Searching for Sunshine

by Linda Seed

  She shouldn’t fall apart. Not yet, anyway. She didn’t know that Jake had been involved in the accident. It was possible he had merely changed his mind about wanting to see her and had opted out of the lunch date.

  Except that Jake wouldn’t do that. He hadn’t done that. She knew that as surely as she knew the sun would rise and fall and the cattle on the ranch would moo and graze and her own mother would cook and fuss and love everyone. She knew Jake hadn’t stood her up intentionally the way she knew the most basic truths of her life: that Brian had loved her and then died, and that you never could take life for granted.

  She needed her family. They would know what to do.

  By the time she got to the ranch, her heart was pounding and her face was lined with stress. The boys knew something was wrong, but it was her role to protect them, not to further worry them. She brushed off their questions, much to her oldest son’s irritation.

  “I’m just tired from the move, that’s all,” she told Michael, who was sitting beside her in the passenger seat, just recently grown tall enough to sit in the front and brave the hazards of airbags. Had Jake’s truck had airbags? Surely it did. Breanna’s thoughts spun to wreckage, to injury, to things worse than hospitalization and surgery and pain.

  “You’re lying. Something happened,” Michael said flatly.

  Lucas, in the back seat, was absorbed by a game on his phone. She hoped he hadn’t heard.

  * * *

  “Girl, what in the world?” Sandra asked when she saw Breanna. Immediately, the older woman’s face registered alarm.

  “Boys, go on upstairs,” Breanna told them.

  “I’m not a child,” Michael said.

  It was true, he wasn’t. It was time she stopped treating him like he was.

  “You’re right,” she said. She whispered to him, “Could you maybe take Lucas upstairs and get him settled in watching TV or something? Then come down, and we all can talk.”

  He nodded somberly, then said, “Come on, Luke. Let’s see if Uncle Liam’s here.”

  A few minutes later, he was back. Lucas had found Liam, and the two of them had gone to the stables to visit the horses. Michael waited silently, looking with concern at his mother.

  “It’s Jake,” Breanna told him and Sandra when Lucas was safely gone. “He was supposed to meet me for lunch at twelve thirty. He never came. He didn’t call, and he’s not answering his phone.”

  “Well, I’m sure there’s a good reason,” Sandra said. “The man wouldn’t just—”

  “There was an accident on the highway north of Cayucos. A big one. Jake was coming from Cayucos.”

  Sandra’s face registered several things—alarm and concern among them—before settling back into her usual stoic expression. “You sit on down and we’ll talk about what to do,” she said.

  * * *

  Once he was past the accident, Jake pulled over to the side of the road and searched for the phone. He found it wedged under the back seat, tooth marks in the case, the screen cracked. He pushed the button in an attempt to bring it to life, but the thing was dead.

  He muttered a few choice curses to the dog, repeated his threat to get a trainer, and then drove to Robin’s.

  Of course, as he’d predicted, Breanna was no longer there. The hostess said she’d waited more than a half hour and then had left, looking pissed-off and sad. The hostess was judging him, clearly, but he didn’t have time to deal with that. He thanked her and left.

  Next, he drove to the house on Moonstone Beach. He knocked on the front door, but no one came. He even tried the guesthouse, but no luck. The place had the feel of being empty.

  After that, he weighed his options. Knowing Breanna, she was probably at the ranch if she wasn’t at her own house. He could drive straight there, or he could find another phone and call her.

  He judged that showing up in person would increase his chances with her, but on the other hand, what if she’d gone somewhere else? If he showed up at the ranch and she wasn’t there, it would only delay him being able to explain what had happened.

  Jake made a quick stop at home and locked Sam inside the house. He took a moment to berate himself for not getting a landline. But nobody had landlines anymore, did they?

  He got into his truck, planning to head toward the ranch.

  * * *

  Breanna’s thoughts were too scattered for her to be able to form a coherent plan. That was one of the reasons she’d needed to be here with Sandra. The Delaney matriarch was nothing if not cool under pressure.

  Sandra knew a lot of people on the Central Coast, having spent decades attending community events, potlucks, fund-raisers, parades, and various other get-togethers that attracted people from all walks of life.

  She couldn’t think of anyone she might know in the emergency rooms of either of the local hospitals, which were not very local, actually—each of them was around thirty miles away.

  She did know one of the 911 dispatchers for the sheriff’s department in San Luis Obispo. Sort of. She knew the woman’s aunt Shirley, and that was enough.

  Sandra called Shirley, who called her niece, who wasn’t working that day but who knew the man who was. He couldn’t come to the phone for obvious reasons, but through a phone relay that involved several people, Sandra eventually ended up talking to a guy who was working the reception desk at the sheriff’s office and who agreed to poke around and find out what was going on.

  Sandra was able to glean various pieces of useful information, none of which included names, but some of which included the makes and models of the vehicles involved in the crash.

  When Sandra told Breanna that a black Toyota Tundra had been demolished and that its driver had been extracted with the Jaws of Life, Breanna paled and sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

  Jake drove a black Toyota Tundra.

  “Oh, God. I have to get to the hospital. I have to—”

  “We don’t even know which one they took him to. We don’t even know—”

  “Well, find out!” Breanna never yelled at her mother. But she was yelling now.

  “We don’t know if it’s him, Mom,” Michael said softly, his hand on Breanna’s shoulder.

  But Breanna knew. In her heart, she knew. You always thought tragedy wouldn’t affect you, that it would pass you by and leave you unscathed in favor of other, less fortunate people. But then you got the knock on the door and you realized you were that less fortunate person.

  Tragedy didn’t spare anyone, and Breanna had no reason to believe that fate would be kind to her now, when it had never shown kindness or mercy before.

  “It’s him,” she said. “It’s him. I know it’s him.”

  “I’ll call the hospitals,” said Sandra, who shared her daughter’s pragmatic outlook on life and all of the things it might bring. “We’ll find out where they took him.”

  Sandra seemed to agree with Breanna that, yes, Jake was likely the person whose body had been mangled in the crash, and that made Breanna lose whatever composure she’d had. A sob rose from deep inside her and tore loose. She realized that Michael was beside her, holding her. She clung to him.

  A few minutes later, Sandra returned from the kitchen, where she’d gone to make her phone calls without the distraction of Breanna’s emotional breakdown.

  “They took the Tundra driver down to San Luis Obispo,” she said grimly. “Don’t know the name. They wouldn’t say. Gave me some crap about confidentiality.”

  “All right.” Breanna took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her eyes. “Let’s go. Lucas can stay here with Liam. Michael, you should, too.”

  “No. I want to come.”

  She looked into her son’s eyes and saw something mature, something adult, looking back at her. She nodded. “All right.”

  “We’ll take my car,” Sandra said. “I don’t want you driving like this. We’d better hurry.”

  Sandra didn’t have to say what Breanna was thinking: They had to hurry because if they didn’t, they
might be too late.

  * * *

  If Jake had fully understood Breanna, he would have rushed directly to the ranch. But he didn’t—not yet—so he wasted precious time stopping to buy her a bouquet of flowers. In his experience, women expected flowers when you’d done something to make them mad.

  By the time he got on the road to the ranch, he was feeling pretty good about his chances. He was sure Breanna would be angry when he saw her, but no matter how pissed she might be, he knew he had a rock-solid explanation for everything.

  She had to forgive him, because none of it had been his fault.

  He was standing on pretty solid ground, he figured. All he had to do was show up and make his case.

  As he drove, he mentally rehearsed what he would say. I’m so sorry. He would have to lead with that, even though he hadn’t been to blame. It was never wrong to apologize to a pissed-off woman. Phrases like beyond my control and never happen again seemed like they might be useful.

  But the problem wasn’t just that he hadn’t shown up today. She hadn’t wanted him even before this. He would overcome that, too. He would reassure her that he wasn’t going to rush her. No more ultimatums. No more insisting that things progress on his terms instead of hers.

  He had to make her give him another chance. He just had to.

  He pulled up to the main house at the ranch, gathered up the flowers and his courage, and got out of the truck. He walked up the front porch steps, raised his hand to knock on the door—and was surprised when the door flew open before he even made contact.

  Breanna, Sandra, and Michael were in the doorway, apparently on their way out. All of them had looked tense and upset when the door opened, and all of them had identical stunned looks on their faces when they saw him standing there.

  Breanna burst into tears, then threw herself forward and into his arms, crushing the bouquet of roses he’d brought.

  He didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, it looked like Breanna wasn’t mad anymore. So, that had to be a point in his favor.

  36

  There was more hugging, and some crying, and not just from Breanna. As soon as Breanna let go of him, Sandra grabbed Jake in a hug so fierce he thought she might crack a rib. Michael’s eyes were red, but he wasn’t quite on hugging level with Jake yet, so he gave him a manly clap on the back and turned away.

  Everybody was talking at once, but eventually everything came out: the way Jake had been stuck behind a complete traffic blockage with a broken phone, and the way the Delaneys had been certain that he was either dead or grievously injured.

  That was when Jake began, for the first time, to truly understand Breanna. After what she’d been through with her husband, she didn’t worry about potential tragedy in the vague way that other people did. She waited for it, certain that it would come. She didn’t just know intellectually that bad things happened, that lives changed or ended in an instant. She lived it in her core.

  Jake had never lost a close loved one, so death was an abstract concept to him. But it wasn’t that way for Breanna. For her, death was real and certain. It was a constant companion that shadowed everything she did and everything she might do. It haunted all of her attempts to love and be loved.

  All this time he’d thought that Brian was the other man standing between them. But he’d been wrong. The other man was Death.

  After a little while, Sandra hustled Michael out of the room so Jake and Breanna could be alone. He told her everything he’d wanted to say: how he’d been wrong to rush her and that he wanted to be with her, no matter what. If she needed to wait before they took their relationship to the next level, then he would wait. He would wait for sex, he would wait for commitment, he would wait for her to let him into her kids’ lives.

  However long it took, he would wait.

  “You’re worth it, even if I have to wait forever,” he told her. “I can’t imagine why I ever thought you weren’t. I’m an idiot, basically. I don’t want anyone else, and if I’m still waiting when we’re old and eating early bird specials and riding in those mobility scooters, then I’ll just wait.”

  “No,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows in alarm. “No?”

  “No. I don’t want to wait until we’re old and using mobility scooters.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply. Then she pulled back and smiled at him just a little, her eyes still red. “Take me to the house on Moonstone Beach, Jake. Right now. Take me home.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until she was convinced that Jake was hurt or dead that Breanna realized how stupid she’d been. She’d told herself she was keeping her distance from him to protect her children from the upheaval of a new man in their lives. She’d told herself she was being smart. She’d told herself it was about mature behavior and responsible parenting.

  She’d told herself so many lies.

  The biggest lie of all was that if she could keep him at arm’s length, then she could protect herself from complete devastation if she should lose him.

  She’d thought she could keep herself from loving him so much that those feelings might break her.

  When she’d thought he was in the accident, she’d known she was too late. She already loved him that much. She already was that vulnerable. She already ran the risk of the same kind of pain she’d endured with Brian.

  Now, she had two choices: risk losing him to some nameless tragedy, or lose him for certain by forcing him away.

  Only one of those options offered her any hope for happiness.

  She couldn’t stop herself from loving Jake any more than she could stop herself from loving her boys. Any more than she could have stopped herself from loving Brian. If pain one day came, then she would endure the pain.

  She had no choice.

  She would tell him all of this later. There would be time to talk, time to sort it all out and tell him everything he needed to know about her. Today, she would show him what he needed to know.

  Breanna had asked Sandra to keep the boys for a while so she could work things out with Jake. Sandra had turned Breanna toward the front door and had given her shoulders a push.

  “You go on, now,” she said, her voice gruff. “Don’t you worry about those boys. They’re with family. You take care of things with that man of yours.”

  Breanna hadn’t even objected to the phrase that man of yours. It was simply the truth.

  Now, Jake and Breanna arrived at the house on Moonstone Beach and she led him inside, with the sound of the surf humming and pounding behind them. He’d barely closed the door when she turned and stepped into his arms.

  “Are you sure you want this?” he said. She was so close to him that she could feel the vibration of his words through the hard wall of his chest.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Because I shouldn’t have rushed you before. If you’re not ready …”

  “Jake. I’m ready.”

  And she was. The thought that she might have lost him had made it clear to her, finally, that being with him was worth any potential pain, any risk. She wanted to be close to him, and she didn’t want to be afraid any longer.

  “Come upstairs,” she said.

  She led him up by the hand, and as she did, it seemed to her that this was right in so many ways. Him being here, in this house he’d helped to create, felt like it was meant to be.

  In her room, her sunny, fresh room that he’d revived for her out of hard work and pure will, she turned to him and pulled his shirt off over his head. He tangled his hands in her hair and brought his mouth to hers, devouring her with his kiss.

  After that, she stopped thinking about love and risk and potential reward. She stopped thinking entirely. Instead, she simply felt. Felt the warmth of his skin, the feel of his hands undressing her and then gliding across her body, the sensation of being exactly where she was meant to be, with exactly the person she was meant to be there with.<
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  She unbuttoned his jeans and slid them down over his hips, and then took him in her hand. His eyes closed and his lips parted, and he moaned the sound of her name.

  Making love with Jake this time was different than before. Then, she’d been with him despite the nagging voice in her head that said he meant danger. Her body had reveled in the sensations, but her mind had been issuing urgent warnings. Now, all of her was eager, all of her was ready. She couldn’t wait to be wrapped around him and to have the delicious feeling of him inside her.

  When they were both fully undressed, she took his hand and drew him to the bed. They fell back on it, and his weight on top of her made her feel safe and loved and protected.

  She wanted him to hurry; wanted him now. But Jake had been waiting for this, and he seemed determined to take his time. He touched and kissed her face, then moved down her body, to her throat, over her breasts, down to her belly and beyond, to the part of her that was quickly becoming the center of her existence.

  He explored her with his tongue and she squirmed on the bed, bringing her body ever closer to him, to his mouth.

  Breanna was older than Kye Ferris. She was a mother. Her body bore the signs of childbirth and of the slow but inexorable decline that had begun when she’d hit her thirties. But he made her feel beautiful. He made her feel perfect. His attention to her, his fascination with her, his total absorption in learning the curves and planes of her made her believe there was nowhere he would rather be, and no one he would rather be with.

  She wanted him inside her, but this had been so impulsive that she hadn’t planned for it.

  “Jake,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  “I didn’t know this was going to happen. I don’t have anything.”

  He rose up to look at her, and comprehension dawned. He got up, found his jeans, fished around in the pocket, and brought out a square foil packet.