Dear Reader,

Somebody asked me recently why so many of my characters have suffered something horrible. Wow. Gut check! I looked through my previous books and realised I do write a great deal about people who have been through rough times. The loss of a spouse, infertility, a terrible accident, an injured child. Hmm. Definitely a pattern there!

As I dug a little deeper, it wasn’t so surprising. I find it inspiring to write about people who have faced difficult things and yet have managed to overcome, to move forward with their lives and find joy once more. I am heartened by the many examples in my own life of friends and family who manage to face hard times with grace and dignity and come through to the other side with a beautiful strength.

That perfectly describes Maura McKnight-Parker. She has suffered unimaginable loss, the death of her teenage daughter. While she is tempted to hide away in her pain, she still has a family and a business to contend with and so she forces herself to take one difficult step after another. When Jackson Lange, her childhood sweetheart, bursts back into her life, the ice around her heart begins to crack like Sweet Laurel Falls spilling back to life in springtime.

I loved writing Maura and Jack’s story. While I shed more than a few tears for a mother’s pain, I also smiled more than I ever have while writing a book. It’s a story filled with sweetness and laughter and the healing peace that only love can offer.

All my best,

RaeAnne

Sweet Laurel Falls
RaeAnne Thayne

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To the members of the Utah chapter

of Romance Writers of America. You inspire me

with your dedication, talent and sheer grit and

I will forever be grateful for your friendship.

CHAPTER ONE

FORGET CHRISTMAS VACATION. This year, Maura McKnight-Parker wanted a vacation from Christmas. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could just crawl into a warm cave somewhere and sleep through the holidays?

With a sigh, Maura took a final look around at the cozy nook where she had arranged several of the plump sofas and chairs normally scattered throughout her bookstore-slash-coffeehouse. Everything appeared ready for the Books and Bites book club Christmas party and gift exchange tonight.

Nibbles? Check. M&M’s, spiced nuts and popcorn mix waited in holiday-printed bowls, and she had even dragged out her Christmas china and coffee mugs for said nibbles.

Decorations? Check. Not much to do there, since the halls of Dog-Eared Books & Brew had already been decked the week before Thanksgiving with artificial Christmas trees adorned in elegant blues and whites and silver. Snowflakes and gleaming ornaments in the same color scheme dangled from the ceiling, lightly dancing in the currents of air whenever anybody opened the front door.

Gifts? Yes. She had set up a little tabletop tree with handmade blown-glass ornaments for each of the book club members that she had commissioned from an artist with a gallery in town.

In addition to that pretty bit of swag, she had spent the past few days scouring shelves and boxes in her office and had filled gift bags for all the book club members, brimming with coffee and tea samples and some of the promotional bookmarks, notepads and other tchotchkes authors and their publicists were always sending to the store.

Despite a deep-seated wish that she could just hole up in her house for Christmas like a fox in a cozy den, she had worked tirelessly for days to make this party a success. If she were a scam artist, she would have called this baiting her trap. She had to convince her dearest friends and family members that she was indeed trying to move forward with her life after the hell of the past year. To accomplish that, she needed to put on a convincing show for them.

Maybe then, everybody would back off and give her a little space to find her own way.

“What do you think?” she asked April Herrera, who was taking a load of Books & Brew coffee mugs out of the small dishwasher behind the counter.

The assistant manager for the coffeehouse side of her business gazed at the setup with an enchanted look in her eyes that seemed at odds with her henna-colored hair, pencil-thin eyebrows and various diamond studs. The silk long-underwear shirt she wore underneath her barista shirt and apron hid the various tattoos Maura knew adorned her arms.

Judging only by appearances, April ought to be wild and cynical. Instead, she was just about the sweetest person Maura knew. More important, she was smart and hardworking and intuitive about her customers.

“It looks super in here. Just perfect. You guys are going to have such a great time.”

Maura tended to have a soft spot for rebellious girls, probably because she’d been one in another lifetime. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

“I really wish I could. Your book club meetings are always a hoot. Your mom cracks me up every time she comes in, and it’s hilarious to watch Ruth and Claire together. Do they ever agree on a book?”

“Rarely,” she answered. Or anything else, for that matter. Ruth Tatum worked in the bookstore, and she and her daughter had what could best be described as a complicated relationship. “You should really stay. You know everyone would love to have you again. Your comments on the last book were really insightful.”

“I can’t. Sorry. I’ve really got to take off as soon as Josh gets here. This is my very first time night-skiing with the team.”

“How’s that going?” she asked.

“Excellent.” The young woman’s face lit up. “I think they’re ready to put me on the schedule on a regular basis.”

April was training for the ski patrol and also taking classes in hope of eventually becoming a paramedic. Maura didn’t know how she juggled work and class and her two-year-old son, especially on her own. Maybe that was another reason she had taken April under her wing—she could certainly relate to being a young single mother just trying to survive.

“That’s terrific. If you need me to make any adjustments to your work schedule here, just say the word. I’m flexible. And I’m happy to babysit Trek whenever you need.”

“Thanks, Maur.”

“Maybe you can come to the book club meeting in January, if it fits around all the plates you have spinning.”

“Definitely!” April started to add something else, but a customer at the coffee counter rang the little bell, and she gave Maura a “later” kind of wave and headed back to take the order.

Personally, Maura couldn’t wait for January, to finally turn that page of her calendar to a new year. Maybe once the holiday craziness was over, she could escape some of the pressure of trying to act as if everything was fine when she was frozen solid inside.

She grabbed one more bowl of spicy nuts and set it on a side table, then moved a bowl of plump, airy peppermints to another spot. Having dear friends and family members surrounding her in Hope’s Crossing was both a blessing and a curse. She knew they loved her and worried for her. While she understood their concern and tried to be grateful, mostly she just found it exhausting and overwhelming.

Sometimes that ever-present concern made her feel as if she had been buried alive under an avalanche. It pressed down on her, heavy and suffocating, until all she wanted to do was scramble for an air pocket.

Even her little bungalow on Mountain Laurel Road wouldn’t remain a haven for long. In a few days, her daughter Sage would be coming home from college for the holidays, bringing yet another pair of watchful eyes.

She could do it. A few more weeks of pretending, and then she could have the cold nights of January to herself.

After one last look around, she suddenly remembered she’d meant to grab a couple extra copies of this month’s book club selection off the shelf, in case anybody forgot theirs and needed it for reference. She had several copies in the display near the front, she remembered, and hurried in that direction.

A light snow drifted past the front display window, the big, fluffy flakes reflecting the colorful Christmas lights on storefronts up and down Main Street. Hope’s Crossing was a true winter wonderland and local businesses worked hard to make the town glow with an old-fashioned, enticing charm. Nearly every store had some kind of light display. Hers were LED icicles that appeared to be dripping.

The effort seemed to be working. Her store bustled with customers and, judging by the pedestrian and vehicle traffic on a normally slow Thursday night, the other businesses on Main Street were enjoying the same success.

An SUV snagged the last parking space in front of the café across the street and a few stores down from her. A man in a leather jacket and Levi’s climbed out and snowflakes immediately landed on his wavy dark hair and the shoulders of his warm cocoa-colored coat. He looked sharp and put together.

Everyone would be arriving any second now and she should go put the finishing touches on the scene she had created, but for some reason she was drawn to the man she could still barely see.

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.

Sage. Together with Jackson Lange.

The two of them, in the same room. Not just the same room—the same freaking three-foot radius.

She’d never had a panic attack, despite the past eight months of purgatory, but she could feel one coming on now. Her heart raced and she could feel each pulse throbbing in her chest, her neck, her face. “S-Sage.”

Her daughter gave her a long look, but for the first time ever Sage’s usually expressive eyes were shuttered.

She knew.

Maura wasn’t sure how she was so certain, especially as her daughter’s features were closed and set, but somehow she could tell Sage knew the truth. Finally. After nearly two decades.

“Who’s your friend, sweetheart?” Mary Ella asked as she stepped away from her oldest grandchild and gave Jack the sort of quizzical look she wore when trying to place someone, as if she thought she recognized him but wasn’t quite sure.

“This is Jackson Lange. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s a pretty famous architect.”

Maura was aware of the little stir of excitement among her friends. It was fairly common knowledge that Hope’s Crossing had spawned the man many considered the next Frank Gehry.

Mary Ella’s expression cooled and she took a slight step back. “Of course. Harry’s son.”

“I haven’t heard that particular phrase in a long time.” Those were the first words he spoke, and she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that his voice seemed lower, sexier, as it thrummed down her spine.

“Yes. Harry Lange’s son.” Sage gave her mother that cool look again. “And he’s not my friend. Not really. He’s my father.”

Maura hissed in a breath. Okay. There it was.

This Christmas had just climbed straight to the top of the suck-o-meter.

CHAPTER TWO

OKAY, THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE.

Jack stood beside his daughter—his daughter. Hell. How had that happened?—and gazed around at the group of women all staring at him as if he’d just walked in and mooned them all.

When Sage had suggested stopping in at the bookstore to talk to her mother first before he dropped her off at her house and found a hotel for himself for a few days, he’d had no idea Maura would be in the middle of a freaking Christmas party. He noted the cluster of gift bags, the personalized glass decorations on the tree. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for this gathering, and he had just barged in and ruined it.

“Your…father?” an older woman said faintly.

Though twenty years had gone by, he clearly recognized Mary Ella McKnight, with those green eyes all her children had inherited, now peering at him through a pair of trendy little horn-rimmed glasses. She had taught him English in high school, and he remembered with great fondness their discussions on Milton and Wilkie Collins.

She was still very pretty, with a soft, ageless kind of beauty.

“You didn’t know either?” Sage raised an eyebrow at her grandmother’s obvious shock. “I guess it was a big secret to everyone. I thought I was the last to know.”

He had met Sage only days ago, but her sudden barbed tone seemed very unlike the sweet, earnest young woman he had come to know. That she would burst in and spring him on Maura like this without any advance warning seemed either thoughtless or cruel. He should say something to ease the tension of the moment, but for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything polite and innocuous that didn’t start with “How the hell could you keep this from me?”

A woman with chestnut hair who looked vaguely familiar stepped forward and rested a hand on Maura’s arm. “Are you all right, my dear?” the woman asked.

Maura gave a jerky shake of her head and swallowed, her features pale. According to what Sage had told him, Maura was still grieving the loss of her other daughter, he suddenly remembered, and he felt like an even bigger ass for bursting in here like this.

“Maybe the three of you should go back to your office where you could have a little privacy for this discussion,” the other woman gently suggested.

Maura gazed at her blankly for a moment, then seemed to gather her composure from somewhere deep inside. “I’m…I’m sorry. I wasn’t…This is a bit of a shock. Yes. We should go back to my office. Thank you, Claire. Do you mind helping your mother lead the book discussion? When Alex gets here, she should have the, uh, refreshments.”

He really should have made sure Sage had talked to her mother about all of this before he showed up, but then, he hadn’t really been thinking clearly in the three days since the carefully arranged life he thought he had constructed for himself had imploded around him.

Three days ago, he had been living his life, continuing to build Lange & Associates, preparing for an undergraduate lecture at the University of Colorado College of Architecture and Planning. It was the first time he had stepped back in the state since he had escaped twenty years ago, a bitter and angry young man.

His lecture had gone well, especially as he focused on one of his passions, sustainable design. He was fairly certain he hadn’t come across as a pompous iconoclast. Among the students who had pressed toward the dais to talk to him afterward had been this young woman with dark wavy hair and green eyes.

She told him she had studied his work, that she had always felt a bond to him because she was also from Hope’s Crossing, where she knew he had grown up, and that while she hadn’t met him, she saw his father around town often.

He studied her features as she spoke to him about her dreams and their shared passion for architecture, and he had been aware of an odd sense of the familiar but with a twist, as if he were looking at someone he knew through a wavy, distorted mirror.

When she told him her name—Sage McKnight—he had stared at her for a full thirty seconds before he had asked, “Who are your parents?”

“I don’t know my father. He took off before I was born. But my mother’s name is Maura McKnight. I think she might be around your age or maybe a little younger.”

Younger, he remembered thinking as everything inside him froze. She had been a year younger.

“She’s thirty-seven now, if that helps you place her,” Sage had offered helpfully. “She graduated from high school nineteen years ago. I know, because it was about a month before I was born.”

Just like that, he had pieced the dates and the times together, and he had known. He didn’t need to bother with DNA tests. He could do the damn math. Anyone with a brain could clearly see she was his child. They had the same nose, the same dark, wavy hair, the same dimple in their chins.

His daughter. After three days, he still couldn’t believe it.

And neither, apparently, could all those gaping women back there. Hadn’t she told anyone who had fathered her child?

Now he followed Maura through the bookstore, noting almost subconsciously certain architectural details of the historic building, like the walls that had been peeled back to bare brick and the windows with their almost Gothic arches. With jewel-toned hanging fixtures on track lights and plush furniture set around in conversation nooks, Maura had created a cozy, warm space that encouraged people to stop and ponder, sip a coffee, maybe grab a book off a shelf at random and discover something new.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have found the place appealing, clever and bright and comfortable, but he could only focus on haphazard details as he followed her through a doorway to a long, barren stockroom, and a cluttered office dominated by a wide oak desk and a small window that overlooked Main Street.

Inside her office, Maura turned on both of them. “First of all, Sage, what are you doing here today? What about your biology final tomorrow morning?”

Her daughter—their daughter—shrugged. “I talked Professor Johnson into letting me take it this morning. She was fine with that, especially after I explained I had extenuating circumstances.”

Maura’s gaze darted to him, then quickly away again. “How do you think you did? Did you even have time to study after your chemistry final? You needed a solid A on the final to bring your grade above a C.”

“Really, Mom? Is that what you want to talk about right now? My grades?”

A hint of color soaked Maura’s cheeks, and she compressed her lips into a thin line as if to clamp back more academic interrogation. Even with the sour expression, she still looked beautiful. Looking at her now, he couldn’t fathom that she was old enough to have a daughter who was a college sophomore, but then she must have been barely eighteen when Sage was born. She was seventeen when he’d left, still six months before her eighteenth birthday.

Maura released a heavy breath and finally sat on the edge of her desk, which put her slightly above him and Sage, who had taken the two guest chairs in her office.

“You’re right. We can talk about school later. I just…this was all unexpected. I didn’t think you would be here until tomorrow, and then I never expected you to bring…”

“My father?”

Maura’s hands flexed on her thighs even as she made a scoffing sort of sound. “I don’t know where you possibly came up with that crazy idea,” she began, but Sage cut her off.

“Please don’t lie to me. You’ve been lying for twenty years. Can we just stop now?” Though the words were angry, the tone was soft and almost gentle. “You’ve known who he is and where he was all this time, haven’t you? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Maura looked at him quickly and then away again. She hadn’t looked at him for longer than a few seconds at a time, as if she were trying to pretend he wasn’t really there. “Does it really matter?”

“Yes. Of course it matters! I could have had a father all this time.”

“You’ve had your stepfather from the time you were just a little girl. Chris has always been great to you.”

“True. He’s still great to me. Even after the divorce, he never treated me any differently than he did L-Layla.” Sage’s voice wobbled a little at the name. Her sister, who had died earlier this year, he remembered, and felt like an ass again for showing up out of the blue like this, dredging up the past. What would happen if he left town right now and went back to his real life in the Bay Area and pretended none of this had ever happened?

He couldn’t do that, as tempting as he suddenly found the idea. To a man who had spent his adult life trying to clear through the clutter in his personal and professional lives, this was all so messy and complicated. But like it or not, Sage was his daughter. He was here now, and had been given the chance after all these years to come to know this young woman who bore half his DNA and who reminded him with almost painful intensity of an innocent part of himself he had left behind a long time ago.

“A child can never have too many people who love her, Mom. You taught me that. Why did you keep my father out of our lives all this time? He didn’t have any idea I even existed. If he hadn’t come to campus to give a lecture, both of us would still be in the dark.”

“A lecture?”

“Right. On sustainable design, one of my own passions. It was wonderful, really inspiring. I went up afterward to talk to him and mentioned I was from Hope’s Crossing. It only took us a minute to figure things out.”

Maura frowned. “Figure what out? That the two of us dated when I was barely seventeen? How could you both instantly jump from that to thinking he’s your…your sperm donor?”

The term annoyed the hell out of him. “Because neither of us is stupid. She told me who her mother was. When I asked how old she was, I could figure out the math. I knew exactly who you were with nine months before her birthday.”

And ten months before and eleven months and every spare moment they could get their hands on each other that summer.

“That doesn’t prove a thing. You took off. You weren’t here, Jack. How do you know I didn’t pick up with the whole basketball team after you left?” Defiance and something that looked suspiciously like fear flashed in her eyes.

She had been a virgin their first time together. They both had been, fumbling and awkward and embarrassed but certain they were deeply in love. Even if not for the proof sitting beside him, he wouldn’t have believed the smart and loving girl she had been would suddenly turn into the kind of girl who would sleep around with just anybody.

“Look at her,” he said, gentling his tone. “She has my mother’s nose and my mouth and chin. We can run the DNA, but I don’t need to. Sage is my daughter. For three days, I’ve just been trying to figure out why the hell you didn’t tell me.”

For the first time, she met his gaze for longer than a few seconds. “Think about it, Jack,” she finally said. “What difference would it have made? Would you have come back?”

He couldn’t lie, to her or to himself. “No. But you could have come with me.”

“And lived in some rat-hole apartment while you dropped out of college and worked three jobs to support us, resenting me the whole time? That would have been the perfect happily-ever-after every young girl dreams about.”

“I still had a right to know.”

She suddenly looked tired, defeated, and he saw deep shadows in her eyes that he sensed had nothing to do with him.

“Well, I guess you know now. Yes. She’s your daughter. There was no one else. There it is. Now you know, and we can be one big, freaking happy family for the holidays.”

“Mom.” Sage moved forward a little as if to reach for Maura’s hand, but then she checked the motion and slid back into her chair.

Pain etched Maura’s features briefly, but she contained it. “Okay. I should have told you. Give me a break here. I was just a scared kid who didn’t know what to do. You left without a forwarding address, Jack, and didn’t contact me one single time after you left, despite all your promises. What else was I supposed to do? I finally tracked down your number at Berkeley about four months after you left and tried to call you. Three times I tried in a week. Once you were at the library, and twice you were on a date, at least according to your roommate. I left my number, but you never called me back, which basically gave me the message loud and clear that you were done with me. What more was I supposed to do?”

He remembered those first few months at school after that last horrible fight with his father, after he had opted to leave everything behind—even the only warm and beautiful thing that had happened to him in Hope’s Crossing since his mother’s death.

He remembered the message from Maura his roommate had given him and the sloppily scrawled phone number. He had stared at it for hours and had even dialed the number several times, but had always hung up.

She had been a link to a place and a past he had chosen to leave behind, and he’d ultimately decided it was in both their best interests if he tried to move on and gave her the chance to do the same.

That she had been pregnant and alone had never once occurred to him. Lord, he’d been an idiot.

Everything was so damn tangled, he didn’t know what to do—which was the whole reason he had agreed to give Sage a ride back to Hope’s Crossing to talk to Maura before he flew back to San Francisco.

“Look, we’re all a little emotional about this tonight. I didn’t realize you were unaware I was bringing Sage back to town.”

That little tidbit also appeared to be news to Maura. “You rode here with him?” she asked her daughter. “Is something wrong with the Honda?”

“It hasn’t been starting the last week or so. I think it just needs a new battery, but I figured I could drive the pickup while I was home and catch a ride back to school with one of my friends after the break. I can deal with the Honda before school starts next semester.”

“You should have called me. I could have driven to Boulder to pick you up.”

“Sorry, Mom. My car troubles just didn’t seem all that important in light of…everything else.”

“I guess that’s understandable.” Maura forced a smile, but he could clearly see the bone-deep weariness beneath it. What had happened to the vibrant, alive girl who’d always made him laugh, even when they were both dealing with family chaos and pain?

“So what now?” she asked. Though she looked at her daughter, he picked up the subtext of the question, directed at him. What else are you planning to do to screw up my life?

“I think you should get back to your book club Christmas party for now. I’m really sorry we interrupted it.”

“Between Ruth and Claire and your grandmother, I’m sure everything will be fine,” Maura assured her.

Much to his astonished dismay, tears filled Sage’s eyes. “But I know how much you always look forward to the party and the fun you have throwing it for your friends. It’s always the highlight of your Christmas. If anything, you needed it more than ever this year, and now I’ve ruined everything for you.”

Maura gave him a harsh look, as if this rapid-fire emotional outburst were his fault, then she stepped forward to wrap Sage in her arms.

“It’s only a party,” she said. “No big deal. They can all carry on just fine without me. And if you want the truth, I almost canceled it this year. I haven’t really been in the mood for Christmas.”

This information only seemed to make Sage sniffle harder, and he watched helplessly while Maura comforted her. Judging by the mood swings and the emotional outbursts, apparently he had a hell of a lot to learn about having a nineteen-year-old daughter.

“You’re exhausted, honey. I’m sure you’ve been studying hard for finals.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep much since the lecture,” she admitted, resting her darker head on her mother’s shoulder. He had a feeling the bond between them would survive the secret Maura had never told her daughter. As he saw the two of them together, something sharp and achy twisted in his gut.

He had an almost-grown daughter he suddenly felt responsible for, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it.

“Why don’t you take my car home and go back to the house to get some rest,” Maura said. “I’ll catch a ride with your grandmother or with Claire. We can talk more in the morning when we’re both rested and…more calm.”

“I’ll take her home,” Jack offered quietly.

“Thank you, but I wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble. You’ve done enough by bringing her all this way from Boulder. I’m sure you need to get back to…wherever you came from.”

In a rush to send him on his way, was she? “Actually, I’m planning to stay in town a few days.”

“Why?” she asked, green eyes wide with surprise. “You hate Hope’s Crossing.”

“I just found out I have a daughter. I’m not in any particular hurry to walk back out of her life right away.”

The surprise shifted to something that looked like horror, as if she had never expected him to genuinely want to be part of their daughter’s world on any ongoing basis. Sage, though, lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and gave him a watery smile. “That’s great. Really great.”

“What do you say we meet for breakfast in the morning? Unless you have to be here at the bookstore first thing.”

Maybe a night’s rest would give them all a little breathing space and offer him, at least, a chance to regain equilibrium, before any deeper discussion about the decisions made in the past and where they would go from here.

“I own the place. I don’t have to punch a clock.”

“Which usually means you’re here from about eight a.m. to ten p.m.” Sage gave her mother a teasing look.

“I can meet for breakfast,” Maura said. “Tomorrow I don’t have anything pressing at the store until midmorning.”

“Perfect. Why don’t we meet at the Center of Hope Café at around eight-thirty? We stopped there to grab a bite at the counter before we walked over here, and I’m happy to say their food is just as good as I remembered.”

“The café? I don’t know if that’s the greatest idea. You might not want to…” she started to say, but her words trailed off.

“Want to what?” he asked.

She seemed to reconsider the subject of any objection on his part. “No. On second thought, sure. Eight-thirty at the café should work just fine.”

“Okay. I’ll see you then. Shall we go, Sage?”

“Yeah.” She pressed her cheek to her mother’s. “I’m still furious you didn’t tell me about my father. I probably will be for a while. But I still love you and I will forever and ever.”

“Back at you,” Maura said, a catch in her voice that she quickly cleared away.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Sage asked him after they walked through the bookstore and the lightly falling snow to the SUV, which he had rented what seemed a lifetime ago at the Denver airport before his lecture.

“You would know that better than I do.”

“I thought I knew my mother. We’re best friends. I still can’t believe she would keep this huge secret from me.”

He wondered at Maura’s reasons for that. Why didn’t she tell Sage? Why didn’t she tell him? Surely in the years since he’d left, she could have found some way to tell him about his child.

The idea of it was still overwhelming as hell.

“You’ll have to give me directions to your place,” he said after she fastened her seat belt.

“Oh. Right. We live on Mountain Laurel Road. Do you remember where that is?”

“I think so.” If he remembered correctly, it was just past Sweet Laurel Falls, one of his favorite places in town. The falls had been one of their secret rendezvous points. Why he should remember that right now, he had no idea. “I know the general direction, anyway. Be sure to tell me if I start to head off course.”

Traffic was busier than he expected as he drove through Hope’s Crossing with the wipers beating back the falling snow. He hardly recognized the downtown. When he had lived here, many of these storefronts had been empty or had housed businesses that barely survived on the margin. Now trendy restaurants, bustling bars catering to tourists and boutiques with elegant holiday window displays seemed to jostle for space.

Some of the historic buildings were still there, but he could see new buildings as well. Much to his surprise, some faction in town had apparently made an effort to keep the town’s historic flavor, even among the new developments. Instead of a modern hodgepodge of architectural styles that would be jarring and unpleasant with the mountain grandeur surrounding the town, it looked as if restrictions had been enacted to require strict adherence to building codes. Even in the few strip-mall-type developments they passed with pizza places, frozen yogurt shops and fast-food places that might appeal to tourists, the buildings had cedar-shake roofs and no flashy signage to jar with the setting.

As he drove up the hill toward Mountain Laurel Road, the surroundings seemed more familiar, even after twenty years. In his day, this area of town had been called Old Hope, a neighborhood of smaller, wood-framed houses, some of them dating back to the town’s past as a rough and rugged mining town. A few of the houses had been torn down and small condominium units or more modern homes built in their place, and many had obviously been rehabbed.

He could easily tell which were vacation homes—they invariably had some sort of kitschy decoration on the exterior, like a crossed pair of old wooden skis or snowshoes, or some other kind of cabin-chic decoration. He saw a couple of carved wooden bears and even a wooden moose head on a garage.

“Turn here,” Sage said. “Our house is the small brick-and-tan house on the right, three houses from the corner.”

From what he had just seen in town, Maura ran a prosperous business in Hope’s Crossing. According to the information he had gleaned from Sage over the past few days, she had been married for five years to Chris Parker, frontman for Pendragon, a band even Jack had heard of before.

She must have received a healthy alimony and child support settlement from the guy when their marriage broke up. So why was she living in a small Craftsman bungalow that looked as though it couldn’t be more than nine hundred square feet?

Despite its small size, the house appeared cozy and warm nestled here in the mountains. Snow drifted down to settle on the wide, deep porch, and a brightly lit Christmas tree blazed from the double windows in front. The lot was roomy, giving her plenty of space for an attached garage that looked as if it had been added to the main house later.

He glimpsed movement by the side of the house and spied a couple of cold and hungry mule deer trying to browse off the shrubs, which looked as if they had been wrapped to avoid just such an eventuality. The deer looked up when Jack’s headlights pulled into the driveway, then it turned and bounded away, jumping over a low cedar fence to her neighbor’s property. Its mate followed suit and disappeared in a flash of white hindquarters.

Now, there was an encounter that brought back memories. When he was a kid and lived up Silver Strike Canyon, he and his mother would often take walks to look for deer. She would even sometimes wake him up if a big buck would wander through their yard.

“Thanks for the ride. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I can walk you in. Help you with your bag and your laundry.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

He hadn’t been given the chance to do anything to help his daughter in nearly twenty years. Carrying in her bags was a small gesture, but at least it was something. He didn’t bother arguing with her; he only climbed out of the SUV and reached into the backseat for the wicker laundry basket she’d loaded up at her apartment in Boulder, hefted it under one arm and picked her suitcase up with the other.

Sage made a sound of frustration, but followed him up the four steps to the porch and unlocked the house with a set of keys she pulled from her backpack. Warmth washed over them as Sage pushed open the door to let him inside, and the house smelled of cinnamon and clove and evergreen branches from the garlands draped around.

Jack found himself more interested than he probably should have been in Maura’s house. He took in the built-in bookshelves, the exposed rafters, the extensive woodwork, all softened by colorful textiles and art-glass light fixtures.

“Looks like Mom went all out with the Christmas decorations. A tree and everything.”

He glanced at his daughter. His daughter. Would he ever get used to that particular phrase? “You sound surprised.”

“I thought this year she wouldn’t really be in the mood for Christmas. Usually it’s her favorite time of year but, you know. Everything is different now.”

He didn’t want to feel this sympathy. For the past three days, he had simmered in his anger that she had kept this cataclysmic thing from him all these years. Being here in Hope’s Crossing, being confronted with the reality of her life and her pain and the difficult choices she must have faced as a seventeen-year-old girl, everything seemed different.

He felt deflated somehow and didn’t quite know what to do with his anger.

Sage fingered an ornament on the tree that looked as if it was glued-together Popsicle sticks. The tree was covered in similar handmade ornaments, and he wondered which Sage had made and which had been crafted by her younger sister.

“I hope Grandma and the aunts helped her and she didn’t have to do it by herself,” Sage fretted. “That would have been so hard for her, taking out all these old ornaments and everything on her own.”

Sage’s compassion for her mother, despite everything, touched a chord deep inside him. There was a tight bond between the two of them. Had it always been there, or had their shared loss this year only heightened it?

He spied a cluster of photographs on the wall, dominated by one of Sage and Maura on a mountain trail somewhere, lit by perfect evening light amid the ghostly trunks of an aspen grove. They had their arms around each other, as well as a younger girl with purple highlights in her hair and a triple row of earrings.

“This must be Layla.”

Sage moved beside him and reached a hand out to touch the picture. “Yep. She was so pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Beautiful,” he murmured. All three females were lovely. They looked like a tight unit, and it was obvious even at a quick glance that they had all adored each other.

Maura had been divorced for a decade and had raised both girls on her own. How had she managed it? he wondered, then reminded himself it was none of his business. He was here only to establish a relationship with his newly discovered daughter, not to walk down memory lane with Maura McKnight, the girl who had once meant everything to him.

“Oh, look. Presents.” Sage’s eyes were as wide as a little kid’s as she looked at the prettily dressed packages under the tree. What had she been like as a big-eyed preschooler waiting for Santa to arrive? He would never know that. He’d missed all those Christmas Eves of putting out plates of cookies and tucking his little girl into bed.

“I guess I’d better head out to find a hotel. Are you sure you’re okay now?” He couldn’t see any evidence of the tears from earlier, but a guy never could tell.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just going to throw in a load of laundry and check my Facebook, then go to bed.”

“Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay. Good night.”

He turned to head toward the door and had almost reached it when her voice stopped him.

“Wait!”

He paused, then was completely disconcerted when she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m really glad we found each other, Jack.”

On the way here, they had already had the awkward conversation about what she should call him. She didn’t feel right calling him Dad at this point in their relationship, so he had suggested Jack.

“I am too,” he said gruffly.

He meant the words, he thought, as he walked out into the snowy evening lit by stars and the Christmas lights of Maura’s neighbors. Despite everything, the realization that Sage was his daughter astonished and humbled him. And yes, delighted him—even though it meant returning to Hope’s Crossing after all these years and facing the past he thought he had left far behind.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR A LONG TIME AFTER SAGE walked out with Jack, Maura sat in her chair with her hands folded together on her desk, staring into space.

Jackson Lange was here in Hope’s Crossing.

She’d never thought she would have occasion to use those particular words together in the same sentence. Stupid and shortsighted of her, she supposed. This was his hometown, and despite his avowed hatred of the place, she should have expected that someday he would eventually be drawn back.

One would assume some latent affection for the town where he had lived his first eighteen years must have seeped into his bones. It was only natural. Salmon spent their last breaths returning to their birthplace. Why should she simply have assumed Jackson wouldn’t want to come back at least once in twenty years?

In her own defense, she had always assumed his hatred for his father would also serve to keep him away.

In the early years after Sage was born, she used to come up with all these crazy, complicated scenarios in her head for what might happen if he did return. She had worked it all out—what she would say to him, how he would respond, the immense self-satisfaction she fully expected to find from throwing back in his face that he had left her yet she had managed to move on and survive.

In her perfect imagination, he would come back on the proverbial hands and knees, telling her what a fool he had been, begging her to forgive him, promising he would never be parted from her again.

Around the time she’d met Christian, she had been more than ready to put those fantasies away as both impossible and undesirable. She had put all her resources into thrusting Jack firmly into her past, and focusing instead on her new relationship and the love she told herself she felt for Chris.

She could never completely assign him to the past, of course, not when her beautiful, smart, clever child bore half his DNA. Sage was always a reminder of Jack. She would turn her head a certain angle, and Maura would remember Jack looking at her the same way. Sage would come up with a particularly persuasive argument for something, twist logic and sense in a way that never would have occurred to Maura, and she would remember how brilliantly Jack could do the same.

In all those early fantasies and all the years to come later, it had never once occurred to her that someday Sage might find him on her own and bring him back to the town he couldn’t wait to leave.

Her sigh sounded pathetic in her small office, and she shook her head. Nothing she could do about this now. Against all odds, he and Sage had found each other, and now she would have to deal with the consequences of him in their lives. A smart woman would find a way to make the best of it—but right now she didn’t, for the life of her, know how she was supposed to do that.

“Having a rough night?”

She turned at the voice and found her mother in the doorway, still lovely at sixty with her ageless skin and Maura’s own auburn hair, the color now carefully maintained at To Dye For. Emotions crowded her chest at the sight of the sympathy in her mother’s green eyes behind her little glasses, and she suddenly wanted to rest her head on Mary Ella’s shoulder, as Sage had done with her earlier, and weep and weep.

Her mother and her sisters were her best friends, and she didn’t think she would have survived the past eight months without them. Or what she would have done twenty years ago, when she was seventeen and terrified and pregnant in a small town that could still be closed-minded and mean about those sorts of things.

She fought back the tears and mustered a smile. “Rough night? Yeah. You could say that.”

“Oh, honey. Why did you keep this to yourself all these years?”

“I didn’t think it mattered. He was gone and insisted he wasn’t ever coming back. Why did I need to flit around town badmouthing him for knocking me up and then taking off?”

Mary Ella stepped forward and pulled her into a hug, and those blasted tears threatened again. “I have to admit, I suspected. I knew you had become friendly with him. People told me about seeing you together. I also suspected you had a little crush on him. I just hadn’t realized things had…progressed. I don’t know how I missed it now. Sage looks a little like him, doesn’t she?”

“Do you think so?”

“The mouth and her chin.”

“She might look a little like him, but she’s very much her own person.”

“Absolutely.” Her mother leaned back a little and smoothed a stray lock of hair away from Maura’s forehead. “Everyone will understand if you need to leave. Go home to Sage. We can carry on without you.”

She was tremendously tempted to do just that—the going home part, anyway. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to sneak into her house, crawl into her bed and pull the Storm at Sea quilt—the one she and her sisters had made after her divorce—over her head and not crawl out again until the holidays were over.

Nothing new there, she supposed. She couldn’t remember a moment in the past eight months when she hadn’t wanted to climb into bed and block out the world. But she was a McKnight, and the women in her family soldiered on, no matter what.

She had managed to keep herself going all these months. She could make it through this too.

“I’m not about to let Jackson Lange ruin the book club Christmas party for me.” She rose on legs that felt a little unsteady. Low blood sugar, she told herself. All she needed was a truffle or something. “Let’s go party. I think this evening calls for some of Alex’s famous spiked cider. I hope she brought some.”

“If I know your baby sister, I have no doubts of that.” Mary Ella slipped an arm through hers and walked by her side through the bookstore and back to the gathering.

She might have predicted the reactions of her friends and family exactly. Angie, her oldest sister and the second mother to the six McKnight siblings, looked at her with deep compassion and concern. Alex, younger than her by only a few years, gave her a look that clearly conveyed solidarity against all males of the species. Claire—Alex’s best friend, who had always seemed like part of the family and had made it official only a few weeks ago by marrying Maura’s younger brother—acted typically solicitous, handing her a mug of something, fragrant steam curling into the air.

It was tea, not Alex’s cider, a Ceylon black with cinnamon, clove and orange peels, but Maura figured she could build to the cider.

They were just getting ready to start the annual gift-exchange game, she realized, where everybody picked a wrapped gift and passed it either left or right while someone—in this case, Janie Hamilton—said certain words when she read a passage from a holiday book.

“We saved a spot for you,” Claire told her. “Pass left when you hear the word the and right when you hear and. What are we reading, Janie?”

Janie held up a familiar Dr. Seuss book. “Sorry. My kids have all the Christmas books in their rooms, which are a total mess until I shovel them out. All I could find was How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

“My fave,” Alex said, stretching her feet out on a cushioned ottoman.

Maura took the empty seat and spent the next few minutes giving an Oscar-worthy performance of someone enjoying herself as, with much laughter, they passed the gifts back and forth, until Janie finished with the Grinch carving the roast beast and everybody ended up with their final gift.

To her delight, her prize was Charlotte Caine’s gift, a beautifully presented bag of almond brickle from Charlotte’s store down the street, Sugar Rush.

“Thanks, Charley. Just what I needed!” She smiled, thinking how pretty the other woman looked tonight in her white silk blouse and ruby earrings, despite the extra pounds she carried.

The distraction of opening presents gave her a much-needed chance to gather her composure, so she was almost ready when Ruth finally brought up what she knew was on everyone’s mind.

“So it’s true,” she said in her abrupt way. “Harry Lange’s son is Sage’s father.”

She would like to deny it, but what would be the point? Everybody knew now, and she couldn’t stopper that particular bottle. Trust Ruth not to shy away from the topic everybody else had been avoiding.

“Yes,” she said, with as much calm as she could muster.

“I always knew that boy was a troublemaker,” Ruth said promptly.

“He wasn’t. Not really.” Jack might have been on fire with grief for his mother and with anger and bitterness toward his father, but it had consumed him quietly. To everyone else, he had been hardworking and reliable. An excellent student, a diligent employee at his summer construction job.

“A decent man stays around to take care of his responsibilities,” Ruth said stubbornly.

“He didn’t know he had responsibilities here, Ruth,” she said, wondering if her voice sounded as tired to everyone else as it did to her. “I never told him I was pregnant.”

“Well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?”

A bubble of laughter with a slight hysterical edge welled up inside her. “Yes. Yes, it was. Very stupid,” she answered.

“What was stupid?” Angie asked, on Ruth’s other side.

“Not telling the Lange boy she was pregnant so he could step up and do the right thing.” Ruth said.

Like marry her? Oh, that would have been a complete nightmare. She had believed it then, and nothing had changed her mind in the intervening years. She had loved Jackson Lange with a desperate passion, and he obviously hadn’t loved her back nearly as intensely. If he had, he never would have left.

Only after he took off did she realize the twisted way she had subconsciously reenacted her own childhood in their relationship. Her father had walked away from their family in order to pursue his own professional and academic dreams. By falling hard for Jack just months later—an angry young man who already had one foot through the crack in the door on his way out of Hope’s Crossing—hadn’t she perhaps been trying to replicate and repair her family life by trying to keep him with her, as she couldn’t keep her father?

Her love hadn’t been enough to keep Jack in Hope’s Crossing any more than she had been able to keep her father from walking away from their family.

“Look, you’re all my dearest friends,” she said now, realizing everyone’s eyes were on her, though they made a pretense of carrying on conversation. She supposed it was better to confront the weird turn her life had just taken head-on rather than dance around it. “I don’t want to put a damper on the party, but I know everyone is wondering. You’re all just too kind to pry.”

Except Ruth, anyway, but she didn’t need to point out the obvious to anyone there.

“I might as well get this out in the open, then we can go back to enjoying the rest of the party. Jack and I dated in high school. We kept it secret because…well, because of a lot of things going on in our respective families. the timing didn’t seem right.”

Her mother’s lips tightened, and Angie reached out and rubbed a hand on Mary Ella’s arm. She wanted to assure her mother that James McKnight’s defection of his family and the emotional fallout from that hadn’t been the only reason for their secrecy.

After years of mental illness, Jack’s mother had committed suicide herself just a few months earlier. Sometimes Maura wondered if Jack had only turned to her out of a desperate effort to push away the pain.

“After Jack left town, I discovered I was pregnant. For a lot of reasons that seemed very good at the time, I decided not to tell him I was pregnant and to raise Sage by myself.” She lifted her chin. “Personally, I don’t think she’s suffered for my decisions. She’s bright and beautiful and well-adjusted. Chris has been a great stepfather to her, and she loves him. If our marriage had lasted, I’m sure he would have adopted her.”

Okay, she was spilling way too much here. She caught herself and wanted to change the subject, but on the other hand, these were her dearest friends. She would rather be open with them from the outset about Jack and Sage, rather than have them all shake their heads and worry about her behind her back. Hadn’t she endured enough of that since Layla’s death?

“How did they find each other?” Alex asked.

“As you all must know, Jack is an architect. Apparently Sage attended a lecture he gave a few days ago on campus. She knew he was from Hope’s Crossing and they struck up a conversation. In the course of the conversation, they both connected the dots. And here we are.”

Silence descended on the group as everyone mulled the information. Claire was the first to break it. “How are you doing with all this?”

“Peachy. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s all very civil.” Except for that moment when she had wanted to smack him and tell him how he had shattered her heart. “It will be interesting to see what happens. My hope is that Jack and Sage can develop a friendship. They have a shared interest in architecture, after all. Perhaps Jack can, I don’t know, mentor her. Help her with her studies, maybe.”

“That would be great,” Angie said. “Does that mean you think he’s sticking around Hope’s Crossing?”

Oh, she hoped not. The very idea made her stomach cramp. “I doubt it. Jack isn’t a big fan of our little neck of the woods. Not to mention that he also hates his father.”

“Not a big shocker there,” Mary Ella muttered. She had a long-standing feud with Harry Lange, the wealthiest man in town, who seemed to think he owned everyone and everything in town—not just the ski resort he had developed, but everybody in Hope’s Crossing who owed a living to the tourists he had brought in to enjoy it.

“Is there anything you need from us?” Claire asked.

A little spiked cider would be a good start. “I’d like to get back to the party. You have all found time in your holiday-crazed lives for this, and I don’t want to ruin everything with more drama. Can we just forget about Jackson Lange for now?”

Everybody seemed to agree, to her great relief. Katherine Thorne asked Janie a question about one of her children who had broken an arm sledding off the hill at Miner’s Park, and the conversation turned.

She loved these women. Sometimes their idiosyncrasies and their smothering concern drove her crazy, but she didn’t know how she would have survived these past months without them. She had a feeling she would be leaning on them more than ever with this new twist on her life’s journey.

HER HOUSE WAS QUIET when she returned after the party finally wrapped up. She’d become used to it over the past few months since Sage had returned to Boulder and school. After she opened the door and found only the whoosh of the furnace, she finally admitted to herself that some part of her had been looking forward to Sage’s return to fill the empty space with sound—her endless chatter about grades and her classes and current events, the television set she always had on, usually to HGTV, her local friends who went to other schools or had stuck around town to work and who always seemed to find excuses to drop in when Sage was in town.

She was destined for another quiet night, she realized.

“Sage? Honey?” she called, but received no answer. Maura knew she was home. Her purse was hanging on the hook by the door, and her cell phone was on the console table. She walked through the house to Sage’s bedroom. The door was ajar and she rapped on it a few times softly, then pushed it open.

Sage was curled up in her bed with only her face sticking out of the cocoon of blankets. The lights of one of the little individual Christmas trees Maura had always set up in her girls’ bedrooms twinkled and glowed, sending brightly colored reflections over Sage’s face.

She rubbed a hand over her chest at the sudden ache there. She loved her daughter fiercely, had from the very first moment she’d realized she was pregnant. Yes, she had been afraid. What seventeen-year-old girl wouldn’t have been? But she had also been eager for this unexpected adventure.

Those weeks and months of her pregnancy seemed so fresh and vivid in her mind. In her head she had known that giving up the baby for adoption to a settled, established couple who loved each other deeply would have been the best thing for Sage, but she had been selfish, she supposed. She couldn’t even bear the idea of losing this part of Jack that she already loved so much.

She could also admit to herself now that, at the time, she had been so angry at her father for leaving and at Jack for repeating the pattern that she had managed to convince herself her baby didn’t need a father in her life, except to donate half the DNA. She could certainly raise this baby by herself without help from anyone.

Yeah, it had been immature and shortsighted—but then she had only been seventeen. Younger than her daughter was now.

Sage had always been a restless sleeper, even as a baby, but her exhaustion over finals must have tired her out. She didn’t move when Maura stepped forward to click off the lights on the little tree or when Maura smoothed the blankets and tucked them more securely, then walked quietly from the room.

She paused outside the next bedroom and almost didn’t go inside but finally forced herself to move. She switched on the little tree beside the empty bed and watched the colors reflected on the pale lavender walls, cheerful yellows and blues and reds and greens.

Angie, Mary Ella and Alex had insisted on coming over Thanksgiving weekend to help her put up the rest of the decorations, but she had placed this little tree here herself, as well as the little solar-powered tree on the gravesite. She had decorated it with all Layla’s favorite ornaments—little beaded snowflakes Layla had made at String Fever, a glass snowman she had received from one of her good friends, a few small, pearlescent balls that seemed to shimmer in the glow from the lights.

She hadn’t changed anything in here yet. It still looked like a fifteen-year-old girl’s room, with a couple of lava lamps, a big, plump purple beanbag where Layla had loved to study, and huge posters of bands on the wall—most notably, Pendragon, her father’s acoustic rock band. Though he was twice her age, Layla had had a bit of a crush on Chris’s drummer.

Some day she would do something with the room. Maybe turn it into a home office, since most of the bookstore paperwork she brought home ended up spread out on a desk in her bedroom.

Not yet, though. She couldn’t bring herself to change anything yet, so she left it untouched and only came in occasionally to dust.

After a few minutes of watching the lights, Maura cleared her throat and turned off the lights before she walked back into the quiet hallway.

As much as she ached with pain for Layla and the life that had been cut short by a whole chain of stupid decisions by a bunch of teenagers, Maura couldn’t stop living. She had another daughter who needed her, now more than ever.

CHAPTER FOUR

DESPITE THE RADICAL CHANGES to the rest of the town, the Center of Hope Café had changed very little in the twenty years since Jack had been here.

That might be new wallpaper on the wall, something brighter to replace the old wood paneling he remembered, but the booths were covered in the same red vinyl and the ceiling was still the old-fashioned tin-stamped sort favored around the turn of the century.

Even the owner, Dermot Caine, still stood behind the U-shaped bar. He had to be in his mid-sixties, but he had the familiar shock of white hair he’d worn as long as Jack could remember and the same piercing blue eyes that seemed capable of ferreting out any secret.

Despite the calorie-heavy comfort food the café was famous for, Dermot had stayed in shape and looked as if he could beat any comers in an arm-wrestling contest, probably from years of working the grill.

Just now he was busy talking to a couple of guys in Stetsons. Jack looked around for Maura and Sage but couldn’t spot them. He didn’t see anyone else he recognized either. It looked as if the Center of Hope was popular with both locals and tourists, at least judging by the odd mix of high-dollar ski gear and ranch coats.

He stood waiting to be seated for just a moment before Dermot walked over, no trace of recognition in his gaze. No surprise there. Jack had been gone twenty years. He probably looked markedly different than that kid who used to come into the café to study after the library had closed for the night.

It sure as hell had beat going home.

“Hello there and welcome to the Center of Hope Café.” Dermot had a trace of Ireland in his voice. Jack could easily have pictured him running a corner pub in a little town in County Galway somewhere, surrounded by mossy-green fields and stone fences. “You’ve got a couple of choices this lovely morning. You can find yourself a vacant spot at the counter, or I can fix you up with a booth or a table. Your preference.”

“I’m actually waiting for two more. A booth would be fine.”

“I’ve got a prime spot right here by the window. Will that suit you?”

“Perfectly. Thank you.” He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on a convenient hook made from a portion of an elk antler on the wall beside the booth. As he slid into the booth, Dermot set out a trio of menus and opened one for him.

“Here. You can have a little sneak peek at the menu before the rest of your party comes. We also have made-to-order omelets, if that suits your fancy. The breakfast special this morning is our eggs Benedict, famous in three counties. Can I get you some coffee or juice while you’re waiting?”

Ordinarily, he would have liked to extend the courtesy of at least ordering beverages for Sage and Maura. Since he had no idea what they would like, he opted to play it safe and order only for himself. “I’ll have both. Regular coffee and a small grapefruit juice. Thank you.”

Dermot nodded. “Coming right up.” He paused for just a moment, his blue eyes narrowed. “Have you been in before? I usually have a good eye for my customers. I keep thinking I should know you, but I’m afraid my memory’s not what it once was and I can’t quite place you. Sorry, I am, for that.”

“Don’t apologize. I would have been surprised if you had recognized me. It’s been twenty years. You used to serve me chocolate malts from the fountain with extra whipped cream while I did my homework in the corner.” It was a surprisingly pleasant memory, especially considering he didn’t think he had many of this town. That hadn’t involved Maura, anyway.

“Jackson Lange,” Dermot exclaimed. “Lordy, it’s been an age, it has. How have you been, son?”

How did a man encapsulate his journey over the past two decades? Hard work, ambition, amazing good fortune in his chosen field and not such good fortune in his painfully short-lived marriage. “I can’t complain. How about you? How’s Mrs. Caine?”

His cheerful smile slipped a little. “I lost her some fifteen years back. The cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Aye. So am I. I miss her every single day. But we had seven beautiful children together, and her memory lives on in them and our eight grandchildren.”

He gestured to the other two menus. “And what about you? Are you meeting your family here, then?”

He thought of Sage, the daughter he hadn’t known existed a handful of days ago. “Something like that.”

“I’ll treat you right. Don’t you worry. Our French toast is still legendary around these parts. We still cover it in toasted almonds and dust it with powdered sugar.”

He usually was a coffee-and-toast kind of guy, but he had fond memories of that French toast. An indulgence once in a while probably wouldn’t kill him. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Dermot smiled at him and headed to the kitchen, probably for his juice. Through the window, Jack watched Main Street bustle to life. The woman who was trying to change the marquee on the little two-theater cinema up the road had to stop about five times to return the wave of someone driving past, and a couple of women in winter workout gear who had dogs on leashes paused at just about every storefront to talk to somebody.

The scene reminded him of a small village outside Milan where he had rented an apartment for two months during the construction of a hotel and regional conference center a few miles from town. He used to love to grab a cappuccino and sit on the square with a sketchbook and pencil, watching the town wake up to greet the day.

In his career, Jack had worked on projects across the world, from Riyadh to Rio de Janeiro. He loved the excitement and vitality of a large city. The streets outside his loft in San Francisco bustled with life, and he enjoyed sitting out on the terrace and watching it from time to time, but he had to admit, he always found something appealing about the slower pace of a small town, where neighbors took time to stop their own lives to chat and care about each other.

Dermot walked out with his juice and a coffeepot. “Still waiting?” he asked as he flipped a cup over and expertly poured.

“I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”

“I’ll keep an eye out, unless you would like me to take your order now.”

“No. I’ll wait.”

A few moments later, while he was watching the dog walkers grab a shovel out of an elderly man’s hands in front of a jewelry store and start clearing snow off his store entrance, Maura and Sage came in. Their faces were both flushed from the cold, but he was struck for the first time how alike they looked. Sage was an interesting mix of the both of them, but in the morning light and with her darker, curlier hair covered by a beanie, she looked very much like her mother.

The women spotted him instantly and hurried over to the booth.

“Sorry we’re late,” Maura said without explanation, but Sage gave a heavy sigh.

“It’s my fault,” Sage said. “I was so tired and had a hard time getting moving this morning.”

“You’re here now. That’s the important thing.” He rose and helped them out of their coats. Sage wore a bulky red sweater under hers, while Maura wore a pale blue turtleneck and a long spill of silver-and-blue beads that reminded him of a waterfall.

He was struck by how thin she appeared. The shirt bagged at her wrists, and he wondered if she had lost weight in the months since her daughter died.

“I’ve been enjoying the café,” he said after they slid into the other side of the booth together, with Sage on the inside. “It hasn’t changed much in twenty years.”

“The food’s still just as good,” Maura said. “Unfortunately, the tourists have figured that out too.”

“I noticed that. It’s been hopping since I got here.”

The conversation lagged, and to cover the awkwardness, he picked up their menus from the table and opened them, then handed them to the women. He hadn’t worked his way through college tending bar at a little dive near the Gourmet Ghetto for nothing.

“So Mr. Caine recommended the French toast.”

“That’s what I always get when we come here for breakfast,” Sage told him. “It’s sooo good. Like having dessert for breakfast. Mom usually has a poached egg and whole wheat toast. That’s like driving all the way to Disneyland and not riding Space Mountain!”

“Maybe I’ll try the French toast this morning too,” Maura said, a hint of rebellion in her tone.

She seemed to be in a prickly mood, probably unhappy at the prospect of sharing a booth and a meal with him.

“Sorry I didn’t order coffee for either of you. I wasn’t sure of your preferences.”

“I usually like coffee in the morning,” Sage told him, “but I’m not sure my stomach can handle it today. I’d better go for tea.”

As if on cue, Dermot Caine headed toward their booth and did an almost comical double take when he saw Maura and Sage sitting with him. Jack wondered at it, until he remembered his comment about waiting for his family, in a manner of speaking.

Well, if the word wasn’t out around town that he was Sage’s father after the scene at the bookstore the night before, he imagined it wouldn’t take long for the Hope’s Crossing grapevine to start humming.

“Sage, my darlin’. Home for the holidays, are you?”

“That’s the plan, Mr. C.” She beamed at the older man, who plainly adored her.

“And how is school going for you?”

Sage made a face. “Meh. I had a chemistry and biology class in the same semester. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Well, you’re such a smarty, I’m sure you’ll do fine.” He turned to face Maura. Somehow Jack wasn’t surprised when he reached out and covered her hand with his. “And how are you, my dear?”

“I’m fine, Dermot. Thanks.” She gave him a smile, but Jack didn’t miss the way she moved her hand back to her lap as soon as Dermot lifted his away, as if she couldn’t bear to hold even a trace of sympathy.

“I’m guessing you’ll be wanting water for tea.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Make that two,” Sage said.

“Sure thing. And what else can I bring you? Have you had time to decide?”

They all settled on French toast, which seemed to delight Dermot Caine to no end. “I’ll add an extra dollop of fresh cream on the side for you. No charge,” he promised.

After he left, awkwardness returned to the booth. What strange dynamics between the three of them, he thought. Twenty years ago, Maura had been his best friend. They could never seem to stop talking—about politics, about religion, about their hopes and dreams for the future.

Over the past few days, he had seen Sage several times, and their conversation had been easy and wide-changing. He had years of her life to catch up on, and she seemed fascinated with his career, asking him questions nonstop about his life since he’d left Hope’s Crossing and about some of the projects he had designed.

Maura and Sage seemed very close as mother and daughter, and he would have expected them to have plenty to talk about.

So why did these jerky silences seem to strangle the conversation when the three of them were together?

“I guess you found a hotel room,” Sage finally said after Dermot returned with cups of hot water and the two women busied themselves selecting their tea bags.

“It wasn’t easy,” he admitted. “I ended up stopping at a couple different places and finally found a room at the Blue Columbine.”

“That’s a really nice place,” Sage said. “My mom’s friend Lucy owns it.”

Good to know. He would have to take a careful look at the basket of muffins that had been left outside his door that morning to make sure nobody had slipped rat poison into it. “The bed was comfortable. That’s usually what matters most to me.”

“You didn’t want to stay up at the Silver Strike?” Maura asked with a sharp smile that seemed at odds with her lovely features. “I’ve never seen the rooms there, but I’ve heard they’re spectacular. Fodor’s gives the place a glowing review.”

His mouth tightened. She really thought she had the right to taunt him about that damn ski resort, after everything? Did she not understand she was on shaky ground here? He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to forgive her for keeping Sage from him all these years. He certainly wasn’t in the mood to deal with her prickly mood or veiled taunts about his father’s ski resort.

“I’ll pass. A B and B in town is fine with me for now.”

“For now? How long are you planning to stay in Hope’s Crossing?” she asked bluntly.

Sage sat forward, eyes focused on him with bright intensity as she awaited his answer. He chose his words carefully. “I’m not sure yet. I was thinking about sticking around for a week or two, until after the holidays.”

For all their surface resemblance, the two women had completely disparate reactions. Sage grinned at him with delight, while Maura looked as if Dermot had just fed her a teaspoon full of alum with her tea.

“That’s great. Really great!” Sage enthused. “I was afraid you were leaving today.”

“How can you spare the time?” Maura asked woodenly. “You’re a big-shot architect, just as you always dreamed.”

“It’s a slow time of year for me, which is why I was able to accept the lecture invitation. After the holidays, things will heat up. I’ve got a couple of projects in the region, actually, one in Denver and one in Montana, and a big one overseas in Singapore coming up, but my schedule is a little looser than normal this month.”

Maura stirred her tea, then took a cautious sip before speaking in a polite tone that belied the shadow of dismay he could see in her eyes. “Do you really want to spend that much time in Hope’s Crossing?”

He shrugged. No doubt she was thinking his presence would ruin her whole holiday. He didn’t care. He wasn’t really in the mood to play nice, not after she had kept his daughter from him for nineteen Christmases. “I was thinking maybe Sage and I could take off for a few days to Denver to study some of the architectural styles.”

“Really?” Sage’s eyes lit up as if he had just handed her keys to a brand-new car. “That would be fantastic! I would love it.”

Maura avoided his gaze to look out the window, and he could almost taste her resentment, as thick and bitter as bad coffee. When she finally looked back at the pair of them, she offered up a small, tense smile.

“That would provide a good chance for the two of you to spend some time together. If you do stick around, there are plenty of things to do around here as well. Art galleries, restaurants, hundreds of miles of cross-country ski trails. I’m sure you remember how lovely the canyon can be when it has fresh powder. Of course, that’s what all the skiers love too, and what brings them here in droves.”

It was another caustic dig, another reminder of what had finally forced him to turn his back on Hope’s Crossing—his father’s final, vicious betrayal and the gross misuse of land his mother had intended to leave to him.

Eventually he would probably have to drive up to the ski resort to see for himself how greed had destroyed his mother’s legacy. But not today.

“We should go up for the Christmas Eve candlelight ski,” Sage exclaimed. “We haven’t done that in a few years, have we, Mom? It’s so beautiful to watch all the little flames dancing down the mountainside.”

“That sounds great,” Maura said.

Not to Jack. The last place he wanted to be on Christmas Eve was up at the ski resort. He started to give some polite answer when his attention was caught by someone else coming into the café. He couldn’t see the man’s features from here when he turned away to speak to Dermot, but something inside Jack froze.

He didn’t need to see him clearly to know who was currently trying to push around the restaurant owner, despite the futility of anyone thinking they could intimidate Dermot Caine.

His father.

The biggest son of a bitch who had ever lived.

Dermot cast a quick look in their direction and grabbed Harry’s arm, obviously intent on steering him the opposite way.

“Hold your horses. Let me at least take my coat off, you daft Irish fool.”

Those were the first words he had heard his father speak in nearly two decades. He was taken completely by surprise at the twisted, complex mix of emotions that washed over him like flood waters through a rain-parched arroyo.

At the overloud voice, Maura turned around to follow the sound of the commotion. When she turned around, he didn’t detect any hint of surprise in her expression.

Was his father a regular at the cafe? He must be. He suddenly remembered Maura’s reaction the night before when he had suggested they meet here for breakfast, her initial hesitation and then the too-quick agreement. She must have expected Harry to show up eventually.

This was a damn setup. He should have known.

What happened to her? When they were wild teenagers in love, Maura had been his anchor, the only bright spot in a world that had never been all that great but had completely fallen apart after his mother’s suicide. It was obvious that sweet and loving girl had disappeared twenty years ago.

“Low,” he murmured.

She sipped at her tea again and gave him an innocent look that didn’t fool him for a second. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a liar now too?”

Sage looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to interpret the simmer of tension, but Maura quickly distracted her. “The Christmas Eve ski is always fun. What else would you like to do this year?”

“I always love the wagon rides they have through Snowflake Canyon to look at the lights.”

“We can add that to the schedule,” Maura assured her.

They talked about other traditions, leaving Jack to simmer in his frustration. He had known he would eventually have to see his father. He just hadn’t expected it to be twelve hours after he arrived in town.

Dermot must have remembered the vast rift between him and his father. To Jack’s relief, he had seated Harry in an area of the restaurant that angled away from them, out of sight of their booth. At least he wouldn’t have to come face-to-face with the man. Even so, any culinary anticipation for the cafe’s much-vaunted French toast had turned to ashes in his gut.

A bleached-blond college-age kid with the slouchy dress and manner of a ski bum brought their food over a few moments later, three plates brimming with golden French toast with little crackly pieces of sugar-coated fried dough and sliced almonds on top.

“Hey, Sage, Maura. Stranger Dude. Dermot’s tied up in the kitchen for a while,” he explained. “He asked me to take care of you. So if you need anything else, give me a shout-out.”

“Thanks, Logan.”

“How’s school?” Sage asked.

“Good. I think I made the dean’s list. I had a killer final in statistics, but I think I aced it. You?”

“Pretty good. Not dean’s-list good, but I was happy with it. Did you have Professor Lee for stats? I’ve got him next semester.”

“He’s brutal, man.”

“Hey, I might need a ride back to Boulder after the break. When are you taking off?”

“Haven’t thought that far in advance. My first class isn’t until ten-thirty the Monday school starts, so I might get in a few runs as soon as the lifts open before I head back.”

“I’ll text you after New Year’s to figure things out.”

“Okay. Like I said, if you need anything, let me know.”

The conversation between the young people gave Jack a chance to regain his perspective. It wasn’t Maura’s fault Harry ate breakfast at the café. He had sensed something off in her reaction when he’d made the suggestion to eat here the night before and should have pursued it.

Besides, he was an adult. He could certainly spend a few minutes in the same restaurant with the man he despised. Yes, it had been petty of her to set him up like that, but if he were going to hold a grudge, he had bigger grievances against her. As far as he could see, there was no reason to let Harry ruin a perfectly delicious breakfast.

“So we talked about cross-country skiing and sleigh rides and Christmas Eve candlelight skis. What else do I need to see in Hope’s Crossing while I’m here?” he asked Sage.

She launched into a long list of her favorite things to do in town. By the time she finished, even he was thinking maybe Hope’s Crossing wasn’t the purgatory he remembered.

“Sounds like you two have plenty to keep you busy until school starts up again,” Maura said. She had only eaten about four or five bites of her French toast and one nibble of the crispy bacon that accompanied it.

Sage suddenly looked stricken, as if she had only just remembered that her mother might have expected to spend some of the holiday break with her. “We could do a lot of this together, the three of us.”

There was no “three of us.” Just two people who had once loved each other and the child they had created together.

“No, this will be good,” Maura assured her with a smile that only looked slightly forced. “You know how busy I’m going to be up until Christmas Eve and then the week after with all the holiday returns. This way I won’t have to worry about you being bored while I’m stuck at the store.”

She checked her watch and set down her napkin. “Speaking of busy, I probably need to run. Mornings are hectic in December. It seems like everyone in town decides to take a coffee break at the same time and fit in a little shopping too.”

The purpose of suggesting they meet for breakfast had been to come to some sort of agreement on how their tangled relationship would proceed from here. He wasn’t sure they had accomplished that particular goal, but they seemed to have reached an accord of some sort, Harry’s unexpected presence notwithstanding.

“Do you need some extra help with the rush?” Sage asked.

“You don’t need to come in,” Maura assured her. “You should spend the day with your, er…with Jack while you have a chance.”

“Well, yeah, I want to. But to tell you the truth, I haven’t had a chance to do any Christmas shopping yet, and I could use a little extra money. I hate to dip into my college fund for presents if I don’t have to.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jack assured her. “I’ve got plenty of work to catch up on. Maybe we could always meet this evening.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Sage asked.

“Not at all.” The two of them didn’t need to spend twenty-four hours a day together. It was probably better to take their interactions in small doses while he was still adjusting to the idea of even having a daughter.

Besides, he didn’t want Maura to think he planned to monopolize every moment with Sage while he was in Hope’s Crossing.

“In that case,” Maura said, her features a little more relaxed, “I would love to have you work at the store today. We’ve been slammed the last few days, and I’m sure Ruth could use help restocking.”

With that settled, they returned to their breakfast. He was happy to see Maura eat a few more bites and finish off the citrus slices that came with it. When breakfast was over, they wrangled for a moment over the bill, but he solved the issue by taking his credit card and the ticket to the cash register, leaving her to glower after him.

“I’ll walk you over to the store,” he said to the two of them after signing the credit card receipt handed him by the snowboarding academic. “The only place I could find to park was in that alley behind your store.”

“Parking is our big problem downtown, as you have probably figured out. The Downtown Merchants’ Alliance is talking about building a big parking structure a block to the west, if we can do it in an aesthetically pleasing way that fits in with the rest of the town.”

After leaving the café, they walked up half a block to the light so they could cross the street. As he looked up the length of Main Street, he was struck again by the charm of the town, with electrified reproductions of historic gas lamps lining the street and brick-paved sidewalks instead of concrete. The town leaders seemed to have gone to a great deal of trouble to manage the growth in that pleasing way Maura was talking about that stayed true to its character, with none of the jumble of styles so many communities adopted by default.

Beneath the wooden sign reading Dog-Eared Books & Brew, he held the door open for the two women and stepped inside the welcoming warmth to say goodbye to Sage.

“What time do you think you’ll be free for dinner?”

“I don’t know. Can you give me a second, though, before we figure out details? I’ve had to pee since before Logan brought our breakfast, and I’m not sure I can wait even five more minutes.”

“Uh, sure.”

She gave him a grateful smile and hurried to the back of the store, leaving him to watch with bemusement at her abrupt exit.

Maura gave a short laugh. “That’s Sage for you. Sorry about that. When she was a little girl, I always had to remind her to take a minute and visit the bathroom. She tended to hold it until the very last second, because she didn’t want to bother wasting time with such inconsequential things when she could be creating a masterpiece skyscraper out of blocks or redesigning her Barbie house to make better use of the available space.”

He could almost picture her, dark curls flying, green eyes earnest, that chin they shared set with determination. A hard kernel of regret seemed to be lodged somewhere in his chest. He had missed so much. Everything. Ballet recitals and bedtime stories and soccer games.

This whole thing was so surreal. He had always told himself he didn’t want or need a family. His own childhood had been so tumultuous, marked by his mother’s mental chaos and Harry’s increasing impatience and frustration and his subsequent cold distance. In his mind, family was turmoil and pain.

Jack had always just figured that since he didn’t have the desire—or the necessary skills—to be a father, he was better off just avoiding that eventuality altogether. That had been one of the things that had drawn him to Kari, her insistence that her career mattered too much for her to derail it with a side trip on the Mommy Track.

Mere months into their marriage, she’d done a rapid about-face and started buying baby magazines and comparing crib specifications. Even before that, he’d known their marriage had been a mistake. She hated his travel and his long hours, she couldn’t stand his friends, she started drinking more than she ever had when they were dating.

Bringing a child into the middle of something that was already so shaky would have been a disaster. They started counseling, but when he found out she had stopped taking her birth control pills despite his entreaties that they at least give the counseling a chance to work, he had started sleeping on the sofa in his office.

She filed for divorce two weeks later and ended up married to another attorney in her office a month after the decree came down.

Yeah, he had always figured he and kids wouldn’t be a good mix. But these little glimpses into Sage’s childhood filled him with poignant regret.

Nothing he could do about that now. He realized that Maura was watching him warily and he forced himself to smile. “I like your place.”

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.

“I…No. Not really. Damn it.”

His father lurched as if someone had struck him from behind. He knocked a hip against a display table of new releases and swept a hand out to steady himself, scattering books to the floor. Even so, he was unable to keep his balance. Jack could see him start to head to the floor, but he was too far away to reach him in time. Maura was closer, but even she couldn’t prevent Harry from toppling. A hard crack sounded above the bustle from the coffee bar as the side of his head made contact with the edge of the table before he slumped to the ground.

“Mr. Lange!” Maura exclaimed, kneeling next to the prone figure.

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. He was standing there one minute, then hit the ground the next. Mr. Lange!”

She turned his father onto his back, and his aging features were ashen and still. Was he dead? Had Jack managed to knock him off just by showing up in town? He froze for a moment, aware of his own strange mix of emotions—shock and dismay and most surprising, a completely unexpected regret.

“He’s unconscious!” Maura said. “Come on, Mr. Lange. Wake up.”

“He hit the edge of the table pretty hard.”

“Give me your coat.”

“Why?”

“Just give it to me, Jack!”

He reluctantly handed over the custom-sewn leather jacket he had picked up during his time in Italy. She bunched it up and tucked it under Harry’s head. Even that bit of commotion didn’t make his father snap out of it.

“Come on, Harry, this is stupid. Wake up.” His father’s eyelids fluttered a little at his voice, but his eyes didn’t open.

If he had ever imagined a reunion with his father—which he absolutely hadn’t—he was pretty sure this wasn’t what he would have predicted, with his father sprawled out on the ground looking lifeless and ashen.

“Harry!” he barked.

That seemed to do the trick. Harry’s eyelids jerked a few times, and seconds later he finally opened his eyes fully. They were dazed and blank for a moment before they sharpened, his gaze fixed on Jack with shades of that same stunned disbelief. “What…happened?”

Jack couldn’t seem to say anything, frozen in place by the years of bitterness and hatred he had fed and nurtured for this man.

“You fell,” Maura finally answered.

She tugged and pulled the jacket to a better position under the old man’s head and seemed unfazed when he batted away her hands.

“Get away from me,” he snapped. “I just need to catch my breath.”

She eased away, picking a cell phone out of her pocket. “Fine. You should know we charge extra for napping in the middle of the store.”

“Smarty.”

She gave him a tart look even as she started hitting buttons on her phone.

“What are you doing? Put that away! I hope you don’t think I’m going to let you take a picture of me for all your girlfriends to cackle about.”

Jack noted with concern that, despite his protests, his father’s voice still sounded feeble and his features hadn’t lost that pallid cast.

“I hadn’t planned to take a picture, no. But that’s a great idea.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“Calling nine-one-one. You need to go to the emergency room to be checked out.”

If anything, that made Harry look even more horrified. “Forget it. I’m fine. I just lost my balance, that’s all.” He tried to scramble up, and Jack finally had to move forward to help Maura keep him in place.

Harry gave a sharp intake of breath when Jack grabbed his arm and gazed at him with an expression he couldn’t decipher.

“You passed out in my store,” Maura said sternly. “I’m not about to leave myself open to some future lawsuit where you claim negligence. I’m calling the paramedics. You can fight it out with them.”

Harry jerked his gaze away from Jack to summon a halfhearted glower, but he subsided back against the cushion of his jacket. Really? He was going to give in without a fight? For the first time, Jack began to wonder if something was seriously wrong with Harry’s health.

“This is just want you wanted, isn’t it?” Harry said bitterly. It took a moment for Jack to realize the words were directed at him. “It probably gives you no end of pleasure to come back after all these years and see some weak, pathetic old man on the floor at your feet.”

Any concern and sympathy he might have briefly entertained for Harry dried up like the Mojave in August. “You’re not that old.”

Harry frowned at him and gave Maura a nasty look in turn. “At least help me up. I’m fine. I don’t need to be lying on the damn floor. Help me to one of those chairs over there.”

She looked undecided, then gazed around the crowd of curious customers that had begun to gather around.

“If we do, will you promise to stay put instead of trying to juke around us and run out to avoid the EMTs?”

“Very funny. I’m not running anywhere. Now help me up.”

She sighed and reached for one of Harry’s arms, gesturing for Jack to take the other. He would have liked to ignore her. Hell, he would have liked to yank his eight-hundred-dollar Milano leather jacket out from under Harry’s head and make his own escape from Dog-Eared Books & Brew, but common decency—as well as a completely ridiculous desire not to look like a bigger ass to her than he already did—compelled him to step forward and grab Harry’s other arm.

His father was still not quite seventy. Jack imagined without the pallor he would still be fairly hale and hearty. Still, the old man felt almost frail as he and Maura supported him toward a plump armchair in the nearby travel section.

“What’s going on?”

At the new voice, he looked over and found Sage gazing at the three of them in puzzled consternation.

“Mr. Lange is feeling a little under the weather,” Maura replied. “He passed out.”

“I didn’t pass out,” Harry snapped. “I just lost my balance. If you left a person with half a foot of aisle room in this place, I would have been fine.”

“See, that definitely sounds like you’re blaming me. Should I be calling my lawyer?” Maura returned.

“I’m not going to sue anybody.”

Don’t believe him, he wanted to tell Maura. If Harry saw any advantage to himself in a given situation, he wouldn’t hesitate to lie, steal and betray to get his way.

“O. M. G.!”

Maura blinked at Sage’s sudden exclamation. “What?”

“If Jack is my father, that means Mr. Lange is my grandfather!”

He bit back a four-letter word. Of all the moments for Sage to blurt out that little bit of information!

Harry’s eyes widened and he looked back and forth between the two of them. Maura was the one who had turned pale now. She looked as if she wanted to disappear behind a bookshelf, and Jack wanted to join her.

Harry did not need this information, something else he could figure out how to manipulate for his own purposes.

“What did she say?” Harry asked.

“Nothing,” Maura muttered. “Now would be a really good time for you to go back to sleep.”

“Who are you?” Harry asked Sage, his thick eyebrows arched like bristly caterpillars.

“My daughter,” Maura said quickly.

He narrowed his gaze. “Your daughter died in that car accident up Silver Strike Reservoir this spring. I was there, wasn’t I? I saw the whole thing.”

That was news to Jack. What had been his father’s involvement in the accident that killed Layla Parker?

“This is my older daughter, Sage.”

He should just keep his mouth zipped here. He knew damn well telling him about Sage was a mistake—but he also knew Harry well enough to be certain he would just keep pushing and pushing until somebody told him.

“And mine, apparently,” Jack finally said.

Maura sent him a quick, surprised look, as if she expected him to deny the whole thing. Harry, on the other hand, just stared.

“Have you taken a DNA test?” he asked.

None of your damn business, he wanted to say. He didn’t want his father mixed up in this complicated mess, but he was coming to realize he didn’t have much control over things. Harry just might have more contact with Sage than he would. He lived in Hope’s Crossing, after all. While Jack would be back in San Francisco, Harry would be free to pick up the phone whenever Sage was in town and meet her for lunch at the café or the resort or any blasted place he wanted.

“She’s my daughter. I’m convinced of it, and that’s all that matters.”

Harry opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, the door to the bookstore burst open, and a pair of burly paramedics hurried inside with emergency kits and dedicated focus.

“Back here,” Maura called and waved. They shifted directions and headed toward them.

“I don’t need the damn paramedics,” Harry grumbled.

“Well, you’ve got them,” Maura retorted. “Hey, Dougie.”

One of the paramedics, a guy who looked like he could probably bench-press half the bookstore, grinned at her. “Hey, Maur. What have we got?”

“Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I just thought it would be better to call you to check things out.”

“That’s what we’re here for. What happened?”

“Mr. Lange isn’t feeling well. He had some kind of incident. We were talking one moment and he fell over the next. I think he was unconscious for about thirty seconds to a minute.”

“I didn’t pass out,” Harry asserted. “I just lost my balance.”

“And then went to the Bahamas for the next little while,” Jack answered.

“Either way, it’s a good idea to check things out,” the other paramedic said.

“That’s what I figured,” Maura answered. “He hit his head on a table pretty hard when he fell.”

She stepped away from Harry and let the paramedics do their thing.

“Is he going to be okay?” Sage asked him, her voice low.

He figured his father would be harassing the paramedics all the way to the hospital, haranguing them on everything from their driving to the accommodations. “It’s just a precaution. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

For the first time, he noticed Sage looked a little pale too. This had to be weird for her, to find herself suddenly related to the old bastard.

“I don’t need a stupid gurney.”

“Sorry, Mr. Lange. We have to follow the rules.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“You can always refuse treatment,” Dougie, Maura’s friend, said to Harry.

Jack fully expected his father would do just that, but after a pause, Harry shrugged. “No. I’ll come. I don’t want to see the idiots in the E.R., though. Call Dr. Osaka and tell him to meet us there.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

A moment later, the paramedics finally succeeded in loading Harry onto the gurney and rolled him out of the bookstore.

“Are you going to follow the ambulance to the hospital?” Maura asked.

“He doesn’t need me. He’s made that more than clear.” He turned to Sage. “So we’re meeting for dinner. What time works for you?”

She still looked a little green around the gills, and he had a feeling food was the last thing on her mind. “Well, I was thinking I could work until four or so. Any time after that?”

“Let’s say six-thirty. I’ll pick you up at your house.”

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

He picked up his jacket, shook it off from being on the ground, then shrugged into it. With a stiff nod to Maura, he headed out into the snow-crusted streets of Hope’s Crossing.

The encounter with Harry served as a stark reminder of everything he’d been thinking. What the hell did he know about being a father? When he was a kid, his own example had been distant, preoccupied with work, then increasingly sharp—bordering on cruel—as Jack had reached adolescence.

By the time his mother eventually took her own life out of despair and loneliness and mental illness, Harry had given up any effort at establishing a relationship and had shown nothing but disdain for him.

Maybe Jack ought to just cut Sage a break now and slip back out of her life as quickly as he had come. She hadn’t had a chance yet to establish any real feelings for him. She had her mother, her grandmother, a strong support network here in Hope’s Crossing. Why on earth did she need him?

He stopped himself before he could go further down that road. The idea of leaving now, after he had only just found her, was unbearable. He wanted to be a father to her, in whatever limited capacity he could manage.

If that meant achieving some sort of peaceful accord with Maura, he was willing to do that too. He had to think that somewhere inside the prickly, sad-eyed woman she had become were some traces of the smart, funny, tender girl she had once been.

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