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A Holiday for Healing
As December dawns in the Superstition Mountains, Cooper Smith is resigned to spending another Christmas alone. With his dad gone, his mom ailing and his younger brother in trouble, Cooper’s only wish for the holidays is to keep his father’s outfitting store going. But when his former high school sweetheart, Elise Hubrecht, unexpectedly returns to her family’s ranch, Cooper puts one more item on his to-do list. If he can get Elise to face the tragedy that made her leave Apache Creek, he may get the chance of a lifetime: a second chance at lasting love.
“Back in town so soon?” Cooper asked.
“I got laid off, so I’m moving back home and taking that job at the high school,” Elise replied.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Sorry to hear I got laid off or sorry to hear I’m moving back home?”
“Laid off. It’s not easy making a change. Up until a year ago, I worked in Moab, Utah. I was just beginning to make a life for myself.”
“You came because your family needed you,” Elise pointed out.
“Didn’t make it any easier.”
“You’re right. But there is no other work. I spent the last month checking out the job market.”
“So, Apache Creek High School is your only option?”
The wind picked up, blowing her hair across her face. “It’s the option I’m accepting.” Cooper tried not to let it bother him that Apache Creek was a last resort. The Elise he knew had loved it here. It was wrong that Elise didn’t feel excited about moving back home.
Just as much as it had been wrong for her to walk away from him, from the life they’d planned.
PAMELA TRACY is a USA TODAY bestselling author who lives with her husband (the inspiration for most of her heroes) and son (the interference for most of her writing time). Since 1999, she has published more than twenty-five books and sold more than a million copies. She’s a past RITA® Award finalist and past winner of the American Christian Fiction Writers’ Book of the Year Award.
Second Chance
Christmas
Pamela Tracy
www.millsandboon.co.uk
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The heart of man plans his way,
but the Lord establishes his steps.
—Proverbs 16:9
To my niece Shannon Leutkenhaus,
a champion team roper, who is living the dream and has the saddles and buckles to prove it. Shannon, you rock!
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
About the Author
Title Page
Bible Verse
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Dear Reader
Extract
Copyright
Chapter One
Storm clouds rolled in the Arizona sky, a black-and-gray blanket that sank lower even as Cooper Smith watched. One drop hit his forehead. He whooped, then turned and headed inside his store, AJ’s Outfitters. His cell phone was out and in his hand before he made it to the counter. He had five regulars who went gold-panning with him on the Superstition after every rain. Plus, this trip, he had three other numbers to call: tourists who had come into his store to buy expedition gear and had shown an interest in going panning. That meant paying customers.
Something AJ’s sorely needed.
He’d gotten hold of all but two when an incoming call interrupted him.
It wasn’t someone wanting to go panning tomorrow. Instead a deep voice, one he recognized well, said, “I just saw your brother doing doughnuts in your truck in the parking lot of the Apache Creek fairgrounds.”
Cooper closed his eyes. Lately, it was one thing after another with his little brother and each and every incident landed at Cooper’s feet. “You sure it was him?”
It was a stupid question, and Cooper didn’t even bother to pray that Jacob Hubrecht was wrong. Still, there was nothing quite like having an elder of the church, and your ex-girlfriend’s father, phone you right after you switched the Closed sign to Open.
Cooper’s little brother, just turned eighteen and ten years younger but an inch taller, was skipping school again. Just six months to go and the kid would graduate. Maybe.
“Nothing wrong with my vision,” Jacob answered. “Even in the rain.”
There was nothing wrong with Cooper’s, either. He opened his eyes and looked around the store. Only three customers, one family really, and only the four-year-old appeared to be the potential sale. He held a fool’s gold necklace in hand. Cost: five dollars.
Business was down, and Cooper was still learning how to manage the storekeeping part of his responsibility instead of just the guide part. Going panning tomorrow meant Garrett had to work the store. Cooper would bring in three hundred dollars from the three tourists. That might just double their Saturday total.
Cooper didn’t know what more he could do except pray. Lately, he’d not said any prayers for himself until after amen. Sometimes, before falling into an exhausted sleep, he added an addendum, a simple plea: Help me, God.
Last time he’d prayed this much was a good ten months ago.
Mitch Smith, his father, had left a big hole to fill when he’d passed away in February, and the hole looked to be getting deeper as the first Christmas without him loomed less than five weeks away.
“I’m sure it was Garrett,” Jacob said. “And, it gets worse.”
Worse than skipping school and abusing a 1962 classic Ford F-100, four-by-four, V8, four-speed transmission in the rain? Cooper had had a customer offer him five thousand for it two weeks ago, and Cooper had turned him down. They didn’t need the money that badly.
Yet.
Cooper didn’t want to know how worse his brother was making it. Each passing day just proved to him that he couldn’t fill his father’s shoes.
Jacob interrupted Cooper’s meandering thoughts by sharing, “He had three other teens in the truck with him.”
“Great,” Cooper muttered. “One is probably David Cagnalia, right?”
“Pretty sure,” Jacob agreed. “Plus, two girls I didn’t recognize.”
Girls? Oh, please no.
“Thanks, Jacob. I appreciate the call. You wouldn’t by any chance have some advice on how I should deal with this, would you?”
Jacob Hubrecht had brought up three girls, pretty much on his own, and they’d all turned out perfect. Especially his middle daughter, Elise, who Cooper had been in love with from fourth grade until... Well, Cooper couldn’t rightly say that he’d fallen out of love with Elise; it was more as if they’d fallen apart, literally and figuratively.
“Do what you’re doing. Keep letting him know you’re there. Also, when he decides to talk, listen.”
“I’ve been doing that.” Cooper watched his three customers leave the store without the five-dollar fool’s gold necklace. They ran to their car, looking at the sky as if amazed at the Arizona rain. Some storekeeper he was, on the phone the whole time.
“Go fetch Garrett now,” Jacob said, grabbing Cooper’s attention again. “Get him to school. He’ll only be two hours late. Wait to talk to him until tonight when you’re not so mad. Better yet, let your mother do the talking.”
“I don’t know,” Cooper said slowly, even as he was thinking how much easier it would be on him if he could let his mother deal with Garrett. “She’s not feeling well.”
She hadn’t felt well since the funeral nine months ago.
“I’ll ask Elise if she has any ideas,” Jacob said.
Cooper opened his mouth to say “Not necessary”, but Jacob wasn’t finished. Quickly and proudly, he announced, “She’s interviewing today at the high school for some kind of social worker position.”
Elise was coming home.
After a decade.
Home.
But not to him.
“No, thanks,” Cooper said. “I’ll handle it on my own.”
* * *
Elise Hubrecht had never been a fan of the term last resort. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a fan of the word unemployed, either. Just the thought of it gave her an upset stomach. She had a school loan, more than one credit card and daily bills. If she moved back to Apache Creek, she could live at the ranch for a while, maybe pay off the credit cards and buy a new truck—new to her, anyways. The way things were going, her old truck wouldn’t last much longer. It hadn’t started this morning, so she was in one of her dad’s Lost Dutchman Ranch trucks, which had brought back memories of high school. All her best memories were here, in Apache Creek, Arizona.
And her worst memories, too. Those were why she had left, ten years ago. And why she hadn’t planned to return.
Her father, who claimed he didn’t have an emotional side, had all but killed the fatted calf when she’d told him she was coming home for a job interview. She had an eleven o’clock appointment with Principal Beecher and a few school board members who made up the hiring committee. Checking her watch, she figured she’d be a good twenty minutes early. For no other reason than curiosity, she turned left when she should have turned right, and headed down the rural road to AJ’s Outfitters.
She passed the weathered white brick building with its dark blue roof. Odd, there was a Closed sign on the door. It was a Friday morning, late November. Perfect weather and the busy season for the Arizona outdoorsmen.
None of her business. She pressed on the gas and drove toward the street that eventually lead to the high school. She cracked the window and took a deep breath of the eighty-degree Arizona winter.
Just two blocks from the school, she caught sight of a red truck moving fast off-road, to her left, and bumping crazily on terrain never meant for tires. Then it abruptly turned and traveled down a fairly steep embankment.
Elise blinked. She recognized the vehicle.
The driver didn’t even hesitate when he swerved in front of her truck, skidding slightly on the pavement, and finally straightening. Then the driver hit the gas and turned down the road that led right toward her family’s ranch.
The Cooper she remembered drove slower than her great-uncle and never broke the law. Couldn’t be him. Besides, the momentary glance she’d managed into the front seat of the red truck highlighted what looked like four teenagers, all laughing, maybe screaming, but definitely younger than Cooper and his friends.
More the age of Cooper’s much younger brother. She’d seen Garrett briefly at his father’s funeral back in February. Elise made a snap decision, turned to follow, all the while knowing she was getting involved and that would only make her even more desirable to the school board that so desperately wanted to hire her.
If only Mike Hamm, her favorite minister and now apparently a member of the school board, hadn’t seen her résumé posted on a job-hunting website and called her with an offer. It was the only job available for five hundred miles. She knew this. But coming home felt like such a step back—from everything she’d accomplished in her current home of Two Mules, Arizona, and everything she’d hoped to achieve there in the next few years.
She’d just been starting to make headway with some of the local teens. Her work there was supposed to make up for her failures in the past. She couldn’t walk away now. Especially not to come back here—the site of those painful failures.
What she really couldn’t seem to do was stop following Cooper’s truck even as it veered from one side of the road to the other. It was an accident waiting to happen and she the only witness. Where was everyone?
The truck in front of her turned again, Elise on its tail. She’d be late for her interview, that was for sure, but clearly the teens in front of her needed a reality check.
The truck careened across the dirt road and into the remnants of Karl Wilcox’s cotton field. When she was a teen, Mr. Wilcox owned a shotgun, which he filled with buckshot and was quite willing to use on anyone who messed with his land. She doubted that had changed in the years since then.
Elise honked her horn, trying to get the teens to pull over. It took a good five minutes, time Elise spent with her cell phone aimed out the window taking a video. She knew a picture was worth a thousand words, especially when parents wanted denial more than truth. Finally Elise cornered them when a dirt road they’d turned on dead-ended. She stepped out of her vehicle and waited, noting that a rainbow had already formed above the Superstition Mountains that towered over the landscape.
A tall brown-haired boy stepped from the vehicle. Her breath caught. Cooper ten years ago.
“Garrett,” she said. “I just took a video of your little adventure with my cell phone.”
He blinked as recognition set in. “Does Cooper know you’re here?”
“No, but we can talk about that later. I’m on my way to speak with Principal Beecher about a job opening. That makes it very convenient to just follow you four to school. That’s where you were heading, right?”
She worded it carefully, hoping they’d realize that a Yes answer might mean fewer consequences. From where Elise stood, she could see relief on the girls’ faces. The boy standing by the red truck never changed his angry expression. As for Garrett, he merely nodded his head, lips pressed together, and then marched back to his truck.
“Get in,” he told his friends. After a deliberate few seconds making a point, they crawled in the front seat.
Later, slightly late and a little damp from the rain, Elise sat at a conference table and studied the three men sitting across from her. The principal of Apache Creek High, David Beecher, still looked annoyed. Not at her, but at the four seniors who’d showed up right behind her late to school and with an escort. They were now with the vice principal.
She hoped that on their own the teens owned up to their responsibility, not just about ditching school but about where they’d been and what they’d done. Wilcox’s cotton field was pretty much destroyed.
She hadn’t shared with the principal the lack of respect shown by the two boys when she’d mentioned showing her video to their families. Not without knowing more about the situation.
Of the four teens, she only knew the background of one, and she remembered him at age seven or eight, building a tree house in the backyard, a place where he and his friends could play their handheld electronics without being disturbed. He’d had a slight crush on her, and oh how big brother Cooper liked to tease. She wanted to believe that sweet kid was still there inside that surly teen.
“Tell me again what you saw,” Mike Hamm asked.
“I recognized the trunk and knew Cooper wasn’t driving. It was easy enough to figure out they weren’t on their way to school,” Elise said. “I followed, managed to get them to pull over, and suggested a tardy would be better than an absence.”
“Good thinking. I hope there’s someone like you around when my children get to high school.” Mike had two children, both under the age of three. He had a while before he needed to worry. She, however, knew what he was doing. He was letting her know how very much she was needed here.
She knew she was right when he leaned forward, hands folded in front of him, a sincere expression on his face. “Situations like these are why we petitioned for funding to hire a guidance counselor.”
“We have a school counselor,” Beecher said, “but quite honestly, she knows more about getting kids on track for college than on getting them back on track for life.”
“Miss Sadie’s still here?” Elise asked.
“For three more years.” The principal smiled as if he’d heard the threat before. Miss Sadie had been advising students of future opportunities since Elise’s mom had been a student.
“Once the funding came through for a school counselor, Mike found your résumé online and we read about what you’ve been doing up in Two Mules.” This came from an imposing man who sat on Mike’s left, and the only one Elise didn’t know from her years growing up in the area. Mike had introduced him as the new chief of police, Ethan Fisher.
The principal nodded before adding, “Three new teen programs in under a year.”
That I’m still developing, she thought but didn’t say.
“Your résumé is impressive,” Mike said. “But we didn’t think we were looking for a social worker. Then we started looking at the successes happening where schools employ one.”
“Of course, those schools are a lot bigger and have more tax dollars and such. We would need you to wear a couple of hats,” Principal Beecher said. “You’d not only be a social worker dealing with crisis intervention within the school walls but also working outside the school with families and the communities.”
In Two Mules she’d had to make time for academic emphasis. Apache Creek was dictating the emphasis. On the table before her was her dream job. But why did it have to happen now, when her work in Two Mules—the work that was supposed to make up for her past—was still unfinished?
Principal Beecher opened a manila folder and withdrew some papers. “We’ve changed the job description a bit since Mike spoke to you. And we were able to raise the pay so it matches what you make now.”
Almost as if they were bidden, her fingers slid across the table and took the papers. She still wanted to say no—but her justifications were melting away. Yes, she’d be two hours away from Two Mules, but she could live at the Lost Dutchman and save on rent. She’d easily be able to afford gas back and forth to visit often. Once a week, she could manage that. She’d find the time. That had been her mantra since Cindy died. To always make time for someone who needed her.
“Jasmine Taylor ran away just over a month ago,” Principal Beecher said. “Three months into the school semester. It’s all the seniors can talk about. I hear from parents almost daily. They’re all worried that their sons and daughters might run away, too.”
Elise remembered Jasmine as a seven-year-old brown-haired girl who hated it when her big sister babysat. Elise had been over there a time or two, riding horses in their back field and playing. Jasmine would be sixteen or seventeen now. Close to Garrett’s age. She wasn’t one of the teens Elise had so diligently mentored in Two Mules...but she was still a girl in trouble. A girl Elise might be able to help. “Any word from her at all?” Elise asked. She tried to settle back in her black, hard plastic chair and looked at the photos and certificates on the wall. A college diploma or two. Photos of winning football teams, debate teams and cheerleaders. She recognized Cooper, bent on one knee, in the front row of the football photo just over the principal’s head.
Mike answered, “No, no sightings, no cryptic messages to her parents.”
Mike Hamm touched the screen of his iPad. “Also, David Cagnalia shoplifted at a convenience store near the interstate a month ago. They caught him on the outskirts of town.”
“Sounds like a call for help.” Elise rubbed her temples. She’d been told that David was the other young man in Garrett’s truck.
Above the principal’s head and slightly to the left was a photo of her and Cooper taken after they’d become the first Apache Creek students to win the Arizona High School Rodeo Team Roping Competition. “You still sending students to the rodeo competition?” Elise asked.
“Not since your little sister graduated and your dad no longer ran the program. There’s no one with time and rodeo experience to spearhead an after-school program now.”
Elise’s father had started the program when Elise’s older sister, Eva, was a freshman, hoping to get her involved and overcome her fear of horses. By the time he realized his ploy wasn’t going to work, he had twenty students counting on him. When Elise started her freshman year, Apache Creek High School was making a name for itself in the competition arena. When baby sister Emily entered, parents were filling out vouchers and driving their kids fifty miles to attend a school out of district just so they could be under her father’s tutelage. The saddle came easy to Emily but it wasn’t her calling. Still, she boasted a few buckles herself.
“The last three years the number of incidents involving teenagers in Apache Creek has increased two hundred percent,” Ethan Fisher said.
“It’s an epidemic, kids running away and skipping school, girls getting pregnant before they graduate, and boys,” the principal choked up, “boys making decisions that will go on their record. David is a senior, and he’s nineteen.”
It was the catch in the principal’s voice, the look in the police chief’s eyes and Mike Hamm’s hands folded in prayer that spurred Elise to say words she couldn’t possibly mean.
No way could she return to Apache Creek to live.
No way.
“I’ll know by next week if my job in Two Mules has been eliminated. Are you willing to wait that long?”
“That would be fine,” Principal Beecher said. “We can get busy with the paperwork.” The men talked a bit longer, about pay and hours and benefits.
Elise stared at the photo of her and Cooper on the wall, remembering a past that warred with the present and colored the future.
Chapter Two
After she’d shaken hands with the chief of police and principal for the second time, she followed Mike out the door and into the hallway. It was almost Thanksgiving, but backpacks still looked new, maybe because no one took books home; jeans still looked purposely old, maybe because kids bought them that way; and no one looked exhausted. The hallway pulsed with teenage angst and smelled like a combination cafeteria and gym with a hint of perfume.
“You need to come home.” Mike led the way down the stairs to the exit and to the parking lot. Apache Creek High School hadn’t changed much since Elise had graduated, except maybe to be a bit smaller.
When they got to her truck, Elise closed her eyes as she leaned against the hood. “Mike, I appreciate you reaching out to me, but—”
“Think of it as a plea for help. You can make a difference, more than anyone I know.”
“I don’t think I’m strong enough,” Elise whispered.
“You’re stronger than any girl I know,” Mike said. “I know you don’t like talking about Cindy, but from the time you two were in kindergarten, you were a person that she always wanted to be with. You made a difference with her, just like you’ll do with the kids here at the high school. Believe me, I know how her death hurt you. But you couldn’t have prevented it. Don’t let it keep you from coming home. Apache Creek needs you.”
She’d successfully blocked the request to move back home a hundred times the last ten years. She had great reasons, too. The fact that maybe she could have prevented Cindy’s death being the main roadblock. She’d always thought she’d come back someday—a far off someday when she wasn’t weighed down by guilt; when she’d helped enough teens to feel like she’d made amends for not being there for her friend. That “someday” hadn’t come yet.