Currant Creek Valley

chapter NINE



“LESS THAN A WEEK before the restaurant opens. You’ve got to be going crazy making sure everything is ready. Are you certain there’s nothing I can do to help you?”

She smiled at Claire for her ever-ready willingness to help. She loved her friend dearly, even when she tried a little too hard.

“You’re doing it. I needed the distraction of some company and I needed taste testers. This is the perfect combination. Thanks so much for coming over on short notice.”

“Sign me up for taste testing and distracting anytime,” Maura piped in, smiling at Henry, who currently sat on Alex’s lap chortling away at Leo, who watched him out of careful eyes as the baby banged a wooden spoon on a plastic bowl Alex had sacrificed for the cause.

Maura seemed a different person than she had been a year ago, when she had been tangled up in grief and pain, closed off to all of them.

Married nearly a year and mother to the very adorable Henry, she glowed with happiness, and Alex couldn’t be happier for her. Her sister deserved to find joy again after the hell of losing a child.

“Are your nerves completely shot?” Mary Ella asked. “This is something you’ve wanted for so long and it’s almost here.”

Panic fluttered in her stomach with barbed wings. “You could say that. If I blow it, who knows when another chance like this might come along, right?”

“But you’re not going to blow it,” Claire insisted. “Everything will go perfectly. You’ll see.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. Every time she turned around, she remembered something else she needed to do before the Friday night.

The past three weeks had been a whirlwind of preparation, trying to make sure every detail was perfect. She had worked her last day at the resort restaurant more than a week ago and spent every waking moment since devoting all her energies to Brazen.

“You’re all coming, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Claire said firmly. “We already have reservations and are planning to drive over with Evie and Brodie. We better get a fantastic table, since we’re sitting with the owner.”

Those barbed wings flapped harder. She would not screw this up. She could do this. One of the first things she learned in culinary school had been that a good chef had confidence in herself and the unique gifts she had to offer.

She knew her food was good, but all the minutia was killing her.

It didn’t help that her two sous-chefs were engaged in a pissing contest that was beginning to affect morale among the rest of the crew. She had a meeting with both of them later to go over final details and she planned to rattle their cages a little, remind them she was in charge and refused to keep either of them on staff if they couldn’t figure out how to bury their differences and get along.

Should be a pleasant evening, all in all.

“You know I’ll be there,” Mary Ella declared. “Both Harry and I are eagerly anticipating it.”

“I’m coming,” Maura said. “Jack will even be there. He’s flying in from Singapore and should be home Friday afternoon. Should be just enough time to shower and shave.”

“He’s coming home just for my restaurant opening, I assume.”

Maura laughed. “I’m sure that was right at the top of his list while he was scheduling his trip dates.”

Maura’s husband always had several international projects spinning. Alex had been inclined to dislike the guy for abandoning her pregnant sister more than twenty years ago but Jack had managed to achieve what none of the rest of them did, help Maura see that her life could go on again.

“Who’s watching this adorable guy?” She nuzzled Henry’s warm, sweet-smelling neck. His giggle just about drowned out the little pang in her heart at what might once have been.

“Macy. She insists she’s fourteen and plenty old enough.”

How could Claire’s daughter be fourteen already? She had vivid memories of holding her just like this, giving her raspberries on her neck and changing her diaper, and now she was becoming a young lady.

The world moved on and she just stayed the same.

Not true, she corrected herself. Look at all she had done in those fourteen years. She was happy. Not every woman needed one of these little munchkins to feel complete. She loved being an aunt and was damn good at it. That was enough for her.

“So what do you think?” She gestured to the plates she had prepared for the women. That was the reason she was holding Henry, so his mother, grandmother and Auntie Claire could devote their full attention to the pumpkin risotto.

“I like it,” Claire declared. “It’s got an almost smoky flavor.”

She waited for Maura and Mary Ella and didn’t miss the quick look they exchanged.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s not my favorite thing you’ve ever cooked,” Maura said honestly.

“Mom?”

“I have to agree. It needs something. I can’t quite figure out what.”

That panic fluttered faster, stronger. Brazen would be a disaster. No one in town would ever be able to look her in the eye again.

She forced herself to breathe. Confidence. So she made one dish that didn’t resonate. So what? They had all raved about the apple-pear salad, the roasted artichokes and the pan-seared turkey cutlets. She hadn’t even been planning to add the pumpkin risotto to the menu.

“Okay. That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll table that one and work on it a little more. Thanks for the input.”

“It’s not bad,” Mary Ella assured her. “Just...not as fantastic as everything else.”

“I’m a big girl. I can take criticism,” she said, and hoped it was true. She had better be able to, anyway, since after Friday night, she couldn’t hide away behind someone else’s failures or successes.

Needing a bit of comfort after that little ego burn, she played her trump card. “This isn’t for the restaurant, just for you guys, but I made some of those three-layer chocolate-and-caramel brownies you like.”

“Wow. Is it my birthday?” Claire asked.

“As good as.”

She handed Henry over to Mary Ella for some grandma love, then plated the still-warm brownies, adding a drizzle of caramel and one of chocolate from the squeeze bottles she kept in the refrigerator.

For the next several moments, her warm, comfortable kitchen was full of her favorite sound: people enjoying her food. The brownies took a great deal of effort by the time she made the fudge sauce and layered the blond and dark chocolate batters, but the effort was almost universally appreciated.

“You know, of all the things you make, I think this very well might be my favorite,” Mary Ella said. “I gain five pounds just breathing in the smell of them, but it’s worth it.”

“I can make them for your wedding reception if you want,” Alex suggested.

“You can give the recipe to someone else to make but I told you before, I don’t want you doing the food for the wedding. And I don’t think we’re having a reception. Just a small gathering for family and friends.”

“Is that what Harry wants?” Maura asked. “If I know him—and I venture to say I do a little after being married to his son this last year and raising his clone of a granddaughter for twenty years before that—I would guess he wants to throw a big party and brag about his beautiful bride to the whole town.”

“We’re both too old for that kind of business, don’t you girls think?”

“Are you kidding?” Maura grinned at their mother. “You’re the sexiest sixtysomething bride I know. Besides, we were all robbed last year of the biggest social event of the season when Genevieve called off her wedding. Somebody has to fill that void. You owe it to Hope’s Crossing.”

“I’ve still got her wedding dress hanging at the shop,” Claire said. “I have no idea what to do with it. Genevieve told me she never wants to see it again.”

“There you go, Mom. You could wear that.” Alex grinned.

Even when she scoffed, Mary Ella managed to make the sound classy. “My bust is a little bigger than Genevieve’s. And can you just see me in that lovely designer white gown, veil and all, at my age? I would look completely ridiculous!”

“You would look beautiful,” Claire said stoutly. “At least that way, all the work I did—twice—of custom-beading the bodice wouldn’t completely go to waste.”

“Who knows?” Mary Ella argued. “Gen’s young. She might want to wear it again in a few years.”

“Seems to me, wedded bliss is the last thing on her mind,” Alex offered. “Did I tell you I saw her one night last month, shooting pool with some pretty rough customers at The Speckled Lizard?”

Had it only been a month ago when she and Sam had spent that first evening together? When they had gone for a walk through the quiet streets of Hope’s Crossing and laughed together and shared that first kiss?

She had only seen him a couple times in the past few weeks, once at the restaurant when she had delivered a celebratory lunch for him and his crew on the day they finished the kitchen and turned the work over to the interior design crew, and once when she had bumped into him briefly at the grocery store in town.

Both had been short, stilted encounters—on her part, mostly, she suspected—and had left her unaccountably depressed.

She knew he had moved into the house down the street. For the past week or so, she had seen lights burning at all hours. She couldn’t seem to escape the man. Every time she drove past, she thought of him, wondered how he and Ethan were getting along, remembered the sizzle and churn of her blood when he kissed her.

Though she had been tempted several times to drop by and welcome him to the neighborhood as she would any other new move-in, she kept telling herself she would do it later, after the restaurant opened.

She was a coward. She knew it, but the truth was, she hadn’t yet recovered from the bombshell he had dropped that Saturday afternoon.

All along, she had been thinking he would be out of her life as soon as the restaurant was finished, only to discover the man was moving in down the street...with the son he hadn’t bothered to mention.

Had she ever been so completely wrong about a man before?

Well, okay, once. Horribly, disastrously. She turned her attention away from the past and back to the conversation when she realized Claire was asking her a question.

“You saw Gen here in town?” Claire frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. I thought she was working in Paris.”

“Last I heard, she had some big hotshot public-relations job with a fashion design company there,” Maura added.

With that tight clothing and her heavy makeup, Genevieve had looked pretty far removed from someone in the Parisian fashion design world, but that was none of Alex’s business.

“It was definitely her. If I had any doubt, it would have disappeared when I saw the way she turned up her nose when she saw me, like a family of skunks had just wandered past.”

“Have you heard any news about what she’s doing lately from her mother?” Claire asked Mary Ella.

“Laura tends to avoid me these days.” Mary Ella didn’t look particularly upset by that development. No surprise there. The ill will between the McKnights and the Beaumonts was deeply rooted in the events of the past two years.

Genevieve’s brother Charlie had been driving impaired in the accident that had killed Maura’s daughter Layla. While Maura seemed to have made her peace with the boy, Alex wasn’t as forgiving a person as her sister.

Then the previous year, the scandal erupted about Maura’s other daughter, Sage, having a brief affair with Gen’s fiancé, who happened to be the son of a very influential Denver family, and Gen had broken off the engagement and sent back all her wedding presents.

Alex had her own opinion about the social-climbing Beaumonts as a whole, but she still couldn’t get over Gen standing up for her future like that.

The result of that unexpected pregnancy—the beautiful little boy on Mary Ella’s lap—started to fret and rub at his eyes.

“You’re tired, aren’t you, little man?” Maura said.

He stuck out his bottom lip and held his hands out to his mother, who swooped him out of her mother’s arms.

“I should probably take off,” Maura said. “I’m hoping I can get him down for a nap before I have a conference call with a couple distributors later today.”

“Thanks for dropping everything to come over.”

“You know I’m here whenever you need somebody to eat your delicious concoctions. It’s a sacrifice, but you know me. I’m all about my family.”

“You’re a giver, Maur.”

Her sister laughed as she bundled Henry into a cute little denim jacket and hefted him into her arms, where he promptly laid his head on her shoulder, perfectly content in the arms of his mother.

Again, that old pain tugged at Alex’s heart but she ignored it with the ease of long practice.

She returned to the kitchen, where Claire sat alone, leafing through a culinary arts magazine she had left on the table.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked.

Claire gestured to the French doors. “She walked out to your patio to take a phone call. I was assuming it was Harry, since they were all lovey-dovey.”

“Eww.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Claire said. “Your mom’s been alone a long time. She deserves to find someone who treats her so well, after all these years.”

“I guess.”

Claire had plenty of experience dealing with Riley’s reaction, who also felt squeamish about his mother’s relationship with Harry, and she was wise enough to deftly change the subject. “This was so fun today. Thanks for the invite. I hate that we never have time to hang out lately.”

Some of that was Alex’s fault, she knew, because of her hectic schedule and the late hours she had to work in the restaurant business.

Some was simply the inevitable fact that Claire was busy with two—soon to be three—children, the bead store she owned and her husband.

“Once the restaurant opens and things settle a little, I’m sure we’ll be able to find a little more time.”

“But then I’ll have a new baby,” Claire pointed out. “You certainly remember how crazy that was.”

“Not really. I wasn’t here, remember?”

“Right. You were off having your grand adventure in Europe.”

She forced a smile as she transferred the leftovers to the many containers that filled her cupboards for that very purpose. Grand adventure. Right. After a dozen years, she still didn’t have any intention of telling her loved ones otherwise.

“I’m actually glad we have a minute alone,” Claire said, her voice a little hesitant. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”

“Sure,” she said absently as she separated the dozen or so brownies and packaged them individually in cling film. Caroline Bybee loved them. She could freeze them individually and stick a few in her freezer next time she stopped by for a special treat.

“Riley and I would like you to be the baby’s godmother.”

The words seeped through her consciousness and she set down the spatula. Godmother. Good heavens.

“I... Really?” She stared. “Come on. Be serious. You honestly think I’m the best one to be a guide and example to your baby?”

“Who better?”

She could think of a couple dozen others. “What about Angie? Or Maura, for that matter? They’ve done a fine job with your other kids, haven’t they?”

“You’re my best friend, Alex. You weren’t around when I had either of my other kids. You’re finally home now and it would mean so much to both Ri and me if you would consider it.”

Another obligation that threatened to overwhelm her. All these babies. Sometimes her arms ached with it.

But, just like Maura had joked, she was all about her family. “Of course,” she answered after a moment’s hesitation. “It can’t be much harder than being the favorite aunt and I’ve had plenty of practice there.”

Claire laughed and hugged her. “Yes. Yes, you have. Thank you, my dear. You’ve taken a big weight off my mind.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, just as the doorbell chimed through her house.

“Maura must have forgotten something.” Claire looked around. “One of Henry’s toys or a bottle or something.”

“She knows she doesn’t need to ring the doorbell, for heaven’s sake,” Alex exclaimed, hurrying to answer.

When she opened it, she found not her sister but a very cute, curly-haired boy with big blue eyes and his father’s long lashes.

“Hi, Alex. How are you this afternoon?”

She smiled at his formal, polite greeting. “Hello, Ethan! I’m fine. And how are you?”

“Great. Hi,” he greeted Claire. “My name is Ethan Delgado. I just turned seven years old. My dad and I live down the street.”

Claire shook the small hand he held out, swallowing her own smile. “Hi, Ethan. Nice to meet you. I’m Claire McKnight.”

Despite making the first overture, he looked uncomfortable at speaking with a stranger and quickly turned back to Alex. “I’m sorry to interrupt but I was riding my new bike down the street and I thought I heard Leo bark. I was checking to see if you found his owners. I guess you didn’t.”

“Not yet. Still looking, though.” She had tried everything. After nearly a month, she didn’t hold out much hope that she would succeed.

She would soon have to figure something out with the dog. She still didn’t have time to take care of a dog but now she was very much afraid she had passed the point where she could give him to someone else, without her heart breaking apart.

“I could exercise him for you, if you want,” Ethan said eagerly. “Do you think he would like to take a walk with me? You could pay me if you wanted to.”

At the magic W word he recognized only too well, Leo sat up straighter and his tongue started to loll eagerly.

“I think that’s probably a good guess,” she answered drily. “Tell me, what’s the going rate for dog-walking these days?”

“I was thinking a dollar would be fair.”

“More than fair,” she assured him. “What a great deal for me! I’m sure Leo would enjoy taking a walk very much. How thoughtful of you to offer! Come on inside while I find his leash. Would you like a brownie while you wait?”

Ethan’s eyes lit up. “Oh, is that what I smell? I bet they’re delicious. They smell good, anyway.”

“Trust me, they’re good,” Claire answered.

He seemed to warm up a little to her. When Mary Ella walked in after finishing her phone call, Alex introduced her mother to the boy and left Ethan in the capable hands of both women while she placed a brownie on a napkin and then retrieved the leash off the hook by the back door.

“Here you go,” she said, giving him the brownie and then attaching the leash to Leo’s collar before she handed that over, as well. “The big question is, can you hold on to the leash and eat a brownie at the same time?”

His brow furrowed as he considered his answer. “I think so. I can hold the leash with one hand and the brownie with the other, see? If it’s too difficult to manage both, I’ll eat the brownie first and then go on the walk with Leo.”

“You, my friend, are indeed a man who thinks things through.”

He gave her that sweet, swift smile of his, obviously delighted at being called a man.

“You remember to stay away from the creek, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “My dad only reminds me of that every time I go outside. We’ll stay on the sidewalk and we’ll only go to the end of Currant Creek Valley Road and back, I promise. Is that okay with you?”

They should be fine for the four-block round trip, she figured. Leo was very well behaved on a leash—another indication that someone somewhere had once loved him.

“Sounds perfect. You boys have a wonderful time.”

He had a mouthful of brownie and just waved to her, leash and all, as he walked out the door and down the steps with the dog leading the way.

The three women watched him go down the sidewalk and she was happy to see that Leo didn’t tug or jerk.

“Oh, my word. Is he not the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?” Claire exclaimed, smiling as she watched them go.

Well, personally Alex thought the kid’s father was pretty darn adorable, too, but she decided not to comment. Her mother and Claire would both make too much of her opinion.

“Did you know Sam is working on the new recreation center?” Mary Ella looked delighted to reveal that particular tidbit of information.

“No. I hadn’t heard,” she said, trying to inject just the right note of casual interest in her voice.

She should be happy for Sam. He wanted to settle in Hope’s Crossing, to build a business here. Working for Harry Lange’s pet project up Silver Strike Canyon was a great start and would probably lead to future jobs.

That’s what he wanted but she had still been clinging to the hope that maybe he would decide he and her town didn’t fit, after all, which was pretty small-minded of her when she stopped to think about it.

“Harry has really taken a liking to him and his work,” her mother went on. “He says Sam is an old-time craftsman who cares more about quality than quotas. His military record doesn’t hurt anything, of course. He’s a genuine hero, though I get the impression you won’t hear him say anything about that.”

He was closemouthed about his past and downplayed that aspect of his life. She could admire that about him. She supposed he kept plenty of secrets about his past.

“It’s nice when regular people move in,” Claire said. “People who want to make Hope’s Crossing their permanent home instead of just buying a place for a vacation spot or a tax write-off.”

“Isn’t it?” she murmured.

“I think so. We need new people, new blood,” Mary Ella said. “That’s the reason Harry and Jack are trying to build more affordable housing in that development they’re working on together west of town.”

Yes. New blood was important. She just didn’t want it to belong to Sam.

“Look, I hate to run after you went to so much trouble for us,” Mary Ella said, “but I told Angie I would help her pick out some curtains to go with the walls she just painted. She texted me when I was on the phone with Harry.”

“Absolutely. You’d better go.”

“What time is it?” Claire looked at the clock. “Oh, I can’t believe I stayed so long. The kids are with their father but I said I would pick them up about twenty minutes ago. I’m sorry!”

“Nothing to be sorry about. The kids come first. It’s completely understandable. I appreciate you both taking the time to come.”

After ushering them out to their cars with a package of leftovers each, she returned inside. Without the happy chatter, the house seemed to echo with silence, especially while Leo was busy taking a walk. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she had become to his company in just a few short weeks.

She only had a few moments of silence before she heard a bark outside and an instant later the doorbell. She grabbed her wallet and opened the door while digging out some change.

“How was your walk?” she started to say, but bobbled the last word when she discovered Ethan and Leo weren’t alone on the doorstep. The boy’s father stood behind them, big, dark, gorgeous.

This time the nerves in her stomach had wings tipped with feathers and it was all she could do not to shiver.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Hi, there.” He gave her a long look, that mouth that tasted so very lovely lifted in a half smile. “Apparently we’ve gone into the dog-walking business.”

“And a very valuable service it is, too. Were you a good boy, Leo? Were you?”

The dog slobbered all over her while she rubbed his scruff. When she looked up, she found Sam watching her with a sharp, hungry look in his eyes but he blinked it away so fast she wondered if she had imagined it.

“We walked to the corner and back and stayed away from the creek, just as I promised you,” Ethan said proudly.

“Excellent! Then I think you’ve earned two dollars.”

She handed them over and he couldn’t have looked more thrilled.

“Thanks,” he exclaimed. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t thank me. You earned them.”

“I was telling my dad you make the very best brownies I have ever tasted and that he should try one.” He paused, a crafty look in his eyes. “Maybe I could have another one, too, just to make sure. If you have any left, I mean.”

Sam cleared his throat, a faintly embarrassed look in his eyes. “That’s not why I came over,” he said. “You don’t have to give me brownies.”

“You’re in luck. I happen to have exactly two extra brownies and was looking for someone to take them off my hands.”

“We can do that, can’t we, Dad?”

“I’ve learned to never turn down brownies. Who knows when the chance for more might come along?”

She couldn’t resist raising an eyebrow. “Isn’t that true? For brownies and...so many other things.”

His eyes glazed, just a bit, and she hid her smile even as she tried to rein in the natural instinct to flirt with the man. She just couldn’t seem to help herself around him but she vowed to try harder.

She was supposed to be mad at him for not telling her he was moving to Hope’s Crossing or that he had a son. And she was, honestly. Anger and hurt and a whole host of other emotions seemed to clot together in a big ball inside her whenever she thought about Sam, but she also couldn’t help thinking the afternoon suddenly seemed much brighter.

He was a loving father who had been trying to protect his son. How could she be angry about that?

She ought to send them both on their way with the brownies, but she had all those leftovers and it didn’t seem very neighborly not to share.

“Are you guys hungry?”

“Yes,” Ethan declared. “We haven’t had anything to eat since lunchtime. Well, technically I had a brownie, but that’s it.”

“Then you are both in luck,” she said. “Come on back to the kitchen. My family was just here having a taste of things to come when the restaurant opens and I happen to have plenty of leftovers.”

“You don’t have to feed us. That’s not why I stopped by, either.”

“The way I see it, the more guinea pigs, the better.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that, Eth. We’re guinea pigs.”

“If I can’t have a dog, can I at least have a guinea pig?”

Sam smiled at his son, rubbing a hand over his son’s curls. “We’re going to have to see on that one, kid. Maybe we should check out what guinea pigs eat first.”

She managed to tear her gaze away from the tenderness between father and son. “In my kitchen, they eat fabulous food. Just wait and see. And if the guinea pigs are very good and try a little of everything, they get to have some of my fantastic brownies as a reward.”

“They really were good,” Ethan told his father.

“You must know some very happy guinea pigs,” Sam said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

She couldn’t seem to look away from his smile. “Why did you? Stop by, I mean?”

He blinked a little, as if he’d forgotten. “Oh. To say hello, for one thing. That’s what neighbors do, isn’t it? I hadn’t seen you in a while and I...well, wanted to see how you are.”

Had he missed her, too? Probably not. He probably only wanted...brownies.

“I’m fine,” she answered. “Nervous about this weekend, but otherwise fine.”

“Good. That’s good. I, uh, also wanted to ask you about the blue recycling can. I can’t seem to figure out when they come pick that one up.”

“Every other Monday, so tomorrow would be the day. You probably just missed the first pickup of the month when you moved in.”

“That makes sense. Okay. Thanks.”

They gazed at each other and she remembered the delicious heat of his mouth and the implacable hardness of his body against hers and the slow, heady churn of her blood.

“Are we going to eat?” Ethan asked.

She looked down at his son as color rushed to her cheeks. “Right. Yes. Come on back to my kitchen.”