A Place To Call Home

“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 tightened, too. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew it wasn’t good.

He settled beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. Pulling her hair into a bundle, he held it at the back of her neck so he could observe her face. “What’s happening?”

“Miscarriage,” she said. “I think.”

A shiver ran down his back. While he’d taken a first aid course, he wasn’t equipped for this type of emergency. He held her until the contraction subsided, until she sighed and pulled slightly away and gazed at him.

“Thanks for coming.” Her smile was weak, apologetic. “You were the only person I could think of…the only one I trusted.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the hospital or something?” he asked, wondering where all her elite, sophisticated friends were. She was part of the “in” crowd at the university.

“In a minute,” she said and gasped, bending forward from her waist and grasping her knees again. “Help me to the bathroom.”

He cupped an arm around her waist and half carried her into the adjoining room. Sweat trickled down his scalp, his chest, his back.

She gave him a weary, rueful glance from eyes that looked like bruised petals. He stepped back into the other room, leaving the door ajar in case she needed him.

Peering into the dingy mirror, she combed her hair and pulled it back with a stretchy band, then splashed water on her face. Little curling tendrils formed around her face, making her look as vulnerable as eleven-year-old Krista. Her audible sigh dipped right down inside him.

When she came out, he slipped an arm around her waist and helped her to the cot. Following her instructions, he gathered her belongings and erased all signs of her having been in the cabin. He stored the stuff in the truck and came back for her.

“Let me rest a minute, then we’ll go,” she said, then with a brief smile, she added, “Poor Jeremy. After donating blood and saving my life, are you worried that you’ll have to take care of me for the rest of your life?”

“The thought never entered my mind.”

That was the truth. She’d been a spectator at an illegal drag race a couple of months ago. The cars had side-swiped each other and a piece of chrome had flown off and hit her in the neck. It was one of those freakish moments life liked to throw at a person. He and his uncle, being O-negative in blood type, had been called by the hospital to help replace the large amount of blood she’d lost.

At the time, he hadn’t known their lives would become entangled due to family ties, he mused as he took a sip of coffee and returned to the present and the restaurant, aware of glances their way from other patrons. Zia drew attention wherever she went although, as usual, she seemed unaware of it.

He stared at the scar on the side of her neck, still visible above the collar of the shirt all these years later.

“I wore turtlenecks for the rest of that year so no one could see the scar,” she said, her eyes following his line of sight as she added milk and sugar to the cup of steaming tea.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.” He looked at the sky, now a dark blue with a crystal drop of teal clinging to the horizon.

“You were remembering the past,” she said. “I was, too. It was terrible of me to put you in such a position. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“I wondered why you didn’t call Sammy.”

Her lovely face became solemn with a disillusionment she’d never before allowed to surface in his presence. “He’d already walked out on me once. I would hardly give him a chance to do so again. My best friend had driven me to the cabin and promised not to tell anyone where I was. I didn’t want to call her out in the middle of the night. Her parents would have questioned her if they’d heard her leaving at that hour.”

“So that left me.”

“Yes.” She sipped the tea, then gazed at him over the rim of the cup, the steam adding a mysterious aura to her eyes. “I’ve tried not to bother you with my woes since then.”

“Have there been other problems?” he asked.

She shook her head. Wispy curls floated around her temples. He remembered how soft her hair had been the one time he’d touched it. Sometime past midnight of that night long ago, he’d taken her to a twenty-four hour clinic where she’d been checked out and pronounced fine. The doctor had told them that over fifty percent of first pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

“Just the body’s way of preparing for the real thing,” he’d assured them in a hearty manner, treating them as a couple.

Neither he nor Zia had explained the truth. Between the two of them, they had managed to pay the bill. Later he’d received a check from Zia for his share. Two words had been written on the accompanying note. “Thanks forever.”

“Actually my life is quite calm and peaceful. Just the way I like it.” Her smile was droll.

He smiled, too. “Same here.”

“No serious involvement to give you heart pains?” she teased, surprising him with the question.

He grimaced. The woman he’d been dating had made it clear she wasn’t interested in moving from Cedar City in the southwestern part of the state to another small town in the northeastern section, so that had ended the relationship. “None. You?”

Her smile dimmed a bit. “I was going pretty steady with a high school teacher in Provo when this job offer came up. When he didn’t get down on his knees and beg me to stay, I was disappointed. Then I realized the promotion meant more to me than he did.”

“You didn’t love him,” Jeremy murmured.

“I cared about him, but I didn’t want a lifelong commitment.” Her eyes seemed to darken. “I’m not sure I ever will.”

“You can’t let a jerk like Sammy influence the rest of your relationships,” he advised.

“No, I haven’t. At least, I don’t think I have.” She sighed. “Mom’s worried, though. She made some strong hints during the wedding festivities that I might be too picky. I didn’t remind her that her first attempt at marriage ended in divorce.”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, her tone cooler. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sharp. I just haven’t met the one, I suppose.”

“Yeah, same here.”

“All my friends thought you were a hunk,” she murmured on a determinedly lighter note. “They kept dropping by the house when we were home on vacations. Did you notice?”

He shook his head. “I was concentrating too hard on getting my courses in, making decent grades and graduating. Nothing was going to stand in my way.”

“That’s what my mother said I should do when I was going with Sammy. I’ve never had the courage to tell her she was right.”

“It was a long time ago,” Jeremy advised, catching a hint of regret in her manner. “We were young.”

“Young,” she echoed, brushing back a curl from her cheek. “And foolish. Why do those two go together so easily?”

When she laughed, he did, too. But he didn’t share the irony. He felt sorry for her. She’d learned a hard lesson in trust, one she’d obviously never forgotten. However, that was neither here nor there. He felt he could truthfully report to her mom that Zia was safe and well in her new environment.

“Ready to go?” he asked as she patted back a yawn.

Zia studied the three-story building where she would be working come August. She had seven weeks to find a place to live, get her furniture out of storage and settle in. That should be plenty of time.

Meanwhile, she was reading over all her books on continuous courses of study for students from first to twelfth grade.

Research had shown that more than about six weeks off from school and the kids forgot a lot of what they had learned. That meant teachers had to spend at least a month reviewing old material before beginning new stuff each and every school year.

She wanted to decrease the review time to two weeks and hoped to make changes in the scheduling of the semesters, too.

A vehicle pulled into the parking space next to her. Startled, she glanced around to see Jeremy in the SUV.

He rolled down the window. “Checking out your new domain?”

She nodded, feeling a little shy because he’d read her so easily. “I wanted to see where the building was located and how the town was laid out.”

“Where’s your car?”

“I walked down from the hotel. I needed the exercise after spending all those hours in traffic yesterday.”

“Good thinking. I’m heading for the bridge site south of here, down toward Desolation Canyon. I saw you when I pulled out of the parking lot at the DOT building and wondered if you’d like to go along. The scenery is pretty nice.”

The educational offices were across the street from the courthouse. The squat building down from the courthouse was the one he pointed out as the DOT regional headquarters. She hadn’t realized it would be near her workplace.

“You probably don’t want to be trapped in a car again after your long trip yesterday,” Jeremy said when she failed to respond.

She turned to him. “Sorry, I was thinking about work. If you’re sure I won’t be in the way, I’d love a scenic tour of the area,” she said on an impulse she couldn’t quite explain.

“Hop in,” he invited with an engaging smile.

As they drove out of town, she had to chuckle at the dinosaur that welcomed visitors.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “It takes some getting used to.”

“Why pink?”

“Beats me.”

It was nice, she realized, to laugh with him, to have someone to be at ease with. Jeremy was the only person who knew all the ugly details of her secret past, so she didn’t have to be on guard with him every minute the way she was with her family and friends back in Idaho. In fact, she hadn’t really been free and easy with anyone in ages, perhaps not since she was nineteen.

That was the past, she reminded herself hastily. When she’d agreed to take the new position, she’d decided the move would be a starting point, a new day in her life. Regret and mistakes would be wiped out, and she’d start over with a clean slate.

Could that be done? Her emotional upheaval since the wedding had upset those grand schemes, and now she was unsure she’d done the correct thing.

Her gaze was drawn to her companion. What an irony that the one person who knew all the details of her foolish, betrayed heart should be here, reminding her of long-ago dreams and the confidence she’d once had in them.

“Look,” he said softly, pointing out the rugged view in front of the truck. “The Uinta Mountains of this area are unique in that they run east-west rather than north-south like most ranges. We also have eleven peaks over thirteen-thousand feet. King’s Peak, at 13,498, is the highest in the state.” He paused. “Am I boring you with the travelogue?”

“Not at all. I like knowing about the area where I live. Most people don’t realize there are canyons and cliffs up here that are as impressive as the Grand Canyon.”

“Yeah, Desolation Canyon of the Green River for one. It’s a prime rafting area.”

“Have you gone down it in a raft?”

“Several times. It’s fun.”

“If you like life-threatening adventure,” she murmured wryly.

His chuckle was low and husky. Intimate. It sent a funny sensation down her spine. Being with Jeremy, away from their common environment, put a different angle on their knowing each other, as if the past was too far away to count.

She frowned as an uneasy feeling disturbed her pleasure with the scenery. She wasn’t an adventurer, she decided. She liked life to be predictable and stable. She no longer considered living in a van and following the best surf to be the height of fun as she had as a four-year-old. She was no longer positive she knew everything worth knowing as she had been at nineteen.

Young and foolish? Yeah, been there, done that.

When he pulled off the road at a vista point, she got out of the SUV and stood on the lookout, wary and disturbed.

To the west rose the Badland cliffs. To the east was the gorge of the river. She and Jeremy stood on a mile-high plateau between the two. A breeze from the canyon caressed their faces, cooling the heat that enveloped her when he moved near.

“Look,” he said, speaking close to her ear, “I think there’s a bighorn on that bluff.”

She saw a white spot moving in the distance. The mountain sheep clambered up the steep incline and disappeared over the ridge.

“How do they manage such slopes?” she asked in awe.

“Suction cups for feet, I think.”

His breath touched her temple as he laughed. Instinctively she turned her face to his as amusement caught her unawares. She sucked in a quick, startled breath as she realized their lips were only inches apart. And that she wanted…

His eyes, which had some surprising green flecks near the pupil, locked on hers as if he could read that internal yearning. For a second that seemed an eternity, they stared at each other.

He stepped back. “We’d better move on. It’s a short distance to the site but very winding.”

They were mostly silent on the rest of the trip, other than her exclaiming over each new panoramic view, which seemed to occur with each bend in the road.

When they arrived at the construction camp, around thirty people were there, most of them operating huge machines that ate up big chucks of dirt and moved boulders as if they were toy building blocks. She was pleased to see a woman driving one of the behemoths and another, obviously in the last trimester of pregnancy, going into a trailer that had a sign declaring it to be the office.

Jeremy led the way to it. “Tina Ramsey, Zia Peters,” he introduced her to the pregnant woman. “Tina is the executive assistant of the site and keeps things on track around here. Zia is the new curriculum coordinator for the county education department. She arrived in town yesterday.”

“Glad to meet you,” the younger woman said. “Are you at the residential hotel? Everyone stays there when they arrive.”

“Yes. I rented a suite for a month while I’m looking for a place of my own,” Zia told the friendly younger woman.

“My cousin Jim is in real estate. You should check with him. Are you looking to rent or buy?”

“Rent for now. I would like a small house, if possible.”

Tina wrinkled her nose. “Those are hard to find. People tend to stay put.” Her laughter was infectious. “There was an article in the local paper about the county’s plans for the school system, if the federal funds come through. It mentioned you.”

Zia liked the vivacious young woman. She was friendly and very pretty with thick black hair that almost reached her waist, fair skin and intriguing gray eyes that flashed like quicksilver as she talked.

Tina turned her attention to her boss. “I have the lading bills for you to look over. Also, I need your signature for the overtime hours last week.”

Zia glanced out the trailer window at the busy compound while they conferred. Jeremy had just started his new position, yet the two seemed very comfortable with each other.

She wasn’t particularly comfortable with anyone at first meeting. For her, friendship had to grow slowly. Only time would tell if the person was trustworthy. Her attitude was a lot different from what it had been at one time, when she’d been prone to snap judgments.

Maybe part of turning over a new leaf was learning to trust others without so many of the reservations learned from the past.

“Come on,” Jeremy said. “I’ll show you around.”

Jeremy, like his uncle, was one of the most honorable people she’d ever met, she mused as she fell into step beside him. He would never walk out on anyone who needed him….

He took her arm and led the way outside, interrupting the unsettling introspection.

The gorge where the new road would cross was narrow and deep. Below them, the river rushed over rocks as big as cars. The land on either side was beautiful in a wild, natural way that didn’t invite habitation.

“This will be the foundation of a rainbow bridge,” Jeremy explained, pointing out the concrete piers.

“Rainbow?” That sounded too fanciful for a bridge.

“The roadbed will be built across the top of an arch made of steel beams and attached to piers on each side. It’s a fairly simple form of construction and very strong. The Chinese used the technique a couple of thousand years ago, only they built the whole bridge from logs lashed together and the arch also functioned as the road. Unfortunately none are standing now, we only have a few engravings to go by.”

By the time they’d finished the tour, including crossing to the other side and back on a rather precarious—in her opinion—footbridge, she’d learned a lot more about bridges than was strictly necessary in her view. She was aware of amusement in Jeremy’s eyes as he gave her the guided tour.

The footbridge was like a ladder laid across the gorge with flimsy ropes for railings. The workers could probably dash across as sure-footed as the bighorn they’d seen earlier.

Zia kept her eyes on where she put her feet, aware of the water ten stories below and of the gaps between the foot supports which looked wide enough to fall through.