Wanted: A Real Family

“You can’t let what happened take away your gift.”

That was one way of looking at it, he supposed.

“I’ll walk you out,” Sara suggested.

She followed him as he opened the screen door, which now hung correctly on its hinges. Outside the cottage, with the scent of roses climbing on a trellis beside the house redolent, he stared down at her, the desire to kiss her so strong he could taste it.

But instead he did the best thing for both of them. He picked up the toolbox he’d left outside the door and said, “Goodbye, Sara.” He could feel her gaze on his back as he walked away.

Chapter Three

Amy ran from Sara’s side before she could catch her.

Her daughter’s giggles reinforced Sara’s resolve that she’d done the right thing by moving to the vineyard a few days ago. But when she saw where Amy was headed, she wondered about her decision all over again.

Jase was standing near a vine-laced trellis, his T-shirt pulling tightly across his shoulder muscles. He was tanned and fit and gave off an eminently masculine air. Especially with more than a day’s beard stubbling his jaw.

When he saw Amy running toward him, he caught her, swung her around and made her giggle more.

He’d make a wonderful dad.

Sara banished the errant thought almost as quickly as it had entered her head and ran over to her daughter. She and Jase hadn’t talked since their impromptu dinner. He’d come and gone, she’d come and gone, and they’d passed like two ships in the night, neither sure where they were headed. But Jase looked sure now.

“She has more energy than a high-speed train,” he remarked with a wry smile.

“And she’s just as fast. All I have to do is blink and she’s into something she shouldn’t be. Sorry if she bothered you.”

“No bother. That’s the nice thing about a vineyard. It’s a big place. Are you settled in?”

“We are.”

The way he was looking at her made her wish she’d combed her hair. She’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt when she’d gotten home from work and now she felt as if his eyes saw everything.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you a tour. Maybe Amy can walk off some of that energy.”

With Amy only a few feet away, Sara focused her attention on the vined trellises rather than on Jase. The trellis system was set up with about twelve feet between the rows and approximately eight feet between vines. “I’ve never tasted Raintree wines.”

“We’ll have to set you up for a wine tasting. We’re the best in the state, but then of course I’m prejudiced. Our tasting host is on vacation right now. But he’ll be back at the end of the week.”

“Tasting host?”

“Tony works closely with Liam, keeps an eye on inventory and handles tours around the vineyard.”

Amy had run up ahead, her attention taken by a stone on the ground.

“Did you ever consider staying here instead of writing and photographing the four corners of the world?”

“No. I felt I had to succeed on my own.”

“Did your father want you to stay?”

Jase cocked his head. “He did. But I needed space … and something different. As a teenager, I read about every place on earth I wanted to see, and I saw causes that needed advocates, especially for kids who were displaced. After college, I found my niche with photojournalism. My editors liked the fact that I could write as well as shoot pics in hot spots.” After a pause, he said, “You’re too easy to talk to. I never revisit my past if I can help it.”

“I don’t have magic powers,” she said with a smile.

“No, but your genuine interest is addictive.”

Was she genuinely interested in Jase Cramer? Glancing at her daughter, remembering her marriage—the highs and lows, the plunge into discord—she knew she shouldn’t be.

Suddenly the sound of a car engine preceded a vehicle along the driveway that led to the cottage. Sara studied the black sedan as it parked next to her car in the gravel area beside the trellis.

“Were you expecting someone?” Jase asked.

“No. Maybe it’s someone here on vineyard business.”

Even as she spoke, she doubted her theory. No one would be coming in the early evening, and besides, the parking lot for the winery was clearly marked by a sign that led visitors there rather than to the cottage.

Jase waited as a short man with wire-rimmed glasses climbed out of the sedan. “I don’t recognize him. Let’s go see what he wants.”

Sara beckoned to Amy and then captured her hand, swinging it between them. At the door to her cottage, she faced the man who wore a three-piece suit and bow tie.

“Mrs. Stevens?” he asked, pleasantly enough.

“Yes, I’m Sara Stevens, and this is Jase Cramer.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Ross Kiplinger, from High Point Insurance. I’ve come to ask you a few questions about the house and the fire. This might take a little while. Maybe we could go inside and sit down?”

Sara supposed they’d have to go over the policy Conrad had taken out on their house when he’d bought it.

“I can take Amy on a walk, if you’d like,” Jase offered. “But we’ll stay within shouting distance if you need us. Can we see some ID?” Jase asked the man.

Kiplinger didn’t look put out at all, just took his wallet from his pocket and opened it to his driver’s license. Then he took a security ID badge from an inside pocket. He showed them that, too. “I’m not an ax murderer,” he assured them. “I have a briefcase inside my car that has Mrs. Stevens’s policy inside, if you’d like to see that, too.”

Sara believed he was who he said he was. She crouched down in front of Amy. “Would you like to go for a walk with Mr. Jase?”

Amy glanced down at the stone in her hand, then up at Jase. “Can we find more stones?”

“We can collect as many as you want.” He held out his hand to her and she took it.

As Jase and her daughter walked off, Sara wished she was going with them, rather than stepping inside with Ross Kiplinger. But the sooner she received her fire insurance settlement, the sooner she and Amy would have a normal life again … the sooner they would leave Raintree Winery.

Jase and Amy traipsed along the trellises, looking for anything interesting to explore. Amy was entranced by the shape of a leaf, the length of a vine shoot, a tiny yellow flower that was simply a weed. He knew caring for a child was a heavy responsibility, but he imagined that the joy of living with one could balance that out. All those years he had taken pictures of kids, he hadn’t really considered being a dad himself, maybe because he knew nothing about lasting relationships. Maybe because since he’d returned home, the taste of the betrayal was still too bitter in his mouth. Dana’s involvement with another man while they were engaged, her desertion when he was at his lowest, still stirred resentment he’d like to rid himself of. Most days he pushed the past away and it stayed packed in the boxes up in the attic along with his cameras. But, for some reason, inviting Sara to the vineyard had unearthed much of it.

Sound carried across the vineyard and he heard the rumble of the black car’s engine as it started up. Kiplinger had been with Sara close to an hour.

Amy was stooped on the ground, her red-brown hair falling over her shoulders as she studied a bug crawling through the dirt. He crouched down beside her.

“That’s a busy bug, but I think we’re going to have to leave him for now. I bet your mom’s missing you.”

Amy looked up at Jase. “She cries sometimes. I don’t want her to cry.”

Out of the mouths of babes. Did Sara cry because she missed her husband? Did she still love him? Or had losing everything in the fire caused her tears to flow? She gave the impression that she was strong and could handle anything, but at night, when she was alone, what thoughts ran through her head?

“We wouldn’t want to make her cry. Come on, let’s go back and make her smile. I bet she always smiles when she sees you.”

It only took them about ten minutes to make their way through the rows and find the path that led to the cottage. All was quiet as they approached. Jase was actually a little surprised that Sara didn’t come to meet them. A shout across the vineyard rows, and she would have known where they were.

Jase could see Sara through the screen door. She was sitting on the sofa, staring into space.

Amy pulled open the door and ran toward her, holding out the stones in her little hand.

“Mommy, look what I found.”

Sara immediately took her daughter into her arms, gave her a hug and said, “Let me see.”

But Jase could tell the sound of her voice was forced. He could see her smile wobble. What had gone on with that insurance investigator?

“We’ll have to put your stones in a box. We’ll make it a treasure box.”

“I’ll put it under my bed.”

“That’s a great idea. But right now we have to get you washed up and ready for bed. Jase, thanks for taking her on a walk.”

“I need to snitch one of your bottles of water. Why don’t you put Amy to bed, and then we can talk about your visitor.”

Sara’s eyes grew wide and she looked almost fearful. “There’s no need—”

“I think there is. You look a little shaken up and I’d like to know why.”

She glanced down at Amy. “Honey, why don’t you go wash your hands and brush your teeth. I’ll be in in a minute.”

“Are you going to look for a box?”

“I will. Go on, now.”

When Amy had left the room, Sara squared her shoulders. “I’m fine, Jase. Really. There’s no need for you to stay.”

Should he push, or shouldn’t he? “I’m going to drink that bottle of water. After you put Amy to bed, if you want me to leave, I will. It’s your call.”

Her lower lip trembled a little but then she firmed it up and gave him a resigned look. “Fine. It usually takes about twenty minutes. If you get tired of waiting …”

“I won’t.”

Sara avoided his gaze and went to help her daughter prepare for bed.

Jase stood at the counter, drinking his bottle of water. He didn’t want to crowd Sara. If she wanted him to go, he’d go. If she wanted him to stay, he’d listen, just as she’d listened to him two years ago.

When she returned to the living room, he really wasn’t sure what her decision would be. Her expression was as worried as it had been when he and Amy had returned from their walk.

At first, she looked at him and said, “You might not want to get involved in my life.”

“Listening won’t involve me.”

Her pretty brows hiked up as if to say, You don’t believe that any more than I do.

He shrugged. Then he set his water bottle down and crossed the room to her, settling his hands on her shoulders. “Maybe I can help.”

“No one can help with this. Mr. Kiplinger was here to warn me they might not be paying out on my policy. He didn’t put it into so many words, but the insurance company believes I could have set the fire.”

Nothing had prepared Jase for that, but he didn’t step away. He just responded, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

Her voice almost a whisper, Sara said, “I don’t talk about my marriage.”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “Maybe you should.”

“I’m sure you don’t like to talk about your fiancée calling off your engagement.”

Whoa! So she knew how to fight when the time came. “It was a mutual decision when I found out she was unfaithful. Was your husband unfaithful?”

Sara looked around the room for a minute as if she were trying to find a corner to escape to, as if anything would be better than telling him about this. But then she took a deep breath and motioned to the sofa. “Let’s sit.”

“It’s a long story?” he joked lightly.

“It’s … complicated.”

What relationship wasn’t? he thought.

After they were seated on the couch, she turned toward him, her eyes a little too bright. “When Conrad and I first married, I moved into his apartment because his was bigger than mine. He managed a home-improvement store and it was doing well. My job was secure, so we didn’t have to think about finances very much. But then he entered into talks to open a store of his own. He spoke with bankers and investors, had a couple of custom suits made and his taste in suits, shoes and wine changed, becoming more expensive. I loved him. I trusted him. I thought he could do no wrong so I went along with the changes. Then I got pregnant.”

“Unplanned?” Jase asked.

She tilted her hand back and forth. “We wanted kids. We just weren’t sure when we wanted to start a family. We went away one weekend and the pregnancy was the result.”

Jase found himself not wanting to think about Sara with another man. That was crazy. Conrad had been her husband.

“What happened after your pregnancy?”

“Conrad thought we should buy a house. He was sure the investors for his own store were going to come through. We looked at several houses and there was one we really liked. I thought the price was too high, but Conrad said we could afford it. I wasn’t privy to all of his business dealings, so I believed him. He took care of the paperwork and settled on the house. I knew the mortgage payment each month seemed exorbitant but Conrad said we could manage it, and I shouldn’t worry. I was seven months pregnant then, and concerned about everything baby. The thought of planning the nursery and the baby’s playroom and decorating the rest of the house kept me more occupied than I should have been. I should have asked more questions, but I was a trusting wife.”

Jase heard the bitterness behind the words and suspected what was coming. What was it about loving someone that made a woman put good sense aside and wear blinders? He was a good one to pass judgment on that. Maybe men weren’t much different.

Because Sara had sounded angrier at herself than she did at her husband, he asked, “What didn’t you see?”

“I didn’t see that we were sinking deeper and deeper into debt. I didn’t see that Conrad’s store wasn’t doing as well as he said it was. I didn’t see that his deals with investors never materialized. I didn’t see that the expensive cars and the diamond bracelet he gave me for my birthday were just a sham to cover up everything that was happening.”

“You found out about all this after your husband died?”

“No. That wasn’t the way it happened. The way it happened made everything worse. Men came to the house one evening and repossessed Conrad’s car. Amy was two and I had gone back to work part-time because I really do love what I do. That night I started asking questions and didn’t stop, questions I should have asked a lot sooner. I found out we were so deep in debt I didn’t see how we were ever going to get out. Conrad had lied about so much. There were no investors. Anyone he’d tried to convince decided the economy was too weak. The store he managed wasn’t doing well. Our credit cards had reached their limit. I just felt so … betrayed that he kept it all from me.”

“Once trust is broken, it’s difficult to earn back.”

“Exactly. I found I couldn’t trust him. I didn’t know when to believe him. I had doubts about everything he said. That was our marriage for the next year—all filled with tension, regret and resentment. I went back to work full-time and found The Mommy Club day care instead of a private child care provider. I covered home budget costs wherever I could. But then I found out Conrad was still courting investors for a store that would never be! He was running up bar tabs and dinner tabs that we couldn’t afford. He thought I wasn’t supporting his dreams. I thought he wasn’t facing reality. And then, after a year of living like that, Conrad had a heart attack in his office at work. It was a massive coronary and he couldn’t be revived. The doctors said there was a defect that was probably congenital and Conrad never knew he had it, but I think the stress did it. Our marriage did it. I did it.”

Her voice broke and Jase realized how much all of it still affected her. He also understood what he saw in Sara’s eyes so often wasn’t just grief for her husband, but guilt for his death. That was a heavy burden to carry.

He wanted to cover her hand with his, yet tonight that didn’t seem right, not while they were talking about her husband. “His death wasn’t your fault. He brought everything on by his dishonesty.”

“I brought everything on by not probing and pushing and opening my eyes to what was happening.”

“Sara, you were a young mother with a new baby. You trusted your husband. That’s not a sin.”

“Maybe not, but it sure was a flaw. If I had demanded to be part of the financial planning as we bought the house, or even after Amy was born, everything would have been different.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If your husband was a spender then he was a spender, and he might have needed help to curb the habit. Determination sometimes isn’t enough. It’s not much different from a drug addict, knowing she should stop and yet she can’t.”

Sara looked at him curiously when he said that, but he stopped there. He wasn’t about to go on. They were talking about Sara, not about him, and that’s the way he’d like to keep it. He’d been in his twenties before he’d finally come to terms with the fact that he was ashamed of his childhood, ashamed of how he’d ended up at Raintree in the first place. He didn’t tell anyone about that. His father didn’t talk about it, either, with good reason. How could he be proud of Jase—born illegitimate, his father unknown and his mother a drug addict? That wasn’t something Ethan liked to tell his friends. That wasn’t something that he’d ever told his friends.

Jase focused on Sara. “Looking at your situation practically, wasn’t it better after Conrad died?”

“Jase! How could you say such a thing?” She looked horrified at his putting the obvious into words.

“You know exactly what I mean. What happened with the debt?”

“Most things weren’t paid off and we still owed, not just the house that was dropping in value every day, but the furniture and the rugs and the wall paintings. After Conrad died, all the debt was left to me. He’d canceled his life insurance policy because he couldn’t make the payments, so I sold what I could—jewelry, rugs, art. I couldn’t sell the house because it had depreciated so much. All I could do was try to keep up with the mortgage payments. Amy and I had a roof over our heads, but I bought day-old bread, pasta on special and didn’t drive anywhere I didn’t have to. Thank goodness Amy was too young to realize what was going on.”

“But children pick up a lot. She probably understood that you were worried all of the time.”

“Yes, I was.”

“But your husband kept the fire insurance on the house.”

“He had to. It was required by the mortgage company. So the house was heavily insured and that’s why the insurance investigator is asking me tons of questions. It’s why he thinks I burned down my house to dig myself out of a hole.”

When Sara looked up at Jase, he knew she wasn’t going to ask the question out loud, but he could hear it, anyway. Do you think I would do such a thing?

His immediate reaction was, No, I don’t. Sara wasn’t that kind of woman. On the other hand, he’d been wrong about a woman before. Exactly how well did he know Sara? He’d invited her here on gut instinct, but now his gut instinct was also telling him to be cautious.

All he said was, “I’m sorry you have to go through this.”

She looked disappointed, maybe even hurt, and he didn’t know what to do about that. But he wasn’t about to become recklessly involved with her. That would be tantamount to marching into war without knowing where the enemy hid … to photographing refugee children without realizing they could all be victims of an attack.

No matter how much he wanted to put the past behind him, it constantly tapped him on the shoulder. Sara’s past would do the same. Her husband had lied to her and put their family in a situation no family should be in. She’d apparently loved him but she’d had to live with doubts while she tried to make her marriage work … while she’d tried to forgive what he’d done. Then he’d left her with a mess.

“Did Kiplinger say what happens next?”

“I wait.”

“Don’t let your thoughts bury you,” Jase advised her. “This could turn out all right in the end. It just might take a while to get settled.”

“If I’m here longer than a month, I’m going to pay you rent.”

“Sara, that’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is. I don’t want your father to think I’m taking advantage of your hospitality.”

“If you’re here a month, then we’ll talk about it.” Jase rose to his feet, wanting to take her into his arms, yet knowing that wasn’t the prudent thing to do. “Now, you’ve got to get some sleep for work tomorrow.”

“You make this sound as if it’s not serious.”

“I know it’s serious.”

When he gazed into her eyes, he felt a startling sexual arousal that hadn’t plagued him for a very long time. But he willed it under control and he knew the best thing for both of them was for him to leave.

After she rose and walked him to the door, again the same question was in her eyes. Do you believe I would do such a thing?

But he couldn’t answer her now. He couldn’t let his guard down long enough to sort it all out. But he did run his thumb down her cheek, relishing the softness of it. He did say, “We’ll talk again. Soon.”

Then he walked away.

The following evening, Amy held on to Sara’s hand tightly as her mother led her up the flagstone pathway to the vineyard’s office building. She still hadn’t met Raintree’s chief winemaker, Liam Corbett. His comings and goings were at different times than hers. She’d come over to the offices today to see Jase’s assistant. Marissa had watched over Amy on moving day. Since then they had chatted a few times. Sara felt comfortable with her and today she needed some advice from an insider at the vineyard. She could have left already, Sara knew, but her little boy, Jordan, was still at The Mommy Club day care when she’d picked up Amy. Sara was hoping she could catch her if she was working late.

She stooped down to Amy. “This won’t take too long, and I’ll make your favorite supper when we get back—burgers and French fries. But you have to eat a little bit of broccoli, too.”

“Dipped in cheese?”

Sara smiled. “You’ve got it.”

Amy’s Mary Janes tapped on the Mexican tile as they approached the first office in the long hallway. Located beside the winery, this was the hub of Raintree’s business activity. Windows allowed Sara to see Marissa inside the first office. She was waiting at the printer, collecting documents as they spewed out. She was a beautiful woman, a couple of years younger than Sara. Her hair was the deepest brown and curly. Her chocolate-brown eyes were as expressive as her wide mouth, and she didn’t hide what she was thinking. Right now, Sara needed her opinion.

There was a walkway through Marissa’s office that led to a much bigger office beyond. Sara suspected that was where Jase usually sat, at the massive mahogany desk. There were double file cabinets behind it and beautiful paintings of Carmel and Big Sur. His chairs as well as his desk blotter were wine-colored leather. The wood paneling was as fine as the Oriental rug on the floor.

The printer stopped spewing out paper and Sara knocked lightly. Marissa’s face broke into a wide smile. “Sara, it’s so good to see you. You, too, Amy. How do you like your new room?”

Amy stayed close to Sara, then peeked out around her legs. “I like it.”

Marissa laughed. “Well, good.” Her attention went back to Sara. “Are you feeling more at home here?”

“I am, but that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. First, let me ask if I’m tying you up. I don’t want to keep you from picking up your son.”

“I often work late, but now and then, Jase will give me a whole afternoon off. It evens out. He had new orders come in tonight that I had to organize and give to the account manager.”