Sweet Laurel Falls (10 page)

She suspected Rose and Michael had come for her sake, to lend
emotional support on her first Christmas without Layla. While she had been
touched at the gesture and happy to see her just-older sister, she had thought a
few times that the avalanche of concern just kept piling on.

She touched the edge of a place setting and straightened the
silverware a little, remembering how when she and Sage had returned home from
the noise and craziness of the family gathering, they had sat here in the living
room by the fire, watching the lights twinkle on the tree, snowflakes gently
falling and the little shih tzu puppy wrestling with a leftover ribbon. She had
been able to hold it together, until she’d looked over and seen tears trickling
down Sage’s cheeks.

“I miss her,” Sage had said softly. “Sometimes I miss her so
much I don’t think I can bear it.”

“Oh, honey. I know,” she had said. What else could she say? She
knew from experience no words were adequate to soothe this pain, so she had held
Sage and the two of them had cried that they would share no more Christmases
with Layla.

Today Sage hadn’t had time to grieve for her sister, too busy
shopping and cleaning and cooking. Maura was glad for that, even if Sage was
doing all this work for her father. Jack was due to arrive in half an hour for
one last evening with his daughter before he left in the morning to return to
the coast.

One more day and he would be gone. She had hardly seen him
since that first morning after he’d arrived in town, just brief moments when
he’d picked up or dropped off Sage on their way to some outing. This would be
the longest time she had spent in his company since their ill-fated breakfast at
the Center of Hope Café.

If she had her choice, she would have tried to get out of this
dinner and let Sage have a quiet evening with her father. What could she do,
though? Sage had asked her to stay, and she couldn’t find a decent excuse to
refuse.

Maybe after he left, she would be able to breathe again.

She looked around the beautifully presented dining table again,
but couldn’t see anything out of place.

“So put me to work. What can I help you do?” she asked.

Sage shook her head. “Nothing! Absolutely nothing. You’ve been
working at the store all day. Jack won’t be here for forty-five minutes. You can
go take a nap or read a book or play with Puck—whatever you want, as long as
it’s something relaxing, not working here in the kitchen with me. This is my
gift to the both of you. My parents.”

Okay, she probably shouldn’t feel so squeamish about being
lumped into that category with him. It was the truth, after all, but considering
herself a co-parent with Jack still felt so strange after all these years on her
own.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind helping.”

“Positive. Everything’s under control. Why don’t you go take a
soak in the hot tub?” Sage suggested.

The idea had instant appeal. The hot tub on the edge of her
patio overlooking Woodrose Mountain was her one indulgence, especially on winter
nights with the snow falling gently on her face. “I wouldn’t feel right leaving
you in here to do all the work.”

“Mom, go!” Sage ordered. “I’m serious. You’ll only be in the
way. I’ve got this.”

She wanted to argue but saw the futility of it. A soak actually
would
be perfect and might soothe her psyche a
bit, give her a little inner peace to handle the ordeal of the next few
hours.

“Okay. I won’t be long.”

“Take your time,” Sage said.

Maura finally surrendered and hurried into her bedroom to
change into her swimming suit, and grab a towel and the book she was currently
reading for the January book club meeting.

She hadn’t shoveled the path to the hot tub since the last
storm, and the two inches of new snow froze her toes in her flip-flops. But she
danced quickly through it and worked the lid off, then slid into the always-hot
water with a sigh of pure bliss.

Oh, she had needed this, she admitted. The stress of the
holidays had just about done her in. She should make time to come out here every
night, instead of saving it for a once- or twice-weekly treat.

When Chris lived here with them, he had put the hot tub in the
backyard to soak sore muscles after a day on the slopes. After the divorce, it
had become her escape from dealing all day with two girls by herself. Once they
were in bed, she used to love coming out here to gaze up at the stars and read a
book and feel like herself again, a woman with dreams and regrets, instead of
only someone’s mother.

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.”