Protecting the Single Mom

by Catherine Lanigan

  “No, buddy. I’m not,” he replied, casting a doubtful look at Cate. “I grabbed a few things at Mrs. Beabots’s for you,” Trent said. “I’ll go back to get more once we get the tree up...for Danny.”

  “Yes,” she said, putting her keys in the shell-shaped dish on the table near the door. “I’ll help you with the tree.”

  “No need,” he said. “It’s small.” He slipped out the door without looking at her.

  Cate took off her coat and hung it neatly in the front closet.

  “Where do you want it?” Trent asked, standing just outside the front door, waiting for permission as if he’d never crossed the threshold before.

  “In the corner by the fireplace.”

  “Just like Mrs. Beabots. You two have a lot in common,” he said with a wan smile, walking past her.

  She watched as he stood the tree up and moved a box of firewood and starters out of the way.

  “That’s where we put it every year, and I’ve always thought it looked so homey...”

  He turned, and his face was filled with determination as he took three strides toward her. He reached out to hold her shoulders. “Cate. I can’t stand another minute of being in the same room with you and not telling you...”

  “Tell me what?” She’d tilted her head to take in his handsome face. His eyes spilled over with all the sparkling emotion she’d hoped to see. It was love in all its glory. She was back at that fork. Hovering. Panting with anticipation, praying that the road before her would be filled with joy.

  “I love—I love you,” he said with a hitch. “But that’s not enough.”

  “Trent—”

  He placed two fingers on her lips and pulled her closer with his other arm. “Don’t say anything. I owe you so much, and none of it has to do with what happened today. Although, I hope you can forgive me for Danny. I miscalculated the flood of people backstage and Danny got away so quickly. Before I knew it, Le Grande had him... I’m so sorry.” He paused. “But that’s not really what I want to say.”

  She took his fingers from her lips and kissed them. She curled her hand around his, protectively. “Tell me, then.”

  “Because of you, I want... I mean, I need to try to put the past behind me. For good. I’m willing to do anything, Cate. Therapy. Counseling. I’ve done some research, and there are a number of new therapies out there for PTSD. Virtual reality treatments. Cognitive restructuring is supposed to help my sense of bad memories. I’ve already started with some stress inoculation training. I saw it online, and it’s amazing. In just one session it’s helped me to look at my past in a much healthier way.” He took a deep breath. “Cate, I want you to know I’ve contacted a psychologist in Chicago. Richard Schmitz says the CPD highly recommends him. But all this is to say that I’ve realized, Cate, I now have a purpose for wanting to be healed. And that purpose is you.”

  Awe for the magnitude of the love she had for him nearly buckled her knees. Nearly. She sagged against him, putting her arms around his massive chest and placing her cheek against his heart. She’d opened the golden door—the door to her own heart—and walked into her new life.

  “I’ll help you in every way I can. Attitude and determination are so important.”

  He lifted her chin with his fingers. “So is love. Everything I want in life is right here with you and Danny. From the little Christmas tree to the prayers you say with Danny at bedtime. I don’t think I can spend another day of my life without you in it. You and Danny have come to mean everything to me. Tell me you forgive me,” he said pleadingly.

  “Oh, Trent. There’s nothing to forgive. I knew what I was getting into. I was afraid, but deep down, I think I always believed you were the only person who could stop Brad—for good. And I was right. You did protect us. You saved Danny.”

  He touched her nose with his as he rested his forehead against hers. “Now you’re saving me.”

  “I’m saving us, Trent. We’ll do this together. I promise.”

  “Then will you make me another promise?” he asked.

  Cate couldn’t help the smile and giggle. She felt light and free as she never had. People were wrong when they said love tied a person down. She felt as if she were filled with helium and could float to the stars. “Getting greedy, are we?” she teased and kissed him softly.

  “Promise me you’ll never stop doing that, for one. And for another, marry me, Cate. Marry me and let me be part of your life.”

  Cate eased her arms around his neck. This time when she kissed him she held nothing back. She let him know that hers was a heart meant for loving. Releasing him was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  “Well?” he asked, staring at her with anxiety all over his face.

  “What?” She blinked.

  He stood stock-still, not even taking a breath.

  She gasped. “Didn’t I say yes?”

  “No.” He laughed. “You didn’t.”

  “Yes! Yes.”

  “Thank God.” He exhaled and crushed her in his arms.

  Effervescent happiness filled Cate. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Danny had tiptoed down the hall and watched them.

  “I told you, Mom, this is the best Christmas of all.”

  Danny raced into their open arms.

  Trent kissed Danny’s cheek and beamed at Cate. “We are the Christmas miracle I never thought could happen.”

  Cate kissed them both, believing for the first time there was joy in the world.

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story by Catherine Lanigan, check out

  SOPHIE’S PATH,

  FEAR OF FALLING and

  KATIA’S PROMISE.

  And come back to Indian Lake in Lanigan’s next book, coming in July 2017 from Harlequin Heartwarming! Available at harlequin.com.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from LOVE, SPECIAL DELIVERY by Melinda Curtis.

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  Love, Special Delivery

  by Melinda Curtis

  CHAPTER ONE

  “TELL ME THIS isn’t where we’re going to live. It’s
too...too...icky.”

  “What’s wrong?” Mandy Zapien’s heart had been clinging to a position in her throat for the last hour of the drive to Harmony Valley. It clawed a degree higher as she pushed past her teenage sister to get a good look inside the house they’d left seven years earlier.

  Same dark chocolate shag. Same tan-and-navy plaid couch under the front picture window. Same oak side table with Grandma’s sewing basket next to it and the fake ficus in a plastic planter Mandy had Bedazzled when she was ten. Nothing was new or out of place.

  Mandy’s heart slid back into her stress-strapped chest.

  Icky? It was home and it was vacant. The choke hold on her emotions loosened. “It’s perfect.” Just the way Grandpa, Mandy and Olivia had left it after Grandma died. A testament to the life Grandma and Grandpa had built together before lost jobs had forced them to move. Just the way Grandpa had wanted it to be when he returned after retirement.

  “Seriously?” Olivia darted around Mandy, holding her cell phone and panning around the room, videotaping. “I opened the door and there was a nuclear explosion of dust.” Her yellow flip-flops snapped as she made her way into the kitchen. Her pale bare legs looked long because her jean shorts were too short.

  Mandy had considered asking Olivia to change this morning and throw away the shorts, or at the very least roll down the thin cuffs, but as the guardian of a seventeen-year-old, she had to pick her battles and not break eggs. Today, moving day, was not the time to upset her little sister.

  Mandy moved to the fireplace, pressing her hand against the solid red brick. It was as sturdy as their grandparents had once been. Would they approve of what she was doing? “I have good memories of this place.”

  “Really? I don’t remember much about Harmony Valley.” Olivia’s voice bounced off bare walls.

  The dust. The emptiness. The relief.

  Mandy breathed deeply. Their grandparents may be dead, but they were going to be all right. It didn’t matter if her sister didn’t remember life here. Olivia claimed not to recall the tinsel-covered Christmas tree their grandparents put in the corner every year. Or the photos they’d staged of the girls on the hearth on Christmas morning wearing the annual holiday sweaters Grandma had knitted.

  “Hey, the fridge is running.”

  “Is it...” Mandy’s heart crept back into her throat. “Is it empty?” Mandy hurried into the kitchen in time to see Olivia pry the sticky refrigerator door open.

  “Ew. That’s disgusting.” Olivia stopped filming and covered her nose.

  Mandy peeked in. What once might have been a small basket of strawberries (based on the fermented smell) was now a glob of mold. That hadn’t happened overnight. Mandy shut the door, more convinced than ever that no one had lived here recently. More hopeful that no one would visit while they stayed a few weeks.

  Olivia and her flip-flops snapped their way down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Hey, I recognize our room.” She disappeared inside. “Why did we leave the bunk beds?”

  “Why?” Mandy leaned against the door frame. There were more good memories in this room than bad. “Because I’d slept on top for ten years, and at twenty-five I wasn’t going to do that anymore. And don’t get any ideas.” At thirty-two she was too old to be sleeping on a bunk. “These are out. We’re bringing in your bed and you’re sleeping in here alone.” She’d take her grandparents’ room. “No arguments.”

  “It’s freaky how you can read my mind.” But Olivia looked happy, which was a welcome change since they’d had to leave her friends and support group behind.

  “Do you remember this?” Mandy closed the door, shutting them inside. They had time for a little reminiscing before the day’s summer heat made it too hot to unload their truck. “This is where Grandma tracked our height.” On the white frame of a tall slim mirror on the back of the door.

  The two crowded into the reflection. Mandy, the tallest of the pair, looking too thin and too young with her slight smile and thick dark hair in messy ponytails. Her red tank was as baggy as the circles under her eyes. She’d been worried about her new job, about the move, about the bills, the house, Olivia, about...well...everything.

  Olivia’s frame was deceptively solid, as if she’d put on extra adolescent weight preparing for a growth spurt. Her soft brown hair was only an inch long, making her brown eyes and wide mouth seem more prominent.

  “Was I ever that short?” Olivia leaned closer to the door, peering at a mark about three feet off the floor.

  “You were a petite thing.” Mandy nudged her aside and opened the door, leading the way to the master bedroom. “You should feel lucky you didn’t get my height or my shoe size.”

  Neither one of them opened the second bedroom door.

  Grandma’s wide bureau sat in the master bedroom in front of a wall with maroon-striped velvet wallpaper. The solid cherry dresser had a white marble top and a large framed mirror attached to the back.

  “Grandpa and I couldn’t lift this, so we left it when we moved.” Mandy opened a top drawer. It was filled with her grandmother’s colorful polyester scarves. “He left most of her things.” And then she said with forced casualness, “Do you remember Grandma’s wedding ring?”

  “Only because you told me it was made of brass.” Olivia opened the closet. “Her clothes are still here. They smell of lavender.” While Mandy fingered her grandmother’s scarves, Olivia moved clothes across the rod, scraping wire hangers over wood. “There aren’t very many clothes in here.”

  Dismay made a special delivery to Mandy’s gut with a one-two punch. “That can’t be.” Grandma had never walked out of a clothing store without a purchase. She’d believed in retail therapy. When they’d moved after her death, Grandma’s closet had been jammed full of pants, blouses and dresses, many with the tags still on.

  But the clothes with price tags were gone. Mandy rummaged through the mostly empty bureau. Only the scarf drawer seemed untouched.

  An old memory lurched from her past, like a zombie coming to life after a long restless sleep.

  Grandma’s voice, pitched low. “If you need money, Teri, ask. Don’t go searching through my drawers.”

  “I was just admiring your scarves.” Mandy’s mother slid the drawer closed, looking like a model in a short, clingy black cocktail dress and black heels more appropriate for a hotel bar than Harmony Valley. “They’re so pretty.”

  Neither one of them acknowledged eight-year-old Mandy lingering in the hallway, eavesdropping as she held on to the hope that Mom wasn’t going to leave again.

  “Save that tone for your father. You hate those scarves.” Her grandmother’s voice wasn’t sweet. It didn’t comfort, not the way it did when she talked to Mandy. “Those scarves remind you of my cancer. They taunt you because I didn’t die.”

  Mandy had stumbled back in the hallway and then ran into her room. It wasn’t until the door was closed and she’d burrowed under the covers that she’d realized her mother was laughing.

  “Do you think...?” Olivia came to stand near Mandy, unable to complete her question.

  It didn’t matter. Mandy knew what her sister had been thinking. They both stared at the closed door across the hall. Grandpa had left the house to their mother, a woman who didn’t value roots or generosity or family. “If Mom stayed here, it was a long time ago.” The dust. The strawberries in the fridge. The drawer full of untouched scarves. “You know how Mom is. She comes for a very brief time and then goes away for a lot longer.”

  Still, neither one of them moved toward their mother’s room. Neither one seemed to want to know how long it’d been since Teri Zapien had been here.

  “I want to see her.” Olivia’s words sounded like they came from a young girl lost on a once-familiar playground.

  “She might show up.” Mandy hoped not.

  Their mother was no good
at keeping secrets, especially ones that would hurt Olivia.

  * * *

  “KITTENS?” CAPTAIN BEN LIBBY drove Harmony Valley’s fire truck around the corner toward the crowded town square. “We’re taking the engine out for the first time for kittens?”

  “It’s not just kittens.” From the passenger seat, his father, Fire Chief Keith Libby, pointed to the large, sweeping oak tree in the middle of the square and the gathering crowd. “There’s a boy up there, too.”

  Sure enough. There was a flash of red hair and knobby knees between the branches.

  Dad’s eyesight was still sharp even if the rest of his body wasn’t in its prime.

  “Kids seldom need rescuing from trees.” Ben’s godchild came to mind. Seven-year-old stoic Hannah would never find herself in such a predicament.

  Dad scoffed. “Need I remind you of a boy who fell out of a tree and broke both wrists?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” Ten-year-old Ben had been pretending to battle a blazing high-rise. That’s what third-generation firefighters in the making did—pretend to battle blazes. Unfortunately, his feet had tangled in the garden hose and ladder rungs, sending him tumbling to the ground. He’d had a healthy dislike of ladders ever since.

  “Give Harmony Valley a chance, son.” Dad laid his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t grow up here like I did, but I didn’t ask you to come with me.”

  “No. That request came from Mom.”

  Decades of sleep-depriving forty-eight-hour shifts and the inhalation of too much toxic smoke in the busy Oakland, California, fire department had taken their toll on his father. Dad’s weakened heart and lungs made the fifty-five-year-old move like the octogenarians who made up the majority of Harmony Valley’s population. Breathing had become a daily struggle. He’d be deadweight on a fire crew in a busy fire station, a danger to himself, those under his command and those in need of rescue. Ben had put his firefighting career on hold to help his father reopen the rural fire department for the ten months his old man had left until retirement. Reaching full retirement meant a 25 percent bigger stipend each month.