For A Father's Love

by JoAnn A. Grote

  Copyright

  ISBN 1-58660-631-X

  © 2002 by JoAnn A. Grote. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Truly Yours, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. niv®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked kjv are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  One

  Jason punched the speakerphone button, irritated by the incessant buzz. His secretary wouldn’t put through a call this afternoon unless it was important, but he still resented the intrusion. He faced a mountain of information to wade through before the corporate takeover meeting the next morning.

  “J. P. Garth, here,” he barked, scowling at the financial statement on his desk.

  “Jason, it’s—”

  “Mandy.” He dropped into the high-backed leather chair. His heart plunged to his stomach. The eight years since he’d heard her voice rolled away in a millisecond.

  “I–it’s your grandfather, Jason. He’s had a heart attack.”

  “Heart attack? But he’s strong as an ox.” Jason’s mind immediately built a foundation for his denial. Years of working on the mountainside Christmas tree farm kept Gramps in great shape. Besides, if he’d a heart attack, why would Mandy be the one to call? Last he knew, she lived more than an hour’s drive from his grandparents.

  He heard her take a shaky breath. “Your Grandma Tillie and I are at the hospital. She asked me to call you.”

  Fear surged through him. It must be true if Gram couldn’t make the call herself. She was one tough lady. “Is he. . .is he dying?”

  “No, but Dr. Monroe said it’s an acute attack. They took an EKG and put Grandpa Seth on an IV with a drug to dissolve the clot in his heart. He started feeling better almost immediately.”

  “But he’s still in danger?”

  “Not after the clot dissolves. Not immediate danger. They’ll have to do tests to see whether he needs angioplasty or bypass surgery.”

  “Bypass surgery?”

  “Jason, I—”

  “Tell Gramps and Gram I’ll catch the next plane home.”

  He heard her sigh of relief. “Good. They need you.”

  Guilt pushed at his fear. He hadn’t seen his grandparents since Christmas, ten months earlier. “Mandy. . .” Even with the arrangements to make and his fear for his grandfather, Jason hated to break the only connection he’d had with her since graduating from college.

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good-bye, Jason.”

  He hung up, then took a deep breath and punched the button connecting him with his secretary. “Ida, get me on the next flight to Greensboro or Charlotte, North Carolina.”

  “What about the meeting tomorrow?”

  “Neal will tell you what arrangements to make for it. First, get me on a flight.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Moments later Jason entered the senior partner’s office through huge paneled doors and succinctly explained the situation to Neal.

  After a few words of sympathy, Neal scowled. “Sounds like there’s nothing you can do for him at the moment. Meetings on the Sullivan takeover begin tomorrow. We both know they’re going to be rough. Can’t you wait a few days?”

  “No.”

  “He’s your grandfather, J. P., not your father.”

  Jason leaned both hands on the senior partner’s desk. “My parents died when I was a teenager. My grandparents took me in. They’re as close to parents as it gets. I’m going home.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Neal blustered. “Of course, under the circumstances, a few days is understandable.”

  “I might be gone for more than a few days.”

  “What can you do for him if he’s lying around recuperating?”

  “He may be a grandfather, but his age doesn’t keep him from running his own Christmas tree farm.”

  “It’s only the end of October. Surely he doesn’t need you yet.”

  “Just starting the busiest time of year.”

  “But the takeover—”

  “Timmins has been working with me on it. I know he’s a junior partner and hasn’t handled any negotiations alone, but he’s a good man. He knows the facts in this case and my strategy. Every man jumps out on his own sometime. Guess this is Timmins’s time.”

  Neal’s face paled. “This is the largest case we’ve handled in three years. We can’t entrust it to a tenderfoot.”

  “He can call me if he needs advice. You’ll sit in on the meetings. Teamed with your prestige and experience, Timmins can pull it off. You hired him, Man. Put a little faith in him.”

  “I hired him for his potential. It takes more experience than he’s had, even with your excellent tutoring, to pull off a coup like the one we plan.” Neal tapped his fingertips on the mahogany desktop. “Let’s postpone.”

  “If you postpone, our opponents will think we’re waffling. You and Timmins can pull the meeting off. I need to catch a flight. I’ll call you from North Carolina.” Jason turned on his heel and left Neal protesting to empty space.

  ❧

  It had been dark for hours when Jason’s flight left New York. He leaned back in the wide, first-class seat, slowly removed his tie, and pulled his shoulders down, trying to stretch. Would his muscles never relax? He should sleep—he’d need his strength tomorrow—but his body wouldn’t cooperate.

  He glanced toward the window and saw his pale reflection there. His short brown hair looked crisply neat as always, the style chosen to present a dignified, self-confident business image, the same as his clothing. His eyes stared back at him from beneath almost straight, dark brows in a lean face. The ghostly image didn’t show the lines that at thirty-two were already making inroads. All hints of the boy who grew up in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains had long since left his face. And left my heart, he thought, turning away from the window.

  What would he find at his grandparents’ mountain home? Would Gramps be better or worse? Or might he? . . .

  Jason couldn’t finish the thought.

  A vision of his grandfather slid through Jason’s mind: thick white hair, a trim white beard bordering a broad, tanned face with a permanent smile. His chest tightened. In many ways, Gramps had been more of a father to Jason than his own father. Sam Garth’s position as professor of finance at the local university had supplied the family’s material needs. He’d stressed to Jason the importance of responsibility and had groomed Jason for a successful career. But it was Gramps who had loved Jason unconditionally.

  Jason lost his father when he was sixteen, half a lifetime ago. Now he might be losing Gramps. The tightness in his chest grew tauter.

  He turned his thoughts deliberately from his fears. Mandy. Closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the seat, he let her voice drift through his memory. Had she been visiting Gram and Gramps at the time of the heart attack? She’d always liked them. He smiled, recalling how she called them Grandma Tillie and Grandpa Seth. He’d often suspected in the four years they dated that she loved his grandparents almost as much as she loved him.

  As much as I thought she loved me.

  Wouldn’t he ever get over her refusal to ma
rry and move to New York with him? He remembered everything about the day he’d proposed: the way the sunlight shone through the trees, adding copper lights to her brown hair, the determination in her wonderful, fir-green eyes, and the words that ripped his world apart: “I’ll never leave the mountains, not for you, not for anyone.”

  He loved the mountains too, but when his parents died, he’d abandoned his dream of owning a tree farm like his grandfather’s and embraced the career his father had wanted for him—a career in finance in New York City, the nation’s financial hub.

  Wasn’t that what love did—sacrifice its own desires for the loved one? He’d trusted Mandy’s love completely, but she hadn’t loved him enough to sacrifice her precious mountains for a life with him.

  “Mandy,” he whispered. He rubbed a hand down his face. Turning his thoughts from his grandfather to Mandy had only replaced one kind of pain with another, more familiar one.

  Two

  “Ooh, aren’t you beautiful.” Mandy Wells lifted the fragile angel from its protective wrappings. The morning sun streamed through the large window behind her, its rays resting on the tiny porcelain head, bringing to life the pink cheeks, blue eyes, and blond hair.

  Mandy smoothed the angel’s flowing gown of ivory satin and hand-spun lace, which was in striking contrast to her own faded blue jeans and oversized topaz sweater. “You’ll be perfect for the top of the tree beside the door.” Stepping quickly over cardboard packing boxes, Mandy made her way through the layer of crushed newspaper and Styrofoam beads covering the wooden floor.

  She touched a switch, and the Christmas shop burst into life. Dozens of trees sparkled with every type of ornament. Spicy cinnamon and orange odors from Christmas potpourri and pine scent from swags hanging from wooden beams filled the air.

  She stopped beside a tree decorated with Victorian nose-gays, miniature dolls, wide ribbons of cream and pink, and sprays of baby’s breath. Dragging a decorated wooden stool over, Mandy climbed up to remove a lace-backed nosegay of rose and cream buds from the treetop. Holding her breath, she stretched to attach the angel to the treetop.

  Brass bells above the door jangled merrily. Mandy gasped as the door crashed into her stool.

  “O-oh!” Mandy clutched the precious angel in one hand and grasped for the bedecked tree with the other. The tree tumbled to the floor. The stool slipped from beneath her. Mandy shut her eyes in anticipation of a hard landing.

  There was a loud masculine grunt. Muscular arms closed about her, crushing her against a hard chest with the delicate angel between her and her rescuer. The man lurched back with the sudden force of her weight. The door thudded shut when he crashed against it, the bells once again tinkling merrily.

  She opened her eyes slowly. Finely cut light brown hair topped the ruggedly handsome face above her. The lips were colorless, the square jaw tensed, the green eyes wide with shock.

  She knew those eyes. “Jason.” The name came out in a hoarse whisper. Every nerve ending tingled to life. She thought she’d braced herself for the moment they’d meet. Obviously I deluded myself.

  The shock in his eyes shifted to anger. Their fury brought Mandy back to her senses. She squirmed slightly. “If you’ll let me go,” she suggested, congratulating herself silently on her calm tone.

  He set her roughly on her feet, steadying her with strong hands on her waist.

  Instantly she regretted the lack of his arms about her. She’d longed to be back in those arms for years. Idiot, she reprimanded herself. She brushed the angel’s golden hair into place, searching for time to compose herself. “You’re certainly the man for the moment.”

  “Are you all right?”

  He didn’t look as though he cared. “I’m fine.” She set the angel on the counter behind her, then turned to survey the scattered nosegays and broken miniature Victorian dolls. “Unfortunately, my tree didn’t have as soft a landing.”

  Jason scowled at the rubble he’d created, then scanned the shop. “What is this place?”

  She clasped her hands behind her back and surveyed the large room with its decorated Christmas trees, satin angels, and glittering snowflakes dangling from the wooden beams. Red-and-green stockings stuffed with toys hung from the oak mantel above the stone fireplace in the middle of the former barn, and brightly wrapped packages were piled everywhere. “It’s a Christmas store. I thought so, but since you didn’t recognize it as such, I thought I’d better give it another look.”

  He took a deep breath. “What are you and this store doing in Gramps’s barn?” The question came slowly, each word forced between clenched teeth.

  She took a couple steps back and stared at him in surprise. “Your grandparents never told you? They leased it to me last January.”

  “Why?”

  She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what he meant by that one-word question. “The short answer is that last year when I bought my Christmas tree from them, I told them my dream of opening a Christmas store in a barn like this. They’d just built that long warehouse-type building for their tree business, so they offered me this barn. I accepted, and”—she spread her arms toward the store—“here I am with my Christmas store.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  You meant why would they let me use the barn only a few hundred yards from their house when they know how much you and I meant to each other once; why would I want to be so close to the only family you have left. “Can’t a more complete explanation wait? You must be eager to see your grandfather. Or have you just come from the hospital?”

  “No, I haven’t seen him yet. I thought Gram would be at the house and we could go to the hospital together.”

  She noticed the circles beneath his eyes. She’d been avoiding his eyes, avoiding looking at that face she saw all too often in her dreams. Stubble shadowed his cheeks. His finely tailored gray suit was wrinkled; the white shirt with its monogrammed pocket was rumpled and open at the neck. The tip of a navy-and-gray-striped tie poked from a suit pocket. Obviously he hadn’t slept all night.

  The realization softened her tone. “I took Grandma Tillie in to the hospital this morning.”

  “Already? The sun’s barely up.”

  “She couldn’t sleep last night. She wants to be with your grandfather every minute.”

  “I guess that’s no surprise. She and Gramps have spent almost sixty years together.”

  His green-eyed gaze gentled, holding her own. Her throat tightened, remembering they’d promised to love each other as long and as fully as Grandma Tillie and Grandpa Seth. Was Jason remembering too? She shifted her gaze to the floor to break the spell, but the taut feeling in her chest stayed.

  Jason cleared his throat. “You say Gramps is doing okay?”

  She glanced back at him, ashamed at daydreaming about the two of them when Grandpa Seth was so ill. “He’s doing as well as can be expected.”

  Jason’s lips thinned. “I haven’t stopped imagining the worst since you called.”

  She reached toward him, longing to ease his pain. When her head was a fraction of an inch away, she snatched it back. I haven’t the right to comfort him with more than words anymore. The old sense of loss stabbed through her.

  He rubbed a hand down his face in a gesture so familiar it caught at her heart. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. Chalk it up to shock and exhaustion, though it’s no excuse.”

  “It’s okay.” The words came out in a cracked whisper. She pressed her lips together hard, unable to tear her gaze from his, wishing she could talk with him without remembering the way it felt to laugh with him and be in his arms.

  “Mandy, we’re back.”

  She whirled around at her sister Ellen’s voice, swallowing hard and pasting on a smile. The back door slammed. A moment later, two girls raced across the room, dodging trees and gift items.

  Six-year-old, chestnut-haired Bonnie threw her arms around Mandy’s legs in her usual exuberant greeting. Mandy lifted the girl and gave her a hug. “Hello, Precious.
”

  Bonnie’s round arms tightened about Mandy’s neck, and the gentle scent of baby shampoo filled Mandy’s senses.

  Eight-year-old Beth smiled, tilting her head, straight blond hair sliding over the shoulder of her red sweater. “Hi, Aunt Mandy.”

  Mandy slid her palm along the child’s silky hair. “Hello, Sweetheart. What’s for breakfast?”

  Beth held up a white bag which emitted fast-food odors. “Sausage biscuits.” A frown puckered her brow. “What happened to the tree?”

  “A small accident. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

  “Sorry it took us so long.” Ellen’s voice preceded her as she crossed the room, expertly dodging Christmas trappings while tugging off her leather gloves. “The place was packed, and—” She caught sight of the tree with its broken and smashed decorations. “What happened to—”

  She stopped, gloves dangling from one hand, and stared at Jason with her mouth open.

  Jason nodded brusquely. “Ellen.”

  “J. P.”

  Ellen sounds as breathless as I was when I first saw him, Mandy thought in amusement.

  Ellen closed the few feet between herself and J. P., her shoulder-length, straight brown hair swinging. She reached to shake hands. “Hello, J. P. I’m sorry about your grandfather. All my hopes and prayers are for his recovery.”

  “Thanks.”

  His gaze shifted from Ellen and rested on Bonnie, who still clung to Mandy’s neck. Mandy noticed his puzzled look and remembered he wouldn’t recognize the girls. Resting a hand on Beth’s shoulder, she said, “You remember Ellen’s daughter, Beth, don’t you?”

  He smiled at the shy, slender girl. “I remember. You were only a few months old when I last saw you.”

  Beth blushed and stared at him soberly.

  “This is J. P.,” Ellen told her. “Seth and Tillie’s grandson.”

  Beth kept staring, not smiling.

  His glance slid to the girl in Mandy’s arms.

  “This is Bonnie,” Mandy said.

  “Hello, Bonnie.”

  The girl burrowed her face into Mandy’s neck at Jason’s intense gaze. Why had his voice cracked when he greeted Bonnie? Mandy wondered. Was he thinking of the children they’d talked of having one day? Her stomach tightened painfully at the memory of the once-shared dream.