Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (26 page)

CHAPTER ONE

“PURPLE
AGAIN
? Why don’t you ever put
green
in your hair, Tessa? Green’s my favorite.”

As always, Tessa Daniels felt her heart tug at the slight w-lisp she could hear curled into Jilly’s use of the word ‘green.’ Because adorable as it was, Tessa had no doubt that lisp would’ve been gone by now had the sweet young girl sitting across from her not spent the last few years missing long stretches of school days from all her complications with Juvenile Huntington’s Disease.

She was only six years old.

Sweeping her purple-tipped hair up into a ponytail, Tessa went over to sit on the edge of Jilly’s newly installed hospital bed. It was one of the three dozen new top-of-the-line beds now housed here, thanks to the grant money she and her friend Connor had managed to secure for the care home his sister-in-law had lived out her Huntington’s end-stage in.

“Green? I thought your favorite color was rainbow, Jilly-bean.”

“You made a rhyme!” giggled Jilly, trying and valiantly succeeding in softly clapping together her two little hands, despite the near-frozen curved angle of her fingers preventing her palms from making solid contact with one another.

Seeing the rigidity of Jilly’s limbs and fingers—the worst case Tessa had ever seen in all her years of volunteer work with those plagued with the juvenile and adult forms of HD—tore another jagged shard out of Tessa’s heart.

Damn this disease.

“I’ve never been able to find a green hair dye that’ll show on my dark hair,” answered Tessa belatedly. “But now I’ll be sure to look even harder.” She grabbed the small tub of crayons and poured it out on the activity tray that hooked onto the side of Jilly’s bed. “Which color green do you like better, the darker ones or the lighter ones?”

Jilly took a long, serious look at the crayons, sifting through them with her splayed fingers, poking at and then dismissing various colors of green with her pinky.

Tessa couldn’t help but smile a proud, albeit sad smile when Jilly used her thumb to expertly flip one of the crayons up by its sharpened tip and catch it between two of her fingers. Every day in all these little ways, Jilly was showing herself to be so incredibly adaptive to the increasing stiffness in her extremities due to her JHD.

“Slick move there. Did your physical therapist show you that one?”

“Nope, I learned it all by myself,” beamed Jilly as she held up the chosen crayon, wedged between her index and middle finger as one would hold a cigarette. “I like
this
one the best.”

“Oh man!” Tessa feigned horror and put the bright green crayon up to her hair. “Neon green? I’ll look like a glowing alien with neon green stripes in my hair.”

“You’ll look like a mermaid princess!” squealed Jilly, bopping happily in her bed. “I can’t wait to see it!”

That was yet another thing Tessa admired about Jilly. The happy little girl simply did not live her life in maybes; she believed in things with her whole heart, and looked forward to that assured reality with all the confidence in the world.

“Okay, neon green it is,” promised Tessa, angling the tub off the edge of the tray so Jilly could slide the crayons back into it. It would have taken a fifth of the time to just scoop up the crayons herself, but Tessa had learned long ago not to rob anyone with JHD of any task they could accomplish on their own. “So what do you want to do first today? Do you want to take a cruise around the courtyard and hang out in the garden or play a round of video games?”

“Video games!”

Of course.

Smiling, Tessa pulled a little video game cartridge out of her pocket and let Jilly screech excitedly over the new game while she set the TV and modified controllers up for them to play head-to-head.

“This is the exact game I wanted! How did you know?” Unable to sit still, Jilly was practically bouncing off the walls as Tessa clicked in the new cartridge.

“You remember my friend Connor? His niece Skylar recommended it. Her best friend’s little brother is your age and he said this game is the talk of the playground.” Tessa slid the comfier of the two chairs in the room over and settled in next to Jilly—this was no doubt going to go on for a while. “And unfortunately for you, missy, Skylar gave me a few pointers on how to totally own you at this game.”

A fierce little glint lit up Jilly’s eyes. “If I win, I get to pick the movie we watch today.”

“Whoa, we’re playing high-stakes, are we?” Tessa made a show of eyeing her pint-sized opponent up and down. “Okay, Jilly-bean, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

As they shook hands, Tessa had a quick flashback to a similar handshake agreement they’d had months ago, when a very mulish Jilly had demanded that Tessa stop letting her win at everything. Or else.

Lordy, she loved this tiny little miracle to pieces.

They quickly got down to business and not even two minutes into the game, Tessa already knew that it was going to be a princess movie kind of afternoon.

* * * * *

BRIAN SULLIVAN STOPPED and stared at the photo of his wife up on the memory wall of the care home in Cactus Creek where she’d spent the last few years of her life. It was a photo from when she’d first been admitted, a far cry from the pictures of her that were forever burned into his memories—candid snapshots his mind held on to from the first day he’d laid eyes on her back in high school, and the even more different memories of the final, of many, times he’d been forced to say goodbye to her. Beth had only been twenty-eight when she died, but her decade-long battle with JHD had aged her far more than was fair in pain and suffering. Ditto on its effect on him and his daughter as well.

Damn that disease.

He hadn’t been back to the care home for over three years—not since Beth’s funeral. But he’d made a point to come in today to drop off a gift for one of Beth’s favorite nurses on her last day before she retired. The amazing woman had saved Beth’s life on at least a dozen occasions during her time there.

After one last look, he turned and left the patient wing. But instead of heading back to his car, he found himself walking through the courtyard over to the back garden area. His wife used to love sitting out there and feeling the sun on her skin. Even after she’d stopped remembering his name and then eventually stopped recognizing him altogether, there were times when he’d come by to visit her and she’d immediately point at her wheelchair and smile. He had doggedly clung to the hope that some part of her brain seemed to remember that he would take her out back and sit with her.

At least that’s what he used to tell himself on the really bad days when she’d look at him not just in confusion, but in fear. When he’d hear her gurgle out a panicked stranger-danger cry, which would break his heart every single time.

He sat and replayed the memories as he gazed out at the craggy mountainous landscape just beyond the fenced garden of the care facility. Random giant cactuses standing head and shoulders above trees that looked deceptively like tall, unkempt grass from afar, dried in every shade of green under the sun. His eyes wandered aimlessly, restlessly over it all—until a splash of electric color in stunning contrast to the rugged, red dirt backdrop drew his focus like a magnet and had him doing a jarring double-take.

Squinting, he eyed the t-shirt and shorts-clad figure venturing into the deep pockets of the mountainside, dips and hollows that carved out valleys most folks would never know existed under the camouflage of the arid overgrowth all around.

Had to be that his mind was playing tricks on him. A dainty little pixie with peekaboo strips of neon-bright rocker hair out in that terrain?

Couldn’t be.

But it was. That was definitely another flash of sexy hot purple he just saw.

And for some reason, the streaks of color in the long ponytail of ink-black hair disappearing farther into the desert brush immediately had him thinking of the woman who’d been making random cameos in his thoughts for months now, since the day of his brother Connor’s wedding.

Shockingly pink highlights, a fallen angel smile, and a laugh he’d been unable to forget.

He shook his head—partly to try and dislodge the image of her out of his mind—and studied the hiker intently when she happened to turn in his direction for a brief second. Just long enough for him to see her face fully.

Huh, what were the odds? Same woman.

Now what the hell was she doing hiking out there in a pair of backless sneakers and an utterly useless-in-the-mountains slouched, boho-gypsy looking bag, similar to the one his daughter had asked him for this past Christmas?

He rolled his eyes. The woman took offbeat to a whole new level.

Before he could even decide whether or not to follow her so he could tell her as much, however, she dropped out of sight.

Literally. Dropped.

With an explosive curse, he went tearing across the lawn, hopping over the fence to make his way up the mountain to find the hidden ravine she must have fallen down into.

UN-FREAKIN-BELIEVABLE!

Tessa unstrangled herself from the noose her bag strap was making around her neck and untangled her now-ripped clothing from the thicket of mesquite and ironwood trees she’d crashed through on her plummet down. The small gulch had appeared out of nowhere. One minute there’d been ground under her feet and the next she was falling like a coin down a slot.

When the rustling ruckus of her fall eventually dissipated, blanketing her in the quiet of the surprisingly lush desert forest once again, that’s when she finally heard it.

The garbled grunts and snorts of a creature not twenty feet away from her.

Scrabbling quietly to a steadier perch on the tree that had broken her final descent, she took a good look down. All but camouflaged in the shadows below was an animal she’d never seen before that looked like a cross between a boar and a huge possum. If not for the viciously long tusks, the creature could've even looked cute. Cuddly.

She quickly retracted that assessment when the hair on the animal's body shot up like spikes and a hot, angry snarl hissed out of him.

Javelina.
Almost twenty-eight years she’d lived here in Arizona now and not once had she ever seen a Javelina in person.

Who said there was no such thing as small miracles?

Tessa stopped moving altogether and quickly took inventory of her surroundings and situation. She was in a tree and injured…check. More checks sounded in her head as she raced through her options and limitations. She’d almost landed on her plan for escape when she heard a muffled voice shout out from above, “
Tessa!
Are you okay?”

That voice. She knew that voice. It was a voice her subconscious seemed particularly fond of—if her insanely overheated dreams over the past few months were any indication.

Brian Sullivan.
Brian Sullivan was here and calling out her name in that wickedly deep alpha male voice of his.

Hot damn, her subconscious was definitely recording that one to put on instant replay later.

Much later.

When she wasn’t one big walking bruise with a giant thorny branch crammed against her butt cheeks and a vicious, growling animal not far away.

A snap of dry twigs alerted her attention back down the ravine.

Crap. Okay, make that
two
vicious, growling animals.

She added a perfectly reasonable freak-out over the situation as another thing she’d put on hold until later. Ignoring the twenty different kinds of pain attacking her brain from all her injuries, she scanned the gulch wall she’d tumbled down and spidey-sprang to the surface with the least amount of cacti and succulents, tucking and rolling when her ninja skills proved to be seriously lacking.

Brian grabbed her by the shirt to keep her from sliding back down the gulch at the very last second. Then he growled in her ear, “
Climb
!”

OPTING FOR THE ROUTE that would get them a safe distance away from the javelina the fastest, Brian forcibly shoved Tessa up the ravine wall with the steepest angle. Scrappy little thing. She was surprisingly quick in her ascent up the rocky terrain, considering how bad of a tumble she’d just taken.

Keeping his ears open for the sound of the javelina charging after them, Brian didn’t let up for a moment until he had the top ridge of the gulch in his sights.

What had his blood pressure shooting back through the roof again, however, was seeing the dainty little hand covered in dirt and blood reaching out to him from above.

Grabbing hold of a thick tree root jutting out of the mountain instead, he hoisted himself up and over the edge.

He paused to catch his breath, allowing the adrenaline to drain out of his system as he watched her smile at him in relief and scoot her way back from the edge of the cliff.

She’d had her legs wrapped around a tree to brace herself.

So she wasn’t completely insane. That meant the jury was only out on him now.

Here they were, just having scrambled their way up a steep ravine to avoid a pair of rabid javelina and his brain was thinking about how it would feel to have those sexy legs of hers wrapped around him instead.

He was definitely the one losing his mind.

It took a few silent minutes of their walking from the trails back to the care facility lawn for him to finally notice all the deep, gouging scrapes and gashes slashed across her calves and thighs. “
Shit
, you’re bleeding. Come here, let me—”

She jumped back and gave him a look. Not a wary one but one that looked…confused. Out of sorts.

Maybe she’d hit her head when she fell.

“I’m fine.” She backed up again when he took another step forward.

There was that look again. Like she was expecting him to suddenly sprout a second or third head.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue back there, Brian. I really appreciate it. But really, you don’t have to do this ‘knight in shining armor’ thing. I’m good.”