Love Inspired March 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Wife for Jacob\The Forest Ranger's Rescue\Alaskan Homecoming (40 page)

Tears stung the backs of her eyes again. Why was this so hard to say? She had every right to be upset. But sitting across from her mother, looking at her face—at the new lines around her eyes and the worry in her gaze—her indignation began to slip away.

She should have visited more. She hadn't even come home for Christmas. Not that she ever would have been able to take leave of the ballet company during the holidays. The weeks that stretched from the end of October to New Year's Day made up
Nutcracker
season. Everyone knew as much.

“I wish you would have told me that Liam was the youth pastor,” she finally said.

Her mom sighed. “I'm sorry. I just thought...”

“You thought you could have him spy on me. To make sure I'm not taking any pills. Right?” Her throat burned. It hurt to say the words aloud, but someone had to.

“Posy.” The lines around her mother's face deepened.

“Mom, admit it. Please.”

Her mom took a deep breath, and she seemed to wilt a little on the exhalation. “That's part of it, yes. But try to understand. Other than the handful of times we've been to California to watch you dance, your father and I haven't seen you in seven years.”

“Six,” Posy began to whisper, but the word died on her tongue.

“After what happened last time, we wanted you here. At home, where you belong.”

Is this where I belong, God?

She didn't bother waiting for an answer.

This was her home, but no, it wasn't where she belonged. Not really. She was just here because she was hurt. She belonged onstage. Her foot belonged in a ballet shoe, not the ugly plaster where it currently resided.

“It's not like the last time, Mom. I promise.”

Her mother nodded. She didn't believe her. She might want to, but she didn't. That much was obvious. And Posy wasn't altogether sure she blamed her.

God, why is this all so hard?

Posy glanced up at the ceiling. But instead of finding God, all she could imagine were the snow-laden boughs of the giant blue evergreen spread over the town like angels' wings.

Chapter Five

T
he next afternoon at the church, Posy scrolled through the playlists on her iPod, checking one last time to make sure she had the music she needed for barre work. Classical, of course.

For as long as she could remember, her barre exercises had been performed to classical piano. Sharp, staccato notes, perfect for the seemingly endless repetition of pliés, elevés, tendus and battements.

When she'd been a little girl in Madame Sylvie's ballet school, the one and only in Aurora, the music had drifted from an ancient turntable—blue, the kind that could be closed like a suitcase. On it spun scratchy vinyl record albums with cardboard covers on the verge of deterioration that had been used by generations of dancers.

Posy turned the iPod over in her hand, wondering what had become of that turntable and those albums. Madame Sylvie had suffered a sudden heart attack only three months after Posy had moved to San Francisco. In a single, tragic episode, both the ballet teacher and the school itself ceased to exist.

Posy had missed the funeral. She'd been dancing in her first real performance with the corps.
Swan Lake
, notorious for being the toughest ballet for corps dancers. It was the marathon of ballets. So while the woman who'd first taught her how to point her feet had been laid to rest, Posy had been fluttering across the stage in white feathers for three solid hours. By the end of the matinee that Saturday, her feet had hurt nearly as much as her heart.

Of all the things she'd missed in Aurora, Madame Sylvie's funeral was the one Posy had been the most conflicted about. Ultimately, she'd stayed in California because it was what her teacher would have wanted. Dancing that afternoon was the best way to honor Madame Sylvie's memory.

Posy had stitched a tiny black satin ribbon on the inside of her right pointe shoe in remembrance. And she'd danced until she no longer felt like crying.

A bittersweet smile came to Posy's lips as she clicked the iPod in place in the docking station. She hadn't thought about Madame Sylvie in a long time. Years maybe. This town was so full of memories, she was beginning to wonder if her heart had room for all of them.

And of course, just as she was feeling particularly wistful, the biggest memory of them all walked into the room.

“How's it going in here? Do you need any help?” Liam stood with his hands on his hips and looked around at the metal folding chairs lined up in neat rows up and down the length of the fellowship hall. “What are all the chairs for? I thought the girls were going to be dancing.”

“The chairs are makeshift barres, for balance.” Posy would have loved some full-length mirrors, like every actual ballet school had. But this wasn't a ballet school. It was a church. And anyway, this situation was temporary.

“Oh,” Liam said, crossing his arms and scowling, clearly disappointed. As if she'd given up on teaching the girls ballet before they'd even started. “Well, do you need anything else?”

He glanced at the iPod in her hand, at the dance bag overflowing with tattered pointe shoes sitting at her feet and then at the chairs again. Was it Posy's imagination, or was he looking everywhere but at her injured foot?

It was the big, plaster-clad elephant in the room. She should have been relieved not to have to talk about it. But instead it irritated her that he was so painstakingly avoiding the topic. Then the fact that it irritated her just irritated her further.

“I think I've got things under control.” She turned away from him and clicked the iPod in place on the player.

Prokofiev's
Peter and the Wolf
came blaring from the small speakers.

“Is this the music you're planning on using?” Liam's scowl morphed into a sardonic grin. Sarcasm aside, it was nice to see a smile on his face for a change. She hadn't seen him smile since she'd set foot in Alaska again.

She was surprised to realize that smile still brought a flutter to her belly.

It's nerves. That's all. Just nerves.

“Yes. Why? Is that a problem?”
Peter and the Wolf
had always been one of Posy's favorites. It was whimsical, with instruments representing each of the characters in the story. Oboe for the duck, clarinet for the cat, bassoon for the grandfather, the string instruments for Peter and the French horn for the wolf.

She'd loved it when she was a little girl. Madame Sylvie had played it in class only on rare special occasions. Posy figured this being the very first class definitely qualified.

“It's an odd choice.” Liam let out a little laugh. “Don't you think?”

Posy's cheeks flushed. Was this what working with Liam was going to be like? Was he going to micromanage her music choices?

Peter and the Wolf
was perfect. Liam was crazy if he thought otherwise. What did he know about ballet anyway? This was the man who intentionally went out of his way to
not
know anything about dance. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Don't you think it's a little young? I mean, the girls...”

A deafening crash interrupted him before he could finish. The sound of metal on metal...on metal on metal on metal. And so on. The shock of it caused Posy to jump, and a lightning bolt of pain shot up her leg when she landed on her injured foot.

What in the world was going on? All the metal folding chairs she'd spent so much time arranging—dragging them out of the storage closet and lining them up all on her own so she wouldn't need to rely on Liam—were tumbling over, one against the other. It was like watching a falling line of dominoes.

“Great. Just great,” Liam muttered, shaking his head.

Posy followed his gaze until she found the source of the catastrophe. The beast. She still couldn't quite wrap her mind around the fact that it was a dog.

She aimed a sideways glance at Liam. “I thought you said he wasn't unruly.”

“I have it under control.” His tone was anything but convincing.

She rolled her eyes. “I see that.”

“Sorry. I'll fix it.” He headed toward the row of overturned chairs and the dog, who'd dropped to the floor to writhe around on his back. Posy could have sworn she felt the ground shake beneath her feet. A mini, canine-triggered earthquake.

“Don't worry about it.” She grabbed her crutches and hobbled her way past him as quickly as she could. She was actually growing pretty adept at using them, a fact that both thrilled and depressed her.

“Don't be silly. I can get them upright in no time.” As if to demonstrate, he picked up a chair with one hand, and with a flick of his masculine wrist, it was back in its proper place.

“I'd rather do it myself.” She swung her crutches in the direction of the next chair and began struggling with it while he stood there seething.

“Posy. Stop.”

She jammed the chair on the floor. “Liam, you don't have to do this.”

“Do what?” He crossed his arms and blocked her path to the next chair, forcing her to actually look at him.

She blinked. Good grief, he was handsome. She still couldn't wrap her head around it. Maybe she'd eventually get used to looking at those cool blue eyes that somehow seemed even bluer than they'd been six years ago. And he'd definitely grown taller. He had to look down to meet her gaze, just as he'd always had to do at the pond. Only he wasn't wearing ice skates now. He was flat-footed in dark brown hiking boots, arms crossed over his impressive chest.

Posy swallowed. When she thought about him, she still saw the boy she knew in high school, not this grown man whose intensity somehow made her heart skip a beat.

Lucky for her, that intensity also frustrated her to no end. “I know what you're doing, and it needs to stop.”

“I'm setting up chairs in the fellowship hall. I work here, remember? It's my job. Didn't we cover this yesterday?”

“That's not what I'm talking about. Look, we both know what's going on here.” She lifted her chin. Goodness, this situation was humbling. “You're babysitting me. And contrary to popular belief, I don't need a babysitter.”

“You think I'm babysitting you?” He laughed. A little too loudly for Posy's liking.

“Yes. This—” she waved a hand back and forth between them “—is no coincidence. She told me about this job so you could keep an eye on me and make sure I don't...don't...”

Her mouth grew dry, and she couldn't quite force the words out.

Say it. Just say it.

My mother wants you to make sure I don't take any pills.

She cleared her throat. “You're watching me so I don't do anything stupid.”

Way to be direct, Posy.
She deflated a little. How could this still be so difficult to discuss after so long? Maybe because they'd never actually discussed it back then. Not really.

Liam stared at her through narrowed eyes. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Is that what you're worried about?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

She'd suspected that was the case once she'd realized Liam was the youth pastor. And after she'd downed her fourth cup of coffee at the Northern Lights Inn the day before and finally headed home, the look on her mother's face had confirmed it.

“Well, you can rest easy, darling.”
Darling.
Liam had called her that back when things had been perfect. Of course, back then the word hadn't dripped with obvious sarcasm as it did now.

“Are you denying that my mother expects you to keep an eye on me? Because I know that's the case. We talked about it last night.”

“No, I'm not denying that at all. She point-blank asked me to look after you.” His expression went distant. Cold. As cold as an Alaskan winter. “I turned her down flat. I'm not your keeper, Posy. Not anymore.”

I'm not your keeper, Posy. Not anymore.

The words shouldn't have hurt, yet somehow they did.

“Good.” She forced herself to smile. “Then we're in perfect agreement.”

“Good,” Liam echoed and went back to work straightening all of the chairs with exaggerated calmness.

As he did so, Posy tried her best to appear busy readying herself for class. But she felt like jumping out of her skin. She couldn't stand the care with which he resituated the chairs, setting each one down with barely a whisper of sound. The more composed he appeared, the more she felt as though she were coming undone. She wished he'd scream, yell, throw things. Anything to show that he was just as unnerved about this whole situation as she was.

She scrolled through her iPod, the songs blurring together as her mind went to a different place. A place she really didn't want to go, especially now as she was preparing to teach her first ballet class. But try as she might, she couldn't keep herself from imagining the conversation that had apparently taken place between Liam and her mother—her mother wringing anxious hands, that desperate look on her face that Posy could barely bring herself to look at.

And Liam.

Liam telling her parents he didn't want anything to do with her. This new Liam she didn't recognize. This Liam who wasn't really Liam.

The entire scenario should have made her angry. She was an adult now. She'd been enticed to return to Alaska under false pretenses, and her career was hanging in the balance all because she'd landed wrong on a simple arabesque that she'd done thousands of times before without incident. Her parents were trying to get her high school boyfriend to spy on her. She had every reason to be angry.

But she couldn't seem to muster much indignation. Because underneath all the agitation and embarrassment was the knowledge that Liam had become someone she no longer recognized because of her.

It had been raining that night. At first Posy had blamed the rain for what had happened. After she'd walked four blocks to the diner and called Liam for help, she'd been soaked to the bone. The cook had stood staring at her, frowning, as she'd clutched the pay phone, her shoes filling with the water dripping from her hair and her sodden clothes.

In the days, weeks and months that followed, she'd wondered if things would have turned out differently if she'd never called him that night. If she'd dialed her parents instead. It wasn't as if she'd have been able to hide the damage to her car. Or the tree, one of the oldest in Aurora. A blue spruce.

It had stood at the center of town, between the Northern Lights Inn and the skating pond. It still did. At least Posy assumed it was still there. When she'd met Anya and Zoey for coffee the day before, she'd intentionally taken a route that would allow her to avoid the moody blue tree. And the skating pond. And all the tender memories that swirled like fog over the ice.

Her parents would have found out eventually. Everyone had.

But in her panic, she'd called Liam. She hadn't been thinking about the tree when she'd made that fateful call. The fear pumping through her veins had prevented her from thinking about much of anything other than the fact that talking to her parents would be easier with Liam at her side, holding her hand. If she could just talk to him, see him, touch him, everything would be all right.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

* * *

“Posy, what is it? What's happened?” He knew something was wrong. Posy could hear the worry, the fear in his voice.

She tried her best to enunciate, to prevent her words from slurring. But her teeth were chattering so hard that trying to control what came out of her mouth was a fruitless endeavor.

“There's been an accident,” she heard herself say.

It still didn't feel real. She kept thinking that maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe morning would come, and she would open her eyes and find clear diamond skies. No rain. No pain. And no weeping sapphire tree.

“An accident. Are you okay?” He sounded calmer than she'd expected. As if he'd been waiting for such a call. Expecting it. As though he knew something like this was going to happen all along.