A Mother's Love (15 page)

Drat her mother and the rest of the Busybees. Ellen's quilting circle certainly lived up to its name. Christa hated
that she and Hope were the topic of conversation among the ladies at their weekly gossip session.

She never would have dreamed when Ellen told her Jace McCandless's grandmother was a member of the Bees that one day Ellen and Junemarie Stevens would conspire to drag Junemarie's grandson into Hope's limited world.

But then, she had become used to weird, convoluted side trips on the wild journey that had become her life in the five months since Hope's brain injury.

This was only the latest in a long line of unexpected detours.

What was she supposed to do now? Her instincts were urging her to drag Hope out of there, kicking and screaming, if she had to. But her daughter had been so looking forward to coming to the equine therapy center. It was all she had talked about for days. How could Christa withhold such a treat from her?

“Let's go!” Hope suddenly burst out, slamming her curled hands on her armrests. “I want to ride!”

A lot of words for her, Christa thought. Hope's expressive speech was one skill that had been slow to return since the accident. She struggled to find the right words, and those she could manage were often slurred or garbled.

When it came to horses, she apparently didn't have any trouble getting her point across.

“The boss has spoken,” Hank said with a grin.

She didn't return his smile as those nerves jangled in her stomach again.

“Just give it a chance, Christa. Even if she only goes a few times around the arena, her muscles will get a good stretch. We'll be careful, I swear.”

She could feel herself weakening. Hope had shown more
excitement about this than anything else in a long time. She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised. Her daughter had been horse-mad for most of her life and had followed the rodeo circuit faithfully, reading rodeo magazines the way other girls devoured fashion magazines.

Of
course
Hope would be thrilled to see Jace McCandless. Long before they moved back to Utah, to the same town where he had a small ranch near his grandmother's place, Hope had followed his career, claiming some kind of link to the man since their respective grandmothers were friends and quilted together.

Even after he retired from the rodeo world and translated his success and stunning good looks into product endorsements for things such as blue jeans and soft drinks, Hope had followed his career.

Her daughter probably
would
work harder for him than anyone else. But that didn't ease her nerves.

“I don't know. What if she falls? What if she has a seizure? She's still so…breakable.”

Hank sighed. “We've been over this, Christa. I swear, she'll be well protected. She'll be wearing a helmet and she'll have a spotter holding her on—Jace, here—and one more on each side of her. Our therapist has picked a horse with a slow, even gait for Hope to start out during the initial assessment. Jace, it's that big roan over there. You mind grabbing her and meeting us at the mounting block?”

The man gave Hank a long, unreadable look, then shrugged and headed toward the horses tied up across the arena.

“Please, Mom.” Hope gave her a lopsided smile. “I can ride. I want to. Please.”

She studied her daughter, once so fiercely independent,
and the ache that never seemed to quite leave her burned through her chest. Hope had been through so much these last five months.

How could Christa deny her this momentary pleasure?

She squeezed Hope's fisted hands. “All right. Just be careful while you're having so much fun up there. No jumping the gate, okay?”

Hope grinned, looking so much like her old self that Christa was helpless against the tears that burned behind her eyelids.

She wanted her daughter back, prickly teenage moods and all. If this equine therapy would help get them closer to that goal, it was worth a little maternal anxiety.

F
ROM THE MOMENT
H
OPE
was helped onto the horse in front of Jace McCandless, Christa knew she had lost the battle.

She supposed it really wasn't a battle she should have been fighting at all—but how could she help it after everything her daughter had endured? Up until a few months ago Hope had even been missing a piece of her skull, temporarily removed to allow the swelling around her brain to subside.

Christa had earned the right to be overprotective. What mother wouldn't be? It wasn't easy to see Hope up on that big horse, knowing how just one tumble could set back all the progress they had fought so hard to attain.

It was tough to let go of her fears, but for her daughter's sake she could do her best.

They passed her again, Jace McCandless and her daughter. The lean, sexy cowboy sat behind the saddle supporting Hope's weight atop the raw-boned mare. He sat easy on a horse, as she would have expected from someone who had made a very good living on the rodeo circuit, and with each pass through the arena he seemed more comfortable with his duty.

And Hope, Christa saw, didn't just glow with excitement, she exploded with it. Her eyes were bright and she laughed
out loud several times though the horse was only moving at a sedate walk.

She watched them go around again, then Jace slowed the horse and slid off, keeping one reassuring hand at the small of Hope's back.

“Is that it?” she asked Hank, who had stopped to watch.

“Looks like they're going to let her have a few go-rounds on her own,” he answered.

He must have seen her sudden panic, because he gave her a reassuring smile. “Don't worry. McCandless wouldn't leave her alone up there if he didn't think she could handle it.”

Despite his attempt to comfort her, she clenched her fists so tightly she could feel her fingernails gouging the skin of her palms. She needn't have worried. Hope seemed to pick up riding again better than she had anything else since the accident.

They would have to come back, Christa realized with some dismay. How would they possibly afford it with all the co-pays and deductibles piling up? Her medical insurance didn't cover equine therapy, so she would have to cover the entire cost out-of-pocket.

She would just have to juggle both her budget and her time to make it happen, she thought as McCandless used the lead line to guide the horse back to the mounting block.

As she hurried to join them, she saw him lift Hope down from the horse and set her gently in her wheelchair.

“How was it?” Christa asked. “You looked great up there! Did you have a good time?”

Hope looked tired but jubilant. “Loved it! Want to barrel-race now!”

Jace gave Christa a wide grin she could swear sizzled
through her, clear to her toes. She frowned, upset at the reaction, while Jace squeezed Hope's shoulder.

“Not yet, champ. Maybe next time.”

She beamed up at him, as susceptible to that smile as her mother, apparently.

“Nice work, Hope,” Hank Stevens said as he joined them. “Nice riding!”

Hope bestowed her delighted smile on him, as well.

“Glad you had fun. We usually make the riders brush down the horses when they're done—works their arms and shoulders, see?—but seein' as it's your first time, we'll let you off the hook.”

“I can do it,” Hope insisted with the mulish determination that had carried her through eight surgeries in five months.

“I'm sure you can. But next time.” He turned to Christa. “Same time next week?”

A hundred doubts still swirled through her mind, but they all paled next to Hope. “Okay. Sure. Thanks, Hank.”

She would find a way to make it work. She'd been doing just that since those dark days as a stupid eighteen-year-old girl alone in a strange city with a newborn.

“Can I give you a hand out to your car?” Jace asked, still holding the handles of Hope's wheelchair.

Her first instinct was to refuse his offer of help, to show him she was tough and independent. Hadn't she been from the beginning?

But the bald truth was that Hope weighed as much as Christa, and all the transfers she required in the course of an average day were physically exhausting.

Right after the accident, a wise physical therapist urged Christa to always accept help when it was offered, no matter
how it stung her pride not to be as self-sufficient as she would like.

For some reason, accepting help from Jace McCandless seemed particularly galling, but she forced herself to do it anyway.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“You handle the doors and I'll be the muscle.”

Christa decided she wasn't going to allow her weak mind to dwell on his muscles—or on how edgy and uncomfortable he had looked at first with Hope up on that horse or how he had relaxed until he was teasing and joking with her.

She
especially
wasn't going to think about how delicious he smelled right now as they walked out of the arena and into the spring sunshine—or how long it had been since she'd been close enough to any gorgeous male to fully appreciate his pheromones.

She led the way to her vehicle, a small Jeep Liberty she was immensely grateful she had been able to pay off before she moved back to Sage Flats and cut her salary in half.

When they reached the SUV, she opened the door to the backseat and reached to help Hope transfer in, but Jace beat her to it.

“Just tell me how to get her inside. Do you lift her or does she do the work?”

Christa had to admit, she appreciated a man who didn't mind asking for help. “Usually she can transfer on her own if you just hold her hands for stability and take some of her weight. Yes, that's it. Perfect.”

He eased Hope into the backseat while Christa watched, not used to her position as observer in her daughter's care.

She couldn't help comparing the laborious process of settling her into a car now to those days before their world
had changed, when Hope used to jump into the backseat after school, her long hair flying behind her. More often than not, she had her cell phone glued to her ear, already talking up a storm to the friends she had just left.

Oh, how Christa missed those days. Even when Hope had been at her angriest, surly about their move to Utah or caught up in the inevitable teenage dramas between her friends, she had been like a bright, vivid beacon, full of energy and life.

Hope had always been the center of every crowd. She had been funny and smart, with a world of possibilities beckoning her.

Oh, she hadn't been thrilled when they moved from the hip and happening college town of Austin to some Utah backwater, leaving all her friends behind. But she had quickly gathered a new circle of friends and seemed to be adjusting to life in Sage Flats, to the freedom to ride her grandfather's high-strung horses, to her new school.

Until the accident. Now that busy social butterfly seemed so frail and solitary. The steady stream of friends who had come to the hospital bearing flowers and cards and get-well posters had trickled over the last five months to a valiant few who continued to visit every week despite Hope's garbled speech, short attention span and flagging energy level.

She had reached the limit of her endurance now, Christa realized. The minute she was settled on the backseat, she leaned her head back against the upholstery and closed her eyes.

“Tired,” she mumbled.

“I know. Just rest, sweetheart. We'll be home in a moment.”

She closed the door and shook her head.

“She's exhausted, poor thing,” she said to Jace, who stood
watching. “I'm guessing she'll be asleep before we pull out of the parking lot.”

“I hope today wasn't too much for her.”

“It probably was. But she would definitely say the ride was worth a little fatigue.”

While she spoke, she started breaking down the wheelchair so it would fit into the cargo area of her vehicle, disconnecting the foot plates and the head support, then folding the rest down. He stepped forward to help her lift the heavy body of the chair inside.

“Sure seems like a lot of work. I've got a buddy who had a bull roll over him and broke his back a few years ago. He has a van with a ramp where he just rolls right into it in his wheelchair, without all this hassle. Can't you get one of those?”

She pressed her lips together. Sure, if she had a spare fifty thousand dollars sitting around. Since she didn't, she would make do with her paid-off Jeep Liberty and keep praying Hope wouldn't need the wheelchair much longer.

“Someday, maybe,” she answered in a noncommittal tone. She set the brake on the chair so it wouldn't roll around, then closed the hatch.

“Thank you again for helping with her today. I guess you could tell I was more than a little nervous. It helped to have someone experienced like you to lend a hand.”

“You're welcome. It was…not what I expected.”

“Better or worse?”

He smiled and her insides quivered, until she forced herself to breathe. She sternly reminded herself she wasn't interested in a man—and especially not a man like him.

“Just different,” he answered. “The kids are amazing. I wouldn't have expected them all to be so…happy.”

She finally couldn't resist asking the question burning through her. “So how did Hank con you into coming today?”

He blinked for half a second, then burst out laughing. “I guess that's one way of putting it. Probably the most accurate. Hank Stevens is amazingly good at finding weakness and exploiting it six ways from Sunday. In my case, he happened to catch me at a low moment when I was…upset about something. He called in about a half dozen favors.”

Upset about what?
she wondered a bit resentfully. His life seemed so charmed from the outside. He had fame, money, extraordinary good looks. What could possibly put those haunted shadows in his blue eyes?

Not her business. She had enough problems of her own without worrying about someone else's. “Well, I appreciate your being there, whether Hank blackmailed you or not. Hope was a big pro-rodeo fan before her accident.”

He was quiet for a moment, his gaze on the backseat of the SUV.

“I don't quite know how to ask this politely, but…” His voice trailed off.

“What happened to her?” she filled in the question she had been expecting, the one she dreaded most.

“Yeah. Do you mind my asking?”

She wished with all her heart she had the nerve to tell him that she
did
mind, that she hated remembering the instant when her daughter's world—and hers—had changed.

She didn't want to answer, she wanted to climb into her vehicle and leave him behind in a cloud of dust and spewing gravel. But she thought of his gentle patience with Hope for the last hour, the care he had taken transferring her into the backseat, and knew his question wasn't asked just to be nosy.

“She was hit by a car while she was walking home from school just before Christmas.”

The awful, familiar guilt burned through her.

Her fault, her fault, her fault.

Oh, she hadn't been the driver behind the wheel of the truck that had been speeding far too quickly for conditions and had slid on black ice directly into Hope.

She hadn't caused the accident, but she might as well have. If only she and Hope hadn't fought that morning about the cell-phone bill and all of the excessive text-message overages. If only Hope had come to the store after school as she usually did instead of deciding, in her lingering pique over losing her phone for a week, to walk the mile home.

If only they had stayed in Austin instead of moving home after Christa's father died to help her overwhelmed and grieving mother with the grocery store.

She pushed the futile speculation away.
If onlys
didn't do a damn thing to help with the day-to-day care of her daughter.

“She was thrown about twenty feet and broke both arms and her right femur. Worst of all, she suffered severe head trauma. She was in a coma for three weeks and things were…uncertain for a while. But she's making an amazing recovery.”

They had miles to go, but every single step forward was progress, better than where they had come from.

 

T
HAT POOR, SWEET KID
. Jace looked through the window, where Hope was curled up against the seat, then back at Christa. He had a wild, completely inappropriate urge to pull her into his arms to offer whatever small comfort he could.

“I'm so sorry.”

It seemed terribly inadequate, but he didn't know what the hell else a guy was supposed to say in these circumstances—especially a guy as selfish and superficial as he was.

She shrugged. “Every day she regains more skills. The progress is slow but steady. Just today she was able to hold a fork on her own and eat three or four bites of her lunch by herself. I can't begin to tell you how hard she's worked to get to that point.”

He couldn't even imagine it. Jace thought of his own nightmares, the cold sweats, the phantom screams and cries he heard at the oddest moments.

He was alive and in one piece. He hadn't been through nearly the ordeal that Hope and Christa had endured. So why wasn't he dealing better?

“You must be a strong person to cope with all this. The therapies and doctor appointments and the uncertainty and everything.”

How?
he wondered.

She gave him a rueful smile that pierced through all his defenses.

“Who says I'm coping?” she murmured.

Again he had to fight the urge to pull her into his arms, intrigued that a woman who seemed so in control could be hiding such vulnerability.

She seemed to think she had lingered long enough, because she moved to the driver's door and opened it, a clear dismissal.

“Thank you again for your help, Mr. McCandless. Both in the arena and out here.”