Sweet Laurel Falls

She tilted her head, studying him as if to gauge his sincerity, and he was struck again by her fragile beauty. With that sadness that never quite left her eyes, she made a man want to wrap his arms around her, tuck her up against his side and promise to take care of her forever.

Not him, of course. He was long past his knight-in-shining-armor phase.

“Thanks,” she finally said. “I like it too. It’s been a work in progress the last five or six years, but I think I’ve finally arranged things the way I like.”

She untwisted her striped purple scarf and shrugged out of her coat before he had a chance to help her, then hung both on a rack nestled between ceiling-high shelves.

“A bookstore and coffeehouse. That seems a far cry from your dreams of writing the great American novel.”

She seemed surprised that he would remember those dreams. “Not that far. I still like to write, but I mostly dabble for my own enjoyment. I discovered I’m very happy surrounded by books written by other people—and the readers who love them.”

“It’s a bit of a dying business, isn’t it?”

She frowned and stopped to align an untidy shelf of paperback mysteries. “I don’t believe a passion for actual books you can hold in your hands will ever go away. We have an enormous children’s section, which is growing in popularity as parents come to realize that children need to turn real pages once in a while instead of merely flipping a finger across a screen. Our travel section is also very popular, as is the young adult fiction.”

She shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve made sure people come to the store for more than just books, though it’s still the best place in town to find elusive titles. We’ve become a gathering spot for anyone who loves the written word. We have book groups and author signings, writer nights, even an evening set aside a couple times a month for singles.”

“You’ve really built something impressive here.”

She paused and looked embarrassed. “Sorry. You hit a hot button.”

“I don’t mind. I admire passion in a woman.”

In a person. That’s what he meant to say. In a person. Anyone. But it was too late to take the word back. Maura sent him a charged look and suddenly the bookstore felt over-warm. He had a random, completely unwelcome memory of the two of them wrapped together on a blanket up near Silver Lake, with the aspens whispering around them and the wind sighing in the pine trees.

She cleared her throat and he thought he saw a slight flush on her cheeks, but he figured he must have been mistaken when she went on the offensive. “What is this whole business about sticking around town for a few weeks, Jack? You don’t want to be here. You hate Hope’s Crossing.”

He didn’t want to take her on right now. He ought to just smile politely, offer some benign answer and head over to browse the bestseller shelf, but somehow he couldn’t do that.

“If I want to see my daughter—the daughter you didn’t tell me about, remember?—I’m stuck here, aren’t I?” he said quietly.

“Not necessarily. Why can’t you just wait and visit Sage in Boulder when she returns to school? Or have her come visit you in San Francisco. You don’t have to be here.”

“I’m not leaving. Not until after Christmas, anyway.”

“You’re just doing this to ruin my holidays, aren’t you?”

He could feel his temper fray, despite his efforts to hang on to the tattered edges. “What else? I stayed up all night trying to come up with ways to make you pay for keeping my daughter from me. Ruining your holidays seemed the perfect revenge for twenty years of glaring silence. That’s the kind of vindictive bastard I am, right?”

“I have no idea,” she shot back. “How am I supposed to know what kind of bastard you are now?”

“Insinuating I was a bastard twenty years ago to knock you up and leave town.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You must have thought it, though, a million times over the years.”

That was the core of the anger that had simmered through him since that life-changing moment after his lecture. What she must have thought of him, how she must have hated him to keep this from him.

For twenty years their time together had been a cherished memory, something he used to take out and relive when life seemed particularly discouraging.

He had wondered about her many times over the years. His first love, something good and bright and beautiful to a young man who had needed that desperately.

To know that she must have been cursing his name all that time for leaving her alone with unimaginable responsibility was a bitter pill.

“You didn’t tell me, Maura. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“Not forget me, as if you couldn’t wait to walk away from everything we shared. As if I meant nothing to you!”

As soon as she blurted out the words, she pressed a hand to her mouth as if horrified by them.

“I loved you,” he murmured. “Believe whatever else you want about me, but I loved you, Maura.”

“Yet you hated your father and Hope’s Crossing more.”

“Maura,” he began, knowing he had no defense other than youth and idiocy and his own single-minded resolve to make something out of his life away from this place. Before he could figure out how to finish the sentence, chimes rang softly on her front door and a new customer came in.

He saw the man out of his peripheral vision for only a fleeting instant, but something made him shift his head for a better look. Instantly, he wished he hadn’t. Did his father have a freaking tracker on him?

CHAPTER FIVE

“IS THAT BOOK ON SPELUNKING here yet?” Harry Lange growled before he had even walked all the way through the doorway, as if every employee had been lined up inside merely waiting for him to make an entrance. “I could have had it a week ago if I had ordered the damn thing online.”

His words were directed at Maura, Jack realized. Harry must have seen her when he walked inside. It took another beat for his father to recognize him, but Jack knew the instant he did. Harry’s jaw sagged and ruddy color leached from his aging features as if somebody had just slugged him in the gut.

Maura looked from Harry to him and quickly stepped forward. “I’m not sure, Mr. Lange. I’ll have to ask Ruth. She’s the one who handles the special orders. If you can wait a few moments, I’ll see if I can find her.”

Harry didn’t seem to have heard her. He continued to stare at Jack, mouth slack and his eyes awash with a hundred tangled emotions Jack didn’t want to see.

So much for slipping into town and back out again without seeing his father. Twice in the space of an hour must be some kind of cosmic joke.

The familiar raw fury for his father welled up, but now that he was confronted with the actual man instead of only memories, it seemed muted, somehow—as if the color and heat had bled from it as well.

“J-Jackson?” Harry’s voice sounded strangled, as if he were choking on one of the little mints from the checkout at Dermot Caine’s café.

“Harry.” The single word came out clipped, cold.

“I…hadn’t heard you were in town.”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” One he was quickly coming to regret.

“I see. How long will you…” His voice trailed off, and Jack began to think maybe the pale cast to his features was from more than just surprise.

“I’m still working that out.”

For politeness’ sake, he should probably move closer to his father so they didn’t have to raise their voices to be heard a dozen feet apart, but he couldn’t seem to generate the necessary forward momentum. Lord knew, Harry wouldn’t be the one to budge. That much apparently hadn’t changed.

Maura was finally the one to move first. She took a step forward. “Mr. Lange, are you all right?” she asked suddenly, taking another few steps.