Sometimes going back is the best way to start over

Candy shop owner Charlotte Caine knows temptation.To reboot her life, shed weight and gain perspective, she’s passing up sweet enticements left and right. But willpower doesn’t come so easily when hell-raiser Spencer Gregory comes back to Hope’s Crossing, bringing with him memories of broken promises and teen angst. A retired pro baseball player on the mend from injury—and a damaging scandal—he’s interested in his own brand of reinvention.

Now everything about Spencer’s new-and-improved lifestyle, from his mission to build a rehab facility for injured veterans to his clear devotion to his preteen daughter, Peyton, touches Charlotte’s heart. Holding on to past hurt is her only protection against falling for him—again. But if she takes the risk, will she find in Spencer a hometown heartbreaker, or the hero she’s always wanted?

Praise for RaeAnne Thayne’s Hope’s Crossing series

“A heartfelt tale of sorrow, redemption and new beginnings that will touch readers.”

—RT Book Reviews 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

Willowleaf Lane

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my wonderful sisters-in-law, Karla Freebairn,

Melanie Child, Sherri Robinson and Rose Robinson.

I love the four sisters I was born with but I’m so grateful

I gained four more from my husband

and through my brothers’ wise choices.

Dear Reader,

I adore reunion stories and over the course of forty-three books, I’ve written many of them. I find something so sweetly perfect in the idea of two people rediscovering each other when each is in a much better place to find lasting joy together.

Willowleaf Lane is a little different from the typical course these stories might take. In this book, my heroine, Charlotte Caine, has always been in love with my hero, Spencer Gregory, but he barely knew she was alive. Growing up, she was shy and overweight, awkward and rather lonely. When he was young and immature, he was unthinkingly cruel to her at a very crucial turning point in a young girl’s emotional path and the scars of that haunted her for a long time.

Spence was once on top of the world, on track to become a Hall of Fame major-league baseball star. After a hard, painful fall, he’s come to Hope’s Crossing to heal—and finds himself turning to the one person in town who should least want to help him.

I loved writing about Charlotte’s and Spencer’s journey, especially helping Spencer discover what he should have seen in Charlotte all along. These are two people who truly deserve to find a happy ending.

All my best,

RaeAnne

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER ONE

CHARLOTTE CAINE CONSIDERED herself a pretty good judge of character.

Being morbidly obese most of her life, until the serious changes she had made the past year and a half, had given her an interesting insight into human nature. She wanted to think she had seen the best and the worst in people. Some people pretended she was invisible; others had been visibly disgusted as if afraid being fat might rub off on them, while still others treated her with true kindness.

Given her skills in that particular arena, she liked to play a game with herself, trying to guess the candy preferences of the customers coming into her store. Jawbreakers? Lemon drops? Or some of her heavenly fudge? Which would they pick?

When Sugar Rush was slow, like right now on a lazy July day late in the afternoon, it made a pleasant way to pass the time.

By the looks of the skinny preteen with the too-heavy eye makeup, Charlotte guessed she would pick a couple packs of chewing gum and maybe a handful of the sour balls the kids seemed to love for some reason Charlotte didn’t understand.

But she could be wrong.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she finally asked with a smile when the girl appeared to dither in front of the long counter that held the hand-dipped chocolates.

The girl shrugged without meeting her eye. With all that makeup, the dark hair, the pale features, Charlotte was reminded of a curious little raccoon.

“Don’t know yet,” she answered. “I haven’t decided.”

She stopped in front of the fudge, her gaze going back and forth between items inside the display.

“The blackberry fudge is particularly delicious today, if I do say so myself,” Charlotte said helpfully after a moment. “It’s one of my better batches.”

The girl looked from the silky fudge to Charlotte. “You made it? For real?”

Charlotte had to smile at the disbelief in her voice. “Cross my heart. The brand-name candy in my store comes from a distributor, but Sugar Rush produced everything in this display case.”

She didn’t try to keep the pride out of her voice. She had every reason to be happy at the success of Sugar Rush. She had built up the gourmet candy store from nothing to become one of the busiest establishments in the resort town of Hope’s Crossing, Colorado. She had two other full-time employees and four part-time and might have to expand that in the future, given the rapid growth in her online orders.

“Wow. That looks like a ton of work.”

“It can be.” She loved the candy-making part but hated the inevitable accounting required in running a small business. “It’s interesting work, though. Have you ever seen anybody dip chocolates by hand?”

Her young customer shook her head even as an older couple came into the store. They had probably come from the big RV she could see parked in a miraculously open spot. She smiled at them as they migrated instantly to the boxed jelly beans displayed against the far wall.

“It’s pretty cool. My crew usually starts early in the morning and wraps it up by about noon, when it starts to get too warm for things to set up.”

When she first opened the store, Charlotte had made everything herself but she inevitably ran out of inventory by the end of each day. Now she had three people who came to her back kitchen before 6:00 a.m. to hand-dip the sweets. She still made most of the fudge herself, prepared in the traditional copper pots with wooden spoons.

“You’re welcome to come watch,” she said. “Are you staying in town long?”

“I really hope not,” the girl muttered fervently, her expression dark.

“Oh, ouch.” Charlotte smiled. “Some of us actually choose to live in Hope’s Crossing, you know. We like it here.”

The girl fiddled with the strap on her messenger bag adorned with buttons and pins. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m sure it’s a nice town and all. But nobody asked me if I wanted to move here. Nobody cares what I think about anything.”

Sympathy welled up inside Charlotte. She knew very well what it was like to be this age, feeling as if her life was spinning completely out of her control.

Who was she kidding? She had spent most of her life feeling out of control.

“So you’re moving here. Welcome! You know, you might discover you really like it. Stranger things have happened.”

“I doubt that.”

“Give it some time. Talk to me again after you’ve been in town a few weeks. I’m Charlotte, by the way. Charlotte Caine.”

“Peyton,” the girl offered and Charlotte had the strange feeling the omission of her last name had been quite deliberate. The fairly unusual first name struck a chord somewhere in her subconscious but she couldn’t quite place where she might have heard it before.

“Would you like to sample a couple flavors so you can choose?”

“Is that okay?”

“Sure. We give customers sample tastes all the time. It’s quite sneaky, actually. One taste and I’ve generally hooked them.”

Small pieces of the different variations of fudge were arranged in a covered glass cake tray on the countertop. She removed the lid and after a moment’s scrutiny, separated a few flavors onto one of the pretty plastic filigree sample plates she kept for that purpose then handed it to the girl.

“These are our three most popular flavors. Blackberry, peanut butter and white chocolate.”

She waited while the girl tried them and had to smile when her eyes glazed a little with pleasure after each taste. She loved watching people enjoy her creations, even though she hardly tried them herself anymore except to test for flavor mixes.

“These are so good! Wow.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you like it.”

“No. Seriously good! I don’t know which to choose. It’s all so yummy.”

“See why the samples are a sneaky idea?”

“Yeah. Totally. Okay, I guess I’ll take a pound of the blackberry and a pound of the peanut butter.”

“Good choices.” Two pounds of fudge was a large amount, but maybe Peyton had a big family to share it with.

“Oh, and I’ll take a pound of the cinnamon bears. I love cinnamon.”

Charlotte smiled. “Same here. Cinnamon is my favorite.”

She enjoyed finding yet another point of commonality between them. Maybe that explained her sympathy for the girl, who appeared so lost and unhappy.

While Charlotte hadn’t been uprooted at this tender age to a new community, she might as well have been. Her entire world, her whole perspective, had undergone a dramatic continental shift at losing her mother. She had felt like she was living in a new world, one where nobody else could possibly understand her pain.

While Charlotte cut, weighed and wrapped the fudge, Peyton wandered around the store looking at some of the Colorado souvenirs Charlotte stocked.

The husband half of the older couple clutched a bag with saltwater taffy while his wife had several boxes of jelly beans in her arms. The two of them moved to the chocolate display and started debating the merits of dipped cashews versus cherries.

Charlotte smiled politely, waiting for the argument to play out. When Peyton approached the cash register, Charlotte held out the bag of sweets.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Thanks.” Instead of taking it immediately, Peyton reached into her bag and retrieved a hard-sided snap wallet with splashy pink flowers on a black background. She pulled out a credit card and Charlotte spied several more inside the wallet.

She felt a moment’s disquiet. Why would a girl barely on the brink of adolescence need multiple credit cards? Had she stolen them? Charlotte wondered fleetingly, but discarded the idea just as quickly.

She had certainly been wrong about people before. She would be delusional to believe her instincts were foolproof. History would certainly bear that out. She had instinctively liked Peyton, though, and didn’t want to believe her a thief.

She probably had self-absorbed, indulgent parents—divorced, more than likely—who thought throwing another credit card at her would fix any heartbreak or trauma.

Charlotte slid the card back across the clear counter. “Tell you what. No charge. Why don’t you consider this a welcome-to-Hope’s-Crossing sort of thing?”

Peyton’s mouth dropped open a little and she stared at Charlotte, obviously astonished by the simple kindness. “Seriously?”

“Sure. It’s a gift for you and your family.”

At her words, the look in Peyton’s dark eyes shifted from incredulity to a quiet sort of despair before she veiled her expression.

“I don’t have a family,” she declared, her voice small but with a hint of defiance.

Was she a runaway? Charlotte considered. Should she be alerting Riley McKnight, the police chief of Hope’s Crossing, so he could help reunite her with whomever she had escaped? With the vague idea of keeping the girl talking so she could glean as much information as possible, she glanced at the other couple and saw they were busy sampling every variety of fudge.

“Nobody at all?” she asked.

Peyton shrugged, the movement barely rippling her thin shoulders inside the T-shirt that looked a size or two too large. “I had a mom but she died last year.”

Ah. Maybe that explained Charlotte’s instant empathy, that subtle connection she felt for the girl.

“I’m sorry. My mom died when I was about your age, too. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Peyton made a sound that could have been a snort or a rough laugh. “You could say that.”

“So who do you live with, then?” she asked with studied casualness.

“My stupid dad,” Peyton said and Charlotte felt herself relax. Okay. The girl had a dad. One she wasn’t crazy about, apparently. No need to jump to conclusions because she said she had no family.

“Where is your dad?”

She pointed out the door. “He stopped to take a phone call. I got bored waiting around so I came in here.”

“No brothers or sisters?”

“No. Just me.”

“So you and your dad are moving to Hope’s Crossing together?”

“Yeah.” Her mouth tightened. “He took a job here even though I told him I didn’t want to move. I had to leave all my friends in Portland, my best friend, Victoria, this boy I like, Carson, and the mall and everything. This dumb town doesn’t have any good stores.”

Charlotte, for one, had hated clothes shopping when she was Peyton’s age. Even before her mom died, she had been pudgy, with plenty of baby fat that stubbornly clung on. Afterward, the pounds just piled on until she couldn’t find a single thing that fit in any store except what she had considered the fat old lady stores.

Now her favorite thing was to go into a clothing store and actually have choices.

“We have a pretty decent bookstore and a couple nice boutiques that specifically cater to teens. And a killer candy store,” she added with a smile.

Peyton didn’t look thrilled about any of those offerings. “Yeah. I guess. It’s not the same as Portland. I could buy anything there.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure the shopping options were the measure of what made a good town, but she decided not to offer that particular opinion.

“The good news is, as long as you’ve got an internet connection, you can still find everything you like. And Denver’s only a few hours’ drive.”

“I guess that’s true.”

Peyton still didn’t look convinced of the wonders of Hope’s Crossing. Charlotte couldn’t blame her. Change could be tough for anyone, especially a young girl who had no control over her own circumstances.

“Thanks for the fudge,” Peyton said.

“You’re welcome. Come back anytime. Next time maybe I’ll have cinnamon fudge for you.”

“You make that? Really?”

“Sure. It’s generally something I have only around the holidays but I’ll see about a special order.”

The small cowbell hanging on the door rang out. Charlotte looked up from Peyton, donning her customary friendly smile of greeting—then the smile and everything else inside her froze when she caught sight of the man who’d just walked through.

Oh, crap.

Her stomach dived like the time she accidentally wandered into a black-diamond ski run when her older brother Dylan took her up to the resort once.

“There you are.” The man was gorgeous, with a square jawline, a slim elegant nose and hazel eyes fringed by long lashes.

Smokin’ Hot Spencer Gregory. The cameras and sports magazines had loved him, once upon a time.

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to leave? One minute you were there, the next I turned around and you were gone.”

The curious girl who had tasted Charlotte’s fudge with such appreciation disappeared, replaced by a sullen, angry creature who glowered at the man.

“I did,” she muttered. “I said I wanted to come in here. I said it like three times. I guess you were too busy with your phone call to notice.”

He frowned. “Pey, you can’t just wander off. I was worried about you.”

“What did you think was going to happen in this stupid town? I was going to die of boredom or something?”

Right now, Charlotte would give anything to be wearing something sultry and sleek. Black, skintight, with some strategically placed bling, maybe. Instead, after all these years she had to face him with little makeup and her hair yanked back into a ponytail, wearing jeans and a simple blue T-shirt, covered by an apron that had Sugar Rush emblazoned across the chest.

At least she wasn’t wearing the ridiculous hairnet required while making fudge. Small favors, right?

She had barely registered the thought when the full implications of the moment washed over her like molten chocolate.

Peyton. Peyton. Why hadn’t she figured it out? That’s why the name had seemed familiar—somewhere in the recesses of her brain, in the file marked Spencer Gregory that she had purposely buried as deeply as she could over the years, she suddenly remembered Spence had a twelve-year-old daughter. Named Peyton.

And the said Peyton had just mentioned that her father had taken a job in Hope’s Crossing and they were moving to town.

Oh. My. Fudge.

Spencer Gregory, the only person on the planet she could honestly say she despised, was back in Hope’s Crossing. Permanently.

Why on earth hadn’t anybody bothered to tell her this particular juicy rumor? She had to think that, by some miracle, the news hadn’t made the rounds yet. Otherwise it would have been the topic of conversation everywhere she went.

The bag with its silvery Sugar Rush logo still lay on the countertop. She picked it up and held it out.

“Here you go,” she said to Peyton. Her voice came out cold and small and she widened her smile to compensate.

“Um. Thanks. Thanks a lot.” The girl finally reached out and grabbed it and shoved it into her messenger bag.

“How much does she owe you?” Spence reached into his wallet with what one of the women’s magazines had once declared the sexiest smile in sports.

If she had known Spence Gregory would be eating some of her fudge, she might have had second thoughts about tossing it around indiscriminately.

“She said I didn’t owe her anything. It’s a gift to welcome us to town,” Peyton stated.

Spence looked just as stunned by the gesture as his daughter had. “Wow. Thanks.”

He should be astonished. Charlotte sincerely doubted anybody in town would be standing with open arms to welcome back their native son. As far as many people were concerned, Spence Gregory had taken the clean, charming image of Hope’s Crossing and, as her brothers might have said, hawked a loogie all over it.

“Wow. Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

“You’re welcome,” she lied gruffly.

His smile deepened as he gazed at her without a trace of recognition. There was a certain light in those hazel eyes, something bright and warm and almost...appreciative.

The nerves in her stomach sizzled. Oh, how she would have loved to be the recipient of that kind of look from him when she was fifteen. Back then—okay, even as recently as a year ago—she never would have dreamed it was ever within the realm of possibility.

Instead of making her giddy, having Spence Gregory smile at her now, after all this time, only infuriated her.

She deliberately turned away from him to his daughter. “Peyton, come back anytime. I’ll see what I can do about the cinnamon fudge.”

The girl gave her a hesitant smile that meant far more than her father’s well-practiced one. As she did, Charlotte became aware that the browsing couple that had been in her store for what felt like hours was in the middle of a whispered argument.

Finally the husband stepped forward. “You’re Smoke Gregory, aren’t you?”

Spence stiffened, his friendly smile melting away. “Yeah,” he said tersely.

“I knew it. Didn’t I tell you I knew it?” he crowed to his wife. “And you said he wouldn’t dare show his face in public!”

“Darwin, hush!” she said, her face turning scarlet.

Spence had gone completely rigid, a hard, solid block of granite in the middle of her store.

“Well, I just want you to know, we’re big baseball fans. We love the Pioneers. We live in Pendleton and drove to Portland several times just to watch you play.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. You were a darn good ballplayer. Shame about everything else.”

“Isn’t it?” he bit out.

“And for what it’s worth,” the woman said, her face still red, “we don’t think you killed your wife.”

Charlotte could only stare at the couple, appalled, as what little color was left in Peyton’s pale features seeped away like spring runoff.

Fury sparked in Spence’s gaze and Charlotte shivered at the heat of it. He placed a big hand on Peyton’s shoulder, who went taut.

“Good to know,” he said coldly.

“Could we have your autograph?” the woman asked in a rush. “Our grandson followed your whole career. Had a poster on his bedroom wall and everything, right up until...” Her voice trailed off at something she saw in Spence’s dark features.

After a moment, he seemed to take a deep breath. He lifted his hand from Peyton’s shoulder. To Charlotte’s astonishment, he managed to look almost calm.

“Do you have anything for me to sign?”

After an awkward pause, the husband of the couple grabbed one of Charlotte’s printed Sugar Rush napkins and thrust it at him, along with one of the pens she kept by the register in a pretty beaded canister she had made.

Spence used the countertop to sign the napkin with a flourish. From her vantage point, she managed to read the message upside down. Generic and succinct. Best wishes. Spencer Gregory. Along with the number forty-two he had famously worn through more than a decade as a starting pitcher for the Portland Pioneers.

The wife gripped the napkin and Charlotte realized they had dropped all their purchases atop a bin full of root beer barrels. They left the store without buying anything, leaving behind a vast, echoing silence in the store.

Charlotte never expected she would have a moment’s sympathy for Spence Gregory, not after everything, but in light of that painful encounter, she couldn’t help a little tingle of dismay. Was it like that for him everywhere he went?

“Are you ready to go?” he asked his daughter.

She nodded and headed for the door.

“Thanks again,” Spence said. He cocked his head, his gaze narrowed. “You look familiar. I have a feeling I’m going to be saying that a lot now I’m back in Hope’s Crossing. Did I know you when I lived here before?”

For a horrifying moment, Charlotte didn’t know how to answer him. He didn’t recognize her. How could she tell him they’d sat across from each other a couple nights a week at her dad’s café for years? That she spent night after night helping him with his English homework?

That he had once broken her heart into a million tiny glass shards?

She had to say something, even though she knew perfectly well what his reaction would be.

“Yes,” she muttered.

He scrutinized her harder, obviously trying to place her. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’re going to have to help me out.”

She didn’t have to do anything. Just for a moment, she wished one of her older brothers was around to politely encourage him to leave her store. They were just as big, just as tough as Spence Gregory. In fact, she thought Jamie might even be bigger.

“Charlotte Caine,” she finally murmured.

Just as she expected, his eyes widened with disbelief first and then astonishment.

“Char... Of course. Wow. You look fantastic!”

“Thanks,” she said, her voice clipped.

“Really fantastic. I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

“You didn’t.” She pointed out the obvious.

“True enough.”

“I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you. Somehow I hadn’t heard you were coming back.”

“You mean nobody has started a petition yet to keep me away?” He said the words in a joking tone but both of them knew it wasn’t far from the truth.

“Not that I’ve signed yet.”

Though his mouth quirked up with amusement at her pointed reply, she thought she saw just a hint of bleakness in his gaze. Again, she felt that flutter of unexpected sympathy.

“Harry Lange brought me in to be the director of the new recreation center in town,” he answered. “I’m starting tomorrow.”

Of course. She should have known Harry Lange was somehow involved. The town’s richest citizen didn’t seem happy unless he was stirring up trouble somewhere. Still, this seemed a bold move, even for him. Why would he select a man for the job who had, by the skin of his teeth, just barely avoided going to prison for supplying steroids and prescription drugs to his teammates? And whose wife died under mysterious circumstances the very day those charges were thrown out?

“I suppose getting engaged at seventy years old can make a man lose a few brain cells,” she answered.

The words tasted ugly on her tongue and she wanted to call them back. Usually she liked to give people the benefit of the doubt, but she just didn’t have it in her to be objective when it came to Spence Gregory.

His mouth tightened and he looked almost hurt, though she knew that couldn’t be true. What did he care if she welcomed him with somewhat less-than-open arms?

“Apparently,” he murmured. “Yet here I am. For the next six months, anyway. It’s a temporary position.”

That was something, anyway. She could endure anything for six months, even having him back in the same zip code.

“Let’s go, Peyton.”

“Okay.”

Peyton looked subdued instead of angry now and Charlotte directed her sympathy where it rightfully belonged—to a young girl who had lost her mother far too young and spent her days under the cloud of her father’s scandal.

Having to live with the man many considered responsible for her mother’s death couldn’t be an easy situation for a young girl.

She gave her a warm smile. “See you around, Peyton. It was really nice to meet you. Enjoy the fudge.”

“I’m sure I will,” she mumbled. She pushed open the door and walked out into the summer afternoon.

Spence hesitated, looking as if he wanted to say something else, but he finally lifted a hand in a wave and followed his daughter.

After the door closed behind them, Charlotte pressed a hand to her stomach, fighting the urge to rush over and flip the sign to Closed, lock the door and sag against the counter.

She liked to think she was a pretty good person most of the time. She volunteered at the animal shelter, she always paid her taxes on time, she tried to throw a little extra into the collection plate at church on Sundays.

She didn’t consider herself petty or vindictive. She was friendly with just about everyone in town, even the cliquey girls who had once made her life so painfully hard at school and had grown into cliquey women with the same prejudices.

But a small acrid, angry corner of her heart despised Spence Gregory with a vitriol that unsettled her.

What was Harry Lange thinking? She had to wonder if Mary Ella knew what her fiancé was up to, bringing back the man who had once been the darling of Hope’s Crossing but was now considered a pariah.

Maybe it was one of Harry’s twisted schemes. The man appeared to have been turning over a new leaf in the past year since reconnecting with his son Jack and the granddaughter he didn’t know existed, but maybe it was all for show. Maybe Harry wanted the recreation center he had basically financed to fail so he could sweep in and somehow make money off it for his own purposes, perhaps as a tax write-off for a business loss.

Whatever the reason, she couldn’t believe she would be the only one in town upset at this new development, though she had very personal reasons to be angry about the return of Spence Gregory.

The cowbell clanked suddenly and, for an instant, fear spiked that she would have to deal with him again, while she was still trying to come to terms with his return.

Seeing Alex McKnight rush in, her long blond curls flying behind her, was a sweet relief.

“Hi, Alex.” She even managed a smile, envious, as always, at Alex’s effortless confidence. She was smart and sexy and a brilliant chef—and was comfortable enough in her own skin that none of it mattered to her except the chef part, of which she was fiercely proud.

“Guess who I just saw walking Front Street?” Alex said, her green eyes wide.

“Spencer Gregory,” she answered dully.

“Wow. You are good.” Alex looked surprised and a little amused.

“Not really. He just left the store.”

“Can you believe it? The guy must have balls as big as ostrich eggs to show up back in town like nothing ever happened.”

“Take it up with your stepfather-to-be. Apparently he hired Spence to run the new rec center.”

Alex’s eyes widened for an instant and then she shook her head. “The man is insane sometimes. What goes on inside Harry’s head?”

Charlotte didn’t know. And right now she didn’t want to talk about either Harry Lange or Spence Gregory.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Actually, I came in to ask you a huge favor.” With a cheerful grin, Alex let herself be distracted. She seemed so happy lately since she had started seeing Sam Delgado, a new contractor in town.

Charlotte was thrilled for her, she really was, but sometimes she couldn’t help an insidious little niggle of envy. While Charlotte found their developing relationship wonderful for the two of them—especially since she knew firsthand how deeply Sam cared for Alex—Charlotte had once entertained hopes herself toward the man when Sam had first come to town.

He had endeared himself to Charlotte forever by reaching out to help her troubled brother Dylan, offering him a job with Sam’s construction company despite Dylan’s new limitations. Her brother had refused—no big surprise there—but Charlotte wanted to think the offer had meant something to Dylan. It had certainly meant something to her—so much that she had asked Sam to go to the town’s annual Giving Hope Day gala.

She had hoped the two of them might hit it off and that he might ask her out again. Sam was new in town. He hadn’t even known her before the changes of the past year and a half and she had hoped that might give her a slight advantage, but it had become obvious fairly quickly that Sam was completely tangled up over Alex.

During these past few weeks since the two of them had come together, it was transparent to all they were crazy about each other. Alex gave every appearance of a woman deeply in love.

“I’m glad to help,” Charlotte said now, pushing down that spurt of envy. “What can I do?”

“You don’t even know what it is, and you’re already agreeing to help. That’s one of the things I love most about you, Char.”

She cherished all her friends who had supported her on her recent journey toward reinvention, in no small part because they had loved her just as generously eighty pounds ago. “You know I’ll help in any way I can. Unless you need me to rob a bank or taste test one of your new fattening dessert recipes.”

Alex grinned. “Nope. This one is easy. A friend of Sam’s has been in town helping him with all the work coming his way. He’s thinking about making his temporary stay in our fair little hamlet a permanent thing. He’s a single guy, really sweet but a little lonely, I think.”

Charlotte braced herself, guessing what was coming next. Her friends seemed to feel a compelling need to set her up on dates with eligible men lately. First Claire McKnight just happened to know a new police officer in her husband Riley’s department she thought would be perfect for Charlotte, then Evie Thorne had wanted her to go out with a business associate of her husband, Brodie.

She was beginning to wonder if she had subconsciously started sending out some secret bat signal that she was single and desperate. Which so didn’t describe her at all. Okay, she was single. But she hadn’t yet descended into desperation.

“I don’t know.” She stalled for time.

“Come on. It will be fun. Sam was thinking we could take him out to dinner to celebrate his move here. Maybe go up to Le Passe Montagne.”

“Not Brazen?” Charlotte asked, surprised.

“Well, obviously that’s the best restaurant in town but Sam knows how hard it is to get a reservation there.”

“Even when a guy is sleeping with the chef?”

Alex grinned, looking completely pleased with the world. “Even then. If you want the truth, I did suggest we just meet there but Sam seems to think I don’t relax when I’m eating in my own restaurant. Imagine that.”

Charlotte laughed, despite the lingering disquiet over Spence’s reappearance. It was hard not to laugh around Alex, who deserved every bit of the success her new restaurant was enjoying.

“I think I can picture it. He knows you well, doesn’t he?”

Her friend made a face. “So we were thinking next week sometime, maybe Saturday. I’m giving you plenty of advance notice. Will that work?”

“I’m not really crazy about blind dates,” she said, which was a rather monumental understatement.

“Don’t think of it as a blind date. Just a few friends getting together.”

“Two of whom happen to be seeing each other.”

“Well, yes. Come on, Char. He’s really a nice guy and we want to make sure he feels like he has a few connections in town besides us.”

She swallowed a sigh, imagining how awkward it would be to go on a double date with Alex and Sam Delgado, considering her prior interest in Sam.

She opened her mouth to politely decline but clamped it shut again. Just the night before while she had been eating her Healthy Choice dinner for one, she had promised herself she would try to get out more. She had no real reason to say no, other than a little embarrassment at unrealized dreams. And heaven knows, she had enough of those lying around to fill a darn auditorium.

An image of Spence Gregory, lean and dark and muscled, filled her head but she shoved it aside.

“Sure,” she said quickly before she could talk herself out of it. “Dinner would be lovely. Thank you for the invitation.”

“Perfect. We can talk next week but let’s tentatively plan on a week from Saturday, about seven. Does that work?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to love Garrett, I promise.”

“I’m sure I will,” she lied as Alex gave a cheery wave and left the store.

Customers came in right behind her and Charlotte was grateful for the distraction they provided. She didn’t need to think about blind dates or old hurts or how, after only a few minutes with Spencer Gregory, she once more felt fifteen years old—fat, awkward, shy—and desperately in love with a boy who barely knew she was alive.

CHAPTER TWO

A FEW HOURS after leaving the candy store, Spence decided house hunting had to rank about dead last on his list of favorite activities. Even behind the IRS audit he had once endured.

“I’ve got several more houses to show you but I’m not sure we even need to see them,” the perky real estate agent flashed her extremely white teeth at him as they pulled up to the address she indicated, in a neighborhood he remembered delivering papers to.

“Given what you’ve told me you’re looking for, I think you’ll really love this house,” Jill Sellers went on. “The location is fantastic, close to the mouth of Silver Strike Canyon and the recreation center but within walking distance of the downtown restaurant scene. The house comes fully furnished, which I know you want. The interior is beautifully designed in a contemporary style for the discriminating renter.”

Was that what he was? Since when? As far as he was concerned, a couple beds and a working kitchen just about covered his needs.

She beamed at him, which he found more than a little unsettling. He certainly didn’t remember her being this helpful when they went to school together, at least in their earlier years. By the time he had reached high school, he had started to excel in sports and the same girls—who the year before had turned up their nose when he walked past in his ripped jeans and too-small jacket—had suddenly seemed to look at him with new eyes.

He supposed he should be grateful he wasn’t a complete leper in town.

“I’m sure we’ll love it,” he answered.

“Or not,” Peyton muttered.

She hadn’t liked any of the rental properties Jill had showed them in the past two hours—and made no secret of it. Several houses later, he was sick of her attitude and tired of trying to find something she might like, when he knew in his bones she wasn’t going to be happy with anything.

Nothing in Hope’s Crossing would please her. She was quite determined to hate everything about the community, which ought to make for an interesting six months.

He sighed, wondering again if he had made a huge mistake taking this job at the recreation center. It had seemed like an ideal opportunity when Harry Lange had called him—far better than sitting around working on his golf handicap, dabbling in a few investment interests he had held on to and waiting for offers he knew were never coming.

He had also had some vague idea that perhaps this might be an opportunity for him to reconnect with the daughter who had turned into a baffling, surly stranger.

“You’re going to have to at least take a look inside before I’ll let you tell me how much you hate it,” he said to Peyton.

“Whatever.”

She followed the two of them into the house. Though moderately sized from the outside, the inside seemed to open up, probably because of the soaring windows of the two-story great room that looked out behind the house at Silver Strike Canyon. From the front, the house would have a pretty view of town.

The decor, while fine, seemed a little impersonal. What else could he expect in a property that was mainly used as an executive rental?

The master bedroom was huge with an oversize shower in the attached bath that featured multiple showerheads. The second bedroom also had an attached bath and he saw Peyton’s eyes light up at the jetted tub, though she quickly veiled her expression.

The best feature of the house, as far as he was concerned, was the completely glass solarium with a small but adequate lap pool.

“This one works for me,” he said when they returned to the gourmet kitchen for another look, after Jill Sellers had led them through the house, her speech punctuated with exclamation points and capital letters. “We’ll take it.”

“I just knew you’d love it!”

She touched his arm in a way he definitely recognized as flirtatious. He glanced down at her hand against his sleeve, the nails pink, sharp and glossy. Unbidden, he had a sudden image of Charlotte Caine’s hands, competent, a little callused, with her nails short and unpainted.

She had made all the fudge in the store. Peyton had told him as much when she had rather grudgingly shared a couple samples with him.

He forced away thoughts of Charlotte. “You must have good instincts,” he said in reply to Jill.

“I hope so. Without good instincts, I wouldn’t be able to do my job, would I?”

He didn’t know a blasted thing about being a real estate agent and had no desire to learn. Of course, he didn’t know the first damn thing about being the director of a community recreation center either, yet here he was, preparing to take on the job.

“Can you see if they’ll consider a short-term lease? I only want six months. And how soon can we move in?”

He wasn’t even sure if he—or Peyton—would make it that long, but he had committed to six months and intended to stick to his contract with Harry.

“I’ll speak to the owner, see if I can negotiate a little, and bring you back a lease agreement to sign in a few hours. You could be in this little gem by bedtime.”

“I still don’t see what’s wrong with staying at the lodge,” Peyton muttered.

What he wouldn’t give to have her carry on a halfway civil conversation with him. Of course she preferred the luxurious accommodations at the Silver Strike Lodge. But he had a feeling Harry wouldn’t be too thrilled about extending their stay indefinitely in rooms that generally went for several hundred dollars a night.

“We’re not spending the next six months in a hotel. We need a real house.”

“We have a real house. In Portland.”

By the time those six months were up, she was going to make him crazy. “Which will still be there when we’re finished here in Hope’s Crossing. Meantime, we need a kitchen, outdoor space, room for a housekeeper.”

“Babysitter, you mean.”

This was another argument he didn’t want to debate with her again so he decided to ignore the comment for now. “This works better than any of the others we looked at, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

That was as ringing an endorsement as he was likely to get from her. “We’re in,” he said to Jill. “Give me a call after you talk to the property management company.”

“I will. I have your number. And you have mine, right?”

“I’m sure I can find it somewhere.” He managed a polite smile and hoped she understood he didn’t intend to call her about anything but his real estate needs—which, after signing this lease, would be nonexistent.

He ushered Peyton out to the Range Rover he had picked up to replace the sports car he drove in Oregon. As he backed out of the driveway and turned in the direction of the canyon mouth, he was struck by the charming view—the colorful houses nestled in trees as they climbed the foothills, the picturesque downtown with its historic architecture, the grand rugged mountains standing sentinel over the valley.

He certainly didn’t remember Hope’s Crossing ever being so appealing when he was living with his mother in that tiny dilapidated house a few blocks off Main Street that probably hadn’t been painted since his grandfather had died twenty years before Spence was born.

Kids could certainly be self-absorbed and he had been no different. Like Peyton, he had spent his days in a cloud of discontent, hating just about everything in his life except football and baseball. The town and its inhabitants had been part of that. He had convinced himself he couldn’t wait to leave, but when he looked back now, he realized he had never really hated Hope’s Crossing.

For every snobby cheerleader mom who thought he was going to impregnate her daughter just by looking at her, there had been others who had seen beyond the mended clothes, the threadbare shoes, the haircut he usually tried to manage himself—until he took a job in high school to pay for little luxuries like a decent razor and a letterman’s jacket.

Dermot Caine, for instance.

He smiled as he drove back toward the canyon, though it was tinged with a shadow of guilt. Now there was someone he should have remained in contact with over the years. Dermot had always been kind. Hell, he had given Billie Gregory a job when no one else would and had kept her on even when she showed up half the time blitzed, when she bothered to show up at all.

Thinking of Dermot inevitably led his thoughts to Charlotte. He remembered again that shock when she had identified herself at the candy store.

Charlotte Caine. He couldn’t get over how she had changed. All that gold hair shot through with hints of red, the big blue eyes, the sexy, curvy figure he could see beneath the apron she wore.

Was she anything at all like he remembered?

When he had known her before, she had been more than a little overweight and had hidden those stunning eyes behind big thick-framed glasses. While she could have moments of quick wit and she was as kind as her father, she could also be painfully shy.

If he remembered correctly, she had been a couple or three years behind him in school though she was four years younger. She had been ahead a grade and he had been behind because of the dark time after his father had died when he was eight, when Billie had gone off the deep end and dragged him aimlessly around the country from flophouse to homeless shelter to the backseat of her car.

He had hated being older than everybody else but still struggled in school—with English class, especially. He had never been a very big reader until long road trips with the Pioneers when he had little else to do. Charlotte, on the other hand, could have been an English teacher herself, even at twelve. She knew her stuff and he had been savvy enough to take advantage of the generous help she offered him.

He would venture to say, Charlotte Caine had been the only reason he had been able to keep his grades up high enough to allow him to participate in school sports.

In a roundabout way, he supposed he had her to thank for his whole career with the Pioneers—which didn’t explain the instant attraction that had been simmering in his gut since the moment he had walked into that candy store and saw her standing behind the counter looking fresh and lovely.

What was wrong with him? He didn’t have time for this. Harry Lange had offered him one chance at redemption, one chance to move beyond the demoralizing isolation of the past year and prove he was more than lousy headlines.

He couldn’t screw this up. He needed to focus on repairing his damaged reputation, not on Charlotte Caine, no matter how much she had changed.

* * *

THIS WAS THE hardest thing she had to face.

Other people had their Rubicons, their Pikes Peaks. She had her dad’s café.

As she walked from Sugar Rush down the street and around the corner to Center of Hope Café after work, her stomach rumbled in anticipation. She swore she could already smell delicious things sidling through the air, tempting and seductive.

Yeah, she worked all day in a candy store, surrounded by chocolates and caramels and toffee, but there she could resist temptation. It was her business and she certainly wanted to produce a delicious product but she supposed it was a little like being the teetotaling owner of a distillery. She didn’t mind a little fudge in moderation once in a while but she never had a desire to stuff herself until she was sick.

This, though. The gnawing craving for some of her father’s comfort food sometimes kept her up at night.

Gooey rich macaroni and cheese. Shepherd’s pie, with thick roast beef and creamy mashed potatoes coating the top like a hard snowfall on the surrounding mountains. Cinnamon-laced apple pie with Pop’s famous homemade vanilla ice cream.

Her dad’s café specialized in the kind of food that numbed and sedated, that soothed hunger pangs and heartache in equal measure.

Despite eighteen months of struggling to change a lifelong addiction to it, whenever she stumbled over one of life’s inevitable bumpy patches, she still craved a hit of Pop’s cooking like a junkie needed crack cocaine.

She knew why. She knew the food at the café represented more than just butter-laden calories. It was her mother waiting for her with a warm towel fresh from the dryer at the end of a rainy walk home from the school bus. It was Pop snuggling her on his lap for a bedtime story, his whiskers tickling her neck. It was summer nights spent sleeping in the tree house with her brothers behind their home while crickets and frogs filled the night with song.

Pop’s food was like home, or at least the home she remembered before the winter she turned ten, when everything changed forever.

On days like this, with her emotions in chaos, she wanted nothing more than to be snugged up against the counter at the diner, burying every concern and feeling of inadequacy under calories.

Drat Spencer Gregory anyway. He had no business coming back to town and leaving her so shaken, filled with dismay and memories and the echo of old pain.

Lasagna. Wouldn’t a big plate of lasagna, dripping with cheese, hit the spot right about now? She bet Pop had some hot and ready. She only had to say the word.

She sighed, increasing her pace. She wouldn’t ask for lasagna. She was stronger than the craving. She only had to remember how hard she had worked the past eighteen months to reshape her life. No matter how provoking her day might be, she couldn’t go back to old habits, the well-traveled pathways in her brain that would inevitably lead her to a destination she no longer wanted.

Instead, she had a chicken breast at home in the refrigerator, soaking in her favorite low-fat marinade of lemon juice, tarragon and a splash of olive oil. As soon as she finished a few errands, she would throw it on the grill along with some vegetables and be far better off.

She pushed open the door and the familiar rich scents surged through her bloodstream like a solid jolt of high-octane caffeine.

“Hey, girl.” Della Pine, who had been waitressing at the Center of Hope as long as Charlotte could remember, greeted her with a wide smile on her wrinkled cheeks. She tottered toward Charlotte in the painfully high heels she always wore, even when she had to spend all day on her feet.

Despite the extra inches, the woman still barely reached Charlotte’s chin, except for her hair, which towered over both of them in all its teased glory.

Charlotte leaned in and kissed the waitress’s cheek, smiling at the familiar olfactory concoction of hair spray, cold cream and lavender powder.

The café was busy, as usual, hopping with the dinner rush. The clientele was generally a healthy mix of tourists and locals. She recognized a few of the latter and raised a hand in greeting.

“Is Pop around?” she asked when Della grabbed a couple menus off the counter by the door for a pair who had come in after Charlotte.

Della jerked her head toward the back. “Check the office. We had some trouble with one of the beef suppliers. Last I checked, he was still trying to iron it out.”

“Thanks.”

She headed toward the office, fighting through the temptation to stop and order a few things off the menu on her way.

Chicken-fried steak, maybe, with a big side of garlic mashed potatoes.

Pop was wonderful at running the Center of Hope Café. Over the years, she had learned more from watching him than any of her business classes in college. She had learned by example how to be a responsible, caring employer, how to be kind to customers and workers alike, how to treat everyone with dignity and respect.

And he cooked one heck of a pork chop.

She sighed as she walked into the office, tucked in behind the kitchen.

This place was as familiar to her as her own childhood on Winterberry Road.

Heaven knows, she had spent enough time here when she was a kid. Even before her mother died, she had loved coming to Center of Hope, hanging out at a table and doing homework while she listened to the sounds of life around her.

During the hard, ugly two years Margaret Caine fought cancer, coming to the diner had been an escape from the fear, from the pain and sickness that seemed to seep through the walls of their home like black mold.

She had avoided that toxic sludge as much as possible. Her mother mostly wanted to sleep anyway, and Charlotte had hated being there. Maybe she should have tried harder to help but that was a heavy burden for a young girl. She had felt like she was coping alone, for the most part.

By then, her only sibling still home had been her next oldest brother, Dylan. At sixteen, he had been too busy with friends and sports and school to offer much help.

She couldn’t deny she had found undeniable comfort in coming to the café after school to do her schoolwork, where Pop would invariably give her a nice chocolate milk shake and a slice of pizza.

Was it any wonder she weighed nearly a hundred eighty pounds by seventh grade?

She paused outside the office door, reminding herself sharply that she was doing her best to become something else. Though she still craved the pizza, the milk shake, she could have her father’s love without it.

She pushed open the door and smiled at the familiar voice uttering a few tasteful swear words at the telephone he had just returned to the cradle.

Her father was still good-looking in a distinguished way, with a shock of thick white hair and the blue, blue eyes she had inherited. His features were tanned and weathered from all the time he spent out in the garden he tended zealously.

“Problem?”

He looked up as she came in and she wanted to smile at the way his eyes always lit up at the sight of her.

“If it isn’t my darling girl, come to see her old da.” Though he had left the green hills of Galway behind when he was a boy of six, sometimes the brogue slipped through anyway.

“Hi, Pop.”

She hugged him from behind, smelling Old Spice and a hint of garlic.

“And how was your day, my dear?”

She thought of that strange encounter in her store a few hours earlier and the wild chaos of her thoughts ever since.

“Interesting. Did you know Spencer Gregory was back in Hope’s Crossing?”

Dermot swiveled around in his office chair and folded weathered hands over his still-lean belly. “Well, now, you know, I did hear something to that effect. About a dozen customers had to tell me they saw him around town.”

She could only imagine how the café must have buzzed with the news. People would be talking about this for some time to come.

“Well, nobody had the courtesy to warn me. I just about fell over when he walked in. I still can’t believe it. How can he return to town like nothing’s happened? Does he expect us to just throw out the red carpet like this town has always done for him?”

“Now, Charley...”

She perched on the edge of the desk. “I’m serious. He gives Hope’s Crossing a bad name. I can’t believe people can’t see that. Now he’s back and he’s going to dredge everything up all over again.”

“I think you’re exaggerating a wee bit.” Dermot gave her a chiding sort of look, the same one he used to wear when she didn’t finish her orange juice in the morning or when she chose to stay home and study instead of go to social activities at school. “A man shouldn’t have to pay the rest of his life because of a few poor decisions.”

“Poor decisions? I’d call it more than that. He was a drug dealer! He ran a steroid and prescription drug ring out of the team locker room.”

“The charges against him were dropped, remember?”

“Because of a technicality in the evidence. He’s never once denied it.”

She didn’t want to admit to her father that she had followed coverage of the case religiously, though she had a feeling Dermot might already know. He seemed to have uncanny insight when it came to her, as much as she might try to be obscure and mysterious.

Spencer’s situation was one of those fall-from-grace scandals the media seemed to relish voraciously. He had been a much-admired sports celebrity with a huge paycheck and a slew of endorsements—a kid from nowhere with fierce talent and extraordinary good looks who had made it big early in the game and continued to produce stunning wins for the Pioneers for the next decade.

She couldn’t lie to herself. She had also followed Spence’s career with the same interest as she did the scandal later. Despite past betrayals, she had celebrated his success, happy for him that he had attained every goal he set out for himself as a driven, angry teen. His nickname, Smokin’ Hot Gregory—Smoke—referred not just to his stunning good looks but also his wicked fastball that had once been clocked at over a hundred miles an hour.

Then three years ago, everything changed. In one horrible game against the Oakland Athletics, he suffered what turned out to be a career-ending injury. Months later, after he had tried to come back, she had caught the press conference when he admitted to a problem with prescription drugs following his injury and that he had gone into rehab for it.

With other Pioneers fans, she had celebrated when he returned to the program as a pitching coach—and then, like the rest of Hope’s Crossing, she had felt personally betrayed when accusations were leveled against him. Someone had been supplying prescription drugs and steroids to his teammates and the evidence against Spence was overwhelming, including a large shipment found in his vehicle parked in the team lot.

Then, in another stunning development, the judge threw out the charges just days before he was supposed to go to trial. Not that the court of public opinion shifted its vote so readily.

While Spence never went to prison, he lost his career, his endorsements, his reputation—and when his stunning former supermodel of a wife was found floating facedown in their pool the very afternoon the charges were dropped, most people blamed him for that, too.

Through it all, Dermot had only seen the good. It was a particularly exasperating failing of her father’s, particularly in Spence’s case.

“Say what you want about him, but he was always a good boy,” her father said now, quite predictably, with that same admonishing look. “You know he had no sort of home life at all, what with his father dying young and his mother tippling away anything she could earn here. My heart fair ached for the lad.”

For some reason, at her father’s words, she pictured Peyton, pale and thin and troubled.

“He has a girl. A daughter. Skinny as a pike. She could use a little of your good apple pie, if you ask me.”

“Or your fudge.”

“I gave her some.”

She smiled a little, remembering the girl’s stunned expression at the simple act of kindness, as if nobody had ever done anything spontaneously nice for her before, then her features had shifted back to truculence when her father found her in Sugar Rush.

“I don’t think she likes it here much.”

“Oh, the poor lamb.”

Predictably, her father was easily distracted by a sad case, and she decided to push yet another even more tender button to avoid further discussion of Spence Gregory.

“Sorry. I didn’t come in to talk about Spence or his daughter. I wanted to let you know I’m heading out to drive up Snowflake Canyon tonight to check on Dylan. Do you have anything you want me to take to him?”

Dermot’s features softened with worry even as he stood up from his chair a little gingerly, as if his bones ached.

“Excellent idea.” He draped an arm over her shoulder and they headed out of the office toward the kitchen. “You’re a grand sister, you are. The meat loaf is good today. He always favors that. And I’m sure I could find a bit of soup and perhaps some leftover fried chicken. Another of his favorites.”

“Perfect. Those should keep him going for a while.”

“That boy. What are we to do with him?”

She leaned her head against Pop’s shoulder. “I wish I knew. He can’t go on like this. I think he’s lost an extra twenty pounds just since he’s been home.”

She didn’t need to add that Dylan hadn’t any spare poundage to lose, not after the severe injuries and then resulting infection that had nearly killed him.

“You’re a sweet girl to worry so for your brother. Someday he’ll thank you for it. You’ll see.”

She wasn’t so sure of that. Though he had come home several weeks ago, he felt even more distant than when he had been back east receiving treatment.

She just kept hoping that if she tried hard enough, she could find the key to helping her brother.

As she helped Pop package up several meals for Dylan, along with some cookies and a nice slice of cake, she reminded herself her brother was a worthwhile thing to fret about, not the sudden reappearance in her life of a man she had long ago vowed that she despised.

CHAPTER THREE

ON A JULY evening, Hope’s Crossing was a lovely, serene place, far removed from the bustle and craziness of the winter season, when the streets would be clogged with traffic and long lines of bundled-up customers would stretch out of all the better restaurants.

Though the town had plenty of summer visitors, for some reason they didn’t seem as pervasive, maybe because so many of them were out enjoying the backcountry.

She drove past the ball diamonds and saw what looked like a Little League game in full swing. It dredged up memories of late spring evenings when she would perch on the bleachers while Hope’s Crossing High played—ostensibly to watch her brother but she spent plenty of time checking out the boy who usually occupied the pitcher’s mound.

She had been pathetic. Really. Just a few yards shy of creepy Stalkerville.

With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the road and turned up Silver Strike Canyon, where the trees bowed over the road, heavy with summer growth, and the river gleamed bright in the sweet golden light.

After only a mile or so, she took the turn up the box canyon known as Snowflake Canyon. The road rose steeply here, winding in hairpins up the backside of the mountains that enfolded the town, and it took all her concentration to drive here.

This was a sparsely populated area, just pockets of houses here and there. No developer had stepped in to make it a subdivision, probably because the cost of delivering water and other utilities to these houses was prohibitive.

For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine why Dylan wanted to live in the tall timbers, isolated and alone. After fifteen minutes, she turned onto his driveway and finally parked in front of his small log home. Though the inside had nice amenities, with a well-outfitted kitchen and comfortable bathroom and bedroom, the outside looked more like a backwoods shack, complete with chickens pecking the gravel. For all she knew, Dylan had a moonshine still in the barn.

True to form, when she pulled up, Dylan was sitting on the porch, his feet resting on the railing. Beside him lounged his big black and tan coonhound, Tucker, who had lived with her and Pop during Dylan’s deployments and the long months of his recovery.

Tucker lifted his head when she drove to a stop, then rested it on his paws again, apparently disinterested.

Dylan didn’t look any more enthusiastic at her visit. He watched her step down from her SUV out of hooded eyes, and she didn’t miss the way he set a bottle of whiskey on a little table beside him.

Though it was hard—so hard—she pasted on a smile as she approached the porch. “Hey, there.”

She could tell instantly this wasn’t one of his good days. His mouth tightened from what she guessed was pain, and he glowered at her. Hurt pinched just under her breastbone at his deliberate lack of welcome.

Why couldn’t he let her in a little? Before his injury, she would have said she and Dylan had been close. Though he was four years older, the same as Spence, he had been her closest sibling in age. As children, he had always been patient and sweet to her, far more than most older brothers would have been to pesky little sisters. As adults, their relationship had shifted to good friends. She sent him care packages every week he was deployed and he emailed her funny little stories about interesting things he saw or whatever military experiences he was free to share, which weren’t that many.

Since he had been wounded, he had closed in around himself, shutting her out just like everybody else.

She walked up the porch with one hand clutching the handles of the brown paper bag with Center of Hope Café printed on the side. Though he was still handsome, like all her brothers, with chiseled features, full lips and the blue eyes they shared, he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days and his eye patch gave him a dark, menacing air, despite the weight he had lost.

He wasn’t wearing his prosthetic, she saw, and the stump of his arm just below his elbow looked red and scarred.

“What brings you up this way?” he asked, his voice more of a growl.

No Hello, no friendly How’s my baby sister? Terse and trenchant. That’s about the best she could get out of him these days.

She leaned in and kissed his cheek just under the eye patch, catching a strong whiff of booze that broke her heart.

“Brought you some of Pop’s food. I figured it might hit the spot. Have you had anything today but Johnnie Walker?”

He eased away from her and rested his remaining hand—the one she was quite sure wanted to reach for the bottle—on his thigh. “I made a grilled cheese sandwich at lunch.”

Did you eat any of it, though? She bit her tongue to keep from asking the question. “Do you care if I put these in the refrigerator?” she asked instead.

He gestured to the door, and she pulled open the screen and walked inside.

One might have expected the inside to reflect the same general air of neglect the house showed on the outside. Instead, it was almost freakishly neat, with no dirty dishes in the sink, no scatter of magazines or junk mail on the countertop.

To her, it always seemed like an empty vacation rental, as if nobody really lived here to give it heart. The house seemed bleak and unhappy to her and she couldn’t understand how he could tolerate it for more than a minute.

She opened the steel late-model refrigerator and found only two twelve-packs of Budweiser, a small brick of cheese that had something growing on one corner and a half-gallon milk container with barely a splash left.

She put the food containers away, her own hunger completely forgotten.

“Do you need me to go grocery shopping for you again?” she asked when she returned to the porch.

“Shopping is one of the few things I can manage. I can still push a cart with one hand.”

She frowned. “Then why don’t you have anything in the refrigerator except beer and what I brought you from Pop?”

“I just haven’t had time. I’ll get to it.”

“I don’t mind,” she offered again. At least if she went shopping, she could be certain he had a few more fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator and a little less alcohol. “I know you don’t like going into town.”

He made a face. “I don’t like going to the doctor as well, but sometimes you can’t avoid it.”

Except he didn’t do that as often as he should, either. She again clamped down on the words, knowing he wouldn’t welcome them.

Since he had been back in Hope’s Crossing, she had tried nagging, cajoling and bribery to convince him he had to take better care of himself. What was the point of going through the months of medical treatment that had saved his life after his injury and the resulting infections if he was only going to waste it sitting around here?

Nothing appeared to work. If anything, he was only digging in his heels harder.

She had never told him that his near brush with death had been her own impetus for change.

She could remember sitting by his bedside right after he had been flown stateside from Germany. At the time, she had weighed more than two hundred pounds and had felt nauseous and exhausted from the long day of travel and the poor food choices she had made on the airplane.

He had been in and out of consciousness and not really aware of her and Pop sitting there beside him, both of them scared to their bones that he wouldn’t make it through the evening.

It had been a long night of prayer and reflection. As she watched her brother cling to life, she had thought about the years of diets she had tried, the weight she would lose and then regain, the frustrating, demoralizing cycle she couldn’t seem to shake.

She had just about accepted she would spend the rest of her life in that state. But now her brother had nearly died in service for his country. He was fighting to survive, barely hanging on, each moment a hard, painful slog.

Meanwhile, she was slowly killing herself, fighting high blood pressure and prediabetes at not even thirty years old. She had been alone and fat and miserable.

It had been an epiphany, a realization that she couldn’t keep going on that cycle. She had made a vow that this time would be different. She owed it to herself and she owed it to her brother to show a tiny measure of the same courage and strength he had.

The irony was, right now, she felt better about herself than since she was a young girl. She looked better, she was stronger, she was certainly healthier and no longer needed any medication. Through a healthy diet and an intense exercise regimen, she had lost almost half her body weight.

Dylan, meanwhile, had won the fight to stay alive, at least physically, but the emotional toll his injuries and new limitations had taken on a once-tough, vibrant soldier had been brutal.

He was broody and angry and she knew she couldn’t fix this for him, no matter how many grocery bags or plates of food she brought over.

“Want me to heat something up for you?” she asked him now.

“No. I’ll grab something later.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

If their mom were still alive, Margie Caine would drag Dylan down this mountainside by his ear and throw him back into life, whether he liked it or not.

“No hot date tonight?” he asked.

She gave a short laugh, fighting down the fierce wish she could channel a little of their mother right now. “You know me. I’ve got them lined up around the block.”

Despite all the changes, dating was one area she still hadn’t really ventured out into. She had never learned to flirt when she was a teenager.

“You ought to,” he said gruffly. “Have them lined up around the block, I mean. You just need to put a little effort into it.”

If she had been able to find it at all amusing, she would have laughed at the irony of her brother giving her advice on dating when he had become a virtual hermit.

“Thanks for the vote of encouragement. Since I’m up here, I was thinking about grabbing fifteen minutes of cardio before I go home. Do you and Tucker want to come for a walk with me?”

The dog lifted his head, perking up as much as his droopy ears and morose eyes allowed. He gave his musical wooo-wooo bark and clambered to his feet, obviously understanding the magic w-word.

Dylan, not so much. He curled that hand on his thigh again, clear reluctance shifting across his features.

“What about my dinner?”

“You can eat it later.” She ignored the growl of her stomach. A few endorphins would take care of that until she could get home to her chicken breast. “Come on. We won’t go far.”

After another moment of hesitation, Dylan slowly rose to his feet and she felt a surge of elation that was probably completely unwarranted for such a small victory. She would take it anyway. A little fresh air and movement could only be good for her brother, though she knew he puttered around the barn and attached wood shop a little.

She walked off the porch, grateful for the old tennis shoes she kept in the back of her SUV for spontaneous exercise opportunities like this one.

She and Tucker had taken a few walks up here before, usually without Dylan, so she had a passing familiarity with some of the trails that crisscrossed the mountainside among the pines and aspens. She headed toward one she liked that wended beside a small pretty creek and, after a pause, Dylan followed her.

Tucker ambled ahead, his hound dog nose sniffing the ground for the scent of any interesting creature he might encounter.

They walked in silence for a time, accompanied by the annoyed chattering of squirrels high above them and the occasional birdsong.

She breathed in deeply of the high, clear mountain air, sweet with wildflowers and pine, feeling some of the tension of her day begin to seep away. “I can’t tell you how badly I needed this today,” she said.

“Glad I could help.” Dylan’s dry tone surprised a laugh out of her.

“It’s beautiful up here, I’ll give you that. Remote but beautiful.”

“Nothing wrong with a little seclusion,” he answered.

“I suppose.”

Dylan had always been so social, always in the middle of the action. She missed that about him.

Because of the time, only an hour or so from true sunset, and because neither of them had eaten, she decided not to push too hard. After about ten minutes, they reached a small glacial lake that blazed with reflected color from the changing sky.

“Let me take your picture,” she ordered, pulling out her camera phone.

He frowned but stood obediently enough, his hand resting on the dog’s head.

“Perfect,” she said, snapping several before he could move away. She didn’t bother asking him to smile.

Behind him, the surface of the lake popped and hissed like Pop’s cheese sauce bubbling in the pan. “Looks like the fish are jumping. Do you ever come up here and cast a line?”

She regretted the words as soon as she said them, when he shrugged his left shoulder, rippling the empty sleeve.

“Yet another skill I haven’t quite mastered with one hand and one eye.”

He could do plenty of things if he would only wear the prosthesis. She knew most of his rehab had been aimed at helping him adapt to his new reality. Since his return to Hope’s Crossing, he seemed to have resorted to only figuring out how to open another whiskey bottle.

“You will,” she answered calmly.

He didn’t answer, just gazed out at the water.

Her stomach grumbled again and she sighed. “We should probably head back.”

“Yeah. Before the mosquitoes eat us alive. It’s a little tough for me to scratch these days. Hey, how do you get a one-armed man out of a tree?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You wave at him.”

He seemed to think that was hilarious and was still giving that hard-sounding laugh as he turned down the trail toward his house.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT MORNING, the sun was barely a pink rim along the black silhouette of the mountains when Charlotte laced up her tennis shoes in her entryway.

Every morning it was the same. She had to force herself out of bed when what she really wanted was to curl up under her nice warm blankets, hit the Snooze on her alarm clock and capture a few more moments of bliss.

Instead, here she was in her oh-so-flattering reflective performance capris and T-shirt, no makeup, her hair yanked back into a ponytail.

She rotated her head a few times, then her shoulders to work out some of the kinks before opening the door and pushing herself outside.

Rain or shine she ran, either here or on her treadmill at home or, when she really needed motivation, at the gym.

She felt no small amount of pride at how far she had come. Even walking had felt like torture when she first started on this journey more than a year ago. With all the extra pounds she had been packing around, it had taken all her strength and will to complete a mile and a half in an hour. She had finished with twitching thigh muscles, achy calves and complete exhaustion.

After about three months of making herself walk an hour a day and increasing her pace so she was covering three to four miles, she had begun to add intervals to her workout using her cell phone as a timer, one minute of running for every two minutes she walked at a regular pace, until eventually she was jogging most of the time.

Together with a far healthier diet than the fast food and her father’s café delights she had existed on, the numbers started dropping on her scale and her clothes began to hang much looser.

After the first few moments, she discovered she actually enjoyed working out. She enjoyed being in the fresh air and the wind, and she liked taking a moment to ponder and meditate as she jogged through her beautiful surroundings. She especially savored the feeling of knowing she was doing something good and right for herself, that she was trying to repair bad habits of a lifetime.

It wasn’t yet 6:00 a.m. and most of Hope’s Crossing still slept. Here and there, a few lights were on and she could see glimpses of people moving behind curtains, the flicker of a television screen at one house, a car backing out of a driveway at another.

Even in July, the high altitude air was crisp. Tourists in her store often remarked at the temperature span. It could be mid-eighties in the afternoon but drop to just above freezing in the hours before dawn. That was good chocolate-dipping temperature. In a short time, her employees would be busy creating delicious things to sell at Sugar Rush.

She ran down the hill, past Alex’s restaurant in a renovated old fire station, then took a side street and circled around back up toward Sweet Laurel Falls.

By the time she finished the first mile, she forgot about how badly she hated working out. Who wouldn’t love this surge of endorphins, the invigorating wind in her face?

She waved to a few people she knew: Lori Kaplan, who worked the early shift in the housekeeping department at the hotel; Errol Angelo, who drove a delivery truck to Denver every morning; Linda Ng, working in her garden early. She was either trying to beat the heat of the day later or trying to get in some work before her four young children awoke and ran her ragged.

By the time Charlotte headed toward home an hour later, many more houses glowed with warm light and the sun was cresting the mountains. She would have to hurry to make it to work on time. That almond fudge wasn’t going to make itself.

Finally, muscles humming pleasantly, she turned onto Willowleaf Lane, still three blocks from her house.

Another early morning jogger ran ahead of her. He must have turned from the other direction, coming down from the bruising route up Woodrose Mountain where steep trails crisscrossed beautiful alpine terrain and offered a splendid view of the valley below.

While she did run there when she had a lot more time and energy, she preferred taking her mountain bike for those trails to cover more terrain.

She didn’t recognize the guy from the back, which wasn’t unusual. While she would venture to say she knew most of the locals, besides the ever-present tourists, Hope’s Crossing had many vacation homes and condos owned by people who only visited a few weeks a year. It was tough to build a community under those circumstances but somehow the town managed it.

She lifted the water bottle she carried at the small of her back and took a sip, her eyes on the fine physical display a half block ahead of her.

The guy was built. His legs were corded with muscle, she could tell even from here, and the soft gray T-shirt he wore molded to wide shoulders, a slim waist, tight butt....

The tingle of awareness disconcerted her, even though she had to admit she enjoyed the little spice of pleasure it gave her in the gorgeous morning.

Still, she really needed to start dating more if she could ogle a stranger jogging down the street.

It was all she could do to keep pace with him, though she was a hundred feet behind, and she was breathing hard by the time they reached her block. To her surprise, the guy headed into a house on the corner.

He must be renting the Telford place. Good. It would be nice to see someone living there again. Empty houses were never good for a neighborhood and the house had sat vacant for six months. Likely due to the soft long-term luxury rental market she had heard Jill Sellers complain about a few weeks earlier when she had stopped into Sugar Rush for more of the custom-wrapped chocolates she handed out to her clients.

As she approached the edge of the property, she noticed the man had stopped near the porch steps for some after-run stretching. She wondered idly if there was a Mrs. Studly Jogger. Not that it was any of her business.

Just as she reached the mailbox, he turned his face in her direction and she felt as if one of those early morning gardeners had just swung a shovel hard into her stomach.

Spence Gregory. Here. On Willowleaf Lane, in all his sweaty, muscled glory.

That thought barely had time to register—along with the far more horrifying realization that he must be the one renting the Telford house—before her feet became as tangled up as her brain.

She wasn’t quite sure how it happened, only that she hadn’t been paying a bit of attention to where she was running. She must have stepped off the curb or something. How fitting. One moment she was running along minding her own business, admiring a well-built man who just happened to cross her path, the next she was lying in the gutter.

Pain exploded from her ankle, racing up her leg with hot, angry ferocity, but it was nothing compared to the sheer, raw humiliation of tripping over her two feet, right in front of Spencer Gregory.

She wanted to die. She wanted to slither down that storm grate and just disappear.

Spence.

Of all people.

Fudge.

She could only pray he hadn’t noticed the idiot woman who had just made a fool of herself in front of him. That fleeting forlorn hope was dashed when she spied him trotting toward her, concern on his features.

“Oh, wow. Are you okay? That was quite a tumble.”

No, she wasn’t okay. She was mortified. Even worse, this was far from the first time she had ever made a fool of herself around him. The reminder of all her other little humiliations seemed to parade across her memory in all their delightful glory.

How many times had she tripped up the stairs at Hope’s Crossing High School when he said hello to her on his way down the other way? Or spilled her drink when he slid into the booth across from her at Center of Hope Café?

Once, she had ridden her bicycle into a fence just because he had happened to drive past and wave at her.

She wasn’t normally a graceless person. Witness that she’d been working out for more than a year without incident until this morning.

Now Spence had only to look at her and she was twelve again, dropping her ice cream cone down her shirt when he had smiled at her at the county fair.

Apparently, her old habits didn’t just die hard, they went down kicking and screaming and then resurrected themselves at the least opportune moment.

“Charlotte!” he exclaimed when he came close enough to recognize her. “I thought that was you but I wasn’t sure.”

She could feel her face heat. “Oh, it’s me,” she muttered.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

You. You happened.

“I’m not sure. I think I just came down on the edge of the curb and lost my balance.”

“I’m so sorry. Here. Let’s get you back on your feet.”

He held a hand out and she eyed it balefully, even though she knew she didn’t have a choice but to accept his help. She gripped his hand and told herself she was completely imagining the spark arcing between them.

He reached his other hand beneath her elbow and helped her up. When she put weight on her ankle, that pain roared through her again and she would have slid back to the ground if not for his supporting hold.

“Ow,” she said in a small voice, when what she really wanted to do was burst out into tears. Having six older brothers had taught her early to man up and hide her tears until she was in the safety of her bedroom or they would freak out and not let her play with them anymore.

“Did you break something?”

Wouldn’t that just be her luck? “I don’t think so. I just twisted my ankle.”

“That scrape looks nasty.”

The pain from the ankle had been so overwhelming, she had hardly noticed the abrasion on her palm but now she could see blood was beginning to seep around the edges of the tiny embedded pebbles. She must have thrown out a hand to catch herself as she went down.

Stirring fudge would certainly be more of a challenge with a big, ungainly bandage on her hand.

“Let me help you inside, and I can take a better look at that ankle and clean off the scrape. I have no idea where the bandages might be in the house but I can probably find something.”

“That’s not necessary. My house is just there.”

She pointed to her whimsical little cottage, tucked amid the trees.

“Great house. I noticed it when we were house shopping yesterday.”

“I like it.” Until you moved in down the street, anyway.

“This seems like a pretty nice neighborhood.”

Again, until you moved in. “It is. There’s a good mix of vacation homes and year-round residents.”

She couldn’t believe she was standing here calmly talking real estate with Spence while her ankle breathed fire up her leg and her palm sizzled along with it.

She was beginning to feel a little light-headed.

“The town has certainly changed since I lived here,” he went on. “I barely recognized some of these neighborhoods when the agent was taking us around yesterday.”

“It’s grown, hasn’t it. Will you excuse me?”

Hoping she didn’t pass out, she shifted in the direction of her house. The thirty feet between them seemed insurmountable, as tough as the 10K she ran with Alex in the spring.

She took a step away from him but made it no farther and would have fallen again if he hadn’t rushed forward and absorbed her weight into his solid bulk.

“You need to see a doctor for that.”

He was warm. Incredibly warm. And how was it possible he still smelled good after jogging? She caught a hint of laundry soap from his T-shirt and some kind of sexy citrus and musk aftershave.

“I only twisted an ankle. Not the first time. Once I ice it and take some weight off, it will be fine.”

She hoped. She did not have time for this. She managed to extricate herself from his arms and hobbled another step. By sheer force of will, she managed to remain upright, though it took every ounce of strength.

She made it maybe four steps before she heard a muffled curse.

“You’re as stubborn as ever, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said stiffly.

“I’m talking about the girl who once insisted on going on a six-mile bike ride with Dylan and me, not once mentioning she had walking pneumonia.”

“I don’t remember that,” she lied.

“Funny, I have a vivid memory of it. You just about passed out before the end of it.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have time to stand around reminiscing with you but I’ve got to change and get to work. See you later.”

She gave what she hoped looked like a jaunty wave and not a dyspeptic robotic one and started toward her house, willing down the pain with every step and trying to figure out how she would squeeze in an appointment with Dr. Harris that morning.

After just a few more steps, her ankle gave out, and she had to grab hold of a convenient aspen sapling for support.

Next moment, Spence swore again under his breath—a surprisingly mild oath for a man who had spent ten years as a professional athlete. Suddenly her feet were swept out from under her, and she was lifted into the air quite effortlessly.

Oh, fudge. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, cradled tight between hard arms and an even more solid chest, but she did her best to gather the scattered corners of her brain.

“Put me down! This is ridiculous. I can walk.”

“Maybe. But I would hate to see you do more damage to that ankle by putting weight on it if you’ve seriously injured it.”

He wasn’t even breathing hard. Eighty pounds ago, he probably would have needed a couple teammates to help carry her down the street.

“I’m not going to hurt my ankle. Please. Put me down.”

He smelled even better up close. Some small, stupid part of her wanted to lean her head on his shoulder and just inhale his warm neck, right there below his rugged jawline.

“You’re tight as a drum. Relax. I’m not going to drop you.”

“So you say,” she muttered. Her insides seemed to flutter and dance and everything girlie inside her hummed to life.

How could she possibly be attracted to him, after everything? It completely belied logic. It was only situational attraction, she told herself. He was big and muscled and she couldn’t help being aware of the heat and scent of him.

Nobody except her brothers had ever lifted her up, and even they hadn’t done it in years.

“How long have you lived here?” he asked in a conversational tone, as if they were sitting on counter stools at the café passing the time.

She really, really hoped none of her neighbors were awake and gazing out their window at the morning view. This wouldn’t exactly be easy to explain, how she found herself in the arms of the town’s most notorious former denizen.

On the other hand, she would look even more foolish if she put up a fuss and tried to wriggle out of his arms, onto legs she wasn’t entirely certain would support her.

Only two more houses to go and then she would be home.

“Three years,” she finally answered.

She ought to leave it at that—her life was none of his concern, thank you very much—but with nerves bubbling through her like fine champagne, she couldn’t seem to keep from jabbering.

Maybe it was the way the sunlight glinted gold in his hair or the play of those muscles against her, but her voice sounded husky and strained.

“After I graduated from Colorado State, I came back to town with a degree in business and a master plan of taking over the café from my dad eventually. I tried working as his manager but he wasn’t in a big rush to retire, and I discovered I wanted to build something of my own.”

“You have,” he answered. “I had a piece of your peanut butter fudge last night. It was just about the best thing that’s ever crossed my lips.”

She knew perfectly well she shouldn’t have this little burst of pride at his words. What did she care what Spence thought of her store and her product?

Oh, why did her house feel like it was so far away, like they were swimming through miles and miles of melted chocolate to get there?

“Pop always told me that, when you find something you’re good at, you should throw your whole heart into it.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “Good man, your dad.”

She had a vivid memory of sitting at a corner booth at the café with Spencer doing homework. She had probably been twelve, he had been sixteen, and his mom had showed up drunk for the dinner shift, as usual. This time, she started talking smack to one of the customers who complained she got his order wrong and then had turned on Dermot when he stepped in to help.

Instead of firing her, like he probably should have done years earlier, Dermot had, in his quiet, effortless way, calmed the situation with the customer, directed Billie to his office and brought her a big pot of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Meanwhile, Spence had sat at their booth, his head almost buried in the book he was supposed to be writing a report about, but she hadn’t missed his red ears and the tension in his shoulders.

Her father had adored Spence like one of his own boys. Just a few months after his mother had died of acute liver poisoning, Spence had signed with the Pioneers, and Dermot had been as proud and excited as if Spence were his son.

And when Spence had been embroiled in scandal and controversy, Dermot had followed the news with a baffled, hurt sort of disbelief that had broken her heart, though he had clung to baseless faith.

If she hadn’t already despised Spence by that time, she would have hated him for that alone.

The reminder helped her rein in her wayward hormones. “Okay,” she said abruptly, the moment he crossed from the sidewalk in front of her neighbor’s property to her own. “We’re here. You can put me down anytime now.”

He gave a short laugh, enough to make his chest move against her shoulder, but kept walking up the path to her porch. “Is your house locked? I can help you inside.”

She could hear a car approaching at the other end of the street, and she just wanted this to be over before someone saw. “I’m fine. Please put me down now.”

It must have been the please that finally did the trick. He carried her up the steps then lowered her gingerly to her feet. She braced one hand on the wall and with the other pulled the key out of its zippered pocket of her capris.

“Thank you,” she said shortly. She should say something more but for the life of her she couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound ridiculous.

“You’re welcome. Consider it my neighborly duty. Are you sure you don’t need me to help you inside, maybe tape it up for you?”

Oh, she could just imagine him kneeling at her feet, his big hands warm on her bare skin as he wrapped it. “I should be fine.”

He looked big, muscular. Gorgeous.

“Give me a call if you need a ride to the doctor. I guess you know where I live.”

“I’ll do that,” she lied as if she didn’t have a dozen friends and family members she could call, people she would be far more likely to turn to in times of trouble than Smoke Gregory.

He stood and watched as she fumbled through unlocking the door. Already, the acute pain of her ankle injury had begun to fade to a dull, insistent throb. She figured that was a good thing but it still made it a challenge to enter her house with any degree of dignity.

When she made it through the doorway, she turned around and gave him a little one-finger wave then closed the door firmly.

When she knew she was out of sight, she sank onto the conveniently placed bench in her entry and pressed a hand to her foolish heart.

Of all the rental properties in Hope’s Crossing, why on earth did he have to pick the one just a few hundred feet from hers? She would be aware of him all the time now. Every time she drove down the street and passed his house, she would wonder if he was home, what he was doing, how he smelled....

If she wasn’t careful, she was afraid she would turn into that fifteen-year-old again, a crazy stalker girl with a crush on the sexiest boy in town.

No problem. She would just have to make sure she was very, very careful.

CHAPTER FIVE

SPENCE WALKED BACK down the steps of Charlotte Caine’s house, off balance by the tangle of emotions.

Charlotte Caine.

He still couldn’t get over it. Whoever would have guessed she could have such a lithe, curvy body now? He was still having a hard time reconciling the girl he had known to the sexy armful he had carried to her house.

She had always had pretty-colored hair, he remembered, blond shot through with gold and red streaks. When she was a girl, though, she had worn it long, her bangs hanging in her eyes and around those big thick-framed glasses.

He supposed he had changed, too. What did she see when she looked at him now? He was no longer that cocky kid blessed with uncommon ability who thought the world was his to conquer.

Life had a funny way of knocking guys who needed it back down to size.

How had the years treated Charlotte, beyond the physical changes? Her store seemed to be doing well. Did she have someone special in her life? Had she been married? Engaged? He hadn’t noticed a ring on her finger but he had certainly learned a little piece of jewelry didn’t always mean anything.

So far, he knew she had come home to Hope’s Crossing with a business degree but their few moments of conversation while she had been in his arms hadn’t exactly unlocked her life story for him.

He pulled out his key and let himself into the rental.

After one night here, he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether he liked the place or not. The house was meticulously and expensively decorated, but compared to the glimpse into Charlotte’s charming little cottage he’d caught when she had opened the door—plump pillows, bright textiles, bookshelves overflowing—the furnishings here seemed cold, almost sterile.

He wasn’t sure if he would be here long enough to redecorate. He and Pey had only packed a few suitcases between them for the drive. The rest of their belongings still filled their Portland house. He hadn’t decided yet how much to haul down here.

He would have to see how things went first with the job before he made a decision about that.

He heard noises coming from the kitchen and headed in that direction. When he walked in, he found Pey seated at the breakfast bar, a huge bowl of cereal in front of her, looking at something on her phone.

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” he asked, then cursed the stiff politeness in his tone. This was his daughter. He shouldn’t sound like he was on a business trip, bumping into an associate in the hotel’s free buffet line.

She shrugged, a spoonful of cereal almost to her mouth. “Okay, I guess. I need a fan or something. It was too quiet.”

“We can probably find you something. Was the bed comfortable?”

“I don’t know. I guess. It was a bed. I slept.”

She took another bite of cereal and he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle and a yogurt, grateful he had taken a moment to order groceries the night before. It took him a few tries to find the silverware drawer for a spoon before he leaned back against the counter adjacent to her.

“We can change anything you don’t like in your room.”

“Can you transport it back to Portland?”

He bit down his frustration at her continual refrain. This was why he walked on eggshells around her, because she was prickly and moody all the damn time.

“Nope. Can’t do that. How’s your cereal?”

“Fine.” She poured a little Cinnamon Toast Crunch into her milk. Where did she put all the food she ate sometimes? he had to wonder. She was skinny as can be, like her mother had been.

Once he had found that attractive. He must have. Hadn’t he been enamored with Jade at first and thought her the most perfect creature on earth?

Of course, he had been only nineteen and in his rookie year with the Pioneers, starry-eyed and heady with the success that had come far more quickly than a dirt-poor kid who had spent his life watching over a drunk of a mother could either comprehend or cope with.

When a gorgeous supermodel like Jade Howell, three years older and infinitely exciting, wanted to date him, what teenage boy would have refused?

Not him, even though he was pretty sure now she had been more drawn to all those new zeros in his portfolio from his record-breaking contract than she had been to a naive nineteen-year-old kid.

At the time he had been too caught up in the high life of instant fame—fast cars, magazine covers, avid fans—to see that she was a troubled, damaged soul constantly in need of reassurance. Or maybe subconsciously, he had seen it and had in some twisted way thought that, if he could make things work with Jade, in some way he might be able to scab over all those open sores from his childhood.

A therapist would probably tell him he had a pretty severe case of knight-in-shining-armor complex from all those years he had tried to look out for his mother. Even so, after six months, he had grown tired of Jade’s moods and her petty piques and probably would have ended things if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with Peyton.

He didn’t like thinking about Jade or the way their hasty marriage had disintegrated before Peyton was even in preschool. Though his wife had certainly loved the creature comforts his income provided, she had hated everything about his career—the traveling, the fame, the fans—and had constantly accused him of cheating.

He took a spoonful of yogurt. It had been a miserable marriage. If not for his daughter, he would have walked away but Jade had threatened to tie him up in court so he would never see Peyton again. He had known she wouldn’t have been able to win but the energy in fighting her would only have hurt their daughter.

As poor a father as he had been, he had been raised the only child of a bitter, lost, addicted soul, and he couldn’t condemn his child to that same fate.

Eventually, he and Jade had worked out an arrangement of sorts. They lived virtually separate lives in the same house, joined only by their shared love for their daughter. Jade did her thing, he did his and they tried to stay out of each other’s way—until she made that impossible by dragging him into the complicated mess her life had become.

Jade had been all sharp edges and angles. Charlotte Caine, on the other hand, had those soft curves that a man wanted to spend days, weeks, months exploring....

“So why were you carrying the fudge lady?” Peyton asked.

He flushed, remembering that surge of unexpected heat when she was in his arms. “You saw that, did you?”

She pointed to the window over the sink, which he realized provided a fine view out into the street.

“I guess I startled her this morning when I said hello as she was jogging past. She lost her balance and ended up twisting her ankle.”

“Oh, way to go, Dad.”

At her caustic tone, he jumped immediately to the defensive. “Yeah. It was totally on purpose. I like to lie in wait, then jump out of the bushes when unsuspecting joggers appear. Makes a fun ending to my own workout.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

He would like to wring the neck of whatever idiot invented that word that was wielded so freely by his daughter.

“It was totally accidental, I promise. I was just being friendly when I saw her go past. I figured she would have seen me. Turns out, she lives up the street in that little white cottage with the blue shutters and the ivy.”

“And you had to carry her home.”

“Didn’t have to, no. But I didn’t want her putting weight on her ankle.”

Peyton raised a skeptical eyebrow, always looking for the worst in him, and he waited for the dreaded w-word. To his surprise, she must have decided to demur.

“You knew her when you lived here before, didn’t you?” she asked instead, in almost a civil tone. Charlotte must have made quite an impression with her kindness. Peyton had seemed genuinely touched at her welcome gift.

“Yes,” he answered, weighing how much to tell her. He had been fairly closemouthed about his life here in Hope’s Crossing, figuring his childhood wasn’t exactly much to brag about. She hadn’t showed much interest but when she did ask, he evaded and dissembled.

He had spent most of his adult life trying to forget his beginnings here. Off the top of his head, he couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with Pey about those hardscrabble times, the weekends when he would eat ramen noodles for three meals each day because that’s all they had in the house and about all he knew how to fix.

Another reason he had loved the café, because Dermot would always make sure he went home with something in his stomach and usually a doggie bag of food he could heat the next day.

That was one of his worries about being home, actually. Peyton already thought the worst of him. What would she think once she discovered how much everybody likely hated him here?

On the other hand, he wouldn’t exactly win any popularity contests in Portland, especially since the Pioneers had struggled the past few years without him. He knew things had been rough for Peyton at school, enduring taunts and ridicule about her drug-dealing asshole of a father, but at least she also had a core of loyal friends there.

He wondered again if he was doing the right thing, dragging her away from what little she had left. He had to cling to the idea that, if he could make things work here in Hope’s Crossing, he might be able to open other options for them both in the future.

“Charlotte’s family was always kind to me,” he finally said, which was a bit of an understatement. “I was good friends with her older brothers. My mom was a waitress and I washed dishes at her dad’s diner in town. The Center of Hope Café.”

“You washed dishes? Seriously?”

“Yeah. And I swept the floor at the hardware store after school. And delivered papers at 5:00 a.m. every day from the time I was twelve.”

He had figured out early that if he and his mother were going to be able to afford to keep the utilities turned on in the house she had inherited from her mother, one of them was going to have to work to make it happen.

“Newspaper delivery boy. Really?”

He had no regrets, at least about the paper delivery job. As miserable as it might have been riding his secondhand bike around the hilly streets of Hope’s Crossing, especially on bitter January mornings, he gave that job a lot of the credit for his throwing arm that Sports Illustrated once called supersonic.

“Yeah. Really. It taught me a lot, that job. Maybe you ought to think about picking up a route.”

She snorted. “Right.”

Her phone bleeped with a text and that apparently was the end of their conversation. She turned her attention to the device and started thumbing a message, probably about her idiot of a father.

“After I shower, I need you to get dressed and grab your laptop or whatever other gadgetry you want to take.” He tried for a firm paternal tone. “I’m heading into the recreation center today. Until I can hire a housekeeper, I guess you’ll have to come with me.”

She stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why can’t I be serious?”

Her eyebrows nearly reached her fringe of bangs. “I’m almost thirteen. I don’t need a babysitter! I’m old enough to be a babysitter, for heaven’s sake.”

Yeah, how many nights had he spent on his own? After his grandma had died when he was nine, Billie sometimes wouldn’t come home for a couple days at a time. Of course, she didn’t spare a thought for the child she only remembered half the time.

A vivid memory flitted through his mind, the first time she had decided to stay at the bar all night until closing and then go home with somebody who bought her a few drinks. He remembered locking the front door and huddling in his bed, missing his grandmother like crazy. He hadn’t slept at all that night and had been so bleary-eyed, he had ended up in detention for dozing off in class, where he was warm and safe.

He hadn’t thought about these things much in years. He wasn’t sure he liked the way the memories had started to bubble up to the surface since his return, like some geothermal hot spot reinvigorated by volcanic activity deep beneath the crust of the earth.

Peyton probably was old enough to stay by herself but the idea didn’t sit well with him, for reasons he couldn’t fully explain.

“I have no problem with you being on your own for a few hours. Even three or four,” he said. “But this is all day long. I just don’t feel good about leaving you in a strange house by yourself when you don’t know anybody in town yet that you could call in case of an emergency.”

“I don’t want to sit around a stupid, boring recreation center all day!”

He licked the last bit of yogurt from his spoon and tossed it in the sink and the empty container into the trash. “It’s a recreation center,” he reminded her. “By its very definition, you should find plenty to do. Swimming, racquetball, mountain biking. You won’t be bored unless you want to be, trust me on that, ladybug.”

“Would you stop calling me that? I’m not five years old anymore, and I’m so tired of you treating me that way. I don’t want to spend all day at your stupid job!”

He should have known she would dig her heels in about this, as she did about every other damn thing in their lives.

“This isn’t negotiable,” he said, trying not to grind his teeth. “Get dressed. I can give you half an hour.”

She stared at him for a long moment and apparently seemed to know he had drawn a line he wouldn’t let her cross.

“I hate you and I hate this stupid town!” she exploded. “Why couldn’t I have stayed in Portland with one of my friends or with Mrs. Sanchez?”

“You think Mrs. Sanchez would have extended the retirement she had been planning for a year in order to stay with you?”

“If you paid her enough, she would have! You just didn’t want to.”

A bleak sense of futility seemed to settle in his gut. His daughter would have preferred staying with their housekeeper to moving here and having a new adventure with him. She said she hated him. For all he knew, she meant the words.

Like the rest of the world, she blamed him for her mother’s death. He wanted to believe she didn’t think he was literally responsible for Jade’s drowning, that he had held her head underwater or something, but Peyton seemed to think he should have done more to help Jade when her addictions spiraled out of control.

The hell of it was, she was right. But by then, he was tangled in his own legal issues and busy trying to stay out of prison to spend much time worrying about the woman responsible for tangling him up in the whole mess in the first place.

“We’re a family, like it or not,” he said now, trying his best to keep his temper contained.

“I don’t,” she muttered under her breath.

“Look, you’ve convinced yourself you hate it here but we’ve only been here a few days. Give it time. I think you’ll change your mind. And I promise, first order of business for me is to hire a housekeeper. I’m working through an agency and expect to have someone by the end of the day.”

“I don’t see why we need a housekeeper.”

He couldn’t take any more. “Face it, kid. We’re slobs. I haven’t washed dishes in a long time. We need somebody to clean up after us, cook for us, run you around, be here if you break your thumbs with all that texting.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she muttered.

“You will. Once you’ve been here awhile and have a chance to make some new friends, you’ll probably find all kinds of things to do. Meantime, today I would like you to come with me and be my moral support. Please. Just get dressed, Peyton.”

He could tell she wanted to offer more arguments but she finally slid off the bar stool.

He whispered a prayer of gratitude that at least he didn’t get another whatever out of her.

* * *

“GOOD NEWS. NOTHING’S broken.”

“What did I tell you?”

Charlotte shifted her aching ankle to a little more comfortable position on the exam table while her primary care physician, Susannah Harris, examined the X-ray displayed on the wall-hung light cabinet.

Dr. Harris tucked a strand of steel-gray hair behind her ear. “It’s not broken but your ankle is badly sprained. In my experience, sorry to say, a sprain can sometimes be more painful than a fracture.”

Charlotte closed her eyes, foreseeing a difficult week. “This is going to be a problem for me, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to be. But I would recommend you stay off it for at least a week.”

“I can’t do that! What about the store? And my running? I have to exercise!”

Susannah had been with her through her whole weight-loss journey. She knew how deadly a change in routine could be for someone trying to establish new habits.

“Calm down, Charlotte. You can do this.”

Easy for Susannah to say. She was athletic and tough and ran marathons for fun.

“Have you done much swimming?” the doctor went on. “The new pool at the recreation center is wonderful. James and I went up over the weekend. They reserve it for lap swimming in the morning and it wasn’t very busy when we were there.”

When she was young, she used to swim all the time but since she had gained weight, she hated how she looked in a swimsuit too much to subject herself to that humiliation very often.

What other choice did she have? She couldn’t run on her ankle. Right now, she couldn’t even walk. She had a reclined exercise bike but the thought of pedaling made her ankle give an angry throb.

Yet another reason to be angry with Spence Gregory for coming back to town and ruining everything.

She frowned. Okay, in all fairness she couldn’t really blame him. How could he have known she would become so off balance to see him there that she would lose track of where she was running?

She could only imagine the trouble she could get into if he happened to walk past while she was swimming at the community center. Susannah would be treating her for a concussion from heedlessly ramming into the side of the pool.

“I’ll figure something out. Thanks, Susannah.”

“I’m going to write a scrip for some crutches. You can pick them up at our pharmacy here at the clinic. Use them, got it?”

“At least it’s my left foot. I can still drive, right?”

“If you’re careful.” The doctor gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry I can’t give you better news. But look at it this way—you don’t have to wear a cast.”

Small favors. This would definitely complicate her life. In addition to the difficulties at work, she would have to try very hard to make sure she didn’t lose hard-fought ground when it came to working out.

Susannah gazed at her computer screen for a moment. “It looks like you’ve lost another five pounds since I saw you two months ago. That’s fantastic, Charlotte. Doesn’t that put you right at your goal weight?”

She smiled. “Yes. Three pounds ago.”

“You’re an inspiration. You’ve added years to your life, you know. I can tell you that, if you hadn’t lost the weight, this injury probably would have been far worse—and I think you’ll find your ankle will heal much faster than it would have otherwise, since you’re more toned and your diet is more healthy.”

Of course, if she hadn’t lost the weight, she probably wouldn’t have been running in front of Spence Gregory’s just after sunrise to go sprawling into the street. But she decided not to mention that little fact to the doctor.

She left Susannah’s office with her ankle wrapped and her palm bandaged, wielding a rented pair of crutches.

She drove to work trying to figure out how she was going to handle parking. Most downtown merchants used a lot a block off Main Street in order to leave the prime spots for customers. She certainly had a good excuse to park closer but she couldn’t find a more convenient spot. Besides, parking along the street was limited to two hours anyway. She ended up circling around the block and finally pulling back into the off-street parking lot.

Ah, well. It would give her good practice on the crutches and a little of that exercise she and Susannah were just talking about.

By the time she made it half a block, she was reconsidering. Besides the steady throb of her ankle, her hands hurt where she clutched the crutches and her armpits burned.

This would get old fast.

She was walking past String Fever, her favorite place to bead, when Claire McKnight, the owner of the store, and her manager, Evie Thorne, came out the front door.

“Oh, my word,” Claire exclaimed, consternation temporarily shunting aside her voluptuous pregnancy glow. She planted her hands on her hips. “Charlotte Caine, what have you done to yourself?”

She was grateful for the chance to take a break and sank onto the conveniently situated bench outside the bead store. “Nothing. It’s so embarrassing. I sprained my ankle this morning on my run.”

Tripping over my feet, just because Spence Gregory happens to look gorgeous in a pair of jogging shorts.

“Do you have to use the crutches long?” Evie asked. She was a physical therapist by training, though she only maintained a select few clients and preferred to spend most of her time working at the bead store.

Charlotte sighed. “Dr. Harris tells me I’m supposed to keep weight off it for a week. It’s really no big deal.”

“It is. Believe me, I know how horrible crutches can be,” Claire said. “Why don’t you come into the store and let me get you a drink and fuss over you for a bit? The fall bead magazines showed up this morning.”

Fall, already? She supposed so. It wouldn’t be long, anyway. Here in Hope’s Crossing, the quaking aspens would start turning gold in another month.

“That sounds tempting, believe me, but I’m afraid I’m already late heading into the store. I missed the whole morning at the doctor’s. I hope nobody needs an urgent order of fudge made today because I’m afraid it’s not happening.”

“You’re coming to the book club meeting tomorrow, aren’t you?”

She had completely forgotten in the chaos of Spence’s return. “I should be there, as long as I can find a convenient spot to prop my ankle.”

“We’ll make sure you do,” Evie promised. “Here. Stand up. Let me help adjust those crutches to a better fit.”

Charlotte had learned a long time ago it was best to just obey when her dear friends started trying to order her life. She stood and let Evie fuss over her for a moment.

“There. Try that.”

She took a few exploratory steps with the crutches and smiled back over her shoulder. “That’s tons better. Wow. Amazing!”

“We all have our little skills. You make the best fudge in the Rocky Mountains. I adjust crutches. Take it easy. Even when your ankle starts to feel better, you can do serious damage if you push yourself.”

“So Dr. Harris warned me. Thank you for the double dose of caution. I promise, I’ll sit in my office at the store all day long and let my employees wait on me hand and foot.”

“Good idea,” Claire said. “Or better yet, take the day off. You’ve got smart people working for you. They can handle things without you during an emergency like this.”

Charlotte gave Claire and Evie a warm smile. “I’m a lucky woman to have friends to fret about me.”

“Yes, you are,” Claire answered.

With a smile and a wave, Charlotte started to hobble toward Sugar Rush when Evie moved up to walk beside her.

“Wait,” her friend said. “I’m heading that direction anyway to grab coffee at Maura’s place. I’ll walk with you.”

She had a feeling that wasn’t precisely true, and that Evie was manufacturing a reason to accompany her, probably to make sure she didn’t take another dive off the sidewalk.

As long as Spence didn’t happen to walk by and start some leg stretches, she should be fine.

“So I understand Alex is trying to set you up next weekend with one of Sam’s army buddies.”

Crap. She had completely forgotten about that. She absolutely didn’t want to go out on a blind date while she was on crutches. She would just have to hope she didn’t need them by the following weekend.

“I’ve met Garrett King,” Evie said. “He seems very nice. You should have a wonderful time.”

Evie was another of her friends who had a great husband. She and Brodie just seemed to fit together, perfectly complementing the other’s strengths.

Evie had moved to Hope’s Crossing a few years ago from Los Angeles, where she’d had a successful pediatric rehab practice. After Brodie’s teenage daughter, Taryn, had been injured in a severe car accident that had killed another teen, Evie had stepped in to help the girl’s recovery.

Charlotte started to ask about Taryn, but before she could get the words out, an old blue battered pickup pulled up to the curb beside them and the driver killed the engine.

Tucker’s big droopy face hung out the passenger window and a moment later, Dylan climbed out the other side and walked around the front of the truck. He wore his customary scowl but for once, he looked more concerned than angry at the world.

“What the hell happened to you?” he exclaimed. “I just saw you last night!”

She sighed, wondering how many times she was going to have to go over this with people. Probably a couple dozen more that day, at least. “You know me. Clumsy as a deaf bat. I sprained my ankle while I was running this morning.”

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