Sweet Laurel Falls

He bit back a four-letter word. Of all the moments for Sage to blurt out that little bit of information!

Harry’s eyes widened and he looked back and forth between the two of them. Maura was the one who had turned pale now. She looked as if she wanted to disappear behind a bookshelf, and Jack wanted to join her.

Harry did not need this information, something else he could figure out how to manipulate for his own purposes.

“What did she say?” Harry asked.

“Nothing,” Maura muttered. “Now would be a really good time for you to go back to sleep.”

“Who are you?” Harry asked Sage, his thick eyebrows arched like bristly caterpillars.

“My daughter,” Maura said quickly.

He narrowed his gaze. “Your daughter died in that car accident up Silver Strike Reservoir this spring. I was there, wasn’t I? I saw the whole thing.”

That was news to Jack. What had been his father’s involvement in the accident that killed Layla Parker?

“This is my older daughter, Sage.”

He should just keep his mouth zipped here. He knew damn well telling him about Sage was a mistake—but he also knew Harry well enough to be certain he would just keep pushing and pushing until somebody told him.

“And mine, apparently,” Jack finally said.

Maura sent him a quick, surprised look, as if she expected him to deny the whole thing. Harry, on the other hand, just stared.

“Have you taken a DNA test?” he asked.

None of your damn business, he wanted to say. He didn’t want his father mixed up in this complicated mess, but he was coming to realize he didn’t have much control over things. Harry just might have more contact with Sage than he would. He lived in Hope’s Crossing, after all. While Jack would be back in San Francisco, Harry would be free to pick up the phone whenever Sage was in town and meet her for lunch at the café or the resort or any blasted place he wanted.

“She’s my daughter. I’m convinced of it, and that’s all that matters.”

Harry opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, the door to the bookstore burst open, and a pair of burly paramedics hurried inside with emergency kits and dedicated focus.

“Back here,” Maura called and waved. They shifted directions and headed toward them.

“I don’t need the damn paramedics,” Harry grumbled.

“Well, you’ve got them,” Maura retorted. “Hey, Dougie.”

One of the paramedics, a guy who looked like he could probably bench-press half the bookstore, grinned at her. “Hey, Maur. What have we got?”

“Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I just thought it would be better to call you to check things out.”

“That’s what we’re here for. What happened?”

“Mr. Lange isn’t feeling well. He had some kind of incident. We were talking one moment and he fell over the next. I think he was unconscious for about thirty seconds to a minute.”

“I didn’t pass out,” Harry asserted. “I just lost my balance.”

“And then went to the Bahamas for the next little while,” Jack answered.

“Either way, it’s a good idea to check things out,” the other paramedic said.

“That’s what I figured,” Maura answered. “He hit his head on a table pretty hard when he fell.”

She stepped away from Harry and let the paramedics do their thing.

“Is he going to be okay?” Sage asked him, her voice low.

He figured his father would be harassing the paramedics all the way to the hospital, haranguing them on everything from their driving to the accommodations. “It’s just a precaution. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

For the first time, he noticed Sage looked a little pale too. This had to be weird for her, to find herself suddenly related to the old bastard.

“I don’t need a stupid gurney.”

“Sorry, Mr. Lange. We have to follow the rules.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“You can always refuse treatment,” Dougie, Maura’s friend, said to Harry.

Jack fully expected his father would do just that, but after a pause, Harry shrugged. “No. I’ll come. I don’t want to see the idiots in the E.R., though. Call Dr. Osaka and tell him to meet us there.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

A moment later, the paramedics finally succeeded in loading Harry onto the gurney and rolled him out of the bookstore.

“Are you going to follow the ambulance to the hospital?” Maura asked.

“He doesn’t need me. He’s made that more than clear.” He turned to Sage. “So we’re meeting for dinner. What time works for you?”

She still looked a little green around the gills, and he had a feeling food was the last thing on her mind. “Well, I was thinking I could work until four or so. Any time after that?”

“Let’s say six-thirty. I’ll pick you up at your house.”

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

He picked up his jacket, shook it off from being on the ground, then shrugged into it. With a stiff nod to Maura, he headed out into the snow-crusted streets of Hope’s Crossing.

The encounter with Harry served as a stark reminder of everything he’d been thinking. What the hell did he know about being a father? When he was a kid, his own example had been distant, preoccupied with work, then increasingly sharp—bordering on cruel—as Jack had reached adolescence.

By the time his mother eventually took her own life out of despair and loneliness and mental illness, Harry had given up any effort at establishing a relationship and had shown nothing but disdain for him.

Maybe Jack ought to just cut Sage a break now and slip back out of her life as quickly as he had come. She hadn’t had a chance yet to establish any real feelings for him. She had her mother, her grandmother, a strong support network here in Hope’s Crossing. Why on earth did she need him?

He stopped himself before he could go further down that road. The idea of leaving now, after he had only just found her, was unbearable. He wanted to be a father to her, in whatever limited capacity he could manage.

If that meant achieving some sort of peaceful accord with Maura, he was willing to do that too. He had to think that somewhere inside the prickly, sad-eyed woman she had become were some traces of the smart, funny, tender girl she had once been.