As she left to take her call from Russ, she was aware of a heady excitement zinging through her veins and realized she was looking forward to the Haven Point Lights on the Lake Festival more than she had anything else in a very long time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THIS WASN’T A DATE and everybody had damn well better remember that.
Especially him.
Cole glowered as he pulled his pickup into Devin Shaw’s tidy driveway. She lived in a much bigger home than he would have expected for one person, a two-story cedar and rock house that seemed to fit in nicely with the surrounding pine and fir around the lakeshore.
“Wow. Devin lives right on the lake,” Jazmyn said from the back row of the crew cab, gazing at the house with admiration.
“She could go fishing right from her backyard!” Ty exclaimed.
“Probably,” Cole answered with a little smile. He and Ty had been talking about going fishing in the spring and it had become a bit of an obsession for the boy.
“Why don’t we live on the lake?” Jazmyn asked.
He sighed, wondering if she would ever be happy with her lot in life and how he could help her see she had it pretty good right now, despite the fumbling efforts of her father.
A few months ago, she was traipsing from crappy apartment to dingy trailer home with her mother and whatever dude Sharla was currently hooking up with. Now Jaz had a safe, secure home with her own bedroom in a lovely Rocky Mountains setting—yet she still wanted something different.
“We live on a ranch with horses and cows,” he explained. “They take up a lot of room, which I’m afraid you can’t find down here by the lake.”
Seeing this elegant house, with its gleaming windows and the sunroom on the lake side, seemed another glaring reminder that he and Dr. Devin Shaw were total opposites. They lived in different worlds. He was a rancher with manure on his boots more often than not; she was a physician who lived in a beautiful sprawling home on the lake.
The differences ran much deeper than that, of course. Her life was one of purpose and meaning, of helping to save lives. She had things figured out, while he was barely hanging on.
She wasn’t for him. Somehow they seemed to have developed a friendship of sorts, but that’s all it would ever be. He needed to keep that thought firmly in mind throughout this evening—that wasn’t a damn date!—and keep his hands to himself.
“Do you think she can go swimming, too, right from her backyard?” Ty asked in a breathless sort of voice.
“Don’t know why not.”
“Wow! She’s lucky!” He sounded as if that concept was the most amazing thing he could imagine.
“It would be too cold now, though, right, Dad?” Jazmyn said. “The lake would be freezing. Not like our hot spring.”
Our hot spring. It was the first time his daughter had ever claimed ownership of anything to do with the ranch. She had always acted as if her stay was completely temporary, as if her grandmother Trixie was going to swoop in any moment and take her away from the misery of living with him.
His heart gave a little tug and he decided to take that as an encouraging sign.
He cleared his throat. “Right. Our hot spring is a much more comfortable temperature. Even in July, that lake is cold, but it’s still fun. We’ll have to go this summer.”
“Okay,” Jazmyn said. “Maybe we can come swimming at Devin’s house.”
“You and Devin can go swimming and Dad and me will go fishing,” Ty suggested.
He didn’t have the heart to tell either of his children that by the time summer rolled around, Devin might have forgotten all about the rancher and his children she had taken pity on and helped out during the holidays.
This wasn’t a date, he reminded himself yet again, even though it felt suspiciously like one as he climbed out of his pickup truck and headed up the walk.
She opened the door before he reached it. “I saw your headlights. Yes, I’ve been anxiously waiting by the door for you. I told you, I adore the Lights on the Lake Festival.”
She was all bundled up, he saw, in a baby blue parka, a wool hat with a pom-pom on top and matching gloves and scarf, and she had several blankets over her arm as well as a backpack.
“What can I carry?” he asked. She handed over the blankets, which were still warm from her body heat.
“Isn’t it a glorious night?” she asked as they walked to the pickup truck. “We couldn’t have asked for better weather. Not too cold, not too snowy. Ideal boat parade weather.”
“Seems to me, ideal boat parade weather would be in the middle of July.”
She laughed. “Good point. You’re right. I guess we’re all a little crazy to find this so fun.”
He opened the door of the pickup and set the blankets in back by the kids, then gripped her elbow to help her up. She smelled delicious, he couldn’t help noticing, of flowers and strawberries and vanilla ice cream.
“Hi, guys,” she said to the kids in the backseat.
He heard them greet her with enthusiasm before he closed her door and walked around to the other side, reminding himself firmly one last time that this wasn’t a date. They were friends. That’s all.
“I like your house,” Jazmyn announced from the backseat as he climbed in.
“Thanks,” Devin said. “I like it, too. I should, I guess. I’ve lived in it most of my life, except when I was away at school.”
Cole glanced over. “Really? That’s your childhood home?”
She looked a little embarrassed in the stretched-out late-afternoon light. “Yes. I bought out my mother’s and McKenzie’s shares after my father died a few years ago. It was a good investment. Real estate around the lakeshore continues to climb in value as more people discover the area. Besides that, I like the style of the house. Yeah, it’s more than one person needs, but it works for me.”
“Do you have a dog?” Ty asked.
“No. I’m afraid not. I’m pretty busy. It wouldn’t be very fair to leave a dog alone all the time. Instead, I’ve got a couple of cats who do a very good job of keeping each other company.”
“I like cats, too,” Jazmyn said. “I’ve always wanted to have one of my very own.”
Something else he didn’t know about his daughter. Apparently she still had untapped dimensions she hadn’t shared with him. He knew she liked playing with the barn cats but she’d never said a word about wishing she had one of her own.
“I like cats, I guess,” Ty said. “But I like dogs better. They play more and they’re funny. Grandpa’s dog, Buster, is so cute. When we throw a ball for him, he catches it and brings it right back and he’s just a puppy!”
“Ty!” Jazmyn said the name as a warning. When he glanced in the rearview mirror, Cole saw she looked panic-stricken.
“What?” her brother asked.
“You’re not supposed to say that, remember?”
“Say what?”
As they were stopped at a stop sign, Cole continued gazing in the rearview mirror. He saw confusion and then nervous guilt cross his son’s features as he looked at the back of his father’s head. “Oh.”
Fury growled through him, the impotent anger he always experienced when his father’s name came up. Damn Stan anyway for coming back and making everything that much harder.
“When did you play with your grandfather and his dog?” Cole was pleased to hear his voice sounded calm and reasonable. He might be livid at his father but the children didn’t need the trickle-down from that.
Jazmyn waited a beat before answering. “Yesterday,” she said, her voice small. “When we walked up to the house from the bus stop, Buster was playing outside in the snow and he—Grandpa—was watching. Buster came right over to us and he was so cute and we played fetch for just a minute, then I remembered we weren’t supposed t
o talk to our grandpa,” she finished in a rush.
“Only, I don’t know why,” Ty said. “He’s nice. And so is Buster.”
The puppy might be nice but his father certainly wasn’t—or at least the version of him Cole had known. Maybe Stanford was trying to reinvent himself as some kindly old man who had a puppy and wanted a relationship with his grandchildren, but Cole wasn’t buying it. His father was self-absorbed and egotistical and only cared about his own momentary pleasures.
“Why are you so mad at him?” Jaz pressed when he said nothing.
“Did you have a big fight?” Ty asked.
Cole glanced across the truck cab at Devin and saw her watching him with curiosity on her lovely, serene features. He didn’t know what to say, to any of them. He hated when adults flaked off kids’ questions by telling them a situation was complex and difficult, but what else was a guy supposed to do when that was the damn truth?
“We didn’t really have a fight,” he finally said. “It’s a long story but...he wasn’t the best dad around. He made me and Aunt Tricia feel like we didn’t matter to him, like he didn’t love us as much as a dad should love his kids.”
His children fell silent, absorbing that. He didn’t dare look at Devin, though he could feel the weight of her watchful gaze.
“Grandma Trixie said you must not love us very much,” Jazmyn announced, “because you didn’t want us to live with you and you didn’t pay my mom enough to take care of us.”
He tightened his hands on the steering wheel at the devastating words from his eight-year-old daughter. Did Jaz believe the vitriol her grandmother loved to dish up about him? He had a feeling that probably wasn’t the worst of the things Sharla and her mother said about him.
He chose his words carefully, driven to defend himself without openly criticizing their grandmother.
“Maybe your grandma Trixie didn’t have the whole story, either. That happens sometimes. But you know I love you both more than anything, right?”
“You said you love us bigger than the mountains and the lake and the big blue sky,” Ty said with his sweet, open grin. Cole gazed at him in the mirror, awash with love for this kid he loved so much, who probably wasn’t even his.
“You know it, partner.”
Jaz didn’t say anything, deliberately turning to look out the window at the snow-covered scenery passing by. He sighed. He had no idea how to reach this difficult, contrary little girl. Sometimes he thought he was making progress with her, proving that he loved her and she was safe with him here at the ranch. Other times, he felt as if he was pounding his head against that windshield in front of him.
He couldn’t really blame her, either. She had spent eight years being poisoned against him by all the important people in her life. How was she supposed to trust him when her mother and grandmother had done their best to convince her he was a bastard?
Lost in his bleak thoughts, he felt a whisper of physical contact and glanced down to see Devin’s hand on his arm. She gave a comforting squeeze, which seemed to seep through all the warm layers of clothing he wore.
She couldn’t know what a disaster his marriage had turned into or the bigger mess that came out of his fiery divorce and subsequent custody battles. She only knew he needed solace. The simple gesture left a curious ache lodged right under his rib cage.
For the rest of the short drive to the long park that ran along the lakeshore in town, he didn’t want to move his arm, afraid to lose that tantalizing, comforting contact with her.
“Is this it? Are we there?” Ty asked.
“This is it,” Devin said cheerfully.
The park was crowded all along its length. He was lucky enough to find a parking space not too far away, and as they walked through the cold December night toward the festivities, he could see little glowing fires in barrels and families on lawn chairs and a busy section where vendor tents had been erected—exactly the sort of scene he had studiously avoided since he came to Haven Point.
He had kept to himself, for the most part, since his return. But while he might prefer cloistering himself away at the ranch with his horses and the dogs, that self-imposed isolation was no longer possible. His children needed this: the lights, the noise, the crowd, the fun.
He wanted them to build a home here, a life with him. In order to do that successfully, they needed community, connections. This sort of event was ideal for creating ties that would make them feel they belonged here.
“They have peppermint cotton candy!” Ty exclaimed. “Can I have some, Dad? Can I?”
That sounded like the most disgusting thing he could imagine but then he wasn’t a six-year-old boy.
“You can’t have one of everything that catches your eye. After we’ve been here awhile and you have the chance to see all the available treats, you can pick one thing, deal?”
“Aww,” he said, so dejectedly that Cole had to smile. Devin smiled as well and the two of them shared a quiet, amused moment over the boy’s dramatics. Despite the crowd and the noise, a subtle dangerous intimacy seemed to swirl and eddy around them.
“I know what I want already and I don’t need to see anything else,” Jazmyn announced, and they both jerked their gazes away.
“What’s that?” Devin asked.
“Hot kettle corn. It’s my favorite.”
“That does sound good,” Cole answered.
“No, it smells good,” Jaz said.
“And tastes even better,” her brother said with a giggle. “I want kettle corn, too.”
“Can anybody see the booth? We can grab some for the parade.”
“Great idea,” Devin said. She craned her neck to look. Cole found it first, at the far end of the concessions row.
As they walked toward it, Devin waved to just about everybody they passed and exchanged greetings with most of them. She seemed to know everyone and it became even more obvious that she was well liked in town.
He felt more than a few curious looks in his direction, people probably wondering either who he was or what the hell she was doing with a man like him.
As much as the kids needed this sort of thing, he didn’t.
The line for kettle corn was fairly long. The woman in front of them beamed when she spotted Devin and immediately launched into a soliloquy about some new medication Devin had prescribed and how much it had helped.
Devin listened with a patient smile as the woman went on and on. Just before they reached their turn to order, an elderly man approached them and started asking about a crick in his neck and a young mother with a baby in a sling interjected with a question about colic.
“Sorry,” Devin said after she finally extricated herself from the crowd and they grabbed their kettle corn bag.
“Does that happen everywhere you go?” he asked as they walked away from the booth.
She made a face. “It’s part of being a physician in a small town. I’m friends with many of my patients, which means they feel like they can talk to me wherever we happen to meet, not just in an exam room. Even at the grocery store, people still want to ask me questions about their arthritis or their backache. Usually I don’t mind, unless they come up to me in a restaurant and start talking about changes in their stool.”
He had to laugh. “I guess you have to draw a line somewhere.”
“Yes. That’s mine.” Her phone chimed and she pulled it out of her pocket, gazed at the text message, then thumbed a quick answer.
“My sister,” she said to him. “She’s saving spots for us near the bowery. The parade’s going to start in a few moments. Shall we start making our way over there?”
“Good idea. Kids, come on.”
They headed in that direction, stopping only long enough to buy a colorful light-up magic wand for Jazmyn, who insisted she would die if she didn’t have it, and a similar
ly outfitted plastic sword for Ty. He figured both of them would probably be broken by morning but they would be fun for a moonlit parade.
“There’s McKenzie,” Devin said when they reached the covered structure used for picnics and family reunions and the like.
She pointed to a slim, very pretty woman who looked vastly different from Devin. The young mayor of Haven Point had dark hair and eyes and a dusky complexion, very different from Devin’s creamy skin and auburn hair.
Cole recognized the man next to him. He and Ben Kilpatrick had gone to school together, back in the day, and had been friends of a sort.
“There you are!” McKenzie exclaimed, hugging her sister. “I was hoping you weren’t being called out to some kind of emergency.”
“It was a culinary emergency. A long line at the kettle corn booth.”
Jazmyn giggled and McKenzie smiled down at her. To Cole’s surprise, she hugged Jazmyn, then turned to hug Ty, too.
“Hey, kids! It’s great to see you again.”
When had she seen them? he wondered, then remembered Devin said the kids had gone to McKenzie’s store with her the day he had driven to Boise.
“Guess what’s selling like hotcakes over at the Haven Point Helping Hands booth?” McKenzie asked them.
“What?” Ty asked, with a wide-eyed look.
“The ornaments with the ribbons you tied, Jazmyn, and the scented rice bags you helped us make, Mr. Ty. They are both very popular items. We’re making a ton of money for the library and we never would have been able to do it without your help.”
Both of his children beamed with pride. This. He wanted his kids to feel as if they were part of something bigger than themselves, and this was exactly the sort of thing he had in mind.
If he wanted his kids to feel as if they belonged, he had to make an effort to go outside his comfort zone and be more social than he’d been in the years since he returned to Haven Point. Whether he liked it or not.
McKenzie Shaw finally turned her attention to him. “You must be Cole.”
“Yes. Nice to meet you, Mayor.” He extended a hand and after a few beats, she shook it, though he didn’t miss the hard glint in her eyes.
Evergreen Springs Page 19