Small-Town Dreams (19 page)

Blessed is the man who listens to me, Watching daily at my gates, Waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoever finds me finds life, And obtains favor from the Lord.

—
Proverbs
8:34–35

To my critique group:

These books are books of my heart and as such are part of each of you, for each of you holds a special place in my heart. I would not have come so far were it not for the talents and counsel you have all so willingly shared over the years. Thanks for the laughter, the tears and the good times. May we have many more to share.

H
ope Taggert stared at her brother, wondering if during all those years Cole had been away he’d gone mad. “Why would I want to cut my hair?” she asked, thinking of the two-foot-long sable braid that lay heavily against her back. “I’ve always worn my hair like this.”

“That’s my point. It looked exactly like that when I left twelve years ago. You said you want Jeff to see you in a different light. That you don’t want him thinking of you as my pain-in-the-neck little sister, Laurel Glen’s trainer or—what was that you called yourself—the voice of his conscience?”

“Honestly, he has the worst taste in friends. Someone had to try to warn him,” Hope said, grousing. “You don’t know him the way I do anymore. We just had another argument about that crowd before he jetted off to California for this latest round of competitions.”

“So there’s tension between you. That’s good, believe it or not.” Cole’s grin reminded her of days gone by. “What you need to do is something drastically different physically. Wouldn’t waking him up be worth it?”

“I happen to like your sister’s hair exactly as it is,” Ross Taggert all but growled as he entered the sunny breakfast room.

Hope watched with dismay as the grin slid off Cole’s face. Somehow when her father’s penetrating voice announced his arrival, the bright and airy room became dark and stifling. And her dismay turned to anger when her father continued.

“Jeffrey Carrington isn’t worthy of her time, let alone cutting her hair. And I don’t want her encouraging him in that way. It’s bad enough that he’s around when he thinks of her as just a friend.”

Hope felt her hackles rise. She loved her father. She tried to honor him at all times, as the Lord commanded. But he no longer had a right to a say in her life. Before she could form an intelligent, adult response, though, Cole picked up the usual pattern of his relationship with their father.

“You just don’t want to share her,” Cole challenged.

“That isn’t it at all,” Ross snapped. “He isn’t worthy of her, and she’s safer if he sees her only as an occasional friend.”

“No one’s good enough for your princess, isn’t that it?” Cole sneered, sarcasm and irritation rife in his voice.

“She’s too naive to handle a man like Carrington.”

“Would you take a look at her? She isn’t your little girl anymore. There’s a beautiful woman hiding behind those jeans and chambray shirts. And she could do a lot worse than attracting Jeff Carrington’s attention.”

Ross’s eyes turned frosty. “Your recommendation isn’t a plus considering your track record with women, or with the rest of life for that matter.”

“How would you know anything about me or my life? You haven’t cared about me for years. I have a degree in veterinary medicine, but you still can’t see past a few indiscretions in my adolescence. As far as you’re concerned, I’m still a disgrace to the family name,” Cole said.

“A few indiscretions? You were arrested for felony car theft. You didn’t choose to become a solid citizen around here. Until you prove yourself to the people who knew you when, your bad record will stand with this community.”

Typical, Hope thought, tuning out yet another spate of cross words. Within seconds of being in the same room, her father and brother were once again at each other’s throats. Be careful what you wish for, Aunt Meg always said.

Hope had wanted her brother to come back to Laurel Glen, and now, after years away, he had. But nothing had changed. Ross and Cole’s animosity toward each other hadn’t faded with time as she’d hoped. Since Cole arrived home two weeks ago, being in the company of father and son was like walking through a mine field. Any subject was likely to spark an explosion. It was tiring, to say the least.

She glanced at Aunt Meg, who had lost interest in her hot cereal. The older woman’s disgusted expression seemed to say, “Run for the hills. They’re at it again.”

Both her aunt and Hope had been through all this before. After Hope and Cole’s mother was killed in a tragic accident, Aunt Meg had come back to Laurel Glen to live with them. Hope had been thirteen and Cole fifteen at the time. After Marley Taggert’s death, the relationship between Ross and his son had disintegrated, and it had apparently continued along the same road in the last thirteen years since Cole left for military school at sixteen. Absence had not made their hearts grow fonder. Theirs no longer even looked like the love-hate relationship it had been back then.

Now it was all hate.

Hope stood. Cole had given her a lot to think about, and she wasn’t about to get dragged into yet another argument. “Dad, since you didn’t invite Jeff to the Valentine’s Day party, I did,” she interrupted, facing her father as he glared at Cole. “Jeff’s coming as my date.”

Ross’s gaze swung to her. He was clearly stunned at first. “What? You know how I feel about that wastrel.”

“He’s
my
date. Not yours. I’m twenty-seven years old. Stop trying to pick my friends.
And
my clothes.
And
my hair style.” Suddenly she didn’t want to think about Cole’s suggestion. She wanted to act on it and then some. “I’ve decided to buy a different dress than the one I wore last year. I’m going shopping.”

Ross Taggert suddenly looked confused. “I helped you pick out that nice blue dress. You always look so charming in it.”

“I’ve worn it, what…three or four years running? And that’s exactly why I want a new one.” She looked from her father to Cole then back. “Please don’t argue all day while I’m gone.” Then on impulse she turned to Cole and leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Thanks. I’ll think about the hair. Who knows, maybe a whole new me will come home.”

She rushed out, trying not to think about Cole’s chuckle and her father’s strident tone rebuking her brother as a troublemaker. Aunt Meg was in for yet another tension-filled day. Hope wanted nothing more at that moment than to knock their heads together!

It was six o’clock when Hope crept up the back stairs. She entered her room and stared at the woman—the stranger—who stared back at her from the mirror over her dresser. She looked…

Panic invaded her heart. How could she have let them cut off her hair? Even though she’d donated her hair to Locks of Love, an organization that supplied wigs to juvenile cancer patients, she’d still cut it more to spite her father than to attract Jeff.

She sighed, knowing that she’d fallen once again into the same trap Cole had lived in for years. It had been happening more and more since Ross had refused her the job as head trainer three years ago. She’d taken a job with a competitor because her father had told her that no daughter of his was going to continue hanging around the stables with rough-and-tumble handlers for the rest of her life. To her, he’d been saying she would never be able to cut it in the job.

So she had taken the job at Lithum Creek Farm and had brought the mediocre stables up to and past the standards Ross Taggert had set for his own place. It had taken a year and a half, but one fine day Ross Taggert had come to her hat in hand. He’d begged her to leave her job and to come home. The job was hers—at an increased rate over what her current job paid. She’d agreed, but it took six months to hire and train a replacement. She’d been back home a year, and while he hadn’t contradicted her in front of the men, they battled often about her decisions.

“Oh, excuse me, I was looking for Hope. Are you a friend of hers?” Hope heard Aunt Meg ask from behind.

Hope forced a smile and pivoted to face her aunt, who stood uncertainly in the doorway. “Hi, Aunt Meg.”

“Oh, goodness gracious! Hope, what have you—“Oh, look at you!”

Hope’s stomach rolled as she turned to do just that. She couldn’t meet her aunt’s eyes in the mirror. “You hate it. I look stupid, don’t I? Go ahead. Tell me.” Hope braced herself for the awful truth. “I saw an all-day spa and threw caution to the wind. I told them to create a whole new me. They took me at my word.” She gestured to her outfit and the piles of bags on the bed. “They, uh, have a boutique. I look like I’m playing dress-up. Jeff’s probably going to laugh at me.”

“Laugh? My dear, you are going to knock Jeffrey Carrington’s socks off! Cole certainly knew what he was talking about. You are simply gorgeous.”

Hope turned quickly to face Aunt Meg and was momentarily startled by the hair that swung across her cheek before it settled into its new bouncy do. She caught her reflection in the full-length cheval mirror across the room and walked to stand in front of it.

“He was right?” Hope examined each feature of the woman in the mirror. “Cole was right,” she repeated, but this time she was certain that the woman in the mirror was her—part of her that she’d always denied.

“You can never say your brother doesn’t know women,” Meg said sardonically.

“I was hiding, wasn’t I?”

“I’d say so. Do you know why you were?” Aunt Meg asked.

“I was about to ask myself the same thing. Dad. He was so convinced a woman couldn’t do my job, so I buried this part of me. I see why Cole thinks I’ve tried to take his place. I’ve been so busy trying to earn Dad’s respect that I haven’t been all I can be for me. I like looking like this. Dressing like this.”

“Well, now, that’s a start. It’s okay to be beautiful, Hope. The Lord gave you your beauty.”

“Mom was beautiful. Do you think Dad sees her in me? Does this hurt him?”

“I don’t know what’s in his heart. I wasn’t here much during his marriage to your mother. And he won’t talk about her even now, but I can tell you that you don’t look at all like your mother. You look like my mother. Ross may have forgotten you’re a woman, since you’ve always done work he considers traditionally male, but I don’t see how he won’t see it now. I’m sure he’ll be proud of the lovely woman who is his daughter. And now that you see how much fun it can be, maybe I can drag you away to go shopping once in a while.”

Hope grinned at her tall, willowy aunt. “I didn’t get the new dress, after all. How about one night this week?”

Meg grinned in answer. “So show me all you
did
buy.”

Hope got excited all over again. There was a bag full of all the things the makeup technician used to give Hope’s face the look of classic beauty. She’d bought bath salts and body cream and perfume all in the same scent. She couldn’t wait to soak in a nice tub instead of her usual hurried shower. According to the consultant who’d guided her through her startling remake, nothing makes you feel like a woman more than soaking in acres of bubbles and gallons of scented water. And Hope had put off womanhood long enough.

Two weeks later, Hope put the finishing touches on her makeup. Then she slipped on and buckled her new sandals. She stood in the three-inch heels then walked to the mirror and pirouetted in the middle of the floor, laughing and thinking of Jeff.

Tall and golden, Jeffrey Carrington had been the object of her love in one capacity or another from her earliest memories. Oh, sometimes when they were younger his teasing and pat-her-on-the-head mentality had pushed her to find ways to torture him as only a best friend’s little sister can. But it had always been because, deep in her heart, she adored him.

A knock on her door interrupted her thoughts. “Hope, the guests are nearly all here,” her father called through the door.

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll be right down,” she called back and checked herself one last time in the mirror. Unnecessarily, she smoothed the floor-length emerald silk sheath that she and Aunt Meg had found at a boutique, then she reached up to finger the emerald and diamond choker, a family heirloom left to Aunt Meg. She’d insisted Hope wear it the moment she’d seen Hope in the dress.

Please, Lord. Let him see me. Really see me this time.

Hope took one last deep breath and stepped into the hall. Strains of an old love song drifted up the gracefully curved stairs of the central foyer. She had just about reached the middle of the sweeping staircase when Cole opened the front door to admit a golden couple.

The man, tall and heart-stoppingly handsome, turned toward her, and Hope gasped. Jeff had arrived. With a date. Before she could retreat, Jeff glanced up at her and stared.

Hope sought out Cole with her gaze as tears stung the back of her throat. When she found him, she mentally begged him to rescue her from her frozen stance on the stairs. She blinked away telltale moisture collecting in her eyes. She refused to cry in front of Elizabeth Boyer and Jeffrey Carrington.

Unfortunately, Jeff was two steps ahead of Cole in reaching the bottom of the stairs.

“Hope?” he said, looking at her, his voice sounding a bit odd. “You—You’re—”

“I’m Hope. You got it in one, sport,” she said just a tad too sharply. She took the next step and then the next till she stood gazing into his darkened gray eyes. She forced a smile, determined to brazen her way through this. “You remember me, Carrington. Bane of your existence. Oft times voice of your unused conscience. Pick your chin up off the floor. You’re staring.”

“And drooling,” Cole growled and stepped to her side. “Come dance with me, sister mine, before everyone tries to steal you away.”

Cole directed her toward the band and the nearly empty dance floor. A few years earlier the caterer had come up with an ingenious way to temporarily cover and heat the stone terraces. The candle-and moonlit dance floor was now a Valentine’s Day tradition in the area. On the air was the perfume of hundreds of flowers that had been placed about the perimeter of the room, twined around the myriad candelabra and arranged in beribboned clusters that surrounded the stage.