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“I’m your first lover, Sarah.”
She tossed back her head, pride stiffening her resolve. “Do you really think you’ve been such a…a monument in my life, after just those few weeks we were involved? I could have had dozens of lovers since you. Ones that I tossed aside as easily as you did me.”
“There was no tossing and it sure as hell wasn’t easy.” Max’s brooding gaze met hers. “And I don’t think there have been dozens.” His voice was soft. Impossibly gentle.
“Go to hell.”
“Been there.” He looked pained and his fingers, when they touched her cheek, weren’t steady.
Or maybe that was just because she was shaking. From head to toe.
“You were the one I loved, Sarah.” His fingers smoothed down her cheek. Traced her jaw. “That was never a lie.”
He closed the last few inches between them, covering her mouth with his.
Dear Reader,
I think there is nothing better than a happy ending. The guy gets the girl, and all is right with the world. The bad guy gets caught, and justice is served. The personal struggle is overcome, and the character we’ve come to care about moves on, somehow stronger in the process.
The hard part, as a writer, is that it’s not very interesting if we just magically “arrive” at the happy ending. We can’t get to that point without having to experience all the problems beforehand, can’t fully appreciate the high moments without also having a brush with the low times.
Sarah Clay has yet to learn that those low moments are all a part of her life’s path, and to accept the fact that for her, the highest moments will only come when she opens her heart again. But, as we all know, opening one’s heart to another person can truly be one of the most difficult things to do in life. This is Sarah’s struggle with Max, and it’s also Max’s struggle with his past.
Thank you for joining Sarah and Max and me as we all, once again, visit Weaver to share in a journey to another happy ending.
Sincerely,
Allison Leigh
Allison Leigh
www.millsandboon.co.uk
For my parents, who’ve celebrated more
than forty-nine years together.
You are my inspiration.
Prologue
She hadn’t thought things could get any worse.
Twenty-one years old.
Pregnant with no husband in the wings. No fiancé, of course. And a boyfriend? Oh, please.
Sarah wanted to laugh over that one, and might have if she hadn’t felt so horrible.
Laughing might have drawn attention to herself, anyway. And attention was the last thing she wanted, considering she was practically hiding in the thick of an oleander bush that was as tall as she was.
She brushed at the pink blossoms tickling her arm, shifting her position. The bride was handing off her spray of deep red roses to her attendant and Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice spoke behind her.
“I love weddings.”
She looked at the small, wizened woman who’d toddled up beside her. If she’d noticed anything odd about Sarah’s position, virtually hiding in a bush, she said nothing. “Don’t you, dear?”
Feeling stupid—nothing new there, either—Sarah managed a shrug and a noncommittal smile.
Again, the woman didn’t seem to take any notice. She just peered around the bushes of the Malibu garden in which they stood, toward the bridal couple standing about fifty yards away. “They have weddings at this spot pretty regularly. I can certainly understand why, though, with the Pacific Ocean in the background and the garden here. It’s a lovely setting.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Of course, in my day—” the woman’s voice dropped, confidentially “—choosing to get married out of doors usually meant the bride was going to be having an early baby. Premature, but not really premature.” Her face wrinkled even more as she continued her study. “Times are different nowadays. And the bride obviously has already had her baby. Looks like a tiny mite, being held like that against the daddy’s shoulder. Wonder if it is a boy or a girl?”
Sarah couldn’t manage even a shrug. “Boy.” The word felt raw against her throat. The reality of that boy baby had felt raw in her soul since she’d learned of his existence a few weeks earlier. “And not so tiny. He’s nearly nine months old already.”
“Really? You know the couple? Why aren’t you sitting with the rest of the guests?”
Sarah wished she’d kept quiet. “I didn’t expect to make the wedding,” she murmured.
“Are you a friend of the bride or the groom?”
“Groom,” she said. “Acquaintances.” Which was a lie.
One didn’t make love with acquaintances.
They didn’t fool themselves into thinking they loved an acquaintance.
The explanation was good enough for the woman, though. “Ahh. Well, that baby will probably grow up as handsome as his daddy there,” the woman mused. “My husband was tall and dark like that. Italian.” Her wrinkles deepened again with a surprisingly impish smile. “Passionate.”
Sarah forced her lips to curve.
“Bride’s gown is pretty, too. Nothing I’d want to see my granddaughter wearing, mind you, but still pretty.”
The gown was pretty. Sophisticated. Sleeveless and reaching just past her knees. It wasn’t even white, but a sort of pinkish oyster-like hue that seemed to reflect the glow of the sun as it hung on the horizon over the ocean.
“What do you do, dear?”
Sarah swallowed. “I’m an intern at the L.A. office of Frowley-Hughes.”
The woman looked blank.
“It’s a brokerage firm.”
“Ahh. Financial stuff.” Seemingly satisfied, the woman turned her focus back to the wedding party. “I taught school. Until my own children started coming along.”
Sarah managed not to press her hand against her abdomen. She knew it was still flat beneath her T-shirt and jeans, but she was painfully aware that state would end soon enough. “How many did you have?”
“Four. And now I have eleven grandchildren. They’re scattered all over, though. Don’t come out to see their old grandma here in California too often.”
Sarah felt a swift longing. “My family is mostly in Wyoming.”
“Long way from here.”
“Yes.” Her gaze settled on the groom once more. “A long way.”
“Maybe someday you’ll have a beachside wedding. You’d be a beautiful bride. Such wonderful long hair you have.”
Sarah’s throat tightened. The memory of his hands tangling in her hair taunted her. “Thank you. But I don’t have any plans to get married.”
The woman smiled and waved her hand. “Forgive me, but you’re just young. You wait. You’ll want a husband and children at some point. I can tell. Oh, look.” She nodded toward the wedding party again. “They’re doing the rings now. Such a beautiful couple,” she said again, her voice a satisfied sigh.
The bride did look beautiful.
The groom did look handsome.
And the baby—well, the baby was a baby. Sarah couldn’t blame a baby.
She couldn’t blame that lovely bride, either.
But the groom?
Oh, she could certainly blame him, all right.
But the person she blamed the most?
That would be herself.
She turned away, pushing the oleander branches out of her way, being careful not to let them snap back and hit the other woman.
“Don’t you want to watch the rest of the wedding?”
Sarah shook her head gently. “No. I’ve seen enough.”
More than enough.
Only problem was, she’d seen it all too late. Much too late.
And though Sarah had thought things couldn’t get any worse, it was only a matter of months before she learned that they could.
Chapter One
The first time Sarah saw the name on her class roster, she felt shock unlike anything she’d felt in years roll through her.
Elijah Scalise.
Not that daunting of a name, really. It surely suited the dark-haired eight-year-old boy who’d soon be joining her third-grade class. She had made a point of not looking at the boy’s picture, even though she was perfectly aware that there was one. It was framed in a plain gold frame that sat on his grandmother’s desk in the classroom right next to Sarah’s classroom. Genna Scalise often talked about her grandson, Eli.
Sarah hadn’t expected to ever be the boy’s teacher, though.
She set aside the roster on her desk and went to the window that overlooked the playground. Frost still clung to the exterior corners and she could feel the coolness of the pane radiating from it. Outside, the bell hadn’t yet rung and children were clambering over the swings and jungle gym. Winter scarves flew in the breeze and boots crunched over the crispy skiff of snow scattered across the playground.
Despite the cold, they were enjoying the last few minutes of freedom before they had to settle down into their seats. Until they broke for recess in a few hours, that was.
Nothing like feeling carefree.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt as carefree as they looked.
Which wasn’t strictly true. She could probably pick the exact date on the calendar when she’d stopped feeling carefree.
Her gaze slid to the class roster.
“So, why didn’t you tell me the news?” The chipper female voice drew her attention to the doorway of her classroom.
“Hey, Dee. What news?”
“About the new deputy.” Deirdre Crowder was the sixth-grade teacher and at five-foot-nothing, she was about as big as a minute. Her blue eyes were mischievous. “He works for your uncle, girl, but you could have shared the wealth. A new, single man suddenly in town and all that. If it were the week before Christmas rather than Thanksgiving, I’d consider him to be our very own Christmas present!”
Sarah now had years of practice under her belt at keeping her true thoughts to herself. “Go for it,” she said with a smile. “He’s my new student’s father. And you know I don’t get involved with my kids’ fathers.”
Dee’s eyebrows lifted as she sauntered into the room. Her shoulder-length blond hair seemed to crackle with the energy that kept it curled in loose ringlets. “I may have only come to Weaver a year ago, but as far as I can tell, you don’t get involved with anyone. What’s with you?” She joined Sarah at the window. “If I had your looks I’d be dating every available man in town.”
“There is nothing wrong with your looks,” Sarah countered. She’d heard Dee’s opinion plenty in the months since school had begun in August. “Deputy Tommy Potter thinks they’re about perfect.”
“Oh, Tommy.” Dee shook her head, dismissively. “Unless he was going to arrest me for something, or wants to spread a little gossip, that boy moves about as slow as molasses in winter. He has no gumption.” She pushed up the sleeves of her bright red sweater and pointed out the window. “Since it might as well be winter, with all that snow on the ground, you can just imagine the snail’s pace I’m talking about.”
Sarah’s lips curved. “You’re the one who moved to a small town, Dee. Could have stayed in Cheyenne where the pickings were more varied.”
Dee pressed her nose against the cold windowpane, looking not much older than the children playing outside. “Have you met him? The new deputy, I mean? I heard he comes from Weaver.”
If Sarah hadn’t been prepared to see that name on her class roster, she definitely wasn’t prepared to discuss her new student’s father. “He left Weaver a long time ago.”
“Yeah, but you did know him, right? Most everyone in Weaver seems to know everyone else.”
“Maybe by sight,” Sarah allowed. Though the Clay family had its history with the Scalise family—history that had nothing to do with her experience with him. “Talk to Genna,” she suggested. “She’s his mother. She could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Max.”
Her throat tightened.
Max.
At the mention of Genna, the most senior teacher at Weaver Elementary, Dee turned her back on the window. “How’s she healing up, anyway?”
“Fine, last I heard.” Sarah felt a little guilty that she didn’t know more. That she hadn’t made a more concerted effort to visit Genna herself. After all, they were coworkers and had been since Sarah began teaching at Weaver Elementary nearly six years ago. Genna was a friend of her mother’s. Her aunts!
“What was she doing skiing at her age, anyway? It’s no wonder she broke some bones.”
“Anyone can have a skiing accident, even someone who’s barely twenty-five,” Sarah said pointedly.
Dee grinned impishly and rolled her eyes. But Sarah was spared her comment when the bell rang, sharp and shrill.
“To the salt mine,” Dee said, heading for the classroom door. “Want to head over to Classic Charms one night this week? See if Tara’s got anything new in?”
Sarah nodded. The children outside had scattered like leaves on the wind when the bell rang, and now she could hear footsteps ringing on the tile floor in the corridor. “Sure.”
Classic Charms was the newest shop to open its doors in Weaver, though it had eschewed the new shopping center area for a location right on Main Street.
Dee swiveled, deftly avoiding a collision with the first trio of kids bolting into Sarah’s classroom.
Sarah began passing out the workbooks she’d corrected over the weekend as the tables slowly filled. She had seventeen kids in her class this year.
Correction.
Eighteen, now.
They sat two to a table, usually, though she had enough room for them to all sit separately if need be. Some years were like that. This year though, had so far been peaceful.
“Thanks, Miz Clay.” Bright-eyed Chrissy Tanner beamed up at her as she accepted her workbook. “Are we having science today?”
“It’s Monday, isn’t it?” she asked lightly and continued passing through the room. Her attention, though, kept straying to the door.
Sooner or later, Eli would be there. Her gaze flicked to the wide-faced clock affixed high on the wall and noted he’d have three minutes before he’d be tardy. Not that she’d enforce that rule with a brand-new student on his very first day. She wasn’t that much a stickler for the rules.
The thought struck her as incredibly ironic.
The last workbook delivered, she walked back through the tables, heading to the front of the classroom where she picked up her chalk and finished writing out the day’s lesson plan on the blackboard. The sound of chatter and laughter and scraping chairs filled the room.
It was familiar and normal.
Ordinarily those sounds, this classroom, felt safe to Sarah.
But not today.
Would he bring Eli?
Between her fingers, the chalk snapped into pieces. Squelching an impatient sound, she picked them off the floor, and rapidly finished writing as the final bell rang.
No Eli Scalise.
As she’d done every morning at the beginning of the school day, she moved across the room and closed the door. Regardless of her feelings about her new student and his presence—or lack of it—she had a class to teach.
She turned back to her students, raising her voice enough to get everyone’s attention. “How many of you saw the double-rainbow yesterday?”
A bunch of hands shot up into the air.
And the lessons of the day began.
“Why do I gotta go to school?”
“Because.”
Eli sighed mightily. “But you said we were going to go back to California.”
“Not for months yet.”
“So?”
Max Scalise pulled open the passenger door of the SUV he’d been assigned by Sawyer Clay, the sheriff. They were already late, thanks to a conference call he’d had to take about a recent case of his. “In.”
His son, Eli, made a face, but tossed his brown-bag lunch and dark blue backpack inside before climbing up on the seat.
“Fasten the belt.”
The request earned Max another pulled face. He shut the door and headed around to the driver’s side. As he went, his eyes automatically scanned the area around them.
But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just bare-branched trees. Winter-dry lawns not quite covered by snow. A few houses lined neatly along the street, all of them closed up tight against the chill. Only one of them had smoke coming from the chimney—his mother’s house that they’d just left.
Genna was as comfortably situated as she could get in the family room, where Max had lit the fire in the fireplace as she’d requested. She had her heavy cast propped on pillows, a stack of magazines, a pot of her favorite tea, the television remote and a cordless phone.
Outside the houses, though, there were no particular signs of life.
His breath puffed out around his head in white rings and cold air snuck beneath the collar of his dark brown departmental jacket.
God, he hated the cold.
He climbed in the truck.
“I could’a stayed in California with Grandma Helene,” Eli continued the minute Max’s rear hit the seat.
“What’s wrong with your grandmother here?” He made a U-turn and headed down the short hop to Main Street.
Eli hunched his shoulders. The coat he wore was a little too big for him. Max had picked up the cold-weather gear on their way to the airport. There hadn’t been a lot of time for fine fitting. “Nuthin’,” his son muttered. “But she always visited us out there. How come we gotta come here this time?”
“You happen to notice that big old cast on Grandma’s leg?” Max drove past the station house and turned once again, onto the street leading to the school. It took all of three minutes, maybe, given the significant distance.
The closer they got to the brick building that hadn’t changed a helluva lot since the days when Max had run the halls, the more morose Eli became. If his boy slouched any more in his seat, he’d hang himself on the seatbelt.
“Look at the bright side,” Max said. “You won’t be bored.”
Eli’s eyes—as dark blue as Jennifer’s had been—rolled. “Rather be bored back home than bored in there.” He jerked his chin toward the building.
Max pulled into the parking lot and stopped near the main entrance. “Don’t roll your eyes.” Donna, the school secretary, had told him when he’d faxed in the registration forms from California that the office was just inside the main front doors. A different location than he’d remembered from his days there.
“Do they have an after-school program?”
Eli was used to one in California—two supervised hours of sports and games that had never managed to produce completed homework the way it should have.
“No.”
Eli heaved a sigh. “I hate it here.”
Unfortunately, Max couldn’t say much to change his son’s opinion. Not when he remembered all too clearly feeling exactly the same way. He reached over and caught Eli behind the head, tousling his hair. “It’s only for a few months. Until Grandma’s all healed up and can go back to teaching school.” By then, hopefully, Max would have finished the job he’d been assigned. But Max didn’t tell Eli that. He wasn’t about to tell anyone in Weaver what his true purpose was there.
Someone was funneling meth through Weaver. It was coming out of Arizona by way of Colorado and heading north after Weaver, even—occasionally—on a locally contracted semi. But only occasionally.
The transports seemed to be wide and varied and Max’s job was to determine who was organizing the local hub.
It was a job he’d managed to avoid being assigned until his mom broke her leg two weeks earlier. She’d needed help. His boss had been putting on the pressure. So here they were. Father and son and neither one too thrilled about it.
“I’m already late, you know.” Eli dragged his backpack over his shoulder. It rustled against his slick coat. “On my first day. The teacher’ll probably be mad for the rest of the year.”
“I seriously doubt it,” Max drawled. His son had inherited his mother’s dramatic streak, as well.
“Is it a lady? Or a man?”
“Who?”
Eli started to roll his eyes again, but stopped at a look from Max. “The teach. I liked Mr. Frederick. He was cool.”
“I have no idea.”
Eli made a sound. “You didn’t ask?”
Max felt a pang of guilt. He’d been more preoccupied with this unexpected—and unappealing—assignment than with the identity of Eli’s temporary teacher. Max had only had a few days to take care of the school paperwork, as it was. But Eli was right about one thing. They were late. Both of them.
The sheriff had expected Max at the station nearly thirty minutes ago.
Great way to start off, Scalise.
He caught Eli’s jacket and nudged his son around the corner into the office when he spotted the sign.
A young woman he didn’t recognize smiled at them the moment they came into her view. “The new student,” she said cheerfully. “Welcome.”
Max heard the gritty sigh that came out of Eli and hoped he was the only one who heard it. He didn’t need Eli having trouble at this school. He needed everything to go as smoothly as possible. With no distractions, Max could finish his investigation as quickly as possible, and they could get the hell back out of Dodge. As soon as his mother could get back in the classroom.
Weaver held no great memories for him.
He was just as anxious to leave it again as Eli was. Telling his boy that, though, was not going to happen.
“Deputy Scalise—” the girl at the desk had risen “—I’m Donna. It’s nice to meet you in person. You, too, Eli. I’ll just let Principal Gage know you’re here.”
“He already knows.” A balding man approached from behind them, hand outstretched. “Max. Good to see you. Been a long time.”
“Joe.” He shook the principal’s hand. “Still can’t believe you’re head honcho here.” Joe Gage had been a hellion of the highest order back when they’d been kids. “Guess they don’t hold a little thing like blowing up the science room against a man.”
“Guess not. They made you a deputy, and you were in that room with me.”
“Whoa, Dad.” Eli sounded impressed.
The principal chuckled. “Come on. I’ll take you down to Eli’s class.” He looked at the boy as they stepped into the corridor once more. “Miss Clay. You’ll like her.”
Max’s boot heels scraped the hard floor. Clay. Another name from the past.
Well, why not?
The Clay family had plenty of members—seemed to him there’d been a teacher among them.
For a moment, he wished he’d been more inclined to listen to his mother’s talk of Weaver over the years. But she knew his reasons for not wanting to hear about the town well enough. Weaver was where Max’s father betrayed everyone they knew. It was where Tony Scalise had abandoned them. And on her visits to see him and Eli, she barely mentioned details about her life back home. Mostly because it generally led to an argument between them.
Max had wanted Genna to leave a long time ago. To join him in California.
For reasons that still escaped him, she’d been just as determined to stay.
The principal stopped in front of a closed classroom door. Through the big square window that comprised the top half of the door, he could see the rows of tables—situated in a sort of half circle—all occupied by kids about Eli’s size. At the head of the class, he caught a glimpse of the teacher. Slender as a reed, dressed in emerald green from head to toe. A little taller than average and definitely young, he noted. Her arms waved around her as she spun in a circle, almost as if she were acting out some play.
Max started to smile.
Then the teacher stopped, facing the door with its generous window head-on. Through the glass, her sky-blue eyes met his.