Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Her husband had been a narcissistic asshole. He had always thought so, and that had only been reinforced when the idiot had walked away from Mary Ella and their six children.

  “Go ahead and finish it if you want. I’ve had my quota for the day.”

  “I never quite developed a taste for it.” She looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry to intrude. I was admiring the Colville in the living room, and Maura told me you had another one in here. I only wanted to see it. I love her work. Even if she wasn’t a dear friend, I would love it. I actually own a small landscape she gave me for my birthday a few years ago. It’s my most treasured possession.”

  He couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk to Mary Ella when she wasn’t sniping at him. “Would you like a tour of all twelve of mine?”

  She gaped at him. “Good heavens. You really have that many?”

  “When I find something I like, I don’t see any reason to deny myself.”

  “You could save a few for the rest of the world, couldn’t you?”

  Her sharpness almost made him smile. If he kissed her, would her mouth taste tart like pie cherries or sweet and lush like bings? He was unbelievably tempted to find out.

  “Come on. I’ll show you my collection. If you’re such close friends with Sarah Colville, maybe you can convince her I’m not such a bad guy and she should consider selling me more.”

  “Hmmph.”

  Despite the derogatory sound, she followed him as he walked out of his office and down the hall toward the den.

  She had the same reaction to each one as she’d had in his office, rich and wholehearted admiration. He saved his favorite for last, a huge landscape in his bedroom, ten feet wide, a spill of sensual poppies on a field of vibrant green.

  “Oh, stunning!” she exclaimed, her face as radiant as the painting.

  Seeing her sheer joy at something he also loved seemed to weave a spell of intimacy around them. He wanted to march out and buy a dozen more paintings just for the sheer thrill of showing them to her.

  “Thank you for the tour,” she said, her voice and her eyes soft, and he wondered if she too sensed the subtle tug between them.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, his voice gruff. He should be the one thanking her. He had never appreciated his own treasures as much as he did seeing them through her eyes.

  “And while I’m choking on my gratitude here,” she said, “I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you for hosting this gathering. Sage told me you insisted, which meant a great deal to her. To all of us, really. It was…oddly kind of you.”

  “Believe it or not, I do have the occasional moment of odd kindness.”

  She gave him a half smile. “A few months ago I wouldn’t have believed you possessed a shred of goodness, no matter what evidence I heard to the contrary.”

  They were standing very close together, he realized. What would she do if he reached a hand out and brushed that loose strand of hair away from her face and kissed her, as he had been aching to do since he had seen her gazing up at the painting in his office like a novitiate in front of the Blessed Virgin?

  Knowing Mary Ella McKnight, she probably knew karate and would take him down to the floor.

  “I just have one question for you,” she said, her voice a soft breath on the air.

  “What’s that?” he asked, just as softly.

  “Are you the Angel of Hope?”

  He froze, his mind racing with a hundred different ways to answer that—and the hundred different questions he wished she might have asked. Will you kiss me? headed that particular list.

  “Sage told you. That little snitch. She swore she wouldn’t tell a soul. The mystery was all part of the fun, she said. And what does she do? First chance she has, she blabs to her nosy grandmother.”

  “Sage didn’t tell me a thing,” she assured him calmly. “It was only a wild guess, but thank you very much for confirming the suspicion I’ve had for a while now.”

  He swore, loud and long. That was twice now he had been fooled by McKnight women. How in the hell had he managed to amass such a fortune when he could be such an idiot sometimes?

  “How did you guess?”

  She shrugged. “Process of elimination, really. It had to be somebody with plenty of financial resources and time on his or her hands. And, to be fair, I happened to be walking past Mike’s Bikes one day a few months ago and saw a quite unusual sight through the window that presented a huge clue.”

  “Oh?” he asked warily, guessing already what she would say.

  “I had to ask myself why Harry Lange would be looking at child-size bicycles. And lo and behold, a few days later I heard the Angel had dropped a brand-new bicycle off on the porch of poor little Polly Ellis the very day she learned she had to start a second round of chemotherapy.”

  “Completely circumstantial.”

  Her smile spilled over with triumph. “Absolutely. But you just confirmed it.”

  Early on, he had decided to do most of his Angel shopping online or in Denver, where he had a better chance at anonymity. The Polly Ellis situation had come up quickly and he hadn’t wanted to wait until he had a chance to make the arrangements, so he had gone against his better instincts and shopped locally.

  And look where it got him. Ratted out by his own stupidity.

  On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that she knew. Instead of prickling with animosity—which he knew damn well he fully deserved—Mary Ella gazed at him with a soft light in her eyes.

  He caught his breath suddenly when she reached a hand out and rested it gently on his arm. “You’ve done a good thing for Hope’s Crossing, Harry. This town needed something to bring us together. All of us knew deep inside that something good and right was missing in our town, but no one knew how to fix it and bring us together again. As usual, you took the lead.”

  Goose bumps erupted on his skin where she touched him. He didn’t know what to say, so he did the only thing he could think of. He covered her hand resting on his arm with his opposite hand. Her fingers were small, slim. Delicate. A low ache began somewhere inside him, wistful and subdued. He missed the softness of a woman’s hand in his. He hadn’t realized how very much until right this moment.

  He was vaguely aware through his own yearning that her fingers had stiffened when he touched her, but she didn’t pull away. If he was going to be an idiot for Mary Ella McKnight, he might as well go all the way. Take a chance. Jump off the cliff. Float the rapids.

  Live.

  With his heart in his throat, waiting any moment for her to slap him or shove him away or yell, he reached a hand out and acted on his earlier impulse, pushing her hair aside. The strands were silky and he wanted to rub it between his fingers, maybe bury his face in it. Instead he slid a hand over her cheek, still soft despite the few fine wrinkles there, and leaned in to steal the kiss he had been thinking about for longer than he cared to remember.

  “Don’t you dare,” she ordered in that bossy English-teacher tone he had always secretly been crazy about, though he wanted to think her voice sounded husky and strained.

  “Go ahead and stop me,” he growled.

  She didn’t.

  And when she kissed him back with a fierceness that shocked both of them, it was everything he dreamed and more.

  When they emerged from his bedroom sometime later, Mary Ella’s cheeks were pink and her hair was a little messier and he was pretty sure he just might have lipstick on his jawline.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” she muttered as they made their way through the house to the living area.

  His laugh was rough and amused. “You can tell yourself that, but we both know better, don’t we?”

  Sage was the first one they bumped into back at the party. She gave them both a curious look, and he wondered if anyone else could sense the tensile connection between him and Mary Ella now. “There you are. What happened to you?”

  Love. That’s what happened, missy. Not that it’s any of your busin
ess.

  “Did you ever find the yarn?” she pressed when he didn’t immediately answer.

  Yarn? It took him a moment to remember the errand she had sent him on earlier. First he’d been distracted by the cigar and then by the even more tempting forbidden treat of Mary Ella.

  “No. And I’ve been over the whole house.” It wasn’t quite a lie—he had traipsed through every room, but he had been showing Mary Ella the Colvilles instead of looking for yarn. “Let me go take another look in my office.”

  “No. Forget it. We’ll just use the red that we already have. It will look fine.”

  “I’ll look anyway.” He brushed a kiss on his granddaughter’s forehead, then squeezed Mary Ella’s arm slightly. She trembled just a little, which made him grin broadly, and he walked away whistling—whistling, for hell’s sake—the tune to “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” as he headed to his office.

  In his office, the woody, cedary smell of cigar smoke was stronger than it should have been. He frowned and looked around. The whistle died on his lips when he spotted Jackson on the terrace, in the same spot where he’d been when Mary Ella had come in a half hour earlier—and enjoying one of the same cigars.

  “Make yourself at home,” he said, still feeling so great after kissing Mary Ella McKnight that he could almost look at his son without the customary sorrow and guilt.

  “Sage sent me in here to look for you. Something about yarn. I didn’t find you, but I did happen to spy an open box full of particularly fine Coronas and couldn’t resist.”

  He frowned at the dark circles under Jack’s eyes and the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth. “Maybe you would be better off finding a bed and taking a nap instead of stealing my cigars. You look like hell.”

  Jack shrugged. “Give me a break. I was up two nights straight before I left Singapore trying to wrap things up so I could get away, then spent the next twenty-two hours either flying or waiting around in airports.”

  He wanted to tell Jack not to let work completely consume him or he might one day find himself alone and unhappy, but he choked back the words. This didn’t seem the time for lectures, especially not when he was just so damn happy to be with his son.

  “I’m sure it means the world to Sage that you made the effort to be here.”

  Jack narrowed his gaze as if parsing the words for mockery, then appeared to accept them as genuine. “I had to try, even if it was tough.” He paused. “Maura tells me you and Sage are becoming close.”

  He loved her with the same fierceness he loved her father. “Are you going to try to tell me you don’t want me in her life?”

  What would he do if that were the case? He had treated Jack so horribly he didn’t know how he could ever atone. He had tried in small ways. Oh, his will was written to leave everything to him, even before Jack had come back to town, and over the years he had worked behind the scenes to steer juicy projects his son’s way.

  He knew it wasn’t enough. If Jack wanted him to stay away from Sage, he would have to accept that as penance for his sins, even though it would kill him. Possibly quite literally.

  He waited for Jack to say the words that would crush him, but his son only puffed the cigar. “Why would I make you stay out of Sage’s life, as long as you continue to treat her well?” he finally asked.

  Gratitude and relief almost made Harry weep, much to his dismay. “She’s a good girl,” he said gruffly. “I…care about her very much.”

  “I can tell,” Jack said. “Word is you don’t entertain often. Yet here you are flinging open those big gates for Sage.”

  It was such a small thing. Why was everybody making such a big deal about it? Had he really become such a recluse that people considered him another Howard Hughes, hoarding his fingernail clippings and his used tissues in his mansion?

  He stood for a long moment while Jack smoked. His son didn’t seem to mind his presence, and Harry was aware of a fragile happiness bubbling inside him. He was here, with his son, and for once they weren’t fighting. He was half tempted to relight the long stub of his own cigar, still in the ashtray on the table, but he didn’t dare. Smoking even one was risky with his bad ticker, and for the first time in far too long he had plenty of things to keep him alive.

  Including his granddaughter, he suddenly remembered, who would be ready to put him in a nursing home for dementia if he let himself become distracted by one more thing.

  “I should probably go,” he said with deep regret. “Sage sent me in here to find something for her. She’s going to have my hide if I don’t get back out there. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. Have another cigar. Hell, have two or three.”

  Jack nodded, and Harry hurried to his desk and opened the drawers until he found the bag of yarn. He gazed at his son out on his terrace in the spring sunshine, with one of his cigars in his hand, and Harry smiled with a deep, contented joy before he hurried back out to find his granddaughter.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JACK SAT FOR A WHILE in the very comfortable chair outside his father’s office, watching a few clouds scud across the snow-topped mountain peaks. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened between the two of them, but it seemed somehow significant, as if they had crossed some Continental Divide in their relationship.

  He wasn’t sure he could forget everything his father had done, but maybe it was time, at last, to find room for a little forgiveness. Harry had certainly made mistakes. Those tramlines and ski lifts etching their way up the greening hillsides were a prime example.

  Could Jack find some semblance of peace with his father? He was mellowing, he supposed. Maybe age and experience had leaked away some of the hot anger of youth, or maybe it was due to becoming a father himself. He still didn’t know if he could move beyond their past, but for the first time in two decades, he realized he wasn’t averse to trying.

  He saw a flash for a moment as someone headed out across the sloping lawn, headed toward the horse paddocks just beyond the grass. Maura, he realized. He recognized her slim frame and the lavender dress she wore, which flowed around her legs with every step.

  A deep yearning stirred. He had missed her this past month while he had been overseas. In the past, he had always enjoyed the traveling aspect of his job, the hands-on involvement on a project, but all he had wanted these past weeks was to come home to her.

  The constant flow of emails and phone calls and Skyping—their modern-day long-distance courtship—had only heightened this ache to be with her. Every time he talked to her only whetted his need to talk to her the next time.

  They traded stories about their day, she asked his business advice, they laughed and joked and rediscovered each other. Every time they ended a call, he felt the keen loss of the connection and had to force himself not to pick up the phone and call her right back.

  So what the hell was he doing sitting here by himself when she was out there, a strong, beautiful, vibrant woman instead of an image on a monitor or a voice on the phone?

  He tossed the cigar in the ashtray on the terrace and vaulted over the three-foot stone fence surrounding the terrace, probably built to keep out the animals and the rabble, and headed toward her.

  She didn’t seem aware of his approach and appeared lost in thought as she leaned on the top railing of the paddock, watching a few elegant, undoubtedly expensive, horses graze inside.

  “Hey,” he finally said when he was only a few steps away.

  She turned in surprise, and her expression seemed to instantly light up with joy when she saw him. “Jack. Hi!”

  He was helpless against the tide of warmth that flowed through him, sweet and cleansing, washing away everything that had come before. He was in love with this woman. Deeply and profoundly.

  He had loved the girl she had been, sweet and generous. His first love. But the woman Maura had become—a woman of courage and strength and grace—she was everything to him.

  “Where did you go earlier?” she asked. “I looked around some
time ago and you had disappeared.”

  “Sage sent me on an errand and I ended up stealing—and then very much savoring—the guilty pleasure of one of my father’s cigars.”

  She smiled while the breeze played with the ends of her hair.

  “Why are you out here by yourself?” he asked.

  “Brodie and Evie and Taryn just left. Taryn was tired.”

  “She looked good.”

  “Doesn’t she? If you had seen her a few months ago, you would be completely stunned at how far she has come. So I was walking them out to their car and the sunshine felt so good, I couldn’t resist walking back here to see Harry’s view from the back.”

  He leaned his elbows on the railing next to her, relishing the sunshine on his head and the earthy smell of springtime around them. He wasn’t sure he had ever been so exhausted, but just standing here beside Maura filled him with a sweet, seductive peace. “It turned out to be a beautiful day.”

  “Yes.” Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw her draw her bottom lip between her teeth. “Do you think the butterflies will survive?”

  “Of course they will.” He didn’t know a damn thing about butterflies, but he wasn’t about to tell her otherwise. “You said Sage researched this out. If the butterfly people said it’s warm enough for them, I’m sure they’ll be just fine.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “You would say that even if you thought they were all doomed, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  Her laughter rippled over him, and he finally couldn’t resist the overwhelming need to pull her into his arms. With a sigh, she settled against him, wrapping her arms around his waist and lifting her face for his kiss.

  He managed to bank his wild desire—for now—and kept the kiss soft and gentle, with all the tenderness inside him.

  Finally, when he wasn’t sure how much longer he could be noble and considerate and mindful of the solemnity of the day, he slid his mouth away and caressed her cheek with his thumb.

  “I think the butterflies will be fine. Despite how lovely and fragile they look, they’re survivors, accustomed to weathering storms. A great deal like someone else I know.” He paused, gazing intently at her, his heart pounding in his chest like one of those horses on a racetrack. “The woman I happen to be in love with, actually.”