She didn’t want to be attracted to him, but she didn’t seem to have any more control over her hormones than she’d had as a teenager.
Finally, everyone seemed to be finished either eating or pushing food around the plate, and the ordeal was over.
Maura smiled and took the napkin off her lap. “Sage, you’ve been working so hard all day. Why don’t you and Jack go in by the fire and relax? I’m happy to take care of the cleanup in here and in the kitchen.”
“I can’t let you do that, Mom. I left a big mess.”
“Between the three of us, we can have the job done in a flash.” Jack said.
There is no “three of us,” she wanted to say. They weren’t a unit and never had been. For Sage’s early years, she and Maura had been alone against the world. Okay, they hadn’t exactly been alone, since her mother and sisters—and even Riley—had rallied around her. But Jack certainly hadn’t been in the picture to stay up late with a sick child or work on potty training or read her to sleep.
Now he had burst into their lives with his stories about his high-powered career and the excitement of traveling around the world, and she could see Sage lapping it up like Puck at his water dish after a long game of fetch, and she hated it.
She caught herself, appalled at the thoughts. She was jealous, she realized. Plain and simple. She didn’t want to see Sage establishing this bond with Jack. She wanted to turn the calendar back several weeks, to when she didn’t have to share her daughter with anyone.
She had lost one child with devastating suddenness. Now it felt as if the other one was slipping away, inch by inch.
She would only push her away further by acting petulant and bad tempered. She forced a smile. “Sure. All three of us can clean up. I really don’t mind doing it myself, but we can all make the work go faster together.”
After they carried the dishes in from the dining room and loaded the dishwasher together, Maura filled the sink with sudsy water that smelled of green apples and began washing the dishes.
“Towel?” Jack asked, and Sage pointed him to the drawer beneath the work island where the dish towels were stored. As he reached for them, his hip brushed Maura’s and she froze as the masculine scent of his aftershave teased her but the moment passed quickly.
For the next few minutes, she washed the dishes and he dried them before handing them to Sage to put away. This was entirely too domestic, she thought. Like a regular nuclear family working together at the end of a long day.
When the final dish was washed and the last bit of water gurgled down the drain, she dried her hands on another towel she pulled from the door, wishing she could clean up the mess of her life as efficiently as they had cleaned up the kitchen. “I imagine Puck is tired of his bedroom confinement. I’d better go let him out.”
“I can do that,” Sage said.
“No. It’s okay. Stay and talk to your, uh, Jack.”
The little shih tzu greeted her as if he hadn’t seen her in months, jumping around and doing cute little dancing circles in the air. He wasn’t much of a barker, something she very much appreciated.
She scooped him up with a quick look down the hall to make sure Sage wasn’t watching. It wouldn’t do to let her daughter think she was softening about keeping the dog.
“You did okay in here by yourself, didn’t you? I don’t see any accidents. Good job,” she murmured, pressing her cheek to his furry face and receiving a gleeful lick in return.
Through the windows in Sage’s darkened bedroom, she could see snowflakes softly falling, kissing the window. Her favorite sort of winter night, soft and quiet. Peaceful. She wanted to be out there, she thought, in the quiet solitude, rather than here with all these awkward currents and the solid proof of all her mistakes.
She could hear the voices recede behind her as Sage and Jack moved into the family room near the fireplace. Suddenly she wasn’t at all sure she could sit in there with them and make after-dinner conversation for another hour or so.
“How would you like to go for a walk?” she asked the dog, seizing on any excuse to escape. Puck wagged his tail so hard it was a blur, and Maura was surprised at her own rusty chuckle. “All right. Don’t hurt yourself. Let me find your leash and my coat.”
In only a few moments, she slipped into her favorite black knee-high UGG boots and her parka, then clipped the leash on the dog and headed into the family room with him dancing around her feet with eagerness.
“Puck needs a walk. I think I’ll just take him around the block. We should be back in a few minutes.”
“Alone? In the dark?” Jack asked, eyebrows raised.
“This is Hope’s Crossing, not San Francisco. But if it makes you feel better, I’ve got a flashlight and pepper spray on my key chain.”
He rose. “You know, now that you mention it, a walk actually sounds nice after such a great and filling dinner. What do you say, Sage?”
Sage made a face. “Normally, I’d love that. Mom and I like to take walks together in the evening, but I’ve been on my feet all day. Right now I don’t want to move a muscle from the fire.”
Jack looked from Sage to Maura and back again, obviously torn about whether to go with her or stay here and talk to his daughter on his last night in town.
Sage made the choice easier for him, unfortunately for Maura. “You two go ahead and take a walk. I’m great here, I promise. I told my roommate I would Skype for a few minutes to help her with an essay she has to finish for an online course.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’ll be fine. It’s too cold out there for you to be gone long, anyway.”
She was stuck with him now. Maura didn’t see a reaction on Jack’s handsome features. No doubt he wasn’t any more eager than she was to be forced into closer contact, without the buffer Sage had provided so far.
“Let me grab my coat,” he said.
While Jack shrugged into his very sexy leather jacket, Puck tugged anxiously on his leash, no doubt the only one excited about this walk now.
Christmas lights still blinked around them from her neighbor’s houses as they headed out into the quiet night. This was always a bit of a melancholic time for her, the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when people kept their decorations up as if clinging to the last moment of celebration.
They walked in silence past a few houses to the corner, then turned onto the next street.
Jack was the first to break it. “Sage seems like a really terrific kid,” he said.
Their daughter seemed to be the one topic they could agree about. “She’s amazing. She’s always been very grounded. Layla… Layla was fire and passion and all these swinging emotions, from the time she was little. It was like she was hormonal from the time she was a toddler, but Sage has never been that way.”
“You’ve done a good job with her.” He paused and seemed to be weighing his words. “It couldn’t have been easy on your own.”
She glanced at him to see if his words held hidden barbs, but he seemed sincere. She gripped Puck’s leash a little more tightly while a steady warmth seeped through her.
“No. It hasn’t always been easy. But always worth it.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, and the only sounds besides the crunch of their steps in the snow were the occasional passing car on another street farther down and Puck’s snuffles. The lights of Hope’s Crossing were a bright glitter below them.
Again, he was first to break the silence. “I’m still furious, you know. That you never told me you were pregnant.”
She exhaled heavily, her breath coming out in long puffs. “Well, I’m still furious that you walked away without once looking back. So I guess that makes us even.”
After a long moment, he startled her by chuckling softly. “How about we both agree we’ve got a right to be angry with each other and try to figure out where we go from here?”
“You’re leaving tomorrow, Jack. Why do we have to go anywhere, except back to my house?”
“Really? You would do that for Sage?”
“I missed twenty years of her life. I’m not sure I want to miss out on the rest of it.”
“She’s an adult. Trust me, the last thing she’s going to want is her father hovering over her.”
“I wouldn’t hover. Just…be closer. If she needed me.”
Her chest ached at the wistfulness in his voice. Should she have tried harder to reach him while she had been pregnant? She had been so certain of her decision to exclude him from Sage’s life, but for the first time she began to wonder how much of that had been based on rational thought, and how much had been an immature girl’s reaction to her own pain, that he hadn’t loved her as she had loved him.
“I suppose you’re an adult too,” she said. “If you want to uproot your life in some effort to make up for…for lost time or whatever, I’m really in no position to say otherwise. Sage might not want you underfoot all the time, but I’m sure she would enjoy having you closer.”
He nodded, hands in his pockets. “Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I’m still trying to figure everything out.”
He released a breath. “I always loved this spot. When I’ve thought of Colorado over the years, I’ve pictured this place on a summer evening, with the trees sweeping low in the water, and the water flowing over the moss with the mountains all around. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was in winter.”
To her surprise, their steps had led them to Sweet Laurel Falls, one of her favorite places on earth. A small parkway ran parallel to Sweet Laurel Creek, and benches had been set where there was a view of the falls, really just a series of cascading levels where the creek rippled down the mountainside. They stood on the snow-covered pedestrian bridge over one of the lower levels, and from here the water still looked an impossible green from the moss growing on the rocks beneath the surface, in vivid contrast to the ice that had formed along the edges and the snow piled along the banks.
“In another few weeks, that waterfall will be completely iced over, with only a little trickle of water underneath.” Right now she felt like that icy waterfall, with only a tiny trickle of life buried deep inside her.
“It must be beautiful.”
They stood together without speaking for a long moment, elbows on the bridge railing as they watched the moonlight drift through the snow clouds and create pale shadows on the spill of water. His scent teased her, of cedar and leather. Some part of her wanted to lean against him and just inhale, to soak up some of that warmth. If she turned her head just so, their mouths would be on the same level. Would he taste the same as she remembered?
The thoughts sidled through her head and she caught herself, horrified.
No. Absolutely not. She wasn’t ready for that ice to thaw.
She eased away from him, feeling the cold where their bodies had nearly touched. “Um, we should probably head back. Puck’s little paws are likely frozen. I should have put his booties on before we left.”
For a moment, he watched her with an inscrutable expression, and she had to dearly hope none of those crazy stray thoughts showed on her face.
“Leave the guy a little dignity,” Jack finally said. “Here.”
Before she knew what he intended, he reached for the leash, then scooped up Puck with one arm while he unzipped his jacket with the other, and tucked the dog inside. She watched, amused and touched despite herself, while he zipped the jacket back up with Puck’s little furry face sticking out the top. The dog looked inordinately pleased with himself, as if he had orchestrated the whole thing.
“What were you saying about a guy and his dignity?” she asked.
He made a face as they headed back through the lightly fluttering snow to her house, in what turned out to be an oddly companionable silence.
“Would you like some cocoa before you head back to the B and B?” she asked as they approached her front door. The invitation was mostly polite, but he had been kind enough to carry Puck all the way.
“Sure. That sounds great. Thanks. We may complain about our chilly summers in the Bay Area, but they don’t compare to late December in the high Rockies.”
The moment they opened the door, Jack pulled Puck out from his coat and unhooked the dog’s leash before setting him down. The scrabble of his nails sounded on the hardwood floor as he headed into the kitchen to his water bowl. Maura shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet, then went in search of her daughter. She found Sage stretched out on the couch in the family room, sound asleep with the television playing softly in the background.
Rats. If only she had waited a few moments to extend the cocoa invitation to Jack, she could have used the excuse of Sage sleeping to send him on his way for the evening. She was stuck with him a little bit longer.
“Zonked out,” he murmured beside her, and she realized he must have followed her. She glanced over and found him watching their daughter with a wary sort of tenderness that made her chest ache all over again.
Maybe having him in Sage’s life wasn’t such a terrible thing.
Sage had reminded her of something she used to say, that a child could never have too many people to love her. Maybe there was truth in that. Jack obviously cared for Sage. How could she possibly resent that?
Before she could say anything, she heard that click of nails on hardwood again. Finished with his water, Puck was apparently ready for more fun. He scampered into the room, past them both. Before she could grab him or call out to stop him, he headed straight for the couch and jumped up, straight onto Sage’s legs.
“Puck!” she grumbled sleepily, and pushed the dog off her legs.
“Sorry. He moves faster than I do,” Maura said.
Sage turned her attention to the doorway, blinking a little to clear away her sleepiness.
“Oh. You’re back.”
“Sorry we woke you.”
“It’s okay. I couldn’t reach Michelle, my roommate that wanted to Skype. I guess I dozed off while I was waiting for her. I don’t think I was asleep very long. How was your walk?”
Maura thought of those tantalizing moments back at the falls when his heat had tugged at something deep inside. “Um, good. I’m making cocoa. Do you want some?”
“Sure. That would be great. Thanks.”
She sat up and stretched, her shirt pooching out a little. Maura frowned. Sage had gained weight since she’d left for school in August. She really hoped she wasn’t stress eating in the dorm to ease her pain over losing Layla.
Though her mother always insisted on hot cocoa the old-fashioned way, Maura didn’t have the time and patience for that, not when she bought high-quality gourmet mixes that tasted just as good, mixed up with water heated in the microwave.
After preparing a mug for each of them, she carried a tray back into the family room. Jack smiled his thanks when she handed him a mug, and she tried to ignore the little tingle as their hands brushed.
Sage took only a small sip of hers before setting it down on the coffee table. She took a deep breath and faced them both. “Okay, I have to talk to both of you. I wanted to do this at dinner. That’s actually the reason I wanted Jack to come over, but then when it came down to it, I just… I couldn’t ruin the meal.”
Apprehension congealed in Maura’s stomach. This, whatever Sage wanted to say, must have been the reason she was so distracted throughout dinner.
She set her own mug down and reached for Sage’s hand. “What is it, honey?”
Her daughter gripped her fingers for a moment, then released them and folded her hands together in her lap. “I’m not going back to school when it starts next week.”
The vague apprehension turned to a full-fledged groan. They had fought about this all summer. After Layla’s death, Sage had come home to be with her and had wanted to take a semester off to help at the st
ore.
“You are,” she said now, sounding like an old, scratchy record of the conversation they’d had throughout July and early August. “You have a scholarship.”
“I know, Mom. Don’t you think I know? That’s exactly why I need to take a semester off. My grades last semester sucked! I mean, seriously sucked. I’m barely going to be able to hold on to the scholarship as it is, and if I don’t get my act together, I won’t have the credits to get into grad school.”
“I can’t believe you want to run away, just because things are tough right now.”
“I’m not running away! I’ve got everything figured out. I talked to my counselor before I left, and she said we can work things out with the scholarship for me to take one semester off. I can take some online courses that will help bring my GPA up again, even finish the last of my generals online so I can be ready next fall to start taking classes for my major.”
“No. Absolutely not.” Oh, she did not want to have this fight while Jack was sitting there watching them, but she also wasn’t about to let Sage walk away from her dreams.
“Mom, listen to me.”
“Why should I, when you’re not being reasonable? You’ve been given a chance of a lifetime. I won’t let you throw it away.”
“I’m not going to throw anything away. Would you just trust me, for once? I know what I’m doing. I came up with a viable plan to take online classes and you won’t even listen to it! You’re completely unreasonable when it comes to school.”
She dug her nails into her palms and curbed her sharp retort. Sage was probably right about that. Maura had missed out on her chance to go to college. She’d been too busy working as a checker at the grocery store and nursing her newborn. Maybe that’s why she had been so insistent that Sage had to seize every opportunity that had been offered to her.
“What are you going to do here? Work as a barista at the store?”
“You say that like it’s a terrible thing. I like working behind the counter, Mom.”
“Not for the rest of your life. You have bigger dreams.”
“Yes. And that’s all they will remain—dreams—until I can bring my grades up again. I’m just not sure my head is in the game right now.”
Sweet Laurel Falls Page 10
