by Emily March
“Why not?”
He dragged his hand down his bristled jaw and yawned once more. The sound shook Hope from her stupor. “I’d better get these little guys settled.”
“Need any help carrying them?”
“I’m good. Thanks.” Hope continued toward the door, awkwardly searching for something to say before settling on a simple “Welcome to Eternity Springs, Coach Romano.”
In an instant, he went from looking like a Roman god to an angry Mafia don. “Call me Lucca. Just plain Lucca.”
She sucked in a breath. There was anger, and yet there was such pain in this man, too. She understood pain. She sympathized with it.
Gentling her tone, she said, “I’m Hope, just plain Lucca. You can call me Hope.”
FOUR
As early morning sunlight sparkled like diamonds on the surface of Hummingbird Lake, Zach Turner saw his wife and mother off on a two-day shopping trip to Denver with a hug and kiss and a caution to drive carefully. He waited until they’d turned off Reflection Point Road and disappeared from sight to make a fist pump in the air. Today was his day off and no one had claims upon his time. He loved Savannah to distraction, and he considered married life pure bliss. Getting to know his birth mother and siblings and having them as part of his daily life enriched his world. But his bachelor and sans-family days hadn’t ended all that long ago, and while he’d never admit it aloud, sometimes he missed the freedom that came with being alone.
Whistling beneath his breath, he walked toward his garage—dubbed his “toy closet” by Savannah—and opened the door. Standing in the threshold, he debated his choices. What did he want to do today? Ride his bike? Take a cruise on his motorcycle? Grab his fishing tackle and head up to the Taylor River? Maybe he should load up his climbing gear and give Storm Mountain a go. The possibilities were endless and invigorating … until the sound of an approaching vehicle made him tense.
He recognized the peculiar ping in the engine of one of his department’s Range Rovers. Why would Gabi drive out to Reflection Point today? Had there been an emergency, the office would have called. Anything short of an emergency, well, days off were sacrosanct.
He walked out to meet the truck, wondering if her visit was deputy related or sister related or both.
Gabi parked her Range Rover and approached him wearing a tired smile. The dark circles beneath her eyes made him frown. “What’s up?”
“I know it’s your day off and this won’t take long, but once I made the decision, I knew I needed to go ahead and tell you.”
Zach didn’t like the sound of that. “What decision?”
Gabi sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m giving my two-weeks’ notice. I’m leaving the department.”
He searched her eyes, so similar to his own, and spied the worry. She was fearful of his reaction, he realized. He wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d suspected for some time that she hadn’t been happy. While this was definitely a sheriff’s-deputy moment, the brother spoke to his sister and said, “Well, that sucks for me. Is it my coffee? You’ve finally had all you can stand?”
Her smile wobbled and a frown creased her brow. “Admitting this makes me feel like such a loser, but Zach, I don’t want to carry a gun anymore.”
She swallowed hard and blinked back tears, and Zach opened his arms to her. “C’mere.”
“No. I can’t.” She held up her hands, palms out, and took a step backward. “If I let you hug me, then I’ll cry, and that will be the cherry on top.”
“Cherries are good for you,” Zach responded, ignoring her protest as he pulled her into his arms. “They’re fruit and you are the farthest thing from a loser out there, Gabriella. You gave me my life.”
When old enemies attempted to murder Savannah the previous summer, Gabi had shot and killed a woman seconds after that woman had shot and damn near killed Zach. His sister’s first aid and clear thinking had saved him from bleeding out on the floor.
Now she sputtered a little as she tried not to sob against his shoulder. “That’s the problem. I’m so thankful I was there to back you up, and I’m proud that I saved you, but the thought of having to draw my gun again … to use it … gives me the creeps. I could do it if I had to—I know that—but the fact is that I walk around with a little ball of dread in my gut all the time, even here in Eternity Springs where the crime rate is next to nothing. I don’t want to live this way, Zach.”
“Then you shouldn’t.”
“That’s what my counselor said, but this is my career. I wanted to be a cop, and the bottom line is that I can’t cut it. That makes me feel lousy.”
“That’s bull,” Zach fired back. “The bottom line is that you did your job when it counted most.”
“But that’s before the little ball of dread. I can’t be counted on to be there the next time. I don’t trust myself.”
Zach let out a snort of derision. He’d taken a life in the line of duty before, so he could relate to what she was feeling, but he also knew his sister. He stepped back and held her upper arms, waiting until she met his gaze to say, “Well, that’s just silly. I understand leaving if you’re not happy. That’s no way to go through life. But don’t do it because you don’t believe in yourself, Gabi. There’s not a doubt in my mind that you wouldn’t perform under fire or in any sort of emergency. Frankly, if I had any doubt at all, I wouldn’t have put you back on the job.”
She let out a long sigh. “I wish I could be as certain. But even if I were, I don’t think I’d want to stay. Something has changed in me since the shooting, Zach. It makes me sad, but the uniform doesn’t suit me.”
“Tell that to all the male tourists who get whiplash watching you stroll around town.”
“I said it didn’t suit me, not that it didn’t look good on me.” She sniffed pridefully, then grinned for an instant before becoming serious once more. “I feel like I’m at a crossroads. It’s time for me to turn in a different direction.”
A thought occurred to Zach, and his heart gave a little lurch. “Will you stay in Eternity Springs?”
“Definitely. I’m going to ask Mom if I can work with her at the B&B. She’s going to need help whether she’ll admit it or not.”
“True.” Zach wondered, though, if having Gabi as Maggie’s helper was a good idea. He’d never forget the argument they’d had over how to scramble eggs when he was convalescing. Those were two hardheaded women.
“So, you and I are okay? You don’t think I’m a coward?”
Zach grinned. “You and I are just fine, and I think it takes an exceedingly brave person to want to work with our mother.”
Ruefully, Gabi shrugged. “Maybe I’m just crazy.”
“Maybe.”
They discussed resignation-related procedures for a few minutes, then Gabi departed. Watching her go, Zach experienced a vague sense of unease. He knew the woman well as a deputy and a friend. He knew her less well as a sister. Was the idea of working with their mother a good thing for Gabi and Maggie, or a bad thing for them both? Adult children working with parents faced a peculiar set of challenges. For that matter, parents working with adult children did, too. And Maggie was still trying to figure out widowhood.
Yikes. Maybe he should try to talk to them, caution them. Better yet, get Savannah to do it. She was tight with both Gabi and Maggie.
No, he’d better stay out of it. When did an attempt to mediate with two women ever work out for a man?
Nevertheless, in the wake of Gabi’s announcement, he felt the need to share his concern with someone who had a better grasp on the effect of this development on his newfound family. Since this was still his day off, he figured he could multitask.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled his pickup into the drive at the house that would be his mother’s bed and breakfast and called to the man on a ladder scraping paint from the north-facing wall. “Hey, Lucca. Want to go fishing?”
Lucca descended the ladder and rolled his shoulders to ease the stiffness in his
muscles. He stuck his paint scraper into the back pocket of his jeans and met his brother halfway to his truck. “I guess today is your day off?”
“Yes. And it’s all about me. Savannah went with Maggie to Denver. Thought I’d go fishing above Heartache Falls. Why don’t you come with me?”
Lucca looked at the partially completed job. “I hate scraping paint.”
“I have extra gear in my truck. We can be there in half an hour.”
Lucca’s smile was wry. “I’d love to, but I told Mom I’d finish paint prep while she’s gone. She wouldn’t be happy with me if she came home and found the job half done.”
Zach’s eyes gleamed with wicked amusement. “I can help you out with that. I have that “favorite kid” thing going on right now. I’ll tell her I begged you to come with me and she’ll be delighted.”
“You have a point there.” Lucca looked from his brother to the house and back to his brother again. “Let me lock up.”
The road Zach took up beyond Heartache Falls was little more than a tire-rutted path. The scenery was a feast for the eyes with snowcapped mountains, wildflower-dotted meadows, and a heavenly blue sky. The first part of the drive passed in comfortable silence between the brothers, but as they climbed up toward the timberline, Lucca picked up on the fact that Zach had something on his mind.
He braced himself, expecting some sort of probe about his emotional well-being. Instead, Zach surprised him. “Gabi resigned from the sheriff’s department today.”
“What?” That came right out of the blue. “I thought she really liked her job.”
“She gave me her two weeks’. She says she’s going to help run the B&B.”
“What?” Lucca’s mouth gaped. Gabi work with Mom? That was borderline lunacy. “But it won’t be ready to open for months.”
“I know. She says she doesn’t want to carry a gun anymore.” Zach summarized the conversation he’d had with Gabi that morning, then added, “I know how to handle this as her boss. I don’t know how to deal with her as a brother. Any advice?”
Lucca rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure I have any to give you. As often as not, the women in our family confound me.”
“As often as not, women confound me, period.”
“I hear you, brother.” Lucca gave him a sidelong look. “Trouble in paradise?”
“With Savannah?” Zach gave a slow, satisfied grin. “No. None at all. But that doesn’t mean I always understand her. This is the first time I’ve ever lived with a woman. I had no sisters growing up and my mother wasn’t much on drama. Me and Savannah, we have some issues, we have drama.”
“Leaving law enforcement will mean lots of drama with Gabi.”
“That’s what I thought. What about Maggie? How will she take it?”
Every time Lucca heard Zach refer to their mother as Maggie, he felt a little sad for her. He respected the fact that Zach still considered his adoptive mother his mom, but he knew Maggie Romano well enough to know that part of her craved to hear Zach refer to her using that term. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Mom has changed since Dad died. In some ways she seems stronger to me, but in others … I don’t know. I still sense a fragility inside her.” He paused a moment, then added, “A lot has happened to the Romanos in the past couple of years. Now we’re a bunch of head cases.”
Zach gave him a peculiar look and Lucca winced. “That didn’t sound right. I don’t mean you, Zach. You’ve been the best thing that’s happened to our family since we lost Dad.”
Zach opened his mouth but obviously had second thoughts about what he’d been about to say. Lucca arched a questioning brow and Zach shrugged. “Tell me about him.”
“Dad?”
“Yes. Since I never got to meet him, I’m curious. What was he like?”
“Well, as you’ve probably guessed because he passed the trait along to the rest of us, he was tall and athletic. He was the son of Italian immigrants. Came from a large Catholic family. Between Mom’s family and his we have so many cousins I’ve lost count.”
“I’ve heard those types of details. I’m curious what he was like as a father.”
“He was a great dad. We all looked up to him. He was smart as a whip and very charismatic. He could have sold a snowball to an Eskimo. Everybody loved him.”
“Sounds like Gabi.”
Lucca nodded. “I always thought she was more like Dad than any of his sons are. He treated her differently, not only because she was the only girl, but because I think he saw himself in her. Not that he let her get away with stuff. He was strict with all of us, but he left the disciplining up to Mom. He was the threat she used to keep us in line. ‘Don’t make me tell your father.’ We didn’t want that, either, believe me. The very worst thing in the world was disappointing Marcello Romano.”
“So you were all a bunch of angels?” Zach asked.
“Not hardly.” Lucca grinned at the idea. “Max, Tony, and I got into our share of trouble, but Dad’s ‘boys will be boys’ category was pretty big. He didn’t give us grief about sneaking out of the house or underage drinking or sleeping around—as long as we got out of the house and back into it without Mom finding out, didn’t mix drinking and driving, and swore we wore condoms.”
“Did he have that same attitude where Gabi was concerned?”
“Oh, no. Dad was old-fashioned. Mom was a stay-at-home mom, and Dad wouldn’t have had it any other way. If Gabi hadn’t earned a basketball scholarship, I’m not sure he’d have sent her to college—unless it was nursing school or beauty school.”
“What did he think about her becoming a cop?”
Lucca smiled at the memory. “It was World War Three. Mom stood up for Gabi, though, so he couldn’t do much more than grumble and bluster. Mom didn’t take positions against him often, and when she did, she usually got her way.”
“I know that feeling,” Zach said. “Savannah is like that. Most of the time, she’s pretty easygoing, but when something really matters to her, she’s implacable. There is no changing her mind.”
“Speaking of implacable women, what can you tell me about my next-door neighbor?”
Zach glanced his way. “I assume you don’t mean Mrs. Winsted?”
“Is her first name Hope?”
“Catherine.”
Mrs. Winsted must be the elderly woman who lived in the house to his south. “I’m talking about the redhead with the dog and the big Bambi eyes.”
“Ah, Hope Montgomery. I didn’t know she had a dog.”
“An annoying, yappy little terrier mix. With puppies.”
Chuckling, Zach asked, “You don’t like little dogs, Lucca?”
“I don’t like dogs, period,” Lucca fired back.
Zach looked taken aback by that. “Really? I’m surprised. Gabi has told me about the antics of the Labradors you and Tony got for one of your birthdays. I thought you were a dog lover, too.”
Lucca had never told anyone about the puppy that Seth Seidel had brought onto the Ravens’ team bus or the part it had played in the accident. “No, not particularly. Back to Hope … Montgomery, was it? She’s always coming and going from her house. What does she do for a living?”
“Easier question might be what she doesn’t do. I heard Celeste say just last week that from now on when she’s going to use the cliché ‘busy as a beaver’ she’ll say instead ‘busy as Hope Montgomery.’ She teaches at our school. Kindergarten and high school English, I think. Or maybe math. This summer she’s been working at the tourist office, conducting tours for the historical society, helping out up at the Davenports’ camp, and once a week she leads an alpine mountain bike tour. I think she’s become fairly good friends with Maggie and Gabi, actually. So, are you interested?”
“If she’s friends with Mom and Gabi, not anymore.”
Zach smirked. “That’s probably smart. You’d be letting yourself in for all kinds of interference.”
“I already have more than my share of that.” Then, feeling the need to change
the subject, he asked, “So, I understand you’re an avid fisherman. Want to hear about the barracuda I caught off Cozumel?”
Talk turned to fish stories until they arrived at Zach’s destination where they set about turning talk into action. When he caught his first trout forty minutes later, Lucca realized he was enjoying the morning more than any in recent memory.
He had always loved being outdoors. Spending so much of his time in a gym had given him a real appreciation of fresh air and blue sky. Fishing for trout in a burbling mountain stream on a sunny day was about as good as it got. He was glad he had accepted Zach’s invitation.
But just as he drew back his rod to send the line sailing, a trio of ugly truths slithered through his brain. Seth Sei-del doesn’t get to go trout fishing. Alan Palmer doesn’t get to enjoy a summer afternoon. Brandon Gates might, but he does it from a wheelchair.
In that moment, his enjoyment of the day evaporated like mist. He set down his fly rod, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked away from the creek headed toward the road, trying to outpace his demons. He walked downhill—for how long he couldn’t say. He was lost in his thoughts and the misery of his memories.
Eventually, Zach’s truck pulled up beside him and the passenger side window rolled down. “Want a lift?” Zach asked.
Shaken from his reverie, Lucca hesitated. “Hey man, I’m sorry. I just … I needed to walk.”
“No problem. Let it go, Lucca. The whole purpose of coming up here was to do what we felt like doing. Hell, sometimes I’ll come up here to go fishing, and I never touch a fly to water.”
Lucca nodded, grateful for the unstated understanding, and climbed into the truck. “Thanks for bringing me along, Zach. It’s a peaceful place.”
“Lots of places around Eternity Springs are peaceful. You’ll be surprised what you’ll find and where you’ll find it. All you have to do is open your eyes to the possibilities.”
Hope was physically tired and emotionally exhausted when she arrived home following the end of a session up at the Davenports’ summer camp, the Rocking L Ranch. While volunteering in the craft studio the past week, she’d befriended a little girl from Louisiana whose personal story about losing both her mother and brother to cancer had ripped Hope’s heart out.