by Toni Blake
Willow Springs
A Destiny Novel
Toni Blake
Dedication
To every girl who ever felt
plain, overlooked, or underappreciated,
this book is for you.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Toni Blake
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
“You will be an old maid! And that’s so dreadful!”
Jane Austen, from Emma
“Meow.”
Amy Bright stood next to the trunk of the old maple tree in her mother’s front yard peering up into the branches, heavy and green with spring foliage. She could just barely make out the gray-and-white cat’s tail peeking from between the leaves far above.
“Knightley, you come down from there right now,” she said, head tilted back, her tone more encouraging than harsh. As frustrating as it was to have her cat stuck up a tree, she knew Mr. Knightley—named for the Jane Austen character—was probably frightened. And she hoped the sound of her voice might at once calm him and persuade him to make his way down.
But in response, her beloved kitty only let out another desperate-sounding “Meow.”
Amy sighed, knowing what had to be done, much as she didn’t want to do it. She’d been trying to lure the cat down for over half an hour, after all, and he hadn’t budged. And he was on a branch way too high for her reach, even if she dared to climb.
So she pulled out her cell phone, cast a last annoyed glance up at the furry tail dangling overhead, and dialed her old friend Logan Whitaker, who happened to be a fireman. And who she also knew was on duty at the Destiny firehouse today.
“What’s up, freckles?” he answered cheerfully, clearly having seen that it was her. But he probably wouldn’t stay so cheerful when he heard the reason why.
“Well . . . it’s Mr. Knightley. He’s stuck in my mom’s maple tree.”
Silence met her on the other end of the line before Logan finally replied in a dry voice. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Because they’d had this conversation before. This wasn’t the first cat rescue call she’d had to make to the Destiny Fire Department. Generally, Mr. Knightley was an indoor cat—and as a result, when he ended up outside for any reason, trouble often ensued. And she knew Logan disliked using town resources and taxpayer money to get her cat out of a tree, which she completely understood. But she still had to get Mr. Knightley down somehow, and if you couldn’t call on one of your closest friends in the world for help, who could you call on? And it was a really tall tree.
“Mom was on cat-sitting duty this weekend while I went to Cincinnati with Rachel and Tessa.” Both of her best girlfriends were getting married this summer and they’d gone on an overnight shopping trip, which had included a gown fitting for Rachel. And though Tessa’s wedding would be a smaller affair than Rachel’s, yesterday she’d succeeded in finding a simple lace dress that fit her slightly-Bohemian-yet-feminine fashion sense. “When I came by to pick him up,” Amy went on, “he ran up the tree.”
Now it was Logan who sighed, even as he said, “We’re on our way. But one of these days, I’m buying you a leash for that cat.”
“Thanks, Logan,” she said with heartfelt sincerity before disconnecting. And though she had, of course, thought about a leash for Mr. Knightley’s outdoor excursions, she just didn’t like the idea. Life could hold you captive in so many ways—so she didn’t like the notion of adding one more, even for her kitty.
As she waited for Logan then, an inexplicable sense of melancholy came washing over her. Because your cat’s up a tree? Because you were embarrassed to call the fire department?
But no, it wasn’t either of those things. It was . . . life. The sense that it was passing her by.
She was thirty-four years old, after all, and other than a few trips to the city with her friends, she’d barely set foot outside Destiny. And now her friends were getting married, starting romantic new lives that would demote her to fifth wheel status. And as for romance of her own . . . well, it had been painfully hard to come by and she had no reason to think that would change anytime soon.
Ugh. Stop this. It’s not who you are. Amy was usually happy, upbeat, good at finding the sunny side of any situation. She’d always been that way—thankful for the blessings life had brought her, content and comfortable with her small town Destiny existence. Joy came naturally to her. So at a moment like this, when sadness crept in, it left her disoriented and at a loss for how to deal with it.
Fortunately, though, her spirits were lifted when, a few minutes later, she looked up to see a red fire engine rumbling around the bend on Meadowview Highway where her mother’s house was located. Logan’s mom still lived in the small cottage next door—and though the home of Logan’s best friend, Mike Romo, sat up the road just a football field’s length away, the two small houses where Logan and Amy had grown up were located side by side, a stone’s throw apart.
“Meow,” Mr. Knightley said from above.
“Help’s on the way,” she called up into the leaves.
For both of them, she thought. Because seeing Logan would surely distract her from her weird mood and lift her spirits. Everything will be fine. She was sincerely happy for her girlfriends, after all. As the unofficial town matchmaker, Amy delighted in seeing other people find romance even if she herself had not.
A couple of the other local firemen lifted their hands in waves to her, but as Logan stepped off the truck in his firefighting gear, it was his smile that warmed her heart. He was a lot like her—a generally amiable guy who always looked on the bright side—so no wonder they had such a solid, long-standing friendship.
A moment later, Amy pointed out the cat tail high up in the tree. And as Logan moved back toward the fire engine, ready to extend the attached ladder, he said playfully over his shoulder, “Gonna owe me a piece of pie for this, freckles.”
That was how they traditionally paid off favors to each other, with pie at Dolly’s Main Street Café. “You got it,” she told him.
Then she watched as Logan worked his magic—maneuvering the long ladder into the tree, toward the highest branches, soon disappearing up into the foliage himself, only his legs visible . . . until he emerged with Mr. Knightley tucked securely in his arms.
Something about the sight sent a gentle pang of profound gratitude stretching through Amy’s whole being. She knew she really had no reason to be feeling down, but getting her kitty safely back, delivered by the good, capable man she’d felt close to for her whole life, seemed . . . well, like the most wonderful gift life could give her at the moment. Sometimes it was the little things.
As Logan transferred the cat from his grasp into hers, their hands brushed together and she caught his musky male scent. “Thank you,” she told him, meeting his blue eyes with her gaze and hoping it relayed the depth of her appreciation.
He tilted his head, offering up a half grin. “For you, freckles, anything.” Then he pointed chidingly down at Mr. Knightley. “And you, stay out of trees.”
Just then, the two-way radio attached to Logan’s hip buzzed and, shifting immediately into work mode, he snatched it up and spoke into it to dispatch. “What’s happening, Jeanie?”
“House fire on Whisper Falls Road,” Jeanie said, the words masked just slightly with static. “Last house in the valley before you reach the bridge.”
“Shit,” Logan murmured to himself. “That’s the Knight house.” Everyone in Destiny knew the Knight family, and Logan’s reaction reminded Amy that the Knights had been especially close with Logan’s family back when she and Logan were kids.
“It’s a bad one,” Jeanie added then. “Better hurry.”
As Logan rushed back to the engine, his concern evident in his stride, Amy called, “Thanks! And be careful!” behind him.
Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to end up with . . . a man that good. Maybe.
Although guys like Logan were few and far between, and as the red fire engine roared away a few seconds later, siren wailing, Amy knew in her heart that her chances for finding true love in Destiny were growing bleaker by the day.
One
A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart.
Jane Austen, from Emma
As Amy pulled into the driveway next to the little green cottage that faced Blue Valley Lake, she noticed the fading yellow tulips beneath one window and thought they were the only bright thing about the small home right now. Even the willow trees—one next to the water, the other closer to the house—seemed more droopy than usual. It was as if the home itself had joined in Logan’s mood.
It had been a month since the fire at the Knight place had burned the house to the ground. A month since Ken and Doreen Knight had died there. Both had been suffering from spring allergies and had taken a nap together in their upstairs bedroom that tragic evening. The community still reeled from the loss, and poor Christy Knight—their only child who’d been away at college at the time—had been left parentless.
It had been no one’s fault. Old wiring had started the fire in the kitchen, and flames had quickly engulfed the home with the help of a spring breeze whipping through the valley below Whisper Falls. Turned out that Amy’s friend Tessa, who lived near the falls, had been the one to spot the fire and call 9–1–1.
But Logan had taken the deaths unusually hard. He hadn’t worked since then. He’d barely left the usually cheerful cottage, in fact. Despite having been trained to deal with this kind of loss, the deaths of his old family friends had thrown him into a deep, dark depression unlike any Amy had ever seen.
So she wasn’t particularly happy to be here. But someone had to feed the dog and make sure Logan was still alive in there. She and Mike Romo had been taking turns, yet Mike’s patience—which was not his strong suit to begin with—was reaching its end.
The cottage lay quiet as death as she ascended the small front porch and knocked.
Inside, Cocoa, Logan’s chocolate lab, barked in response. But when no one came to the door, she knocked again, harder. And she kept knocking. Her patience was wearing pretty thin, too.
When finally the door opened, the guy on the other side looked more like a homeless derelict than her good, dependable friend. His dark blond hair, usually neat and attractive, needed a serious trim and pointed in all directions. And though he’d been known to sometimes go a few days without shaving, at the moment his handsome face lay hidden beneath a scraggly beard that left him almost unrecognizable—except for his pretty blue eyes.
“You look awful,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied. “Go away.”
At any other time in their relationship, Amy might have been offended, but this was how Logan greeted anyone who came by these days. So instead, she just opened the screen door and shoved her way inside, picking up the odor of beer that wafted from him as she passed by.
“How much have you had to drink today?”
“Don’t know,” he replied, his tone implying that he also didn’t care. Up until the last several weeks, Logan had only drunk socially—with friends at the local watering hole, the Dew Drop Inn, or after a summer softball game at Creekside Park. But unfortunately, he’d had a large stockpile of beer left over from a party at his place a couple of months ago—and Amy only hoped it would run out soon.
After greeting Cocoa, who was clearly starved for attention, she set her purse on the coffee table and took in her surroundings. Like Logan himself, the place was a mess—with dirty dishes, empty beer cans, and take-out bags left behind from the fast food Mike had been dropping off. At first, Amy had been happy to pitch in and clean up after Logan, but at this point she was beginning to feel like an enabler, so she decided to focus on the one positive she saw. Looking him up and down, she said, “You changed clothes.” The gray tee and blue jeans he now wore were a switch from her previous couple of visits.
As he plopped back on the couch where, as far as she could tell, he spent most of his time sleeping or staring mindlessly at the TV, he only shrugged. “Others stank.”
“Did you take a shower, too?” she asked hopefully.
Another shrug from the couch. “Couple days ago. No energy.”
He looked so sad, empty, that it almost made Amy want to cry. While it was getting easy to be fed up with him, easy to demand he snap out of this once and for all, at the same time it broke her heart to peer into his once vibrant blue eyes and see that, quite simply, the light had gone out of them.
Rather than let herself get weepy, though, she decided to do something more practical. Mike had just delivered a large bag of dog food last week, so she filled Cocoa’s bowl, then ran fresh water in the water dish and returned it to its spot on the floor. But as the chocolate lab—usually Logan’s pride and joy ever since he’d gotten her as a puppy last year—rushed to gobble down the food, it only made Amy mad all over again. Clearly the dog hadn’t been fed since she’d last done it two days ago. And while she’d tried to be nice to Logan through these past weeks, it was time for a little tough love.
As she approached the couch, taking a seat next to him, she said, “I didn’t bring you anything to eat.”
When this produced only another shrug, however—and the truth was, he didn’t seem nearly as concerned with food as Cocoa did—she added, “And don’t be expecting any more hamburgers from Mike, either. He’s tired of babysitting you, Logan. And you know your mother can’t do it, either.” Mrs. Whitaker was getting older, and arthritis had her moving a lot slower these days. In fact, Mike and Amy had both done their best to keep the severity of Logan’s condition from her lately.
“So it comes down to this,” Amy went on. “I’m really all you’ve got left. And I’m afraid that if I keep coming over here, helping you out, it’s not doing you any favors.”
“I never asked anyone to come over,” he reminded her glumly. “I always tell you to go away, remember?”
Darn it, he had her there. “True. But Logan . . .” Exasperation gripped her as she motioned to where Cocoa still wolfed down her food, visible through the wide doorway that led to the kitchen. “You’re not only neglecting yourself—you’re neglecting your dog, too. And none of this is her fault. And—” She stopped, sighed, her frustration reaching an all-time high. “And I’m really worried about you. I don’t know what exactly happened to you at that fire, because you won’t tell me or anyone else, but the one thing I do know is that you’ve got to snap out of this. Now. You’ve got to wake up, clean up, and start living your life again. Once and for all. Got it?”
Next to her, though, Logan just sat there, looking as depleted as he had for the past month. The only thing different was that this time he turned to look her in the eye. And her heart crumbled in her chest all over again at what she saw on his face. One lone tear rolled down his cheek.
“It was awful,” he told her in a raspy whisper. “I can’t get it out of my head.”
And it wasn’t so much what he’d said that affected her as much as the starkly haunt
ed look in his eyes. She even heard a short gasp escape her before she hurried to say, “But you did everything you could. And now you have to let it go.”
Yet that quickly, she could tell Logan didn’t see her anymore—he was clearly seeing something much worse in his mind. “Can’t,” he said absently. “Just can’t.”
And all Amy could do was let out a long, heartsick sigh. She couldn’t imagine what he’d gone through that night, and despite herself, in that moment she thought that if he needed her to take care of him forever because of this, she would. She cared for him that much. “Oh Logan,” she finally breathed. They were the only words she could find, however useless.
And as another tear made a wet line down his opposite cheek, she followed the instinct to pull him into a hug. She didn’t care if he was messy and unshowered. She didn’t care if he smelled like beer. She only knew the compulsion to comfort him somehow.
When Logan’s muscular arms closed warmly around her, she knew he needed the hug as badly as she’d needed to give it to him. And she wondered then—had anyone hugged Logan lately? Or was everyone just leaving him alone, getting fed up with him? It made her embrace him a little tighter, move her palms reassuringly across his back through his T-shirt. He held her tighter, too, and they stayed like that for a long moment—until finally she murmured in his ear, “Wish I could make you feel better.”
He pulled back just slightly, just enough so that he could whisper in her ear, “I know.”
And she felt the bond between them deepen, felt all the years of their friendship stretching between them; and she knew he was glad she was there, glad he’d made her understand the nightmare he was living in right now.
“It’ll get better, Logan, I promise,” she told him, their cheeks touching. And she became strangely aware that she wanted to just stay that way. For as long as she could.
That was when she felt his mouth, his lips. Just in front of her ear. He’d pressed a kiss there.