These Ties That Bind
These Ties That Bind
Mary Sullivan
Rem Caldwell has made mistakes–there's no denying that. But he knows he can be the father his son deserves. If only Sara Franck would agree. She keeps bringing up their shared past, no matter how many times Rem tells her he's changed.Telling her isn't enough. Rem has to show Sara that he's a different man. And he has to do it soon–he needs his mother to know her grandson before it's too late. Because the one thing Rem wants more than anything is a permanent family reunion with Sara, the woman he adores.
“I can’t do this.”
Sara was strong enough to control her body and its desires. She’d had a lot of practice. She didn’t need to understand the darkness lurking inside—whatever it was—to know that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
“Damn it, Sara.” A thread of desperation rang in Rem’s voice. “Let go for once in your life.”
“No. I did that once. With you. Remember? And I ended up pregnant. You walked out on us. I’ve raised a great kid. All by myself. I don’t need you.”
“I’m not talking about need. I’m talking about love. We belong together. We always have. We’re connected.”
Sara shook her head sadly. “We might have been at one time. But everything has changed.”
Dear Reader,
Remington Caldwell begged for his own story. He first appeared in Beyond Ordinary, as the hero, Timm Franck’s, best friend. The idea of writing about the gorgeous bad boy who had worked hard to reform appealed to me. Where would his life go after redemption? And why couldn’t he forget Timm’s sister, Sara, a gray wren who was hard to ignore?
They’d traveled a rocky road because of one incident that changed their lives forever, that wreaked havoc with their best intentions and with their futures. Sara started as Rem’s little buddy, though. So the only way this story could go, despite having difficulties to resolve, was for them to end as friends.
I wanted to explore the idea that, although every friend we make in life counts, sometimes it’s those old friends who call to us and make us feel like we’re coming home. Throughout our lives, those friends act as landmarks that ground us, that remind us about the best parts of ourselves. When Sara finally comes home, she steps straight into Rem’s arms.
Happy reading!
Mary Sullivan
These Ties That Bind
Mary Sullivan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Sullivan recently moved back into her old neighborhood and is getting in touch with old friends. The joy of renewing these friendships enriches her life these days. Funny how easy it is to slip into those relationships as though time never passed, as though we are still those young children with our lives ahead of us. As much as she loves her old friends, Mary also enjoys making new ones and hearing from readers. You can reach her at www.marysullivanbooks.com.
Thank you, Megan,
for making this a better book.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
SARA FRANCK HAD NEVER considered herself a coward, but walking into Chester’s Bar and Grill this evening was about to be the hardest thing she’d ever done. She hesitated on the doorstep.
Earlier today, Remington Caldwell had sent her a note.
Tonight. Seven o’clock. Chester’s. Far corner, back booth. Just you and me, babe. Time for a reckoning.
Rem
To a woman who prided herself on her common sense, the butterflies in her stomach were disconcerting, but she’d been off balance since June—the last time she’d seen Rem.
He’d asked her to marry him…
“Sara?” Her brother, Timm, held the front door open for her. “You coming?”
The scents of beer and grilled meats, and the welcoming warmth of the place enveloped her.
Drawing on the determination that had pulled her through every hardship she’d ever faced, Sara followed Timm in out of the frosty December night, to Christmas carols filling the air and candles winking on every table. Silver garlands hung from the rafters. Fresh cedar swags gathered with red velvet bows covered the walls. A decorated Christmas tree took pride of place on a small stage.
Chester and his wife, Missy, had invited all of Ordinary, Montana, to their first annual Christmas party and it looked as if the whole town had shown up. The sounds of conversation and merriment saturated the big room, but Sara heard little. Rem was here.
Timm went straight to the bar, to visit with his new wife, Angel, who was helping out for the night as bartender and waitress. No surprise. After all, Missy was her mom and Chester her stepfather.
Sara stepped farther into the room and, as though her heart were a compass, spotted Rem in the far corner. Ha. Some compass. It had been slipping since the summer, careening off center, along with her ability to keep focus on the direction her life had always taken and should continue to take, and all of it Rem’s fault.
She started toward him with her tender feelings locked down. She didn’t want or need to be vulnerable to this man.
Someone called out a greeting. She answered in kind, but had no idea to whom.
Rem watched her as she crossed the busy restaurant, the hot blue of his eyes a guiding light.
Don’t look at me like that.
He raised a glass of clear liquid to his lips. So, he was still drinking. What was in that glass? Gin? Vodka?
Sara, I’m a changed man, he’d said in June. I want you to see the new me.
Sitting here in the bar amid the hubbub of a happy crowd, the new Rem didn’t look much different from the old and it proved that she’d made the right decision when she’d turned him down. He’d lied about changing.
He drained the last of his drink. Her gaze followed. With that mouth, how could it not? He’d kissed her that day in June, just before proposing.
Why did that kiss still haunt her? Because it had been sweet and tempting and seductive. But he’d been sweet and tempting before, when he was a teenager, and things hadn’t worked out then. Why would anything work now?
She slid into the booth across from him.
He kept his eyes on her, but didn’t say anything.
Angel showed up beside them. “What can I get you, Sara?”
“We’ll have a couple of club sodas on ice,” Rem answered before Sara could.
Angel nodded and walked away, taking Rem’s empty glass with her.
“When you get a minute, Angel,” someone shouted. “We need another round here.”
“I’m on it, folks,” Angel called.
Sara ignored all of it, her focus on the man who had the power to shift her world’s axis. “I’m a big girl, Rem. I could have ordered my own drink.”
“I know.”
“So, you’re not drinking?”
“Not a drop.”
The scent of French fries wafted from the table beside them. Sara knew she should eat, but couldn’t. Her stomach rejected the thought, at least until she’d finished her business with Rem—whatever this business was.
“Since when have you not been drinking, Rem?”
“Since I got stabbed in the summer.”
Sara didn’t want to think about the stabbing. Instead, she concentrated on the drinking issue. “How long will it last this time?”
“Forever. Those two months last summer were an aberration, Sara, because you turned me down. I was hurting. That was the first alcohol I’d had in six years. I’m over the drinking and the disappointment.”
“Why am I here?” she asked. “You proposed. I said no. What’s left to discuss?”
Rem got out of the booth and she wondered where he was going. Before she could stop him, he sat beside her.
“What—?”
He forced her into the corner, facing him with her back against the wall, and laid his warm hands on her thighs. She knew she should protest, should push him out of the booth because he was too big and too close, but her body craved him even as her mind rallied against him.
“Damn it, Rem.”
He turned toward her.
“I—” Whatever she was going to say died on her lips, the festive crowd faded away and they might as well have been alone in the room. Rem stared at her with brilliant blue eyes framed by dark lashes, reflections of the white lights hanging from the ceiling shining in his pupils.
Black hair fell across his forehead and she almost reached out to push it back, managing to stop before making a fool of herself.
He smelled like cedar and pine. Maybe he’d helped Chester decorate today.
Amy Grant sang about having a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light. But Sara’s wasn’t. It was dark and scared and off-kilter. She wanted her sanity back, her old life before Rem had proposed.
“Why?” she asked, as though he could know her thoughts. “Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”
“I wanted to make things right.”
“They already were right. My life was perfect.”
“Nothing was right between us, Sara.” He ran a finger down her cheek and she jerked away.
“Keep your hands to yourself.”
He let his hand fall to the table. “Nothing’s been right since that night in the hospital after Finn was born. I rejected you both. I was scared and immature and dead wrong. I should have married you then.”
“For Finn. Because I got pregnant.” It wasn’t a question. “So, more than eleven years later you proposed out of guilt?”
“No!” Rem slapped his palm on the table. “Are you blind? I love you.” He hauled her close and wrapped his fingers around her nape. Before she could protest, his lips were on hers and there was nothing sweet or seductive about this kiss.
It was carnal. Heat-drenched. Laden with so much anger and frustration, Sara could taste it. She felt the same things herself.
Her body begged her to give in to the kiss, but she wouldn’t, because that darkness inside her that she’d felt toward Rem for years had grown bigger in the past six months. Since June. Since that devastating marriage proposal. She didn’t know where the darkness came from or what it was, but it was profound and terrified her to her toes. Something that had been hidden for a long time had worked its way too close to the surface. A flood of emotion threatened to pour out of her and all she could do was stick her finger in the hole, resist the pressure and hang on for dear life.
She thought she heard someone whisper, “Wow, it’s about time.”
Sara took one last taste of Rem’s tongue and lips, because it would be their last kiss—ever—then forced herself to pull away. His moisture cooled on her lips and his breath feathered bits of hair around her face.
“I can’t do this.” She was strong enough to control her body and its desires. She’d had a lot of practice.
She didn’t need to understand the darkness lurking inside—whatever it was—to know that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. She and Finn had a good life. Things would stay the way they were.
“Damn it, Sara.” A thread of desperation rang in Rem’s voice. “Let go for once in your life.”
“No. I did that once. With you. Remember? And I ended up pregnant. I wouldn’t give up Finn for the world, but it’s been anything but easy. You walked out on us. You decided you didn’t want to be a father. I’ve raised a great kid. All by myself. I don’t need you.”
“I’m not talking about need. I’m talking about love and companionship. We belong together. We always have. We’re connected.” He leaned forward. “If we don’t belong together, why did you sleep with me that night last summer?”
“That was a mistake.” She traced a scar on the tabletop with her nail. “Do you think your mom knew I stayed late that night? Do you think she heard me when I ran out?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We aren’t kids anymore.” He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her to look into his intense blue eyes. “Answer my question. Why did you make love to me that night?”
“You’d been stabbed. You almost died.”
“And it scared you because we’re connected. Because if I died, part of you would die, too.”
She shook her head sadly. “We might have been at one time, before you burned Timm. But that changed everything.”
Rem cursed and bracketed her face with his hands. He rested his forehead on hers, breathing hard. “That was an accident. I was a kid. You know that. Timm’s forgiven me. Why can’t you?”
She wanted to touch him so she curled her hands into fists in her lap. She had to protect herself and her son. “What about all of that stuff when you were a teenager? The drinking? The girls? The street racing?”
“There’s a difference between what I did as a teenager and what I did last summer. When I was a kid, drinking and partying were a pattern in my life. I’d burned my best friend. I didn’t think I deserved better for myself. Last summer’s drinking was an aberration after six years of sobriety. Can’t you see they aren’t the same?”
He backed away and the bar came into focus again. People talked, laughed, sang along with the Christmas carol tinting the air with nostalgia.
Two glasses filled with clear soda and ice sat side by side on the table. Angel must have brought them while they were kissing.
Heat crawled up Sara’s neck.
Rem picked up one of the glasses. “Club soda. No alcohol. I haven’t had a drop since the stabbing. I’ve changed, Sara. You need to accept that.”
He slammed the glass down and soda splashed onto the table.
“But I haven’t seen any change,” she said. “You drank in the summer. You sure looked like the old Rem.”
“That was temporary. I was upset after you turned me down.”
“Okay, so you haven’t had a drink since then. But you could again at any time. It shouldn’t have happened in the summer.”
“It happened because I’m human. No one is perfect. Not even you.” He rammed his fingers through his hair, his frustration a palpable thing beating between them. “There are things you don’t know.”
“What are you talking about? What things?”
He got out of the booth and his absence sucked all of the warmth out of the room. He reclaimed the bench on the other side and she felt a loss whose source she couldn’t identify.
“Nothing,” he said. “Forget I said anything.” He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Okay, listen. You haven’t seen the changes in me because you were away too many years at school and then working. Your visits have been short. A week here. A week there. Just like now.”
He took a long swallow of soda. “Dad died seven years ago. His death scared me straight. I knew I had to save myself. Ma needed me to grow up and take responsibility. I did, Sara. I went to school for six years. I didn’t drink. Didn’t party. I’m a veterinarian now. I take care of the ranch. I take care of Ma.”
He reached across the table and took her hands in his. His gaze shot to her face. “Your fingers are icicles.”
“I know.” This year she felt winter’s chill so deeply. She didn’t know why she couldn’t get warm.
You were warm a minute ago, in this man’s arms. She ignored that sentiment.
“Before last summer,” Rem went on, “I’d been sober for six and a half years. That’s a long time.”
“Yes, it is, but you did drink again last summer.”
“And I don’t now. We’re going around in circles, Sara.”
She didn’t respond. What ruled her decisions about Rem were the times when he lost control, because those times destroyed her, devastated her, starting with her brother’s eleventh birthday party. Rem had sprayed Timm with foam streamers and the birthday candles had set the foam—and Timm—on fire. Rem’s questionable choices were terrifying.
“What about the car you crashed when you were sixteen? You were lucky to survive.”
He tapped one fist against his forehead. “I’m thirty-two years old. Why are you dwelling on ancient history?”
“Because it will always be there between us.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Life changes. Only your memories stay the same.”
“That’s true. My memories don’t change.”
As much as it hurt her to do so, she took her fingers out of his grasp.
“Nothing is going to happen between us, Rem. That’s final.” She moved to slide out of the booth, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“If you leave now, it will be final. For me, too. I’m done with you, Sara.”
Rem sounded so strong, so determined, that Sara hesitated. He had hovered on the edges of her life for so many years. Had always been there, a constant, undeniable shadow. A man who’d loved her unceasingly. As of this moment, that all ended.
“I understand,” she said, and left the booth.
It was over. This time, for good.
She walked away, through the warm and festive restaurant and straight out the door into the quiet night, where falling snow coated the ground like a feather duvet, cloaking the world in a reverent hush. And all Sara felt as she trudged to her mother’s home was hollowness in the pit of her stomach and a bone-deep chill.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MOMENT HE HEARD THE CRASH, Rem shot out of his sweat-soaked bed and ran to the open window. Light-headed, he grasped the sill for support.
The June sun was too bright, already too high. Must be eight-thirty or nine o’clock. He’d slept in.
He’d been dreaming of Sara Franck again. And fire.
On the small highway that ran along his land, a patch of orange glimmered, so pretty it looked almost harmless. Was that actually fire or a remnant of his heat-wrought imagination?
He scrubbed his eyes and peered out the window to see a car nose-deep in the ancient oak beside his front gate.
The glow of orange grew.
Fire! Real, not dream-induced.
Lord, was there someone in that car?
With no time for a shirt, he scrambled into his jeans, almost falling when he hit the stairs.
His cell phone sat on the hall table where he’d left it beside his car keys.
As he ran out of the house, he tried to see whether anyone was up and walking around the car in the distance. Nothing moved.
Rem dove into his old SUV and sped down his long driveway toward the road that led to Ordinary, Montana.
He needed the fire department. Fast.
His hands shook and he dropped his phone.
Damn!
He wiped his eyes to clear them of sleep.
Wake up, already.
A too-long moment later, he pulled to a screeching stop at the end of the drive, scrabbled around under his seat for the phone and dialed 9-1-1.
“It’s Rem Caldwell. There’s been a car crash. Looks bad. I need the fire department and an ambulance.” He rattled off his address and jumped out of his vehicle.
Thick smoke obscured the compact car that had torn a gash into the oak, making it impossible to tell whether anyone was trapped inside.
Fire crackled in the front of the vehicle.
His heart in his throat, he rounded the car. A woman sat on the road holding her head and looking bewildered.
Thank God she’d gotten out.
“There’s a woman on the road,” he shouted to the emergency operator. “Alive, but hurt.” He shoved the phone into his pocket.
At least she wasn’t burning in that twisted wreckage, her flesh on fire and smelling of roasting meat.
Rem shook his head to rid his mind of old images.
“I’m coming!” he called to the woman. She didn’t react. Blood matted her hair and the asphalt around her.
On the far side of the road, in another pool of blood, lay a large stag. If he wasn’t dead already, then soon. The impact with the animal had crushed the front of the car right to the steering wheel.
The driver was lucky to be alive.
He squatted beside her. “Where are you hurt besides your head?” Judging by the way she held her ribs, she’d cracked or broken at least one. He guessed her arm was broken, too.
“What happened?” she whispered, the words slurred. Concussion, maybe?
“You hit a stag.”
She rubbed her ear, then turned to her side and vomited.
He supported her until she was finished.
“What happened?” she asked again and, with that evidence of confusion, he knew she had a concussion.
A high-pitched scream burst from the wreckage and the hair on Rem’s arms stood on end. Dear God.
Someone was inside that burning metal box.
“Who else was in the car with you?” Rem yelled over his shoulder as he ran toward the vehicle.
The driver didn’t respond.
He scanned the car. Too much fire. “Who’s in there?”
A young voice inside the car screamed, “Mom, help me!”
SARA FRANCK GLANCED at the cast on her son’s broken wrist, disappointed that Finn had been so foolish. He sat in the passenger seat staring out his window and avoiding talking to her, as was usual lately. If he was this moody at eleven, she dreaded his teen years.
She gripped the steering wheel. She’d hoped that moving back to Ordinary would settle him down.
“Are you sure you’re okay for your horseback riding lesson today?”
Finn shook his hair out of his eyes and mumbled, “Yeah.”
She pointed to his cast. “You won’t be able to attend the lifeguard lessons I signed you up for. You can’t go in a pool with that on your arm.”
“Why do I have to do so much stuff every day? It’s summer. Why can’t I just hang out like other kids?”
“To keep you busy. To keep you out of trouble.”
“Mo-om, how many times do I hafta tell you? I’m not going to get into trouble.”
And yet, he’d broken his wrist yesterday.
“I have four words for you, Finn. Those boys in Bozeman.”
“Well, I’m not there anymore. I can’t hang out with them again, can I?”
Determined to check out the scene of his accident, Sara turned off Main and drove by the parking lot where his wrist had done battle with asphalt and had lost.
Her foot hit the brakes. Makeshift skateboarding ramps littered the asphalt. Obviously, kids had cobbled together whatever materials they could find. Oh, dear Lord, one of the ramps looked like an old rec room door. Finn could have killed himself. “That’s where you were skateboarding?” Fear sharpened her tone. “Oh, Finn, you’re lucky you didn’t die.”
“God, Mom, don’t exaggerate.” Finn crossed his arms and curled his shoulders in on himself, his lower lip jutting even more than normal these days.
“I’m happy to see you out doing something other than lying around listening to music and doodling in your sketchbook,” she said. “Skateboarding is fine, but doing it on wooden ramps over concrete is nuts. What were you thinking?”
“I was having fun,” he shouted, then lapsed back into his “I’m too cool to care” attitude.
Foolish boy.
She shot out of town, driving faster than she should, but for Pete’s sake, how was she supposed to survive motherhood?
“Thank goodness you were wearing your helmet.”
“Of course I was. I’m not stupid, Mom.” Why did the word sound like an insult when he used it?
Where have you gone, Finn? What have the aliens done with my sweet little boy and why did they leave this hostile stranger in his place?
He turned his back on her, as far as his seat belt would allow, and stared out the window.
Sara reached out to touch that bit of his neck peeking out from his too-long hair, but he flinched away from her. If she could, she’d encase him in bubble wrap for protection.
His twelfth birthday was less than two weeks away. His feet were getting big, almost man-size. That vulnerable neck, though? That was still little boy.
She’d thought she’d taught him how to be careful, but his streak of—of sheer recklessness worried her. What if he was like his father?
That left a bad taste in her mouth.
Adolescence barreled down on Finn, heedless and full of dangerous potential.
She glanced at his profile and saw his eyes widen.
“Mom, look,” he shouted.
Farther down the road at the entrance to the Caldwell ranch, a car sent plumes of smoke into the air. Rem’s place!
Sara pushed the accelerator to the floor and the car surged forward.
“Wow, looks bad, Mom. Unbelievable! Check out all that smoke.”
“Get my cell phone and dial 9-1-1. Tell them we need the fire department.”
As she drew closer, she noticed two people in the road, one lying down.
“Tell them we need an ambulance, too.”
The other person was running toward the burning car. Rem! What was he doing? Going in? Was he nuts?
She came to a gravel-spewing stop across from the accident, just shy of a large buck on the shoulder.
“Stay here,” she ordered Finn, and jumped out of the car.
The first thing that struck her was the noise of the deer lowing pitifully, in pain, of the woman groaning, also in pain, and of the fire crackling, eating up the car that Rem was about to jump into.
She grabbed her first aid kit from the trunk and yelled, “Rem, what are you doing? Don’t.”
REM’S BODY HAD GONE COLD. Geez, there was a kid trapped in that inferno.
The driver’s door stood ajar and he wrenched it open all the way.
Weirdly, he thought he heard Sara Franck’s voice.
The child screamed again.
“Melody!” the woman lying in the road screamed, lucid and hysterical now.
Afraid she would run to the car, Rem whipped around to tell her to stay put.
Sara knelt beside the woman, restraining her. Where had she come from?
“Rem,” she called, “don’t be stupid! Don’t go in there.”
“Can’t wait.” He coughed on smoke. “She’ll die.”
Turning back to the smoke swathed car, he cried, “Where are you?” even while he leaned toward the burning passenger seat.
“Here.” The terrified young voice came from the backseat. Thank God. He slammed the driver’s seat forward into the steering wheel and climbed into the car, the heat intense.
The scent of burning skin and hair choked him. The fumes from melting fabric and metal stung his eyes. The child cried out again, her screams terrible.
Rem barely made out a small form huddled beside the window in the only corner of the car not engulfed in flames. She beat her fist against the glass.
Reaching blindly, he grasped a leg.
“Gotcha!” Rem pulled hard. A small body crashed into his chest sending him backward against the door.
With a jerk, he dragged her out with him. He batted at her burning hair with his bare hands, then checked her over. Fire had touched only her hair.
He blinked hard. His eyes watered from the smoke.
As he carried her away from the burning vehicle, putting distance between them in case it blew up, Rem stared into her wide eyes. “You were lucky you were in the only corner of the car that wasn’t burning.”
“Was on…other side,” she gasped.
Hacking coughs wracked her thin body.
“When I woke up, there was fire everywhere. I undid my seat belt and moved over.” She lifted her shaking hands to show him her burnt palms.
“I couldn’t get Mom’s seat out of the way.” Her lower lip trembled. “I couldn’t get out.”
“Shh. You’re safe now,” Rem crooned, the same way he would to a balky horse. He wanted to rest his head on hers to soothe her, but he feared hurting her damaged scalp. Or maybe he wanted to soothe himself.
“Who are you? Where’s my mom?” She should be crying more, he thought. Her scalp had to hurt like crazy. She was probably going into shock.
“I’m Rem. Your mom’s okay. She got out of the car.” No sense mentioning her mother had been injured. Or that she’d stumbled out of the car on her own, likely forgetting about her daughter because of shock and a head injury.
Rem laid the girl on the grass, but hesitated to let her go. Maybe if he held on tightly enough, he could keep her safe.
The child looked older than her tiny body would indicate—about eight or nine, at a guess.
This close he could smell her burned skin and it gripped him with the talons of a familiar helplessness.
Sara was a nurse. She’d know what to do for the child. He searched for her.
“Sara?” She still knelt beside the injured woman wrapping her arm against her chest with gauze.
“Sara!” he barked. “Get over here. This girl’s hurt.”
Sara ran over.
“Fix her,” he said.
Gingerly, she checked the girl. “I can’t. They both need to get to the hospital.”
“I’ll take them.”
“We shouldn’t move the mother. The ambulance is on its way.”
“Ambulance is probably still on the other side of Ordinary. How long will it take?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Each way. Too long.” He gestured toward the injured woman. “She’s already moved, sat up just as I got here. If one of those ribs punctured a lung, she’ll get bad fast. We need to go.”
He ran to the still-disoriented woman. “I’m going to lift her.”
“Careful,” Sara said.
Reaching under the woman’s legs and with one arm across her back, Rem picked her up as if she were a porcelain doll, trying to keep her in the same position she was already in.
He was beyond gentle, but she cried out anyway. There was no way to do this without hurting her.
While they placed her into his Jeep, Sara supported her bloody head. Before resting the woman back onto the seat, Sara shimmied out of her sweater and balled it up to cushion her head.
“That sweater will be ruined,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
She’d never had a lick of vanity.
“We can’t put her seat belt on,” Sara said. “Drive carefully.”
Yeah, right. While I speed like a demon. “I’ll do my best.”
“Do you keep a gun in the Jeep?”
“Yeah. A rifle. Why?”
“That stag’s in pain. He can’t be saved and he’s dying too slowly.”
“Let me get my kit and I’ll give him an injection.”
“We don’t have time. Where’s the gun?”
“I’ll get it.” Rem rushed to the back and reached in for his rifle.
When Sara tried to take it from him, he said, “Move.”
“I can do it. Get those two to the hospital. Go. Now.”
Here in full force was übercapable Sara. She charged through life taking care of everyone and everything around her.
Rem and Sara had practically grown up together. He knew she loved animals as much as he did and he wanted to spare her this ugliness. But he also knew that look of determination. Fine. She could do it.
He shoved the rifle into her hands, then returned to the sobbing child, whispering inanities as he lifted her. A little bit of a thing, she whimpered against his chest like a kitten. So vulnerable. So helpless against life.
Rem cleared his throat of the fear blocking his breath. She’ll be fine. Have faith.
He put her into the front passenger seat where he could keep an eye on her. Her chest seemed to be fine, so he buckled her in, ran around to the driver’s side and pulled onto the highway.
As he sped off with his window open, he heard one rifle shot.
Sara had been a thorn in his side over the years, but he couldn’t deny she had guts.
Sheriff Kavenagh’s cruiser approached, barreling down the highway from the opposite direction, toward the cloud of dirty smoke the car threw into the air.
Easing to a stop, Rem rolled down his window. Cash did the same in the oncoming lane.
“I’ve got an injured woman and a burned child. I’m taking them to the hospital.”
“I’ll give you an escort.”
The woman in the backseat moaned. Rem needed to get moving.
“Don’t worry about it. You have a fire extinguisher in the trunk?” Rem asked.
“Sure,” Cash answered. “I always keep a couple on hand. They won’t put out a fire that size, though.”
“Fire department isn’t here yet. I’m worried about the brush on the side of the road. Last thing we need is a grass fire.”
“No kidding. I’ll see what I can do.”
They separated and accelerated in their separate directions.
In his rearview mirror, he watched Sara pull a U-turn and speed down the highway after him.
Dark smoke still rose from the wreckage. With all the chemicals and plastics used in manufacturing these days, car fires burned hot and intense. That fire could spread to his fields and reach the house.
He couldn’t think about that now.
Rem flew through town, blaring his horn for the length of Main Street. Sara caught up and stuck to his tail like contact cement, her horn blaring in unison with his.
Someone was sitting in Sara’s passenger seat, someone as tall as she. Finn? Had he grown that much since Rem had seen him around town at Christmas?
The woman in his backseat had stopped moaning. Maybe she’d passed out.
The shops passed in a blur.
On the highway on the far side of town, an ambulance passed headed toward the accident scene. It would take too long to stop, wait for the ambulance to turn around and then transfer the patients over. Best to just keep going.
Rem got back on his cell and told 9-1-1 to cancel it and to hook him up to the local hospital in Haven.
While he waited to be patched through, he checked the girl. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. She’d started to shiver.
Shit!
She was getting worse.
He didn’t have anything to cover her with.
Finally, the hospital came into view and he screeched into the emergency entrance, narrowly missing a car.
A few nurses he knew stood outside the doors with stretchers. Randy took the child from the front seat and placed her onto one of the gurneys.
“She’s in shock,” Rem said, jumping out and rounding the SUV.
“Got it,” Randy responded, wheeling her into the hospital.
Kelly and Phil went to the back for her mother.
“Careful. She’s got head injuries—concussion, for sure—and a broken arm and we’re pretty sure some busted ribs.”
“Park your car,” Kelly told him, her voice calm but rushed. “Then get a nurse to help with your injuries,”
His injuries? What was she talking about? He was fine.
He parked the Jeep and ran back to the emergency doors. Just inside, white coats and nurses’ scrubs swarmed the two stretchers. Nurses ripped plastic from IV needles and inserted them into the uninjured arms of the patients.
On her stretcher, the child glanced around, her eyes wide and scared. When her gaze settled on Rem, she seemed to settle. He gave her a thumbs-up.
Her tremulous smile tugged at something deep inside him, as though there were already a connection between them. What was that Asian proverb? If you save a life, you become responsible for that life? Forever after that, you were obligated to take care of them. Or was that just a myth? For whatever reason, Rem did feel responsible. He wanted to be able to fix her, to take away her pain and fear.
In a whirlwind of activity, the two patients were taken to examination rooms, followed by nurses and doctors. The gurneys disappeared behind closing doors and suddenly all was quiet.
In the vacuum, Rem bent over and struggled to breathe, air searing his throat as it passed through his windpipe. He hadn’t realized he’d inhaled that much smoke. Didn’t matter. He would live. He hoped like crazy those two would be okay.
When the adrenaline that had carried him this far gave out, his knees buckled. He grasped the counter of the nurses’ station.
If he’d slept through the crash…
Or what if he’d already been out working, taking care of animals on someone else’s ranch…
Those two might be dead now, one on the road and the other burned to death in the backseat of their car. Sara would have helped them when she came along. Could she have climbed into a burning vehicle, though? He didn’t know. Her shock after her brother had been burned had been profound. He just didn’t know how much of that she’d got over.
Nausea rose into his throat along with memories he’d grown damn good at repressing, but here they were now, vivid and too real, brought on by the scent of roasted flesh—a ball of fire, Timm Franck’s screams, the other children running away, parents scrambling to put out the fire. Sara frozen in place and staring at her injured brother.
The stinking horror of it rang in Rem’s conscience—your fault. Your fault. Those words—your fault, Rem—had dogged him for twenty years. Far too many years.
He’d put his worst memories behind him, but today’s crash, that burning girl, played havoc with his equilibrium. Maybe he felt this connection to her because he’d saved her from getting burned as badly as Timm had.
Sara ran past him. On her way through the examination room doors, she said, “Sit down before you fall on your face.”
Rem stumbled to a blue plastic chair, one of a row, and sagged into it.
That poor kid.
He slumped against the chair and his back burst into flame. Howling, he shot forward. What the hell? He stood and tried to see his reflection over his shoulder in the side of a chrome vending machine, but the finish was too dull.
“Where’s your shirt?”
Rem turned. Finn Franck stood in front of the machine with a fistful of change, staring at Rem’s back and his hands.
He’d combed masses of jet hair across his forehead like a modern-day Beatle look-alike. With silver-gray eyes he’d inherited from Sara, the kid promised to be a heartbreaker one day soon.
He’d grown a lot since the last time Rem had seen him. Must be taller than Sara by now.
He was turning twelve in a couple of weeks. Rem knew his birth date. He knew a lot about him.
“When I heard the car crash I jumped out of bed.” Rem finally answered the boy’s question. “Didn’t have time to get fully dressed.”
“There’s a long scratch on your back. It’s bleeding.”
Must’ve happened when he pulled the girl out of the car.
Finn stared at him, unnerving him. “Does it hurt?”
“It didn’t until a minute ago.” Rem had driven all the way out here with his back against his car seat and, in those adrenaline-fueled moments, hadn’t felt a thing.
“I saw you go into the burning car,” the boy said. “That was cool. Really sick. You were great.”
Finn’s eyes gleamed with hero worship.
Lord no. Anything but that. Rem was no hero. Never had been. Never would be.
“Don’t try it at home,” he muttered. “Fire is dangerous business.”
Rem slowly turned away from the boy and sat back down.
He couldn’t handle this right now.
He’d just rescued a girl from a burning vehicle, but to have a conversation with his son scared the bejesus out of him. Over the years, during Sara’s visits home from school, he’d seen Finn around town. He’d admired the fine job Sara was doing raising him, but Rem didn’t know what to say, what to talk about, and that helplessness frustrated him.
He wanted to connect. To claim the boy. Badly.
Sara had finished her nursing degree a few years ago and had been working in Bozeman; but she’d returned to Ordinary with Finn last week, this time to stay for good.
Rem wanted to know why.
He stretched his neck to ease the tightness there, where his resentment of Sara had settled since last summer.
Finn poured coins into the pop machine. When a ginger ale fell into the bottom, he pulled it out and sat on a chair in the same row as Rem, holding the can level on his thigh.
Rem stared at the boy’s smooth profile, at his straight nose and square jaw, as nonplussed as if Finn were a strange kind of animal Rem had never encountered before.
He wanted to touch the boy, to acknowledge him as his son. He was ready. Did Finn ever ask about his father?
With the utmost care, Finn popped the tab, then took a long gulp, all while Rem stared at Sara’s reflection in his young face.
Rem pointed to the cast on Finn’s left wrist. “What happened?”
“Skateboarding.”
Rem nodded. “Shit happens.”
Finn nodded, too. “Yeah, shit happens.”
SARA STEPPED OUT OF THE emergency hallway and what she saw brought her up short. Rem sat beside her son. They were talking. Get away from him, she wanted to yell but didn’t. She had more self-control than that. Instead, she brushed a quick hand down her torso to ease her panic.
When Rem bent toward Finn, motioning to his cast, Sara noticed what she’d spent most of the past eleven years ignoring—how her son often tilted his head the same way when he was curious about something, and how their lush dark hair curled in the same direction. If Finn didn’t use product to keep his bangs straight across his forehead, they would flop forward like Rem’s did.
It made Rem look like a rebel, like James Dean, but less sulky, more dangerous.
When Finn took a pencil out of his sketchbook and handed it to Rem to sign his cast, she called, “Remington Caldwell,” too sharply.
Rem looked up at her and frowned at her tone, then deliberately took his time with his autograph. He knew what this was doing to her, how it unnerved her, but he did it anyway.
He’s mine, not yours. Only mine.
Rem smiled at her son, stood and then walked toward her.
Sara didn’t want to stare, but couldn’t help it.
As a teenager, she’d worked hard to ignore Rem’s charms. As a grown woman, she tried not to drool.
Why was it so hard to turn off her attraction to him?
He wasn’t the only man on earth.
He’s the only one who makes you feel alive.
That had been brought home to her too clearly with the recent situation with Peter, yet another man who couldn’t measure up to Rem. She’d broken up with Peter simply because he wasn’t Rem, and wasn’t that ridiculous considering how unsentimental she was supposed to be. No-nonsense, dependable Sara.
Wasn’t it serendipitous that shortly after, she’d moved home with Finn to get him away from that gang’s influence? She no longer had to see Peter at the hospital every day and be reminded of her own foolishness. She didn’t have to see that bewildered look on his face whenever they met. He had no clue why she’d ended their relationship after his proposal. She hadn’t been able to explain fully to either him or herself exactly what her problems were.
She continued to stare. Rem was the handsomest man in Ordinary, Montana, and she was only human. Usually, she coped. It was just that she hadn’t seen him since Christmas and now without a shirt. That was all.
Her stomach rebelled when she noticed the scar on his abdomen and remembered the terror of the night last summer when he’d been stabbed in a bar, and her own helplessness, of how little she’d been able to do for him while they’d waited for the ambulance.
She’d almost lost him that night. He’d been drinking in Chester’s when it was still the Roadhouse and a biker had hassled one of the waitresses. When Rem stepped in to protect her, the biker stabbed him in the stomach. Foolish, courageous Rem who never thought of the danger to himself.
It didn’t matter that it really hadn’t been his fault. Trouble stalked Rem and that scared her.
The strawberry birthmark above his left nipple had faded over the years. The last time she’d seen it in daylight, they’d gone swimming with Timm. Her brother and Rem had been only ten and she nine.
Time had changed them all.
Rem’s arms and chest had been scrawny back then, but weren’t now.
When he lifted his hands to his hair to tidy it, his biceps flexed. Those unruly locks fell back onto his forehead.
He winced. He’d hurt his hands.
The small scar that bisected his upper lip—from a minor childhood mishap she no longer remembered—served to accentuate how full it was. The things that would be flaws on regular people looked like heaven on Rem.
To a plain woman like Sara, it smacked of unfairness.
He was still the best bad boy Ordinary had ever produced and Sara hated that she was so aware of him.
“Follow me,” she said.
“What do you want?” he asked, belligerent as hell.
“I’ll take care of your back.”
“Someone else can do it.” His lips barely moved. He was being rude.
“Little pitchers have big ears,” she said.
“What?”
She motioned with her head toward Finn. “Mind your manners.”
He blushed, obviously only now remembering that Finn would hear every word they said.
“There is no one else to do it,” Sara said. “They’re busy with the accident victims.”
He approached and said under his breath, “You live to make my life miserable, don’t you?”
“I do my best.”
She led him to an examination cubicle, all the while too aware of how close he was.
“You look like you’re chewing on a mouthful of finishing nails,” Rem observed.
He wasn’t far off. She felt that tense. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled the privacy curtain across the opening of the cubicle, closing them into a space too small for Sara’s comfort.
“What did I do wrong?” Rem muttered.
“Shut up and sit.” She pushed him onto the bed.
“Nice talk, Sara.” Rem sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. “Great bedside manner.”
She ignored his sarcasm and examined his back. Despite her feelings, she made sure to keep her touch gentle. She checked out the burns on his hands.
“Ouch,” he said. “I didn’t even realize those were there.”
“They must hurt.” Sara sterilized the wounds.
“They do now. That poor little girl has worse burns on her hands and the top of her head.”
Although she was being careful, he flinched. Burns were tricky to clean without hurting the patient.
“Have you heard how the girl is?” he asked.
Sara’s tension eased a bit. Rem had a soft spot a mile wide for children. And animals. “No. If I hear anything I’ll let you know.”
Rem stared at her clothes. “Why aren’t you in scrubs?”
“I’m not scheduled to work today.” She glared at him. “That was a stupid stunt.”
“Excuse me? What stunt?”
“Climbing into a burning car.” Sara tore open packages of gauze so hard she nearly ripped the bags in half. When she started to clean the cut on his back, he hissed, and she struggled to relax, to ease her pressure on his cut. He’d terrified her when he’d climbed into that car.
“Do you think you’re invincible?” She knew full well how vulnerable people were, how easily they could be hurt, and how hard it was to come back from some injuries. Like burns.
She’d spent her teenage years helping her brother recover from his burns.
“Saving someone is wrong?” Rem asked. She watched him grit his teeth, but she couldn’t be any more careful than she already was and still do the cleaning and patching that needed to be done.
She secured his injury with gauze then handed him a scrub top to wear. He shrugged into it.
“Saving someone isn’t wrong, but why couldn’t you have waited until the firefighters got there? They wear protective gear.” She refused to look at him, didn’t want him to see her fear, didn’t want him to think she still cared for him. “They don’t reach into burning cars half dressed. After all these years you’re still reckless.”
“Sara, you’re being unreasonable. On the way to the hospital, did we pass any fire trucks?”
“No, but—”
“There is no but. That girl needed to be rescued.”
“And you just have to be the hero, don’t you?” she said.
“It wasn’t about me!” he shouted. “You’re being unfair.”
He was right. She needed to bring her irrational anger under control. She usually didn’t have this much trouble, but then she’d spent years away from Ordinary so she wouldn’t have to deal with Rem.
“Honest to God, Sara, I really don’t need to be a hero.” He touched her chin and forced her to look at him.
“We both know there’s nothing heroic about me,” he said. “But sometimes there isn’t time to wait for someone else to show up.”
But he was a hero. He’d just proven it and it went so far toward redeeming him, toward paying for all of the faults he’d shown when he was a teenager, that she had trouble keeping up. She’d thought badly of him for so many years. But he’d apparently been able to give up drinking and women and any number of destructive habits. Apparently, he was a responsible man now. And he’d just saved a child’s life in a way that was pretty hard to beat. Sara didn’t want to be impressed, but she was.
When he’d climbed into that burning vehicle, she’d thought she would lose him. She needed to be honest with him. “I know you couldn’t wait, but I was scared. It was hard to watch. I remembered Timm.” Her voice fell quiet, to barely above a whisper.
“I didn’t have time to think. I just did.”
“But that’s exactly it, Rem. You never think. You haven’t changed.” Memories of the day that altered their lives burned her eyes and sizzled between them.
“Sara, I’m not the kid I used to be. You know that.”
Yes, but why was it so hard for her to accept? Sara tossed bloody gauze into a wastebasket. “Half an hour ago, you sure looked like the same crazy kid.”
He captured her hands and she could feel his warmth through her gloves. “Sara, stop and think. Today brought back memories of Timm being burned, yes, but you know I had to go in to get that girl.”
She pulled her fingers out of his grasp and dropped a package of gauze. When she bent over to pick it up, her hands shook. “Yes.”
“There’s a difference between recklessness and courage. I wasn’t being reckless this morning. I was doing what had to be done.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I get your point.”
She reached for a bottle of ointment and the panic she’d felt when Rem had climbed into that car, and the bleakness at the thought of losing him forever, surfaced. “The car could have exploded while you were in it. Then both of you would be dead.”
She picked up one of his hands to apply ointment, but he wrapped his fingers around hers and held them captive in his callused palm.
“Nice to see you care.” For once, he didn’t sound sarcastic. “You tie me in knots so often, can be so critical, I’m never sure if we’re still friends.”
She’d been careful to look only at his injuries, but now she met his gaze and couldn’t hide what she felt, as impossible and self-defeating as it was.
CHAPTER THREE
REM COULDN’T BELIEVE the longing he saw on Sara’s face. He understood the emotion, had felt it too often for her, but they could have been acting on it for the past year. They could have been married and loving each other every day and night.
Her longing angered him. “Uh-uh, Sara. You don’t get to look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though you want me. Nothing’s going to happen between us. That ship has sailed, sweetheart, and it ain’t ever coming back.”
Her fingers flinched within his grasp.
“Why are you back in Ordinary?” he asked. “Why didn’t you stay in Bozeman? You had a good job there.”
“Mama’s here. Timm and Angel are here and soon their new baby. I wanted to be with my family.”
Hmm. Maybe. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She pressed her lips together as though she wouldn’t answer but finally did. “Finn was hanging out with kids I didn’t like and getting wild. They got into trouble with the police. It scared me. I thought it would be good for him to be with family.”
It sounded plausible enough, but still not like the full story. He’d leave it for now. He had more important fish to fry. “I’m Finn’s family.”
She jerked to attention, the longing gone like last Sunday’s dinner, and tugged her hands out of his grasp. She opened his fists to tend to his palms in her usual no-nonsense way, the vulnerable woman vanishing behind her professional facade.
Damn your self-control to hell, Sara.
Time to hit her with the decision he’d made.
He’d spent the past seven years turning his life around, righting so many of the wrongs he’d committed before his father’s death had given him a rude wake-up call. Rem had made the decision to straighten out, but he wasn’t finished making amends yet. His father had been a great role model. It was time for Rem to be the same for his son. He’d hurt people. He wanted that to stop. Here. Now. Today. Starting with the most important people in his life.
“I want to get to know him.”
“Who?” Sara asked, turning away so he couldn’t see her expression.
“Santa Claus,” he snapped. “Who do you think? Finn.”
She spun back to him. “No. We had an agreement.”
“That agreement is almost twelve years old. I’ve paid my dues since then.”
“I don’t care. We agreed. You promised you’d never go back on your decision.”
“It was the wrong decision. I’m old enough and strong enough to see that now.”
“I don’t care.”
“Does he ever ask about his father?”
Sara flinched. Bingo.
He changed his tactic, knew what would work in convincing her.
“Ma had another stroke.” A week ago. It was her third stroke in a year and a half and the worst yet. How much longer would he have her around? He needed to set so many things right.
“I know,” Sara answered. “I’ve been visiting her.”
Of course she had, because underneath all of her stubborn grittiness Sara was a caring person.
“So why shouldn’t she get to know her grandson before she dies? What if the next stroke kills her?” His voice rose. “Finn’s my son.”
“Be quiet,” Sara warned. “We’re not private here.”
“So what? It wouldn’t kill either of us if people found out.”
She leaned close and pointed a finger in his face. “You were the one who decided not to be in his life, that you weren’t father material. The fact that you wanted out so quickly proved you were right. You’d make a terrible father.”
“I was young and stupid. I was scared. I thought Finn would be better off without me.” He stood, loomed over her and lowered his voice, infusing it with a dark intensity because she had to understand how serious he was. “That’s no longer true. I think I’d be a good father now. That boy needs one. And I need my son.”
She refused to make eye contact even though he stood mere inches from her. Instead, she stared at his collarbone.
“You agreed to the deal pretty damn quickly,” he accused. “You didn’t want me to acknowledge Finn, either.”
Her chest rose and fell too rapidly. He knew Sara through and through and, although she looked calm, he could tell she was scared. He didn’t blame her. This was new territory for him, too.
“I’ve come to terms with who I am, with the mistake I made burning Timm, with all of the mistakes I made in my crazy adolescence. I can’t take back what I’ve done, Sara, but I’m moving on. I’ve proven that I’m a responsible man.”
She hadn’t been around to witness his change, but he had changed, and she was going to have to trust him.
She still wouldn’t look at him, but said, “Fine, so you’ve come to terms with your guilt.”
Guilt. Of course she would use a word that loaded.
“It was a child’s mistake, Sara. I’ve finally accepted it. Someday, you’re going to have to let it go, too.”
“I know you were a child and I’ve tried to come to terms with it, Rem. I truly have. But it was a huge mistake with consequences that still affect us to this day.”
“Yes. I know. But it’s done. Nothing can be taken back.”
Finally, she looked at him, uncertainty in those steel-gray eyes. “If something goes wrong again, how do you know you won’t end up bingeing like last summer?”
“I don’t, but I do know that I spend ninety percent of my days being a good person. If I slip, I slip. Big deal. I’m human.”
He wanted to tell her how human she was, too; but that truth was one she had to come to on her own.
“If I slipped up,” he continued, “Finn could handle it.”
“He could handle it only because I raised him well.” She tried to push him away, but he was too strong.
Rem watched Sara control the heat that flared between them.
He stepped back.
“You’ve done a fine job of raising Finn. He’s a great kid.” Rem was ready to stop thinking of Finn as Sara’s son and to start accepting him as his own.
“Get used to this, Sara, ’cause I’m not backing down. You’re not going to win this fight.”
Something more flared in her eyes, something beneath the anger she wore like a badge. He thought it might be fear. He wracked his brain for a way to convince her that he was serious about changing, about becoming stronger, and that everything would work out fine, and he hit on one thing.
“Since the day Finn was born, I’ve been helping to support him, starting with your hospital bills when he was born. Every month without fail, I’ve sent you money for him. In twelve years, I didn’t miss once. I’ve been responsible. I’ve proven that I have staying power. Right?”
“You never missed a payment,” she acknowledged.
“I won’t relapse, Sara.”
She wouldn’t look at him.
“Fine, if you can’t do this for me, do it for Ma. She has a right to know Finn. I’m going to tell her.”
“Don’t,” Sara rasped. “Just don’t.”
“It’s no longer your choice to make.”
Beneath the defiance and fear on her face, he saw devastation. Her world was about to change.
Too bad. Rem needed everyone to know that he was Finn’s father.
He stalked out of the emergency room.
It was long past time to be a father.
SARA PRESSED A HAND AGAINST her stomach.
The controlled, defined, safe world she’d struggled to build since her son’s birth was about to crumble. She’d worked so hard and Rem could rip it all apart with a few words.
Don’t hurt my baby.
Rem was a master at finding chinks in her armor.
He didn’t understand the chance he took. His decision didn’t affect only her. Didn’t he know how hurt Finn could be if Rem let him down, if he couldn’t carry through as a father? Once he started, there was no turning back.
She listened to the familiar sounds of the hospital, her home away from home, but saw only the small recovery room she’d been in after Finn’s birth. She’d thought things were going to work out for her. She’d been so wrong.
It hurt to remember how excited she’d been and then how devastated after Rem had rejected both of them.
After she’d buried her emotions and thought things through rationally, she’d realized that she and Finn could survive just fine without Rem. And they had.
That day, she’d decided that she’d work her butt off for independence, to support herself and Finn, and the hell with Rem. She didn’t need him. She and Finn were on their own and that’s how they would stay.
Sara and her son had been a team—until lately, at any rate.
Now Rem was changing his mind and he expected her to fall into line.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Sara still stood in the small, curtained emergency room with the familiar equipment that could mend broken bodies, that could take blood and mess and dirt and transform the chaos into the order she craved.
She brushed off the past.
She would get through this. She always did.
Taking an antiseptic wipe from a container, she ran it across the small counter and into every corner and cranny.
She replaced the sheet of protective paper on the bed.
Rem had disappointed her before and there wasn’t a speck of doubt in her mind that he would do so again. She just didn’t want him pulling his old tricks on Finn.
No matter what it took, she’d make sure Finn didn’t get hurt. She’d bet her last dollar that Rem had gone up to visit Nell. She was going to march up there right now to lay down a few parameters, rules that Rem had to follow.
She would see Nell then, too. Rem had hit a nerve when he’d talked about his mom—a problem she’d been aware of since Finn’s birth.
Sara had loved Nell ever since she was a child and running everywhere with Timm and Rem. Nell had treated her as her own daughter. Over the years, Sara had worried about keeping Finn away from Nell, about how it would affect Nell if she ever found out. Nell didn’t know she was a grandmother and the guilt ate away at Sara.
Nell had had three strokes and now Rem was talking about the very real possibility of her death. It was hard to think of Nell dying without ever learning the truth. Rem was right.
Fine, Nell could get to know her grandson, but Sara would have to make sure she understood that Finn wasn’t to know whose mother she was. No way would Sara let Finn find out that Rem was his father.
Sara would keep as much control of the situation as she could.
Finished with her straightening of the room, Sara stopped and gripped the counter, overwhelmed by Rem’s threat. She squeezed her eyes shut, but still saw his face and that body she wanted to hold despite his past betrayals.
She snapped her eyes open.
Mixed in with all of that desire was a backwash of emotion too toxic for her to sort out—guilt, anger, tenderness and even love. And that terrible and unrelenting darkness.
Her head had to rule. Experience had taught her that Rem could cost her pieces of herself that she didn’t want to give. But she was faced with the same old struggle between desire and reality.
Over the years, she’d grown so good at quashing her dreams of Rem, of suppressing memories and desires. But today, at this moment, Sara Franck still wanted Remington Caldwell.
You poor unfortunate fool.
REM TOOK THE ELEVATOR to Ma’s floor, to make sure she was all right and to let her know he’d made the arrangements for her homecoming.
At least he’d had the chance to tell Sara what he wanted with Finn. She was dead set against him getting to know his son. Surprise, surprise.
Calming himself before entering Ma’s room, he put aside all thoughts of Sara.
When he approached the bed, Ma’s eyes followed him, but her head remained still. This latest stroke had immobilized her so much and it hurt to see her like this.
“What?” she asked, glancing at his bandaged hands. Her speech had been affected and her words clipped short. “What happen?”
He raised his hands so she could see them better. “It isn’t as bad as it looks. I pulled a girl out of a car fire.”
“Fire?” He didn’t miss the flicker of fear in her eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Ma, I’m good.” Blinking rapidly, he kissed her forehead, unsure whether she could even feel it.
Get your shit together. Get over all of this stupid emotion.
“She okay?”
“I don’t know how she’s doing. She had burns on her head, but I haven’t seen her since we got here. I hope so.”
“How old?”
“I think maybe nine.”
“Poor girl.”
With her good hand, she pointed at the scrub shirt he wore. “Where’s…own…shirt?”
“The accident was at the end of our lane. It woke me up and I rushed out to see if everyone was all right. Only got as far as pulling on my pants ’cause the car was on fire.”
Ma smiled but it looked bizarre with that one side drooping.
Ma’s eyes flickered to the doorway and her expression softened. Rem turned to see who had entered. Sara.
His gaze flickered to check out her conservative shirt and blue jeans. He remembered her tight body as though it were tattooed on his eyelids.
Sara approached the bed and gave Ma the kind of warm smile he hadn’t seen from her in years.
He’d always wanted a piece of that, of the soft, affectionate side of Sara’s character she reserved for everyone but him.
“How are you feeling?” Sara asked.
“Good.”
“When are you going to the convalescent home?”
Nell glanced at Rem.
“She leaves here tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve already arranged everything. She’s coming home with me.”
She turned to him with a frown. “May I talk to you out in the hall?”
He didn’t like the seriousness of her expression, but followed her out. Was she going to argue more about Finn? He wouldn’t allow it.
Once away from the door, Sara crossed her arms. “Why are you taking Nell home instead of putting her into Tender Loving Care? She needs full-time attention.”
That took him aback. She wanted to talk about Ma, not Finn. “She wants to come home.”
“It doesn’t matter what the patient wants. What does matter is that she gets the care she needs.”
“She’s my mother—I care what she wants. I’m not putting her in a place run by a bunch of strangers. I won’t know how well she’s being taken care of, or if they’ll give her enough attention. I’ve heard horror stories about old folks being neglected.”
“TLC has an excellent reputation. She would receive everything she needs.”
Rem chewed on his lip. “I can’t.” He’d neglected his parents for too many years. His wild ways had kept him isolated from everyone. When his father died, Rem realized just how much of his life he’d been throwing away. How much he was hurting those around him.
No way was he letting Ma go to an institution.
He shifted gears. “She wants to come home, Sara. I don’t know how much longer she’ll be around. How can I say no to her? I want her home, too.”
“Do you have any idea how much care she’ll need?”
“Of course I do. For God’s sake, Sara, I’ve talked to the doctors. I’ve arranged to have caregivers at the house fourteen hours a day.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“You guess? It isn’t your decision to make.”
Sara raised a staying hand to squelch his anger. “I know. I care about Nell, though. I want to make sure she gets the best care.”
“She’ll get the best.”
“TLC Outreach?”
“Yes.”
Her frown eased. “Okay.”
Rem calmed down. Sara might be a pain in the rear end sometimes, but there was no doubting how much she loved his ma.
She touched his arm, her manner hesitant but also determined. “As far as Finn goes, here’s the deal. You can tell Nell that he’s her grandson on the condition that she understands that he isn’t to know. And you can’t tell him that you’re his father.”
“What the hell?”
“Those are my terms. For years, you didn’t want to acknowledge him as your son. You can’t change the rules on a whim.”
“I want to be his father now.”
“I can’t risk that you’ll hurt him.”
“I’ll take you to court.”
“In the eyes of the law, I’m his only parent.”
No way. “You didn’t put my name on the birth certificate?”
“I had planned to, but you walked out on us.”
She might as well have sucker punched him. It hurt. Finn was his son. He’d never claimed the boy, though, had he?
“Did you really hate me so much?”
“I’ve never hated you, Rem. Never. But I don’t trust you to do what’s right for my son.”
Without waiting for a response, she strode away and Rem was left reeling. So, should he go ahead and tell the boy anyway, against Sara’s wishes? Somehow, that didn’t feel right.
He would tell his ma, though, when the time was right.
He returned to Ma’s room to say goodbye.
Last week, on the day of her latest stroke, it had occurred to him that she was his only family.
Other than Finn.
He’d always thought her hale and healthy, but she’d shrunk, was small now, and he was in danger of losing her. Now he had this impulse, an inkling that had started after he became a full-time veterinarian, but urgent now that Ma was so bad, to start a family. He already had started one, though, and wanted to claim his son and get to know him.
He’d screwed up in not acknowledging him from the beginning. He was through screwing up. He was setting everything in his life right.
Sara had done a great job of raising Finn alone, so Rem would respect her wishes. For now.
“Ma, I’m going to see how that young girl is doing and then finish setting the house to rights for your homecoming tomorrow.”
She tried that smile again, but must have known how bad it looked because she stopped. Ma, you’re breaking my heart.
He squeezed her good hand. “I love you.”
She nodded.
Rem rushed out because of the headache throbbing behind his sinuses. Maybe he was getting a cold. Or maybe it was just that he’d been up too late last night turning the dining room into a bedroom for Ma’s return, including moving in the new bed he’d had delivered.
On the first floor, he found Randy in the emergency ward. “How are the girl and her mother?”
“Lucky, from what I hear.” He punched Rem on the shoulder. “Heard you’re the man of the hour for pulling her out of the wreckage.”
Rem shrugged. “You would have done the same thing. Seriously, how are they?”
“You called it right. Mother’s got a concussion, fractured ribs and a broken arm. Daughter’s got burns to her scalp, hands and arms.”
“Can I see them?” Rem needed reassurance that the two were alive and well. When the kid had been trapped…
Quit. Don’t think about it.
Randy directed him to Intensive Care. “They’re pretty doped up, but you can look in on them.”
Rem stepped into the room. Nurses worked around the young girl’s bed quietly, lending the room a hushed, expectant silence.
Her face looked peaceful in her drugged sleep, with the white bandages swathing her head.
His gaze drifted to the other bed, where her mother lay awake and watching him, her gaze only slightly unfocused by pain meds.
“Hi,” he said with a wave of two fingers.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you the one who saved my daughter?”
“Yeah.” He squirmed beneath her admiring gaze. Lady, I’m not a hero.
He approached her bed. Under the bruises on one side of her face, he could tell she was a whole lot younger than he’d originally thought, probably younger than his own thirty-two years.
“What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked.
“Melody.”
He had a snap memory of this woman screaming that as Rem dove into the burning vehicle. “I’m Remington Caldwell. People call me Rem.”
She smiled, then grimaced as if her face hurt.
“I’m Elizabeth Chase. Liz,” she said. “Did that happen at the crash?” She pointed to his wrapped hands. He nodded.
“I’m sorry.” She had a pretty voice, feminine and sweet.
“You’re not from around here. Are you here to visit family?”
She shook her head and shadows clouded her eyes along with a dose of fear. Something wasn’t right, but the woman wasn’t saying more. Fair enough. She had a right to her privacy.
When he asked no further questions, she stared at him some more as though he were her hero, and he had to leave the room before he disappointed her by blurting out how wrong she was.
REM TURNED THE JEEP INTO his driveway and stared at his big old oak and the fields on either side of the entrance to his ranch.
Fire had scorched the fields, now sodden under the weight of the water the fire crews had poured on them.
The acrid scent of charred earth drifted through the open window.
The fire trucks must have reached his ranch shortly after he passed through Ordinary on his way to the hospital.
After last summer’s drought, the town had installed solar-powered pumps in Still Creek where it ran along the highway.
Thankfully, access to water for the fire pumps wasn’t an issue.
The results could have been so much worse. Those golden fields could have burned right up to the house and taken it down, too.
He had lost grain, though, and would have to replace it.
He climbed out and pressed his hand against the scar on the tree where the car had hit. Fire had blackened this entire side of the trunk. Still fresh, the odor of burning wood had replaced that of singed flesh.
His bandage came away sooty and black.
Above his head, bare limbs formed a stark spider’s web against the blue sky.
Lucky he hadn’t lost the whole tree. The other half remained green. Thank God. He loved his land. Rem had an affinity with nature and this hurt. It really sucked.
The stag was gone. Maybe one of the firefighters had taken it home to butcher and freeze for the winter.
Out here in rural Montana, food didn’t go to waste.
Rem shook himself out of his pensive musings.
Given Sara’s reluctance to let him get to know his son, he had a lot to prove, a lot to do to persuade her that he was a responsible man.
Fired up, he drove to the house, ready to jump into final preparations for Ma’s homecoming tomorrow morning.
One way or another, he would find a way to be Finn’s dad, Sara be damned.
CHAPTER FOUR
SARA TOOK THE ELEVATOR down to the emergency waiting room. Finn waited for her there, listening to music in his headphones and sketching. Thank goodness he’d broken his left wrist instead of his right.
She should go home and make him lunch, but acid churned in her belly. How could she possibly eat after the bomb Rem had dropped?
Since his birth, she’d had Finn all to herself, had taken him to and from school with her, year after year until she finally became a nurse, her dream of medical school eliminated by her pregnancy. No regrets, though.
She’d kept him with her despite Mama’s and Timm’s arguments to leave him in Ordinary with them.
She made every decision about his life. If she could keep her son close enough to her, Sara could keep him safe. How could she possibly share him, especially with a man who had spent too many years wasting his life on the worst habits, and who’d made a mistake of the biggest proportions? He’d burned Timm and ruined her brother’s teenage years. He’d ruined Sara’s, too.
With her parents’ attention firmly on Timm’s operations and physiotherapy, and the illnesses brought on by a compromised immune system, Sara had faded into the background. Had disappeared. Had become another caregiver for her older brother.
But their care had never been enough. Timm had been sick too often. He’d been scarred. Sara had felt so helpless, so useless no matter how hard she’d worked. She’d been only ten years old when the accident changed the landscape of her family’s life. It had never been good again.
Then her oldest brother, Davey, had been killed by a bull, in the rodeo, and things had become even worse. Dad had turned more and more to the sedative of the bottle. He’d finally killed himself by driving into a tree on his way home from a bar in Monroe.
Sara had never been able to do enough to fix her brother or to save her family.
So…now she was a nurse. She’d learned how to take care of people and to help save them. Or was she just kidding herself? She hoped the work she did had value.
She stepped forward and called Finn’s name. Time to take care of her son. Rem was not going to ruin what was already working fine.
Finn closed his book, took the buds out of his ears and showed her his cast. “You know the guy who pulled that girl out of the car?”
“Rem? Yes.”
“Look what he put on my cast.”
He’d signed only his first name, a big flamboyant Rem, but he’d drawn a smiley face beside it—with a lopsided grin and devil’s horns. Sara couldn’t help laughing. She had never doubted his charm.
On the drive home to Ordinary, Finn didn’t put his earbuds back in, nor did he open his sketchbook. His MP3 player sat idle in his hand as he stared out the window.
Sara glanced at him, worried. He looked pensive, the way he’d been lately just before asking her questions she’d rather not answer.
“Mom,” he said, turning to her.
“Yes?”
“Father’s Day is coming up.”
“I know.” Nuts. Every year, Finn became more and more curious about his father, more troubled by his lack of one. The issue seemed to be pulling him further and further away from her. She felt that separation like a physical ache.
“On Father’s Day, all the kids are allowed to bring their dads to school. Everyone’s talking about it. There’s gonna be a big party in the gym. I’ll be the only one there without a father.”
“The only one for sure?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Everyone’s talking about their dads.”
“But I know there are single mothers living in town. How about Stacey Kim’s daughter, Joy?”
“She’s in high school.”
“Oh. I guess she is by now.” Sara came up with more names, but the kids were either too young for school or were in high school. Of all the rotten luck for Finn. A fluke of demographics left him isolated.
As the new kid in school, life was hard enough on Finn. He already stood out too much. Adding the weight of his being the only kid without a father at the party was so unfair; but he had no idea of the kind of damage Rem Caldwell had done to the Franck family. Sara had no idea what additional harm Rem could still do while trying to father Finn.
Her parents had spent her adolescence warning her away from Rem, from the boy who’d been her best friend before Timm’s birthday party. One small mistake. Such big consequences.
“Why don’t you have a photograph of my dad?” Finn’s question caught Sara by surprise.
Why hadn’t she prepared herself for this? But what preparation could there have been?
“I didn’t know him for that long.”
“How long did you know him?”
She swallowed around a lump that was the lie she’d told her family and the entire town—that she’d met a man at a party and they’d had unprotected sex. Finn was still so young for that explanation.
“Well?” Finn asked. “How long?”
He wasn’t going to let it go.
“One night,” she answered.
Finn’s chin dropped. “You had a one-night stand?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That’s so uncool, Mom. So uncool.”
He stared out the window silently for a moment and Sara hoped that was the end of it.
“So, why didn’t you find him and tell him about me?”
“The name he gave me was false.” Was she going to hell for telling her son so many lies? “I discovered that when I tried to track him down.”
“So, there’s some guy out there who doesn’t even know I’ve been born?” His voice had risen in anger. “That makes me feel really rotten, Mom.”
Sara brushed her hair back from her forehead, but her hand shook. This was so hard. How long could she continue to lie to her little boy?
“Finn, I’m sorry.”
He didn’t respond, so she continued, “I made a mistake one night, but it gave me you and I’m not sorry for that. Can you forgive me?”
Wasn’t that sweet freaking irony, such hypocrisy on her part to beg her son’s understanding when she hadn’t forgiven Rem a single one of his many transgressions?
“I’m not even supposed to be alive!” He turned to her with an accusation that cut through her defenses. “I’m a big mistake!” he yelled.
His anger fueled hers.
“Stop right there.” She didn’t shout but she wanted to. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Ever.”
Finn crossed his arms over his chest, but his fury seemed to seep out of him. His lower lip jutted forward, but rather than looking petulant, he just looked sad. “I’ll never have a father.”
She shook her head, unable to tell him “no” out loud. She’d come close with Peter Welsh in Bozeman, a sweet, smart, handsome doctor. But after that one night when she slept with Rem last summer, after he’d been stabbed, Sara hadn’t been able to sleep with Peter again. She’d broken off their relationship.
As much as she tried to forget Rem with other men, she couldn’t deny her feelings for him, even if she wouldn’t act on them.
It didn’t look like marriage was ever going to be in her future. So, yet again, she was on her own. Independence suited her just fine.
They turned down the road to the old Webber home. It had been vacant for more than a dozen years, had been for sale for ages.
This past spring, Sara had bought it.
She and Finn could live here, just the two of them, and not worry about having to depend on anyone else. Not emotionally, and certainly not financially. This little house was hers and only hers. She’d earned it and deserved it.
The property abutted Still Creek, and the spot where she and Rem had created Finn on a blanket under the stars.
Refusing to consider why it had been so important to her to buy this property, she turned and studied the house. A smallish bungalow, it would be more than enough for the two of them.
The siding was dirty, the wraparound veranda needed a coat or two of paint, the eaves troughs needed cleaning and the gingerbread appointments had fallen apart. But the bones were good. Just right.
She and her son had lived in tiny cheap apartments, some dingy, most crowded, none in the best parts of town. On the rare occasions that she dated and developed a relationship with a man, she never brought him home. Not to those places in which she felt no pride.
Now they had a house where she could give her son safety and a permanent roof over his head. It didn’t look like much but it was all hers. Amazing how proud that made her feel.
She pulled the key out of her purse.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
She pulled the cleaning supplies she’d picked up yesterday from the trunk. Because of his broken wrist, Finn could carry only one pail filled with bottled cleaners.
She opened the door of her house and stepped in.
The rooms smelled stale. She could fix that. She could fix anything here.
As she walked through the hushed rooms and opened windows, the house breathed in fresh air and seemed to come to life. She could bring a spark to this place.
She handed Finn a broom. “Sweep up. I’ll wash the kitchen and the bathroom. Unless you’d rather scrub the toilet and I’ll sweep.”
“I’ll sweep,” he mumbled without cracking a smile.
The ancient bathroom fixtures still worked. One of the Webbers had fitted the old claw-foot tub with a showerhead and a track on the ceiling from which to hang a shower curtain. She hung the new yellow-and-mauve-striped curtain that she’d picked up in Bozeman before the move.
This house was hers. All hers. She hadn’t told anyone about it yet, not even Mama. This was her own private secret. In time, she would tell everyone, but not until she fixed it up the way she wanted to. Then she would throw a big party and be proud to have her family here.
She heard a sound in the doorway and looked up. Finn stood there with a scowl on his face.
“Mom, when are we going to move here from Oma’s house?”
“Soon. When I’m off work, I’ll gradually move over some of the boxes from Oma’s and then have our furniture shipped from Bozeman.”
“So, like, only you and me will live here? Right?”
Sara looked around. A fresh coat of paint on the walls would brighten the space beautifully.
“Mom, right? Only you and me?”
“Hmm? Sorry! Yes, only us.”
Finn stared out the window above the sink. “What is there to do out here?”
He’d stumped her. “We’ll come up with stuff. Anything you do at Oma’s can be done here.”
She was worried, though. With her working two jobs and Finn being supervised by only Mama, would he get into trouble, as he’d started to in Bozeman? He had no friends here. Who was going to fill that void when he finally did make friends? Good kids?
Or would he follow in his father’s footsteps? She refused to allow it.
“How am I supposed to become friends with kids in Ordinary when I live way out here?”
If she had to drive him everywhere, then she could control who his friends would be.
She packed the supplies into a hall closet. Finn followed her down the hallway like a lost puppy.
“Mom, are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t hide her frustration. “Don’t be so negative about this, Finn. Give the place a chance.”
Finn stomped out of the house and to the car. Sara locked up and followed him. Why did he have to question everything she did these days? Was this a lead-up to adolescence? If so, she was going to go nuts before it was over. Seriously. Stark raving mad.
On the trip into Ordinary to the Franck house where they currently lived, Finn fell asleep. Taking advantage, she touched his nape.
Such a beautiful boy.
It was her job to protect him and she took that seriously. When they got home to Mama’s, Sara spent the afternoon checking out every class, course and organized sporting activity around Ordinary and Haven, to replace that swimming course Finn should have been in three afternoons a week. She glanced at the calendar. She’d have to cancel the basketball league she’d signed him up for, as well. That left too many days empty—too many days he could fill with mischief—and there was nothing left to register him for.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK THE following morning, an unforgiving sun followed Rem out of the house and to the corral where his horse Rusty ambled lazily, kicking up puffs of dust with his hooves.
What was taking Ma so long to get here? He’d expected her half an hour ago.
He’d already been out to the hospital this morning with a bag of nice clothes for her to wear home. He’d signed all the necessary papers, had packed up all of the cards the townspeople had given her. He’d found an elderly woman in another room who had no family and had given her Ma’s flowers. Then he’d driven out ahead of Ma’s ambulance. He’d expected them to be only a few minutes behind him.
He’d already had time to put the cards around her room, to give her something to look at all day.
He glanced around the yard. It looked good. Clean.
He’d taken Ma’s pretty flowered cushions out of plastic in the storage shed and had spruced up her blue wicker chairs on the veranda. Rem’s ancestors had built this two-story home more than a century ago, had built it with brick to last and with gingerbread trim that Rem had repainted white in May.
He’d put a fresh coat of blue paint on the veranda floor and stairs, too.
He’d started on the stable with more white paint, but had only finished the front and the corral side, both of which could be seen from the dining room windows. He still had to paint the far side and the back, but that would come in time.
Gracie lay on the steps like the grand old dame she was, a border collie with too much gray fur among the white and black. She spent a lot of her days sleeping, sometimes in the house, sometimes in the stable.
Two days ago, Rem had planted pansies across the front of the house, in yellow, purple and mauve. What did he know about flowers? If they lasted through the summer, he’d be surprised. They brightened the place, though.
At the rumble of an engine in the driveway, he turned.
The ambulance rode up the long lane, with neither siren nor flashing lights.
Ma. Home at last. Feeling like a kid getting a present, he ran to the steps at the front of the house. He’d missed having her here.
The ambulance swung around in the yard, backed up toward the house and stopped a couple of yards away from him.
The driver jumped out of the vehicle and came around the rear, nodding at Rem, his pressed white shirt almost blue in the sun.
“How is she?” Rem asked.
“Comfortable,” the attendant replied while he opened the door.
“What took so long?”
“Half the staff came out to say goodbye.”
Rem thanked his lucky stars that he lived in a close-knit community. Ma would have loved the attention.
Another attendant jumped down from the patient area and Rem caught his first glimpse of Ma, half sitting in the dark interior. She looked pale, her face immobile, her eyes a little scared.
His chest tightened. Ma, I’ll take care of you. You’ll never go to a home to be taken care of by strangers. I promise.
The attendants lifted the stretcher out of the ambulance and released the legs. Rem stepped close. He took Ma’s hand in his, but it was the paralyzed one, so she might not have felt his touch.
Her eyes flickered to the pansies raising their colorful faces toward the sun and a weak smile cast the ghost of movement across her face then disappeared. She blinked.
On the veranda, she dropped her good arm over the side of the gurney and Gracie stood and licked her fingers. Her glance at the cushions on the chairs brought forth another smile. Rem was glad he’d worked so hard.
After the attendants wheeled her through the front door, Rem ran ahead to open the dining room doors. “In here.”
He’d rented a comfortable hospital bed and had crowded Ma’s treasured dining room set into the closed-in porch at the back of the house. For the past two nights, he’d worked until three in the morning to make Ma a comfortable new bedroom.
After they transferred her from the stretcher to the bed, Rem walked the paramedics out and shook their hands.
“Thanks, guys. I appreciate you taking care of her.”
Any minute now, one of the caregivers should be showing up.
Sure enough, a small blue sedan rode up the lane just moments after the ambulance drove off. Ah, here she was, the first nurse.
Sara stepped out of the car, spit polished and as crisp as a new dollar bill in a white shirt and navy skirt. She pulled a bag out of the backseat and turned toward the house.
Sara? What was she doing here?
She approached the steps then stopped before climbing them.
“Hello, Rem,” she said, her voice as cool as her gray eyes.
His expression flattened. “What are you doing here?” Even to his own ears, he sounded unhappy. “Checking up on me?”
“I’m here to work with Nell. I’m with TLC Outreach.”
“No way. You’re a nurse at the hospital.”
“I have two jobs.”
“What do you need two jobs for?”
“I have student debts to pay down.”
Rem knew Sara well. Again, as with her reasons for returning to Ordinary to live, he got the feeling he wasn’t getting the whole story.
“Why didn’t they send someone else?”
“I volunteered.”
“Why?”
“Rem. It’s Nell. How could I not want to help her?”
Yeah, that part made sense, but, honest to God, this complicated things.
“There will be two of us caring for Nell,” Sara explained. “You’ll have one full-time nurse, and I’ll be working part-time.”
“We’ll see.”
Free of yesterday’s emotional overload, Rem got his first good look at Sara.
She never changed. The conservative clothing did nothing to brighten a dull landscape. With her brown hair pulled back hard enough to draw tears, she looked all business. Would a little lipstick hurt?
Her legs, though… Her legs were her best feature, not long, but damned perfect. Her slightly pigeon-toed walk, that minor vulnerability in a capable woman, had always charmed him, as had her hint of an overbite.
She watched him with a solemn gaze in that unremarkable face. “I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
She climbed the steps to the veranda and gestured with her head toward the hallway. “May I see her?”
Rem stepped aside and she brushed past him.
“Ma’s in the dining room,” Rem said. “You remember where it is?”
She nodded. Of course she would. She’d been here last summer to nurse him after the stabbing at Chester’s. That had been a rough time. He hadn’t forgotten a thing that had happened between them in those days while he recovered.
On the day that Timm had driven him home from the hospital, Sara had arrived to take care of him. After Timm had left, Sara had crawled into bed beside Rem and had held him while he’d slept.
In those days that Sara had nursed him, Finn had stayed with her mom. Rem’s own mother hadn’t said a word about Sara being on the Caldwell ranch and spending so much time in Rem’s room. He suspected that Nell would have loved for them to have married. Maybe last summer she’d hoped it was finally going to happen.
Anyway, Rem had needed a caregiver. Ma had already had a stroke and couldn’t have nursed him back to health.
Then there’d been that night a week or so after the stabbing when they’d made love, carefully so he wouldn’t hurt his healing wound. And tenderly, because they’d both known how easily that biker’s knife could have killed him.
Getting close to him had scared her, though, and she’d packed up, had taken Finn and had run away to Bozeman. The woman was a coward.
When Sara passed him to walk into the house, something scented with lily of the valley swirled around her.
She used to smell like sunshine, fresh air and kid sweat. Now she simply smelled feminine.
Just inside the dining room door, he pulled up short, Ma’s new appearance catching him off guard again. He kept expecting to see her old self, but she looked like she didn’t weigh much more than a handful of green beans.
He felt his eyes water and blinked hard. Shoot.
When Sara saw his mother, her face lit up and she looked younger.
Sara bent forward and wrapped Ma in a hug. “I’m going to be one of your caregivers.”
When she pulled away, Ma’s pleasure in seeing her was obvious. She loved Sara, and wasn’t that a kicker because it meant there was no way Rem was going to boot Sara out as one of Ma’s nurses. Ma’s joy would make having to put up with Sara worthwhile.
It also made him sad, made him rue that horrible day when Timm had been burned. If that accident hadn’t happened, would Sara be living here now as his wife? Would he have been a father to his son all along?
What-ifs weren’t worth a hell of a lot, though, were they? They just left a person regretful.
“I’m going to make you better,” Sara said, smiling and rubbing Ma’s hands.
Really, Sara? You do that and I’ll kiss your feet.
When Sara pulled a nightgown from a stack of clean laundry Rem had put in the room last night and then started to remove Ma’s clothes, he rushed outside.
The nitty-gritty of having Ma home overwhelmed him. He didn’t have a clue how to take care of a sick woman.
His cell phone rang.
“Rem, it’s Max Golden. Got a problem with a horse. Can you take a look at her today?”
“I can come now.”
Rem ended the call and went to the kitchen to rummage in the fridge for a carrot or two.
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Mary Sullivan
Rem Caldwell has made mistakes–there's no denying that. But he knows he can be the father his son deserves. If only Sara Franck would agree. She keeps bringing up their shared past, no matter how many times Rem tells her he's changed.Telling her isn't enough. Rem has to show Sara that he's a different man. And he has to do it soon–he needs his mother to know her grandson before it's too late. Because the one thing Rem wants more than anything is a permanent family reunion with Sara, the woman he adores.
“I can’t do this.”
Sara was strong enough to control her body and its desires. She’d had a lot of practice. She didn’t need to understand the darkness lurking inside—whatever it was—to know that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
“Damn it, Sara.” A thread of desperation rang in Rem’s voice. “Let go for once in your life.”
“No. I did that once. With you. Remember? And I ended up pregnant. You walked out on us. I’ve raised a great kid. All by myself. I don’t need you.”
“I’m not talking about need. I’m talking about love. We belong together. We always have. We’re connected.”
Sara shook her head sadly. “We might have been at one time. But everything has changed.”
Dear Reader,
Remington Caldwell begged for his own story. He first appeared in Beyond Ordinary, as the hero, Timm Franck’s, best friend. The idea of writing about the gorgeous bad boy who had worked hard to reform appealed to me. Where would his life go after redemption? And why couldn’t he forget Timm’s sister, Sara, a gray wren who was hard to ignore?
They’d traveled a rocky road because of one incident that changed their lives forever, that wreaked havoc with their best intentions and with their futures. Sara started as Rem’s little buddy, though. So the only way this story could go, despite having difficulties to resolve, was for them to end as friends.
I wanted to explore the idea that, although every friend we make in life counts, sometimes it’s those old friends who call to us and make us feel like we’re coming home. Throughout our lives, those friends act as landmarks that ground us, that remind us about the best parts of ourselves. When Sara finally comes home, she steps straight into Rem’s arms.
Happy reading!
Mary Sullivan
These Ties That Bind
Mary Sullivan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Sullivan recently moved back into her old neighborhood and is getting in touch with old friends. The joy of renewing these friendships enriches her life these days. Funny how easy it is to slip into those relationships as though time never passed, as though we are still those young children with our lives ahead of us. As much as she loves her old friends, Mary also enjoys making new ones and hearing from readers. You can reach her at www.marysullivanbooks.com.
Thank you, Megan,
for making this a better book.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
SARA FRANCK HAD NEVER considered herself a coward, but walking into Chester’s Bar and Grill this evening was about to be the hardest thing she’d ever done. She hesitated on the doorstep.
Earlier today, Remington Caldwell had sent her a note.
Tonight. Seven o’clock. Chester’s. Far corner, back booth. Just you and me, babe. Time for a reckoning.
Rem
To a woman who prided herself on her common sense, the butterflies in her stomach were disconcerting, but she’d been off balance since June—the last time she’d seen Rem.
He’d asked her to marry him…
“Sara?” Her brother, Timm, held the front door open for her. “You coming?”
The scents of beer and grilled meats, and the welcoming warmth of the place enveloped her.
Drawing on the determination that had pulled her through every hardship she’d ever faced, Sara followed Timm in out of the frosty December night, to Christmas carols filling the air and candles winking on every table. Silver garlands hung from the rafters. Fresh cedar swags gathered with red velvet bows covered the walls. A decorated Christmas tree took pride of place on a small stage.
Chester and his wife, Missy, had invited all of Ordinary, Montana, to their first annual Christmas party and it looked as if the whole town had shown up. The sounds of conversation and merriment saturated the big room, but Sara heard little. Rem was here.
Timm went straight to the bar, to visit with his new wife, Angel, who was helping out for the night as bartender and waitress. No surprise. After all, Missy was her mom and Chester her stepfather.
Sara stepped farther into the room and, as though her heart were a compass, spotted Rem in the far corner. Ha. Some compass. It had been slipping since the summer, careening off center, along with her ability to keep focus on the direction her life had always taken and should continue to take, and all of it Rem’s fault.
She started toward him with her tender feelings locked down. She didn’t want or need to be vulnerable to this man.
Someone called out a greeting. She answered in kind, but had no idea to whom.
Rem watched her as she crossed the busy restaurant, the hot blue of his eyes a guiding light.
Don’t look at me like that.
He raised a glass of clear liquid to his lips. So, he was still drinking. What was in that glass? Gin? Vodka?
Sara, I’m a changed man, he’d said in June. I want you to see the new me.
Sitting here in the bar amid the hubbub of a happy crowd, the new Rem didn’t look much different from the old and it proved that she’d made the right decision when she’d turned him down. He’d lied about changing.
He drained the last of his drink. Her gaze followed. With that mouth, how could it not? He’d kissed her that day in June, just before proposing.
Why did that kiss still haunt her? Because it had been sweet and tempting and seductive. But he’d been sweet and tempting before, when he was a teenager, and things hadn’t worked out then. Why would anything work now?
She slid into the booth across from him.
He kept his eyes on her, but didn’t say anything.
Angel showed up beside them. “What can I get you, Sara?”
“We’ll have a couple of club sodas on ice,” Rem answered before Sara could.
Angel nodded and walked away, taking Rem’s empty glass with her.
“When you get a minute, Angel,” someone shouted. “We need another round here.”
“I’m on it, folks,” Angel called.
Sara ignored all of it, her focus on the man who had the power to shift her world’s axis. “I’m a big girl, Rem. I could have ordered my own drink.”
“I know.”
“So, you’re not drinking?”
“Not a drop.”
The scent of French fries wafted from the table beside them. Sara knew she should eat, but couldn’t. Her stomach rejected the thought, at least until she’d finished her business with Rem—whatever this business was.
“Since when have you not been drinking, Rem?”
“Since I got stabbed in the summer.”
Sara didn’t want to think about the stabbing. Instead, she concentrated on the drinking issue. “How long will it last this time?”
“Forever. Those two months last summer were an aberration, Sara, because you turned me down. I was hurting. That was the first alcohol I’d had in six years. I’m over the drinking and the disappointment.”
“Why am I here?” she asked. “You proposed. I said no. What’s left to discuss?”
Rem got out of the booth and she wondered where he was going. Before she could stop him, he sat beside her.
“What—?”
He forced her into the corner, facing him with her back against the wall, and laid his warm hands on her thighs. She knew she should protest, should push him out of the booth because he was too big and too close, but her body craved him even as her mind rallied against him.
“Damn it, Rem.”
He turned toward her.
“I—” Whatever she was going to say died on her lips, the festive crowd faded away and they might as well have been alone in the room. Rem stared at her with brilliant blue eyes framed by dark lashes, reflections of the white lights hanging from the ceiling shining in his pupils.
Black hair fell across his forehead and she almost reached out to push it back, managing to stop before making a fool of herself.
He smelled like cedar and pine. Maybe he’d helped Chester decorate today.
Amy Grant sang about having a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light. But Sara’s wasn’t. It was dark and scared and off-kilter. She wanted her sanity back, her old life before Rem had proposed.
“Why?” she asked, as though he could know her thoughts. “Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”
“I wanted to make things right.”
“They already were right. My life was perfect.”
“Nothing was right between us, Sara.” He ran a finger down her cheek and she jerked away.
“Keep your hands to yourself.”
He let his hand fall to the table. “Nothing’s been right since that night in the hospital after Finn was born. I rejected you both. I was scared and immature and dead wrong. I should have married you then.”
“For Finn. Because I got pregnant.” It wasn’t a question. “So, more than eleven years later you proposed out of guilt?”
“No!” Rem slapped his palm on the table. “Are you blind? I love you.” He hauled her close and wrapped his fingers around her nape. Before she could protest, his lips were on hers and there was nothing sweet or seductive about this kiss.
It was carnal. Heat-drenched. Laden with so much anger and frustration, Sara could taste it. She felt the same things herself.
Her body begged her to give in to the kiss, but she wouldn’t, because that darkness inside her that she’d felt toward Rem for years had grown bigger in the past six months. Since June. Since that devastating marriage proposal. She didn’t know where the darkness came from or what it was, but it was profound and terrified her to her toes. Something that had been hidden for a long time had worked its way too close to the surface. A flood of emotion threatened to pour out of her and all she could do was stick her finger in the hole, resist the pressure and hang on for dear life.
She thought she heard someone whisper, “Wow, it’s about time.”
Sara took one last taste of Rem’s tongue and lips, because it would be their last kiss—ever—then forced herself to pull away. His moisture cooled on her lips and his breath feathered bits of hair around her face.
“I can’t do this.” She was strong enough to control her body and its desires. She’d had a lot of practice.
She didn’t need to understand the darkness lurking inside—whatever it was—to know that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. She and Finn had a good life. Things would stay the way they were.
“Damn it, Sara.” A thread of desperation rang in Rem’s voice. “Let go for once in your life.”
“No. I did that once. With you. Remember? And I ended up pregnant. I wouldn’t give up Finn for the world, but it’s been anything but easy. You walked out on us. You decided you didn’t want to be a father. I’ve raised a great kid. All by myself. I don’t need you.”
“I’m not talking about need. I’m talking about love and companionship. We belong together. We always have. We’re connected.” He leaned forward. “If we don’t belong together, why did you sleep with me that night last summer?”
“That was a mistake.” She traced a scar on the tabletop with her nail. “Do you think your mom knew I stayed late that night? Do you think she heard me when I ran out?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We aren’t kids anymore.” He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her to look into his intense blue eyes. “Answer my question. Why did you make love to me that night?”
“You’d been stabbed. You almost died.”
“And it scared you because we’re connected. Because if I died, part of you would die, too.”
She shook her head sadly. “We might have been at one time, before you burned Timm. But that changed everything.”
Rem cursed and bracketed her face with his hands. He rested his forehead on hers, breathing hard. “That was an accident. I was a kid. You know that. Timm’s forgiven me. Why can’t you?”
She wanted to touch him so she curled her hands into fists in her lap. She had to protect herself and her son. “What about all of that stuff when you were a teenager? The drinking? The girls? The street racing?”
“There’s a difference between what I did as a teenager and what I did last summer. When I was a kid, drinking and partying were a pattern in my life. I’d burned my best friend. I didn’t think I deserved better for myself. Last summer’s drinking was an aberration after six years of sobriety. Can’t you see they aren’t the same?”
He backed away and the bar came into focus again. People talked, laughed, sang along with the Christmas carol tinting the air with nostalgia.
Two glasses filled with clear soda and ice sat side by side on the table. Angel must have brought them while they were kissing.
Heat crawled up Sara’s neck.
Rem picked up one of the glasses. “Club soda. No alcohol. I haven’t had a drop since the stabbing. I’ve changed, Sara. You need to accept that.”
He slammed the glass down and soda splashed onto the table.
“But I haven’t seen any change,” she said. “You drank in the summer. You sure looked like the old Rem.”
“That was temporary. I was upset after you turned me down.”
“Okay, so you haven’t had a drink since then. But you could again at any time. It shouldn’t have happened in the summer.”
“It happened because I’m human. No one is perfect. Not even you.” He rammed his fingers through his hair, his frustration a palpable thing beating between them. “There are things you don’t know.”
“What are you talking about? What things?”
He got out of the booth and his absence sucked all of the warmth out of the room. He reclaimed the bench on the other side and she felt a loss whose source she couldn’t identify.
“Nothing,” he said. “Forget I said anything.” He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Okay, listen. You haven’t seen the changes in me because you were away too many years at school and then working. Your visits have been short. A week here. A week there. Just like now.”
He took a long swallow of soda. “Dad died seven years ago. His death scared me straight. I knew I had to save myself. Ma needed me to grow up and take responsibility. I did, Sara. I went to school for six years. I didn’t drink. Didn’t party. I’m a veterinarian now. I take care of the ranch. I take care of Ma.”
He reached across the table and took her hands in his. His gaze shot to her face. “Your fingers are icicles.”
“I know.” This year she felt winter’s chill so deeply. She didn’t know why she couldn’t get warm.
You were warm a minute ago, in this man’s arms. She ignored that sentiment.
“Before last summer,” Rem went on, “I’d been sober for six and a half years. That’s a long time.”
“Yes, it is, but you did drink again last summer.”
“And I don’t now. We’re going around in circles, Sara.”
She didn’t respond. What ruled her decisions about Rem were the times when he lost control, because those times destroyed her, devastated her, starting with her brother’s eleventh birthday party. Rem had sprayed Timm with foam streamers and the birthday candles had set the foam—and Timm—on fire. Rem’s questionable choices were terrifying.
“What about the car you crashed when you were sixteen? You were lucky to survive.”
He tapped one fist against his forehead. “I’m thirty-two years old. Why are you dwelling on ancient history?”
“Because it will always be there between us.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Life changes. Only your memories stay the same.”
“That’s true. My memories don’t change.”
As much as it hurt her to do so, she took her fingers out of his grasp.
“Nothing is going to happen between us, Rem. That’s final.” She moved to slide out of the booth, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“If you leave now, it will be final. For me, too. I’m done with you, Sara.”
Rem sounded so strong, so determined, that Sara hesitated. He had hovered on the edges of her life for so many years. Had always been there, a constant, undeniable shadow. A man who’d loved her unceasingly. As of this moment, that all ended.
“I understand,” she said, and left the booth.
It was over. This time, for good.
She walked away, through the warm and festive restaurant and straight out the door into the quiet night, where falling snow coated the ground like a feather duvet, cloaking the world in a reverent hush. And all Sara felt as she trudged to her mother’s home was hollowness in the pit of her stomach and a bone-deep chill.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MOMENT HE HEARD THE CRASH, Rem shot out of his sweat-soaked bed and ran to the open window. Light-headed, he grasped the sill for support.
The June sun was too bright, already too high. Must be eight-thirty or nine o’clock. He’d slept in.
He’d been dreaming of Sara Franck again. And fire.
On the small highway that ran along his land, a patch of orange glimmered, so pretty it looked almost harmless. Was that actually fire or a remnant of his heat-wrought imagination?
He scrubbed his eyes and peered out the window to see a car nose-deep in the ancient oak beside his front gate.
The glow of orange grew.
Fire! Real, not dream-induced.
Lord, was there someone in that car?
With no time for a shirt, he scrambled into his jeans, almost falling when he hit the stairs.
His cell phone sat on the hall table where he’d left it beside his car keys.
As he ran out of the house, he tried to see whether anyone was up and walking around the car in the distance. Nothing moved.
Rem dove into his old SUV and sped down his long driveway toward the road that led to Ordinary, Montana.
He needed the fire department. Fast.
His hands shook and he dropped his phone.
Damn!
He wiped his eyes to clear them of sleep.
Wake up, already.
A too-long moment later, he pulled to a screeching stop at the end of the drive, scrabbled around under his seat for the phone and dialed 9-1-1.
“It’s Rem Caldwell. There’s been a car crash. Looks bad. I need the fire department and an ambulance.” He rattled off his address and jumped out of his vehicle.
Thick smoke obscured the compact car that had torn a gash into the oak, making it impossible to tell whether anyone was trapped inside.
Fire crackled in the front of the vehicle.
His heart in his throat, he rounded the car. A woman sat on the road holding her head and looking bewildered.
Thank God she’d gotten out.
“There’s a woman on the road,” he shouted to the emergency operator. “Alive, but hurt.” He shoved the phone into his pocket.
At least she wasn’t burning in that twisted wreckage, her flesh on fire and smelling of roasting meat.
Rem shook his head to rid his mind of old images.
“I’m coming!” he called to the woman. She didn’t react. Blood matted her hair and the asphalt around her.
On the far side of the road, in another pool of blood, lay a large stag. If he wasn’t dead already, then soon. The impact with the animal had crushed the front of the car right to the steering wheel.
The driver was lucky to be alive.
He squatted beside her. “Where are you hurt besides your head?” Judging by the way she held her ribs, she’d cracked or broken at least one. He guessed her arm was broken, too.
“What happened?” she whispered, the words slurred. Concussion, maybe?
“You hit a stag.”
She rubbed her ear, then turned to her side and vomited.
He supported her until she was finished.
“What happened?” she asked again and, with that evidence of confusion, he knew she had a concussion.
A high-pitched scream burst from the wreckage and the hair on Rem’s arms stood on end. Dear God.
Someone was inside that burning metal box.
“Who else was in the car with you?” Rem yelled over his shoulder as he ran toward the vehicle.
The driver didn’t respond.
He scanned the car. Too much fire. “Who’s in there?”
A young voice inside the car screamed, “Mom, help me!”
SARA FRANCK GLANCED at the cast on her son’s broken wrist, disappointed that Finn had been so foolish. He sat in the passenger seat staring out his window and avoiding talking to her, as was usual lately. If he was this moody at eleven, she dreaded his teen years.
She gripped the steering wheel. She’d hoped that moving back to Ordinary would settle him down.
“Are you sure you’re okay for your horseback riding lesson today?”
Finn shook his hair out of his eyes and mumbled, “Yeah.”
She pointed to his cast. “You won’t be able to attend the lifeguard lessons I signed you up for. You can’t go in a pool with that on your arm.”
“Why do I have to do so much stuff every day? It’s summer. Why can’t I just hang out like other kids?”
“To keep you busy. To keep you out of trouble.”
“Mo-om, how many times do I hafta tell you? I’m not going to get into trouble.”
And yet, he’d broken his wrist yesterday.
“I have four words for you, Finn. Those boys in Bozeman.”
“Well, I’m not there anymore. I can’t hang out with them again, can I?”
Determined to check out the scene of his accident, Sara turned off Main and drove by the parking lot where his wrist had done battle with asphalt and had lost.
Her foot hit the brakes. Makeshift skateboarding ramps littered the asphalt. Obviously, kids had cobbled together whatever materials they could find. Oh, dear Lord, one of the ramps looked like an old rec room door. Finn could have killed himself. “That’s where you were skateboarding?” Fear sharpened her tone. “Oh, Finn, you’re lucky you didn’t die.”
“God, Mom, don’t exaggerate.” Finn crossed his arms and curled his shoulders in on himself, his lower lip jutting even more than normal these days.
“I’m happy to see you out doing something other than lying around listening to music and doodling in your sketchbook,” she said. “Skateboarding is fine, but doing it on wooden ramps over concrete is nuts. What were you thinking?”
“I was having fun,” he shouted, then lapsed back into his “I’m too cool to care” attitude.
Foolish boy.
She shot out of town, driving faster than she should, but for Pete’s sake, how was she supposed to survive motherhood?
“Thank goodness you were wearing your helmet.”
“Of course I was. I’m not stupid, Mom.” Why did the word sound like an insult when he used it?
Where have you gone, Finn? What have the aliens done with my sweet little boy and why did they leave this hostile stranger in his place?
He turned his back on her, as far as his seat belt would allow, and stared out the window.
Sara reached out to touch that bit of his neck peeking out from his too-long hair, but he flinched away from her. If she could, she’d encase him in bubble wrap for protection.
His twelfth birthday was less than two weeks away. His feet were getting big, almost man-size. That vulnerable neck, though? That was still little boy.
She’d thought she’d taught him how to be careful, but his streak of—of sheer recklessness worried her. What if he was like his father?
That left a bad taste in her mouth.
Adolescence barreled down on Finn, heedless and full of dangerous potential.
She glanced at his profile and saw his eyes widen.
“Mom, look,” he shouted.
Farther down the road at the entrance to the Caldwell ranch, a car sent plumes of smoke into the air. Rem’s place!
Sara pushed the accelerator to the floor and the car surged forward.
“Wow, looks bad, Mom. Unbelievable! Check out all that smoke.”
“Get my cell phone and dial 9-1-1. Tell them we need the fire department.”
As she drew closer, she noticed two people in the road, one lying down.
“Tell them we need an ambulance, too.”
The other person was running toward the burning car. Rem! What was he doing? Going in? Was he nuts?
She came to a gravel-spewing stop across from the accident, just shy of a large buck on the shoulder.
“Stay here,” she ordered Finn, and jumped out of the car.
The first thing that struck her was the noise of the deer lowing pitifully, in pain, of the woman groaning, also in pain, and of the fire crackling, eating up the car that Rem was about to jump into.
She grabbed her first aid kit from the trunk and yelled, “Rem, what are you doing? Don’t.”
REM’S BODY HAD GONE COLD. Geez, there was a kid trapped in that inferno.
The driver’s door stood ajar and he wrenched it open all the way.
Weirdly, he thought he heard Sara Franck’s voice.
The child screamed again.
“Melody!” the woman lying in the road screamed, lucid and hysterical now.
Afraid she would run to the car, Rem whipped around to tell her to stay put.
Sara knelt beside the woman, restraining her. Where had she come from?
“Rem,” she called, “don’t be stupid! Don’t go in there.”
“Can’t wait.” He coughed on smoke. “She’ll die.”
Turning back to the smoke swathed car, he cried, “Where are you?” even while he leaned toward the burning passenger seat.
“Here.” The terrified young voice came from the backseat. Thank God. He slammed the driver’s seat forward into the steering wheel and climbed into the car, the heat intense.
The scent of burning skin and hair choked him. The fumes from melting fabric and metal stung his eyes. The child cried out again, her screams terrible.
Rem barely made out a small form huddled beside the window in the only corner of the car not engulfed in flames. She beat her fist against the glass.
Reaching blindly, he grasped a leg.
“Gotcha!” Rem pulled hard. A small body crashed into his chest sending him backward against the door.
With a jerk, he dragged her out with him. He batted at her burning hair with his bare hands, then checked her over. Fire had touched only her hair.
He blinked hard. His eyes watered from the smoke.
As he carried her away from the burning vehicle, putting distance between them in case it blew up, Rem stared into her wide eyes. “You were lucky you were in the only corner of the car that wasn’t burning.”
“Was on…other side,” she gasped.
Hacking coughs wracked her thin body.
“When I woke up, there was fire everywhere. I undid my seat belt and moved over.” She lifted her shaking hands to show him her burnt palms.
“I couldn’t get Mom’s seat out of the way.” Her lower lip trembled. “I couldn’t get out.”
“Shh. You’re safe now,” Rem crooned, the same way he would to a balky horse. He wanted to rest his head on hers to soothe her, but he feared hurting her damaged scalp. Or maybe he wanted to soothe himself.
“Who are you? Where’s my mom?” She should be crying more, he thought. Her scalp had to hurt like crazy. She was probably going into shock.
“I’m Rem. Your mom’s okay. She got out of the car.” No sense mentioning her mother had been injured. Or that she’d stumbled out of the car on her own, likely forgetting about her daughter because of shock and a head injury.
Rem laid the girl on the grass, but hesitated to let her go. Maybe if he held on tightly enough, he could keep her safe.
The child looked older than her tiny body would indicate—about eight or nine, at a guess.
This close he could smell her burned skin and it gripped him with the talons of a familiar helplessness.
Sara was a nurse. She’d know what to do for the child. He searched for her.
“Sara?” She still knelt beside the injured woman wrapping her arm against her chest with gauze.
“Sara!” he barked. “Get over here. This girl’s hurt.”
Sara ran over.
“Fix her,” he said.
Gingerly, she checked the girl. “I can’t. They both need to get to the hospital.”
“I’ll take them.”
“We shouldn’t move the mother. The ambulance is on its way.”
“Ambulance is probably still on the other side of Ordinary. How long will it take?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Each way. Too long.” He gestured toward the injured woman. “She’s already moved, sat up just as I got here. If one of those ribs punctured a lung, she’ll get bad fast. We need to go.”
He ran to the still-disoriented woman. “I’m going to lift her.”
“Careful,” Sara said.
Reaching under the woman’s legs and with one arm across her back, Rem picked her up as if she were a porcelain doll, trying to keep her in the same position she was already in.
He was beyond gentle, but she cried out anyway. There was no way to do this without hurting her.
While they placed her into his Jeep, Sara supported her bloody head. Before resting the woman back onto the seat, Sara shimmied out of her sweater and balled it up to cushion her head.
“That sweater will be ruined,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
She’d never had a lick of vanity.
“We can’t put her seat belt on,” Sara said. “Drive carefully.”
Yeah, right. While I speed like a demon. “I’ll do my best.”
“Do you keep a gun in the Jeep?”
“Yeah. A rifle. Why?”
“That stag’s in pain. He can’t be saved and he’s dying too slowly.”
“Let me get my kit and I’ll give him an injection.”
“We don’t have time. Where’s the gun?”
“I’ll get it.” Rem rushed to the back and reached in for his rifle.
When Sara tried to take it from him, he said, “Move.”
“I can do it. Get those two to the hospital. Go. Now.”
Here in full force was übercapable Sara. She charged through life taking care of everyone and everything around her.
Rem and Sara had practically grown up together. He knew she loved animals as much as he did and he wanted to spare her this ugliness. But he also knew that look of determination. Fine. She could do it.
He shoved the rifle into her hands, then returned to the sobbing child, whispering inanities as he lifted her. A little bit of a thing, she whimpered against his chest like a kitten. So vulnerable. So helpless against life.
Rem cleared his throat of the fear blocking his breath. She’ll be fine. Have faith.
He put her into the front passenger seat where he could keep an eye on her. Her chest seemed to be fine, so he buckled her in, ran around to the driver’s side and pulled onto the highway.
As he sped off with his window open, he heard one rifle shot.
Sara had been a thorn in his side over the years, but he couldn’t deny she had guts.
Sheriff Kavenagh’s cruiser approached, barreling down the highway from the opposite direction, toward the cloud of dirty smoke the car threw into the air.
Easing to a stop, Rem rolled down his window. Cash did the same in the oncoming lane.
“I’ve got an injured woman and a burned child. I’m taking them to the hospital.”
“I’ll give you an escort.”
The woman in the backseat moaned. Rem needed to get moving.
“Don’t worry about it. You have a fire extinguisher in the trunk?” Rem asked.
“Sure,” Cash answered. “I always keep a couple on hand. They won’t put out a fire that size, though.”
“Fire department isn’t here yet. I’m worried about the brush on the side of the road. Last thing we need is a grass fire.”
“No kidding. I’ll see what I can do.”
They separated and accelerated in their separate directions.
In his rearview mirror, he watched Sara pull a U-turn and speed down the highway after him.
Dark smoke still rose from the wreckage. With all the chemicals and plastics used in manufacturing these days, car fires burned hot and intense. That fire could spread to his fields and reach the house.
He couldn’t think about that now.
Rem flew through town, blaring his horn for the length of Main Street. Sara caught up and stuck to his tail like contact cement, her horn blaring in unison with his.
Someone was sitting in Sara’s passenger seat, someone as tall as she. Finn? Had he grown that much since Rem had seen him around town at Christmas?
The woman in his backseat had stopped moaning. Maybe she’d passed out.
The shops passed in a blur.
On the highway on the far side of town, an ambulance passed headed toward the accident scene. It would take too long to stop, wait for the ambulance to turn around and then transfer the patients over. Best to just keep going.
Rem got back on his cell and told 9-1-1 to cancel it and to hook him up to the local hospital in Haven.
While he waited to be patched through, he checked the girl. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. She’d started to shiver.
Shit!
She was getting worse.
He didn’t have anything to cover her with.
Finally, the hospital came into view and he screeched into the emergency entrance, narrowly missing a car.
A few nurses he knew stood outside the doors with stretchers. Randy took the child from the front seat and placed her onto one of the gurneys.
“She’s in shock,” Rem said, jumping out and rounding the SUV.
“Got it,” Randy responded, wheeling her into the hospital.
Kelly and Phil went to the back for her mother.
“Careful. She’s got head injuries—concussion, for sure—and a broken arm and we’re pretty sure some busted ribs.”
“Park your car,” Kelly told him, her voice calm but rushed. “Then get a nurse to help with your injuries,”
His injuries? What was she talking about? He was fine.
He parked the Jeep and ran back to the emergency doors. Just inside, white coats and nurses’ scrubs swarmed the two stretchers. Nurses ripped plastic from IV needles and inserted them into the uninjured arms of the patients.
On her stretcher, the child glanced around, her eyes wide and scared. When her gaze settled on Rem, she seemed to settle. He gave her a thumbs-up.
Her tremulous smile tugged at something deep inside him, as though there were already a connection between them. What was that Asian proverb? If you save a life, you become responsible for that life? Forever after that, you were obligated to take care of them. Or was that just a myth? For whatever reason, Rem did feel responsible. He wanted to be able to fix her, to take away her pain and fear.
In a whirlwind of activity, the two patients were taken to examination rooms, followed by nurses and doctors. The gurneys disappeared behind closing doors and suddenly all was quiet.
In the vacuum, Rem bent over and struggled to breathe, air searing his throat as it passed through his windpipe. He hadn’t realized he’d inhaled that much smoke. Didn’t matter. He would live. He hoped like crazy those two would be okay.
When the adrenaline that had carried him this far gave out, his knees buckled. He grasped the counter of the nurses’ station.
If he’d slept through the crash…
Or what if he’d already been out working, taking care of animals on someone else’s ranch…
Those two might be dead now, one on the road and the other burned to death in the backseat of their car. Sara would have helped them when she came along. Could she have climbed into a burning vehicle, though? He didn’t know. Her shock after her brother had been burned had been profound. He just didn’t know how much of that she’d got over.
Nausea rose into his throat along with memories he’d grown damn good at repressing, but here they were now, vivid and too real, brought on by the scent of roasted flesh—a ball of fire, Timm Franck’s screams, the other children running away, parents scrambling to put out the fire. Sara frozen in place and staring at her injured brother.
The stinking horror of it rang in Rem’s conscience—your fault. Your fault. Those words—your fault, Rem—had dogged him for twenty years. Far too many years.
He’d put his worst memories behind him, but today’s crash, that burning girl, played havoc with his equilibrium. Maybe he felt this connection to her because he’d saved her from getting burned as badly as Timm had.
Sara ran past him. On her way through the examination room doors, she said, “Sit down before you fall on your face.”
Rem stumbled to a blue plastic chair, one of a row, and sagged into it.
That poor kid.
He slumped against the chair and his back burst into flame. Howling, he shot forward. What the hell? He stood and tried to see his reflection over his shoulder in the side of a chrome vending machine, but the finish was too dull.
“Where’s your shirt?”
Rem turned. Finn Franck stood in front of the machine with a fistful of change, staring at Rem’s back and his hands.
He’d combed masses of jet hair across his forehead like a modern-day Beatle look-alike. With silver-gray eyes he’d inherited from Sara, the kid promised to be a heartbreaker one day soon.
He’d grown a lot since the last time Rem had seen him. Must be taller than Sara by now.
He was turning twelve in a couple of weeks. Rem knew his birth date. He knew a lot about him.
“When I heard the car crash I jumped out of bed.” Rem finally answered the boy’s question. “Didn’t have time to get fully dressed.”
“There’s a long scratch on your back. It’s bleeding.”
Must’ve happened when he pulled the girl out of the car.
Finn stared at him, unnerving him. “Does it hurt?”
“It didn’t until a minute ago.” Rem had driven all the way out here with his back against his car seat and, in those adrenaline-fueled moments, hadn’t felt a thing.
“I saw you go into the burning car,” the boy said. “That was cool. Really sick. You were great.”
Finn’s eyes gleamed with hero worship.
Lord no. Anything but that. Rem was no hero. Never had been. Never would be.
“Don’t try it at home,” he muttered. “Fire is dangerous business.”
Rem slowly turned away from the boy and sat back down.
He couldn’t handle this right now.
He’d just rescued a girl from a burning vehicle, but to have a conversation with his son scared the bejesus out of him. Over the years, during Sara’s visits home from school, he’d seen Finn around town. He’d admired the fine job Sara was doing raising him, but Rem didn’t know what to say, what to talk about, and that helplessness frustrated him.
He wanted to connect. To claim the boy. Badly.
Sara had finished her nursing degree a few years ago and had been working in Bozeman; but she’d returned to Ordinary with Finn last week, this time to stay for good.
Rem wanted to know why.
He stretched his neck to ease the tightness there, where his resentment of Sara had settled since last summer.
Finn poured coins into the pop machine. When a ginger ale fell into the bottom, he pulled it out and sat on a chair in the same row as Rem, holding the can level on his thigh.
Rem stared at the boy’s smooth profile, at his straight nose and square jaw, as nonplussed as if Finn were a strange kind of animal Rem had never encountered before.
He wanted to touch the boy, to acknowledge him as his son. He was ready. Did Finn ever ask about his father?
With the utmost care, Finn popped the tab, then took a long gulp, all while Rem stared at Sara’s reflection in his young face.
Rem pointed to the cast on Finn’s left wrist. “What happened?”
“Skateboarding.”
Rem nodded. “Shit happens.”
Finn nodded, too. “Yeah, shit happens.”
SARA STEPPED OUT OF THE emergency hallway and what she saw brought her up short. Rem sat beside her son. They were talking. Get away from him, she wanted to yell but didn’t. She had more self-control than that. Instead, she brushed a quick hand down her torso to ease her panic.
When Rem bent toward Finn, motioning to his cast, Sara noticed what she’d spent most of the past eleven years ignoring—how her son often tilted his head the same way when he was curious about something, and how their lush dark hair curled in the same direction. If Finn didn’t use product to keep his bangs straight across his forehead, they would flop forward like Rem’s did.
It made Rem look like a rebel, like James Dean, but less sulky, more dangerous.
When Finn took a pencil out of his sketchbook and handed it to Rem to sign his cast, she called, “Remington Caldwell,” too sharply.
Rem looked up at her and frowned at her tone, then deliberately took his time with his autograph. He knew what this was doing to her, how it unnerved her, but he did it anyway.
He’s mine, not yours. Only mine.
Rem smiled at her son, stood and then walked toward her.
Sara didn’t want to stare, but couldn’t help it.
As a teenager, she’d worked hard to ignore Rem’s charms. As a grown woman, she tried not to drool.
Why was it so hard to turn off her attraction to him?
He wasn’t the only man on earth.
He’s the only one who makes you feel alive.
That had been brought home to her too clearly with the recent situation with Peter, yet another man who couldn’t measure up to Rem. She’d broken up with Peter simply because he wasn’t Rem, and wasn’t that ridiculous considering how unsentimental she was supposed to be. No-nonsense, dependable Sara.
Wasn’t it serendipitous that shortly after, she’d moved home with Finn to get him away from that gang’s influence? She no longer had to see Peter at the hospital every day and be reminded of her own foolishness. She didn’t have to see that bewildered look on his face whenever they met. He had no clue why she’d ended their relationship after his proposal. She hadn’t been able to explain fully to either him or herself exactly what her problems were.
She continued to stare. Rem was the handsomest man in Ordinary, Montana, and she was only human. Usually, she coped. It was just that she hadn’t seen him since Christmas and now without a shirt. That was all.
Her stomach rebelled when she noticed the scar on his abdomen and remembered the terror of the night last summer when he’d been stabbed in a bar, and her own helplessness, of how little she’d been able to do for him while they’d waited for the ambulance.
She’d almost lost him that night. He’d been drinking in Chester’s when it was still the Roadhouse and a biker had hassled one of the waitresses. When Rem stepped in to protect her, the biker stabbed him in the stomach. Foolish, courageous Rem who never thought of the danger to himself.
It didn’t matter that it really hadn’t been his fault. Trouble stalked Rem and that scared her.
The strawberry birthmark above his left nipple had faded over the years. The last time she’d seen it in daylight, they’d gone swimming with Timm. Her brother and Rem had been only ten and she nine.
Time had changed them all.
Rem’s arms and chest had been scrawny back then, but weren’t now.
When he lifted his hands to his hair to tidy it, his biceps flexed. Those unruly locks fell back onto his forehead.
He winced. He’d hurt his hands.
The small scar that bisected his upper lip—from a minor childhood mishap she no longer remembered—served to accentuate how full it was. The things that would be flaws on regular people looked like heaven on Rem.
To a plain woman like Sara, it smacked of unfairness.
He was still the best bad boy Ordinary had ever produced and Sara hated that she was so aware of him.
“Follow me,” she said.
“What do you want?” he asked, belligerent as hell.
“I’ll take care of your back.”
“Someone else can do it.” His lips barely moved. He was being rude.
“Little pitchers have big ears,” she said.
“What?”
She motioned with her head toward Finn. “Mind your manners.”
He blushed, obviously only now remembering that Finn would hear every word they said.
“There is no one else to do it,” Sara said. “They’re busy with the accident victims.”
He approached and said under his breath, “You live to make my life miserable, don’t you?”
“I do my best.”
She led him to an examination cubicle, all the while too aware of how close he was.
“You look like you’re chewing on a mouthful of finishing nails,” Rem observed.
He wasn’t far off. She felt that tense. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled the privacy curtain across the opening of the cubicle, closing them into a space too small for Sara’s comfort.
“What did I do wrong?” Rem muttered.
“Shut up and sit.” She pushed him onto the bed.
“Nice talk, Sara.” Rem sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. “Great bedside manner.”
She ignored his sarcasm and examined his back. Despite her feelings, she made sure to keep her touch gentle. She checked out the burns on his hands.
“Ouch,” he said. “I didn’t even realize those were there.”
“They must hurt.” Sara sterilized the wounds.
“They do now. That poor little girl has worse burns on her hands and the top of her head.”
Although she was being careful, he flinched. Burns were tricky to clean without hurting the patient.
“Have you heard how the girl is?” he asked.
Sara’s tension eased a bit. Rem had a soft spot a mile wide for children. And animals. “No. If I hear anything I’ll let you know.”
Rem stared at her clothes. “Why aren’t you in scrubs?”
“I’m not scheduled to work today.” She glared at him. “That was a stupid stunt.”
“Excuse me? What stunt?”
“Climbing into a burning car.” Sara tore open packages of gauze so hard she nearly ripped the bags in half. When she started to clean the cut on his back, he hissed, and she struggled to relax, to ease her pressure on his cut. He’d terrified her when he’d climbed into that car.
“Do you think you’re invincible?” She knew full well how vulnerable people were, how easily they could be hurt, and how hard it was to come back from some injuries. Like burns.
She’d spent her teenage years helping her brother recover from his burns.
“Saving someone is wrong?” Rem asked. She watched him grit his teeth, but she couldn’t be any more careful than she already was and still do the cleaning and patching that needed to be done.
She secured his injury with gauze then handed him a scrub top to wear. He shrugged into it.
“Saving someone isn’t wrong, but why couldn’t you have waited until the firefighters got there? They wear protective gear.” She refused to look at him, didn’t want him to see her fear, didn’t want him to think she still cared for him. “They don’t reach into burning cars half dressed. After all these years you’re still reckless.”
“Sara, you’re being unreasonable. On the way to the hospital, did we pass any fire trucks?”
“No, but—”
“There is no but. That girl needed to be rescued.”
“And you just have to be the hero, don’t you?” she said.
“It wasn’t about me!” he shouted. “You’re being unfair.”
He was right. She needed to bring her irrational anger under control. She usually didn’t have this much trouble, but then she’d spent years away from Ordinary so she wouldn’t have to deal with Rem.
“Honest to God, Sara, I really don’t need to be a hero.” He touched her chin and forced her to look at him.
“We both know there’s nothing heroic about me,” he said. “But sometimes there isn’t time to wait for someone else to show up.”
But he was a hero. He’d just proven it and it went so far toward redeeming him, toward paying for all of the faults he’d shown when he was a teenager, that she had trouble keeping up. She’d thought badly of him for so many years. But he’d apparently been able to give up drinking and women and any number of destructive habits. Apparently, he was a responsible man now. And he’d just saved a child’s life in a way that was pretty hard to beat. Sara didn’t want to be impressed, but she was.
When he’d climbed into that burning vehicle, she’d thought she would lose him. She needed to be honest with him. “I know you couldn’t wait, but I was scared. It was hard to watch. I remembered Timm.” Her voice fell quiet, to barely above a whisper.
“I didn’t have time to think. I just did.”
“But that’s exactly it, Rem. You never think. You haven’t changed.” Memories of the day that altered their lives burned her eyes and sizzled between them.
“Sara, I’m not the kid I used to be. You know that.”
Yes, but why was it so hard for her to accept? Sara tossed bloody gauze into a wastebasket. “Half an hour ago, you sure looked like the same crazy kid.”
He captured her hands and she could feel his warmth through her gloves. “Sara, stop and think. Today brought back memories of Timm being burned, yes, but you know I had to go in to get that girl.”
She pulled her fingers out of his grasp and dropped a package of gauze. When she bent over to pick it up, her hands shook. “Yes.”
“There’s a difference between recklessness and courage. I wasn’t being reckless this morning. I was doing what had to be done.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I get your point.”
She reached for a bottle of ointment and the panic she’d felt when Rem had climbed into that car, and the bleakness at the thought of losing him forever, surfaced. “The car could have exploded while you were in it. Then both of you would be dead.”
She picked up one of his hands to apply ointment, but he wrapped his fingers around hers and held them captive in his callused palm.
“Nice to see you care.” For once, he didn’t sound sarcastic. “You tie me in knots so often, can be so critical, I’m never sure if we’re still friends.”
She’d been careful to look only at his injuries, but now she met his gaze and couldn’t hide what she felt, as impossible and self-defeating as it was.
CHAPTER THREE
REM COULDN’T BELIEVE the longing he saw on Sara’s face. He understood the emotion, had felt it too often for her, but they could have been acting on it for the past year. They could have been married and loving each other every day and night.
Her longing angered him. “Uh-uh, Sara. You don’t get to look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though you want me. Nothing’s going to happen between us. That ship has sailed, sweetheart, and it ain’t ever coming back.”
Her fingers flinched within his grasp.
“Why are you back in Ordinary?” he asked. “Why didn’t you stay in Bozeman? You had a good job there.”
“Mama’s here. Timm and Angel are here and soon their new baby. I wanted to be with my family.”
Hmm. Maybe. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She pressed her lips together as though she wouldn’t answer but finally did. “Finn was hanging out with kids I didn’t like and getting wild. They got into trouble with the police. It scared me. I thought it would be good for him to be with family.”
It sounded plausible enough, but still not like the full story. He’d leave it for now. He had more important fish to fry. “I’m Finn’s family.”
She jerked to attention, the longing gone like last Sunday’s dinner, and tugged her hands out of his grasp. She opened his fists to tend to his palms in her usual no-nonsense way, the vulnerable woman vanishing behind her professional facade.
Damn your self-control to hell, Sara.
Time to hit her with the decision he’d made.
He’d spent the past seven years turning his life around, righting so many of the wrongs he’d committed before his father’s death had given him a rude wake-up call. Rem had made the decision to straighten out, but he wasn’t finished making amends yet. His father had been a great role model. It was time for Rem to be the same for his son. He’d hurt people. He wanted that to stop. Here. Now. Today. Starting with the most important people in his life.
“I want to get to know him.”
“Who?” Sara asked, turning away so he couldn’t see her expression.
“Santa Claus,” he snapped. “Who do you think? Finn.”
She spun back to him. “No. We had an agreement.”
“That agreement is almost twelve years old. I’ve paid my dues since then.”
“I don’t care. We agreed. You promised you’d never go back on your decision.”
“It was the wrong decision. I’m old enough and strong enough to see that now.”
“I don’t care.”
“Does he ever ask about his father?”
Sara flinched. Bingo.
He changed his tactic, knew what would work in convincing her.
“Ma had another stroke.” A week ago. It was her third stroke in a year and a half and the worst yet. How much longer would he have her around? He needed to set so many things right.
“I know,” Sara answered. “I’ve been visiting her.”
Of course she had, because underneath all of her stubborn grittiness Sara was a caring person.
“So why shouldn’t she get to know her grandson before she dies? What if the next stroke kills her?” His voice rose. “Finn’s my son.”
“Be quiet,” Sara warned. “We’re not private here.”
“So what? It wouldn’t kill either of us if people found out.”
She leaned close and pointed a finger in his face. “You were the one who decided not to be in his life, that you weren’t father material. The fact that you wanted out so quickly proved you were right. You’d make a terrible father.”
“I was young and stupid. I was scared. I thought Finn would be better off without me.” He stood, loomed over her and lowered his voice, infusing it with a dark intensity because she had to understand how serious he was. “That’s no longer true. I think I’d be a good father now. That boy needs one. And I need my son.”
She refused to make eye contact even though he stood mere inches from her. Instead, she stared at his collarbone.
“You agreed to the deal pretty damn quickly,” he accused. “You didn’t want me to acknowledge Finn, either.”
Her chest rose and fell too rapidly. He knew Sara through and through and, although she looked calm, he could tell she was scared. He didn’t blame her. This was new territory for him, too.
“I’ve come to terms with who I am, with the mistake I made burning Timm, with all of the mistakes I made in my crazy adolescence. I can’t take back what I’ve done, Sara, but I’m moving on. I’ve proven that I’m a responsible man.”
She hadn’t been around to witness his change, but he had changed, and she was going to have to trust him.
She still wouldn’t look at him, but said, “Fine, so you’ve come to terms with your guilt.”
Guilt. Of course she would use a word that loaded.
“It was a child’s mistake, Sara. I’ve finally accepted it. Someday, you’re going to have to let it go, too.”
“I know you were a child and I’ve tried to come to terms with it, Rem. I truly have. But it was a huge mistake with consequences that still affect us to this day.”
“Yes. I know. But it’s done. Nothing can be taken back.”
Finally, she looked at him, uncertainty in those steel-gray eyes. “If something goes wrong again, how do you know you won’t end up bingeing like last summer?”
“I don’t, but I do know that I spend ninety percent of my days being a good person. If I slip, I slip. Big deal. I’m human.”
He wanted to tell her how human she was, too; but that truth was one she had to come to on her own.
“If I slipped up,” he continued, “Finn could handle it.”
“He could handle it only because I raised him well.” She tried to push him away, but he was too strong.
Rem watched Sara control the heat that flared between them.
He stepped back.
“You’ve done a fine job of raising Finn. He’s a great kid.” Rem was ready to stop thinking of Finn as Sara’s son and to start accepting him as his own.
“Get used to this, Sara, ’cause I’m not backing down. You’re not going to win this fight.”
Something more flared in her eyes, something beneath the anger she wore like a badge. He thought it might be fear. He wracked his brain for a way to convince her that he was serious about changing, about becoming stronger, and that everything would work out fine, and he hit on one thing.
“Since the day Finn was born, I’ve been helping to support him, starting with your hospital bills when he was born. Every month without fail, I’ve sent you money for him. In twelve years, I didn’t miss once. I’ve been responsible. I’ve proven that I have staying power. Right?”
“You never missed a payment,” she acknowledged.
“I won’t relapse, Sara.”
She wouldn’t look at him.
“Fine, if you can’t do this for me, do it for Ma. She has a right to know Finn. I’m going to tell her.”
“Don’t,” Sara rasped. “Just don’t.”
“It’s no longer your choice to make.”
Beneath the defiance and fear on her face, he saw devastation. Her world was about to change.
Too bad. Rem needed everyone to know that he was Finn’s father.
He stalked out of the emergency room.
It was long past time to be a father.
SARA PRESSED A HAND AGAINST her stomach.
The controlled, defined, safe world she’d struggled to build since her son’s birth was about to crumble. She’d worked so hard and Rem could rip it all apart with a few words.
Don’t hurt my baby.
Rem was a master at finding chinks in her armor.
He didn’t understand the chance he took. His decision didn’t affect only her. Didn’t he know how hurt Finn could be if Rem let him down, if he couldn’t carry through as a father? Once he started, there was no turning back.
She listened to the familiar sounds of the hospital, her home away from home, but saw only the small recovery room she’d been in after Finn’s birth. She’d thought things were going to work out for her. She’d been so wrong.
It hurt to remember how excited she’d been and then how devastated after Rem had rejected both of them.
After she’d buried her emotions and thought things through rationally, she’d realized that she and Finn could survive just fine without Rem. And they had.
That day, she’d decided that she’d work her butt off for independence, to support herself and Finn, and the hell with Rem. She didn’t need him. She and Finn were on their own and that’s how they would stay.
Sara and her son had been a team—until lately, at any rate.
Now Rem was changing his mind and he expected her to fall into line.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Sara still stood in the small, curtained emergency room with the familiar equipment that could mend broken bodies, that could take blood and mess and dirt and transform the chaos into the order she craved.
She brushed off the past.
She would get through this. She always did.
Taking an antiseptic wipe from a container, she ran it across the small counter and into every corner and cranny.
She replaced the sheet of protective paper on the bed.
Rem had disappointed her before and there wasn’t a speck of doubt in her mind that he would do so again. She just didn’t want him pulling his old tricks on Finn.
No matter what it took, she’d make sure Finn didn’t get hurt. She’d bet her last dollar that Rem had gone up to visit Nell. She was going to march up there right now to lay down a few parameters, rules that Rem had to follow.
She would see Nell then, too. Rem had hit a nerve when he’d talked about his mom—a problem she’d been aware of since Finn’s birth.
Sara had loved Nell ever since she was a child and running everywhere with Timm and Rem. Nell had treated her as her own daughter. Over the years, Sara had worried about keeping Finn away from Nell, about how it would affect Nell if she ever found out. Nell didn’t know she was a grandmother and the guilt ate away at Sara.
Nell had had three strokes and now Rem was talking about the very real possibility of her death. It was hard to think of Nell dying without ever learning the truth. Rem was right.
Fine, Nell could get to know her grandson, but Sara would have to make sure she understood that Finn wasn’t to know whose mother she was. No way would Sara let Finn find out that Rem was his father.
Sara would keep as much control of the situation as she could.
Finished with her straightening of the room, Sara stopped and gripped the counter, overwhelmed by Rem’s threat. She squeezed her eyes shut, but still saw his face and that body she wanted to hold despite his past betrayals.
She snapped her eyes open.
Mixed in with all of that desire was a backwash of emotion too toxic for her to sort out—guilt, anger, tenderness and even love. And that terrible and unrelenting darkness.
Her head had to rule. Experience had taught her that Rem could cost her pieces of herself that she didn’t want to give. But she was faced with the same old struggle between desire and reality.
Over the years, she’d grown so good at quashing her dreams of Rem, of suppressing memories and desires. But today, at this moment, Sara Franck still wanted Remington Caldwell.
You poor unfortunate fool.
REM TOOK THE ELEVATOR to Ma’s floor, to make sure she was all right and to let her know he’d made the arrangements for her homecoming.
At least he’d had the chance to tell Sara what he wanted with Finn. She was dead set against him getting to know his son. Surprise, surprise.
Calming himself before entering Ma’s room, he put aside all thoughts of Sara.
When he approached the bed, Ma’s eyes followed him, but her head remained still. This latest stroke had immobilized her so much and it hurt to see her like this.
“What?” she asked, glancing at his bandaged hands. Her speech had been affected and her words clipped short. “What happen?”
He raised his hands so she could see them better. “It isn’t as bad as it looks. I pulled a girl out of a car fire.”
“Fire?” He didn’t miss the flicker of fear in her eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Ma, I’m good.” Blinking rapidly, he kissed her forehead, unsure whether she could even feel it.
Get your shit together. Get over all of this stupid emotion.
“She okay?”
“I don’t know how she’s doing. She had burns on her head, but I haven’t seen her since we got here. I hope so.”
“How old?”
“I think maybe nine.”
“Poor girl.”
With her good hand, she pointed at the scrub shirt he wore. “Where’s…own…shirt?”
“The accident was at the end of our lane. It woke me up and I rushed out to see if everyone was all right. Only got as far as pulling on my pants ’cause the car was on fire.”
Ma smiled but it looked bizarre with that one side drooping.
Ma’s eyes flickered to the doorway and her expression softened. Rem turned to see who had entered. Sara.
His gaze flickered to check out her conservative shirt and blue jeans. He remembered her tight body as though it were tattooed on his eyelids.
Sara approached the bed and gave Ma the kind of warm smile he hadn’t seen from her in years.
He’d always wanted a piece of that, of the soft, affectionate side of Sara’s character she reserved for everyone but him.
“How are you feeling?” Sara asked.
“Good.”
“When are you going to the convalescent home?”
Nell glanced at Rem.
“She leaves here tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve already arranged everything. She’s coming home with me.”
She turned to him with a frown. “May I talk to you out in the hall?”
He didn’t like the seriousness of her expression, but followed her out. Was she going to argue more about Finn? He wouldn’t allow it.
Once away from the door, Sara crossed her arms. “Why are you taking Nell home instead of putting her into Tender Loving Care? She needs full-time attention.”
That took him aback. She wanted to talk about Ma, not Finn. “She wants to come home.”
“It doesn’t matter what the patient wants. What does matter is that she gets the care she needs.”
“She’s my mother—I care what she wants. I’m not putting her in a place run by a bunch of strangers. I won’t know how well she’s being taken care of, or if they’ll give her enough attention. I’ve heard horror stories about old folks being neglected.”
“TLC has an excellent reputation. She would receive everything she needs.”
Rem chewed on his lip. “I can’t.” He’d neglected his parents for too many years. His wild ways had kept him isolated from everyone. When his father died, Rem realized just how much of his life he’d been throwing away. How much he was hurting those around him.
No way was he letting Ma go to an institution.
He shifted gears. “She wants to come home, Sara. I don’t know how much longer she’ll be around. How can I say no to her? I want her home, too.”
“Do you have any idea how much care she’ll need?”
“Of course I do. For God’s sake, Sara, I’ve talked to the doctors. I’ve arranged to have caregivers at the house fourteen hours a day.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“You guess? It isn’t your decision to make.”
Sara raised a staying hand to squelch his anger. “I know. I care about Nell, though. I want to make sure she gets the best care.”
“She’ll get the best.”
“TLC Outreach?”
“Yes.”
Her frown eased. “Okay.”
Rem calmed down. Sara might be a pain in the rear end sometimes, but there was no doubting how much she loved his ma.
She touched his arm, her manner hesitant but also determined. “As far as Finn goes, here’s the deal. You can tell Nell that he’s her grandson on the condition that she understands that he isn’t to know. And you can’t tell him that you’re his father.”
“What the hell?”
“Those are my terms. For years, you didn’t want to acknowledge him as your son. You can’t change the rules on a whim.”
“I want to be his father now.”
“I can’t risk that you’ll hurt him.”
“I’ll take you to court.”
“In the eyes of the law, I’m his only parent.”
No way. “You didn’t put my name on the birth certificate?”
“I had planned to, but you walked out on us.”
She might as well have sucker punched him. It hurt. Finn was his son. He’d never claimed the boy, though, had he?
“Did you really hate me so much?”
“I’ve never hated you, Rem. Never. But I don’t trust you to do what’s right for my son.”
Without waiting for a response, she strode away and Rem was left reeling. So, should he go ahead and tell the boy anyway, against Sara’s wishes? Somehow, that didn’t feel right.
He would tell his ma, though, when the time was right.
He returned to Ma’s room to say goodbye.
Last week, on the day of her latest stroke, it had occurred to him that she was his only family.
Other than Finn.
He’d always thought her hale and healthy, but she’d shrunk, was small now, and he was in danger of losing her. Now he had this impulse, an inkling that had started after he became a full-time veterinarian, but urgent now that Ma was so bad, to start a family. He already had started one, though, and wanted to claim his son and get to know him.
He’d screwed up in not acknowledging him from the beginning. He was through screwing up. He was setting everything in his life right.
Sara had done a great job of raising Finn alone, so Rem would respect her wishes. For now.
“Ma, I’m going to see how that young girl is doing and then finish setting the house to rights for your homecoming tomorrow.”
She tried that smile again, but must have known how bad it looked because she stopped. Ma, you’re breaking my heart.
He squeezed her good hand. “I love you.”
She nodded.
Rem rushed out because of the headache throbbing behind his sinuses. Maybe he was getting a cold. Or maybe it was just that he’d been up too late last night turning the dining room into a bedroom for Ma’s return, including moving in the new bed he’d had delivered.
On the first floor, he found Randy in the emergency ward. “How are the girl and her mother?”
“Lucky, from what I hear.” He punched Rem on the shoulder. “Heard you’re the man of the hour for pulling her out of the wreckage.”
Rem shrugged. “You would have done the same thing. Seriously, how are they?”
“You called it right. Mother’s got a concussion, fractured ribs and a broken arm. Daughter’s got burns to her scalp, hands and arms.”
“Can I see them?” Rem needed reassurance that the two were alive and well. When the kid had been trapped…
Quit. Don’t think about it.
Randy directed him to Intensive Care. “They’re pretty doped up, but you can look in on them.”
Rem stepped into the room. Nurses worked around the young girl’s bed quietly, lending the room a hushed, expectant silence.
Her face looked peaceful in her drugged sleep, with the white bandages swathing her head.
His gaze drifted to the other bed, where her mother lay awake and watching him, her gaze only slightly unfocused by pain meds.
“Hi,” he said with a wave of two fingers.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you the one who saved my daughter?”
“Yeah.” He squirmed beneath her admiring gaze. Lady, I’m not a hero.
He approached her bed. Under the bruises on one side of her face, he could tell she was a whole lot younger than he’d originally thought, probably younger than his own thirty-two years.
“What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked.
“Melody.”
He had a snap memory of this woman screaming that as Rem dove into the burning vehicle. “I’m Remington Caldwell. People call me Rem.”
She smiled, then grimaced as if her face hurt.
“I’m Elizabeth Chase. Liz,” she said. “Did that happen at the crash?” She pointed to his wrapped hands. He nodded.
“I’m sorry.” She had a pretty voice, feminine and sweet.
“You’re not from around here. Are you here to visit family?”
She shook her head and shadows clouded her eyes along with a dose of fear. Something wasn’t right, but the woman wasn’t saying more. Fair enough. She had a right to her privacy.
When he asked no further questions, she stared at him some more as though he were her hero, and he had to leave the room before he disappointed her by blurting out how wrong she was.
REM TURNED THE JEEP INTO his driveway and stared at his big old oak and the fields on either side of the entrance to his ranch.
Fire had scorched the fields, now sodden under the weight of the water the fire crews had poured on them.
The acrid scent of charred earth drifted through the open window.
The fire trucks must have reached his ranch shortly after he passed through Ordinary on his way to the hospital.
After last summer’s drought, the town had installed solar-powered pumps in Still Creek where it ran along the highway.
Thankfully, access to water for the fire pumps wasn’t an issue.
The results could have been so much worse. Those golden fields could have burned right up to the house and taken it down, too.
He had lost grain, though, and would have to replace it.
He climbed out and pressed his hand against the scar on the tree where the car had hit. Fire had blackened this entire side of the trunk. Still fresh, the odor of burning wood had replaced that of singed flesh.
His bandage came away sooty and black.
Above his head, bare limbs formed a stark spider’s web against the blue sky.
Lucky he hadn’t lost the whole tree. The other half remained green. Thank God. He loved his land. Rem had an affinity with nature and this hurt. It really sucked.
The stag was gone. Maybe one of the firefighters had taken it home to butcher and freeze for the winter.
Out here in rural Montana, food didn’t go to waste.
Rem shook himself out of his pensive musings.
Given Sara’s reluctance to let him get to know his son, he had a lot to prove, a lot to do to persuade her that he was a responsible man.
Fired up, he drove to the house, ready to jump into final preparations for Ma’s homecoming tomorrow morning.
One way or another, he would find a way to be Finn’s dad, Sara be damned.
CHAPTER FOUR
SARA TOOK THE ELEVATOR down to the emergency waiting room. Finn waited for her there, listening to music in his headphones and sketching. Thank goodness he’d broken his left wrist instead of his right.
She should go home and make him lunch, but acid churned in her belly. How could she possibly eat after the bomb Rem had dropped?
Since his birth, she’d had Finn all to herself, had taken him to and from school with her, year after year until she finally became a nurse, her dream of medical school eliminated by her pregnancy. No regrets, though.
She’d kept him with her despite Mama’s and Timm’s arguments to leave him in Ordinary with them.
She made every decision about his life. If she could keep her son close enough to her, Sara could keep him safe. How could she possibly share him, especially with a man who had spent too many years wasting his life on the worst habits, and who’d made a mistake of the biggest proportions? He’d burned Timm and ruined her brother’s teenage years. He’d ruined Sara’s, too.
With her parents’ attention firmly on Timm’s operations and physiotherapy, and the illnesses brought on by a compromised immune system, Sara had faded into the background. Had disappeared. Had become another caregiver for her older brother.
But their care had never been enough. Timm had been sick too often. He’d been scarred. Sara had felt so helpless, so useless no matter how hard she’d worked. She’d been only ten years old when the accident changed the landscape of her family’s life. It had never been good again.
Then her oldest brother, Davey, had been killed by a bull, in the rodeo, and things had become even worse. Dad had turned more and more to the sedative of the bottle. He’d finally killed himself by driving into a tree on his way home from a bar in Monroe.
Sara had never been able to do enough to fix her brother or to save her family.
So…now she was a nurse. She’d learned how to take care of people and to help save them. Or was she just kidding herself? She hoped the work she did had value.
She stepped forward and called Finn’s name. Time to take care of her son. Rem was not going to ruin what was already working fine.
Finn closed his book, took the buds out of his ears and showed her his cast. “You know the guy who pulled that girl out of the car?”
“Rem? Yes.”
“Look what he put on my cast.”
He’d signed only his first name, a big flamboyant Rem, but he’d drawn a smiley face beside it—with a lopsided grin and devil’s horns. Sara couldn’t help laughing. She had never doubted his charm.
On the drive home to Ordinary, Finn didn’t put his earbuds back in, nor did he open his sketchbook. His MP3 player sat idle in his hand as he stared out the window.
Sara glanced at him, worried. He looked pensive, the way he’d been lately just before asking her questions she’d rather not answer.
“Mom,” he said, turning to her.
“Yes?”
“Father’s Day is coming up.”
“I know.” Nuts. Every year, Finn became more and more curious about his father, more troubled by his lack of one. The issue seemed to be pulling him further and further away from her. She felt that separation like a physical ache.
“On Father’s Day, all the kids are allowed to bring their dads to school. Everyone’s talking about it. There’s gonna be a big party in the gym. I’ll be the only one there without a father.”
“The only one for sure?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Everyone’s talking about their dads.”
“But I know there are single mothers living in town. How about Stacey Kim’s daughter, Joy?”
“She’s in high school.”
“Oh. I guess she is by now.” Sara came up with more names, but the kids were either too young for school or were in high school. Of all the rotten luck for Finn. A fluke of demographics left him isolated.
As the new kid in school, life was hard enough on Finn. He already stood out too much. Adding the weight of his being the only kid without a father at the party was so unfair; but he had no idea of the kind of damage Rem Caldwell had done to the Franck family. Sara had no idea what additional harm Rem could still do while trying to father Finn.
Her parents had spent her adolescence warning her away from Rem, from the boy who’d been her best friend before Timm’s birthday party. One small mistake. Such big consequences.
“Why don’t you have a photograph of my dad?” Finn’s question caught Sara by surprise.
Why hadn’t she prepared herself for this? But what preparation could there have been?
“I didn’t know him for that long.”
“How long did you know him?”
She swallowed around a lump that was the lie she’d told her family and the entire town—that she’d met a man at a party and they’d had unprotected sex. Finn was still so young for that explanation.
“Well?” Finn asked. “How long?”
He wasn’t going to let it go.
“One night,” she answered.
Finn’s chin dropped. “You had a one-night stand?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That’s so uncool, Mom. So uncool.”
He stared out the window silently for a moment and Sara hoped that was the end of it.
“So, why didn’t you find him and tell him about me?”
“The name he gave me was false.” Was she going to hell for telling her son so many lies? “I discovered that when I tried to track him down.”
“So, there’s some guy out there who doesn’t even know I’ve been born?” His voice had risen in anger. “That makes me feel really rotten, Mom.”
Sara brushed her hair back from her forehead, but her hand shook. This was so hard. How long could she continue to lie to her little boy?
“Finn, I’m sorry.”
He didn’t respond, so she continued, “I made a mistake one night, but it gave me you and I’m not sorry for that. Can you forgive me?”
Wasn’t that sweet freaking irony, such hypocrisy on her part to beg her son’s understanding when she hadn’t forgiven Rem a single one of his many transgressions?
“I’m not even supposed to be alive!” He turned to her with an accusation that cut through her defenses. “I’m a big mistake!” he yelled.
His anger fueled hers.
“Stop right there.” She didn’t shout but she wanted to. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Ever.”
Finn crossed his arms over his chest, but his fury seemed to seep out of him. His lower lip jutted forward, but rather than looking petulant, he just looked sad. “I’ll never have a father.”
She shook her head, unable to tell him “no” out loud. She’d come close with Peter Welsh in Bozeman, a sweet, smart, handsome doctor. But after that one night when she slept with Rem last summer, after he’d been stabbed, Sara hadn’t been able to sleep with Peter again. She’d broken off their relationship.
As much as she tried to forget Rem with other men, she couldn’t deny her feelings for him, even if she wouldn’t act on them.
It didn’t look like marriage was ever going to be in her future. So, yet again, she was on her own. Independence suited her just fine.
They turned down the road to the old Webber home. It had been vacant for more than a dozen years, had been for sale for ages.
This past spring, Sara had bought it.
She and Finn could live here, just the two of them, and not worry about having to depend on anyone else. Not emotionally, and certainly not financially. This little house was hers and only hers. She’d earned it and deserved it.
The property abutted Still Creek, and the spot where she and Rem had created Finn on a blanket under the stars.
Refusing to consider why it had been so important to her to buy this property, she turned and studied the house. A smallish bungalow, it would be more than enough for the two of them.
The siding was dirty, the wraparound veranda needed a coat or two of paint, the eaves troughs needed cleaning and the gingerbread appointments had fallen apart. But the bones were good. Just right.
She and her son had lived in tiny cheap apartments, some dingy, most crowded, none in the best parts of town. On the rare occasions that she dated and developed a relationship with a man, she never brought him home. Not to those places in which she felt no pride.
Now they had a house where she could give her son safety and a permanent roof over his head. It didn’t look like much but it was all hers. Amazing how proud that made her feel.
She pulled the key out of her purse.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
She pulled the cleaning supplies she’d picked up yesterday from the trunk. Because of his broken wrist, Finn could carry only one pail filled with bottled cleaners.
She opened the door of her house and stepped in.
The rooms smelled stale. She could fix that. She could fix anything here.
As she walked through the hushed rooms and opened windows, the house breathed in fresh air and seemed to come to life. She could bring a spark to this place.
She handed Finn a broom. “Sweep up. I’ll wash the kitchen and the bathroom. Unless you’d rather scrub the toilet and I’ll sweep.”
“I’ll sweep,” he mumbled without cracking a smile.
The ancient bathroom fixtures still worked. One of the Webbers had fitted the old claw-foot tub with a showerhead and a track on the ceiling from which to hang a shower curtain. She hung the new yellow-and-mauve-striped curtain that she’d picked up in Bozeman before the move.
This house was hers. All hers. She hadn’t told anyone about it yet, not even Mama. This was her own private secret. In time, she would tell everyone, but not until she fixed it up the way she wanted to. Then she would throw a big party and be proud to have her family here.
She heard a sound in the doorway and looked up. Finn stood there with a scowl on his face.
“Mom, when are we going to move here from Oma’s house?”
“Soon. When I’m off work, I’ll gradually move over some of the boxes from Oma’s and then have our furniture shipped from Bozeman.”
“So, like, only you and me will live here? Right?”
Sara looked around. A fresh coat of paint on the walls would brighten the space beautifully.
“Mom, right? Only you and me?”
“Hmm? Sorry! Yes, only us.”
Finn stared out the window above the sink. “What is there to do out here?”
He’d stumped her. “We’ll come up with stuff. Anything you do at Oma’s can be done here.”
She was worried, though. With her working two jobs and Finn being supervised by only Mama, would he get into trouble, as he’d started to in Bozeman? He had no friends here. Who was going to fill that void when he finally did make friends? Good kids?
Or would he follow in his father’s footsteps? She refused to allow it.
“How am I supposed to become friends with kids in Ordinary when I live way out here?”
If she had to drive him everywhere, then she could control who his friends would be.
She packed the supplies into a hall closet. Finn followed her down the hallway like a lost puppy.
“Mom, are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t hide her frustration. “Don’t be so negative about this, Finn. Give the place a chance.”
Finn stomped out of the house and to the car. Sara locked up and followed him. Why did he have to question everything she did these days? Was this a lead-up to adolescence? If so, she was going to go nuts before it was over. Seriously. Stark raving mad.
On the trip into Ordinary to the Franck house where they currently lived, Finn fell asleep. Taking advantage, she touched his nape.
Such a beautiful boy.
It was her job to protect him and she took that seriously. When they got home to Mama’s, Sara spent the afternoon checking out every class, course and organized sporting activity around Ordinary and Haven, to replace that swimming course Finn should have been in three afternoons a week. She glanced at the calendar. She’d have to cancel the basketball league she’d signed him up for, as well. That left too many days empty—too many days he could fill with mischief—and there was nothing left to register him for.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK THE following morning, an unforgiving sun followed Rem out of the house and to the corral where his horse Rusty ambled lazily, kicking up puffs of dust with his hooves.
What was taking Ma so long to get here? He’d expected her half an hour ago.
He’d already been out to the hospital this morning with a bag of nice clothes for her to wear home. He’d signed all the necessary papers, had packed up all of the cards the townspeople had given her. He’d found an elderly woman in another room who had no family and had given her Ma’s flowers. Then he’d driven out ahead of Ma’s ambulance. He’d expected them to be only a few minutes behind him.
He’d already had time to put the cards around her room, to give her something to look at all day.
He glanced around the yard. It looked good. Clean.
He’d taken Ma’s pretty flowered cushions out of plastic in the storage shed and had spruced up her blue wicker chairs on the veranda. Rem’s ancestors had built this two-story home more than a century ago, had built it with brick to last and with gingerbread trim that Rem had repainted white in May.
He’d put a fresh coat of blue paint on the veranda floor and stairs, too.
He’d started on the stable with more white paint, but had only finished the front and the corral side, both of which could be seen from the dining room windows. He still had to paint the far side and the back, but that would come in time.
Gracie lay on the steps like the grand old dame she was, a border collie with too much gray fur among the white and black. She spent a lot of her days sleeping, sometimes in the house, sometimes in the stable.
Two days ago, Rem had planted pansies across the front of the house, in yellow, purple and mauve. What did he know about flowers? If they lasted through the summer, he’d be surprised. They brightened the place, though.
At the rumble of an engine in the driveway, he turned.
The ambulance rode up the long lane, with neither siren nor flashing lights.
Ma. Home at last. Feeling like a kid getting a present, he ran to the steps at the front of the house. He’d missed having her here.
The ambulance swung around in the yard, backed up toward the house and stopped a couple of yards away from him.
The driver jumped out of the vehicle and came around the rear, nodding at Rem, his pressed white shirt almost blue in the sun.
“How is she?” Rem asked.
“Comfortable,” the attendant replied while he opened the door.
“What took so long?”
“Half the staff came out to say goodbye.”
Rem thanked his lucky stars that he lived in a close-knit community. Ma would have loved the attention.
Another attendant jumped down from the patient area and Rem caught his first glimpse of Ma, half sitting in the dark interior. She looked pale, her face immobile, her eyes a little scared.
His chest tightened. Ma, I’ll take care of you. You’ll never go to a home to be taken care of by strangers. I promise.
The attendants lifted the stretcher out of the ambulance and released the legs. Rem stepped close. He took Ma’s hand in his, but it was the paralyzed one, so she might not have felt his touch.
Her eyes flickered to the pansies raising their colorful faces toward the sun and a weak smile cast the ghost of movement across her face then disappeared. She blinked.
On the veranda, she dropped her good arm over the side of the gurney and Gracie stood and licked her fingers. Her glance at the cushions on the chairs brought forth another smile. Rem was glad he’d worked so hard.
After the attendants wheeled her through the front door, Rem ran ahead to open the dining room doors. “In here.”
He’d rented a comfortable hospital bed and had crowded Ma’s treasured dining room set into the closed-in porch at the back of the house. For the past two nights, he’d worked until three in the morning to make Ma a comfortable new bedroom.
After they transferred her from the stretcher to the bed, Rem walked the paramedics out and shook their hands.
“Thanks, guys. I appreciate you taking care of her.”
Any minute now, one of the caregivers should be showing up.
Sure enough, a small blue sedan rode up the lane just moments after the ambulance drove off. Ah, here she was, the first nurse.
Sara stepped out of the car, spit polished and as crisp as a new dollar bill in a white shirt and navy skirt. She pulled a bag out of the backseat and turned toward the house.
Sara? What was she doing here?
She approached the steps then stopped before climbing them.
“Hello, Rem,” she said, her voice as cool as her gray eyes.
His expression flattened. “What are you doing here?” Even to his own ears, he sounded unhappy. “Checking up on me?”
“I’m here to work with Nell. I’m with TLC Outreach.”
“No way. You’re a nurse at the hospital.”
“I have two jobs.”
“What do you need two jobs for?”
“I have student debts to pay down.”
Rem knew Sara well. Again, as with her reasons for returning to Ordinary to live, he got the feeling he wasn’t getting the whole story.
“Why didn’t they send someone else?”
“I volunteered.”
“Why?”
“Rem. It’s Nell. How could I not want to help her?”
Yeah, that part made sense, but, honest to God, this complicated things.
“There will be two of us caring for Nell,” Sara explained. “You’ll have one full-time nurse, and I’ll be working part-time.”
“We’ll see.”
Free of yesterday’s emotional overload, Rem got his first good look at Sara.
She never changed. The conservative clothing did nothing to brighten a dull landscape. With her brown hair pulled back hard enough to draw tears, she looked all business. Would a little lipstick hurt?
Her legs, though… Her legs were her best feature, not long, but damned perfect. Her slightly pigeon-toed walk, that minor vulnerability in a capable woman, had always charmed him, as had her hint of an overbite.
She watched him with a solemn gaze in that unremarkable face. “I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
She climbed the steps to the veranda and gestured with her head toward the hallway. “May I see her?”
Rem stepped aside and she brushed past him.
“Ma’s in the dining room,” Rem said. “You remember where it is?”
She nodded. Of course she would. She’d been here last summer to nurse him after the stabbing at Chester’s. That had been a rough time. He hadn’t forgotten a thing that had happened between them in those days while he recovered.
On the day that Timm had driven him home from the hospital, Sara had arrived to take care of him. After Timm had left, Sara had crawled into bed beside Rem and had held him while he’d slept.
In those days that Sara had nursed him, Finn had stayed with her mom. Rem’s own mother hadn’t said a word about Sara being on the Caldwell ranch and spending so much time in Rem’s room. He suspected that Nell would have loved for them to have married. Maybe last summer she’d hoped it was finally going to happen.
Anyway, Rem had needed a caregiver. Ma had already had a stroke and couldn’t have nursed him back to health.
Then there’d been that night a week or so after the stabbing when they’d made love, carefully so he wouldn’t hurt his healing wound. And tenderly, because they’d both known how easily that biker’s knife could have killed him.
Getting close to him had scared her, though, and she’d packed up, had taken Finn and had run away to Bozeman. The woman was a coward.
When Sara passed him to walk into the house, something scented with lily of the valley swirled around her.
She used to smell like sunshine, fresh air and kid sweat. Now she simply smelled feminine.
Just inside the dining room door, he pulled up short, Ma’s new appearance catching him off guard again. He kept expecting to see her old self, but she looked like she didn’t weigh much more than a handful of green beans.
He felt his eyes water and blinked hard. Shoot.
When Sara saw his mother, her face lit up and she looked younger.
Sara bent forward and wrapped Ma in a hug. “I’m going to be one of your caregivers.”
When she pulled away, Ma’s pleasure in seeing her was obvious. She loved Sara, and wasn’t that a kicker because it meant there was no way Rem was going to boot Sara out as one of Ma’s nurses. Ma’s joy would make having to put up with Sara worthwhile.
It also made him sad, made him rue that horrible day when Timm had been burned. If that accident hadn’t happened, would Sara be living here now as his wife? Would he have been a father to his son all along?
What-ifs weren’t worth a hell of a lot, though, were they? They just left a person regretful.
“I’m going to make you better,” Sara said, smiling and rubbing Ma’s hands.
Really, Sara? You do that and I’ll kiss your feet.
When Sara pulled a nightgown from a stack of clean laundry Rem had put in the room last night and then started to remove Ma’s clothes, he rushed outside.
The nitty-gritty of having Ma home overwhelmed him. He didn’t have a clue how to take care of a sick woman.
His cell phone rang.
“Rem, it’s Max Golden. Got a problem with a horse. Can you take a look at her today?”
“I can come now.”
Rem ended the call and went to the kitchen to rummage in the fridge for a carrot or two.
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Mary Sullivan
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Rem Caldwell has made mistakes–there′s no denying that. But he knows he can be the father his son deserves. If only Sara Franck would agree. She keeps bringing up their shared past, no matter how many times Rem tells her he′s changed.Telling her isn′t enough. Rem has to show Sara that he′s a different man. And he has to do it soon–he needs his mother to know her grandson before it′s too late. Because the one thing Rem wants more than anything is a permanent family reunion with Sara, the woman he adores.