Country Bride

by Debbie Macomber

  Charlie’s father was the mayor of Hope’s Crossing and one of the town’s most powerful members. He was also an attorney who—along with his partners—was doing everything he could to keep his son from having to atone for his stupid choices.

  Because of this little punk, his baby girl’s life had been decimated. While he rode around town flaunting his five-thousand-dollar mountain bike and buying iced treats, Taryn was forced to endure countless procedures and shots, to be unable to communicate even the most basic of needs, to spend her days in a wheelchair when she should be dancing and running and enjoying life as a teenage girl.

  Shoving him into the freezer was too good for him.

  “Um, how’s Taryn?” Charlie finally asked.

  Brodie had to admit, the kid showed balls to pretend concern. “Do you really care? I didn’t notice you coming to the hospital anytime during the last three months.”

  At least he had the grace to look embarrassed. “I wanted to. I just...my parents, uh, didn’t think I should.”

  “Right. Wouldn’t want you to face something as inconvenient as your conscience, would we?”

  If possible, Charlie’s features turned an even deeper shade of red. Brodie would have liked to say something cutting and harsh but a family of tourists in shorts and ball caps came up behind Charlie and the moment passed. What was the point anyway? Yelling at the kid wouldn’t help Taryn and probably wouldn’t make Brodie feel any better.

  Hannah Kirk called his name just a moment later. “Here you go, Mr. Thorne. You tell Taryn we’re all praying for her, okay?”

  He forced a polite smile, biting down the urge to point out that prayers hadn’t done a hell of a lot of good so far.

  “I’ll tell her. And thank you for the shave ice. I’m sure she’ll enjoy it.”

  Hannah hesitated. “Would it be okay if I stopped by to bring her another one sometime, now that she’s home?”

  It was nice of her to offer, especially as their friendship seemed to have withered away after grade school. “I think she’d like that,” he answered.

  Charlie was apparently following their conversation. “Wait. She’s home?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you see the signs all over town?” Hannah asked, with a touch of pugnacity that seemed out of character for her. “Mr. Thorne is taking her home now. That’s why he bought her a shave ice here instead of in Denver.”

  An interesting mix of emotions crossed Charlie’s features. He looked happy and miserable and wary at the same time. “So she’s okay?”

  Chief McKnight probably wouldn’t arrest him if he “accidentally” dumped a shave ice on the punk’s head, would he? “Right,” he growled. “If you call needing twenty-four-hour care, not being able to get out more than a few words, not having the motor control to feed herself this shave ice, okay, then yes. I guess she’s okay. Unlike Layla Parker.”

  It was a cruel thing to say, he knew, and he felt small for it when Charlie hissed in a breath as if Brodie had coldcocked him like he wanted to. The kid stared at him for a long moment then climbed back onto his mountain bike and pedaled away without taking the icy treat Hannah was reluctantly fixing for him.

  Brodie stood like an idiot for a moment watching after him, then shook his head. He tried to put the encounter out of his mind as he headed back to the van. This was a good day, right? Taryn was going home. That was the important thing, not some little shit with an entitlement complex.

  At the van, he slid open the left rear door—the one without the ramp—set his own shave ice in the drink holder and then scooped a spoonful of the sugary treat for Taryn.

  “Here you go, honey. Blue. Just like you wanted.”

  She gave that lopsided smile again, the one doctors warned him might be permanent, and opened her mouth for a taste.

  “Mmmm,” she said, so he gave her another one, wiping her face a little where some of the flavored ice dribbled out.

  “Is that good for now?” he asked after a few more tastes. “I can give you more when we get home.”

  “Yeah,” she answered, smiling again, and his heart ached with love for her. He hated that it had taken a tragic accident stunning the entire town to remind him how much.

  “Everything okay?” his mother asked when they were once more heading up the causeway toward his neighborhood above the main section of town.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” He focused on the drive instead of the jumble of emotions he didn’t know what to do with. Anger at Charlie, love for his daughter, fury at this whole damn situation.

  “You seem tense.”

  In the rearview mirror, he could see Taryn gazing out the window, not paying attention to their conversation, so he decided to tell his mother the truth.

  “Charlie Beaumont was behind me in line at the shave-ice stand.” He pitched his voice low.

  Katherine didn’t seem to think this was all that earthshaking an event. “What did you do?”

  “He’s still in one piece, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  His mother’s smile had a bittersweet edge. “Glad to hear it. I think enough people have suffered from one boy’s foolish mistakes, don’t you?”

  Except Charlie. The kid hadn’t suffered one damn bit. By one of those weird quirks of physics and sheer stupid luck, he’d emerged from the accident completely unscathed—and Brodie was quite sure one part of him would never be content until the kid paid somehow for all the lives he’d ruined.

  * * *

  She could be Switzerland.

  Think the Matterhorn, lederhosen, those ten-foot-long trumpety thingies.

  Above all, neutrality.

  Evie stood inside the sprawling Thorne home, wondering at the delay. Katherine had texted her thirty minutes earlier to say they were arriving in Hope’s Crossing. They should have been here fifteen minutes ago but maybe they stopped somewhere along the route to enjoy the outpouring of support from the town.

  She wasn’t sure how word had trickled out but by now everybody seemed to know. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce had started a phone tree or something, because nearly every store in town had some kind of sign in the window or on their marquee and it seemed everyone who came into the store wanted to talk about Taryn’s homecoming.

  Evie only hoped Brodie would take that support in the light it was intended, as a manifestation of the good wishes of people in town and not as some expression of pity. Somehow she doubted the latter would sit well with him.

  “Can I get you something to drink while we wait? A soda or some tea?” Mrs. Olafson, Brodie’s scarily efficient housekeeper, hovered in the doorway. She was squat and apple-cheeked and had seemed stern at first glance. A bit on the terrifying side, actually, but Evie could see by her frequent glances down the driveway that the housekeeper was eagerly anticipating Taryn’s return.

  “I’m great,” she said, her tone gentle. “Why don’t you sit down and wait for her with me?”

  “I couldn’t. I should be working on the salad for dinner.”

  “Dinner is still a few hours away. Please. Sit.”

  Mrs. Olafson looked reluctant but she finally perched on the edge of the teak bench beside the front door.

  “How long have you worked for the Thornes?” Evie asked. She had seen the older woman around town but their circles hadn’t really connected before and she had yet to take the chance to get to know her. They would be working in close proximity the next few weeks. No harm in trying to be friendly and learn more about Mrs. Olafson, other than that she rarely smiled and always pulled her hair into a rather severe steel-gray bun at the base of her neck that made Evie think of her elementary school lunch ladies or perhaps the stereotypical warden at a women’s prison.

  “Almost five years. My husband was a chef and Mr. Thorne hired him to work one of his restaurants up at the ski resorts.”
/>
  “Oh, is that where you learned to cook so well?”

  “I taught him everything he knew,” the other woman said, the first hint of a smile Evie had seen just barely lifting the corners of her mouth. It faded quickly. “We moved from our home in Minneapolis just six weeks before he was diagnosed with liver cancer.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  The other woman shrugged. “I thought for sure Mr. Thorne would fire him but he didn’t. He continued to give him a paycheck even when he couldn’t work anymore. After David died, Mr. Thorne asked if I would like to come to work for him, helping him with the house and with Taryn. I’ve been here ever since.” She fidgeted with her apron, her pale blue eyes darting to the driveway again. “He’s a very good man, Mr. Thorne. Though I’ve always been a good cook, I had no real job experience at all. I married young and all I’d ever done was be a mother to my boys, who are both in college now. Mr. Thorne didn’t care about that. He hired me anyway.”

  She should never have asked. Evie fidgeted. She didn’t want to hear these glowing words of praise for Brodie. It made him seem kind and generous, not the stiff, unpleasant man she’d always thought him to be.

  “It seems to me a lifetime of taking care of your family made you eminently qualified to handle things here. If those delicious smells coming from the kitchen are any indication, I’m sure you do your job exceptionally well.”

  The woman seemed to warm a little, some of the reserve in her expression thawing. “I try. I don’t have any experience with therapy either but if you need my help with Taryn in any way, I can always offer an extra set of hands.”

  “Thank you. I might take you up on that.”

  She knew Brodie had hired personal nurses to be help with Taryn’s medical needs, but the plan for now was for Evie to work with the girl on an intensive physical therapy program six hours a day, between the hours of ten and four, until Brodie could find someone to replace her. In addition, an occupational therapist who had worked with Taryn at the rehab facility would come to the house three times a week for two hours at a time. Evie would reinforce the skills she was working on during her own time with Taryn on the other days.

  Only a few weeks. She could handle this, she reminded herself.

  She had dreamed of her adopted daughter the night before, of Cassie’s sweet smile and loving heart and endless eagerness to please.

  They had been lying in the hammock under the trees behind her bungalow in Topanga Canyon, telling stories and humming silly little tunes and listening to the creek murmuring by and the wind in the trees. Cassie had been laughing and joyful, just as Evie remembered her—and then she had awakened to the grim awareness that her daughter was gone.

  It had been nearly two years since she died and the grief still seemed so much a part of Evie, despite the peace she had found in Hope’s Crossing. The raw pain of it had eased over the last year during her time here and she had begun to think that perhaps she was finally growing a protective scab over her heart.

  The trick was going to be preventing Taryn Thorne and her entirely too appealing father from ripping it away.

  Switzerland. Stoic and aloof, with no trace of emotional involvement. She could do it, even when her friendship with Katherine complicated the situation.

  She was still trying to convince herself of that when a silver minivan pulled into the circular driveway.

  “Oh. She’s here,” Mrs. Olafson breathed. Evie smiled and squeezed the woman’s hand, then rose to greet them.

  Brodie seemed to hesitate a moment in the driver’s seat before hitting the button for the power ramp and Evie was aware of another unwanted pang of sympathy. She remembered well that panicky what now the first night she’d taken Cassie home after Meredith’s funeral, when she had to shift instantly from friend and therapist to parent.

  That compassion urged her forward with a broad smile of welcome, down the gleaming new graded concrete walkway that had been artfully designed to accommodate a wheelchair. “Hi. Welcome home! How was your drive?”

  He blinked a little as if he hadn’t expected such an effusive greeting. “Good. She’s been a real trouper but I’m sure she’s tired.”

  Mrs. Olafson had followed her toward the van. “Mr. Thorne, the home-nursing company called and said their nurse was running late. She should be here in another hour.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. O.”

  He stood helplessly for just a moment as if not quite sure what to do next. Evie wanted to hug him and whisper that everything would be okay. As the mental image formed in her mind she almost laughed. She could just imagine how he would react to that.

  Instead, she took charge, leaning in and placing a hand on the armrest of the wheelchair. “Hi, Taryn. Remember me? Evie Blanchard from the bead store?”

  The girl nodded and her mouth stretched into a half smile. “Hi.”

  What are you doing here? Though Taryn didn’t say the words, Evie could see them clearly in her eyes. One lesson she’d learned well with her patients was how to read all kinds of nonverbal cues and right now Taryn was completely confused by her presence.

  “You want to know why I’m here, right?”

  Taryn dipped her chin down and then back up again, which Evie took as agreement.

  “Great question. I’m not sure if you knew this but back before I came to Hope’s Crossing and started working for Claire at the bead store, I was a physical therapist in California. Your dad and grandmother have asked me to help set up your home therapy program with the aides and nurses who will be working with you. Is that okay?”

  She lifted one shoulder, though she didn’t look thrilled at the idea of therapy.

  “I would guess you’re ready to head inside, aren’t you? I know my butt is always tired after I’ve been sitting in the car for a while. Let’s go stretch out, shall we?”

  “O—kay.”

  “I’ll bring your shave ice,” Katherine said.

  “Shave ice. Yum. And blue. My favorite.”

  “We saw that little shack near the end of Main Street on our way here and Taryn made it clear she had to have one.”

  That must have been the reason for the delay, Evie thought. At this evidence that Brodie wasn’t so impatient and inflexible he couldn’t fulfill one of his daughter’s wishes, she felt a little scrape against that scab over her heart, like a fingernail prying up the edge.

  Evie stepped back while Brodie wheeled the chair down the ramp and pushed Taryn toward the front door. When he turned her through the doorway leading to her suite of rooms, Taryn jerked her head back toward the stairway. “My room. Up.”

  “T, we talked about this. For now you’ve got new digs down here.”

  “No. My room.”

  Brodie shot Evie a frustrated plea for help and she stepped forward. “You want your old bedroom up there?”

  Taryn nodded firmly.

  “Then you’re the one who will have to work your tail off to get there. Are you ready for that?”

  “Yeah,” Taryn said, a rather militant light in her eyes that heartened Evie.

  “Excellent. I am, too.”

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Katherine said. “Let me show you your new room.”

  Her grandmother pushed the wheelchair down the hall and, though Evie wanted to start working with the girl right away, she was aware of that twinge of unwanted compassion for Brodie as he watched his mother and daughter together—a stark, hopeless expression on his features.

  She again wanted to comfort him, to promise him everything would be okay, but she wouldn’t lie to him.

  “Did Taryn enjoy the shave ice?” She gestured to the cup Katherine had handed him when she’d taken over pushing the wheelchair.

  “She only had a few tastes but I think so. I, on the other hand, could have done without the company.”

>   When she gave him a blank look, he shrugged. “I saw that little prick Charlie Beaumont at the shave-ice stand. And before you ask, no, I didn’t punch him—though I’ll be honest, I almost dumped my peach coconut on his head.”

  “Admirable restraint,” she said with a smile. She decided not to tell him she felt a little sorry for the kid, who had been vilified by everyone in town.

  “On a lighter note, I also talked to one of Taryn’s friends. She’d like to come visit sometime. Since you have requested absolute power, I guess that’s your call.”

  “I don’t need absolute power,” she muttered.

  “Visitors weren’t really a problem in Denver where we were nearly two hours away. She didn’t have that many visitors after the first few weeks out of the coma. Now that she’s home, I anticipate more of her friends may want to drop in. What do you think?”

  “Why do you consider it an issue?”

  He inclined his head toward the suite of rooms. “You saw her. She can’t carry on much of a conversation with anyone. I thought maybe it might be hard on Taryn, the constant reminders of everything she’s lost.”

  “Regular social interaction is important to teenage girls, no matter what physical challenges they’re dealing with.”

  “I can see that. Before the accident, she always had a friend or two around the house. If you think it’s all right, I’ll call Hannah’s mother and let her know the girl can visit.”

  “Maybe we can incorporate social interaction into her therapy plan somehow. I’ll speak with the speech therapist when she comes tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” He paused, looking uncomfortable. “I’m afraid I didn’t say that the other day when you were here. I know helping my daughter isn’t something you want to do. My mother wouldn’t tell me why, only said you have your reasons but...thank you for helping us anyway.”

  Discomfort crawled up her spine when she thought of how pissy and pouty she’d been inside her own head since Sunday when he’d first approached her. If circumstances had been different, if she had been stronger, she should have been eager to take on the challenge. Any decent person would have jumped at the chance to help a girl who had already endured so much. It shamed her that she had been dragging her feet all week and manufacturing a hundred different excuses to wriggle out of the obligation.