Wild Iris Ridge (Hope's Crossing) Read online

  She hurried into the house and found a couple of old work shirts of Annabelle’s. In a drawer in the mudroom/washroom cabinet, she retrieved several pairs of gardening gloves she had seen there earlier.

  When she returned to the children, Carter was bent with his nose almost to the sidewalk, watching a bug inch its way across the pavement.

  “Look. It’s a roly-poly,” he said. “If you pick it up, it rolls into a ball. Watch.”

  He picked up the bug with a careful concentration she found adorable and laid it out in the palm of his other hand. The bug lived up to its billing and rolled up, tail to head.

  “Isn’t that cool?” he exclaimed.

  “Very.” She smiled as she helped him set the bug back in the grass then pulled his arms through the sleeves of Annabelle’s denim work shirt and rolled up the cuffs. The shirt was cavernous on him but did a pretty good job of covering up his clothes from neck to knee.

  “Now gloves,” she said, and helped him get his fingers in the right spots.

  When she finished helping Carter, she turned to do the same with Faith but found the independent miss had already covered her clothes with one of the work shirts and found some gloves on her own.

  “Which are the flowers and which are the weeds?” Faith asked, studying the garden with a frown of concentration.

  “That, my dear, is an excellent question.” She pointed to a prevalent plant. “I know for sure that’s a weed, at least when you find it in your flower garden. It’s an elm seedling that sprouts from seeds that blow off the trees.”

  “You mean if we left the little thing alone, it would grow into a big tree like that one?” Faith asked.

  “Eventually. Let’s start with pulling all the elm seedlings you can see. It’s kind of like a treasure hunt.”

  The children both jumped into the spirit of the thing and for the next fifteen minutes she and Faith worked together to the accompaniment of Carter yelling, “There’s one! There’s another one. Hey, I found another one!”

  In between, they talked about Carter’s kindergarten teacher—super pretty; about a problem Faith was having with a schoolmate—aka, mean girl in training; and about which park in town had the fastest slide, which Lucy vowed to test at the earliest opportunity.

  This was exactly what she needed, she thought. Listening to the children chatter seemed to miraculously lift her worries about the next day and her sister’s arrival. She felt far more centered than she would have from mowing the lawn.

  They had made it around the front of the house when she heard the mower shut off. A few moments later—long enough, apparently, for Brendan to return it to the shed behind the garage—he walked around the side of the house, looking big and masculine in the early-evening light.

  He caught sight of them kneeling in the dirt together and paused, an odd expression on his features that made her insides do a long, slow shiver.

  After a moment, he moved closer, and she rose and pulled off her gardening gloves.

  “Lawn’s all done.”

  “You didn’t need to do that,” she said.

  “It took me all of fifteen minutes. I told you it would. No big deal. It’s not a very big lawn, in case you didn’t notice.”

  She suddenly realized she must sound surly and unappreciative, not her intention. “Thank you. It’s been a...rough day. This was an unexpected kindness.”

  “You’re welcome. And I’m sorry about your rough day.”

  She shrugged. “They happen.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had a few of those myself.” He didn’t quite smile but it was a close thing. For a moment, she was overwhelmed by how gorgeous he looked there in the warm golden evening light and she couldn’t help remembering the last time she had seen him, a few nights earlier when he had walked her home and they had talked in the rain-soaked moonlight.

  “I’m starving,” Carter said with grand dramatic fervor, as if he were going to expire any moment now from malnutrition.

  “I know, I know,” Brendan said, tousling his son’s head. “But what are a few hunger pangs compared to helping our neighbor? Now we can enjoy our dinner even more knowing we’ve done something nice for someone else.”

  Maybe it was the general turmoil of the day or her emotions that were already on edge, but the sweetness of the life lesson between father and son there in Annabelle’s spring-wild garden touched a deep chord inside her.

  “Hey, Dad. Can Lucy come have dinner with us?” Faith asked suddenly.

  “Oh. I don’t...” Lucy started, but Carter cut her off.

  “Yay! I want to sit by Lucy!” he exclaimed. “Grandpop is gonna make me my own pizza. I bet you can have one, too. He puts a smiley face on it with the pepperonis!”

  She smiled, crazy about this boy who found joy in roly-poly bugs and pepperoni smiley faces.

  “That sounds delish. Dinner would be great, but I’m pretty messy here.”

  “We can wait for you to wash up,” Faith said eagerly. “Can’t we, Dad?”

  He gazed down at his daughter with a helpless sort of expression, the look of a man who didn’t know how to undo a situation his children had just created.

  The awkwardness of the situation might have made her laugh a little if his reluctance to spend any time with her didn’t sting so badly.

  The polite thing would be to make up some excuse to the children for why she couldn’t eat with them. She was busy. She had an entire garden to weed. She was in the middle of a load of laundry.

  She certainly didn’t want to go where she was plainly not wanted.

  At the same time, she didn’t want to say those things. She loved being with Carter and Faith, and the idea of a solitary dinner was depressing, especially in light of her difficult afternoon.

  “We’ll be happy to wait,” Brendan finally said. He even managed to make the lie sound believable to her. “Carter won’t mind a few more minutes, will you, bud?”

  Carter looked like he minded very much, but he finally shrugged. “I guess not.”

  All three of them looked at her with varying degrees of expectation. Again, she thought of all the excuses she could make. Brendan would prefer if she did, she knew, but she suddenly didn’t want to give him that convenient way out.

  She had gone along with the program when it came to her father and what he wanted from her. She wasn’t at all in the mood to give Brendan his way on this, too.

  “I can hurry,” she said. “You won’t starve in five minutes, will you?”

  Carter did his best to put on a brave face. “I guess not. I hope Grandpop still has pepperonis when we get there.”

  “He will,” Brendan assured his son.

  “You’re welcome to come in and wash up, as well,” she said. “I did my best to keep them clean.”

  “We’ll do that. Thanks,” he answered, as Lucy flew up the stairs and rushed into the house.

  A little defiance could be good for the soul sometimes, but she couldn’t help wondering just what she had accomplished by pushing Brendan outside his comfort zone. He was like one of Carter’s bugs. She had a feeling he was only going to curl in tighter to protect himself.

  * * *

  DINNER. WITH LUCY and all this uncomfortable subtext shimmering around them.

  Once more, his life felt like a Hail Mary pass spiraling toward him way out of reach, completely beyond his ability to control.

  How in the hell had that happened?

  He had no idea how to tell Lucy he would rather she didn’t come with them to dinner. He suspected she knew yet had agreed to come, anyway, for reasons that baffled him. As usual. Most of the things Lucy did baffled him.

  It was too late now, so he would just have to make the best of the situation.

  “Come on, kids. Let’s wash up.”

  He s
hepherded the kids to the bathroom off the kitchen and supervised while they scrubbed fingers and the few smudges of dirt on their faces.

  When they returned to the graceful living room—Annabelle always called it her parlor—Faith immediately opened her book while Carter headed for the bottom drawer of an old carved-leg chest where Annabelle always kept die-cast cars and trains and dolls for visiting children.

  They were very good at entertaining themselves—one of the greatest blessings of parenting these particular two little creatures, he had always thought. Their preoccupation left him free to look around the room. He spotted a thick notebook and what looked like a stack of fabric samples and color palettes on the coffee table.

  He picked up one of the books and was leafing through it when Lucy returned looking fresh-scrubbed and pretty. His gut twisted, but he told himself it was just hunger.

  He and Carter both needed to be fed at regular intervals.

  He held up the sample book. “You’re serious about the bed and breakfast, then.”

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I never thought you wanted any more ties to Hope’s Crossing. You seemed in a big hurry to leave, back in the day, first to college and then Seattle.”

  “I was never running away from Hope’s Crossing. Just running to something else. There’s a big difference.”

  “And now you’re back.”

  “For now,” she said, and he told himself that little stomach twist this time was relief.

  “We’re all different people, aren’t we?”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m definitely serious about the bed and breakfast. If all goes according to plan, I’m hoping to have guests here by the Fourth of July.”

  “I hope it works out for you,” he answered.

  “Are we ready now?” Carter asked, apparently at the end of his tether.

  “I’m ready,” Lucy said.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The children chattered with Lucy all the way out to the car and after they took off. He didn’t think Carter even stopped to take a breath in the ten minutes it took to drive downtown and find a parking space near the Center of Hope Café—while he just tried not to think about how strange it was to have someone sitting beside him in the passenger seat again.

  The moment they walked together into his pop’s restaurant, he knew he had made a huge mistake.

  Dermot stood behind the counter speaking to a customer. When he spotted his son and grandchildren, his eyes lit up with the usual warm delight—and then he spotted Lucy walking with them and his expression shifted almost comically. Shock, delight and something that looked suspiciously like hope gleamed in Dermot’s eyes.

  Crap. The last thing he needed was for Pop to get the wrong idea about him and Lucy and start spinning any little matchmaker schemes. He was having a tough enough time reminding himself that he wasn’t ready for this yet. He didn’t need added pressure from his father.

  “Hi, Grandpop!” Faith beamed at Dermot. “Can we sit in our usual spot?”

  Dermot walked around the counter and knelt down to kiss his granddaughter on the cheek and solemnly shake hands with Carter, as he always did. “You certainly may, my darlin’. I’ve been saving that table just for you.”

  “Did you know we were coming?” Carter asked, eyes wide.

  “Well, no, now that you mention it. Maybe I was hoping, though.”

  The children giggled at his Irish malarky, which he had in abundance.

  “And Lucy, my dear. How lovely to see you again. How are you getting along in that big old house by yourself?”

  “So far, so good,” she answered, kissing him on the cheek and earning a delighted blush in return.

  Brendan hadn’t been joking when he told her half the women in town adored his father. The truly humbling thing about Dermot was that he didn’t even have to try. He showed genuine interest and concern for everybody, and people responded instantly.

  Dermot led them to their favorite spot, a booth in front of the window, where they could watch any excitement on Main Street while they waited for their food.

  “Tonight’s special is the macaroni and cheese. A particularly good batch, if I do say so myself. I experimented with a little Gruyère cheese tonight, on Alex McKnight’s recommendation.”

  “Oh, that sounds delicious. I think I’ll have that,” Faith exclaimed, as if she even knew what Gruyère cheese was. Hell, Brendan barely knew what it was.

  “Not me!” Carter sang out. “You know what I want, Grandpop.”

  “Hmmm. Liver and onions again? Or my special fried worm stew?”

  “Ewwww. No! Pizza. Pizza. Pizza. With pepperonis and a smiley face.”

  “I think I can manage that. Son. You?”

  “I’m in the mood for a Reuben tonight, in a fog.”

  Dermot beamed, as he always did when his children—or other customers—used diner slang.

  “In a fog?” Lucy asked with a baffled look.

  “It means with a side of mashed potatoes,” Brendan explained.

  “Ah. Well, is there a way to say I’ll have a grilled chicken wrap with a side salad?”

  “You just did, my dear.” Dermot grinned. “Coming right up. And to drink?”

  Brendan was tempted to ask for a good, stiff whiskey, but Dermot didn’t carry a liquor license at the café. The kids had chocolate milk and he and Lucy both requested water with lemon.

  “Excellent,” Dermot said. “Now, which of my darling grandchildren would like to come in the back with me and help me put the pepperonis on a certain pizza?”

  “Me!” Carter exclaimed, jumping up.

  “Oh, may I come, too, Grandpop?” Faith asked.

  “Of course! The more the merrier! Come along, then.”

  The children slid out again, and Brendan was tempted to go along with them as soon as he realized their absence left him alone with Lucy. They were seated on opposite sides of the booth, and without the children’s buffering presence, it felt entirely too much like a date.

  As soon as the laughing trio headed for the kitchen, an awkward silence descended. Brendan blurted out the first thing that came to his head. “I thought I saw your father today, driving down our street.”

  He knew at once by the way her mouth tightened and her hands clasped in front of her that the subject wasn’t a comfortable one.

  “That’s certainly possible,” she answered, avoiding his gaze. “He stopped in this afternoon for an unexpected visit.”

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  She appeared fascinated by the weave of her place mat. “Not particularly.”

  He should change the subject, but he couldn’t come up with an alternative on the fly. Give him a break, he hadn’t been on a date in about a decade. Not that this was a date or anything.

  She had thanked him earlier for mowing the lawn and said she had a rough day and needed a little kindness. Did that have to do with her father?

  “He must be happy you’re back in Colorado.”

  “Why would you think that?” she asked, her tone stiff.

  “Well, he drove all the way from Denver to say hello, didn’t he?”

  She made a noise that wasn’t quite a snort. “Something like that,” she answered.

  She was quiet for a long time, and he started racking his brain to come up with another topic of conversation, until she finally spoke. “He came to ask me to let my half sister stay with me. She’s fifteen years old and...troubled.”

  “And he wants you to take her?”

  “My father is very good at finding someone else to deal with the messes in his life. Annabelle took me, didn’t she?”

  “You consider yourself one of the messes in your father’s life?
”

  “He certainly did. I hit those rebellious teen years just as he was marrying for the second time and settling down. I was what you might call a difficult child, especially after my mom’s death.”

  Her mother had committed suicide. He knew that from Jess and felt an unexpected wave of sympathy for the confused and grieving teenage girl she must have been.

  “I was moody and angry all the time, had a pathologically difficult time following rules and didn’t get along at all with my father’s second wife.”

  “Understandable, after everything you went through.”

  “Not according to the great Robert Drake. So he somehow talked Annabelle into taking me in.”

  He could imagine that had felt very much like another abandonment to her. First her mother escaped her obligations and left behind a world of pain by taking her own life, then her father chose his new wife over his own daughter.

  He couldn’t even imagine it. His children were his life.

  “It worked out okay for me, I guess,” she said. “Once I was away from that environment, I did better and remembered I actually liked school, when I wasn’t trying to hand my dad a screw-you along with every report card. I made it through high school and went on to college.”

  “You worked hard and were successful because of it.”

  She looked surprised at his words. “I guess he’s hoping maybe history will repeat itself with Crystal.”

  “Did you agree to take her?”

  She fiddled with her silverware. “Conditionally. I’m giving her two weeks to see how she likes Hope’s Crossing and living with me.”

  “And then what?”

  “We’ll have to see how things go.” She was quiet for a minute. “It’s going to be a disaster, isn’t it?”

  After more than a decade as a firefighter and emergency medical technician, he had dealt with enough accident victims to recognize the thready note of panic in her voice.

  “Don’t worry. You’re going to be great,” he answered, in the slow, measured, calm tone that usually helped in these situations.

  “How do you know?” she demanded. “What do I know about being responsible for a teenage girl? I’ve never even had a pet!”