A Place To Call Home. Laurie Paige
Against his will, he recalled blue eyes that had once looked like bruises in a face so pale he’d been afraid she was going to die on him.
He sucked in a harsh breath as a gang of tiny darts hit his heart all at once, making him aware that he’d once been truly worried for the lovely woman seated beside him, who normally kept up a pleasant facade and rarely gave a hint of her own deeper feelings. Ignoring the softer part of himself that still felt sorry for her in some ways, he pulled into a parking space and went around to help her out of the SUV.
“This is lovely,” she said.
He stopped when she did and gazed at the colors of the sunset, all gold and magenta, highlighting the sky beyond the mesa country that dominated the horizon.
“Yes,” he said, but his eyes had returned to her.
He mentally muttered a curse at the attraction he couldn’t deny. Okay, she was gorgeous, but beauty is as beauty does.
When he’d first met Zia, she’d been headstrong, thoughtless and self-centered. In his opinion. But that was long ago. In all fairness, he admitted he really didn’t know her as an adult.
Taking her arm, he ushered her inside where they were led to a table next to the window.
“A full panoramic view,” she said in approval. “I love the colors of a desert sunset, don’t you?”
He answered with a grunt of agreement and accepted the menu the hostess handed him.
He observed her over the edge of the menu. There was something different about her, he decided, feeling the annoying little darts again, something sad or perhaps nostalgic. Maybe she was remembering the past, too.
“I can recommend the prime rib,” he said, bringing them back to the mundane present.
They both ordered the prime rib special. He selected a red wine, a merlot that he recalled she liked.
“The wedding was lovely, wasn’t it?” she said after the wine had been served, along with a basket of hot bread.
“The bride and groom are probably at their computers as we speak, going over contracts,” he said, grinning.
Her laughter was unexpected, a gift reaching right down into his chest. Now where had that strange idea come from?
“I’m surprised they’re taking a month for a honeymoon. But I’m glad they are,” she added thoughtfully.
“I don’t think it matters. Both of them are such workaholics, they would probably rather be up to their ears in one of their projects than anywhere else. I still have trouble seeing Krista as a hard-nosed businesswoman.”
“Ah, but you didn’t hear her tell the florist that if he wanted any future orders from the Aquilons, he’d better fulfill the agreement they had and pronto! He came up with the rest of the floral arrangements with no delays.”
When they chuckled together, he felt tension flow out of him. So, the dinner was going to go okay. After tonight, he would be busy with his new job and she would be engrossed in hers.
For a second, he wondered if fate was playing some diabolical trick on them, bringing them to the same town at the same time via the promotions. Caileen had been glad, but he thought that was because she was a mother with one chick, and that chick was very beautiful…not to mention distant and rather standoffish.
Maybe that was why she hadn’t married, which was another reason her mother worried about her. At the wedding reception, he’d heard Caileen whisper to his uncle that she hoped Zia would find someone soon.
“Aren’t you rather young to be a district manager?” Zia asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Irritation washed over him, but he gave her a lazy smile while slightly tipping his glass toward her. “I’m only three months younger than you and you’re the school curriculum director for the whole county.”
“That’s not as impressive as being a district manager on the state level. I was wondering at the responsibility…but then, you’ve never been afraid to take on any amount of responsibility, have you?”
Blue eyes met his, and for a moment, he knew they were both remembering another place and another night that now seemed more of a nightmare than reality. He pushed the memory back into the black box of the past.
“You were seventeen when you ran away with Tony and Krista and lived on your own for a year. I still don’t see how you kept from starving.”
“In the summer, we lived off the land. I worked in a grocery store during the winter. I got all the discarded produce I wanted for free. A few bruises on the apples didn’t bother us.”
“You made up the year you lost in record time and graduated from college the same year I did. You were taking classes in high school and college at the same time. Remember that history class we were both in?”
“Yeah. I was in a hurry to get started.”
“With what?” she asked softly, a sardonic note in her voice.
“My career. My life,” he added for no good reason that he could think of.
“Life,” she echoed and her eyes went dark, as if she’d thought of something that made her unhappy.
The horde of darts pricked at him. He shrugged them off. Whatever her life was, it was of her own making. He had a full plate with his new position and the problems that went with it.
After the tender beef and baked potato dinner, he ordered coffee while she asked for tea with milk and brown sugar. He recalled that she preferred the tea over dessert, that she rarely ate dinner rolls and never indulged in something so decadent as butter. However, she loved brownies with pecans and had always praised Krista to the skies when she made them for her.
He wondered why he remembered something like that about her when there were other, more shattering things to muse on. He’d never asked, not then and not once in the intervening years, why she’d called him for help that night long ago. The night she’d lost the child she carried.
Chapter Two
It had been eerily dark that night, with only a sliver of moon showing beyond the trees lining the creek. Jeremy had answered Zia’s summons as quickly as possible, not sure what to expect. She’d said she needed a ride when she’d called him.
He parked his secondhand pickup in front of the cabin. The old fishing camp, part of a state park now, wasn’t going to be opened until extensive renovations were done to the cottages. Since the repairs hadn’t been started yet, he figured it would be a while before they were used again.
No other vehicles were around. Through a crack in the ancient cabin’s curtains, he could detect a light.
Zia.
His insides tightened as he got out and gently closed the door. He wondered why she’d called him. It wasn’t as if they were close or anything, even if his uncle and her mother did have something going between them.
So what could Zia’s call for help mean?
Forcing a calm he was far from feeling, he went to the cabin door and softly knocked. “Zia? It’s me, Jeremy.”
“Wait,” he heard her say in a strange voice, a hoarse whisper as if she were being strangled.
His nerves tightened as the seconds clicked by, then he heard the slide bolt being drawn back. He turned the knob and went inside. Zia, looking like hell and much older than her nineteen years, stared at him, her eyes the only color in her face.
“What is it?” he asked as she sat on the rumpled sleeping bag spread over the steel frame of a cot.
She pressed her lips together, then leaned forward, her hands gripping her knees, obviously in pain. Beneath the T-shirt and leggings she wore, he saw her abdominal muscles contract as if in a spasm. His insides