A Cold Creek Reunion (13 page)

She was still in love with him.

The realization slowly seeped through her consciousness, like water finding a weakness in a seam and dripping through.

She was still in love with Taft and probably had been all this time.

The discovery left her reeling, disoriented. She had loved her husband.
Of course
she had. She never would have married him if she hadn’t believed they could make a happy life together. Yes, she had discovered she was unexpectedly pregnant after their brief affair, but she hadn’t married him for that, despite the intense pressure he applied to make their relationship legal.

Her love for Javier hadn’t been the deep, rich, consuming love she had known with Taft, but she had cared deeply for the man—at first anyway, until his repeated betrayals and his casual attitude about them had eaten away most of her affection for him.

Even so, she realized now, throughout the seven years of her marriage, some part of her heart had always belonged to Taft.

“We were always so good together. Do you remember?”

The low words thrummed through her and images of exactly how things had been between them flashing through her head. From the very first, they had been perfectly compatible. He had always known just how to kiss, just where to touch.

“Yes, I remember,” she said hoarsely. All the passion, all the heat, all the heartbreak. She remembered all of it. The memories of her despair and abject loneliness after leaving Pine Gulch washed over her like a cold surf, dousing her hunger with cruel effectiveness.

She couldn’t do this. Not again. Not with Taft.

She might still love him, but that was even more reason she shouldn’t be here on this sofa with him with their mouths entwined. She froze, needing distance and space to breathe and think, to remind herself of all the many reasons she couldn’t go through this all over again.

“I remember everything,” she said coldly. “I’m not the one whose memory might have been blurred by the scores of other people I’ve been with in the meantime.”

He jerked his head back as if she had just slapped him. “I told you, reputation isn’t necessarily the truth.”

“But it has some basis in truth. You can’t deny that.”

Even as she snapped the words, she knew this wasn’t the core of the problem. She was afraid. That was the bare truth.

She still loved him as much as she ever had, maybe more now that she was coming to know the man he had become over the past decade, but she had given her heart to him once and he had chosen his grief and anger over all she had wanted to give him.

If she only had herself to consider, she might be willing to take the risk. But she had two children to think about. Alex and Maya were already coming to care for Taft. What if he decided he preferred his partying life again and chose that over her and the children? He had done it once before.

Her late husband had done the same thing, chosen his own selfish pursuits over his family, time and again, and she had to remember she wouldn’t be the only one devastated if Taft decided he didn’t want a family. Her children had already been through the
pain of losing their father. At all costs, she had to protect them and the life she was trying to create for
them.

“I don’t want this. I don’t want
you,
” she said firmly, sliding away from him. Despite her resolve, her hands trembled and she shoved them into the pocket of her sweater and drew a deep breath for strength as she stood.

“Like apparently half the women in town, I’m weak when it comes to you, so I’m appealing to your better nature. Don’t kiss me again. I mean it, Taft. Leave me and my children alone. We can be polite and friendly when we see each other in town, but I can’t go through this again. I won’t. The children and I are finally in a good place, somewhere we can be happy and build a future. I can’t bear it if you bounce in and out again and break our hearts all over again. Please, Taft, don’t make me beg. Go back to the life you had before and leave us alone.”

* * *

Her words seemed to gouge and claw at his heart.

I don’t want this. I don’t want you.

That was clear enough. He couldn’t possibly misunderstand.

The children and I are finally in a good place, somewhere we can be happy and build a future. I can’t bear it if you bounce in and out again and break our hearts all over again.

As she had done mere days before their wedding, she had looked at him and found him somehow wanting. Again.

He sucked in a ragged breath, everything inside him achy and sore. This was too much after the misery of the day he had just been through, and left him feeling as battered as if he’d free-floated down several miles of level-five rapids.

In that moment, as he gazed at her standing slim and lovely in this graceful, comfortable room, he realized the truth. He loved her. Laura and her family were his life, his heart. He wanted forever with them—while
she
only wanted him gone.

The loss raced over him like a firestorm, like the sudden flashover he had once experienced as a wildlands firefighter in his early twenties. The pain was just like that fire, hot and raw and wild. He couldn’t outrun it; he could only hunker down in his shelter and wait for it to pass over.

He wanted to yell at her—to argue and curse and tell her she was being completely unreasonable. He wasn’t the same man he’d been a decade ago. Couldn’t she see that? He had been twenty-four years old, just a stupid kid, when she left.

Yeah, it might have taken ten years to figure things out, but now he finally knew what he wanted out of life. He was ready to commit everything to her and her children. He wanted what Trace had found with Becca. Once he had held exactly that gift in his hands and he had let it slip away and the loss of it had never hurt as keenly as it did right in this moment.

What did it matter that he might have changed? She didn’t want to risk being hurt again by him and he didn’t know how to argue with that.

She was right, he had turned away from the warmth of her love at a time in his life when he had needed it most. He couldn’t argue with that and he couldn’t change things.

He didn’t know how to demonstrate to her that
he
had changed, though, that he needed her now to help him become the kind of man he wanted to be. He would be willing to sacrifice anything to take care of her and her children now, and he had no idea how to prove that to her.

“Laura—” he began, but she shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m not strong enough to go through this all over again.”

The misery in her features broke his heart, especially because he knew he had put it there—now and ten years ago.

She gave him one last searching look, then rushed out of this bright, cheerily decorated room, leaving him alone.

He stood there for a long time in the middle of the floor, trying to absorb the loss of her all over again in this room that now seemed cold and lifeless.

What now? He couldn’t stay here at the inn anymore. She obviously didn’t want him here and he wasn’t sure he could linger on the edges of her life, having to content himself with polite greetings at the front desk and the occasional wave in the hallway.

He had finished the carpentry work Jan asked of him in this room and the other six in this wing that had needed the most repair. Because his house was ready for occupancy, with only a few minor things left to finish, he had no real excuse for hanging around.

She hadn’t wanted him here in the first place, had only tolerated his presence because her mother had arranged things. He would give her what she wanted. He needed to move out, although the thought of leaving her and Alex and Maya left him feeling grimly empty.

Losing her ten years ago had devastated him. He had a very strong suspicion the pain of their broken engagement would pale compared to the loss of her now.

Chapter Ten

“S
o how’s the house?”

Taft barely heard his brother’s question, too busy watching a little kid about Alex’s age eating one of The Gulch’s famous hamburgers and chattering away a mile a minute while his parents listened with slightly glazed expressions on their faces.

Tourists, he figured, because he didn’t recognize them and he knew most of the people in his town, at least by sight. It was a little early for the full tourism season to hit—still only mid-May, with springtime in full bloom—but maybe they were visiting family for the Mother’s Day weekend.

Where were they staying? he wondered. Would it be weird if he dropped over at their booth and casually mentioned Cold Creek Inn and the new breakfast service people were raving about? Yeah, probably. Trace, at least, would never let him hear the end of it.

Anyway, if they asked him about the quality of the food, he would have to admit he had no idea. He had moved out of his room at the inn and into his new house the day before Laura started the breakfast service.

But then, he wasn’t going to think about Laura right now. He had already met his self-imposed daily limit about ten minutes after midnight while he had been answering a call for a minor fender bender, a couple of kids who wouldn’t be borrowing their dad’s new sedan again anytime soon.

And then exceeded his thinking-about-Laura quota about 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. And so on and so on.

He was a cute kid, Taft thought now as he watched the kid take a sip of his soda. Not as adorable as Alex, of course, but then, he was a little biased.

“The house?” Trace asked again and Taft had to jerk his attention back to his brother.

“It’s been okay,” he answered.

“Just okay? Can’t you drum up a little more excitement than that? You’ve been working on this all winter long.”

“I’m happy to be done,” he answered, not in the mood for an interrogation.

If his brother kept this up, he was going to think twice next time about inviting Trace for a late lunch after a long shift. It had been a crazy idea anyway. He and his twin used to get together often for meals at The Gulch, but since Trace’s engagement, his brother’s free time away from Becca and Gabi had become sparse, as it should be.

He hadn’t been quite ready to go home for a solitary TV dinner after work, so had persuaded Trace to take a break and meet him. They could usually manage to talk enough about the general public safety of Pine Gulch for it to technically be considered a working lunch.

Except now, when the police chief appeared to have other things on his mind.

“I can tell when somebody’s lying to me,” Trace said with a solemn look. “I’m a trained officer of the law, remember? Besides that, I’m your brother. I know you pretty well after sharing this world for thirty-four years. You’re not happy and you haven’t been for a couple of weeks now. Even Becca commented on it. What’s going on?”

He couldn’t very well tell his brother he felt as if Laura had made beef jerky out of his heart. He ached with loneliness for her and for Maya and Alex. Right now, he would give anything to be sitting across the table from them while Maya grinned at him and Alex jabbered his ear off. Even if he could find the words to explain away his lousy mood, he wasn’t sure he was ready to share all of that with Trace.

“Maybe I’m tired of the same-old, same-old,” he finally said, when Trace continued to give him the Bowman interrogation look:
Talk or you
will
be sorry.

“I’ve been doing the same job for nearly six years, with years fighting wildland fires and doing EMT work before I made chief. Maybe it’s time for me to think about taking a job somewhere else.”

“Where?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve had offers here and there. Nevada. Oregon. Alaska, even. A change could be good. Get out of Pine Gulch, you know?”

Trace lifted an eyebrow and looked at him skeptically. “You just finished your new house a week ago. And now you’re thinking about leaving it? After all that work you put into it?”

He had come to the grim realization some nights ago during another sleepless episode that it would be torture continuing to live here in Pine Gulch, knowing she was so close but forever out of reach. He missed her. A hundred times a day he wanted to run over to the hotel claiming fire-code enforcement checks or something ridiculous like that just for the chance to see her and the children again.

Being without her had been far easier when she was half a world away in Spain. He was afraid the idea of weeks and months—and possibly
years
—of having her this close but always just out of his reach was more than he could endure.

Maybe it was his turn to leave this time.

“It’s just an idea. Something I’m kicking around. I haven’t actually
done
anything about it.”

Before Trace could answer, Donna Archuleta, who owned The Gulch with her husband, brought over their order.

“Here you go, Chief Bowman.” She set down Trace’s plate, his favorite roast-beef sandwich with green peppers and onions. “And for the other Chief Bowman,” she said in her gravelly ex-smoker voice, delivering Taft’s lunch of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, a particular specialty of Lou’s.

“Thanks, Donna.”

“You’re welcome. How are the wedding plans coming along?” she asked Trace.

His brother scratched his cheek. “Well, I’ll admit I’m mostly staying out of it. You’ll have to ask Becca that one.”

“I would if she would ever come around. I guess now she’s opened that fancy attorney-at-law office and doesn’t have to wait tables anymore, she must be too busy for us these days.”

Trace shook his head with a smile at the cantankerous old woman. “I’ll bring her and Gabi in for breakfast over the weekend. How would that be?”

“I guess that’ll do. You two enjoy your lunch.”

She headed away amid the familiar diner sounds of rattling plates and conversation.

He had hoped the distraction would derail Trace’s train of thought but apparently not. “If you think taking a job somewhere and moving away from Pine Gulch is what you want and need right now, I say go for it,” his brother said, picking up right where he had left off. “You know the family will support you in whatever you decide. We’ll miss you but we will all understand.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.”

He considered it one of his life’s greatest blessings that he had three siblings who loved him and would back him up whenever he needed it.

“We’ll understand,” Trace repeated. “As long as you leave for the right reasons. Be damn careful you’re running
to
something and not just running away.”

Lou must be having an off day. The meat loaf suddenly tasted like fire-extinguisher chemicals. “Running away from
what?
”

Trace took a bite of his sandwich and chewed and swallowed before he answered, leaving Taft plenty of time to squirm under the sympathy in his gaze. “Maybe a certain innkeeper and her kids, who shall remain nameless.”

How did his brother do that? He hadn’t said a single word to him about Laura, but Trace had guessed the depth of his feelings anyway, maybe before he did. It was one of those weird twin things, he supposed. He had known the first time he met Becca, here in this diner, that Trace was already crazy about her.

The only thing he could do was fake his way out of it. “What? Laura? We were done with each other ten years ago.”

“You sure about that?”

He forced a laugh. “Yeah, pretty darn sure. You might have noticed we didn’t actually get married a decade ago.”

“Yeah, I did pick up on that. I’m a fairly observant guy.” Trace gave him a probing look. “And speaking of observant, I’ve also got an active network of confidential informants. Word is you haven’t been to the Bandito for the greater part of a month, which coincidentally happens to be right around the time Laura Santiago showed up back in town with her kids.”

“Checking up on me?”

“Nope. More like vetting questions from certain segments of the female society in Pine Gulch about where the hell you’ve been lately. Inquiring minds and all that.”

He took a forkful of mashed potatoes, but found them every bit as unappealing as the meat loaf. “I’ve been busy.”

“So I hear. Working on renovations at the inn, from what I understand.”

“Not anymore. That’s done now.”

He had no more excuses to hang around Cold Creek Inn. No more reason to help Alex learn how to use power tools, to listen to Maya jabber at him, half in a language he didn’t understand, or to watch Laura make the inn blossom as she had dreamed about doing most of her life.

Yeah, he wasn’t sure he could stick around town and watch as Laura settled happily into Pine Gulch, working on the inn, making friends, moving on.

All without him.

“When I heard from Caidy that you’d moved into the inn and were helping Laura and her mother with some carpentry work, I thought for sure you and she were starting something up again. Guess I was wrong, huh?”

Another reason he should leave town. His family and half the town were probably watching and waiting for just that, to see if the two of them would pick up where they left off a decade and an almost-wedding later.

“Laura isn’t interested in rekindling anything. Give her a break, Trace. I mean, it hasn’t even been a year since she lost her husband. She and the kids are trying to settle into Pine Gulch again. She’s got big plans for the inn, and right now that and her children are where her focus needs to be.”

Some of his despair, the things he thought he had been so careful not to say, must have filtered through his voice anyway. His brother studied him for a long moment, compassion in his green eyes Taft didn’t want to see.

He opened his mouth to deflect that terrible sympathy with some kind of stupid joke, but before he could come up with one, his radio and Trace’s both squawked at the same moment.

“All officers in the vicinity. I’ve got a report of a Ten Fifty-Seven. Two missing juveniles in the area of Cold Creek Inn. Possible drowning.”

Everything inside him froze to ice, crackly and fragile.

Missing juveniles. Cold Creek Inn. Possible drowning.

Alex and Maya.

He didn’t know how he knew so completely, but his heart cramped with agony and bile rose in his throat for a split second before he shoved everything aside. Not now. There would be time later, but right now he needed to focus on what was important.

He and Trace didn’t even look at each other. They both raced out of the restaurant to their vehicles parked beside each other and squealed out of the parking lot.

He picked up his radio. “Maria, this is Fire Chief Bowman. I want every single damn man on the fire department to start combing the river.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

His heart pounding in his chest, he sped through the short three blocks to Cold Creek Inn, every light flashing and every siren blaring away as he drove with a cold ball of dread in his gut. He couldn’t go through this. Not with her. Everything inside him wanted to run away from what he knew would be deep, wrenching pain, but he forced himself to push it all out of his head.

He beat Trace to the scene by a heartbeat and didn’t even bother to turn off his truck, just raced to where he saw a group of people standing beside the fast-moving creek.

Laura was being restrained by two people, her mother and a stranger, he realized. She was crying and fighting them in a wild effort to jump into the water herself.

“Laura, what’s happened?”

She gazed blankly at him for a moment, her eyes wide and shocky, then her features collapsed with raw relief.

“Taft, my children,” she sobbed and it was the most heartrending sound he had ever heard. “I have to go after them. Why won’t anyone let me go after them?”

Jan, still holding her, was also in tears and appeared even more hysterical, her face blotchy and red. He wouldn’t be able to get much information out of either of them.

Beyond them, he could see the water running fast and high and Lucky Lou running back and forth along the bank, barking frantically.

“Laura, honey, I need you to calm down for just a moment.” While everything inside him was screaming urgency, he forced himself to use a soothing, measured tone, aware it might be his only chance to get through to her.

“Please, sweetheart, this is important. Why do you think they’re in the river? What happened?”

She inhaled a ragged breath, visibly struggling to calm herself down to answer his question—and he had never loved her more than in that single moment of stark courage.

“They were just here. Right here. Playing with Lucky. They know they’re not to go near the creek. I’ve told them a hundred times. I was out here with them, planting flowers, and kept my eye on them the whole time. I walked around the corner of the inn for another flat and was gone maybe thirty seconds. That’s all. When I came back Lucky was running along the bank and they were g-gone.” She said the last word on a wailing sob that made everything inside him ache.

“How long ago?”