WHEN LAUREN GOT up the next morning she had half a mind to try to avoid her mother. But, it was impossible. As soon as she got up, she saw her mother in the kitchen. Her daughter Ava was already up, sitting at the table with a mug of hot chocolate and a piece of buttered toast.
“Good morning,” Lauren said.
Ava looked up at her, then back down at her breakfast. The stony, teenage silence was getting old. It had been all she had gotten from her daughter since they’d moved back to Gold Valley.
“Nice to see you, too, Ava,” she said, determinedly overbright. “It’s a beautiful day outside. I hope you do something other than lie on your bed and morosely text.”
“There’s nothing to do here,” she said.
“If you’re bored,” Lauren’s mother put in, “you can always pick up a few extra chores.”
Ava made a growling sound in the back of her throat and picked up her toast, devoting all of her focus to it.
“Don’t growl at your grandmother,” Lauren said.
Her mother gave Lauren a sympathetic look but didn’t make any comments to Ava. Delores Bishop would not have held her peace at all, had Lauren growled at her when she was a teenager.
But, her parents had definitely mellowed a little bit as grandparents. She supposed that was the way of the world. It stuck in her craw sometimes, though. Because she certainly hadn’t been allowed to have moods and attitudes.
And really, if her mother had chastised Ava, Lauren would have probably resented her stepping in and co-opting her role as parent. So there was that.
“What’s your plan today?” her mom asked.
“I have to go back over to the house. There’s flooring to finish. And once that’s done, we can actually schedule the inspection. Then, hopefully we’ll get a close date and... All of our things can come out of storage.”
“You did the right thing moving back,” her mom said. And, Lauren supposed that made up for her ease on Ava.
“I know,” Lauren said.
Unbidden, flashes of last night burst into her head. All the wrong things she had done with Calder Reid.
Her mother would not be in support of that.
But it didn’t matter because Lauren wasn’t going to be doing that again. No, she was not.
“I’ll take the girls downtown,” her mom said. “Maybe we can do some school shopping.”
Lauren imagined that Ava would have a lot of opinions about school anywhere other than Portland. But she was going to have to deal with it.
“Thank you,” Lauren said. “For helping out. If I had to do all of this by myself, I don’t think I’d be able to.”
Ava got up, saying nothing as she shuffled out of the room.
“Hopefully, someday my kids won’t hate me,” Lauren said.
Her mom sighed. “Someday, they won’t. But, you didn’t think that I knew what was best for you either.”
Ouch. That stuck hard in Lauren’s ribs. Even harder because in many ways, Robert had been the wrong choice, and her mother had been right. But if she hadn’t married him, she wouldn’t have Ava and Grace, and she didn’t regret that part of her life one bit. Which made it all... Complicated.
Which, she supposed, was actually a decent thing to realize.
That sometimes her kids would do something she didn’t approve of.
That they might even be bad choices, or not the ideal choices. And there would be good in that anyway.
Her mom and dad, to their credit, hadn’t cut her off for what she did. They’d come to her wedding. They’d dealt with Robert’s hard-drinking friends and relatives who’d felt that was required at a wedding.
Once they’d realized her mind was made up, they’d supported her.
“I loved him,” Lauren said. “I mean, I wasn’t just rebelling against you. Just so you know.”
Her mom, turned to her, hugged her quickly. “I know that. I mean, I didn’t know that for the first couple of years. But when you actually married him, had the first baby...”
“I would’ve stayed with him,” Lauren said, quickly.
I know,” her mom said. “And you would have been unhappy.”
She thought of last night again. Of Calder. Not of the sex, but the way he’d worked on the house. The way he’d promised to finish what he’d started. He was so different from her late husband. “Not with everything,” she protested. “Not with the girls.”
“You deserve better than that.”
“Why?” Lauren asked, going over to the coffeemaker. “I didn’t make the right choices. I didn’t choose the right man. I chose the exact kind of man you warned me about. So, I’m not exactly sure why I deserve happiness now. Don’t you reap what you sow?”
“Yes,” her mom said. “I believe that you do. But I also believe that you don’t deserve to be miserable for your entire life. Should you suffer forever?”
“I thought I was going to have to.”
Her mom shook her head. “I was strict with you because I worried about you. And some of my fears for you did come true. And I very much didn’t want you to lose your husband. I especially didn’t want the girls to lose their father. He was...”
“He wasn’t quite bad enough to spit on his grave,” Lauren said. “But... Now I realize that things are easier without him. And I feel bad. I feel guilty. I’m glad that I got back here. Glad that I’m not with him. I don’t think I would’ve been brave enough to leave ever. Because it’s not like he was abusive. He was just...”
“You didn’t love him.”
Lauren shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“No matter how it happened, that part of your life is over now. Don’t you deserve something better? Something different?”
She couldn’t take those words on board. Not now.
The sad truth was, as she stood there in her mother’s kitchen, all she could really think was that she deserved to be exactly where she was standing. Really, she deserved to be married to Robert still, while he lived. To have to live with her choices for the rest of her life.
This was actually a little bit of deliverance that hadn’t required any action, bravery or thought on her part.
If she was a little bit lonely, if her girls were angry at her...
Well, those were the seeds she had planted.
It was all fine and good for her mother to say she wanted Lauren to feel differently now, but she hadn’t raised her to feel differently. She had raised her to think deeply about her choices, and to understand that what she did in the moment was going to impact her future.
And Lauren hadn’t listened. Because it had been inconvenient. Because it had been prescriptive, and unfair. And Lauren had been convinced that she knew better.
And still, standing there in the kitchen she could get back inside the head of that eighteen-year-old girl who had basically run away from home to marry that charming redneck she’d met on the beach. The one who’d stolen her heart and her virginity in very short order. Of course it had felt unfair when her parents had told her she was being crazy. That she needed to think about her future. That her future might not be the easiest with a man like him.
But she had felt like they were Romeo and Juliet. Destined and doomed all at the same time, and she had felt like she had no choice but to follow her heart. She’d had such pure conviction, even now she could feel it echoing inside her.
Wasn’t it right to fight for love?
But she had been wrong. Catastrophically.
Even three years on the other side of it she was still sorting through what all of that meant.
Well, she had decided what it meant. That she couldn’t just follow her heart. That she needed to make plans and follow those instead. That she needed to think.
That she needed to think about other people, and a whole lot less about what she felt she deserved. What she felt she knew.
“I better go,” she said.
“Do you want your dad to come over and help?”
Right. And explain the giant, burly cowboy working in the house.
“You know he can’t get down there onto the flooring. He’ll never get back up again. We already discussed this.” That was true.
“Yes,” her mom said. “Although, he would never admit it.”
“No. Which is why it’s just better if I let him have his pride and enlist you guys to watch the girls.”
“Yes, you’re right about that. But I worry about you.”
“I’ve got it handled,” she said.
But as she gathered her things, and headed out toward her car, she wondered if she had anything handled at all.
* * *
BY THE TIME Lauren showed up, Calder had been waiting in the driveway with doughnuts and coffee for twenty minutes.
She pulled up and stepped out of the car, her blond hair blowing over her face, her expression cautious when she saw him. And his stomach felt like it had been kicked by a horse.
“I brought breakfast,” he said.
“That was... Really nice of you but I already...” She shook her head. “I guess I didn’t. I had coffee. But I wasn’t really feeling hungry.” She eyed the doughnuts. “I’m feeling a little bit hungrier now.”
So was he. Starving. But, not for doughnuts. For her.
He really, really didn’t want for things to be finished between them. Once wasn’t enough. He didn’t think there would be an enough, not with her.
Of course, he had to sort out what that meant. Because it wasn’t just her.
Though, here it felt like it.
It was tempting to believe he was making a place here just for the two of them.
He waited for that idea to terrify him. But it didn’t.
He wondered if his dad had felt confident every time he’d found a woman he wanted to marry. And his father had done it more than once. He wondered if his father had ever once questioned his own authority or motivations. His own judgment. He doubted the old man ever had.
And he should have.
It made Calder wonder if he should question himself a bit more right now than he was.
“Let’s go inside,” he said. “I think doughnuts and coffee are best had on a blanket.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked, cautiously reaching out and taking the cup of coffee from his hand. Their fingertips connected, and desire stirred in his stomach.
“I like you,” he said. “And I haven’t said that to a girl since seventh grade.”
“Hey,” she said as they walked toward the house, their shoulders bumping together. “I thought you liked me when you were in seventh grade.”
“I did,” he responded. “But you were a little bit out of my league. I figured I would aim for an easier target.”
She shook her head. “Then you say things like that, and you sound a lot more like a regular old guy.”
“Yeah, I am.”
They paused in the doorway, looking at each other. He was just a regular old guy. Not actually any better than her late husband, not in a measurable sense. It wasn’t like he had ever been put to the test. Wasn’t like he’d ever been asked to give up anything he enjoyed in order to be a better partner.
He’d never been in a real, long-term relationship.
In the abstract, he didn’t see the appeal in it.
Lauren Bishop wasn’t abstract.
“I think the world is full of regular guys who try to do just a little bit better when they meet a woman who’s extraordinary,” he said. He wasn’t sure who the hell had put those words in his mouth, because he wasn’t any kind of poet. But they were true enough.
She gave a little half role to her eyes, then looked down, as the two of them took their seats on the blanket, and she opened up the box of doughnuts, purely as a distraction method, he was sure. “And what makes you think I’m extraordinary?”
“This house is a pretty good indicator. The way you’re working on it. The way you’re working for your kids. You know, I love my dad, Lauren. I really did. I do. But I don’t think he was going to win any father of the year awards. What he did he did for the ranch. He didn’t do it for us. As far as the women he married... He did that for himself. What he found with Chloe’s mother... That was something else. It was something special. It just so happened that she was an extraordinary woman. But make no mistake, as someone who lived through being abandoned by his real mother, someone who lived with a father who was distant at best... I see that what you’re doing here is extraordinary. For your kids. And just from the little bit you told me about what you’ve been through...”
“So your attraction to me is still... A caregiver thing?” She wrinkled her nose.
He laughed. “No. Although, I guess you couldn’t prove different.”
“Thank you. For everything. You’re being astonishingly nice.”
“It makes me pretty damned sad that the act of me bringing you coffee and a couple doughnuts seems extraordinarily nice. You deserve better than that.”
“There’s been a lot of talk today about what I deserve.”
“Oh yeah? It’s pretty early in the morning for there to have been a lot of talk at all.”
“My mother. She thinks... That I need to forgive myself.”
“Do you?” He met her gaze and she looked away.
“I don’t know. Though, I’m not sure that I’m punishing myself so much as... Just trying to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes twice.”
He thought of everything she’d told him about her husband. And he turned his next words over carefully. Because she wasn’t a woman he could play with, and he didn’t want to. He wanted...
His life had been fine until she had shown up. Totally fine.
And now it felt empty. And the only moment he felt like there was something real, something full, was when he was sitting with her.
“The thing is, at any point your husband could have changed. He could have fixed those problems. You did what you could. You make it sound like you were the only adult, the only person, involved in that relationship. And that just isn’t true. He could have done better for you. He could have done better for Ava and for Grace. Those are not your mistakes. They’re his.”
Her daughters whom he hadn’t even met. And why should he have met them? He’d been in her life for two days. And they might have had sex, but that didn’t mean anything. In his world, historically it hadn’t meant anything at all.
So why did it now?
He couldn’t exactly say why. He wasn’t sure he cared about the why right now. All that mattered was Lauren.
“I mean, you’re right. He could have changed. But he didn’t. And, as a result, my daughters...”
“You have your daughters,” he said. “And it sounds to me like you’ve done your very best to give them the best life you can. You’re a good mom.”
She huffed out a laugh. “You’ve never even see me with them.”
“It doesn’t matter. I bet you lose your temper with them a lot. I bet that sometimes it’s frustrating, and sometimes it’s fun. But...you handle it.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because here you are,” he said. “Handling all this.”
Silence fell between them and she picked up a doughnut, taking a bite out of it and chewing slowly. He was transfixed. By the way her pale pink lips closed around the soft treatment. By the way she chewed. He wanted her. Bad.
But he also wanted her to know that this was different. Not just another fling. Not just another anything.
She looked up at him, caught him watching her. And he smiled.
She looked away, color bleeding into her cheeks. He didn’t know what the hell was going on with him.
She was blushing, and his chest felt tight watching for more signs that she might be affected by what was happening between them.
There was a little crumb of doughnut on her lower lip. He reached out, brushing it off with his thumb. She ducked her head, and his cock started to feel heavy. Her skin was so soft beneath his. He wanted to keep touching her, but he didn’t want to push it either. He lifted his thumb to his own lips, licked the crumb away.
“Calder...”
But then, she seemed to think better of thinking. Instead, she started to lean forward, her lips achingly close to his.
She jumped, a buzzing sound cutting through the moment.
“I need to get this,” she said, pulling her phone out of her purse. She looked at the caller ID and frowned, then slid her finger across the screen. “Hello?”
She listened, strange, daunting horror going over her expression. “When? When was the last time you saw her? Did she take her phone? She’s not answering?”
Calder stood, ready to spring into action, because he knew exactly what it sounded like, and he was ready to fix it.
“I can track it. As long as she didn’t turn it off or something. I’ll handle it.” She sighed heavily, her hand on her forehead. “Just let me try this. Stay with Grace.” She hung up the phone. Her hands were shaking, her face pale. “Ava is gone.”
“That’s the fourteen-year-old?” he asked.
“Yes. She’s gone. She ran away. At least, that’s what we assume.” She stood up and put her bag over her shoulder. “Hopefully she didn’t run away with a man she met on the internet, but what do I even know? She ran away. I guess I don’t know her very well at all.”
“You said you could track her phone.”
“Yes,” she said, already heading for the door.
“I’ll drive.”
“You don’t have to...”
“Lauren,” he said, his voice stern. “You use your phone to track hers, see if you can find out where she is. I’m going to drive you wherever that is. If we can’t find it, I’m going to drive you to the police. We’re going to look until we find her.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“I fucking want to,” he said, the words hard and definitive in the space.
He thought she might argue, but she didn’t. Instead her lips firmed into a grim line and she looked down at her phone.
They walked out to his truck, and he opened the door for her. She was swiping at her cell screen, doing something to track the phone he assumed. He wasn’t really up on all that kind of stuff. It wasn’t like he and his brothers had a shared family plan.
Mostly, his use of phones was limited to swiping right.
“It’s not coming up,” she said, her tone flat and shaking. He could tell she was trying her best to say calm but was about one second away from losing it completely.
He pulled out of the driveway, indecisive about where to turn.
“What does it say?” he asked.
“It just says that her phone is offline. But I can’t believe that she’d keep it offline. She texts her friends all the time. I’m not really totally sure she knows that I can track her with it. She’s fourteen. She’s not a mastermind. I know that I’ve used this feature to find it for her when she misplaced it...”
“It could just be spotty service,” he said. “Out here it’s not always great.”
“What if she’s hitchhiking? What if she got in a car with someone? What if she was meeting someone?”
“We’ll handle all that if we find out it’s the case. Right now, we don’t know anything. And you need to breathe.”
“Don’t tell me to be calm,” she snapped.
“I won’t tell you to be calm, Lauren,” he said, reaching his hand out and pressing it over her thigh. “I just told you to breathe. You have to keep breathing, okay?”
“Oh, there it is,” she said, holding her phone up to her face. “I can see it. On that...” She was zooming in frantically on the screen, and he stole it from her. He zoomed back out. “Highway 62,” he said, keeping one hand and one eye on the wheel while he glanced at the phone. “Past...” He zoomed in slightly. “Past Get Out of Dodge. So, that’s up the road apiece. It doesn’t look like she’s driving.”
“She’s just walking on the side of the road?”
“There are some woods to walk in. She might be just off the road. But, we can find her.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m not safe to drive.”
“Of course you aren’t.” He turned left. “We’ll find her soon. I promise. She’s not far away.”
“I can’t believe she would do this. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I knew that she was mad at me, but I thought she understood. It’s not... It’s not a democracy. This is a dictatorship. I’m not going to... Not going to be dictated to by a fourteen-year-old who doesn’t understand...” There were tears in her voice, the words growing thick. “Who doesn’t understand that I was going to go crazy if I stayed there. I couldn’t live that life anymore.”
He didn’t know jack about kids. But he knew what it was like to grow up in a house where parents made mystifying decisions. He knew what it was like to feel helpless. Like you couldn’t fix the damage happening around you. “Maybe you should talk to her about that.”
“All she has left of her father are memories of him. I can’t ruin them.”
“The fact that you would ruin his memory by telling the truth is his own fault. That’s called a legacy.” His chest tightened, awareness filtering through him that what he was saying applied to him in many ways, too. “People shouldn’t have to behave themselves talking about you after you die. You should do enough good things that they have good things to say.”
“He’s her father.”
“And I bet she remembers the reality of the situation. She was what... Eleven when he died? I’m sure she saw some of it.”
Lauren sighed heavily, her eyes fixed on the trees outside the window. “I know you’re probably right. That kills me. It kills me because I did love him. In the beginning. It kills me because I wanted a better father for my girls. And... It would be really nice if we could just rewrite it. He’s not here. What’s the harm?”
“The harm is to you, and even though you keep acting like that doesn’t mean anything, it does, baby. It does. You matter.”
She swallowed hard, her breath stuttering as she sucked in deep.
“Can you refresh her location?” he asked.
“Are we close?”
“Yes. We’re getting pretty close.”
She studied her phone carefully. “It hasn’t moved much.”
He nodded, going slowly. “That means that she’s definitely walking.” He looked into the trees, keeping an eye out for something. Anything.
And then he saw it. A figure in a bright white jacket, blond head bent low, loose strands of hair blowing in the breeze. A pink knit hat on her head. Her arms were crossed, and she was wearing a backpack.
“There she is,” he said, pulling off the road quickly. And Lauren was out of the truck like a shot.
“Ava!” She stumbled toward the woods. “Ava Marie.”
But once she reached her, she didn’t yell. Instead she grabbed hold of her daughter and pulled her up against her chest, crying, broken and miserable, and he didn’t feel like he had a right to witness the moment, but there he was all the same. And that was when it clicked into place. Every bit of it made sense. Because he didn’t feel like he was standing on the outside of this, even if he should have.
This was his. This whole situation.
And this was why—this unfiltered display of who she was down to her soul—this was why Lauren was special.
She loved.
And he wanted some of that. Just a bit. For himself.
He wanted to fix this. And he wanted her to love him.
How many times had he wanted the same in his own life? His father had looked for a quick fix in marriages, and long hours worked on the ranch. He had never looked to Calder. Calder wanted to fix this. He could. He cared enough to.
“I was scared to death,” Lauren said, holding Ava’s shoulders and looking into her eyes. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t want to be here,” Ava said, her tone full of anger and the kind of fear that he recognized. That fear teenagers carried when they realized too late the kinds of consequences their actions might have had. When you can only stand back in awe and terror at what you had done, because your brain had finally caught up with your emotions.
“Where were you going?” Lauren asked.
“Back to my friend’s house. I figured when I got close enough I’d call Sarah’s mom and have her come get me.”
“And Sarah’s mom would have just sent you back.”
“I know,” Ava said, angry tears in her voice now. “I know that. But I thought maybe... I just...”
“I can’t go back,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry if you don’t understand that. But that’s not my home.”
“Well, it’s mine,” Ava returned, defiant.
“I know that it has been. I promise that we’re going to go back and visit. I do. But I needed to be with my parents. You need to be with me. We’ve lost enough, Ava. And I couldn’t live in that place where we had that other life. I couldn’t deal with the reminders. I have to move on. I have to get away from my sadness. From my anger.”
“Anger?” Ava asked. “What are you mad about?”
He watched, as Lauren took a fortifying breath. Making the decision. “I’m so angry at your dad, honey. I’m angry at him for being irresponsible. I’m angry at him for not being there for us more when he was alive. And I’m angry at him because no matter how much I thought he could’ve done better, I still miss him. Mostly for you. Mostly for Grace. But it would be better if he’s here, and he isn’t. I just couldn’t take all that anymore.”
Ava said nothing, her head bent low. Then she took a breath, her shoulders shaking.
“Do you know what the worst thing is?” Ava asked, her voice small. “It’s that... As long as we were still there in the house in Hillsboro... It wasn’t that different with him gone. Because he was never home anyway. And he never did anything with us. So... As long as we were in that house it seemed like he might still walk in. And I kind of wanted him to. Even though... I know he didn’t come to school plays and things. But he was my dad.”
“I know,” Lauren said. “I know he was. And he will always have a special place in my heart for that reason.” She cleared her throat. “I think it’s better, though, if we don’t live thinking that he might walk in.”
“I miss everyone,” Ava said, her tone full of misery.
“I know. We’ll make friends here. And if you don’t... If you don’t we’ll go back.”
“But you just said you can’t live there.”
Lauren nodded. “I know. But if you are miserable, I’ll be able to find a way to move back. We’ll find a different house. We’ll make it different enough.” She sighed heavily. “You have to talk to me. Don’t just go taking off. You scared me. I’m just thankful we found you as quickly as we did.”
“I was just angry,” she said. “I didn’t think.”
“Why don’t we get in the truck?” Calder asked, conscious of the fact that he was witnessing this and he maybe shouldn’t be.
Suddenly, it was as if Ava saw him for the first time.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“This is Calder Reid,” Lauren said. “I used to babysit him.”
Ava looked him up and down. “Really? He doesn’t look younger than you.”
“I am,” he confirmed. “As a matter of fact.”
“He’s been helping get the house ready,” Lauren said, overexplaining in his estimation. He doubted Ava really cared.
“Oh,” Ava said.
“It’s very nice of him. There’s a lot of work to do.”
“Yeah,” Ava agreed. “That is really nice.”
They got into his truck, the three of them, Lauren right next to him, her leg brushing against his. He wanted to touch her, offer comfort, but he had a feeling that with Ava in the car that would be extremely unwelcome.
“I’ll drop you back off at your car,” he said. “And, I’ll go inside and start working.”
“You don’t have to,” she said.
“I’m going to, though,” he said, making sure his tone offered no chance to argue.
She said nothing for a moment. Probably because she was trying to figure out a way to argue with him.
“Thank you,” she finally managed.
They took the rest of the drive in silence, and when they arrived at the house, Ava and Lauren got into Lauren’s car. Calder went into the house, surveying all the work that needed to be done. He could do this. Do this for her.
This was different.
She was different. And he felt different with her.
He had a feeling that was the last thing in the world she’d want to hear.
So he was just going to have to keep on showing her.