RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer\Woodrose Mountain\Sweet Laurel Falls (75 page)

RaeAnne Thayne

CHAPTER ONE

F
ORGET
C
HRISTMAS
VACATION
. This year, Maura
McKnight-Parker wanted a vacation
from
Christmas.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if she could just crawl into a warm cave somewhere and
sleep through the holidays?

With a sigh, Maura took a final look around at the cozy nook
where she had arranged several of the plump sofas and chairs normally scattered
throughout her bookstore-slash-coffeehouse. Everything appeared ready for the
Books and Bites book club Christmas party and gift exchange tonight.

Nibbles? Check. M&M's, spiced nuts and popcorn mix waited
in holiday-printed bowls, and she had even dragged out her Christmas china and
coffee mugs for said nibbles.

Decorations? Check. Not much to do there, since the halls of
Dog-Eared Books & Brew had already been decked the week before Thanksgiving
with artificial Christmas trees adorned in elegant blues and whites and silver.
Snowflakes and gleaming ornaments in the same color scheme dangled from the
ceiling, lightly dancing in the currents of air whenever anybody opened the
front door.

Gifts? Yes. She had set up a little tabletop tree with handmade
blown-glass ornaments for each of the book club members that she had
commissioned from an artist with a gallery in town.

In addition to that pretty bit of swag, she had spent the past
few days scouring shelves and boxes in her office and had filled gift bags for
all the book club members, brimming with coffee and tea samples and some of the
promotional bookmarks, notepads and other tchotchkes authors and their
publicists were always sending to the store.

Despite a deep-seated wish that she could just hole up in her
house for Christmas like a fox in a cozy den, she had worked tirelessly for days
to make this party a success. If she were a scam artist, she would have called
this baiting her trap. She had to convince her dearest friends and family
members that she was indeed trying to move forward with her life after the hell
of the past year. To accomplish that, she needed to put on a convincing show for
them.

Maybe then, everybody would back off and give her a little
space to find her own way.

“What do you think?” she asked April Herrera, who was taking a
load of Books & Brew coffee mugs out of the small dishwasher behind the
counter.

The assistant manager for the coffeehouse side of her business
gazed at the setup with an enchanted look in her eyes that seemed at odds with
her henna-colored hair, pencil-thin eyebrows and various diamond studs. The silk
long-underwear shirt she wore underneath her barista shirt and apron hid the
various tattoos Maura knew adorned her arms.

Judging only by appearances, April ought to be wild and
cynical. Instead, she was just about the sweetest person Maura knew. More
important, she was smart and hardworking and intuitive about her customers.

“It looks super in here. Just perfect. You guys are going to
have
such
a great time.”

Maura tended to have a soft spot for rebellious girls, probably
because she'd been one in another lifetime. “Are you sure you can't stay?”

“I really wish I could. Your book club meetings are always a
hoot. Your mom cracks me up every time she comes in, and it's hilarious to watch
Ruth and Claire together. Do they
ever
agree on a
book?”

“Rarely,” she answered. Or anything else, for that matter. Ruth
Tatum worked in the bookstore, and she and her daughter had what could best be
described as a complicated relationship. “You should really stay. You know
everyone would love to have you again. Your comments on the last book were
really insightful.”

“I can't. Sorry. I've really got to take off as soon as Josh
gets here. This is my very first time night-skiing with the team.”

“How's that going?” she asked.

“Excellent.” The young woman's face lit up. “I think they're
ready to put me on the schedule on a regular basis.”

April was training for the ski patrol and also taking classes
in hope of eventually becoming a paramedic. Maura didn't know how she juggled
work and class and her two-year-old son, especially on her own. Maybe that was
another reason she had taken April under her wing—she could certainly relate to
being a young single mother just trying to survive.

“That's terrific. If you need me to make any adjustments to
your work schedule here, just say the word. I'm flexible. And I'm happy to
babysit Trek whenever you need.”

“Thanks, Maur.”

“Maybe you can come to the book club meeting in January, if it
fits around all the plates you have spinning.”

“Definitely!” April started to add something else, but a
customer at the coffee counter rang the little bell, and she gave Maura a
“later” kind of wave and headed back to take the order.

Personally, Maura couldn't wait for January, to finally turn
that page of her calendar to a new year. Maybe once the holiday craziness was
over, she could escape some of the pressure of trying to act as if everything
was fine when she was frozen solid inside.

She grabbed one more bowl of spicy nuts and set it on a side
table, then moved a bowl of plump, airy peppermints to another spot. Having dear
friends and family members surrounding her in Hope's Crossing was both a
blessing and a curse. She knew they loved her and worried for her. While she
understood their concern and tried to be grateful, mostly she just found it
exhausting and overwhelming.

Sometimes that ever-present concern made her feel as if she had
been buried alive under an avalanche. It pressed down on her, heavy and
suffocating, until all she wanted to do was scramble for an air pocket.

Even her little bungalow on Mountain Laurel Road wouldn't
remain a haven for long. In a few days, her daughter Sage would be coming home
from college for the holidays, bringing yet another pair of watchful eyes.

She could do it. A few more weeks of pretending, and then she
could have the cold nights of January to herself.

After one last look around, she suddenly remembered she'd meant
to grab a couple extra copies of this month's book club selection off the shelf,
in case anybody forgot theirs and needed it for reference. She had several
copies in the display near the front, she remembered, and hurried in that
direction.

A light snow drifted past the front display window, the big,
fluffy flakes reflecting the colorful Christmas lights on storefronts up and
down Main Street. Hope's Crossing was a true winter wonderland and local
businesses worked hard to make the town glow with an old-fashioned, enticing
charm. Nearly every store had some kind of light display. Hers were LED icicles
that appeared to be dripping.

The effort seemed to be working. Her store bustled with
customers and, judging by the pedestrian and vehicle traffic on a normally slow
Thursday night, the other businesses on Main Street were enjoying the same
success.

An SUV snagged the last parking space in front of the café
across the street and a few stores down from her. A man in a leather jacket and
Levi's climbed out and snowflakes immediately landed on his wavy dark hair and
the shoulders of his warm cocoa-colored coat. He looked sharp and put
together.

Everyone would be arriving any second now and she should go put
the finishing touches on the scene she had created, but for some reason she was
drawn to the man she could still barely see.

Some indefinable aspect of him—the angle of his jaw or the way
he moved—called to mind the image of her first love. Jackson Lange, sexy and
dangerous, young, angry, ferociously smart.

She rarely thought about Jack anymore, except on the rare
occasions when his unpleasant father came into the store. Why she would be
wasting time wondering about him now when she had so much to do was a
mystery.

The man walked around the other side of the vehicle to let
someone out of the passenger side, a gesture she didn't see enough these days.
She was curious to see his companion, but before she could catch a glimpse of
the woman, the front door of the shop opened and Claire and Evie burst through,
bringing the scent of snow and Christmas. Their mingled laughter chimed more
sweetly than carols.

“I know,” Claire said. “That's what I told him. But this is his
first Christmas as a stepfather, and I swear, he's more excited than Owen or
Macy. I've had to hide the present stash a half-dozen times, and he finds every
blasted spot.”

“What do you expect, honey?” Evie untwisted her scarf,
hand-knitted in a heathery wool that dangled with beads instead of fringe. “He's
a trained detective. It's kind of what he does.”

The two of them had probably walked over from the bead store
Claire owned, just down the street a block. Evie rented an apartment upstairs
from Claire. For now, anyway. Evie was dating Brodie Thorne, her friend
Katherine's son, and Maura expected their relationship was progressing
quickly.

Claire's soft, pretty features lit up when she saw her. “Maura,
honey, the store looks fabulous. I keep meaning to tell you every day when I
come in for coffee, but you're never standing still long enough.”

“Your mom did a lot of the work. It was her idea to hang all
the snowflakes and the ornaments. Isn't that brilliant?”

Ruth had been working at the bookstore for months, but Claire
still seemed baffled by it. Maura couldn't blame her. No one was more surprised
than Maura when Ruth's offer to help out temporarily during those dark days and
weeks in the spring had turned into a permanent arrangement that had worked out
beautifully for everyone concerned.

“Ruth is a great employee,” she assured Claire again.
“Hardworking and dependable, with these wonderful, unexpected flashes of
ingenuity, like the snowflakes.”

“And here she is now,” Evie announced.

Sure enough, a moment later Ruth walked in, along with Maura's
mother, Mary Ella, and Katherine Thorne. With them was Janie Hamilton, a fairly
new addition to town and another lost lamb Katherine had taken under her wing,
and right behind them was Charlotte Caine, who owned the candy store in
town.

Maura took a deep breath and put on her game face, that forced
smile that had become second nature since her world had changed forever eight
months earlier. “Welcome, everyone. I'm so happy you can all come.”

She stepped forward to hug and brush cheeks with everyone as
they all began to shed coats and scarves and hats like penguins molting in the
spring. Everyone seemed to have on holiday party clothes: shimmery blouses,
festive patterned scarves, dangling earrings and beaded necklaces.

She felt drab in her suede jacket, tailored cream shirt and
jeans, though she was wearing one of her favorite chunky wood-bead necklaces she
had made at String Fever last year.

“What about Alex?” she asked. “Isn't she coming?”

“Angie's picking her up,” her mother assured her. “They texted
me a few minutes ago to tell me they're running late. As usual.”

“Whew. That's a relief. She's supposed to be bringing dessert,
those delicious pumpkin spice cupcakes she makes.”

“The ones with the cinnamon buttermilk icing? Oh, yay!” Claire
said. “I guess since I'm not trying to fit into a wedding dress anymore, I might
be able to let myself have one.”

Maura could probably afford to eat five or six, since all her
clothes fit her loosely now. Amazing how little appetite she had these days.
“Everybody grab coffee or tea or whatever you're drinking from the counter. I've
got us set up in the corner.”

She ushered everyone over to the coffee counter in time to see
April hang her apron on the hook. Josh Kimball had come in to replace her for
the evening shift. He waved and grinned his charmer of a grin at her, and she
managed to dredge up a small smile for his perpetual raccoon eyes, white in an
otherwise bronzed face where his goggles blocked the sun while he was
snowboarding.

“I'm off. I'll see you later,” April said as she grabbed her
coat.

“Thank you for everything. Good luck with the night patrol. See
you tomorrow.”

“You got it.” April swung open the door just as a couple walked
in—and suddenly all the air whooshed out of Maura's lungs.

It was the man she had seen a half hour earlier entering the
café, the same impractical leather jacket, the same wavy dark hair, the same
plaid scarf.

In the hanging track lights of her store, she could clearly see
her mistake.

This man didn't simply bear a mild, passing resemblance to
Jackson Lange.

He most definitely
was
Jackson
Lange.