RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer\Woodrose Mountain\Sweet Laurel Falls (31 page)

“Sounds like you've thought of everything.” Janie smiled as she finished off her second earring. “I have to say, I've been really impressed with Hope's Crossing. I didn't expect to feel so welcomed from the very first day we arrived.”

“It's not perfect,” Claire said, thinking of Riley and the opposition that had become vocal and annoying, led by J. D. Nyman. “But it's a nice place.”

“It's why we keep coming back year after year,” Sarah said. “Every time we think it's just too difficult keeping up two homes, we remember that's one thing
we love most about Hope's Crossing, besides Walter's beloved fishing streams. We don't find that same sense of community during the winter when we're home in Tucson.”

“The moving van wasn't parked at our house ten minutes before we had four or five neighbors over asking if they could help us unload,” Janie said. “It was a bit disconcerting, if you want the truth. I thought it was because they somehow knew my husband had just died.” She forced a smile. “But I don't see how that could be possible. I have a feeling they would have showed up regardless of our situation.”

Claire tried to imagine losing her husband after a long, debilitating illness, as Ruth had told her was the case. She couldn't wrap her head around it. She vowed to have Janie and her children over to dinner as soon as the craziness of the benefit subsided and she could breathe again.

“You know,” she said as she was ringing up the other woman's bead purchases, “your family might be interested in helping with the construction of new playground equipment at that small park near you, the one that has only a couple measly little swings and a slide now. I can get you the information if you'd like.”

“I would love it!”

She handed over one of her many lists. “Write down your contact information for me and I'll let that project coordinator know. Here's my card, too. If you don't hear from someone by next week, call me back and I'll put you in touch with them.”

“Thank you!” With her new dangly earrings catching the late-morning sunbeams, Janie looked somehow
lighter as she left than she had when she came in. This was why Claire loved owning a bead shop. People came here for pretty little luxuries they might not otherwise allow themselves. Creating the pieces themselves added an extra layer of enjoyment and they invariably left happier than when they'd walked through the doors.

One bead at a time, she was trying to make the world a little brighter.

When she left, Sarah set down her magazine again. “I didn't want to say this when you had another customer, but I think what you're doing for this town is marvelous. I've been thinking about it and I would like to donate a painting to your auction. Just last week I finished an oil on canvas of the resident elk herd browsing in that meadow above Dutchman's Pass. It's quite lovely, one of my favorites in quite a while.”

“Are you sure?” Claire asked, awed at the offer. Sarah's exquisite paintings hung in galleries across the West.

“Well, I can't guarantee anyone will buy it, but Walter will at least bid on it so I don't humiliate myself.”

No one buy it? Sarah's work was sought after by collectors across the country. She'd heard somewhere her paintings were selling well into five figures. Goose bumps popped out on her arms. “Sarah, my word. Thank you. It's too much.”

“It's too much only if I say it's too much. I want to do this. My heart has been broken for Maura since I heard about the accident. She has always been kind to us when we go for coffee at her bookstore. This is
just a small thing, but if it helps ease her pain a little, I want to do it.”

Maura had a way of drawing people to her. Dog-Eared Books & Brew was as much a town institution as the Center of Hope Café. Earlier in the week, Claire and Alex had stopped at Maura's house and she had been dismayed at the changes in her friend. Everyone who knew and loved her was keeping collective fingers crossed this benefit would help her find a little hope herself.

“I'll warn you,” Sarah went on, “you won't catch me out raking leaves or building playground equipment or painting up some rickety old shed or whatever. A painting is all you're getting out of me. But at least it's something.”

Claire smiled and on impulse hugged Sarah's whippet-thin shoulders. After a surprised moment, Sarah returned the hug briefly, then stepped away.

“I'd better go. I told Walter I would pick up some of that gooey macaroni and cheese he loves from the café for his lunch. If I don't hurry he'll be grousing around like a hungry grizzly, tearing open kitchen cabinets and knocking shelves out of the refrigerator.”

“We can't have that.”

“I'll take this magazine. I think I'm going to make that charm bracelet for my granddaughter's birthday. Do you have all the supplies I'll need?”

Claire quickly perused the list and nodded. “We should. I've got another copy of this. I'll have all the findings ready for you when you come back and you'll only need to pick out the beads you want to use.”

“That is why I put off all my bead projects until
we come back to Hope's Crossing for the summer, my dear. That and, of course, Chester.”

At his name, her lazy hound thumped his tail on the rug. Claire smiled at both of them and rang up the magazine for Sarah.

When the other woman left, she let her dog out into the back garden. She had just returned inside and headed for the worktable when her cell phone gave a soft little wind-chime ringtone. It took her a moment to remember she had changed her mother's ringtone to something a little more benign than the nuclear meltdown warning. She supposed that was progress.

“Hi, Mom. How are you?”

“Okay. Are you busy?”

Claire thought of all the phone calls she still had to make today for the benefit, the Venetian glass bead order she had been trying to place for a week and her pitifully slow progress on the necklace she was thinking of naming the Heart of Hope.

“Not bad. What's up?”

“Any chance you can close the store for half an hour and come down to the bookshop? I was going to come over there after the lunch rush, but I've got a handful of customers who think I have all day to hang around.”

Claire chewed the inside of her cheek, grateful her mother couldn't see her fighting a smile. Somehow Ruth hadn't quite caught on that running a business had more to do with meeting your customers' needs than vice versa.

“Evie should be coming downstairs in a few minutes. She can cover for me.”

“Great. I'll see you in a while. I've got to go. No, sir,
I'm afraid we don't carry any climbing guide books with Norwegian translations,” she heard her say in the background before Ruth cut off the call.

Claire set down her phone, marveling at the changes in her mother in just a few weeks. Ruth could still revert to her needy, demanding self on occasion, but working at the bookstore in Maura's absence seemed to fill a need in her mother to be useful.

If she'd known how much Ruth would thrive in a retail setting, Claire would have encouraged her mother to get a job years ago. Not at String Fever, of course. The changes in her mother weren't
that
extreme.

Maura's bookstore was across the street and up Main Street on the opposite corner, three storefronts from the café. Fifteen minutes later, after Evie came down for her shift, Claire grabbed the cane she used these days instead of the crutches for stability and headed out into the gorgeous late-May afternoon, warm and sunny.

Everything had greened up beautifully except the very tops of the mountains, which retained their snow-caps year-round.

She couldn't believe school would be out in only a week. The children had a summer full of fun activities planned, from baseball teams to tennis lessons to sleepaway camp. Add to that the impending arrival of their new half brother in a few months and the summer was bound to be as hectic as the past few weeks.

Claire walked past the bike shop and the year-round Christmas store the tourists loved, with its twinkling lights and the train in the window that ran three hundred sixty-five days a year. She crossed at the crosswalk
and headed toward the bookstore. If only they could have this sort of perfect weather on Giving Hope Day, with only a few plump white clouds to mar the vast blue sky….

Ooomph.
She was so busy sky-gazing that she plowed right into a solid bulk and caught her breath as a couple of strong arms grabbed her to keep her from stumbling.

“I'm sorry, Claire. My fault. Are you okay?”

Riley. Her insides tumbled around and she looked up. Yep. He was as gorgeous as ever. She hadn't seen him up close since that night at her house. Even though he had driven past a few times when she had been outside with the children on his way to or from his own rental house, he hadn't stopped.

Somehow she'd forgotten the shock of those green eyes, the angle of his jaw. He wore a tan jacket and a light blue dress shirt with no tie, his badge clipped to the front breast pocket, and she had an insane urge to just rest against him for a moment. Or a hundred moments.

His eyes were dark with concern and he looked as if he wanted to whip out his cell phone and call the paramedics at the slightest provocation.

“I'm fine,” she assured him, feeling her cheeks heat. Why could she never have a single encounter with him that didn't somehow result in her coming off as an idiot? “I should have been watching where I was going. I was just… It's a beautiful day and I haven't been outside all morning. I'm afraid I got a little distracted.”

“I had something else on my mind, too. You're sure you're okay?”

“Fine. Great.”

“You look like you're getting along well. No crutches, I see.”

She held up her foot. “Walking cast. We're on the home stretch, according to the good Dr. Murray. I'm supposed to get the one on my arm off in a couple of weeks and this one a week or two after that.”

“How do you feel?”

She remembered that tender kiss between them, the heat and magic, and hated that they had been reduced to this bland, boring chitchat.

“Better than I expected.”

“That's great. I like your bling.” He gestured to her cane, covered in glued-on fake jewels.

“Holly and Macy surprised me with it last week. It's what all the stylish cane users are wearing these days, apparently.”

What she had thought so trendy and cute at the time now made her feel old and decrepit compared to Riley, brimming with strength and sheer gorgeousness.

“How about you?” she asked.

“I'm still here.” He said it as if it were a joke, but she knew things couldn't have been easy for him the past few weeks. She'd heard J. D. Nyman was collecting a petition to have the city council reconsider their hiring decision, although she hadn't been approached with it yet. She pitied the first person to ask for her signature.

They stood awkwardly for a moment and she hated again that things had come to this.

“I'm meeting someone for lunch,” he finally said, “or I'd offer to buy you a sandwich over at the café.”

“Thanks anyway, but I'm actually on my way over to the bookstore to meet my mom.”

“Another time, then.” After another awkward pause, he leaned in and kissed her cheek and headed on his way.

She drew in a breath and hobbled the rest of the way to Dog-Eared, wondering how it was possible that Riley could manage to scrub all the happiness right out of the day, in five minutes' worth of conversation. She sighed and pasted on a smile as she opened the front door of the shop.

She found her mother ringing up a customer Claire didn't know who was buying a tall stack of children's books. “I think you'll find your grandchildren will very much enjoy this author. I know when I read the books to my grandson, he thinks they're a hoot.”

Claire waited, browsing through the new releases while her mother finished up.

“Oh, it's been crazy in here all morning,” Ruth finally declared after the bells on the door chimed behind the customer. “I'm
exhausted.
I swear I haven't had a minute to breathe today.”

“That's what pays the rent, Mom.” She smiled. “I love the window display of gardening and wildflower books. So clever to use seed packets and real potted plants. Did you do that?”

Her mother looked pleased. “I did. I thought we needed a little something to remind us summer is almost here.”

“It really works together. I should have you come spruce up my window display at the bead store. You've got a real knack.”

Pleasure warmed her mother's eyes, made her look years younger. “I'll have to see. I'm pretty busy right now.”

The change in her mother astonished her. Ruth straightened the display Claire had just been looking over with a sense of proprietary pride.

“You're really into this, aren't you?”

Ruth shrugged as she aligned the books with the table's edge “I think it's mostly fun because I know it's only temporary. Sage will be back from university for good in a week or so. She can take charge and I'll fill in until Maura thinks she's ready to come back.”

Claire hoped that would be soon, but Maura seemed a long way from ready to return to life.

“What did you want to show me?” she asked.

“Oh. Right. It's in the back.”

With a careful look around the bookstore at the few browsing customers, she led the way to Maura's stockroom, piled high with boxes, a hand truck, wire shelving.

From the quilted book tote Claire had given her mother for Mother's Day a few weeks earlier, Ruth extracted a thin box.

“I know what you're going to say before you even open your mouth. Let me just tell you I've given this a great deal of thought and I believe this is the right thing to do. I want to donate great-great-grandmother's necklace and earrings for the auction.”