Lover's Leap (8 page)

Simultaneously, Cam and Sarah and Nic recited, “He was asking for it.”

Cam softly banged his head against the window glass.

“You need to explain that comment, dear.”

He hesitated before turning around. “I don’t talk about that night. I was responsible for what happened to Andrew Cook. I don’t try to defend myself.”

“I didn’t say defend, Cameron.” Celeste’s expression was kind and tender. “I said explain.”

“I don’t know, Celeste,” Nic said. “What good will it do to drag up old ugliness? Isn’t that like poking a sharp stick at a wound?”

“When the wound has festered for a long time, it’s important to let the poison out.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Cam declared. “Dredging up the past won’t make anything better. Everyone knows what happened. I put Andrew Cook in the hospital and went to jail because of it. End of story.”

“It’s not the end of the story.” Celeste held Cam’s gaze. “
People
should know why you hit him.”

Meaning me
, Sarah thought.

Cam shook his head. “It would only cause
people
pain. I won’t do it. Frankly, my motive doesn’t matter. It’s best left in the past. All I care about is the future, and the future is Lori. I want to do the right thing for Lori.”

“He’s right,” Sarah said. “I’ve been thinking about the whole situation myself. We can’t change what happened in the past. The only thing that matters is doing what is best for Lori going forward. Primary to that is taking her wishes into account with every decision we make. She’s an adult. She has a right to be treated as an adult in this situation, a right to be part of the process. It would be wrong of us—me and Cam and all of you—to make potentially life-changing decisions without her input.”

Recent developments made Sarah resolute in this respect.

Celeste responded to both Cam and Sarah with another one of her special smiles. “You are quite correct, Sarah. Lori’s well-being is paramount. That said, what Lori wants isn’t always what is best for her. As a parent, you know that.”

Is that what her parents had thought when letters from Australia arrived? Sarah cleared the sudden lump from her throat, then repeated, “She’s an adult.”

“Yes, she is. And so are you, and so is Cameron. It’s good that you both consider your daughter’s feelings as you go forward, but I caution you not to shortchange yourselves. You see, sometimes the best thing we can do for our children is to see to our own happiness.”

Sarah stole a glance at Cam and found him stealing one right back at her.

Nic asked, “Have you spoken to Lori yet?”

“No time. We have an online date tonight.”

“Excellent.” Celeste clapped her hands. “We’ll develop our strategy here now, and you can share it with her tonight.”

Sarah knew Celeste well enough to know she’d be wasting her breath to argue any more, so she didn’t. After a moment of awkward silence, Ali cleared her throat. “As the mother of a daughter the same age as Lori; as your friend, Sarah; and as, like Cam, a descendent of Eternity Springs’s founder Harry Cavanaugh, I want to say that I think this project to rehabilitate the Murphy name is a wonderful idea. I also agree that a newspaper interview of some type would be beneficial, and I don’t see why you couldn’t set some ground rules about what topics you will and will not address, but I have to ask. Emily Hall grew up here, too, didn’t she? What sort of prejudice might she bring to the interview? I have some friends at
The Denver Post
who owe me a favor.”

Nic glanced at Sarah. “Ali has a point. I don’t think Emily has ever forgiven you for getting the lead in the senior play. I could see the high school girl coming out in an interview with Cam.”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. She had a crush on Cam our sophomore year, and she’s single again. She might write an article that makes him sound like a saint.”

“That would be just fine,” Celeste said. “What other ideas can you suggest? Ali, can we count on you to prevail upon Mac to befriend Cam?” To Cam, she added, “Mac retired from the federal bench in Denver before moving to Eternity Springs.”

Cam muttered a curse, then turned away from the window to face them. “Look, Celeste, I appreciate the idea and your effort to enlist your friends on my behalf, but this just isn’t how I work. I’ll be damned if I’m going to parade around Eternity Springs like a suck-up.”

“You’re thinking about it wrong,” Sage said, absently rubbing her tummy. “Getting along with people isn’t sucking up. Think of it like a campaign. What’s wrong with kissing a few babies if it’ll help achieve the goal?”

“Just because I have a criminal record doesn’t mean I’m slimy like a politician.”

Sage laughed and looked at Sarah. “I like this guy.”

Sarah didn’t know what to make of Cam. Yesterday, the world as she knew it had tilted on its axis. Maybe he didn’t deserve all of the scorn, but he still wasn’t blameless, and changing two decades of attitude didn’t happen overnight.

“How long do you plan to be here, Cam?” Ali asked.

Cam darted a glance toward Sarah before saying, “We’re not on a set schedule. People are covering for me at the tour office, and Devin’s teachers have given him independent-study projects to make up for missed class time.”

“I have a thought,” Sage said. “Community service is always appreciated. Colt could use an assistant coach for his baseball team. Devin says you taught him how to swing a bat. You should consider helping Colt with the Grizzlies, Cam. I know he’d be happy to have your help.”

Nic pointed toward Cam. “That’s a great idea. You need to do that. Still, there is one thing I want to point out. The ultimate success of this project is as much up to us as it is to Cam. You all know that most of the talk about Cam will take place behind his back. We need to be out there, speaking up every time anyone says something negative. You especially, Sarah.”

“I don’t know that I’ll have the chance,” she replied. “I expected to be bombarded with questions this morning, but believe it or not, nobody said a word. I had a lot of curious looks, and business from the locals this morning was at an all-time high, but people didn’t mention Cam. Everyone asked about Mom’s accident, though.”

“Pauline Roosevelt didn’t say anything?” Ali asked, aghast.

“She didn’t come in.”

Celeste said, “She left town after the festival closed yesterday. She’s meeting friends in Denver.”

“I bet the timing of that killed her,” Sage observed.

“At least she had a front-row seat for yesterday’s thrill,” Nic added.

Cam muttered, “This is humiliating.”

“It’s for Lori,” Sarah said, speaking to him directly for the first time. “They’re right. If we can pull this off, it will make her life at home easier. She’ll see that. She’s not stupid. And this is really a separate issue from what sort of relationship she’ll want to have with you. That’ll be between you and Lori.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Could I talk with you? Privately?”

She swallowed a sigh. She guessed it was time they finished the conversation they’d had yesterday. Might as well just get everything out on the table. “Sure.”

She glanced at Celeste, who made a little go-along sweeping motion with her hands. Both Ali and Sage gave her smiles of encouragement as she walked past. Nic winked at her.

In the hallway, she looked at Cam and asked, “Here?”

He shook his head. “No. Outside. I’m done with walls.”

They didn’t speak as they made their way downstairs and out into the sunshine. There, Cam took the lead, walking in the opposite direction of the gazebo where they’d had their aborted discussion the day before. He took an old path that led away from the hot springs into the stand of aspen that hugged the base of the mountain rising behind the estate. It was the most isolated section of the Angel’s Rest property, one she rarely visited. No one would look for her here. They wouldn’t be interrupted today.

Okay. That’s good
. They needed to come to an understanding about Lori. Celeste’s idea to rehabilitate his name was a good one, and for Lori’s sake, she appreciated the effort. But that was a separate issue from any relationship Cam might forge with her daughter. Sarah needed to finish yesterday’s interrupted conversation with him. She needed to know what his intentions were toward Lori. She wouldn’t keep secrets from her daughter, but neither would she keep her opinions to herself. She darn well wanted ammunition for her arguments. Just how big of a fight did she have on her hands?

Abruptly, Cam halted. He turned and faced her. Sunlight beaming through the leaves on the aspens cast dappled shadows across his face. He looked rugged and rough and almost pained. Sexy and oh, so serious. Her mouth went dry.
What now?

His chest expanded, and he drew a deep breath before exhaling in a rush and saying, “Sarah, maybe you and I should get married.”

SIX

Cam watched her mouth fall open and a look of alarm spread across her face. “What did you say?”

Insulted, Cam braced his hands on his hips and widened his stance. “I said maybe we should get married.”

Her mouth worked, but no sound emerged. Finally, she squeaked out, “Why in heaven’s name would you say that?”

Cam scowled. She didn’t have to act like he’d just asked her to help him drown puppies. “I don’t know. I just thought … Look. I can’t change what happened that night behind the Bear Cave Bar, but I can right the wrong of making you an unwed mother and our daughter illegitimate.”

Sarah sighed heavily. “Unwed mother? Illegitimate? That’s awfully old-fashioned of you, Cameron. This is the age of the baby mama, after all.”

“Even in Eternity Springs?”

She responded with only a shrug. He resumed walking, frustration riding his blood until he spied an overgrown path a few minutes later. He remembered this path. “Is that old mine shaft entrance still up on the hill?”

“The county blocked off all the old holes for safety’s sake years ago, but they didn’t haul off any of the old wooden structures. I don’t know what’s left of this mine. I haven’t been up there in years.”

He eyed her jeans and hiking boots. “Are you up for a little climb?”

Her expression declared no, but aloud, she said, “Sure.”

He needed the physical exertion of the climb. By the time they reached the big flat-topped boulder near the entrance to the abandoned silver mine that had been his goal, twenty minutes had passed and he’d burned off much of his frustration.

Joining him, Sarah eyed the boulder with a frown. He recalled that due to her petite stature, she’d never managed to climb atop it without help. Well, she hadn’t grown any taller since he’d been gone. Without asking her permission, he put his hands on her waist and lifted her up onto the rock.

Touching her proved to be a distraction. He experienced a momentary flashback to the days long ago when he’d put his hands on her, all over her. He’d loved her so much. The what-ifs and if-onlys all but brought him to his knees.

He released her the second she was settled, and stepped away. Feeling the need to put even more distance between them, he said, “So I take it the answer to my question is no?”

“What question? That was more a suggestion than a question, and while I appreciate the gesture, I don’t think our getting married would really solve anything.”

“Would it make Lori happy?”

She drummed her heels against the rock. “Is that what is behind this?”

Cam stared down at the rooftops of Eternity Springs. How long had he hated this place? All of his life or only most of it? “I screwed up yesterday, going public like I did.”

“So this was a damage-control marriage proposal. How flattering.”

“That’s not … Oh, hell. Until the day I die I will remember the look on Lori’s face when she realized who I was. She was horrified. I need to fix that.” He glanced over his shoulder at Sarah. “I know you probably won’t believe this, but I love her. I always have.”

Her eyes flashed like jewels, and her chin came up. “You’re right. I don’t believe it. You don’t know her. How can you possibly claim to love her?”

Cam turned around and faced her, capturing her gaze with his own. “Because I loved her mother when Lori was conceived.”

Sarah shut her eyes and swayed backward as if warding off a blow.

Determined to make his point, Cam stepped toward the boulder. “I knew you’d had a girl. I asked the social worker assigned to me in juvie. As time passed, I imagined what she looked like, what her laugh sounded like. I wondered what her favorite food was, what her favorite color was, what her first word was.”

“Dog,” Sarah said without opening her eyes. “Her first word was
dog
. It broke my heart at the time. I wanted her to say Mama.”

Cam imagined a dark-haired toddler pointing at a puppy and saying “dog.” He’d missed so much. It was his own fault. He had no one to blame but himself. Well, himself and his father.

Now, though, the situation had changed. He was no longer a boy afraid of his own fists. Cam was a man who in life had been pushed to his limits a time or two. He knew what he was capable of doing and what he wouldn’t do in a million years. Oh, he had demons. What person went through life without collecting a few? But his demons weren’t those of his father’s. Cam didn’t drink. He didn’t do drugs.

He didn’t hit kids.

He wasn’t a danger to Lori. He knew that with certainty, something he hadn’t known twenty years ago when he sent Sarah away, then ran away himself. Shoot, even ten years ago he’d had his doubts that he’d had anything positive to offer Lori other than money. That had changed. He was a good father to Devin, and he could be good for Lori. He yearned to have her in his life. But would she want him in return?

“You told me yesterday that you didn’t bad-mouth me to her. What
does
she know? What does she think of me?”

“She knows the Murphy family history. She read every local history book in the library, and she asked around town under the guise of doing research for a history paper for school. I’d say she has a good grasp on the public version of who you are. The private one, less so. I told her we were high school sweethearts who let our hormones get carried away. I told her about Andrew’s accident and your sentence. I told her that we were too young to deal with two crises at once and manage to stay together.”

“So she must hate me.”

Sarah thought about it, then said, “I think you were a fantasy for her. I think she concocted various story lines for why you never contacted her. She reads romances with secret-agent and witness-protection-plan plots. I think she liked to project those possibilities onto you. Once she saw you and discovered you had a son, well … I think you went from being hero to villain.”

“And once she learns my side of the story?”

“I honestly don’t know, Cam. I’ll know better after I talk to her tonight, but I suspect you’ll meet some resistance. Lori’s a sensitive young woman, and her emotions run deep. Despite my best efforts, the whole fatherhood issue has left her wounded.”

“Then I need to focus my efforts on helping her heal, wouldn’t you say? This Angel’s Rest bills itself as a healing center. They must have mental-health people on staff. Maybe they offer some programs we could look into. I’ll go to counseling with you two, or just with Lori, if that’s what’s best.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Totally serious.” He levered himself up onto the rock to sit beside her. “When I saw her and she ran away, she tore a scab off my own heart. Lori is my daughter, and I want to have a relationship with her. I want to fight for her. Will you help me, Sarah?”

A long moment dragged by as Sarah traced the rough edge of the rock with her index finger but didn’t respond. Cam tried again. “Please?”

She cleared her throat. “There’s part of me that wants to refuse. I’ve resented you for a long time, Cam.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he chose to say nothing. Eventually, Sarah continued. “Due to what I’ve learned in the past two days, I guess the paradigm has shifted. Apparently you’re not the total jerk I believed you to be.”

His mouth twisted ruefully. “Just a partial jerk?”

“Don’t expect miracles, Murphy.” She lifted her face toward the sky, where puffy white clouds drifted against a cerulean blue. She’d been pretty as a teenager, Cam thought. Now she took his breath away.

A little voice whispered in his mind,
You didn’t come back just for Lori. You came for Sarah, too
.

Startled by the thought, Cam jerked and almost slipped off the rock.

“I’m so angry at my parents,” she said. “They had to be responsible for keeping your letters from me. It just can’t be anyone else. I don’t know why they did it, and I’ll never be able to ask them. It’s totally frustrating.”

“Yes, that was a big piece of interference they pulled. They must have really hated me.”

“I hate to agree, because it sounds awful, but I think you must be right. They hated you and wanted to control me.” Sarah tucked a flyaway strand of her short dark hair back behind her ears. “Or maybe they truly believed they were doing what was best for me. Maybe they didn’t trust my judgment. That makes me a little crazy, too. I’m so angry at them. I have too much I’d like to say and nobody to say it to.”

“Say it to me if that would help, Sarah. I understand about this better than anybody, I would think.”

A long minute passed before she responded. “Their decision hurt me. Some of it is obvious, but other aspects less so. It’s things like my book club. When Lori was little, I joined an online book club. I had almost no social life at the time, and I became friends with these women. They planned a group cruise the summer Lori turned eleven. I wanted to go so badly. I saved every possible penny, worked every hour I could work. Then Lori broke her arm and the doctor bills wiped out my savings. I missed the cruise. Not that big of a deal, right? Except I was the only person in the book club who didn’t go. When they came home, they’d bonded in a new way, and I was never able to break through and be a real part of the group again. I hated that.”

“If you’d had the money I sent, you could have gone on the cruise.”

She lifted her shoulders. “I sound like a pouty child, don’t I?”

The offer to take her on a cruise now hung on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. Instead, he said, “Not at all. What they did was wrong, Sarah. You have a right to your anger. You should have been able to go on that cruise.”

He almost apologized for his part in making it impossible. For being careless with birth control in the beginning to quitting too easily when she didn’t cash the checks and respond to his letters. But he kept his mouth shut. She’d probably take any condom remark as a wish that Lori had never been born, and that wasn’t how he felt at all. He truly believed that Lori was one of the greatest gifts he’d ever been given. He just had to figure out how to cut the ribbon and open the box.

Sarah dropped her chin to her chest. Cam sensed that she was working toward saying something difficult, and he tensed. When she lifted her head and looked him in the eyes, he held his breath.

“I’ll help you with Lori,” she said. “I think it’s in her best interest to make her peace with you. It’s only fair that she knows the whole truth. What happened, how it happened, and where the responsibilities lie. You, me. My parents. I need to lay it all out for her and let her process it.”

Cam exhaled in relief.

Sarah narrowed her eyes and continued, “But be on notice, Murphy. I’ll be watching closely. If I determine that this is in any way harmful to Lori, I’ll put a stop to it quick as a minute. And if she eventually decides she wants nothing to do with you, I’ll support her decision. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.”

“So what’s your plan?”

“My plan is to ask you to help me come up with a plan.”

Amusement lit her expression. “That’s not a bad plan, Murphy. I’ll have to think about it, though.”

“That’s fine. I want our plan to be the best it can be. In the meantime, will you tell me about our daughter?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know about the little girl she was and the young woman she’s becoming. Tell me everything, the little things, the big things. Help me know her, Sarah.”

Sarah stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankles. “She has always loved animals. Growing up, her favorite television show was
Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures
, and she started begging me for a pet almost as soon as she could talk. I had quite a time convincing her that it simply wasn’t possible for her to have a koala bear for a pet.”

“A koala bear, huh?” He liked the sound of that. “She’s stubborn?”

“Beyond stubborn.”

“That probably doesn’t help my case.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier.”

Cam couldn’t help but grin. “I guess she comes by it honestly.”

Sarah challenged him with an uplifted brow, and Cam’s smile widened. “So what pet did she talk you into getting her?”

“It might be easier to tell you what pets she didn’t have.” Ticking them off on her fingers, she added, “We had turtles and chickens and hamsters. Fish. Cats. Snakes—”

“Snakes?”

“My father’s doing. We also had a guinea pig, hermit crabs, parakeets, and, of course, we had Honey. We lost her right after she turned eleven. Lori was devastated. Nic really did get me our next dog.”

Honey was the golden retriever pup he’d given Sarah for her sixteenth birthday, the gift Sarah had told her parents came from Nic. “Another golden?”

“What can I say? I love them. I have two at home now. Daisy and Duke.”

Cam laughed. “Fans of
The Dukes of Hazzard
? That doesn’t seem like you.”

She gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “That I can blame on the man I was seeing at the time.”

That comment distracted him from thoughts about his daughter, and he casually asked, “Have there been a lot of them?”

“Dogs?”

“Men.”

“That’s really none of your business, now, is it?”