Currant Creek Valley

A couple kids rode down the hill on bicycles, legs sticking out as they let gravity take over and flew past him, their laughter ringing loudly.

Across the street, an older lady with snow-white hair tended to flowers in a box hanging from her porch railing, and farther down from that, a couple people stood talking beside a mailbox.

It looked peaceful, comfortable. Perfect.

A few weeks ago, he had come up from Denver to check things out. From the moment he had driven into the city limits, he had felt the tension in his shoulders relax, the dark edges retreat.

He wasn’t naive enough to think trouble couldn’t find him here. While the surface of Hope’s Crossing might look like something out of a Norman Rockwell illustration, the reality was never as ideal.

After all, he had met Brodie at the Denver Children’s Hospital when Sam had been working on renovations to an office suite there at the same time Brodie’s teenage daughter was a patient, after she had suffered a terrible accident here in Hope’s Crossing.

Bad things happened in small towns just as easily as big cities like Denver. Marriages still fell apart, plenty of kids dabbled in drugs and alcohol, people still got cancer and died.

He grimaced at that thought and turned around to head back into the restaurant just as his cell phone rang. After a quick glance at the caller ID, his frown disappeared.

“Why, hello,” he answered. “If it isn’t my favorite son.”

“Favorite and only,” Ethan said primly.

Sam smiled, picturing his nearly seven-year-old’s dark curls and the blue, blue eyes he had shared with his mother. “Maybe so. But even if you had a half-dozen siblings, you’d still probably be my favorite.”

“That’s hypothetical, though. We can’t really know that for sure, can we?”

Hypothetical was apparently the word of the week. Last week it had been enumerate and the week before precocious. Spoken in that sweet young voice that still had a trace of a lisp, the hundred-dollar words always made Sam smile.

Love for his terrifyingly brilliant son was a sweet ache in his chest. “How is everything at Uncle Nick and Aunt Cheri’s?”

Ethan’s sigh was heavy and put-upon. “All right, I guess. I had to play Barbie dolls today with Amanda. I was Malibu Ken and she had Hula Barbie and they were supposed to be going on a date. I decided they should go on a date to the beach and we had them go surfing down the rain gutter in front of the house. How was I supposed to know Malibu Ken would fit down the sewer grate?”

“I bet that went over real well with your cousin.”

“Aunt Cheri made me stay in my room for an entire half hour. I don’t see why I had to be punished when it was simply an estimating error.”

“Life isn’t fair, is it?”

“Rarely, in my experience,” Ethan said glumly.

His son was six for a few more weeks but acted as if he was thirty-six most of the time.

“When can I come see Hope’s Crossing again, Dad?”

He grimaced, though there was no one but the lady across the street with her flowers to see. He missed his son already. “I’ll bring you up first chance I get, I promise.”

“I want to live with you for good in our own house, where I don’t have to play Barbies or share a room with somebody who still watches Barney.”

“I want that, too, more than anything. I’m working on it, I swear. Soon, okay? Six weeks. You have to finish the school year first and I need to find a decent place for us to live.”

“Six weeks seems like forever.”

“I know. To me, too. But we’ll spend every weekend together and before you know it, school will be out and you can come here for the summer when Uncle Nick and Aunt Cheri take off to Belgium. Then next fall you’ll have a whole new school and new friends.”

“I don’t want to go to a new school,” Ethan said, that stubbornness creeping into his voice.

“I know you don’t, son. But Hope’s Crossing is too far for us to drive to St. Augustine’s every day. If we’re going to live here, we’ll have to find a school here, too. Don’t worry. I’ve heard this one is terrific. You’ll see.”

Beyond the two-hour distance involved, Ethan attended a very elite private school. He had thrived at St. Augustine’s, where they celebrated his brain and had spent the past two years trying to stimulate it.

Move or not, he couldn’t continue there now. For one thing, Sam’s former in-laws had insisted on paying the hefty private school tuition but those funds had dried up a year ago.

They loathed Sam now. While they claimed they wanted to continue a relationship with Ethan, he couldn’t allow it, not when they filled his son’s head with lies and vitriol.

The whole thing was such a mess. When his late wife’s father had been arrested, the tuition payments stopped. Sam had managed to scrape together enough to keep Ethan at St. Augustine’s this year but he certainly couldn’t continue paying that much unless he wanted to deplete Kelli’s entire life insurance policy before Ethan even reached college age.

“You were going to have to go to a new school either way, kid. You know that. You couldn’t stay at St. Augustine’s. The schools here in Hope’s Crossing are supposed to be excellent. We’ll have all summer together to get ready for second grade.”

“I miss you,” Ethan said, his voice small.

“Oh, son. I miss you, too. It’s only a few weeks and then things will be better. You’ll see.”

“I guess.”

“Hang in there and be good for Uncle Nick and Aunt Cheri. I’ll call you every night to check on your homework and I’ll come home next weekend, okay?”

After a few more moments, he hung up with his son. As he gazed down at the picturesque little town, he decided he could use some of the town’s eponymous Hope.

He sincerely hoped he was making the right move here. He had to make a living and that was becoming increasingly difficult in Denver. His reputation in Denver construction circles suffered coming and going.

From J.T.’s friends, he was considered a traitor for whistle-blowing on his own father-in-law and starting the chain of events that had led to J.T.’s conviction. Sam still didn’t know what else he could have done except go to authorities in Denver with his suspicions about his father-in-law. After all, Sam had first given J.T. the chance to make things right when he had discovered Tanner and Sons Construction was dangerously cutting corners—and using shoddy imported materials—but billing full price on government contracts.

From the honorable contractors left, Sam was painted with the same ugly brush as his father-in-law because he had been J.T.’s second-in-command for the last three years and should have known what was happening under his nose at the company. They didn’t seem to make allowances for a floundering man who had been helping his wife fight cancer and then grieving when she lost the battle.

Hope’s Crossing offered a chance to make a new start, away from all that ugliness. Thanks to Brodie and a few of his contacts, he had jobs lined up for several months. He had no doubt he could keep them coming, as long as he focused on the work at hand.

That was all the more reason to keep things casual and friendly with Alex McKnight. He couldn’t afford the distraction and the complication of a woman like her. He would meet her the next night for a game of pool and some friendly conversation, but that was as far as he would let things go.

His future—and, more importantly, his son’s—depended on it.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT NIGHT, THURSDAY, Alex escaped to the employee restroom after her shift and quickly changed out of her white jacket and black slacks to jeans and a tailored soft green shirt. She added a chunky hammered silver necklace she had made a few months ago and a matching pair of earrings and bracelet.

Much to her dismay, she had spent hours before her shift trying to figure out what to wear for her little outing with Sam. Discarded clothes were still strewn all over every flat surface of her bedroom.

She wanted to set just the right tone for the way she had decided the evening should proceed. She would be friendly and fun but completely casual. No more of that high-octane flirting from the other day.

She couldn’t deny she was fiercely attracted to Sam. He was big, gorgeous, tough...but he was also building the kitchen of her dreams. She couldn’t afford to screw this up.

Earlier that day she had stopped in at Brazen to check things out and had been astonished at the progress he and his crew had made in just a single morning of work. They already had one whole section of cabinets installed and had been close to finishing another.