Currant Creek Valley - By RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,29
do that.” After a bit of an awkward moment, she gestured to the coffee. “You probably should go, unless your crew likes cold coffee.”
“Right.” He had completely forgotten his objective. “See you later, Alexandra. Mrs. McKnight, it was a pleasure to meet you.”
Both women gave him smiles of varying warmth—Mary Ella’s looked welcoming and friendly while Alexandra’s struck him as guarded and wary.
Why? he wondered as he walked out of the bookstore and back to his truck, parked on a side street. They had a great time together, so why was she so determined to keep him at a distance now?
She obviously regretted their kiss. His ego might have been bruised by that if he didn’t remember her heated response, the way her mouth had softened under his and how she had held on to him as if she couldn’t bear to let him go.
He did remember those things, though, which made her reaction afterward all the more baffling.
The woman was a puzzle. A beautiful, funny, complicated puzzle.
One he very much wanted to figure out.
* * *
AFTER SAM WALKED OUT of Books & Brew, taking all that masculine strength with him, the fine tension that had clenched Alex’s shoulders when she saw him standing there began to seep away.
She inhaled deeply, ridiculously aware that she had been holding her breath during the conversation, on edge and off balance.
Drat the man! He had no business bursting into her life right now and messing with her head and her hormones, not when she was so close to grabbing for everything she had ever wanted.
“I’m so glad you could meet me for coffee this morning,” Mary Ella said. “I know you were working late last night.”
She focused on her mother instead of this jittery mess of nerves in her stomach. “I love Maura’s coffee.”
“Your sister runs a fine shop, doesn’t she?”
The pride in Mary Ella’s voice made her smile. “She does indeed. Remarkably well, and all while raising the most beautiful baby in the world.”
“Our Henry isn’t that much of a baby anymore.” Her mother’s expression was soft, as it was when she talked about any of her children or grandchildren. “He’s going to be a year old in June. Maura said he’s been trying to take a few steps along the furniture.”
“The time is just flying by. Any day now he’s going to start growing a beard.”
Mary Ella made a face. “Okay, he’s still a baby for a while now. But the older I get, the faster time seems to spin.”
They reached the front of the line and placed their orders, then found a couple padded chairs in one of the conversation nooks Maura had placed throughout her store for the convenience and enjoyment of her customers.
They chatted about Maura and Jack and Sage, just finishing her third year of undergraduate work at the University of Colorado in Boulder, then moved on to talk about Riley and Claire’s upcoming happy event.
Throughout the conversation, Alex became aware that she wasn’t the only one who seemed unsettled this morning. Mary Ella—usually calm as Silver Strike Reservoir on a summer morning—fidgeted in her chair as if she couldn’t quite find a comfortable spot, and her fingers drummed with impatience on the padded armrest as they awaited their order.
When their drinks arrived, Mary Ella took a single sip of her tea and set the cup back on the saucer so abruptly some sloshed over the side and onto her lap.
Worry blossomed inside Alex like a noxious weed in Caroline’s garden. This was not like her mother, usually the epitome of easy grace. Something was up.
“What’s going on? You’re acting like you’ve already had about a dozen cups of tea this morning.”
Mary Ella set her tea—cup, saucer and all—onto the small table between them and tucked a strand of tastefully colored auburn hair behind her ear with fingers that trembled. “This is hard. Harder than I thought it would be.”
That noxious weed of worry grew into a bristly, towering stalk. Something was seriously wrong. Cancer was the first thing that came to mind, maybe because of Caroline or because she had just seen Sam, who had tragically lost his young wife to the devil disease, though she didn’t really have confirmation of that yet.
“What is it? Are you ill?” How would she bear it if she lost her mother? Mary Ella was in her sixties, yes, but she was healthier than the rest of them and still walked four miles every morning and lifted weights at the