Connor stepped back and closed the screen door, his mind racing. He’d never understood why Jenny had left, and certainly didn’t understand why she wouldn’t see him now.
He wasn’t going to give up this time. Not by a long shot. She owed him an explanation for leaving town without a word, and he was going to get it.
The curtain next to the door fluttered, and he saw the older woman peering out of it, directly at him.
With a tip of his flat-brimmed leather newsboy hat, he pivoted and walked down the steps. He kept walking, straight to his car and climbed in it. After starting the car, he backed up and then drove away, down the tree-lined driveway. The entire time, he kept seeing Jenny’s face. Determination to have answers grew inside him, and by the time he arrived at the mailbox, he’d started a countdown of when he’d see her again and get those answers.
* * *
Holding her breath and both hands over her pounding heart, Jenny Sommers watched from behind the curtain of the upstairs window as Connor drove away. Connor McCormick.
The Connor McCormick.
Good Lord, but he was as handsome as she remembered. He might be a bit taller, a bit broader at the shoulders, but the rest of him... A tiny groan rumbled in her throat. From the top of that leather hat covering his brown hair to the very soles of his feet inside shiny black shoes, he was the perfect specimen of the male species. Always had been.
Her eyes stung as his black-and-red car completely disappeared around the curve in the driveway. Despite all she’d gone through since leaving Rochester seven years ago, barely a day had gone by when she hadn’t thought of him.
Some days she even blamed him for how her life had turned out, even though he had no idea what had happened after he’d lied to her.
Or did he?
Was that why he’d shown up here today?
No. He couldn’t know. Most likely didn’t care. Their romance—if it could be called that—had been short lived; he probably didn’t even remember it. He’d been the one to end it. She’d been the one to let it break her heart.
She was older now. Wiser. Stronger. A heavy sigh left her lungs as she turned away from the window.
Gretchen stood in the open doorway.
As tall as some men, and nearly as broad shouldered, Gretchen Olsen had saved her life, and Emily’s, almost seven years ago, and had saved her again today, because in the moment she’d seen Connor, she hadn’t been as strong as she needed to be.
“He’ll be back,” Gretchen said, leaning a shoulder covered in a red-and-black flannel shirt against the door frame.
Red and black, the same as Connor’s car.
Stop it! Jenny told herself. If only she could! She’d tried so hard to forget Connor. For years. Now, the forgetting would have to start all over again, and would be even harder.
“As sure as the sun will come up tomorrow,” Gretchen said, “he’ll be back.”
Pushing down a wave of hope that did nothing but make her angry, Jenny asked, “Did he say so?”
“He told me to tell you that he’d always hoped to see you again,” Gretchen answered.
Jenny took two steps, but her legs didn’t want to cooperate. They were trembling again. Like the rest of her. She eased herself onto the bed and focused on ignoring the little joyous leap her heart had taken at Gretchen’s words.
“He’s not Emily’s father,” Gretchen then said, her tone somber.
It hadn’t been a question, yet Jenny shook her head. “No, if Connor McCormick had been Emily’s father...” Her throat plugged as heaviness filled her, making it impossible to speak, to breathe. Jenny loved her daughter with all of her heart. Had since before she’d been born. It didn’t matter who fathered her; she was her daughter.
She considered it a blessing that Donald Forsythe knew nothing about Emily, and if Jenny had her way, he never would. Having Connor find her could change that. Change it as quickly as a hummingbird flaps its wings.
“I haven’t questioned you about her father in six and a half years, and won’t start now, but that young man will be back, and he will question you. I’ll do what I can, but...” Gretchen let her shrug finish her sentence.
Jenny nodded. She’d always feared that someday her past would catch up with her. Blinking hard and fast didn’t help. Hot tears still worked their way forward. She bit her bottom lip, fighting harder to hold the tears at bay, keep them from falling down her cheeks.
The bed sank beside her and Gretchen’s calloused hand took hold of hers. “Who is this young man? This Connor McCormick? Is he one of the McCormicks?”
The McCormick name was well known because of the large family textile business that had been in Rochester for years. “Yes. And the reason I became pregnant,” Jenny replied. As soon as the words were out, regret struck. It wasn’t fair to blame Connor, but somehow, doing so had eased her own guilt of what she’d done. She’d wanted to hurt him that night, as badly as he’d hurt her. Her own foolishness had backfired on her, and she alone had been the one to face the consequences.
“How so?”
Long-ago buried yearnings rose up inside Jenny. “I was young. Stupid. Thought I was in love with him.” Her story was much the same as many of the girls who had lived with Gretchen, and her, over the years. She felt sympathy for them, but only anger for herself. Connor had been dashing, handsome, gallant. Everything that would kick a young girl’s heart out of control. “He was two years older than me and though I’d worshipped him from afar, he hadn’t even known I was alive until the school play. I’d been given the job of painting scenery boards.” She’d begged for the job. Would have done anything to be in the same room as Connor. “His role was Captain Trevor in the play, a dashing charmer who would stop at nothing to win the heart of the female lead. He’d been perfect for the part. Even Mrs. Ellis, the director, had said he was the best actor on the stage, and she never gave out compliments—to anyone. His charm had won her over and literally stole the show.”
“And your heart.”
Jenny couldn’t stop how her heart warmed at the memories. “Yes, completely.” Gretchen already knew so much, there was no reason to not tell her the rest. “Just like nearly every other girl in school. Connor McCormick was the one subject that was guaranteed to come up at every lunch hour, every walk home and every slumber party.” Those carefree days of giggling with friends and secretly gossiping had all disappeared the night she’d been driven to Albany.
Even with pain, disgrace, working its way into her heart, Jenny couldn’t stop a smile from forming as she pushed that night out of her mind and focused on the play again. “During a rehearsal, a dancer lost her footing and stumbled into the scenery board I was painting. The board toppled and paint splattered everywhere. Connor was who helped me off the floor, and everyone claimed the board was ruined, including Mrs. Ellis, but not Connor. He said it wouldn’t take long to fix, and that he knew I could do it. Fix it. He stayed and helped me, and from then on, we were nearly inseparable. All the girls wanted to be me. It was the best month of my life. Then summer arrived, and Connor said he was going to New York City, to work at a phone company there.” Her throat burned. “But he didn’t. He’d only used that as an excuse to break up with me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I saw him two weeks later, and...” She’d accepted what had happened long ago. “And I decided to forget all about him. Another boy asked me out and I went.”
“Emily’s father?”
“Yes.” Jenny stood and thrust the bitterness inside her toward Connor. Toward every memory she had of him. “He won’t be back.”
“He told me he was with the Rural Rochester Telephone Company,” Gretchen said. “That they were running a phone line past our place.”
Jenny’s insides quivered. “He did?” That had been his dream, the reason he’d supposedly been going to New York, to work at
a company there, learn all he could so that when he graduated, he could start his own company. Not work for the family business.
“Yes, he did,” Gretchen said.
It was unfortunate how deeply Connor could still affect her, but it was also true. “We don’t need a phone. I’d just as soon pack up Emily and leave than let Connor McCormick set foot in this house.”
CHAPTER TWO
Connor had never been overly patient, and not driving up Jenny’s driveway again, demanding that she speak to him, was the hardest thing he’d ever had to keep himself from doing, yet he did it. He didn’t drive up her driveway.
For two days.
He’d been busy every one of those forty-eight hours—less a few hours of sleeping which he’d done in a small inn five miles up the road from Jenny’s house. Syracuse was only fifteen miles away, but he didn’t want to travel that far, especially just for a comfortable bed. A small town, Twin Pines was made up of a school, post office, grocer, gas station, diner and the inn where he’d booked a room for the length of his stay.
The end date of his stay was unknown because he wasn’t going anywhere until he’d talked to Jenny and got some answers to questions that just kept mounting.
With a population of twenty-four, of which each and every person was excited at the idea of a telephone line being hung throughout the town, Twin Pines had welcomed him. They were also glad that he’d called the county and had the gravel on the railroad tracks replaced up the road, and had told him plenty about Gretchen Olsen, the owner of the house where Jenny lived.
Gretchen raised flowers and sold them to shops in Syracuse and Albany, and often hired young women to help her. In the winter time, she grew the flowers in her sheds, that he’d have to take a closer look at on his next visit. It was reported that the sheds were made of glass, not wood. To his disappointment, no one was overly talkative about any of the young women Gretchen hired, including Jenny. It was almost as if that was a town secret that everyone had sworn an oath to protect.
One of the things he had learned was that this time of year, Gretchen delivered flowers to Syracuse a few days a week. During the summer months, she delivered them more often. He’d never thought much about the flower business, but it appeared that Gretchen Olsen had been growing her flowers for years, and made a good living doing so. The town people insisted the roses she grew were highly sought after, and that the winter plants, poinsettias and such, were even more sought after during the holiday season.
With his car well-hidden behind the small inn, he’d watched Gretchen roll through town, and after a short while, of which every minute felt like an hour, he was convinced she wouldn’t be returning to the farm for hours.
There had been a woman in the passenger seat of Gretchen’s truck, but she’d had red hair, not brown.
He climbed in his car and drove to the flower farm, but rather than drive up the curved driveway, he pulled his car off the road near the mailbox, and left it there, choosing to walk up the driveway so Jenny wouldn’t be warned of his arrival by the sound of the engine.
He stayed hidden within the tall pines and cedars. There were other leafed trees and plenty of spring brush to keep him from being seen.
Exiting the trees near the sheds, he stepped closer to examine them. They both had what appeared to be wooden shutters that reached from near the ground to the roof line, and today they were pulled open, exposing rows of windows that ran the length of the sheds, on three sides. The fronts didn’t have windows, just large doors. Greenhouses in order to grow flowers in winter. A peek inside a window showed long, raised beds of plants, some flowering, some not, as well as large heaters near the front, to keep the sheds warm during the cold months.
He was impressed, but didn’t spend a lengthy amount of time at the sheds, instead, he worked his way around them and paused to scan the house and yard.
A bolt of excitement shot through him as strongly as two electrical lines meeting when his gaze settled on a woman hanging clothes on the clothesline. It was Jenny. Her long, glistening brown hair hung down her back, just like he remembered. He could recall how it had always smelled as sweet as honeysuckle. It had driven him crazy, and every time he’d caught a whiff of honeysuckle over the years, a deep and powerful yearning had put Jenny in his mind.
He’d tried hard to get over her as time had gone by, but there had never been another woman who had been able to do that. And there had been plenty. After she’d disappeared, he’d dated a lot of females, but he’d never put his heart on his sleeve again, not like he had with her.
Because not a single woman he’d met in the past seven years had leveled up to Jenny. He understood he’d put her on a pedestal in his mind, making it impossible for anyone to reach that high, and had come to accept that. How she’d been one of a kind.
The one who’d gotten away.
She’d also been the one to break his heart, and he wanted to know why. Deserved to know why.
Her back was to him. The pink-and-blue-paisley-print dress was loose-fitting, but still highlighted her shape, the curve of her small waist and trim hips. The hem ended near her shins, showing the creaminess of her skin above her rolled-down stockings. The dress was short-sleeved, exposing the slenderness of her arms.
He watched as she bent, picked up another item out of the wicker basket, snapped it open and then stretched to hook it on the line with the wooden pins. A hint of a shiver rippled down his spine as he stared at the items she’d already hung on the lines. They weren’t clothes, as in dresses, shirts, pants or underthings. They were simple rectangular pieces of bleached white cloth.
That’s when he noticed something else.
Actually, someone else.
A small child sitting on the grass.
Diapers!
She was hanging up diapers.
His heart took a nosedive all the way to his toes.
She was married.
With a baby. A boy from the looks of his clothing.
The crushing sensation that hit had happened twice before in his life. When Jenny had disappeared, and at the death of his father. He’d never wanted to feel that again. Ever. That’s why he’d put her on a pedestal, an impossible place for anyone else to reach, just so no one else could come close to crushing him all over again.
For a brief second, Connor considered leaving and this time truly forgetting that Jenny existed.
He should be glad that she’d gone on with her life, but something deep inside his very soul said no. He wasn’t glad. He was mad. Mad that she had gone on with her life without a thought as to what her leaving had done to him.
He wasn’t going anywhere, either, because this time, by God, he was going to get answers to the questions that had haunted him for years.
* * *
A shiver rippled over Jenny at the same time her heart leaped into her throat. She whirled around, ignoring the diaper that slipped from her fingers and floated to the ground.
Connor stood not five feet away and the anger in his eyes made her tremble as if the earth beneath her was shaking, rumbling, and the air was so charged, it felt as if lightning was about to strike.
When he hadn’t returned two days ago, she’d figured she’d been right. That he wouldn’t be back, because the Connor she remembered hadn’t been patient. His spontaneous actions had been one of the things she’d loved the most. He’d always been the first to jump in and take action.
Running was all she could think to do. Run fast and far. As the thought found execution, she glanced at William at the same time a hand grasped her arm firmly. She hadn’t even had a chance to take a step toward the baby.
Connor didn’t say a word. Just stared at her. There was more than anger in his eyes. The only thing she could compare to what she saw glistening in those sky-blue eyes was agony, because that’s what she felt, too. Along with a powerful bout of regret for what she�
�d done all those years ago.
Blame came next, as usual. If he had acknowledged her that night, she wouldn’t have done what she’d done.
Her throat was on fire, so were her lungs and her arm where he held on to it. Then she remembered. She was older. Wiser. Stronger. “You need to leave,” she said, not sounding like herself.
His laugh was bitter. “Not on your life.”
It wasn’t her life she was most worried about. Others lived here. Joyce and little William, Rachel and Lora. Not to mention Gretchen and all the others who needed the sanctuary that Gretchen provided. If it wasn’t for Gretchen, only the Good Lord knew what would have happened to Emily. Her daughter was the one thing that meant the very most to Jenny, and was the one thing she would protect above and beyond all else.
The bang of the screen door on the back porch echoed through the silence filling the air between her and Connor. Rachel most likely, with more laundry to hang. “Go back inside!” Jenny shouted, not wanting Connor to catch a glimpse of the other woman. Young girl, actually. Rachel was only seventeen. The same age she’d been when she’d given birth to Emily.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes!” Jenny answered Rachel’s question. “Go back inside. I’ll be there in a moment.”
“No, you won’t,” Connor said as the door banged again. “We need to talk, and I’m not leaving until that happens. Neither are you.”
She lifted her chin and prayed that he wouldn’t notice how it trembled. “We don’t need a telephone.”
His eyes narrowed.
“This isn’t about a telephone,” he growled. “And you damn well know it.”
Breathing through the trembling of her body, the burning of her throat, she held his gaze. It took every ounce of her strength, and some, to not consider running again. “I need to take William inside.”
He glanced toward the baby sitting near her feet, playing with a rag ball.
Wearing a pair of blue overalls and red shirt, William looked up and offered a huge grin, showing off his two bottom teeth. He would soon turn a year old, and though he was standing with help, had yet to take his first steps. With a babble, he held up both of his hands toward her, an act that never failed to melt her heart.
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