Love Will Find a Way (6 page)

Wesley shook his head. "We can't afford any help, not until my daddy comes back."

His heart stopped. Did Wesley really think his father was coming back?

"He's coming home when it's done," Wesley said fiercely, as if anticipating an argument. "He said we would live in the house together all the time, just like a real family. He promised."

He had no idea what to say, but thankfully, he heard the slamming of a car door and a very familiar, worried voice.

"Wesley! Wesley!" Rachel yelled.

"He's back here," Dylan replied.

Rachel came around the corner with a shocked look on her face. He didn't know if she was more surprised to find him or Wesley.

"What are you doing here?" she asked as he got to his feet.

"I was on my way to your place. I saw this house, and I had a feeling ..."

She frowned and glanced over at Wesley. "And what are you doing here? I told you to stay on our property."

"This is our property."

"You knew what I meant. I don't want you coming over the hill on your own. And I certainly don't want you here alone."

"I'm working on the house. Someone has to," Wesley said defiantly. "Else Daddy can't come back and live with us."

Dylan heard her sharp intake of breath, but he had to give her credit for holding it together.

"I told you that I'll hire someone to finish the house as soon as we get through the harvest season," she said.

"That's too long. Don't you want Daddy to come home?"

"Of course I do. But he's not coming back. He's in heaven. You know that, Wesley."

"No, he's not in heaven. He's on a trip and he's coming back when the house is finished. We have to finish it. We have to." Wesley picked up the oversized hammer and swung it down so close to his fingers that Dylan had to react. He grabbed the hammer from Wesley before he could strike again, but the boy's eyes filled with outrage and unbearable pain.

"I'll finish the house," Dylan heard himself say "I'll finish it for you, Wesley."

"Dylan, don't," Rachel said. "Don't make a promise you can't keep."

"I never do," he replied, making a sudden decision.

"You will?" Wesley asked hopefully "You'll finish the house?"

"Yes."

"Wait a second," Rachel interrupted. "Slow down. I can't pay you, Dylan. I don't have the money. That's why I stopped the construction."

"You don't have to pay me. I want to do it -- not for you, for Wesley."

Rachel looked at her son, who was listening intently to their conversation. "Go get in the car, Wesley."

"But -- "

"Now," she said in a mother's tone that allowed no argument.

"You promised," Wesley told Dylan. "Don't forget."

"I won't."

"Are you crazy?" she asked as soon as Wesley was out of earshot. "You can't finish this house."

"Why can't I?"

"Because, because ..." She waved her hand in the air, searching for words. "Gary said you didn't want to work on it. He offered you the job a long time ago. You said no."

"I've changed my mind."

"Why?"

"Because I want to do something. I
need
to do something," he said, realizing how true that was. "And this I can do."

"But you have other jobs -- "

"And lots of employees."

"This could take weeks."

He nodded slowly as reality seeped into his brain. Maybe he was crazy, volunteering to work on a house that was just down the road from where Rachel lived. She'd no doubt be by all the time. Well, what did it matter? Whether she was down the road or an hour away, he'd probably still be thinking about her. And now that he'd seen the house, just begging to be finished, he couldn't walk away. He had to finish it. He would make Wesley happy and maybe, somewhere, Gary would be happy, too. Gary had wanted Dylan to work on the house all along.

"I keep thinking things can't get any worse, and then they get worse," Rachel murmured, running a hand through her hair. "I knew you would make this harder."

"I don't want to make it harder. I want to make it easier. This is something I can do. Will you let me do it?"

"I should say no."

He saw the expression on her face and suddenly knew for sure that she hadn't forgotten the past any more than he had. "Say yes," he whispered, feeling as reckless as he had once before.

"You'd better come up to the house," Rachel said. She tried to think logically, which was almost
an impossibility
considering the way her pulse was jumping. "We can talk about it, think about it."

"There's nothing to think about. Gary wanted me to build your house, and Wesley wants it finished."

"And what about me?
What about what I want?"

"What do you want, Rachel?" He gazed intently into her eyes. She had to look away, afraid of what he would see there. She was too vulnerable right now to deal with Dylan, too mixed up, too lonely, too scared.

"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "I'm not sure I want to finish the house. Especially since Wesley has it in his head that Gary will come home at the end of it all. I've tried to make him accept the truth. But he won't."

"He needs to let go in his own time."

"But everything I read about kids and grief says you should be up-front with them from the beginning. Don't give them false hope. Don't let them wish for the impossible. Make them face reality."

"You can't make someone forget or give up or accept, Rachel. You can't make them do that just because it makes you feel better."

"It's not about me, it's about Wesley," she said, surprised and annoyed by his tone.

"That's what my mom used to say. 'It's not about me, Dylan; it's about you. You need to forget'."

"Forget what?" Rachel asked in confusion. "What are you talking about?" She'd never heard Dylan speak of his family, and Gary had been silent on the subject as well.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter," he said abruptly.

"I thought your parents were divorced. I didn't know your father had died."

"Not my father."

"Your stepfather? One of your stepsisters?" she queried, trying to remember what little she knew of his family.

"No. It was before the stepfamily. My first family, I guess you could call it. I had a little brother named Jesse. He died when I was ten years old." Dylan walked away from her without any further explanation.

Rachel caught up to him at the front door of the house. "Hang on a second. You can't just say that and leave."

"I shouldn't have said it at all."

"I don't remember you ever mentioning that you had a little brother who died."

"I don't like to talk about it."

"What happened, Dylan? Please tell me."

He hesitated, his jaw stiff, his eyes dark with emotion. "It was a long time ago," he said slowly. "Jesse was eight, the same age as Wesley. He had cerebral palsy. He spent most of his life in a wheelchair, but his spirit was as free as a bird. When he died, everything else died, too."

"Why?"

"The family didn't work without Jesse in it. We'd focused everything we had on him. My parents split up. My mother wanted me to accept Jesse's death so she could go on. I hated her for rushing me." He paused. "Give Wesley a chance to let go of his father when the time is right for him, not when it's right for you."

Rachel was touched by his story. "Of course I will. I wish you'd told me before, Dylan." Another thought occurred to her. "Gary never said anything either. Did he know? Of course he knew," she murmured, answering her own question. "He kept your secrets, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did." Dylan met her gaze head-on, with no apology.

"And you kept his? Well …"

"Well," he echoed, then turned and went down the front steps.

She followed him, catching a glimpse of Wesley's anxious face as he sat in the front seat of her car. She couldn't imagine the horror of losing a child. What Dylan's mother must have gone
through.
What Dylan must have gone
through.
Maybe it was this loss that had darkened his soul. She'd always sensed in him an inexplicable sadness.

Dylan opened his car door and pulled out a palm-sized electronic calendar. He punched in something,
then
looked at her. "I can clear my schedule for the next few weeks."

"Will that be enough to finish the house?"

"Probably not, but I can hire subcontractors, some local carpenters, maybe bring up one of my crews on the weekends. It's definitely doable."

"And who will pay all those people?"

"I will."

She immediately shook her head. "I can't let you do that. You're talking about a lot of money."

"You'll pay me back."

"I'm not sure I can. Not without the insurance."

"We'll get the insurance money."

"You're a real man of action, aren't you?"

He raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like an insult."

Maybe it was. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of Dylan swooping in to rescue her, making her feel like she couldn't rescue herself. She'd been in charge for a long time. She'd been the one to solve any problem in her family for more years than she could count. She didn't need a man, or Dylan, to fix things for her. She could fix them herself.

"I'm not some helpless woman," she said.

"I never said you were. But I build things, that's what I do."

"I wanted your help in finding out the truth about Gary, not this. I never asked for this."

"So I'm offering. Come on, Rachel, what's the big deal?"

She hated the casualness in his voice, hated the way he pretended they were friends, that they hadn't spent the past ten years avoiding each other, that it wouldn't feel strange to suddenly be together.

"Mommy?" Wesley said, opening the car door. "He's going to finish our house, isn't he?"

Rachel was caught, pure and simple. She couldn't give Wesley back his father, but she could give him the house the three of them had planned. Maybe it was wrong to encourage Wesley's obsession, but he was only eight years old. Time would convince him of a reality that no amount of words could cover.

"Let me do this," Dylan said. "I need to build this house as much as Wesley needs it to be built."

She saw in his eyes
a desperation
similar to that of her son. Maybe that's the way it was with men and boys. They needed the action to take away the hurt. She could have used a pair of really strong, comfortable arms and a good, long cry. But she wasn't going to ask Dylan for that. "All right," she said finally. "You can build the house, but I will pay you back someday because that's something I need to do."

* * *

"Tell me what you need," Travis Barker said to Carly as she tried to enter the private house next door to the Rogelio Winery.

"I need you to get out of my way," Carly replied, holding her pie carefully in her hands. She'd tried to see Antonio the night before, but he'd gone to San Francisco. She'd waited until now to come back, hoping to catch him just in time for a late-afternoon snack. Or maybe she could convince him to go on an evening picnic with her. There was a beautiful spot by a nearby creek with a soft bed of grass. She could picture it in her mind, a tiny slice of heaven that could be hers if only she could get this idiot, Travis, out of her way. But Travis wasn't moving. His solid linebacker body was firmly planted in front of her and his nose was twitching at the sweet smell of her apple pie.

"What you got there, Carly?" Travis asked with his usual slow drawl. The Barker family had moved to Sebastopol from Texas when Travis was thirteen, but there was still a lot of the Lone Star State in his voice and his manners. She supposed some girls would find that attractive, maybe even a little sexy, but it did absolutely nothing for her, she told herself firmly.

"It's a pie," she said, trying to peer around him.

"I'm kind of hungry," he said hopefully.

"Forget about it. It's for Antonio. Is he here?"

"I don't think he's back from the city."

"You don't think or you don't know?"

"He's not here. Clear enough for you, babe?" he asked with a grin that told her he knew he got to her and enjoyed it.

"I'm not your babe."

"You could be."

She rolled her eyes at that. Travis had taken notice of her when she'd turned fifteen and grown breasts. Before that, he'd just been the older, obnoxious big brother of her best friend, Sandra Barker. Sandra was now devoting herself to her husband of six months and her pregnancy, just another one of her friends to opt for marriage and children and life in Sebastopol. She had other plans, which included getting Travis out of her way.

She didn't know why he didn't give it up already. He'd been asking her out for years. She'd never said yes, and she was never planning to say yes. She knew what she wanted in a man and it was not this man.
Not that he hadn't grown into a reasonably good-looking guy.
Gone were the braces and the too thin, lanky body that had always been more clumsy than graceful. Now his freckles had faded, giving him a nice, even tan to go with his sandy-brown hair and golden-brown eyes. He'd buffed up over the years, his muscles defined, his stance powerful, his shoulders broad enough for a woman to rest her head on. But -- and it was a big
but
-- he had no ambition.

Travis was a simple carpenter. He loved living in the small town. His idea of a hot Friday night was bowling or a miniature-golf date. She wanted much more than that. She yearned for big-city noises, busy shopping malls, fancy restaurants, museums and art galleries. Oh, how she loved standing in an art gallery surrounded by masterpieces. She sneaked into the city every chance she got to do just that, but she couldn't tell anyone, especially not her family. They'd see it as a betrayal.

Rachel was forever speaking of duty and loyalty and keeping the orchards alive for their father, for their family, for the goddamn legacy that had been passed down from generation to generation. Rachel didn't understand that they didn't share the same dreams, and Carly hadn't found the courage to tell her.