Sweet Laurel Falls

Some indefinable aspect of him—the angle of his jaw or the way he moved—called to mind the image of her first love. Jackson Lange, sexy and dangerous, young, angry, ferociously smart.

She rarely thought about Jack anymore, except on the rare occasions when his unpleasant father came into the store. Why she would be wasting time wondering about him now when she had so much to do was a mystery.

The man walked around the other side of the vehicle to let someone out of the passenger side, a gesture she didn’t see enough these days. She was curious to see his companion, but before she could catch a glimpse of the woman, the front door of the shop opened and Claire and Evie burst through, bringing the scent of snow and Christmas. Their mingled laughter chimed more sweetly than carols.

“I know,” Claire said. “That’s what I told him. But this is his first Christmas as a stepfather, and I swear, he’s more excited than Owen or Macy. I’ve had to hide the present stash a half-dozen times, and he finds every blasted spot.”

“What do you expect, honey?” Evie untwisted her scarf, hand-knitted in a heathery wool that dangled with beads instead of fringe. “He’s a trained detective. It’s kind of what he does.”

The two of them had probably walked over from the bead store Claire owned, just down the street a block. Evie rented an apartment upstairs from Claire. For now, anyway. Evie was dating Brodie Thorne, her friend Katherine’s son, and Maura expected their relationship was progressing quickly.

Claire’s soft, pretty features lit up when she saw her. “Maura, honey, the store looks fabulous. I keep meaning to tell you every day when I come in for coffee, but you’re never standing still long enough.”

“Your mom did a lot of the work. It was her idea to hang all the snowflakes and the ornaments. Isn’t that brilliant?”

Ruth had been working at the bookstore for months, but Claire still seemed baffled by it. Maura couldn’t blame her. No one was more surprised than Maura when Ruth’s offer to help out temporarily during those dark days and weeks in the spring had turned into a permanent arrangement that had worked out beautifully for everyone concerned.

“Ruth is a great employee,” she assured Claire again. “Hardworking and dependable, with these wonderful, unexpected flashes of ingenuity, like the snowflakes.”

“And here she is now,” Evie announced.

Sure enough, a moment later Ruth walked in, along with Maura’s mother, Mary Ella, and Katherine Thorne. With them was Janie Hamilton, a fairly new addition to town and another lost lamb Katherine had taken under her wing, and right behind them was Charlotte Caine, who owned the candy store in town.

Maura took a deep breath and put on her game face, that forced smile that had become second nature since her world had changed forever eight months earlier. “Welcome, everyone. I’m so happy you can all come.”

She stepped forward to hug and brush cheeks with everyone as they all began to shed coats and scarves and hats like penguins molting in the spring. Everyone seemed to have on holiday party clothes: shimmery blouses, festive patterned scarves, dangling earrings and beaded necklaces.

She felt drab in her suede jacket, tailored cream shirt and jeans, though she was wearing one of her favorite chunky wood-bead necklaces she had made at String Fever last year.

“What about Alex?” she asked. “Isn’t she coming?”

“Angie’s picking her up,” her mother assured her. “They texted me a few minutes ago to tell me they’re running late. As usual.”

“Whew. That’s a relief. She’s supposed to be bringing dessert, those delicious pumpkin spice cupcakes she makes.”

“The ones with the cinnamon buttermilk icing? Oh, yay!” Claire said. “I guess since I’m not trying to fit into a wedding dress anymore, I might be able to let myself have one.”

Maura could probably afford to eat five or six, since all her clothes fit her loosely now. Amazing how little appetite she had these days. “Everybody grab coffee or tea or whatever you’re drinking from the counter. I’ve got us set up in the corner.”

She ushered everyone over to the coffee counter in time to see April hang her apron on the hook. Josh Kimball had come in to replace her for the evening shift. He waved and grinned his charmer of a grin at her, and she managed to dredge up a small smile for his perpetual raccoon eyes, white in an otherwise bronzed face where his goggles blocked the sun while he was snowboarding.

“I’m off. I’ll see you later,” April said as she grabbed her coat.

“Thank you for everything. Good luck with the night patrol. See you tomorrow.”

“You got it.” April swung open the door just as a couple walked in—and suddenly all the air whooshed out of Maura’s lungs.

It was the man she had seen a half hour earlier entering the café, the same impractical leather jacket, the same wavy dark hair, the same plaid scarf.

In the hanging track lights of her store, she could clearly see her mistake.

This man didn’t simply bear a mild, passing resemblance to Jackson Lange.

He most definitely was Jackson Lange.

For one crazy second, her mind became a tangle of half-buried memories, the kind that came from being young and impulsive and passionately in love. The first time he held her hand in a darkened theater, shared confidences on a sun-warmed boulder high up the canyon, tangled bodies and mouths, the peace she found only with him—then the vast heartache and the sharp, gnawing fear after he left.

Someone was talking to her. Evie, she thought vaguely, but the words couldn’t register past her dismayed shock.

Jack had vowed never to step foot in Hope’s Crossing, with the fierce, unwavering determination only an eighteen-year-old young man could claim.

Yet here he was.

Yeah. Like she needed one more thing to make this Christmas really suck. This was definitely the cherry on top of the fruitcake—for Jackson Lange to come into her store with his undoubtedly lovely wife to have a cappuccino or maybe browse through one of the nonfiction sections. Travel, maybe, or her small but adequate architectural design shelf.

And in the middle of her book club meeting, for crying out loud.

She could just ignore him. If she ducked behind a bookcase, with luck, he wouldn’t see her. He probably had no idea she owned Dog-Eared Books & Brew—why would he possibly know that? She could send one of the clerks over to escort him to the farthest corner away from the book club—or better yet, have Josh come with all his delightful snowboarder muscles and throw him out in the cold. She’d never heard of a bookstore having a bouncer, but there was always a first time.

Too late. He turned just at that moment and his blue-eyed gaze met hers. She saw definite recognition there. Oddly, he didn’t seem at all surprised to see her, almost as if he had come looking for her. That was impossible, of course. In nearly twenty years, he hadn’t made the smallest effort to find her. Not that it would have taken much work on his part. She hadn’t gone anywhere.

The years had been unfairly kind to him, she saw, had taken a teenage boy who had been brooding and angry and undeniably gorgeous to all the other teenage girls and turned him into a sexy, potent male, with intense blue eyes, a firm mouth and the resolute jawline that just might be the only thing he shared with his father.

“Are you all right?”

She managed to look away and saw her mother studying her with concern. “What?”

“You’ve gone pale, darling. And I asked you three times if you made these delicious truffles. What’s the matter?”

“I…” She couldn’t come up with a way to answer, since every single brain cell had apparently decided to stage a temporary work stoppage.

He was coming this way. She watched him take one step toward her and then another. Her palms went damp and she could feel the blood rush out of her head, which didn’t help the small matter of her sudden inability to form a coherent thought.

In a panic, she turned away, as if maybe she could block out the last two minutes and pretend it was just a slice out of her nightmares.

“Why, yes. Yes, I did make the truffles. It wasn’t hard at all. The secret is to add the cream slowly and use high-quality flavoring… .”

She launched into a whole explanation about the homemade chocolate balls, but eventually the words petered out when she realized nobody was paying attention to her. They were staring at a point above her shoulder.

“You’re here!” Mary Ella suddenly exclaimed. “Oh, darling. I’m so happy you made it. I thought you weren’t coming until the weekend!”

Her mother brushed past her, arms outstretched. Okay, this had to be a nightmare. As far as she knew, Mary Ella would have no reason to even know about Jack, as they had kept their relationship a secret that summer, in the tumult that was their respective home lives.

Wondering what alternative universe she had suddenly been thrust into, she finally forced herself to turn around. Mary Ella wasn’t hugging Jack, she was hugging someone behind him. When her mother shifted, Maura finally caught a glimpse of who it was, and her insides turned to thin, crackly ice.

Her nineteen-year-old daughter, Sage, stood just a half step behind Jackson Lange, hidden from view by the breadth of his shoulders.

Her numb brain finally began kicking out messages at a rapid-fire pace, and none of them were good.