The First Love Cookie Club

by Lori Wilde

  “You can’t always get what you want.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, looked utterly lost. “Sarah…

  “Thank you by the way.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “For what?”

  She held up the book. “A Wrinkle in Time.”

  “The book was to thank you for helping my daughter. Books are powerful things.”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “Nothing else you want to say?”

  “I’m not your ex-wife. I’m not looking for an excuse to run out on you. I’m thinking what would be best for Jazzy.”

  “What about you and me? What would be the best thing for us?”

  “You told me yourself that you and Jazzy are a package deal. There can’t be just you and me. Jazzy is always going to factor into the equation and you know it.”

  “Are you sure that’s it?” His gray eyes darkened to charcoal.

  “What are you accusing me of?”

  He raised his palms. “Hey, if it’s too hot in the kitchen, I get it, but at least have the decency to tell me that and stop pretending you’re backing off for Jazzy’s best interest.”

  He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d hauled off and slapped her across the face. This had been an agonizing decision for her and here he was suggesting she was simply running away because the pressure was too much for her to handle.

  Could he be right? whispered a dark voice inside her.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s been great reconnecting with you, Sarah. Have a wonderful life,” he said, sarcasm tingeing his voice, and then he stepped off the porch and turned away.

  Her instinct was to call to him, to ask him to stay, but she squelched it. Squelched it hard. She’d become so adept at squelching her feelings, she didn’t know how to take her jackboot off the lifeline and allow herself to just breathe.

  As she watched him walk away in the darkness, she knew she’d never love another the way she loved this man, but right now, nothing on earth could make her tell him that.

  A tornado couldn’t have as effectively laid waste to Travis’s heart as Sarah’s coolly spoken words. Stupidly, he’d thought their lovemaking had meant something to her. Apparently, he’d been dead wrong.

  Blindly, he walked back to the square, his pulse thudding erratically. Okay, so Sarah wanted him to give Crystal a second chance? Jazzy wanted him to give Crystal a second chance? Then fine, he’d give the woman a second chance. He’d let her stay at the house and he’d let her back into Jazzy’s life, but that was it. He had no feelings left for his ex-wife. All that went to Sarah, and now she was leaving him too.

  What the hell was wrong with him that he picked women who couldn’t love him back? What did it say about him?

  “You love too damn easily, Walker,” he growled under his breath. “It’s time to take a page from Sarah’s book, stop wearing your heart on your sleeve, and stop expecting to find true love.”

  Somehow, Sarah made it up to her room in one piece. She got undressed, took a shower, blew dry her new hairstyle, which now felt like a huge mistake, and put on her pajamas. She opened her notebook computer, sat crossed-legged in the middle of the bed surrounded by smiling angels. The Merry Cherub indeed.

  She opened the file of The Christmas Angel and stared at the blinking cursor. She was almost finished. All she needed was the ending. A Christmas miracle to save her heroine Lily’s life.

  A knock sounded on her door.

  Oh crap, please, please don’t let it be Travis. If the man was standing in the hallway outside her door she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from yanking him into the room and hauling him into her bed.

  The knock came again. Maybe it was Jenny Cantrell or Travis’s Aunt Raylene or one of the other ladies from the cookie club who’d just gotten the gossip hot off the grapevine.

  She got out of bed, padded to the door, and peeked through the keyhole.

  It wasn’t Travis. Neither was it Jenny or Raylene or any of the members of the First Love Cookie Club.

  Instead, she spied Travis’s ex-wife, Crystal Hunt.

  Every instinct in her body told her to crawl back in bed, cover up her head, and pretend she was deaf. What the hell did the woman want with her?

  Rap, rap, rap.

  Sarah thought of Poe’s raven tapping at her chamber door. Go away!

  “Miss Cool,” Crystal called. “May I talk to you?”

  Sighing, Sarah opened the door, but she did not smile. “How may I help you?”

  “Could I come in?”

  Sarah stood aside and gestured toward the overstuffed chair covered in pink angel print. Crystal crossed the threshold and then plunked down in the chair. Sarah closed the door, but remained standing.

  “You’re her, aren’t you?” Crystal said. She wore thick mascara and too much rouge. Her skin was pale and her platinum blond hair was the texture of dried grass. “The girl who interrupted our wedding.”

  “Yep, that’s me. Wedding crasher.”

  “You’re still in love with him.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

  Sarah shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.

  “I thought so.” Crystal nodded as if Sarah had said yes.

  “What do you want?” Sarah didn’t even try to sound polite.

  “I just wanted you to know I’m not the villain everyone in this town paints me to be.” She stuck a fingernail in her mouth to gnaw at a ragged cuticle. “They judge me. I know they do. Mothers aren’t supposed to run off and leave their babies.”

  “So why did you?”

  Crystal blushed, shamefaced. “I shouldn’t have. I know that, but I just couldn’t deal with Jasmine’s illness. She kept getting worse and worse and you don’t know what I’ve been through. No one does.”

  “Could it be any worse than what Jazzy’s gone through?” Sarah folded her arms over her chest. Why was this woman here? Was she expecting sympathy from her?

  “Travis was good to me, you know. He was funny, lots of fun.”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  Crystal nodded, kept working on that cuticle. “He helped me pick up the pieces of my life.”

  Anger spurted through Sarah; she was surprised at how angry she was at this woman she didn’t even know. All she knew was that Crystal had hurt both Jazzy and Travis very deeply. “And you repaid him by leaving him just when he needed you most.”

  “I suppose I deserve that.” Crystal winced. “But you don’t know what it’s like, sitting there day after day watching your baby slowly dying.”

  “I don’t,” Sarah agreed, “but Travis does.”

  “I’m not just talking about Jazzy.” Crystal leaned forward, rested her forearms on her thighs, and dropped her head.

  Her words startled Sarah. The woman looked so helpless, damaged. “What?”

  “I had another baby. Before Jazzy. Before Travis.”

  Sarah said nothing, just waited, and the story poured from Crystal’s lips. “Most people don’t know about this. I wasn’t living in Twilight at the time. I don’t talk about it much.” She hauled in a shuddering breath. “I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Travis.”

  Reluctant sympathy washed over Sarah. She did not want to feel sorry for this woman, but it wasimpossible to deny how utterly broken she looked. Who was she to say how she might have behaved if she’d been in Crystal’s shoes?

  Crystal slowly opened her mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. Sarah could see how difficult this was for her. “I got pregnant when I was seventeen by my boss where I worked at the Chicken Shack. When I told him I was pregnant, he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with it and for me to have an abortion. He was married with two kids already.” Crystal stared off into space. “But I wanted that baby.”

  Crystal lapsed into silence. Sarah didn’t know what to say so she kept quiet.

  Finally, Crystal shook herself and continued in a rushed monotone. “Here’s what happened. I had the baby on my own.
My parents kicked me out. It was hard, but that baby was worth it. I loved that boy more than I loved life itself. He had dark brown eyes and jet black hair. He looked just like this daddy. He’d give me the biggest hugs and his smile was like sunshine. He smelled so good, like cotton blankets and fluffy bunnies. He was my pride and joy.”

  Pausing, Crystal ran a hand through her hair, then whispered, “His name was Shiloh. Shiloh James.”

  Sarah felt a stab of pain straight to her heart. Detach, detach, detach. But it was too late. Being with Travis had demolished the barriers she’d put up to keep her safe from her feelings. She had no defenses left.

  Tears were streaming down Crystal’s face. Sarah reached over and handed Crystal the box of tissues from her nightstand.

  “Thank you.” Crystal sniffled.

  “You don’t have to tell me any more.”

  “No, I want you to know. I want you to understand.”

  Sarah suppressed a sigh. She didn’t want to know.

  “Me and Shiloh lived in government-funded housing across a main street from a park. He loved being pushed in the swings. I’d push him and he’d say, ‘Higher, Mommy, higher.’ He was smart as a whip, always figuring things out. When he was one year old he learned how to turn on the light switch with the handle of a broom. Then just a couple months shy of his second birthday …” She stopped, hitched in another breath, swiped at the tears. Mascara smeared underneath her eyes. “I thought he was in his crib. I’d put him down for a nap. It was in the spring and I had the windows open. I was watching TV and folding clothes, when there was a knock on the door and I open it up and it’s a policeman and he’s holding …” Crystal hiccupped, paused, then finally said, “He’s holding Shiloh’s little blue striped shirt with the bunnies on the pocket and there’s blood on the front of it.”

  Sarah’s pulse was pounding so hard she could feel it throbbing at her temples. She fisted her hands. She did not want to hear this.

  Crystal completely dissolved. Tentatively, Sarah reached out and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder shaking hard with her sobs. “Shh, shh.”

  For the longest time there was nothing but the sound of Crystal’s sorrow rolling off the walls. Then she sat up, scrubbing her face with the tissue. “I was so stupid. I’d left his crib near the window so he could look outside. I never dreamed he’d push out the screen and try to go across the thoroughfare to the park.”

  In her mind’s eye Sarah could just see the little black-haired boy in the blue striped bunny shirt toddling toward his beloved swings, oblivious to the danger. She fisted her hand over her heart. This should never, ever happen to any mother.

  “The paramedics did CPR and they got a pulse. They rushed him to the hospital, but his head injuries were too severe. He was put on a ventilator. They couldn’t stop his brain from swelling. For three days I sat and watched my baby struggle to live and then they told me he was brain dead.” Crystal’s face was a mask of pure horror. “They asked me if I would donate his organs so another baby could live. The vultures. They wanted to pick my baby’s bones clean.”

  Poor Crystal had been nineteen, all alone, no family support, watching her child die. Sympathy swamped Sarah.

  The wave of grief washed over Crystal again, but she was so wrung out of tears all she could do was rock and shake. “But. … but then I realized I couldn’t let another mother suffer like I was suffering if I could help her. So I signed the papers and they took him off life support and they cut him up. My sweet little baby boy. Don’t you see? That’s why I couldn’t get attached to Jazzy. I couldn’t love her the way I loved Shiloh or it would destroy me. Especially after she got sick. I could not go through that again. I could not do it.” Crystal wailed a long, keening note of pure sorrow.

  Sarah came unglued. She was crying too and hugging Crystal and telling her it was going to be okay. That Jazzy was okay now that Crystal was here to make amends.

  And as painful as it was for her, Sarah knew exactly what she had to do next.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The day before Christmas Eve, Travis met Sarah at the lawyer’s office to sign all the papers on the sale of the cottage. They were cordial. He thanked her and accepted the check. She thanked him. They made arrangements about the rent.

  “Jazzy’s looking forward to making cookies with you tomorrow night,” he said.

  “I asked Jenny and she said it’s fine to use the kitchen at the Merry Cherub if that’s okay with you.” Her face revealed no emotions. She was calm and detached as usual.

  When he was a boy, his mother used to read him a story about an young Eskimo—yes, he knew the term was no longer politically correct, but the book was from another era—who got stranded on an ice floe. It broke off from the main chunk of ice where his family had been fishing and carried the boy out to sea. He still remembered the stark picture in the book with the stunned boy near his own age, floating away from everything he loved into the frosty blue waters, alone and isolated. Ithad made him feel cold and sad all the way to his bones.

  As he looked at Sarah now, he felt the same way he’d felt when his mother had read him the story of the boy lost in the Arctic. Except Sarah was the Eskimo on the ice floe, floating away, a giant chasm of icy ocean stretching between them. Her arms were folded over her chest, her eyes narrowed, but her face expressionless as she pulled inside herself, drifted farther and farther away from him, and no matter how much he wanted her, he could never reach her.

  Good. Good. Let her go. It would be easier this way. Saying good-bye.

  So why the lonely ache building inside him, layer upon layer like brick mortar? Dammit, he couldn’t let her go without at least trying to scale that wall. She might have cut her hair, but Rapunzel had climbed back into her ivory tower.

  He put out his hand, touched her arm, and felt her flinch. She might hide it in her face, but her body reacted. “Sarah,” he said hopefully. “Would you like to grab a cup of coffee?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

  “I still think we should talk about what happened between us in the hunter’s cabin. Leave Crystal and Jazzy out of it for a moment and let’s just talk about how we feel and if there’s a way—“

  “Feelings change,” Sarah said. “You can’t rely on them to stay the same. That’s why you should never make decisions based on emotions.”

  “It sounds logical, but it’s a really difficult thing to do. How do you simply turn off your feelings?”

  “It’s not that I turn them off,” she said, “it’s just that I accept them as transient. They will change. Joy becomes sorrow. Love becomes hate. Anxiety becomes peace. Feelings are always bouncing back and forth.”

  Had he imagined it? The love they’d shared in the cabin? Not just the physical love, but the emotional bonding. It had happened. He knew it. How could she so successfully turn it away?

  “I want you to know I’m not closing the door on us. Just because Crystal is back doesn’t mean you and I can’t have some kind of relationship.”

  In that moment, he saw it, the flicker of longing in her eyes. It disappeared in a flash, but he’d seen it. She was afraid. That’s what this was all about. The love she was feeling was so big she had no idea how to wrap her mind and heart around it.

  Well, he had the patience of Job. He could wait her out.

  After all, he was her destiny. She’d once told him so herself.

  Raylene was wiping down the bar at the Horny Toad when Earl came through the door. He had a look on his face like a mule had gut-kicked him. His color was ashen, his eyes full of pain.

  “Honey,” she said, coming around the bar toward him. Heart attack? she feared, and felt her own pulse rate speed up. “What’s wrong?”

  Earl stared past her like she wasn’t there and glared at the only two customers in the bar at two in the afternoon. “Get on out of here you barflies!” He ran at them like he was chasing off cur dogs. “Go on, git. Shoo.”

  “
Earl?” Raylene was getting a real bad feeling about this. She’d never seen her husband act this way. Fear clenched her gut. “Earlie?”

  “Shiiiittt, Earl,” drawled one of the drunks. “What’s eating you?”

  Earl picked up a barstool. “You want me to smash this over your head, Micky? Do you?”

  Micky held up both arms in a gesture of surrender and scooted back from the bar.

  “Hit the road. You too, Snake,” Earl growled.

  “I ain’t finished my beer,” Snake mumbled.

  Earl smashed the stool over the bar. Everyone jumped and stared as the stool shattered. Earl wielded the broken bar stool leg at Snake like it was a Louisville Slugger. “I said get out of my bar.”

  Snake looked impressed and hightailed it out the door right behind Micky.

  Earl turned around, the broken leg still cocked over his shoulder like he was about to take a swing and hit something hard.

  Raylene gulped and took a step back. She’d never seen her easygoing husband do anything like this. Ever. “Earl?”

  His eyes were haunted, empty, like a zombie. “Is it true, Ray?”

  Raylene saw that his hands were trembling and so were her own. In that minute, she knew that he’d found out. Probably that damn Crystal had gone blabbing. “Earl, let’s sit down—“

  “Is it true? Did you sell your own child?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she whispered, feeling her marriage slipping away from her. In all honesty, this was why she’d never told him. Her terror of losing the only man she’d ever really loved.

  The last bit of light vanished from her husband’s eyes. His shoulders sagged and he finally dropped the broken bar stool leg. “You did it.”

  Raylene wrung her hands. “It sounds so bad when you say it like that.”

  “Did you or did you not accept money for a child you had with Lance Dugan?”

  She crossed her arms, uncrossed them, crossed them again. Distress ate a hole through her. “The money was from his family. They didn’t want their upper-crust son married to trailer trash like me. They had our Vegas wedding annulled.”