Sweet Laurel Falls (11 page)

She smiled. “Let me guess. A scarf. Lucy’s mother is a
prodigious knitter.”

“It’s a very nice scarf and will definitely be just the ticket
during our chilly Bay Area summer mornings when the fog rolls in.”

She tried to imagine him in his natural milieu of San
Francisco. Where did he live in the city? she wondered. Riley had lived in
Oakland for years and had only returned to be the Hope’s Crossing police chief
the year before.

Maura had gone to visit him with her girls several years ago
and done all the tourist things—the cable cars, walking across the Golden Gate
Bridge, visiting the sea lions on the wharf. They might have even passed by
Jack’s office.

“Hope’s Crossing is a nice town,” she said after a moment. “I
think if you spent a little more time here, you might see that. We even have our
own Angel of Hope.”

“Angel of Hope?”

“It’s actually pretty cool,” Sage said. “Somebody goes around
secretly doing good works for people. And not little things either. Major stuff.
Taryn Thorne, one of the other kids injured in Layla’s car accident, got a video
game system from the Angel, the kind where you don’t need a remote. They’re not
cheap. And my friend Brooke’s mom had all her utilities secretly paid while she
was going through a divorce.”

He looked intrigued. “And you don’t know who’s doing all the
good works?”

“There are a million theories buzzing around town,” Maura said.
“Some completely unbelievable. Personally, I think not knowing is a big part of
the excitement.”

“We had a visit from the Angel,” Sage said. “After Layla died,
somebody left an envelope with money in it on the doorstep with a note that we
could use it for funeral expenses or find some other way to honor her life. Mom
and I agreed to donate it to Habitat for Humanity. They’ve got a housing
development going up west of town.”

“Really? In Hope’s Crossing, along with the million-dollar ski
lodges up the canyon?”

“A community can’t survive with only vacation homes. We need
year-round residents and they need to be able to afford housing,” Maura said. It
was one of her pet issues and hit very close to home. Too many of the old-timers
had been forced out of their homes because they could no longer afford property
tax once valuations started going sky-high after the ski resort was built.

“We volunteer to help build whenever we can,” Sage said. Her
daughter was barely picking at the delicious meal, Maura noticed. She had eaten
only a little of the pork and a few of the potatoes she had spent so much time
mashing.

Maybe she was too excited at having her father there, or maybe
she hadn’t quite beaten the flu she seemed to have picked up since she had been
home.

“If you take the project in Hope’s Crossing, would that mean
you would have to commute from California?” Sage asked.

“I don’t know whether I’m even going to submit a proposal,” he
said. “Even if I do, there’s no guarantee I would be awarded the project.”

“Oh, sure. That makes sense.” Sage poked at her food, dragging
her fork into little ski trails through her mashed potatoes. She gazed down at
her plate and spoke in a deceptively casual voice. “Since you’re leaving
tomorrow, I was, uh, just wondering when I would see you again.”

“We’ll work something out,” Jack said quietly. “You’re not
getting rid of me now.”

Maura set her own fork down, not hungry anymore. Good thing
Jack had a healthy appetite, or all of Sage’s hard work would have been for
nothing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

D
URING
THE
REST
OF
THE
MEAL
,
they talked about Sage’s studies and Jack’s projects. It wasn’t as awkward as
Maura had feared, but she couldn’t ignore the little twang of tension between
her and Jack, and the small sizzle of awareness.

She didn’t want to be attracted to him, but she didn’t seem to
have any more control over her hormones than she’d had as a teenager.

Finally, everyone seemed to be finished either eating or
pushing food around the plate, and the ordeal was over.

Maura smiled and took the napkin off her lap. “Sage, you’ve
been working so hard all day. Why don’t you and Jack go in by the fire and
relax? I’m happy to take care of the cleanup in here and in the kitchen.”

“I can’t let you do that, Mom. I left a big mess.”

“Between the three of us, we can have the job done in a flash.”
Jack said.

There is no “three of us,”
she
wanted to say. They weren’t a unit and never had been. For Sage’s early years,
she and Maura had been alone against the world. Okay, they hadn’t exactly been
alone, since her mother and sisters—and even Riley—had rallied around her. But
Jack certainly hadn’t been in the picture to stay up late with a sick child or
work on potty training or read her to sleep.

Now he had burst into their lives with his stories about his
high-powered career and the excitement of traveling around the world, and she
could see Sage lapping it up like Puck at his water dish after a long game of
fetch, and she
hated
it.

She caught herself, appalled at the thoughts. She was jealous,
she realized. Plain and simple. She didn’t want to see Sage establishing this
bond with Jack. She wanted to turn the calendar back several weeks, to when she
didn’t have to share her daughter with anyone.

She had lost one child with devastating suddenness. Now it felt
as if the other one was slipping away, inch by inch.

She would only push her away further by acting petulant and bad
tempered. She forced a smile. “Sure. All three of us can clean up. I really
don’t mind doing it myself, but we can all make the work go faster
together.”

After they carried the dishes in from the dining room and
loaded the dishwasher together, Maura filled the sink with sudsy water that
smelled of green apples and began washing the dishes.

“Towel?” Jack asked, and Sage pointed him to the drawer beneath
the work island where the dish towels were stored. As he reached for them, his
hip brushed Maura’s and she froze as the masculine scent of his aftershave
teased her but the moment passed quickly.

For the next few minutes, she washed the dishes and he dried
them before handing them to Sage to put away. This was entirely too domestic,
she thought. Like a regular nuclear family working together at the end of a long
day.

When the final dish was washed and the last bit of water
gurgled down the drain, she dried her hands on another towel she pulled from the
door, wishing she could clean up the mess of her life as efficiently as they had
cleaned up the kitchen. “I imagine Puck is tired of his bedroom confinement. I’d
better go let him out.”

“I can do that,” Sage said.

“No. It’s okay. Stay and talk to your, uh, Jack.”

The little shih tzu greeted her as if he hadn’t seen her in
months, jumping around and doing cute little dancing circles in the air. He
wasn’t much of a barker, something she very much appreciated.

She scooped him up with a quick look down the hall to make sure
Sage wasn’t watching. It wouldn’t do to let her daughter think she was softening
about keeping the dog.

“You did okay in here by yourself, didn’t you? I don’t see any
accidents. Good job,” she murmured, pressing her cheek to his furry face and
receiving a gleeful lick in return.

Through the windows in Sage’s darkened bedroom, she could see
snowflakes softly falling, kissing the window. Her favorite sort of winter
night, soft and quiet. Peaceful. She wanted to be out there, she thought, in the
quiet solitude, rather than here with all these awkward currents and the solid
proof of all her mistakes.

She could hear the voices recede behind her as Sage and Jack
moved into the family room near the fireplace. Suddenly she wasn’t at all sure
she could sit in there with them and make after-dinner conversation for another
hour or so.

“How would you like to go for a walk?” she asked the dog,
seizing on any excuse to escape. Puck wagged his tail so hard it was a blur, and
Maura was surprised at her own rusty chuckle. “All right. Don’t hurt yourself.
Let me find your leash and my coat.”

In only a few moments, she slipped into her favorite black
knee-high UGG boots and her parka, then clipped the leash on the dog and headed
into the family room with him dancing around her feet with eagerness.

“Puck needs a walk. I think I’ll just take him around the
block. We should be back in a few minutes.”

“Alone? In the dark?” Jack asked, eyebrows raised.

“This is Hope’s Crossing, not San Francisco. But if it makes
you feel better, I’ve got a flashlight
and
pepper
spray on my key chain.”

He rose. “You know, now that you mention it, a walk actually
sounds nice after such a great and filling dinner. What do you say, Sage?”

Sage made a face. “Normally, I’d love that. Mom and I like to
take walks together in the evening, but I’ve been on my feet all day. Right now
I don’t want to move a muscle from the fire.”

Jack looked from Sage to Maura and back again, obviously torn
about whether to go with her or stay here and talk to his daughter on his last
night in town.

Sage made the choice easier for him, unfortunately for Maura.
“You two go ahead and take a walk. I’m great here, I promise. I told my roommate
I would Skype for a few minutes to help her with an essay she has to finish for
an online course.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’ll be fine. It’s too cold out there for you to be
gone long, anyway.”

She was stuck with him now. Maura didn’t see a reaction on
Jack’s handsome features. No doubt he wasn’t any more eager than she was to be
forced into closer contact, without the buffer Sage had provided so far.

“Let me grab my coat,” he said.

While Jack shrugged into his very sexy leather jacket, Puck
tugged anxiously on his leash, no doubt the only one excited about this walk
now.

Christmas lights still blinked around them from her neighbor’s
houses as they headed out into the quiet night. This was always a bit of a
melancholic time for her, the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when people
kept their decorations up as if clinging to the last moment of celebration.

They walked in silence past a few houses to the corner, then
turned onto the next street.

Jack was the first to break it. “Sage seems like a really
terrific kid,” he said.

Their daughter seemed to be the one topic they could agree
about. “She’s amazing. She’s always been very grounded. Layla… Layla was fire
and passion and all these swinging emotions, from the time she was little. It
was like she was hormonal from the time she was a toddler, but Sage has never
been that way.”

“You’ve done a good job with her.” He paused and seemed to be
weighing his words. “It couldn’t have been easy on your own.”

She glanced at him to see if his words held hidden barbs, but
he seemed sincere. She gripped Puck’s leash a little more tightly while a steady
warmth seeped through her.

“No. It hasn’t always been easy. But always worth it.”

He didn’t answer for a long moment, and the only sounds besides
the crunch of their steps in the snow were the occasional passing car on another
street farther down and Puck’s snuffles. The lights of Hope’s Crossing were a
bright glitter below them.

Again, he was first to break the silence. “I’m still furious,
you know. That you never told me you were pregnant.”

She exhaled heavily, her breath coming out in long puffs.
“Well, I’m still furious that you walked away without once looking back. So I
guess that makes us even.”

After a long moment, he startled her by chuckling softly. “How
about we both agree we’ve got a right to be angry with each other and try to
figure out where we go from here?”

“You’re leaving tomorrow, Jack. Why do we have to go anywhere,
except back to my house?”

“My job is fairly flexible. I can work anywhere. I’m thinking
about temporarily relocating to Colorado, especially if I decide to pursue the
recreation center project.”

“Really? You would do that for Sage?”

“I missed twenty years of her life. I’m not sure I want to miss
out on the rest of it.”

“She’s an adult. Trust me, the last thing she’s going to want
is her father hovering over her.”

“I wouldn’t hover. Just…be closer. If she needed me.”

Her chest ached at the wistfulness in his voice. Should she
have tried harder to reach him while she had been pregnant? She had been so
certain of her decision to exclude him from Sage’s life, but for the first time
she began to wonder how much of that had been based on rational thought, and how
much had been an immature girl’s reaction to her own pain, that he hadn’t loved
her as she had loved him.

“I suppose you’re an adult too,” she said. “If you want to
uproot your life in some effort to make up for…for lost time or whatever, I’m
really in no position to say otherwise. Sage might not want you underfoot all
the time, but I’m sure she would enjoy having you closer.”

He nodded, hands in his pockets. “Thank you. I appreciate you
saying that. I’m still trying to figure everything out.”

He released a breath. “I always loved this spot. When I’ve
thought of Colorado over the years, I’ve pictured this place on a summer
evening, with the trees sweeping low in the water, and the water flowing over
the moss with the mountains all around. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was in
winter.”

To her surprise, their steps had led them to Sweet Laurel
Falls, one of her favorite places on earth. A small parkway ran parallel to
Sweet Laurel Creek, and benches had been set where there was a view of the
falls, really just a series of cascading levels where the creek rippled down the
mountainside. They stood on the snow-covered pedestrian bridge over one of the
lower levels, and from here the water still looked an impossible green from the
moss growing on the rocks beneath the surface, in vivid contrast to the ice that
had formed along the edges and the snow piled along the banks.

“In another few weeks, that waterfall will be completely iced
over, with only a little trickle of water underneath.” Right now she felt like
that icy waterfall, with only a tiny trickle of life buried deep inside her.

“It must be beautiful.”

They stood together without speaking for a long moment, elbows
on the bridge railing as they watched the moonlight drift through the snow
clouds and create pale shadows on the spill of water. His scent teased her, of
cedar and leather. Some part of her wanted to lean against him and just inhale,
to soak up some of that warmth. If she turned her head just so, their mouths
would be on the same level. Would he taste the same as she remembered?

The thoughts sidled through her head and she caught herself,
horrified.

No. Absolutely not. She wasn’t ready for that ice to thaw.

She eased away from him, feeling the cold where their bodies
had nearly touched. “Um, we should probably head back. Puck’s little paws are
likely frozen. I should have put his booties on before we left.”

For a moment, he watched her with an inscrutable expression,
and she had to dearly hope none of those crazy stray thoughts showed on her
face.

“Leave the guy a
little
dignity,”
Jack finally said. “Here.”

Before she knew what he intended, he reached for the leash,
then scooped up Puck with one arm while he unzipped his jacket with the other,
and tucked the dog inside. She watched, amused and touched despite herself,
while he zipped the jacket back up with Puck’s little furry face sticking out
the top. The dog looked inordinately pleased with himself, as if he had
orchestrated the whole thing.

“What were you saying about a guy and his dignity?” she
asked.

He made a face as they headed back through the lightly
fluttering snow to her house, in what turned out to be an oddly companionable
silence.

“Would you like some cocoa before you head back to the B and
B?” she asked as they approached her front door. The invitation was mostly
polite, but he
had
been kind enough to carry Puck
all the way.

“Sure. That sounds great. Thanks. We may complain about our
chilly summers in the Bay Area, but they don’t compare to late December in the
high Rockies.”

The moment they opened the door, Jack pulled Puck out from his
coat and unhooked the dog’s leash before setting him down. The scrabble of his
nails sounded on the hardwood floor as he headed into the kitchen to his water
bowl. Maura shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet, then went in
search of her daughter. She found Sage stretched out on the couch in the family
room, sound asleep with the television playing softly in the background.

Rats. If only she had waited a few moments to extend the cocoa
invitation to Jack, she could have used the excuse of Sage sleeping to send him
on his way for the evening. She was stuck with him a little bit longer.

“Zonked out,” he murmured beside her, and she realized he must
have followed her. She glanced over and found him watching their daughter with a
wary sort of tenderness that made her chest ache all over again.

Maybe having him in Sage’s life wasn’t such a terrible
thing.