RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer\Woodrose Mountain\Sweet Laurel Falls (86 page)

Tonight she decided not to bother with her book after all and
left it on the edge of the hot tub. She turned the jets on High, leaned her head
back and lifted her face to the cold night air.

She just might have dozed off from weeks of jagged sleep. She
dreamed of Jack, of their first time together, on a blanket high up Silver
Strike Canyon. Of tangled limbs and mouths, of two painfully awkward adolescents
trying to work their way through the emotions and the heat and intensity that
had built up over their weeks together, while the river bubbled beside them and
a red-tailed hawk cried somewhere overhead.

After about twenty minutes, the sound of a barking dog in the
distance yanked her back to the reality of a winter's evening. She hadn't been
asleep long. Maybe even not fully asleep at all. Her fingers and toes were
shriveled, but the rest of her was a big, loose ball of relaxation. She probably
should go back into the house, even though she didn't want to let go of the
sweetness of that dream.

She rose, turned off the hot tub jets and reached for her
towel—just in time to see the very grown-up version of that boy standing at the
window inside, looking out at her through the frost-etched glass.

Heedless of the plumes of steam that curled and caressed around
her, she froze while a heat that had nothing to do with the water temperature
seeped through her. She remembered that dream, remembered the heat and wonder of
being with him.

After a long, charged moment, she managed to shake off the
clinging tendrils of the past and turned away. She wrapped the towel quickly
around her, hit the button to close the hot tub's automatic cover, then slipped
her feet into her cold flip-flops for the trip through the snow back to the
house. Her face was more hot than the rest of her now, but at least she had
private access to her bedroom from here, and wouldn't have to drip her way
through the rest of the house and risk encountering him in her swimming
suit.

More than she already had through the window, anyway.

Drat the man for coming early.

After a quick shower to rinse off the hot-tub chemicals and the
rest of her embarrassment, Maura threw on a pair of soft gray slacks and her
favorite wine-colored tailored shirt, along with a necklace set Claire had made
her out of turquoise-and-burgundy glass beads artfully strung on coiled silver
wire.

She wasn't dressing up, she told herself as she touched up her
makeup and quickly took a flatiron to her hair—she was only trying to look nice.
Okay, and maybe stalling as long as she could here in the safety of her room.
Finally she forced herself to give one last look in the mirror, took a deep
breath and walked into the kitchen.

She found Jack standing at her kitchen island wearing an apron
that read Hope's Crossing Chili Cookoff: We're Smokin' Hot. His long, artistic
architect's hands were shredding lettuce into a bowl, while Puck curled up at
his feet.

Sage was on the other side of the island, smashing potatoes in
her grandmother's old mustard-colored earthenware bowl. She raised an eyebrow
with a sweeping gesture toward the entirely too appealing man across the island.
“Okay, explain to me why you basically barred me from the kitchen earlier but
here Jack is, looking quite at home in my favorite apron?”

Sage shrugged. “He insisted on helping.”

“So did I,” Maura complained. “You wouldn't let me do a
thing.”

“I guess you're not as persuasive as I can be,” Jack said.

Oh, she was quite sure of that. “I could have done the salad,”
she muttered, embarrassed all over again that he had caught her dozing in the
hot tub while Sage was in here working by herself.

“It's done now,” Jack said. “Shall I set this out?”

“Yes. Everything else is ready, I think. Mom, do you want to
put Puck in my room?”

“Sure. I would hate to think I didn't do my part,” she said
drily. “Come here, dude. Time to be banished.”

The little dog cocked his furry face and gave her the canine
equivalent of a pout as she scooped him up. The two of them had reached an
accord of sorts. He mostly stayed out of her way, maybe sensing that her heart
wasn't open to him right now. She didn't mind his temporary presence in the
house, especially as Sage enjoyed him so much and had stayed true to her promise
to take care of him.

Maura carried him down the hall, refusing to acknowledge the
comfort she found in the small, warm weight in her arms. Puck whined a little
when she set him down on the brightly colored area rug in Sage's room, unhappy
with being excluded from the evening's festivities.

“Cry me a river, kid. You're the lucky one. I'd much rather
stay in here with you,” she muttered.

“Everything's ready, Mom,” Sage called out.

Yeah. She would definitely prefer to hide out here with the
little dog. “Sorry. It's only for a while. I'll let you out again after dinner,”
she promised.

Puck must have sensed she meant business and accepted his fate
with equanimity. As she closed the door, he was circling the floor a few times,
preparing to settle in.

Back in the kitchen, she found Jack had taken off the apron. He
looked impossibly gorgeous in a tawny fisherman's sweater and jeans, and her
stomach did a long, slow churn, an unwelcome warmth seeping into places that had
been cold and empty for a long time.

She didn't want this. Drat the man, anyway. She wasn't ready
for heat and hunger and
life
again.

“What's the matter? Did I forget to set something out?” Sage
asked anxiously.

Maura realized she was frowning and quickly smoothed out her
features. It wasn't
Sage's
fault she was having this
blasted reaction to the presence of an entirely too sexy man. No matter her
unease around Jack, she refused to ruin all her daughter's culinary efforts.

“Nothing's wrong, honey. I was just thinking this is bigger
than the spread your grandmother put on for Christmas dinner.”

“Not quite.”

“It looks great from here,” Jack assured her. Sage beamed at
him, though Maura couldn't help but notice the lingering shadows under her
daughter's eyes, which didn't seem to disappear no matter how much Sage
slept.

They sat down and began to dish up the bounteous feast. At
first, the conversation seemed to sputter and fizzle like an improperly laid-out
fire, but Sage did her best to add tinder and kindling.

“Jack designed an office tower in Singapore. He's going there
in a few months when they start building it. Isn't that awesome!” she
exclaimed.

“Awesome,” Maura murmured.

He raised an eyebrow but didn't comment.

“Where's the coolest place you've designed a building?” Sage
pressed.

“Cool? That's relative. I designed a high-rise apartment
building in Seoul last year. That was interesting. But I don't take on any
project unless I think it's cool in some way. I would be bored otherwise.”

Maura studied him, trying to reconcile this confident man with
the passionate boy she remembered. “You've accomplished everything you talked
about doing.”

She raised her glass of ginger ale, and he lifted his own to
clink it against hers and then Sage's.

“Funny thing about this business, though. There's always
another mountain.”

“What's your next summit?” She genuinely wanted to know, she
realized. When was the last time she had been curious about
anything?

He hesitated for a moment, twisting the stem of his wineglass
between his fingers. “You're going to wonder if I'm crazy. No, scratch that. No
wondering about it. I
am
crazy. I don't know why I'm
even considering it.”

“What?”

“The town is considering bonding for a new all-season
recreation center up above the reservoir.”

Sage's eyes widened. “This town? Hope's Crossing?”

He nodded. “My, uh, Harry told me about it when I went to visit
him in the hospital after he fell in the store.”

He went to visit his father? Maura stared, caught off guard. If
he'd just told them he had swum across the icy waters of Silver Strike Reservoir
that morning, she wouldn't have been more surprised.

“What is Harry's involvement?” Maura asked.

“It's his land, if you can believe that. He's considering
donating it to the city for the facility.”

Okay, that was even more shocking than the idea of Jack going
to visit his father in the hospital. Harry didn't do anything out of the
goodness of his heart, simply because he didn't
have
a heart and whatever he had that might resemble one wasn't at all good. He was a
man who didn't make a move unless he could find some way to squeeze a dollar out
of it, and he was famously antiphilanthropic.

She studied Jack. “You're actually considering this? Doing
something for the benefit of a town you despise?”

“I don't hate the whole town. I never did.”

“No. Just all the people who live in it.”

“That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?”

Was it? He had seen cruelty and inequality all around him,
especially in the way some people treated his mother's mental illness.

“Anyway, I can't say I've been miserable during the time I've
spent in Hope's Crossing these last few weeks. For the most part, people have
been very welcoming. The B and B even left me a present with my muffins on
Christmas morning.”

She smiled. “Let me guess. A scarf. Lucy's mother is a
prodigious knitter.”

“It's a very nice scarf and will definitely be just the ticket
during our chilly Bay Area summer mornings when the fog rolls in.”

She tried to imagine him in his natural milieu of San
Francisco. Where did he live in the city? she wondered. Riley had lived in
Oakland for years and had only returned to be the Hope's Crossing police chief
the year before.

Maura had gone to visit him with her girls several years ago
and done all the tourist things—the cable cars, walking across the Golden Gate
Bridge, visiting the sea lions on the wharf. They might have even passed by
Jack's office.

“Hope's Crossing is a nice town,” she said after a moment. “I
think if you spent a little more time here, you might see that. We even have our
own Angel of Hope.”

“Angel of Hope?”

“It's actually pretty cool,” Sage said. “Somebody goes around
secretly doing good works for people. And not little things either. Major stuff.
Taryn Thorne, one of the other kids injured in Layla's car accident, got a video
game system from the Angel, the kind where you don't need a remote. They're not
cheap. And my friend Brooke's mom had all her utilities secretly paid while she
was going through a divorce.”

He looked intrigued. “And you don't know who's doing all the
good works?”

“There are a million theories buzzing around town,” Maura said.
“Some completely unbelievable. Personally, I think not knowing is a big part of
the excitement.”

“We had a visit from the Angel,” Sage said. “After Layla died,
somebody left an envelope with money in it on the doorstep with a note that we
could use it for funeral expenses or find some other way to honor her life. Mom
and I agreed to donate it to Habitat for Humanity. They've got a housing
development going up west of town.”

“Really? In Hope's Crossing, along with the million-dollar ski
lodges up the canyon?”

“A community can't survive with only vacation homes. We need
year-round residents and they need to be able to afford housing,” Maura said. It
was one of her pet issues and hit very close to home. Too many of the old-timers
had been forced out of their homes because they could no longer afford property
tax once valuations started going sky-high after the ski resort was built.

“We volunteer to help build whenever we can,” Sage said. Her
daughter was barely picking at the delicious meal, Maura noticed. She had eaten
only a little of the pork and a few of the potatoes she had spent so much time
mashing.

Maybe she was too excited at having her father there, or maybe
she hadn't quite beaten the flu she seemed to have picked up since she had been
home.

“If you take the project in Hope's Crossing, would that mean
you would have to commute from California?” Sage asked.

“I don't know whether I'm even going to submit a proposal,” he
said. “Even if I do, there's no guarantee I would be awarded the project.”

“Oh, sure. That makes sense.” Sage poked at her food, dragging
her fork into little ski trails through her mashed potatoes. She gazed down at
her plate and spoke in a deceptively casual voice. “Since you're leaving
tomorrow, I was, uh, just wondering when I would see you again.”

“We'll work something out,” Jack said quietly. “You're not
getting rid of me now.”

Maura set her own fork down, not hungry anymore. Good thing
Jack had a healthy appetite, or all of Sage's hard work would have been for
nothing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

D
URING
THE
REST
OF
THE
MEAL
,
they talked about Sage's studies and Jack's projects. It wasn't as awkward as
Maura had feared, but she couldn't ignore the little twang of tension between
her and Jack, and the small sizzle of awareness.

She didn't want to be attracted to him, but she didn't seem to
have any more control over her hormones than she'd had as a teenager.

Finally, everyone seemed to be finished either eating or
pushing food around the plate, and the ordeal was over.