by Emily March
Vegas was a reference to the sweet bit of family gossip Tucker had shared during Boone’s trip to Texas over the weekend. In response, Tucker made a vulgar anatomical-related suggestion, then changed the subject. “So how did it go?”
“How did what go?”
“Your trip to Fort Worth.”
Ah. Well. Boone had managed to bury thoughts about his own unsettled situation while in the company of Hannah Dupree. Tucker’s question brought it right back to the forefront of his mind. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t go.”
“Oh.” There was a moment of silence as Tucker absorbed Boone’s answer. “You’re not taking the baby, after all?”
“I am taking him. Trace. I’m gonna name him Trace.”
“Trace,” Tucker repeated, approval in his tone. “Good choice. The family is due for another Trace McBride.”
“That’s what I thought. I talked to the foster parents and my friends at CPS, and we all decided it made more sense to wait until after Jackson’s wedding to make the trip to Fort Worth. The legal stuff needed a little more time, and honestly, I was afraid that if I’d gone to visit him, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave him behind. Can you imagine what the family would do if I showed up at Jackson’s wedding, and my plus-one was an infant son?”
“Your mom and sisters would go berserk.”
“It wouldn’t be right. Jackson and Caroline are the stars of the show this weekend, and I want it to be perfect for them. And to be honest, I want time alone with the baby at first. Trace and I will need to bond.”
Wariness in his tone, Tucker asked, “Alone? Boone, you’re not going to try to do this without help, are you? A nanny or something?”
“No, of course not. Sarah Winston—she’s the social worker who has taken point position on this whole thing—recommended a nanny for me. Excellent references and experience, and she wants to move to Colorado.”
“You’ve hired her sight unseen?” Tucker asked, his tone incredulous.
“I trust Sarah. Besides, I don’t really have any options. I don’t know anyone here in Eternity Springs who is in a position to step up at this particular time.”
After that, the conversation turned to wedding-related issues. Throughout the discussion, Boone found his attention divided between his cousin and the woman on the pier.
Anniversaries were hell. He knew that much from firsthand experience. The first anniversary, in particular, was a great big hairy bad. He wondered if today was the first for Hannah Dupree, and just whom she mourned.
Because mourn she did. Someone, not something. Boone would bet his favorite pair of Lucchese boots on that.
In his ear, Tucker’s impatient voice said, “Hey? Did I lose you?”
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“I said I won’t need to bunk at your place this week. I’m going to stay at the North Forty instead.”
“Want to be closer to your wife?”
“Don’t say that out loud,” Tucker snapped. “I swear, Boot, if you don’t keep your big mouth shut, I’ll shut it for you.”
“Boot” was the nickname his cousins sometimes used for him and reflected back to when his father threatened to put a boot in his ass. Tucker tended to use it when he seriously meant what he was saying.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Boone assured his cousin. “You’re actually doing me a favor. It looks like a friend of mine might need a place to stay this week, and there’s not a rental unit to be had in a hundred miles of Eternity Springs. The cabin will be perfect for her.”
“Her?”
Boone decided a subject change was in order. “Did I tell you I’m getting a puppy?”
* * *
The creak of footsteps on the wood planks clued Hannah into the fact that she was no longer alone. She glanced over her shoulder and was unsurprised to see Boone McBride approaching. He carried a cooler in one hand and a pair of fishing poles in the other. Setting the cooler down, he handed her a pole.
“I don’t have a fishing license.”
“Not a problem. The game warden is a friend of mine, and I prepaid for a stack of ’em to cover instances just like this. The top compartment of the cooler is a tackle box if you want to change your bait. The cooler has beer, water, soft drinks.”
“A combination tackle box and cooler, hmm? That’s handy.”
“Indispensable.” Boone opened the cooler. “I’m having a beer. What’s your preference?”
“I’ll stick with water, thank you.”
He handed her a bottle of water, snagged a beer for himself, then motioned toward the end of the pier. “Mind if I join you?”
“Please.” She scooted to one side, then with a wry twist of her lips added, “It is your fishing pier, after all.”
He sat beside her and spent the next few minutes opening his beer, switching a spoon for a spinner bait, and tossing his lure into the water. Once upon a time, Hannah had enjoyed fishing, having grown up in a boating family with a father who was an avid angler. She’d always found the repetitive process of casting and reeling to be soothing and peaceful. Now, though, she couldn’t bear the thought of hooking anything hidden beneath the lake’s surface. A stream, okay. A lake? Not in a million years.
“Not gonna fish?” Boone asked.
“No. I’m a lucky fisherman. I’d catch something, and I’m not in the mood for fish-smell hands.”
“Hey, I’m a gentleman. I’ll take the fish off your hook.”
She shook her head. “My father taught me better. You catch it, you free it, and you clean it.”
“Ah. A man after my own heart.”
Hannah smiled wistfully. “I miss him.”
Boone pinned her with a sharp look. “Is your father the person you are mourning today?”
The question was switchblade-deployed in surprise and sliced deep. Hannah shrank against the pain of it, sliding her gaze away from Boone. It landed on the open tray of tackle. Spying a casting plug, she reached for it and quickly, expertly, removed the swimming bait on the end of her line and attached the plug.
She cast, reeled, cast, reeled. Cast.
Boone must have figured that she wasn’t going to answer his question. He cast his line away from hers, then said, “My college roommate started dating a girl from Fort Worth during our freshman year of undergrad. His name is Joe Hart. She’s Ashleigh. Ashleigh introduced me to her best friend Mary, and I fell hard. Joe and Ashleigh married the weekend after we graduated. Mary and I tied the knot the weekend after that.”
Guessing his age, she figured this would have been somewhere between twelve and fifteen years ago.
“Due to Mary’s medical history, we knew going into it that we wouldn’t be able to have children. We also knew the adoption road could be long and full of bumps, so while I went to law school, Mary did a deep dive into adoption. We knew we’d likely have a wait on our hands if we wanted an infant, but we were young, and Mary really wanted a baby.”
Hannah set her fishing pole beside her on the pier. Why is he telling me this? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but neither did she want to interrupt him. She was curious now.
Boone placed his pole on their pier and set about changing his tackle as he matter-of-factly continued his story. “Twice, we brought babies home. Twice, something happened, and the adoption fell through.”
“That must have been terribly hard,” Hannah said.
“Ripped our hearts out.” Boone sent a top-water lure flying. “By then, I had my law degree and passed the bar. I worked for a little while at Ashleigh’s father’s law firm in Fort Worth, but defense wasn’t my calling.” He gave his line a series of jerks, working the lure. “I decided I really wanted to prosecute, so I joined the DA’s office. It was a much better fit. I specialized in cases involving crimes against children.”
Hannah involuntarily shuddered. Boone didn’t notice her reaction. He was staring off into space.
“While all this was going on, Joe and Ashleigh’s marriage was showing s
ome serious cracks. Mary and I tried to be Switzerland and remain neutral, but there were times Joe was a real jerk. I’d call him on it.” Boone’s lips twisted in a sadly rueful grin. “Once it went so far, we had a fistfight. Only black eye I’ve ever had that wasn’t given to me by one of my cousins, though I did get a little bit of a shiner when my friend Devin Murphy broke my nose. That’s a different story, though. Remind me to tell you about it.”
Hannah wished he’d go on about the broken nose. She had a feeling she’d much rather hear that story than the one he seemed intent on telling. It made her tense.
“Anyway,” he continued. “What happened next with Joe and Ashleigh…”
Why was he telling her all of this? Was he about to share something about a crime against a child? If so, she might have to jump into the lake and attempt to drown herself after all. Or at least push him in.
Having reeled in his line without a strike, Boone threw another cast. He reeled and pitched twice more before continuing, “It’s a long story worthy of an afternoon soap opera.” He frowned and cut Hannah a glance. “Are afternoon soap operas still on the air?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
He shrugged, then continued. “Without sharing the ugly details, I’ll say that one lesson I learned during this ordeal was that from the outside looking in, you can’t understand another couple’s marriage. You shouldn’t try. Joe did have a good heart, however, and in the middle of his personal crisis, he came to us with a private adoption opportunity. The teenage daughter of someone who worked for his parents was pregnant and looking for parents for her child. I knew it was risky, but Mary…” He shrugged. “We decided to try one more time and went all in. We met the mother. She liked us. She picked us. Mary decorated another nursery. Two weeks before the baby was due, the mother changed her mind.”
“Oh, Boone.”
“Yeah.” He reeled in his line, then made another cast. “I threw myself into another case, and I just didn’t see what was happening at home. Mary stalked the girl. The day the baby was born, my wife came home, sat down in the rocking chair in the nursery that I hadn’t made time to disassemble, and took a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I worked late, and she was gone by the time I came home.”
Hannah gave in to the desire to touch him. She placed her hand atop his and gave it a quick, comforting squeeze. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. Me too.” Boone continued to reel in the line. He filled his cheeks with air, then blew out a heavy breath. “There’s more to the story, but I’ve done all the bleeding I care to right now. The point I wanted to make is this: I understand, Hannah. I know what it’s like to lose someone. I know what a bitch anniversaries can be. March twenty-first will be seven years since Mary died. What year is today for you?”
Hannah hesitated. On the heels of his intimate confession, how could she keep quiet? “Three. This is the third anniversary.”
Boone nodded. “Three was a tough one. One and two, you know you’re going to be a basket case. Just when you think you’re progressing okay on the road toward recovery, boom, the third anniversary rolls around. The pain is fresh and new again.”
Now she looked at him appraisingly. “You have a point.”
“I know. That’s what I want you to know. Every anniversary is hard, but from my experience, four truly is a little easier than three.”
“Thank you. You are a nice guy, Boone McBride.”
“Not much of a fisherman, though,” he grumbled when his cast failed to attract a nibble once again. He secured the hook through the eye on his pole, set it aside, and rose. “I don’t know about you, but I’m so hungry that my navel is rubbing against my spine. I picked up a charcuterie board in town, and it’s on my kitchen table, calling to me. Do you need a little more solo time, or would you like to join me?”
Hannah smiled up at him. “I never turn down cheese.”
He grinned back at her and stretched out his hand to help her up.
Just like he’d been doing all day.
Chapter Five
As Boone flipped the steaks on the grill, curiosity was about to kill him. He wanted to know about the tragedy that she marked with such sorrow today. He needed to know just whom she mourned. Exactly why he wanted answers so bad, he couldn’t say. Ordinarily, he didn’t stick his nose in other people’s business.
Well, unless they were family. Family was fair game. That’s just the way the McBrides rolled. And maybe he’d been known to get nosy with good friends upon occasion.
Maybe he did lead with his nose reasonably often.
Of course, he’d learned at the feet of a queen. He loved his mother more than any woman on earth, but Marquetta McBride was the queen of mother hens. She was the empress of mother hens. Just how she managed to keep her thumb on the pulse of her adult children’s lives from her home base in West Texas, he had yet to discover.
This reminded him that he’d better give Celeste a heads-up about the need to keep his baby news quiet until after the wedding. He’d give her a call after dinner.
Hannah had asked for her steak medium-rare, a woman after his own heart. Judging the meat to be done, he moved the steaks from the grill to a platter and carried them inside. She’d volunteered to make the salad, so he’d invited her to make herself at home. She’d not only prepared a killer wedge complete with homemade blue cheese dressing, but also set the table.
“Hey, that looks really nice. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You have beautiful things, Boone. And fresh flowers in the house!”
“That’s because my mother is coming. She has a thing for fresh flowers. This will be her first visit to my new place, and I want to impress her.”
“Well, I think you have that in the bag.”
They made small talk over dinner, which Boone served in the sunroom where they could watch the sun go down. He continually searched for a way to slip a question or two for her into the mix. He discovered that she too liked flowers, had worked in a retail gift shop during high school and college, and liked to crochet. She’d shut down his attempts to delve any deeper into that subject, though he was able to ferret out the fact that she’d spent much of the past year in Florida.
He talked her into sharing a piece of the cake he’d picked up at Fresh Bakery on his trip to town. Watching her take her first bite of Sarah Murphy’s Midnight Magnificence chocolate cake made him want to growl. She went melty and soft, closed her eyes, purred, and licked her lips.
“That’s decadent,” she murmured.
“You should taste Fresh’s strawberry pinwheel cookies. I could eat myself into a sugar coma with those.”
“I’ll have to try them before I leave town.”
There. An opening. Finally. “Speaking of that, are you going to hang around our quaint little hamlet for a little while longer?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t thought beyond today. My time is my own to spend as I wish. This is my first visit to Colorado, so I’d like to do a little sightseeing before I move on.”
“A first-timer?” Boone rubbed his hands villainously together and waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, honey, do I have suggestions for you. Put yourself in my tour-guide hands.”
“Tour guide? I thought you were a lawyer.”
“I am a man of many talents. There exists a companion piece to the tourist map that lured you here. Let me get it.” He rose from his seat at the kitchen table and hurried to his home office, where he grabbed a United States atlas and the tourist map of Colorado that the local chamber had developed using Eternity Springs as a center for tourism in the state.
Returning to the sunroom, he took a seat in the chair next to Hannah and handed her first the cartoon tourist map. “It’s not to scale, of course, but it shows all the places you shouldn’t miss seeing.” He pointed out the Royal Gorge, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The Durango–Silverton train. The Great Sand Dunes. Mesa Verde. “And this just covers sights to see. If you add in things to do—hiking and fi
shing and climbing, horseback riding and white-water rafting—Eternity Springs is a great place to use as a home base. Do you consider yourself more a doer or a looker?”
“Excuse me?”
“Which appeals to you the most? Taking part in activities or seeing the sights?”
Studying the map, she tilted her head as she considered the question. “One doesn’t take precedence over another. I’d like to do both, I think.”
“Good. You should stay here in Eternity Springs in that case. My friend Cam Murphy runs Refresh Outdoors, the local outfitter shop. He can hook you up with guides and day trips for just about any activity around. He’ll put you with the right people and events for your needs and abilities.”
“That sounds appealing. Maybe I’ll stop by Refresh and visit with him tomorrow. Look into renting a place to stay. Do you have a recommendation for that?”
“Well, that’s a bit more complicated.” The sound of his phone ringing interrupted him, and he scowled. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t answer that while we are still technically at the dinner table, but that’s my mother’s ringtone. She and my dad are due to head this way first thing in the morning, so I probably should take it.”
“Go ahead. Please.”
Boone grabbed his phone from the wooden bowl in the kitchen, where he habitually dumped his pockets upon arriving home. “Hey, Mom, what’s up?”
“We’re going a mile a minute here. Want to have the car mostly loaded before we go to bed tonight. But something—someone, actually—has come up. Do you remember Linda Gail Pearson?”
“Blake’s sister? Of course I remember her.” The Pearsons had been part of the McBride family’s summer running bunch out at Boone’s grandparents’ lake house.
“Well, she was down in Redemption with some friends over the weekend, and she ran into Jackson and Caroline. They invited her to the wedding. Her weekend is free, so she’s going to ride up with us if we can find a place for her to stay. Do you have room at your inn?”
“Sure. The twins can bunk together.” Boone felt sure that his sisters, Lara and Francesca-aka-Frankie, wouldn’t mind sharing a room.
