Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Well, yeah, I want to. But to tell you the truth, I haven’t had a chance to do any Christmas shopping yet, and I could use a little extra money. I hate to dip into my college fund for presents if I don’t have to.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Jack assured her. “I’ve got plenty of work to catch up on. Maybe we could always meet this evening.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Sage asked.

  “Not at all.” The two of them didn’t need to spend twenty-four hours a day together. It was probably better to take their interactions in small doses while he was still adjusting to the idea of even having a daughter.

  Besides, he didn’t want Maura to think he planned to monopolize every moment with Sage while he was in Hope’s Crossing.

  “In that case,” Maura said, her features a little more relaxed, “I would love to have you work at the store today. We’ve been slammed the last few days, and I’m sure Ruth could use help restocking.”

  With that settled, they returned to their breakfast. He was happy to see Maura eat a few more bites and finish off the citrus slices that came with it. When breakfast was over, they wrangled for a moment over the bill, but he solved the issue by taking his credit card and the ticket to the cash register, leaving her to glower after him.

  “I’ll walk you over to the store,” he said to the two of them after signing the credit card receipt handed him by the snowboarding academic. “The only place I could find to park was in that alley behind your store.”

  “Parking is our big problem downtown, as you have probably figured out. The Downtown Merchants’ Alliance is talking about building a big parking structure a block to the west, if we can do it in an aesthetically pleasing way that fits in with the rest of the town.”

  After leaving the café, they walked up half a block to the light so they could cross the street. As he looked up the length of Main Street, he was struck again by the charm of the town, with electrified reproductions of historic gas lamps lining the street and brick-paved sidewalks instead of concrete. The town leaders seemed to have gone to a great deal of trouble to manage the growth in that pleasing way Maura was talking about that stayed true to its character, with none of the jumble of styles so many communities adopted by default.

  Beneath the wooden sign reading Dog-Eared Books & Brew, he held the door open for the two women and stepped inside the welcoming warmth to say goodbye to Sage.

  “What time do you think you’ll be free for dinner?”

  “I don’t know. Can you give me a second, though, before we figure out details? I’ve had to pee since before Logan brought our breakfast, and I’m not sure I can wait even five more minutes.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  She gave him a grateful smile and hurried to the back of the store, leaving him to watch with bemusement at her abrupt exit.

  Maura gave a short laugh. “That’s Sage for you. Sorry about that. When she was a little girl, I always had to remind her to take a minute and visit the bathroom. She tended to hold it until the very last second, because she didn’t want to bother wasting time with such inconsequential things when she could be creating a masterpiece skyscraper out of blocks or redesigning her Barbie house to make better use of the available space.”

  He could almost picture her, dark curls flying, green eyes earnest, that chin they shared set with determination. A hard kernel of regret seemed to be lodged somewhere in his chest. He had missed so much. Everything. Ballet recitals and bedtime stories and soccer games.

  This whole thing was so surreal. He had always told himself he didn’t want or need a family. His own childhood had been so tumultuous, marked by his mother’s mental chaos and Harry’s increasing impatience and frustration and his subsequent cold distance. In his mind, family was turmoil and pain.

  Jack had always just figured that since he didn’t have the desire—or the necessary skills—to be a father, he was better off just avoiding that eventuality altogether. That had been one of the things that had drawn him to Kari, her insistence that her career mattered too much for her to derail it with a side trip on the Mommy Track.

  Mere months into their marriage, she’d done a rapid about-face and started buying baby magazines and comparing crib specifications. Even before that, he’d known their marriage had been a mistake. She hated his travel and his long hours, she couldn’t stand his friends, she started drinking more than she ever had when they were dating.

  Bringing a child into the middle of something that was already so shaky would have been a disaster. They started counseling, but when he found out she had stopped taking her birth control pills despite his entreaties that they at least give the counseling a chance to work, he had started sleeping on the sofa in his office.

  She filed for divorce two weeks later and ended up married to another attorney in her office a month after the decree came down.

  Yeah, he had always figured he and kids wouldn’t be a good mix. But these little glimpses into Sage’s childhood filled him with poignant regret.

  Nothing he could do about that now. He realized that Maura was watching him warily and he forced himself to smile. “I like your place.”

  She tilted her head, studying him as if to gauge his sincerity, and he was struck again by her fragile beauty. With that sadness that never quite left her eyes, she made a man want to wrap his arms around her, tuck her up against his side and promise to take care of her forever.

  Not him, of course. He was long past his knight-in-shining-armor phase.

  “Thanks,” she finally said. “I like it too. It’s been a work in progress the last five or six years, but I think I’ve finally arranged things the way I like.”

  She untwisted her striped purple scarf and shrugged out of her coat before he had a chance to help her, then hung both on a rack nestled between ceiling-high shelves.

  “A bookstore and coffeehouse. That seems a far cry from your dreams of writing the great American novel.”

  She seemed surprised that he would remember those dreams. “Not that far. I still like to write, but I mostly dabble for my own enjoyment. I discovered I’m very happy surrounded by books written by other people—and the readers who love them.”

  “It’s a bit of a dying business, isn’t it?”

  She frowned and stopped to align an untidy shelf of paperback mysteries. “I don’t believe a passion for actual books you can hold in your hands will ever go away. We have an enormous children’s section, which is growing in popularity as parents come to realize that children need to turn real pages once in a while instead of merely flipping a finger across a screen. Our travel section is also very popular, as is the young adult fiction.”

  She shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve made sure people come to the store for more than just books, though it’s still the best place in town to find elusive titles. We’ve become a gathering spot for anyone who loves the written word. We have book groups and author signings, writer nights, even an evening set aside a couple times a month for singles.”

  “You’ve really built something impressive here.”

  She paused and looked embarrassed. “Sorry. You hit a hot button.”

  “I don’t mind. I admire passion in a woman.”

  In a person. That’s what he meant to say. In a person. Anyone. But it was too late to take the word back. Maura sent him a charged look and suddenly the bookstore felt over-warm. He had a random, completely unwelcome memory of the two of them wrapped together on a blanket up near Silver Lake, with the aspens whispering around them and the wind sighing in the pine trees.

  She cleared her throat and he thought he saw a slight flush on her cheeks, but he figured he must have been mistaken when she went on the offensive. “What is this whole business about sticking around town for a few weeks, Jack? You don’t want to be here. You hate Hope’s Crossing.”

  He didn’t want to take her on right now. He ought to just smile politely, offer some benign answer and head over to browse the bestseller shelf, but somehow he cou
ldn’t do that.

  “If I want to see my daughter—the daughter you didn’t tell me about, remember?—I’m stuck here, aren’t I?” he said quietly.

  “Not necessarily. Why can’t you just wait and visit Sage in Boulder when she returns to school? Or have her come visit you in San Francisco. You don’t have to be here.”

  “I’m not leaving. Not until after Christmas, anyway.”

  “You’re just doing this to ruin my holidays, aren’t you?”

  He could feel his temper fray, despite his efforts to hang on to the tattered edges. “What else? I stayed up all night trying to come up with ways to make you pay for keeping my daughter from me. Ruining your holidays seemed the perfect revenge for twenty years of glaring silence. That’s the kind of vindictive bastard I am, right?”

  “I have no idea,” she shot back. “How am I supposed to know what kind of bastard you are now?”

  “Insinuating I was a bastard twenty years ago to knock you up and leave town.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You must have thought it, though, a million times over the years.”

  That was the core of the anger that had simmered through him since that life-changing moment after his lecture. What she must have thought of him, how she must have hated him to keep this from him.

  For twenty years their time together had been a cherished memory, something he used to take out and relive when life seemed particularly discouraging.

  He had wondered about her many times over the years. His first love, something good and bright and beautiful to a young man who had needed that desperately.

  To know that she must have been cursing his name all that time for leaving her alone with unimaginable responsibility was a bitter pill.

  “You didn’t tell me, Maura. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

  “Not forget me, as if you couldn’t wait to walk away from everything we shared. As if I meant nothing to you!”

  As soon as she blurted out the words, she pressed a hand to her mouth as if horrified by them.

  “I loved you,” he murmured. “Believe whatever else you want about me, but I loved you, Maura.”

  “Yet you hated your father and Hope’s Crossing more.”

  “Maura,” he began, knowing he had no defense other than youth and idiocy and his own single-minded resolve to make something out of his life away from this place. Before he could figure out how to finish the sentence, chimes rang softly on her front door and a new customer came in.

  He saw the man out of his peripheral vision for only a fleeting instant, but something made him shift his head for a better look. Instantly, he wished he hadn’t. Did his father have a freaking tracker on him?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “IS THAT BOOK ON SPELUNKING here yet?” Harry Lange growled before he had even walked all the way through the doorway, as if every employee had been lined up inside merely waiting for him to make an entrance. “I could have had it a week ago if I had ordered the damn thing online.”

  His words were directed at Maura, Jack realized. Harry must have seen her when he walked inside. It took another beat for his father to recognize him, but Jack knew the instant he did. Harry’s jaw sagged and ruddy color leached from his aging features as if somebody had just slugged him in the gut.

  Maura looked from Harry to him and quickly stepped forward. “I’m not sure, Mr. Lange. I’ll have to ask Ruth. She’s the one who handles the special orders. If you can wait a few moments, I’ll see if I can find her.”

  Harry didn’t seem to have heard her. He continued to stare at Jack, mouth slack and his eyes awash with a hundred tangled emotions Jack didn’t want to see.

  So much for slipping into town and back out again without seeing his father. Twice in the space of an hour must be some kind of cosmic joke.

  The familiar raw fury for his father welled up, but now that he was confronted with the actual man instead of only memories, it seemed muted, somehow—as if the color and heat had bled from it as well.

  “J-Jackson?” Harry’s voice sounded strangled, as if he were choking on one of the little mints from the checkout at Dermot Caine’s café.

  “Harry.” The single word came out clipped, cold.

  “I…hadn’t heard you were in town.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” One he was quickly coming to regret.

  “I see. How long will you…” His voice trailed off, and Jack began to think maybe the pale cast to his features was from more than just surprise.

  “I’m still working that out.”

  For politeness’ sake, he should probably move closer to his father so they didn’t have to raise their voices to be heard a dozen feet apart, but he couldn’t seem to generate the necessary forward momentum. Lord knew, Harry wouldn’t be the one to budge. That much apparently hadn’t changed.

  Maura was finally the one to move first. She took a step forward. “Mr. Lange, are you all right?” she asked suddenly, taking another few steps.

  “I… No. Not really. Damn it.”

  His father lurched as if someone had struck him from behind. He knocked a hip against a display table of new releases and swept a hand out to steady himself, scattering books to the floor. Even so, he was unable to keep his balance. Jack could see him start to head to the floor, but he was too far away to reach him in time. Maura was closer, but even she couldn’t prevent Harry from toppling. A hard crack sounded above the bustle from the coffee bar as the side of his head made contact with the edge of the table before he slumped to the ground.

  “Mr. Lange!” Maura exclaimed, kneeling next to the prone figure.

  “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know. He was standing there one minute, then hit the ground the next. Mr. Lange!”

  She turned his father onto his back, and his aging features were ashen and still. Was he dead? Had Jack managed to knock him off just by showing up in town? He froze for a moment, aware of his own strange mix of emotions—shock and dismay and most surprising, a completely unexpected regret.

  “He’s unconscious!” Maura said. “Come on, Mr. Lange. Wake up.”

  “He hit the edge of the table pretty hard.”

  “Give me your coat.”

  “Why?”

  “Just give it to me, Jack!”

  He reluctantly handed over the custom-sewn leather jacket he had picked up during his time in Italy. She bunched it up and tucked it under Harry’s head. Even that bit of commotion didn’t make his father snap out of it.

  “Come on, Harry, this is stupid. Wake up.” His father’s eyelids fluttered a little at his voice, but his eyes didn’t open.

  If he had ever imagined a reunion with his father—which he absolutely hadn’t—he was pretty sure this wasn’t what he would have predicted, with his father sprawled out on the ground looking lifeless and ashen.

  “Harry!” he barked.

  That seemed to do the trick. Harry’s eyelids jerked a few times, and seconds later he finally opened his eyes fully. They were dazed and blank for a moment before they sharpened, his gaze fixed on Jack with shades of that same stunned disbelief. “What…happened?”

  Jack couldn’t seem to say anything, frozen in place by the years of bitterness and hatred he had fed and nurtured for this man.

  “You fell,” Maura finally answered.

  She tugged and pulled the jacket to a better position under the old man’s head and seemed unfazed when he batted away her hands.

  “Get away from me,” he snapped. “I just need to catch my breath.”

  She eased away, picking a cell phone out of her pocket. “Fine. You should know we charge extra for napping in the middle of the store.”

  “Smarty.”

  She gave him a tart look even as she started hitting buttons on her phone.

  “What are you doing? Put that away! I hope you don’t think I’m going to let you take a picture of me for all your girlfriends to cackle about.”

  Jack noted with concern t
hat, despite his protests, his father’s voice still sounded feeble and his features hadn’t lost that pallid cast.

  “I hadn’t planned to take a picture, no. But that’s a great idea.”

  “What are you doing, then?”

  “Calling nine-one-one. You need to go to the emergency room to be checked out.”

  If anything, that made Harry look even more horrified. “Forget it. I’m fine. I just lost my balance, that’s all.” He tried to scramble up, and Jack finally had to move forward to help Maura keep him in place.

  Harry gave a sharp intake of breath when Jack grabbed his arm and gazed at him with an expression he couldn’t decipher.

  “You passed out in my store,” Maura said sternly. “I’m not about to leave myself open to some future lawsuit where you claim negligence. I’m calling the paramedics. You can fight it out with them.”

  Harry jerked his gaze away from Jack to summon a halfhearted glower, but he subsided back against the cushion of his jacket. Really? He was going to give in without a fight? For the first time, Jack began to wonder if something was seriously wrong with Harry’s health.

  “This is just want you wanted, isn’t it?” Harry said bitterly. It took a moment for Jack to realize the words were directed at him. “It probably gives you no end of pleasure to come back after all these years and see some weak, pathetic old man on the floor at your feet.”

  Any concern and sympathy he might have briefly entertained for Harry dried up like the Mojave in August. “You’re not that old.”

  Harry frowned at him and gave Maura a nasty look in turn. “At least help me up. I’m fine. I don’t need to be lying on the damn floor. Help me to one of those chairs over there.”

  She looked undecided, then gazed around the crowd of curious customers that had begun to gather around.

  “If we do, will you promise to stay put instead of trying to juke around us and run out to avoid the EMTs?”

  “Very funny. I’m not running anywhere. Now help me up.”

  She sighed and reached for one of Harry’s arms, gesturing for Jack to take the other. He would have liked to ignore her. Hell, he would have liked to yank his eight-hundred-dollar Milano leather jacket out from under Harry’s head and make his own escape from Dog-Eared Books & Brew, but common decency—as well as a completely ridiculous desire not to look like a bigger ass to her than he already did—compelled him to step forward and grab Harry’s other arm.