Love Reclaimed: (Clean Small-Town Romance) (Kings Grove Book 4)

by Delancey Stewart

  “Maybe loving someone isn’t selfish,” Maddie said softly, and her eyes across the fire suggested she didn’t mean Matilda.

  “I think maybe it’s the most selfish thing you can do,” I countered. “Especially if you loving them changes their plans.”

  Connor frowned at me, clearly missing the subtext. “What kind of plans you figure Matilda might have?” Maddie reached out and swatted his arm.

  We were silent then, letting the warm night settle around us for a while, the forest whispering high above our heads as the high winds moved through the treetops.

  Number three finally became too much for Maddie, and she took her back inside and then came out and sat down.

  “We’ve got the plans all worked up for filming the movie,” I told her. “Tuck and I are going to get started on some of the background shots this week, at the Inn and out in the grove.”

  Maddie grinned. “Can I come with?”

  Connor took her hand and leaned forward to kiss it. “Let them do their jobs,” he suggested. “You’re adorable, but you’re bossy. Cam knows what he’s doing.”

  I did, and it felt good to acknowledge it. “Tuck is one of the best cameramen I’ve ever worked with,” I assured her. “And you’ll be surprised how well Harper put the scenes together.” I’d been surprised, at least. She had a real knack for the way a film should flow and move to tell a story. One more talent. One more thing to admire about her.

  “When she gets back are you finally going to do something about all this?” Maddie asked.

  “Yeah, we’re going to get started making the movie. I just said that.” I scowled, hoping she’d leave it at that and let me ignore what she really meant.

  She frowned at me, but she let it go.

  A little while later, Connor and Maddie rose and said goodnight.

  “Think about things,” Maddie suggested as I hugged her close. “Think about what really matters to you, Cam. And fight for it.”

  I shook my head into her thick hair, a rush of conflicting emotions choking me up unexpectedly. “I’ll try,” I told her.

  “Good night, brother.” Connor slapped my hand and we shook, and then I watched them walk slowly away, Matilda standing at my side.

  “Come on girl,” I said. “Let’s go in.” I had to bring the pups out to the pen once more that night before we could all settle in, and once everyone was ready, I turned out the lights and got into bed. I didn’t feel happy, but my life—with the dogs and the big house occupied—felt much more real than it had a few months ago. I’d been mostly a ghost, I realized. And the thing about floating through life as a ghost was that while it was definitely devoid of any real pain, it was also absent of joy. Feeling one seemed to mean feeling the other, and I wondered, now that I felt both, if I’d ever go back.

  Tuck came back the next day and showed up at my house with his camera, ready to work. I stood in the door for a moment after he knocked, swallowing down my jealousy and my questions, and then I let him in.

  “Dust is going to be an issue up here,” he said, shaking his head. “It reminds me of that shoot out toward Death Valley. The future western thing?”

  I laughed. “I remember that one. Weren’t you hooking up with the Mae West character?”

  “What I do in my free time is not your business,” he said, pretending to be offended. “After all, I’m not quizzing you about what you’ve been doing in your off time, am I?” he wiggled his eyebrows and it was obvious he was talking about his room mate.

  I blew out a frustrated breath. It’d be easier to just talk about Harper and get the topic out of the way than it would be to endure suggestive questions the whole day. “Nothing’s been happening there for weeks,” I said. “Actually kind of thought maybe you’d been—“

  “I’ll cut you off right there,” Tuck said. “It was clear there was something between you when I arrived. I wouldn’t step in the middle of that any sooner than I’d walk into a pond full of crocs.”

  “Very Aussie reference,” I pointed out.

  Tuck grinned. “You like her. She likes you. There’s no room for a third, even if you are mucking the whole thing up.”

  “Yeah,” I said, agreeing and hoping maybe we were done with the topic. Relief lightened my limbs as I stood to get the plans Harper had printed out. Knowing she and Tuck hadn’t been involved banished some of the dark thoughts I’d let myself entertain.

  “Yeah, so when she gets back, you’re gonna take a stand, right? Let her know?”

  “She’s got plans, man. I’m not getting in the way of that.”

  “Plans change, Cam. That’s part of life. You switch directions to pursue new opportunities. That’s how I ended up here, in the mountains with you. Hell, that’s how I ended up in Hollywood.” He shook his blond head, hair falling into his eyes. “My whole life has been about shifting plans, catching the next wave.”

  “Well, it’s not for me to decide.”

  “You have to let her know there’s a choice to be made. In no uncertain terms.”

  I dropped my eyes, studied the knotted pine floor between my feet and listened to the chaotic antics of the dogs all around us. It was time to find them homes. “I don’t know. I mean…”

  “Jess,” Tuck suggested.

  I raised my gaze to meet his, seeing both the answer and the question there. “Yeah, I mean… I feel like it’s wrong on some level, like it’s a betrayal of her.”

  “She loved you. Do I really have to say ‘she’d want you to be happy’? You know this.”

  Puppy number two jumped up into my lap then, sending the papers I held scattering to the floor where numbers four and five eagerly investigated them. “I’ve got to divest myself of some dogs, man!” I was grateful for the distraction as I lifted number two down and bent down to get the papers.

  “Well, I’ll take two of them,” Tuck said. “If you don’t mind them being in the big house.”

  I shook my head. “Clean up after ‘em.”

  “I’ll choose when we get done today,” he said, grinning as he watched them romp around the room that had basically become a doggy play pen. “But we’re not done. You need to talk, and I know there’s no way you’ll go see someone qualified, so talk to me. I’m like a sponge. I’ll just absorb everything you say, suck it all away.”

  “Weird analogy,” I told him.

  He waved a hand, indicating I should continue.

  I took a deep breath and found that I did want to tell him, actually, that I had something to talk about, something I’d been holding onto for a long time. “Jess and I weren’t happy,” I finally said, the words leaving me like a poison I’d been holding inside.

  He looked surprised for a split second, eyebrows climbing, eyes narrowing. “You put on a good show.”

  I nodded. “We got married too fast. It was an impulse. But when we got together, after the romance had settled and we were just living together, married…” I trailed off, remembering the disappointment in my wife’s eyes every day as I failed to live up to whatever her expectations of me were. “I think she was getting tired of me. And then she got sick.”

  “Oh man,” Tuck said.

  “And life became about that.” I wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, rubbing it for a minute as I thought, as the guilt and the love and the sadness all pooled inside me. “I let her down. In so many ways. And then she died.”

  “You know it’s not your fault,” Tuck suggested.

  I shook my head. “That’s the thing,” I told him. “I guess I know that. But I don’t believe it. Her last years were complicated and unhappy because she married me. I loved her, and I let myself get so wrapped up in it, I couldn’t see it wasn’t good for her. I wasn’t good for her. I wasn’t what she really wanted but I married her anyway because I thought she was what I wanted. We trapped each other, and we were almost getting to a point where we could admit it, give it up and move on. But we stayed together, and she never got the chance to find someone else to make her really
happy. It was like being with me killed her.”

  “Dude,” Tuck scoffed. “Now you’re just being arrogant. You don’t have that power, friend.”

  The fear and pain I’d held since Jess’s death felt lighter somehow, just for having been made real by words. The feelings were smaller now than they’d felt inside me, now that I’d shone a light onto them—the way the monsters in my closet when I was small disappeared when Dad took the flashlight in there and swung it around.

  “You loved her, and she loved you. Sometimes that works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s life, man. And you were there for her when she needed you. You took care of her.”

  A choked breath caught in my throat as I thought of Jess at the end. I had loved her. I had tried.

  “Don’t let what happened with Jess color what happens next. Learn from it for sure. Let the understanding of those emotions become part of the foundation of your next relationship. Every connection is different, though. Don’t let one outcome predestine another.” Tuck’s face was solemn as he delivered this wisdom and I couldn’t help but smile. He was part Buhddist monk, part surfer, part giant kid.

  “Thanks for that, oh great yogi.”

  He put his hands together in front of his heart and bowed to me. Then he stood. “We making a movie, or what?”

  Chapter 16

  HARPER

  I called my dad to pick me up at the airport just before I left Austin. We needed to talk—both about my changing plans and about the things that still ached between us. He’d answered eagerly, been happy to make the long drive if it meant spending time with me, and once again I had to think about whether the man who’d supposedly abandoned me as a little kid would be so eager to pick things up now, to change his plans to spend three hours driving to and from the airport unexpectedly.

  He was there waiting at the end of the long terminal hallway in Fresno when I returned. I saw him before he saw me—tall and thin, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets and his silvered hair striking in the afternoon light flooding the terminal. I let myself really look at him, and the memories and emotions I’d walled up stirred around inside me a bit. Daddy had been good to me once. He’d been the warmth and the fun at home when I’d been little. Mom had been…something else. Distracted, mostly. So why had she been the one to take me when they divorced?

  “Hi Dad,” I said when I was close enough for him to hear me.

  “Harper,” he said, his face breaking into a warm smile. “How was the trip?”

  “It was good,” I said. “Really good.”

  He nodded. “Have a bag?”

  “No, I didn’t check anything.” I indicated the wheeled bag next to me and he reached for it, taking the handle.

  “Ready?”

  I followed him outside to his black compact, and once we were on the road, I cleared my throat, ready to get down to business. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” I started, and watched his shoulders stiffen slightly as he gripped the wheel and kept his eyes on the road. “I know you’ve been wanting time to talk, so I thought maybe this would be good.”

  He nodded. “I’m glad for the chance,” he said a little hesitantly.

  “Thanks for coming to get me,” I said, not wanting to forget to thank him before I approached the other things.

  He looked at me then. “I should have come to get you a long time ago.” His eyes met mine and I was reduced to a little girl once again, sitting next to my daddy, relying on him, believing in him. I nearly broke into tears, but focused on my breathing and pulled my eyes away from his. He didn’t get to control this conversation. I wasn’t going to regress. I needed answers.

  I swallowed hard and found my voice again. “That’s what I want to talk about. Why didn’t you? Where were you?”

  I watched his knuckles whiten on the wheel and then he sighed, a low exhausted breath rushing out of him. It sounded like resignation. I was finally going to have answers. “Your mother loved you,” he began. “But she didn’t love me anymore.” He let that sit for a minute, hanging between us. “And the longer we stayed married, the more angry she became at me.”

  “Why?” I breathed, wishing I could remember anything about them together during those early years—but in my memories, they weren’t together. Not ever, really.

  “Your mom and I grew up together in Los Angeles,” he said, his shoulders relaxing a bit. I swiveled in my seat to watch him as he spoke, not wanting to miss anything since I’d waited so long to hear this. “You mother’s family lived a few houses away from mine. Your mom and her sister were my best friends when we were little. Then, as we got older, things changed.”

  “Mom has a sister?” I’d never heard my mother talk about a sister. Shock slid through me, cold and slick.

  “Had. Yes. Allene.” Dad glanced over at me then, and then went on. “She and I were the same age. Your mom was a couple years younger. And you know, in those years, when you’re in school, it feels like it matters a lot, those couple years.”

  I nodded, remembering that from my own life.

  “I was always in love with Allene.

  “What?” If I was shocked to learn that my mother had a sister, I was far more surprised to hear that my father had loved her.

  He smiled, obviously remembering this strange aunt I’d never heard of before now, but he shook his head sadly. “We were together in high school, boyfriend and girlfriend. God, I loved her…”

  “And…?” I prodded him to move on. I needed answers.

  “She was in a car accident our junior year. She didn’t survive.”

  A hand shot to my mouth. “Oh God. Dad…”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. “And my senior year, your mother and I spent a lot of time together. Consoling one another. Missing her felt less painful together, I guess. And one thing kind of led to another, eventually that morphed into something else.”

  I shook my head slowly back and forth. It was amazing that I’d never heard this until now. “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”

  He gave me a serious look then, and I sensed something shift in the air. “Things changed as your mom and I were together. I stayed in town for college, she finished high school, and it just seemed like we were supposed to stay together. To get married. So we did. Your mother told me she’d always loved me, even when we were little.”

  “But you loved her sister.”

  “I did. And you mother never forgave me for it. I guess she thought she could overlook it at first. She’d loved me all those years, she’d said, been jealous of her sister, of the fact I loved her instead. But once Allene was gone, she thought it meant we were supposed to be together. I think it was a mistake we made out of circumstance. And things just happened fast. When I got the job up in Kings Grove and we moved, she got pregnant with you. And after you were born, things got worse.”

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t like to think that my arrival had made anything worse. I had been an infant—innocent, vulnerable.

  “Your mother used you as a weapon. She’d begun to mistrust me, letting her jealousy for what I’d had with Allene make her believe things that weren’t true. She accused me of cheating. Often. I was constantly having to try to prove to her that I was faithful, that I was committed to her and to you.”

  “Were you? Even though you’d loved her sister?”

  He looked at me and then swung his gaze back to the road, quiet. Finally he said, “I might not have loved your mom the same way, but I did love her. And once you were born… We were a family. I wasn’t going to break that if I could help it. But she made it impossible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t live with her suspicion and her anger over something I couldn’t change. I begged her to understand that loving Allene didn’t change what we had—didn’t change our love for you, for each other. But she couldn’t get past it, and the longer we were together, the more she talked about Allene and about how I could never love her—or you—the way she nee
ded me to.”

  He took a deep breath, then went on. “I told her I thought we should separate.” He let that sift around us for a minute before continuing. “And even though she was miserable with me, I guess she’d convinced herself that we were supposed to be together, that this was just how things were with married people. She thought what we had was normal, and I couldn’t convince her that we both deserved something more. She told me if I left her that I’d never see you again.”

  “So that was it?”

  “Well, not really.” He looked at me, smiled faintly. “She was furious with me when I insisted that we weren’t right for each other, and she told me she’d never give me a divorce.”

  “But she did, eventually.”

  He lifted a shoulder, smiled a sad smile with his eyes still on the road. “She didn’t. She told me I’d come around eventually, and that neither of us could remarry. She wouldn’t divorce me, but she left. She disappeared while I was at work—took you with her. She left me a note saying that if I cared enough to find her, it would be a sign that we were meant to be together. I think she believed that if she was gone, I’d realize how much I really loved her. But all I realized was that I couldn’t live without you, Harper.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I lost my mind. I went everywhere I could think of, tried to understand where she would go, where she would take you. Called everyone we knew. Finally I hired a private investigator.”

  “Oh my gosh.” I hadn’t known any of this.

  “It took three years,” he said, his voice breaking. “I missed three years of your life then—because your mother thought it would teach me a lesson. And when I finally found you, finally got to see you again, she was with another man. I told her I’d take her back, that I was wrong.” He looked at me then, his eyes wet. “Harper, I would have done anything to get you back. I would have suffered through the marriage, put up with her accusations. I missed you so much, worried so much.”