A Cold Creek Reunion

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She squirmed under her mother’s probing look. “Why should that bother me?”

  “I don’t know. Your history together, I guess.”

  “That history didn’t seem to stop you from inviting the man to live at the inn for weeks!”

  “Don’t think I didn’t notice during that time how you went out of your way to avoid him whenever you could. You told me things ended amicably between you, but I’m not so sure about that. You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

  She started to give her standard answer. The past was a long time ago. We’re different people now and have both moved on.

  Perhaps because the day had been so very monumental, so very profound, she couldn’t bring herself to lie to her mother.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I’ve loved him since I was a silly girl. It’s hard to shut that off.”

  “Why do you need to? That man still cares about you, my dear. I could tell that first day when he came to talk to me about helping with the inn renovations. He jumped into the river and risked his life to save your children. That ought to tell you something about the depth of his feelings.”

  She thought of the dozens of reasons she had employed to convince herself not to let Taft into her life again. None of them seemed very important right now—or anything she wanted to share with her mother. “It’s complicated.”

  “Life is complicated, honey, and hard and stressful and exhausting. And wonderful. More so if you have a good man to share it with.”

  Laura thought of her father, one of the best men she had ever known. He had been kind and compassionate, funny and generous. The kind of man who often opened the doors of his inn for a pittance—or sometimes nothing—to people who had nowhere else to go.

  In that moment, she would have given anything if he could be there with them, watching over her children with them.

  Perhaps he had been, she thought with a little shiver. By rights, her children should have died today in the swollen waters of Cold Creek. That they survived was nothing short of a miracle and she had to think they had help somehow.

  She missed her father deeply in that moment. He had loved Taft and had considered him the son he had always wanted. Both of her parents had been crushed by the end of her engagement, but her father had never pressed her to know the reasons.

  “While you were busy at the clinic this afternoon,” Jan said after a moment, “I was feeling restless and at loose ends and needed to stay busy while I waited for you. I had to do something so I made a caramel-

  apple pie. You might not remember but that was always Taft’s favorite.”

  He did have a sweet tooth for pastries, she remembered.

  “It’s small enough payment for giving me back my grandchildren, but it will have to do for now, until I can think of something better. I was just about to take it to him…unless you would like to.”

  Laura gazed at her sleeping children and then at her mother, who was trying her best to be casual and nonchalant instead of eagerly coy. She knew just what Jan was trying to do—push her and Taft back together, which was probably exactly the reason she agreed to let him move into the inn under the guise of trading carpentry work for a room.

  Jan was sneaky that way. Laura couldn’t guess at her motives—perhaps her mother was looking for any way she could to bind Laura and her children to Pine Gulch. Or perhaps she was matchmaking simply because she had guessed, despite Laura’s attempts to put on a bright facade, that her marriage had not been a happy one and she wanted to see a different future for her daughter.

  Or perhaps Jan simply adored Taft, because most mothers did.

  Whatever the reason, Laura had a pivotal decision to make: Take the pie to him herself as a small token of their vast gratitude or thwart her mother’s matchmaking plans and insist on staying here with the children?

  Her instincts urged her to avoid seeing him again just now. With these heavy emotions churning inside her, she was afraid seeing him now would be too dangerous. Her defenses were probably at the lowest point they had been since coming home to Pine Gulch. If he kissed her again, she wasn’t at all certain she would have the strength to resist him.

  But that was cowardly. She needed to see him again, if for no other reason than to express, now that she was more calm and rational than she had been on that riverbank, her deep and endless gratitude to him for giving her back these two dear children.

  “I’ll go, Mom.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

  “I need to do this. You’re right. Will you watch the children for me?”

  “I won’t budge,” her mother promised. “I’ll sit right here and work on my crocheting the entire time. I promise.”

  “You don’t have to literally watch them. You may certainly sit in the living room and check on them at various intervals.”

  “I’m not moving from this spot,” Jan said. “Between Lou and me, we should be able to keep them safe.”

  * * *

  The evening was lovely, unusually warm for mid-May. She drove through town with her window down, savoring the sights and sounds of Pine Gulch settling down for the night. Because it was Friday, the drive-in on the edge of the business district was crowded with cars. Teenagers hanging out, anxious for the end of the school year, young families grabbing a burger on payday, senior citizens treating their grandchildren to an ice-cream cone.

  The flowers were beginning to bloom in some of the sidewalk planters along Main Street and everything was greening up beautifully. May was a beautiful time of year in eastern Idaho after the inevitable harshness of winter, brimming with life, rebirth, hope.

  As she was right now.

  She had heard about people suffering near-death encounters who claimed the experience gave them a new respect and appreciation for their life and the beauty of the world around them. That’s how she felt right now. Even though it was her children who had nearly died, Laura knew she would have died right along with them if they hadn’t been rescued.

  She had Alex and Maya back now, along with a new appreciation for those flowers in carefully tended gardens, the mountains looming strong and steady over the town, the sense of home that permeated this place.

  She drove toward those mountains now, to Cold Creek Canyon, where the creek flowed out of the high country and down through the valley. Her mother had given her directions to Taft’s new house and she followed them, turning onto Cold Creek Road.

  She found it no surprise that Jan knew Taft’s address. Jan and her wide circle of friends somehow managed to keep their collective finger on the pulse of everything going on in town.

  The area here along the creek was heavily wooded with Douglas fir and aspen trees and it took her a moment to find the mailbox with his house number. She peered through the trees but couldn’t see anything of his house except a dark green metal roof that just about matched the trees in the fading light.

  A bridge spanned the creek here and as she drove over it, she couldn’t resist looking down at the silvery ribbon of water, darting over boulders and around fallen logs. Her children had been in that icy water, she thought, chilled all over again at how close she had come to losing everything.

  She couldn’t let it paralyze her. When the runoff eased a little, she needed to take Alex and Maya fishing in the river to help all of them overcome their fear of the water.

  She stayed on the bridge for several moments, watching lightning-fast dippers crisscross the water for insects and a belted kingfisher perching on a branch without moving for long moments before he swooped into the water and nabbed a hapless hatchling trout.

  As much as she enjoyed the serenity of the place, she finally gathered her strength and started her SUV again, following the winding driveway through the pines. She had to admit, she was curious to see his house. He had asked her to come see it, she suddenly remembered, and she had deflected the question and changed the subject, not wanting to intertwine their lives any further. She was sorry now that she hadn’t come
out while it was under construction.

  The trees finally opened up into a small clearing and she caught her breath. His house was gorgeous: two stories of honey-colored pine logs and river rock with windows dominating the front and a porch that wrapped around the entire house so that he could enjoy the view of mountains and creek in every direction.

  She loved it instantly, from the river-rock chimney rising out of the center to the single Adirondack chair on the porch, angled to look out at the mountains. She couldn’t have explained it but she sensed warmth and welcome here.

  Her heart pounded strangely in her ears as she parked the SUV and climbed out. She saw a light inside the house but she also heard a rhythmic hammering coming from somewhere behind the structure.

  That would be Taft. Somehow she knew it. She reached in for the pie her mother had made—why hadn’t she thought of doing something like this for him?—and headed in the direction of the sound.

  She found him in another clearing behind the house, framing up a building she assumed would be an outbuilding for the horses he had talked about. He had taken off his shirt to work the nail gun, and that leather tool belt he had used while he was working at the inn—not that she had noticed or anything—hung low over his hips. Muscles rippled in the gathering darkness and her stomach shivered.

  Here was yet another image that could go in her own mental Taft Bowman beefcake calendar.

  She huffed out a little breath, sternly reminding herself that standing and salivating over the man was not why she was here, and forced herself to move forward. Even though she wasn’t trying to use stealth, he must not have heard her approach over the sound of the nail gun and the compressor used to power it, even when she was almost on top of him. He didn’t turn around or respond in any way and she finally realized why when she saw white earbuds dangling down, tethered to a player in the back pocket of his jeans.

  She had no idea what finally tipped him off to her presence, but the steady motion of the nail gun stopped, he paused for just a heartbeat and then he jerked his head around. In that instant, she saw myriad emotions cross his features—surprise, delight, resignation and something that looked very much like yearning before he shuttered his expression.

  “Laura, hi.”

  “Hello.”

  “Just a second.”

  He pulled the earbuds out and tucked them away, then crossed to the compressor and turned off the low churning sound. The only sound to break the abrupt silence was the moaning of the wind in the treetops. Taft quickly grabbed a T-shirt slung over a nearby sawhorse and pulled it over his head, and she couldn’t help the little pang of disappointment.

  “I brought you a pie. My mother made it for you.” She held out it, suddenly feeling slightly ridiculous at the meagerness of the offering.

  “A pie?”

  “I know, it’s a small thing. Not at all commensurate with everything you did, but…well, it’s something.”

  “Thank you. I love pie. And I haven’t had anything to eat yet, so this should be great. I might just have pie for dinner.”

  He had a square bandage just under his hairline that made him look rather rakish, a startling white contrast to his dark hair and sun-warmed features.

  “Your head. You were hurt during the rescue, weren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “No big deal. Just a little cut.”

  Out of nowhere, she felt the hot sting of tears threaten. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you kidding? This is nothing. I would have gladly broken every limb, as long as it meant I could still get to the kids.”

  She stared at him there in the twilight, looking big and solid and dearly familiar, and a huge wave of love washed over her. This was Taft. Her best friend. The man she had loved forever, who could always make her laugh, who made her feel strong and powerful and able to accomplish anything she wanted.

  Everything she had been trying to block out since she arrived back in Pine Gulch seemed to break through some invisible dam and she was filled, consumed, by her love for him.

  Those tears burned harder and she knew she had to leave or she would completely embarrass herself by losing her slippery hold on control and sobbing all over him.

  She drew in a shuddering breath. “I…I just wanted to say thank-you. Again, I mean. It’s not enough. It will never be enough, but thank you. I owe you…everything.”

  “No, you don’t. You owe me nothing. I was only doing my job.”

  “Only your job? Really?”

  He gazed at her for a long moment and she prayed he couldn’t see the emotions she could feel nearly choking her. “Okay, no,” he finally said. “If I had been doing my job and following procedure, I would have waited for the swift-water tech team to come help me extricate them. I would have done everything by the book. I spend seventy percent of my time training my volunteers in the fire department not to do what I did today. This wasn’t a job. It was much, much more.”

  A tear slipped free but she ignored it. She could barely make out his expression now in the twilight and had to hope the reverse was also true. She had to leave. Now, before she made a complete fool of herself.

  “Well…I’m in your debt. You’ve got a room anytime you want at the inn.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  She released a breath and nodded. “Well, thank you again. Enjoy the pie. I’ll, uh, see you later.”

  She turned so swiftly that she nearly stumbled but caught herself and began to hurry back to her SUV while the tears she had struggled to contain broke free and trickled down her cheeks. She didn’t know exactly why she was crying. Probably not a single reason. The stress of nearly losing her children, the joy of having them returned to her. And the sudden knowledge that she loved Taft Bowman far more than she ever had as a silly twenty-one-year-old girl.

  “Laura, wait.”

  She shook her head, unable to turn around and reveal so much of her heart to him. As she should have expected, she only made it a few more steps before he caught up with her and turned her to face him.

  He gazed down at her and she knew she must look horrible, blotchy-faced and red, with tears dripping everywhere.

  “Laura,” he murmured. Just that. And then with a groan he folded her into his arms, wrapping her in his heat and his strength. She shuddered again and could no longer stop the deluge. He held her as she sobbed out everything that suddenly seemed too huge and heavy for her to contain.

  “I could have lost them.”

  “I know. I know.” His arms tightened and his cheek rested on her hair, and she realized this was exactly where she belonged. Nothing else mattered. She loved Taft Bowman, had always loved him, and more than that, she trusted him.

  He was her hero in every possible way.

  “And you.” She sniffled. “You risked your life to go after them. You could have been carried away just as easily.”

  “I wasn’t, though. All three of us made it through.”

  She tightened her arms around him and they stood that way for a long time with the creek rumbling over rocks nearby while the wind sighed in the trees and an owl hooted softly somewhere close and the crickets chirped for their mates.

  Something changed between them in those moments. It reminded her very much of the first time he had kissed her, on that boulder overlooking River Bow Ranch, when she somehow knew that the world had shifted in some fundamental way and nothing would ever be the same.

  After several moments, he moved his hands from around her and framed her face, his eyes reflecting the stars, then he kissed her with a tenderness that made her want to weep all over again.

  It was a perfect moment, standing here with him as night descended, and she never wanted it to end. She wanted to savor everything—the soft cotton of his shirt, the leashed muscles beneath, his mouth, so firm and determined on hers.

  She spread her palms on his back, pressing him closer, and he made a low sound in his throat, tightening his arms around her and deepening the kiss. She opened her m
outh for him and slid her tongue out to dance with his while she pressed against those solid muscles, needing more.

  His hand slipped beneath her shirt to the bare skin at her waist and she remembered just how he had always known how to touch her and taste her until she was crazy with need. She shivered, just a slight motion, but it was enough that he pulled his mouth away from hers, his breathing ragged and his eyes dazed.

  He gazed down at her and she watched awareness return to his features like storm clouds crossing the moon, then he slid his hands away and took a step back.

  “You asked me not to kiss you again. I’m sorry, Laura. I tried. I swear I tried.”

  She blinked, trying to force her brain to work. After a moment, she remembered the last time he had kissed her, in the room she had just finished decorating. She remembered her confusion and fear, remembered being so certain he would hurt her all over again if she let him.

  That all seemed another lifetime ago. Had she really let her fears rule her common sense?

  This was Taft, the man she had loved since she was twelve years old. He loved her and he loved her children. When she had climbed out of his brother’s police vehicle and seen him there by the stretcher with his arms around Alex—and more, when she had seen that rope still tied to the tree and the churning, dangerous waters he had risked to save both of her children—she had known he was a man she could count on. He had been willing to break any rule, to give up everything to save her children.

  I would have gladly broken every limb, as long as it meant I could still get to the kids.

  He had risked his life. How much was she willing to risk?

  Everything.

  She gave him a solemn look, her heart jumping inside her chest, feeling very much as if she was the one about to leap into Cold Creek. “Technically, I could still kiss you, though, right?”

  He stared at her and she saw his eyes darken with confusion and a wary sort of hope. That little glimmer was all she needed to step forward into the space between them and grab his strong, wonderful hands. She tugged him toward her and stood on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to the corner of his mouth.