Currant Creek Valley (24 page)

This was why she was so careful to keep her relationships light and casual. The men in her life had been assholes, all of them, and she wanted to remain in control so she didn’t have to risk being hurt.

He had no idea how he could heal a lifetime of disappointments.

“You should know,” he said carefully, “nothing you’ve told me makes me suddenly discover I can’t possibly be in love with you.”

She looked at him, her face pale and lovely against the shadows around her and completely solemn. “Oh, just wait.”

The dog moved closer to her, resting his chin on her leg, and her hands absently moved through his fur.

“When I was about six months along, still working sixteen-hour days on my feet in a hot, crowded restaurant kitchen and not taking any kind of care of myself or the baby, I started having pain under my rib cage. Severe pain.”

He ached for her, for what he sensed was coming.

“It went on for two days. I didn’t go to a doctor. In fact, I continued working and told myself it would pass. On the second day, I fainted just before the dinner rush while I was slicing tomatoes for the
insalata caprese
and I started hemorrhaging all over the floor.”

His own blood ran cold thinking of her, a young woman alone in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language well in dire need of medical attention.

“I was rushed to the hospital where it turned out the pain I had been so stubbornly ignoring had been a placental abruption. The baby didn’t survive. I nearly didn’t.”

He could feel his insides tremble at the thought of how close she might have come. “But you did.”

“Yes. More or less intact. Well, less, actually. They had to take out everything to save my life. All the girly parts, I mean.”

She said the words as if they had some great significance, but he was just a big dumb carpenter and didn’t understand why she thought that would matter to him.

“And where is the part where you killed your baby?” he asked.

She stared. “Haven’t you been listening? If I had taken proper care of myself, seen a doctor, stayed off my feet for five minutes, maybe, the baby might have survived. Instead, I was so busy hating myself for my stupidity and naïveté and hating Marco for being an ass and even hating the baby for ruining everything that I let an innocent child die because of it.”

Again he chose his words carefully. Everything—
everything
—hinged on him not screwing this up. “Sorry, but I’m not seeing it. You made poor choices, but you didn’t kill your child.”

She made a strangled noise as if gearing up to argue and he purposely hardened his voice. “I served three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I know what it means to kill someone, defending myself or my platoon or the mission. I also know the difference between that and an emotionally battered young woman alone in a foreign country neglecting her health while she tries to survive. Trust me, there’s no comparison.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

D
ESPITE
THE
SUMMER
EVENING
, she shivered at his blunt words.

He had killed people. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised. He had been a Ranger, after all, but it was hard to reconcile the soldier he had once been with the man who talked to Ethan with such patient gentleness and taught him to use a hammer and was building the world’s best tree house for him.

You made poor choices but you didn’t kill your child.

The words seemed to seep inside her, finding all the dark, ugly corners she didn’t want to explore. She
had
been young, not nearly as sophisticated and urbane as she had wanted to pretend when she took off alone to Europe. She had grown up in a tight-knit family, in a small, conservative town. She had made really stupid choices but she didn’t know anybody who couldn’t say the same.

The doctors afterward had told her that even with the proper medical care and attention, the placenta had been weak and might have abrupted anyway. She hadn’t wanted to believe them. It was easier to blame herself but now, a dozen years later, she could view that young woman she had been with a little more compassion.

“In the end,” she whispered now, “when I woke up after the surgery and the doctors told me what had happened and that the baby was dead, I...finally I wanted him again. So much.”

The tears began to fall and she couldn’t seem to stop them and she stopped trying. She hadn’t cried in forever and now, here in the darkness with Sam, she cried for her empty arms and a young woman’s shattered dreams and all the chances she had lost along the way.

Sam swore and rose from his chair. Before she could protest, he sat beside her on the porch swing he had hung and pulled her into his arms.

In some corner of her mind, she knew she should protest but he felt so wonderful—strong, steady, solid—and she couldn’t resist. He held her for a long time while she wept and she was vaguely aware of a light pressure as he kissed the top of her head softly, as he might a child who had come to him with a bad dream.

The moment was almost unbearably tender.

“You need to forgive yourself, Alexandra,” he said, his voice low. “Take it from a man who went through a pretty rough time after a few missions, where I second-guessed decisions, my own and others. People make mistakes. You can either let it eat away at you from the inside until you’re hollowed out and have nothing good left. Or you can learn to accept that none of us can change our past. All we can do is move forward and make something better out of the rest of our days.”

His words resonated with truth. She had blamed herself for too long. It was time to let go, to embrace what she had done with her life in the years since and the person she had become.

Sam had moved forward. He had come from a rough childhood and had made something of his life by serving his country. He had fallen in love, married, then had lost his wife tragically.

Many men might have become bitter and railed at fate, yet Sam had this core of goodness in him that made him push past the disappointments and sadness and seek out something better for his son than he had experienced.

To a man like him who had known both the horrors of war and a tumultuous personal life, the quiet streets and quaint houses of Hope’s Crossing must represent unimaginable peace.

She couldn’t let him leave this place he already loved. She didn’t want to go, either, but how could she stay?

“For a long time, I thought the fact that I can’t have more children was punishment for my mistakes.”

“I hope you know better now.”

“I think some things just happen. Not for a reason, not as some punishment from a higher power, not as part of some master plan. They just are.”

“You can still be a mother, you know.”

With his arms still around her, he shifted so she could see his face, and in the pale light on the porch, he looked serious and intense. “I know a certain seven-year-old boy who could use someone like you in his life.”

“Sam.” She clamped down hard on the wild joy fighting to flutter through her again at the implication behind his words.

“No. Listen to me. You keep telling me how you’re not what I need, what Ethan needs. Let me tell you all the reasons I think you’re wrong.”

She couldn’t bear this. How could she possibly push him away again when everything within her wanted to stay right here in his arms?

“You make me laugh,” he said. “I haven’t laughed in so long. Even before Kelli got sick, I was so busy being a husband and father and a good soldier that I didn’t often pause to just savor each moment. When I touch you, when I see you, when I simply
think
about you, I’m happy.”

She wanted to block out his words, knowing they would only make this harder, but each one seemed to imprint itself on her heart.

“You treat my son with respect and affection and see beyond that brain of his to the reality that despite it, he’s still just a boy who loves brownies and dogs and having fun.”

“He’s a wonderful boy, Sam. How can anyone who meets him help but love him?”

“He doesn’t respond to everyone the way he has to you, believe me. He can be stiff, awkward, even downright rude. But when you talk to him, he knows your interest is genuine.”

He paused and his hand caressed her cheek with such sweetness she almost cried again. “You care about everyone like that. You tell me how prickly and difficult you are. I see a woman who gives her love freely and generously. Who prepares food for people who can’t take care of themselves, who helps a dying friend with her garden, who takes in a dirty, bedraggled stray dog because that’s just the kind of person she is.”

Leo, curled up at their feet, slapped his tail against the floor of the porch, almost as if he understood Sam was talking about him.

“I love you, Alexandra. Nothing you’ve told me tonight changes that. I love you in spite of all the reasons you think I shouldn’t. In part, maybe,
because
of those reasons. You’re the person you are today because of everything that has happened to you.”

She gazed at him in the slanted moonlight as his words and the tenderness in his eyes seemed to slide through her, shining the brilliant beacon of hope in all those dark corners.

He loved her. He knew the very worst about her but somehow he loved her anyway. This man, who understood all about pain and loss and regret, was offering her a miraculous chance to move beyond the hurt.

She had been stupid when she was twenty-five, yes. She wasn’t twenty-five anymore and she wanted to think she had learned a little something along the way.

If she walked away from this, from Sam and Ethan and the chance he was offering her to embrace a future with them, she deserved to spend the rest of her days miserable and alone.

Love, bright and joyful, bloomed in those once-dark corners like the most brilliant flower garden, like a perfect, crisp-on-the-outside, springy-and-light-on-the-inside soufflé.

It was so big, so sweet and lovely as it swelled and burst inside her, she couldn’t contain it. She did the only thing she could. She reached up and kissed the corner of his mouth, this man who had seen beneath her sharp, thorny edges to the woman she wanted to become.

She felt the sharp inhalation of his breath against her cheek but beyond that, he didn’t move for several long moments and then finally his mouth moved on hers and he returned the kiss with dazzling sweetness.

His familiar Sam-smell of laundry soup and cedar shavings filled her senses and she had to fight down a bubble of laughter, of pure happiness. She kissed him fiercely, arms tightly around his neck as if she feared the swing would topple them both to the floor.

When she finally broke the kiss and eased away long moments later, his dazed eyes reflected the starlight.

“Just so you know,” he said, his voice gruff, “I don’t think I will ever understand the way that mind of yours works.”

“You do understand me. Better than anyone ever has.”

He smiled that slow, sexy smile she loved so much and she had to kiss him all over again.

“Does this mean you’re not going to be taking a job in Park City?” he asked sometime later.

She thought of all she had been willing to give up—and, more importantly, what she would gain now if she stayed. But first, she needed to be completely clear.

“What about Charlotte?” she had to ask.

He stared. “Charlotte Caine? There’s a non sequitur for you. What does she have to do with any of this?”

“I saw the two of you. The night of the gala. You were at her house on the porch. She was in your arms.”

He looked shocked first, then his features lit up with as close to a grin as she had ever seen there. “You were jealous!”

“No, I wasn’t....” Her voice trailed off and she sighed. “Okay. Yes, I was. Insanely jealous. But only because I thought she was so perfect for you. I love Charlotte but, right at that moment, I wanted her to choke on some of her own blackberry fudge. Which is fantastic, I must admit.”

He blinked. “Wow.”

“What? I would have done the Heimlich. Eventually.”

He laughed and she didn’t think she had ever heard a more beautiful sound. How could she have moved so abruptly from utter despair to this sweet, bubbling joy?

She thought of Caroline’s advice to her. This was what she meant.
Take a chance. Embrace life.

Caroline had been afraid to risk being hurt again so she had spent most of her life alone. Alex was afraid, she would be lying if she didn’t admit that, but she also knew with all her soul that Sam was a man she could count on.

“So,” she said lightly. “Back to Charlotte and the gala.”

“You might have seen us embracing,” Sam said, a little cautiously.

She could be jealous here but she wasn’t. She had complete trust in him, which she found breathtaking.

“That was probably right around the time I told her that I happened to be in love with someone else. You, for the record.”

“You did not.”

“Ask her. She mentioned, by the way, that she thought you just might share those feelings. Something about you being entirely too quick to assure her how wonderful I was.”

She blushed, remembering that scene with Charlotte after they had decorated the ballroom together.

“There’s that ego again,” she teased.

“Was she right? About your feelings?”

She heard a thread of uncertainty in his voice and realized this big, tough soldier could be as vulnerable as she was when it came to laying his heart bare.

She was overwhelmed, consumed, with love for him. He was such a good man and she knew she didn’t deserve him, but in that moment, she didn’t care. She wanted him, whether she deserved him or not.

Maybe that was the very best part of loving someone. Wanting to do anything she could to become the kind of woman who could feel worthy of a man like him.

“Charlotte can be an amazingly astute person,” she finally said, her voice prim.

His laugh held joy and a trace of relief. He kissed her, his mouth warm against the cooling air.

“Say it,” he ordered against her skin. She wanted to respond in some light, teasing way but sensed he needed the words as much as she did.

She eased away and slid a hand to the curve of his cheek. “Yes, I love you, Sam. I loved you then, I love you now. I probably fell in love that very first night we spent together at the Lizard. I flirted and teased and joked but I think I was tumbling hard, even then.”

“Yet you wouldn’t even agree to see me again.”

“Because you scared me to death! You were so...well, you.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do much about that.”

Her hand curled into a fist and she trailed it down to his hard chest, where she could feel each pulse of his heart. “I don’t want you to change anything. I love you exactly as you are. Big, tough, scary. Wonderful. I love you more than I ever imagined possible. You’re everything I never knew I needed.”

He smiled with pure joy and wrapped his arms around her, then he kissed her there on his porch swing while the creek rippled past and his son slept peacefully inside and the lights of their town twinkled in the moonlight.