare on her cousin. It was a combination of displeased, dismissive, and disgusted that on another face might have been lethal. "Excuse me?"
Like her father had, Josh ignored the glare. Freaking men.
They had embarked on their semi-regular afternoon ritual, walking their combined six huskies around the park in downtown Helen. Kelsey had given Josh his three dogs when he moved here a couple of years ago, and they mingled with hers-Romeo, Juliet, and Puck-as they made a circuit around the park's perimeter.
What a difference a few weeks made. Helen hadn't entirely shut down for the winter yet, but the number of tourists had so rapidly declined, it was like someone had shut off a spigot. The park, just a couple of weeks ago, had been a maze to navigate with six dogs, but now it was an easy stroll. That was good, because the chillier weather made Kelsey want to keep a faster pace even as she delighted in the scent of the wet grass and salty bay water. Anything smelled better than the drywall compound she'd been inhaling all morning.
Well, almost anything. She was supposed to meet with Ian at his brewery in an hour, and Kelsey assumed the place would smell like beer. She hated beer. Even if she did have experience writing marketing materials, which she most certainly did not, she still would be the worst person in the world to help Ian.
"I'm not saying it was cool of your father to volunteer you," Josh said as he attempted to detangle a couple of leashes. "But how long can it take you to write some stuff for the brewery's website?"
"It's not only the website. It's also press releases, and a puff piece for the local paper. Maybe even a longer article to submit to some travel zines."
"And that." Josh winced, and Kelsey hoped it was dawning on him why she was being so negative.
Lies-spinning them for a living was called fiction. Living them was turning out to be a pain in the ass. Everyone in town, including Josh, believed Kelsey was a freelance writer, and they all had their own ideas as to what that meant. She'd never bothered to correct them, since it hadn't mattered. Until now.
Kelsey hadn't the faintest clue what the website work might entail, but she did have an idea how much time it took to write for the Helen Weekly Herald, because she did it on occasion. It helped keep her cover and paid for the occasional new doggie toy, but she hated it. The only thing Kelsey enjoyed writing was novels. Steamy paranormal romance novels about a pack of husky shifters living in the Alaskan bush, to be 100 percent precise, because romance readers knew exactly what sort of stories they wanted, and Kelsey aimed to provide them for the ones who liked hers. It wasn't what she'd planned to do with her life, but she enjoyed it, was apparently good at it, and had gotten extremely lucky to be able to support herself with it.
And there was no way in hell she could tell anyone in Helen about it. Thank goodness for pen names.
"I don't know how long it'll take," Kelsey said after a moment of encouraging Romeo to get a move on. "My father's obsession with the brewery is going to drive me up a wall though."
Josh grinned. "Oh, come on. Your father volunteering you to do work for free is one thing, but the brewery is exciting. I can't wait until they open to the public."
"It's more people." Ian Roth might be Kelsey's nemesis, but he had a business partner, Micah, who'd moved to Helen with him. That was two more outsiders crowding a town that was already starting to split at its seams. "Besides, you know my father. He doesn't care about the brewery because he likes beer. He sold Ian the warehouse because he's all about development, and he's invested in its success because he thinks it'll drive even more development. Then he can make a killing selling off all the property he bought. If he had his way, he'd turn Helen into some sort of metropolis."
At least a metropolis by Alaskan standards, which basically meant pushing the town's population into the five-digit range and being big enough to support a Walmart or a Costco. Kelsey got the appeal of wanting more and closer shopping options, but it was bad enough that the local coffee shops now had to compete with a Starbucks and the town had erected two new traffic lights in the past three years. Granted, they were only truly necessary during the summer tourist season, but it irked.
Josh pulled a bag of trail mix out of his pocket and offered some to her. He'd just gotten off his shift at the hospital and was probably ready for dinner. "Need I remind you that I was one of the 'more people' when I moved here?"
Kelsey declined the offer of food with a shake of her head. Josh liked the healthy stuff-nuts and seeds. If she was eating trail mix, it had better be half sweets. "You're family. It's different."
They had this discussion whenever Josh chided her over her dislike of outsiders, which wasn't so much a dislike of outsiders at all. It was a dislike of Helen losing its small-town charm.
"I haven't even told you the worst of it," Kelsey said before they ended up rehashing that old argument.
"There's more?" Even Josh sounded wary now. But then, despite his original attempt to downplay her father's obnoxious behavior, Josh and her father weren't on speaking terms at the moment. Her cousin knew exactly what kind of crap Wallace Porter was capable of dishing out.
"Oh, there's more." Kelsey laughed, although there wasn't much about it that she found funny. Absurd was more like it. Her father's precise words had made her feel like she'd been dropped in the middle of a Regency-era novel. A day later, she could recall the culmination of his paternalistic speech with perfect clarity.
"We founded this town," her father had said. "Connections are important for maintaining our hold on our position, and think of the possibilities. Ian's family owns a very successful brewery in Florida. If Ian and Micah can replicate that success here, it would benefit us all for you to be a part of it. You'd be well taken care of too."
Yes, her father had had the gall to suggest that she might want to consider dating Ian or Micah for the sake of the family, and the nerve to suggest she might be happier with a man in her life. Kelsey laughed at the memory, because otherwise she'd scream.
No doubt her parents had been contemplating how to advantageously marry her off since the moment Kevin had gotten engaged and ruined their hopes of him increasing the family's status. Her mother just seemed pleased that her youngest son was happy, but her father was another story. Her was trying; Kelsey would give him that much, but only barely. But whether it was Kevin's fiancŽ's first name (Peter), his last name (Chung), or the fact that he was a poor graduate student (the disappointment!), Kevin's engagement had made life around the Porter nuclear family stressful.
The only thing that was helping smooth over the situation was the very reason that Josh and her father weren't on speaking terms-Josh was dating Taylor Lipin, and for a Porter, there was nothing more shocking and terrible than a Lipin. The Porter-Lipin feud had raged for over a century, and while Kelsey had enthusiastically embraced having enemies as a child, her adult self was starting to feel like the whole debacle was, in fact, childish.
Perhaps it had started during her time away from Helen while she was in college, or maybe it had everything to do with wanting Josh to be happy, but Kelsey had lately found herself dwelling more and more on the feud's downsides. As a state of mind, that was almost as heretical as dating a Lipin, so she kept her increasingly conflicted thoughts to herself and quietly supported Josh's uncharacteristic attempt at being the family rebel. She couldn't help herself. Pride and Prejudice had been a seminal novel in forming her ideas of romance, and thus there was no drama she loved more than a person horrifying their family in the name of love.
That was another truth that could only be dragged out of her under threat of someone torturing her dogs.
That said, it made perfect sense that her parents would currently be pinning their hopes for an engagement that would increase the family's status on her. Such was the burden of being the only daughter and living nearby. Kelsey was positive her older brother was not being subjected to the same expectations as she was. No one would expect Nate to move back to town and make a sacrifice for the family. She, on the other hand, had always been daddy's little warrior. Her father might not be happy that she refused to shun Josh, but until she indicated otherwise, he'd continue to assume that the six-year-old girl who "accidentally" spilled paint all over a Lipin boy's art project had grown into a woman who would flirt her way into a powerful alliance for the sake of the family.
Leaving out her thoughts about the feud, Kelsey relayed the gist of her father's ridiculous request to her cousin.
Josh laughed along with her. "Does your father even know you? What did you tell him?"
Kelsey sighed, because as much as she'd have liked to, she hadn't laughed in her father's face. "I didn't say much, but I did agree to this writing thing for the brewery, so I wonder if it wasn't some devious trick on his part-bring up something so outlandish that I'd agree to the less ridiculous ask."
"I'm not sure your father's that clever, but I was confused about why you were going along with being volunteered. That might explain it."
"Things are tense with my parents these days," Kelsey said, tugging on Puck's leash as the husky sniffed what must have been a particularly fragrant patch of grass. "If this helps, it seems worth it. It's strange being the family peacekeeper, but here I am."
That was one of the justifications she'd come up with. The others involved her real job. Namely, that writing stuff for the brewery kept up her cover, and her current book-the one under deadline-made her scream every time she thought about it. Kelsey hoped writing something completely different might give her some much-needed perspective on the book struggles.
For a moment, she was tempted to confess all of this to Josh. Yes, he was male and she'd had it up to her eyeballs with men, but he was one of the few people Kelsey trusted. On the other hand, the insignia for Helen Regional Hospital that was embroidered on Josh's jacket gave her pause. Josh would certainly keep her true vocation a secret, but how could she be sure her cousin the doctor wouldn't look down on her for writing romance? If he did, she'd be compelled to write him out of her already minuscule circle of trusted people
Josh raised the zipper on his jacket as the damp breeze picked up. "Well, since you are doing it, I recommend not letting your first impression of Ian completely color your opinion. He seemed nice enough to me."
Kelsey rolled her eyes. Josh could make excuses for Ian all he wanted. That was just like Josh. Nate probably would too. But she was long past the point of making excuses for men acting like jerks. As far as she was concerned, Ian was an ass until proven otherwise. "He snubbed you and wasn't interested in petting our dogs. Who doesn't want to pet our dogs? They're adorable."
"Not everyone's a dog person, Kels."
"Exactly." Kelsey didn't trust anyone who wasn't, although to be fair, she didn't trust most people regardless. But not liking dogs, particularly her dogs, was a strike against someone. Her babies were sweet and friendly, even timid Romeo, who was every bit as distrustful as she was. All they wanted was to be loved and give love in return, and not reciprocating suggested certain things about a person's character that Kelsey couldn't abide.
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