Taking a Chance

by Maggie McGinnis

  “Oh, it’s definitely an indicator. I just can’t figure out if it’s an indicator of utter insanity at this point.”

  “Well, if it is, it’s kind of working for you, right?”

  “Very funny.” Emma paced back toward the fireplace. “Kyla and Hayley hinted that maybe something happened in his past, but they wouldn’t say more than that.”

  “And that scares you?”

  “Well, how can it not?”

  “Emma, what thirty-year-old man gets to that age without some baggage? What woman does? It goes with being a human. And yeah, maybe it’s a little scary because you don’t know his particular baggage, but I’m pretty sure if you found a man our age without any, it’s because he spent his twenties in a cryogenic capsule.”

  Emma laughed. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I just needed to hear it.”

  “So here’s another question for you.” Ari paused. “What does he know about yours?”

  “Nothing. I am perfect. I have no baggage.”

  “Excellent. Reality rules.” Ari chuckled. “So—you know—while you’re busy freaking out about his, maybe just remember you’ve got a pretty good boatload of your own, right?”

  “This is supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Nope. It’s supposed to help you remember we all have it. Stop worrying so much. Just see what happens. Have no expectations, and just live in the moment with it. The worst thing that could happen is you have an unbelievable three months in Big Sky country and come home with enough hot memories to fuel your fantasies for years.” She paused. “And don’t say ‘gah’ again. You know I’m right. Just have fun.”

  Emma was silent, but memories of ten years earlier crept into her peripheral vision.

  She’d lost her mind for a guy one other time in her life.

  One.

  And she’d promised never to do it again.

  —

  “Hey, Emma? We’ve got a problem.” Brandy’s voice pierced Emma’s fog on Monday afternoon as she walked back from the dining room. She hadn’t been on her fourth trip around Shady Acres, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jasper.

  She hadn’t.

  She stopped in the middle of the hallway. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Archie. He’s complaining of chest pain.”

  Emma pivoted, then set off toward Archie’s room, Brandy walking quickly to keep up. “Who’s with him?”

  “Katrina.”

  “Have we called 9-1-1?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not an acceptable answer.” Emma sped up, praying that this was just another one of Archie’s dramatic episodes. In the two weeks she’d been here, he’d had three besides the phantom rib fracture, but they had to treat each one as if it were real, in case it…was.

  “Sorry.” Brandy sounded like a scolded puppy, and Emma took a calming breath, resetting herself.

  “I’m sorry to snap. But we have protocols. You guys know the protocols. You’re drilled on them constantly. Chest pain has a protocol, so if someone asks whether you’ve called 9-1-1 , you need to be ready with an answer, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They reached Archie’s room, and Katrina looked up, her stethoscope planted on his chest. Archie was in his bed, and he looked pale and clammy.

  Oh, Lord. She’d never seen him look like this before.

  Katrina rattled off numbers to Brandy, then took Archie’s hand in hers. “Listen, you old coot. The guys are on their way. Looks like you get a free pass out of here tonight, and maybe some better breakfast than Horace would be making you in the morning.”

  “What do you need from me?” Emma asked, trying not to wring her hands. She needed to maintain composure, to present a calm, measured, authoritative tone, to offer assistance without getting in the way.

  Meanwhile, she was sending silent, frantic please-don’t-die messages to whoever might be listening.

  Katrina adjusted Archie’s pajama top. “If you could meet the guys out front and send them down here, that would be great. And we need to call his son and let him know we’re sending him over to the hospital.”

  “Don’t call my damn son,” Archie growled from the bed. “He’ll stop by the bank on his way up here to make sure my accounts are in order before I die.”

  “You’re not going to die, Archie.” Katrina squeezed his hand. “This is just a precaution.”

  “I don’t care. Don’t call my son. If you have to call somebody, call Jasper. He’s the only one who gives a hoot whether I stick around, anyway.”

  Emma felt her jaw tense at the mention of Jasper’s name, because short of calling the café, she realized she didn’t actually know how to get hold of the man.

  Good Lord, she’d slept with him, and she didn’t even have his number!

  Katrina raised her eyebrows. “Can you call Jasper?”

  “Yes.” Emma nodded like of course she could. “I’ll—”

  “Archie, my man.” A uniformed medic strolled into the room, and Emma felt her shoulders drop six inches. Thank God they were here. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, the usual.” Archie tried to sound fierce, but his voice was weak. “Just bored, so I told them to give you a call and spice up the ward a little bit.”

  “It’s not a ward, Archie.” Katrina batted him playfully.

  “Whatever. Take me to the hospital where they have the good nurses, would ya?”

  “You got it, my man.” The medic looked at the laptop screen Katrina turned his way, then nodded. “Okay, we’re bored, too, so we’re going lights and sirens this time, all right?”

  Emma saw Katrina and Brandy share a worried look, but before she could interpret it, Archie was on a stretcher and on his way down the hall to the waiting ambulance.

  “That was—fast,” she said, feeling her hands start to shake.

  “Not a drill this time,” Katrina replied as she straightened up his bed and pushed his slippers underneath. “His numbers don’t look good.”

  “What do you think’s happening?”

  “Well, I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know for sure.”

  Emma nodded. “Well, I’m a paper-pusher, so enlighten me enough to have something intelligible to tell Jasper.”

  Katrina’s eyes widened as she looked at Emma, then at Brandy, then back at Emma. And then she laughed. It was a stress laugh, but it was still a laugh, and when she gathered Emma into a quick hug, it felt sort of…not fake.

  “You are precious,” she finally said.

  “I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

  “Sure it is.” She tapped a few keys on her laptop, then closed it. “It looks like a heart attack to me, but a lot of things can look like a heart attack, including anxiety, which Archie has definitely dealt with. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s that, but we can’t ignore the possibility of the other, so we’ll let the experts figure it out.”

  “Okay. I’ll go call Jasper.” Emma paused in the doorway. “Archie really doesn’t want his children to know, does he?”

  Katrina sat down on the end of his bed, looking up at the ceiling like she was gathering her thoughts.

  “Archie’s been here for eight years. You want to know how many times his kids have visited?”

  Emma shook her head. “Probably not.”

  “You’re right. They came here once, en masse, five years ago when he did have a heart attack. And they hovered for three days, bringing him drinks and fixing his pillows and generally behaving like you’d hope kids would. But then, when it was clear he was going to be fine—wasn’t going to die and leave them all of his money—off they went, and we haven’t seen them since.”

  “Do they live far away?”

  “Farthest one’s two hours.” Katrina raised her eyebrows. “So you see why he doesn’t want us calling them. Jasper’s been more of a son to him these past five years than anybody ever was.”

  Emma nodded, then headed down the hallway toward her office. Did Jasper have this effect
on everyone?

  When she sat down at Bette’s desk, she found the number for Java Beans, and with shaky fingers, tapped in the digits.

  “Java Beans! Help you?” a teenaged male voice answered.

  “Is Jasper there, please?” Emma asked.

  “Um, not right now. He’s out for the afternoon.”

  “Do you know how I can reach him?”

  There was a pause. “Who’s calling?”

  “Emma. Emma Winthrop. I’m calling from Shady Acres.”

  “Is his dad okay?”

  “Oh! Yes! Yes, he’s fine.” Emma thwacked her forehead for not realizing that would be anyone’s first thought. “I just need to speak to him about something else.”

  “Okay. Well, we’re actually not supposed to give out his cell number, but I can tell him you called.”

  “Um, if it’s kind of an emergency, can you give it to me?”

  “Tell you what—give me the message, and I’ll call him. And then he can call you back. How’s that?”

  Wow. Jasper had his employees pretty well trained. Emma sighed. She guessed she didn’t have a choice. She relayed the information about Archie, and then hung up, feeling her adrenaline rush turn into the opposite.

  But there were things she needed to do right now. Steps she needed to follow to document Archie’s departure and condition. This was good. She could get out a checklist and run down it, doing all of the things one apparently did when this happened.

  Maybe it would help chase away the jitters that were making her flex her fingers.

  Maybe it would help chase away the fear that Archie might actually be really, really sick.

  Maybe it would help chase away the fear that she’d made an epic mistake with a man who’d made her feel like precious glass and a caged tiger—all in the same night.

  And hadn’t spoken to her since.

  Chapter 23

  Tuesday morning, Jasper walked into the dining room to find his dad, having purposely skirted the admin office. Yes, maybe he was being an ass, but his brain was such a muddled mass of crossed wires right now that he didn’t know what would come out if he tried to speak to Emma.

  He hadn’t called her back last night—had just taken the message from Milo at the café and had headed straight from Bette’s to the hospital. And granted, by the time they’d worked Archie up and determined he could use better anxiety meds, but not heart surgery, it had been after midnight, so calling could have easily been construed as rude.

  But the fact was, she’d left his bed on Sunday morning, and it was now Tuesday, and he hadn’t spoken a word to her.

  He really needed to talk to her.

  And as soon as he figured out what to say, he would.

  “Mornin’, Junior.” Dad smiled up from his table by the window. “Good news—substitute cook today. We can eat.”

  Jasper smiled. “Where’s Horace?”

  “Dunno. Cooking school, maybe.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m serious.” Dad ate a bite of eggs. “Emma threatened to send him back to school if he didn’t learn to cook.”

  “What?” That didn’t sound like Emma. Not at all.

  “Well, she might have phrased it differently. Maybe asked him if he’d ever wanted to go to school. Maybe offered to reimburse him a couple of weeks at the culinary place in Bozeman if he wanted to give it a shot. It might have been something like that.”

  Jasper sighed. “Well, that’s a little bit different, Dad.”

  “I know. But it’s a better story, the other way.” He grinned. “Plus, it lets me get your gander up about Emma, which tells me more than if I just came right out and asked how it’s going with you two.”

  “Again, what?” Jasper put down his fork. How did his father know there even was a “you two,” if, in fact, there was?

  “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody mighta seen her car parked outside your place Saturday night…and Sunday morning.”

  Jasper shook his head. The Shady Acres rumor mill was worse than a junior high school’s, and after all these years, he still hadn’t figured out how this crowd stayed so informed about what was going on in town.

  “Well, just so you know—and you can let the rumor squad know—her car died there on Saturday.”

  “Oh-h.” Dad nodded, spooning in more eggs.

  “So that’s why it was still there Sunday morning.”

  “Gotcha. And the fact that the café didn’t open on Sunday morning, for the first time in four years? That was—coincidence, maybe? You forgot to get up?”

  Jasper sighed, pushing away his plate. “I don’t need this abuse, you know.”

  “Yep, I know.” Dad smiled. “But who’s gonna give it to you if I don’t?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—Liam, Cole, Gunnar, Hayley? The list is long.”

  Dad set down his fork, sitting back and studying Jasper as he sipped his coffee. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “Not sure which way’s up right now?”

  Jasper looked at him, surprised. “Little bit, yeah.”

  “Big step. It’s been a helluva long time.” Dad shrugged carefully. “You’re bound to be a little rocked. Especially since it’s somebody like Emma.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the way I see it, you’ve had more than your fair share of offers over the years, right? I mean, even half the nurses here threatened to leave their husbands for you, so it’s not like you haven’t had opportunity.”

  Jasper rolled his eyes. “They weren’t serious.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that. But you never took anybody up on it, and to my knowledge, you haven’t gone out looking.”

  “No. Obviously, no.”

  “So then this girl swings into town, and she’s sweet and smart and downright adorable, and suddenly your brain goes to mush and you’re taking her home. So it’s gotta make a man wonder, right?”

  “Um…”

  Jasper had no idea where Dad was going with this, but it appeared the man had a plan, so it would probably be better to just shut up.

  “Here’s the thing, Jasper. You’ve had plenty of sweet,and plenty of smart cross your path over the past few years. And you didn’t give even one of them a second glance. Meanwhile, at the same time you’re preaching to everybody that they should embrace life and live in the moment and all of that yogi crap, you’ve sentenced yourself to some solitary prison sentence whereby someday, if you’re alone and miserable long enough, maybe it’ll be enough to atone for Bridget.”

  “It wasn’t just—”

  “I know it wasn’t just Bridget. But you know what? I don’t think you’ve ever stepped back far enough to realize that Bridget owns some of what happened to your marriage, too.”

  “Not fair.”

  “Totally fair.” Dad leaned forward. “Tell me something—was law school ever your dream?”

  “Of course it was.”

  “You wanted to be a teacher, Jasper. You wanted to be a teacher from the first time you met Miss Sweet in kindergarten, all the way through to senior year. You were—what—sixteen credits shy of your education degree when you switched over and signed on for however many more years it took to do law?”

  “Things change, Dad. Reality intrudes. Hard to make a living as a teacher.”

  “Would you have been happy with a teacher’s salary?”

  “That’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think it’s irrelevant. I think it’s just the opposite. I think Bridget had a certain life she envisioned for herself, and she loved you, but what she didn’t love was the idea of settling for what you would have been happy taking in.”

  “She had a job, too, Dad. You’re way oversimplifying this.”

  “Maybe, but here’s what I’m not oversimplifying. She should have told you.”

  “Oh, God. Don’t go there.”

  “She should have told you. She should have given you a chance, and she didn’t.”

  “Well, she gave me plenty
of chances, Dad. You know it, and I know it. But I was so busy living the champagne-and-courtroom life that I never saw just how many of those chances I blew.”

  “She didn’t give you a chance at this.”

  Jasper sighed miserably. “Why would she have? I mean, really? In her mind, I’d already proven to be no more than a paycheck, so what in the world would make her think I had the chops to be more? Who could really blame her?”

  Dad leveled him with a stare. “She never, ever should have kept that information from you.”

  “I know.” Jasper’s words were so low he barely heard them.

  “You’ve done your time, son. You’ve done your penance, and it’s time to stop killing yourself with this guilt. You made a fresh start here in Carefree. You brought me here to live out my years, and you’re here every damn day. You’ve been more of a son to Bette than her own son is, and Archie’s still threatening to saddle you with his millions.”

  Jasper closed his eyes. The last thing he needed right now was a list of all the things he’d done for other people. He hadn’t done them because he wanted them recited at his funeral. He’d done them because in Carefree, Montana, he’d seen a chance to redeem all of the crap decisions he’d made before he got there. And he was far from done.

  Didn’t feel like such a celebratory list when you looked at it that way.

  “So what are you planning to do about Emma?” Dad’s voice was soft as he refilled his coffee mug from the carafe on the table.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, you could come at it from two different angles. One? You tell yourself she’s just out here for a few months, and the two of you are good together, and maybe you can help each other be a little less lonely for a while before she goes back home.”

  “What’s the other angle?”

  Dad paused, studying him over the rim of his cup. “You remember the religion we raised you with, and you allow the thought that maybe there’s a reason somebody put this woman in your path right exactly now. And maybe that somebody’s got a plan for you, and maybe it has a happy ending, if you do it right.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “Could be, if you let it. And before you give me any bullshit about how she’s from Florida and she’d never move here permanently and all of that, just take another little drive out to Whisper Creek and ask those guys how many of their women hail from here in Montana.”