The Renegade (The Rockwell Legacy Book 3)

by Jennifer Bernard

  “You aren’t fooling us, Izzy. But keep trying.” Jake paused when voices sounded from down the hallway.

  “Isabelle!” Kai was shouting. “Someone find Isabelle. Damn it, I should have handed out the comms last night.”

  All three of them looked at each other as a horrifying thought struck Isabelle.

  “Tigger,” she breathed.

  They abandoned their coffee mugs and dashed for the hallway. Isabelle ran as fast as she could in her fuzzy slippers, but even so she slid now and then across the wood floors. Jake grabbed her hand to keep her from crashing.

  If anything happened to Tigger… Fear gnawed at her heart, making her nauseous, sick to her stomach…

  23

  In the raftered reception area by the front entrance, a small group of people had gathered. She spotted Kai and Nicole, Birdie in her wheelchair, Griffin and Serena, and Lyle, who turned to her with eyes filled with concern.

  And behind him…Beth. Her parka dripped melted snow onto the worn floorboards of the foyer. She cradled Tigger in her arms.

  Isabelle closed her eyes, going lightheaded for a second. Beth was back. And she was taking Tigger. Of course she was, because Tigger was her baby. Hers, not Isabelle’s.

  When she opened her eyes, Lyle was right in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms, keeping her upright. “Beth sorted everything out with the police. They dropped the charges, and she came back for Tigger.”

  She pushed him away and hurried past him, toward Beth. “Beth. Why didn’t you call first?”

  Beth clutched Tigger close, making him squirm and babble. “I sent you a text, but I didn’t want to wake you up too early on Christmas morning. I just got back last night. It’s Christmas and I want my baby back.” She dropped a kiss on Tigger’s unruly blond hair. “He looks wonderful, thanks so much for taking care of him.”

  “You’re…you’re welcome, but…what about Colin? It’s not safe for Tigger. He should probably stay here for a while longer.”

  Beth took a step backwards, inching toward the front door. “Don’t worry about Colin. We’re going to live separately for a while and get counseling. We’re both committed to making this work, for Tigger’s sake.”

  “No!” Isabelle dug her fingernails into the heels of her hands. “You can’t trust him. He’s just saying that to get you back.”

  “Excuse me?” Beth glared at her, all hint of gratitude gone. “You don’t know him. You don’t know us.”

  “But I know how this goes. As a doctor, I’ve seen it so many times. He’ll tell you everything’s fine and that he’s going to change and that you owe it to him to stay. But you can’t trust him. Think, Beth. Think of Tigger’s best interests.”

  “I am thinking of Tigger.” She snatched up her car seat and stepped toward the door. “He’s my child and I know what he needs.”

  “But—”

  “Stay out of it, Isabelle.”

  “You’re the one who called me when you needed help!”

  “Yeah well, now I need Tigger back, and he needs me. What do you know, anyway? You don’t know what it’s like to have a child. Or a husband.”

  Isabelle must have looked stricken, because Beth added, “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I got this now.”

  She struggled with the door, juggling the car seat and the baby. Kai stepped forward to open it for her, and in that moment Isabelle hated him just a little. A blast of cold air rushed into the foyer through the open door.

  “Thanks to all of you for taking care of him,” Beth said. “I’m so grateful, I really am. Merry Christmas.”

  Isabelle couldn’t quite catch her breath, as if someone had just punched her in the stomach. She felt Lyle’s hand on her shoulder—support? Restraint? She wasn’t sure which.

  Beth stepped into the sparkling white world beyond the door. She bent into the wind, hunching her body around Tigger’s. The door slammed shut, and they were lost to sight. Tigger was gone.

  Rogue sat on his haunches next to the door and whimpered.

  Birdie rolled her wheelchair toward him and offered her hand for him to lick. “You can lick me a lot, just pretend I’m Tigger,” she told the dog.

  For a moment, Isabelle couldn’t even move. Then she pushed Lyle’s hand off her shoulder and faced her siblings. “We just let her go!”

  “We don’t have any right to stop her,” said Jake quietly. “Tigger’s her child and she’s ready to take him back.”

  “But she’s not making good decisions. She’s upset. She’s not herself, and she’s going to drive an icy road down a mountain and—” she broke off with a sob that shook her whole body. “We let her leave!”

  That last part came out as a wail. Embarrassed, she buried her face in her hands.

  Her brothers and sister gathered around her. In the back of her mind, she knew they must be stunned to see her like this. She was usually a fighter, not a crier. “Is this about Tigger or something else?” Jake murmured.

  “I think it’s about Mom,” Gracie said soberly. Trust Gracie to pick up on the unspoken. “She’s crying about Mom.”

  “I’m not…it’s not…I’m not cry—” She broke off, because it was stupid to deny that she was crying while a tear ran down her face.

  “We all feel that way,” said Jake. “We all miss her.” But not even her twin really got it.

  “No. No one feels exactly the way I do. Because I was her daughter, her firstborn daughter, and she told me things she didn’t tell anyone else, not even you, Jake. I knew she was sad and distracted, I knew it but I didn’t know what to do—” She looked desperately around the faces of her siblings, who wore expressions ranging from pure sympathy to sadness.

  None of them had really known what was going on inside Amanda Rockwell. Not Max, not her oldest daughter, not anyone.

  Her gaze landed on Lyle. There was so much wild emotion running through her that she thought she might explode. She didn’t even need to say anything, because he read her plea on her face. He strode to her side and placed a firm arm around her shoulders. “Give us a minute, guys. We’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  He guided her away from the foyer. She felt so gutted that she could barely walk, and it was a relief when he actually picked her up, Scarlett O’Hara style, and carried her down the corridor to her room.

  Once she was safely inside, she let the tears flow. They streamed down her face as if they’d been building up for years. Maybe they had been.

  Jake’s comment—you’ve been moving too fast to go deep—rang true right about now. After Mom died, everything had been about survival, about learning to live in this strange incomprehensible world that didn’t include her mother.

  Lyle drew her to her bed and sat down beside her. The box of notebooks sat in the corner of her room, a silent reproach. She still hadn’t summoned the nerve to read her mother’s journals. What kind of daughter was she?

  She cried softly while the seconds ticked past. When the rush of emotion finally calmed, Lyle spoke in his deep voice.

  “This is because of your mother? Like Gracie said?”

  Was she crying for her mother, for Tigger, or for herself? All of the above? She didn’t really know.

  She blotted her tears with the sleeve of her sweater. “Want to know when I decided to be a doctor?”

  “I do. I’ve often wondered.”

  One corner of her mouth quirked up. Lyle was a really good guy, so very unexpectedly patient.

  “After Mom died, all I wanted in life was to feel her near me again.” Her voice broke, but she breathed through it. She’d cried enough for one morning. “And I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear that I would never feel her arms around me again, never hear her voice, except when I dreamed it. So I’d go skiing and then I was okay, because I had to pay attention so I wouldn’t hit a tree. I skied a lot.”

  For a moment the tears threatened again. Lyle rested a warm hand on her thigh, and that steadied her.

  “Then one day I found so
meone on the trail, someone who had hit a tree. One of the guests. I was fourteen, I think. He was unconscious and one of his legs was broken, all purple and swollen. I remembered seeing something like that on a YouTube video, so I knew he needed surgery. I made a gurney out of his skies and some branches, and packed snow around his leg to numb the pain. Then I just skied him back to the lodge. Kai was already gone by then, so I called the fire department and they drove up and took him away. They said I did a good job. One of them joked that I should do disaster triage. I didn’t even know what that was, but I looked it up right after that.”

  “You saved his life.”

  “Well, maybe. Probably.”

  “Definitely—”

  “Okay, definitely.” This time she managed half of a shaky smile.

  “It felt good to save someone. That big thorn in my heart didn’t hurt so much. I’d been so busy saving his life that I hadn’t thought about my own sadness. So I started throwing myself into studying hard so I could become a doctor. I had a purpose. It made all the difference.”

  “Sounds like you turned your grief into helping people.”

  “But don’t you see? I was trying to block out the pain. But now that I’m back here, with everyone else, and now with Tigger gone, I feel it all over again. I just want to be with her one more time. She always had advice about things. She said something to me once that I never forgot. It was after one of her fights with Max. She said, ‘live your life like a dog with a bone, as if someone might come along and take it from you. It’s your life, don’t ever let anyone take it over.’”

  She could still hear her mother’s exact tone of voice, fierce and sure, almost desperate. She knew what her mother had been telling her. Don’t get married. Don’t fall in love. Don’t have a family. Don’t do what I did.

  What else could ‘don’t let anyone take it over’ mean?

  Lyle squeezed gently, a gesture that was either meant to comfort or to keep her from crying again.

  “Don’t worry, I’m done crying. I can’t believe I lost it like that. It’s that darn adorable baby’s fault. I didn’t know I’d get so attached to Tigger in such a short time.”

  “Yeah, babies do that.” He laughed a little, lightening the atmosphere. “In some of my foster families, the babies were the only people I could stand.”

  She smiled. The world was righting itself, slowly but surely. And Lyle had a lot to do with that, with his calm strength and big hands. “I’m going to have to apologize to Beth or she’ll never let me around Tigger again. Especially with Colin in her life.”

  “You took care of Tigger when he needed it. Hold on to that thought.”

  Pain clutched as her heart again. She missed that baby’s smell. How silly.

  “I could never be a foster parent,” she declared. “It’d be like breaking my heart over and over again.” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. That was completely tactless of me.”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it. My favorite foster mother cried when I left. She really loved me.”

  She glanced up at his face, its usual hard lines soft with concern for her.

  “Why did you leave them?”

  “Her husband got sick. They were good people, but she couldn’t take care of all of us and her husband. So they stopped taking kids in. I was the last to go. They really wanted to keep me. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.” His wry smile nearly broke her heart.

  “I’m absolutely sure that’s true.” She turned to him and threw her arms around him. “You’re a good person, Lyle Guero. Thank you so much for being here while I make a fool of myself.” She felt his laugh in the vibrations of his rib cage. “By the way, Lyle—if you really don’t know who your actual parents are, how did you get your name?”

  “I honestly don’t know. It might have come from one of my first foster families, or from the state, or maybe I had that name before. It’s the only one I remember being called.”

  “It’s just such an unusual name. You’re the only Lyle I know.”

  “The best one, too, right?”

  “Absolutely the best, without a doubt.” She rested against his side, his warmth spreading comfort and joy through her. “I got your Christmas present, the one you hid behind the paper towels. It’s the most perfect gift I could ever imagine.”

  He gave a double take. “Wait a minute here. You were supposed to wait until after Christmas. Are you saying you broke the Rockwell family rules?”

  “I think of them more as guidelines.” She twinkled at him, amazed that she was actually able to smile again.

  “I bet you do, my little renegade.”

  24

  At first, Tigger’s absence cast a sadness over the Christmas celebrations, but quickly everyone rallied as if they were determined to cheer up Isabelle. Lyle kept a close eye on her for the rest of the day. He missed Tigger too, but not with the intensity that Isabelle did. Then again, she threw herself body and soul into everything she did, so it was no wonder she’d taken his departure so hard.

  Once the insane gift-giving spree began, no one could stay sad for long. It was a crazy process of scrambling all over the lodge, then radioing the recipient of whatever present you managed to find.

  The gifts were mostly fairly simple. Gracie had knitted hats for everyone, including Lyle. He was honored to wear the pink and purple-striped creation even though he knew how ridiculous he looked in it.

  Jake gave everyone an insulated travel mug, along with the beverage of their choice. Griffin and Serena had bought glass pendants for everyone from their favorite glassblower in Santa Barbara—which apparently had great significance for them.

  Lyle didn’t usually wear things like that, but he planned to hang his pendant in his bedroom window where it would catch the light and always remind him of Rocky Peak Lodge.

  Kai, Nicole and Birdie had collaborated on an amazing gift for the whole family—a handmade mobile made of dozens of origami birds. Birdie had been working on it back at the home where she lived in Seattle, then Nicole had carefully packed it up and brought it back to Rocky Peak, where the three of them gave it the finishing touches.

  They’d hung it in the lounge, where deer heads used to be mounted, and no one had looked up long enough to find it. Finally Birdie had given into her impatience and directed Max toward it in a hilarious sequence of “warm…warmer…cold…it’s right above you!!”

  Max gave out framed prints of an old family photo. “It’s the last one with all of us,” he muttered into his beard. “Goddamn historical relic. And I’m not referring to myself, so no jokes about relics.”

  No one made any jokes — they were too moved as they passed around the print that Griffin had found hidden in the reception desk. When it came to Lyle, his gaze went right to eleven-year old Isabelle, mugging for the camera in bangs and braces. She looked about as adorable as any human being could, her bright green eyes brilliant with joy as she flashed a goofy rabbit sign over Kai’s head.

  And there was Amanda, a crown of holly holding her long flowing hair in place, her expression caught between a dream and a laugh.

  The highlight of the gift spree was when Jake radioed from the dining room that he’d found Isabelle’s present for Lyle hidden behind a candle sconce.

  Lyle strode to the dining room, arriving at the same time as Isabelle skipped in. “I have to see your face when you open it,” she said gleefully.

  Jake handed Lyle a small box wrapped in gift paper.

  “Maybe I’ll just take it back to my room and open it in my own sweet time,” he teased her.

  “That’s against the rules. Presents must be opened in the presence of the giver. That’s why they’re called presents.”

  “No it isn’t. But fine. Doesn’t matter anyway. You know me, I don’t show my emotions on my face. Everyone knows I’m too arrogant and coldhearted. You won’t get any reaction from me.”

  “Willing to put your money where your mouth is?”

&
nbsp; He shot her a hot glance loaded with secret meaning. Remember where my mouth was last night? How about early this morning? How about where I want it to be later on tonight?

  She flushed self-consciously, and fixed her glance on the present she’d gotten him. “Fine, just open the darn thing.”

  Hiding his grin—determined to keep his expression blank—he ripped open the wrapping paper and opened the box underneath.

  And then he forgot his resolve and burst into laughter. She’d given him a set of Bananagrams, in a cheerful yellow pouch shaped like a banana.

  Jake glanced between the two of them. “I assume this is some kind of inside joke?”

  “More or less,” said Lyle, still smiling. “But if you want to play, don’t challenge Isabelle. She’ll beat the pants off you.”

  “She usually does, at everything.” Jake said mournfully. “I’m used to it by now.”

  Isabelle had given everyone else games too—Cards Against Humanity, travel Scrabble, The Captain is Dead, and on and on, a different game for each member of her family. For Max, she’d gotten a book of advanced crossword puzzles, which made his usually grumpy face soften into a smile.

  The gifts for Birdie were probably his favorite of all. Nicole had shared a list of everything Birdie liked and didn’t like, along with a simple note. If it has a bird on it, she’ll love it. Lyle experienced pure joy watching the girl’s face light up with each new bracelet or sweater or book with a bird on it.

  He himself had taken the easy way out and gotten everyone gift cards to a store especially selected for them. Art supplies for Serena and Gracie, maternity clothes for Nicole, sporting goods for Griffin, who needed to gear up for the “Reach Your Peak” training camps for kids, which were due to start in the spring.