The First Love Cookie Club (16 page)

He scowled. “I—”

But he didn’t get any further because Vivian scurried over. “It’s time to start the story, Miss Cool.”

Sarah took her place in the middle of the circle and started to read. The rapt children sat mesmerized by the story. She slipped inside the book and let herself be carried off, blocking out everything around her except the words on the page— withdrawing, tucking in, escaping the intensityof emotions she’d never learned how to deal with beyond burying them. The words she knew so well tumbled over her, ran through her, came out of her.

As her tongue flew over the words, her body coiled tighter and tighter, until she was outside herself. It was like she was hovering above her own body, watching herself perform. Watching Travis watching her.

A shudder ran through her but she didn’t feel it. She was that out of touch with the feelings balling up inside of her. She wanted him so badly but she was so afraid to let herself go, to take the emotional risks necessary. What if she took a chance and things didn’t work out? No, much easier and safer to back away now before things got really sticky.

Her mind swirled with images of the night before. Travis’s lips on hers, his hands on her body, the look in his eyes. Then stupidly, for one whisper of a second, she raised her head and her gaze met his and she realized three important things.

One, she was a woman with an emotional wall so tall she had no idea how to go about knocking it down. Two, Travis was a single father with an ailing little girl who wished desperately for a mommy. And three, she had fallen madly in love with them both, but she was scared of showing it. Terrified that if she did, she’d have her heart broken right in two.

Travis studied Sarah. She was so wrapped up in reading to the children, it was as if nothing existed for her except the inner world she’d created. Her eyes lit up with passion and she took on the voices of the characters, becoming each one in turn. When she was Isabella, the heroine from her book, her voice grew higher, reedy, and her eyes widened. When she was Santa, her voice dropped and her shoulders broadened and she laughed from deep in her belly. The children were transfixed, caught in the spell of the story and Sarah’s expert telling of it.

This was Sarah’s world and the only connection he had to it was through the book his daughter loved.

The rest of the time, when she wasn’t immersed in her fictional world, Sarah was guarded and cautious. His father had been like this—quiet, withdrawing, hard to know, difficult to access. He’d often made Travis feel alone even when they were in the same room together. Maybe that was oneof the reasons he went a little overboard lavishing attention on his daughter. His father had often looked down on him for making decisions based on his feelings. Was Sarah the same way? So logical that she was Spock-ish when it came to emotions?

Did he really want to try so hard to be with her? Never mind that he wanted her so much it made his bones ache. There were those feelings again, illogical, but powerful. How did she manage to turn them off and lead with her brain? So what if when he looked at her he felt as if they were destined. There were some things love just couldn’t fix. His gaze traveled over to his daughter. He knew that firsthand.

Love.

The word tap-danced in his head. Was he really in love with Sarah Collier or was it just gratitude for all she’d done for his daughter masquerading as love? Or maybe it was simple lust. Not destiny or kismet at all, just intense physical attraction of which he’d never felt the like.

In that moment, she raised her head and looked him in the eyes, then quickly glanced away again, and Travis knew he was doomed to love a woman who might never be able to love him the way he needed to be loved.

Once she was back in Manhattan, amid the honking of taxis, the crush of crowds, and buildings so tall they obscured the sky, Sarah couldn’t write. Gone was the smooth muse who’d sat on her shoulder in Twilight and whispered fragments of brilliant story into her ear. All she could think aboutwas Travis and Jazzy and everything she’d left behind.

“Come on, we’re getting you out of this apartment. You need sunshine,” Benny told Sarah on the Tuesday after she’d returned from Twilight. “Let’s go for a walk in Central Park.”

Sarah stayed slouched in her seat, her gaze pinned on her computer screen. She stretched the sleeves of her sweater past the ends of her fingertips and stared at the blinking cursor. Where had the rush of inspiration gone that had seized her in Twilight? How could it have just disappeared?

“Hello.” Benny knocked on her cherrywood coffee table. “Anybody home?”

“I can’t think. My mind is blank.”

“It’s just jet lag. You’ve only been home a couple of days. Get on your feet, get out of your chair.”

“A walk isn’t going to fix this.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve already taken three walks today.”

“Ice skating at Rockefeller Center?”

“Forget it. This block is exercise proof.”

He took her coat from the hook beside the door and held it out to her. “I don’t think you have writer’s block.”

Sarah groaned and shambled over to poke her hands into the coat. “Please don’t quote Stephen King to me again.”

Benny opened the door and ushered her into the hall. “I wasn’t going to quote King. I was going to say you seem homesick.”

“Twilight isn’t my home,” she protested as he took her elbow and guided her toward the elevators.

“Maybe not geographically, but in your heart, I think it is.” They got in and he punched the button for the ground floor.

“What on earth makes you say that?”

“When you talk about the town, your whole face lights up. The cookie club women, the town square, Jazzy.”

“It doesn’t.” She touched her cheek.

They went through the lobby, pushed out into the rush of cold December air. “The rest of the time you mope and you sigh a lot and you keep staring out the window lost in thought and it’s not the good kind of lost in thought like you’re working on a book. You’re either homesick or lovesick.” Benny paused, and narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t fall in love while you were away, did you?”

Sarah walked faster, outdistancing him, headed straight ahead toward Central Park.

“You did!” Benny exclaimed, rushing to catch up with her.

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t tell me it was with that guy you were hung up on back in high school.”

Blindly, she nodded and swallowed back the lump welling up in her throat, then explained how Jazzy had turned out to be Travis’s daughter and the ladies of the cookie club had been playing matchmaker. All around her, New York throbbed with energy, but she couldn’t help comparing the stimulating pulse with the serene pace of Twilight. One place revved you up. The other calmed you down.

“Wow.”

“Wow is right.”

“So what happened?”

Sarah shrugged. “Nothing happened.”

“Oh, don’t lie to me. Something happened.”

“Okay …” Sarah inhaled deeply. “We might have almost made love.”

“What stopped you?”

She touched her stomach, felt the ridges of the burn scar through her clothing. “My fears, his kid, our doubts. Oh, and he shoved me out the back porch in my underwear.” Her breath came in frosty puffs and she snuggled deeper into her coat.

“What?”

Sarah waved, and then jammed her hands into her pockets. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. His daughter came home unexpectedly and he didn’t want her to see us like that.”

“He’s ashamed of you.”

“No, not at all. He just doesn’t want Jazzy to get too invested in me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because … well, you know me, Benny. I’ve never had a real romantic relationship. I don’t know how to go about it. And while being with Travis was a dream come true, I can’t trust my feelings. Are they real? Or is it simply wish fulfillment? I don’t know if I’m capable of seeing him through any lenses other than those rose-colored glasses of my youth.”

“You’re scared to trust your emotions.”

“That about sums it up.”

“But in the meanwhile, your writing has stalled.”

She nodded.

“I’ve read what you sent me,” he said. “That’s why I dropped by in the first place. To tell you thatthe story absolutely blew me away. It’s got so much more pathos than
The Magic Christmas Cookie.
But three-quarters of a story doesn’t cut it. You’ve got to have that power ending.”

“I know.” She groaned. “And I’ve hit a wall I can’t find my way around.”

“Wrong.”

“What?”

“There’s a way around it, you just don’t like it.”

“What’s that?”

“If you want to get your inspiration back you have to return to where you found it in the first place.”

“Twilight?”

“Twilight,” Benny confirmed.

He made it sound so easy. Just get on a plane and go back.

And see Travis again. He was bound to think her return meant something more than the need to recapture her vanishing muse. Which begged the question, was her disappearing creativity simply a way for her devious subconscious mind to get her back to Twilight?

“I don’t mean to put the screws to you,” Benny said as a group of runners jogged past them. “But I had lunch with Hal again today.”

She stopped walking and looked at him. The air smelled of snow, and somewhere someone was roasting chestnuts. “I don’t like the look on your face.”

“It’s not good news.”

A chill pushed through her that had nothing to do with the nippy air. “Oh?”

“He says if you don’t get it turned in on schedulethis time they’re canceling your contract and you’ll have to pay back that quarter of a million advance. If that happens, your writing career is as good as over.”

Travis tried to tell himself that it was probably all for the best that Sarah had gone back to New York. She wasn’t ready for a serious relationship and because of Jazzy he couldn’t afford anything casual.

Who was he trying to kid? He didn’t want anything casual from Sarah. He was serious about her, which sucked considering she was on the fence about him.

How had this happened? How had he gone from minding his own business and taking care of his daughter to being crazy about a woman who clearly had commitment issues?

On the Wednesday after Sarah had left, he was out in his boat on the lake, pondering these questions, when his cell phone vibrated. When he saw on the caller ID that the message was from Jazzy’s school, a cold sweat broke out on his neck.

“Yes,” he barked into the phone.

“Mr. Walker, this is the school nurse at Jon Grant Elementary.”

A spike of fear drove down his spine. “What is it?”

“I don’t mean to alarm you sir, it’s just since Jazzy has been so improved, I simply wanted you to know that she’s having a little trouble catching her breath this morning. It’s not nearly bad as it used to be, but I thought you’d want to nip this in the bud.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Twenty minutes later, he and Jazzy were in Dr. Adams’s office. As the nurse had said, Jazzy’s wheezing really wasn’t as bad as it had been in the past, but in light of her miraculous response to the new drug, this setback concerned him. Had the drug stopped working? Were they headed back to square one?

Jazzy sat on the exam table, her head down, while Dr. Adams listened to her lungs with a stethoscope. When he was finished, he called the nurse in to help Jazzy get dressed and pulled Travis into his office.

“Jazzy’s progress on the new drug has been remarkable,” Dr. Adams said. “She’s far exceeded our expectations.”

“Okay, so what’s this little episode of shortness of breath all about?”

“It appears that she’s having some breakthrough issues.”

“What does that mean?”

“The drug isn’t holding her three weeks this time.”

Travis waited. He’d been so afraid to hope that this medication was indeed the thing that could fix Jazzy once and for all. He’d gotten his hopes up before, only to have them dashed. For the last two months, he’d never seen her so energetic and pink-cheeked, so full of life. But today, she’d taken a step backward. He fisted his hands.

Dr. Adams steepled his fingers. “It means the drug isn’t lasting three weeks. Remember, we’re experimenting here to titrate the dosage. I think we need to increase the frequency of her injections to every two weeks.”

Travis gulped. “That’s five thousand dollars amonth instead of every six weeks. So roughly that increases the cost from forty thousand dollars a year to sixty thousand.”

The doctor nodded.

“I’ve got to be honest. Today’s injection is going to wipe out my savings. The only money I have left is Jazzy’s college fund and there’s only enough in there to last for another six weeks.”

“Now that we know the drug does work, we’re going to have to figure out a way for you to afford it until the FDA approves the medication for the treatment of severe asthma.”

“How far off is that?”

“It’s hard to say,” Dr. Adams hedged. “I could front you a couple of doses and I’ll willingly waive my fee—“

“You don’t have to do that,” Travis said. “I’ll get the money.”

In his head he was frantically trying to think of ways to make five thousand a month. He loved his job as game warden. It was the only job he’d ever wanted, but the pay, while good enough to support him and Jazzy comfortably, wasn’t enough to cover medical bills like these. He knew the town would rally around him, throw fund-raisers. They’d done it ever since Crystal had left him, but he didn’t want to ask for donations. That felt too much like begging, although if it came down to it, he wasn’t too proud to beg. Not where Jazzy was concerned. He knew his Aunt Raylene could pitch in a little, but she and Earl had taken a big financial hit in the economic bust because most of their fortune was tied up in real estate. He’d rather provide for Jazzy on his own if he could.

The cottage was the only thing he had left to tapfor cash. No way around it, to keep his daughter healthy, he was going to have to sell the house.

Sarah stared at the blank screen, sweating metaphorical blood, attempting to will words to magically appear on the page. She’d been frozen like this ever since Benny had left. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten and she was a bit fuzzy on what day it was. She’d fallen into the well of writer’s fugue and it was an ugly place indeed.

It wasn’t so much that she’d have to pay back the advance. She’d received only half of it on signing anyway and the money she’d gotten for the movie option would pay that back. Plus she had a small trust fund her father’s parents had left her and there were still plenty of royalties rolling in from
The Magic Christmas Cookie.

What paralyzed her was the thought of losing her career. Never mind that her quick success had made her feel a bit fraudulent. When it came down to it, writing was all she’d ever wanted to do. It was all she really knew. If she wasn’t a writer, then who was she?

Something her Gram had once said rose in her mind. “Your mother has never learned that a career is just a career. It doesn’t define who you are.”

Sarah let out a sigh. Imagine that. She and her mother had something in common.

The phone rang, but inertia had such a strong hold on her that Sarah didn’t move from the chair. She just kept sitting and staring at the empty computer screen and listening to the phone ring.

The answering machine picked up.

“Sarah, are you there? If you’re there, please pick up. It’s Travis.”

Impulse rocketed her out of her seat and launched her to the phone. But discretion held her back, her hand hovering over the receiver. Elation warred with caution. Joy that he’d called her did battle with her logical, detached mind. Fear arm-wrestled with hope.

Be careful.

“I know I’m not the person you most want to hear from right now, but please pick up. This is about Jazzy.”