by Lucy Score
There were hundreds of pictures of Beau handing out signed jerseys to kids at games or signing autographs. He’d visited children’s hospitals in full uniform. He’d donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to several worthwhile charities. There was even a freaking Beau Evanko doll with matching kid-sized jersey from which all proceeds went to a children’s charity.
So he was generous, Bristol had mused cynically. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a generous asshole.
She’d also spent hours tracking down every single picture of every woman Beau had escorted anywhere. In the past several years, it had been the same five blondes recycled for public appearances. Interestingly enough, each blonde was labeled the sister or cousin of a different Blackhawks player. She couldn’t imagine the scenario where a guy wouldn’t mind his little sis being one of five girlfriends.
Speaking of little sisters, there were a handful of pictures of Beau with his sister, Alli. Alli traveling with the team, Alli accompanying Beau to a movie premiere. Alli, her face painted, at a Blackhawks playoff game. There were fewer pictures of her as she got older, though there was one disturbing website she found that featured younger siblings of famous people and countdowns to “being legal.” She couldn’t find any social media accounts for Alli, and Beau’s had been run by his sports management company and hadn’t been updated in forever.
She’d pored over articles about his retirement announcement. Announced in the middle of the last season and effective immediately, it had been a surprise to the hockey community. He’d given a press conference where he’d read a prepared statement, and as Beau had talked about his teammates being family, he’d choked up. The expression on his face had been the same one she’d seen when he sat with her grieving family at their Thanksgiving table.
But her digging failed to uncover one important thing. Bristol couldn’t find any connection between Beau the Blackhawks hockey player with Beau the Hope Falls stranger.
In a fit of embarrassment and rage, she’d ripped the sheets off her bed intending to burn them. But they’d stayed in a ball at the bottom of her closet, and she was ashamed to admit that she’d buried her face in them more than once to catch his lingering scent on them.
How could she have been so wrong about him? As a mother, she was supposed to have first-rate instincts about impending danger. How had he made it past her? How had he convinced her that he was a good, kind man?
If she were completely honest, nothing in her digging had made him seem like anything but that. The only anomaly was his disappearance.
It looked as though once again she was left with questions and a hole in her heart. But this time she was anything but numb.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The day of Savannah and Vince’s wedding dawned crisp and bright. Another overnight snow had blanketed Hope Falls in a fresh layer of white that Bristol pretended to admire when she dropped Violet off with Nolan.
She put on a happy face for her daughter, and she’d put one on for Savannah’s big day, but alone in the car, driving past the over-the-top town Christmas decorations, she let herself sink into the miserable stew of hurt and sad and anger.
Bristol eased to a stop at the corner of Bluebird and Main and stared at the twelve-foot inflatable angel outside the Twin Cinemas.
A feeling of desperation overtook her. “Hope,” she said staring at the smiling angel, “I need your help snapping out of this for Vanna today. Just some temporary angel magic, please?”
The angel’s beige face remained blankly positive, and Bristol pulled away cursing herself and inflatable angels everywhere.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Hope Falls Community Church right behind Savannah, their mother, and two women weighted down with tackle boxes full of hair and makeup necessities. Bristol pasted a smile on her face, climbed out of her car, and grabbed the garment bag from the backseat.
“Hey bride!” she said cheerily.
Savannah looked back at her with red eyes and sad smile. Mary had a similar expression. She could see both joy and sadness there. One daughter was getting married and starting a new life while another’s had ended.
“What’s wrong?” Bristol demanded. “Did Vince call it off to start preparing for tax season?”
Savannah, the ball-busting attorney, gave a sad little sniffle. “I’m so happy and sad at the same time I think I’m losing my damn mind.”
Mary was gesturing wildly behind Savannah’s back in a pantomime Bristol took to mean “fix your sister, now!”
“Let’s focus on the happy,” Bristol said, decisively. “When we look back at this day, we want to remember all the happy, right?”
Savannah sniffled. “I guess.”
“That’s the spirit. Now, this is really important. Does your beauty team have a hair dryer?”
“They have everything. But I already washed my h—”
She didn’t get to finish the subject because Bristol hit her in the face with a snowball.
“Are you kidding me right now?” she shrieked. “It’s my wedding day!”
Savannah Quinn never backed down from a challenge. She retaliated with her own snowy weaponry, and Mary looked on as her daughters chased each other around the church’s parking lot chucking snow at each other.
A side door opened, and Pastor Harrison poked his head out. He was a young, bookish man who often wore jeans under his robes. “Everything okay out here?” A snowball smacked into the white washed stone a foot from his face.
“Girls!” Mary yelled. “Sorry, pastor. They’re just working out some wedding day jitters.
“Well, uh, don’t get cold feet on me,” he joked before slipping back inside. Mary and the beauty team followed him, leaving the girls to their ridiculousness.
The battle for snow supremacy raged until Savannah caught Bristol by the hood of her jacket and flung her into a snowdrift. Bristol shrieked as Savannah straddled her chest and shoved a handful of snow in her face.
“There! Now who needs the hairdryer?” Savannah laughed.
“Do not laugh too hard! You’ll pee on me!” Bristol yelped.
Savannah fell over, and they both lay on their backs under the snow coated oak tree admiring the snatches of blue sky that peeked through bare branches.
“God, that felt good,” Bristol admitted.
“Hell, yeah. You know if Hope were here, we would have ganged up on her and probably shoved her head first into this drift,” Savannah said dreamily.
“Totally,” Bristol snickered. “She was such an easy target.”
A tidal wave of snow launched itself out of the tree, landing on them with a spectacular “whump.” They shrieked and sputtered, brushing their faces clean.
“What the hell was that?” Savannah demanded.
Bristol looked heavenward. “I think that was Hope.”
––—
Hope had shown up for her today. Of that Bristol was sure. And for the first time in weeks, she felt a spark of hopefulness burn to life inside her. It was going to be a good day, she decided.
She changed out of her snow-soaked clothes and slipped into the fleecy green maid of honor robe Savannah had given her. Her sister, in a matching robe, was getting her hair and makeup done while Tessa snapped away with her camera, capturing every step of the process.
Mary, a stickler for details, headed out for fortifying snacks and to check up on the rest of the family and wedding party.
“B, can you do me a favor?” Savannah asked without moving her lips that were being painted a festive pink.
“Sure, what do you need?”
“Can you poke your head into the sanctuary and make sure the trees are plugged in? I don’t want anyone crawling around on the floor while people are being seated.”
“On it,” Bristol said, cinching the tie on her robe and slipping her feet into her slippers. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She ducked into the hallway and walked straight into a wall. A male wall. A familiar male wall.
This w
asn’t happening.
“Oh, no. No. You are definitely not here right now.”
Beau was dressed in a sleek, fitted navy suit and tie. His hair was combed, his beard neatly trimmed, and his warm hands were on her shoulders. He was here.
“Bristol—”
“No. No way! You can’t be here. This is not okay!”
“You look beautiful.” He said the words in a rush as if they had clawed their way out of him.
“And you look like a liar.” A hot one. A big, gorgeous, sexy, steaming liar.
He steered her across the hallway away from the door.
“Let me explain.”
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “You can’t be here. It’s my sister’s wedding day. And stop touching me!”
He held up his hands in a sign of peace. “Bristol, I know you’re mad, but I can explain.”
“No, you can’t. I need to get my sister ready to walk down the aisle, not hash things out with a one-night stand.”
“We weren’t a one-night stand,” he argued. “Don’t make what we have something sad and—”
“And what?” she demanded. “Pathetic? You slept with me, and then you packed your bag and left town. Without a backwards glance, I might add.”
“Bristol, listen to me,” he gripped her arms with warm, callused palms. “I lied to you.”
“No shit.”
He squeezed harder. “I’m not a yoga instructor.”
“Yeah, how’s that hockey career going?” she said, jutting out her chin. “Evanko, right?”
He took a deep breath. “Look, I can’t fix what I did between the two of us right this second. I will. I swear to you I will. But there’s something even more important that I have to do right now.”
She choked out a laugh. “Oh really? And what’s that?”
“I want you to meet my sister.”
Bristol shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
Beau let go of one of her arms and reached into his jacket pocket. “I’m talking about this.” He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it over to her.
She snatched it out of his hand and opened it with a huff of impatience.
Bristol didn’t notice that her knees had buckled or that Beau had guided her over to a red velvet bench under a picture of the last supper. She didn’t notice that he’d crouched down in front of her. All that registered for her was her handwriting on the paper. Her handwriting inviting Hope’s heart recipient to her sister’s wedding.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Your sister?” Bristol whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
Beau nodded. “My sister has Hope’s heart.”
Bristol swallowed hard through the emotion that choked her. So many feelings were careening through her system she wasn’t sure if she could stand it. She met his gaze. She let her breath out on a shaky exhalation. “She’s okay? I mean, the transplant…”
“She’s great. Hope saved her life. You saved her.”
Bristol choked on a sob, and Beau tried to pull her into his arms. But she shook her head and pushed him away. “Don’t even think for a second that we’re okay, Beau,” she warned.
Undeterred, he sat down next to her crowding her on the narrow bench. He draped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side. “I know I owe you a big explanation and a bigger apology, but I had to make sure that you and your family were… okay before I brought Alli here to meet you.”
“Alli is really here? You brought her today?” Bristol asked.
Beau nodded. “Yeah. She’s eighteen. She had a congenital heart defect, and I thought…” he took a moment to compose himself. “I thought I was going to lose her last winter.”
Bristol bit her lip hard, remembering how it felt outside the ICU knowing that a loss was coming.
“You and your family saved Alli’s life. She wanted to come find you from the get go. The second thing she said when she woke up from transplant surgery was ‘I need to say thank you.’”
“What was the first thing?”
“‘Holy shit, I’m not dead.’”
Bristol choked out a sob and a laugh and this time didn’t fight it when Beau pulled her into his lap. He tucked her head under his chin.
“Baby. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. For Hope, for me leaving, for not letting Alli contact you right away… This entire year has been an emotional roller coaster. I came here just to make sure you and your family couldn’t hurt her in any way. We’ve dealt with people before trying to get things from us because of me…” he trailed off lamely.
“Why did you sleep with me, Beau?”
“Because you’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“Because I had to go talk to Alli before I made the decision to uproot her and everything she’s ever known and move us to Hope Falls.”
She shook her head. “Don’t say that, Beau.”
“I love you, Bristol. And not just because of a decision that you and your family made that saved my sister’s life. I feel like I’ve loved you from the minute I was born. I’ve been waiting this whole time just to find you, and I’m not going to give up on us.”
“You can’t say that! You can’t just come back here and say all the right things. I trusted you! Violet trusted you.”
“I know, gorgeous. And I’m so sorry. But I had to talk to Alli before I promised you anything. She was my whole world. When she got sick… when we found out that the only thing that would save her was a transplant, I was wrecked. She’s lived with me since I was twenty.”
He ran his free hand through his hair. “I came here to make sure you and your family weren’t the kind of people who would try to take advantage of her or me. And I fell for you. Hard. But I couldn’t make promises to you until I’d talked to her.”
“It isn’t all or nothing, Beau! You could have told me. You could have not slept with me. You could have done a hundred things somewhere in between.”
“I fucked up. A lot. I know it,” Beau said. “But I’m here now, and I’m going to make this right for all of you. Especially you and Violet.”
Bristol nodded and swallowed hard. “I get that you wanted to protect your sister. I wish I could have had that opportunity with my own,” she said. “But then that would mean that your sister wouldn’t be here. God, this is so fucked up.”
She threw a surreptitious glance at the painting above her and murmured a silent apology.
“I know, baby. I know,” Beau said, rubbing her arm.
“Is everything all right? Can I be of some assistance?” Pastor Harrison, already dressed in his collar and robe, poked his head out of his office. He looked over the reading glasses perched on his nose and frowned.
Aware of the picture they were making in the hallway of the church, Bristol felt like she should at least climb off of Beau’s lap, but he wasn’t having it. “We’re fine here, Pastor Harrison,” she said weakly. He didn’t look convinced but stepped back into his office.
She should pull away, stand up, and slap Beau at least. But Bristol felt frozen in place as she processed.
“She’s here now?”
Beau nodded. “I’d like you to meet her if you’re okay with that. Then you can introduce her to the rest of your family.”
Bristol swiped a hand under her eyes. “This is a lot to take in. I thought maybe no one read my letter.”
“I read it a thousand times. I had to come.”
“I get it. You wanted to protect your family,” she said, pulling a tissue out of the pocket of her robe.
But he was shaking his head. “It was more than that. That letter… it was like falling for a stranger. And that’s exactly what I was doing. I was already halfway in love with you before I ever laid eyes on you.”
He took the tissue from her and dabbed under her eyes. “At first I was terrified at the thought of introducing my sister to you, and now all I want is for you two to get to kno
w each other. I’ve told her about you and—”
“Just stop, Beau,” Bristol said, slicing her hand through the air. “I can’t deal with all of this.”
“Okay. Okay. One thing at a time,” he slid her back onto the bench and rose. She missed the warmth as soon as it was gone and hated herself for it. “I’m going to go get her. You’ll be here?”
Those green eyes were searching her face.
“I’ll be here,” she affirmed. Because I’m a masochistic crazy person.
He hurried off down the hall, and Bristol looked up at the painting again. “Well, I’m not asking you what you would do,” she muttered.
She probably looked like a giant, weepy mess. And she was still wearing a bathrobe, a detail that had escaped her when she’d gone into rage mode with Beau. Thank God she hadn’t done her makeup yet.
He loved her? What in the hell could that possibly mean? People who loved each other didn’t lie and disappear. They communicated. Or, at least, that’s what she heard they did. Her only long-term monogamous relationship had been with her college sweetheart and didn’t last long enough for their daughter to go to preschool.
Her inner tirade was cut off when Beau returned. He held the hand of a reed slim girl several inches shorter than Bristol. Her hair had the same reddish brown tones as Beau’s beard, and she had a dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose and cheeks. She had his green eyes, too, and they were filled with tears.
“Bristol, this is my—”
The girl didn’t wait for her brother to finish the introduction. She launched herself into Bristol’s arms. “Thank you,” she whispered against Bristol’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to say it big enough or loud enough, but thank you.”
Bristol’s arms closed around the girl.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Bristol said, fighting off the wave of emotion that threatened to swamp her.
