Love Inspired March 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Wife for JacobThe Forest Ranger's RescueAlaskan Homecoming

by Rebecca Kertz

  “I assure you he’s yours.” She glanced up at him. There was an openness in her gaze that hadn’t been there moments ago when they’d been manning the snack bar together. “This is Sundog.”

  Memories swirled amid the snowflakes. A tree. A whisper. A kiss.

  He held out his hand. “Come skate with me.”

  “Skate with you?” She shook her head. “You know I can’t.”

  “Trust me, Posy.” Trust me. One last time.

  The trees surrounding the pond all held their breath and the snow flurries hung in the air, suspended, as Liam stood there offering her his hand. Ever so slowly, she smiled and placed her hand in his.

  “Come on.” He pulled her to her feet.

  Hand in hand, they walked to the snack bar, where he put another record on the record player and slipped his feet into his skates.

  Posy watched him wordlessly, and for once the silence between them didn’t feel loaded with bittersweet sadness. He laced up his skates, every one of his senses kicking into overdrive. He was hyperaware of Posy’s gaze on him, the whisper of the cold winter breeze on his hands and face, and the breathless feeling of anticipation that lingered between the moment he set the needle on the record and the one in which the music came to life. An oldies ballad. The kind of song that couples swayed to long ago, back when slow dancing was still in style.

  Once he was laced up, he stood and took her hand again. “Ready?”

  She gave him a curious smile. “Maybe.”

  “I told you to trust me. Come on.”

  He led her to the pond, walking slowly through the rapidly accumulating snow so she wouldn’t slip and hurt herself again. When they reached the ice, he stepped onto its smooth crystal surface. Maybe this was a crazy idea, and maybe he would regret it a month from now after she’d gone. But for right now, he wanted to heed his own advice and savor the moment. Live his life. Follow his heart. And what his heart most wanted was to dance with Posy Sutton.

  “Dance with me.” He gave her hand a gentle tug and pulled her toward him.

  He didn’t need to tell her what to do. She already knew. How, he wasn’t sure. They’d never danced like this before. In fact, they’d never danced together, period. Dance had always been her thing and hers alone. Something that separated the two of them more often than it brought them closer together. At school dances, he’d been too intimidated to dance with her. Music had never moved through him the way it did through Posy.

  But now was different. He was different, and so was she.

  Gingerly, she placed her feet on top of his so that she was facing him, standing on the boots of his skates, like a child first learning how to dance. She rested one hand on his shoulder and kept the other entwined with his. She looked up at him, and Liam watched as her graceful composure and staged confidence fell away. He was no longer a man looking at a dancer. He was a man looking at a woman.

  “It’s about time you asked me to dance,” she murmured.

  Her upturned face was so close to his that their frosty breath commingled in the glacial Alaskan air. He looked into those gray eyes that were so often filled with storms and saw nothing but an elegant tranquillity, like the lifting of an evening fog.

  She was beautiful. So beautiful. She always had been, but Liam didn’t want to dance with a memory, a reflection of the past, no matter how lovely and familiar. He wanted something real. He wanted to dance with the grown woman Posy had become. The woman in his arms.

  “I was waiting for the right moment,” he said, gliding his foot along the ice.

  She laughed and tightened her grip on him as he moved them over the frozen mirror of the pond, linked foot to foot and hand to hand. Slowly at first, and rather shyly. But as the music played on, Liam’s movements grew bolder, quicker. Soon they were spinning and floating with the wind whipping through their hair until it was no longer Liam guiding their steps, but the music.

  He felt it.

  At last.

  The music, the freedom. The feeling of movement being something of beauty, a work of art. He understood.

  Somehow, someway, after all this time, Posy had taught him what it meant to dance.

  He knew it didn’t change anything. In a matter of weeks, they would go their separate ways. The past might belong to them, but the future never would. Nothing had changed.

  Yet somehow, everything had. Because they’d created the perfect moment. A new memory that would live forever. This dance hadn’t been about trying to hold on to something. It had been about letting something go. Letting her go.

  He’d been ready to offer Posy all the love in the world back then, but what would that have mattered if she’d been unhappy? How long would it have taken for the screaming fury of young love to wither to a whisper if she’d chosen him over dance? If she’d stayed.

  He wanted more for her. More than Alaska. More than a love that put shackles on her dancing feet. He wanted her to have everything.

  “Liam,” she whispered. “After all of this is over, maybe...”

  Don’t. Don’t say it.

  “Let’s not talk about tomorrows. Not now.” He didn’t want her yesterdays, and he didn’t have a place in her tomorrows. But now, beneath the star-swept Alaskan sky, the snow fell just for them. This moment was theirs and theirs alone. “Dance with me. Here. Now.”

  Meet me. Meet me here, Posy.

  He pulled her closer, gazed into her eyes and waited with his heart in his throat as she stepped into the moment. Memories and expectations lifted away, like a shimmering veil. And it was in the subtle, gentle parting of her lips that she left the past behind and the future to its own devices.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered as his skates came to a stop with an agonizingly slow scrape against the ice.

  Then the two of them stopped moving, and it was the world that kept on spinning in a dizzying snow-shaker swirl. Liam tried to take it all in—the glittering gold stars, the diamond snowflakes that had gathered in Posy’s coppery hair, the way she was looking at him as if he were the only man that ever did, ever could or ever would matter.

  And in that moment of innocent grace, Liam lowered his lips to hers.

  It was like kissing his past, present and future all at once. Everything he’d ever wanted was wrapped up and tied with ribbons in that tender meeting of their lips. Their mouths were frosty cold, and snow flurries whipped around them as they stood on the mirrored surface of the ice, but there was warmth in Liam’s heart. Warmth, tenderness and an ache so fierce that his chest felt as if it were being ripped in two.

  There were so many things he wanted to say. Words danced on the tip of his tongue. Dangerous words that he had no business saying aloud. Words like mine and love. And the most dangerous word of all—stay. It was a mighty struggle to hold them back.

  Think of her happiness. Think of her.

  He kissed her again. And again. And this time he was kissing each one of her dreams, willing them to come true.

  Then on and on they skated, until the record stopped and the needle came to its noiseless end. In the center of the pond, Liam’s feet spun them into a whisper-silent twirl. Round and round they went until the momentum died and they slowed to a halt.

  Posy’s eyes were wild, the tip of her nose as red as a cherry. Liam had never seen her look this way before—this happy, this carefree—without a pair of ballet shoes on her feet.

  “Thank you,” she said, and suddenly Liam realized she was looking at him through eyes filled with glistening, unshed tears.

  He released her hand and brushed the hair from her eyes before cupping her cheek. “For what, exactly?”

  She blinked up at him, and a lone tear slid down her face. Her eyes had grown stormy once again. Misty gray, like a gathering tempest. Eyes filled with goodbyes.

  A bittersweet heav
iness settled in Liam’s chest. He told himself the burning in his lungs was from the biting-cold air and the exertion of their dance. But deep down he knew it was a lie.

  He wiped away her teardrop with a brush of his thumb, but the trail it left in its wake remained. As did the ache in his heart.

  Her answer came in a whisper softer than the fall of snowflakes drifting onto the ice. “For the best dance lesson I’ve ever had.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What exactly are we looking for again?” Zoey walked alongside Posy toward the entrance to the Aurora Community Church Thrift Store, juggling a cardboard tray loaded down with four cups of coffee from the Northern Lights Inn.

  “Record albums,” Posy said. “Remember those?”

  “Vaguely.” Anya frowned.

  “No.” Zoey shook her head. “I actually don’t.”

  “You’re kidding. I find that profoundly sad.” Posy stared down at the ground as she walked, picking her way through the snow, careful to avoid any patches of ice. As happy as she was to be rid of the plaster cast, her foot felt oddly vulnerable and exposed without it. She couldn’t quite get past the fear of falling.

  Realistically, she knew she wasn’t going to fall. The only danger of falling had been the night when Liam had taken her skating. And that had been a falling of a different variety.

  Don’t go there. You are not falling in love with him. You can’t.

  But no matter how hard she fought against it, she feared there was a tiny part of her heart that had already begun that rarest of descents. She could almost feel herself free-falling into an everlasting tombé.

  Zoey laughed, pulling her thoughts back to the matter at hand. What was that again? Oh, right. Madame Sylvie’s records.

  “I’m just teasing,” Zoey said. “I know what a record album is. What I don’t understand is why we’re on a wild-goose chase to find some.”

  “Try not to think of it as a wild-goose chase. It’s more like a treasure hunt.” Posy grinned.

  She’d been telling herself all morning not to get her hopes up. Even if the record player that she’d seen the other night at the skating pond had been the one that belonged to Madame Sylvie, it didn’t mean the albums would still be around. Most of them had been nothing but ballet practice music, repetitive eight counts of piano chords composed for the routine of barre exercises. Pliés, tendus, battements, rond de jambes. They weren’t exactly typical fare for iPod playlists. But to Posy, they were precious. Those soothing notes sounded like her childhood, like dance itself. Like her dreams.

  “Well, if anyone can help you find them, my mom can.” Anya pushed through the door of the thrift shop and held it open for Zoey. She plucked one of the coffees off the tray as Zoey passed. “Give me one of those. I’m dying for some caffeine. And the smell is out of this world.”

  “I aim to please.” Zoey handed Posy a cup. “Here, have one.”

  “Thanks.” She took a sip. The explosion of flavor that hit her tongue was so unexpected that she stopped dead in her tracks. “What is this? I thought I was drinking coffee.”

  Zoey and Anya exchanged bemused glances.

  “You are,” Anya said.

  “This is not coffee.” Posy had consumed copious amounts of coffee. Ballerinas lived on coffee. Bad coffee, mediocre coffee and what she’d always thought of as good coffee. But nothing like what she held in her hand.

  “Yes, it is. Specifically, it’s a caramel latte.” Zoey smiled, then added, “With whip.”

  “Let me translate that for you—normal-people coffee.” Anya sipped hers again. “Good, isn’t it?”

  A caramel latte with whipped cream. There had to be more calories in that cup than what Posy normally consumed in an actual, edible meal. She couldn’t bring herself to question the fat content of the milk. Whole milk hadn’t passed her lips since she’d slipped on her first pair of pointe shoes.

  Zoey set the cardboard tray beside the cash register on the counter at the entrance to the thrift shop. “Come on, Posy. Live a little. There’s more to life than all ballet, all the time.”

  She stared into her cardboard cup. “I know that.”

  She’d gone ice-skating a few nights ago, hadn’t she?

  She took a defiant swig of her latte.

  “Can I help you?” Kirimi, Anya’s mother, came bustling through the narrow aisles of the shop, eyes cast down at a bundle of neatly folded clothes in her arms. When she looked up, her olive face split into a wide grin. “Girls! It’s so great to see you all here. What brings you by?”

  Anya gave her mom a tight hug, then handed her a latte. “Posy is looking for some music. Plus we brought you coffee.”

  “Thank you.” She took a sip. How she didn’t faint from elation was a mystery to Posy. Normal-people coffee. What else had she been missing out on all this time? “What kind of music do you need, Posy?”

  “I’m looking for some record albums. Specific ones. They would have come here from the ballet studio that closed a few years ago.”

  “Oh.” Kirimi’s face fell. “That was a while ago. We have some record albums, but I doubt any of them have been around that long. You’re welcome to go through them. I’m afraid they’re not in any kind of order. We’re perpetually shorthanded around here.”

  Posy looked around at the crowded shelves of books, knickknacks and clothes, clothes and more clothes. She wasn’t surprised to hear that the shop was shorthanded. It was obviously a lot to keep up with. But Posy couldn’t help feeling as though she were standing in the middle of a treasure chest. These weren’t just items from the past. Everything here represented a story. A life.

  “I don’t mind doing some digging,” she said.

  Suddenly, the opening bars of the Swan Lake score rang from inside her handbag. Her cell phone. It had begun to elicit a Pavlovian response in her every time it rang. One that felt vaguely like panic.

  She glanced at her phone. Incoming call: Gabriel.

  She flipped the ringer to the off position and dropped the phone back in her purse. She’d call him back later. She couldn’t very well talk to him now. It would be rude.

  “I’m so sorry, Kirimi.” Posy smiled and pushed away thoughts of Gabriel’s repeated calls. It was surprising that he seemed so interested in the progress of her recovery. Flattering, but strange.

  “It’s no trouble. Did you need to take that call?” Kirimi asked.

  “No. It can wait.” She’d call Gabriel later when she had more time. Not that she had much time to spare at the moment. Plans for the recital were eating up every free moment. “Lead the way to the records.”

  “Alrighty. Follow me.” Kirimi led them to the back of the store, where a row of milk crates, each one crammed with record albums, were lined up on waist-high shelves. “Here you go. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” Posy took a fortifying sip of her coffee and took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

  Anya flipped through one of the crates. “I’m keeping my eyes peeled for anything with ballerinas on the cover.”

  “Me, too,” said Zoey. “Or just anything with one of the presidents on it.”

  “One of the presidents?” Posy frowned.

  Zoey shrugged. “You’re looking for classical stuff, right? Classical composers look an awful lot like our country’s Founding Fathers. Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed the resemblance between Mozart and George Washington.”

  Anya paused. “Hey, you’re right. Although for Washington, I’d choose Haydn. Mozart gives off more of a Jefferson vibe.”

  Posy shook her head and laughed. “I am most definitely no longer in the land of ballerinas.”

  Zoey lifted a brow. “Is that so bad?”

  No, actually. It wasn’t. Posy would miss this once she was gone—the camaraderie, the laughter. She would miss a lot of things
.

  “Speaking of ballerinas...look!” Anya grabbed a record album from her crate and triumphantly held it over her head.

  Posy gasped. She recognized the record at once. Its cover was slightly more faded than it had been the last time she’d seen it, but the photograph of girls in black leotards lined up along a ballet barre, their slippered feet pointed at identical angles, was forever seared in her memory. The Etudes II.

  She had to stop herself from automatically moving into a glissade. “Yes! That’s one of them.”

  Anya handed her the record. “If one of them is here, then surely there are more.”

  They sped up the search process, and in the next fifteen minutes, they’d gone through every crate and collected a stack of eleven albums, all of which Posy recognized. Not just with her eyes, but with her feet, her heart and her pointed toes.

  “I can’t believe it.” She gathered the pile in her arms. The worn edges of the old records were softer than felt. “Madame Sylvie’s records. All of them.”

  She was holding on to history.

  She thought of all the endless movements her body had made to the music in her arms and of the way she still sometimes heard Madame Sylvie’s rhythmic counting in her sleep. One, two, three, four, and up, two, three, four, and plié, two, three, four...

  Then she thought of the black satin ribbon in her pointe shoe when she’d danced Swan Lake, and a lump lodged in her throat.

  “They’re your records now,” Anya said.

  My records. The thought made her both happy and sad at the same time. She set them on the counter and fished through her purse for her wallet.

  Zoey glanced at the shelf full of CD players and old jam boxes. “Too bad there’s not a record player here for sale.”

  In her mind, Posy saw Liam turning his back, the golden glow of the fairy lights dancing on his hair, the fall of his soft flannel shirt as it stretched across the width of his shoulders. She saw him reaching for the arm of the record player, his hands as they lifted the vinyl from the spindle and replaced it with another.

  She could ask him to sell it to her. She could buy him another, nicer record player for the skating pond. But she wouldn’t. It seemed appropriate that there were people moving to its melody, dancing on the ice. What would she do with it, anyway? Her foot was nearly healed. She had a life to return to. A life a world away, where Madame Sylvie’s record player would sit silent, gathering dust.