Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book

by Tracey Alvarez

  “I was so scared,” she said in a choked whisper. “So scared.”

  “You and me both,” His hand splayed across her shoulder and back. A knock at the door had them breaking apart as Caroline came in holding Lacey’s hand.

  “Mummy.” Lacey pulled away from Caroline and raced across the room.

  Jared caught her and lifted her on the bed. “Careful of Winsome’s hands, Lacey.”

  “Hi pumpkin.” Winsome devoured her child with hungry eyes, needing to see for herself, that she was okay. “That’s a neat hairdo.”

  Lacey’s long hair had been trimmed back very short, but it would grow again, her face was pink but there were no blisters. The spectre that the girl was burned finally faded.

  Lacey snuggled into Winsome’s neck. “I was so frightened.”

  “So was I kiddo.” Winsome hugged her close, and then held her away and looked into her child’s eyes. “But we worked together and we got out.” She laid a bandaged hand on a tear-streaked cheek. “You did good finding that door handle.”

  “I thought you were stuck in that window.” Lacey’s grin wobbled but Winsome saw a glimpse of the exuberant child emerge. “Then you plopped out like a cork out of a bottle.”

  Winsome gave a shaky chuckle. It had been a very tight fit.

  “You both did good.” Jared’s voice was husky as he looked at them, his heart in his eyes.

  “You saved us, Daddy.” Lacey threw herself at Jared, clinging to his neck. “You got us out of that tree.”

  Winsome looked at Jared and saw the agony in his eyes.

  “Daddy climbed up and got us. He carried you over his shoulder and got us away from the fire.” Lacey put her other arm around Winsome’s neck. “You were so still.”

  The three of them held each other and Winsome felt tears wet her cheeks. The ache around her heart intensified. It could have been so very different.

  “What about our house? Where will we live?” Lacey pulled away a little and looked from one parent to the other.

  “The house is gone, Lacey.” Jared didn’t gloss over the gravity of the destruction. “But we’ll build a new one. In the meantime Nana Caroline has asked us to stay with her, but first we’re going to spend a week with Quentin.”

  A house might be replaceable but that homestead had witnessed the lives of so many Graingers until one woman’s spiteful revenge had destroyed a piece of their history. Would Jared ever recover from the loss?

  “Thank God you managed to get out of that house.” Caroline gripped Winsome’s shoulder her eyes damp as she put an overnight bag on the end of the bed. “I’ve put together a change of clothes for you.”

  “Thank you.” Winsome’s smile was tremulous as the implications sank in. “Everything has gone?”

  Jared nodded, his face set. His eyes held a lost, blank look that sent a frisson of apprehension slithering through her.

  “Here’s Quentin,” he said standing and shaking hands with his brother as he walked in the door. “He’s come to take us home.”

  Quentin too, looked haggard as he pulled Jared into a hug.

  A nurse followed him and shooed the others out of the room, then helped Winsome to dress, insisting she leave in a wheelchair.

  With Jared pushing, they all went out to Quentin’s truck. Lacey sat in the front and Jared sat with Winsome in the back. He held her close and resting against him, she felt safe for the first time since Gaelen had confronted her with a gun.

  At Levelly Lodge Catherine met them, her smile warm, her face pale and drawn, brown eyes filled with a now familiar horror.

  “Thank God you’re both safe.” Catherine leaned into the back seat, pulled Winsome into a rough hug and she laid her head on the other woman’s shoulder fighting tears.

  Finally she pulled back.

  Catherine wiped tears off her cheeks. “I’ve prepared rooms for you and have gathered a few essentials to see you over the next few days.”

  “Thank you.” Winsome’s smile was wobbly and tears overflowed. The stark realisation that they’d lost absolutely everything finally began to sink in. She watched Jared talking to Quentin. His brother nodded and then both men talked to Lacey.

  “Do you want to ride Duke?” Quentin held out his hand.

  Lacey’s eyes lit up but she clung to Jared, not ready to leave his side.

  “Mummy and I have to go into town. Why not stay here and have a ride?” Jared hunkered down to her level.

  Lacey was on the brink of tears, clinging to him, not ready to leave the security of her parents.

  “You’ll get to see the new colt,” Quentin coaxed the tearful child. “He hasn’t got a name yet, would you like to give him one?”

  That intrigued, Lacey enough to let go of Jared’s hand and take her uncle’s. “You’d let me give him a name?”

  “Yep.” Quentin’s smile was reassuring. “Just imagine when that little colt’s a champion, you can tell everyone you named him.”

  “I can call him anything I want?”

  “You can call him whatever name you like, Lacey Grainger,” Quentin assured her as they walked off towards the stables. “That little colt’s going to be a winner.”

  Jared turned to Catherine and gave her a hug. “Winsome and I are going out to the farm. We’ll be back later.”

  “There’s no rush.” She lifted her hands and scrubbed them down her cheeks. “Look after Winsome, she still looks fragile.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let her out of my sight.” Jared helped Winsome from the back seat to the front. They watched Quentin and Lacey walk hand in hand toward the stables before they drove off.

  “Will she be okay?”

  “Quentin will take great care of her,” Jared said, giving her a sober look. “He’s just so thankful he can take her riding and let her name his new colt.”

  “He’s game.” Winsome gave him a shaky smile. “Lacey dreams up some wonderful names. Where are we going?”

  Jared laid a hand on her arm. “Home,” he said grimly. “I want to see what’s left. Are you up to it?”

  Was she up to seeing the aftermath of the fire?

  “Yes.” Her smile was wan but determined. She had done with running from anything, no matter how gruelling. “I’d sooner get it over with.”

  She prayed she was up to it. The terror was too close.

  She’d thought she would never see Jared again. Overwhelmed, Winsome leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes for the short time it took them to reach Totara Park. She opened them as the truck slowed to turn in the driveway and she caught her first glimpse of the blackened ruins. Although she was expecting it, seeing the heap of burnt debris made her breath catch in her throat.

  It looked so obscene, so out of place.

  Jared parked the truck on the circular drive and sat staring through the windscreen his hands looped over the steering wheel.

  Winsome laid a bandaged hand on his shoulder and he turned towards her. The devastation in his eyes made her heart ache and she knew what she had to do.

  No more evasions, no more secrets.

  “Up there on that roof,” she said in a shaky whisper. “I thought I’d never see you again. There’s something about staring death in the eye that clarifies your thinking.”

  Jared made an involuntary movement as if he would take her in his arms but she waved a bandaged hand at him to leave her or she would never get this said.

  “And I knew if I died, my biggest regret would be not telling you I loved you,” she said in a stark whisper. “And not telling you how much I regret not trusting your love. I always thought I wasn’t worthy of your love, you see.”

  “Ah sweetheart.” He lifted a hand and smoothed away a tear that tumbled onto her cheek and the expression in his eyes threatened to break her heart.

  “It was unforgivable not to tell you what was happening with Gaelen and not tell you how Matthew died. He was your son, too.” Tears clogged her chest but Winsome knew she had to get it all said. “It
was your right to know the truth. Quentin told me so, over and over again.

  “I could have found some way of contacting you after I left here. Someway to tell you what had happened to Matthew. Any number of people, especially Clinton, would have helped me but I was a coward.” Tears overflowed and ran down her pale cheeks. “I’m so damn sorry.”

  Jared nodded and his eyes shone with the sheen of tears.

  “As I watched you clambering across that roof I felt so utterly helpless,” he said gruffly lifting a hand and wiping another tear off her cheek with his thumb.

  “And I realised that’s how you must have felt when you lived here before. Helpless.” He shook his head, his eyes filled with sorrow. “I expected too much from you. I knew but didn’t understand the implications of how you were raised.

  “I expected you to know that families talked out their problems, to know you could protest when things were wrong. I didn’t realise that you’d never learned you had the right to speak up about anything that upset you or made you unhappy. How could you know that when you’d never been part of a family?” He laid a gentle hand on her cheek his expression very sober. “And Gaelen exploited your helplessness.”

  Winsome had already realised this for herself. She hadn’t had a clue how to deal with Gaelen or that she even had the right to complain. She’d grown up being told what to do and when to do it. And when Gaelen was so cruel she’d just endured it because that was all she knew.

  Winsome nodded. “And she expected me to be that same helpless person, when I returned.”

  “I never expected this.” Jared waved a hand at the ruins of the homestead. “And yet I’m not surprised. You accused me of being naïve and I must be. How stupid of me to have expected her to just fade out of our lives.”

  “No,” she contradicted with a desperate fierceness, afraid that once again Gaelen’s actions would threaten their marriage. “You are honest and honourable. How could you begin to suspect someone of plotting such hideous revenge?”

  “She was my mother.” He shook his head, opened the truck door, got out and walked across to the blackened ruins of a once lovely, historic home.

  And therein lay the heart of the matter Winsome realised as she watched him kick apart a heap of charred cinders with barely controlled anger.

  Gaelen was his mother, a mother whose actions he found impossible to comprehend.

  Winsome managed to open the door, wincing as the pressure made her realise how sore her hands were beneath the bandages. She slid to the ground and walked across to where he was poking about in the ruins.

  “There’s not much left.”

  “No.” He slanted her a sober look. “The fire had too much of hold a by the time the fire brigade arrived.”

  “You alerted them?”

  “With my cell-phone. I arrived just as Gaelen went careening off down the road. The house was well ablaze and I saw you and Lacey racing across the roof.” He walked across and put a hand on the gnarled trunk of the old oak. “I never tried going inside.”

  The image of Jared braving that inferno trying to find them was enough to make Winsome feel faint. “You climbed the tree?”

  He nodded his eyes filled with remembered horror. “I knew you couldn’t make it all the way down carrying Lacey.” He shook his head looking her up and down. “God knows how you carried her as far as you did.”

  “I failed Matthew, Jared,” Winsome said simply. “I wasn’t going to fail Lacey.”

  A glimmer of emotion warmed his eyes as he looked at her and then at the charred tree trunk.

  “You are one gutsy woman,” he said lifting his hands and letting them settle on her shoulders, as light as thistle down. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid in my life.”

  “You think I wasn’t scared?” Winsome managed a shaky smile. “But there was no way I was going to perish or let Lacey perish if I could help it.”

  Jared winced and pulled her into his arms. He cradled her against him and she felt the shudder that swept through his strong body. For long moments they stayed like that each drawing comfort from the other, survivors of an unspeakable nightmare.

  “What made you come back?” she asked at length, turning in his arms.

  “Fly.” Jared shook his head. “She went demented, raced around in circles and barked like crazy. Then she ran toward the house, raced back to me and grabbed my trousers, pulling me towards home.”

  “I was hoping you would read my mind.” Winsome gave a shiver as she remembered the desperate, silent calls she’d sent to him. That was something she would think about later, now there were more pressing problems. “What will we do now?”

  “Rebuild.”

  Something about the way he said it made a shiver of apprehension slide down her spine. What was going through his mind?

  “In the same place?”

  He pulled away from her and stood his hands thrust in his pockets as he stared around, that lost vacant look creeping back into his eyes. He scuffed a booted foot at a heap of blackened debris, the acrid smell of destruction was all around them.

  She walked behind him, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her face against his back, offering him what comfort she could. He was so stiff, so tense, it was as if every muscle and sinew was stretched to breaking point. Her heart ached for him.

  “No,” he said fiercely. “I’m going to sell Totara Park.”

  So totally unexpected were his words, it took several moments for her to comprehend their meaning. Winsome pulled away, darting in the front of him and looking at his face.

  Sell Totara Park?

  “You can’t.” The vehement words burst from her. “This has been Grainger land for well over a hundred years.”

  He looked at her and she flinched at the bitterness and…and hatred she saw in his amber eyes.

  “Then I’d say the time for change is well overdue.” His lips thinned to a hard unforgiving line. His hands settled on her shoulders, kneading the flesh with gentle fingertips.

  “You can’t sell Totara Park, Jared,” she whispered horrified.

  “Can’t I?” His grip on her shoulders tightened. “This land has cost me too much. Matthew’s life, my marriage and twice now, it’s almost cost me you and Lacey. We need to start over. Someplace where you and my children will be safe.”

  With deepening shock, she realised he was serious. He had decided that this was the best for his family. And with grim intent he would follow it through.

  It was, she supposed, a natural reaction, generated in the aftermath of trauma.

  But did he realise he could never outrun the memories? She’d tried hard enough and had never succeeded.

  “Walking away from Grainger land isn’t going to magically erase the past, Jared,” she said laying a bandaged hand on his tense arm.

  “But in a fresh place there won’t be the constant reminders.”

  He turned to look at her and she shivered at the torment she saw in his eyes.

  “I never realised what a high price this land has demanded. It’s always come first with me,” he shook his head, “I’ve never admitted that before, I could never see it. My damn blindness almost cost you and Lacey your lives. No land, whether it’s been in the family for hundreds of years, or two, is worth that kind of sacrifice.”

  A lump clogged Winsome’s throat making speech impossible.

  Jared thought this was what it would take to make her happy.

  He would sell the land he loved. The land that had nurtured him, made him into the man he was. He would sacrifice his heritage because he thought, after this last vicious act of Gaelen’s, she could never be happy here.

  She stared at him through a mist of tears as she grappled with the enormous sacrifice he was prepared to make for her. This was love in action.

  “Last night as I watched over you, I realised the toll my commitment to this land has demanded of you. Your life has been blighted by a wretched, unhappy marriage. You’ve been abused by a vindictive wom
an, had your son murdered.” He shook his head as if he, too, found it too much to comprehend. “And the new life you’d made was snatched from you on the arbitrary whim of a man obsessed with the continuation of the family name.”

  Startled, Winsome stared at him, her jaw slackening and her eyes betraying her shock.

  “You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head. She hadn’t known and yet it made perfect sense.

  Dad was working to his own agenda. Jared’s assertion flashed into her mind and suddenly, she understood. When push came to shove Harvey was prepared to overlook her imperfect bloodlines to her usefulness in producing a male heir for the Grainger dynasty.

  He had regarded her as little better than a broodmare. All couched in kindness of course.

  With a growing anger she realised that this was what his visits and support had been about. She had been his backup to ensure the continuation of the Grainger name. Winsome was, after all, a proven breeder and Harvey Grainger was a stockman to the bone. Had Jared shown any inclination to divorce her and remarry then she and her child would have been side-lined out of his life, culled with as little remorse as an animal.

  “I thought you realised what he was about.” Jared watched the shock and anger cross her expressive face. “He was always at me to divorce you.”

  “So when he made it impossible for me not to return…” she looked at Jared, devastation in her eyes. “You thought I was a party to it?”

  “You seemed to be in his confidence, so it seemed likely,” he said spreading his hands wide, his eyes filled with remorse. “But when you returned and I realised how little you’d changed, I knew you would never agree to something that devious, so Dad had to have acted on his own.”

  “So when he banished Gaelen…”

  “He knew about Matthew, knew Lacey and Gaelen couldn’t live in the same house. It was a practical decision. She couldn’t contest his will. Dad only left me what he himself, had inherited.”

  “That’s…that’s obscene,” she said on a choked breath.

  “That about sums it up.” He turned and looked out across the charred remains of the homestead. “But he hadn’t counted on Gaelen’s need for vengeance, or that it would force you to fight for your life again.”