RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry SummerWoodrose MountainSweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You’ve really built something impressive here.”

  She paused and looked embarrassed. “Sorry. You hit a hot button.”

  “I don’t mind. I admire passion in a woman.”

  In a person. That’s what he meant to say. In a person. Anyone. But it was too late to take the word back. Maura sent him a charged look and suddenly the bookstore felt over-warm. He had a random, completely unwelcome memory of the two of them wrapped together on a blanket up near Silver Lake, with the aspens whispering around them and the wind sighing in the pine trees.

  She cleared her throat and he thought he saw a slight flush on her cheeks, but he figured he must have been mistaken when she went on the offensive. “What is this whole business about sticking around town for a few weeks, Jack? You don’t want to be here. You hate Hope’s Crossing.”

  He didn’t want to take her on right now. He ought to just smile politely, offer some benign answer and head over to browse the bestseller shelf, but somehow he couldn’t do that.

  “If I want to see my daughter—the daughter you didn’t tell me about, remember?—I’m stuck here, aren’t I?” he said quietly.

  “Not necessarily. Why can’t you just wait and visit Sage in Boulder when she returns to school? Or have her come visit you in San Francisco. You don’t have to be here.”

  “I’m not leaving. Not until after Christmas, anyway.”

  “You’re just doing this to ruin my holidays, aren’t you?”

  He could feel his temper fray, despite his efforts to hang on to the tattered edges. “What else? I stayed up all night trying to come up with ways to make you pay for keeping my daughter from me. Ruining your holidays seemed the perfect revenge for twenty years of glaring silence. That’s the kind of vindictive bastard I am, right?”

  “I have no idea,” she shot back. “How am I supposed to know what kind of bastard you are now?”

  “Insinuating I was a bastard twenty years ago to knock you up and leave town.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You must have thought it, though, a million times over the years.”

  That was the core of the anger that had simmered through him since that life-changing moment after his lecture. What she must have thought of him, how she must have hated him to keep this from him.

  For twenty years their time together had been a cherished memory, something he used to take out and relive when life seemed particularly discouraging.

  He had wondered about her many times over the years. His first love, something good and bright and beautiful to a young man who had needed that desperately.

  To know that she must have been cursing his name all that time for leaving her alone with unimaginable responsibility was a bitter pill.

  “You didn’t tell me, Maura. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

  “Not forget me, as if you couldn’t wait to walk away from everything we shared. As if I meant nothing to you!”

  As soon as she blurted out the words, she pressed a hand to her mouth as if horrified by them.

  “I loved you,” he murmured. “Believe whatever else you want about me, but I loved you, Maura.”

  “Yet you hated your father and Hope’s Crossing more.”

  “Maura,” he began, knowing he had no defense other than youth and idiocy and his own single-minded resolve to make something out of his life away from this place. Before he could figure out how to finish the sentence, chimes rang softly on her front door and a new customer came in.

  He saw the man out of his peripheral vision for only a fleeting instant, but something made him shift his head for a better look. Instantly, he wished he hadn’t. Did his father have a freaking tracker on him?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “IS THAT BOOK ON SPELUNKING here yet?” Harry Lange growled before he had even walked all the way through the doorway, as if every employee had been lined up inside merely waiting for him to make an entrance. “I could have had it a week ago if I had ordered the damn thing online.”

  His words were directed at Maura, Jack realized. Harry must have seen her when he walked inside. It took another beat for his father to recognize him, but Jack knew the instant he did. Harry’s jaw sagged and ruddy color leached from his aging features as if somebody had just slugged him in the gut.

  Maura looked from Harry to him and quickly stepped forward. “I’m not sure, Mr. Lange. I’ll have to ask Ruth. She’s the one who handles the special orders. If you can wait a few moments, I’ll see if I can find her.”

  Harry didn’t seem to have heard her. He continued to stare at Jack, mouth slack and his eyes awash with a hundred tangled emotions Jack didn’t want to see.

  So much for slipping into town and back out again without seeing his father. Twice in the space of an hour must be some kind of cosmic joke.

  The familiar raw fury for his father welled up, but now that he was confronted with the actual man instead of only memories, it seemed muted, somehow—as if the color and heat had bled from it as well.

  “J-Jackson?” Harry’s voice sounded strangled, as if he were choking on one of the little mints from the checkout at Dermot Caine’s café.

  “Harry.” The single word came out clipped, cold.

  “I…hadn’t heard you were in town.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” One he was quickly coming to regret.

  “I see. How long will you…” His voice trailed off, and Jack began to think maybe the pale cast to his features was from more than just surprise.

  “I’m still working that out.”

  For politeness’ sake, he should probably move closer to his father so they didn’t have to raise their voices to be heard a dozen feet apart, but he couldn’t seem to generate the necessary forward momentum. Lord knew, Harry wouldn’t be the one to budge. That much apparently hadn’t changed.

  Maura was finally the one to move first. She took a step forward. “Mr. Lange, are you all right?” she asked suddenly, taking another few steps.

  “I… No. Not really. Damn it.”

  His father lurched as if someone had struck him from behind. He knocked a hip against a display table of new releases and swept a hand out to steady himself, scattering books to the floor. Even so, he was unable to keep his balance. Jack could see him start to head to the floor, but he was too far away to reach him in time. Maura was closer, but even she couldn’t prevent Harry from toppling. A hard crack sounded above the bustle from the coffee bar as the side of his head made contact with the edge of the table before he slumped to the ground.

  “Mr. Lange!” Maura exclaimed, kneeling next to the prone figure.

  “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know. He was standing there one minute, then hit the ground the next. Mr. Lange!”

  She turned his father onto his back, and his aging features were ashen and still. Was he dead? Had Jack managed to knock him off just by showing up in town? He froze for a moment, aware of his own strange mix of emotions—shock and dismay and most surprising, a completely unexpected regret.

  “He’s unconscious!” Maura said. “Come on, Mr. Lange. Wake up.”

  “He hit the edge of the table pretty hard.”

  “Give me your coat.”

  “Why?”

  “Just give it to me, Jack!”

  He reluctantly handed over the custom-sewn leather jacket he had picked up during his time in Italy. She bunched it up and tucked it under Harry’s head. Even that bit of commotion didn’t make his father snap out of it.

  “Come on, Harry, this is stupid. Wake up.” His father’s eyelids fluttered a little at his voice, but his eyes didn’t
open.

  If he had ever imagined a reunion with his father—which he absolutely hadn’t—he was pretty sure this wasn’t what he would have predicted, with his father sprawled out on the ground looking lifeless and ashen.

  “Harry!” he barked.

  That seemed to do the trick. Harry’s eyelids jerked a few times, and seconds later he finally opened his eyes fully. They were dazed and blank for a moment before they sharpened, his gaze fixed on Jack with shades of that same stunned disbelief. “What…happened?”

  Jack couldn’t seem to say anything, frozen in place by the years of bitterness and hatred he had fed and nurtured for this man.

  “You fell,” Maura finally answered.

  She tugged and pulled the jacket to a better position under the old man’s head and seemed unfazed when he batted away her hands.

  “Get away from me,” he snapped. “I just need to catch my breath.”

  She eased away, picking a cell phone out of her pocket. “Fine. You should know we charge extra for napping in the middle of the store.”

  “Smarty.”

  She gave him a tart look even as she started hitting buttons on her phone.

  “What are you doing? Put that away! I hope you don’t think I’m going to let you take a picture of me for all your girlfriends to cackle about.”

  Jack noted with concern that, despite his protests, his father’s voice still sounded feeble and his features hadn’t lost that pallid cast.

  “I hadn’t planned to take a picture, no. But that’s a great idea.”

  “What are you doing, then?”

  “Calling nine-one-one. You need to go to the emergency room to be checked out.”

  If anything, that made Harry look even more horrified. “Forget it. I’m fine. I just lost my balance, that’s all.” He tried to scramble up, and Jack finally had to move forward to help Maura keep him in place.

  Harry gave a sharp intake of breath when Jack grabbed his arm and gazed at him with an expression he couldn’t decipher.

  “You passed out in my store,” Maura said sternly. “I’m not about to leave myself open to some future lawsuit where you claim negligence. I’m calling the paramedics. You can fight it out with them.”

  Harry jerked his gaze away from Jack to summon a halfhearted glower, but he subsided back against the cushion of his jacket. Really? He was going to give in without a fight? For the first time, Jack began to wonder if something was seriously wrong with Harry’s health.

  “This is just want you wanted, isn’t it?” Harry said bitterly. It took a moment for Jack to realize the words were directed at him. “It probably gives you no end of pleasure to come back after all these years and see some weak, pathetic old man on the floor at your feet.”

  Any concern and sympathy he might have briefly entertained for Harry dried up like the Mojave in August. “You’re not that old.”

  Harry frowned at him and gave Maura a nasty look in turn. “At least help me up. I’m fine. I don’t need to be lying on the damn floor. Help me to one of those chairs over there.”

  She looked undecided, then gazed around the crowd of curious customers that had begun to gather around.

  “If we do, will you promise to stay put instead of trying to juke around us and run out to avoid the EMTs?”

  “Very funny. I’m not running anywhere. Now help me up.”

  She sighed and reached for one of Harry’s arms, gesturing for Jack to take the other. He would have liked to ignore her. Hell, he would have liked to yank his eight-hundred-dollar Milano leather jacket out from under Harry’s head and make his own escape from Dog-Eared Books & Brew, but common decency—as well as a completely ridiculous desire not to look like a bigger ass to her than he already did—compelled him to step forward and grab Harry’s other arm.

  His father was still not quite seventy. Jack imagined without the pallor he would still be fairly hale and hearty. Still, the old man felt almost frail as he and Maura supported him toward a plump armchair in the nearby travel section.

  “What’s going on?”

  At the new voice, he looked over and found Sage gazing at the three of them in puzzled consternation.

  “Mr. Lange is feeling a little under the weather,” Maura replied. “He passed out.”

  “I didn’t pass out,” Harry snapped. “I just lost my balance. If you left a person with half a foot of aisle room in this place, I would have been fine.”

  “See, that definitely sounds like you’re blaming me. Should I be calling my lawyer?” Maura returned.

  “I’m not going to sue anybody.”

  Don’t believe him, he wanted to tell Maura. If Harry saw any advantage to himself in a given situation, he wouldn’t hesitate to lie, steal and betray to get his way.

  “O. M. G.!”

  Maura blinked at Sage’s sudden exclamation. “What?”

  “If Jack is my father, that means Mr. Lange is my grandfather!”

  He bit back a four-letter word. Of all the moments for Sage to blurt out that little bit of information!

  Harry’s eyes widened and he looked back and forth between the two of them. Maura was the one who had turned pale now. She looked as if she wanted to disappear behind a bookshelf, and Jack wanted to join her.

  Harry did not need this information, something else he could figure out how to manipulate for his own purposes.

  “What did she say?” Harry asked.

  “Nothing,” Maura muttered. “Now would be a really good time for you to go back to sleep.”

  “Who are you?” Harry asked Sage, his thick eyebrows arched like bristly caterpillars.

  “My daughter,” Maura said quickly.

  He narrowed his gaze. “Your daughter died in that car accident up Silver Strike Reservoir this spring. I was there, wasn’t I? I saw the whole thing.”

  That was news to Jack. What had been his father’s involvement in the accident that killed Layla Parker?

  “This is my older daughter, Sage.”

  He should just keep his mouth zipped here. He knew damn well telling him about Sage was a mistake—but he also knew Harry well enough to be certain he would just keep pushing and pushing until somebody told him.

  “And mine, apparently,” Jack finally said.

  Maura sent him a quick, surprised look, as if she expected him to deny the whole thing. Harry, on the other hand, just stared.

  “Have you taken a DNA test?” he asked.

  None of your damn business, he wanted to say. He didn’t want his father mixed up in this complicated mess, but he was coming to realize he didn’t have much control over things. Harry just might have more contact with Sage than he would. He lived in Hope’s Crossing, after all. While Jack would be back in San Francisco, Harry would be free to pick up the phone whenever Sage was in town and meet her for lunch at the café or the resort or any blasted place he wanted.

  “She’s my daughter. I’m convinced of it, and that’s all that matters.”

  Harry opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, the door to the bookstore burst open, and a pair of burly paramedics hurried inside with emergency kits and dedicated focus.

  “Back here,” Maura called and waved. They shifted directions and headed toward them.

  “I don’t need the damn paramedics,” Harry grumbled.

  “Well, you’ve got them,” Maura retorted. “Hey, Dougie.”

  One of the paramedics, a guy who looked like he could probably bench-press half the bookstore, grinned at her. “Hey, Maur. What have we got?”

  “Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I just thought it would be better to call you to check things out.”

  “That
’s what we’re here for. What happened?”

  “Mr. Lange isn’t feeling well. He had some kind of incident. We were talking one moment and he fell over the next. I think he was unconscious for about thirty seconds to a minute.”

  “I didn’t pass out,” Harry asserted. “I just lost my balance.”

  “And then went to the Bahamas for the next little while,” Jack answered.

  “Either way, it’s a good idea to check things out,” the other paramedic said.

  “That’s what I figured,” Maura answered. “He hit his head on a table pretty hard when he fell.”

  She stepped away from Harry and let the paramedics do their thing.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Sage asked him, her voice low.

  He figured his father would be harassing the paramedics all the way to the hospital, haranguing them on everything from their driving to the accommodations. “It’s just a precaution. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  For the first time, he noticed Sage looked a little pale too. This had to be weird for her, to find herself suddenly related to the old bastard.

  “I don’t need a stupid gurney.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Lange. We have to follow the rules.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “You can always refuse treatment,” Dougie, Maura’s friend, said to Harry.

  Jack fully expected his father would do just that, but after a pause, Harry shrugged. “No. I’ll come. I don’t want to see the idiots in the E.R., though. Call Dr. Osaka and tell him to meet us there.”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  A moment later, the paramedics finally succeeded in loading Harry onto the gurney and rolled him out of the bookstore.

  “Are you going to follow the ambulance to the hospital?” Maura asked.

  “He doesn’t need me. He’s made that more than clear.” He turned to Sage. “So we’re meeting for dinner. What time works for you?”

  She still looked a little green around the gills, and he had a feeling food was the last thing on her mind. “Well, I was thinking I could work until four or so. Any time after that?”