Lucy Drake and Brendan Caine have only one thing in common…

And it’s likely to tear them apart. Because it was Brendan’s late wife, Jessie—and Lucy’s best friend—who’d brought them together in the first place. And since Jessie’s passing, Brendan’s been distracted by his two little ones…and the memory of an explosive kiss with Lucy years before his marriage. Still, he’ll steer clear of her. She’s always been trouble with a capital T.

Lucy couldn’t wait to shed her small-town roots for the big city. But now that she’s back in Hope’s Crossing to take care of the Queen Anne home her late aunt has left her, she figures seeing Brendan Caine again is no big deal. After all, she’d managed to resist the handsome fire chief once before, but clearly the embers of their attraction are still smoldering….

Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne and her Hope’s Crossing series

“A sometimes heartbreaking tale of love and relationships in a small Colorado town.… Poignant and sweet, this tale of second chances will appeal to fans of military-flavored sweet romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

“Once again, Thayne proves she has a knack for capturing those emotions that come from the heart.… Crisp storytelling and many amusing moments make for a delightful read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Willowleaf Lane

“RaeAnne Thayne has continued her tradition of creating believable, flawed characters that reflect our lives.”

—Idaho Statesman on Currant Creek Valley

“Hope’s Crossing is a charming series that lives up to its name. Reading these stories of small-town life engage the reader’s heart and emotions, inspiring hope and the belief miracles are possible.”

—Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on Sweet Laurel Falls

“Plenty of tenderness and Colorado sunshine flavor this pleasant escape.”

—Publishers Weekly on Woodrose Mountain

“Thayne, once again, delivers a heartfelt story of a caring community and a caring romance between adults who have triumphed over tragedies.”

—Booklist on Woodrose Mountain

“Readers will love this novel for the cast of characters and its endearing plotline.… A thoroughly enjoyable read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Woodrose Mountain

“Thayne’s series starter introduces the Colorado town of Hope’s Crossing in what can be described as a cozy romance…[a] gentle, easy read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Blackberry Summer

“Thayne’s depiction of a small Colorado mountain town is subtle but evocative. Readers who love romance but not explicit sexual details will delight in this heartfelt tale of healing and hope.”

—Booklist on Blackberry Summer

Wild Iris Ridge

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my siblings, Brad, Maureen, Chris, Mike, Jennie and Carrie, who have set a wonderful example to me of caring, compassion and strength. I love you and I’m incredibly grateful for our big, noisy, crazy family.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

THIS WAS, WITHOUT QUESTION, the craziest thing she had ever done.

Lucy Drake stood on the front porch of her great-aunt’s house, shivering at the cold, damp breeze that slid under her jacket.

She ought to just find a hotel somewhere in Hope’s Crossing to spend the night, instead of standing here on the dark and rather creepy-under-the-circumstances doorstep of a massive Victorian mansion after midnight in the middle of an April rainstorm.

If she had an ounce of brains or sense, that is exactly what she would do—climb back into her BMW and head for the nearest hotel. Hope’s Crossing was overflowing with them, and on a shoulder-season April night when the ski tourists were gone, she could probably find hundreds of empty rooms.

Then again, if she had either of those things—brains or sense—she wouldn’t be in this situation. Right now, she would probably be at the end of an eighteen-hour workday, heading back to her quiet condo on Lake Washington with another few hours of work ahead of her before she finally crashed.

Another gust of freezing wind whined fitfully under the eaves and sent the branches of the red maple beside the porch clawing across the roof like skeletal fingers.

She zipped up her coat and reached for the doorknob of the house. Crazy, she might be, but she didn’t need to be cold and crazy, too.

The door was locked, of course. What else had she expected, when Iris House had been empty since December and Annabelle’s shocking death? Even though she had known it would be locked, she still felt a hard kernel of panic in her gut at one more obstacle.

What if she couldn’t get in tonight? What if she could never get in? Where would she go? She had come all this way, two days of driving from Seattle. She had subleased her condo, packed all her belongings, brought everything with her. She would be stranded without a home, without shelter, in a town where the two people she cared most about in the world were both gone.

The lateness of the hour and her own exhaustion from the stress of the past week pressed in on her, macerating her control. She felt it slipping through her fingers like fine-grained sand but she forced herself to take a deep breath.

Okay. Calm. She could handle this. She had fully expected the door to be locked. No one had lived here for months. If she had showed up on the doorstep of the old house and found it wasn’t secure, then she would have cause to worry.

This wasn’t a problem. She knew right where her great-aunt always hid the spare key—assuming no one had changed the locks, of course....

She wasn’t going to go there yet. Instead, she turned on the flashlight app of her phone and used the small glow it provided to guide her way around the corner of the wraparound porch.

The chains of the old wood porch swing clanked and rattled as she sat down, a familiar and oddly comforting sound. She reached for the armrest closest to the front door with one hand, aiming the light from her phone with the other.

After a little fumbling, her fingers found the catch and she opened the tiny, clever hidden compartment Annabelle had created herself inside the armrest.

Only someone who knew the magic secret of the porch swing could ever find the hollowed-out hiding place. She reached inside and felt around until her fingers encountered the ice-cold metal of the key to Iris House.

“Thank you, Annabelle,” she murmured.

She discovered that no one had changed the locks when she inserted the key and turned it. See, there was a bright spot. Next hurdle: What if the security code had been changed since her last visit?

Knowing she didn’t have a moment to spare, she didn’t take time to savor the scents of rosemary and lemon wood polish and home that greeted her inside.

Instead, she bolted to the keypad for the state-of-the-art security system Annabelle had installed several years ago. Her fingers fumbled on the keypad but she managed to type in the numbers that corresponded with the letters H-O-P-E.

The system announced it was now disarmed. Only then did she let herself sigh with relief, trying not to notice how the small sound echoed through the empty space.

She flipped the light switch in the entryway, with its parquet floor and the magnificent curving staircase made up of dozens of intricately turned balusters.

How many times had she rushed into this entryway during the two years she’d lived here during her teen years and called to Annabelle she was home before dropping her books on the bottom step to take up to her room later?

Suddenly she had an image of when she’d first arrived at fifteen, her heart angry and battered, showing up at a distant relative’s home with everything she owned in bags at her feet.

Apparently, things hadn’t changed that much in seventeen years—except this time her bags were still out in the car.

She turned around, half expecting Annabelle to come bustling through the doorway from the kitchen in one of those zip-up half aprons she always wore that had a hundred pockets, arms outstretched and ready to wrap her into a soft, sweet-smelling embrace.

That familiar sense of disorienting loss gnawed through her as she remembered Annabelle wouldn’t bustle through that door ever again.

She felt something dig into her palm and realized she was still clutching the key from the front porch. She slid it onto the table, making a mental note to return it to its hiding place later then took another of her cleansing breaths.

Right now she needed to focus. She desperately needed sleep and a chance to regroup and regain a little perspective.

The air inside Iris House was stale, cold. She walked through turning on lights as she headed for the thermostat outside the main-floor bedroom Annabelle had used the past few years when it became harder for her to reach the second or third floors.

The heating system thermostat was set for sixty-two degrees, probably to keep the pipes from freezing during the winter, but the actual temperature read in the mid-fifties.

She tried turning the heating system off and then on again—about the sum total of her HVAC expertise. When no answering whoosh of warm air responded through the vents, she frowned. Annabelle used to complain the pilot light in the furnace could be tricky at times. Apparently this was one of those times.

Lucy was torn between laughter and tears. What did a girl have to do to catch a break around here? She had walked away from everything and packed up her life to come here, seeking the security and safety she had always found at Iris House.

With all the possible complications that could have ensnarled her journey here from Seattle, she had finally made it and now a stupid pilot light would be the one thing keeping her from reaching her goal of staying here.

It didn’t have to be a stumbling block. Last time she counted, the old house had nine fireplaces and she had seen a pile of seasoned firewood against the garage when she pulled up. She didn’t have to heat the whole house, just one room. She could pick one and spend a perfectly comfortable night in front of the fire then have a furnace technician come in the next day.

And wasn’t that some kind of metaphor for her life right now? Who ever said she had to fix every disaster she had created right this moment? She only had to focus on making it through tonight then she could sort the rest of it out later.

Considering none of the beds likely had linens at all—and certainly not fresh ones—for tonight she would bunk on the sofa in the room Annabelle had used as a TV room, she decided, and deal with the rest of the mess in the morning.

“You can do this,” she said aloud.

Hearing her own voice helped push away some of the ghosts that wandered through the house. Annabelle. Jess. Even her younger self, angry and wounded.

Energized by having a viable plan of action, she quickly headed out into the rain again and grabbed an armload of wood from the pile, enough to keep the cold at bay for several hours, at least. Trust Annabelle to keep her woodpile covered and protected so the wood was dry and ready to burn. Her great-aunt had probably cut it all herself.

Back inside, she dropped the pile of wood on the hearth in the cozy little den and found matches and kindling sticks in a canister on the mantel.

She was so not a Girl Scout, but Annabelle had insisted both she and Jessica learn the proper way to light a fire. Those long-ago lessons bubbled back to the surface, and in moments she had a tidy little blaze going.

Perfect. In no time, the room would be cozy and comfortable.

She added a larger split log and watched the flames dance around it for a moment before they caught hold. Already the house felt a little warmer, not quite as empty and lonely.

She yawned, tempted to curl up right this instant on the sofa and drop off. No. She would sleep better in a nightgown, with her teeth brushed and her face washed. Closing the door to the room behind her to hold on to the heat, she headed out for one more bone-chilling trip to the car for the suitcase that held her essentials.

She carried the case straight to the bathroom just off the kitchen and made it through her ablutions with bleary eyes. After grabbing a couple of blankets out of the linen chest in the downstairs guest room, she opened the door to the den—and was greeted by thick, choking black smoke.

For an instant, her exhausted brain couldn’t quite process this latest disaster in a depressingly long line of them. Then in a wild burst of panic, her synapses started blasting messages, one after the other, and she had the presence of mind to slam the door shut.

Smoke. Blaze. Iris House was on fire.

“No! No, no no!”

It was probably just the chimney not drawing correctly. That’s all. Calm down. She would just put the fire out and air out the room and all would be fine.

Fire extinguisher! Where was the bloody fire extinguisher? Annabelle always kept one under the kitchen sink, she remembered. She raced back and yanked open the cabinets then blessed her great-aunt’s independent, self-reliant mindset. The fire extinguisher was attached right to the inside door.

Lucy yanked it off and quickly scanned the instructions, then stopped long enough to grab a dishcloth out of a drawer to cover her mouth before charging back to the den.

She couldn’t see any flames through the smoke, which further reinforced the idea that a chimney draw issue was to blame. She hoped, anyway. At the same time, she wasn’t completely stupid. If she couldn’t deal with the problem on her own, she would call the fire department.

Coughing, eyes burning from the smoke, she activated the fire extinguisher and sprayed toward the logs.

The fire sizzled and spat at coming into contact with the chemical as the extinguisher did its job.

Okay. Crisis averted.

She hurried and unlatched the window to let some of the smoke out. Just as she turned around, she heard an ominous crackling and a loud, angry roar from overhead.

Her stomach turned over. She had heard that sound once before, in one of the upstairs bedrooms one memorable wintry January day when she was seventeen. This was more than a problem with a poorly drawing flue. This was a chimney fire.

In that previous fire when she was living here, that had been a case of an old bird’s nest falling and igniting. This could be another one or perhaps creosote buildup had ignited.

Whatever the reason, this was a nightmare. Chimney fires burned hot and fierce and could burn through the masonry, the walls. Everything. In addition, flying debris could ignite the roof and take down the entire hundred-twenty-year-old historic mansion.

She couldn’t burn down Iris House. She had nothing else left.

Though she knew it was risky, in one last desperate effort, she aimed the fire extinguisher up the chimney, adrenaline shooting through her as fast and fierce as those flames, until the chemical ran out then she scooped up her purse and raced for the door with her phone in hand, already dialing 911.

Apparently, someone beat her to it. She ran out onto the porch just as a couple of guys in full uniforms were running out of a fire truck parked behind her car, lights flashing. Another engine was just pulling up behind it.

Somebody must have seen the smoke pouring out the window and called it in. Yay for nosy neighbors.

“Is there anybody else inside?” one of the firefighters asked her.

“No. Just me. It’s a chimney fire, centered in the den. Go to the end of the hall, last door on the right.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, am I so glad to see you guys,” she called to the third firefighter she encountered as she headed down the steps of the porch.

This one wasn’t in turnout gear, only a coat and helmet that shielded his features in the smoke and the gloomy night. She had only an impression of height and impressive bulk before he spoke in a voice as hard and terrifying as the fire.

“You won’t be so glad to see us when we have you arrested for trespassing, arson and criminal mischief.”

Lucy screwed her eyes shut as recognition flooded through her.

Oh, joy.

She should have known. Brendan Caine. He was probably the reason she hadn’t wanted to call the fire department in the first place. Her subconscious probably had been gearing up for this encounter since she saw that first puff of smoke.

It would have been nice if she could have spent at least an hour or two in Hope’s Crossing before she had to face this man who just happened to despise her. Not the way her luck was going these days, apparently.

She lifted her chin. “How can I be trespassing in my own house, Chief Caine?”

He jerked his head up as if she had lobbed a fireball at him. In the glow from the porch light, she saw his rugged features go slack with shock. “Lucy? What the hell?”

She tried for a nonchalant shrug. “Apparently, having the chimneys cleaned is now at the top of my to-do list.”

“You did this?”

“The furnace wouldn’t kick on so I thought I would warm the place up with a fire”

“The pilot light has been dicey all winter. I’ve been meaning to have somebody in to look at it. I’ve had to relight it a couple times a week.”

Of course. He only lived about four houses down the street—and since Annabelle had been Jessica’s great-aunt, too, Brendan would naturally feel responsible for looking after Iris House.

“I didn’t know how to light it and I was freezing,” she said. “I just figured I would stay warm with a fire tonight and deal with the furnace in the morning.”

“And you never thought to go to a hotel?”

“Why go to a hotel when I happen to own a twenty-room mansion?”

Before he could answer, the two firefighters who had first charged into the house came out. “Chimney fire,” one said. “Looks like some creosote ignited. It’s mostly extinguished but we’ll need to head up to the roof to put out any hot spots.”

She wanted to sit right down on the porch steps and sob with relief—but she would never do that in front of Brendan Caine, of course.

He pulled out a radio and issued instructions in it that were completely beyond her understanding, something about a ladder truck.

“I want my paramedics to take a look at you,” he said to her after he finished.

“That’s not necessary. I’m fine.”

“It wasn’t a request,” he said, his tone hard. “We need to be sure your lungs are okay after breathing all that smoke.”

He spoke to a couple other guys who had just pulled up. “Redmond. Chen. Run vitals on Ms. Drake here. Let me know if you think we need to transport her to the E.R.”

“I’m perfectly fine. I don’t need to be checked out, and I certainly don’t need to go to any E.R!”

One of the paramedics, a big, burly bald guy with a mustache and incongruously sweet features gave her an apologetic smile. “It won’t take long, ma’am.”

They led her over to a waiting ambulance. Had Brendan called out every truck in his entire department? For the next ten minutes she sat mortified on a stretcher while they checked everything. Oxygen levels, normal. Blood pressure, slightly high—no big surprise there. Temperature and reflexes, all as they should be.

“Everything checks out,” the bald guy said.

“I told you it would.”

“Sorry, ma’am. We have to follow procedure. The chief can be a stickler about that.”

“Am I free to go?”

“As far as we’re concerned.”

Not knowing what else to do, she retreated to the safety of her car and for the next hour watched as the Hope’s Crossing volunteer fire department scrambled across the various roof levels, climbed up and down ladders and peeked through windows, checking out every inch of Iris House.

Finally, they seemed to be certain the fire was completely out. The ambulance peeled away first then one engine after another until only the first ladder truck and the SUV that said Fire Chief on the side were left.

When Brendan walked onto the porch, speaking into his radio, she finally gathered the courage to climb out of her vehicle and approach him.

The rain had stopped, but the April night was still cold, with a damp wind that seemed to burrow beneath her coat.

He looked surprised to see her again, as if he had just remembered her existence—and probably would have preferred to forget it.

“I guess you’re okay or the paramedics would have taken you to the hospital.”

“I’m fine. Just like I told you. What are the damages to the house?”

“Too soon to say. You’ve got smoke damage, definitely, though it seems to be isolated to the TV room. We’ve got the windows open, airing things out.”

“That’s a relief.”

“It could have been a lot worse.”

She shivered as all the nightmare images that had been parading through her mind seemed to march a little faster. “I really do appreciate everyone. Please tell your department thank you for me. I’m sorry to call them out of their beds in the middle of the night.”

“It’s part of the job,” he said, his tone dismissive. He tilted his head. “Now, you want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here? Why didn’t you tell anyone you were coming?”

She shrugged. She couldn’t tell him everything, the personal and professional humiliation she had left behind. “Spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t end up fried to a crisp.”

What would have happened if the creosote hadn’t ignited so quickly? If it had smoldered for an hour or so, until she was sound asleep just a few feet away from the fire? She would have died of smoke inhalation first and then been fried to a crisp.

Cold panic dripped down her spine, but she clamped down on the nerves before they could flood her completely.

“I know.”

He gave her one of those dark looks that could mean anything. “You can’t stay here tonight. You understand that, right? We need to make sure the house is safe tonight, with no lingering hot spots. You’ll have to find a hotel.”

If she had only done that in the first place, they wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.

“I can do that,” she said.

Of course, he didn’t invite her to stay at his house. They didn’t have that kind of amicable relationship, despite the fact that she was godmother to his children or that his late wife had been not only her cousin but her dearest friend in the world.

“I still can’t quite wrap my head around you showing up in the middle of the night like this. You should have let me know you were coming. I could have made sure the pilot light was turned on for you, and none of this would have happened.”

She was tempted to remind him caustically that she didn’t need his permission to visit her own house. He might be watching over it, but she had been Annabelle’s only surviving heir.

Iris House should have been Jessica’s. She had adored the place, and she and Annabelle had always talked about turning it into a bed and breakfast one day after the children were grown, with Jess running the day-to-day details.

But Annabelle and Jess were both gone. Lucy was the only one left, the sole owner of this rambling old Victorian mining mansion she had never wanted in a town she had once been so eager to leave. Since her own dreams had just burned up hotter than any creosote fire, she had decided to borrow Jessica’s for a while.

“Like I said, spur-of-the-moment decision. I didn’t think things through.”

“How very unlike you,” he said, his voice dry enough to make her bristle.

She was too tired to fight with him tonight. Instead, she changed the subject. “How much damage do you think the fire caused?”

“We won’t know until we inspect things in the morning. From what I could see, the fire seemed to be contained to the chimney. I doubt you’ll see any structural damage but we can’t be certain until at least tomorrow. It might be Monday or Tuesday by the time we know anything.” He paused. “Are you planning to stick around that long?”

She glanced at the house, feeling that steady, relentless dribble of panic again. “Yes,” she said, lips tight.

She had no reason to tell this man who disliked her so intently that she would be here for the immediate future, that she had nothing left but this smoke-damaged house that sat in the rain like a graceful grande dame.

“You can call the fire station and leave the name of your hotel once you figure it out. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I know whether the house is safe to inhabit.”

She could afford a night or two in a hotel, but she would have to come up with another solution if this dragged on longer than that—especially if she was going to pour all her resources into pursuing Jess’s dream. Again, nothing she was willing to share with Fire Chief Caine.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

He studied her for a minute longer and she knew she must be a mess—bedraggled and sooty and smelling of smoke and fire extinguisher chemicals.

“Welcome back. I guess.”

* * *

SOMETHING WAS UP.

Brendan frowned as he watched Lucy Drake slide back behind the wheel of her fancy BMW. She sat for a moment gazing out the front windshield into the darkness as if she couldn’t quite remember how to put the car in gear.

He was aware of a tiny, wriggling concern, like a slippery earthworm in the garden he couldn’t quite grasp.

Usually, she was brash and confident, striding through the world with her designer suits and leather briefcases.

On her rare visits to Hope’s Crossing before Jess had died, Lucy would blow in with a backseat full of expensive gifts for the kids and for Jess and story after story about her exciting life in Seattle as the marketing director at a hugely successful and rapidly expanding software company.

Yeah, the circumstances were rough tonight. It had to be a rude welcome for her to come back to Iris House and end up with a chimney fire five minutes later.

That didn’t completely explain the way she had been acting. The woman who had just headed away looking lost and alone didn’t seem at all like the fiercely driven go-getter who usually made no secret of her disdain for him.

Don’t you think you can do better than a washed-up jock with more muscles than brains?

He pushed away the bitter memory he hadn’t realized still haunted him somewhere deep inside to find he wasn’t alone in his contemplation of Lucy’s little red BMW.

Pete Valentine, one of his volunteer firefighters who ran a successful plumbing business the rest of the time, stood at his elbow. The other man licked his bottom lip with a greedy sort of look as his gaze followed her taillights. “Lucy Drake. She’s still as hot as ever. Man, she used to make my balls ache in high school.”

He glowered at the locker room talk which, unfortunately, wasn’t all that uncommon among his crew at times.

Pete was married to a nurse at the hospital. If she heard him talking like this, Janet would probably give him a whole new definition of aching balls.

Pete seemed to take his silence as tacit permission. “Something about that whole badass-Goth-girl thing just did it for me, you know? Especially because she was so smart on top of all that attitude. Honor roll, the whole thing. I sat behind her in Mrs. McKnight’s English class senior year, and I spent the whole semester trying to get a peek beneath all that black leather, if you know what I mean.”

He had always thought he liked Pete, but right now he wanted to take one of the attack fire hoses to him, for reasons he didn’t quite understand.

“Yeah, well, how about we don’t take any more visits down your horny teenage memory lane while we have a job to finish?” he growled.

Pete blinked at his tone and his glare. “Uh, sure, Chief. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just surprised to see her, that’s all.”

Yeah. Join the club, Brendan thought as Pete hurried away.

He never would have guessed when he tucked the kids in at home with Mrs. Madison and drove past this very house on his way to his shift that evening that he would be back here—and facing Lucy in the process.

Though her car was long gone, he still couldn’t help gazing down the road where she had traveled.

He hadn’t missed how evasive she had been when he’d asked how long she was staying. He had to hope it was only a day or two.

Some people just tended to shake things up wherever they went, to spawn chaos and tumult without even trying. Lucy had that particular gift in spades—as tonight clearly indicated.

He and Carter and Faith were finally digging their way out of the deep, inky chasm Jess’s death had tossed them all into. They were finally settling back into a routine, moving forward with one steady foot in front of the other. His kids didn’t need Lucy to aim all that chaos in their direction and shake up the world that was finally feeling calm for the first time in two years.

No sense in worrying about it, he thought as he turned back to the fire and all the details he needed to do in order to clear the scene and send his engines back to the house.

One thing about Lucy. She never stayed long in Hope’s Crossing. In a few days, no doubt she would be packing up her little red car and heading back into the fray, to Seattle and her high-powered career and the world where she belonged.

CHAPTER TWO

A MAN WHO had reached the ripe old age of thirty-six ought to have picked up a little sense along the way.

The next morning, Brendan sipped at his coffee at the counter of his father’s café, The Center of Hope, waiting for some of Pop’s delectable French toast. Though his cup was still half-full, Pop topped him off without asking the minute he set it back down.

“Lucy Drake! That darling girl.” Dermot’s weathered features creased into a concerned frown. “You’re certain, are you, that she came to no harm, then? Did you give her an examination?”

“I had a couple of the EMTs check her out. They reported all her vital statistics were normal. She was only exposed to the smoke for a few moments.”

“You didn’t check her out yourself?”

“No, Pop. I relied on the word of a couple guys who have a combined twenty years as emergency medical technicians. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so trusting.”

“She’s a family friend. Godmother to your children. You can’t be too careful with people who are that important.”

Did Pop mean it was okay for Brendan to provide subpar care to the various strangers he encountered in the course of his job every day? “You can put your mind at ease. She was fine when she left Iris House last night, I promise.”

“That’s a relief. And you’re sure she had no burns?”

“Positive.”

He should have expected this interrogation. By his very nature, Dermot was concerned about everybody in Hope’s Crossing, but he especially fretted over those he had taken under his wing. For reasons known only to him, Dermot had developed a soft spot for Lucy from the moment she showed up in town to live with her great-aunt, all black clothes and pale makeup and a truckload full of attitude.

Brendan sighed and sipped his coffee. When he’d decided on the spur of the moment to grab a quick bite of breakfast at the Center of Hope Café before he headed home, he had hoped he could avoid thinking about Lucy for five minutes—something he had found impossible throughout the night as he worked the rest of his shift.

Dermot wasn’t making that task particularly easy by bringing the woman up the moment Brendan walked into the café. He should have known his father would have heard about the fire the night before, that it would be a central topic of discussion in town.

Dermot knew everything that went on in Hope’s Crossing, from the precipitation level for the month to the color of Mayor Beaumont’s new suit. Owning the town’s most popular gathering spot meant he was usually privy to the best gossip and the most interesting tidbits.

Flashing lights and an assortment of ladder and pumper trucks showing up in the middle of the night to one of the town’s historic silver baron mansions would certainly have set tongues wagging.

The minute Brendan walked into the café, Dermot had demanded all the details about the chimney fire excitement at Iris House—and particularly about the juicy rumors that Lucy Drake had been the cause of it.

“Where did she spend the night, do you know?”

He sighed. “Can’t tell you that, Pop. Sorry I didn’t think to press her for more details about her lodging arrangements. I was a little busy. You know, putting out the fire and all.”

Dermot was unfazed by his dry response. With six strapping sons and a daughter, very little could faze his father, especially not a bit of mild sarcasm.

“I hadn’t heard she was coming back to town, had you?”

“No. She didn’t tell me.” A little warning would have been nice. Air-raid sirens, at the very least.

“How long is she planning to stay?”

“No idea,” he answered.

“Well, have you told the children yet?” Dermot persisted. “Carter and Faith will be thrilled to see her, won’t they? Why, Faith is always talking about her aunt Lucy sending her this or that, video-conferencing with her on the computer, emailing her a special note.”

He picked up his coffee cup with another sigh. So much for hoping he could eat a hearty breakfast without having to think about the woman for five minutes.

“I haven’t seen them yet. I had a meeting first thing when my shift ended and didn’t catch them before they left for school this morning. Mrs. Madison took them. My plan was to grab some breakfast here and then head home and crash for a few hours until school is out. I’m sure I’ll have the chance to tell them later.”

They would be over the moon at the unexpected treat of a visit from their favorite aunt. Lucy wasn’t truly their aunt. She and Jess had been cousins, linked mostly through their relationship with Annabelle, but his late wife had adored Lucy like a sister.

She had been the maid of honor at their wedding. In typical Lucy fashion, she had been too busy to come back for any of the pre-matrimonial events until the weekend of the wedding, where she had appeared late to the rehearsal dinner with apologies about a last-minute meeting she couldn’t miss and then had left early from the reception to catch a flight.

“They do love her,” Dermot said. “She’s been good to them, hasn’t she? As busy as they keep her at that outfit where she works, she still somehow found time to fly down for Faith’s birthday last year, remember? Just to take her to Denver. Faith didn’t stop talking about the ballet and the shopping for weeks.”

Right. Lucy was a saint.

“Faith didn’t make some plans with Lucy again to bring her to town, did she?”

“Not that I know about,” he answered. He only knew she had been in Hope’s Crossing less than eight hours and he was already tired of her.

“Pop, can we talk about something else?”

“Something else?”

“I don’t know why Lucy Drake is back in town, and to be honest with you, I don’t care much. I only want the little idiot to stay out of my way and to do her best not to burn down Iris House again.”

“Darn. I guess that means I’ll have to return all the cans of gasoline and the jumbo box of matches I just bought at the hardware store.”

If he hadn’t been distracted by the tantalizing smell of bacon after a long shift, he would have smelled Lucy come into the diner before she even spoke. She always wore some kind of subtle, probably expensive scent that reminded him of cream-drenched strawberries.

He swiveled, ignoring Dermot’s disapproving glower. She looked none the worse for wear after her adventures of the night before, fresh and bright and lovely.

She was wearing a leather jacket the color of deer hide, tailored and supple, with a scarlet scarf tied in some kind of intricate loose knot around her neck. She looked sophisticated and urbane and, as usual when he was around her, he felt like a dumb jock with more brawn than brains.

“If you saved your receipt,” he drawled, fighting back against his own stupid sense of inadequacy, “I’m sure Mose Lewis at the hardware store will take it all back.”

She made a face then plopped onto the stool next to him, leaned across the counter and gave Pop a big smacking kiss on the cheek.

“Dermot. You’re as handsome as ever. I’m still waiting for you to get tired of this one-horse town and run away with me. You’d never have to pour a cup of coffee again.”

The tips of his pop’s ears turned red and he smiled, pouring her a cup of coffee.

When he spoke, the traces of Irish accent that still sprinkled his speech intensified. “I have to say, that’s a verra appealing offer, m’darling, but I’m afraid I would miss my grandchildren too much.”

“Ah, well. I guess I’ll have to ease my broken heart with some of your luscious French toast. I’ve been dreaming about it since I left King County.”

Pop beamed at this, as his greatest joy was feeding people—especially those who held a soft spot in his big, generous heart, which certainly qualified Lucy.

“Coming right up. You just sit there and enjoy much better coffee than you’ll ever find in Seattle while you listen to my stubborn son apologize for his rudeness.”

“I can’t wait,” she murmured.

Apparently, Brendan wasn’t the only one who could wax sarcastic in the morning.

Since it had been rude and childish to call her names—and Pop likely wouldn’t be quick to let him forget it—he took his medicine like a good boy.

“Sorry I called you an idiot,” he muttered.

“Sorry you said it or sorry I happened to walk in just in time to overhear you?”

“Does it matter?”

To his surprise, she smiled a little, though she still had that unsettled, restless look in her eyes. “Not really, I suppose. Nicely done, Chief Caine.”

Even big, dumb jocks could use good manners at times, especially when their Pop was standing close enough for a good whack on the knuckles with a wooden spoon.

“So. This is how the fire chief unwinds after an exciting night of serving and protecting the good people of Hope’s Crossing.”

“Sometimes. It’s been a long shift and I’m starving. I didn’t feel like cooking breakfast for myself or pouring a bowl of cereal. Since I already missed seeing the kids off to school this morning, I figured, why not?”

He wondered, not for the first time, why he always felt compelled to defend his actions around her.

“If I had a father like yours, I would come here every morning for breakfast.”

He didn’t miss the slightly wistful tone in her voice. Her home life hadn’t been great, he knew, though only secondhand. Jess hadn’t shared too many details but he knew Lucy’s parents divorced when she was a girl, and she hadn’t had a good relationship with her father’s second wife.

“How is Iris House?” Lucy asked now. “Do you think it’s safe for me to return?”

Though she spoke casually, he sensed an undercurrent of urgency that gave him pause. What was the big rush? She had spent the four months since Annabelle died basically ignoring her legacy. Why was she in a hurry now to stay there? First she showed up after midnight to a dark, cold, locked house when any logical person would have gone to a hotel, now she was trying to hurry along the investigation.

Some tiny part of him was tempted to drag the investigation out as long as possible in the hopes that any further complication would make her turn around and head back to Seattle, but that would have been petty and small.

“You should be fine. We’ve had our inspector go through it from top to bottom and everything appears in order. All the chimneys could use a thorough scrubbing before you use them. I can get you the name of a couple of chimney sweeps in town.”

“That would be good. Thanks.”

“I relit the pilot light, so you ought to have no trouble running the furnace at this point. You’ll want to keep the windows open throughout the day to vent any lingering smoke. Should be a nice, sunny day for it.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Most of the smoke damage seemed to be centered in that den area. You may want to have a cleaning company come in to do a professional job. Sometimes the smell can linger for a long time. I can get you a few of those numbers, too.”

She wore an expression of vague surprise, as if she hadn’t expected him to be helpful. “Again. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They lapsed into an awkward sort of silence and he wondered once more why she had come back to town. This close, he could see a return of that fine-edged tension in the set of her mouth and the way she clasped a napkin tightly, as if to keep it from wriggling away.

“How long are you staying in Hope’s Crossing?” he finally asked. “I’ve had a half-dozen people ask me that already, including Pop.”

“Why would people automatically assume you know anything about my plans?”

“The very question I have asked myself numerous times, believe me.”

Her mouth lifted a little at the corner and he almost thought she wanted to smile but she only picked up her coffee again.

“So?” he pressed.

“I...haven’t decided.”

He leaned back on the stool. “Now that doesn’t sound like the Lucy Drake we all know. You’re the woman with the plan, right? Always looking for the best angle, the next big thing.”

Her fingers tightened around that recalcitrant napkin. “Not always,” she muttered.

Yeah. Something was definitely up. He remembered that strange impression of the night before, that she was lost and even a little frightened.

He didn’t like the sudden urge washing over him to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulder and tell her everything would be okay. That was more Dermot’s venue, not his. He was just the dumb jock who was once married to her cousin.

And who had once shared a couple pretty heated kisses with Lucy, long before he ever started dating Jess.

He pushed that memory back into the deep recesses of his brain, right where it belonged. He had done his best for more than a decade to forget about that night.

“I thought NexGen couldn’t get along without their hotshot marketing director. You don’t have some kind of vitally important meeting to get back to in a day or two?”

She was now not so much fidgeting with her napkin as mangling it beyond recognition. “NexGen and I have...parted ways. I’m taking a small vacation to consider my options. A few weeks. A month. I haven’t decided.”

“Here?”

It was a stupid question, but he was so shocked that he couldn’t think what else to say.

He figured when it came to jobs, people fell into four basic categories. Some hated them vehemently, others tolerated them, still others found great satisfaction in what they did. And then there was the fourth category, those passionate few who were basically defined by their vocation.

That was Lucy—and as a result, she had been amazingly successful for someone just barely on the north side of thirty.

Jessica used to always talk about what Lucy had achieved, her awards and honors and status. Sometimes his wife would glow with pride when she talked about Lucy. Other times she would be terse and moody after hearing about how far and how high Lucy had climbed in such a short time.

During those dark times, he wondered if she regretted her decision to marry him just a few years out of college and to give up her teaching career temporarily while the kids were young.

He hoped not. For the rest of their lives, his children would be without their mother. He would always be deeply grateful they had those first uninterrupted years with her.

“I needed a change of scenery,” Lucy answered. “And since I’ve been putting off dealing with the house, I figured now was a good time.”

He might not like Lucy much, given their complicated history, but he knew a little about loss. Leaving the job she had loved must be very difficult for her.

“Are you...doing okay?”

“You mean, am I going to be forced to live out of a grocery cart and a refrigerator box? I think I’m probably a few months out from that.”

“I meant, are you doing okay, um, emotionally. Change is never easy, even if it was something you wanted. Especially after you lost Annabelle just a few months ago.”

She looked surprised at the question and for a moment he saw a raw tangle of emotions in her expression before she donned a haughty sort of look.

“How refreshingly sensitive, Chief Caine. I never would have expected it of you.”

He could feel his skin heat. “Forget I asked. Not my business.”

Where was Pop with his breakfast, for crying out loud? All he wanted to do was eat his French toast and go home to sleep for a few hours before the kids got home. He wasn’t in the mood to make nice to a prickly porcupine.

After a long, awkward moment, she finally spoke. “The truth is, I got fired.”

Okay, he hadn’t been expecting that one. Fired? Ms. Can-do-no-wrong Drake? What had she done to earn such a dramatic response? Last he heard, she was being groomed for a vice president spot, and now she had been canned? There had to be quite a story behind that one.

Judging by way she didn’t meet his gaze after she dropped that little interesting bombshell, he had a feeling she hadn’t meant to tell him. So why had she?

“That’s tough. I’m sorry.”

She gave him a wary look. “What? No sarcastic comments about how I probably had it coming?”

What had he ever done to make her think he was the kind of jerk who would kick a woman who had obviously hit a personal low point?

“Not my business. If you wanted to tell me, you would have.”

“Our last product launch failed spectacularly,” she said after a moment. “It was a PR nightmare. Our entire marketing campaign focused on how much more secure our newest software was than its closest competitor. Within minutes of the product launch, hackers set out to prove us wrong. Our clients have lost millions and the lawsuits have only just begun.”

“How is that your fault?”

“Someone needed to take the hit, and after I got into a yelling match with the CEO and the product manager last week and called them both a few choice names, I was nominated.”

“Ouch.”

“As you can see, last night’s stupidity trying to burn down Iris House was just the latest in a string of brilliant decisions on my part.”

Before Brendan could come up with an answer to that, Pop came bustling out from the kitchen with two plates piled high with carbohydrates.

“Here you go. Two of the breakfast specials, French toast, just the way you both like it, with strawberries and almond butter.”

“I can’t believe you remembered that!” she exclaimed.

“You’ve only been coming in here for it since you were a wee girl.”

Brendan thought he was the only one on the planet who ate his French toast like that. How strange, to find that Lucy shared that particular affinity with him.

“I remember because I always thought it funny that you and my boy here liked it the same way, given that you don’t usually see eye to eye on many things.”

Not much slipped past his pop.

“Isn’t it?” she murmured.

She took a bite of her breakfast and closed her eyes in appreciation. “It’s every bit as fantastic as I remember. You’re a genius in the kitchen, my friend. Are you sure I can’t talk you into running off with me?”

Dermot laughed, his usually weathered features once again turning pink with delight.

“I do hope you plan to stay in town longer than a few days. You look like you could use a few more mornings of my French toast.”

She was too skinny, Brendan thought, as if she had been working too hard, though she did have a few nice curves he had no business noticing.

“You’re in luck. At this point, I’m here indefinitely,” she said with false cheerfulness.

Brendan’s gut tightened. Indefinitely. That certainly sounded like she would stick around longer than a few weeks.

“Oh, that’s lovely to hear,” Dermot exclaimed. “What will you do?”

“I’m thinking about opening Iris House as a bed and breakfast.”

“Are you, now?” Pop beamed at her.

“It seems like the right thing to do. Jess and Annabelle were always talking about it.” She was careful not to look at Brendan while she spoke.

“They were, at that. That doesn’t make it the right thing for you. I never would have figured you for an innkeeper.”

“I know I don’t have any experience at running a B&B. But I can certainly market the heck out of it.”

Dermot laughed. “Indeed.”

The door to the café suddenly opened and Pop looked up with a smile to greet the new customer.

“Oh. Katherine.” His smile slid away, replaced by an even deeper blush. “Good mornin’ to you.”

“Hello.” Katherine Thorne, a city council member and one of the town’s leading citizens, walked into the café looking as smart and put-together as always.

Dermot suddenly fumbled the coffeepot and splashed some over the side of Brendan’s cup. He glared at his son as if it were his fault, before reaching for a napkin to clean it up.

Pop had a long-term infatuation for Katherine Thorne. Brendan had no idea why his father had never done anything about it, especially when it was obvious to everyone in town that Katherine shared his infatuation and would certainly welcome something more than this awkward friendship.

Margaret Caine had been gone for more than a decade. His mother had died of cancer while he was still a running back for Colorado State, before his short-lived time in the NFL.

As for Katherine, she had been alone even longer, as her husband died years ago.

Brendan could see no reason why the two of them seemed locked in this dance where neither wanted to be the first to lead off. He only knew that watching them together was like chewing on last year’s Halloween taffy, both sweet and painful.

“I’m meeting some friends for breakfast,” Katherine said. “There should be about six of us at last count. If it’s not too much of a bother, could we take one of the back tables, out of the way?”

“Of course. Of course. No problem at all. I’ll just go make it ready for you and your friends.”

Anything for his sweetheart, Brendan thought in amusement. Except actually making her his sweetheart.

Katherine watched after him for just a moment then turned back to greet Brendan. Her eyes widened when she spotted his companion at the counter.

“Lucy! Hello. How are you, my dear?”

Lucy gave Katherine a smile far more genuine than anything she ever bestowed on Brendan. “I’m fine. It’s great to see you. You look wonderful. How’s the bead business treating you these days?”

“Oh, I sold that ages ago. I loved it but the details of running a small business—taxes, inventory, personnel headaches—was sucking all the fun out of it for me. Now I’m just a beader. It’s a much better fit.”

“That’s too bad. I planned to stop in while I was in town.”

Brendan never would have pegged Lucy as a crafter. He might have thought she was only being polite if not for the sincere regret in her blue eyes.

Katherine smiled. “You still can, never fear. Make sure you do, in fact. You won’t be disappointed. String Fever is as busy as ever. I sold it several years ago to Claire McKnight and she’s done wonders with the place. You know Claire, of course.”

“I don’t think so. The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“You might have known her by her maiden name. Claire Tatum.”

“Oh, right. Ruth Tatum’s daughter. I thought she married Jeff Bradford.”

“She did. They were divorced shortly before I sold her the store. A few years ago, she married Riley McKnight. Do you know him?”

“Is that Alex McKnight’s brother?”

“The very same, except she’s now Alex Delgado. You must stop by her restaurant while you’re here. Brazen. It’s at the top of Main Street in the old fire station and is absolutely fantastic.”

Lucy looked a little overwhelmed at the barrage of information. “Thank you for the recommendation. I’ll try to do that. I guess Hope’s Crossing has changed a bit since I lived here.”

“Not that much. You’ll find the same good friends and kind neighbors.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she murmured, though he hadn’t missed the way her mouth tightened a little.

He had never had the impression that Lucy liked Hope’s Crossing very much. Oh, she loved Annabelle and Jess and Iris House. She would visit on the occasional holiday and special occasion, like the children’s christenings and Annabelle’s past few birthdays.

He couldn’t really blame her. From what Jessie had told him, Lucy had come to town an angry, rebellious teenager, forced to live with a great-aunt she barely knew. She had spent her last few years of high school at Iris House with Annabelle before heading off to college, but that didn’t necessarily mean the town felt like home to her.

If she were looking for a place to lick her wounds, he wanted to tell her, she could do much, much worse than Hope’s Crossing.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN LUCY GREW UP, she wanted to be just like Katherine Thorne.

The woman was the very epitome of class and elegance. Lucy had always thought so.

When Lucy had first been dumped on Aunt Annabelle, Katherine used to visit Iris House for the monthly library board meetings. Even when Lucy had been clad all in black with her piercings and her purple-dyed hair, Katherine had treated her with respect and kindness.

Few others had been able to see past all the attitude to the frightened, sad girl inside. Most treated her with suspicion and sometimes outright disdain, but Katherine had at least tried.

Lucy had never forgotten it. After she was able—in no small part thanks to Annabelle—to get her stuff together and move past that rebellious teen stage, she would sometimes stop into String Fever on trips back to Hope’s Crossing during college breaks to visit Annabelle.

Invariably, Katherine would greet her with a warm smile of welcome and insist on catching up on her most recent semester and how her studies were progressing.

She remembered the woman as a bright spot of kindness in a dark time.

Now, as Lucy listened to Katherine talk to Brendan about a new fire engine the city had recently purchased, she was impressed all over again. First the library board with Annabelle years ago, now the city council. Apparently Katherine worked hard to serve the people of Hope’s Crossing.

Dermot Caine approached them, his color a little more ruddy than usual, for reasons she didn’t understand.

“Your table is ready,” he said to Katherine. “Would you like to be seated or wait until the rest of your party arrives?”

The older woman made a face. “Oh. How rude of me. I’ve been monopolizing the conversation when you’re here to have breakfast together.”

“We’re not together,” Lucy said quickly, careful not to look at Brendan. “I mean, we’re here together, obviously, but we didn’t intend it. We both just kind of showed up at the same time. But not together, together.”

She sounded like an idiot, a point that was reinforced when all three of them stared at her.

Brendan cleared his throat. “You know you’re welcome to come over to the station and take a look at the new engine anytime. As hard as you worked to push the funding through, we ought to at least name it after you. Katherine. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“I’ve always thought so,” Dermot said, then appeared flustered when the city councilwoman smiled warmly at him.

“Thank you, but I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. We all knew you needed it—it was just a matter of squeezing the funds out of our tightfisted mayor.”

“Nobody squeezes William Beaumont better than you.”

“His daughter seems to do a pretty good job of it. And speaking of which, she’ll be one of my breakfast companions, along with Charlotte, Evie, Mary Ella and Janie Hamilton. Will you send them back to my table, Dermot? They should be arriving soon.”

“Of course. Of course.”

Katherine smiled, brushing her cheek against Lucy’s. “My dear. It was lovely to see you again. I hope we get the chance to catch up before you leave town again.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” she answered.

As soon as the woman left, Dermot seemed to find it necessary to retreat to the kitchen, leaving her and Brendan alone. Relatively alone, anyway, considering they were seated at a busy counter along with a half-dozen others, in a bustling diner filled with the pleasant sounds of clinking dishes and conversation.

She was still uncomfortably aware of him. Big surprise there, since she had the same reaction every time she was in the same room with him. His wife had been her best friend so, yes, that ridiculous awareness had led to some very awkward interactions over the years.

One stupid kiss more than a decade ago—a mere fifteen minutes out of her life—and sometimes, despite her very best efforts, she couldn’t manage to think about anything else.

She let out a breath. She just had to try harder. If she was going to be staying in Hope’s Crossing for a while, she would inevitably have to see Brendan. He lived down the street, and his children were two of her favorite humans on the planet.

She had to put that kiss a decade ago—and the subsequent weeks of confusion and heartache—completely out of her mind.

A moment later, he set his napkin down beside his plate and climbed off the round stool. “I guess I’ll probably see you later. If I’m going to catch a few hours of sleep before Carter and Faith get home from school, I should probably take off.”

“I can’t wait to see them. I’ve got a few gifts for them, things I brought with me that I haven’t gotten around to mailing. Could I drop them off sometime today?”

A muscle flexed in that strong jaw. “You know you don’t have to shower them with gifts. They would love you, anyway, trinkets or not.”

He made no secret that it annoyed him when she sent little toys or books to the children—or delivered them in person when she came to town. She was honest enough with herself to admit that might have been part of the reason she went to the trouble. She genuinely enjoyed picking out things for the children, but she considered needling Brendan a bonus side effect.

Yes, she was a horrible person.

If he had never flirted with her that long-ago night, never kissed her, never inspired such silly dreams—and never fallen hard for her best friend just a few weeks later and ended up marrying Jessie—their relationship might have been a much more comfortable one.

“I know I don’t have to give them gifts, but I enjoy it. And who knows? Now that I’m unemployed, this might be the last time I can afford to bring them anything.”

That was as close to a joke about the catastrophe her life had become as she had yet been able to manage. That had to be progress, right?

He studied her a moment, an unreadable expression on his features. He looked tired, his eyes a little red-rimmed and his hair slightly mussed, probably from taking off that helmet he’d worn at Iris House during the fire. He had crinkles at the corners of his eyes she didn’t remember seeing before and a few little gray strands hidden in all that thick dark hair.

But he was still far too gorgeous for her peace of mind.

“The kids both have baseball practice this evening. We won’t be home until later and then they’ll have homework and their daily reading for school to do. Another day would be better.”

She didn’t need him to spell it out. He was clearly telling her that even though she was back in Hope’s Crossing and living just up the street, he wasn’t going to allow unfettered access to Faith and Carter.

The few bites of really delicious strawberry-and-almond sprinkled French toast she had managed to eat around her nerves seemed to congeal in her stomach. “Sure. I’ll try to connect with you another day, then. I’m anxious to see them but I can certainly wait.”

“I’ll let you know.”

He waved to his father, nodded to a couple other people in the diner then headed out without another word to her.

After he left, she spent a minute or two more picking at her breakfast, mainly because she didn’t want to hurt Dermot’s feelings by not savoring the meal he had prepared especially for her.

Why had she opened her big mouth and told Brendan about being fired? Of all the people in town, he was the one person whose reaction she had dreaded.

He had really been surprisingly decent about it. She had expected some kind of snide comment, but he actually had seemed sympathetic. Sometimes she didn’t know what went on in his head. She only knew their encounters were usually so awkward and tense, she couldn’t wait for them to be over.

How would she survive living in Hope’s Crossing, where she was bound to run into him often?

The bells on the door suddenly chimed. She glanced up at the big mirror above the counter as a couple of women about her age walked in, laughing at something with their heads close together. Her heart gave a sharp, familiar ache at their friendship. Jessie had been her best friend most of her life, and Lucy missed her every single day.

She didn’t have many other female friends, at least none that reached the level of closeness she had shared with Jess. Since she’d graduated from college and started working for NexGen, she had been so focused on her career, on climbing further and faster, she hadn’t put nearly enough effort into building healthy relationships in other aspects of her life.

If she had a better support network, maybe she wouldn’t have been left so shattered right now.

To her surprise, the women immediately walked over to her.

“Lucy! Katherine just texted us that you were here. How great to see you again!” A trim-looking woman with honey-gold hair and a sweet smile reached out and wrapped her in a hug.

It was a disorienting moment, as she had no clue who the woman was until she scrutinized her a little more closely. “Charlotte? Wow! You look fantastic!”

The last time she had seen Charlotte Caine, Brendan’s sister, had been at Jessie’s funeral, when the other woman had been about a hundred pounds heavier.

Charlotte smiled. “Thank you. It’s been a fun journey. What a surprise to see you here at Pop’s on a lovely Saturday morning! I didn’t think you ever left Seattle.”

Everyone in town would be wondering why she was back. How could she explain to them all that she had failed at the one thing she ever thought she was good at?

Maybe Brendan would tell everyone and then she wouldn’t have to. No. Somehow, she knew he wouldn’t. He might dislike her intensely, but she instinctively trusted him to keep this information to himself.

She had lost her job. The weight of her failure seemed to clutch at her chest. Who was she if she wasn’t the go-getter marketing director at NexGen?

She made herself take a deep breath, forcing away those familiar snaking tendrils of panic.

“I decided it was finally time to figure out what I want to do with Iris House,” she finally answered in a calm tone that left her inordinately proud of herself.

The woman with Charlotte—blonde and slim and stylishly, if casually, dressed—lit up at her words. “Oh, you’re the one who owns that beautiful house?”

“Yes,” she answered. It was still a tough admission. She didn’t feel she had any rights to the place. Jessica should have inherited it, should have had the chance to turn it into the B&B of her dreams. She had adored every opulent inch of it.

Instead, Jess was gone, taken far too young during pregnancy by a heart condition no one suspected. Jess was gone, Annabelle was gone. Lucy was the only one of them left.

“I heard there was a fire there last night. Is it true?” Charlotte’s friend said.

That’s right. She had dozens of reasons to be embarrassed to show her face around town. “Yes. That was my fault. I arrived in the middle of the night and couldn’t get the furnace to start. I tried to light a fire in one of the rooms and ended up with a chimney blaze.”

“Is everything okay?” Charlotte exclaimed.

“Your brother seems to think so. He says I should be safe to return there this morning.”

“That’s a relief!” the other woman said. “I can’t recall if we’ve met. I’m Genevieve Beaumont.”

Ah. This was the mayor’s daughter, who could wrap him around her finger. She thought she vaguely recalled seeing her at Annabelle’s funeral, but she had been so grief-stricken, that time was a blur.

“Hello. I’m Lucy Drake. Annabelle Stanbridge was my great-aunt.”

“She was quite a character. I’ve hated seeing her house empty these last few months. Iris House is one of those places meant to be filled with life,” Genevieve said.

“I agree,” she answered.

“What are your plans for it?” Charlotte asked. “Are you looking to sell? I can think of several people who might be interested.”

“I haven’t decided,” she admitted. “I’m actually thinking about opening it up as a bed and breakfast, if the town isn’t already glutted with them.”

“Oh, that would be the perfect place!” Charlotte exclaimed. “People would love a chance to stay in one of the early silver mansions.”

“I have no idea how much work awaits me. My plan after breakfast is to go through room by room and start making lists.”

That panic began pressing in on her again. She felt completely out of her comfort zone with the whole idea—but maybe that was exactly what she needed. Maybe she had become too settled, too complacent with her life.

“If you need any help,” Charlotte said, “Genevieve is just opening an interior design business. She does amazing work.”

The mayor’s daughter looked pleased and a little embarrassed at the endorsement. “I’m only just starting out. I’m sure Lucy has other plans in mind for what she wants to do with the place.”

“Not really. I’d love for you to take a look at it and give me your thoughts.”

Before Genevieve could respond, Dermot came out from the kitchen and spotted them.

“Why, look who’s here! It’s my lovely daughter and my lovely daughter-to-be.”

Genevieve blushed at this, and both women greeted him with kisses on the cheek. Lucy studied the mayor’s daughter more closely.

“You’re engaged to one of the Caine boys? Really? You’re a brave woman, Ms. Beaumont. No offense, Dermot.”

He laughed cheerfully. “None taken. Believe me, I know exactly how brave she is to take on this particular son.”

He hugged Genevieve again, who seemed to light up with happiness. Lucy was aware of a sharp pang of envy that Genevieve apparently had been absorbed into the huge, boisterous, loving Caine family.

“Which brother?” she asked. “Let me guess. Aidan.”

The tech genius had accrued a fortune in Silicon Valley and was worth millions, which would probably suit the elegant Genevieve. She had met him a few times over the years at various business functions.

Because of their shared connection to Hope’s Crossing, he always found a few moments to speak with her, earning her jealous snake-eyes from some of her female associates, who tended to go a little out of their heads for Aidan’s brilliant mind and his sexy-nerd good looks.

“Good heavens, no,” Genevieve exclaimed. “I barely know Aidan. I think I’ve only met him two or three times. He terrifies me, if you want the truth.”

“Jamie, then?” She never would have thought the sexy charmer of a helicopter pilot would settle down, even for someone as lovely as Genevieve.

“Wrong again,” Charlotte said with a grin.

Lucy did a few quick calculations. She knew the older two of Charlotte’s brothers were married. Surely not...Brendan. Impossible.

Why was it impossible? she asked herself. Jess had been gone more than two years. Did she really expect him to hold on to her memory forever? But still. Picturing Genevieve Beaumont as stepmother to Faith and Carter left a cold, tangled knot in her stomach.

“So you’re marrying...”

“Dylan!” Genevieve said, with obvious relish, as if Lucy couldn’t have made any other guess.

Just like that, the sickly feeling eased. “Dylan! Wow. That’s...terrific.”

And wholly unexpected. Last she heard, the youngest Caine brother had nearly died while fighting in Afghanistan and had been left with lifelong scars.

He seemed an odd pick for a woman who was obviously very aware of her appearance and who was starting an interior design business. But what did she know?

Nothing in Hope’s Crossing was turning out as she expected.

She couldn’t doubt the woman was deeply in love with Dylan, not when she saw the joy bloom on her lovely features.

“We’re having a quiet sunrise ceremony this summer in a meadow near his house in Snowflake Canyon.”

“Followed by a huge blowout bash that’s going to take over the entire ski resort,” Charlotte added dryly.

Genevieve beamed. “It has to be huge!” she protested. “What else do you expect from a double reception? Half of that is from your side.”

“Who else is getting married?” Lucy asked, feeling a little lost.

Charlotte waved her hand, which Lucy now saw sported a tasteful princess-cut diamond.

“Oh, congratulations. I hadn’t heard.”

“Thank you.”

“She’s marrying Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory,” Genevieve said.

“Spence? Really?”

“Yes. Spence.” Charlotte’s joy was softer than Genevieve’s but every bit as genuine.

Though Lucy had lived in Seattle, she had been a big fan of the Portland Pioneers and had even driven down a few times to watch Smoke Gregory’s amazing fastball. His fall from grace as a Major League Baseball pitcher a few years before had been a personal blow—and the way he had clawed his way back from a dark place just as inspiring.

Maybe she should learn a few things from him.

“They’re getting married at the church the night before Dylan and I are tying the knot. We’ve decided on separate ceremonies and a combined reception. Doesn’t that sound fabulous?”

“It really does. Wow. A girl leaves town for a decade and everything changes. Congratulations, both of you.”

“Thank you! We’re meeting people for breakfast. You look as if you have nearly finished eating, but we would love to have you join us for coffee and conversation.”

Lucy was sorely tempted, struck again by how very few female friends she had. She was suddenly greedy for friends—and not just any friends, these women.

At the same time, she wasn’t sure she could pull off being warm and friendly when she felt so wrecked by everything that had happened the past few days. It wasn’t every week a woman lost the job of her dreams or tried to burn down the only thing she had left.

“Another time, I would love that. Right now I need to head over to Iris House and take a look at the damages.”

“Oh, good luck,” Charlotte said. “We’ll definitely catch up while you’re in town.”

“Genevieve, if you’re serious about helping me with Iris House, I would greatly appreciate any input. Maybe we could make an appointment next week for you to walk through with me and at least give me some idea where to start.”

The other woman looked thrilled. “That would be fantastic! I just had these really cute cards made up.” She reached into the funky fabric bag she carried and pulled out a slim black case. She extracted a business card and handed it over to Lucy. “My cell, business line and email are on there. Call me and we can work something out. Do you have a card we can exchange?”

She had about a jillion and three of them, but they wouldn’t do her any good anymore. “Not on me,” she answered, which wasn’t precisely a lie. “I’ll call you, though.”

“Great. I can’t wait.”

She waved goodbye to the women, left a bill on the counter to pay Dermot for her breakfast along with a healthy tip and then walked out into the town that would be her home for the foreseeable future, like it or not.

CHAPTER FOUR

“COME ON, HONEY. You can do it,” Brendan urged his daughter.

“No! Don’t let go, Daddy,” Faith begged. “Please don’t let go.”

Brendan sighed as he held on to the back of her bike seat, wishing he could enjoy the sweetly warm April evening that smelled of life, new growth, somebody barbecuing down the street.

Another spring, another effort to get Faith to ride her bike without the training wheels.

Two years ago, she had begged him to take off the training wheels on her bike as soon as the snow melted. He had promised he would before the new baby came—but before he could follow through on his promise, Jess and the baby were both gone.

None of them had felt much like riding bikes that spring. When he pulled them out of the garage after the snow melted a year ago, Faith had insisted she wasn’t ready to ride without the training wheels. He had pushed a little but not too hard. Jessie had only been gone a year and Faith seemed to need the comfort of the familiar.

But she would turn eight years old during the summer. The time had come for her to stop clinging so tightly to the familiar and venture into untried territory.

He worried about the tentativeness she had developed since Jess’s death. She never wanted to try anything new—roller-skating, Girl Scouts, sushi.

She was an insanely smart girl, but she was beginning to let her fears rule her.

All of them had been in grief counseling for months after Jess and their unborn baby died. Maybe they weren’t quite done in that department.

At some point, he had to fight back against the tyrannical hold Faith’s fears had over her. He figured forcing her to lose the training wheels was as good a place to start as any and had removed them a week earlier, much to her dismay.

“Hey, Dad! Look! Here I go!”

Carter, still a month away from six, rolled past on his two-wheeler like Lance freaking Armstrong—but without the steroid abuse.

Carter seemed on the other side of the spectrum from Faith, totally without fear. He had begged Brendan to take off his training wheels the previous fall and he had done it with a great deal of trepidation, certain a five-year-old didn’t have the balance or coordination yet. Training wheels existed for a reason, right?

At the same time, he had hoped maybe seeing Carter make the effort might spur Faith to try a little harder.

Instead, as she watched her brother master the bike in just an hour, Faith only seemed to cling tenaciously to her conviction that she wasn’t ready.

“You’re doing great, Car,” he called. “Keep going.”

“I loooove my bike,” Carter sang out at the top of his lungs in one of his spur-of-the-moment song compositions as he rode past. “I love love love my bike.”

He had to smile at the sheer exuberance Carter brought to everything he did. What would he have done the past two years without both of his kids?

Probably wandered into the wilderness and became a hermit or something, growing a four-foot-long beard and living off beef jerky.

“Riding bikes is awesome and cool. I want to ride my bike to school,” Carter sang.

Even Faith smiled at her little brother.

Brendan took that as an encouraging sign. “Okay, let’s try one more time.”

Her smile slid away. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me, Daddy.”

“You can do it, Faith. You just have to believe in yourself,” he urged, feeling like the worst parent on earth for pushing her out of her comfort zone. On the other hand, wouldn’t catering to her unreasonable fears be more harmful in the long run?

“I don’t want to!” she protested.

“One more, that’s all. I promise. And then we can put the bikes away and go for a walk.”

“I want to ride a bike,” she said, with traces of her mother’s stubbornness—okay, and his, as well—in her voice. “I just want to ride a bike that still has training wheels. Why can’t you put them back on?”

If the kid spent as much time trying to focus on her balance as she did arguing about why she couldn’t, they would all be better off.

“One more time, Faith. Come on, kiddo. You’ve got this.”

She glared at him but apparently accepted that he wasn’t about to back down. With him holding on to the seat for balance, she started her wobbly way down the ride.

“Don’t let go,” she said. “Promise!”

He didn’t answer. Instead, when she seemed to have sufficient speed and had reduced the wobble, he enacted one of those difficult parental betrayals and released his hold on her.

She rode about six feet before she realized he wasn’t holding on anymore...and promptly fell over.

“Owwww,” she wailed, not quite crying but close to it. “You let go! You promised you wouldn’t let go!”

“I never promised I wouldn’t let go.”

“Yes, you did! You did!”

She wouldn’t listen to him in this state, and he wasn’t going to stand here arguing with her. Close to the end of his patience, he was about to tell her so when an unwelcome voice intruded.

“Wow, Faith! You’re riding a two-wheeler? That’s wonderful!”

Both of them turned around swiftly to find Lucy walking down the sidewalk toward them.

She looked lovely and bright and more casually dressed than he had seen her in a long time, in jeans and a plain green tailored cotton shirt that matched her eyes. With her hair pulled up into a loose hairstyle on top of her head, she looked pretty and sweet and far too young to have been the marketing director at a major software company until recently.

He was supposed to make arrangements with her to drop off a few things for Faith and Carter. He hadn’t precisely forgotten; he had just done his best to put it out of his head so he didn’t have to dwell on more thoughts of her that seemed to have intruded far too frequently since she returned to town.

“Aunt Lucy!” Faith exclaimed, her voice overflowing with joy.

Her father’s minor treachery forgotten, she jumped up from the toppled bike and raced to Lucy, throwing her arms around her waist with an exuberant delight he rarely saw in his quiet, serious oldest child.

Lucy closed her eyes as she returned Faith’s embrace with a soft expression on her features that brought a weird lump to his throat.

He and Lucy might not get along for a dozen different reasons, but he couldn’t deny that she loved his children.

“What are you doing here?” Faith burst out. “I didn’t even know you were coming! How long are you staying? Where are you staying? Will you be here for my baseball game next week?”

Lucy laughed at the barrage of questions hurled at her like a broken pitching machine spewing balls at the new batting cages in town.

“Whoa. Slow down. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you myself. I made a really quick decision to come back to Hope’s Crossing, and here I am. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anybody. And I can’t tell you how long I’m staying but I think it will be at least a month.”

Faith’s eyes widened. “A month? Really?” she whispered in a reverent sort of voice, as if someone had just handed her all her dreams on a shiny platter. Which Lucy apparently had just done.

“Yes. I’ll be staying at Iris House. Just up the hill, right? I hope we have a chance to spend a lot of time together while I’m here.”

“We can! Oh, we can,” Faith said, at the same moment Carter came zooming past again on his bike.

Unlike his sister, Carter didn’t seem at all fazed to see his usually absent honorary aunt. He acted like it was no big deal to encounter her walking down the street.

“Lucy! Hey, Lucy! Look at me!”

“Wow, Carter! You’re doing great. Both of you riding without training wheels. That’s so terrific. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll both be driving.”

Faith giggled and grinned at Brendan, apparently forgetting for the moment that she was mad at him.

“I’m not really very good at riding a two-wheeler,” Faith confessed after a moment.

“It takes a lot of practice. I bet you’re terrific. Why don’t you show me?”

Brendan worried she might start up her litany of excuses again. Instead, after a wary look at Lucy, she picked her bike off the pavement and climbed on with a determined expression.

He moved forward to hold on to the seat again, but before he could reach it, Faith pushed one pedal down and then the other. The effort was wobbly and unsteady and he thought for sure she would fall but after a few more feet, something clicked. She caught the rhythm or found her balance or something. By the time she made it to the next driveway, she was actually riding.

Faith gave a half excited, half terrified shriek.

“You’re doing it, sweetheart,” he called.

“That’s fantastic! You’re amazing,” Lucy said. “See if you can make it to the corner and back.”

“Come on, Faith. We can go together!” Carter exclaimed, obviously excited to see his sister riding after all the hassles of working to make it happen.

They rode off together, with Faith gaining more confidence with each rotation of the wheel.

“You’re welcome,” Lucy said, as the children pedaled out of earshot.

He gave her a long look. “Am I?”

“How long has she been trying not to learn how to ride a two-wheeler?”

He made a face. “About two years now. How did you know?”

She shrugged, keeping a careful eye on the children. He tried to do that, too, but found his gaze straying back to her despite his best efforts. “I’ve been watching from the house for the past fifteen minutes. Nobody but Carter seemed to be having a good time.”

“Faith can be obstinate when she’s in a mood.”

“Poor thing,” she said with a dry look. “She must have inherited that trait from Jessie.”

The name seemed to shiver between them. Her best friend and his late wife.

“No doubt,” he murmured and quickly changed the subject. “How’s the house? Still smell like a campfire in there?”

She shook her head. “I found a couple of box fans in the cellar. I threw open all the windows on the ground floor and for the last two days I’ve been trying to blow all the air out. Now it smells like a Colorado April afternoon.”

“That should help. You’ll want to wash the curtains in that room, like I said, maybe have the upholstery on the furniture cleaned. Sometimes that smoke can cling for weeks, especially in textiles.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you.”

They lapsed into silence, both watching the children as they reached the corner. Brendan held his breath as Faith navigated the turn. She was a little shaky and he thought she would fall, but she set her leg down to help stabilize the bike and then picked up the rhythm again.

The kid was a natural. He had known she would be once she conquered her mental block and pushed past her apprehension. For that, at least, he owed Lucy.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night about coming over to bring the gifts you bought for the children,” he said on impulse. “The evening got away from me, as they tend to do, with homework and laundry and dinner and everything.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her eyes filled with a sympathy he found as surprising as it was unwelcome. He didn’t want her feeling sorry for him. Yeah, being a single father was tough, but he had plenty of help from his family and good neighbors.

“Whenever you want to come over should be fine. Tomorrow after school would work. I’m not on the schedule at the station for a few more days.”

“Thanks. I would go get them now but I don’t want to stop the forward momentum here.”

The kids rode up to them just then. Faith even managed a credible job of staying balanced while she braked.

“Did you see that, Dad?” Faith’s sweetly serious little face glowed. “I rode all the way to the corner and back!”

“I watched the whole time. You were terrific. I knew you could do it. It was just a matter of practice.”

And a little bit of Lucy magic, he added to himself. It wasn’t a completely comfortable thought.

“Can we go for a bike ride to the park?”

He chuckled. “Two minutes ago, you couldn’t ride without your training wheels. Now you’re ready to go across town to the park?”

“It’s not across town. I meant the little park that’s just on the other side of Tulip Street.”

He had a hundred things to do that evening. Reports to file, bills to pay, dishes to wash. But he couldn’t discourage her from practicing this new skill he had fought so hard for her to attain.

“Sure. We can go to the park. Stay on the sidewalk and don’t cross the street until I get there.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

She beamed at him and rode off, still a little wobbly but really doing remarkably well, considering she had only actually been riding without the training wheels for about ten minutes.

He followed after her and had walked only a few steps when he realized Lucy was still standing where he had left her, in front of the Browns’ driveway.

He turned around, struck by how lovely she looked there in the long shadows of afternoon with the fading sunlight haloing her hair and burnishing her skin.

He didn’t want to notice that about Lucy or any woman. Not yet. He forced himself to push it out of his mind.

“You’re not coming with us?” he asked gruffly, gesturing after the kids.

She blinked a little at his tacit invitation then smiled. “Oh. Yes. I could use a walk this evening.”

He waited until she caught up with him, and they walked in silence for a few moments. The air was pleasantly cool. He always enjoyed this time of year, when the grass was beginning to green up again and the trees were bursting with buds.

“I had forgotten how pretty Hope’s Crossing is in the evening,” she said.

He had lived here most of his life, except the few years he was away on a scholarship playing college football and earning his degree and then the two short years he played pro football before a knee injury permanently sidelined him. To him, Hope’s Crossing was just...home. But on a spring night in April, he could see the appeal of the well-kept, charming houses, the tree-lined streets, the mountains that encircled the town.

He waved to old Mr. Henderson, driving past in his beat-up old Chevrolet pickup truck. “It’s a nice little town, especially for kids.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

They walked a little farther and he raised a hand in greeting to two more people driving past.

“You must know everybody in town,” she said.

“Not even close. We’ve got so many people moving in or building second homes in the area, it’s hard to keep track. I just happen to know those two. And that one, my neighbor, Mrs. Peabody.”

He waved at the longtime widow who used to teach him in Sunday school. He saw her shield her eyes with a hand as she tried to make out the identity of his companion and his stomach dropped.

He suddenly regretted asking Lucy to join him on this little excursion. Hope’s Crossing was a small town. People were bound to take notice when their favorite object of pity, that poor widower Brendan Caine, started walking around town with a woman new to Hope’s Crossing—or at least recently returned to town.

The last thing he needed were rumors starting up about him and Lucy. He didn’t want anybody deciding to put more into this than exactly what it was, a casual walk to the park with his kids.

In reality, they were two people who disliked each other, linked only by the woman they had both loved and by the two children who rode ahead of them.

He needed to keep reminding himself of that and not allow himself to be seduced by a lovely evening, an even lovelier woman and the quiet enjoyment of a little adult companionship, for a change.

* * *

A WEEK AGO, if somebody had told her she would be spending a beautiful April evening sitting at a park in Hope’s Crossing on a bench next to Brendan Caine, she would have laughed out loud at such a preposterous notion.

Life had the strangest way of throwing curveballs at a woman when she least expected it.

A week ago, she had been confident she had the world figured out—or at least her place in it. Now everything had changed, and she was left trying to find her way again.

Once again, she questioned her decision to return to Hope’s Crossing. It had seemed so right at the time, coming back to this place where she had always found peace and comfort with Annabelle.

But Annabelle was gone and nothing would be the same.

Maybe she should have stayed in Seattle. She had a condo there she had paid cash for a few years earlier. She could have lived there basically rent free while she sent out feelers for other jobs. With her contacts in the industry, it probably wouldn’t have taken her long to find something new. Being fired from her previous job didn’t exactly look that great on her résumé but maybe her track record before the disastrous software launch would speak for itself.

Instead of following logic and sense, she had gone with her gut, for once, and had come back to the only place that had ever felt close to home.

Now, sitting next to Brendan Caine, she wondered again if it had been a huge mistake. He didn’t want her here, that much was obvious—at the park or in Hope’s Crossing. She hadn’t missed his discomfort, just walking through town with her.

Too late to second-guess herself now. She was here now and just needed to make the best of things—and maybe that started with finding common ground with Brendan.

“I had a nice chat with your sister yesterday morning at the café,” she said.

“Did you?”

“She looked fantastic. And she told me she’s getting married to Spence Gregory. That must have been quite a shock for you and your brothers.”

He shrugged. “They seem happy together. Spence was always a good guy. He just lost his way for a while.”

Apparently, there was a lot of that going around.

“And I understand Dylan’s tying the knot, too, with Genevieve Beaumont,” she said. “Shock number two.”

“Yeah. That one’s a little harder to take in, but somehow they work together.”

“How is her family taking it?”

“You mean their little princess hooking up with a disfigured war veteran?” he asked, his voice cold.

“Your words. Not mine,” she answered in the same tone.

He studied her for a moment and some of the protective harshness seemed to ease in his handsome features. “Sorry. It’s a touchy subject. The mayor and Mrs. Beaumont weren’t very thrilled at first, especially since Dylan was unemployed for a while there. And of course, they didn’t hesitate to let their objections be known far and wide throughout the land.”

“I remember the Beaumonts. That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Gen stood up to them, which was a surprise. The way I hear it, she told them if they put her in a position to make her choose between her family or Dylan, she would choose him, every time.”

Lucy decided she was liking Genevieve Beaumont more and more. “How romantic.”

“Or something,” he murmured.

“You don’t think so?”

“It’s easy to make grand sweeping statements like that. Not so easy to live with the consequences of them.”

“But Genevieve must have stuck by her guns. They’re getting married, right?”

“Dylan had a long, tough talk with Gen’s parents. When he’s not being all gruff and cranky, he can be quite a charmer, apparently. I think he must get it from Pop.”

“Too bad that trait wasn’t handed down universally to all the Caine brothers.”

He snorted, a small, amused smile teasing the corner of his mouth. “Isn’t it, though?”

She felt inordinately pleased that she had brought a smile to his face, even such a tiny one.

“He’s also started a partnership with a fairly new contractor in town, Sam Delgado. From what I understand, they have more business than they know what to do with right now. And he’s still a regular volunteer at A Warrior’s Hope, the recreational therapy program Spence and Charlotte started for wounded veterans. A war hero, a volunteer, a thriving businessman. How could Laura and William possibly object to such a paragon for a son-in-law?”

“Not to mention he’s the man their daughter loves.”

“There is that.”

He started to say something else but Carter called out from the swings in an imperious tone.

“Daddy! Push me.”

Brendan sighed. “How did my children both get to be such bossy little things?”

She rose from the bench. “I’ve got this. Relax.”

“No. It’s fine.”

“I’d like to. Would it kill you to let me help with the kids for five seconds?”

So much for any amicable accords. He was back to glowering at her—but at least he sat back down on the bench and made a gesture for her to go ahead.

She moved behind Carter and gave him a hard, swift push that had him giggling in delight.

“Higher!” the little daredevil exclaimed. This one was going to give his father all kinds of trouble during his reckless teenage years, she expected.

“Sure thing. Except I’m going to blame you if my arms fall off.”

He giggled harder and swung his legs to help gain momentum.

“Faith says you’re staying for a month. Is that true?”

“That’s the plan, kiddo.”

“Yay! Then you can come to my birthday party. It’s next month. I’m going to be six.”

“Do you know,” she said, “I believe I heard a rumor somewhere that most five-year-old boys turn six on their next birthdays.”

He giggled. “Will you come?”

“I’ll have to see.”

She didn’t add that a lot could happen between now and next month. Given the tangled history between her and Brendan, she wasn’t entirely sure she would be welcome at his son’s birthday party in a month.

* * *

TWO EVENINGS LATER, Lucy juggled an umbrella in one hand, a bag from her favorite toy store in Seattle in the other and a box in both arms as she pressed Brendan’s doorbell with her elbow.

She had always loved his house. It was comfortable and homey, built of a warm, rust-colored brick in the Craftsman style, with a wide front porch and two dormer windows. Situated on a higher plot in town, it had lovely views down the hill into downtown Hope’s Crossing.

Jess’s favorite rocking chair had a few old cobwebs underneath it, as if nobody used it much anymore.

She didn’t have time to feel more than a sharp, familiar pang of loss over that before the door jerked open. Brendan stood on the other side, a cordless house phone cradled in the crook of his shoulder and neck and his fingers texting on a cell phone in his hand.

He appeared astonished to see her for all of two seconds before his features shifted into an expression of sheer gratitude. He grabbed the box out of her arms with one hand and practically yanked her inside with the other.

“I understand,” he said into the phone in a clear tone of dismissal. “If you can’t do it, you can’t do it. Thanks, anyway. Talk to you soon.”

He hung up and set the cordless receiver down on a cluttered table in the entryway at the same time he shoved the cell phone back in his pocket. “Lucy Drake, you are an answer to prayer.”

She couldn’t recall anyone ever saying that to her, especially not Brendan Caine. “I am?”

“Yes! Please tell me you’re free for the next couple of hours.”

She mentally perused her evening schedule and came up empty. As usual. “I should be free,” she said, rather warily.

“Any chance you might be willing to stay with the kids for me? I’m supposed to be off tonight but I just got a call that three of our four full-time paramedics and four more of the volunteers are out with stomach trouble, probably food poisoning from some bad Chinese food they had for lunch, and we’ve had a string of accidents from the rain. I’m got to go in and cover until the overnight shift comes in. I know it’s a lot to ask but the kids have already had their baths and are almost ready for bed.”

She was stunned at the unexpected request but thrilled at the same time that he would even consider turning to her, a woman he so obviously disliked. “Of course. I’m happy to stay with them.”

“None of my usual backup caregivers are available,” he said, looking frazzled. “If you hadn’t showed up, I was going to have to drag them in with me, pajamas and all, as a last resort. Thank you. I owe you.”

“Not at all. I’ll be delighted to spend a little time with them. You know I will.”

“I’ll try to get off as early as I can. Midnight would be the latest.”

“No problem. I can get them to sleep.”

“Thanks. I’ve got to run. Um, make yourself comfortable. Whatever you need. My cell number is on the fridge if you need me.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Thanks. Seriously. I owe you.”

“You don’t. I owe you for giving me the chance to spend time with them.”

“Give me a second. I just have to change. The kids should be changing into pajamas. I imagine they’ll be in any moment.”

She waved him off and stood for a moment in the entryway of his house, left a little off-kilter by the unexpected turn of events.

This was good, though. She couldn’t imagine anything she would rather do than spend the evening with her two favorite children.

She set the hefty box on the bottom step and put the toy store bag on top of it. She was shrugging out of her raincoat when Carter and Faith came barreling down the hall, their hair wet. Carter was wearing LEGO Star Wars pajamas, and Faith had on a nightgown sporting Strawberry Shortcake. They looked startled to see her but rushed over with ready hugs.

“What are you doing here?” Faith asked.

“Well, my plan was to drop a few things off for you, but your dad just asked me to stay with you for a couple of hours while he runs into work.”

“Yay!” Faith exclaimed just as Brendan emerged from down the hall wearing navy cargo pants and a white polo shirt with the logo of the Hope’s Crossing Fire Department on the chest. He looked big and tough and dangerous.

Oh, and delicious. She couldn’t deny that.

“Good news, kids,” he said, grabbing a set of keys off a table in the entryway. “You get to stay in your own beds instead of sleeping at Grandpa’s place or at Aunt Charlotte’s. Your aunt Lucy has kindly agreed to keep an eye on you this evening until I can make it back.”

Carter raced to her and gave her a complicated high-five. Somehow she managed to keep up. “Can we stay up until ten?” he asked.

“Eight-thirty,” she countered. She figured that was appropriate when Brendan didn’t protest the negotiation.

“Yay! That’s half an hour later than usual,” Carter exclaimed.

“Just this once,” Brendan said. He scooped up his son and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Be good for Aunt Lucy.”

“I’m always good,” Carter insisted.

Faith rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. Brendan set the boy down and folded his daughter into a hug. “You, too. No staying up all night reading, got it?”

“Got it.” She hugged him hard. “Good night, Dad. Be careful, okay?”

His mouth tightened a little, but Lucy watched him twist it into a smile that looked forced. “Will do, kiddo.”

He straightened. “Thank you again,” he said to Lucy. “Seriously. You saved the day.”

“Right time, right place. I’m glad I could help.”

He studied her for just a moment, and she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. She was no doubt bedraggled from the rainy walk to his house. She should have just driven, but it had seemed ridiculous when he lived less than a block away.

It didn’t matter what she looked like, she reminded herself. Brendan didn’t care. He had made that quite plain when he had kissed her senseless one moment and then fallen in love with her best friend the next.

“All right, my darlings,” she said after he left. “Who wants to see what I’ve brought you?”

“Me! Me!” Carter exclaimed.

Faith chewed on her bottom lip. “Did Dad say it was okay?”

Brendan had known she had gifts for the kids. He had seen her carrying them in, and he hadn’t not said it was okay.

She was going to take that as approval—though it annoyed her that he had apparently expressed enough displeasure about her gift-giving habits that perceptive little Faith picked up on it.

“It’s fine,” she answered.

“Okay,” Faith decided. “Then I would like to see, too.”

She tried not to overspend on the children, though she had to check herself at times. She had been paid an exorbitant salary at NexGen, far exceeding her needs and her investments, and had few people to spend it on—a number that had dwindled in the past two years with Jessie’s and Annabelle’s deaths.

Her father, her stepmother, her half sister, Crystal, and the children. That was about the size of it.

She wanted to spoil Carter and Faith with trinkets and treasures but knew the things she gave them paled in comparison to actually making the effort to have contact with them through email, Skype and phone calls.

To that end, these gifts were small, but Carter adored the clever magnetic shapes that could be put together to form all kinds of structures, and Faith gave an adorable gasp of delight at the little elastic band bracelet loom and the supply of bands that came along with it.

“Oh! I’ve been wanting one of these to make bracelets for my friends,” she exclaimed.

“Great. We can figure it out together. The woman at the toy store showed me how, and it looks simple enough.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Faith said.

“I am, too, sweetheart,” she answered—and to her surprise, it wasn’t completely a lie, at least not when she was with the children.

She pulled out the heavy box she had carried down from Iris House. “The real treasure is in here, though.”

“What is it?” Carter asked. “Can I open it?”

“You both can.”

The children knelt on either side of the box and worked together to pull back the cardboard flaps.

“Books.”

They both said the word at the same time, Carter with disgust and Faith in a reverent tone.

“Yes. Books. I found them up at Iris House. These were all your mom and my favorites when we were children—The BFG, Charlotte’s Web, Nancy Drew, Jack London, The Hobbit.”

“Hey, I saw that movie,” Carter exclaimed.

“You need to read the book now.”

“Only I can’t read chapter books,” he answered in a duh sort of tone.

“It’s only a matter of time, kid. You’ll be reading chapter books before you know it and then you’ll want to read some of these books, I promise.”

She pulled a boxed collection from the bottom of the box and held it out to Faith, who looked dazed with delight at the literary bounty. “And look at this. My very favorite. Anne of Green Gables. One summer when I came to stay with Annabelle for a few weeks, your mom and I made a pact to read the whole series by the time school started again. I think I was thirteen.”

She actually knew she had been thirteen. It was the summer her father had left them, she remembered, when she had been lost and frightened, emotionally traumatized by a lifetime of being caught in the crosshairs on the battlefield of a horrible marriage.

When her mother—seeking attention, as always—made a halfhearted suicide attempt and was subsequently committed to the psychiatric treatment unit at the local hospital, Robert Drake had once more shrugged off responsibility for her.

How could he possibly be expected to take in a frightened girl? He had just moved in with his twenty-one-year-old girlfriend, and Pam wasn’t at all prepared to handle that kind of responsibility. Besides, they just didn’t have room. She would have so much more fun staying at Annabelle’s, where her favorite cousin, Jessica, was living with her recently widowed mother.

For Robert, it had been the perfect solution. For Lucy, it was just another betrayal, made bearable only by Annabelle and Jessica and the magical escape she found that summer in books.

When her mother was released, she moved back to Denver with Betsy but she’d never forgotten those treasured hours reading on the shaded porch swing on hot July afternoons or under the big maple tree out back.

“You’ve read them, right?” she asked Faith now.

The girl shook her head. “Not yet. I’ve been wanting to but I never started.”

She was not quite eight, much younger than Lucy had been when she’d read them. Maybe she wouldn’t enjoy them as much.

Despite her worry, Faith looked delighted and picked the first book out of the collection and opened it up right there in the living room.

“What about me?” Carter asked, not to be outdone. “Which one should I read?”

She looked through the collection and pulled out Charlotte’s Web.

“Have you read this? It’s one of my favorites.”

“Is that the one about the spider and the pig?” he asked.

“The very one.”

“Daddy checked it out of the library for us once but we were reading something else and never had time for that one before we had to return it.”

“Now you have your own copy and don’t have to take it back to the library. Why don’t we start it tonight?”

“Okay!”

“Faith, do you want to stay out here and read your book or come into Carter’s room and listen to Charlotte’s Web?”

“I’ll come with you.”

Carter led the way back to his room, still decorated the way Jessie had left it, with a Western Americana theme: red, white and blue, with horseshoes holding up some shelves and a trail of stars stenciled around the ceiling.

It was a cute room for a boy, perfect for an active kid like Carter.

The sharpness of loss clutched at her chest again. Jessie had loved her family, being a mother, making a comfortable home for them. Of all the gross inequities in the world, Lucy considered it so unfair that this loving young mother with her life ahead of her would be taken from her family by a health condition nobody could have anticipated.

The room had two twin beds, maybe in anticipation for the day when Carter would have shared this room with his brother, who had been too gestationally immature to survive outside the womb after Jess went into cardiac arrest so suddenly.

Carter jumped onto one of the beds, and Lucy forced herself to push the sadness away.

“Daddy usually reads to me from the other one. You can do that, too.”

She eased down onto the bed, and Faith curled up at her feet, pulling a throw over herself and listening raptly while Lucy began reading the story about a runt piglet and the spider who was a very brave friend—and a good writer, too.

By the time she finished the first chapter, Carter’s eyelids were drooping. Judging by his energy level every time she saw him, she completely understood why. An object in constant motion eventually had to run out of steam. She didn’t know if that was an actual physics principle, but it definitely applied to five-year-old boys.

He closed his eyes at the same moment she marked her page and closed the book. She slid off the bed and pulled his blanket up over his shoulders, awash with tenderness for this funny little man.

“You got through a whole chapter. That’s great. My dad usually falls asleep after about two pages while he’s reading to Carter,” Faith confided in a whisper.

Like his son, Brendan put in a long, busy day, as well.

“I guess it’s lucky for both of us I made it this far. Shall we go into your room and read about Anne coming to know Matthew and Marilla?”

“Yes!”

Together, they walked down the hall to Faith’s room, all pink and lavender and yellow, sweet as Faith herself.

“Oh. Look at that! That’s the chair you told me about on the phone a few months ago. I’d forgotten about it, but it’s just as lovely as you said.”

It was a slim Queen Anne recliner with curvy lines and a pretty material that seemed to bring together all the colors of the room.

“Dad said somebody who liked to read as much as I do needed a comfortable reading nook. He bought me the light and everything. And it wasn’t even my birthday. It was a just-because present. Those are the best.”

“I agree.” She smiled. “Do you want the chair or the bed for reading?”

“I’ll take the bed.” Faith settled in, hands clasped on her chest expectantly.

Lucy settled into the recliner—which was, indeed, comfortable—and proceeded to read a chapter from the book about an orphaned girl trying to make her way in her new home.

“I think that’s enough,” she finally said, though she would have read all night if she could, she was enjoying it so much.

“Anne is so funny,” Faith declared.

“She is,” Lucy responded.

The girl was quiet as Lucy rose from the recliner, laid the book on her bedside table and tucked in her quilt a little more snugly around her.

“I wonder how her mom died,” Faith finally asked, her voice low.

This poor little child, who had lost her own mother too young. Lucy wanted to cry suddenly that Jess would never have the chance to know the funny, sweet, courageous girl her daughter was becoming.

“If I recall from reading the series all those years ago, she was only a baby when both of her parents died of an illness.”

“That would have been easier,” Faith said, her voice solemn. “She probably didn’t know them enough to miss them.”

“Oh, honey.”

She reached down to the bed and hugged Faith, wondering if the girl was open with her father about her grief or if she tried to protect him from it, as appeared to be her nature.

“It’s normal to miss your mom,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “You know that, right? Some part of you will always have a little hole. My mom died almost twenty years ago, and I still miss her.”

Despite her emotional and psychological issues, Betsy had still been her mother. Lucy knew she probably missed what she wished she had in a mother more than the actual person, but the loss was no less acute.

“More than anything,” she went on to Faith, “I wish that I could patch that hole for you and take away your sadness. But that would also mean taking away all your wonderful memories of your mom, and I would never, ever want to do that. You’re sad because you miss her. I miss her, too. Your dad and Carter do, too.”

“I know,” Faith said, her voice small. “I miss her so much sometimes. Carter doesn’t remember her much. He was only three. I do, though.”

“He’ll remember her most through the memories you and your dad share with him about her.”

“Sometimes I’m mad at her, too,” Faith said in a rush, as if the confession had been churning inside her for some time, just waiting for a chance to slip out.

Lucy was almost positive Faith hadn’t shared this with her father. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the girl’s hand into hers. “That’s normal, too, honey.”

“Why did she even need another baby? She had me and Carter. She would still be here if she hadn’t decided to have another baby.”

Just how much did Faith know about the circumstances around Jessie’s death? Lucy chose her words carefully. “Your mom used to tell me when we were girls that she wanted a half-dozen kids, just like the Brady Bunch. Three boys and three girls. She loved your dad’s big family and wanted one, too. It’s not that you weren’t enough for her, honey. She just had so much love in her heart and knew another baby would make that love grow even more.”

“It didn’t, though.”

Lucy sighed. “She didn’t know she had a problem with her heart. None of the doctors even knew. She spent all her life with it and had you and Carter and it never gave her any trouble. She had no reason to think having the new baby would be any different from having you or your brother.”

She hugged Faith, feeling the slenderness of her bones beneath her nightgown. “You know she would never have chosen to leave you, right?”

Faith sniffled a little but didn’t cry. “I guess.”

“You were her sunshine. Always. I know it hurts not having her here, but the best thing you can do is think about all the good you still have. Your dad, Carter, your grandpa Caine and all your aunts and uncles and cousins.”

“You.”

The tears she had been fighting ever since Faith first asked her about Anne Shirley’s mother welled up, and she had to swallow hard against the emotion in her throat. “Me. Yes. Always.”

“I know. I know I have all that. Sometimes I just get a little sad.”

“Nothing wrong with that. The sad times in our lives help us appreciate those moments of beauty and joy.” She rose. “You need to try to sleep now. You’ve got school tomorrow, and your dad won’t be very happy with me if he finds us still up gabbing when he gets back. If you want, I can read here in your comfortable chair while you fall asleep.”

“No. I’ll be okay.” She smiled sleepily. “I’m really glad you’re here, Aunt Lucy.”

She kissed the top of the girl’s wispy blond hair. “I am, too, darling.”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HOUSE SEEMED almost eerily quiet without the children running around, filling the space with their laughter, their questions, their disparate personalities.

She walked down the hall toward the kitchen, accompanied only by the sound of the rain still pattering against the windows and the creak of an occasional floorboard in the old house.

Odd, that she lived in the huge, echoing mansion by herself but didn’t feel nearly as alone as she did right now, walking through Brendan’s place—probably because all the clicks and whooshes at Iris House were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.

She felt a little like an intruder, creeping around where she shouldn’t. How ridiculous was that, when he needed her here to help him with his children?

This was a comfortable house, she had to admit, warm and airy. But something still seemed missing.

The kitchen was a mess, with dirty dishes piled in the sink and a glass casserole with the sticky remains of what had likely been their dinner on the stovetop.

Since she had nothing else to keep her busy—and maybe she wanted to prove to him that she could be useful for more than just bringing unwanted gifts to his children—she unloaded the dishwasher. She had to do some opening and closing of cupboards and drawers to figure out where things belonged, the worst part about working in someone else’s kitchen, but she figured it out.

After that was done and the remaining dishes loaded again, her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. Her plan had been to take the gifts down to the children and then head back to Iris House to make a sandwich.

She thought about ignoring the rumbling but the residue left on the casserole had looked like chicken enchiladas and had smelled delicious. She was sort of a rabid chicken enchilada fan.

She opened his refrigerator and found a container with the leftovers, along with an unfinished meal on a plate covered in plastic wrap that she guessed had been Brendan’s.

Assuming he wouldn’t mind, given the last-minute favor she was doing him, she left his plate alone but spooned a rolled tortilla from the leftover container onto a plate of her own, added some of the sauce and warmed it in the microwave.

The food was fantastic, easy on the heat index but every bit as good as something she would find in her favorite Mexican restaurant in Seattle. After she just about licked the plate clean, she loaded it and her fork into the dishwasher, gave the countertops one last swipe with a cloth and then wandered into the family room.

She had probably been here before when she had visited Jess, but she didn’t remember spending any time in this room. The space was dominated by a big-screen TV and two big plump leather reclining sofas.

Right now, it was also cluttered with toys. She should have made the children come in before bedtime to clean up their mess. Since she hadn’t thought of it—and since she didn’t like the idea of Brendan having to do it himself when he came home after a long day—she spent a few moments clearing the floor before she collapsed onto the sofa, exhausted from her day.

She flipped through the television shows and finally settled on a news program.

The stress of the past few days must have been more exhausting than she realized. The last thing she remembered was some apple-cheeked reporter with an unnaturally chipper voice trying to ask a hard-hitting question of a politician.

She must have fallen asleep. When she awoke, she had the strange, crawly sensation of being watched.

She blinked her eyes open, wondering if Carter or Faith had awakened her. Instead, she saw a big, wide-shouldered figure standing in the doorway, and she gasped, visions of psycho killers flashing through her mind.

“Whoa. Easy. I’m sorry I startled you. It’s me. Brendan.”

The voice pushed through the panic, and she drew in an unsteady breath. Brendan. Of course. How could she possibly have mistaken him for anybody else?

She drew in a shaky breath. “Well. There go several years off my life I won’t get back.”

He turned the dimmer lights up in the room. “See? Only me.”

As if that made her feel any more comfortable. “I’m sorry. I was sleeping and woke up to find you standing there. It would creep anyone out. Even you.”

“Probably.” He smiled a little, but she thought suddenly that he looked weary. Beyond weary, actually, bordering on deep fatigue.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Almost one. I’m sorry to be so late. Things were a little busier than I expected, and this is the earliest I could get away.”

“Don’t worry about it. If they need you back at the station, I’m fine staying all night. As long as you don’t jump out and scare me when you come back.”

Through his exhaustion, she saw glimmers of surprise in his expression that left her melancholy. Why did he seem so shocked that she could be compassionate and helpful when the situation called for it? This was only further evidence of his poor opinion of her.

The feeling of trying so very hard to please someone impossible seemed entirely too familiar. She didn’t have to look very far to see why—a girl growing up with a difficult, demanding, overbearing father knew that feeling like she knew her own imperfect face in the mirror.

Brendan always viewed her as nothing more than Jessie’s pain-in-the-neck ambitious, driven cousin, who showed up at inconvenient moments.

Okay, not always. One magical night, he had flirted with her and kissed her and had led her to start spinning ridiculous dreams about something that would never be. That night seemed like a distant scene in someone else’s life, something she almost thought she might have made up in her head, especially after he started dating Jessie just a few weeks after making her think he might actually be interested in her.

She wasn’t going to say he broke her naive twenty-one-year-old heart, that getting over his rejection of her had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. That would be giving him entirely too much power, and she wasn’t willing to go that far.

“I’m done for the night,” he answered, and she pushed stupid thoughts of the past away. “The shift is covered now, and the guys with food poisoning are already feeling better. Thanks for saving the day.”

“No problem.” She rose from the sofa. “Let me grab my things from the kitchen and then I’ll get out of your way.”

He followed her as she retrieved her raincoat and umbrella.

“Did you ever catch dinner?” she asked him.

“No. I’ll grab a bowl of cereal or something before I crash.”

“Don’t forget, you’ve still got a plate of enchiladas in the refrigerator you can warm up.”

“I might do that. The phone call from my assistant chief came just as we were sitting down to dinner.”

“I thought as much.”

How many plates had he left uneaten over the years?

“I had a few bites of your chicken enchiladas,” she told him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I hadn’t eaten dinner yet when I came over here.”

“Not at all. I hope you had more than a bite. There was plenty. You stepped up and saved my bacon. The least I can do is feed you.”

“They were very tasty. You’re not a bad cook.”

He made a face but seemed pleased with the compliment. “With Pop around, learning to cook at our house was mandatory, not optional. All of us were required to learn at home and then to work at the café at some point in our lives. Pop had me flipping pancakes before I could talk.”

She tried to picture him as a dark-haired little boy surrounded by his brothers, both older and younger, trying to learn how to cook. It was difficult to make the image stick when she was confronted by the big, hard reality of the adult Brendan Caine.

“I love your dad.”

“You and half the women in town. Young and old, he charms them all. Too bad for you, but his heart belongs to Katherine Thorne...though he’ll never admit it.”

“Katherine? Really? I had no idea they were a thing.”

“I’m not sure what kind of thing they are. They’ve never even dated, if you want the truth, but you should see the way Pop blushes whenever she comes into the café.”

She smiled, charmed by the idea of two people in that season of their life being flustered by each other. Brendan hadn’t specifically mentioned that Katherine returned Dermot’s feelings, but she must. Lucy had always liked Katherine Thorne and considered her to be a woman of good sense. What other choice would she have but to care for someone as wonderful as Dermot?

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