Harlequin Superromance February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: His Forever Girl\Moonlight in Paris\Wife by Design (62 page)

“I thought Maddie was a resident who donated her skills while she was here.” She'd told him before that much of the general running of the place—the cooking, cleaning, laundry and even a lot of the computer and office work—was handled by residents.

“She was, when she originally came to us,” Lynn said. “Maddie's situation was different, and it suited everyone best if she stayed on. But the idea here is to help these women heal, inside and out, to prepare them for happy healthy futures as they resume their lives. We're a hideaway, but the only thing we hide our residents from is the wrongful abuse. Otherwise, our goal is to prepare them to face the world, not hide from it. These women and their children have loved ones. Jobs and schools and friends and lives. We want them to be able to live those lives. Or, if they choose, to start new ones.”

So had she been healed? Had Maddie?

They'd reached the main building and were standing in one of the extrawide, fancily decorated hallways so he lowered his voice. “But there's no time limit attached to it.”

Lynn smiled at a couple of residents. Handed a toy back to a toddler who'd dropped it. Said hello a few times. They went through a door and reached the more private hallway that led to the therapy rooms.

Grant, walking beside her the entire time, smiling and trying to appear as unthreatening as possible, had the crazy urge to hold her hand.

“We run on a tiered system,” she said, stopping inside the door to lean back against the wall, and it took him a minute to realize she was answering his earlier question. Her arms were crossed. “Our residents have objectives based on their personal circumstances. There are measurements for each objective and they have to show a certain amount of progress toward meeting those objectives, and reaching the next tier in their own personalized plan, in order to remain a part of the program.”

Her tongue peeked out between her lips as she met his eyes. He wanted to promise her something, but had no idea what it would be.

He wanted to sleep with her. But had absolutely no room in his life for another commitment.

There hadn't been time or opportunity for a committed relationship in his life since Darin's accident.

“I wondered,” he said now. “This place is so nice, who wouldn't want to stay here forever?”

“People who want to get back to their families. To their friends and jobs. To have their own homes where they can decorate as they please, cook when they please, leave as much of a mess or not as they please.”

“What about you?”

He knew he shouldn't have asked the question. But Grant had never been known to have a lot of finesse. He was more the bull-in-a-china-shop type.

“I have my own home here on the premises. And this
is
my job.”

He wanted to ask about family. Friends. And thought better of it.

“So what happens when a resident doesn't show progress?”

He'd kept his distance at the Stand. Hadn't had more than cursory and very polite conversations with Darin's therapist, with Lila, the managing director and with Maddie on one occasion when she was still in the room when he'd come to collect Darin. But he knew enough to know that the people here would not just throw a woman out on the street.

“Anyone who doesn't try to help herself is given special counseling,” Lynn was saying, still leaning against the wall a couple of closed doors down from the therapy room. “She's assigned a one-on-one mentor. If she still doesn't help herself, we help her find some kind of job and a place to stay that she can afford with the money she has, and we help her move. We help her unpack in her new place, have a little housewarming for her. And invite her back to the Stand for any counseling she wants and for dinner once a week.”

“What's the success rate on that?”

“Better than average.” Lynn stood, shrugged. “Some people just don't want to help themselves. But the majority do. Our overall success rate here is better than anyone imagined,” she added.

Anyone
imagined
.
“Who's anyone?” he asked, growing more and more connected to a place that he'd never known existed and probably wouldn't have given more than a cursory thought if he had. Who had the wherewithal, or the need or the foresight, to conjure up The Lemonade Stand?

“Our founder is a thirty-six-year-old man who grew up in an abusive household. His mother had left with him and his sister a couple of times before she got pregnant again. They'd spend a week or more in a seedy motel while she tried to keep them safe and find a means of supporting them, and each time, they'd end up having to go back. Until one night after their little sister was born, when he and his other sister saw his father knock his mother unconscious and then shake the crying toddler to death. He hurled himself at the man and doesn't remember much after that until he woke up in a hospital. But they say he hit his father in the head with his own beer bottle.”

And he thought he'd had it rough.

“How old was he?”

“Twelve. His old man survived but was sentenced to life in prison for killing his own daughter.”

“And his mother?”

“She survived, too. And is doing well.”

“Did his father have money that your founder used to build The Lemonade Stand?” It was fitting.

“There was some money, enough for his mom to provide a home for herself and her two remaining children, to provide them all with college educations, including herself. Our founder started a dot-com business when he was at university, which he sold upon graduation for a hefty sum and that's what he used to set up The Lemonade Stand. He was twenty-four at the time. Originally there were four bungalows on a couple of acres that housed sixteen victims. He spent the next year crusading for investors and grants and government funding. That was twelve years ago.”

“Is he still around?”

“He sits on our board.”

“And his mother?”

She straightened, standing free of the wall. “She's around.”

He had to collect Darin and get in a couple of hours of mowing and trimming before the sun went down.

“You were married,” he said instead of “Thank you for the tax papers.”

Her eyebrows rose but she didn't say anything. “Before...that day at the hospital. You were wearing a wedding ring.”

She nodded.

“Now you aren't.”

Her husband could have died.

She didn't have the demeanor of a widow. Maura, his next-door neighbor who helped out with Darin, had the demeanor of a widow.

“I'm divorced.”

Grant didn't ask any more questions. The shadow that had immediately fallen over her face at the words was answer enough.

The bastard had hurt her.

Bad.

It was also clear, from her tone, her changed and distant demeanor, that Lynn wasn't open to discussing the topic.

Hopefully, someday, she would be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

L
YNN
WAS
COMING
from her office on Wednesday afternoon and took the long way around, passing through the grassy commons. The February weather was perfect. A sunny and balmy seventy degrees. She wanted to take a couple of minutes to enjoy it.

She wanted to see if Grant was still there. Not for any reason. Just to see.

When she noticed him and Darin at the edge of the Garden of Renewal unloading stones one by one from a cart, she picked up her pace toward home, taking a couple of shortcuts and making it there in record time.

“She's still asleep.” Maddie met her at the door, her finger to her lips, although Kara would sleep through an earthquake. “She had swimming lessons this afternoon,” Maddie reminded her. “With LaQueisha.” An ex-Olympic-bound swimmer whose older brother had used her to practice his boxing skills and irreparably damaged her left shoulder in the process, killing her chances to swim competitively ever again. Her divorced father, who'd been unaware of his son's anger issues, was prepared to take LaQueisha to live with him, to put her through college, as soon as she was ready to leave the Stand.

“Then I'm going to go help unload some rock,” Lynn whispered, heading into her room to change into jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. “I'll be back in an hour, and if she's not up yet, we can wake her for dinner.”

Dinner was always at six. Whether Lynn was home to eat with Kara or not.

Kara had her bath between 7:30 and 7:45 and was in bed by eight. Story time was Lynn's time. She'd lie in bed with her little girl and read to her. Sometimes long after Kara had fallen asleep.

Five minutes later, Lynn arrived at the cordoned-off site. “I'm here to help,” she announced, not singling out either brother as she directed her words.

“Hi, Lynn, you look different in a T-shirt,” Darin said as he knelt by a section of neatly stacked rock.

“He means cute,” Grant said, standing, his gloved hands empty as he smiled at her.

“No, I meant different.” Darin's tone was slightly petulant. “But she is cute,” he finished, with a grin that was all male.

Hot inside, and feeling suddenly uncomfortable, Lynn asked, “What can I do to help?”

“I'm stacking the rock,” Darin said. “Normally I lift, but I can't because of my surgery. Another three weeks, huh, Grant?”

“Yep.” Grant grunted as he lifted a stack of about ten stones and carried them over to Darin, who took them one at a time and placed them, at different angles, on top of one another.

“This is how we'll place them when we build the wall,” Darin said. “See how they form this circle...?”

Pointing with his right hand to the more defined edges of the somewhat flattened stones, Darin gave her a brief rundown of the job ahead.

“Looks like you've got that part covered,” she told him, and then moved toward the loaded-down trailer in the yard beyond the garden. “I'll help carry,” she said.

Grant stopped, hands on his hips, and stared at her. “You are not going to lift river rock.”

“Not as many of them at a time as you are,” she agreed. “But I want to help. This garden, it's over and beyond our agreement. And I have a free hour.”

She wanted to spend time with Grant. It didn't make sense. She didn't want a relationship with him. Or anyone, in a partnership sense. But knowing he was there...

His presence drew her.

And so, ignoring his objections, she spent the next forty-five minutes carrying rock.

* * *

G
RANT
WAS
PULLING
weeds from a flowered border along the sidewalks between the bungalows later that week when he heard someone behind him. Darin was due out of therapy soon and they were going to put in an hour on the garden before heading home to an increasingly rare night of pizza, beer and college basketball.

They both had twenty bucks in a pool of tiered picks, a fantasy game set up by a buddy of Darin's from college.

A buddy who still included them in sports pools but rarely came around anymore.

Maddie stood there, holding the hand of the cutest little kid he'd ever seen.

“Why you pullin' flowers, Mister?” All curly hair, chubby cheeks and questions, the child had a babyish lisp that made her a little hard to understand.

“I'm not pulling flowers,” he told the toddler with a nod and a grin at Maddie—the woman Lynn had introduced them to that first day. The woman who shared her morning therapy sessions with Darin.

The woman who'd been abused but was now a full-time paid employee of the Stand.

Lynn hadn't mentioned that the woman had a daughter.

But then Lynn hadn't talked about any of the Stand's residents on a personal basis. Or former residents, either. Other than to mention that Maddie was a full-time employee.

“See these flowers—” with one finger, Grant touched a fragile yet velvety yellow petal “—they're colorful. They were planted on purpose to be here because they're so pretty to look at.”

Letting go of Maddie's hand, the little girl bent at the knees to put her face within six inches of the flower. As though she was studying it.

“Preetty,” she said, clearly mimicking something she'd heard before.

“These things—” he picked up a couple of stalks from the pile he'd been amassing on a small tarp at the edge of the sidewalk “—are not pretty,” he said. “See how it's kind of prickly on the edges? It wasn't planted here. Its seeds blew in the wind and if we let it stay it will use up all of the food and the water that the pretty flowers need to grow and then there would only be these ugly things and no pretty flowers.”

He was no more used to children than he was to battered women. But she was such a serious, cute little thing.

And then she giggled and looked up at Maddie. “Mister said the pretty flowers eat food.” She sprayed spit as she said the words, laughing.

“They do eat food,” Maddie said, her words a bit forced, as if she'd had to work hard to make them come out.

He wondered again if Maddie might have suffered some kind of brain injury. It was discomfiting, being around so many women who were there because they'd been injured, and yet not knowing, or being in a position to ask, what specific damage had been done to any of them.

Maddie seemed to have come off worse than most.

And she had a daughter? That was rough.

“Do pretty flowers eat macaroni?” the little girl said with another chuckle as she continued to squat next to him.

“No, it's not like food we eat,” Maddie explained, her words slow, but seemingly just right for the child who looked so trustingly to her for guidance. As a child would a mother. The toddler wouldn't understand yet that her mother struggled more than normal. “It's called
nutrients
and I don't know all what's in it but ground comes with nutrients.”

The little girl looked back at him. “What's that?” she asked, pointing at the hairy stalk he still held.

“This is called a weed.” He could give the child the scientific name. Could lecture her about wildflowers, those which weren't cultivated, that most gardeners considered weeds because they came uninvited and took over. He could also give her many instances when these so-called weeds were used to create exquisite beauty.

“Weed bad, hurt pretty flower,” the little girl said.

“That's right,” Grant told her, glad he'd kept his lecture to himself. “What's your name?”

“Kara.”

Her short legs, dressed in jeans with a design on the pockets that matched the pink design on her short-sleeved white top and the pink in her little white tennis shoes, didn't seem to tire from her position.

And her mother wasn't calling her away from bothering him.

Or acting bothered by him, either.

“How old are you, Kara?”

“Three.”

She was rocking back and forth, still squatting, and then just as suddenly as she'd been there, she was standing, putting her hand back in Maddie's.

“Bye, Mister, see you soon I love you.”

The words came out so fast, and with babyish garble, and he wasn't sure he'd heard them right. And then she was gone.

It took Grant a couple of seconds to realize that he was pulling weeds with a grin on his face.

* * *

“L
YNN
,
CAN
I
talk to you for a minute?” Maddie's words were enunciated as slowly as always, her pretty face marred with anxiety, about half an hour before her therapy session Friday morning.

“Of course. Close the door,” she told the woman who looked great in her leggings and lightweight T-shirt. Maddie's short blond hair was curled this morning, and sprayed. She was wearing makeup.

Not a first, but not usual, either. Makeup on Maddie usually meant she'd been spending time at a bungalow that housed some of their younger residents. One in particular, Katrina, had been with them for several months and was good with Maddie. She also had dreams of being a cosmetologist.

“I'm prettier with makeup,” Maddie said, sitting down on the edge of a chair across from Lynn's desk. Maddie's hands were clasped tightly in her lap. Her knees bobbed up and down.

“You're pretty either way,” Lynn told her. “Pretty comes from the inside out.”

The cliché rolled off her tongue with very little thought—or emotion, either, for that matter. Because she was starting to take the job for granted?

God, she hoped not.

“If I want boys to notice me, I have to take care of myself.”

Lynn leaned forward. “Who told you that?”

“I'd rather not say.” Maddie seemed irritated by the question, not agitated. A difference Lynn had learned to ascertain.

“Have you talked to Sara?”

Maddie was fond of her counselor, but seemed to have bonded more with Lynn. Lynn and Sara had discussed the situation with Lila, who guessed that Maddie probably felt closer to Lynn because of Kara, and wasn't concerned.

It didn't really matter which of them helped Maddie as long as they helped her.

“No.”

“Okay, what's up?”

“I like someone.” There was no glee in the words. No excitement. Only... Yes, there it was now, agitation.

“Who?”

“I don't want to say.”

There was a time to accept that answer, and a time when she couldn't.

“I can't help you unless I know who we're talking about.”

“I just... Do you think it's wrong for me to like someone?”

“Absolutely not. But it's always good to get the opinion of a trusted source before you pursue a relationship.”

Most particularly in Maddie's case. She couldn't read people, was an easy target and...

Lynn's senses were on full alert. As far as she knew, Maddie hadn't left the grounds in over a month. But she wasn't aware of the outside workings at the Stand a lot of the days when she was in her office with patients. Or tending to new arrivals.

“I just like him,” Maddie said now, looking down. “And he might like me.” The words were nearly a whisper, aimed at Maddie's rib cage.

“Who is he, Maddie?” Lynn wasn't joking around. Period.

“Darin.”

The response sent Lynn backward in her chair with a whoosh. Of course. She should have seen it. Expected it. Known. Maddie and Darin, alike in some ways, pushing themselves through the rigors of therapy together...

They'd been at the park together, with Kara.

But...

“You haven't ever liked anyone but Alan,” she said out loud.

“I know.”

They all should have seen this coming, but Lynn hadn't. And as far as she knew, Sara hadn't, either. Just the opposite, in fact. Maddie was deathly afraid of men. She was the last resident they'd have thought would be in danger of some kind of transference or neediness with the Bishop men on campus.

To the contrary, they'd hoped an association with someone as harmless as Darin would help ease Maddie back into an ability to be more comfortable around men.

“Maybe Darin just seems like a good Alan to you. Someone who will take care of you.”

The man had that air about him. Like he'd right wrongs, fix that which was broken. In spite of his injury.

Maddie shook her head. “He...looks at me. And I get all rubbery inside.”

Oh, boy.

“Has he ever touched you, Maddie?” She kept her voice soft, calm.

“No! Darin, he wouldn't hurt anything. Except a spider. He stepped on it.”

Apparently, there'd been a spider during therapy....

“Is it wrong for me to like him, Lynn?”

“No! Of course not.” It wasn't. In theory. But, oh, boy. Lynn's insides were churning now, too.

And not in a rubbery way.