Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You’ve gone pale, darling. And I asked you three times if you made these delicious truffles. What’s the matter?”

  “I…” She couldn’t come up with a way to answer, since every single brain cell had apparently decided to stage a temporary work stoppage.

  He was coming this way. She watched him take one step toward her and then another. Her palms went damp and she could feel the blood rush out of her head, which didn’t help the small matter of her sudden inability to form a coherent thought.

  In a panic, she turned away, as if maybe she could block out the last two minutes and pretend it was just a slice out of her nightmares.

  “Why, yes. Yes, I did make the truffles. It wasn’t hard at all. The secret is to add the cream slowly and use high-quality flavoring....”

  She launched into a whole explanation about the homemade chocolate balls, but eventually the words petered out when she realized nobody was paying attention to her. They were staring at a point above her shoulder.

  “You’re here!” Mary Ella suddenly exclaimed. “Oh, darling. I’m so happy you made it. I thought you weren’t coming until the weekend!”

  Her mother brushed past her, arms outstretched. Okay, this had to be a nightmare. As far as she knew, Mary Ella would have no reason to even know about Jack, as they had kept their relationship a secret that summer, in the tumult that was their respective home lives.

  Wondering what alternative universe she had suddenly been thrust into, she finally forced herself to turn around. Mary Ella wasn’t hugging Jack, she was hugging someone behind him. When her mother shifted, Maura finally caught a glimpse of who it was, and her insides turned to thin, crackly ice.

  Her nineteen-year-old daughter, Sage, stood just a half step behind Jackson Lange, hidden from view by the breadth of his shoulders.

  Her numb brain finally began kicking out messages at a rapid-fire pace, and none of them were good.

  Sage. Together with Jackson Lange.

  The two of them, in the same room. Not just the same room—the same freaking three-foot radius.

  She’d never had a panic attack, despite the past eight months of purgatory, but she could feel one coming on now. Her heart raced and she could feel each pulse throbbing in her chest, her neck, her face. “S-Sage.”

  Her daughter gave her a long look, but for the first time ever Sage’s usually expressive eyes were shuttered.

  She knew.

  Maura wasn’t sure how she was so certain, especially as her daughter’s features were closed and set, but somehow she could tell Sage knew the truth. Finally. After nearly two decades.

  “Who’s your friend, sweetheart?” Mary Ella asked as she stepped away from her oldest grandchild and gave Jack the sort of quizzical look she wore when trying to place someone, as if she thought she recognized him but wasn’t quite sure.

  “This is Jackson Lange. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s a pretty famous architect.”

  Maura was aware of the little stir of excitement among her friends. It was fairly common knowledge that Hope’s Crossing had spawned the man many considered the next Frank Gehry.

  Mary Ella’s expression cooled and she took a slight step back. “Of course. Harry’s son.”

  “I haven’t heard that particular phrase in a long time.” Those were the first words he spoke, and she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that his voice seemed lower, sexier, as it thrummed down her spine.

  “Yes. Harry Lange’s son.” Sage gave her mother that cool look again. “And he’s not my friend. Not really. He’s my father.”

  Maura hissed in a breath. Okay. There it was.

  This Christmas had just climbed straight to the top of the suck-o-meter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OKAY, THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE.

  Jack stood beside his daughter—his daughter. Hell. How had that happened?—and gazed around at the group of women all staring at him as if he’d just walked in and mooned them all.

  When Sage had suggested stopping in at the bookstore to talk to her mother first before he dropped her off at her house and found a hotel for himself for a few days, he’d had no idea Maura would be in the middle of a freaking Christmas party. He noted the cluster of gift bags, the personalized glass decorations on the tree. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for this gathering, and he had just barged in and ruined it.

  “Your…father?” an older woman said faintly.

  Though twenty years had gone by, he clearly recognized Mary Ella McKnight, with those green eyes all her children had inherited, now peering at him through a pair of trendy little horn-rimmed glasses. She had taught him English in high school, and he remembered with great fondness their discussions on Milton and Wilkie Collins.

  She was still very pretty, with a soft, ageless kind of beauty.

  “You didn’t know either?” Sage raised an eyebrow at her grandmother’s obvious shock. “I guess it was a big secret to everyone. I thought I was the last to know.”

  He had met Sage only days ago, but her sudden barbed tone seemed very unlike the sweet, earnest young woman he had come to know. That she would burst in and spring him on Maura like this without any advance warning seemed either thoughtless or cruel. He should say something to ease the tension of the moment, but for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything polite and innocuous that didn’t start with “How the hell could you keep this from me?”

  A woman with chestnut hair who looked vaguely familiar stepped forward and rested a hand on Maura’s arm. “Are you all right, my dear?” the woman asked.

  Maura gave a jerky shake of her head and swallowed, her features pale. According to what Sage had told him, Maura was still grieving the loss of her other daughter, he suddenly remembered, and he felt like an even bigger ass for bursting in here like this.

  “Maybe the three of you should go back to your office where you could have a little privacy for this discussion,” the other woman gently suggested.

  Maura gazed at her blankly for a moment, then seemed to gather her composure from somewhere deep inside. “I’m…I’m sorry. I wasn’t… This is a bit of a shock. Yes. We should go back to my office. Thank you, Claire. Do you mind helping your mother lead the book discussion? When Alex gets here, she should have the, uh, refreshments.”

  He really should have made sure Sage had talked to her mother about all of this before he showed up, but then, he hadn’t really been thinking clearly in the three days since the carefully arranged life he thought he had constructed for himself had imploded around him.

  Three days ago, he had been living his life, continuing to build Lange & Associates, preparing for an undergraduate lecture at the University of Colorado College of Architecture and Planning. It was the first time he had stepped back in the state since he had escaped twenty years ago, a bitter and angry young man.

  His lecture had gone well, especially as he focused on one of his passions, sustainable design. He was fairly certain he hadn’t come across as a pompous iconoclast. Among the students who had pressed toward the dais to talk to him afterward had been this young woman with dark wavy hair and green eyes.

  She told him she had studied his work, that she had always felt a bond to him because she was also from Hope’s Crossing, where she knew he had grown up, and that while she hadn’t met him, she saw his father around town often.

  He studied her features as she spoke to him about her dreams and their shared passion for architecture, and he had been aware of an odd sense of the familiar but with a twist, as if he were looking at someone he knew through a wavy, distorted mirror.

  When she told him her name—Sage McKnight—he had stared at her for a full thirty seconds before he had asked, “Who are your parents?”

  “I don’t know my father. He took off before I was born. But my mother’s name is Maura McKnight. I think she might be around your age or maybe a little younger.”

  Younger, he remembered thinking as everything inside him froze. She had
been a year younger.

  “She’s thirty-seven now, if that helps you place her,” Sage had offered helpfully. “She graduated from high school nineteen years ago. I know, because it was about a month before I was born.”

  Just like that, he had pieced the dates and the times together, and he had known. He didn’t need to bother with DNA tests. He could do the damn math. Anyone with a brain could clearly see she was his child. They had the same nose, the same dark, wavy hair, the same dimple in their chins.

  His daughter. After three days, he still couldn’t believe it.

  And neither, apparently, could all those gaping women back there. Hadn’t she told anyone who had fathered her child?

  Now he followed Maura through the bookstore, noting almost subconsciously certain architectural details of the historic building, like the walls that had been peeled back to bare brick and the windows with their almost Gothic arches. With jewel-toned hanging fixtures on track lights and plush furniture set around in conversation nooks, Maura had created a cozy, warm space that encouraged people to stop and ponder, sip a coffee, maybe grab a book off a shelf at random and discover something new.

  Under ordinary circumstances, he would have found the place appealing, clever and bright and comfortable, but he could only focus on haphazard details as he followed her through a doorway to a long, barren stockroom, and a cluttered office dominated by a wide oak desk and a small window that overlooked Main Street.

  Inside her office, Maura turned on both of them. “First of all, Sage, what are you doing here today? What about your biology final tomorrow morning?”

  Her daughter—their daughter—shrugged. “I talked Professor Johnson into letting me take it this morning. She was fine with that, especially after I explained I had extenuating circumstances.”

  Maura’s gaze darted to him, then quickly away again. “How do you think you did? Did you even have time to study after your chemistry final? You needed a solid A on the final to bring your grade above a C.”

  “Really, Mom? Is that what you want to talk about right now? My grades?”

  A hint of color soaked Maura’s cheeks, and she compressed her lips into a thin line as if to clamp back more academic interrogation. Even with the sour expression, she still looked beautiful. Looking at her now, he couldn’t fathom that she was old enough to have a daughter who was a college sophomore, but then she must have been barely eighteen when Sage was born. She was seventeen when he’d left, still six months before her eighteenth birthday.

  Maura released a heavy breath and finally sat on the edge of her desk, which put her slightly above him and Sage, who had taken the two guest chairs in her office.

  “You’re right. We can talk about school later. I just… This was all unexpected. I didn’t think you would be here until tomorrow, and then I never expected you to bring…”

  “My father?”

  Maura’s hands flexed on her thighs even as she made a scoffing sort of sound. “I don’t know where you possibly came up with that crazy idea,” she began, but Sage cut her off.

  “Please don’t lie to me. You’ve been lying for twenty years. Can we just stop now?” Though the words were angry, the tone was soft and almost gentle. “You’ve known who he is and where he was all this time, haven’t you? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  Maura looked at him quickly and then away again. She hadn’t looked at him for longer than a few seconds at a time, as if she were trying to pretend he wasn’t really there. “Does it really matter?”

  “Yes. Of course it matters! I could have had a father all this time.”

  “You’ve had your stepfather from the time you were just a little girl. Chris has always been great to you.”

  “True. He’s still great to me. Even after the divorce, he never treated me any differently than he did L-Layla.” Sage’s voice wobbled a little at the name. Her sister, who had died earlier this year, he remembered, and felt like an ass again for showing up out of the blue like this, dredging up the past. What would happen if he left town right now and went back to his real life in the Bay Area and pretended none of this had ever happened?

  He couldn’t do that, as tempting as he suddenly found the idea. To a man who had spent his adult life trying to clear through the clutter in his personal and professional lives, this was all so messy and complicated. But like it or not, Sage was his daughter. He was here now, and had been given the chance after all these years to come to know this young woman who bore half his DNA and who reminded him with almost painful intensity of an innocent part of himself he had left behind a long time ago.

  “A child can never have too many people who love her, Mom. You taught me that. Why did you keep my father out of our lives all this time? He didn’t have any idea I even existed. If he hadn’t come to campus to give a lecture, both of us would still be in the dark.”

  “A lecture?”

  “Right. On sustainable design, one of my own passions. It was wonderful, really inspiring. I went up afterward to talk to him and mentioned I was from Hope’s Crossing. It only took us a minute to figure things out.”

  Maura frowned. “Figure what out? That the two of us dated when I was barely seventeen? How could you both instantly jump from that to thinking he’s your…your sperm donor?”

  The term annoyed the hell out of him. “Because neither of us is stupid. She told me who her mother was. When I asked how old she was, I could figure out the math. I knew exactly who you were with nine months before her birthday.”

  And ten months before and eleven months and every spare moment they could get their hands on each other that summer.

  “That doesn’t prove a thing. You took off. You weren’t here, Jack. How do you know I didn’t pick up with the whole basketball team after you left?” Defiance and something that looked suspiciously like fear flashed in her eyes.

  She had been a virgin their first time together. They both had been, fumbling and awkward and embarrassed but certain they were deeply in love. Even if not for the proof sitting beside him, he wouldn’t have believed the smart and loving girl she had been would suddenly turn into the kind of girl who would sleep around with just anybody.

  “Look at her,” he said, gentling his tone. “She has my mother’s nose and my mouth and chin. We can run the DNA, but I don’t need to. Sage is my daughter. For three days, I’ve just been trying to figure out why the hell you didn’t tell me.”

  For the first time, she met his gaze for longer than a few seconds. “Think about it, Jack,” she finally said. “What difference would it have made? Would you have come back?”

  He couldn’t lie, to her or to himself. “No. But you could have come with me.”

  “And lived in some rat-hole apartment while you dropped out of college and worked three jobs to support us, resenting me the whole time? That would have been the perfect happily-ever-after every young girl dreams about.”

  “I still had a right to know.”

  She suddenly looked tired, defeated, and he saw deep shadows in her eyes that he sensed had nothing to do with him.

  “Well, I guess you know now. Yes. She’s your daughter. There was no one else. There it is. Now you know, and we can be one big, freaking happy family for the holidays.”

  “Mom.” Sage moved forward a little as if to reach for Maura’s hand, but then she checked the motion and slid back into her chair.

  Pain etched Maura’s features briefly, but she contained it. “Okay. I should have told you. Give me a break here. I was just a scared kid who didn’t know what to do. You left without a forwarding address, Jack, and didn’t contact me one single time after you left, despite all your promises. What else was I supposed to do? I finally tracked down your number at Berkeley about four months after you left and tried to call you. Three times I tried in a week. Once you were at the library, and twice you were on a date, at least according to your roommate. I left my number, but you never called me back, which basically gave me the message loud and clear that you were
done with me. What more was I supposed to do?”

  He remembered those first few months at school after that last horrible fight with his father, after he had opted to leave everything behind—even the only warm and beautiful thing that had happened to him in Hope’s Crossing since his mother’s death.

  He remembered the message from Maura his roommate had given him and the sloppily scrawled phone number. He had stared at it for hours and had even dialed the number several times, but had always hung up.

  She had been a link to a place and a past he had chosen to leave behind, and he’d ultimately decided it was in both their best interests if he tried to move on and gave her the chance to do the same.

  That she had been pregnant and alone had never once occurred to him. Lord, he’d been an idiot.

  Everything was so damn tangled, he didn’t know what to do—which was the whole reason he had agreed to give Sage a ride back to Hope’s Crossing to talk to Maura before he flew back to San Francisco.

  “Look, we’re all a little emotional about this tonight. I didn’t realize you were unaware I was bringing Sage back to town.”

  That little tidbit also appeared to be news to Maura. “You rode here with him?” she asked her daughter. “Is something wrong with the Honda?”

  “It hasn’t been starting the last week or so. I think it just needs a new battery, but I figured I could drive the pickup while I was home and catch a ride back to school with one of my friends after the break. I can deal with the Honda before school starts next semester.”

  “You should have called me. I could have driven to Boulder to pick you up.”

  “Sorry, Mom. My car troubles just didn’t seem all that important in light of…everything else.”

  “I guess that’s understandable.” Maura forced a smile, but he could clearly see the bone-deep weariness beneath it. What had happened to the vibrant, alive girl who’d always made him laugh, even when they were both dealing with family chaos and pain?

  “So what now?” she asked. Though she looked at her daughter, he picked up the subtext of the question, directed at him. What else are you planning to do to screw up my life?