Surrender: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  She knew Brian loved his work, which worried her, because the loss of muscle in his leg was so devastating, it might be impossible for him to remain a firefighter. She had no idea what other interests he had that might suggest an alternative career. That was something else he’d need to decide.

  Brian would want out of the hospital as soon as it was medically advisable to release him, and his family would support his decision. But she couldn’t see him hanging out for long at the Lucky 7, which was an hour out of town, while he did his rehab every day at the center right next to the hospital in Jackson. Every time he got back home, his father and elder brother would be all over him like ants at a picnic.

  Brian was going to want a place in town. His wife had gotten their house in the divorce a year past, and he hadn’t yet bought himself another. Taylor figured if she played her cards right, she could offer him convenient housing—with her—while he learned to walk again.

  She’d earned good money as a corporate pilot, mostly because King owned the plane she flew, and he’d allowed her to keep a portion of the rental for the use of it. She’d also earned a nice fee dropping smoke jumpers for whoever needed her, be it Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or some other entity.

  Taylor had invested her money wisely, buying property in Jackson during the brief moments when the very expensive market was down. She was a landlord with six rental properties—and six mortgages. She’d chosen not to question the fact that her father owned the bank that had approved her six loan applications. As far as she was concerned, she was a qualified borrower. She had a steady income, good credit, and she’d never once been late paying her mortgages.

  At the moment, Taylor was simply grateful that she would be able to offer Brian an alternative place to live. Her nicest rental, a single-story, four-bedroom, wood-and-stone house that backed up on a creek, in a neighborhood shaded by aspen and evergreens, was a summer week-to-week rental, and the latest tenants were leaving on Friday, which was the last day of August, and coincidentally, the end of the summer season in Jackson. Because she’d been aware she might find herself without a roof over her head if Matt kicked her out, she hadn’t yet rented it out for the winter ski season.

  She could take possession of the house in a matter of days, fix it up, paint it, store the current furnishings, and replace everything with things she liked and hoped Brian would like. When the time was right—that is, when he could no longer stand his hovering family—she would let Brian know that he was welcome to share the house with her.

  Taylor’s mind was racing a thousand miles a minute, but her heart was sinking lower and lower. It was all well and good to offer Brian a substitute place to stay during his rehabilitation. The trick was going to be getting him to accept it. He wasn’t going to want to spend time with her while he was struggling to walk, any more than he wanted to be around his family.

  She would need to come up with a way to pitch the idea so he wouldn’t refuse. However, she was pretty sure that, if she timed it just right, whatever she said would be good enough, especially if he needed an escape from his loving, but overbearing, father and elder brother.

  Taylor heaved a shuddering sigh at all the work she had ahead of her, work that needed to be completed on a short timeline. Failure was not an option. She had a vested interest in making sure that Brian was restored in body and spirit, because he was the man with whom she planned to spend the rest of her life.

  Even if he wasn’t on board with the idea at the moment.

  It would have been far easier to take Brian at his word at the hospital, to fall back on her lifelong belief that she just wasn’t the sort of person a man could love. But something had happened to her in the wilderness.

  Brian had happened. He’d said he loved her, and she’d believed him. They’d planned their futures together. And when he’d been incapacitated, she’d found inner resources she hadn’t known she had and fought for both Brian’s life and her own. She’d kept them alive long enough to be rescued. And she’d done it because she wanted to spend her life sharing the love Brian had promised.

  She wasn’t about to give up now, just because Brian was feeling scared of what the future held. She was scared, too. There were no guarantees going forward that everything would turn out the way either of them hoped. But she wasn’t going to let his fear keep her away.

  Taylor wasn’t stupid. Or naïve. Even though she’d grown up in a houseful of girls, or maybe because of it, she had some inkling of how fragile the male ego was. Men were like some of the most resilient sea creatures, soft and vulnerable on the inside, with a hard shell they hid behind whenever they felt threatened.

  At the hospital, Brian had been doing and saying only what was necessary to protect himself, until he could come back stronger than ever. She’d gathered, from the way he was talking, that he wasn’t sure he was ever going to be the man he once had been. His order to “go away” was simply the result of a vulnerable creature retreating into his protective shell.

  Taylor could understand Brian’s anger and grief over having to give up work he loved. She was perfectly willing to give him time to heal and adjust to his new reality.

  But not too much time.

  She wasn’t going to wait until Brian was completely well and trust him to pick up their relationship where they’d left off in the wilderness. She was going to walk beside him every step along the way. Loving him. Letting him lean on her, letting him learn he could trust her not to walk away from him again.

  “Taylor?”

  Taylor started. “Leah. I didn’t see you.”

  “You’ve been standing in the middle of the kitchen staring out the window for the past ten minutes. Is something wrong?”

  “No. Nothing.” Then she took a closer look at Leah and realized that her sister’s stark hazel eyes were surrounded by deep, dark circles. “Are you all right?”

  “I…I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ve been back nearly two weeks, and you still look like death warmed over,” Taylor said. “Something’s keeping you up at night.” She thought of the pain Leah must be suffering as a result of Aiden’s bet with Brian. But unless Leah brought it up, she didn’t want to mention it. “What is it, Leah? What’s wrong?”

  Leah opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. She found her way to a barstool and settled onto it, gesturing Taylor to the stool next to her. “King’s in trouble.”

  Taylor snorted. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting to hear. “King’s in trouble? Why should you care what happens to him? He’s treated you the worst of all of us. You’re the one who planned to run Kingdom Come the rest of your life. You’re the one being thrown out of house and home because he made a devil’s bargain to get his ‘Black Sheep’ back in the fold.

  “I suppose that’s reason enough for those dark circles under your eyes,” Taylor said. “But you’ve dealt with problems like this before and never looked this bad. What is it, Leah? What’s keeping you awake at night?”

  Is Aiden Flynn the one making you miserable? Would you like me to kick him in the balls? Would you like me to knock him down and—

  “Angus has King by the throat, and this time it’s a death grip.”

  So, not Aiden. Aiden’s father.

  Angus threatening King, or vice versa, was of more concern to Taylor than she was willing to admit to her sister. Anything that raised the stakes between her father and Brian’s threatened the relationship she hoped to have with him. “What is it this time? Brian mentioned something about Angus interfering with King’s efforts to renew the loan on some property in South America. Is that it?”

  “King mortgaged everything he has to buy grassland in Argentina, and he doesn’t have the money to pay off the note. He’s going to lose everything, if Angus follows through on his threat to keep the banker from extending the loan.”

  “What is Daddy going to
do?”

  Leah’s eyes flicked toward Taylor’s when she used a name she’d rarely called their father since childhood. “King says he has a plan,” Leah said, “but I can’t imagine what it might be. I do the books. If there were any assets to be gleaned, I’d know about it.”

  “Is that why you haven’t been yourself lately?”

  “No. There’s…something else.”

  Taylor’s brow furrowed at the tremor in her sister’s voice. Leah was the strong one, the anchor that kept them all from being adrift in a frightening and unfriendly world. Should she tell Leah she knew about the bet between Aiden and Brian? Or should she keep silent? “Can I help?”

  Leah shook her head. “I have to make a decision about something. I may have a way to stop Angus in his tracks.”

  “What are you planning?”

  Leah shook her head. “I can’t tell you that. Not yet. If I do this…thing…it might backfire. I have no way of knowing. And the wrong decision could spell disaster for…”

  “For whom, Leah?”

  Leah’s eyes looked bleak. “For me.”

  Taylor put her arms around her sister and realized Leah was trembling. This couldn’t just be business. Aiden Flynn must be mixed up in this somewhere. “Leah,” she said, putting her hands on her sister’s arms and taking a step back so she could see into her eyes. “If there’s anything I can do to help, you have to let me know.”

  Leah pressed her lips flat, as though to keep any request for help from coming out.

  “Did you know I own six houses?” Taylor said.

  A small smile curved Leah’s lips. “King complained that you were on your way to becoming a real estate mogul when he okayed the loan for the most recent purchase.”

  Taylor pursed her lips. So much for getting those loans on her own merits. “I suppose he told them to loan me the money.”

  “He told them that if you didn’t qualify, they shouldn’t give you the loan.”

  “Oh.” She thought about it and said, “Well, that was mean of him. What if I hadn’t qualified?”

  Leah laughed. “How could you not? From what I’ve seen, you’ve been pretty savvy with your investments.”

  “If I am, it’s because I learned it from you.”

  “If I were better at managing the ranch—”

  “You’re great at managing the ranch. You can’t help it if King got a wild hair up his ass and yanked the rug out from under you by offering it to Matt.”

  “Taylor,” she admonished, speaking to her grown-up child with the authority of the mother she’d always been, “that’s no way to speak about your father.”

  “I just want you to know that, if you get kicked out of here, you’ll always have a place to stay. You can have your pick of—”

  Leah hugged her tight and then let her go. “Thank you, Taylor. With any luck at all, that won’t be necessary. I may have…other plans.”

  “Like what?” Taylor thought of Aiden Flynn and worked to keep the worry from her brow.

  Leah smiled and said, “You’ll know when I know.”

  THE MORNING AFTER he woke up, when his fellow firefighters from the Jackson Hole fire station came by to visit, Brian could see in their eyes what they thought about his chances of getting back to work. Slim to none. Every time one of them shook his hand as he or she was leaving, Brian gritted his teeth and promised himself that he’d prove them all wrong.

  Except he wasn’t sure his leg was going to cooperate.

  When the doctor changed his bandages later that morning, and he saw the extent of the damage for the first time, his heart sank to his toes. A six-inch stretch of his calf had been sheared of flesh to within an inch or so of the bone. He was still on an antibiotic IV drip, and would be for quite a while, to make sure the infection was gone for good. He was refusing painkillers because they made him groggy, and the resulting pain made him grouchy.

  Brian hated being stuck in bed, but the doctor had warned him he would do more damage than good if he got out of it. Aiden had brought him the latest Jack Reacher novel, but he didn’t have the patience to read it. He felt like yelling. Hollering the roof down. He felt as surely imprisoned as if he’d never gotten out of that goddamned cave.

  When Battalion Chief Fire Marshal Kathy Warren came by at noon, he sat up a little straighter and ignored the pounding in his maimed calf.

  “You look better than I thought you would,” she said, regarding him with a critical eye. “When are you coming back to work?”

  Brian was so shocked by the chief’s comment that he couldn’t find his voice for a moment. “You’re expecting me back?”

  “Why not? You had the best scores I’ve ever seen on the Work Capacity Test. Presuming you can get that leg in shape and get an okay from your doctor, I don’t see why you can’t be one of my firefighters.”

  The chief laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Keep your chin up, Brian. See you in a couple of months.”

  When she was gone, Brian remembered how hard he’d trained for his Work Capacity Test the previous year. He tried to imagine how, dressed in full Bunker gear, including air bottle, SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus), pants, coat (three layers—thermal, waterproof, and rip-proof), boots, helmet, and gloves, he was going to perform the difficult series of firefighting skills required—and not just complete them, but do it within five minutes—on this bum leg.

  Shit.

  He understood from the doctor that there was no replacing the muscle he’d cut out. Where was he going to get the leg strength he needed?

  He looked up, saw Aiden in the doorway, and said, “You look like your dog died. I’m the one with the crippled leg. What the hell is your problem?”

  “You’re my problem.”

  Brian’s heartbeat ratcheted up. “Is there something the doctor didn’t tell me? Is the infection worse? Does he want to cut off my leg?”

  “Whoa there, Mr. Leaps-out-of-planes-into-burning-forests. Don’t start jumping to conclusions.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Aiden settled onto the foot of Brian’s bed. “Would you believe a romance gone wrong?”

  Brian hissed out a relieved breath. The infection wasn’t back. And the doctor didn’t want to cut off his leg. He suddenly realized what must be troubling Aiden. “Leah?”

  “Who else?”

  “I’m sorry, Aiden. What I did, telling her about the bet, was the pits. You can have my Harley as soon—” Brian yelped when Aiden jumped up quickly enough to jerk the sheets around his leg. “Ow! Watch it!”

  Aiden didn’t apologize, just glared at him. “I don’t want your damned Harley. I want Leah back.”

  “So get her back!” Brian snapped. “And stay off my bed.” He grimaced as he gently rearranged the sheet around his injured limb.

  Aiden paced the room in agitation. “She says she can never trust me again. She’s not giving me a second chance.”

  “Then move on.”

  He stopped and confronted Brian. “You just don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “I love her. I want to spend my life with her.”

  Brian bit his tongue rather than say, “It’ll never work.” But he didn’t think it would ever work. It wasn’t just the animosity between their families. The obstacle keeping them apart was plain old logistics. Both Aiden and Leah ran their fathers’ ranches, which meant they needed to live in two different places. Matt’s appearance had complicated things for Leah, but Brian didn’t think she’d give up Kingdom Come without one hell of a fight. And Aiden would never leave the Lucky 7. “If you’re looking for suggestions,” Brian said. “I don’t have any.”

  Aiden groaned as he ruffled his hair, then smoothed it back down. “I just needed to vent with someone, and since you’re the only other person who knows about this, you’re it.”
<
br />   “Uh. That’s not exactly true.”

  “Brian, if you’ve—” Aiden began.

  Brian put up both hands to cut him off. “Hey! Tag and I thought we were going to die in that cave. I was feeling guilty about never being able to make things square with you, so I told her what I did.”

  His brother looked horrified. “She knows about me and Leah?”

  “Not about you being married. But yeah, she knows about the bet. I didn’t tell Tag not to say anything, but I don’t think she will. I mean, she wouldn’t want to hurt Leah’s feelings by telling her she knows what we did. Would she? Should I call her—”

  “No! Hell, no. If you fuck this up any more than you already have, Brian, I swear I’ll hack off both your legs myself.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t be seeing Tag again.”

  Aiden frowned. “I thought you guys got kind of close. When Leah and I found the two of you, she was holding you in her arms like you were the love of her life. From what I saw, and what I heard later, she’s the one who kept you alive.”

  Brian felt his face flush with embarrassment. “I have no idea what she did, because I was out of it. Nobody’s said anything to me about her part in this before now.”

  “Well you should get down on your knees—when you can—and thank her.”

  Brian remembered how he’d kicked Tag out of his room. How he’d denied having any feelings for her. No wonder she’d been so mad.

  He missed her. Missed her constant chatter. Missed holding her, touching her, being inside her. He had vivid memories of the two of them during the last days he’d been lucid. How he’d told Tag he loved her. How they’d planned their future together.

  But he wasn’t the same man who’d spoken those words of love. And he needed time and space to figure out whether he was going to have any sort of future to offer her.

  Aiden had remained silent, and Brian realized the two of them made a great pair, both of them brooding over Grayhawk women. He would have laughed, if the whole situation hadn’t been so tragic.