A Mother's Love (17 page)

 

J
ACE HEFTED ANOTHER
heavy box onto the dolly, more loose and relaxed than he had been in six weeks. He didn't know if it was the work or the company.

Good, hard, physical labor was an effective antidote to the restlessness that had been churning through him for far too long. But he also found something soothing about Christa Sullivan.

He couldn't really explain why, he just knew she had this
air of quiet strength about her, of calm competence. It eased something wild and restless and aching inside him.

Most women he knew wouldn't be thrilled at having to spend a sweaty hour or two unloading a delivery truck. He had seen that instant of frustrated discouragement when the delivery driver showed up.

But she didn't complain, just knuckled down and got the job done with a surprisingly upbeat attitude. He found it astonishing, especially given what he knew she had to deal with at home.

It humbled him and made him realize just what a self-absorbed, self-pitying jerk he had become since the hotel fire.

“I understand Sully's has been in your family for a few years.”

She lifted a box of canned peaches onto a dolly of her own. “My great-grandfather opened it just before World War I, mostly as a general store and gas station for those early automobiles. We've been running it ever since.”

“Not you, though. Hank tells me you haven't been here long, that you left a job in some fancy clothing boutique in Texas a year or so ago to come home and give a hand after your dad died.”

She gave him a long, measuring look over the top of a stack of boxes. “Hank is just bubbling over with information, isn't he?”

“I asked him about you,” he confessed.

“Why?” Genuine surprise flitted across her features.

He shrugged. “Something about you doesn't quite fit Sage Flats. Your clothes, your hair. I can't put my finger on it.”

“I was raised here and lived just a few blocks away from
Sully's until just a few weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday. And now here I am, back.”

“Where were you in between?”

She turned away. “You mean Hank didn't fill your ears with that long, boring story, too?”

“He was a bit vague on details. He just said you took off as soon as you could.”

She rolled the hand truck down the ramp. “I can't imagine why you would possibly be interested.”

He couldn't have explained it to her, but he found he was very much interested in her answer. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her since he watched her drive away from the therapy center the afternoon before.

For the first time in weeks his dreams hadn't been haunted by the cries of those he couldn't help. Instead they had featured this woman he found intensely fascinating.

He had taken one of his own horses for a long, bracing trail ride into the mountains after he left the therapy center—the first time he had done that in weeks. As he rode, his mind had drifted over the encounter with Christa and Hope, and he had marveled all over again at the courage and tenacity in both of them.

He didn't have a whole lot of experience when it came to mothers. His own had been a real piece of work, too drugged up to remember she even had a kid most of the time. She'd dragged him from one piece-of-crap crack house to another until his grandmother Junemarie finally tracked him down when he was eight and rescued him.

But if he could have chosen a mother, he would have wanted someone like Christa, with that same unwavering determination in her eyes to do what was best for her child.

How long had it been since a woman had genuinely in
trigued him? Most of them were painfully transparent, usually buckle bunnies who were only interested in him because once upon a time he had been moderately good in the rodeo arena.

But he had the definite impression his rodeo days would actually prove an obstacle to Christa Sullivan.

“Why wouldn't I find your life interesting?” he asked.

“I've seen the tabloids, Mr. McCandless. You're a jet-setting celebrity on a first-name basis with other jet-setting celebrities. You date movie stars and appear in commercials for macho pickup trucks and sexy blue jeans. I, on the other hand, am a thirty-something single mother who spends my days taking my daughter to doctor appointments and stocking cans of peas and corn and cream-of-chicken soup on the dusty shelves of a tiny grocery store in some backward town in Utah no one has ever heard of. I'm sure you can understand my skepticism that any portion of my scintillating life might be of interest to a man like you.”

He laughed out loud at her dry tone, even as some part of him had to wince at her indictment of his life—mostly because it was dead-on. Since his retirement, his life had seemed pretty damn meaningless, something that became starkly obvious while he was escaping for his life through the flaming, hellish hallways of a burning hotel.

He pushed the images aside, vastly preferring to focus on the woman in front of him.

“Believe me, you underestimate yourself, Ms. Sullivan.”

She leaned against a stack of boxes, looking dusty and bedraggled and immensely appealing.

“Okay. Fine,” she said after a long moment. “You want to know my life story? Here it is. I ran off a few weeks before
high school graduation with a rodeo cowboy nearly ten years my senior.”

She sighed, already looking as if she regretted saying anything. “We had an exciting, passionate love affair for all of about four months before I found out I was pregnant. He, of course, wanted nothing to do with a ready-made family, so we parted ways in Texas. I was too ashamed to come home and face my parents' disappointment. Though I reconnected with them after Hope was born, I stayed away from Sage Flats until my father died, when my mother begged me to come home and help her with the store.”

She climbed up into the truck for another stack of boxes. “You'll have to forgive me if I don't have the fondest spot in my heart for rodeo cowboys with egos bigger than their horses.”

He couldn't help himself, he followed her into the truck. “That's all you think of me? Some washed-up rodeo cowboy with a big ego?”

She focused on the sole remaining stack of boxes. “I don't think of you at all other than as a man who helped my daughter with equine therapy as a favor to Hank Stevens.”

Something in the sudden evasiveness of her features made him think her answer wasn't completely truthful. He moved closer, until they were only a few feet apart, until he could smell the sweet scent of strawberries that surrounded her.

Her eyes widened slightly, but she didn't back away.

“There's more to me than a washed-up rodeo cowboy or a jet-setting celebrity,” he said quietly. “Just as I think you're more than only a single mother coping with an unimaginable tragedy.”

S
HE GAZED AT HIM OUT
of those huge green eyes, and their less-than-romantic surroundings seemed to fade. He completely forgot they were standing in the back of a hot, dusty tractor-trailer, forgot the boxes of canned goods on the loading dock, forgot everything but the soft, entirely appealing woman in front of him.

Without conscious thought, he took a step forward, his heart leaping in his chest like a bronco bursting through the gate, and he saw color climb her cheekbones, saw her lean toward him slightly, that sweetly upturned mouth parted….

“You folks about done? I'd like to get a move on.”

Christa whirled around at the trucker's impatient drawl, then she jerked away from Jace as if he had dumped a whole hand truck full of boxes on her toes.

“Y-yes. We're done. This is the last load. I…I'm sorry it took us so long. The forklift should be fixed next time.”

Jace saw her hands tremble a little as she pushed the last load off the truck before he could make his brain work enough to insist on taking it from her. She didn't so much as look at him while she signed for the delivery and saw the driver on his way.

When the truck pulled out of the loading area, she finally turned to Jace, though she focused somewhere over his right
shoulder. “Thank you for your help. My stocker can organize all this in the morning.”

“You're welcome. I'm glad I was here to help.”

She hesitated for a moment, then sighed and finally met his gaze. “As for the other, for what almost happened back there…I won't deny some foolish part of me is…flattered. But I have to be blunt with you. I don't have the time or the energy for a flirtation right now, if that's what you're after.”

“And if it's not?”

More color flooded her cheeks, something else he found intriguing about her. He didn't remember the last time he'd met a woman who could still blush.

“Then I'm mortified for misreading the signs and I'll just look around for a convenient hole to disappear into while you go pay for your shopping cart full of junk food.”

He laughed and with deceptive casualness he reached a thumb out and brushed away a smudge of dirt on the plane of her cheekbone she must have picked up while they were unloading the boxes.

She trembled slightly but didn't jerk away. All too quickly the smudge was gone and he had no more excuse to touch her. He forced himself to drop his hand back to his side.

He was suddenly not at all convinced a harmless flirtation was what he had in mind when it came to Christa Sullivan.

The prospect should have sent him rushing right out of her little grocery store. Hadn't he spent the better part of his adult life trying to avoid anything deeper than that?

He knew he should have been panicking right about now. Instead he felt the same wild emotions he used to experience on the circuit as he waited in the chutes for the gates to swing wide—a jumbled mix of exhilaration, anticipation and uncertainty.

“You didn't misread any signs,” he finally said. “I'm attracted to you, Christa. More attracted than I've been to anyone in longer than I can remember.”

Something flickered in her eyes, something hot and intense, before she looked away from him. “Then what I said before still stands. I might…return that attraction. But I don't have time right now for a flirtation or a fling or anything. My life is in crisis. Hope takes every single bit of energy I have, and that's the way it has to be.”

Hope.

Damn it. How had he forgotten Hope so quickly?

Christa had responsibilities and pressures he couldn't even begin to imagine. As much as he might want to argue that she ought to at least give things a chance to see what might happen between them, he recognized the impossibility of that.

He had no business coming in and stirring things up for her. It was just one more selfish, irresponsible act in a long string of them.

Hank was absolutely right. If Jace had, indeed, been given a second chance at life after being trapped in that hotel fire that killed two dozen people—and should have killed him—maybe it was time he stopped feeling sorry for himself and started doing something worthwhile to prove Somebody hadn't made a mistake in saving his sorry hide.

And maybe he needed to start by not pursuing Christa Sullivan just because he wanted her, as though he was some kind of greedy kid in a toy store with a fistful of dollars.

“I have to get back to work,” she said abruptly. “Thanks again for your help. There's an employee restroom back there if you need to wash up. Michelle can ring you up out front.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Enjoy your mac and cheese.”

“I'll do that,” he answered, though what had seemed so enticing a few hours earlier now seemed like the rest of his life, without much redeeming value at all.

 

C
HRISTA DID HER
absolute best to focus on invoices when she returned to her office, but Jace McCandless proved more of a distraction than she wanted to admit.

The darn glass of her office and the panoramic view it allowed into the grocery store allowed her to watch him undetected as he returned to his cart.

She watched as he selected a gallon of milk, some bananas and a small quart of gourmet ice cream of a flavor she couldn't quite determine from her viewpoint.

The store had become more busy while she had been unloading the truck with Jace. She saw him stop and speak to a few customers—women, mostly, though even from here she could sense a restlessness in him and guessed he was anxious to leave Sully's.

Could she blame him?

She winced when she remembered the awkwardness of their last interaction. The most gorgeous man she'd ever seen in real life had almost kissed her, had told her he found her attractive, and she had jumped into full-blown panic.

She could have at least let herself have a little taste, just so she could remember in her old age that she had once kissed a man like Jace McCandless.

What was his story, anyway?

While they had been unloading that truck, he had talked and joked with her, but she hadn't missed the shadows he hadn't quite managed to hide. Those shadows were none of
her business.
He
was none of her business. The orbits of their respective lives had briefly bumped up against each other, but it was just a random fluke and certainly wouldn't happen again. She wouldn't let it happen.

Anyway, he'd purchased the Silver Spur ranch near Junemarie and Hank more than a year ago, and as far as she knew, this was the first time he had spent any significant amount of time there.

No doubt he would be leaving Sage Flats soon and probably wouldn't be back anytime in the near future.

She knew darn well that prospect shouldn't depress her so much.

 

T
HE NEXT TWO DAYS WERE
too hectic for Christa to give Jace McCandless much thought at all. Hope had appointments with her neurologist and her rehab specialist an hour away at the children's hospital in Salt Lake City.

Both doctors seemed heartened by her progress—and both urged Christa to continue with the equine therapy.

“I think it's a great idea,” the rehab physician said. “It can only help with her tone and with muscle memory. She loved to ride before the accident. Putting her back up on a horse has to help her body remember how it used to move, which can only help rewire those neural pathways.”

Even more beneficial to her than the stretching and physical movement, Dr. Kolford explained, was the emotional lift Hope received from being around the horses and reconnecting to what had been an important part of her life preaccident.

Christa knew all that. In her heart she had seen her daughter's improvement after even just one session and her excitement to try it again. That didn't do much to ease
her apprehension or her continuing worry about trying to afford it.

And now she had Jace McCandless to add into the mix. She could only hope he would follow his usual pattern and leave town soon so she wouldn't have to risk encountering him again at Hope's therapy sessions.

The next day, one of the three checkers at the store called in sick and the other two had commitments they couldn't escape, so Christa had to fill in at the cash register most of the day. Two days away from her regular responsibilities at the store left a serious backlog in her workload.

She tried to call home to let her mother know she was running late, but Ellen didn't answer. She left a message on the answering machine, then tried her mother's cell phone and again received no answer.

She set the phone receiver down, fighting down her instinctive unease. Ellen would call her if something was wrong.

They had probably just gone for a walk or something. Sunshine poured through the front window of Sully's, and it looked like a lovely spring day. Hope loved to be out basking in the fresh air.

Christa did, too, come to that. She had a sudden wild urge to take one of her father's two Arabians for a good, hard run after work to shake off the cobwebs—to feel the soft breeze against her skin and the leather reins in her hands and the strength and beauty beneath her.

How long had it been since she had indulged in a few selfish moments for herself? Between work and Hope, she had little time for any of her old pastimes.

Maybe she needed to make time. The rehab physician had taken her aside after Hope's appointment to ask how Christa
was doing. Dr. Kolford had urged her to take care of herself first or she would have no reserves left to care for her daughter.

It was good advice in the abstract. But the reality of five months had taught her there was always one more thing she needed to do for her child—one more exercise to get in before bedtime, one more prescription to track down, one more battle to fight with the insurance company.

She sighed and set her paperwork aside. Though she still had much to do, most of it could wait until the next day. Right now Christa needed to be home and get to all those
one-more
things.

When she neared her mother's home, she slowed her SUV at the unfamiliar shiny silver pickup in the driveway.

That wasn't so unusual to find a vehicle she didn't recognize at the house. Between the medical case workers and the therapists and tutors at school, Hope had a wide circle of caregivers and many of them made home visits.

Perhaps that was the reason Ellen hadn't answered either the home phone or her cell, because she'd been occupied with a visitor.

Christa opened the door, ready to smile and be polite, but inside the house only echoing silence greeted her.

“Mom? Hope?”

No one answered, and she walked from room to room on the main floor and found no sign of them. Since Ellen couldn't take Hope up the stairs, she didn't bother checking there.

This was odd. She could believe Ellen might have pushed Hope outside to enjoy an afternoon walk, but that certainly didn't explain the unfamiliar pickup truck.

Where could they be?
she worried. She knew her mother
would have called her if Hope had had a bad seizure or something. But what if Ellen wasn't able to use the phone?

She walked outside to look around and thought she just heard the murmur of voices on the wind. Odd. It sounded as if the voices were coming from the horse pasture where her father's beloved pair of Arabians resided.

What on earth would they be doing there? The path between the house and the horse pasture was uneven gravel, far too difficult terrain for Ellen to easily maneuver Hope's wheelchair.

But when she listened, she could distinctly hear voices. Drat her mother. She pushed herself too hard. Even if Hope had begged her grandmother to take her there—which she probably had—Ellen shouldn't have given in.

Christa followed the path, thinking how many times she had walked this same route when she was a girl. She had been just as horse-mad as Hope—which might explain why she'd run off with the first hunky cowboy to come her way.

The evening was warm for April and lovely with spring. Daffodils and tulips swayed in the breeze along the fence line, and the trees in her mother's small fruit orchard burst with color, heavy with lush blossoms.

This was home. In those rough early days on her own in Texas, she had dreamed of the sweetness of a Utah spring, of lilac bushes and cool mornings and their neighbors' new lambs leaping through the grass.

She remembered Jace McCandless telling her she didn't quite fit here and she knew in this moment she could have offered him a powerful counterargument. Sometimes she wondered if she had ever truly belonged anywhere else.

Following the sound of voices, she rounded the corner of the barn, then stopped abruptly, her instant astonishment quickly giving way to a slow bubble of anger.

She should have known a man like Jace McCandless wouldn't take no for an answer. She had asked him to leave her alone. So what was he doing there? He stood by the corral with Ellen and Hope, looking impossibly gorgeous as he supported Hope, who leaned against the fence railing and fed apples to the horses.

“Hi, Mom,” Hope chirped, sounding so much like her old self that Christa blinked and had to fight back tears.

“Hi,” she answered.

“Shiloh remembers me.”

“I'll bet she does.”

With some measure of defiance, she leaned in and kissed her daughter, doing her best to ignore Jace just inches away from the two of them. Darn him anyway for coming around, for making her so painfully aware of the emptiness of her life.

“How did you get down here with that bumpy pathway?”

“Jace.” Hope beamed at him.

Of course. Who else?

“We were taking a little walk earlier down the street when Jace happened to drive past,” Ellen offered with a smile that seemed just as smitten as her granddaughter's. “He was kind enough to stop and say hello. And before you know it we were inviting him home with us for pie and coffee. We've spent a lovely afternoon together.”