“Because of you and your hard work.”
To his regret, she slid her fingers away as she shook her head. “I would love to take all the credit, but it’s not me. Oh, I was making slow, steady progress but she fought me every step of the way. When Charlie is here, she works three times as hard. With Hannah, it’s maybe twice as hard—Charlie seems to have the magic touch—but either of them can still cajole her into doing more than I can alone.”
More than anything, he wanted to go back to those few moments before he’d walked into the house, when he had been in blissful ignorance that all this was going on behind his back. He didn’t want to deal with it. If Evie was right and Charlie was helping Taryn, how could he bar the kid from his house?
Through the kitchen window, he could see them on the deck. Taryn was laughing at something Charlie said and she looked carefree and lighthearted. As she laughed, she must have drooled a little—something she didn’t completely have under control yet—because Charlie picked up a cloth from the back of the chair and dabbed at the corner of her mouth in such a matter-of-fact way that he doubted Taryn even registered it.
His chest felt tight, fragile, as if a breeze might shatter something deep inside.
“What about Beaumont? Why is he doing this?” Brodie’s voice sounded strangled and he cleared his throat, thinking of all the dreams he’d once had for his daughter and how that kid out there had destroyed them all in one night.
Evie didn’t respond at first. She was silent for so long, he finally had to shift his attention from the scene out the window to her.
“I don’t know, if you want the truth,” she finally answered. “I think he enjoys it, actually. At first I think he came out of guilt and…” She paused. “Okay, you won’t like this either but Charlie has said something about his father encouraging the visits in the hopes it might reflect well on him during his judicial proceedings.”
His anger, which had begun to cool, hit boiling point all over again. “That sleazy bastard. And you went along with this, knowing Mayor Beaumont would like Charlie to wriggle out of these charges with less than a slap on the wrist?”
“I was looking at what was best for Taryn. You can throw any motivation at me that you want but she remains my primary concern.”
“If Charlie uses this to help him walk on the charges against him, I am going to hold you personally responsible.”
“That’s fair.”
“Fair? Do you know how much I hate that word? Nothing has been fair in our world for four damn months! Including that the one person I trusted would go behind my back like this.”
“So fire me. If you think what I’ve done is so outrageously egregious, I’ll quit right now. You’ve only got a few more days before the new aide is supposed to start anyway. I’m sure you can hobble along without me.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “How can I fire you? Look at her. She’s a different person than she was two weeks ago.”
“Then trust me, Brodie,” she pleaded. “Trust me that I would never do anything to hurt Taryn. I’m trying to help her here. I knew you wouldn’t like Charlie helping with therapy but I was willing to do it because it was working for Taryn. I thought that was worth the risk of you being angry.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Evie hadn’t wanted to help them at all because of her past pain yet she’d spent more than two weeks here, day after endless day, exercising extreme patience and calm. All for Taryn. She hadn’t acted maliciously by having the kid here. Brodie accepted that.
Right after the accident, those terrible, bleak days when doctors couldn’t say whether she would even survive her extensive injuries, Brodie had vowed to God that if He would spare Taryn, he would do anything within his power to give her the best chance at a normal life. But damn it. This wasn’t what he’d meant at all.
“I hate this.”
“I know.” She touched his arm again. Just as before, he could feel the tension and frustration inside him begin to ease as if she’d rubbed the tight muscles in his shoulders instead of merely brushing her fingers against the skin between wrist and elbow.
She hesitated for just a moment and then, before he quite realized what she intended, she followed up that soft caress with a tentative hug, her arms warm around his waist.
He froze, not sure what to do. He never had been much of a hugger, probably because his father had discouraged such obvious shows of affection. Not that his disapproval had stopped Katherine. He might have received stiff and hard disapproval from his father but Katherine had compensated with her steady love.
Evie’s simple, unexpected embrace sent comfort and calm seeping through him. Though he found it as dangerous as it was enticing, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.
They stood that way for a long time, not speaking and neither seeming eager to break this fragile, tensile connection between them.
She was the first to slide away and he thought he saw the shadow of something tender and soft in her gaze before she lowered her lashes and wrapped her fingers together. “If you absolutely can’t bear the thought of Charlie being here, I’ll go out there right now and tell him to leave and not come back. I can guarantee Taryn won’t be happy about it, but this is your home and you’re her father. You get the final say.”
He was tempted. So tempted. Taryn would get over it. He was almost sure of it. The new therapist was starting the following week and maybe that would provide enough distraction that Taryn wouldn’t even remember that Charlie wasn’t here.
And maybe his mother would get a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on her forehead.
“He can keep coming but I don’t want to see him. Make sure he’s only here when I’m not.”
Her smile was more breathtaking than the sunrise breaking over the mountains after weeks of gray muck. He had the grim realization that he would be willing to do just about anything if only she would smile at him like that.
“You’re a good father, Brodie. Taryn is lucky to have you in her corner.”
He wasn’t so sure about that right now. Letting Charlie Beaumont even within a mile of her seemed like a huge mistake.
As big a mistake as allowing this dangerous tenderness for Evie Blanchard to filter through him even though he knew damn well it would never go anywhere.
* * *
HAD SHE EVER SO MONUMENTALLY misjudged a person?
Though she knew she needed to return to Taryn and Charlie on the deck, Evie paused for a moment to watch Brodie slide into his luxury SUV out front. She had always prided herself on her natural instincts when it came to figuring most people out, but she had been completely off the mark when it came to Brodie Thorne.
The man she had come to know these last few weeks was a vastly different creature from the cold, humorless man she’d believed him to be when she’d first arrived in Hope’s Crossing. She had despised him from the very first, had wondered how Katherine—warm, generous, loving—could have produced a man so disagreeable.
The man she mistakenly had believed he was would never have backed down from this particular fight. He would have railed and blustered, demanding his way and threatening anything in his path.
Brodie had certainly been furious, as he had every right to be. He could easily have forbidden Charlie to continue coming to the house and sent Evie packing at the same time. As far as she knew, he was right. He might even have been able to bring in the authorities—though she seriously doubted Riley McKnight would have moved forward with trespassing charges against the kid when she had allowed him to continue coming.
Despite Brodie’s anger at the deception, he hadn’t forbidden Charlie from coming again. He had been willing to swallow his own wishes for the sake of what she considered best for Taryn, and Evie didn’t know quite what to think about that.
Nor did she know why she had followed through on that insane impulse to give him a hug. She was still reeling from the sheer intimacy, the soft, gentle tenderness,
of those few moments as he had wrapped his arms around her and held on tightly.
She sighed. Better not to think about it. She would be leaving in a short time and her path probably wouldn’t cross with either of the Thornes much after that.
When she walked back out to the deck, Charlie gazed at her, his eyes solemn. “I should go,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” she assured him.
“I do, actually. I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss with my attorneys.”
Despite the remarkably graceful way Brodie had handled Charlie’s presence, she could only be grateful he wasn’t here to hear that particular announcement. She was quite certain Brodie wouldn’t want to hear anything about Charlie’s defense team.
“Thanks. You were a big help today.”
“You’re welcome.” His voice sounded funny and she searched his features. He was looking at Taryn, not at Evie, and she saw guilt and regret in his eyes.
“I’ll see you later, T.”
“See…you.” She lifted her hand and waved at him.
Jacques followed him to the side gate leading to the circular drive out front and waited there as if making sure the boy got on his way safely.
“My dad was mad.”
“Yes.” She slid into the chair where Charlie had been sitting. “He had reason to be. We should have told him Charlie has been coming to visit. I was too much of a coward. Why didn’t you ever mention it to him?”
Taryn shrugged. “He doesn’t like Charlie. He never did. Can he come back?”
“For now.”
“Whew!”
Evie was compelled to be honest with the girl, as she should have been with her father from the beginning. “You need to prepare yourself that Charlie might not be able to come around much longer, Taryn. I know it’s been fun to work with him but I can’t promise it will continue. After I go back to work at the bead store next week, the new therapist might have different ideas, or your father might change his mind and decide he doesn’t want Charlie around anymore.”
“That’s so dumb.”
“It’s not dumb for your father to be upset about what happened to you. He loves you. All parents feel responsible for making sure their children are safe. Your dad feels like he failed you—and he blames Charlie for that.”
“I keep telling you, it wasn’t…Charlie’s fault.”
They had already talked about this and Evie wasn’t in the mood to travel this particular road again. She opted to divert attention away. “Hey, here’s an idea. Since it’s your grandmother’s birthday, why don’t we go clean up and drive into town to surprise her for lunch?”
“To String Fever?”
“We’ll stop there and see where Katherine wants to have lunch. How does that sound?”
“Okay, I guess.”
To Evie’s relief, Taryn allowed her attention to be sidetracked. Evie couldn’t understand this dogged insistence that none of them blame Charlie for what had happened. Taryn had a definite blind spot when it came to the boy.
She wanted to warn the girl to be careful and guard her heart well but for some reason she didn’t care to identify yet, the advice seemed hypocritical coming from her. Instead, she helped Taryn find the gift she’d carefully made for her grandmother and wrapped during her last session with the occupational therapist, then ushered her out the door.
* * *
TARYN WAS QUIET THROUGHOUT the complicated process of Evie helping her into the accessible bathroom before they left, washing her face and hands, fixing her hair and makeup.
The home-health aides were only coming twice daily now, once in the morning to help her shower and dress for the day and again in the evening to deliver meds and help her to bed. Now that she could transfer herself from her wheelchair to the commode and to other chairs around the house, Taryn was almost to the point where she was able to handle most of her needs by herself, which was huge progress in only the few months since she’d been in a coma.
Finally they were on their way. Their route took them past the high school and, as they went by, Evie glanced in the rearview mirror and found Taryn gazing out the window, her mouth tight and her eyes upset.
She had lost so much. They were all so focused on the big picture, on Taryn regaining her skills, they sometimes forgot all the little things she’d lost, like back-to-school excitement in the fall, football games on crisp autumn evenings, bonfires in the canyon with friends as fall began to brush vibrant color on the leaves.
Hope’s Crossing High School planned to send a series of tutors to help Taryn try to catch up from what she’d missed the previous year. Perhaps Evie ought to talk to Brodie about the possibility of Taryn attending an hour or two of regular school, just for the interaction with her peers.
Evie could certainly do that but in another few days, none of this would be her concern. Her replacement would be starting the day after Labor Day, less than a week away, and Evie would be out of their lives not long after that.
The thought should have cheered her. She wanted things to return to normal, wanted to be able to put this brief return to her therapy roots to rest once and for all. She thought about no longer making that drive in the morning up the hill toward Aspen Ridge and Brodie’s house, no longer having Taryn greet her every day with a mock groan and her regular “You’re here again?” refrain, no more of Mrs. O.’s delicious food and her occasional dour but amusing company.
Evie should have been anticipating the idea of her life returning to normal. But all she could see right now was how empty her days would seem.
Oh, this was not right. She loved working at String Fever. Interacting with customers, talking to Claire, taking the chaos of a hundred disparate beads and jumbling them together to create beauty and order.
But she also loved this, helping Taryn. Every day posed a new challenge, another surprise, and she would miss it terribly. She might tell herself she needed to distance herself from her chosen career as a physical therapist but some part of her still found immense satisfaction in it.
She was still mulling the shock of that realization as she circled the block, trying to find a parking space near the bead store with enough room on the right to allow her to lower the wheelchair ramp. A handicapped parking spot finally opened up behind the store on her second trip around the block and Evie grabbed it.
“Grandma will be surprised,” Taryn said when Evie turned off the van.
She managed a smile at the girl, despite the tumult of her emotions. Taryn’s returning verbal skills far outpaced her physical abilities. If nothing else, Evie was deeply grateful for that. The ability to communicate wants and needs could take a person much farther in life than being able to toss a ball to a dog.
“She might already have made lunch plans, or be too busy to get away from the store this afternoon,” she warned. “We probably should have called her.”
“What’s the fun…of that?” Taryn’s still-lopsided smile was bright and a little mischievous.
Evie had to sigh. Who was she kidding? She was already crazy about Taryn.
They let Jacques into the back gate and found Chester already there as if he’d known they were coming. He waddled to her bigger dog and sniffed him with that enthusiastic way dogs acted, as if they were being reunited after months apart.
“Smells pretty back here,” Taryn said.
“That’s the lavender and the phlox and the lemon balm.”
“Do you…take care of the flowers?”
“I water and weed and plant a few here and there. Your grandma started the garden when she owned the store, then Claire added to it.”
“It’s nice here.”
“I love coming out in the morning and watching the sun come up. You should smell the flowers then,” Evie said. “You ought to plant a garden next spring. I’m sure your dad would let you take over a patch of ground at your house.”
In her experience, gardening could be fabulous therapy, both mental and physical. Maybe she would talk to Brodie abou
t letting Taryn use the warm, south-facing window in her room for an indoor container garden. She could see tarragon and rosemary, perhaps a tomato plant or two.
She caught herself. In a few days, Taryn’s therapy would be none of her business. She needed to get that straight in her head once and for all. The new therapist would be making those sorts of decisions and that was just the way she wanted it, right?
They enjoyed the peaceful garden for a few moments more, then Evie pushed the wheelchair toward the door. Inside, they found Katherine and Claire both seated at the worktable while a customer browsed through the chain selection.
Katherine looked delighted. “Hello, you two! What a lovely surprise,” she exclaimed.
“Hi, Grandma. Happy birthday.”
“Why, thank you! It’s been a lovely day so far.”
“Can you…have lunch?” Taryn asked.
Regret flashed in Katherine’s eyes and she opened her mouth to answer but Claire cut her off. “Of course she can.”
“But you were planning to leave early,” Katherine protested.
“Don’t worry about that for a minute. I’ve got plenty of time. The kids are with Jeff and Holly, busy cooing over their new baby sister, who is adorable, I have to admit.”
Again, Evie wanted to roll her eyes at her friend. She knew very few women who would be enthusiastic about their ex-husband’s new child with another woman. But that was Claire.
“Riley has to run to Denver to track down some information on a case he’s working and I’m driving in with him to do some wedding shopping, but we’re not leaving until later. I’ve got all the time in the world. It’s your birthday and I can’t think of a better way for you to celebrate than lunch with Taryn.”
“Good,” Taryn said happily.
“Shall we go to the café?” Katherine asked.
Evie hesitated. Taryn still grew nervous when people watched her eat, as it could be an awkward, messy process. She’d been thinking more along the lines of grabbing something and coming back to the store to eat in the garden or grabbing a picnic table over at Miners’ Park, but she decided to leave it up to Katherine’s granddaughter.
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