Currant Creek Valley

chapter SIXTEEN



CLAIRE WAS GOING TO PAY, and pay hard.

From her vantage point kneeling in the dirt around Caroline’s south garden, where she had been hard at work yanking out annoying elm seedlings that had blown from the surrounding trees and rooted, Alex glowered at the pickup truck that had just pulled up behind her own SUV.

She knew that truck.

When a big, muscled figure climbed out, followed closely by a very adorable dark-haired boy, she wanted to cry. Or throw something, she wasn’t sure which.

Of all the work projects going on all over town, why would Claire feel compelled to assign Sam here, where she knew full well Alex would be working all morning on the cleanup of Caroline’s overgrown garden?

She didn’t have to guess. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Claire suspected she had feelings for Sam. Despite all her efforts the other day to avoid talking about him—or maybe because of them—Claire must have guessed her feelings for him ran deeper than she would admit.

For all she knew, her mother and sisters likely connived with Claire to force her together with Sam today. Matchmaking busybodies, the lot of them.

She sat back on her heels and watched him and Ethan grab matching tool belts out of the bed of the pickup. Sam fastened his low on his hips but Ethan seemed to struggle with his. The boy’s father reached down and pulled the ends around with care then guided the end through the loop.

Watching a big, tough ex-soldier help his son just about turned her heart and her brain to mush.

Claire was definitely going to suffer for this, even if it was a little tough to come up with creative ways to wreak vengeance against a pregnant woman.

She couldn’t totally blame her, she supposed. Hope’s Crossing was a small town. She couldn’t avoid him indefinitely. If she couldn’t figure out a way to deal with seeing him on a regular basis, she would quickly find herself miserable.

With that in mind, she decided to try the casual, friendly approach one more time, pretending everything between them didn’t exist. She shoved her garden gloves into her pocket and headed over to the two of them.

He wasn’t surprised to see her, she saw as she approached. Had Claire warned him or had he simply recognized her vehicle when he drove up?

He straightened up from helping Ethan and watched her walk toward them, heat smoldering in his brown eyes for just a moment before he quickly banked it.

To give her heart time to settle down, she chose to ignore him and turned instead to Ethan. “Hey, there. You’re coming to work, I hope.”

“Yes. I have my very own hammer. My dad gave it to me this morning. And I got two screwdrivers, a flathead and a Phillips-head.”

The tools gleamed on his belt, obviously new, and her heart squeezed at the thought of Sam picking them out for his son.

“Those are some impressive tools.”

“I’ve been borrowing some from my dad but these are for my very own use. I don’t have to give them back. We’re going to build a tree house this summer. It’s going to be the very best tree house in town, with four walls and a roof and windows that close and everything.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“You can come see it,” he suggested. “Maybe you could bring Leo. And brownies, if you want to.”

She smiled. How could she help it when this boy was so very open with his heart? “I just might want to do that. Thank you for the invitation. You give me the word when you’re finished and I’ll bring over the brownies.”

Eventually she was going to have to meet Sam’s gaze, she supposed. She couldn’t avoid him forever. She gave a little sigh and straightened up.

The memory of that last, emotional kiss seemed to hover between them, fierce and intense, and she was amazed they didn’t catch all the overgrown weeds on fire.

“My orders are to fix some porch steps and a railing. I think Claire also said something about an arbor that needed some work.”

Those things did need attention but none was urgent. Even if they were, why did they have to be fixed by him? she wanted to whine.

“There’s plenty of work to be done,” she said instead. “Caroline hasn’t been feeling well the last few years. But she’s getting better now.”

She waved at her friend, who sat on her porch wrapped in a blanket watching her work and offering the occasional helpful comment.

Caroline lifted her hand to wave back but didn’t seem to have the energy to raise it more than a few inches. She looked more pale out here in the June sunshine.

“I guess we should get started, right, Ethan?”

His son nodded, though he continued smiling up at Alex. “Guess what? I finished the first grade yesterday.”

“Congratulations!”

“School is out for the summer and now I get to live with my dad here all the time. I don’t even have to go back. I can’t go back anyway because my uncle and aunt are in an entirely different country. We might go visit them sometime. Not soon, but sometime. It’s in Europe.”

“That’s terrific!”

“And guess what else? My bedroom is all finished. We finished painting it last night. One whole wall is a chalkboard. My dad used a special kind of paint. I have colored chalk to write on it and a big eraser. I can draw artwork or do math or whatever I want.”

“Awesome!” And the perfect touch for a boy who was scary-smart. Nice work, Sam, she wanted to say.

“Why don’t you come see it? You wouldn’t even have to bring brownies, really, if you didn’t want to.”

She glanced at Sam. Though she couldn’t read anything in his expression, she could almost feel the tension and yearning radiating off him like heat waves.

I care about you, Alexandra. I think I could fall for you very easily, with a little encouragement....

“I’d like that sometime.”

“How about tonight?”

She managed a smile, even as she was aware of Sam opening his mouth to say something. “I don’t think I can tonight. I’m supposed to go to the big benefit gala and auction at the ski resort.”

“What’s a gala?”

“It’s a big party where people dress up in fancy clothes and dance and sometimes have fancy food.”

“That sounds boring to me.”

She laughed. “You won’t get an argument out of me, kiddo. But when you’re a grown-up, you have to do boring stuff once in a while.”

“My dad’s going, too. He has a date. I have to have a babysitter. I think I’m too old for a babysitter, don’t you?”

She had a sudden image of Sam with another woman, laughing with her, sharing those delicious kisses and his wry sense of humor. Pain clutched her gut, so raw it made her eyes water.

Through the shock slicing through her, she shifted her gaze to Sam. He gave her a cool look in response but she couldn’t read his expression.

What else did she expect? She had shut him down in every conceivable way. She couldn’t expect him to just sit around waiting for something they both knew wasn’t going to happen.

She forced herself to smile, ignoring the pain that seemed like a living, breathing thing prowling through her. “Babysitters are a pain, yeah, but I’m afraid you’ve still probably got a few more years for them.”

“I guess. I’m very responsible for my age, though. I think that should be taken into consideration.”

Sam interjected before she could come up with a reply. “Come on, kid. We’d better get to work before Mrs. McKnight comes out here and cracks the whip.”

It took her a minute to realize he meant Claire, not her mother.

“Right. You don’t want to get on her bad side.”

Or she might decide to send over the one person in town you wanted to avoid to spend the entire day with you.

Sam reached into the back of his pickup and handed Ethan some long boards to carry up to the house, and Alex turned back to the garden, grateful she had some convenient noxious weeds to vent her tangled emotions against.

It was hard, sweaty, backbreaking work but she found an undeniable satisfaction in cleaning up the mess so the bright, cheery perennials could thrive.

While she weeded and thinned and cleared out old growth, she did her very best to ignore both Delgado males.

It wasn’t easy.

Every once in a while she would catch glimpses of Sam walking back out to his truck for something or measuring and cutting a board on the sawhorses he set up. Ethan’s cheerful chatter rang out in the morning air and now and then he would yell out at her to admire a board he had just nailed or a cut he had made.

As the sun hit its apex after noon and began its slide toward the mountains, the morning clear skies gave way to a few gray-edged clouds. The more she cleared away the mess and brought order to Caroline’s garden, the more tangled her own thoughts seemed to become.

How could she do this? How could she continue to live in Hope’s Crossing, just down the street from Sam and Ethan, while Sam moved on with his life, dating, possibly marrying again at some point?

Just thinking about it left her feeling queasy, though she tried to tell herself it was the sunshine and the fact that she’d only had a banana to eat that day.

The alarm beeped on her phone about an hour after Sam and his son arrived, reminding her Caroline had been outside for quite some time and probably needed a change in position, if nothing else.

She walked up onto the porch. “Ready for a rest?” she asked.

“I’m doing fine,” the other woman assured her with a smile that looked as if it took a great deal of energy. “But you could probably...use a break.”

She could have put in a few more hours before stopping but she didn’t want Caroline to push herself too hard.

“I had Helen make up some...lemonade when she was here yesterday. Maybe you could take some out to the nice man and his...little boy.”

Call her cynical but she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Caroline was in on the matchmaking efforts. But maybe she was only being hypersensitive.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Good idea. Why don’t you come inside where it’s cooler while I pour some.”

“I’m...all right out here. It’s the next thing to being in the garden myself. The sun feels good.”

How many afternoons of June sunshine did Caroline have left? Alex’s heart broke all over again.

“The sunshine feels nice after a long winter, doesn’t it? I’ll fix you a snack then, and bring you some lemonade.”

“I hope there’s enough. Helen can...make more. She was coming back today. Or was it...tomorrow? I can’t remember.”

Caroline’s brow furrowed and she looked out at the garden as if she could find the answer there. Alex squeezed the fingers that rested on the curved rocking-chair arm. “I don’t know how you keep everything straight, between all your appointments and your medications and the hot guys you have coming over all the time. We can find out easily enough. I can simply look at the hospice schedule on the refrigerator, my dear.”

The woman’s tension relaxed and she seemed to sink back into her chair. “Would you? Thank you.”

She saw that Helen was indeed coming that day, and the next. In fact, the hospice had scheduled someone to come every day, indefinitely, which meant they knew Caroline was failing, too.

Fighting back the burn of tears, she busied herself with pouring several glasses of lemonade on the same tray she had served Caro’s soup the other day. She found some of the cookies she had brought over as well and arranged them prettily on a plate.

When she carried the tray back out to the porch, she found Sam sitting in the rocking chair beside Caroline. Ethan was sprawled on his stomach on the sidewalk, watching something on the concrete with a peculiar intensity.

It seemed strange to have them here, in this place, with her friend.

“What have you found?” she asked Ethan as she set the tray on the small table at Caroline’s elbow.

“A snail. He’s all slimy. I read in a book that snails produce mucus to reduce friction so they can move better. Don’t you think that’s cool?”

Yeah, not really. The only thing she considered cool about snails was how very delicious the right kind could be cooked in butter and a good wine sauce.

“Sure,” she answered anyway.

He smiled up at her just as the sun passed between a couple of the clouds and a sunbeam landed directly on his head, bathing him in golden light.

Out of nowhere, she was suddenly overwhelmed with love for this boy who had suffered great loss but could still find joy in little things like a snail streaking slime across a sun-warmed sidewalk.

She wanted to sweep him into her arms and hold him close.

She couldn’t. It wasn’t her place. Someday Sam would probably marry again and that woman would have the right to smooch Ethan’s cheek and straighten his collar and tuck him in at night.

She cleared her throat. “I brought you and your dad some lemonade. Do you want some?”

“In a minute,” Ethan said absently, and she was forced to turn back to Sam.

He took a glass from the tray and sipped it and she found herself ridiculously fascinated by the slide of his throat up and down as he swallowed.

“I...appreciate you helping me out today,” Caroline said in her garbled, thready voice. She was used to having to strain in order to understand. Sometimes people who didn’t know Caro well grew frustrated with it but Sam only smiled with patience.

“You’re welcome,” he answered.

“Used to be, I could...take care of this place on my own. It’s hard to watch...others handle what I...should be doing.”

“We’re happy to help, ma’am. You’ve got a beautiful place here. What a view! Have you lived here long?”

She wondered if Sam was purposely trying to distract Caroline from the reality of all she could no longer do. Yes. Of course he was. She had no doubt. Beneath that tough, masculine exterior, he was just that kind of man.

Wonderful.

“You could...say that,” Caroline said. “Eighty-five years now. I...was born in this house and moved here as a...young bride, after my parents died.”

For the few short months of her marriage, before her husband was killed, she must have been so happy here.

“I want to...die in this house.”

“Not for a long time,” Alex answered promptly.

“Humph” was Caroline’s answer.

She asked Sam where he was living and the two of them engaged in a conversation about his house and the previous owners, all of whom Caroline had known from the time the house had been built when she was a girl.

Alex was tempted to go back out to the garden but she made herself stay. This was a test, of sorts. If she couldn’t endure a few minutes of conversation with the man, how did she expect to spend the next several decades in the same town?

“You’re going...to the gala tonight?” Caroline asked him.

He nodded.

“Make sure you dance with...my Alex. She’s a good dancer, when she’s not in the kitchen.”

Alex could feel her face heat. “He has a date, Caro.”

“Oh? Who?”

Sam was under no obligation to tell and he seemed reluctant to share but he finally did. “Charlotte Caine,” he answered, gazing out at the garden.

So he had taken her advice from several weeks earlier and asked Charlotte out. It had been her idea. She had thought from the beginning that Charlotte would be perfect for him. She was sweet and kind, unlike Alex, and certainly deserved a great guy like Sam.

It was one thing to have the image of some nameless, faceless woman in Sam’s arms playing through her head. But, oh, it was something else entirely when that woman was her good friend.

“She’s a...nice girl,” Caroline said. “Pretty as can be, even before...she lost all that weight.”

She winced for Charlotte’s sake but Sam didn’t even seem to register the comment. “She is. Very nice.”

“Charlotte is wonderful,” Alex said. “I told you so. You should have a great time.”

He gave her a long look over his glass. “I’m planning on it,” he said, rather grimly, she thought.

“I hope you...dance all night,” Caroline said.

Her voice seemed to catch on the last word and Alex gave her a closer look. Just in the past few moments, more color had leached away, leaving her features tight and pale as the sweet william growing along her porch.

“Perhaps it’s time for you to go inside and lie down. You’re in pain.”

“Just a...twinge.”

“Let’s get you inside and I’ll give Helen a call.”

“That’s not necessary. But...maybe I should lie down. Just for a bit.”

“Can I help?” Sam asked.

Caroline summoned a smile for him. “No, no. I’m fine. Enjoy...your lemonade. Alex...can help me.”

Sam stood and looked as if he wanted to sweep the frail old woman into his arms and carry her inside but Alex shook her head. Caroline would be embarrassed and flustered with his help, for all her talk about sexy men.

She tucked Caroline’s arm through hers and helped her into the house and toward her bedroom, just off the living room.

It seemed to take all of her friend’s energy to walk those few steps. Alex helped her out of her slippers and settle into bed.

“Now he is...hot,” she declared after the blanket was tucked up and she had the pillows just so. “I...love a man with a few muscles.”

Yes. She did, too. Unfortunately. That particular man.

“That’s the sort of fellow...you should be spending some time with. Not those...snowballers and ski bums.”

“Snowboarders, you mean?”

Caroline waved her blue-veined fingers. “Yes. You need a man.”

A man like Sam. She sighed, feeling battered and achy.

“And that...boy of his. Charming, the both of them.”

“Yes. They are. Utterly charming.”

Something in her clipped tone must have tipped Caroline off—or maybe she had just been talking to Claire.

“He’s the one...isn’t he? The one you’re...sweet on.”

She shook her head at the old-fashioned terminology, even though it was an understatement. She had passed “sweet” a long time ago. “We’re friends and neighbors, that’s all, Caro. He finished the kitchen at my restaurant and now he’s fixing up the old Larson place down the street. That’s all there is to it.”

“Too bad. I love...a man...who’s good with his hands.”

This saucy side of Caroline always made her smile. “Don’t we all,” Alex murmured, even though she was trying hard not to remember just how good Sam Delgado could be with those big, strong hands of his.

“Remember...what I said the other day. If you like the man, and his hands, you need...to let him know. A smart girl...would snap up a handsome widower like that in...two shakes.”

She was not a smart girl. Hadn’t she proved that again and again? “I will definitely keep that advice in mind.”

“I mean it. Don’t waste chances. Life is...gone in a moment.”

She blinked back tears, refusing to show them to her friend. Caroline was dying and she couldn’t fix this with chicken broth and fresh-baked cookies.

“I do...need to rest. Please tell everyone...thank you again for me.”

She kissed Caroline’s sunken cheek. “I will. Sweet dreams, darling.”

She left the room and pressed a hand to her stomach for only a moment before she drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders and walked outside into the sunshine.

* * *

“YOU CAN DO IT. I’ll hold the board in place and you just nail where I showed you.”

“What if I mess up?” Ethan asked, a glimmer of uncertainty in those clear, blue eyes.

“That’s the great thing about nails. We can always pull them out and start over,” Sam answered.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to ruin it.”

“You won’t. Look. Just hold the nail in one hand and the hammer in the other. That’s the way.”

“I did it!” his son exclaimed a few moments later when the support on the sagging arbor was firmly in place.

“Yes, you did. Now every time we come past this house, you can look at the arbor and the porch steps and remember how we fixed them.”

Ethan glowed with satisfaction. He was very proud of himself when he accomplished something he had once deemed hard. Sam envied that in his son, his ability to celebrate his successes instead of looking for the next mountain to climb.

He loved spending time with Ethan while they worked together on various projects around this small, trim house. Being in this close proximity to Alexandra, on the other hand, was another story. All morning, he had been aware of her working in the garden, her hair in braids and a big straw hat shielding her lovely features.

Though he tried not to stare, his attention had been drawn back to her again and again. He liked looking at her, but this was bigger than simply finding a woman beautiful. He loved the way she smiled at her friend and went up frequently to check on her, the way she teased Ethan at every opportunity, the way she brushed her hair back with her forearm to keep from smudging dirt on her face.

He had almost run the nail gun through his finger when they had been working on the porch, simply because she had stood and stretched, her hands at the base of her spine.

She had been inside with her friend for the past twenty minutes. He hoped everything was okay. Caroline didn’t look good. Before she sent him over here, Claire had told him the woman was dying from cancer.

After seeing Caroline, he recognized the signs from Kelli’s last days. She had the same pale cheeks, the same hollow eyes, and Sam knew she wouldn’t be enjoying this arbor he was fixing or the garden Alexandra so diligently cleared for much longer.

Alexandra would hurt when the other woman died. He wished he could protect her from the pain, absorb it onto his own shoulders somehow.

That’s what a man did when he loved a woman. Comfort her. Ease her sorrows.

He frowned. What good did it do him to be in love with her when she pushed him away at every turn?

“Can we have one of these arbors in our garden?” Ethan asked.

Right now they didn’t have much of a garden, just a weed patch that had been neglected for years, along with the rest of the house. “Sure. Maybe not this summer but someday. We’re going to be pretty busy with that awesome tree house.”

Once that would have filled him with satisfaction, the idea that he could make plans to build something in the future. He would have loved nothing more than knowing he could plant a tree in his yard tomorrow and be around to enjoy it for years to come.

Now he didn’t know what was happening to him. He was beginning to second-guess everything. He was very much afraid he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the house he had planned for, saved for, worked for. Not when he knew she was so close but emotionally on the other side of the galaxy.

Alexandra walked out of the house while he and Ethan were cleaning up the construction mess around the arbor. Her hat still rested on the porch chair and he could see her features clearly. The pain in her eyes, the grim knowledge that her friend was dying, reached out and punched him in the gut.

She grabbed her hat and just stood there on the porch, staring out at the garden without moving. Finally he left his son and walked up the steps they had just repaired.

“How is she?” he asked quietly.

Alexandra turned to look at him, her expression haunted. “I’m sure she’ll be just fine. She just needs a little rest. Being out in the sun was too much for her.”

“That’s probably it.” He was lying and both of them knew it.

“I’m still calling the hospice nurse.”

She sank down on the rocking chair where Caroline had been sitting and pulled out her cell phone. Sam knew he probably ought to finish up here and head over to the next job Claire had given him but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. Alexandra needed him, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

“I don’t know,” she said into the phone. “Gut instinct, I guess. I can tell she’s hurting but she wouldn’t let me give her one of her pain pills.”

She was quiet, listening to the other side of the conversation he couldn’t hear. “Well, you know how stubborn she can be. Maybe you should come over a little earlier than you planned and see if you have better luck.”

She paused. “Yes. I need to go check on the caterers and I’m supposed to be helping decorate but I can certainly wait until you get here. Oh, you’re that close? Good. Thank you, Helen. You’ve been wonderful.”

She hung up and gazed down at her hat, with its flowered ribbon around the base of the brim.

“What can I do?” he asked softly, reaching for her hand.

Her fingers trembled a little and he thought she would pull away from him but she turned her hand over and clasped his fingers while Ethan played in the dirt and the clouds continued to gather.

“Nothing,” she finally whispered. “You’ve done plenty. It will make her happy to know her house and her garden are in fine shape again.”

She held his hand for a moment longer and he wanted to think he was offering some small measure of comfort. They stayed that way until a small car pulled up and a plump woman in nursing scrubs climbed out.

“That’s Helen,” Alexandra said, unnecessarily.

As the nurse approached, she slid her hand away from his, much to his regret. Before the other woman could reach them, she touched his arm, her fingers cool.

“Thank you,” she said simply with a small, strained smile, then walked down to greet the nurse.