Sweet Laurel Falls

Sage. Together with Jackson Lange.

The two of them, in the same room. Not just the same room—the same freaking three-foot radius.

She’d never had a panic attack, despite the past eight months of purgatory, but she could feel one coming on now. Her heart raced and she could feel each pulse throbbing in her chest, her neck, her face. “S-Sage.”

Her daughter gave her a long look, but for the first time ever Sage’s usually expressive eyes were shuttered.

She knew.

Maura wasn’t sure how she was so certain, especially as her daughter’s features were closed and set, but somehow she could tell Sage knew the truth. Finally. After nearly two decades.

“Who’s your friend, sweetheart?” Mary Ella asked as she stepped away from her oldest grandchild and gave Jack the sort of quizzical look she wore when trying to place someone, as if she thought she recognized him but wasn’t quite sure.

“This is Jackson Lange. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s a pretty famous architect.”

Maura was aware of the little stir of excitement among her friends. It was fairly common knowledge that Hope’s Crossing had spawned the man many considered the next Frank Gehry.

Mary Ella’s expression cooled and she took a slight step back. “Of course. Harry’s son.”

“I haven’t heard that particular phrase in a long time.” Those were the first words he spoke, and she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that his voice seemed lower, sexier, as it thrummed down her spine.

“Yes. Harry Lange’s son.” Sage gave her mother that cool look again. “And he’s not my friend. Not really. He’s my father.”

Maura hissed in a breath. Okay. There it was.

This Christmas had just climbed straight to the top of the suck-o-meter.

CHAPTER TWO

OKAY, THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE.

Jack stood beside his daughter—his daughter. Hell. How had that happened?—and gazed around at the group of women all staring at him as if he’d just walked in and mooned them all.

When Sage had suggested stopping in at the bookstore to talk to her mother first before he dropped her off at her house and found a hotel for himself for a few days, he’d had no idea Maura would be in the middle of a freaking Christmas party. He noted the cluster of gift bags, the personalized glass decorations on the tree. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for this gathering, and he had just barged in and ruined it.

“Your…father?” an older woman said faintly.

Though twenty years had gone by, he clearly recognized Mary Ella McKnight, with those green eyes all her children had inherited, now peering at him through a pair of trendy little horn-rimmed glasses. She had taught him English in high school, and he remembered with great fondness their discussions on Milton and Wilkie Collins.

She was still very pretty, with a soft, ageless kind of beauty.

“You didn’t know either?” Sage raised an eyebrow at her grandmother’s obvious shock. “I guess it was a big secret to everyone. I thought I was the last to know.”

He had met Sage only days ago, but her sudden barbed tone seemed very unlike the sweet, earnest young woman he had come to know. That she would burst in and spring him on Maura like this without any advance warning seemed either thoughtless or cruel. He should say something to ease the tension of the moment, but for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything polite and innocuous that didn’t start with “How the hell could you keep this from me?”

A woman with chestnut hair who looked vaguely familiar stepped forward and rested a hand on Maura’s arm. “Are you all right, my dear?” the woman asked.

Maura gave a jerky shake of her head and swallowed, her features pale. According to what Sage had told him, Maura was still grieving the loss of her other daughter, he suddenly remembered, and he felt like an even bigger ass for bursting in here like this.

“Maybe the three of you should go back to your office where you could have a little privacy for this discussion,” the other woman gently suggested.

Maura gazed at her blankly for a moment, then seemed to gather her composure from somewhere deep inside. “I’m…I’m sorry. I wasn’t…This is a bit of a shock. Yes. We should go back to my office. Thank you, Claire. Do you mind helping your mother lead the book discussion? When Alex gets here, she should have the, uh, refreshments.”

He really should have made sure Sage had talked to her mother about all of this before he showed up, but then, he hadn’t really been thinking clearly in the three days since the carefully arranged life he thought he had constructed for himself had imploded around him.

Three days ago, he had been living his life, continuing to build Lange & Associates, preparing for an undergraduate lecture at the University of Colorado College of Architecture and Planning. It was the first time he had stepped back in the state since he had escaped twenty years ago, a bitter and angry young man.

His lecture had gone well, especially as he focused on one of his passions, sustainable design. He was fairly certain he hadn’t come across as a pompous iconoclast. Among the students who had pressed toward the dais to talk to him afterward had been this young woman with dark wavy hair and green eyes.

She told him she had studied his work, that she had always felt a bond to him because she was also from Hope’s Crossing, where she knew he had grown up, and that while she hadn’t met him, she saw his father around town often.

He studied her features as she spoke to him about her dreams and their shared passion for architecture, and he had been aware of an odd sense of the familiar but with a twist, as if he were looking at someone he knew through a wavy, distorted mirror.

When she told him her name—Sage McKnight—he had stared at her for a full thirty seconds before he had asked, “Who are your parents?”

“I don’t know my father. He took off before I was born. But my mother’s name is Maura McKnight. I think she might be around your age or maybe a little younger.”

Younger, he remembered thinking as everything inside him froze. She had been a year younger.

“She’s thirty-seven now, if that helps you place her,” Sage had offered helpfully. “She graduated from high school nineteen years ago. I know, because it was about a month before I was born.”

Just like that, he had pieced the dates and the times together, and he had known. He didn’t need to bother with DNA tests. He could do the damn math. Anyone with a brain could clearly see she was his child. They had the same nose, the same dark, wavy hair, the same dimple in their chins.

His daughter. After three days, he still couldn’t believe it.

And neither, apparently, could all those gaping women back there. Hadn’t she told anyone who had fathered her child?

Now he followed Maura through the bookstore, noting almost subconsciously certain architectural details of the historic building, like the walls that had been peeled back to bare brick and the windows with their almost Gothic arches. With jewel-toned hanging fixtures on track lights and plush furniture set around in conversation nooks, Maura had created a cozy, warm space that encouraged people to stop and ponder, sip a coffee, maybe grab a book off a shelf at random and discover something new.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have found the place appealing, clever and bright and comfortable, but he could only focus on haphazard details as he followed her through a doorway to a long, barren stockroom, and a cluttered office dominated by a wide oak desk and a small window that overlooked Main Street.

Inside her office, Maura turned on both of them. “First of all, Sage, what are you doing here today? What about your biology final tomorrow morning?”

Her daughter—their daughter—shrugged. “I talked Professor Johnson into letting me take it this morning. She was fine with that, especially after I explained I had extenuating circumstances.”

Maura’s gaze darted to him, then quickly away again. “How do you think you did? Did you even have time to study after your chemistry final? You needed a solid A on the final to bring your grade above a C.”

“Really, Mom? Is that what you want to talk about right now? My grades?”

A hint of color soaked Maura’s cheeks, and she compressed her lips into a thin line as if to clamp back more academic interrogation. Even with the sour expression, she still looked beautiful. Looking at her now, he couldn’t fathom that she was old enough to have a daughter who was a college sophomore, but then she must have been barely eighteen when Sage was born. She was seventeen when he’d left, still six months before her eighteenth birthday.

Maura released a heavy breath and finally sat on the edge of her desk, which put her slightly above him and Sage, who had taken the two guest chairs in her office.

“You’re right. We can talk about school later. I just…this was all unexpected. I didn’t think you would be here until tomorrow, and then I never expected you to bring…”

“My father?”

Maura’s hands flexed on her thighs even as she made a scoffing sort of sound. “I don’t know where you possibly came up with that crazy idea,” she began, but Sage cut her off.