Country Bride

by Debbie Macomber

  She smiled while she felt her heart rip in two. What she said was all true. She had been temporarily fostering the dog, but after only a few days with him, she had fallen in love with the big, gentle lug and the temporary situation had stretched into weeks and then months.

  “Here with you, he would have room to run and stretch, plus he could continue to help with your therapy.”

  “Oh.” Taryn still looked stunned, as if she didn’t quite know what else to say.

  “If you don’t want to take the responsibility, don’t worry about it. We can just forget the whole thing. But if you think you and your d-dad could make him part of your family, I think he would be very happy here.”

  Her voice broke a little on a few words and she could feel the quiver of her chin but she firmed it with ruthless resolve.

  “Yes! Yes! Are you...are you sure? You love... Jacques.”

  “I do. But you love him too and I can’t help but think the two of you need each other.”

  As if to illustrate her point, Jacques finally tugged the leash away from her and padded to Taryn, licking her cheek and nudging her face with his. The girl threw her arms around the dog and held on tightly and Evie knew she had to get out of there before she broke down completely.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” With great effort, Evie forced a smile. “Your dad probably won’t be thrilled about it, but if he says anything, you tell him for me that you’ve earned this, too.”

  “Too?”

  “He’ll know what it means. I want to see you up out of that chair and taking Jacques for walks in a few weeks, got it? No slackers here.”

  Taryn glowed as she hugged the dog. Most fifteen-year-old girls probably wouldn’t get this excited about a dog, but Taryn and Jacques had bonded over the last few weeks. Evie had watched it happen. Perhaps some part of her had even known somewhere deep inside that this was inevitable.

  “Won’t you miss him?” Taryn asked.

  More than she could ever say. Her apartment would seem deathly empty without him to greet her in the morning with a cold nose against her cheek or curling up beside her bed at night, just a comforting stretch of her arm away. She already dreaded it. Maybe she would have to move away from the ghost of him in every corner.

  She might have to look into buying a little house somewhere, maybe up the canyon. Somewhere big enough for a dog, and wouldn’t that be freaking ironic?

  “I’ll be fine,” she said firmly, more to herself than Taryn. “This is where he belongs.”

  She could hardly see now for the blur of tears but she hugged Jacques hard, then Taryn. The dog looked confused at her for about ten seconds, then plopped down at Taryn’s feet as if he, indeed, belonged exactly there.

  After mumbling something that was probably incoherent to Stephanie she rushed out the door, brushing without a word past a startled Mrs. Olafson.

  The Angel of Hope would approve, she thought as she climbed into her car. She sat behind the wheel and scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh and started the engine.

  This was just the sort of thing the Angel would have been all over—reaching beyond your own interests to give somebody else exactly what he or she needed. Even when it hurt like hell.

  * * *

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? Girls’ night out at the Lodge? It’s Holly’s first time leaving the baby with Jeff,” Claire said. “We’re placing bets on how long she’ll last before she gives up pretending to have fun with us and drives home in a panic, afraid he’s diapered the wrong end or something.”

  Evie laughed and shook her head. It defied all logic to her that Claire had convinced her friends to allow her ex-husband’s new wife into their social circle. Claire’s theory was that—like it or not—she, Jeff and Holly, and soon Riley when they married, were co-parenting her children. Claire wanted the best possible relationship with the woman who had Owen and Macy half the time.

  If it were her, Evie probably would have found a way to stab Holly a few times with an eye pin—or at least she would have wanted to. But then, she never claimed to be as good a person as Claire.

  “We’re going to have a great time. You don’t want to miss it.” Alex grinned, her green McKnight eyes alight with infectious laughter. Alex was always pretty and vibrant, though Evie sometimes thought her bright gaiety was simply a satiny bit of fondant that concealed the real person beneath.

  “Oh, please, Evie,” Mary Ella McKnight—Alex’s mother and Claire’s good friend and future mother-in-law—added her voice. “It won’t be the same without you!”

  She shook her head. “I’d better not. You have no idea how behind I am after the last month with Taryn. I have a half dozen commissioned pieces I promised would be done by the middle of September. I’m not going to make it if I don’t put in some serious bead time.”

  Despite her obligations, she was tempted. Hanging out with her friends, surrounding herself with laughter and conversation and food, held undeniable appeal. A pall had descended on her life the last few days, greasy and dark, and she knew only part of that was losing Jacques. She felt...lost, somehow.

  “The price of fame and talent, I guess.” Mary Ella smiled warmly.

  More like the price of having given in to Katherine and Brodie’s appeal in the first place a month ago, and then falling hard for a certain man with blue eyes and a solemn smile.

  “Something like that,” she murmured. As much as she might be momentarily tempted to spend the night with her friends instead of work, she needed to be here right now. She yearned for the peace and serenity she found feeling the beads slide through her fingers, threading the wire knots that would tie them together, watching something beautiful emerge from her efforts.

  “Katherine and Ruthie are going to meet us there,” Alex said. “Even Maura said she might stop by after she closes the bookstore. I hope so. She’s a little lonely, now that Sage has gone back to school.”

  “You all have a wonderful time. I’ll be there next time, I promise. I’m just going to stay here since my tools are all out and the beads I need are close at hand.”

  Claire frowned. “Are you sure? After the robbery, I hate to think about you here in the store by yourself, especially now that you don’t even have...” Her voice trailed off and she flushed a little. “Anyone else to keep you company.”

  Evie ignored the little spasm in her chest, the familiar twinge of pain she experienced whenever she thought about Jacques. She used to love having him here at the shop while she worked late, not for protection, necessarily, but simply the quiet calm of his presence.

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. You all go and have a fantastic time and I promise I’ll be there next time.”

  The women looked as if they wanted to protest but Mary Ella, bless her, seemed to sense Evie didn’t have the strength to continue arguing. She tugged her daughter and Claire toward the door and finally the store was blessedly silent.

  Evie locked the door after them and engaged the security system with a relieved sigh. She stood for a moment in the quiet, surrounded by the beads she loved and the scent of the soft vanilla candle Claire had been slowly heating that day. Even after the warmer was turned off, the scent lingered in the store.

  Evie breathed deeply a few times to relax away the stress of the day. When she was suitably calm, she wandered into the office and found a station on the satellite radio that played the classical jazz she most enjoyed working to, then returned to the worktable.

  With Miles Davis, Chet Baker and Bill Evans to keep her company, the work went quickly and she finished the first project on her to-do list in just under an hour. She was deep into the second when, over the low music, she heard a sharp, peremptory knock at the front door.

  Evie rolled h
er eyes. The store was clearly closed. If the sign out front wasn’t enough to prove it, the lights in the showroom were off. No doubt whoever it was could see her back here working and just assumed she wouldn’t mind ringing up some seed beads or spacers or something.

  She would just ignore it, she decided, and go on with her business.

  That brilliant plan worked for all of thirty seconds, then the rude person only knocked harder. With a heavy sigh, Evie finally set down her round-nose pliers on the felt pad she liked to bead on and headed for the door, fully intent on telling her unwanted visitor in no uncertain terms they could come back in the morning. She was just in the mood to do it, too, even if it was rude.

  At the door, her stomach dropped when she recognized her visitor—Laura Beaumont, Charlie’s mother, stood on the other side. She wasn’t quite tapping her toe with impatience but it was a close thing. Reluctantly, Evie opened the door and the woman brushed past her into the store before Evie could even form a word.

  “I need to talk to you.” The mayor’s wife seemed flustered. Her hair was usually so shellacked with hair spray nothing short of an F4 tornado could budge it, but now it was slightly mussed and her lipstick was a bit smeared, as if she’d put it on in a hurry.

  “Sure. Come in,” Evie muttered under her breath, then forced a smile, a little embarrassed at her childishness.

  “I was about to go around back and ring the doorbell to your apartment upstairs when I saw the lights on in the store and caught a glimpse of you working in the back room.”

  “I have a couple of commissions I’m trying to finish tonight.” She had to hope Mrs. Beaumont would pick up the hint but instead she moved farther into the room, leaving behind the scent of the expensive, flowery perfume she favored. Even when she appeared less than perfect, Laura Beaumont seemed elegant and contained. Evie knew she purchased all her clothes from a couple of pricy boutiques in Denver. Heaven knew, she wouldn’t be caught dead in anything for sale in Hope’s Crossing.

  Laura headed for the worktable where Evie had set up her supplies. She fingered the piece Evie had just finished, an intricate necklace and earring set recycled from a 1950s four-strand bead necklace.

  “I like this. I have the perfect dress it would go with. How much?”

  “It’s not for sale. It’s a commissioned piece.”

  “Can you make another one?”

  “I’m afraid that’s a one-of-a-kind item I was asked to make out of someone’s mother’s costume jewelry. I wouldn’t be able to duplicate it if I tried.”

  Laura made a face. “You could make something similar.”

  “Perhaps.” Or Laura could make it herself. But while the other woman claimed she loved to bead, she had a particular genius for enlisting someone else to do any work required for it. “What can I do for you tonight, Laura?”

  Laura touched some leftover blue faux-pearls from the project and dribbled them through her fingers. Her usual haughty air seemed to trickle away like the pearls and she shifted, her eyes strangely vulnerable. “I must ask something of you. Not for my sake, you understand. I would never presume so much. This is for Charles.”

  Evie tensed. “Oh?”

  “He pleaded guilty. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I heard.”

  The other woman sank into the folding chair across from Evie’s workstation. “He can’t go to prison. He can’t! He’s just a boy.”

  Laura paused, apparently waiting for her to respond to that dramatic declaration.

  “I’m sorry,” Evie finally said. “I’m not sure what this has to do with me.”

  “I need your help. I want you to speak at his hearing. Tell the judge all he’s done to help you with the Thorne girl.”

  Oh, crap. She released a breath. She so didn’t want to get tangled up in this. Yes, she felt sorry for Charlie. Despite everything he had done, she liked the boy and respected him greatly for standing up and taking responsibility for his actions over his family’s obvious objections. That didn’t mean she was ready to go to court and speak on his behalf. She could only imagine how that would play with Brodie.

  “I don’t...” she began, then stopped, fumbling for words.

  “You have to.” Laura was at once pleading and arrogant. “He’s seventeen years old. He’ll be eighteen in six months. Since he pleaded guilty in adult court, they could send him to an adult prison. He won’t survive it! If you speak on his behalf, perhaps the judge will consider leniency.”

  Leniency. Was that really what was called for here? Layla Parker was dead and, despite all the progress Taryn had made, Evie had no doubt that the girl would be impacted in some ways by the accident for the remainder of her life.

  “I’m not sure that’s likely, Laura,” she said, trying to be as gentle as possible. “What Charlie did was very wrong. Don’t you think he deserves punishment?”

  Laura’s hands trembled a little and Evie was startled by the strain in her eyes. “My son has made terrible mistakes, yes. But he’s trying. You see that, right? He’s helping you with that girl, isn’t he?”

  That girl, as if Taryn were simply a nameless inconvenience. What did that make Layla? she wondered. “Yes. Charlie has been very patient with Taryn and she seems to enjoy having him come. I would have to say his visits have been helpful.”

  “I wasn’t happy when he started to visit her. I didn’t think it was good for him, being involved with her again. On some level, I still believe I was right. If he hadn’t had that firsthand exposure to her, he would never have pleaded guilty to the charges against him, especially over the objections of his father and his attorneys.”

  Evie tended to agree with her. She hadn’t brought it up with Brodie that night at her apartment, but she was certain Charlie’s time with Taryn had given him a true understanding of the extent of her injuries and the long rehabilitation road she still faced. Evie remembered what she’d said to him that night when he had stood on the other side of the garden gate to ask if he could visit Taryn again.

  You won’t be able to hide from it, Charlie. You will know that every frustration, every single exercise she has to do, every painful muscle spasm I have to put her through, is because of you.

  “I do have to say, though,” Laura went on, “that Charlie has been...different these last few weeks. I can’t explain it. He’s not as restless, not as high-strung.”

  She thought of his desperation on Woodrose Mountain that early morning and her vague, unsettled fear that he had intended to harm himself that day. “Sometimes a person simply needs a purpose. Maybe helping Taryn provided that for him and showed him that reaching outside himself to help someone else can give a peace you simply can’t find anywhere else.”

  The words seem to clog in her throat as the truth smacked into her like that weight Taryn had thrown.

  She was the world’s biggest hypocrite. She had retreated deep into herself, had fought ever helping anyone. She had subconsciously decided protecting herself was more important than risking pain by choosing to let others close to her.

  Oh, she might have done superficial things like help paint an older lady’s fence during the Giving Hope day Claire had organized earlier in the summer, or sitting at art fairs all summer to raise money for the scholarship fund in Layla’s name, but she had been very careful to keep that part of herself separate.

  For the last two years since Cassie died, she had turned away from the very thing she had always known was the answer to that elusive serenity—losing herself in helping other people.

  She had needed a purpose, too. Oh, she loved working with beads and always would, creating something lovely out of disparate elements. But did that really compare to actually helping someone live a more fulfilling life?

  Across from her, Laura fidgeted with the pliers on the table, opening and closing them at random intervals as if she we
re snapping at ghosts. “For the last year he’s nearly flunked out of school, but now he’s talking about paying his debt to society and finishing his last year of high school and then trying to go to college. He wants to go into medicine now. He told me that. He wants to be a doctor or a physical therapist like you.”

  She wasn’t a physical therapist anymore, Evie wanted to automatically correct, but those words tasted like chalk, too. No, she might not be a practicing physical therapist but she couldn’t run away from what was in her heart. Working with Taryn had only reinforced how much she loved it.

  “So will you do it?” Laura asked.

  She had no idea how to answer. She couldn’t betray Brodie—and she knew that if she spoke to urge leniency, he would see it as nothing else but disloyalty. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure a harsh punishment was the best option for the boy.

  Finally she sighed. “Laura, the only thing I will do is speak to the judge about Charlie coming to work with Taryn and explain what he did while he was there. I will not take any position either way as to whether that should affect his sentencing. I can’t argue for leniency, only provide information. I want you to be perfectly clear on that.”

  The other woman’s mouth compressed into a line as if holding back her arguments. “I suppose that will have to be enough, won’t it? I’ll inform our attorneys. We will need you to attend the hearing on Friday afternoon at one. I’ll have your name added to the list,” she said, just as if she were extending some elite invitation to a swanky society event.

  What had she just agreed to do? Evie fretted as she let Laura out of the store and set the security system behind her. So much for her calm, relaxing, productive evening. Now she was going to worry all night about how she could convince Brodie that speaking out about the help Charlie had given Taryn—help Brodie hadn’t sought or wanted in the first place—wasn’t a complete betrayal.