Currant Creek Valley - By RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,90

crazy to leave right now, just as the restaurant was taking off. Maybe she was. The thought of leaving everything she cared about behind terrified her but she knew she had to do it.

She wondered what Caroline would have said. She probably would have shook her head sadly and told Alex she couldn’t escape herself, no matter how hard or how far she ran.

Caroline was gone and she had taken her wisdom and her strength with her. Alex missed her terribly. Without her guidance, Alex had to rely on her own decisions and this one seemed inevitable. She couldn’t stay in Hope’s Crossing while Sam was here, moving on with his life.

It sounded melodramatic, even to her, but it was easier to leave than to face everything she had turned her back on.

The moon was high overhead when she reached the Forest Service gate. She leaned on it, looking up at the wild mountains in the distance while Leo headed down to the bank to drink from the cold waters of the creek.

She would miss this splendor, but she reminded herself Utah had mountains, too. Beautiful peaks, alpine valleys, creeks. Park City wasn’t all that different from Hope’s Crossing, actually.

The restaurant she would be taking over was already well established and successful. She didn’t expect to have any problems adjusting—other than missing her family and her friends and her home.

And Sam.

She rolled her eyes at herself. How could she miss someone who had barely been in her life a few months?

She hadn’t talked to him in weeks, not since the Giving Hope Day, though she knew he had been trying to reach her.

She had seen him at Caroline’s memorial service and had drawn undeniable comfort by just the sight of his big, solid strength, but she couldn’t face him.

He had called a couple times and she had only listened about a dozen times to his messages asking her to call him before she forced herself to delete them. Once she had been at home when he rang the doorbell, and had hidden away in her home office with the door closed, feeling stupid and immature and weak. Finally he had given up and left.

She never did have a chance to see Ethan’s bedroom finished or the tree house that had begun to take shape in their backyard. Things were probably better this way. Less messy. She would slip out of town and move on and he would continue dating Charlotte and maybe marry her someday.

They would move here to Currant Creek Valley and have a few more kids, easing seamlessly into the fabric of life in Hope’s Crossing.

Leo returned to her side and stuck his wet muzzle into her hand, sensing in that uncanny way of his that she needed a little love right then.

The dog had become a wonderful companion. She had cared for him for two months now, had put ads up everywhere she could think of, had checked regularly with the Humane Society shelter to see if anyone had come looking for him. So far, nothing.

Sometime in the last month, she had gone from thinking of him as a temporary guest to wondering what she had ever done without him. She loved him and refused to give him up.

“We belong together now, don’t we?”

The dog gave her that wise look he wore sometimes, as if he understood everything she said and agreed with her.

He licked her hand and then moved back down the way they had come. After a few feet on the darkened trail, he turned back with a “hurry up” sort of look.

She smiled, despite the melancholy that clung to her like a dusting of flour after a long day of baking.

“All right, all right. I’m coming. Let’s go home.”

The dog gave a cheerful little bark and started off. She walked behind with the flashlight.

When the trail reached the houses on Currant Creek Road, the path ended and she moved onto the road. Sam’s house was dark, she saw. Good. On the way past it earlier, she had seen lights and shadows moving around inside and had just about had to reach up a hand and physically yank her face around to keep from staring.

She quickened her pace and had just reached the edge of his lawn—neatly mowed now and beginning to green up—when his voice rang out.

“Alexandra!”

She closed her eyes. A few more seconds and she would have been safe. Damn it. She opened them and turned to find him trotting down his steps