Currant Creek Valley (20 page)

Her chest felt tight and achy as she pictured a young war widow, alone and grieving. “Oh. Oh, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“I had a chance for...love...again a few years later. His best friend came back...from the war and stayed around town for a few months, working in the...silver mine, before they played out. Joseph Baxter. Joe. He looked...just like that Damon fellow. Maybe that’s why I like his...movies so much.”

Alex smiled through the tears she was trying not to shed. Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Claire had returned but waited in the doorway, one hand on her round stomach and the other pressed to her heart.

“He loved Ross and...wanted to marry me but...I was too afraid. I had already lost someone dear to me, you see, and I didn’t want to go through that again. The pain...when Tommy died, was...unbearable. And so I pushed away Joe. Again and again. Until he gave up and left Hope’s Crossing. Last I heard, he moved to Nevada to work in the mines and...married a girl he met there.”

Caroline was quiet for a long moment, her face averted on the pillow. Alex would have thought perhaps she had fallen asleep again if those frail fingers didn’t continue to tremble in hers.

Finally she turned back and her gaze met Alex’s with more clarity and purpose than she had seen there in weeks. “I’ve been alone...all these years...sleeping by myself in this cold bed. Who can say what I missed out on, because I was too...afraid?”

Even in her illness, Caroline didn’t do anything by accident. She was telling this story, tonight, out of some motivation Alex didn’t understand.

“He worked in a mine,” she murmured, compelled to defend that long-ago version of her friend. “What if a tunnel collapsed on him or something? You would have had to go through the pain of losing someone all over again.”

Claire made a low sound in her throat but Alex didn’t turn around and Caroline apparently didn’t hear her.

“I...should have...risked it.” She grasped Alex’s hand in both of hers as if she were cupping life-giving water. “Life isn’t...meant to be spent...hiding in the corner with your arms huddled over your head, protecting...yourself from anything that might hurt you. Life should be...embraced.”

“You’ve done that. Everyone in town loves you.”

Caroline dismissed that with a shrug of her slight shoulders. “When a woman is ready to turn another...chapter in her life, she begins to see things with...unforgiving clarity.” Despite the struggle to speak, she gave them both a mischievous smile. “I’ve spent fifty years...without a man in my bed. Think...of all the orgasms I missed.”

Claire sputtered a laugh. Even with her emotions in turmoil, Alex managed to laugh, as well.

“There is that,” Alex murmured.

“Don’t make...my mistakes. If you have the chance to find happiness with someone special, grab hold...and don’t let go. If you don’t, you could end up like me...a shriveled, tired old woman...dying alone.”

“You’re not dying,” Alex said automatically. “And you’re not alone. We’re here, right? We just got done watching a great movie and eating fabulous popcorn and laughing.”

“Yes, and...I’m tired now. I need to sleep. Thank you, my dears. I shall...dream of...Matt Damon tonight.”

As she settled Caroline into bed and turned off the light, Alex wondered if this would be her in fifty years, alone with her regrets.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

C
LAIRE
WAS
GOING
TO
PAY
, and pay hard.

From her vantage point kneeling in the dirt around Caroline’s south garden, where she had been hard at work yanking out annoying elm seedlings that had blown from the surrounding trees and rooted, Alex glowered at the pickup truck that had just pulled up behind her own SUV.

She knew that truck.

When a big, muscled figure climbed out, followed closely by a very adorable dark-haired boy, she wanted to cry. Or throw something, she wasn’t sure which.

Of all the work projects going on all over town, why would Claire feel compelled to assign Sam
here,
where she knew full well Alex would be working all morning on the cleanup of Caroline’s overgrown garden?

She didn’t have to guess. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Claire suspected she had feelings for Sam. Despite all her efforts the other day to avoid talking about him—or maybe
because
of them—Claire must have guessed her feelings for him ran deeper than she would admit.

For all she knew, her mother and sisters likely connived with Claire to force her together with Sam today. Matchmaking busybodies, the lot of them.

She sat back on her heels and watched him and Ethan grab matching tool belts out of the bed of the pickup. Sam fastened his low on his hips but Ethan seemed to struggle with his. The boy’s father reached down and pulled the ends around with care then guided the end through the loop.

Watching a big, tough ex-soldier help his son just about turned her heart and her brain to mush.

Claire was definitely going to suffer for this, even if it was a little tough to come up with creative ways to wreak vengeance against a pregnant woman.

She couldn’t totally blame her, she supposed. Hope’s Crossing was a small town. She couldn’t avoid him indefinitely. If she couldn’t figure out a way to deal with seeing him on a regular basis, she would quickly find herself miserable.

With that in mind, she decided to try the casual, friendly approach one more time, pretending everything between them didn’t exist. She shoved her garden gloves into her pocket and headed over to the two of them.

He wasn’t surprised to see her, she saw as she approached. Had Claire warned him or had he simply recognized her vehicle when he drove up?

He straightened up from helping Ethan and watched her walk toward them, heat smoldering in his brown eyes for just a moment before he quickly banked it.

To give her heart time to settle down, she chose to ignore him and turned instead to Ethan. “Hey, there. You’re coming to work, I hope.”

“Yes. I have my very own hammer. My dad gave it to me this morning. And I got two screwdrivers, a flathead and a Phillips-head.”

The tools gleamed on his belt, obviously new, and her heart squeezed at the thought of Sam picking them out for his son.

“Those are some impressive tools.”

“I’ve been borrowing some from my dad but these are for my very own use. I don’t have to give them back. We’re going to build a tree house this summer. It’s going to be the very best tree house in town, with four walls and a roof and windows that close and everything.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“You can come see it,” he suggested. “Maybe you could bring Leo. And brownies, if you want to.”

She smiled. How could she help it when this boy was so very open with his heart? “I just might want to do that. Thank you for the invitation. You give me the word when you’re finished and I’ll bring over the brownies.”

Eventually she was going to have to meet Sam’s gaze, she supposed. She couldn’t avoid him forever. She gave a little sigh and straightened up.

The memory of that last, emotional kiss seemed to hover between them, fierce and intense, and she was amazed they didn’t catch all the overgrown weeds on fire.

“My orders are to fix some porch steps and a railing. I think Claire also said something about an arbor that needed some work.”

Those things did need attention but none was urgent. Even if they were, why did they have to be fixed by him? she wanted to whine.

“There’s plenty of work to be done,” she said instead. “Caroline hasn’t been feeling well the last few years. But she’s getting better now.”

She waved at her friend, who sat on her porch wrapped in a blanket watching her work and offering the occasional helpful comment.

Caroline lifted her hand to wave back but didn’t seem to have the energy to raise it more than a few inches. She looked more pale out here in the June sunshine.

“I guess we should get started, right, Ethan?”

His son nodded, though he continued smiling up at Alex. “Guess what? I finished the first grade yesterday.”

“Congratulations!”

“School is out for the summer and now I get to live with my dad here all the time. I don’t even have to go back. I can’t go back anyway because my uncle and aunt are in an entirely different country. We might go visit them sometime. Not soon, but sometime. It’s in Europe.”

“That’s terrific!”

“And guess what else? My bedroom is all finished. We finished painting it last night. One whole wall is a chalkboard. My dad used a special kind of paint. I have colored chalk to write on it and a big eraser. I can draw artwork or do math or whatever I want.”

“Awesome!” And the perfect touch for a boy who was scary-smart.
Nice work, Sam,
she wanted to say.

“Why don’t you come see it? You wouldn’t even have to bring brownies, really, if you didn’t want to.”

She glanced at Sam. Though she couldn’t read anything in his expression, she could almost feel the tension and yearning radiating off him like heat waves.

I care about you, Alexandra. I think I could fall for you very easily, with a little encouragement
....

“I’d like that sometime.”

“How about tonight?”

She managed a smile, even as she was aware of Sam opening his mouth to say something. “I don’t think I can tonight. I’m supposed to go to the big benefit gala and auction at the ski resort.”

“What’s a gala?”

“It’s a big party where people dress up in fancy clothes and dance and sometimes have fancy food.”

“That sounds boring to me.”

She laughed. “You won’t get an argument out of me, kiddo. But when you’re a grown-up, you have to do boring stuff once in a while.”

“My dad’s going, too. He has a date. I have to have a babysitter. I think I’m too old for a babysitter, don’t you?”

She had a sudden image of Sam with another woman, laughing with her, sharing those delicious kisses and his wry sense of humor. Pain clutched her gut, so raw it made her eyes water.

Through the shock slicing through her, she shifted her gaze to Sam. He gave her a cool look in response but she couldn’t read his expression.

What else did she expect? She had shut him down in every conceivable way. She couldn’t expect him to just sit around waiting for something they both knew wasn’t going to happen.

She forced herself to smile, ignoring the pain that seemed like a living, breathing thing prowling through her. “Babysitters are a pain, yeah, but I’m afraid you’ve still probably got a few more years for them.”

“I guess. I’m very responsible for my age, though. I think that should be taken into consideration.”

Sam interjected before she could come up with a reply. “Come on, kid. We’d better get to work before Mrs. McKnight comes out here and cracks the whip.”

It took her a minute to realize he meant Claire, not her mother.

“Right. You don’t want to get on her bad side.”

Or she might decide to send over the one person in town you wanted to avoid to spend the entire day with you.

Sam reached into the back of his pickup and handed Ethan some long boards to carry up to the house, and Alex turned back to the garden, grateful she had some convenient noxious weeds to vent her tangled emotions against.

It was hard, sweaty, backbreaking work but she found an undeniable satisfaction in cleaning up the mess so the bright, cheery perennials could thrive.

While she weeded and thinned and cleared out old growth, she did her very best to ignore both Delgado males.

It wasn’t easy.

Every once in a while she would catch glimpses of Sam walking back out to his truck for something or measuring and cutting a board on the sawhorses he set up. Ethan’s cheerful chatter rang out in the morning air and now and then he would yell out at her to admire a board he had just nailed or a cut he had made.

As the sun hit its apex after noon and began its slide toward the mountains, the morning clear skies gave way to a few gray-edged clouds. The more she cleared away the mess and brought order to Caroline’s garden, the more tangled her own thoughts seemed to become.

How could she do this? How could she continue to live in Hope’s Crossing, just down the street from Sam and Ethan, while Sam moved on with his life, dating, possibly marrying again at some point?

Just thinking about it left her feeling queasy, though she tried to tell herself it was the sunshine and the fact that she’d only had a banana to eat that day.

The alarm beeped on her phone about an hour after Sam and his son arrived, reminding her Caroline had been outside for quite some time and probably needed a change in position, if nothing else.

She walked up onto the porch. “Ready for a rest?” she asked.

“I’m doing fine,” the other woman assured her with a smile that looked as if it took a great deal of energy. “But you could probably...use a break.”

She could have put in a few more hours before stopping but she didn’t want Caroline to push herself too hard.

“I had Helen make up some...lemonade when she was here yesterday. Maybe you could take some out to the nice man and his...little boy.”

Call her cynical but she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Caroline was in on the matchmaking efforts. But maybe she was only being hypersensitive.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Good idea. Why don’t you come inside where it’s cooler while I pour some.”

“I’m...all right out here. It’s the next thing to being in the garden myself. The sun feels good.”

How many afternoons of June sunshine did Caroline have left? Alex’s heart broke all over again.

“The sunshine feels nice after a long winter, doesn’t it? I’ll fix you a snack then, and bring you some lemonade.”

“I hope there’s enough. Helen can...make more. She was coming back today. Or was it...tomorrow? I can’t remember.”

Caroline’s brow furrowed and she looked out at the garden as if she could find the answer there. Alex squeezed the fingers that rested on the curved rocking-chair arm. “I don’t know how you keep everything straight, between all your appointments and your medications and the hot guys you have coming over all the time. We can find out easily enough. I can simply look at the hospice schedule on the refrigerator, my dear.”

The woman’s tension relaxed and she seemed to sink back into her chair. “Would you? Thank you.”

She saw that Helen was indeed coming that day, and the next. In fact, the hospice had scheduled someone to come every day, indefinitely, which meant they knew Caroline was failing, too.

Fighting back the burn of tears, she busied herself with pouring several glasses of lemonade on the same tray she had served Caro’s soup the other day. She found some of the cookies she had brought over as well and arranged them prettily on a plate.

When she carried the tray back out to the porch, she found Sam sitting in the rocking chair beside Caroline. Ethan was sprawled on his stomach on the sidewalk, watching something on the concrete with a peculiar intensity.

It seemed strange to have them here, in this place, with her friend.

“What have you found?” she asked Ethan as she set the tray on the small table at Caroline’s elbow.

“A snail. He’s all slimy. I read in a book that snails produce mucus to reduce friction so they can move better. Don’t you think that’s cool?”

Yeah, not really. The only thing she considered cool about snails was how very delicious the right kind could be cooked in butter and a good wine sauce.

“Sure,” she answered anyway.

He smiled up at her just as the sun passed between a couple of the clouds and a sunbeam landed directly on his head, bathing him in golden light.

Out of nowhere, she was suddenly overwhelmed with love for this boy who had suffered great loss but could still find joy in little things like a snail streaking slime across a sun-warmed sidewalk.

She wanted to sweep him into her arms and hold him close.

She couldn’t. It wasn’t her place. Someday Sam would probably marry again and that woman would have the right to smooch Ethan’s cheek and straighten his collar and tuck him in at night.

She cleared her throat. “I brought you and your dad some lemonade. Do you want some?”

“In a minute,” Ethan said absently, and she was forced to turn back to Sam.

He took a glass from the tray and sipped it and she found herself ridiculously fascinated by the slide of his throat up and down as he swallowed.

“I...appreciate you helping me out today,” Caroline said in her garbled, thready voice. She was used to having to strain in order to understand. Sometimes people who didn’t know Caro well grew frustrated with it but Sam only smiled with patience.

“You’re welcome,” he answered.

“Used to be, I could...take care of this place on my own. It’s hard to watch...others handle what I...should be doing.”

“We’re happy to help, ma’am. You’ve got a beautiful place here. What a view! Have you lived here long?”

She wondered if Sam was purposely trying to distract Caroline from the reality of all she could no longer do. Yes. Of course he was. She had no doubt. Beneath that tough, masculine exterior, he was just that kind of man.

Wonderful.

“You could...say that,” Caroline said. “Eighty-five years now. I...was born in this house and moved here as a...young bride, after my parents died.”

For the few short months of her marriage, before her husband was killed, she must have been so happy here.