Sweet Laurel Falls (21 page)

“You never mentioned roasting marshmallows was another culinary
skill.”

“I like to keep a woman guessing. Save a few impressive
accomplishments in reserve, just in case.”

She laughed outright at that, and he was completely entranced
by her. “An enticing offer indeed, but I’m going to have to regretfully decline.
If
I
have to go have dinner with Harry,
you
have to go.”

He sighed. Yeah, he was afraid of that. He could imagine few
things more miserable than sharing a meal and being forced to make conversation
with the old bastard.

On the other hand, he and his father had been circling around
each other like a couple of bull elk on either side of a meadow since he’d
arrived back at Hope’s Crossing, each waiting for the other to charge first so
they could tangle antlers.

“Well, maybe Sage will decide she wants nothing to do with
Harry, and we’ll both be off the hook,” he suggested.

Maura shook her head. “Nice try. I would think you know our
daughter better than that by now.”

Our daughter. He was pretty sure that was the first time she
had ever said those words together. How could a couple of simple words leave him
breathless?

“I guess we’re stuck then,” he said, his voice a little
raspy.

She flashed him a look, and he saw something warm flicker in
her gaze before she looked away. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll hold your hand and
help you through it.”

She was flirting with him, he realized through his shock. He
wasn’t even sure she was aware of it.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he answered, beginning to think he, at
least, was caught by much more than the prospect of dinner with his father.

* * *

H
ARRY
WALKED
THROUGH
the lobby of the lodge, his
heart pounding in his chest—not the scary, call-the-paramedics kind of pounding.
This was something he wasn’t very accustomed to—anticipation, joy and an aching
regret for the years he had lost through his own greed.

Every time he saw Jack, the yearning to permanently have his
son back in his life ate away at him like a lousy case of acid reflux. As far as
he could tell, Jack still wanted nothing to do with him. Could he blame him?
Harry had made stupid choices twenty years ago, had picked power and influence
over what was right, and now he was paying the price for his
shortsightedness.

He was alone and had discovered in recent years he didn’t like
it one damn bit.

He didn’t like thinking about how very afraid he had been after
his heart attack, lying in that hospital room by himself and knowing that there
was not one single person who cared whether he lived or died, except maybe his
attorneys. Even they would probably prefer their commission managing his estate
to actually having to deal with him.

The way things stood, Jack didn’t want to allow Harry back into
his life. So Harry would just have to knock all those obstacles out of his way
and earn his way back in, whatever it took.

He headed for the elevator toward his owner’s suite on the top
floor of the lodge. Though he had a home not far from here, the biggest private
residence for twenty square miles, tonight he couldn’t face the echoing
emptiness of it. He pushed the button for his floor, grateful nobody else came
in to force him into conversation right now. He might not enjoy being alone, but
that didn’t mean he was gung ho to talk to a bunch of idiots, just for the sake
of hearing another human voice.

To his chagrin, the elevator stopped at the third floor. The
doors swung open, and a young woman in a bulky parka walked in and quickly
turned around to face the front, but not before he saw her face, blotchy and
red, and identified her.

His granddaughter.

He knew all about Sage McKnight. Since the moment he had
learned she was his granddaughter in that bookstore, he had made it his business
to discover everything he could about her, from her interest in astronomy, to
her first boyfriend in high school, to what she got on the SATs. He knew she was
an architecture student in Boulder and that, since Christmas, she had been
working as Jack’s office assistant.

What he
didn’t
know was why she was
so upset.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, instantly on alert. He might be an
old man with a bad ticker, but he could still kick some serious ass.

She turned slightly and he saw recognition in her eyes, which
were huge and bruised-looking in her delicate face. “What are you doing
here?”

“It’s my hotel. What’s wrong?” he repeated, hitting the
emergency-stop button.

She closed her eyes and sagged against the wall of the
elevator. “It’s just been a really shitty day and I want to go home. Do you mind
starting this thing again?”

“Who hurt you?”

Her laugh was hoarse and ragged around the edges. “I got myself
into this mess. I can’t blame anybody else. Do you mind?” She shot a pistol
finger at the control panel.

He hit the emergency button again to start the elevator up.
“I’ve got an apartment here. You look like you could use a drink.”

She placed two hands on her abdomen, pressing her shirt down
and showing off the bulge there. “I’m knocked up, Gramps. Not to mention that
I’m still underage. But thanks for the gesture.”

Gramps. She’d called him Gramps. He found the nickname
particularly abhorrent but not the sentiment behind it. “Come on up anyway. I
can get you a glass of water and you can wash your face, get a tissue. Whatever
you need.”

“Are you saying I’m a wreck?”

“I didn’t say that. I only wondered if you wanted a drink of
water.”

She swiped at her cheek with a rough chuckle. “It’s a nice
offer, but my parents are waiting downstairs.”

“I know. I just spoke with them. They can wait a few more
minutes for you to pull yourself together. A Lange would rather die than show
weakness.”

“Nice. You have that embroidered on a pillow somewhere?”

“Not yet. Maybe you can stitch something up and give it to your
kindly old grandfather for Christmas.”

She snorted a little, and he was glad to see some color had
returned to her cheeks. “Yeah, all right. I could use a few minutes to gather my
thoughts. And I really need to pee. That’s one of the worst things about being
pregnant. I can’t be more than ten feet from a bathroom.”

Information he didn’t need, thanks, but he wasn’t going to
argue. He swiped his card and the elevator door opened into his penthouse suite.
She looked around, but he didn’t see any hint that the grandeur of the place
impressed her in the slightest.

“So where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall. First door on the right.”

“Thanks.”

While she was gone, he headed into the kitchen and tried to see
if he had anything in the Sub-Zero refrigerator suitable for a pregnant
teenager. He settled on a bottled water, but then had second thoughts and
thought she might enjoy a soothing cup of tea.

The fool housekeeper usually kept an assortment for his rare
guests, but where the hell did she store it? He rummaged through the cabinets
and finally found a clever little basket by the spice rack he didn’t know he
had.

One thing he
did
know he had was a
hot-water dispenser at the sink that produced near-boiling water in an instant.
A moment later, he had a tea bag steeping in a cup.

He met her in the living room and handed it to her. “Here you
go. It’s lemon balm tea. Supposed to be soothing.”

“Thanks.” She sat down on the edge of the sofa and held the mug
between her hands. “I suppose you’re curious about why I look like I just walked
into poison ivy.”

“No. Not really,” he lied. He had a feeling keeping the mood
light might set her at ease. Sure enough, she laughed roughly.

“Yeah. It’s a girl thing. You wouldn’t want to know.”

He waited a beat, wondering what to say yet terrified that, if
he said nothing, she would find the silence too uncomfortable and would
leave.

“I just told my baby’s father about the pregnancy,” she finally
blurted out. “It…wasn’t pleasant.”

“Oh?” he kept his tone low and nonthreatening, as if she were a
stray kitten he was trying to lure with a bowl of milk.

“Needless to say, he’s not throwing a parade down Main Street.
He’s got a girlfriend. A fiancée, actually. She doesn’t know anything about what
happened with us, and he doesn’t want to tell her.”

Now that she had started, she didn’t seem to want to stop. “It
was…ugly. He doesn’t believe me. Said there’s no way he can be the father. We
used protection, FYI. I was a virgin, not an
idiot.
But I guess it failed, because, you know, here we are.”

Again, too much information, he wanted to tell her, but he
couldn’t interrupt the flow of words that seemed to be gushing out of her like
air from a ripped balloon. “He accused me of getting pregnant on purpose to
extort money from him and his family. As if I want or need his stupid family’s
money. He even had the nerve to accuse me of staging the whole thing. The
concert tickets, the backstage passes, all of it was apparently designed so I
could get him to be my baby daddy and ruin his wedding next month. Can you
believe it?”

“Did he threaten you?” he asked, his voice deadly calm.

He knew just who she had to be talking about. He made it his
business to know who was staying in his hotel and, as far as he could tell, only
one person fit the bill. Sawyer Danforth. Hell, he’d just had dinner with the
bastard’s future father-in-law.

“He didn’t hurt me. Just yelled and threw things around like a
two-year-old having a tantrum. I can’t believe I ever liked him enough to, well,
you know.”

Right now he didn’t want to think about
you know
in connection with the granddaughter he had just
discovered. Instead, he sipped at the one drink a day he allowed himself and
tried to figure out how he could kick Sawyer Danforth out of his hotel on his
bony, privileged little ass.

“I’ve ruined his life, apparently. He wants me to get an
abortion, even though I’m five months along already.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Not get an abortion. That’s for sure.” She finally sipped at
the tea and apparently liked it well enough to take a second sip, which gave him
a completely ridiculous sense of accomplishment.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. That’s the question of
the hour, isn’t it? Am I keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption? It’s a
little more weighty decision than trying to figure out whether to take Math 1060
this semester or put it off until my junior year.”

“True.”

She sighed. “Well, anyway, it’s done. I told him. My mom and
Jack were certain it was the right thing to do, but now I’m not so sure. It
might have been better if he didn’t know.”

“If you decide to keep the baby, you don’t need his help, do
you? Your mother did an okay job raising you by herself.”

She sipped at the tea again. The longer she sat quietly on his
sofa, the more tension seemed to seep from her shoulders, he was happy to see.
“I’m not my mother. I love her like crazy, but I don’t think I’d be happy here
in Hope’s Crossing going to playdates and PTA meetings. I want all that, sure.
But not yet. Not until I’ve had a chance to do a few other things first.”

Either way, she was going to hurt, all because of a few foolish
moments with the wrong person. Life was nothing but pain. If he had learned
anything the past year, simply by opening his eyes to the world around him, it
was how helpless one person can feel trying to hold back that unrelenting tide
of sorrow.

“You’ll figure it out. You’re a smart girl.”

She made a rude sound. “How would you know? You don’t know
anything about me.”

He decided not to tell her just how much he had learned about
her. She might think it was creepy, not just an old man intensely curious about
this unexpected progeny.

“It’s in your genes. You’re my granddaughter, aren’t you?”

“Well, I can’t exactly be
too
brilliant. I got myself into this mess, didn’t I?”

“And you’ll come up with a plan to deal with it. That’s what
you and your father both do. You plan and plot and figure out the angles. It’s
why you’re going to make one hell of an architect, just like he is.”

She cocked her head, squinting at him, and he wondered just how
much he had revealed with that particular statement.

“I hope so. I better go. My parents are probably ready to call
hotel security to go look for me. Uh, thank you for the tea. And the
conversation. They both helped.”

“You’re welcome. Anytime. And I mean that.”

She blinked a little, then gave him a tentative smile that
seemed to arrow straight to his damaged heart. “Okay. Thanks. I might take you
up on that.”

He rose, grateful his almost seventy-year-old bones hadn’t
creaked too loudly, and walked her to the elevator, wishing he knew how to
protect this vulnerable, wounded child and take away the pain he knew was
coming.

“If you want me to, I can kick Sawyer Danforth out of his room
right this minute and bar him and his snooty parents from ever staying at my
lodge.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes filled with horror. “How did you…
I never said it was Sawyer.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said about good genes? You’re not the
only smart one in this family, missy. I know what’s going on in my own
hotel.”

He regretted saying anything when her shoulders went tight
again and she gazed in panic at the elevator and then back at him. “You can’t
say anything. Please!” she begged. “He said he was going to tell Genevieve
himself when the time is right. If word gets out to her before he has the
chance, he’s going to be so pissed.”

It would serve the little prick right for not keeping his
business in his pants. He didn’t care about hurting Danforth, but he didn’t want
to cause his granddaughter any more distress. “I can keep my mouth shut,” he
promised. That didn’t mean he couldn’t drop a hint in his housekeeper’s ear
about putting the scratchiest sheets on his bed and substituting his shampoo for
itching powder.