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

by RaeAnne Thayne

  He met her in the living room and handed it to her. “Here you go. It’s lemon balm tea. Supposed to be soothing.”

  “Thanks.” She sat down on the edge of the sofa and held the mug between her hands. “I suppose you’re curious about why I look like I just walked into poison ivy.”

  “No. Not really,” he lied. He had a feeling keeping the mood light might set her at ease. Sure enough, she laughed roughly.

  “Yeah. It’s a girl thing. You wouldn’t want to know.”

  He waited a beat, wondering what to say yet terrified that, if he said nothing, she would find the silence too uncomfortable and would leave.

  “I just told my baby’s father about the pregnancy,” she finally blurted out. “It…wasn’t pleasant.”

  “Oh?” he kept his tone low and nonthreatening, as if she were a stray kitten he was trying to lure with a bowl of milk.

  “Needless to say, he’s not throwing a parade down Main Street. He’s got a girlfriend. A fiancée, actually. She doesn’t know anything about what happened with us, and he doesn’t want to tell her.”

  Now that she had started, she didn’t seem to want to stop. “It was…ugly. He doesn’t believe me. Said there’s no way he can be the father. We used protection, FYI. I was a virgin, not an idiot. But I guess it failed, because, you know, here we are.”

  Again, too much information, he wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t interrupt the flow of words that seemed to be gushing out of her like air from a ripped balloon. “He accused me of getting pregnant on purpose to extort money from him and his family. As if I want or need his stupid family’s money. He even had the nerve to accuse me of staging the whole thing. The concert tickets, the backstage passes, all of it was apparently designed so I could get him to be my baby daddy and ruin his wedding next month. Can you believe it?”

  “Did he threaten you?” he asked, his voice deadly calm.

  He knew just who she had to be talking about. He made it his business to know who was staying in his hotel and, as far as he could tell, only one person fit the bill. Sawyer Danforth. Hell, he’d just had dinner with the bastard’s future father-in-law.

  “He didn’t hurt me. Just yelled and threw things around like a two-year-old having a tantrum. I can’t believe I ever liked him enough to, well, you know.”

  Right now he didn’t want to think about you know in connection with the granddaughter he had just discovered. Instead, he sipped at the one drink a day he allowed himself and tried to figure out how he could kick Sawyer Danforth out of his hotel on his bony, privileged little ass.

  “I’ve ruined his life, apparently. He wants me to get an abortion, even though I’m five months along already.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Not get an abortion. That’s for sure.” She finally sipped at the tea and apparently liked it well enough to take a second sip, which gave him a completely ridiculous sense of accomplishment.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it? Am I keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption? It’s a little more weighty decision than trying to figure out whether to take Math 1060 this semester or put it off until my junior year.”

  “True.”

  She sighed. “Well, anyway, it’s done. I told him. My mom and Jack were certain it was the right thing to do, but now I’m not so sure. It might have been better if he didn’t know.”

  “If you decide to keep the baby, you don’t need his help, do you? Your mother did an okay job raising you by herself.”

  She sipped at the tea again. The longer she sat quietly on his sofa, the more tension seemed to seep from her shoulders, he was happy to see. “I’m not my mother. I love her like crazy, but I don’t think I’d be happy here in Hope’s Crossing going to playdates and PTA meetings. I want all that, sure. But not yet. Not until I’ve had a chance to do a few other things first.”

  Either way, she was going to hurt, all because of a few foolish moments with the wrong person. Life was nothing but pain. If he had learned anything the past year, simply by opening his eyes to the world around him, it was how helpless one person can feel trying to hold back that unrelenting tide of sorrow.

  “You’ll figure it out. You’re a smart girl.”

  She made a rude sound. “How would you know? You don’t know anything about me.”

  He decided not to tell her just how much he had learned about her. She might think it was creepy, not just an old man intensely curious about this unexpected progeny.

  “It’s in your genes. You’re my granddaughter, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I can’t exactly be too brilliant. I got myself into this mess, didn’t I?”

  “And you’ll come up with a plan to deal with it. That’s what you and your father both do. You plan and plot and figure out the angles. It’s why you’re going to make one hell of an architect, just like he is.”

  She cocked her head, squinting at him, and he wondered just how much he had revealed with that particular statement.

  “I hope so. I better go. My parents are probably ready to call hotel security to go look for me. Uh, thank you for the tea. And the conversation. They both helped.”

  “You’re welcome. Anytime. And I mean that.”

  She blinked a little, then gave him a tentative smile that seemed to arrow straight to his damaged heart. “Okay. Thanks. I might take you up on that.”

  He rose, grateful his almost seventy-year-old bones hadn’t creaked too loudly, and walked her to the elevator, wishing he knew how to protect this vulnerable, wounded child and take away the pain he knew was coming.

  “If you want me to, I can kick Sawyer Danforth out of his room right this minute and bar him and his snooty parents from ever staying at my lodge.”

  Her jaw dropped and her eyes filled with horror. “How did you… I never said it was Sawyer.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said about good genes? You’re not the only smart one in this family, missy. I know what’s going on in my own hotel.”

  He regretted saying anything when her shoulders went tight again and she gazed in panic at the elevator and then back at him. “You can’t say anything. Please!” she begged. “He said he was going to tell Genevieve himself when the time is right. If word gets out to her before he has the chance, he’s going to be so pissed.”

  It would serve the little prick right for not keeping his business in his pants. He didn’t care about hurting Danforth, but he didn’t want to cause his granddaughter any more distress. “I can keep my mouth shut,” he promised. That didn’t mean he couldn’t drop a hint in his housekeeper’s ear about putting the scratchiest sheets on his bed and substituting his shampoo for itching powder.

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “In return, you can do something for me.”

  She instantly looked wary. “What?”

  “I invited your parents and you to dinner at my house on Sunday. I doubt either of them is inclined to accept that invitation. You can make sure they do.”

  “The rumors are true, then. You are a crazy old man. How am I supposed to do that when Jack hates you and you’re not on my mom’s list of favorite people either?”

  “You’re a smart girl,” he repeated as the elevator doors opened. “Lange genes, remember? I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  She shook her head in exasperation, but to his eternal shock, she stepped out of the elevator and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thanks for the tea and sympathy,” she said, then slid back inside just as the doors closed behind her.

  He stood for a long time gazing at the elevato
r with a finger pressed against the skin she had kissed, feeling foolish that he thought he could still pick up the scent of her in the air, of lemons and tears.

  His granddaughter needed him, damn it. And her parents did too, for that matter. He had become very good at subterfuge this past year. Now what could he do to help the three of them?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “YOU’RE GOING WHERE?”

  Maura sighed and straightened a line of books on a shelf in the home-improvement section, aware of Mary Ella’s horror-stricken expression beside her. “Yes. You heard me correctly. As much as I would vastly prefer taking you up on your offer to catch a movie tonight, I have plans. We’ve been invited to Harry’s for dinner. I tried desperately to get out of it. I mean, who wouldn’t? But Sage pulled the poor, pitiful I just want to get to know my grandfather card, and now I’m stuck.”

  “I don’t care what card she pulled. I would have sliced off two or three fingers if it meant I didn’t have to share a meal with That Man.”

  Despite her own internal struggle over the impending evening, Maura had to smile at her mother’s dramatics. “But, Mom, you have so much in common. You both love art and music and books, and now you even share a grandchild!”

  “Oh, thank you very much for that reminder.”

  “Seriously, why do you hate Harry so much? You’re nice to everyone else in town, even grouchy Frances Redmond, but you treat Harry like he ran over your dog or something. What did he ever do to deserve this gargantuan grudge you hold against him?”

  Mary Ella leaned back against the bookshelf, pensive. “You can thank Jack for it.”

  “Jack?”

  “He was one of my favorite students. Oh, I know all about how teachers are supposed to see the good in all our students and not pick favorites, but that is sometimes easier said than done when you’re teaching literature and composition to moody teenagers. I’ve taught hundreds of young people. Maybe into the thousands. But something about Jack just…touched me. He was so wounded and he tried desperately not to show it. I knew what his childhood must have been like, growing up with an…unstable mother like Bethany Lange.”

  “She was more than unstable, Mom. She suffered from schizophrenia.”

  “Yes. You should have known her before her mental illness started to manifest itself. She was just one of those beautiful spirits, you know? Everyone loved her.”

  She seemed wistful here, and Maura let the silence continue until her curiosity swelled. “Your feud with Harry?” she finally prompted.

  “Oh. Right. Well, I had Jack in my English class that terrible spring when Bethany committed suicide. I tried to go easy on him with assignments, but he insisted on filling every one. My heart was just breaking for him. Do you know, he only missed one day of class, to go to her funeral.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” Something soft and tender fluttered in her chest as she pictured him lost and grieving for his mother but determined to focus on his goals.

  “In one of our last assignments, I allowed the students to write an essay about anything they chose. Jack wrote this really heartbreaking piece about watching a beautiful bird trapped in a thicket of thorns, trying desperately to free itself, beating its wings bloody in the effort. He had tried to help but the bird had pecked and pecked at him and refused to let him close—obviously a metaphor for his relationship with his mother. He seemed so troubled that I decided—foolishly now, I can see that—to show it to Harry. I thought maybe he would, I don’t know, make sure Jack received grief counseling or something to assure him Bethany’s suicide wasn’t his fault.”

  “I’m guessing he didn’t respond well.”

  Mary Ella scoffed. “He laughed. Can you believe that? The essay fairly dripped with his son’s pain and sadness, and that bastard laughed. He said it was a good thing Jack didn’t fancy himself a writer and had an architecture scholarship instead, because it was a bunch of sentimental garbage. The bird was weak and would never have survived anyway, even if Jack could have figured out a way to help it.”

  And Maura had to sit across the dinner table from the man. She fought anger and revulsion. “And you’ve hated him ever since.”

  “Jack was a kindhearted boy. He took after Bethany in that respect. It broke my heart, the way Harry treated him. Everyone in town knew that, to build his ski resort, he shamefully used her mental illness to break the land trust she had set up for Jack.”

  “Why didn’t anyone do anything about it?”

  “Without Jack here to fight for himself, what could we do? He walked away from the whole situation, and nobody else had any legal standing to reinstate the trust. And if you want the truth, most everyone took the cowardly way and let Harry and William Beaumont do what they wanted. Hope’s Crossing was dying, our young people leaving, and people were eager for any way to keep that from happening. Like it or not, Harry offered salvation of a sort.”

  At what cost, though? Good or bad, Hope’s Crossing had been forever changed by the ski resort and the resulting growth and development.

  Before she could answer her mother, Mary Ella’s expression sharpened on someone who had just entered the store at Maura’s back.

  Maura turned at the sudden puzzlement in her gaze, and tension suddenly coiled inside her. Laura Beaumont, Genevieve’s mother, was stalking toward them and she did not look like she was shopping for the latest bestseller. Her usually perfect hair was sticking out in strange directions, and she was missing the immaculate makeup that was as much a part of her as her own skin.

  As she drew closer, she seemed to wobble a little, and Maura picked up the definite odor of eau de liquor.

  She drew in a breath. She had no fight with Laura, she reminded herself. For months after the accident, she had hated the whole Beaumont family, but after Charlie’s sentencing hearing, when the whole twisted truth about the accident had emerged, most of her fury had abated. She tried to tolerate Laura during their brief social interactions, mostly by not dwelling on the fact that Laura had wanted her son to completely escape punishment for his impaired driving, which had caused Layla’s death and Taryn’s severe injuries.

  “Hi, Laura. Can I help you find something?”

  “Yes. Where’s the little tramp?” she demanded loudly, her words slurred at the edges.

  Beside her, Maura could feel Mary Ella tense, and any hope she might have stupidly held that she could avoid a confrontation with the Beaumonts flew out the window. This was going to be a scene, and probably an ugly one.

  “The brilliant Charlie Chaplin silent movie?” she asked in a bright voice, deliberately misunderstanding. “I don’t carry it. I’m sorry. Our DVD section is pretty small. Perhaps you can find it online. Just so you know, it’s actually called The Tramp, not The Little Tramp, though many people get confused.”

  Mrs. Beaumont blinked at her, trying to process that. “I’m not looking for a movie, you idiot. I want to talk to your whore of a daughter. She’s ruined everything!”

  And there went her temper. Maura dug her nails into her palms to keep from smacking the other woman and tossing her out into the rainy afternoon. “Okay, this is the part where you’re going to apologize for calling my daughter ugly names, and then leave my store.”

  “I won’t! Where is she? I hope she’s proud of herself. Three weeks. Three more weeks and my Genevieve would have been Mrs. Sawyer Danforth of the Denver Danforths. Do you know how long we’ve been planning this damn wedding?”

  Apparently Sawyer had found the stones to tell Genevieve about his indiscretion. And apparently Gen had found the even bigger stones to eithe
r postpone the wedding—again—or back out of it altogether.

  For Genevieve’s sake, Maura hoped she had broken it off completely and sent Sawyer “Keep It In Your Pants” Danforth on his merry way. She understood indiscretion and that people made mistakes, but if a man couldn’t be faithful during an engagement—when he was supposed to be completely enamored with his chosen bride to the exclusion of all else—what were the chances he would remain faithful after the vows were exchanged?

  “Wait. The wedding’s off?” Mary Ella asked, her expression wholly befuddled.

  “Yes, it’s off! How could she go through with marrying him after she found out he supposedly got the stupid little bitch pregnant?”

  Mary Ella’s jaw sagged, and Maura felt a twinge of guilt for not having told her, but she hadn’t felt it was her secret to share yet. Not even with her mother.

  “Last I heard,” she said coolly, “he was claiming he couldn’t be the father and that Sage must have slept with dozens of men at college.”

  She didn’t add that, when Sage had reported that part of their conversation, Jack had wanted to climb the stairs at the lodge and rip his head off. It had taken both of them to talk him down.

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Laura Beaumont snarled. “But the fact that he might be the father was apparently enough for Gen to call off the wedding. Where is she? I want to ask her what the hell she was thinking to ruin my daughter’s life! She knew he was engaged, the sneaky little bitch. I bet she slept with him on purpose, didn’t she, and probably poked holes in the condom too. She recognized a money train when she saw it, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass who she might hurt in the process.”

  So much for the gracious society matron, doling out her patronage around town like freaking Queen Elizabeth. Apparently Laura was a mean drunk. Who knew?

  As Maura saw it, she had a couple of choices. She could take the other woman on right now—and probably chew her up and spit her out. Or she could try to deflect Laura’s anger and in the process protect her child.