Wanted

by Karen Rose Smith

  An hour later, Sara was still thinking about Jase and his photojournalistic talent as she readied a supper of toasted turkey and cheese sandwiches, fresh fruit and raw baby carrots. Amy liked all of the above. Maybe afterward, she and Amy would bake some of those chocolate chip cookies Jase liked so much. For now, her daughter was in her room, drawing another picture and plastering it with butterfly and cat stickers.

  When someone knocked on the door, Sara couldn’t imagine who it might be...unless maybe Kaitlyn had stopped by for a visit after reading the interview.

  But it wasn’t Kaitlyn. When she answered the door, she found Liam, and he was carrying a bouquet of mixed flowers.

  “This is a surprise!” Then she remembered her manners. “Come on in.”

  He handed her the flowers. “You did a great job with the interview. The flowers are for your guts in doing it.”

  “Jase’s writing kept it from being maudlin or overly dramatic or too sensational. I just told what happened.”

  “You made it real...the way you felt when you realized the house was on fire, escaping with Amy, moving in here and having to accept help. That photo of you and Amy was great. It was really touching, Sara. I mean it.”

  Liam didn’t look quite like himself and Sara wasn’t sure why.

  “I’m going to put these in water.” The daisies, mums and tulips really were lovely. She took a tall glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, then quickly arranged the flowers and set it on the counter.

  “I had another reason for stopping by,” he said almost sheepishly. “Are you busy right now? I mean, can you take a few moments from Amy?”

  Unsure of what Liam had in mind, Sara arched her brow. “To do what?”

  “I was rock climbing yesterday,” he said with a resigned sigh.

  She studied him again more closely. His one shoulder looked to be lower than the other as if there were tension in it, as if he was in pain. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know what I did. That’s just it. People tell me I’m getting too old for rock climbing and I really don’t want to listen. So don’t give me that lecture.” There was something about Liam that she liked...not in a man-woman way, but in a bantering-friend kind of way. “I don’t give lectures.”

  “That’s good because I don’t need one. I want you to look at my shoulder.”

  “Liam, I’m not a doctor.”

  “That’s the whole point. I want to know if I have to see a doctor. I really don’t want to go through the whole emergency room routine—hours waiting, X-rays. I thought if you could just look at it, tell me what you think I did—”

  She wasn’t a doctor, but she did treat patients every day. However, no matter what she found, she’d tell him he needed to see a physician. The question was—could it wait or did he need to see one right now?

  “Amy is coloring and plastering stickers all over the page. That will take her a while. So I have a few minutes.”

  “Do you need me to take my shirt off?”

  “If you want me to look at your shoulder, I do.”

  Liam was wearing a snap-button shirt, probably easier to get into than an over-the-head T. Remembering what he’d told her, she asked, “So if you go rock climbing once a month, how do you keep in shape for it?”

  “I work out three times a week to keep my muscles strengthened.”

  “Even so, they lose their elasticity over time. It’s tough getting older, but it happens to all of us.”

  “Yeah, like you have to worry about it anytime soon.” He shook his head. “Women worry about wrinkles. Men worry about not being able to do push-ups.”

  She laughed until she studied the way he was holding his arm after he took his shirt off. “What exactly did you do?”

  “I wrenched it when I fell.”

  “I hope not far.”

  “About six feet. I rolled but I landed on it.”

  She could easily see that Liam did keep himself in shape. She studied him as she would any patient. “Does your neck hurt?”

  “No. Just my shoulder.”

  “Turn around and let me try to figure out what you’ve injured.”

  * * *

  When Jase’s dinner appointment was canceled, he found himself smiling. He could spend the evening with Sara...and Amy. After Amy went to bed, they could talk more about what happened in the garage...what would happen if she became pregnant...what would happen if they became a couple. Last night he’d actually started envisioning the three of them living here in the main house. After Friday, she’d have answers and she could start planning her life all over again.

  Jase liked the feeling of adrenaline that rushed through him when he walked toward Sara’s cottage. He enjoyed the anticipation that heated his blood. He tried to forget about everything his father had said and everything he didn’t want to think about.

  But the scene with his dad last night played in his head like an unwanted movie. “Why are you running off to Africa again?” his father had asked.

  “I’m not running off. I’m doing what I do best.”

  “Yes, you won a prize. Yes, you’re an accomplished photographer and journalist. But Raintree is your home. You keep running away from it as if I’ve done something horrible to you. Or is the vineyard somewhere you just stop over at when you don’t know where else to go?”

  “I never promised to stay here. I never promised to take it over someday. In fact, you never asked me if I would.”

  “Asked you? You’re my son!”

  “Am I?”

  The question had hung in the air between them...all of the conversations they’d never had, his father’s remoteness, the childhood he couldn’t escape. When he’d arrived at Raintree, his father had kept a distance between them, and that distance had stayed all these years. It was still there now.

  “You’re going to do what you want to do. You always have,” his father said with a bit of resentment.

  Then Jase had asked the one question that had burned in his mind, that had been stinging there all these years. “After you adopted me, did you really want to keep me? Didn’t you want to send me back where I’d come from?”

  Ethan actually looked shocked, then dismayed, then sad. “The idea of adopting a child was different than the reality of it.”

  “So you did want to send me back.”

  “No, I didn’t. But I also didn’t know how to relate to you. I didn’t know how to comfort a child who didn’t want any comfort.”

  “Don’t lay your coldness on a twelve-year-old who had no place else to go.”

  Jase had walked away from that conversation last night feeling as he had when he was younger—with the need to find his own place in the world.

  And now he’d found Sara.

  He rapped lightly before he opened the cottage’s door. After he did, it took a few moments for everything he saw to register.

  As it did, he took a step back.

  He saw Liam, shirtless and fit. He saw Sara’s hands moving over Liam’s shoulder as if she was enjoying touching him. They were gazing at each other. There were flowers on the counter beside them. In that instant, the picture of Dana kissing another man flashed before Jase’s eyes. Everything he’d felt when he’d seen it, when he’d realized and then heard Dana say she’d been unfaithful came roaring back—the betrayal, the resentment, the bitterness.

  He remembered Liam’s wink at Sara at the soiree, their easy conversation whenever they were together. He recalled Liam’s hand on Sara’s arm before the search for Amy had begun, as well as Liam saying, “I’m glad to see she’s taking my advice,” when she was considering letting her interview go into print.

  A sense of betrayal hit Jase again—even sharper and more painful than what he’d felt with Dana. The ache he experienced now was so deep it wa
s worse than the gunshot wounds.

  Disappointment in Sara and everything they’d shared forced words out of his mouth. “I guess you really do prefer older men. I guess what happened between us doesn’t matter at all.”

  Liam and Sara had both been focused on each other, but now they turned to him and stared at him as if he’d grown two heads.

  Liam stepped forward. “Jase, you’re wrong. Whatever you’re thinking is wrong.”

  Sara took a step toward him. “Jase!”

  “Wrong? I can see exactly what’s going on,” he said to Liam. “You don’t have a shirt on. Sara’s hands are on you. Two and two make four.”

  “And maybe you’re looking through a distorted lens,” Liam suggested calmly.

  Now Sara seemed frozen...stricken.

  Plucking his shirt off of the chair, slipping one arm into it, Liam just threw the other sleeve around his shoulder. “If you really think it’s the rotator cuff,” he said to Sara, “I’ll drive to the E.R.”

  Sara had paled at Jase’s words. She was practically sheet-white as she now glanced from him to Liam. “I can’t tell for sure. You’ll need tests, probably an MRI. I don’t think you should drive yourself.”

  This conversation wasn’t making sense to Jase, not with the flowers and the way they’d been looking at each other. “Rotator cuff?” A foreboding began in his solar plexus and spread through his chest.

  “It’s probably better if Sara explains herself,” Liam said, and exited the cottage.

  Face-to-face with Sara, Jase asked, “What was going on?”

  Her face began to take on color again as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It was obvious what you thought was going on. How you could even imagine I’d be attracted to Liam after what you and I—” She stopped as if embarrassed by the thought.

  “You don’t even want anyone to know we’re seeing each other.”

  “Because of gossip. Because of the winery’s reputation. For the sake of my reputation.”

  “Oh, Sara, is that all it is? Maybe you’re not ready to start anything new.”

  “And you are? We began an affair and you’re going to go flying off to Africa.”

  An affair. That was what he’d started, trying to tell himself they were living in the now instead of the future. Trying not to think ahead. Trying to make the most of passion he expected to end without warning.

  Maybe his father had been right about him. Did he fly away from what might hurt him? Fly away from what might give him roots? But what exactly had Sara been doing with Liam?

  As if she could still see his doubts, as if she could still hear the questions in his mind, as if she knew Dana was still a ghost haunting him, she explained, “Liam was rock climbing yesterday. He fell and wrenched his shoulder. He didn’t want to go to the hospital and he asked me to check to see what I thought was going on with it. That’s all, Jase. That’s all.”

  The way she said the words alerted him to what was coming next. She was fired up and he braced himself for her words.

  “Amy’s in the next room coloring. Do you think I’d do anything like you were thinking with her here? Do you think I’d do anything like you were thinking when I just spent the weekend making love to you?”

  What could he say? For just those few moments he had thought it.

  “If you don’t trust me, Jase, we don’t have anything. I went through a marriage where my husband didn’t trust me. He didn’t trust me to tell me what was happening—that our finances were going down the tubes...that his business was failing...that our child was a burden he didn’t always want.”

  But Sara’s tone fired Jase’s pride and anger, too. “Trust goes two ways. Do you trust me? Do you trust that I’ll stand beside you if you’re pregnant?”

  “Maybe I don’t want someone who’s just going to stand beside me. Maybe I want more than that.”

  Did he even know how to give more? He never had, so he wasn’t sure.

  Suddenly Amy came running in from her bedroom. “Mommy. Mommy. Look.”

  Sara tore her gaze from his and took Amy’s picture in her hand. “It’s beautiful, honey.”

  Although Sara was trying to react normally, Jase could hear the tremble in her voice.

  Amy looked up at Jase. “Are you gonna stay for supper?”

  He looked at Sara and her daughter, and now he saw what he hadn’t seen before—the preparations for a meal, the chocolate chips on the counter. She’d been about to make cookies for later. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he could repair the damage he’d done, if they could return to the passion and bliss of the weekend.

  It seemed they both had a lot to think about. “Not tonight, honey. Maybe another time.”

  Sara didn’t second that. She didn’t look as if she wanted him here ever again. They’d needed space once before, and it had brought some clarity. Wasn’t space what always helped him think better? Didn’t space always bring him peace?

  When Sara laid her hand on her daughter’s head, he could see her remembering her broken marriage. He could feel her walls going up again. He could feel her closing him out of her life.

  She said, “If I don’t see you again before your trip Friday, have a good flight.”

  In other words, she needed space, too.

  When he left the cottage, he didn’t know why this time seeking space felt so wrong.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mr. Kiplinger wore a serious expression when he sat down with Sara in her cottage on Friday morning. She’d both dreaded and anticipated this appointment. Thinking about Jase all week had kept her from dwelling on it too much, though. She hadn’t seen him and he hadn’t searched her out. She didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling. She realized now how the situation with Liam had looked. Maybe none of it would have happened if she’d told Jase how she felt about him.

  Still, could she commit herself to a relationship that might be more long-distance than real life? Could Jase?

  When Mr. Kiplinger opened his briefcase, Sara didn’t know what to expect. Her original policy? A report from the investigator? A finding that she was in the wrong and they wouldn’t be paying out?

  Instead of a sheaf of papers or a manila envelope, Mr. Kiplinger handed her a check. “I’m sorry about the delay,” he said. “The investigation showed a faulty extension cord was the cause of the fire.”

  “An extension cord?” she asked.

  “Yes, in the laundry room.”

  She glanced at the check in her hand and her heart fluttered when she saw the amount. She and Amy could now get a place of their own.

  Although Sara had taken a personal day today, she’d taken Amy to day care in case the meeting hadn’t gone well. But it had, and now she knew there was something she must do. She had to tell Ethan Cramer she’d be leaving. He’d surely be glad to hear that.

  After she thanked Mr. Kiplinger again, shook his hand and watched him drive away, Sara went to the main house to the door leading into the kitchen. She hoped Ethan was nearby. She could have phoned him, but she wanted to tell him the news face-to-face.

  When Ethan answered the door, he looked awful. He was dressed in pajamas and a robe with a tissue in his hand. “You might not want to come in,” he told her. “I caught some kind of bug.”

  His face was flushed and his eyes were a little glassy. “Do you have a fever?”

  “I haven’t taken my temperature,” he mumbled.

  “I think you should. Have you eaten yet today?”

  “No, I was in bed till a few minutes ago.”

  “Did Jase leave?”

  “Before dawn. He doesn’t know I caught a cold. I wasn’t going to have him postponing his trip because I started sneezing.”

  “Why don’t you go sit in your favorite chair and I’ll make
you some breakfast. You need to push liquids.”

  “Why would you do that?” he asked brusquely. Sara suspected that, though he was bristly on the outside, Ethan Cramer wasn’t that way on the inside.

  “Because you’re Jase’s father,” she replied. “And, no, I’m not doing it so you’ll let me stay in the cottage longer. The insurance company settled with me, and I’ll be moving out as soon as I find a place.”

  “Moving out? What about you and Jase?” Ethan looked absolutely in shock.

  “Mr. Cramer, I don’t know if Jase wants me here any more than you do.”

  After a quick assessment of her, he gave a resigned sigh. “That’s a bunch of nonsense. I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but he’s been a bear for the past week. Maybe you should think about fixing it. I’ll be in the parlor. My head’s pounding so hard, I can hardly stand here and talk to you.”

  Sara didn’t know where the parlor was, but she’d find it as soon as she’d made Ethan’s breakfast.

  The Cramer kitchen was well stocked, and Sara easily found a frying pan, the toaster, the teapot and a hand juicer. In twenty minutes, everything was ready. She carried the tray down a hall, hearing a TV in one of the side rooms. She hadn’t been in this part of the house the night of the soiree. Following the sounds, she spotted the doorway and found, indeed, she was in a parlor. There was a piano, bookshelves, a wing chair and a recliner. Ethan was in the recliner, his legs up, his head against the chair back.

  His eyes flew open when he heard her enter the room. “Needed the TV louder than the pounding in my head,” he explained, though he really didn’t have to.

  “You really should call the doctor and make an appointment. This could be more than a cold.”

  “Nonsense. It’ll pass. I just need to break the fever.”

  “Hopefully breakfast will help. I made herbal tea so it doesn’t dehydrate you, and if your stomach’s not upset, you should drink all of the orange juice.”

  He switched off the television. “My stomach’s fine. But I am cold.”

  The room was anything but cold. She picked up a throw that was spread over the back of a wing chair and handed it to him. She didn’t think he would take to a lot of coddling.