Man With A Miracle

“What are you doing?”

He grabbed her under the arms and tried to haul her up. She struggled against him and they both went down. This time her head collided with his arm as she fell, dislodging her watch cap. What he saw in the glow of the headlights made him stare in shock and anger.

Her luxurious red hair had been cut off so that it was barely longer than his, and it was…purple.

“I’m leaving!” she said, swinging at him with her plastic bag.

“Beazie!” Her name escaped him in a kind of gasp. He couldn’t believe she’d done it, though he realized it was probably her most recognizable feature.

He forced his attention away from the atrocity perpetrated against her hair, handed her the hat so she could put it back on and made himself focus on the more important issue.

“To go where?”

“Anywhere a cab will take me!” she replied. “I got the tape to you, so my job is done.”

“Beazie, your life is in danger.”

“Not anymore. Now you have the tape….”

Dear Reader,

Happy Holidays from Astoria, Oregon, where it rains at Christmas rather than snows. Still, the Christmas spirit is alive in our hearts and visible everywhere. Though Astoria does not have a town square, it resembles my description of Maple Hill, with Christmas lights, garlands stretched across the main street from sidewalk to sidewalk and wreaths circling the old-fashioned globe streetlights. One Christmas bonus Astoria has that’s missing in Maple Hill is a parade of boats strung with lights from stem to stern.

In the light of day, Astoria is a very different setting from Maple Hill. We’re positioned at the mouth of the Columbia River, on a fairly steep slope that runs down to the water. Many artists and writers live here, claiming the river to be a creative source.

I love it here. Rain never drowns out our enthusiasm. In fact, we have umbrella parades to honor it. For the most part, people are warm and loving, and because we’re a small town, we’re a community of friends. That warmth supports and sustains me every day, and makes it easy to sit in my second-floor office in the middle of a monsooning February and create a Christmas atmosphere.

I wish you all the blessings of the season, and your own personal Astoria.

Muriel

Man with a Miracle

Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

June 10, 2001

EVAN BRAGA WIPED HIS FACE with a towel as he hurried into the locker room of the Hatfield Gym, remembering belatedly that he’d promised to trade shifts with Halloran tonight. Someone else would have to host the Sunday-night poker game of the Boston PD’s Cambridge Division. He went to the bench where he’d left his gym bag and stopped in confusion when he found nothing there. Then he spotted the bag under the bench and yanked it out. Ripping open the zipper, he pushed his sweatshirt aside and reached in for his cell phone.

His hand stopped. His heart stopped. His brain stopped. He was paralyzed.

Only his eyes seemed to be working, and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Cash. Lots of it, neatly bundled in banded packets. One-hundred dollar bundles. Five-hundred dollar bundles.

He felt his mouth open, but no sound came out.

He was alone in the quiet room. He could hear the ticking clock, the sound of someone in the showers on the other side of the wall, shouts and laughter from the gym floor.

He had zipped the bag closed and was trying to figure out what in the hell was going on, when he saw the plastic tag looped around the handle of the bag. New England Insurance, it read. This was Blaine’s bag. Their parents had given them identical gym bags and matching sweatshirts last Christmas, but his younger brother was the one usually mixing them up—not Evan.

His heart lurched uncomfortably. He knew Blaine and Sheila had been having financial problems, but what was his brother doing with banded bills in large denominations, in his insurance business?

He felt a sort of fraternal panic, and the only thought in his head that made sense told him to get the bag and Blaine out of there as fast as he could.

Jerking open his locker, he threw on a pair of blue sweats, grasped the handle of the bag firmly and headed for the gym.

Blaine was chasing across the court in a pickup basketball game, then leaped to block a shot. In an instant of detachment, Evan noticed that Blaine was leaner than he was, his body more artfully graceful than simply strong. Even as a kid, he’d had the looks, the charm, the charisma that drew people to him. He’d always been the golden child, but unfortunately had never realized it and had taken the easy way out of everything.

Watching out for Blaine had been Evan’s job since he was six years old, and it had taken a lot of his time. But he’d done it well. Apparently the fact that his brother had a wife, two little sons and an insurance franchise didn’t mean Evan could stop watching Blaine. Not if that bag of money was any indication.

While another player shot from the free-throw line, Blaine caught Evan’s eye and tossed him a grin. Then he noticed the bag in Evan’s hand and went deathly pale.

Evan started for the door. Blaine ran in his wake, his friends calling after him to come back.

“Sorry, guys,” Blaine shouted over his shoulder. “Uh…family dinner. See you Wednesday.” He chased Evan out of the building and across the parking lot to Evan’s old Austin-Healy convertible.

“You have to put the bag back!” Blaine said urgently, standing by the passenger side door as Evan leaped over his door and into the car.

“Get in!” Evan commanded, stuffing the bag into the narrow area behind the seat.

“Listen to me.”

“Get in!”

“Evan, that money—”

“That money’s going to be returned,” Evan said, starting the engine, prepared to leave whether Blaine climbed in or not. “I don’t even want to know what you’re doing with it—I’m just sure it can’t be good. Now, get in or I’m turning it in to the closest police station. You’ll go away for a long time.”

Blaine swung his legs over the door and slid down into the seat. “You’re always so sure you know everything.”

Evan eased out of the parking lot, then roared away down the long country road. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he said. “I’d be happy to hear that.”

“You’re wrong. It isn’t stolen, as I’m sure you suspect. It’s…it’s borrowed.”

Evan gave him a quick side-glance. “From whom?”

Blaine sighed and ran a hand over his face. “From my holding account,” he said finally. “I’m going to put it back.”

“Blaine—” Evan began.

“Oh, relax!” Blaine shouted at him. “It’s a gray area, okay? It’s the insurance company’s account, but it’s under my control. As long as I put the money back—”

“How are you going to do that, when you had to borrow it in the first place?” Evan slowed as he came to an intersection with a narrow side road, then picked up speed again, feeling an urgent need to return the money before someone found out there was trouble—for Blaine, his wife, his kids, their parents…

“That’s none of your business.” Blaine tried to reach behind him for the bag. “This is none of your business.”

“No, it’s your business!” Evan accused. “Sheila and the boys are your business! Did you give them any thought when you did this? What’s it for? The boat’s not big enough? You need a second summer home to attract more clients? Another classic Jag? Sheila seems perfectly happy…”

“Yeah, well, my girlfriend’s expensive.” Grabbing the bag with both hands, Blaine swung it onto his lap. “Now stop the car. I’ve got to go back! The bag has to be where I left it or I’m—”

“We’re not going back. You’re going to redeposit the money and I’ll help you find another—”

As they approached another intersection, Blaine reached for the steering wheel. Evan tried to push him away, and caught sight of a big black Dodge Ram coming quickly down the side road. Completely unaware, Blaine pulled at the wheel, and with a screech of tires, the Austin-Healy headed straight toward the truck.

Evan shouted, but the squeal of brakes drowned out the sound. There was a bone-shattering impact, the grinding whine of tearing metal, then blackness.

January 4, 2002

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND why you feel you have to go.” Alice Turner, Evan’s mother, followed him from the kitchen to the driveway, where he packed two suitcases into the back of a brand-new white Safari already loaded with boxes, an apartment-size refrigerator and a television. She’d said that several times a day for the two weeks since he’d made the decision.

He couldn’t tell her the truth. “I just have to, Mom,” he said, taking a plastic-wrapped stack of blankets and a pillow from his stepfather, who’d followed them out. “I appreciate all you and Dad and Sheila have done for me since I got out of the hospital, but…”

“You think we blame you,” his mother accused, tears spilling from her grieving brown eyes. She folded her arms pugnaciously.

“No.” He avoided her eyes as he found a place for the blankets on top of a box. They didn’t blame him, and Sheila didn’t blame him. In fact, they’d sat with him every day for the long three months it took to heal his broken legs, his right arm, his pelvis that resulted from his ejection from the car upon impact. They’d helped with his physical therapy, then brought him home to complete his recovery at his parents’ place. His sister-in-law, Sheila, and his two nephews, Mark, 6, and Matthew, 4, had visited often, bringing him cookies, and crayon artwork for his room.

But Evan saw the grief they tried to hide from him, the loss in their eyes even when they smiled and encouraged him. Their suffering compounded his own sense of failure as a brother and a son, until he felt he couldn’t stay another moment. He had to spare all of them the constant reminder that he survived the crash and Blaine died, and he had to find another way to go on, before despair overtook him.

The only good thing to come out of the accident was that it put an end to the issue of the borrowed money. The car had been incinerated and the money burned up. Blaine must have sufficiently hidden his “loan” in the books, because when the franchise was purchased in August, an audit revealed nothing untoward. Or maybe Blaine had some fail-safe method of payback that he hadn’t had a chance to explain before the accident.

Whatever the reason, Evan was grateful that neither his parents nor Sheila had any idea Blaine had done anything criminal.

“I just have to get my life together again, Mom,” he explained, hugging her, “and I can’t do it here. A company in Maple Hill advertised for a housepainter. I love that kind of work and I’m pretty good at it. Maple Hill is close enough that I can come home regularly to visit, and you can come and see me.”

“Are you going to be happy painting houses?” his stepfather, Barney, asked as he wrapped his arms around Evan. “You were such a good cop.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad,” Evan assured him. Barney Turner had been his father since he was four, and he’d never made Evan feel less important or less loved than Blaine.

“You know who to call if you aren’t.”

“I do.”

“Mark and Mattie will miss you,” his mother prodded as they followed him around to the driver’s side.

“Alice, don’t torture the boy,” Barney chided. “He knows they’ll miss him. He spent all day with them yesterday, explaining things. They’ll be fine, and he’ll be fine.”

His mother gave his father a reproachful look. “Men are always fine because they’re the ones off on adventures. Women are the ones who stay behind and worry.”

Barney squeezed her shoulders. “He’s going to Maple Hill, Allie, not to war. Good luck, son.”

Evan hugged his mother again, climbed in behind the wheel and drove away.

CHAPTER ONE

December 9, 2002

EVAN IGNORED THE PAIN in his right leg as he ran around the track of Maple Hill High with three of his friends. He and Hank Whitcomb, Bart Megrath and Cameron Trent formed an irregular line across the lanes as snow fell steadily in large flakes.

“What? Are we training for the Winter Olympics?” Bart asked Hank, his breath puffing out ahead of him. Bart was a lawyer, and much preferred the comforts of his home or office to the uncompromising cold of western Massachusetts in the winter.

“Can’t be,” Cam put in, pulling a blue wool watch cap a little lower over his ears. “Track-and-field is a summer event. Hank just likes to torture us because he’s our boss. Thank God it was icy at the lake, or he’d have us running there, with the wind-chill factor making it even colder than it is here.”

“Hank’s not my boss,” Bart corrected.

“No, but he’s your brother-in-law,” Evan put in. After eleven months on the job with Hank and Cam, and working on community projects with the two of them and Bart, he was comfortable in their company. He considered himself fortunate to have their friendship, and thought often how much brighter his life had become in the past year. “If you don’t get your exercise, he’ll report you to Haley like he did last time, and she’ll tell the ladies at Perk Avenue not to serve you those double mochas and cream horns anymore.”

“That was a joke,” Bart said.

“You didn’t think it was funny.”

Haley was Bart’s wife, Hank’s sister, and the publisher of the Maple Hill Mirror.

Bart laughed. “You’re just being superior, Evan,” he said, “because you’re still a bachelor. Wait till my mother-in-law fixes you up with some pretty young thing who makes you lose your senses and forget your backbone. You won’t be able to laugh at us anymore.”

Addie Whitcomb was a confirmed matchmaker. Evan had skillfully avoided her machinations so far, but she was growing more determined all the time.

“I’m not laughing,” he insisted, even as he tamped his amusement. “I just think it’s interesting that the town’s leading attorney—” he pointed a gloved finger at Bart “—the head of the much-acclaimed Whitcomb’s Wonders—” he indicated Hank, who modestly inclined his head “—and Cam, the Wonders’ brilliant plumber and my inspired partner in land development, can be so cowed by three of the town’s most beautiful and talented, but very small, women. Guys, come on. You’re whipped!”

His friends looked at one another, laughed and ran on, dragging him with them, apparently not offended.

“It’ll happen to you,” Cam warned.

“No,” he denied affably.

“That’s what I used to think,” Hank said with a knowing glance at him from beneath the bill of a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. “And look at me now.”

Hank’s wife, Jackie, was mayor of Maple Hill and the mother of four children, whom Hank had adopted.

“I like my privacy,” Evan insisted.

Cam laughed. “That’s what we all said. Prepare to kiss it goodbye, dude. You’re ripe.”

“Ripe?”

“Almost forty. Addie won’t be able to stand it. Even Haley, Jackie and Mariah are starting to plot.”

Cam’s wife, Mariah, a former dorm mother at the Maple Hill Manor Private School just outside of town, had charmed Cam into marrying her to provide a home for two of the school’s boarders, who suddenly had been without families. Five months later it had proven to be a good move for all of them.

“It’s not going to happen to me,” Evan said, seriousness creeping into his tone. He ignored the speculative looks his friends exchanged with one another. He hadn’t shared much about his past with his friends, though he trusted them all implicitly. It was just still too hard to give words to what had happened.

He’d told them he’d been a cop, and that he’d come to Maple Hill after an automobile accident that had almost disabled him. He said he’d come to rebuild his body in the fresh air, and to restore his spirit with the more relaxed pace of small-town life.

He’d joined St. Anthony’s Church, because after a month here, he still had too many memories and ghosts and needed desperately to be reminded that a power beyond his feeble abilities had charge of the world. And the Men’s Club gave him somewhere to go on weekends when his friends were involved with their families.

The church group was always raising money for the school, repairing or repainting it, or helping with some community project or other. Many of the men in the club were much older than he, but he liked their old-fashioned, curiously heroic way of thinking and their incisive senses of humor. They reminded him of Barney and eased his loneliness.

“Next year at this time,” Hank said, “when you’re married and expecting a baby, we’re going to remind you that you said that. Want to take bets on it, guys? Pick the month you think Evan bites the dust. Ten bucks. Winner buys everybody breakfast at the Barn.”

Evan ran in place, while the others stopped to exchange money and make their bets. “You’ll all owe me a meal when I remain a bachelor. Wait and see.”

They ignored him and conducted their business. Hank, who had faith in his mother, said she’d have Evan hooked by Valentine’s Day. Cam had been claimed in June and thought Evan would, too. Bart said that hurricane weather was powerful stuff and bet on August.

Evan put out his hand. “I’ll hold the money.”

Cam clutched the bills to his chest. “You’re one of the principals of the bet. You can’t hold the money.”

“I’ll give it to Jackie,” Hank said. “She can put it in the safe at City Hall.”

Evan shrugged nonchalantly as he continued to run in place. His leg was going to seize up if he didn’t. He needed a Jacuzzi and a Coffee Nudge. “You’re all going to be so embarrassed.”

They laughed in unison as they headed back to their cars. In five minutes they would reconvene at the Minuteman Bakery.

Evan stayed in his car an extra moment to massage his screaming thigh muscle, then joined his friends in the bakery’s corner booth. Someone had already poured his coffee and ordered his daily caramel-nut roll.

When he slipped in against the wall beside Cam, they were talking about the homeless shelter being built. As mayor, Jackie had helped solicit funds for the project and directed the construction.

The members of Whitcomb’s Wonders, a pool of craftsmen who could be hired at a moment’s notice for an hour or a year, had each worked on it at some point.

Evan had been painting and wallpapering at the shelter for weeks. All that remained to be done was the kitchen, and a second coat of paint applied to the common room. Jackie was hoping to see the shelter open on December twenty-third. With the advent of frigid weather, Father Chabot was sheltering the homeless in the basement of the church. There were several families, and everyone wanted to see them in more comfortable surroundings by Christmas.

“So, you’re okay to finish up by next week?” Hank asked Evan. Though they conducted their business over coffee and doughnuts, it was still business, and everyone’s attitude was a little more serious than earlier.

“Yes,” Evan replied. “Sooner if I can.”

“Don’t you and Cam have to get that office in your building finished this week?”

Evan nodded. “I’m doing that today and tomorrow. Unless you need me somewhere.”

“No. Nothing today. Some work at the Heritage Museum after the holidays.”

Evan and Cam’s first project together as Trent and Braga Development had been the purchase of the old Chandler Mill on the edge of town. Someone had made a halfhearted attempt to turn it into offices at one time, but the work was shoddy, clearly done by amateurs. Hank had once housed the offices of Whitcomb’s Wonders there, but had since moved the business into City Hall’s basement. Evan and Cam had torn down the old walls of the mill and hired Whitcomb’s Wonders to section off the first and second floors into eight large offices, and the third floor into two small apartments and two large ones.

The slow, easy approach they’d intended to take in readying the building for occupancy had gained momentum when a previous tenant, an accounting office, was happy about the renovation and eager to return—preferably between Christmas and the new year. Cam had promised the premises could be occupied on January second.

They had three more tenants eager to move in downstairs, and one waiting for a second-floor spot. It seemed that their development company was off to a good start.

Evan smiled to himself as he thought about how different his life was now from what it had been eighteen months ago. Then, he’d had morning coffee and pastries with scores of other cops in a squad room. He’d patrolled the city in a pattern that was often fairly routine, but could explode into periods of stress and danger that were sometimes energizing, sometimes terrifying. And he’d loved it.

Then he’d killed Blaine, and everything had changed. Well, over the past year he’d managed to accept that he hadn’t really killed him; Blaine had been struggling for the wheel at the time of impact. But that didn’t completely absolve Evan of blame. It was his fault Blaine had been in the car in the first place.

But he didn’t want to think about that right now. What he had here was good. Good friends, good coffee, rewarding work waiting for him. He missed his parents and Sheila and the boys, but he wasn’t up to seeing them yet. His mother had invited him for Thanksgiving, but he’d told her he had to work on the accountant’s office to have it ready in time. She’d sounded disappointed, but said merely that he had to plan to come home for Christmas.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to get out of that yet, but he intended to.

“You’re coming to the Wonders’ Christmas party?” Hank asked Evan as he consulted his watch. It was almost eight a.m., time for them to get to work. “Sunday afternoon. And since we’ll all be together, Jackie’s planning to hold a meeting about preparations for opening the shelter.” Jackie had found a willing group of volunteers in her husband’s friends.

“I’ve got to work on the—” Evan began.

“No, you don’t,” Cam interrupted. “We’ve got a couple of weeks before Harvey starts moving things in.”

“But the carpet’s got to go down.”

“That’ll take all of two hours. You’re just trying to get out of joining us.”

He was. Their warmth and camaraderie, while great on the job, was a little tough to take in their homes. It was a reminder of the family he just couldn’t bring himself to see again, and the family he’d never be able to build for himself.

“I told Brian you were coming,” Cam said, shamelessly forcing his hand. “The kid’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“And Mike was looking forward to talking to you about the Sox,” Bart told him. “Nobody else has the stats at his fingertips like you do.”

Hank slipped out of the booth. “Jackie wants you to bring salad. We’ll expect you at two o’clock.”

He conceded with a nod. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

The group dispersed. Evan bought a refill on his coffee and a few more doughnuts, then went out to the red Jeep the garage had lent him while they replaced the alternator on his van.

He missed his big vehicle. EVAN BRAGA, PAINTING, PART OF WHITCOMB’S WONDERS was now painted in red letters on its side. He felt a certain pride every time he looked at it. He’d managed to pull himself together in a year, and though he still had a lot of issues to deal with, he was making progress. Life was good.