RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer\Woodrose Mountain\Sweet Laurel Falls (96 page)

“Everything okay?”

She jerked her head around at the words and was shocked to see
Jack standing only a few feet away. Her feet were cold, she realized. Her face
was too.

“Yes. Fine. Why wouldn't it be?”

“You seemed lost in your own thoughts. I called out twice.”

The heat seeping into her cheeks was almost painful against the
cold. “Sorry. I was, uh, sort of meditating.” A wind had risen while she stood
on the hillside, and it knuckled its way under her coat. “Are you and Sage
finished?”

“We wrapped things up a few minutes ago. Sage headed back to
the SUV to get warm and I…came looking for you.”

“You didn't need to do that. I was just about to turn back.”
Maybe. If she could have managed to wrench her gaze away from that makeshift
shrine.

“No big deal. I needed to stretch my legs anyway.” He looked
over her shoulder, his gaze following the direction she had been facing. “What
were you looking at?”

“Nothing.” She tried to distract him by starting to head back
down the trail, but Jack was no fool. Unfortunately for her.

“That's where your daughter was killed.”

She sighed. At least her face probably wasn't blotchy and red
and tearstained. She had cried so much these past months, she figured she had
worn out her tear ducts. “Yes. I hadn't realized how close it was to the
building site until I reached this spot. I…didn't come looking for it out of
some morbid obsession, if that's what you're thinking.”

His blue eyes seemed softer, somehow. “I wasn't thinking that
at all. Even if you had come for that reason, I would find it perfectly
understandable.”

“Is it?” She paused. “I keep thinking I'm making progress, you
know, putting my life back together. But I still feel like I'm paralyzed. Like
my feet have been frozen in the snow for months and everyone else just keeps
moving on around me.”

He reached a hand out and briefly brushed her fingers, then
dropped his hand again as if he wasn't sure whether he had the right to offer
comfort. She wanted to grab his arm and hold on to the warmth as tightly as she
could. “I can't even imagine the depth of your pain and what you've been through
this last year.”

For once, she felt comforted by someone's compassion instead of
asphyxiated. “It sucks, if you want the truth. It really, really sucks. I keep
expecting the pain to ease a little bit. I don't want it to, you understand,
everybody has just been telling me it will. Once in a while I'll have a day that
almost feels normal, you know? I'll find myself looking forward to something,
and then I have to stop and remind myself Layla isn't here and I shouldn't be
looking forward to anything. How terrible is that? Sometimes I have to remind
myself.”

He was silent and the cold wind ruffled the edges of his hair a
little. “Call me crazy, but I can't imagine that a daughter who got up early
with her sister to surprise you with breakfast would have wanted you to feel
guilty for trudging forward with your life.”

Okay, she was wrong. Her tear ducts still worked, apparently.
She could feel a hot tear trickle out and she quickly brushed it away with the
finger of her glove.

“Intellectually, I know you're right. Layla was life and
laughter and joy. If she could see me like this, she would have dumped a handful
of snow down my back and told me to get over myself. Either that, or she would
have dragged me down beside her on the couch with a pen and paper and made me
sit there until we came up with ten or twenty nice things we could do for
someone else to shake me out of my funk.”

“She sounds wonderful. I'm sorry I didn't know her.”

“You would have liked her. Everyone did. She probably would
have asked you where the hell you've been all these years and how you could
possibly think you were good enough to be Sage's father, but eventually I think
she would have liked you too.”

She offered him a smile—shaky and a little lopsided, but it was
the best she could manage without bursting into sobs. He gazed at her for a
moment and then he muttered an oath. Before she realized what he intended, he
reached out and wrapped his arms around her, tugging her against him.

She should probably resist. The thought penetrated somewhere in
the recesses of her brain but, quite simply, she didn't want to. Unlikely though
it might be, Jack offered warmth and strength and comfort and she wanted to soak
up every drop.

She nestled her head under his chin, her arms around his waist,
and he did nothing else but hold her.

Twenty years ago, she had turned to Jack for safety and comfort
as well, during that crazy time after her father had walked out. He had been
grieving after his poor mother had committed suicide and they had turned to each
other, two lost souls looking for a little peace together. She had shared
everything
with him and had trusted him with her
deepest pain.

The years since had taught her to be much more wary with that
trust.

Though she wanted to stay right here soaking up the comfort of
his embrace, she forced her arms from around his waist and took a step back, and
then another. “I think I'm okay now. Thank you.”

He studied her, those blue eyes intense and unreadable. “You're
a strong woman, Maura,” he finally said.

Strong? Ha. “I don't feel like it most of the time, but thank
you for saying it and for allowing me to vent. Apparently I needed it. But we
should probably head back to Sage.”

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he finally nodded
and led the way back down the trail toward where he had parked. The wind now
whistled a mournful cry through the trees and blew some of the powdery snow in
cold crystals against her face.

“Did you find what you needed at the site?” she asked when the
silence between them began to feel awkward.

“I think so. My brain is already spinning with ideas. There are
definitely a few challenges to contend with, but that's one of the things I love
most about what I do—figuring out how to work around all the obstacles to attain
the vision the client and I would like for the site.”

“What are some of the challenges?” she asked, mostly to hear
more of his passion for his work.

He seemed only too willing to talk about it and, as they walked
through the trees, he talked to her about drainage problems and the unwieldy
grade of the site.

“How will you address the issues?” she asked.

“No idea,” he admitted. “But I'm sure I'll come up with
something.”

“Of course you will,” she said, earning a look of surprised
gratification from him.

When they reached the SUV, a few hard, mean snowflakes began to
spew from the quickly moving iron-gray clouds. Through the window of the
vehicle, they could see Sage stretched out on the backseat, her eyes closed and
her cheek pressed against the leather upholstery.

“Look at her. Sound asleep,” Jack murmured. He gazed at their
daughter with a tenderness and affection that, absurdly, made Maura want to cry
again.

“She's brilliant at sleeping anywhere. When she was six or
seven, she once fell asleep in the middle of the Silver Days parade, curled up
in a lawn chair right there on Main Street.”

He chuckled softly at the image, and she was struck with great
force by the full realization of how very much she had taken away from him. He
had missed out on twenty years of Sage's life and she was beginning to wonder if
her motives for not telling him about their child had been as altruistic as she
had told herself.

“She looks so young.”

“I know. I still can't believe she will be twenty in the
spring.”

“And
I
still can't believe she's
pregnant. What jackass could do that to her? Look at her. She's not even out of
her teens. She looks like she should still be playing with dolls.”

Sage was two years older than
Maura
had been. And Jack hadn't been a jackass. He had been an angry, grieving young
man looking for a little peace, and they had both found that together. If they
had used a little more effective birth control, they wouldn't be standing here
together looking at their sleeping daughter.

“I agree. She has a huge, bright, promising future ahead of
her. I'm terrified we'll have to stand by and watch that future disappear in a
puff of smoke.”

“What can we do?” he asked.

The moment seemed surreal, somehow, of shared concern and
cooperation for their child, and she found it both unexpected and sweet. “Right
now, I'm not sure we have any power at all in this situation. I think adoption
is her best option. If we present a united front on that, we might have a little
more impact on her decision.”

He raised an eyebrow, and the capricious sun chose that moment
to peek through the clouds. “Is that what you want? For her to give the baby up
for adoption?”

“Are you kidding? It would rip my heart out. But don't you
think that would be best for her and the baby? Sage isn't in any place to raise
a child by herself right now. How will she finish college?”

“You would know that better than anyone. You were in exactly
her place.”

She gazed at Sage, so pretty and bright. “I wouldn't trade a
moment of my life as her mother, even those terrifying early days when I didn't
have the first idea what I was doing. The first time I gave her a bath by myself
without nurses or my mother there, I cried the whole time, afraid I was going to
drop her or drown her or give her pneumonia or something.”

She smiled a little at the memory of her own foibles and found
him watching her with that unreadable expression again.

“You didn't, though.”

“I didn't drown her, at least. I'm sure I made a thousand other
mistakes. But you know, despite all the mistakes and the challenges and
the…
pain,
being a mother has been an
incomparable blessing.”

She loved both of her daughters. Without them, her life would
have been as sterile and cold as, well, Jack's appeared to her. “I want Sage to
know the joy of being a mother, but not this way and not now. Not before she has
the chance to at least
try
for the goals she's been
setting since she was that little girl designing elaborate houses for her
dolls.”

“I'll do whatever you need. I'm here for her now too,
Maura.”

She smiled, finding immense comfort in his promise. Jack might
have left all those years ago, but he was here now. That was the important
thing. For Sage's sake, she told herself. Not for her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“T
HIS WILL BE SUPER FUN
. Thanks for inviting me,
Mom.”

Maura smiled across the String Fever worktable at Sage, making
good inroads on the roast beef and arugula sandwich from the brown-bag lunch she
had packed for her that morning. Maura took a bite of her own and set it back
down amid the bead idea magazines scattered across the worktable.

“We live in the same house, but it seems as if we hardly see
each other. And with spring finally on the horizon, I've been desperate for some
new jewelry to wear. This seemed like a perfect way to kill two birds and all
that. Beading and lunch with you. Two of my favorite things.”

“I know, right?” Sage smiled. “I've been meaning to come over
to the bookstore on my lunch, but there are some days I'm so busy I don't have
five minutes free.”

“Is this going to be a problem with, er, your father?”

Sage snickered. “Not at all. And have you noticed you call him
er, your father
every time you happen to mention
him?”

“I hadn't noticed. Sorry. I'll try to stop.”

Jack had been back in their lives for nearly three months now.
Would she ever be completely comfortable with the whole situation?

Not that she had much interaction with him. His job kept him so
busy, she had only seen him a few times in the past six weeks since the day when
the three of them had made a visit to the recreation center site and he had held
her and offered quiet comfort.

Sage swallowed a bite of her sandwich. “I wasn't complaining,
just pointing it out,” she said. “I think it's kind of funny, if you want the
truth. He does the same thing, except he uses
um, your
mother
instead.”

Why would they have reason to talk about her? And why should
the idea of Jack discussing her leave her flustered and off balance?

“How is Jack?” she asked, to hide her reaction.

“He's good. Great, actually.” Sage dipped a carrot in the small
container of low-fat ranch dressing Maura had packed knowing it was her
favorite. “We're hearing good things about his chances for winning the
recreation project bid.”

“I'm not particularly surprised,” she answered, trying to keep
the dryness from her tone. “I would be more surprised if he
didn't
get it.”

According to Katherine, who was on the city council, Harry
Lange had told Mayor Beaumont and the rest of the council that his donation of
the land was conditional on the city choosing his son's bid. Without Jack on
board as the project architect, there would be no recreation center.

She would never tell Jack
or
Sage
that, however. Contrary as he was—much like his father in that regard—Jack just
might choose to walk away rather than give Harry something he obviously wanted.
If he found out about it, Jack likely wouldn't appreciate his father pushing his
weight around town on his behalf.

She had to wonder what Harry was up to, whether he was simply
manipulating everyone in his own unsubtle way, or if he genuinely wanted his son
to stick around Hope's Crossing so badly.