Rescued by Mr. Wrong

by Cynthia Thomason

  “I know. I thought so, too. But the adventure is still smoldering in my blood. Maybe not as much as it once did, but the adrenaline still pumps, the desire to tell a story still exists.”

  “Have you told Taylor?”

  “No. Good God, Carrie, if I haven’t told you, I certainly haven’t told him.” He shook his head. “It’s all just a bit fast, I know. I should be proud to tell my son, but I’m not. I’m embarrassed, perhaps. I told him I was through with that life. But when Butch came, it all descended upon me—the thrill, the escapes, the almost impossibility of succeeding. It’s hard for me to explain, but in spite of my inner reaction to going one more time, the pumping of blood through my veins, I didn’t think I could disappoint Butch.”

  “So you will just disappoint Taylor.”

  He stroked his hand over his jaw. “I suppose that’s a good possibility.”

  She sighed. “All right, so you can take the reporter out of the war zone, but you can’t take the war zone out of the reporter. Is that it? The excitement, the danger, the thrill of just one more headline always exists.”

  “I think so,” he said, feeling the strongest hint of regret at his decision. Why would he tempt fate one more time? Why would he risk what he had here, in this old campground, with this wonderful woman? And then he remembered. Because he was who he was—deeply scarred, perhaps unfixable, and close to tarnishing every good thing that came his way. In his cockeyed view he was saving Carrie for something much better than him, just as she’d been saving herself.

  She stared at him with warm, endlessly deep eyes. He felt her sympathy, her understanding for the sacrifices he’d made for the written word. She would probably never understand that he was doing this for her. And he would never tell her.

  “Keegan...”

  She let him touch her hand. He felt its warmth to his shoulder.

  “I can accept much of what you say,” she said. “But why did you call my father? You wouldn’t have had to betray me. You could have gone and left me here in the cabin until Friday. I would have gone to the doctor. Chances are, I would have been cleared to drive my car back to Michigan that same day, fully intending to reassert my independence, and fully capable of doing it.”

  “I couldn’t leave you here,” he said. “I couldn’t not know your future. I couldn’t go without assuring myself that you were safe.”

  “But what you did was a violation of my privacy. You shattered my belief in you, my trust, by taking it upon yourself to manipulate my life.”

  He smiled, and her eyes narrowed. “Much as you did to me?” he said. “Without my knowledge, didn’t you arrange for my son to come here, to face me, to challenge our relationship?”

  Her lips curled just slightly. “I guess I did. Maybe it’s good that we are parting after all, Keegan,” she said. “We seem to be a pair of manipulators above all else.”

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. At this moment he could only question his resolve to let her go, to feed his own need for adventure, to pay a debt to an old friend and to play a martyr for her. His book remained unfinished on his computer. But he now knew that Carrie Foster would have her own chapter, one that perhaps would paint him as a better man than he was. Maybe by letting her go, he was finally beginning to heal.

  He spread her fingers and kissed her palm. “I have never been more enchanted by a manipulator in my life, Carrie. From the day you declared to all the world that I was your husband, to now, it has been an amazing journey.”

  Her eyes glistened, her lips trembled. She rose from the sofa. “Tell my family I’m ready,” she said. “And please, Keegan, take care of yourself.”

  * * *

  AFTER SOME DISCUSSION, Carrie convinced her father to let her ride in her own car with Jude as the driver. Jude chuckled, obviously trying to make light of a serious situation, about all the “frozen Christmas gifts” still in the back compartment.

  “Okay,” Martin said, “but I’m following you girls in case you have any trouble.”

  They weren’t a mile away from the campground before Martin called Jude’s cell phone. She smiled at her sister. “What’s that, Daddy? Say again.”

  She put the phone on speaker.

  “I said, watch that lead foot, Jude. This road is notorious for speed traps. And you have an injured passenger in the car. I expect you to drop your speed by at least ten miles an hour.”

  “No problem.” Jude disconnected and stared for a moment at Carrie. “We might be home by tomorrow morning at this rate.”

  Carrie tried to appreciate the humor in Martin’s typical fatherly warning. Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen the humor in anything the past twenty-four hours, and she didn’t know when she would again.

  A few somber miles later, Jude said, “So, maybe you want to tell me how my sweet little sister, who for the last five years has viewed every man in her life as having an agenda, came to stay with a stranger for nearly a month.”

  Carrie smiled. “I admit it seems a stretch, especially for me. But aside from the fact that on Christmas Day with snow piling up by inches an hour, there weren’t too many options for an injured motorist...” She paused, thinking about Keegan, the first moment she saw him, the surprise and shock she’d experienced.

  “I don’t know, Judie,” she said. “I just believed I could trust him. There certainly wasn’t anything about his appearance that day that would lead me to think that.” She chuckled. “He was gruff, bearded and scraggly...”

  “A true Prince Charming,” Jude said.

  “Right. But he was also calm and comforting and strong where I was obviously weak. He took charge of my situation and stayed with me until I could make decisions.”

  “And again, your decision was to move in with a stranger?” Jude said.

  “Yes, but by then he wasn’t a stranger. I know he didn’t want me in his life. He was living alone and liking his hermit lifestyle. I was a burden and a chore, but he took care of me.” She sighed. “And, maybe, just a little, I took care of him, too. I wasn’t the only one who needed comforting and healing.”

  “Why did he need to heal?”

  Carrie stared across the seat at her sister. “You didn’t recognize him?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “He looks different now, but his real name is Patrick Breen. He goes by his middle name...”

  “Patrick Breen!” Jude practically squealed the name. “The correspondent? The one who went to the Middle East and Afghanistan and Haiti?”

  “And everywhere else there was a story,” Carrie added.

  “Oh, my gosh, Care-Bear, he’s famous! A famous guy has been taking care of you all this time. Does Daddy know?”

  “I don’t think so. It was enough for Daddy to see me living with a man without me piling on too much information.”

  “Probably wise. I’m sure Daddy would view him as a worldly man, one with many experiences, and one who certainly could spell trouble for his youngest daughter.”

  Carrie smiled with a recurrent memory of warm nights by the fire, grilled cheese sandwiches and embraces when one or the other of them needed one. “He was a gentleman the whole time, Jude,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better person to take care of me, to comfort me, to...” She stopped, not wanting to say too much.

  “Oh, Carrie, sweetie, you’re in love with him.”

  There being no point in denying what was obvious to the person who knew her best in the world, Carrie nodded slightly. “Let’s keep this between ourselves, okay? I don’t need anyone to attempt to clarify my feelings for me, or, even worse, to feel sorry for me.”

  “So, what happens now?” Jude asked.

  “Now?” Carrie repeated. “I’m doing it. I’m going home to Dancing Falls where I will finish recuperating, and then I suppose I will go back
to my job if I still have one.” She expelled a long breath. “There are always trees that need me.”

  “And Keegan? What about him?”

  “He’s on his way to another civil war in another desperate country. It seems that there is always a story that needs to be told, and he’s determined to tell it.”

  “He doesn’t love you? Does he know you love him?”

  “I think he knows how I feel. And maybe he does love me a little, but certainly not enough.”

  Jude reached over and patted Carrie’s hand. “How could he not love you enough? You are the sweetest, kindest...”

  “Stop,” Carrie said. “You’re describing the problem. I’m the innocent girl who communes with nature while trying to hide her fear of giving herself to a man. Keegan is the spontaneous, passionate man who records the stories of the world’s greatest disasters. My wounds, if you want to believe I’ve suffered any, are on the surface. Keegan’s go so deep I can never reach them, and possibly he’ll never recover from them.

  “This is hard to explain, but, in a way, Keegan is afraid of me, afraid of changing me, bringing me down. The very qualities he likes about me are the ones that are keeping us apart.”

  Jude shook her head. “How did you get so smart? I thought Alex was the one with all the brains.”

  “She has most of them,” Carrie said. “But when you have almost a month to sit on a sofa and contemplate what went wrong with all of your relationships, you eventually come up with answers. Not all of them,” she added. “But some.”

  “I just want you to be as happy as I am,” Jude said. “Why is it that when things are going so right for one of us, the other one or two must suffer?”

  “But I am happy for you, Jude. Truly I am. I want to hear all about the wedding you’re planning for the spring at Dancing Falls. I want to hear every juicy morsel about the fabulous Liam Manning. I want to hear about my wonderful nephew.”

  As Jude talked, Carrie listened. She could find contentment in the happy endings her sisters had discovered. People could be happy for others if not for themselves. Carrie had lost at love. She’d lost Keegan, but there could still be joy in her life. So why did she concentrate on the passing landscape out the passenger window?

  So Jude couldn’t see her tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “HOW LONG HAS she been like this?” That evening Carrie sat by her mother’s bedside and held Maggie’s hand. The sun was low in the sky, coloring the room with a soft pink glow, terribly sad, yet somehow peaceful.

  “Not long,” Jude said. “Daddy didn’t want to alarm you before we really knew what was going on.”

  “She’s so thin,” Carrie said. “All I can think about is how Mom loved to cook. She fixed the most creative meals and taught us all how to do the same. We Fosters have always been such good eaters, and now...”

  Jude put her hand on Carrie’s shoulder. “You have to be strong for Daddy, Care-Bear. Remember, the Mom you’re talking about has been gone for a long time.” She touched Maggie’s cheek. “I think Mom is ready to go now, and we have to let her.”

  “Does the doctor say when that could be?”

  “A matter of a few days to a week or so,” Jude said. “Believe me, Care, we would have let you know in plenty of time to come home and say goodbye.”

  “What have you told Wesley?”

  “Not much. He knows that his grandma is getting weaker, but at only six, he can’t handle too much information. He never knew his grandmother the way we did. She showed the first signs of dementia before Wes’s first birthday. But amazingly he has always related to her in his own way. He reads to her and finds programs on her television he thinks she’d like. He’ll miss her.”

  “Does Aurora know?” Carrie didn’t know their neighbor as well as her two sisters did, but she knew that Aurora had been a source of inspiration and comfort for their father.

  “Yes, she knows. She’s been to the house and has sat with Mom a time or two. That pleases Dad, knowing that the two women in his life had a chance to get acquainted, even in this limited way.”

  “Woman in his life?” Carrie said. “That’s how you describe Aurora?”

  “Not literally. Dad is all about Mom right now, but you’ve heard how caring Aurora is. Dad depends on her.” She paused before adding, “Actually, Carrie, they depend on each other. Aurora’s son died recently, and Dad was there for her when she needed him. They both are grieving right now, and that’s a strong connection.”

  Carrie nodded. “Most of you have depended on Aurora at one time or another. Lizzie stayed with her when she had that awful fight with Alex. You said Aurora was instrumental in getting you to go to the hospital and demanding to see Liam.” I wish there was some way our fairy godmother could help me, Carrie thought.

  “How’s everyone doing?”

  Both girls turned to the sound of their father’s voice in the doorway.

  “Fine,” Jude said. “There hasn’t been a change in Mom since this morning.”

  Martin walked over and stood between his two daughters. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I think she might be smiling, just a little bit. Like she knows on some level that two of her girls are here.” He bent to kiss the top of Carrie’s head and put an arm around Jude. “It’s been a long day. Your Mom and I are turning in.”

  Both girls glanced at the narrow twin bed next to Maggie’s larger one, where their father slept each night. This was their cue that he wanted to be alone with his wife.

  “I’m tired, too,” Carrie said, adjusting her walking boot before standing.

  “Me, too,” Jude said.

  “Go on with you,” Martin teased. “I know you’ll be up for hours talking. And you know what? It makes me happy just thinking of you doing that.”

  They each kissed their father and left the room. “So how about those wedding plans?” Carrie said. “What do you and Mr. Dreamy have in mind?”

  Jude smiled. “We’re both wearing cowboy gear and riding into the ceremony on horseback...” She paused to look at Carrie’s horrified expression. “You are so easy to fool, Care-Bear!”

  * * *

  THE CABIN WAS COLD, empty. Keegan hadn’t even bothered to light a fire. He told himself he was preparing his body and spirit for the poor conditions he’d be facing soon. That was a lie, of course. He was punishing himself for pushing away the kindest woman he had ever met. He deserved to freeze. He deserved to stare at lonely corners of his room, to eat a simple meal by himself.

  How had it happened that he’d fallen so hard for sweet, innocent Carrie Foster? He’d never been attracted to that type of woman before. But, then, he’d never made a relationship work before either. And he hadn’t made one work this time.

  She’d practically said the words many men long to hear, but the very ones he feared. She couldn’t love him. She was too good, and he was almost all bad. He’d come to believe that the life he truly deserved was one where he unrolled a sleeping bag and bedded down in a blown-out hut in a rural part of nowhere only to face anger and discontent in the morning.

  His future before Carrie had been uncertain. He intended to sell his land and use the stake to start over somewhere far away from Ohio, the memories of his youth and the only adult who had ever loved him when he was growing up. Keegan was satisfied with not knowing where he would be a year from now. He would survive. He always had.

  And then a terrible blizzard had sent him a chance for redemption. For Carrie’s sake he didn’t take that chance. Her roots were as deep and solid and pure as the trees she loved. His were still stretching into the darkness, searching for something he never would find.

  And so he sat this night on a hard wooden chair in front of a meal of cereal and toast and thought about what might have been. He considered having a drink or two...or three, but he never
took the bottle from his cupboard. Like he had so many times in the past hours, he remembered that Carrie would be disappointed in him.

  Even though he’d sent her away, he still thought about pleasing her. In the past month she had been easy to please, but deep down he knew that someday, maybe soon, maybe years from now, he would quit trying to please her. That was just the sort of man he was. Marta knew that. Or maybe she would become impossible to please, and that would also be his fault.

  Missing her hurt, but he would get through this night and the next two and then he would fly to New York with Butch and reenter a world that accepted him for who he’d become. He would put his book away for a while and tell his new stories. Devastation and despair were embedded so deeply into his spirit now that he feared he could only survive when everything around him crumbled.

  And that’s how he felt tonight. Like he was disintegrating bit by dusty bit. Like he’d lost his soul in order to save another’s.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MAGGIE ELIZABETH FOSTER passed away on Wednesday, two days after her daughter Carrie arrived home. When the doctor determined that Maggie’s time was near, Martin called his oldest daughter, Alexis, and all three girls were at their mother’s bedside. She slipped quietly into the next world with each of her daughters proclaiming that they, too, could see the smile their father claimed to have seen on Monday.

  Aurora Spindell was called to the house, and the four women cried and laughed and comforted the man Maggie had left behind. Aurora had never known the Maggie that the family knew, but because she loved Martin, a fact that she kept secret from the family but Carrie knew right away, Aurora understood and appreciated the kind of woman Maggie had been.

  Preparations were quickly organized for a funeral two days later, on a beautiful, sunny Friday. Pallbearers were members of Martin’s medical community, his son-in-law, Daniel Chandler, and his future son-in-law, Liam Manning. Maggie’s two grandchildren, Lizzie and Wesley, walked somberly behind the casket, followed by their mothers and aunt.