Just Perfect (29 page)

There are no easy roads in life.

—How
to Have a
Perfect Life

“Okay, Buddy, go boy!” Alec removed the leash and watched Buddy take off across the open field behind his parents’ mobile home. The dog bounded over tall weeds and zipped around a rusted-out car on cinder blocks before heading toward the creek that ran along the back of the five acres. His happy barks filled the air. “Well, at least one of us is having fun.”

“He does love to run,” Christine said, laughing as Buddy made a wide circle, his golden coat rippling in the sunlight.

Following at a slower pace, Alec sent Christine a sideways glance, trying to read her expression. Her face held nothing but pleasure as she watched Buddy’s antics. “You know, it’s okay if you say it.”

“Say what?” She gave him a puzzled look.

Alec glanced over his shoulder at his parents’ trailer house with its sagging porch and rusty streaks running down metal sides that he believed had been white once upon a time. “That they’re every bit as bad as you imagined. Worse, probably.”

The day had been a giant flashback to all the rea-sons he’d wanted to escape this place. He rolled his shoulders in a vain attempt to loosen the knotted muscles.

“Actually”—she slipped her hand into his as they walked—“they’re not as bad as you described them. And you forgot to mention your brother and sister were so good looking. My goodness!” She glanced back at the mobile home, her eyes wide. “Your brother could charm the pants off a woman at twenty paces with that smile of his.”

He laughed a bit at that and thickened his Texas accent. “Yep, that’s one thing you sure can say about them Hunters. They may be as useless as tits on a boar hog, but they know how to breed some good-lookin‘ kids.”

“Stop that.” She gave him a playful swat.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “You saw my sister’s three kids.”

“They are beautiful,” Christine said.

He rolled his eyes when she tactfully left off that they were also undisciplined brats who’d screamed all through lunch. Of course his sister screamed back, which did no good because she never followed through on any of her ridiculous threats.

Watching Christine and his sister seated at the same table in the cramped and cluttered dining room had brought the contrast between them into sharp relief. Both were tall, blond, and beautiful, but his sister was strident, crude, bigoted, and vain.

The fact that Christine had been gracious to everyone since they arrived made him realize her physical beauty wasn’t what pulled him nearly as much as who she was: a woman of intelligence, tolerance, and refinement, with a wicked wit that constantly surprised and delighted him. Then there were those glimpses of self-doubt that went straight to his heart. How could he not love this woman?

“Didn’t you tell me your brother also has children?”

“Oh yeah.” He snorted. “From the pictures Mom sends me, I can attest that Dwight’s kids are five of the best-looking brats you’ve ever seen. And probably every bit as obnoxious as Carla’s.”

“Five?” That stopped her. Standing in the sundrenched field, she faced him.

“And two ex-wives,” he added. “Kids two and three are only six months apart.”

“Oops.” She raised her brow.

“Yeah.” He shook his head in disgust. “ ‘Not his fault,’ of course. When a man has women throwing themselves at him every time he walks into a bar, ‘what’s he supposed to do?’ ”

She tapped a finger to her lips. “This is just a suggestion, but he might try not going to bars when he has a pregnant wife and a child at home.”

“Ya think?” he asked dryly.

Buddy zoomed back to them, barking for them to keep moving. Obliging, they continued to the cool shade of the trees that grew along the lazy, muddy creek. Alec scowled as he looked about. “This used to be my favorite place to hang out when I was a kid. I remember it as being a lot prettier, though.”

“You’ve been living in the mountains for eleven years. That’s bound to dim a lot of places by comparison.”

“True.” He watched Buddy wade into the water and put the word “bath” on the evening’s agenda. “Plus, I picked up the trash that gathers along the banks after every rain. Clearly, no one’s bothered with that task since I left.”

Looking back toward the trailer, he felt irritation mount. “But why am I even surprised? If Dad can’t get off his lazy rear end long enough to fix the leak in the roof, why would he bother cleaning up trash? Oh, excuse me. Dad’s not lazy. He has a ‘bad back.’ That’s why he hasn’t worked a real construction job in twenty years. Jeez, though, my brother’s in construction. Why can’t he find an afternoon to fix the stupid roof?”

“The cobbler’s wife has no shoes?” Christine ventured.

“Dang it.” He looked at the porch with the same moldy sofa that had been sitting there for as long as he could remember. It had permanent dents in the cushion from years of conforming to people’s backsides while they sat drinking beer and watching cars pass on the highway. “I guess once I get moved down here I’ll have to come out and fix a few things myself. For Mom. If it were just Dad, I’d let him lay in bed and get rained on, but as hard as Mom works at the diner, she deserves to come home to a house that doesn’t leak.”

Christine tipped her head, studying him. “You seem closest to her.”

He shrugged and rested his back against an oak tree. “She’s the only one who didn’t make fun of me when I started studying hard and doing well in school.”

“When was that?” Christine stepped between his boots and looped her arms about his neck, eager to learn more about him. How had he turned out so different from his siblings?

“When I was twelve, I discovered search and rescue, and everything changed for me.” He circled his arms about her hips. “We had a tornado rip through here. You can probably still make out its path if you walk up in those trees.”

“It came that close?” She twisted her head to look in the direction he nodded. “That must have been terrifying.”

“Especially living in a mobile home. I swear the things are tornado magnets.” Buddy came and flopped down beside them, panting from his run. “The twister missed us, but tore apart several houses not far from here. Killed eight of our neighbors and left several families homeless.”

“Oh, Alec. That must have been tough.”

“It was. For the whole community.” He widened his stance to settle her more fully against him. “That’s the only time I think I’ve ever been really proud of my dad. He and Dwight worked a lot of volunteer hours rebuilding homes. They also ridiculed me to no end for not helping.”

“You didn’t help?” She frowned. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I didn’t help with the construction,” he clarified. “At least not at first. The day after the storm, a search-and-rescue team arrived with FEMA to look for bodies. I knew some of the people who were missing. In a community this size, how could you not? So when the coordinator asked for volunteers, I jumped at the chance, thinking… I don’t know, that I’d be helping, yes, but also that it would be exciting. Boy was I wrong there.”

“Oh?”

He cocked a brow. “Have you ever watched a team search a wooded area?”

“The only search I’ve seen was the day of the avalanche.”

“Well, it’s similar on flat land, but not as physically grueling. You line up, no more than an arm’s length apart, and walk very slowly, staring at the ground right in front of your feet the whole time. The sheer tedium is enough to bore most people to tears. We did that for days.” He stretched the last word out. “To my dad’s way of thinking, here he and my brother were doing real men’s work, while his youngest boy was off walking around in the woods like some pantywaist sissy.”

Christine felt a twist of empathy on Alec’s behalf. She knew how much a put down from a father could hurt. “What’d you do?”

“Ignored him.” Alec shrugged. “At the end of the day, though, who do you think I was going to hang out with? My dad and his foul-talking drinking buddies? Or this fascinating group of men and women who were like… aliens to my world?”

Christine tried to picture a young Alec meeting search-and-rescue volunteers for the first time. Most of the ones she’d met were extremely dedicated and well trained at what they did. They came from all walks of life, frequently had college educations and white-collar jobs. They made tremendous sacrifices and took personal risks to help people in trouble.

She’d come to admire them greatly working in ER. “My guess is the search-and-rescue guys.”

“I could listen to their stories for hours,” Alec said. “That search might have been boring, but clearly some were very exciting. Plus, every call is important, so there’s that sense of doing something that matters. I decided then and there that that’s what I was going to do. That’s what I was going to be.

“Even after the team left and I was driving nails with the rest of the construction workers, I knew the whole course of my life had changed. Search and rescue was an escape route from this dead-end way of life. I worked my butt off to make it happen.”

“You know what?” She felt her heart expand as she fell in love with him all over again. Framing his face in both her hands, she kissed him briefly on the lips. “You impress the heck out of me. You already did when we were in Colorado and I saw you in action. But to know that this is where you started, now I’m really impressed.”

“Thanks.” He hugged her.

“And you thought meeting your family would drive me away.” She rested her head on his shoulder, enjoying the intimacy of the simple embrace.

“Do you blame me?” His hand rubbed up and down on her back.

“No. Because the shoe’s about to be on the other foot.”

“Oh?”

She lifted her head as restlessness replaced peace in the blink of an eye. “Mom’s pressuring me to bring you to dinner tomorrow evening.”

“I’m up for it.”

“I know.” She stepped back, out of his arms. “I was just hoping to have you to myself a little longer.” And hoping he would have a new job before she introduced him to her family. She studied the slow-moving water. “Are you still planning to head back for Silver Mountain on Tuesday?”

“Weekends are always prime time for accidents in the backcountry, so I didn’t want to be gone for more than one. If I leave Tuesday, I’ll be back at work Friday. Plus, I have a lot of stuff to settle. Like turning in my resignation.”

“Oh?” She glanced back to him. “I thought you were going to wait until you had a new position nailed down.”

“Yeah, well… Hmm.”

She tipped her head. “What are you not telling me?”

“I was going to wait until later, when we were back at your place, but I had an interview yesterday.”

“You did?” She brightened, then noticed he wasn’t smiling. “What is it? Why aren’t you excited?”

“Mostly because I’ve been in denial.” He sighed heavily. “Oh man, this is going to be even harder after everything I just said.”

“What?”

He let out a heavy sigh. “The job isn’t with search and rescue. There flat aren’t any paid positions open within reasonable driving distance, and no one expects that to change anytime in the near future.”

“Than who was the interview with?”

“The Austin Fire Department. They offered me a job as a paramedic. And…” He took a deep breath, as if bracing himself. “On Monday, I’m going to accept.”

“Alec… no. With a schedule like that, you’ll barely be able to do search and rescue as a volunteer, if at all.”

He came off the tree trunk, his jaw tight as he paced the bank. “What else am I going to do? Work some flunky job and do search and rescue on the side? That was fine when I was twenty, but I’m about to turn thirty, and I’m getting married. I owe it to you to be a professional and pull my weight.”

“Alec, with what I make you don’t have to work—”

“Don’t!” His face went instantly hard. “Don’t even say that. First, I’m not my dad.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“And second, isn’t that exactly the kind of thing your past boyfriends have tried to do to you? How would I be any better than them if I mooched off of you.”

“None of them ever wanted to marry me.”

“I fail to see the difference.” His eyes blazed, letting her know she truly had insulted him. “Besides, I enjoy working, and I’m actually okay with the paramedic job. Really.”

“Really?”

He subsided. “Mostly.”

“Then why do you look so unhappy about it?”

“Because… I just— Oh man!” To her surprise, he turned his back to her. Sensing something was wrong, Buddy let out a questioning whine.

“Alec?” She laid a hand on his back and felt the tension bunching his muscles. Concern raced through her. “What is it?”

“It’s going to kill me to give up Buddy.”

“What!” She hurried around so she could face him. Hearing his name, Buddy sat up, looking back and forth between the humans. “Why would you have to give up Buddy?”

“He’s not a pet, Chris. He doesn’t even belong to me.” Looking down at the dog, Alec’s eyes grew damp. “He’s a trained rescue dog who belongs to the county. If I’d landed a paid position down here, I probably could have talked my new county manager into buying him so I could still be his handler, but if I take the paramedic job, I’ll have to turn him over to whoever replaces me in Silver Mountain. There’s no way I could afford to buy a dog worth thirty thousand dollars.”

She blinked at the figure he named. Even knowing rescue dogs were valuable, she hadn’t known they cost that much. “I’ll buy him for you.”

“God, do you know how tempting that is?” He laughed dryly. “But no. Absolutely not. And not because of the money, but because it would be wrong. Just because I’m giving up search and rescue is no reason for the world to lose a great rescue dog who can save lives. Plus, it wouldn’t be fair to Buddy.” When the dog whined, Alec squatted down and ruffled his ears. “I can’t ask this guy to give up something he loves.”

“What about you?” She watched them together, feeling as if someone had just reached inside her chest and pulled her heart out. How much more was Alec hurting? “How is any of this fair to you?”

“Because I’m doing it by choice.” Looking up, he gave her a sad smile. “And I get you to compensate.”