Sweet Laurel Falls (28 page)

* * *

H
E
COULD
THROW
a pretty damn good party when he set his mind
to it.

Harry watched the fifty or so people who had come to celebrate
Layla’s life interspersed among the spring flowers and purple helium balloons
Sage had insisted on for decorations. Everybody looked as though they were
having a good time.

And why shouldn’t they be? The music was nice, the food was
delicious and he was serving free booze.

In the spirit of the Angel of Hope, Sage had even come up with
the idea of combining the meal with an activity to help somebody else. That’s
just the kind of girl she was, and he was damn proud of her.

Along one length of the wall, two quilts had been set on frames
for people to tie, and a group of women—and a few men—worked on all four sides
of each. Sage wanted to donate them to the VA hospital in Denver, which he
figured was a fine idea.

He hadn’t entertained much since he’d built this house. Truth
was, he’d always figured there weren’t that many people in town he wanted to
spend much time with. Maybe he had been wrong about that, as he had been wrong
about so many other things. All his preconceptions seemed arrogant as he
listened with an odd sense of satisfaction to the various conversations flow
around him.

“Hey, Gramps,” Sage said suddenly at his elbow.

“You know I hate it when you call me that,” he lied.

She only winked in answer, seeing right through him. God in
heaven, he loved this girl. She looked a great deal like his Bethany when she
had been young and lovely and free of the demons that would plague her so
cruelly later in life.

Fate was a strange and mysterious thing. Who ever would have
guessed a year ago—when he had witnessed the accident that had changed so many
lives—that one day he would find himself here, hosting a gathering in
remembrance of a girl he didn’t know, for this unexpected granddaughter he
already loved fiercely?

“We need to put up another quilt. One of them is already almost
done. Can you believe it? So do you remember where we put that green yarn after
we went to the store?”

He frowned. “How should I know? That was a week ago. You’ll
have to ask Mrs. Kingsley where she put it.”

“She said to ask you. According to her, she remembered seeing a
bag of yarn in your office and had planned to ask you where you wanted her to
keep it, but when she went back later, she couldn’t find it anywhere.”

He thought for a moment, hating the random absentmindedness
that seemed to have come once he’d hit his late sixties. “Oh. Right,” he
suddenly said. “I put it in one of the desk drawers. I forgot all about it. I’ll
go find it for you.”

“Thanks.” Sage kissed him on the cheek before she returned back
to acting as the de facto hostess of this gathering.

Harry headed for his office in the opposite end of the house.
Now that he thought about it, he wouldn’t mind sneaking a cigar while he was
gone. All this socializing was exhausting for a guy who still preferred his dogs
to large crowds.

His office was quiet and warm, faced to catch the afternoon
sunlight. He unlocked a drawer and pulled out his humidor. Quite a thing when a
man had to lock up his own smokes so his housekeeper didn’t throw them out.
After picking a cigar and a clip and cedar matches, he opened the sliding door
that led to a private terrace, where he enjoyed sitting and smoking and looking
out over his ski resort.

Damn the doctors anyway, he thought as he puffed, leaving the
door open. And damn Mrs. Kingsley too. Her nagging caused him to hide out here
on the terrace to enjoy this rare pleasure, even on snowy days in January, so
the fresh air would hide the revealing scent and smoke.

He took another puff—five or six were all he would allow
himself per cigar, a criminal waste, really—and savored the taste just as he
caught a flicker of movement inside his office. Maybe Sage had come looking for
him and her yarn.

Before he went to the trouble of stubbing out the cigar in the
ashtray he kept hidden under a bush, he peered around the curtains to check and
realized with considerable shock that his visitor wasn’t Sage. Instead, her
grandmother stood inside the room, her attention fixed on the Colville hanging
in his office. The painting was one of his favorites, of a storm rolling over a
meadow in the mountains. The colors were rich and vivid, and he could almost
smell the ozone in the air when he looked at the clouds.

Mary Ella McKnight must be enjoying it as well. She didn’t
appear to notice him—she was too busy gazing at the painting, with her hands
folded together at her chest as if she were a nun at prayer.

It seemed too private a moment for him to witness, almost as if
he had peeped in a window at her dressing.

This was his house, he reminded himself. Hell, not just his
house, his private office.

A shaft of sunlight arrowed in from the window and seemed to
encircle her, giving her an ethereal glow. He had often thought her the most
beautiful woman in town, even now that she had a few wrinkles around her eyes
and bracketing her mouth. The green eyes she had passed to all her children
seemed to blaze in her features and her mouth was rounded, as if on an
exclamation.

He hardly dared breathe as he watched her, but despite his best
efforts to remain still, he must have made some sound. She frowned first, as if
sensing someone on the periphery of her awareness. Then she turned fully toward
where he sat on the terrace, and a curious mix of guilt and horror crossed her
features.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I had no idea anyone was here. What are you
doing out there?”

Watching you. Yearning
. He held up
the cigar. “Hiding from my housekeeper. Want a puff?”

He made the offer as a joke, but Mary Ella was always good at
surprising him. After a pause, she strode to the terrace and, with a defiant
look, she plucked the cigar from his fingers and held it to her lips like a
seasoned aficionado. His insides did a long, slow curl to think of her lips
touching the place where his mouth had just been.

She puffed only slightly and held the smoke in her mouth
correctly before she blew it out and handed the cigar back to him. “My
ex-husband used to enjoy a cigar once in a while. Certainly nothing as fine as
that one.”

Her husband had been a narcissistic asshole. He had always
thought so, and that had only been reinforced when the idiot had walked away
from Mary Ella and their six children.

“Go ahead and finish it if you want. I’ve had my quota for the
day.”

“I never quite developed a taste for it.” She looked
embarrassed. “I’m sorry to intrude. I was admiring the Colville in the living
room, and Maura told me you had another one in here. I only wanted to see it. I
love her work. Even if she wasn’t a dear friend, I would love it. I actually own
a small landscape she gave me for my birthday a few years ago. It’s my most
treasured possession.”

He couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk to Mary Ella when
she wasn’t sniping at him. “Would you like a tour of all twelve of mine?”

She gaped at him. “Good heavens. You really have that
many?”

“When I find something I like, I don’t see any reason to deny
myself.”

“You could save a few for the rest of the world, couldn’t
you?”

Her sharpness almost made him smile. If he kissed her, would
her mouth taste tart like pie cherries or sweet and lush like bings? He was
unbelievably tempted to find out.

“Come on. I’ll show you my collection. If you’re such close
friends with Sarah Colville, maybe you can convince her I’m not such a bad guy
and she should consider selling me more.”

“Hmmph.”

Despite the derogatory sound, she followed him as he walked out
of his office and down the hall toward the den.

She had the same reaction to each one as she’d had in his
office, rich and wholehearted admiration. He saved his favorite for last, a huge
landscape in his bedroom, ten feet wide, a spill of sensual poppies on a field
of vibrant green.

“Oh, stunning!” she exclaimed, her face as radiant as the
painting.

Seeing her sheer joy at something he also loved seemed to weave
a spell of intimacy around them. He wanted to march out and buy a dozen more
paintings just for the sheer thrill of showing them to her.

“Thank you for the tour,” she said, her voice and her eyes
soft, and he wondered if she too sensed the subtle tug between them.

“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice gruff. He should be the
one thanking her. He had never appreciated his own treasures as much as he did
seeing them through her eyes.

“And while I’m choking on my gratitude here,” she said, “I
would be remiss if I didn’t thank you for hosting this gathering. Sage told me
you insisted, which meant a great deal to her. To all of us, really. It
was…oddly kind of you.”

“Believe it or not, I do have the occasional moment of odd
kindness.”

She gave him a half smile. “A few months ago I wouldn’t have
believed you possessed a shred of goodness, no matter what evidence I heard to
the contrary.”

They were standing very close together, he realized. What would
she do if he reached a hand out and brushed that loose strand of hair away from
her face and kissed her, as he had been aching to do since he had seen her
gazing up at the painting in his office like a novitiate in front of the Blessed
Virgin?

Knowing Mary Ella McKnight, she probably knew karate and would
take him down to the floor.

“I just have one question for you,” she said, her voice a soft
breath on the air.

“What’s that?” he asked, just as softly.

“Are you the Angel of Hope?”

He froze, his mind racing with a hundred different ways to
answer that—and the hundred different questions he wished she might have asked.
Will you kiss me?
headed that particular
list.

“Sage told you. That little snitch. She swore she wouldn’t tell
a soul. The mystery was all part of the fun, she said. And what does she do?
First chance she has, she blabs to her nosy grandmother.”

“Sage didn’t tell me a thing,” she assured him calmly. “It was
only a wild guess, but thank you very much for confirming the suspicion I’ve had
for a while now.”

He swore, loud and long. That was twice now he had been fooled
by McKnight women. How in the hell had he managed to amass such a fortune when
he could be such an idiot sometimes?

“How did you guess?”

She shrugged. “Process of elimination, really. It had to be
somebody with plenty of financial resources and time on his or her hands. And,
to be fair, I happened to be walking past Mike’s Bikes one day a few months ago
and saw a quite unusual sight through the window that presented a huge
clue.”

“Oh?” he asked warily, guessing already what she would say.

“I had to ask myself why Harry Lange would be looking at
child-size bicycles. And lo and behold, a few days later I heard the Angel had
dropped a brand-new bicycle off on the porch of poor little Polly Ellis the very
day she learned she had to start a second round of chemotherapy.”

“Completely circumstantial.”

Her smile spilled over with triumph. “Absolutely. But you just
confirmed it.”

Early on, he had decided to do most of his Angel shopping
online or in Denver, where he had a better chance at anonymity. The Polly Ellis
situation had come up quickly and he hadn’t wanted to wait until he had a chance
to make the arrangements, so he had gone against his better instincts and
shopped locally.

And look where it got him. Ratted out by his own stupidity.

On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that she
knew. Instead of prickling with animosity—which he knew damn well he fully
deserved—Mary Ella gazed at him with a soft light in her eyes.

He caught his breath suddenly when she reached a hand out and
rested it gently on his arm. “You’ve done a good thing for Hope’s Crossing,
Harry. This town needed something to bring us together. All of us knew deep
inside that something good and right was missing in our town, but no one knew
how to fix it and bring us together again. As usual, you took the lead.”

Goose bumps erupted on his skin where she touched him. He
didn’t know what to say, so he did the only thing he could think of. He covered
her hand resting on his arm with his opposite hand. Her fingers were small,
slim. Delicate. A low ache began somewhere inside him, wistful and subdued. He
missed the softness of a woman’s hand in his. He hadn’t realized how very much
until right this moment.

He was vaguely aware through his own yearning that her fingers
had stiffened when he touched her, but she didn’t pull away. If he was going to
be an idiot for Mary Ella McKnight, he might as well go all the way. Take a
chance. Jump off the cliff. Float the rapids.

Live.

With his heart in his throat, waiting any moment for her to
slap him or shove him away or yell, he reached a hand out and acted on his
earlier impulse, pushing her hair aside. The strands were silky and he wanted to
rub it between his fingers, maybe bury his face in it. Instead he slid a hand
over her cheek, still soft despite the few fine wrinkles there, and leaned in to
steal the kiss he had been thinking about for longer than he cared to
remember.

“Don’t you dare,” she ordered in that bossy English-teacher
tone he had always secretly been crazy about, though he wanted to think her
voice sounded husky and strained.

“Go ahead and stop me,” he growled.

She didn’t.

And when she kissed him back with a fierceness that shocked
both of them, it was everything he dreamed and more.

When they emerged from his bedroom sometime later, Mary Ella’s
cheeks were pink and her hair was a little messier and he was pretty sure he
just might have lipstick on his jawline.