“Oh,” Liam said, crossing his arms and scowling, clearly disappointed. As if she’d given up on teaching the girls ballet before they’d even started. “Well, do you need anything else?”
He glanced at the iPod in her hand, at the dance bag overflowing with tattered pointe shoes sitting at her feet and then at the chairs again. Was it Posy’s imagination, or was he looking everywhere but at her injured foot?
It was the big, plaster-clad elephant in the room. She should have been relieved not to have to talk about it. But instead it irritated her that he was so painstakingly avoiding the topic. Then the fact that it irritated her just irritated her further.
“I think I’ve got things under control.” She turned away from him and clicked the iPod in place on the player.
Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf came blaring from the small speakers.
“Is this the music you’re planning on using?” Liam’s scowl morphed into a sardonic grin. Sarcasm aside, it was nice to see a smile on his face for a change. She hadn’t seen him smile since she’d set foot in Alaska again.
She was surprised to realize that smile still brought a flutter to her belly.
It’s nerves. That’s all. Just nerves.
“Yes. Why? Is that a problem?” Peter and the Wolf had always been one of Posy’s favorites. It was whimsical, with instruments representing each of the characters in the story. Oboe for the duck, clarinet for the cat, bassoon for the grandfather, the string instruments for Peter and the French horn for the wolf.
She’d loved it when she was a little girl. Madame Sylvie had played it in class only on rare special occasions. Posy figured this being the very first class definitely qualified.
“It’s an odd choice.” Liam let out a little laugh. “Don’t you think?”
Posy’s cheeks flushed. Was this what working with Liam was going to be like? Was he going to micromanage her music choices?
Peter and the Wolf was perfect. Liam was crazy if he thought otherwise. What did he know about ballet anyway? This was the man who intentionally went out of his way to not know anything about dance. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s a little young? I mean, the girls...”
A deafening crash interrupted him before he could finish. The sound of metal on metal...on metal on metal on metal. And so on. The shock of it caused Posy to jump, and a lightning bolt of pain shot up her leg when she landed on her injured foot.
What in the world was going on? All the metal folding chairs she’d spent so much time arranging—dragging them out of the storage closet and lining them up all on her own so she wouldn’t need to rely on Liam—were tumbling over, one against the other. It was like watching a falling line of dominoes.
“Great. Just great,” Liam muttered, shaking his head.
Posy followed his gaze until she found the source of the catastrophe. The beast. She still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the fact that it was a dog.
She aimed a sideways glance at Liam. “I thought you said he wasn’t unruly.”
“I have it under control.” His tone was anything but convincing.
She rolled her eyes. “I see that.”
“Sorry. I’ll fix it.” He headed toward the row of overturned chairs and the dog, who’d dropped to the floor to writhe around on his back. Posy could have sworn she felt the ground shake beneath her feet. A mini, canine-triggered earthquake.
“Don’t worry about it.” She grabbed her crutches and hobbled her way past him as quickly as she could. She was actually growing pretty adept at using them, a fact that both thrilled and depressed her.
“Don’t be silly. I can get them upright in no time.” As if to demonstrate, he picked up a chair with one hand, and with a flick of his masculine wrist, it was back in its proper place.
“I’d rather do it myself.” She swung her crutches in the direction of the next chair and began struggling with it while he stood there seething.
“Posy. Stop.”
She jammed the chair on the floor. “Liam, you don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” He crossed his arms and blocked her path to the next chair, forcing her to actually look at him.
She blinked. Good grief, he was handsome. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it. Maybe she’d eventually get used to looking at those cool blue eyes that somehow seemed even bluer than they’d been six years ago. And he’d definitely grown taller. He had to look down to meet her gaze, just as he’d always had to do at the pond. Only he wasn’t wearing ice skates now. He was flat-footed in dark brown hiking boots, arms crossed over his impressive chest.
Posy swallowed. When she thought about him, she still saw the boy she knew in high school, not this grown man whose intensity somehow made her heart skip a beat.
Lucky for her, that intensity also frustrated her to no end. “I know what you’re doing, and it needs to stop.”
“I’m setting up chairs in the fellowship hall. I work here, remember? It’s my job. Didn’t we cover this yesterday?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Look, we both know what’s going on here.” She lifted her chin. Goodness, this situation was humbling. “You’re babysitting me. And contrary to popular belief, I don’t need a babysitter.”
“You think I’m babysitting you?” He laughed. A little too loudly for Posy’s liking.
“Yes. This—” she waved a hand back and forth between them “—is no coincidence. She told me about this job so you could keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t...don’t...”
Her mouth grew dry, and she couldn’t quite force the words out.
Say it. Just say it.
My mother wants you to make sure I don’t take any pills.
She cleared her throat. “You’re watching me so I don’t do anything stupid.”
Way to be direct, Posy. She deflated a little. How could this still be so difficult to discuss after so long? Maybe because they’d never actually discussed it back then. Not really.
Liam stared at her through narrowed eyes. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
She’d suspected that was the case once she’d realized Liam was the youth pastor. And after she’d downed her fourth cup of coffee at the Northern Lights Inn the day before and finally headed home, the look on her mother’s face had confirmed it.
“Well, you can rest easy, darling.” Darling. Liam had called her that back when things had been perfect. Of course, back then the word hadn’t dripped with obvious sarcasm as it did now.
“Are you denying that my mother expects you to keep an eye on me? Because I know that’s the case. We talked about it last night.”
“No, I’m not denying that at all. She point-blank asked me to look after you.” His expression went distant. Cold. As cold as an Alaskan winter. “I turned her down flat. I’m not your keeper, Posy. Not anymore.”
I’m not your keeper, Posy. Not anymore.
The words shouldn’t have hurt, yet somehow they did.
“Good.” She forced herself to smile. “Then we’re in perfect agreement.”
“Good,” Liam echoed and went back to work straightening all of the chairs with exaggerated calmness.
As he did so, Posy tried her best to appear busy readying herself for class. But she felt like jumping out of her skin. She couldn’t stand the care with which he resituated the chairs, setting each one down with barely a whisper of sound. The more composed he appeared, the more she felt as though she were coming undone. She wished he’d scream, yell, throw things. Anything to show that he was just as unnerved about this whole situation as she was.
She scrolled through her iPod, the songs blurring together as her mind went to a different place. A place
she really didn’t want to go, especially now as she was preparing to teach her first ballet class. But try as she might, she couldn’t keep herself from imagining the conversation that had apparently taken place between Liam and her mother—her mother wringing anxious hands, that desperate look on her face that Posy could barely bring herself to look at.
And Liam.
Liam telling her parents he didn’t want anything to do with her. This new Liam she didn’t recognize. This Liam who wasn’t really Liam.
The entire scenario should have made her angry. She was an adult now. She’d been enticed to return to Alaska under false pretenses, and her career was hanging in the balance all because she’d landed wrong on a simple arabesque that she’d done thousands of times before without incident. Her parents were trying to get her high school boyfriend to spy on her. She had every reason to be angry.
But she couldn’t seem to muster much indignation. Because underneath all the agitation and embarrassment was the knowledge that Liam had become someone she no longer recognized because of her.
It had been raining that night. At first Posy had blamed the rain for what had happened. After she’d walked four blocks to the diner and called Liam for help, she’d been soaked to the bone. The cook had stood staring at her, frowning, as she’d clutched the pay phone, her shoes filling with the water dripping from her hair and her sodden clothes.
In the days, weeks and months that followed, she’d wondered if things would have turned out differently if she’d never called him that night. If she’d dialed her parents instead. It wasn’t as if she’d have been able to hide the damage to her car. Or the tree, one of the oldest in Aurora. A blue spruce.
It had stood at the center of town, between the Northern Lights Inn and the skating pond. It still did. At least Posy assumed it was still there. When she’d met Anya and Zoey for coffee the day before, she’d intentionally taken a route that would allow her to avoid the moody blue tree. And the skating pond. And all the tender memories that swirled like fog over the ice.
Her parents would have found out eventually. Everyone had.
But in her panic, she’d called Liam. She hadn’t been thinking about the tree when she’d made that fateful call. The fear pumping through her veins had prevented her from thinking about much of anything other than the fact that talking to her parents would be easier with Liam at her side, holding her hand. If she could just talk to him, see him, touch him, everything would be all right.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
* * *
“Posy, what is it? What’s happened?” He knew something was wrong. Posy could hear the worry, the fear in his voice.
She tried her best to enunciate, to prevent her words from slurring. But her teeth were chattering so hard that trying to control what came out of her mouth was a fruitless endeavor.
“There’s been an accident,” she heard herself say.
It still didn’t feel real. She kept thinking that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe morning would come, and she would open her eyes and find clear diamond skies. No rain. No pain. And no weeping sapphire tree.
“An accident. Are you okay?” He sounded calmer than she’d expected. As if he’d been waiting for such a call. Expecting it. As though he knew something like this was going to happen all along.
“Please come.” She gripped the phone with all her might. She still felt light-headed from the pills. Even the impact of the tree hadn’t been sufficient to eradicate the airy sensation in her limbs. She needed something to tether her to the ground, to keep her from floating away into oblivion. “Please.”
There was an excruciating beat of silence before he said, “Tell me where you are.”
“The big blue tree.”
He hung up without a word.
She returned to her car to wait for him, unable to bear the scrutiny of the cook, the hostess and the patrons enjoying their burgers and milk shakes. Logically, she knew no one in the diner could tell what she’d done. To them, she was still the town good girl. The perfect music-box ballerina, dancing to an endless tune. Never falling.
She didn’t want Liam to meet her there. She wanted to stay that town good girl for as long as possible. More than that, she wanted Liam to see her intact, unharmed, before he had a chance to catch sight of that horrible tangle of metal wrapped around the tree.
The wait was excruciating.
He arrived in a rumble of thunder and stepped from his car into the rain with an umbrella in his hands, but he made no effort to avoid the puddles at his feet. Pale, visibly shaken, he sloshed through ankle-deep water without taking his eyes off the wreckage.
Posy ran to him, placing herself between him and the tree. As if she could block the sight of it, prevent him from seeing all the damage she’d done.
“Posy,” he whispered, as if it were the most melancholy word that had ever been spoken. Sadder than lonely, affliction and hopeless all put together.
Her name had never sounded that way falling from his lips. Hearing it frightened her just as bad as the accident had. Possibly even worse.
“I think I hydroplaned,” she said, unable to quite meet Liam’s gaze.
She stood there beneath the shelter of his umbrella, heart pounding in fear. Since the moment her car had swerved off the road and crashed into the tree, she’d been unable to take in a full breath. She wasn’t hurt. At least she didn’t think so. She just couldn’t breathe, as if she were in a perpetual state of panic.
But as she stood under that umbrella and finally fixed her gaze on Liam, her fear turned to shame.
He knew.
She saw it in his desolate blue eyes. Eyes that always looked at her with a combination of wonder and affection. Eyes that suddenly went as moody blue as the evergreen in the storm.
His hair was soaked, rain running down his face in angry rivulets. Washing away all the lies. Everything she’d tried so hard to hide.
She had the fierce urge to reach out and chase the drops with her fingertips as they ran down his cheeks. Heaven’s tears. If she could just wipe them away, maybe all of this could be over. As if it had never happened.
“Let me see your purse,” he said in a tone that sent a chill coursing through her.
“Why?” she asked through chattering teeth.
“You know why.” His voice broke, and something inside Posy broke along with it. Not a bone, but something that would take far longer to heal. If it ever could.
“Liam, please.”
“Let me see it. Now.” The umbrella shook in Liam’s hand, sending droplets of freezing rain skittering through the air. Dancing water, spinning into oblivion.
Her instinct was to grip her purse more tightly to her chest in case he tried to wrench it free. He never would do that, would he? Not Liam.
But the boy standing in front of her didn’t quite look like Liam. She’d never seen that glint of fury in his eyes before. Not when she’d missed his eighteenth birthday party because she’d been in Portland auditioning for Oregon Ballet Theatre. Or when she’d missed the final baseball game of the season—the one where he’d scored the winning home run—because she’d had dance rehearsal. Or even when he’d walked in on her just that morning as she’d cradled a tiny blue capsule in her hand in the quiet, desperate moment before she tossed it back with a swallow of water.
She let the strap of her bag slide from her shoulder, down her arm, and held her purse limply toward him, praying he wouldn’t take it. Hoping against hope he was bluffing.
He wasn’t. He took her bag, exchanging it for the umbrella handle. It took him only moments to find what he was looking for. Three pill bottles, one of them empty, the other two half-full, jammed into the toes of the pointe shoes she never went anywhere without.
He shook them loose, until the bottles fell into his palm. Then h
e stared down at them, motionless, until his fist closed around the clear orange plastic. His knuckles went white, his grip so tight that it looked as though he were trying to crush them with his bare hands.
“How long?” he asked, his voice barely audible above the pounding rain.
It was coming down in buckets then. Rain like Posy had never seen before. Like something out of a Shakespeare play. The Tempest.
“Not long.” Posy tried to swallow, but she couldn’t make her body work anymore. First her feet, now her throat. She knew her heart would be the next to rebel. “Only a few days.”
He closed his eyes, his eyelashes inky dark, dripping with rainwater against his ghostly face. “Don’t lie to me, Posy.”
She needed him to look at her, to see that she was the same girl she’d always been. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? The girl he loved didn’t do things like this.
Everything started slipping from her grip. She held on so tightly—as tightly as Liam gripped those awful bottles of pills. But she still wasn’t able to hang on. Her body was failing her just when she’d needed it most. Even the pills weren’t working anymore. Not as well as they had in the beginning.
Every day it was harder and harder to dance. She was losing ballet. She felt it as surely as she felt the broken bone in her foot.
The thought of losing Liam too was inconceivable.
“Six weeks,” she whispered, knowing she couldn’t lie. Not to him. “I’ve been taking them for six weeks. Only one a day at first.”
“More lately, though.”
“More, yes.” She prayed he wouldn’t press for further details. It was too embarrassing. She wasn’t even able to bring herself to think about it, much less say it out loud.
But he pressed on, insisting that she tell him how many she’d taken that day. How many and at what times. She answered his questions as honestly as she could, but it was difficult to concentrate. Her head was so fuzzy. So much of the day was nothing but a blur.
“Where did you get them?” he asked.
There was no use lying. The information was printed right there on the prescription labels.
Love Inspired March 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Wife for JacobThe Forest Ranger's RescueAlaskan Homecoming Page 45