Let it Snow(The Hope Falls Series)

Chapter Thirty


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Tessa leaned her elbows on the kitchen island, trying to concentrate on editing Amy’s wedding pictures. She wanted to do the best job she possibly could for her. She’d weeded out the duds and only had a few more that she needed to crop and color correct for the slideshow.

She hadn’t slept at all last night after the wedding. Part of the reason was that she wanted to get the slideshow uploaded before Amy and Matt left for their honeymoon tomorrow morning. But the main reason was because she kept replaying everything that had happened the last few weeks in her head. Over and over again.

A few things more than others. Of course every time Jake had touched her, kissed her, and made love to her was getting a lot of review time.

But also the almost cryptic words Jake had spoken to her before he left the wedding last night, kept haunting her as well. Why would he ask her to promise him to say goodbye before she left town?

Did he think that she was just going to leave, forget about Gran’s house, just because of the fight they’d had? Did he think that she was the same scared seventeen-year-old who had left the hospital without telling him?

There were so many questions flooding Tessa’s mind that she knew what she had to do. She needed to talk to Jake. Now.

Wait. Maybe the mature thing to do would be to wait until he was off on Wednesday, make him a nice dinner, and discuss all of the questions that were on her mind.

Nah. Tessa grabbed her keys and purse off of the counter and headed out the door. Maturity was overrated.

Thirteen years was long enough to wait. She couldn’t wait another second to find out if she and Jake had a real chance, a real shot at this.

Excitement and adrenaline flooded her system as she jumped into her PT Cruiser and headed to the station. Her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty with anticipation as she drove through the small town of Hope Falls. She had butterflies in her stomach, but they weren’t gracefully flitting about. Oh no, it felt more like they were having a full-blown roller derby of destruction in there.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay,” Tessa whispered to herself to try and settle down.

Just as she was starting her second round of ‘okays’, her phone buzzed in her purse.

Jake.

Grabbing her phone as she pulled up to the intersection the fire station sat at, she felt her heart sink when she saw the call was from Lauren. Not that she didn’t want to talk to her friend. It was just that, for a split second, she thought that maybe she and Jake did, in fact, have some kind of psychic connection and he was calling to tell her that he couldn’t stop thinking about her and they needed to talk. Then she would have pulled into the parking lot and Jake would have been standing there waiting. It would have been like a scene from a movie.

Snapping herself back to reality, Tessa hit the answer button on her phone. “Hey, Lauren.”

“I have some good news,” Lauren said with a small amount of hesitation before adding, “I think.”

Lauren’s contradictory words and tone ratcheted up Tessa’s nervous energy tenfold. The light turned green, and Tessa crossed the intersection and drove to the back of the station, pulling into one of the three empty parking spaces.

When she was no longer operating heavy machinery, she asked, “What good news?”

“We got on an offer on the house, as is. It came in at asking price and you can sign today. The buyer is pre-approved and going to be using it as a rental.”

Tessa went numb. This was good news. Right?

“Oh, okay.” Tessa’s head was spinning.

“Do you want me to come by? With the contract?” Lauren asked.

“Um, I’m actually in town. I have an errand to run, but I will stop by after.” Tessa felt like she needed to see Jake more than ever now.

“Okay, see you then,” Lauren said, and Tessa disconnected the call.

Tessa stepped out of the car and walked in through the back door of the station, operating solely on autopilot. She wasn’t even fully aware of the short trip from the lot to standing in front of Jake’s door. Her hand fisted and she watched as it knocked three times. She couldn’t feel the wood as her knuckles hit it. It was as if she were floating outside herself completely.

Jake’s voice sounded from inside. “Come in.”

Tessa tried to pull herself together before walking into the office. After their fight yesterday, she really wanted to say exactly the right thing. Unfortunately, she had no idea what that was.

“Come in,” he repeated, this time louder and with a hint of irritation.

Taking a deep breath, she turned the doorknob and stepped inside. He looked up, his deep brown eyes locking with hers. Like always, she felt his stare all the way down to her soul.

He didn’t look mad, but he certainly didn’t look happy to see her. He looked…sad.

“Are you okay?” she asked, shutting the door behind her and moving to sit in the green leather chair in front of his desk.

“Yep,” he answered briskly and leaned back in his high-back leather chair.

The vibe between them was so strange that she got thrown off. Well she’d already been a little off balance by Lauren’s call, but now she had totally gone off the rails.

Whether it was because she hated awkward silences or just because she just didn’t want any more secrets between them, she blurted out, “I got an offer on the house.”

His expression did not change one iota. Nodding once, he said with resignation in his tone, “I know.”

Tessa felt her jaw literally fall open. Sure, she knew that news traveled fast in Hope Falls, but this was ridiculous. “Who told you?” After the question left her mouth, she realized it was a stupid one. Lauren had to be the one who had told Jake.

“No one had to. I made the offer.”

“You made the offer?” Tessa asked out loud, thinking that she must have heard him wrong.

“Yes.” Jake’s voice, body language, even his eyes were giving no clues as to what this was all about. It was as if he’d put up invisible walls since she’d danced with him just yesterday to their song at his sister’s wedding.

“Why?” she asked, searching his eyes.

“It’s what you wanted, right? To sell the house so you could open up your studio. I just moved the process along for you.” His cold tone caused a sinking feeling in Tessa’s stomach. “Did you stop by to say ‘goodbye’?”

Tessa couldn’t feel her legs, so she wasn’t sure that they would hold her, but she figured that, worst-case scenario, even if she fell flat on her butt, it wouldn’t be any worse that sitting in front of Jake while he did everything but pack her bags for her to get her out of town.

Did she come by to say ‘goodbye’? No, she came by to tell him that she wanted to try. That if he really couldn’t be happy without her, then she would stay. That she loved him and had only ever wanted what was best for him. That she was sorry that she’d wasted years of their lives that they could have spent together, but that if he wanted her, she wouldn’t waste another second by not being with him.

Obviously she wouldn’t be saying those things now, so she just nodded as she swallowed a huge lump in her throat. Standing, she was happy that her legs did not give out on her. Tessa tried to hold the tears that were threatening to fall at bay and keep her voice strong as she said, “I am so glad we got to spend this time together. Thank you, Jake. For everything.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t get out from behind his desk. The only indication that he’d heard her at all was his jaw locking tightly and the vein on the side of his neck popping out.

Tessa had no idea what he was mad about, but she didn’t want their last conversation to be a fight. So she plastered on her best fake smile and turned to leave.

“Bye, Jake.”

But as her hand touched the doorknob, something stopped her. It was the realization that she still had questions in her mind and she didn’t want to live out the rest of her life wondering about them, even if that meant the last conversation she and Jake had would be a yelling match. She’d made the mistake of not talking things out with Jake when she was seventeen. She was not going to do that again.

Turning back, she asked quickly, before she lost her nerve, “Is that why you told me to say ‘goodbye’ to you before I left yesterday? Because you knew you were going to buy Gran’s house?”

*

Jake didn’t know why Tessa was dragging this out. He’d given her an out. She was free. “I met with Lauren before the wedding. I’d already put an offer on the house.”

“Because you want me to leave?” Tessa asked, her voice shaking like she was the injured party here.

Why am I always the a*shole?

“Tessa”—Jake raked his hands through his hair—“I saw it in your eyes yesterday on your porch. You are leaving. Like I said, I just sped up the process.”


“Because you want me to go?” Now tears were falling down her cheeks.

This was ridiculous. Hadn’t he asked—no, begged—her to stay just yesterday?! Jake did not want to fight with her again, but he was really getting pissed off. As calmly as possible, he said, “It doesn’t matter what I want. You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

Tessa still stood on the other side of the room in front of the door. Jake could see her shaking from here, and she was white as a ghost. More than anything, he wanted to go to her, hold her in his arms.

But he couldn’t. He had to start protecting himself. Because when she left, there had to at least be pieces of himself that he could try and put back together to make a life with. A miserable life, but a life.

He saw her draw in a deep breath before she asked, “What if it did matter?”

His heart jumped in his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Shaking her head a little, she crossed back to the visitor chair, whispering, “Okay, okay, okay, okay,” to herself and sat down. Her blue eyes looked up at him, and what he saw made a small glimmer of hope twist in his chest. She continued, “What I mean is, what do you want to happen here?”

Jake was confused. He’d thought he could not have made himself any clearer yesterday on the porch. As much as he wanted to see where this was headed, a small part of him was scared that he would pour his heart out and she would walk away. Again.

So instead of answering, he asked, “What do you want to happen here?”

She looked like a deer caught in headlights. Obviously, she had not expected him to turn the tables on her. It wasn’t so fun when you were the one in the hot seat. He waited. Inside he was dying, but he sat there silently. Waiting.

“Well,” she said after what felt like hours, “I was thinking about what you said yesterday…and…”

Jake’s heart started beating faster.

She licked her lips nervously and her gaze dropped to her hands, which she was wringing in her lap. He thought he heard her mumble, “Oh screw it,” under her breath before she looked back up at him with a new fire in her eyes. “I love you. I have never stopped loving you. I only left and stayed away because I wanted the best for you. I wanted you to have everything you’d ever dreamed of.

“But I was thinking about what you said about me, about the other girls, about you not living in your house. So, I came over here to tell you that if you still wanted to be with me, I’m yours. I mean, I’ve always been yours, but I’ll stay. If that’s really what you want.

“But then I got Lauren’s call and I came in here and you said you bought the hou—”

Jake was up and around the desk, and before she had a chance to finish what she was saying, he had her in his arms. His lips found hers and he claimed her with his kiss. Her arms flew around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. She parted her lips and his tongue swept inside of her mouth. She kissed him back with equal fervor, meeting him lick for lick.

It had only been a day since he’d kissed her last but damn, Jake had missed her mouth. He knew her kisses were like a drug to him that he would never get enough of. Jake took his time, pouring all of the love he had inside himself into this kiss.

Tessa’s curves melted against him, and Jake knew he needed to get them out of there before he cleared his desk, stripped her out of her clothes, and took her on top of it. But before anything went further, Jake needed to confirm what he thought Tessa was saying.

Pulling away, he met her half-lidded gaze. She looked almost drunk. He smiled, liking the knowledge that he’d made her feel that way from his kiss.

“So you’re staying?” he asked, his voice strained with need.

“If you want me,” she said, still sounding a little unsure.

“I want you. Only you. Forever.” Jake didn’t know how much clearer he could be.

A smile spread across Tessa’s beautiful face. “Then yes. I’m staying.”

“Marry me.” Jake knew he wasn’t on one knee and he didn’t have a ring, but he had to know that Tessa would be his wife.

“Okay,” she answered immediately, her smile spreading even wider.

“Today.”

“What?” she said as she drew her head back and looked at him like he needed to be in a strait jacket. “We can’t get married today.”

“Why not? Let’s drive to Tahoe. We’ll get our license and go to a chapel. You can be Mrs. Maguire by sundown.”

“But what about your family?” Tessa asked, her eyes wide as saucers.

“I told you. You’re my family. It’s me and you. It’s always been me and you.”

He could see a battle going on behind her beautiful blue eyes. Her mouth turned into a nervous frown as she said, “Your mom and Nikki will kill us.”

“I’ll deal with them.” Jake needed her to say ‘yes’. With everything in his being, he needed Tessa to finally be his wife. He knew that begging had never helped before, but that didn’t stop the plea from leaving his mouth. “Please. Marry me. Today.”

Her eyes scanned his face and her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Tears formed in her eyes, her lips turning up into a smile as she whispered, “Yes. I’ll marry you. Today.”

Jake pulled her tightly against him, crushing her with his arms and burying his head in the crook of her neck as relief and joy washed over him like a giant wave. “I love you,” he whispered against her ear.

She held him just as tightly. “I love you too.”

“Let’s go get married.” He grabbed his keys off the desk and started towards the door.

“I can walk,” she giggled as she held her arms securely around his neck.

“Good,” he said, not putting her down. Jake didn’t want to let her go. And now, thank God, he never had to.





Excerpt: My First


THE CROSSROADS SERIES

Book One



Chapter One


“Welcome home!” Katie said sardonically to herself as she sat, eyes closed, in her rental car on the side of Highway 90. She had a paper bag pressed tightly against her mouth and a mantra running through her brain on repeat.

You can breathe. Just breathe. Breathe in and out slowly. You can breathe.

Katie had been back in Illinois for less than an hour and here she was, smack dab in the middle of her first panic attack in five years. She gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to soothe her racing heart to anchor herself to reality. She forced her movements to be slow and deliberate.

This seems to be working, albeit slowly, she assured herself. When the overpriced therapist who taught her the breathing exercise and mantra had laid out his plan, Katie had wanted to roll her eyes. She had wanted to tell him that he clearly had no flipping idea what a panic attack really felt like if he thought that repeating a little magic spell in her mind about breathing was going to have any effect at all. She had wanted to tell him that panic attacks didn’t feel like nervousness or butterflies you could just calm with the power of your mind. They felt like you were having a heart attack, like you were dying. Have you ever heard of someone having a heart attack curing themselves by simply telling themselves to breathe?

Of course, Katie hadn’t said any of those things. She had smiled politely, practiced with the bag, and kept her judgment of his professional aptitude (i.e., that he was a total quack!) entirely to herself.

Still, since she hadn’t had a panic attack in the past five years. She hadn’t ever been able to test out the technique and prove his quackitude with rock-solid evidence. Now that she was in the middle of one and the exercise actually seemed to be working?

Well, I’ll move his status down to ‘Jury’s Still Out on the Level of His Quackosity’ but I’m not nominating him for the Nobel Prize just yet, Katie thought. Of course, this wasn’t even close to a bad attack. This one was fairly mild.

But, that’s exactly how they had started ten years ago. They had begun as hyperventilating episodes and over time had developed into severe attacks resulting in her being rushed to the emergency room—twice—having truly believed she was having a heart attack. Which had not been the case.

The E.R. docs were the reason she had ended up lying on the overpriced therapist couch (metaphorically speaking; in reality she had sat in a plush leather chair). Once the doctors at the hospital had ruled out the possibility that anything was physically wrong with her, they had strongly recommended that she delve into the possibility that it was her psyche, not her body, that needed medical attention.

Even now, as the panic attack was subsiding, Katie was still feeling some of the physical symptoms. Her head felt as if it were floating away, her fingers were tingling as if they were being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles, and she was being bombarded by an obnoxiously loud ringing sound. She forced herself to anchor to the sensation of the paper bag digging into her lips to ground her in reality and repeated the mantra (which, she had to admit, was kind of growing on her.)

You can breathe. Just breathe. Breathe in and out slowly. You can breathe.

Slowly, bit by bit, she drifted back to the present and into her body. She closed her eyes to appreciate the little sensations she was now aware of—the leather of the seat pressed cold against her back, the icy breeze from the air conditioning blowing refreshingly on her face.


Leaning her head back against the headrest, she felt the weight of her chest rising and falling. Her arms felt heavy. Lowering them to her sides, Katie was vaguely aware that the paper bag had slipped from her hand and landed on the console beside her.

After several minutes, her breathing returned to normal and the ringing sound in her head grew sporadic. Katie searched her memory in an attempt to identify if ‘sporadic ringing in the head’ was a normal side effect post-panic attack. She hated that these horrible attacks used to occur with such frequency that she actually had a personal database of experiences to check her symptoms against.

Nope, she concluded, the sporadic ringing is new.

Turning her head to take in her surroundings, she saw cars whizzing by on the interstate. She squinted against the glare of the sun, which was shining brightly down on the pavement and bouncing off the car windshields speeding by.

Katie retrieved the paper bag and folded it up, returning it to her purse. She didn’t love the thought that she might need to keep it handy for future use, but better safe than sorry. I mean, let’s be real, she told herself. You’re less than an hour off the plane and barely starting down the highway toward Harper’s Crossing and you had a panic attack. You really think you’re getting through the rest of the weekend unscathed? Not likely.

As she placed the paper bag inside her gigantic ‘in case of emergency’ carry-on bag, she discovered the source of the ringing.

She felt like an idiot. On the good side, she thought to herself, is the fact that I don’t have to add tinnitus to the looooong list of symptoms that characterize my panic attacks. On the bad side? Apparently, I no longer recognize my cell phone’s ring tone.

Picking up her iPhone, she swiped the screen to answer, saying warmly, “Hey Sophiebell!”

“Katie, where are you? I thought you would be here by now. Was your flight delayed? I can’t wait to see you,” Sophie squealed, the words tumbling out of her mouth one over another. Katie smiled to herself. She had always thought that Sophie could paraphrase that old Army motto to adopt as her own. ‘I say more before nine a.m. than most people say all day!’

“The flight was fine. I am on my way, and I will be there in less than an hour. I can’t wait to see you, too!”

“Okay, hurry,” Sophie pleaded but then followed it up with the command, “but drive safe!”

“I will. See you soon, bride-to-be!” Katie tried to cover the stress in her voice with ebullience as she said goodbye and hung up the phone.

It’s 8:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, she thought, repeating the mental math to herself. My return flight to California is at 7:00 p.m. Sunday night. All I have to do is get through the next four days—preferably without having a nervous breakdown!—and then I can wing my way back to my lovely, safe, predictable life in San Francisco.

Let the countdown begin.

Katie breathed out a long sigh as she pulled back onto the highway. She needed get her head on straight and pull it together. Facts, that was what she needed to focus on. Facts had always comforted Katie.

Fact: she wasn’t a teenager anymore. Fact: she was an adult. Fact: she could handle this.

It had been ten long years since Katie Marie Lawson had set foot in Harper’s Crossing, the town of her childhood and her youth. She had never meant to stay away this long.

When she originally left to California for school a decade ago, her plan had been to come back at Christmastime. Sitting at L.A.X., waiting for her flight that first holiday away from home had been her first experience with a bout of hyperventilation. She never got on the plane. The next episode occurred as she merely booked her flight that same year for spring break. That time she hadn’t even made it to the airport. It took several years to get the episodes under control, during which she refrained from making any travel plans.

Then, after she graduated from law school at Pepperdine University, she immediately started working at Wilson, Martin, Gregory, and Assoc., a very prestigious law firm in San Francisco.

The first three years at the firm flew by in a blur. Katie worked 80+ hours a week and even worked every holiday, including Christmas. She’d barely had time to breathe, let alone go out of town.

Last year, even though she was on the fast track to make Junior Partner, she had taken a vacation. The plan had been to take a few days for herself—to decompress—and then head back to her hometown. She had booked her flight and the experience had been incident free.

That was progress at least.

Katie had then spent the first four days of her vacation in her apartment, so it was really more of a ‘staycation’—but still. She cleaned, cooked, slept, and had a Julia Roberts movie marathon.

At the end of the four days, the morning she was scheduled to fly back to Illinois, she had been called into work because a fellow associate had come down with the flu. And well, if she was being honest, she had been more than happy to go back to work on Wednesday instead of being on a direct flight from SFO to O’Hare.

But, she was here now. In Illinois. Headed back to Harper’s Crossing. She had done it. Because this weekend wasn’t about her—it was about Miss Sophie Hunter, who was getting married to Bobby Sloan, Jr., the youngest of the five Sloan boys. Sophie had called her, ecstatic, three months earlier to announce her engagement to Bobby and to ask Katie to be her maid of honor.

Sophie (or ‘Sophiebell,’ which had been her nickname since Sophie was six and had decided that she was Tinker Bell) was the closest thing Katie had to a sister. And there was nothing Katie wouldn’t do for her. Other than a brief trip out to California after Sophie had graduated high school four years ago, Katie hadn’t seen her since she left home. But they always talked or e-mailed several times a week.

Katie was an only child. She and her mom, Pam, had gone to live with her Aunt Wendy in Harper’s Crossing when Katie was four, immediately after her parents’ divorce.

Craig, Katie’s dad, had come to visit his daughter exactly one time since she’d moved to Harper’s Crossing. It was one month after she and her mom had arrived that Craig had taken Katie to Tasty Treats for a double scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

He had talked about how much he loved her and assured her that the divorce and the move had nothing to do with her. He had also promised to see her once a month. Suffice it to say, he didn’t keep that promise.

Katie had not seen her father since that cold October Saturday twenty-four years ago.

Growing up, she’d always just assumed that he had stayed away because he and Aunt Wendy “did not see eye to eye,” as Katie’s mom always said (although, now, as an adult, she was leaning toward the theory that it was because he was a shitheel).

Honestly, if Katie’s memory served, she hadn’t really seen a lot of her dad even when he and her mom were still together. It seemed to Katie that ‘pre-divorce’ it was just Katie and her mom and then ‘post-divorce’ it was Katie, her mom, and Aunt Wendy.

She never really missed her dad. Sometimes she would miss her idea of what having a dad in her life would be like. But never the man who had fathered her. She really never knew that man, and what she had known had been unpredictable. Promising to come visit her once a month and then her never seeing hide nor hair of him again really just seemed par for the course where he was concerned. It was just the last in a long line of broken promises that had characterized their father-daughter relationship, and—even at four years old—Katie didn’t remember being terribly surprised when the months rolled around and he didn’t.

She had always credited the fact that she didn’t miss him terribly to how full her life had been, how utterly surrounded she was by people who loved her. Although, she would sometimes get lonely in Aunt Wendy’s house. Aunt Wendy had a full-time job and Katie’s mom usually held down two jobs just to make ends meet, so there was a lot of time that Katie had been alone with just her imagination and books to keep her occupied.

As she made her way down the highway, a smile crept across her face because, oh boy, how that changed the summer before Katie’s seventh grade year!

That was the summer that Sophie Hunter (aka Sophiebell) had moved into the house next door to Aunt Wendy. And right away—literally, starting immediately on moving day—Sophie had become Katie’s shadow. Not that she’d minded! Katie had loved finally having someone, anyone other than a doll, to dress up and play tea party with.

Sophie’s dad, Mike, was a fireman and her mom, Grace, was a nurse. Katie had babysat Sophie when Mike’s and Grace’s shifts overlapped. Katie’s house felt a lot less lonely with a bouncing, laughing, full-of-life four-year-old in it. But Sophiebell wasn’t the only distraction the Hunters had brought with them when they moved to Harper’s Crossing. They also brought Nick, Sophie’s older brother and Katie’s first love.

Nicholas Hunter was three months older than Katie and he had never let her forget it. He had sandy blond hair and the most beautiful green eyes Katie had ever seen.

The day before school started in seventh grade, two weeks after the Hunters had moved in, Nick came to Katie’s door to get Sophie for dinner. She’d never forget that day. Before he left the porch, he looked over his shoulder, his green eyes sparkling in the sun. They were even extra green due to the fact that he was wearing his favorite Fighting Irish t-shirt. Swoon!


He asked, “Hey, do you think you would want to be my girlfriend? It’s a lot easier to start a new school when you already have a girlfriend.”

He then proceeded to shoot her a smile she would later come to know had gotten him anything he’d wanted since he was an infant. And with good reason—it was one helluva doozy of a smile!

As much as Katie had wanted to act like the smile didn’t affect her, she knew the heat she felt in her cheeks meant they were bright red. No way could she hide the evidence.

Still, that didn’t mean she had to acknowledge it. So she did what any super-cool eleven-year-old girl would have done when faced with Nick Hunter’s dreamy proposal.

She shrugged and said, “Yeah, whatever.”

“Sweet,” he smiled. “I’ll be here at 7:45 so we can walk to school together tomorrow.”

He then jumped off her porch before she could say another word. She slowly closed her front door and, once it shut, started to scream and run around in circles until she fell on her couch in utter exhaustion. Katie always did lean towards the dramatic.

Katie had no way of knowing then that the relationship she had just entered would last for the next six years of her life and end in tragedy.

As she drove past the sign marking Harper’s Crossing city limits, Katie’s chest constricted tightly and tears stung her eyes at the thought of the senseless tragedy. The summer after Nick and Katie’s senior year of high school, Nick had been out late one night joyriding and had tragically driven his truck off Spencer Point.

Hours later, when the police pulled the truck out of the steep embankment, they found a nearly lifeless body inside. Nick lay in a hospital bed in a deep coma for three weeks following the accident. Katie and his family were by his side every moment the hospital staff would allow them to be.

Finally, his parents, Mike and Grace, made the most horrific decision any parent could ever have to make. They took Nick off life support.

His funeral was held three days later, and Katie left that very same night to go stay with her grandmother in Chicago. She’d needed to escape. That was the last time she had set foot in Harper’s Crossing.

Until today.

Driving through the town as she took in her surroundings, Katie barely recognized it. The last time she had been in Harper’s Crossing, it contained two traffic lights and one four-way stop. Today there seemed to be a traffic light or four-way stop at every intersection!

Katie’s eyes scanned the area where Picklers’ field had been. She was shocked to see that the field she had learned to ride her bike in when she was five, played tag in, attempted and failed to smoke a cigarette in when she was thirteen, and spent almost every Friday and Saturday night parking in with Nick after he turned sixteen and got his black Chevy truck was now a strip mall.

Coming up to yet another stop light, Katie did a double take. The quaint, one-story hospital she had been admitted to when she had suffered from chicken pox and had a temperature of 104 at age six, had her tonsils removed when she was eight, and spent three weeks practically living in when she was eighteen, keeping her vigil beside Nick’s motionless body as he lay in a coma was now a four-story hospital that looked to be straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest. And if the exterior was any indication, it was now state-of-the-art.

As she continued on, she mentally counted four McDonalds’, three Burger Kings, and two Taco Bells since she had entered the city limits. This was quite a contrast to her days in Harper’s Crossing, when there had only been one fast food restaurant in town—a Dairy Queen. It had been the local hang out for all the pre-teens and teens. Katie noted sadly that the Dairy Queen, which was another place that held so many of her teenage memories, had also been obliterated at some point in the past decade. It was replaced by an Office Depot.

Then as she made the left turn onto her childhood street, she audibly exhaled in relief.

From what she could see, nothing had changed on Harper Lane. Certainly not the houses, which were still all painted in one of three color combinations – blue and yellow, green and white, or blue and white.

And judging by the few neighbors she saw out on their lawns, the people hadn’t changed either. Mrs. Belmont stood watering her yard in that same pink and green moo moo she had worn since Katie could remember. Mr. Peters still mowed his lawn in white shorts that were two sizes too small and black socks that he pulled all the way up to his knees, a cigarette precariously dangling out of his mouth.

As she pulled into the driveway of her aunt’s two-story home (painted in the white with blue trim option, for that Mediterranean flair, Katie thought with a small smile), she felt a confusing combination of relief, nostalgia, sadness, and anxiety. This was it. Katie was home.

She opened the door to her rented blue Honda Accord, took in a deep breath, and let out a cleansing sigh. The air smelled of a familiar combination: sweet from Mrs. Greyson’s beautiful flower bed and fresh from the trees that lined the street. She let her head fall back, soaking in the warming rays of sunlight. The sun in the sky may very well be the same one that shone in California, but somehow, standing in her Aunt’s driveway, it felt different. It felt comforting.

With a renewed sense of calm, she moved to the back of the car, popped the trunk, and reached in for her suitcases. As she pulled them from the car, she was stopped cold in her tracks by a familiar voice.

“Need a hand, Kit Kat?” the deep voice sounded from behind her.

A shudder rippled through her body and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her carry-on slipped from her shoulder and dropped with a thud on the cement driveway.

“Jason?” she said, her voice a whisper of disbelief.

Katie had known she would have to face Jason at some point on her trip home. He was, after all, the best man in Sophie’s wedding—which made perfect sense, seeing as how Sophie was marrying Jason’s little brother, Bobby. She didn’t need to possess psychic powers to foresee that their paths would cross. She’d just thought she would have had a little more time to prepare herself before she came face to face with him.

She had also been banking on the theory that when the inevitable face-to-face occurred, she would have the buffering (protective?) shield of a room full of people surrounding them. However, that did not seem to be the case.

Nope. Here they were. Alone.

She stood, frozen, with her back to him, staring down at her pink and black suitcase, wishing with all her might that she could just climb into the trunk and hide. Logically she knew that plan was probably not the most mature response to this encounter—and also, shall we say, not the most subtle. Still, it was tempting. Because as the realization sank in that the extra time and buffer-people she so desperately needed to get through this encounter with Jason were not flipping forthcoming, Katie felt as though the air was literally being sucked from her lungs.

Great. Panic attack number two. Here we go. And right in front of Jason. The hiding-in-the-trunk move was sounding better by the second.

*

Jason Andrew Sloan had chestnut brown hair, whiskey-colored, soulful brown eyes, and a smile that could, as her Aunt Wendy always said, “melt butter in a freezer.” He was also the first person Katie had met in her kindergarten class at Harper’s Crossing Elementary.

23 Years Ago

It was the first day of Kindergarten and Katie was paired up with a boy as a table buddy.

A BOY! Could this day get any worse? The class’s first official assignment as kindergartners was to write their names on the white paper sitting on the desk in front of them and then tape it to the back of their seats.

Katie wrote her name in all capital letters and rainbow colors and taped it on the back of her seat, just as she had been instructed to do. She was proud of finishing her assignment in time to go out for recess. She noticed her table buddy (The Boy!) had not.

After the first recess, when the kids came back into the classroom, she saw a few of them standing around her chair and laughing. As she walked up behind them to sit in her seat, she saw that the ‘ie’ at the end of ‘Katie’ on the nameplate she had been so proud of had been crossed out, and the word ‘Kit’ had been written in front of the ‘Kat’ that remained of her original creation.

She was so embarrassed. Why would anybody ruin her name paper? She looked over to see her table buddy Jason (The Boy!) smiling a toothless grin from ear to ear as he patted her chair “I think this is your seat, Kit Kat,” he said.

All the kids started laughing and Katie just slumped down in her chair, furious at her table buddy aka The Boy aka Jason Sloan.

Jason never admitted to being the one who had defaced her beautiful rainbow-colored name paper but she knew deep down in her heart he was the culprit. And she would never forget it, just like no one ever forgot the nickname. From that day on, Katie Lawson was Kit Kat.

Well, to all the kids in Harper’s Crossing Elementary anyway.

Present Day

His deep voice interrupted her thoughts now.

“Wow, all this time and you know it’s me without even having to turn around. I guess that means I still got it,” he said with his trademark cocky tone. A tone that had always amused Katie, not that she would ever let him know that. His ego was big enough.


Jason had had girls swooning over him for as long as she had known him. In fact, Katie maintained to this day that their sixth grade math teacher, Mrs. Carson, had had a crush on him. Whenever Jason would turn on the charm, usually to get out of detention for not completing his homework or being tardy, Mrs. Carson would just smile as her cheeks turned a light shade of red and say, “Oh, Jason, if you were just ten years older…”

Mrs. Carson never finished the sentence but Katie always knew what she meant, and Jason never got detention—at least in that class.

It’s not like his charm only worked on older women either. Jason had always had girls eating out of his hand and he knew it. There wasn’t a single girl in Harper’s Crossing who wouldn’t do just about anything to get Jason’s attention.

Well, there was one girl. Katie.

“Oh yeah, you still got it, Mr. Sloan,” Katie said, forcing herself to speak, trying to buy herself even a few more seconds before she would have to face him. “If by ‘it’ you mean the maturity of a five-year-old, then yes, you definitely still have it.”

Her words sounded strained between her shallow breaths. Not only was she having trouble keeping the oxygen from escaping her lungs, it also seemed as though all of the oxygen had somehow disappeared around her. Deliberately and methodically, she slowly breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying desperately to remain as calm as possible.

She reminded herself firmly that she had to be calm in hopes of staving off panic attack #2. She absolutely couldn’t think about how humiliating it would be to fall to pieces in front of Jason or fear would take over—her heart would start to race, her breathing would quicken, and it would all be downhill from there. Reaching up with heavy arms, Katie shut the trunk of the car so that she could lean on it for strength.

“Come on Kit Kat, you know you always loved that nickname,” Katie heard Jason say playfully, but his voice sounded as if it were coming from a long distance, across a great expanse. She felt his hand grasp her arm, and then she felt her body being turned in his direction.

As Jason’s fingers wrapped around her arm, they caused tingling sensations in places located much lower south and not nearly as innocent as the place where he was touching her. Hmm, that wasn’t a very good sign. It also wasn’t doing a whole heck of a lot to help her in the campaign to keep her heart rate under control and slow her breathing. Nope. Not one little bit.

As she turned, her eyes alighted on a broad chest that—oh my, yes—filled out his white t-shirt quite well. Her mouth instantly filled with saliva like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Hmmm, she thought, so this is what they mean when they say something looks ‘mouth-watering.’ She totally got it now! In an effort to avoid drooling, she swallowed, but to her own ears it sounded like a shockingly loud gulp.

Slowly, Katie moved her eyes up the length of the solid, strong, statue-like figure standing mere inches away from her. She paused momentarily to admire—against her will—the smooth olive skin at the base of Jason’s neck. She couldn’t help herself. It just so nicely contrasted with the stark white color of the t-shirt’s v-neck it was peeking out of.

Unconsciously, she licked her lips and saw the pulse on Jason’s neck jump. Her eyes darted up to meet his golden brown ones, which caused the aforementioned tingling places to start pulsing.

Katie felt her heart beating so hard she thought it might beat right out of her chest. And the mantra began.

You can breathe. Just breathe. Breathe in and out slowly. You can breathe.

*

As Jason stood in front of Katie, who was wearing a simple grey tank top and blue jeans, he was momentarily paralyzed with shock at the effect she had on him.

Suddenly he was back in Mrs. Garcia’s kindergarten classroom.

23 Years Ago

It was the first day of kindergarten FINALLY. Best. Day. Ever.

Putting his backpack in his cubby, he felt a brush of something that tickled his arm. When he swatted his arm, he felt the softest, silkiest thing he had ever touched.

When he looked up to see what it was, he couldn’t believe his eyes. There she stood, a real-life angel! Rays of sunlight from the window streamed through her long blond hair, and she was looking down at him with the biggest blue eyes Jason had ever seen in his life.

The earth stopped spinning and everything stood still. Nothing existed except this amazing creature. She slowly reached her hand to her neck and flipped her long blond hair behind her back as she placed her backpack in her cubby.

Jason could not speak. This was a new phenomenon for Jason, as the spoken word had always been one of his greatest gifts.

Since the time Jason was able to put two words together, he always knew just the right thing to say to either get out of trouble, get what he wanted, or just put a smile on the faces of the women in his life. Even before he was old enough to speak, he had exuded a natural-born mojo. The first word ever used to describe Jason in the nursery was charming. All of the nurses in the infant care ward would fight over who could hold him. Even as a newborn, he had a twinkle in his eye and a little smirk on his lips that the opposite sex just couldn’t get enough of. But in this moment, five-year-old Jason could not even remember how to say, ‘Hi.’

But luck was on his side, as it usually was. YES! He was assigned to the same table as this heavenly being. Jason could barely sit still next to her. He fidgeted and couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.

She, on the other hand, sat totally composed next to him, completely ignoring him, working on their first assignment, the name paper.

Jason had tried all morning to get her attention somehow, but to no avail. When she finished her paper, she looked so proud of it as she taped it to the back of her seat.

When she sat down again beside him, he had the sudden urge to pinch her just to see what she would do. Anything to get her attention! He was desperate to have her acknowledge him!

But reason prevailed, and he realized that pinching her wouldn’t be the best course of action. He had to keep thinking. Before another plan could take shape, however, she was out the door to recess.

Finally, genius struck! As he sat in his chair while all the other kids were at recess, he decided he would ‘redecorate’ her name paper to give her a nickname. That would be a way he could start to talk to her—an ice breaker of sorts. He knew that would get her attention. And it would be special! If he gave her a special name paper decoration, she would know for SURE how special he thought she was!

He looked at her name page, which so beautifully read ‘Katie,’ and the first thing that came to Jason’s mind was Kit Kat—the best candy bar in the whole world! He quickly changed her paper to read just that.

He had not expected any of the other kids to notice it when they came in from recess—or to think it was funny. It was supposed to be a special, inside secret between him and his blond angel.

In fact, to be honest, he had completely forgotten that any other kids were even in their class. No one existed in the room for him but Katie.

But after the look on Katie’s face when the other kids were all gathered around her desk in giggles, Jason knew he had made a huge mistake.

Okay, he had to fix this and quick. The only thing he knew to do was try to relieve some of the tension by stating the obvious. It was part of his charm. Jason was always being accused of saying what everyone was thinking. Instinct kicked in and he simply said, “I think this is your seat, Kit Kat.”

He was shocked to see a look of anger and embarrassment that suddenly appeared on Katie’s face. He didn’t know how things had gone so terribly wrong or why his charm and wit had not gotten the smile that always appeared on the opposite sex’s face whenever he spoke. But the one thing he did know was that he had never met anyone else who made him feel the way this girl sitting next to him made him feel.

And he hadn’t known it at the time, but he never would.

Present Day

The same feeling that paralyzed him upon seeing her for the first time in kindergarten class washed over Jason now as he stood in front of Katie. His world stopped spinning and she was the only thing that existed.

Katie had grown into the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. Standing five foot three, with a petite figure that had curves in all the right places, she still had incredible long blond hair and the most intoxicating blue eyes in existence.

And when he looked at her, he still saw his angel.





Excerpt: Sweet Reunion   



As Amanda moved the bite-size chicken pieces and chopped vegetables around the sauté pan in front of her, her head swam with conflicted emotions. Was it always going to be this way? If Justin did decide to stay and run the adventure resort with her, was her consciousness going to forever exist in such a state of unbalance?

Karina, Sam, and Lauren had gone to visit Karina’s grandmother, albeit reluctantly. They hadn’t wanted to leave Amanda alone, but Amanda had insisted, coming just short of physically shoving them out the door.

“I need to get my head on straight!” she had told them, “The only way I am going to accomplish that is with some serious soul searching and contemplation. And, barring that, a little ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with myself. Trust me! An hour alone will do me a world of good. I’ll make dinner, and be a whole new woman by the time you get back.”


So, the rest of the Fabulous Four had departed amidst skeptical expressions and admonitions to call if she needed anything.

And now Amanda was by herself, cooking and contemplating, and not a whole lot seemed to be moving forward. She had started out feeling confused and vulnerable, and that was squarely where she still found herself. It didn’t help that she had had ZERO hours of sleep the night before! Maybe it was time to try the ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.

She heard a knock at the back door which led into the kitchen, and turned around to see the very source of her confusion and angst standing there, his handsome face framed in the glass pane of the exterior door like a finely wrought portrait.

A tremor ran through her from head to toe, but she quickly reminded herself that she could not show him her weaknesses. She again thought of her sleepless night, and noticed how well-rested he looked. She couldn’t let him see she was coming apart at the seams!

No, she was only going to show him a completely strong and together facade. She quickly pasted a smile on her face, striving for as natural an expression as possible, but truthfully not even caring if it came off as slightly artificial – as long as her face didn’t betray the roiling emotions just below the surface, it could look as plastic as a mannequin’s for all she cared.

She crossed to the back door, opened it, and stood aside, inviting him in.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked as he entered.

“Not at all,” she assured him. “The girls went down to see Karina’s grandmother, and I’m just cooking some dinner.”

“How is Renata doing?” Justin inquired.

“Oh, you know Renata. As indefatigable as ever. I think she’ll outlive us all, and be working on twelve different community projects as she does it.”

“She’s a rock,” Justin agreed, “Karina’s lucky to have her.”

“True. All of Hope Falls is lucky to have her, when you think about it. So, what were you up to today?”

“Oh, just cleaning out the bunkhouse and getting it habitable. It brought back a lot of memories of living there.”

“I bet.” Amanda said, and sitting between them, making the air electric, was the unspoken memory of the last time they had been in the bunkhouse together. The last time they had seen each other at all.

She quickly turned back to the stove and focused her attention on the chicken sizzling in the pan.

Justin moved behind Amanda, close. So close that she could feel his ragged breath on her neck and in her hair. The nearness of him paralyzed her. Her vision swam and her body felt on fire, and he wasn’t even touching her.

“Amanda…” he said, his voice husky with emotion, with regret. With desire? Was that just wishful thinking on her part?

“Amanda…” he started again, and then trailed off again.

Slowly, so slowly that she almost couldn’t tell if she was really doing it or if it were only her imagination, she turned her face up to his. She could barely breathe. Their mouths were less than an inch apart, and their eyes were locked on each other. She felt as if she would melt on the spot, or possibly explode.

“Yes?” she whispered. With the one small scrap of awareness of her surroundings that she had left, she realized that her breathing had grown ragged as well, as if in answer to Justin’s.

“I…” he started, then took a deep breath and tried to begin again, “I just…”

And then, displaying a sense of timing so horrendous that it belied the flawless sense of rhythm she possessed which was one of the factors which made her a brilliant musician, Karina called from the front door, “Yoo hoo! We’re home.”

Amanda drew in her breath sharply as Justin retreated across the kitchen, but couldn’t manage to access her vocal chords to summon a response. She heard Karina’s voice calling as she came down the hall, “Did you hear me? Lucy, I’m home!” she hollered in her best Desi Arnaz impersonation.

Amanda looked up as Karina entered the kitchen and shook her head to clear it, but realized that the truth of what had just happened must have been written all over her face when she saw a sly smile spread across Karina’s face. “Lucy, you’ve got some ’splaining to do,” she grinned, drawing out the impression.

“What?” Amanda asked, doing her best to maintain an innocent expression as Lauren and Samantha entered the kitchen behind Karina.

As soon as Lauren laid eyes on Amanda’s face, she rushed over and took the wooden spoon out of her hand, taking over the job of sautéing the chicken and veggies. “Oh my goodness, Amanda! I knew we shouldn’t have left you to cook dinner for all of us right now. Seriously, go grab a water, sit down and relax. Your entire face is flushed, you’re getting overheated.”

Karina continued to grin her evil little grin, and added an eyebrow waggle for emphasis. “Oh, yes, it is quite hot in here, isn’t it? Very, very hot. On a completely unrelated note, by the way, how are you today, Justin?”