Currant Creek Valley

chapter THIRTEEN



BRAZEN WAS A HUGE HIT.

He had always figured as long as a meal was filling and tasty, he didn’t need to quibble about spices or cooking methods or whether the flavors melded together in just the right proportions.

He freely admitted his ignorance on culinary matters but even he could tell Alexandra’s restaurant was destined to be a smashing success, just as he had predicted.

For one thing, the place was packed to the gills on opening night, with a waiting list that spilled out the door.

She had enough friends and family around that he imagined a huge first-night crowd wasn’t necessarily enough to guarantee success. The appreciative murmurs and exclamation of delight he heard all around him, on the other hand, were much better indicators.

He sensed a buzz of excitement about the place as palpable as that pleasant evening breeze rippling the trees around their large table on the outdoor patio.

He sat beside Katherine Thorne, adjacent to Brodie and his beautiful wife, Evie, and listened to the conversation flow around him like water around his waders in the middle of a fly-fishing stream the few times he’d gone.

“You’re getting married at Harry’s house, aren’t you?” Katherine was asking Mary Ella, who sat across from her, beside Harry Lange.

“We haven’t made any final decision yet,” Alexandra’s mother said as she took a bite of her entrée, a delicious-looking plate of salmon with some kind of fruity salsa on the top.

“What about a date?” Claire asked.

“We thought Christmastime, but we haven’t made a final decision about that, either. We need to time it right so we don’t interfere with all of you children getting married and having babies.”

“I think you’re safe for a while,” Maura put in. “Alex and Lila are the only unattached McKnights left and they’re both committed to the fancy-free single life.”

“For now,” Mary Ella answered.

He shouldn’t be so shamelessly eavesdropping upon a conversation that didn’t concern him but he was fascinated by everything about Alexandra.

Pretty pathetic, actually, how he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

He wondered how she was holding up. He couldn’t imagine a restaurant opening was all that pleasant for the chef, despite his advice to her the night before to relax and take joy in what she had accomplished.

She was probably too busy chopping and stirring and whatever else she did to truly savor what she had accomplished here, knowing she had given all these people a truly memorable meal.

He hoped he had the chance to tell her but so far she hadn’t appeared in the dining room.

A few moments later, when their server appeared to check on their table, she discreetly pulled a note out of the pocket of her short black apron and set it beside his plate.

It had his name written on it in the big, bold hand he recognized as Alexandra’s. My kitchen is perfect, it read. It’s better than I could have dreamed. Thank you.

He laughed softly but beneath his amusement simmered something else, something warm and tender. In the middle of what she herself had called the most important night of her life, she had taken the time to think about him.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that.

He grabbed a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and scribbled back, Just breathe. You’re rocking the house.

He folded it and wrote To the Chef on the outside and handed it back to the server when she returned to take their dessert orders.

He didn’t think anybody noticed the little interaction but after the server left, Claire McKnight leaned over and spoke to him in a low, amused voice. “Why am I suddenly reminded of our eighth-grade social studies class?”

He smiled. “You tell me.”

Despite what he had said the other night in the heat of the moment about finding Claire boring, he actually really liked the other woman. She struck him as a very kind and giving person.

“You have to remember, we didn’t have cell phones in those days,” she said now. “None of this texting business that takes all the fun out of things. Alex and I had to pass our notes to each other the old-fashioned ways.”

“Poor things.”

“I know. Primitive, right?” She smiled. “You’ll have to ask her about the most embarrassing moment of her junior high school life, when I accidentally dropped the note she had just written me about the boy she had a crush on, Tony Coletti, and it was picked up by our social studies teacher, Mr. Kaiser, who then proceeded to find it highly entertaining to read it aloud to the whole class.”

He tried to picture both of them as girls. It took a little more imagination than he could come up with, especially after such a delicious meal. “You’ve been friends with her for a long time.”

“You could say that. The first day of first grade, Corey Johnson stole my brand-new Barbie lunch box before school and put it way on the top of the big jungle gym that only the older kids played on. I was afraid of heights at the time, too chicken to go after it. Guess who came to my rescue?”

“Um, Wonder Woman.”

“In the form of Alexandra McKnight. Alex climbed right up there without fear, grabbed my lunch box and then jumped all the way down and started hitting Corey with it for being so mean. One of the teachers had to step in to stop her. She and I have been best friends ever since. Oh, and she ended up going to the junior prom with him. He’s a mean drunk now, something we should have guessed by the way he liked to torment little girls.”

He smiled at the story, entranced at these little glimpses into Alexandra’s past. “This is a huge day for her.”

“She’s worked amazingly hard to get here. I hope...”

Her voice trailed off, a worried light in her eyes.

“You hope?” he prompted.

“I hope Brazen is everything she dreams it can be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just...have you ever wanted something with all your heart, worked for it, sweated for it, even sacrificed other important things along the way in pursuit of it...only to discover your dream wasn’t exactly how you pictured it?”

He thought about how much he wanted to create a home here for Ethan. So far it was turning out to be everything he wanted and more.

“Not really,” he said honestly. “What about you?”

She glanced at a couple sitting at a nearby table, then turned back with a smile.

“Funny you should ask. Yes, actually. While Alex was mooning over Tony Coletti, all I could ever see was that particular man sitting over there. My ex-husband.”

Startled, he looked closer at the couple. The man was well dressed, if a little too trendy for Sam’s basic-guy tastes, and had artificially streaked blond hair. He sat holding hands with a very pretty brunette who looked to be about fifteen years younger.

He never would have pictured Claire McKnight as being divorced—but then, he remembered Alexandra telling him she had only recently married Alexandra’s brother. That explained how she had older kids then.

“I thought if I only married Jeff Bradford, my life would be perfect. For several years of our married life, I thought it was all I could ever want. One boy, one girl, a husband who was a doctor, a lovely home.”

“I’m guessing by virtue of the fact that he’s your ex-husband, you discovered otherwise,” he said.

She glanced at the man beside her, who was engaged in animated conversation with Jackson Lange, and her eyes were soft with emotions that made a weird lump rise in his throat. “Dreams change. Lives change. We have to do our best to adapt. What we think we want or need isn’t always the best thing for us.”

“Are you saying you don’t think Alexandra should have opened the restaurant?”

“Oh, no. Not at all! She has been working for this since she came back from culinary training in Europe more than a decade ago. She had many chances to have her own restaurant but none of them seemed right for her until now. I just hope...” Her voice trailed off. “I hope it makes her happy.”

He had to wonder if others could see the loneliness that seemed to twine around her like an ugly scarf she couldn’t untie.

“I get the feeling Alex thinks the name of the restaurant is particularly self-descriptive,” Claire said after a moment. “Brazen. She likes to think she’s tough, bold.”

“You think otherwise.”

Claire was quiet for a moment while silverware and glasses clinked and the conversation murmured around them. “She just might be the most vulnerable person I know, with the biggest heart. Even that bold, brave girl in first grade had a soft spot for someone she perceived as weaker than she was.”

If he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up falling very, very hard for that particular bold, brave girl. The same girl who couldn’t seem to go five minutes without telling him all the reasons they couldn’t be together.

To avoid spending too much time thinking about that depressing reality, he said, “I understand you’re the person I need to talk to about volunteering to help out with the Giving Hope Day in a few weeks.”

The change of subject worked just as he hoped. Claire’s soft, pretty features lit up. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Oh, can I put a man with your skills to work!”

She launched into an explanation of some of the projects on tap that year while the efficient servers cleared away dessert. He listened to her with half an ear while he tried to puzzle out the mystery of Alexandra and his growing feelings for her.

She was the only woman who had evoked even a glimmer of interest in him since Kelli died. If his interest were only a glimmer, he could deal, but this was becoming a tidal wave of hunger and, yes, tenderness.

He was beginning to care deeply for her. Meanwhile, she sent him sweet little notes to make him smile and she kissed him with her whole heart, all while insisting they couldn’t have a relationship.

What was a guy supposed to do with that?

He had a few ideas—and a few plans—but he was very much afraid he was spinning his wheels. Stubbornness was another of her traits.

He sipped at his wine, wondering why it suddenly had an edge of bitterness to it.

* * *

THE DIGITAL READOUT on her dashboard clock read one-fifteen when she finally drove down Currant Creek Valley Road toward home.

Her neighbors slept, their lights out and their window shades closed against the beauty of the May night. They were missing this perfect night, she thought.

How long had she been a night owl? Forever, maybe. Even when she was a kid, she remembered waking up in the room she shared with Maura and sneaking downstairs to watch a scary movie on TV at a rare time when she didn’t have to share the remote and the viewing choices with five siblings.

Her mom used to say she couldn’t sleep because she was too afraid she was going to miss something.

That had been another thing she had shared with her father. No matter how low she turned the television set, even when she was sitting right in front of it with the sound almost off, he would still sometimes hear and come downstairs in his plaid pajamas.

He never yelled at her to go to bed, even on school nights. Sometimes he would pop a batch of popcorn or she would come up with some kind of elaborate snack and they would nosh while they watched the end.

Riley or Maura would sometimes join them but Maura always preferred having a book in her hand to watching television and Ri often fell asleep midmovie, something he still tended to do.

Maybe that’s why she loved this quiet time, when most of the world slept. It reminded her of a happy period in her childhood when she felt important and cherished and safe.

She pulled up in front of her house and sat for a moment with the windows still rolled down and the engine off. A genuine night owl hooted as she climbed out of her car. The sound slid around and through her, leaving her strangely restless.

This was supposed to be the most triumphant moment of her life. Opening night of her own restaurant, after all these years, an evening she had shared with nearly all of those she loved most in the world, all but the twins, Lila and Rose.

Opening night had gone better than she could have dreamed, even with the inevitable kitchen dramas. For starters, she had ordered too few napkins from the linen service. They had ended up—horrors!—having to use paper for the last four tabletops.

And then her two sous-chefs had almost come to blows over a mushroom soup that had charred on the bottom.

To top it all off, one of the servers had chosen that very afternoon, of all possible days, to break up with a troublesome boyfriend and had consequently spent the evening alternating between tears and a giddy relief.

Despite everything, she knew the evening had gone well. The rave reviews alone weren’t enough to convince her. Her family and friends loved her and probably would have raved if she had served them up mac and cheese from a box.

But she had worked in enough fine restaurants to pick up the vibe when diners were very happy with what they were eating.

Judging by the reaction, she sensed Brazen was on its way.

Where was the huge burst of joy she had expected? Expected and earned, damn it. She had just conquered a summit she had been struggling toward for most of her adult life. She should be euphoric, effervescent. Instead, she felt...oddly deflated.

She let herself into the house, expecting for an instant to be greeted by a slavering, enthusiastic dog, until she remembered she had dropped Leo off to stay with Claire and Riley for the weekend because of her hectic schedule.

Her house seemed to echo with a vast emptiness. She told herself that was the reason she felt so unsettled. She had become used to the dog these past few weeks and didn’t quite know now what to do without him.

She had worked hard for the restaurant, just as she had worked hard to make this place her home.

She was happy and content—though she had a feeling people who were truly happy and content didn’t have to try so hard to convince themselves of it.

Though she hadn’t had time for dinner, she couldn’t bear the thought of food right now. A glass of wine, maybe, to celebrate. She found a bottle in the back of the refrigerator and pulled out a wineglass from the cabinet.

She poured a small amount and then on impulse headed for the door leading to her small backyard and patio. She could sit on the back step in the moonlight and listen to the rippling water of Currant Creek and toast herself for a job well done.

She decided the moon offered enough illumination so she opened the door without turning on the outside lights.

Her mind on the long day at the restaurant and all the preparation she needed to do for the dinner crowd tomorrow—tonight, now—she made it down three steps before she suddenly realized something was very different from the way she had left things.

The wineglass almost slipped from her finger but she managed to hang on to it.

What in the world?

In the moonlight, a dark low-slung shape took pride of place, angled toward the creek. A chair, wrapped in a bow.

For just an instant, she thought this might be a gift from her very own Angel of Hope but then reality intruded. The Angel visited the wounded, the downtrodden, those who were struggling with pain and loss.

Everything in her life was going exactly the way she wanted. Why on earth would the Angel waste time on her?

Not the Angel. Sam.

What you need is a big comfortable chair right there on the back patio so you can unwind out here with the sound of the water. While your dog plays in the grass, of course.

Those had been his words, the day he and Ethan had first come to her house. She remembered them as clearly as if he were standing here now.

Sam had done this. She was suddenly sure of it. She rushed back up the steps and flipped on the porch lights so she could see better.

It was stunning. Built in the Adirondack style, of red cedar stained to show the wood grain, the chair had wide armrests and a curving back. A matching leg rest angled down and looked just the thing for relaxing on a summer afternoon.

Beside it was a small round table of the same cedar, the perfect size for holding a pitcher of lemonade and a paperback novel.

She traced a hand over the wood, smooth as chocolate ganache. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

He had made this. She knew it. Warmth burst through her like fireworks over Hope’s Crossing in July and she quickly peeled away the ribbon in the half light of the moon.

That owl—probably the same one who had been keeping her company on her late-night walks—hooted from the treetops of the cottonwoods along the creek. For once, the sound didn’t leave her melancholy. She was too busy being delighted at the gift.

He’d left a note, she saw, taped to the back of the chair. It was too dark to make out the words, even with plenty of moonlight, so she held it up to the glow from the light fixture beside the back door.

With all your hard work today, I figured your bones would probably need a place to rest. Now, this is a sanctuary.

She clutched the note to her chest. Oh, she was in trouble. Sam Delgado was becoming very good at sneaking his way under all her defenses. She was beginning to forget all the reasons she needed to keep trying.

All evening, she hadn’t been able to resist peeking through the kitchen doors every once in a while and somehow her gaze had always seemed to fall on Sam. The only thought that had played through her mind whenever she had seen him was how right he looked, laughing and joking with her family and friends, just as if he had been part of the group forever.

She eased into the chair cushion he had thoughtfully provided. The chair was ergonomically perfect, providing exactly the right support. Her weary bones definitely needed this.

She smiled and then laughed out loud as she sat on her back patio while the creek rippled over rocks, its song an endless comfort.

Yes. Finally, here on her back patio, came the joy and happiness that had been missing all evening. How had Sam instinctively guessed what would make the night perfect?

And how on earth was she supposed to be able to resist a man who was capable of such sweet thoughtfulness?