Country Bride

by Debbie Macomber

  “Of course!” Evie exclaimed. “I’ll run into the kitchen and grab us all water bottles.”

  When she left, Charlie pulled a chair up beside her. “Seriously, Taryn, that was amazing!”

  “Not...really.” She couldn’t go far at all on her own, only a few steps. Maybe she’d have to go back to school with a walker. If she ever went back to school, anyway. Her dad didn’t want her to. Maybe she’d have to go in the special-ed classes now.

  “Trust me. You’re rockin’ it. I had no idea, Taryn.”

  What he said made her feel warm and happy inside, not so tired, and she was superglad he’d come.

  “How long have you been able to walk?”

  “A few...weeks.”

  “You’re going to be hiking up the Woodrose trail before you know it.”

  “Evie says...that.”

  “She’s right. I thought, you know, that you’d never be able to walk again. That’s what everybody said. I know how much you used to like to ski and mountain bike and the cheerleader stuff and I...that’s been really horrible, you know? Thinking you’d be in a wheelchair your whole life.”

  She looked away from him, toward the weights and stuff in the room. She still thought maybe she would be in the wheelchair, at least if she didn’t start working harder. It hurt to work and she was tired of hurting. Hurting meant she was getting better and she wasn’t sure she was supposed to get better.

  “Hey. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay.”

  He looked upset. Sad and mad and kind of scared at the same time. “It’s not okay. What I did. I mean, Layla. Jeez. And you.”

  “Don’t talk...about Layla.”

  He slid back in his chair, more upset. “I know. I know.”

  She wanted to cry, but not in front of Charlie. Evie came back with a tray just in time.

  “Mrs. Olafson reluctantly made some lemonade. I don’t think she poisoned it but maybe I ought to taste it first. If I keel over, you can call the paramedics. Make sure that cute Dougie Van Duran comes to give me mouth-to-mouth.”

  Taryn smiled a little. She was glad Evie came in then. She couldn’t think about Layla. It hurt more than walking a mile.

  My fault, Taryn thought. All my fault.

  * * *

  Once in a while her harebrained ideas seemed to work.

  Charlie stayed for forty-five minutes, just as he had agreed the day before. It was the perfect length for a visit. Long enough to be fun and encouraging but not so long that Taryn grew bored.

  Between Charlie and Jacques, Taryn didn’t have time to show fatigue or petulance. When she started to show signs of wanting to stop, Jacques would come up beside her and nudge her hand or Charlie would say something funny or snarky and she would laugh, take a breath, and try again.

  The petulance and general grouchiness Evie had been dealing with since Taryn’s release from the care center was nowhere in evidence. It seemed to have magically floated away on the summer breeze. Taryn was laughing and talking in her hesitant way and, best of all, doing exactly what Evie asked of her. By the time Charlie glanced at his watch and announced he had to leave, Taryn was even taking three or four shuffling steps with only the walker to support her, quite miraculous progress.

  “Come back,” Taryn ordered Charlie before he left.

  The kid had stared at her with a range of emotions on his pretty, preppy-boy face and then he nodded. “I’ll be back in a couple days, if it’s okay with Ms. Blanchard.”

  What else could she say? Despite her misgivings about Brodie’s reaction when he found out, she couldn’t overlook Taryn’s astonishing attitude shift, nor could she afford to lose this momentum.

  She only hoped Charlie wouldn’t flake out and decide he’d done his part and no longer needed to hang out with a girl who had serious limitations on her ability to make witty banter.

  Evie decided she would just have trust that the boy would keep his word and come again. She had a strong feeling Taryn would be heartbroken if he dropped off the face of the earth again.

  Brodie still wouldn’t approve of the boy visiting and Evie felt more than a little squeamish about allowing it when she knew perfectly well he would object. She ought to tell him tonight just what she had done, but somehow she knew that would ruin everything.

  She usually tried to be a scrupulously honest person but she couldn’t risk his forbidding the boy to come again before Evie even had a chance to see if today’s incredible progress with Taryn was simply a fluke.

  Besides, what he didn’t know, and all that, right?

  “That was f-fun,” Taryn declared, after Charlie had left. Evie doubted she even noticed she was using her left hand to pet Jacques’s head. The bones in that hand had been crushed in the accident and she usually complained when Evie tried to make her use it.

  “See. I told you therapy wasn’t so terrible.”

  “With Charlie, maybe.”

  Evie shook her head, refusing to be goaded into a response, despite Taryn’s implication that regular therapy wasn’t a barrel of laughs.

  “It’s too nice to be indoors today,” she declared. “We don’t have many of these nice late-summer afternoons left. Let’s see if we can have lunch outside again today and maybe we can make something with those beads I told you I had in the car. I was looking on my calendar this morning and remembered someone has a birthday next week. Any guesses?”

  Taryn screwed up her features, thinking, then she smiled. “Grandma!”

  “Right. And I brought some beading supplies as well as a collection of some of my favorite glass beads. You can pick the colors you think your grandmother will like.”

  Brodie’s landscaper had created a lovely spot, she thought a few moments later, after they were settled out on the big, multilevel deck that terraced up from the swimming pool. Brodie had added temporary ramps so that she could move Taryn from level to level.

  She couldn’t imagine a more perfect afternoon than sitting here on Brodie Thorne’s lovely deck while a warm breeze, sweet with sage and pine and mule-ear daisies, rustled the leaves of the aspens around his landscaping.

  A mountain bluebird flitted in the trees. A sign of luck. She watched its color amid the green, aware that in a few short weeks all the leaves would be turning and the bluebirds would be flying someplace else to spend their winters where they could find food.

  Taryn seemed to be enjoying herself. She hummed some nameless tune Evie couldn’t identify, as she sifted through the soft, smooth glass beads in the tray.

  “What’s...this one?”

  “I bought that one from a tiny little lady with a face like a garden gnome on the island of Capri.”

  “I like it.”

  “You can keep it if you’d like. After we’re done with your grandmother’s necklace, we can make a simple one for you out of cord with just that charm if you want.”

  “Thank...you!”

  Taryn smiled her lopsided little smile at her and something gentle and warm stirred in her chest. Not good. Not good at all. She shifted, uneasy. This soft affection for Taryn scared her. She was becoming far too fond of the girl, sour moods and all. This was exactly what she’d feared, that her life would become tangled with the Thornes, Taryn and Brodie both.

  She was already invested in Taryn’s recovery. She wanted the girl to overcome the roadblocks, both mental and physical, that seemed to stand in the way of her regaining many of her old skills. The last week had been challenging, yes, but also infinitely rewarding. Taryn was eating better on her own now. Her tolerance for their activities had increased, even while she grumbled and moaned about doing them.

  And with increasing frequency, she was beginning to show these glimpses of her personality that Evie loved.

  How would
she ever find the strength to walk away?

  “This looks likes the place to be on a lovely summer afternoon.”

  She jerked her head to the doorway and found Brodie watching them, arms crossed and hip angled against the doorframe, his toe tapping a little in that restless way of his.

  He looked quite comfortable, as if he’d been there for some time, and she flushed a little, wondering how long he’d been watching them.

  She was angry, suddenly. Furious with him. This was his fault. If not for Brodie, she wouldn’t be sitting here while the carefully nurtured ice around her heart, cracked apart as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.

  “It’s...nice,” Taryn said, hesitating only an instant between the words. Her speech was coming along so much better than her physical skills but that wasn’t uncommon in Evie’s experience.

  “Mind if I join you two? Mrs. Olafson was just telling me that lunch is nearly ready. She’s the one who told me where to find you.”

  What else had Mrs. O. told him? He didn’t seem furious with her, so Evie had to assume the housekeeper had decided to keep her mouth shut about Charlie’s visit. She ought to be making Mrs. Olafson a bracelet, too.

  “Yes!” Taryn said. “You can help bead.”

  “Hey, I signed up for lunch, not work.”

  “Beading isn’t work. Only...fun,” Taryn declared.

  He aimed a questioning look toward Evie, who shrugged. “Apparently I’ve brought her over to the dark side. I guess my work here is done.”

  “Not yet,” he teased. “You still promised me another week.”

  Just how was she going to make it through another week with her defenses intact when she was already beginning to care for both of them entirely too much?

  “What are we doing here?”

  “It’s for Grandma’s...birthday.”

  He blinked, apparently taken aback. “Is that coming up? Shoot. I guess I’d better hurry to get her something. I completely forgot.”

  “I thought I was...the one with the...brain injury.”

  He stared at Taryn for a full ten seconds before he busted up laughing. Evie couldn’t help laughing along, charmed that Taryn would joke about her condition. Her gaze met Brodie’s and she could feel her smile die away. That sizzle of attraction sparked between them and she was once more standing in the moonlight, pressed against the door of her SUV with his mouth dancing over hers, wanting to wrap her arms around him and hold on forever.

  Oh, this was so not good.

  “Will you help?” Taryn asked her father.

  “Sure, kid. Just tell me what to do.”

  In her halting sentences, she explained the simple pattern they were using on the beads and for the next few moments of the two of them worked, dark heads bent together, leaving Evie’s mind entirely too free to fret while she worked on her own project.

  She was relieved when Mrs. Olafson brought their lunch in, perhaps fifteen minutes later—until she saw the other woman’s expression. Mrs. O. looked as if she’d sprinkled alum on her tongue just before walking out of the house and Evie winced, knowing all that disapproval was intended for her, for allowing Charlie into the hallowed Thorne halls.

  She owed the housekeeper a huge apology for placing her in the position of being deceitful to her employer.

  Despite Mrs. O.’s mood, lunch was delicious, as always—a salad of mountain greens, Gorgonzola cheese and sliced strawberries, along with cold salmon sandwiches and a scrumptious dill sauce.

  “How do you keep so fit while you’re eating Mrs. O.’s delicious food?”

  Brodie smiled. “Why do you think I had to put in a swimming pool? If I slack off on the laps in the morning, I pay for it.”

  Taryn, she was happy to see, only needed minimal help cutting her sandwich into small, more easily handled portions. She struggled a little with the salad greens but managed to maneuver more into her mouth than on the plate. She didn’t even spill her drink, something they’d been battling all week.

  This was the addictive part of being a therapist: charting real, practical progress in everyday ways that helped someone live better.

  Their conversation over lunch drifted between topics, from the bead project she was working on, to a new Asian-fusion restaurant he was opening in a new development in town, to his time as a ski jumper.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” Brodie asked after a half hour or so and Evie realized the girl had set down her half-eaten sandwich and hadn’t contributed to the conversation in some time.

  Taryn gave her lopsided smile. “Tired.”

  “We have had a full morning,” Evie said. “You worked hard today. Do you want to take a little rest in your room before we start the plan for the afternoon? We can put the beading away until later.”

  Taryn nodded and Brodie pushed away from the table. “I’m finished here. I can take her inside and help her to transfer.”

  Evie was finished as well. “I’ll clean up out here.”

  “Mrs. Olafson can take care of that.”

  “So can I,” she returned. Though her family had always employed a cook and a housekeeper, her mother had insisted Evie and her sister clean up after themselves—and besides, right now she needed to do all she could to stay in the housekeeper’s good graces.

  When she carried the tray of dishes into the kitchen, Mrs. Olafson was rolling pastry dough out on the counter.

  “You can set those by the sink. I’ll take care of them when I’m finished here.”

  Evie thought about loading them into the dishwasher but decided heeding the other woman’s wishes would be the wiser course, given the circumstances.

  “Thank you for lunch. It was delicious, as always. You have a gift.”

  Mrs. O. didn’t answer, only continued wielding the rolling pin with rather jerky, abrupt motions. Evie released a heavy breath.

  “I know you think I overstepped by inviting Charlie Beaumont to visit Taryn. But you should have seen her walking today, Mrs. Olafson. She has never gone that far just for me alone.”

  “It’s not right. I don’t like being deceitful.”

  “I’m not asking you to deceive anyone. Go ahead and tell Brodie right now if you feel it’s the right thing to do. He’s in Taryn’s room.”

  The other woman looked at her. “He won’t allow the boy back in the house.”

  “I know that.”

  Mrs. O. paused. “You say she was walking more when he was here?”

  “She walked the entire length of her rooms three times without a single complaint.”

  “That’s something.”

  “I agree.” Evie held her breath as the woman seemed to be considering.

  “I won’t say anything for now. But I still don’t like it.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Olafson. And thank you again for lunch. You do a marvelous job taking care of the Thornes. They’re very lucky to have you.”

  The housekeeper seemed slightly mollified by that, but Evie felt uneasy about placing the other woman in such a difficult position.

  When she returned to Taryn’s rooms, she found Brodie backing out, moving with extraordinary stealth for such a large man.

  “Is she already asleep?”

  “Close enough. Your dog definitely was. He curled right up beside her bed. You must have exhausted both of them today.”

  This was the perfect time to mention Charlie. The words hovered there but she couldn’t quite do it. “Taryn worked hard,” she said instead, feeling like an abject coward. “She deserves to rest for a few minutes.”

  “So do you.”

  “I just had a lovely lunch break, and before that I was beading for an hour. Not exactly hard physical labor.”

  “I know Taryn’s not an easy patient.”

  “She hasn’t be
en that bad,” Evie said.

  “Yet you still don’t want to keep working with her?”

  She gave a rueful laugh. “Nice try, Brodie.”

  “I promised myself I wasn’t going to keep asking after what you told me the other night about your daughter, but I can’t seem to help it. Sorry.”

  “You can keep asking and I’ll keep turning you down,” she said. Better not to think about what else had happened that night.

  “Every business owner knows he needs a contingency plan. I’ve got a few more résumés in my office. Since Taryn is resting, do you have a moment to look over them with me and help me vet the potential candidates?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  Much to her dismay, the memory of that kiss haunted her as they walked down the hall toward his office. She could still feel the heat of his mouth on hers, feel the leashed strength in his muscles as she had foolishly wrapped her arms around him.

  Perhaps being alone with him wasn’t the smartest idea. She wondered how he would respond if she suggested calling Mrs. Olafson in to chaperone—not that he had indicated any interest in kissing her again.

  That was a good thing. Or so she tried to convince herself.

  His office was a masculine space near the front door, painted in rich, earthy brick tones, with wide French doors leading into it and expansive views over the valley. She hadn’t been inside before, as he had chosen to conduct the two job interviews she’d attended in the more formal setting of the living room.

  As he shuffled through a folder of papers on his desk, Evie happened to notice a collection of framed photographs on a shelf above the console table adjacent to his desk. She moved closer for a better look. Most of them were of Taryn through various stages of life and she found this evidence of unexpected sentimentality from him rather endearing.

  One in particular caught her attention. It had been shot on what looked like a sunny, wintry day and showed a little girl who looked about three years old with big blue eyes and long dark curls. She was dressed in a pink ski suit, perched on a snowboard and grinning from ear to ear. Bent over her and holding her hands out to the side as if helping her with technique was a lovely petite woman, her auburn hair in pigtail braids under a beanie and her own snowboard propped at the edge of the frame.