The Pines Of Winder Ranch: A Cold Creek Homecoming / A Cold Creek Reunion

“Yes. I’m sorry my children—and that’s what you all are, you know—have never found the kind of joy and love Guff and I had.”

“I don’t think many people have,” he answered. “What is it they say? Often imitated, never duplicated? What the two of you had was something special. Unique.”

“Special, yes. Unique, not at all. A good marriage just takes lots of effort on both parts.” She tilted her head and studied him carefully. “You’ve never even been serious about a woman, have you? I know you date plenty of beautiful women up there in Seattle. What’s wrong with them all?”

He gave a rough laugh. “Not a thing, other than I have no desire to get married.”

“Ever?”

“Marriage isn’t for me, Jo. Not with my family history.”

“Oh, poof.”

He laughed at the unexpectedness of the word.

“Poof?”

“You heard me. You’re just making excuses. Never thought I raised any of my boys to be cowards.”

“I’m not a coward,” he exclaimed.

“What else would you call it?”

He didn’t answer, though a couple of words that came immediately to mind were more along the lines of smart and self-protective.

“Yes, you had things rough,” Jo said after a moment. “I’m not saying you didn’t. It breaks my heart what some people do to their families in the name of love. But plenty of other people have things rough and it doesn’t stop them from living their life. Why, take Tess, for instance.”

He gave a mental groan. Bad enough that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her all morning. He didn’t need Jo bringing her up now. Just the sound of her name stirred up those weird, conflicting emotions inside him all over again. Anger and that subtle, insistent, frustrating attraction.

He pushed them all away. “What do you mean, take Tess?”

“That girl. Now she has an excuse to lock her heart away and mope around feeling sorry for herself for the rest of her life. But does she? No. You’ll never find a happier soul in all your days. Why, what she’s been through would have crushed most women. Not our Tess.”

What could she possibly have been through that Jo deemed so traumatic? She was a pampered princess, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in town, the town’s bank president, apparently adored by everyone.

She couldn’t know what it was like to have to call the police on your own father or hold your mother as she breathed her last.

Before he could ask Jo to explain, she began to cough—raspy, wet hacking that made his own chest hurt just listening to it.

She covered her mouth with a folded handkerchief from her pocket as the coughing fit went on for what seemed an eon. When she pulled the cloth away, he didn’t miss the red spots speckling the white linen.

“I’m going to carry you inside and call Easton.”

Jo shook her head. “No,” she choked out. “Will pass. Just...minute.”

He gave her thirty more seconds, then reached for his cell phone. He started to hit Redial to reach Easton when he realized Jo’s coughs were dwindling.

“Told you...would pass,” she said after a moment. During the coughing attack, what little color there was in her features had seeped out and she looked as if she might blow away if the wind picked up even a knot or two.

“Let’s get you inside.”

She shook her head. “I like the sunshine.”

He sat helplessly beside her while she coughed a few more times, then folded the handkerchief and stuck it back into her pocket.

“Sorry about that,” she murmured after a painful moment. “I so wish you didn’t have to see me like this.”

He wrapped an arm around her frail shoulders and pulled her close to him, planting a kiss on her springy gray curls.

“We don’t have to talk. Just rest. We can stay for a few more moments and enjoy the sunshine.”

She smiled and settled against him and they sat in contented silence.

For those few moments, he was deeply grateful he had come. As difficult as it had been to rearrange his schedule and delegate as many responsibilities as he could to the other executives at Southerland, he wouldn’t have missed this moment for anything.

With his own mother, he hadn’t been given the luxury of saying goodbye. She had been unconscious by the time he could reach her.

He supposed that played some small part in his insistence that he stay here to the end with Jo, as difficult as it was to face, as if he could atone in some small way for all he hadn’t been able to do for his own mother as a frightened kid.

Her love of sunshine notwithstanding, Jo lasted outside only another fifteen minutes before she had a coughing fit so intense it left her pale and shaken. He didn’t give her a choice this time, simply scooped her into his arms and carried her inside to her bedroom.

“Rest there and I’ll find Easton to help you.”

“Bother. She...has enough...to do. Just need water and...minute to catch my breath.”

He went for a glass of water and returned to Jo’s bedroom with it, then sent a quick text to Easton explaining the situation.

“I can see you sending out an SOS over there,” Jo muttered with a dark look at the phone in his hand.

“Who, me? I was just getting in a quick game of solitaire while I wait for you to stop coughing.”

She snorted at the lie and shook her head. “You didn’t need to call her. I hate being so much of a nuisance to everyone.”

He finished the text and covered her hand with his. “Serves us right for all the bother we gave you.”

“I think you boys used to stay up nights just thinking about new ways to get into trouble, didn’t you?”

“We had regular meetings every afternoon, just to brainstorm.”

“I don’t doubt it.” She smiled weakly. “At least by the middle of high school you settled down some. Though there was that time senior year you got kicked off the baseball team. That nonsense about cheating, which I know you would never do, and so I tried to tell the coach but he wouldn’t listen. You never did tell us what that was really all about.”

He frowned. He could have told her what it had been about. Tess Jamison and more of her lies about him. If anyone had stayed up nights trying to come up with ways to make someone else’s life harder, it would have been Tess. She had made as much trouble as she could for him, for reasons he still didn’t understand.

“High school was a long time ago. Why don’t I tell you about my latest trip to Cambodia when I visited Angkor Wat?”

He described the ancient temple complex that had been unknown to the outside world until 1860, when a French botanist stumbled upon it. He was describing the nearby city of Angkor Thom when he looked down and saw her eyes were closed, her breathing regular.

He arranged a knit throw over her and slipped off her shoes, which didn’t elicit even a hint of a stir out of her. That she could fall asleep so instantaneously worried him and he hoped their short excursion outside hadn’t been too much for her.