Willowleaf Lane (22 page)

He scratched just above his ear. “Sure.”

When she went inside, the three of them seemed locked in that awkward tableau, with Dylan on the porch and Peyton and Spence standing just at the bottom of the stairs. Spence decided not to wait for an invitation to sit down. He walked up and pulled apart a couple stacking plastic chairs, positioning them near Dylan’s spot.

The chairs were dirty but Peyton didn’t seem to notice. She seemed fascinated by Dylan again and hadn’t taken her gaze off him since they had climbed out of the car.

Jade hadn’t tolerated imperfection so Peyton had been surrounded by physically ideal people all her life. It was good for her to see the gritty reality, Spence figured.

Dylan seemed aware of Pey’s interest. To Spence’s relief, he didn’t take another swig of his beer, setting it down on the table beside him instead.

The dog came over to investigate the strangers. Pey seemed nervous at first but then relaxed a bit, petting the dog’s long, droopy ears.

“What’s his name again?” she asked Dylan.

“Tucker,” he answered gruffly.

“Charlotte said he was a coonhound. Does that mean he hunts raccoons?”

“He’ll tree any who dare come around, but I don’t hunt. Not anymore.”

Charlotte came out of the house before Peyton could ask another question. Since Dylan had three guests and two guest chairs, Spence rose to let her take his and leaned instead against the porch railing.

She sat down, her hands folded primly in her lap. She looked edgy and uncomfortable. Spence was sorry he had brought either of the females. He should have just come up here alone to talk to his old friend man-to-man.

“I’m going to take a wild guess that you’ve all obviously got some kind of agenda for driving up here.” Dylan seemed to be sobering by the second. “What do you say we just skip the polite time-wasting chitchat and get straight to the point?”

Spencer had to appreciate the brusque, no-nonsense approach to life. Was that the sort of clarity that came from nearly dying on the battlefield?

Charlotte opened her mouth to say something but Spence gave his head a subtle shake. He decided to start things off with what she probably would consider a non sequitur.

“Do you remember that time we went hiking above the Piedras?”

Dylan stared at him for a second then gave that rusty-sounding laugh again. “Man. I forgot all about that. How old were we?”

“I don’t know. Fourteen. Maybe fifteen.”

“Even then you had a hell of an arm,” Dylan said. He reached for his bottle but didn’t drink it, only held the long neck loosely between his fingers.

“What happened?” Peyton asked. Spencer had to consider it a good sign that she was interested in something besides herself for a while.

“I used to go fishing once in a while with Dermot and his boys.”

“I went, too, sometimes,” Charlotte said.

He remembered now. She had been a tomboy in the years before her mom died. He had a flash of a memory of her tagging along on a couple fishing trips, chubby and cute with honey-gold braids sticking out of a baseball cap turned backward.

“I don’t think you went on this one. Seems to me it was just Dermot, Aidan, Jamie and the two of us.”

“Pop heard about some secret spot clear on the other side of the state and just had to drag us all there.” Dylan wasn’t quite smiling but he didn’t look quite as dangerously grim, either.

Dermot Caine had been so good to include Spence on their family outings. It was astonishing, when he thought about it. What had Spence been to the man, really? Just the son of a drunkard employee he should have fired years earlier, but Dermot had always been kind to him.

When he thought of all the man had done for him, he burned with shame that he had moved away from Hope’s Crossing without looking back. He hadn’t made so much as a phone call or sent a Christmas card.

“What happened?” Charlotte asked, forcing him to push away that particular guilt for now.

“Well, after a morning of fishing near our campsite, Dylan and I decided to walk upriver a bit to check out this lake that was supposed to be full of German browns.”

“Is that a fish?” Peyton asked.

He smiled. His daughter’s education was sorely lacking. Before the summer ended, he would have to take her fishing. He could only imagine how she would love that.

“Yeah. Really tasty trout. Anyway, it was probably a mile hike from our campsite through the sagebrush. We headed out and had been gone maybe fifteen minutes when all of a sudden—”

Dylan cut him off before he could finish. “So there I was, walking along, minding my business, when suddenly Smoke yells,
Don’t move!
Next thing I knew, this cantaloupe-size rock comes whistling toward me at about a hundred miles an hour.”

“I couldn’t throw a hundred miles an hour then. And I topped off at ninety-five, anyway,” Spence said with a bit of a smile. “That particular rock was probably going no more than seventy-five.”

“All I saw was a blur,” Dylan said, one corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “You try having a rock catapulting toward you that fast and see if you can mentally clock it.”

“I never heard this story,” Charlotte said, gazing at her brother as if she couldn’t quite believe he was actually interacting with them, and almost smiling in the process.

“I don’t get it.” Peyton frowned. “Why did you throw a rock at him?”

“I wasn’t aiming at Dylan. I was going for the five-foot-long rattlesnake he was about two seconds from stepping on.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened with horror. “Did you hit it?”

“Bull’s-eye,” Dylan said. “Knocked him into another rock and popped the head clear off. As you can see, I lived to fish another day.”

He said the words with an ironic twist and dangled his longneck over the armrest of his chair.

“Do you remember what you said? You said you owed me. Anything I wanted.”

“I’d give you my left arm but I’m afraid it’s already taken.”

Charlotte drew in a sharp breath, and Spence fought the urge to say something harsh.

“I never took you up on that, remember?” he said instead.

“Something tells me my luck is about to run out.” Dylan spoke again with that bitter irony.

Spence shouldn’t have come here. Charlotte was right. Dylan would never help them. But they had driven all this way, so he plowed on.

“The week after next, we’re having a media event to introduce our A Warrior’s Hope program and break ground for the cabins we’re building near the recreation center. Several athletes are flying in to help us draw attention to the program. Ty Jacobs. Jess Roman. Lucky Lucero. I would like you to come.”

Dylan stared at him for a long moment then turned on his sister. “Did you put him up to this?”

“She didn’t,” Spence answered. “She thinks you won’t want to help us.”

“She’s right.” He looked as if he really wanted to take another drink but Peyton’s presence seemed to stop him.

“This is a good project,” Charlotte said, her voice vibrating with emotion. “Spence has worked really hard to make something worthwhile here. You, of all people, must see how important it is.”

“Do you know what I see? I see a big waste of time and money. You’d be better off tossing your money into the Piedras.”

“Why? You don’t think we can help anybody?”

Dylan glared at all of them. “No. I don’t. You have no idea what it’s like. If you did, you’d never have come up with this dumbass plan. What the hell can a week in the mountains do for a guy who’s had his legs shot off? Or somebody with a traumatic brain injury who can’t remember his own frigging name anymore?”

Spence glanced down and saw Peyton’s features had gone pale as Dylan’s voice rose in intensity.

“Pey, why don’t you go wait in the car?” he murmured.

“Why?”

“Just go,” he answered sternly.

She looked reluctant but she obeyed. The dog trotted after her but turned away when she closed the door of the SUV.

“We don’t have any idea what these guys have been through,” Spence finally said. “You’re absolutely right. That’s my whole point. You do.”

Something dark and haunted spasmed across Dylan’s face. “You think everybody thinks the same, feels the same? No way. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. But, yeah, I know a hell of a lot more than you. Which is how I know you’re not going to fix a damn thing with canoe rides and ski trips.”

“Maybe the goal isn’t
fixing
anything,” Charlotte said softly. “Maybe we just would like to help these wounded soldiers come to terms with their new situation—help them see that no matter what has happened to them, what sorts of limitations or challenges, their lives aren’t ending. They’re just different.”

“Which is your polite way of saying worthless.”

Charlotte’s mouth tightened, hurt drenching her blue eyes. She stared at her brother for a long moment, and Spence watched the heartbreak give way to a fiery, crackling anger.

“Oh, get over yourself, Dylan!” she finally snapped. “I’m so damn tired of you moping around up here, acting like you don’t need anybody or anything, wrapping your pain around you like a hissing rattlesnake to keep everybody away. You lost an arm and an eye. That sucks. It really does. I wish it hadn’t happened to you. But you’re alive. Doesn’t that count for anything with you? You’re alive, and as far as I can see, you’re wasting that miraculous gift of life you were handed by sitting around hating the world and feeding bits of yourself to that snake.”

She rose to her feet and stood over her brother, looking fierce and passionate and wonderful.

“A Warrior’s Hope is a wonderful thing for the soldiers Spence is trying to help, and it’s a wonderful thing for Hope’s Crossing. If you can’t see that, I feel more sorry for you than I have since you were injured.”

She was close to tears. Spence could see it in the tiny quiver of her chin, a certain watery sheen to her eyes.

She seemed to shove it away, though, and stomped down the stairs and across the yard, pushing chickens away as she climbed into the car. An instant later, the slam of the car’s door behind her echoed through the clearing.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

F
OR
A
FEW
seconds, he and Dylan gazed after her, the only sound in the clearing the squawk of one of the chickens and the distant sound of a creek tumbling over rocks somewhere nearby.

Finally Spence let out a long breath. “So let’s be clear. What you’re saying is, you’re not going to help us.”

Dylan gave him a gimlet stare out of the one clear blue eye not encumbered by a patch. “I think that’s a safe bet, yeah.”

“Does that also mean I can strike you off my list of motivational speakers once A Warrior’s Hope is up and running?” he joked.

Dylan gazed at him for a long moment then actually laughed. “How did I forget what an annoying bastard you could be?”

Spence smiled, unoffended. He was actually feeling quite accomplished that he had made Dylan laugh.

Everybody who went through tough things had to take his own road back. Others could push and guide and help but nobody could chose another’s journey for him.

Unlike Charlotte, he didn’t blame Dylan for the route he had taken. There was definitely something healing up here in the trees, surrounded by mountains. If it took Dylan a while to find that, Spence completely understood.

He had thought the past two years of his life had been pretty close to hell—a career-ending injury, rehab, the grim reality of a failed marriage, then the charges against him. Having reporters camped out on his doorstep had been horrible, not to mention the months and months of miserable press they had churned out.

Compared to what Dylan had seen, done, survived, Spence’s life had been cake.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about Charlotte. She’ll get over being pissed at you. She loves you, you know. And she’s worried sick about you.”

“That’s the thing about Charlotte,” Dylan said with a rather pointed look. “She forgives too easily.”

Spence let out a breath, wondering how
he
had ended up in the hot seat here. Yeah, he had been a jerk to her. The knowledge had been eating away at him since she had told him, especially since he had no real way to make amends for something that happened years ago.

“She does.”

He caught a glimpse of her through the windshield of his SUV and felt a tremendous surge of emotion in his chest. Every time he was with her, he felt this kick in his gut and he didn’t understand it.

“This may sound like a cliché,” Dylan went on calmly, “but what the hell. It needs to be said. I might be a broken-down excuse for a soldier, but I still know a couple dozen ways to kill a man. Several of the better ones don’t require more than one arm.”

Spence raised an eyebrow, wondering just what Dylan had seen on his features. “Care to tell me why you feel the need to mention your interesting skill set right now?”

“We both know why.” His friend took a long swig out of his beer. “Charley isn’t your average cleat chaser. She is vulnerable in ways you can’t imagine. Before she lost all the weight, she never met anybody who could see beyond her appearance. Or if she did, it wasn’t the kind of guy she deserved. I don’t know if she’s ever even been kissed.”

Oh, she had. His mind was suddenly filled with images, especially that incredible moment in her bedroom when she had come apart with just a touch, the most erotic moment of his life to date.

Spence blinked it away. “Charlotte can take care of herself.”

“No doubt. She doesn’t have to, though. Here’s something you might want to keep in mind. If you so much as
think
about hurting my baby sister, just remember that I’m a man who doesn’t have anything left to lose.”

His complete sincerity touched Spence, especially because he knew Charlotte had other brothers besides Dylan who would step up in a second to protect her. He envied her the steady assurance that the rest of the Caines would always be there to watch her back.

“Warning duly noted,” he murmured. “If you change your mind about the event, you know how to find me.”

Dylan sipped at his beer. “Don’t hold your breath, Smoke. Or my sister, for that matter.”

Spence laughed, shook his head and headed for his SUV.

* * *

C
HARLOTTE
SAT
IN
the passenger seat fighting tears of mingled anger and pain as she watched Dylan and Spence on the porch. What were they talking about so intently? she wondered. Dylan looked grim around the mouth, and Spence no longer leaned casually against the porch railing but stood tense and still.

Drat her brother. She was so mad at him, she wanted to smack something. Why couldn’t he see all the people who only wanted to help him?

“Are you okay?” Peyton asked in a small voice.

“Not really.” She fumbled in her purse for a tissue. “My heart just hurts for my brother.”

“Because he doesn’t have an arm anymore?”

“I don’t care about that. No, I’m sad because he’s only focusing on what’s gone instead of everything he has left.”

Peyton was watching through the window at her father and Dylan, her slender features thoughtful. Charlotte thought she saw a hint of compassion there, as well.

The girl seemed genuinely interested in Dylan’s situation, which Charlotte considered a positive sign that she was able to look outside herself.

“I guess I just wish he could see how much he has now and how many people care about him and want to help him through it.”

Charlotte paused, compelled to press the point. She couldn’t help her brother, apparently, but maybe she could give this troubled girl a nudge in the right direction. “Life is a precious thing, Peyton. Gone in a minute. I guess you know that, don’t you?”

Peyton’s mouth firmed into a line. “Yeah. I do. I still miss my mom.”

“You always will. My mom has been gone since I was about your age, and I still miss her just about every day.” She tilted her head. “I lost eighty pounds this past year and a half. Did you know that?”

Peyton’s eyes went wide and she looked at her in disbelief. “No,” she exclaimed. “Eighty pounds? You must have been
huge.
”

It stung but it was nothing less than the truth. “I had an eating disorder, too. It’s called compulsive eating. It’s different from what you might be dealing with, certainly. I ate everything I could. I ate to hide my pain, I ate to feel better, I ate because I was lonely. When my brother almost died, I realized I was doing more harm to myself than any enemy in war could do with a shoulder-fired missile.”

Peyton appeared to mull this over. “My mom was always telling me I have to watch what I eat, that I have to cut calories if I want to be healthy.”

“Your body needs food. Healthy food. I eat whenever I’m hungry and I never deprive myself. The difference is, I make smarter choices now. I’ve decided I want to embrace my life, not hide from it. I just wish Dylan would do the same.”

She couldn’t tell from Peyton’s closed expression if any of her words made an impact. It didn’t really matter, anyway. She felt better for having said them.

She watched Dylan take another drink of his beer, and then a moment later, Spence turned and walked toward them. Before her dad reached the SUV, Peyton put in her earbuds. Charlotte was quickly learning the gesture was the girl’s own defense mechanism, like a turtle sucking its head back into its shell. For all she knew, Peyton wasn’t even listening to music in there.

Spence gave Charlotte a regretful look as he climbed into the SUV. She cut him off before he could say anything.

“I’m sorry I stormed off like that. Apparently, my inner thirteen-year-old girl still surfaces sometimes, and I can’t seem to help slamming doors and stomping around. Sad to say, my brothers all seem to be very good at pulling her out.”

His soft laugh filled the SUV’s interior as he pulled the vehicle around, carefully avoiding the chickens, and headed back down that rutted driveway. “I liked that thirteen-year-old girl. She was funny and...sweet.”

“Except when she was slamming doors.”

“I don’t remember that part. I just remember how you used to review my English essays and write all these cute, apologetic little comments every time you wanted me to change something. ‘I’m really sorry, but I think you meant
affect
here and not
effect.
’ I still get those wrong, by the way.”

She winced. Helping him with his essays had been an agonizing exercise in nuance. She had fought conflicting urges to make the work better yet not be so critical that he wouldn’t want her to help him again.

“Well. Anyway, I’m sorry. I probably made things worse for you with Dylan.”

He gave her a sideways look. “I don’t think anything could have made it worse. He would never have agreed to help with the groundbreaking anyway. You knew that and tried to tell me but I insisted we come anyway.”

“I hoped I might be wrong. Dylan
needs
to help with A Warrior’s Hope. He just can’t see that now, and I don’t know how to convince him it would be healing for him.”

“I think it’s safe to say you’ve done all you can. From this point on, I guess he’s just going to have to figure things out on his own.”

“You’ve been talking to Pop, haven’t you? That’s what he always says.”

“Your dad is a wise man. I’ve always said so. And speaking of Dermot, which always makes me think of food... Have you had dinner yet? We’re halfway up the canyon already. We could swing up to the ski resort and grab a bite at one of the restaurants there.”

She was tempted, so tempted. At the same time, she knew she needed to exercise at least a modicum of caution here. She was in danger of losing all perspective when it came to Spence. She couldn’t continue spending so much time with him and his daughter. She had no illusions that Spence would suddenly discover he loved living in a small Colorado ski town and throw down roots. He and Peyton wouldn’t be here forever, and Charlotte needed to protect herself now.

“I’d better not. I have so much work to catch up on tonight. Anyway, Peyton seemed tired. I think she’s still trying to adjust. Going out to eat might not be the best idea for her right now.”

“You could be right,” he said, a touch of dryness in his voice as he looked in the rearview mirror. She followed his gaze and found Peyton with her head nestled in the corner of the backseat. She was either asleep or doing a very good imitation of it.

Tenderness washed over her as she looked at those lovely, fragile features.

She already cared deeply for his daughter. When Spence decided to move on, how would she survive without either of them?

They rode in silence the rest of the drive to her house. When he turned onto Willowleaf Lane, she tried to summon the happiness that usually filled her at the sight of her little cottage with its kissing gate, lush English garden, the cute blue shutters.

It was hers. She had worked ferociously hard for it and had built a good life here, a comfortable one.

She had been happy before Spence came back into her life, and she would continue to be happy after he left, she told herself.

He pulled into the driveway and walked around the vehicle to open her door, something she had realized before was a habit for him. She found it a rather endearing one—not to mention surprising, especially when she considered the chaos of his uncertain upbringing and then the entitlement mentality that had likely been part of his life as a professional athlete.

He walked with her up to the front door. “I always liked this house,” he surprised her by saying, almost as if he had read her mind earlier. “When I was a kid, I remember thinking it looked like something out of Beatrix Potter. English countryside, Wellies by the door, the whole thing.”

She had to smile. “I always thought so, too. Do you remember the family that lived here when we were kids? The Lowells?”

“He worked at the butcher shop, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “And she sold makeup to all the ladies in town. I used to love her visits to my mom when I was a kid because she always brought me lipstick samples in tiny little tubes to use for dress-up.”

A priceless memory of her childhood, one she had completely forgotten until this moment. After six big strapping boys, her mom had been thrilled to have Charlotte. Despite Charlotte’s natural instincts to follow after her older brothers, her mother had tried to mold her into a girlie-girl. She used to help Charlotte put on makeup and her too-big high heels and her oversize dresses. They would have tea parties and play with dolls and tell silly stories.

She had to wonder if Peyton had known that kind of warm, fun relationship with her own mother. From what she had learned about Jade Gregory, she seriously doubted it. The knowledge made her want to tuck the girl against her heart.

“You’re coming to the groundbreaking, right?” Spence asked as she unlocked her front door and walked inside. “A week from Friday. We’ll have a small reception afterward. A couple of the guys I played with are coming. I think you’ll like them. Lucky and Jess should be bringing their wives.”

She certainly recognized the names he had mentioned earlier from all the years she had followed the Pioneers. They were heavy hitters, all of them—literally and figuratively—and it warmed her heart that they would still step in and help him with A Warrior’s Hope, even after his downfall.

“I’ll be there,” she said, aware even as she spoke that, every time she tried to extricate herself from him and Peyton, the connection between them seemed to tighten. “I’ll donate all the toffee and fudge you want. Once you approve the final logo for the organization, I can even have it printed on some chocolate gift boxes to hand out to the media. What else do you need from me?”

For one charged moment there in her entryway, she saw an answer she didn’t expect—heat, hunger, tenderness. Her body instantly responded as if he had set a match to her, and she flushed at the same time she ached for all she knew she couldn’t have.

“For the groundbreaking,” she emphasized.

He looked regretfully out at the driveway and the SUV where his daughter waited.

“What you said to your brother tonight touched me. Would you be willing to say a few words Friday to help spread the word, from the perspective of a family member who understands just what we’re trying to do?”