A Cold Creek Reunion (15 page)

“They’re going to be okay, Laura,” Taft said. He hoped anyway, though he knew Maya wasn’t out of the woods.

She glanced over at him and seemed to have noticed him for the first time. “You’re bleeding.”

Was he? Probably from that branch that had caught him just as he was reaching the children. He hadn’t even noticed it in the rush of adrenaline but now he could feel the sting. “Just a little cut. No big deal.”

“And you’re soaking wet.”

“Chief Bowman pulled us out of the water, Mama,” Alex announced, his voice still hoarse. “He tied a rope to a tree and jumped in and got us both. That’s what
I
should have done to get Maya.”

She gazed at her son and then at Taft, then at the roaring current and the rope still tied to the tree.

“You saved them.”

“I told you I would find them.”

“You did.”

He flushed, embarrassed by the shock and gratitude in her eyes. Did she really think he would let the kids drown? He loved them. He would have gone after them no matter what the circumstances.

“And broke about a dozen rules for safe rescue in the process,” Luke Orosco chimed in, and he wanted to pound the guy for opening his big mouth.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Oh, thank you. Taft, thank you!”

She grabbed him and hugged him, Alex still in her arms, and his arms came around her with a deep shudder. He couldn’t bear thinking about what might have happened. If he had overshot the river and missed them. If he hadn’t been so close, just at The Gulch, when the call came in. A hundred small tender mercies had combined to make this moment possible.

Finally Luke cleared his throat. “Uh, Doc Dalton is waiting for us at the clinic.”

She stepped away from him and he saw her eyes were bright with tears, her cheeks flushed. “Yes, we should go.”

“We should be able to take you and both kids all in one ambulance,” Luke offered.

“Perfect. Thank you so much.”

She didn’t look at him again as the crews loaded the two kids into their biggest ambulance. There wasn’t room for him in there, although he supposed as battalion chief he could have pulled rank and insisted he wanted to be one of the EMTs assisting them on the way to the hospital.

But Laura and her children were a family unit that didn’t have room for him. She had made that plain enough. He would have to remain forever on the outside of their lives. That was the way Laura wanted things and he didn’t know how to change her mind.

He watched the doors close on the ambulance with finality, then Cody Shepherd climb behind the wheel and pull away from the scene. As he watched them drive away, he was vaguely aware of Trace moving to stand beside him. His brother placed a hand on his shoulder, offering understanding without words.

Another one of those twin things, he supposed. Trace must have picked up on his yearning as he watched the family he wanted drive away from him.

“Good save,” Trace said quietly. “But it’s a damn miracle all three of you didn’t go under.”

“I know.” The adrenaline rush of the rescue was fading fast, leaving him battered and embarrassingly weak-kneed.

“For the record, you ever pull a stunt like that again, trying a single-man water rescue, Ridge and I will drag what’s left of you behind one of the River Bow horses.”

“What choice did I have? I knew the deadfall wasn’t going to hold them for long, the way the current was pushing at them. Any minute, they were going to break free and float downstream and I wouldn’t have had a second chance. Think if it was Destry or Gabi out there. You would have done the same thing.”

Taft was silent for a moment. “Yeah, probably. That still doesn’t make it right.”

Terry McNeil, one of his more seasoned EMTs, approached the two of them with his emergency kit. “Chief, your turn.”

He probably needed a stitch or two, judging by the amount of blood, but he wasn’t in the mood to go to the clinic and face Laura again, to be reminded once more of everything he couldn’t have. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

“You sure? That cut looks deep.”

He gave Terry a long look, not saying anything, and the guy finally shrugged. “Your call. You’ll need to clean it well. Who knows what kind of bacteria is floating in that water.”

“I’m heading home to change anyway. I’ll clean it up there.”

He knew he should be jubilant after a successful rescue. Some part of him was, of course. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about, but he was also crashing now after an all-nighter at the fire station combined with exhaustion from the rescue. Right now, all he wanted to do was go home and sleep.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Terry advised him, an echo of what his brother had said earlier.

He wanted to tell both of them it was too late for that. He had been nothing short of an idiot ten years ago when he let Laura walk away from him. Once, he had held happiness in his hands and had blown it away just like those cottonwood puffs floating on the breeze.

She might be back but she wouldn’t ever be his, and the pain of that hurt far worse than being battered by the boulders and snags and raging current of Cold Creek.

Chapter Eleven

S
o close. She had been a heartbeat away from losing everything.

Hours after the miracle of her children’s rescue, Laura still felt jittery, her insides achy and tight with reaction. She couldn’t bear to contemplate what might have been.

If not for Taft and his insane heroics, she might have been preparing for two funerals right now instead of sitting at the side of her bed, watching her children sleep. Maya was sucking her thumb, something she hadn’t done in a long time, while Alex slept with his arm around his beloved dog, who slept on his side with his short little legs sticking straight out.

So much for her one hard-and-fast rule when she had given in to Alex’s determined campaign and allowed the adoption of Lucky Lou.

No dogs on the bed,
she had told her son firmly, again and again, but she decided this was a night that warranted exceptions.

She hadn’t wanted to let either of them out of her sight, even at bedtime. Because she couldn’t watch them both in their separate beds, she had decided to lump everyone together in here, just this once. She wasn’t sure where she would sleep, perhaps stretched across the foot of the bed, but she knew sleep would be a long time coming anyway.

She should be exhausted. The day had been draining. Even after the rescue, they had spent several hours at the clinic, until Dr. Dalton and his wife, Maggie, had been confident the children appeared healthy enough to return home.

Dr. Dalton had actually wanted to send them to the hospital in Idaho Falls for overnight observation, but after a few hours, Maya was bouncing around the bed in her room like a wild monkey and Alex had been jabbering a mile a minute with his still-raspy voice.

“You can take them home,” Dr. Dalton had reluctantly agreed, his handsome features concerned but kind, “as long as they remain under strict observation. Call me at once if you notice any change in breathing pattern or behavior.”

She was so grateful to have her children with her safe and sound that she would have agreed to anything by that point. Every time she thought about what might have happened if Taft hadn’t been able to find the children, her stomach rolled with remembered fear and she had to fold her arms around it and huddle for a few moments until she regained control.

She would never forget that moment she climbed out of his brother’s patrol vehicle and had seen Taft there, bloodied and soaking wet, holding her son close. Something significant had shifted inside her in that moment, something so profound and vital that she shied away from examining it yet.

She was almost relieved when a crack of light through the doorway heralded her mother’s approach. Jan pushed the door open and joined her beside the bed. Her mother looked older than she had that morning, Laura reflected. The lines fanning out from her eyes and bracketing her mouth seemed to have been etched a little deeper by the events of the day.

“They look so peaceful when they’re sleeping, don’t they?” Jan murmured, gazing down at her only grandchildren.

Laura was suddenly awash with love for her mother, as well. Jan had been a source of steady support during her marriage. Even though Laura hadn’t revealed any of the tumult of living with Javier—she still couldn’t—she had always known she could call or email her mother and her spirits would lift.

Her mother hadn’t had an easy life. She had suffered three miscarriages before Laura was born and two after. When Laura was a teenager, she had often felt the pressure of that keenly, knowing she was the only one of six potential siblings who had survived. She could only hope she was the kind of daughter her mother wanted.

“They do look peaceful,” she finally answered, pitching her voice low so she didn’t wake the children, although she had a feeling even the high-school marching band would have a tough time rousing them after their exhausting day. “Hard to believe, looking at them now, what kind of trouble they can get into during daylight hours, isn’t it?”

“I should have fenced off the river a long time ago.” Weary guilt dragged down the edges of her mother’s mouth.

Laura shook her head. “Mom, none of this was your fault. I should have remembered not to take my eyes off them for a second. They’re just too good at finding their way to trouble.”

“If Taft hadn’t been there…”

She reached out and squeezed her mother’s hand, still strong and capable at seventy. “I know. But he
was
there.” And showed incredible bravery to climb into the water by himself instead of waiting for a support team. The EMTs couldn’t seem to stop talking about the rescue during the ambulance ride to the clinic.

“Everyone is okay,” she went on. “No lasting effects, Dr. Dalton said, except possibly intestinal bugs from swallowing all that creek water. We’ll have to keep an eye out for stomachaches, that sort of thing.”

“That’s a small thing. They’re here. That’s all that matters.” Her mother gazed at the children for a long moment, then back at Laura, her eyes troubled. “You’re probably wondering why you ever came home. With all the trouble we’ve had since you arrived—fires and near-drownings and everything—I bet you’re thinking you would have been better off to have stayed in Madrid.”

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now, Mom. I still think coming home was the right thing for us.”

“Even though it’s meant you’ve had to deal with Taft again?”

She squirmed under her mother’s probing look. “Why should that bother me?”

“I don’t know. Your history together, I guess.”

“That history didn’t seem to stop you from inviting the man to live at the inn for weeks!”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice during that time how you went out of your way to avoid him whenever you could. You told me things ended amicably between you, but I’m not so sure about that. You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

She started to give her standard answer.
The past was a long time ago. We’re different people now and have both moved on.

Perhaps because the day had been so very monumental, so very profound, she couldn’t bring herself to lie to her mother.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I’ve loved him since I was a silly girl. It’s hard to shut that off.”

“Why do you need to? That man still cares about you, my dear. I could tell that first day when he came to talk to me about helping with the inn renovations. He jumped into the river and risked his life to save your children. That ought to tell you something about the depth of his feelings.”

She thought of the dozens of reasons she had employed to convince herself not to let Taft into her life again. None of them seemed very important right now—or anything she wanted to share with her mother. “It’s complicated.”

“Life is complicated, honey, and hard and stressful and exhausting. And
wonderful
. More so if you have a good man to share it with.”

Laura thought of her father, one of the best men she had ever known. He had been kind and compassionate, funny and generous. The kind of man who often opened the doors of his inn for a pittance—or sometimes nothing—to people who had nowhere else to go.

In that moment, she would have given anything if he could be there with them, watching over her children with them.

Perhaps he had been, she thought with a little shiver. By rights, her children should have died today in the swollen waters of Cold Creek. That they survived was nothing short of a miracle and she had to think they had help somehow.

She missed her father deeply in that moment. He had loved Taft and had considered him the son he had always wanted. Both of her parents had been crushed by the end of her engagement, but her father had never pressed her to know the reasons.

“While you were busy at the clinic this afternoon,” Jan said after a moment, “I was feeling restless and at loose ends and needed to stay busy while I waited for you. I had to do something so I made a caramel-
apple pie. You might not remember but that was always Taft’s favorite.”

He did have a sweet tooth for pastries, she remembered.

“It’s small enough payment for giving me back my grandchildren, but it will have to do for now, until I can think of something better. I was just about to take it to him…unless you would like to.”

Laura gazed at her sleeping children and then at her mother, who was trying her best to be casual and nonchalant instead of eagerly coy. She knew just what Jan was trying to do—push her and Taft back together, which was probably exactly the reason she agreed to let him move into the inn under the guise of trading carpentry work for a room.

Jan was sneaky that way. Laura couldn’t guess at her motives—perhaps her mother was looking for any way she could to bind Laura and her children to Pine Gulch. Or perhaps she was matchmaking simply because she had guessed, despite Laura’s attempts to put on a bright facade, that her marriage had not been a happy one and she wanted to see a different future for her daughter.

Or perhaps Jan simply adored Taft, because most mothers did.

Whatever the reason, Laura had a pivotal decision to make: Take the pie to him herself as a small token of their vast gratitude or thwart her mother’s matchmaking plans and insist on staying here with the children?

Her instincts urged her to avoid seeing him again just now. With these heavy emotions churning inside her, she was afraid seeing him now would be too dangerous. Her defenses were probably at the lowest point they had been since coming home to Pine Gulch. If he kissed her again, she wasn’t at all certain she would have the strength to resist him.

But that was cowardly. She needed to see him again, if for no other reason than to express, now that she was more calm and rational than she had been on that riverbank, her deep and endless gratitude to him for giving her back these two dear children.

“I’ll go, Mom.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

“I need to do this. You’re right. Will you watch the children for me?”

“I won’t budge,” her mother promised. “I’ll sit right here and work on my crocheting the entire time. I promise.”

“You don’t have to literally watch them. You may certainly sit in the living room and check on them at various intervals.”

“I’m not moving from this spot,” Jan said. “Between Lou and me, we should be able to keep them safe.”

* * *

The evening was lovely, unusually warm for mid-May. She drove through town with her window down, savoring the sights and sounds of Pine Gulch settling down for the night. Because it was Friday, the drive-in on the edge of the business district was crowded with cars. Teenagers hanging out, anxious for the end of the school year, young families grabbing a burger on payday, senior citizens treating their grandchildren to an ice-cream cone.

The flowers were beginning to bloom in some of the sidewalk planters along Main Street and everything was greening up beautifully. May was a beautiful time of year in eastern Idaho after the inevitable harshness of winter, brimming with life, rebirth, hope.

As she was right now.

She had heard about people suffering near-death encounters who claimed the experience gave them a new respect and appreciation for their life and the beauty of the world around them. That’s how she felt right now. Even though it was her children who had nearly died, Laura knew she would have died right along with them if they hadn’t been rescued.

She had Alex and Maya back now, along with a new appreciation for those flowers in carefully tended gardens, the mountains looming strong and steady over the town, the sense of home that permeated this place.

She drove toward those mountains now, to Cold Creek Canyon, where the creek flowed out of the high country and down through the valley. Her mother had given her directions to Taft’s new house and she followed them, turning onto Cold Creek Road.

She found it no surprise that Jan knew Taft’s address. Jan and her wide circle of friends somehow managed to keep their collective finger on the pulse of everything going on in town.

The area here along the creek was heavily wooded with Douglas fir and aspen trees and it took her a moment to find the mailbox with his house number. She peered through the trees but couldn’t see anything of his house except a dark green metal roof that just about matched the trees in the fading light.

A bridge spanned the creek here and as she drove over it, she couldn’t resist looking down at the silvery ribbon of water, darting over boulders and around fallen logs. Her children had been in that icy water, she thought, chilled all over again at how close she had come to losing everything.

She couldn’t let it paralyze her. When the runoff eased a little, she needed to take Alex and Maya fishing in the river to help all of them overcome their fear of the water.

She stayed on the bridge for several moments, watching lightning-fast dippers crisscross the water for insects and a belted kingfisher perching on a branch without moving for long moments before he swooped into the water and nabbed a hapless hatchling trout.

As much as she enjoyed the serenity of the place, she finally gathered her strength and started her SUV again, following the winding driveway through the pines. She had to admit, she was curious to see his house. He had asked her to come see it, she suddenly remembered, and she had deflected the question and changed the subject, not wanting to intertwine their lives any further. She was sorry now that she hadn’t come out while it was under construction.