Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Sit down,” he said when he returned to them, and gestured to the rustic leather sofa and chairs arranged in front of the fire.

  Sage took one edge of the sofa and sent Maura a silent plea to sit next to her. She couldn’t ignore it, as much as she might have wanted to pick a chair halfway across the room, away from Jack.

  Sage reached for her hand. Her fingers were trembling and Maura squeezed them for support and comfort.

  “We don’t want to bother you. You’re probably working, aren’t you?” Sage said.

  “Just trying to catch up on a couple of projects. It’s fine.”

  “Well, we won’t stay long.” She was silent for several beats while Jack continued to watch them curiously. Finally Maura squeezed her fingers again, and Sage drew in a sharp breath.

  “I…need to tell you something. That’s why we’re here. I should have told everyone earlier but, well, everything has been so crazy. I just… I needed to figure things out on my own first.”

  Alarm replaced the curiosity in his eyes. “What is it? Are you okay?”

  The concern in his voice and expression touched something deep inside Maura. He hadn’t intended to be a father, but she couldn’t deny he was trying hard here to do the right thing by Sage and seemed to genuinely care for her.

  “I am. I will be, anyway. No, I am.” She curled her fingers in Maura’s.

  “You’re worrying your father,” she said gently. “It will be easier if you just tell him.”

  Sage sighed. “This is hard. Really hard. But you’ll, uh, figure it out soon enough. I guess I just need to come out and tell you. So…I know you’ve been worried about me the last few weeks and even told my mom you thought maybe I had a drinking problem.”

  “I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I don’t have a drinking problem or the mono or the flu or anything like that. The truth is, um, I’m pregnant.”

  Jack’s features turned blank for perhaps five seconds, and then his eyes widened and his gaze shifted—inadvertently, she was certain—to Sage’s midsection, then quickly back to her face. For once, she shared a moment of complete accord and sympathy with him. She completely understand how flummoxed he must be feeling right now.

  “You’re… Wow.”

  “I know. It’s a shock for me too. It wasn’t planned, obviously. And it wasn’t even like you and Mom. You guys were in love and everything.”

  Jack met her gaze, and she felt heat seep into her face at the memory of just how desperately she had once loved him. Something flickered in his eyes, something soft and almost tender.

  Oblivious to the sudden tension, Sage continued, “I wasn’t even dating the guy, really. I mean, I liked him and everything but he was…is, well, seeing someone else.”

  This was more than she had told Maura. Apparently Jack merited a little additional information.

  “But he was still willing to screw around on her with you? He sounds like an ass.” His voice was hard.

  “He’s not. He’s… We were friends and…”

  “More than friends, it sounds like.”

  Sage’s cheeks turned pink. “Well, things went a little too far, obviously.”

  His daughter. This young woman he had only barely discovered was now going to bring new life into the world. How the hell had his world become so complicated in a matter of weeks?

  “Is he stepping up to take care of his responsibilities?”

  She looked down at her hands. “I, um, haven’t told him about the baby yet.”

  “Now, that sounds familiar.” The words came out with more of an edge than he intended. Maura winced and Sage gripped her mother’s hand more tightly.

  “It’s early days yet,” Maura murmured. Her cheeks looked as pink as Sage’s, and he wondered what she was thinking.

  A child. His daughter, barely older than a child herself, was pregnant. Some bastard had knocked her up and walked away, leaving her alone to deal with the consequences.

  This whole thing seemed like the echo of a particularly nasty nightmare.

  How was he supposed to react? He didn’t know the first thing about babies or pregnancies. His only experience with either had been through a couple of his employees—a receptionist who had worked there through two pregnancies, until she was eight or so months along, and a really talented young associate who had ended up leaving to do consulting from home after the birth of premature twins.

  With each pregnancy, it seemed like baby talk had taken over the office. Everybody who came in seemed to want to talk about ultrasounds and baby names and circumcision, for Pete’s sake.

  All that opulent fertility had left him more than a little uncomfortable. When the office chitchat had started to revolve around swollen ankles and breast-feeding, he had struggled to find any safe, politically correct thing he could say as the male employer that wouldn’t be misconstrued. He had finally decided he would be wise to just ignore the pregnancies as much as possible.

  He wasn’t the employer here, though, and he couldn’t ignore this. Sage was his daughter—and he had no more idea of what he should say to her than he had known what to say around the office.

  He finally settled on something he thought was relatively innocuous. “Are you, uh, feeling okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve been so tired the last few months, but I’m starting to get some energy again.”

  She mustered a little smile. It struck him again how very pretty she was, this child he and Maura had created together. Her smile was almost heartbreakingly sweet, with that little dimple that seemed to peek out at opportune moments.

  In the next few months, her life would change completely. Did she have the first idea how very much? He wasn’t sure he did, he just knew Sage didn’t look nearly mature enough to be a mother.

  “This has got to be a shock for you, right?” Her dimple peeked out again. “I mean, it’s got to be weird finding out you’re a father and going to be a grandfather, all in the space of six weeks. Two for the price of one.”

  A grandfather. Good Lord. He was only thirty-eight years old. He stared at her and then shifted his gaze to Maura, who didn’t look any more thrilled about that than he was.

  “It’s certainly…unexpected. A baby. Wow. I’m still reeling.”

  “I am too, if you want to know the truth. And I’ve known for several weeks.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “That seems to be the question of the hour,” Maura said.

  Sage sighed. “I didn’t want it to ruin things between us. It won’t, will it? I mean, I know everything’s different now but…I would still like to continue working for you as long as I can, if you’ll let me.”

  He frowned. “Did you think I would fire you and throw you out on the streets just because you’re pregnant?”

  “No. Not really. I was pretty nervous about telling you, until Mom reminded me that you came back to Hope’s Crossing when you didn’t want to, only because of me. She told me I needed to trust you.”

  “Did she?” He glanced at Maura and saw another hot tide of color wash over her cheeks. Good to know she didn’t think he was a complete jerk. “Of course I want you to continue working for me. I would have to be stupid to let a thing like an unplanned pregnancy rob me of the best office manager I’ve ever had.”

  “Thanks. That means a lot to me. I just don’t want things to be…weird.”

  He laughed roughly. “I’m not sure my life could possibly get any more weird, unless an alternate life form suddenly comes swarming out of my fireplace.”

  Maura and Sage laughed, and he couldn’t help but notice both of them looked more at ease than they had when he let them into the house. “Thank you for coming in person to tell me this. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you.”

  He directed his words to Sage, but he had a feeling Maura hadn’t exactly been thrilled to come to his house to break this news—yet she had stepped up and supported her daughter anyway, despite her own persona
l misgivings. He considered that very much a mark in her favor.

  “It was totally the right thing to do,” Sage answered. “Talking to you about this in the workplace somehow didn’t seem right.”

  Wherever she had decided to tell him, he could only imagine the courage it must have taken her to face him. What had it been like for Maura after he’d left town, having to tell her family and her friends she was pregnant? Twenty years ago, that couldn’t have been an easy task in a small town like Hope’s Crossing, which could be insular and closed-minded.

  The old biddies who had been so cruel to his mother, who had shunned her because of the inappropriate outbursts and wild mood swings caused by her mental illness, might be dead by now but he could still remember them clearly.

  He had one particularly vivid memory of going grocery shopping at the small store on Main Street that had been the only place to buy fresh meat and produce before the chains had moved in. He would have been maybe eight or nine at the time, old enough to begin to have some awareness that his mother wasn’t like the pretty women in their perfectly matched polyester pantsuits who pushed their offspring through the store sedately, not with hair-raising twists and circles that made him laugh but scared him at the same time.

  Frances Redmond, a particularly cranky lady, had been working at the checkout. When Bethany finally picked out her groceries and pushed the cart to the checkout, he remembered Mrs. Redmond making snide comments about every item.

  “Nuts? Bananas? Can I get you some crackers to go with the rest of your crazy-lady food?”

  It seemed benign now, just somebody trying to make a stupid joke about something they feared and didn’t understand, but his mother had turned red as the package of Kit Kats he had wanted, and he had realized this was one of her bad days.

  “You don’t know anything. I am not crazy, you stupid bitch,” she had yelled, far too loudly, and had grabbed his arm tightly and dragged him out of the store, leaving her groceries on the belt while all the pretty ladies and their perfect children watched with horrified fascination.

  Maura had faced that den of vipers on her own. The wagging tongues like Laura Beaumont and Frances Redmond and Elsie Whittaker. That must have taken great courage on her part.

  Why had she stayed here in Hope’s Crossing? If he had been in her shoes, he would have run as far and as fast as he could.

  Hell, that’s exactly what he had done, at the first opportunity.

  Her mother would have helped her. He couldn’t picture Mary Ella, his favorite English teacher, being deliberately cruel to any of her children. He was fiercely glad for that suddenly, grateful she could have someone in her corner when she was a frightened teenager.

  She would do the same for her own daughter. Somehow he knew without question Maura would be a loving, supportive mother during the challenges Sage now faced with this pregnancy.

  “Where are you two off to today?” he asked, suddenly loath to send them quickly on their way.

  “Home,” Maura answered with alacrity. “I’ve got laundry and grocery shopping to catch up on. Really exciting, isn’t it?”

  Sage wrinkled her nose. “I should do homework. I have a paper due in my ancient-history class at the end of the week.”

  “Feel like taking a drive with me first?” he asked on impulse. “I need to head up to the site Harry wants to set aside for the recreation center to do some measurements. I could use a couple of assistants. I actually wanted to give you a call today, Sage. That’s why I texted you, to find out what your plans were.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know you mentioned you wanted to observe a project from the outset. This might be your best opportunity.”

  “I would love that! My homework can probably wait until later this evening. How about you, Mom? Think you can you put off the laundry and shopping for a while to help us?”

  “Do you really need two assistants? Wouldn’t I just be in the way?” She was plainly reluctant to join them. “I can pick Sage up later, or you could just drop her by the house on your way back here.”

  Obviously she didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary with him. He could understand that, he supposed, but after their kiss the other night, he was unwilling to let her slip away so easily.

  “Any chance I could persuade you otherwise?” he pushed. “You’ve lived in Hope’s Crossing a long time now. You run a business that has become one of the community gathering spots. You would have a unique perspective about the town and the people who live here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  “Sure you do, Mom.” Sage turned to him. “She’s being modest. One of the reasons the bookstore survives and even still thrives in this market is because my mom has an uncanny way of knowing which books people in town are going to want to read, which coffee blends are sure to be hot, events people will fall all over each other to attend.”

  Maura looked both flustered and pleased at her daughter’s praise, but he could still see lingering reluctance. He jumped in before she could refuse again. “That’s exactly what I need. That instinctive knowledge of the town and the people who live here. To be honest with you, one of the toughest things about any new project is letting go of my own perceptions to focus on the needs of the client. I have many preconceived notions about Hope’s Crossing, as you may be aware.”

  “Most of them wrong,” she muttered.

  Not all of them, though. He remembered that scene at the grocery store and a dozen more, incidents where people had shunned his sweet, troubled mother. He wasn’t quite willing to forgive everyone in Hope’s Crossing yet. Despite that, he would work his tail off to make sure the town and its citizens, biddies or not, had the best damn recreation center their money could buy.

  “Come with us, Maura. I need to figure out what the town wants out of this project. I need you.”

  She scrutinized him, her gaze narrowed as if she were trying to ascertain what game he was playing. If she figured it out, he had to hope she would decide to let him in on it. He didn’t quite know what was going on himself. He only knew he was still fiercely drawn to her, just as when he had been that stupid kid desperate for the peace he found only with her.

  More than a week after their kiss, he couldn’t forget the softness of her mouth, the sweetness of her response.

  He wanted more. Foolish as he knew that was, he wanted to see if that moment outside her car had been a fluke, or if they could still generate that same kind of heat.

  “I suppose I could spare an hour or so,” she finally said. “The laundry will still be there tomorrow. Unfortunately. And the grocery store too, for that matter. Watching you work will be…interesting.”

  “Interesting? I’m not sure about that. I’ll only be taking pictures of the site and a few measurements. Nothing too exciting.”

  “But probably better than laundry,” she said.

  “I guess that would depend what’s in your laundry.”

  She laughed and shook her head, and he was entranced by her all over again. He had seen her smile too seldom since he had returned to Hope’s Crossing, and a laugh was a rarity indeed. He wanted more of that too.

  At the same time, now that she was agreeing to go with them, he found himself conversely uncomfortable with the idea of her observing him.

  He had a sudden memory of sitting on a blanket in the canyon with her, describing in detail the judicious development he wanted to create there, homes that blended into the landscape, recreational opportunities that benefited the entire town and not only the elite who could afford exorbitant ski passes. He also suddenly remembered how heady—erotic, even—he had found her rapt attention.

  He cleared his throat. “Just give me a few minutes to grab some supplies and my coat.”

  Trying to shake that seductive image, he headed quickly to his office to find his camera and a fresh battery pack for it, a sketchbook and his laser distance meter.

  He thought water bottles might come in handy and headed for th
e kitchen to take some from the refrigerator. To his surprise, he found Sage standing at the stove, stirring something on one of the burners. Maura was nowhere in sight.

  She grinned at him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I found all the ingredients for cocoa in your cupboards. Even though we just had brunch like an hour ago, I thought that would taste delicious on a cold day like today. Look, I even found a thermos in the pantry!”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” he admitted. “I paid a service to stock the kitchen with the basics for me. I’ve barely even had time to look through the cupboards.”

  “They’re really efficient, whoever you found. I’ve got everything I need. I just need five more minutes for the milk to come to a boil.”

  “Not a problem. I’m not on any kind of timetable here. Do you need help?” Not that he would be much, but it seemed only right to offer.

  “No. I’ve got this. Why don’t you go in and keep my mom company? I wouldn’t let her help either.”

  Sage seemed determined to exert her independence at every turn. He wondered if she had been that way before her sister’s death, or if that pivotal event had changed her in some fundamental way.

  When he walked into the great room, he found Maura perched on the edge of the sofa, leafing through a coffee-table book about the American West.

  “This is interesting,” she said when he walked in. “Did you know the only survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn was a horse named Comanche?”

  “I did not. Thanks for sharing.”

  She laughed a little. “What’s the point of having all these fascinating books if you don’t look inside them?”

  “Here’s the thing. All those books? The decorator picked them all. I haven’t read a single one.”

  “Did you hire Vanessa Black with Design West Interiors? That must be why she came into the store and placed a huge order a few weeks ago. Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome.” He decided not to mention he had insisted to Vanessa that any books be purchased from her store, even if she could have found them cheaper somewhere else.