Currant Creek Valley

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Sam! You’re just the man I wanted to see,” Brodie Thorne exclaimed.

  He stood with an older man with a shock of silver hair and a very well-cut suit.

  “Hey, Brodie. What’s up?”

  When he was first starting out in the construction business, he might have been nervous when the guy cutting the checks told him he wanted to talk, but he knew he was doing a good job at Brazen and had no concerns on that score.

  “Nothing, really. I just wanted you to meet Harry Lange. Harry, this is the man we were talking about at dinner. Sam Delgado.”

  The name rang a bell but he wasn’t sure why. He tried to figure it out as he shook the older man’s hand. “A pleasure.”

  “The pleasure is mine. It’s rare I get the chance to meet a genuine hero.”

  He glanced at Brodie, who shrugged with an apologetic smile. He hadn’t told Brodie much about his time in the Rangers but he fully expected the man had vetted him before bringing him to Hope’s Crossing to finish the project. He would have heard things, just as he probably knew all about Sam’s role in his father-in-law’s downfall.

  He shifted and pretended to misunderstand Harry’s reference. “I’m not sure I’d call it heroic, but you’re right. A good finish carpenter is tough to find these days.”

  The other man gave a rusty sort of laugh at that, earning him a surprised look from Brodie.

  “Full of yourself, are you?” he said.

  “About the things that matter in my life now,” he answered.

  “I like a man who doesn’t live in the past. How are you enjoying our little corner of paradise, Mr. Delgado?”

  He thought of Alex and this tangle of anticipation churning through him. “Everyone has been very welcoming.”

  “Good. That’s what we like to hear. I understand you’re thinking of moving your construction business up this way.”

  He glanced at Brodie, wondering just how much the two of them had talked about him over dinner and why his name had come up. This was the part he disliked about being an independent contractor, having to carry on polite conversations with people who might someday want to hire him. Especially when right now he wanted to be somewhere else.

  “Not just thinking about it,” he answered. “The wheels are already in motion. I’m committed. I’ll be checking out houses tomorrow, as a matter of fact.”

  Not that it was any of the man’s business. He wasn’t sure if he liked Harry Lange. The man held himself with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. He was trying to figure out how to politely excuse himself from the conversation when Brodie spoke.

  “Sam, Harry is the major shareholder and founder of the Silver Strike Resort Group,” he said.

  Was that supposed to impress him? He waited until he knew a man’s character before he cared much about his accomplishments and how much was in his bank account. “Looks like that’s working out well for you. It’s been nice talking with you but I need to go. I just made arrangements to meet up for a late-night hike with a beautiful blonde who said if I was late, she wouldn’t wait around for me.”

  Harry laughed. “Let me guess. Alexandra McKnight.”

  He stared. “How did you know?”

  “Beautiful, blonde, smart-mouthed. That’s Alex. Besides that, I saw her talking to you at my restaurant. I like you, Mr. Delgado. I trust Brodie—and Alexandra, for that matter—to recognize quality, and I think you’ll be a good addition to this town. I’ve got an opportunity that might interest you and I’d like to talk to you about it. I don’t have much time to waste on this one. When you’re done with the real estate agent, come and see me at my home office.”

  He rattled off an address, just assuming Sam would snatch it out of the air and remember it.

  “I’m sorry. That’s not convenient for me.”

  Both men looked at him, surprise on their features.

  “How do you know until you hear what I have to say?”

  “I meant meeting Saturday won’t work for me. I’m picking up my son in the morning so he can spend a couple days with me. He’s staying with my brother and his wife in Denver.”

  “Bring him along. I like kids. I’ve got a couple grandchildren myself and I’m about to gain a whole passel of step-grandchildren.”

  “Is that right?” Brodie asked, sounding surprised. “I hadn’t heard you were making things official. You didn’t say a word, all through dinner. When’s the big day?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll show up whenever Mary Ella tells me.”

  Mary Ella. He knew one woman named Mary Ella, had just met her that morning, in fact. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Harry Lange was about to marry Alexandra’s mother.

  He wasn’t sure if that changed his ambivalence about the man at all but he had liked her mother. If Harry had convinced Mary Ella to marry him, Sam had to be inclined to think more favorably about him.

  “If you don’t mind me bringing my son along, fine. I can be there tomorrow, late afternoon.”

  “Great. See you then. Now I suggest you get a move on, son. Alex is a woman of her word.”

  He had already figured out she would be. He nodded to both men and hurried to his pickup.

  At the motel, he quickly changed out of slacks to cargo pants and suitable hiking boots. Back in his pickup, he was keying in the street address she had given him to his GPS when his cell phone rang.

  Maybe she was backing out. Surprised by the fierceness of his disappointment, he reached for his phone and was happy on several levels when he saw his brother’s home phone number, the one Ethan used to call him.

  “Hi, Dad!” his son chirped when he answered.

  He suddenly missed Ethan with a fierce ache. “I thought you would be sleeping. I tried to call earlier but Aunt Cheri said you were still at Luke’s party. How was it?”

  If not for the huge birthday celebration thrown by one of Ethan’s classmates—the party he had been hearing about for weeks—Sam would have driven down to pick up Ethan that night to bring him back with him.

  “It was really fun! Luke has a swimming pool and a slide and a trampoline. I was very careful to follow all the rules. Only one person at a time is permitted to jump on the trampoline, Luke’s mom said so. It’s a safety issue. I waited to jump until everyone else was done and having cake.”

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about having a son afraid to do anything he wasn’t supposed to. Pretty ironic payback for a guy who had broken as many rules as he could, once upon a time.

  “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow,” he said.

  “What time do you think you’ll be here?” Ethan asked. “I want to set the alarm on my watch.”

  He laughed, even as he had another qualm. Since Kelli died, Ethan had been obsessed with setting alarms, keeping to schedules, probably out of some need to control the world around him that had turned so confusing and scary.

  He wanted Ethan to be a regular kid, breaking rules, taking chances, missing the bus once in a while. Embracing life.

  “I should be there around ten, then we’ll come back here and have two whole days together. You’re really going to like Hope’s Crossing, I promise. Remember how nice it was when we came that day last month? They’ve got a park here with a cool climbing wall and a rocket you can play on inside. In the winter, we can go sledding and maybe you can learn to snowboard.”

  “I don’t know about that. My friend William said his brother broke his leg snowboarding.”

  Further evidence of Ethan’s fears. “It can happen sometimes, but it’s a pretty fun sport if you know what you’re doing.”

  “I guess.”

  “We can talk about it. We have a few more months to go before it snows again. Meantime, get some rest and I’ll be there after breakfast tomorrow. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, Eth. More than anything.”

  They hung up and he stared out at the night for a long moment. His son was his priority. He had to be, especially during the
transition phase while they both tried to adjust to their changing circumstances.

  Ethan had lost so much. First his mother, then the relationship he had once had with his grandparents. Now he was losing something else important—his home for the past eight months, the cousins he loved and the aunt and uncle who had stepped up to help Sam.

  Was it any wonder his son wanted to control as much as he could in his life? It was up to Sam to give him the most stable, supportive environment he could when they finally settled into life here in Hope’s Crossing.

  He was somber as he followed the GPS directions to the trailhead. As much as he wanted to see Alex again, he almost wished he had never gone to her restaurant earlier—and certainly that he hadn’t pushed so hard for an opportunity to spend more time with her.

  He liked her, probably too much. When he was with Alexandra, he could forget about the weight of responsibility dragging at him like that seventy-five-pound pack he’d been thinking about earlier—the constant worry that he wouldn’t be able to give his son what he needed, that he wasn’t enough.

  He needed to be focusing on Ethan and creating the best life he could for the two of them, not remembering that moonlit kiss the other night.

  He would enjoy his impromptu hike with Alex tonight and spend the time trying to ease things back to a friendly footing, he decided. He didn’t see what other choice he had.

  Still, when he drove into the trailhead parking area and his headlights picked up the sight of her waiting on a bench overlooking the town, a brown furry dog at her feet, he was aware of a fierce burst of something warm and bright he hadn’t known in a long time. It felt suspiciously like happiness.

  Leo barked a soft greeting when Sam parked and headed toward them. He reached down to pet the dog at the same moment he leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek in greeting.

  “You smell delicious,” he said, then could have kicked himself for the spontaneous words. That sounded very much like a come-on, after he had just told himself to keep things friendly.

  “I probably smell like a kitchen, since I’ve been cooking all day.”

  “You know us men and our stomachs.”

  She laughed. “Yes, but I also know you can’t possibly be hungry. You just had a divine meal, which I happened to have fixed myself.”

  “Men don’t always have to be hungry to want to eat,” he pointed out.

  “Are you talking about food or sex?”

  So much for casual friendliness. He shrugged. “Either. Both. Does it matter?”

  She shook her head but he saw she was fighting a smile. “Come on. Let’s work off some of that...hunger...on the trail.”

  She took off, the dog trotting ahead of her on a leash. He didn’t even have time to hand her a flashlight. She didn’t really need one—the moon was huge and full and lit up the terrain with a pale, unearthly glow.

  The trail wasn’t steep but the climb was steady. This part of the route was also only wide enough for one across so they didn’t have much chance to talk.

  He didn’t mind. It was probably better that way since he couldn’t seem to keep his big mouth shut. Despite all his good intentions, everything he had said to her since he pulled up to the trailhead had been provocative.

  After maybe fifteen minutes of hiking, she paused at an area where the trail widened and the trees thinned, presenting a vivid view of the glimmering lights of the valley below. She pulled a water bottle out of the deep pocket of her jacket. Even as she drank, she didn’t release her hold on the dog.

  “You’re not letting him off the leash?”

  “Not yet. He’s obviously a runner or he wouldn’t have wandered down Main Street the other night. I don’t want to take the chance of him losing his way, not with all the pitfalls up here. Bear, cougars, coyotes. Moose.”

  “Moose?”

  She flashed him a look. “For your information, a bull moose could take out a Jeep if he had enough mad on.”

  “Yet you have no problem hiking up here in the dark.”

  “I’m tougher than I look, soldier. Besides, wouldn’t you have been sorry to miss that view?” She gestured below them.

  They stood, her shoulder brushing his arm, and admired the lights of the valley spread out below them.

  “Beautiful,” he answered. Lame as it seemed, he wasn’t only talking about the vista. In the moonlight, she seemed otherworldly, too, glowing with life.

  “I don’t know how anybody could ever want to leave this place.”

  She spoke almost reverently and he gave her a careful look. “You haven’t ever wanted to go anywhere?”

  “Been there, done that,” she said, settling onto a slab of granite that looked as if it had been carved out of the mountainside.

  “Oh?”

  She was quiet for a long moment, the only sound the wind moaning in the tops of the pines and rustling the new leaves of aspen trees around them.

  “After college, I lived for two years in Europe while I was in cooking school,” she finally said.

  Wow. He hadn’t expected that. “What part of Europe?”

  “France first and then Italy.”

  She spoke with a reluctance, her tone guarded, and he had to wonder what she wasn’t saying. “You didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Parts of it, I really loved. The architecture, the art, the food. I mean, how can you not love all that fabulous food?”

  “But you didn’t stay.”

  “I planned to, but...I finally decided it wasn’t the life for me.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated. “I missed my family too much.”

  Even through his envy at all she had, he sensed that wasn’t the whole story.

  “Don’t take them for granted. Your family, I mean,” he said when she didn’t seem willing to add anything else. “If you get along with them, consider yourself lucky.”

  “I do. Believe me I do. You mentioned a brother. What about your parents?”

  “Don’t have any. It’s just the two of us.”

  “You had to have had them once. It’s kind of a biological imperative.”

  “Technically, yeah. Our dad, if you want to call him that, took off back to Colombia when Nicky was only a few months old. We never heard from him again.”

  “You don’t know what happened to him?”

  He shrugged. “I barely remember him, if you want the truth. We didn’t miss him much after he left. I tried to find him years ago when I was stationed in that part of the world. I’m not sure why. Stupid curiosity, maybe. Or maybe just to tell him off for abandoning his kids.”

  “You couldn’t find him?”

  “Not a trace. The trail went cold.”

  Judging by the little he knew of the man, he had probably come to some violent end while trying to screw somebody out of money or drugs, but he decided not to mention that.

  “What about your mother?”

  She wasn’t going to stop until she heard the whole grim truth, he sensed. He rarely talked about his parents but something about the night and the woman seemed to wrest the words out.

  “She wasn’t really much of a mother. She was in the life, you know? Drugs, alcohol. The whole thing. Nicky and I were in and out of foster care from the time I was ten until I turned eighteen. Not always together, though I tried.”

  “What happened when you were eighteen?”

  He remembered that time, both the determination and the fear. “I found a compassionate judge who gave me custody of him.”

  “How old was your brother?”

  “Fifteen. The biggest smart-ass you could ever meet when he was a kid, but now he’s a hotshot attorney with a great wife and a couple kids. He just got a job in Belgium working for an international company there.”

  He wasn’t sure how, but he and Nick had somehow made it work. He had done odd jobs for two years, until his brother graduated high school at seventeen, when Sam had enlisted. With his army wages, he had managed to live on nothing, saving every penny to hel
p Nicky through school.

  “You sound proud of him.”

  “I am. It’s amazing that he came out of what we did and became somebody.”

  “So did you.”

  He shifted, uncomfortable with her words. Before he could find some way to deflect the conversation—and before he quite figured out what she intended—she leaned in and kissed him, her mouth warm and soft against his.

  He sensed the kiss was completely spontaneous, that she hadn’t given it much thought ahead of time and probably wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t acted on impulse, but he wasn’t about to argue.

  She was here, touching him, kissing him, and that was the only thing he cared about.

  After that first delicate brush of her mouth against his, as soft and sweet as butterfly wings, she started to ease away, as if she believed he would be content with that little taste after he had savored so much more than that the other day.

  Knowing only that he couldn’t let her go yet, he grasped her hands in his and tugged her closer. Her fingers fluttered in his like that butterfly but after a moment’s hesitation, she opened them and twined them together with his, all while her scent—vanilla and spices and delicious female—made his head spin.

  So much for good intentions. He forgot all the reasons this wasn’t wise. With the sparkle of stars overhead, the sprawl of lights from the town below and the cold mountain air that smelled sweetly of spring wrapping around them, the moment was perfect. He didn’t want it to end.

  He kissed her, tasted her, until they were both breathing hard, until his body ached, until he wanted nothing so much as to find a soft patch of grass somewhere and explore every warm, curvy inch of her....

  She was the first to pull away and he realized she was practically on his lap. He wanted her to stay exactly there.

  “You are one fine kisser, Sam Delgado.”

  He smiled against her mouth. “I’m good at a lot of things.”

  Her body trembled, ever so slightly, but before he could stop her, she slid out of his lap and gave a light jump to the ground, reaching for the leash she had dropped in the midst of their kiss. The dog hadn’t gone far; he was curled up on the ground looking far more comfortable than either of them right now.