He couldn’t argue with her, yet tension followed them into the kitchen where the kids had finished making the pasta and were setting the table.
Harper stopped in front of a new painting leaning against the end of one counter. Even Cole could see it was beautiful.
“Who did this one?” Harper asked.
“I did.” Nervousness shimmered in Skylar’s uncertain eyes, and the hands she shoved into her back jeans pockets trembled.
The painting showed colorful, sunset-painted mountains and, silhouetted in the foreground, a couple embracing and sharing a kiss. For a moment it took him aback, filling him with fear that he and Harper had put something inappropriate in the girl’s imagination. But the picture was a perfect study of beauty and innocence. The unique way it grew out of a simple black-and-white drawing gave it a sense of something being discovered.
Harper turned. “It’s gorgeous, Sky. I’m really proud of you.”
“It’s okay?”
“Far more than okay. It’s—”
The “Imperial March” from Star Wars rang through the kitchen, followed immediately by a sharp intake of breath from Harper.
Cole stiffened. “What?”
“Mia.”
“Wait. She’s Darth Vader on your phone?” He grinned.
“It’s not funny.” Color leached from her cheeks as her anxiety rose. “She wouldn’t call if something wasn’t up.”
“It’s okay, honey,” he said, sobering dutifully. “Do you want me to answer?”
“No. No, I need to.”
She picked up the phone, hesitated one last second and then slid her finger across the screen.
“Hello? Mia?” They all listened. “What? When?”
It was impossible at first to tell what kind of news she’d gotten. Only her eyes gave anything away—they shone like deep dark pools of shiny brown paint. So slowly they barely noticed it happening, she broke into a grin. “Okay. Okay. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
She ended the call and stared at them all for a few seconds. Then, as if she hadn’t had an angry word with him in her life, she threw herself into Cole’s arms. He held her as if they were alone in the woods again.
“Joely’s awake.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I WISH WE could stay for a few more days.”
Harper accepted Lily’s giant hug and squeezed her back. The kids’ supplies and overnight bags now filled the back of Cole’s car, and the three were ready to climb in. Harper wished they could stay longer, too. It had been a weekend successful beyond her wildest dreams.
“Would you do it again sometime?” she asked.
“Anytime,” Lily replied.
“I wish this was a class. Or a camp,” Skylar said. As far as Harper could tell, she’d been the most affected by the weekend. “Everyone who wants to draw should come and have you teach them.”
She followed Lily’s example and threw her arms around Harper’s shoulders.
“That’s sweet of you,” Harper said. “But you guys did all the work.”
“I got a lot out of what you told us about perspective.” Nate smiled at Harper. “You gave us good things to work on.”
“I’m so glad.” Harper couldn’t stop a swelling of pride. “And you all told me you know what you’re turning in tomorrow for the exhibition. I’d say you accomplished what you came to do.”
She’d almost considered calling all their parents and requesting another day or two to work, but it was time to go.
There was Cole and the conflicted emotions he evoked. There was a fear of pushing Melanie a little too far. And, most importantly, there was Joely.
Beautiful, broken Joely, who’d awoken and, according to all reports today, was pleasing the doctors with her improvement. She hadn’t been fully coherent the night before, when Harper had left the kids with Cole to go visit her, but seeing her moving and responding had been as good as seeing her fully recovered. And the weight now gone from Harper’s shoulders had turned today into a brilliant gift. Even her anger at Cole had dulled to annoyance.
Now he circled the front of his car and surveyed the kids and Harper.
“Everyone got what you brought?” he asked. “I don’t get back here too often, so it might take a while to retrieve anything you forgot.”
“We went through the house pretty well, didn’t we?” Harper asked.
The kids all nodded.
“Hop in then,” Cole said.
Harper climbed into the front passenger seat, buckled the seatbelt and settled back for the ten minute drive. When they were underway, she started at a nudge from Cole’s hand against hers. When she relaxed her fingers, he grasped them and squeezed. For a moment she resented how easily he ignored and glossed over their problems. Then the shivers of excitement from his touch trumped her grouchiness, and she clasped his hand in return.
“Successful weekend?” he asked.
“A miraculous weekend.”
“It was fun. Right guys?” he called, and received another chorus of yeses, filled with a lot more enthusiasm than teens usually showed.
“You going to see your sister when we get back?” he asked.
“I’m planning to.”
“Would it annoy you if I tagged along?”
“No.” The question surprised her. “Of course not.”
“You forgot in the wake of the good news how ticked off at me you are.”
So he did remember.
The idea of resuming the oil conversation sent weariness flooding through her. She was sick of the subject, sick at the thought of Mountain Pacific getting its hands on her property, and sick of fearing she and Cole would forever be on opposite sides of the issue. She tried telling herself the whole argument was not important. That in light of Joely’s recovery, and in return for her family being safe again, she could find any business decision acceptable.
But in order to believe all that, she had to ignore a constantly growing ache in her stomach.
“I’d never forget. I’m totally angry with you.”
“Oh, good, I was beginning to worry.”
As they dropped the teens off one by one, Harper wished her words were true. She was annoyed that Cole refused to take her side, but she wanted to be incensed. True fury would make her life much easier. She could chalk the fling with Cole up to out-of-whack emotions, spend her last weeks here, and go back to Chicago with no encumbrances. Her sisters could work out whatever they liked with Paradise and the oil company.
But there was no fury, and a piece of her heart railed at giving up her share of Paradise. An even tinier piece of her heart understood that Cole was only protecting his interests the way she was protecting hers. At least he was actively trying to solve his problems. She was only throwing up roadblocks.
THAT NIGHT JUBILATION shouldn’t have been such a huge part of the gathering in Joely’s room. On the surface, things still looked too serious for celebration. Mother had experienced a setback and developed a fever from a mild infection. Joely still slept 90 percent of the time, and spoke mostly incoherently when she did awaken. Her sleep, however, was natural rather than coma-induced. Mia promised their mother’s condition was almost to be expected. The prognosis for both Crockett patients was better than it had been since they’d been admitted. How could there not be celebration?
Kelly, now at the end of her visit and jubilant that she’d been here for a miracle, broke more than one hospital rule by sneaking Champagne into the rooms. Not even Mia complained when Kelly rubbed a drop of the sparkling wine onto Joely’s lips, and everyone watched her tongue emerge slowly to make a careful circuit around her mouth. They cheered at her thin smile.
“You children are disruptive and undisciplined,” her mother said when Harper surreptitiously offered her a quarter inch of Champagne in a tiny paper cup. “The staff will kick us all out.”
Harper bent to hug her tightly. “Oh, Mama, if only they would.”
By the time they’d emptied the bottle of sparkling
wine, nobody had drunk enough to be inebriated, yet they all giggled like curbside winos. Harper doubted the staff was blind to their breach in the rules, but she figured everyone was equally relieved at the good news.
For the first time since the accident, they were all asked to leave overnight. Joely and Bella would sleep better if they weren’t worried about someone trying to be comfortable in a bedside chair. Nobody objected.
“We’ll continue the party at home!” Mia waved to Harper and Cole as she ducked into their mother’s car with Kelly.
The green Forester rolled out of the parking lot before Harper and Cole had reached his Rover. She climbed in beside him filled with relief and exhaustion.
“Party on, huh?” Cole asked. “It’s been a while since the Crockett girls have thrown a wild bash. Mom’s away, so her kittens can play. And on a Sunday night.” He clucked with mock disapproval.
“Ugh.” She laughed as she leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Partying sounds like a lot of work. Besides, I was never part of those illegal bashes.”
He nearly choked on his own snort. “Good one, Harpo.”
“I was the quiet, artistic one. Remember?”
“Your quiet was deceptive. When you weren’t talking or drawing you were figuring people out. You’re still that way.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I used to think I was such a great judge of people, but I don’t anymore. My wild ways after I left home killed that ability.”
“I know I teased you about partying, but I can’t imagine you were that wild.”
Maybe she’d had just enough Champagne to loosen her tongue too far. She didn’t want to go near this subject, and yet her mouth opened and the truth spilled out.
“You’re wrong. I did every single thing short of getting pregnant that we good Crockett girls had been taught never to do.”
“Sex and degradation from the best-behaved sister of the six. Got it.” He chuckled again.
She didn’t reply. If that was the Harper Crockett he remembered and still compared her to, he was sadly mistaken. Her cheeks stung. She’d never wanted Cole to know how much she’d rebelled after leaving home. Or that her conduct during that rebellion was the real reason she’d made such infrequent visits home over the years.
“Believe me, I’d rather you live in your fantasy world,” she said.
He reached for her hand. “You’re telling me you went a little crazy and experimented with things?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“So? Do you think the rest of us didn’t do the same?” He squeezed her hand. “I had my share of passed-out nights.”
“In a jail cell?”
Oh, Lord, what was making her do this now, after such a great day?
He turned his head in the dim car interior and stared. “Okay, this is interesting.”
“More than once, in fact. And it’s not interesting—it’s mortifying. The first time, it was one of the many men I let try to prove to me I was desirable and worth loving who’d talked me into supplementing my pot—bad enough where I came from—with some old-fashioned uppers. To this day I don’t know what I took over the course of the time I was with him. It was only by the grace of God that he was a small-time dope dealer—no heroine, no meth. Twice he had to bail me out when I was at parties without him and passed out with other friends.
“Thank God, too, I was old enough that my parents didn’t need to get the phone call from jail. The last time I got picked up, it was for, quote, returning a wallet, end quote to one of this guy’s friends. It was filled with cocaine. I absolutely did not know it, but it took some fancy tap-dancing with a court-appointed lawyer to get out of that with thirty days and a year of parole. At least I never saw that guy again.”
She loosened her hand, fully expecting him to drop it. He clamped it tighter.
“You went through a rough patch. You did some dumb things. You got out of it.”
“I wish it had been that straightforward.” She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “Damn, Cole, don’t make me tell you the rest.”
“Oh, you bet I’m going to. In for a penny . . . ”
She laid her head back against the seat and fought with herself. Cole waited silently and she loved him for that. Finally she straightened. What choice did she have? She’d started this herself. And even though she’d only ever told her story to counselors, this telling made her ugly past seem slightly less horrifying than it was in her head.
“Well, I guess you haven’t kicked me out of the car yet,” she said.
“I’m not going to.”
“Fine. I didn’t know how to make good choices anymore. I went through several more boyfriends, and while none of them was a drug dealer, the crowds we hung with definitely knew how to party. And knew how to pull the wool over a parole officer’s eyes. I was a quick study. Mind you, I was in school, too. Art school—something I supposedly loved. And I totally screwed it up. No quick study there. I failed class after class. Only passed the actual hands-on labs. It was after two years of this that I got kicked out. Not flunked out—literally expelled.”
“That explains why I heard you’d dropped out of college,” he said, perfectly calmly.
“That’s about the only kind thing my dad did for me in the whole mess. Not spread the truth.”
“He found out?”
“He was paying for school. He had to find out. And believe me, it did not go down prettily with Sam Crockett. I never could count all the times he said ‘I told you so.’ And, of course, Dad paying for college was a thing of the past. No second chances. I could never afford to go back. But, he and Mom did keep their promise to not tell what really happened. So, aren’t you lucky? You’re one of maybe five people who know how close I came to permanent loser-hood.”
She pulled her hand from his this time. No she hadn’t killed anyone, but it was humiliating all the same to be the only imperfect Crockett girl.
Cole retrieved her hand again. “Tell me the good part now,” he said. “How you didn’t give up. How you got back to being stunning, wonderful Harper—the one who’s sitting here with me.”
“Stunning and wonderful? Wow.” She laughed a little ruefully. “Six weeks of rehab, a bunch of counseling, and Tristan Carmichael.”
“You met Tristan in rehab?”
“No. He taught an art class I took once I was out. Tris was the first to tell me I was talented enough to make it big. We had a six-week-long, I guess you’d call it affair. By that time, though, I was done with meaningless relationships, and there was no sexual attraction between us. There was an artistic one, though. We’ve been friends for four years. He’s the big brother and in some ways the loving father figure I never had. He turned my life around.”
That was it.
She felt fifty pounds lighter even though the story hadn’t come out as tragic as it had been while inside. And here Cole sat, still driving, still squeezing her hand.
“I have officially stopped detesting Tristan Carmichael.”
“About time. He’s never been a threat to you.”
He remained so quiet she panicked briefly. They neared Paradise’s driveway, and he kneaded her fingers together thoughtfully.
“Cole?”
“I’m trying to decide if I heard what you said correctly. Tristan’s not a threat to me. Does that mean I’m in a position where someone could be a threat? Are you telling me I have a chance to be your fella?”
He grinned at the road ahead of him. Harper’s heart soared. “You got a chance to be my fella when you didn’t sing ‘Beauty School Dropout’ from Grease after you heard my story.”
His laughter floated through the car, rich and reassuring. “You’re kidding.”
“Not. Two truly mean girls in rehab. They got disciplined. But to this day I can’t stand that movie.”
He said nothing, just turned into the driveway, but to her surprise, he drove straight past the house and continued to the barn. No lights shon
e from any of the buildings. Cole turned off the engine and opened his door. Seconds later he opened hers, too. She unclipped her seatbelt.
“Wheeler lost a shoe, I guess,” he said. “Bjorn will put it on in the morning, but he’s in because they don’t want him lame tomorrow. I said I’d check on him.”
He flicked on the light in the barn. Most of the horses were still in the pasture. They wouldn’t start coming in at night until the snow flew. Wheeler nickered as the light caught his bright white blaze.
“He looks fine.” Harper reached the horse and stroked his neck.
“Yeah, she does.”
Cole wasn’t looking at the gelding. He grasped Harper’s shoulders from behind, spun her in her tracks and pushed her gently to the stall door next to Wheeler.
“You don’t need to relive all that stuff you told me anymore, Harpo.” The words touched her one at a time, hot, sweet-scented breaths, earnest and adamant. “You have me. And I think you’re brave and smart. You fell and you got up. It made you kind and empathetic and too ready to deny yourself. Stop worrying about everybody and believe you deserve your life.”
It was exactly what she’d tried to tell herself the first night at his house by the pool table.
He claimed her mouth, and familiar pangs of desire erased any thoughts of speech or resistance. She wrapped his neck with her arms and pressed into his body, taking his tongue hungrily into her mouth and twisting her head to get closer.
They kissed. They kissed longer. They parted and then pushed back together. Teeth scraped lips, lips sought cheeks, chins, and earlobes.
Heat blazed into the deepest feminine part of her and pulsed, begging for the touch of his body against hers. She pulled away.
“I want this. I decided that during our retreat. I know I have to get past all my hang-ups.”
“You know none of them matter to me, don’t you?” he said.
“It matters to me a lot what you think. What everybody thinks.”
“What about what you think?”
“I’m still figuring that out. I still can’t believe I told you everything.”
“Harper, people have done much worse.”
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