Harlequin Romance July 2013 Bundle: A Cowboy To Come Home ToHow to Melt a Frozen HeartThe Cattleman's Ready-Made FamilyRancher to the Rescue

by Donna Alward

  And when she was done answering them, she changed her byline. It said “Ask Rover, by Nora Anderson.”

  When she was finished, she went out and visited with her volunteers, telling them there would be a meeting soon, and to please bring ideas about better organizing the jobs and having systems in place for dealing with difficult situations like Iggy.

  When Luke came in, she was busy making cookies for him.

  “How was your first day at school?”

  “It was okay.”

  But she could tell it wasn’t. “What happened?”

  “Gerry wanted another fifty bucks.”

  “I’m calling his parents! This is outrageous. I should have called them—”

  Luke put his hand on her shoulder. She realized she was looking up at him, and that he had grown a lot over the summer.

  “I went to the police station at lunch hour. I told them the truth. I told them I stole the bike.”

  Her mouth fell open. He had grown a lot in every way.

  “Did you tell them that boy is extorting money from you?” she sputtered.

  “No,” he said. “I just took away the reason he could extort money from me.”

  “I’m going to call his parents.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re not. I’m not giving it one more ounce of energy. It’s finished.”

  “Are you going to be charged? For stealing the bicycle?” She could feel that old, desperate worry clawing at her. That she was doing it all wrong.

  That she had let Brendan into their lives, trusted him, and now Luke was dealing with the loss of a male he had looked up to. And he was trying to navigate difficult situations on his own. Why had he gone to the police? He should have talked it over with her! What if he was charged?

  “The sergeant I talked to said it was unlikely I would be charged.”

  Something was different about Luke since Charlie had died. Instead of tearing him down, it was as if the death of the cat had helped him come into his own, and in such a genuine way that not seeing Brendan did not seem to be bothering him.

  Luke had used the word energy so easily a moment ago, and suddenly, just like that, she could see his, and feel it.

  Just like that, she knew who her nephew was, and who he would always be. She knew she had not done things wrong, after all.

  Except maybe for one thing.

  She realized he could handle an adult discussion. “I’m sorry about Brendan,” she said. “I’m sorry that I let you become attached to him, and that he doesn’t come around anymore.”

  When Luke looked at her, she realized he did so with eyes that were wise, the eyes of an old soul.

  She knew in that second it was never going to be what she had hoped for him.

  He was never going to be the popular kid, the one who laughed lots and was at the heart of all the fun.

  It was never going to be like that.

  It was going to be better.

  He was introspective. Somber. Strong. Intuitive.

  “Brendan not coming here is not about me,” Luke said slowly. “It’s not about you, either.”

  “What’s it about?” she whispered.

  “It’s about hope. He hoped he didn’t have to hurt anymore. When Charlie died, it reminded him he did. He was crying when he left Deedee’s that day we buried Charlie.”

  Nora felt herself go very still. “Brendan was crying?”

  “He didn’t want me to see, but I did.”

  The words hit her like hammer blows. She’d been making it all about her. While she’d been breaking free, Brendan had been building up the walls of his prison.

  And she had let him. She had accepted his strength. Accepted the fact that he wanted to be responsible for her and for the whole world. She had leaned on that, and come to depend on it.

  She’d let him believe he was in charge of the whole world. She had relished that sense of being looked after!

  And then Charlie had died, reminding him that protecting everyone and everything was a hopeless job. One he could not do. He withdrew, nursing the sense of failure and powerlessness that he’d had to face for the first time when his wife died.

  “How’d you get to be so smart?” Nora asked Luke softly.

  He snorted and was just a fifteen-year-old boy again, not a wise sage who had been born again and again and again.

  “If you think I’m so smart,” he said, snatching a still warm cookie from the sheet, “tell my math teacher.”

  * * *

  Brendan stared down at the plan. It was after ten and he was still in the office. One of the fluorescent lights had started flickering a few hours ago, and now it felt as if his headache was flickering in unison with it.

  He heard a door open somewhere in the building and ignored it. Janitorial staff.

  He scowled at the plan, dissatisfied.

  “You look happy.”

  He stiffened at the sound of her voice, straightened and glanced at the door. She was there. Her ginger hair caught the light and looked like a flame around her head. Her eyes were deep and soulful, and filled him with a sense of regret for the choice he had made.

  To walk away. It was as if he had walked away from a pool of water beckoning a man who had crossed the desert.

  But of course, he had walked away because he understood the nature of a mirage.

  Even though he turned from her swiftly, masked that reaction of pleasure at seeing her, she did not go away.

  She came and stood beside him, so close he could smell that cinnamon-and-citrus smell that was hers and hers alone.

  He inhaled it as if it were that pool of water and he was that man dying of thirst.

  “That’s a pretty house,” she said, looking down at the plan.

  He ordered himself not to be drawn into discussion. To fold up his plan, fold his arms over his chest and drive her away.

  But a man, any man, was only so strong.

  And loneliness had made Brendan weak. He would just drink in her scent and her presence for a while longer. A few minutes.

  “The house is okay,” he said.

  “Really? What don’t you like about it?”

  It’s not what he didn’t like about it. It was what he didn’t like about him. He used to focus only on the house, and the function of it. He had never wondered about the lives that would be lived inside.

  “It’s a pretty house, for a lovely young couple.”

  “And?” she prodded.

  “They’ve never known a moment’s agony over anything.”

  “And?”

  “And I hope they never do.”

  “But?”

  “But I doubt it, because life doesn’t go that way.”

  “That’s right, it doesn’t,” she said, ever so gently, just as if he hadn’t let her down. As if he hadn’t let Luke down.

  “That little baby they loved so much, that they were cooing over and bouncing up and down on their knee while they sat across from me in my office?”

  “What about the baby?”

  “It will probably take them through the fires of hell one day. It could get sick, or experiment with drugs, or get bullied at school.”

  “That’s what love does,” she said, as if she was agreeing with him. “It leaves you wide-open to all kinds of pain.”

  “And this pretty little house wouldn’t help any of that. It won’t help it and it won’t stop it.”

  “No,” she agreed, “it won’t. Because you don’t have that kind of power.”

  “We’re not talking about me.”

  “Yes, Brendan, we are—the one who builds houses, the one who chose to build houses because he always longed for a home. The one who wanted so badly for that home to protect all who enter ther
e.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’ve come to take you home. Not to a house. I’ve come to take you home to my heart.”

  “See?” he said with a snort of pure derision, doing what needed to be done, trying to wound her, trying to drive her away. “They were all right about you. You are a pure flake.”

  “Yes,” she said sweetly. “Yes, I am. But I’m your flake.”

  “You’re not my flake. I don’t need a flake.”

  “You do. Desperately.”

  “What could you possibly know about my need?”

  “Everything.”

  He scowled.

  “I’m intuitive, remember? A healer. I know what you need.”

  Don’t even ask her, he ordered himself. “What do I need?” he asked, masking his desperation with a sneer.

  “You took a chance,” she said. “You loved. And you felt as if it made you weak instead of strong.”

  Accurate, but not spookily so. He kept his arms folded over his chest, his expression cynical.

  “You need a place,” she said softly, “where you can put away your armor.”

  His mouth fell open. He clamped it shut.

  “You need a place where you don’t always have to be the strong one. Where it’s okay to fall when the parachute doesn’t open.”

  Now it was getting spooky.

  “Where someone is going to be there to catch you.”

  “It sounds like a good way to get squashed like a bug on a windshield,” he said.

  “That’s exactly how I’d want to go.”

  “Like a bug on a windshield?” he said cynically.

  “In the service of love,” she said simply. “You’ll need a strong woman, Brendan. A relationship not based in her need and you providing, but based in true equality.

  “Based in the recognition that, on some days, you’ll hold her up, and other days, made strong by your love when she needed it most, she will hold you up.

  “I’m that woman.”

  She sounded absolutely certain.

  “I love you,” Nora said with quiet composure. “And I’m never stopping. Not if it hurts me. Not if you won’t let me. I’m still going to love you. I’m going to be wide open, and if it brings pain, I’m ready to accept that as part of the price of living fully, not tucked away in a cave somewhere.”

  He knew he had never said a single word about a cave to her. Never.

  “So,” she finished, her courage shining from her eyes, enough courage for both of them, “you might as well come along for the ride.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I know,” she said. “Ask Rover.”

  He fought the impulse to smile, but he had to fight hard.

  And then she did the one thing he could not fight. The one thing that stole what remained of his strength.

  She moved in close to him. She slipped her hand behind his neck and pulled his face to hers. She searched his eyes and found what she wanted there, because she smiled.

  He recognized it instantly, identical to that very first smile he had seen from her when he had turned over a pile of rags in a paddock on a rainy night. It was a smile that knew exactly who he was and welcomed him.

  And then she kissed him.

  And he, weakened, kissed her back.

  Only, the strangest thing happened. As her lips laid claim on him, his surrender became not weakness, but strength.

  It felt as if she had somehow captured every one of those tears he had cried after that damn cat had died. She had captured them, and now she poured them back into his emptiness.

  The energy washed off of her, and into him. Brendan could feel the life flowing back into his body, like water over parched earth.

  He could feel himself opening instead of closing.

  He could feel himself becoming everything he was ever meant to be, and then more. More than he had ever hoped he could be.

  He lifted her slight body to him, and cradled her against his chest.

  This was his home. This was what he had struggled to capture with his building designs his whole life, and this was why he had always had a sense of failure.

  Because the most essential thing had been missing. Home was not a building. It was the spirit that filled it.

  EPILOGUE

  BRENDAN SAT BESIDE Nora in the crowded Hansen High School auditorium. They had endured the speeches, and with each one being duller and longer than the last, he wished Nora, Hansen’s most celebrated citizen, had accepted the invitation to speak.

  Once she had changed her column to Ask Nora, amazing things had begun to happen. The internet blog had been a sensation. A book of her columns and blogs had followed, and it had been on the bestseller list for eight straight months. And then she’d been approached to do a radio show.

  So, as Hansen’s most celebrated citizen, Nora had been asked to give the commencement address at the high school graduation.

  But she had said no—it was Luke’s day, not hers. Which had been a relief to Brendan, because what if the baby decided to come midspeech, and they had to leave fast?

  They had long since sold Brendan’s house on “the Hill.”

  When the acreage next to Nora’s became available, they had purchased it. They had worked on the plan for the new house together. It wasn’t the biggest house he’d ever built, and it certainly wasn’t the grandest.

  And yet it was filled with the secret that made a house something beyond a collection of sticks and stones. It was filled to the rafters with laughter and companionship and healing. Somehow Lafayette had made it in there, and so had Iggy. And the dog with three legs, who came when they called “Long” or “John” or “Silver.” There was a descendant of Valentine named Cupid, and Ranger, and a small pasture that contained two sheep, Bo and Peep, and a burro named Burrito.

  Nora’s property had been sold at cost to Nora’s Ark, now registered as a charity, with a board of directors and an army of volunteers running it. Though she still crossed the fence when a sick animal arrived in the middle of the night, even if she had not been called. She always knew a new animal had arrived, always knew when her special gifts were needed.

  And more often than not, Luke was right beside her.

  As each name was read out, a graduate walked across the stage.

  It occurred to Brendan you could tell a lot about these kids from the way they crossed that stage. You could tell if they were shy. Or outgoing. Or plain old trouble. You could tell by the way they walked if they were going to be ambitious or complacent, if they were going to take the world by storm or just ride a lazy current through it.

  “Ohh,” Nora sighed quietly beside him.

  He turned and looked at her, ready if need be to disrupt the ceremony, to pick up his wife, just the way he had picked her up all those years ago, and race for the door.

  But she gave him a reassuring smile and placed his hand on the swell of her stomach. The baby kicked at his palm, as if impatient to make its entrance into the world. One day he or she would be crossing this stage. What would the way he or she walked say about all of them who had helped raise this child?

  Brendan had deliberately chosen aisle seats. Now he glanced back toward the door, making sure the way was clear, judging how long it would take him to reach it with Nora in his arms.

  But Nora and Luke had both assured him today was not the day, and for a reason Brendan still could not decipher, they knew these things. But still, he needed to be prepared. They had their way, he had his.

  “Luke Caviletti.”

  Brendan turned his attention fully to the stage.

  He had offered Luke his name a year ago, but Luke had said no. He didn’t need the name to feel he was a valued part of the family. He had wanted to carry his
father’s name into the future.

  As he came across the stage, that was what Luke looked like, a beam of pure light heading for the future. Brendan hadn’t expected to feel anything at this graduation except too warm and bored, so his sudden emotion took him by surprise. He didn’t try to pinch his nose, or swallow, or breathe it away. He just let it come, grateful to feel, to be alive, to have this moment of glorious pride and emotion.

  He had helped raise this young man, and through the tears that blurred his vision, he could see every single thing about him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tears of joy and pride sliding down Nora’s face, also. Brendan moved his palm from her stomach, took her hand in his and squeezed ever so gently.

  Luke had never become what Nora had dreamed of—the popular kid who filled up their house with his friends and noise and activity.

  What he had become was so much better.

  He had become himself: strong, quiet, calm, certain in the gift he had to give the world. Neither Nora nor Brendan had been surprised when this young man, once terrified of hospitals, told them he would use the money Deedee had left him to become a doctor.

  Luke had that same incredible quality that Nora had, the one that made people call her a healer. Only in him, it was more intense, more defined, something tangible in the air around him.

  When Brendan had first met Nora, she had just lost her sister. And her fiancé. And yet despite that, she had never hesitated to be of service. She had been there for her nephew. She had provided a place of refuge for the lost and wounded of God’s creatures.

  Luke had that same ability to rise above what had hurt him, and use his life experience in service. He would make an unbelievable doctor.

  And Brendan was learning from both of them. Village on the Lake was completed. People had moved in. They loved it there. It had won a Most Livable Community award. But now he understood exactly why all those early plans had always left him dissatisfied.

  He had tried to use his work to shore up a wounded ego in service to nothing more than himself.

  There was no satisfaction in that, no matter how many awards you won.

  But today a different plan took center stage. He was designing a housing complex for single parents of limited income. It wasn’t utilitarian or bare bones. It was beautiful.