CHAPTER 15
The sun was still hours away from cresting the mountains to the east of Park City when Allie loaded the last suitcase into the trunk of her Honda.
Though it was a tight squeeze, she had somehow managed to pry, cram and stuff their belongings into every available space of the car, leaving just enough room for the girls in their booster seats.
She closed the trunk and stepped away from the car. She supposed she should carry the girls out so they could leave. With luck, Gaby and Anna would stay asleep on the road for a few hours, until they were well on their way.
She wasn’t sure she was up to coping with Gaby’s inevitable barrage of questions for a while.
Though she knew she had no excuse for lingering out here, really, she stood in the driveway, gazing at the dark silhouette of the mountains around her. An owl hooted softly in a tree down the street. His call was answered from somewhere nearby, and in the distance she could hear the sharp bark of a dog then silence once more.
Oh, she didn’t want to run away. She and the girls had been safe here, had made good friends like Ruth Jensen, Estelle Montgomery, Jessica Farmer. At the thought of never seeing any of them again, a lump rose in her throat, and hot tears burned behind her eyelids.
How she hated this life—this constant looking over her shoulder, the subtle tension always simmering beneath her skin. The knowledge that she would likely never again have the chance to sink down roots like the bright blossoms Ruth planted.
Right now, with the town asleep and peaceful and the cool mountain air fresh and clean in her lungs, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving this place. The future loomed ahead of her, dark and scary and unknown, and she wanted to run back inside her snug little cottage, jump into her warm bed and yank the covers over her head so she didn’t have to face it all.
She had to admit, the main reason she couldn’t bear to leave this comfortable little nest was just a dozen yards away, most likely asleep in the bed where they had shared such tenderness.
She shifted her gaze to Gage’s darkened house. The tears threatened to break free but she quickly blinked them back.
She didn’t want to remember him with heartbreak. When she thought of Gage from here on, she wanted it to be with joy and laughter, to remember those heavenly moments they had spent entwined together the evening before. Not with regret and loss.
How cruel life could be. For the last two years, she thought she would remain locked forever in her grief over Jaime. She never would have dreamed a gruff, wounded soldier like Gage McKinnon could help her realize she could one day find love again in a most unexpected place—or that she would find that love with the one man she couldn’t have.
What would Gage think when he discovered she and her girls had cleared out without a word? Would he be angry or hurt or both?
Maybe neither. Though she knew he was attracted to her and she sensed he might have deeper feelings than just the physical heat they generated together, he was so hard to read. Most of the time she couldn’t tell what was happening inside his head or in his heart.
She had a crazy wish that she could see him one more time, just to see him again and to tell him goodbye. It was impossible, though. She had left things too long already, had allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of peace and security. She should have packed up her girls and fled weeks ago, before Gage McKinnon and his gray eyes and his strong shoulders could creep into her heart and threaten her future.
That afternoon he would be returning to work at the FBI, to a world of mug shots and forensics and all-points bulletins.
She could be one of those bulletins. Maybe no one was looking for her and the girls—maybe Irena and Joaquin had never reported her missing—but she couldn’t take that chance. Too much was at stake.
Headlights suddenly sliced through the predawn darkness and she watched as a delivery truck lumbered down the quiet road. The milkman, she realized, charmed all over again by the contrast of Park City—cosmopolitan resort destination one moment, sleepy small town the next.
Allie rubbed at the one dratted tear that escaped before she could stop it. Enough. She couldn’t stand here all day mourning what she would be leaving behind. It would accomplish nothing.
Even though she might long to see Gage again, she knew she couldn’t. She needed to be on the road without having to face him or his mother or anyone else. It would be far easier to make a clean break without having to come up with some convenient lie to explain why she and the girls were skulking away in the middle of the night.
With one last, regretful look toward the cottage next to hers, she went inside to gather her sleeping daughters.
* * *
“Are you sure you’re comfortable, dear? I can bring out more pillows before we leave.”
With a mental groan, Gage settled deeper into the passenger seat of his mother’s sporty little Toyota SUV. “I’m fine.”
Lynn frowned at him, her soft features twisted into a suspicious look. “Are you sure? You’re just so tall and I’m afraid I don’t have much leg room in this thing. Your brother is always complaining about it.”
“I’m fine. Really,” he repeated, working hard to keep the bite out of his voice. He had swallowed so much of his irritation these past few weeks it was a wonder he didn’t have a raging case of bleeding ulcers.
Lynn wasn’t to blame. She was only trying to help, he knew that—that’s why he worked so hard not to take his frustrations out on her. He just wasn’t any good at being mollycoddled, and he still hated the circumstances that had made it necessary.
His mother studied him for a moment longer as if trying to gauge the truth of his words. Finally she gave a little sigh and shifted into reverse. “If you’re sure.”
“I am. The doctor’s office is only ten minutes away.”
Before she drove away, Lynn nodded in the direction of the house next door. “It looks like Lisa went somewhere early this morning,” she said. “Her car is gone, anyway.”
He didn’t want to look, but as Lynn drove off, he couldn’t help himself from gazing in the rearview mirror at her empty driveway, with no sign of her little Honda.
Maybe she had gone into work early, though he hoped not. She needed sleep more than she needed a little overtime.
He thought of how deeply she had fallen asleep in his arms after the heat and wonder they had shared. He would have given anything he owned if she could have been able to stay right there with him all night and slept in his arms, soft and warm and at peace. He had loved holding her, listening to her breathe, watching the worry that always seemed to shadow her eyes disappear for a while.
All too soon, though, he had been forced to wake her so they could be dressed before Lynn returned with the girls and discovered how very well her sneaky plan had worked.
How badly would Lisa rip into him if he called Ruth Jensen and told her she needed the day off so she could recharge her batteries? He pictured her reaction and couldn’t help wincing a little. She would skin him alive if he dared.
Though she had a soft vulnerability inside her, it was covered by a hard, crackly layer of fierce independence. He found it ironic that for all the care she took to nurture everyone around her, she didn’t take well to finding herself on the receiving end of some of that concern.
His own need to take care of her, to do a little nurturing of his own, was as terrifying as the tenderness that settled in his chest whenever he thought about her. He didn’t have the first idea what the hell he was going to do about it.
“I like her,” Lynn said quietly.
He blinked at his mother, unnerved by the way she sometimes seemed to see right through his skull into the workings of his brain. “Who?”
“You know. Lisa. I sense great courage in her. A strength of character you don’t find in many people today. And those daughters of hers! They’re just the sweetest things. They make me want to just grab them both close and hug them tight. I haven’t had so much fun at the movies in years.”
Just for one sublime instant, he allowed himself to remember what he and Lisa had been doing while his mother watched animated characters on the screen with Lisa’s kids. Heat rushed through him and he couldn’t contain his smile.
“Being with Gaby and Anna last night sure made me wish for a couple of granddaughters of my own,” Lynn said slyly.
“Oh?” He pretended to ignore her extremely broad hint. “Is Wyatt seeing someone?”
Lynn gave a snort of laughter that she still somehow managed to make sound ladylike. “That one dates more women than I have lipstick colors. I’ve just about given up on him ever settling down.”
“Don’t look at me for grandchildren,” he said gruffly.
“And why not?”
He was about to say he would stink at being a father, but the words seemed to sputter to a dead stop in his throat. Suddenly the idea of helping to raise a couple of beautiful little girls didn’t seem so very terrible. A quick mental collage formed in his mind of a series of firsts—first day of school, first piano recital, first driving lesson.
Each image featured a smiling dark-haired girl and her mother. And him, looking on with pride and love.
Whoa. Slow down. One incredible evening together did not automatically translate to happily-ever-after.
So why did a future with Lisa seem to fit so well?
If he was stunned by the depth of his tenderness before, this turn of thought was absolutely staggering. A future with her? As in wedding rings and a house in suburbia and joint checking accounts? Impossible!
He drew in a shaky breath, grateful he wasn’t driving or he probably would have run right off the road. No. As appealing as that pretty little picture might be, he didn’t belong there.
“I’ve always thought I wasn’t cut out to be a family man.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense. Wyatt says the same thing.”
“Does he?” he asked, surprised that he and his brother might have even that much in common.
“There’s no reason you both wouldn’t make wonderful fathers. Just look at the example you had in Sam.”
He stared at her, so astonished by her mention of his father—her ex-husband—that for a moment he couldn’t think what to say.
In the entire ten days she had stayed at his house, she had never once mentioned Sam McKinnon. He assumed the enmity between the two of them ran so deeply that his father was too awkward a subject, though now that he thought about it, their divorce had always seemed painfully civil.
“Why do you look so surprised? Sam has always been a terrific father.”
He thought of overnight campouts and heart-to-heart talks at their favorite fishing hole and baseball games where his dad never missed a chance to sit in the stands and cheer him on.
Fast on the heels of those childhood memories was his father the last time he had seen him, quietly asking questions about Gage’s work at the FBI as they worked in Sam’s cabinet shop with the smell of fresh-cut pine in the air and sawdust motes flashing golden in the sunlight that streamed in through dusty windows.
“Yeah, he is a good father,” he said gruffly.
“That’s why I agreed you should live with him after the divorce, Gage,” Lynn said after a moment. “I hope you can understand that. Wyatt was still a child who needed his mother. But you were on the verge of becoming a man. Your father and I both thought it would be best for you to stay with him in Las Vegas until you went off to college.”
He supposed he could see the reasoning to it now. At the time, though, it had sure felt like an abandonment.
He remembered the grief and loss he had struggled with after Lynn took Wyatt back to Utah. In his heart, he had known the reason she didn’t take him, too—because she had counted on him and he had failed her and she couldn’t bear to be reminded of it.
“Even boys on the verge of becoming men sometimes need their mothers,” he murmured.
To his dismay, tears filled her eyes and her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Oh, Gage.”
He instantly regretted his words and wanted to beg her not to cry. He couldn’t bear the sight of his mother’s tears. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
“It does matter. Things were such a mess after…after Charlotte disappeared. I was a mess.”
“It was a crazy time.”
“I regret so many things about those first weeks and months as we all tried to find our way without her—to live with the horrible, devastating loss of her.”
She blew out a ragged breath. “But what I regret the most was that I really lost two children that day. One was taken from me by force, and that was a terrible, traumatic thing for any mother to endure. But the other one—my strong, wonderful oldest child—I gave up completely on my own.”
“You didn’t. Not really.”
“Yes, I did. Maybe not exactly the day Charley disappeared, but that was the beginning. It doesn’t matter that we thought it was the best option, you living with your father. It doesn’t matter that I knew you were better with him, that you had a life there in Las Vegas that I didn’t want to tear you away from. I still let you grow away from me.”
He didn’t know how to answer her so he remained quiet, aware of his fist clenching and unclenching in his lap.
“I don’t know,” Lynn went on after a moment. “Maybe I could have tried harder to keep us all together. But I did nothing, just stood by without even a whimper while time and distance took you from me, and I’m so sorry for that.”
All these years he had no idea she thought these things. Had he misinterpreted everything?
They had arrived at his doctor’s office, Gage saw. Lynn parked out front, but neither of them made a move to start the complicated process of transferring him from the vehicle to the wheelchair. Lynn turned off the engine and faced him.
“I love you, Gage. I’m so proud of the man you’ve become. I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed these past weeks, getting to know you again. I’d like to try to build a relationship with you now, if it’s not too late. Do you…do you believe you could ever find it in that tough heart of yours to forgive me?”
This time his fingers stayed clenched. Forgive her? She had it all backward. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“There is,” she insisted. “You and Wyatt needed me to be strong and I wasn’t. I let my grief over losing Charlotte cloud everything.”
“We both know who holds the most blame for Charley.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked genuinely confused. Suddenly Gage abhorred the way they tiptoed around the subject as if it didn’t exist. He wanted it out in the open, wanted to rip off the polite plaster cast that concealed the wound festering between them and let air into it.
“I was supposed to be watching her. Instead, I was screwing around with my friends. Because of that, some bastard took her. How can I blame you for not wanting me around afterward?”
Lynn gasped, her features going white. “Is that what you thought? That I blamed you for Charlotte’s disappearance?”
He said nothing—what was left to say?—and her skin paled another shade. “Dear heavens. You do! That’s ridiculous. Completely ridiculous! I never blamed you!”
“You should.”
Before he realized what she was doing, she reached out and covered his fist with her smaller hand. Tears seeped from her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.
“No. Oh, son. I never dreamed you felt this way. I should have realized.” Her voice caught and her fingers tightened over his. “It’s not your fault your sister was kidnapped. If anyone shoulders any blame, it should be me! I should have just taken her to the store with me.”
“You couldn’t have known someone was out there watching.”
“And you could? You were a child! I’ve long ago accepted I couldn’t have prevented it from happening. Someone could have snatched her out of a shopping cart or taken her from the car when my back was turned. If I couldn’t have stopped it, how could you?”
“If I had been tending her and Wyatt as you asked me to, she might still be here.”
Lynn was quiet, her gaze out the windshield. When she looked back, the vast, aching sorrow in her eyes whipped through him like a blade, just about more than he could bear.
Even harder to handle was the realization that her pain wasn’t for Charlotte or for her own loss of her daughter but for him.
“Do you tell the parents of all those missing children whose cases you work so diligently that it’s their fault their child was taken?”
He frowned. “No. Of course not.”
“Then how can you blame a twelve-year-old boy for something out of his control, something that happened more than twenty years ago?”
He stared at her, stunned. The truth of her words hit him like ten thousand watts of power rushing through every cell of his body. Damn it, she was right. If this had been a case he worked, he would have done his best to assure the family it wasn’t healthy and would accomplish nothing worthwhile to spend their time assigning culpability.
But hadn’t he done exactly that? He had spent twenty-three years blaming himself for his sister’s disappearance. Had he been wrong all this time? Just thinking about it made him shaky, numb.
“It was a terrible thing to happen to any family,” she said quietly. “But the only one truly responsible is whoever took her. Please don’t punish yourself for someone else’s sins.”
Lynn watched him for a moment then offered a watery smile and opened her door to begin setting up the wheelchair.
* * *
Lisa’s car still wasn’t in the driveway when Gage returned from the doctor’s office, feeling about a hundred pounds lighter, figuratively and literally.
The doctor had removed both casts. The right leg, the one with the simple fracture, was mending cleanly and he’d been given the green light to start a little weight bearing on it and eventually transition to crutches. The left leg, with the pins and rods, would require more time to heal but the doctor had agreed to trade the cast for a brace.
Liberation beckoned him with tantalizing allure. Without the bulky casts, he could have far more mobility. Once he regained the full use of his right leg, he could drive himself places, could return to work, could regain the independence he had taken for granted but had missed so bitterly.
Even as he thought it, he had to admit he hadn’t minded so much having his mother around these last few weeks. And before that, there had been Lisa with her sweet scent and her ready smile and her unfailing compassion.
He wanted to celebrate his newfound freedom with her. As he had suggested to her the day before, now that he would be able to get around easier, he wanted to take her out to one of the many fine restaurants in Park City.
She hadn’t exactly bubbled over with enthusiasm for the idea, he remembered, but maybe she didn’t like leaving her daughters more than she had to. He would figure out a way to convince her. If not, he could always make plans for some outing that included Gaby and Anna.
But first she had to come home so he could talk to her about it. With one last look at her driveway, he transferred from his mother’s SUV to the wheelchair.
“Don’t think just because your doctor took those casts off that you can start acting crazy. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up right back in casts.”
He was feeling so good that he even managed to smile at Lynn’s fussing. “Yes, Mother.”
“It shouldn’t take me long to change for work,” he said once inside. “I appreciate you being willing to drive me in for a few hours. But really, like I told you before, there’s no reason for you to stick around to bring me home. I can catch a ride with one of the guys.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Lynn assured him. “I’ve been wanting to do some shopping in the city. This will give me the perfect excuse to check out some of the new stores until you’re done at work.”
“Thanks. I, uh, appreciate it.”
Lynn smiled, and Gage was once more reminded of their conversation earlier and the air they had somehow managed to clear between them.
He liked this new ease between them, unexpected though it might be. The tension and guilt that always used to simmer under his skin whenever he saw his mother seemed to have disappeared. In its place was a relaxed, comfortable peace.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” he said again, then wheeled to his room where he quickly changed out of the loose side-snap sweats he’d come to detest into one of his familiar suits. Putting it on again was like climbing back into his own skin after far too long away. Even with the brace that had to fit over his left pant leg and the wheelchair he would have to use for a while yet, the suit felt right.
Once dressed, he wheeled out of his room and found Lynn in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes.
She turned around as he rolled through the doorway and gave him an approving smile. “You’re always handsome, but there’s just something that’s so appealing about a man in a business suit and crisp white shirt. Your father rarely wore one, but when he did, my-oh-my. He always could make my heart race a little faster.”
Her face took on a dreamy expression and Gage couldn’t help squirming. He didn’t even want to picture his parents together.
Funny, he thought, but Sam always wore the same expression on his face whenever he talked about Lynn. Why had neither of his parents ever remarried? he wondered. Both of them were still young, really, only in their midfifties.
He didn’t know about Lynn but Sam never even dated. Was it possible they still had feelings for each other? If so, why had they spent all these years apart?
He wondered briefly what would happen if the two of them ever had reason to meet up with each other again. As soon as the thought entered his head, he quickly discarded it. Was he crazy? Didn’t he have enough trouble with his own love life? Why would he possibly want to start messing in his parents’?
“I’m ready when you are,” he said quickly.
“Just one more pan to scrub and then I’ll be finished here.”
“I think I’ll just head outside, then, while I wait.”
He refused to admit that he secretly hoped he might see Lisa and her girls pulling up while he was outside. The need to see her again—to reassure himself those incredible moments they had spent together hadn’t been just a dream—was intense, almost violent.
But no little green Honda had appeared while he was inside. He tried not to let himself be too disappointed as he wheeled to the passenger side of Lynn’s SUV. He had almost reached it when he heard an engine approaching in the still, warm afternoon.
With an eagerness that dismayed him, he wheeled away from the car so he could see who was coming. Disappointment whipped through him as he recognized the small utility truck his landlady drove.
Ruth Jensen looked more dour than usual as she jumped down from the truck, hauling a toolbox in one hand and a caddy full of what looked like cleaning supplies in the other.
She marched up the steps of Lisa’s porch, then used a key to unlock the door, something that struck him as odd. Granted, she was the landlady but should she really just be walking in like that?
“Mrs. Jensen,” he called before she could disappear inside.
She turned and the glum look on her features lightened a little when she spotted him. “Agent McKinnon. Good to see you up and around.”
“I’m trying,” he said. “Listen, is everything okay over there?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t been inside yet. But Lisa Connors and her girls were clean tenants. I don’t expect they left much of a mess.”
“What do you mean?” Sudden unease rippled through him like the wind tossing the heads of the columbines in the backyard.
“Thought you knew,” Ruth said, her voice abrupt. “She and her girls cleared out this morning. Dropped a note round the office before we opened saying thanks for the help but she needed to be moving on.”