Love's Returning Hope (Love's Texas Homecoming Book 2; First Street Church #15)
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Love’s Returning Hope: Texas Homecoming, Book 2
First Street Church, Book 15
Sharon Hughson
© 2018, Sharon Hughson.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover Design by RockSolidBookDesign.com
Proofread by Alice Shepherd
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Sweet Promise Press
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Brighton, MI 48116
With special prayers for those whose “daddy issues” are solved by a Heavenly Father
Contents
Publisher’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
What’s Next?
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1
A sweet bubble gum scent swirled around Jazlyn Rolle during what had become her favorite part of her position at Boldt & Associates. In front of her, the girl smiled, ignorant of the wheelchair beneath her caused by a manufacturer who didn’t care about the faceless statistics harmed by their products. When the girl’s small hand squeezed around Jaz’s, it pulled strings in her heart. Suddenly, Jaz was transported twenty years in the past where she was the little sister sharing cotton candy with her brother.
Jaz blinked the old memory away and firmed her smiling mouth before pumping the girl’s pale hand in her bronze one and sliding away from the wheelchair.
“Can we play catch next time?” Hope shone in the girl’s pale blue eyes.
Jaz glanced to the woman whose hands gripped the handles on the back of the chair. Red shadowed the mother’s eyes, and her thin brown hair hung limply to her shoulders. In contrast, the girl’s hair was in two tight braids, evidence of Jaz’s care while the mother met with Mr. Boldt.
After the woman nodded, Jaz said, “I always have a glove and ball in my desk.” Because softball had been Jaz’s saving grace at that girl’s age, long before she’d played on scholarship at the University of Texas.
“Thank you, Miz Jaz,” the mother said in accent-thickened gratitude.
Jaz gripped the woman’s hand for a moment and opened the door. Heavy air rushed to fill the coolness, and a gust swirled yellowed leaves across the sidewalk. Jaz waved until the wheelchair was out of sight on the far side of the van in the nearest handicapped parking spot.
When it became clear most parents in the large lawsuit proceedings couldn’t afford babysitting during conference appointments, Jaz came up with a compromise. She entertained the children while parents attended the lawyer-client meetings. Now she was forced back to the job she’d been hired to do.
Jaz rolled her shoulders and returned to her desk. Most of the research on the negligence case against the pharmaceutical company had been completed weeks ago, but there was always another case. Always some other big company taking advantage of the little guy. Those cases called to the part of her that wanted to protect others from bullies, as her brother had always done for her. Until being the hero cost his life.
Jaz scooted up to her desk and woke her computer screen. Thoughts of Drew and life callings faded as she copied pertinent case numbers into her research file and highlighted the court summations, working with three separate applications open until words swam on the screen. Just another day in the life of a paralegal.
She leaned away from the monitor and closed her eyes. A stinging burn ebbed as darkness soothed the eye strain. She’d almost prefer fumbling through the dusty tomes in the library on the second floor. At least she had to get up and locate the next resource. Chained to her desk, she didn’t know if her eyes or her rear ached more.
She squirmed, and her chair rolled an inch to one side and squeaked like a mouse beneath an elephant’s foot.
The case she was working on was important. It would secure funding for several nonprofit groups, but that didn’t make the research any less tedious.
Maybe she should apply to law school again. At least then she would be working on briefs and motions rather than this constant search for precedents and statutes. If she got her law degree, someone else would find that information for her.
An old longing for her father’s approval ached in the vicinity of her heart. He wanted her to become a lawyer, but her short list of accomplishments had taught her whatever she did would never be enough to please him. Because she wasn’t a beautiful lady like her mother, and no one could escape the shadow of a brother who sacrificed everything for duty.
The pang sharpened. Most days, her work satisfied her sense of purpose and she didn’t feel her brother’s loss. Other days, the monotony fueled doubts into rocket ships bent on destroying any sense of significance she might have found since leaving the Army.
Her smart phone vibrated on her desk. Jaz snapped her eyes open and flipped the device face up, glancing at nearby desks.
Dad. No photo flashed above the single word because Jaz didn’t have one. That simple truth spoke volumes about her relationship with him. He demanded, and she conformed. She couldn’t recall a time he’d ever listened to more than a dozen words she said.
The ache in her chest became a whirlpool in her stomach. He would never call her. Unless something bad happened, and her mother couldn’t make the call.
Her fingers trembled, and she nearly dropped the phone which chose that moment to vibrate again. She swiped the answer button, swallowing the terror clawing at her voice box.
“Hello?”
“Jazlyn, this is your father.” The medium baritone voice echoed in her ear. Was he on speaker?
“Hey. I’m at work.”
The bottom dropped out of Jaz’s world. She wilted against the chair and numbness had her fumbling the phone again.
“What about her?” Please, God, don’t let her be dead. She couldn’t lose another person she loved.
“There was an accident Saturday.”
It was Monday. Why had he waited two days to tell Jaz the news? A familiar pang slashed at her sense of duty. When the weekly call hadn’t come last night, Jaz should have called Mom.
“How bad?”
“The car’s a loss.” Like Jaz cared about a collection of metal and wires. “They took her to St. Joseph’s, thought it was a fractured pelvis.”
He said it like breaking the bone that divided the body into upper and lower halves was a small thing. Only her father would be so blasé.
“Is she still there?”
After a pause, her father choked out, “No. They had to transport her to Travis County General.”
That was Austin’s foremost trauma hospital. A bubble burst inside her chest. Spots danced along the edges of her vision.
“She had emergency surgery this morning to stop internal bleeding.”
Moisture blurred across the ever-narrowing view in front of Jaz. Her mother had to be okay.
“Prognosis?” She snapped the word out.
Her father’s voice cut off. Sounds of shuffling at his end of the phone scratched her ear.
“She’s in traction for at least six weeks, but they found the bleed and stopped it. Both of her legs are also broken.” His voice faltered.
Jaz knew this hurt him more than it wounded her. Her father idolized and adored her mother. It was the gleam of that relationship that made his dismissal of Jaz all the more obvious and painful. She didn’t measure up. Her athletic interests and tomboyish antics were nothing like her mother’s beauty queen face and figure.
“I’ll come to the hospital.”
“She’s still in recovery. It might be hours.”
You shouldn’t be alone. That’s what she knew she should say. But her being there would practically be the same as him being alone. They wouldn’t talk or hug. No, they’d circle each other like territorial porcupines.
“I’ll be there soon.” Jaz asked where she could meet him and, after he gave directions, she ended the call.
She expelled a long breath. The room spun. Jaz leaned elbows on the desk and propped her forehead on her palms.
Lord, I thought my life was looking up.
After forfeiting her military career to fraternize with an officer who then dumped her, Jaz had lost all sense of purpose. She’d wanted to follow in Drew’s footsteps, carry on the heroics he lived daily. She’d found a great job in Austin, only a couple hours from her parents, and had even spent some time working with the softball team at UT where she’d played on full scholarship for three years.
Until Drew died.
Once her heartbeat returned to normal and she could breathe again, Jaz opened the ongoing text thread with Bailey. At least he would understand. Call me.
If they needed to talk during work hours, the standard method was a simple text. Once the other person had time, they would call back or respond to a text request.
Jaz had informed her boss of the situation and closed the projects she was working on before her cell phone rang. A picture of Bailey lit up the screen. He wore his sexy grin and tapped the brim of his cowboy hat with two fingers. The sight twisted her chest with a different sort of pain.
Why did someone so gorgeous and hardworking admire her? She couldn’t comprehend it, but she knew he would stand by her like no one else. Only Drew had ever been so stalwart.
And today she needed him.
2
Bailey Travers clutched the yellow legal pad. Its familiarity clung to him, a single link to the father he’d buried five months ago.
I’m in the city, Dad. Chasing my dreams like you wanted.
The pale sage eyes and white smile of his girlfriend flashed across his mind. If she hadn’t come back to Sweet Grove, he would still be riding a tractor and living out of his truck. Jaz and the designing job had spurred him away from the only home he’d ever known. But she was worth it. Someday, they would have a new home together.
He stepped through a large room divided into cubicles and lined on three sides by offices, a conference room, and a break area. At his design table, he set the paper aside. His phone had vibrated twice while he was meeting with his boss to discuss changes to a custom remodel on an upscale home in West Lake Hills. Who pulled out walls and replaced rooms in a house barely ten years old?
Bailey couldn’t imagine the audacity of it. He pulled his smart phone from his hip pocket and tapped the screen. A text from Jaz blared, Call me.
His heart jigged behind his ribs, a familiar sensation around Jaz. It still amazed him that a woman from strong roots thought a former foster kid was worth dating. He understood why she’d helped him hold onto the ranch his sister converted to a resort after their father died. She was like her older brother that way. Drew had rescued Bailey from bullies in high school and offered friendship. Still, when Jaz followed up her rescue by asking to date him? Bailey jumped at that and returned to the drafting career he’d left behind when MaryAnn Travers passed away.
The twinge of loneliness at the thought of his little sister Tess and his recently-deceased father Fritz hardly registered. Somehow, Bailey had walked away from his father’s funeral with more to live for rather than less. In a world where he loved and lost, the turnaround constituted a modern miracle.
Bailey snagged his hat from its hook and strolled out of his cube. A few other designers greeted him as he wove through the maze of cubicles to exit into the parking lot behind the building. He shoved open the fire door and sunshine blinded him. The wave of hot air suffocated, and it took him a moment to catch his breath.
After plopping his hat on his head and strolling into shade cast by the neighboring building, he pressed the button. Tinny ringing sounded in his ear.
“Thanks.” Jaz’s voice made spring bloom in his stomach. Something in her tone had Bailey standing straighter.
“You okay?”
During a pause, he shuffled his feet. Lord, whatever it is, let me be able to help her.
“My mom was in a car accident.”
His heart exploded, pounding, flipping, and trying to escape from his chest. Not her mother. They were so close.
“This weekend, but Dad didn’t bother to call until there was some sort of internal bleeding scare.” Her bitterness bit into him.
“You need to go to her.”
“She’s at Travis County General. Still in post-op recovery.”
He swallowed a lump swelling from somewhere deeper than his stomach. Hospitals meant death. “I’ll meet you there.”
Her sigh told him he’d said the right thing. She didn’t get along well with her father, who always ragged on her about becoming a lawyer.
“Are you sure your boss will let you come? My mom isn’t exactly your family.”
Not yet. But Bailey planned to change that relationship by marrying Jaz as soon as the stubborn woman overcame her doubts about his feelings. Today was another time he could prove his commitment to her.
“I’ll work something out.” Bailey’s deadlines weren’t so pressing they couldn’t be met if he stayed late a few nights.
Jaz shared information about the waiting room, promising to text him if they should meet elsewhere. Steadiness returned to her voice. Did that have anything to do with him?
Once the call ended, he paced back into the building, whisking his hat off as he strode to his boss’s office. An assistant typed madly on a computer keyboard in the outer office. Behind her, the door to his boss’s domain stood open.
“Back so soon” The woman’s blonde hair draped over one shoulder and across her ample chest. She winked, and heat crept up Bailey’s neck.
Everyone a
t the firm knew he’d moved to Austin to be close to his girlfriend, but that didn’t stop most of the women from flirting with him.
Bailey shifted from foot to foot and nodded toward the other door. His fingers pinched the band on his cowboy hat.
“Go on in.” Her hazel eyes flickered down him as she returned her attention to typing.
Bailey strode into the office, blinking at the flood of light from the window behind his boss. It overlooked a small green space that separated this building from the much taller one beside it.
“More questions?” His boss stood. Iron gray hair dotted his temples, and the dress shirt tucked loosely into dark slacks concealed the middle-aged bulge. He motioned Bailey toward the two chairs in the far corner of the room, a space the man preferred to conduct meetings and interviews.
Bailey nodded in response to the question and stopped beside one of the chairs. “I’d like to take off early. Jaz’s mother was in an accident and just got out of surgery at Travis County General.”
The shorter man halted. “Of course. Do you need to go now? I would like the proposal for Inder Realty by day’s end.”
Bailey knew his boss was meeting with the broker the next afternoon. It wouldn’t take him long to finish the additions they’d discussed. “I’ll get that to you before I leave.”
“Will you need a few days off?” His boss had the steeliest gray eyes Bailey had ever seen, but at the moment they softened.