Sweet Laurel Falls (20 page)

She started to cry, sloppy tears that leaked out of her eyes
and dripped down her cheeks, and Maura reached for her, her heart aching for her
daughter. “It’s Sawyer, isn’t it?”

Sage drew away a little to stare at her. She didn’t answer,
just let out a little sob that confirmed everything.

“Oh, honey.” Maura held her closer and Sage wrapped her arms
around her mother and held on as if she were five years old, afraid of the
monsters under her bed.

“I know. You don’t have to tell me. I’m such an idiot.”

Sawyer Danforth was the father of Sage’s baby. How on earth had
this all become so complicated? He had been engaged to Gen for longer than a
year. They were supposed to have been married last fall, but the wedding had
been postponed after the accident. His family was wealthy, powerful and
connected—and would not be at all thrilled at their scion for fathering an
out-of-wedlock child with someone they would consider a nobody.

She could see nothing but a vast sea of heartache for her child
and didn’t know the first thing she could say or do to help Sage wade through
it.

“Can you tell me what happened between you? Were
you…dating?”

Sage sniffed. “It’s not like I was in love with him or
anything. Well, I thought I was, a little. But even at the time I knew how
stupid that was. I mean, how can I possibly compete with Gen Beaumont? She looks
like a supermodel and I’m like a Keebler Elf.”

Despite her own broken heart, she had to smile a little at the
imagery, so similar to her own troll comparison. “You could kick Genevieve
Beaumont’s skinny little butt in any kind of head-to-head competition,
especially if it called for brains and personality.”

For a moment, Maura thought Sage might smile at that. Though
her mouth twitched a little, her eyes still looked bleak. “We all went to a
birthday party this summer. Rachel Zeller, Josie’s big sister. I guess she was a
sorority sister of Genevieve’s or something. She and Gen—and Josie, for that
matter—spent most of the day lying out, working on their tans. Gen wouldn’t even
get in the water. I’d never been wakeboarding, so Sawyer was showing me what to
do. We had a lot of fun together, but it was…nothing.”

She clenched her hands together. “So we were on the boat and we
were talking about music and stuff, and he couldn’t believe it when I told him
Chris was my stepdad. I guess he’s a big fan of Pendragon. I told him they were
coming to Boulder in August, right when school started, and I could probably get
him and Gen backstage.”

Maura usually attended all the Pendragon concerts when they
played anywhere in Colorado, but she had made an excuse for that particular one.
Her relationship with Chris had been more than amicable since the divorce, but
his current girlfriend struggled with their friendship, and Maura had decided
she couldn’t cope with the drama this year.

“Sawyer was really excited about the concert, so we exchanged
emails and cell numbers,” Sage went on. “We kept in touch, nothing serious, just
fun. Maybe a little more flirty than we should have been, given his engagement,
I guess, but we were just messing around.”

She sighed. “So I got him the tickets from Chris for the
concert, but it turned out Gen had something else that night. He didn’t want to
miss it, though, especially after I had gone to the trouble to get the backstage
tickets for him, so he asked if he could hang with me. I just… We went to the
concert and backstage. It was a crazy night. We hung out with Chris and the rest
of the gang, and we went back to Sawyer’s hotel and, well, one thing led to
another, I guess.”

Sage looked so miserable, Maura’s heart broke all over again.
“I knew he was engaged to Gen, but we had so much fun together, even before, you
know. I guess some part of me thought maybe he really liked me.”

“I’m sure he did.”

She shook her head. “No. He used me, for everything. He left
first thing in the morning.
Thanks for the fun night. See
you around
. That’s all he said and then he never returned any of my
texts or calls. I was so
stupid
.”

Sawyer was gorgeous and charming and much older than Sage. He
had already passed the bar, for heaven’s sake. What did he want with a
nineteen-year-old girl in her second year of undergraduate work? They were not
only in different social strata but completely different stages in their
lives.

Maura could absolutely believe he had used Sage for whatever he
could get out of her, and Sage had probably been a starry-eyed girl, overwhelmed
that someone like Sawyer wanted to be with her.

“What am I going to do?” Sage whimpered.

Maura released a heavy breath. “You’re not going to like this,
but I think you need to tell him.”

“I can’t! He’s getting married in a month!”

This was the reason Sage had been so evasive all these weeks
when they’d pressed for the identity of the baby’s father—she had to have known
the storm that would result.

“I think that’s exactly why you should tell him now. He has to
know. It’s only fair to him and to Genevieve.”

If possible, even more color leached out of Sage’s cheeks.
“Genevieve? Why? She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Wrong,” Maura said gently. “Be fair. Wouldn’t you want to know
if the man you were preparing to take vows with could father a child with
someone else during the engagement, when he’s supposed to be head-over-heels,
can’t-think-of-another-woman in love with you?”

“It was just a mistake,” Sage wailed. “We…he had too much to
drink and he wasn’t thinking. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She folded Sage’s fingers in hers. They were cold and trembling
and Maura wanted to tuck them against her heart and warm them. So much pain
because of a few foolish moments between two young people who should have known
better.

“Listen to me, Sage. You and I, we have a unique perspective on
this, don’t we? I can see as a woman who’s been exactly in your shoes the
choices I should have made twenty years ago. I should have told Jack, no matter
the consequences. All my rationalizations and excuses are just that. My way of
making myself feel better for my cowardice in not telling him. I regret it now,
more than I can tell you. I can see now how much you needed him in your life
from the beginning. If I had only had the courage, I would have told him. He may
still have chosen to stay out of your life, but at least he would have had the
choice. I took that from him and it was wrong—for him and for you.”

She hadn’t admitted that out loud before, but the words still
resonated with truth—so loudly in her head that she must have completely missed
the sound of the office door opening. Behind Sage she caught a flicker of
movement and turned.

Jack. Of course. How much had he heard? Judging by his
expression, he must have been standing there for some time. He gazed at her for
a long, charged moment and she couldn’t think what to say to him.

She wouldn’t call her words back, even if she could. They were
truth and she should have admitted it a long time ago. She had committed a grave
injustice against him and she didn’t want to see Sage do the same thing.

Sage hadn’t noticed him. She had her face pressed to Maura’s
shoulder. “What’s going on?” he mouthed.

“I’ll explain later,” she mouthed back, holding up a finger,
before turning back to Sage and pressing her point. “I don’t know what you’re
going to do about the baby, whether you plan to keep it or place it with an
adoptive family. Judging from your evasiveness with the attorneys who have
called, I think you’re not quite sure yourself. Either way, I think you owe it
to yourself, to Sawyer and to the child you both created to involve him in the
decision.”

“He’s going to hate me. I’ll ruin everything for him.”

“You didn’t create this mess on your own, honey. He’s a grown
man. He made his own choices all along the way.”

“But the wedding. It’s next month.”

She might not particularly like Gen Beaumont—or any of her
family, for that matter—but that didn’t mean she wanted to ruin the young
woman’s wedding, which so many people had worked tirelessly to pull off.

But putting her grief aside, she knew this was the right thing.
Better for Genevieve to know now than to find out after they exchanged vows that
her fiancé had been unfaithful to her.

For all she knew, maybe Genevieve wouldn’t care. It was no
secret around Hope’s Crossing that Sawyer Danforth had political aspirations
even greater than his father’s, who had once been the president of the state
senate.

Maybe, like a good political wife in training, Genevieve knew
all about any extracurricular activities—going on the logical assumption that
Sage hadn’t been his only indiscretion—and had chosen to look the other way.

“I don’t want to,” Sage said in a small voice that reminded
Maura of the time Sage’s appendix had burst when she was nine and she had to be
rushed into emergency surgery, scared to death and fighting the whole way.

“I know, honey.” She hugged her, aware of Jack standing behind
Sage. “It’s your choice, of course. I’ve told you what I think you should do,
but you’re an adult. You can decide to say nothing if you want.”

Sage grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk and sniffled
into it. “When…when I tell him, will you come with me?”

A tremendous rush of pride burst through her. “In a
heartbeat.”

“Do you have room for one more?” Jack asked in a low voice.
Sage whirled around and turned pink at the sight of her father behind her.

“I guess you heard.”

“Only the last bit. I’m surmising you encountered the, uh,
sperm donor and you’re trying to decide whether to hand him a cigar.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but, yeah,” Sage
said.

“He’s supposed to be getting married in a month to the mayor’s
daughter, Genevieve,” Maura explained. “It’s only the biggest social event to
hit Hope’s Crossing since the original Silver King Ball.”

“Ah. I don’t know how much my opinion is worth in this
situation, but I agree with your mother. Telling him is the right thing to do,
even though it’s going to be tough and probably ugly.”

Sage sighed. “Why does everything have to be so
hard?
”

“If doing the right thing were easy, wouldn’t everybody just
naturally do it?” Maura said.

Her daughter didn’t seem to appreciate that bit of maternal
wisdom, but Jack smiled a little.

“I guess we should get it over with. Find him tonight while I
can still manage the nerve.”

“Do you want me to make a few calls?” Maura offered. “I can at
least find out if he’s staying at the Beaumonts or at one of the hotels while
he’s in town.”

“No. I still have his number, unless he’s changed it. I’ll try
to text him. Ask if I can meet him somewhere. I’d rather tell him without
Genevieve there at first. Then he can decide whether to tell her or not.”

Maura wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but she had meant her
earlier words—Sage was an adult and could make her own decisions about how to
handle the situation.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“R
EADY
OR
NOT
, I
GUESS
.” Sage opened the passenger door of Jack’s SUV and a rush of
cold air flowed inside from the wind tunnel created under the porte cochere at
the sprawling Silver Strike Lodge.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to go inside with you, honey?”
Maura leaned up from the backseat, where she had insisted on sitting so Sage
could take the front seat next to him. Her features were twisted with worry as
she watched their daughter.

Sage tucked a stray hair tossed by the wind back behind her
ear. “I really think it would be best if I go the rest of the way by myself. It
means a lot to me that you both came this far. I’m not sure I could have made it
here on my own, but I think I should talk to Sawyer first alone.”

Jack wished he could make this easier for her. Was that a
universal parental sentiment, this desire to make the world straighten itself
out around his child so her path was always smooth and even? Intellectually, he
knew that was not only impossible but would create someone unable to cope with
life’s inevitable challenges, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to ease her
burden.

“I’ll find a parking space and we’ll wait in the lobby for you,
okay?”

“You really don’t have to do that. I can call you when I’m done
and you can just tell me where you parked.”

“We’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.” He spoke almost
sternly, determined to do this, at least. He hadn’t been here through most of
her life and all the other tough things she’d had to deal with, especially
losing her beloved little sister. He wouldn’t let her down now that he had the
chance to offer support in whatever small way he could manage.

“Thanks, you guys.” After a pause, she leaned into the car and
kissed him on the cheek, then did the same to Maura.

“I’m sure I’ll be out soon. I mean, come on. How long does it
take to ruin a man’s life?”

She gave them both a quick, nervous smile, then closed the
door, squared her shoulders and walked into the lobby.

If Maura hadn’t been there, Jack probably would have pounded
his fist on the steering wheel. At the very least. “Damn it. Why won’t she let
us go with her? I’d like to have a word or two with the son of a bitch
myself.”

“Maybe that’s why she insisted on talking to him by herself at
first. She didn’t want you pulling the outraged father act.”

“I
am
outraged. It’s no act. The
man is twenty-six years old. He’s a full-fledged adult. She’s not even twenty
yet and as green as a field of clover, a vulnerable kid dealing with loss and
uncertainty. He had no business messing with her.”

Maura touched his arm, just a soft brush of her fingers, and
some of his wild anger seemed to ease away. “She’s knows what she’s doing. Let
her handle this her way, okay?”

“What else can we do? She’s a stubborn thing.”

“I’m afraid she gets that from both of us. Poor girl was doomed
from the beginning.”

He smiled a little. While he was tempted to use the valet
parking, he had the feeling Sage might want a quick getaway when they were done,
and wouldn’t want to wait out in the cold for the valets to find his car, so
instead he pulled a short distance away to the parking lot.

Maura was quiet as he opened the back door for her and reached
a hand to help her out. “Careful. It’s icy,” he said, and maintained his hold on
her arm, telling himself it was only out of concern for her safety.

After a pause, Maura pulled her arm away but slipped her hand
into the crook of his arm for more stability. Despite his lingering worry for
Sage and his sharp anger at Sawyer Danforth for being the catalyst for
everything Sage was going through, a sweet tenderness seeped through him at this
small indication of her trust.

The night was clear and beautiful. The mountains soared
overhead, commanding and powerful. He had forgotten how vivid the stars could be
up here. Even with the ambient light from the resort and all the development
around it, he could see their vast, glittery pattern overhead.

None of this was here in his memories. His mother often used to
paint the meadow that had been here. In the summer it would be filled only with
flowers and birds, the occasional curious mule deer. He could clearly remember
playing in the grasses, confident in the knowledge that she was nearby.

Now it was a cramped parking lot. Amazing what changes twenty
years could render.

“Looks like the lodge is doing a good business this
weekend.”

He glanced down at Maura. “You sound surprised.”

“The resort keeps the ski lifts running until April, usually,
but business slows down once March hits. The shoulder season will be here before
we know it.”

“How much of your business is tourist dependent?”

“Not as much as you might think. The locals make up about
seventy to eighty percent of our customer base. When the skiing is lousy,
though, it still hurts all of us on Main Street.”

“Good thing it’s not lousy very often.”

She smiled. “That’s both the beauty and the curse of living
here in the high Rockies. We can pretty much count on snow from October to
April.”

They walked in silence toward the lodge for a few moments. The
building loomed above them, big and commanding and oddly elegant. It reminded
him of one of the old national park lodges, with the dark pine and soaring glass
windows.

“Have you had a chance to try any of the restaurants up here
yet?” Maura asked. “They’re all very good.”

He shook his head. “Want to know something funny? This is
actually the first time I’ve even seen the lodge.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously? You’ve been back in Hope’s
Crossing for months. Weren’t you at all curious in that time about what your
father has done up here?”

“Not really.” The scent of her, lemony and sweet, drifted to
him and he was strangely comforted by her presence and by the heat of her
brushing against him as they walked. “I didn’t need to see it. I knew whatever
had been done up here wasn’t at all what my mother intended when she left the
land to me.”

His mother had been a direct descendant of Alice and Harvey
Jackson, who along with the Van Durans had been the original silver barons here.
Bethany had been the
last
descendant, actually, of
her generation. When she gave birth to him,
he
had
become the last descendant. Now that honor went to Sage, he supposed.

Even when her family had lost most of their wealth after the
silver mines played out, the Jacksons, unlike the Van Durans, had managed to
hang on to most of their land and had even managed to buy more. As a result, his
mother had inherited thousands of acres up here, where the original mines had
once dotted this canyon.

Bethany had left the land in trust to him, but Harry and
William Beaumont had conspired together to break the trust, claiming his
mother’s undeniable mental illness had left her unfit to make those decisions
for herself before she committed suicide. The land rightfully should have gone
to her husband, not to a teenage boy, Harry had successfully argued in
court.

That final betrayal from his father after a lifetime of
distance and disappointments had been the last straw for Jack. Driven by fury
and pain and a vast, aching helplessness, he had walked away from Hope’s
Crossing for good.

Only recently was he beginning to realize all he had left
behind.

“It’s not as terrible as you’d feared, is it?” Maura asked. “At
least we don’t have any Las Vegas–style casinos right in the middle of
town.”

“No. It’s actually quite…pleasing.” It was a grudging admission
but he meant it.

“I’ve always thought so. For all his faults, I can’t deny that
Harry has pretty good taste. For what it’s worth, he’s also the one who insisted
on the zoning restrictions that help the downtown maintain its historic flavor
instead of turning everything into strip malls and big-box stores.”

He didn’t want to hear anything good about his father. As far
as he was concerned, Harry was a cheat and a liar and had manipulated and
schemed his way to defrauding his own son.

The doors opened soundlessly for him, and he and Maura walked
into the lobby, dominated by a massive fireplace and hanging ironwork
chandeliers that probably weighed as much as his SUV. The Silver Strike
Lodge—named for the original mine—apparently appealed to a well-heeled crowd,
judging by the designer après-ski apparel worn by those in the lobby.

“Speak of the devil. Your father is here, just to give you fair
warning,” Maura said in a low voice.

He jerked around in time to see Harry walk out of what looked
like a steak house off the lobby, along with a couple of men who had the same
well-fed look of prosperity.

“Warning duly noted.”

“I don’t mind waiting alone for Sage here in the lobby if you
want to get out of here. You could wait out in your car.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m a grown man. You really think I need
to run away from my father?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Oh, ouch. He winced a little as the arrow hit home. No doubt
that was just how she saw things—that he had chosen to leave instead of sticking
around to fight for what had rightfully been his. If only the whole situation
had been that simple, but he had been an eighteen-year-old kid with no power,
influence or money to hire the huge team of attorneys it would have taken to
defeat Harry.

He had tried to convince somebody to take on his case on its
merits, but nobody in the entire county—or the next, or the one beyond that—had
been willing to go up against Harry and his consortium, especially when the
developers had started to break ground only minutes after the judge broke the
trust.

Beyond that, Jack had finally decided his mother’s memory had
suffered enough through the judicial system. Harry had trotted out every single
diagnosis, every manic episode, every delusion as fodder.

By the time his attorneys were done, all of Bethany’s actions
had appeared insane to everyone in that courtroom. Including him. Instead of the
sweet, funny, creative soul he remembered, who used to take him up into these
mountains to hunt for blackberries and pick wildflowers and identify birds,
Harry had tainted Jack’s own picture of his mother.

He hated his father for that more than for taking the land.

“I think he saw us. He’s coming this way.”

Despite himself, he was amused at Maura’s exaggerated stage
whisper. She always used to make him laugh, he remembered, even when his life
had seemed completely miserable.

“Quick. Maybe we can duck down and hide behind the sofa,” he
stage-whispered back.

She frowned but didn’t have time for a sharp retort before
Harry joined them.

“This is a surprise. Are the two of you dining at the lodge
tonight?”

Jack’s spine stiffened and he felt the hot rush of adrenaline
churning through him, as if his body was gearing up for a fight. His reaction
annoyed the hell out of him, but he supposed it was no different than a person
instinctively brushing away a fly. What
did
surprise
him was the realization that Maura had come to stand next to him, shoulder to
shoulder. He glanced down and found her giving Harry a look that reminded him of
her little dust mop of a dog going to battle against a mountain lion.

“We’re waiting for our daughter,” he answered. “She had a
matter of…business to discuss with one of your guests.”

Harry pursed his lips. “Rumor has it she’s pregnant.”

Beside him, he could feel Maura tense, but he couldn’t see any
good in lying to Harry. No doubt he already knew more about the situation than
Jack did. “For once, the grapevine has it right.”

“She have any plans to marry the father?”

“Absolutely not,” he and Maura said in unison. When he met her
gaze, he thought he saw a little spark of laughter in her eyes before they both
turned back to Harry.

“Of course not. Nobody gets married these days,” Harry
muttered. Jack waited for him to make some kind of asinine comment in the mode
of
like mother, like daughter
so he could deck him,
but Harry wisely refrained.

“I would like to get to know this young lady. She is my
granddaughter, after all. You—” He turned to Maura. “Bring her to my house
tomorrow for dinner.”

“I’m afraid we have plans tomorrow.” She’d answered calmly
enough, but Jack was suddenly completely convinced she was lying.

“Then Sunday evening around six. You may come as well,” he told
Jack peremptorily, then turned and walked away before either of them had time to
come up with another lie.

Jack stared after him, shaking his head. “You know you really
don’t have to go,” he said to Maura. “Contrary to popular belief—especially his
own—he’s not lord of all he surveys.”

She shrugged. “It probably won’t be
completely
miserable and I’ll probably be hungry anyway around then.
If it means I don’t have to cook, then, yay.”

“I would be willing to cook for you if that’s the only way
you’ll agree to go.”

“I thought you could only fix omelets and cheese
sandwiches.”

“Maybe, but they’re delicious omelets and cheese sandwiches.
Better than the swill you could probably get from Harry’s Cordon Bleu–trained
chef.”

She smiled. “Don’t ever tell him this, but I’ve been dying to
see the inside of that mausoleum of his. Word has it he owns a dozen original
Sarah Colville paintings, and nobody ever sees them but Harry. That’s just
criminal. Sarah has a vacation home here in Hope’s Crossing and I’ve been a huge
fan for years.”

“Okay. How about this? You take Sage and enjoy your French
feast and the priceless art, and then afterward you can come to my place and
tell me all about it while we roast marshmallows in my fireplace?”