Home To Family

Matt could still recall how every window in the diner that night had held a lighted candle. He remembered the plastic evergreen that had clung to one corner, blinking a sad welcome. The way his own blood had oozed in a slow spill across the linoleum to soak the cheap Christmas skirt around that tree.

Shayla had worn a sprig of holly pinned to her lapel that night. Even now he could remember the scratch of it against his cheek as he’d bent down to kiss her when he’d left the car.

How long would it be before he’d be able to look at a symbol of Christmas and not think of death?

Feeling his back stiffen as if for battle, he continued up the walk.

The decorations were wasted. There wasn’t another soul outside. Too bad. This was the sort of Colorado night Matt loved. Crisp and clear in spite of the snowfall, so chilly that your breath rose in little clouds around your face. The sky was so deeply midnight blue that it could leave you speechless, and he could barely tell where the mountains ended and the heavens began.

In spite of the lecture he’d just given himself, he approached the front steps slowly, delaying the moment when he’d have to enter the house. Not so brave after all, it seemed.

And then suddenly he realized he’d been wrong. Someone was out here in the darkness.

A woman stood with her back to him, nothing more than a black silhouette. Illumination poured from the tall windows in warped, lemon squares of light along the length of the porch. Her body looked as if it had been dipped in gold, as though she’d bathed in it. In spite of the shawl draped around her shoulders, Matt could tell she was tall and slim. Because she seemed intent on watching the goings-on inside the house, he couldn’t see her face. She remained absolutely still, a silent observer. He wondered what had snagged her attention. And what had driven her outdoors.

She raked her fingers along the side of her hair. Then she shoved her hand underneath the dark mass of it, scoping upward along her scalp, so that momentarily it lifted off her shoulders. It was a gesture of impatience. Of annoyance. He knew it well. Over the years, that little habit of Leslie’s had always given her away whenever they’d squabbled.

It had been like a warning flag. Back off, D’Angelo, that movement had said. You’re making me angry.

He smiled to himself. Of all the people to encounter during this visit, he was ridiculously relieved to have Leslie Meadows be the first. With the exception of a few stolen hours at Nick and Kari’s wedding, he hadn’t seen her in so long, and he realized just how much he had missed her. Now here he was, running into the moment he’d been dreading, and Les’s presence would make it so much easier.

She was so intent on watching whatever was going on inside the house that she didn’t hear him come up behind her. He cupped her shoulders, then bent his lips to her ear. “What’s so fascinating?’ he whispered.

She whirled. The startled look in her eyes turned into exuberant pleasure almost immediately, so that warmth rushed through him.

“Matt!” she said on a little gasp of excitement and gripped his arm. “You’re here! You did come after all!”

“Of course I came,” he said, and when she grabbed him close for a hug, he pushed her dark hair away from her cheek and placed his lips against hers. His kiss was quick, friendly and unplanned. But it was nice—because on a cold night like this her lips were warm.

When he pulled away, he grinned at her. “Merry Christmas, Les.”

She angled back a little, and the way she blinked and looked at him said she hadn’t expected that kiss, either. But what the hell? After all these months of watching his life take a frightening and unknown course, her welcoming smile was a real treat.

She was, and always had been, the only woman he could be completely comfortable with. The only woman he had ever trusted with his dreams, his confessions and his secrets. More so than his family, his male buddies, or even the shrink the hospital had forced him to talk to after that awful night.

He felt a loosening inside his chest, as though something had given way, and suddenly he was glad he’d come home for the holidays.

In the golden light, Leslie’s eyes sparkled and gave her skin a lovely glow. She’d let her hair grow long again. It flattered her face. It seemed impossible that he had known her nearly all his life and had never once realized just how pretty she was.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

“Not half as much as I’ve missed you. You look terrific.”

Difficult to tell in the poor light, but he thought she blushed at that comment. Les had never been comfortable with compliments. He’d always suspected that it came from getting so few of them growing up. Her mother and father had never been demonstrative to their only child. Hell, when it came right down to it, they’d hardly known she existed.

She turned back toward the window. “Everyone will be so glad to see you.”

“Hmmm…Can’t wait,” he offered in a noncommittal tone.

Looking over her shoulder, he peered into Doc’s front parlor. Guests stood in little knots of conversation around the room, laughing, talking, sipping wine. He caught no sign of their host, whom he wanted to speak to before the older man headed off to California. Practical, logical, straight-talking Doc Hayward had been the one to guide Matt through every step of med school. He’d know what to make of the mess Matt’s life had become.

But passing time with everyone else in there? The thought made Matt’s head ache, made his lungs feel as though a band of steel encased them.

“Who’s here?” he asked.

“The usual crowd.”

“I see Ellis Hughes. And there’s Chad Pilcher. What’s he looking so sour about?”

“Felicia took him back to court. The judge increased his alimony.”

Matt let his gaze drift to another pocket of guests. “Tom Faraday’s gained weight.”

Leslie nodded. “Doc put him on a strict diet last summer, but so far he’s still fighting it.”

A statuesque blonde with a figure that had clearly been enhanced by something other than nature passed in front of the window. As first, Matt didn’t recognize her. Then he gasped. “Good Lord, is that Stacey Merrick? What did she do to herself? She looks fantastic.”

Stacey could be a first-class witch, and he remembered that she and Leslie had never been friends. Not surprisingly, Leslie made a disgusted sound. “She says it’s because she’s found inner peace, but her husband let the cat out of the bag. Dale’s complaining that she spent thirty thousand dollars of his hard-earned money getting nipped and tucked.”

“Thirty thousand! Damn, I knew I went into the wrong field of medicine.” He spotted his brother Nick in a corner alcove and was shocked to see him nuzzling the neck of his wife, whose eyes were closed in pure delight. That kind of behavior from Nick surprised him. “I see my big brother’s gotten drunk.”

“What makes you say that?” Leslie asked, with a frown in her voice.

“He’d die before indulging in a public display of affection.”

Leslie glance back at him, laughing. “He’s in love, silly.”

Conceding that love made people do crazy things, Matt moved on, catching sight of his sister talking to a tall, handsome fellow he didn’t recognize. Most of the men inside wore casual clothes, but this guy had on a suit that hadn’t come off any department-store rack. Neither of Matt’s parents had mentioned a new man in Adriana’s life.

“Who’s the blond Romeo talking to Addy? He’s better-looking than Stacey Merrick.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

“Don’t tell me he’s the new man in her life.”

“No.” Again, she looked back over her shoulder at him. This time, she smiled broadly. “Actually, he’s the new man in my life. Perry Jamison.”

He couldn’t help jerking upright suddenly. In the old days, Leslie had hardly dated, and when he thought of her recently, for some reason he never envisioned her with anyone. He shook his head. “He’s not your date.”

She scowled at him. “Why? Don’t you think I can attract someone that good-looking?”

She sounded a little hurt, and Matt realized he’d made a mistake.

“Of course you can,” he said quickly. He lifted a strand of dark hair off her shoulder, rubbing it between his fingers. It felt like silk. “I just meant he doesn’t strike me as your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

“Sure you do,” Matt told her with a smile. “Every woman is drawn to a man for very specific reasons. Whether or not she understands exactly what those reasons are…” He jerked his head toward the window. “So what’s he offering?”

“He’s attentive and treats me well. Comes from one of the founding families of Colorado—”

“God, a blueblood.”

“Good breeding is important.”

“If you’re a poodle at the Westminster Kennel Club.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “He’s confident. Has money. Power—”

“But you’re not completely sold on him yet.”

“What makes you think that?” she asked sharply, her head tilting to give him a close look.

“Because if you were, you’d be in there by his side instead of out here keeping me company.”

He let go of her hair, swinging his gaze back to the parlor. The guy laughed at something Addy said. Matt recognized that sort of false, patronizing good humor, the kind of focused attention that most women seemed to crave. He’d used that trick often enough himself.

“What’s the matter?” Leslie asked.

He realized he was frowning, but frankly he was disappointed at Leslie’s choice. “You can do better than that pompous ass.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed. “You don’t even know him.”

“I know him all right. And I don’t like him.”

“Well, I do,” she said stubbornly. “And you don’t get a vote.”

“C’mon, Les. Look at the arrogance in his stance, the superior way he tilts his head, as though Addy’s requested an audience with a king. You can just tell that he thinks he’s someone special. God’s gift to the world.”

She made an annoyed sound, though he could tell she wasn’t really angry. “Oh, now I get it. You’re afraid he’ll take that title away from you.”

“If I was, I promise you, I’m not anymore.”

His response stunned him. He didn’t like the way those words came out, slightly bitter and angry-sounding. He felt every muscle in his body tense. When Les’s smile faded and her posture went rigid, he knew she’d heard it as well.

“Matt—”

“Sorry,” he said, hoping to keep her from saying anything he didn’t want to hear. “I didn’t intend to kill the mood.”

Before he could stop her, she lifted his left hand and tilted it toward the light.

Sometimes that hand seemed like a foreign object to him now. A part of him, and yet not. It wasn’t misshapen or repulsive, really. Some unattractive scars where the bullet had entered and exited. A network of stitch marks from the last surgery that had excised scar tissue bogging down the tendons. Most of the damage couldn’t be seen.

Leslie turned his hand over a couple of times, looking at it closely, like a mother inspecting a messy kid before he sat down at the dinner table. “How bad is it?” she asked in a soft voice. “Really?”

He considered lying. He didn’t want to discuss it, not even with Les. But she knew him too well, and because she was a nurse, she’d probably know if he tried to down play it.

Still, he shrugged, trying to sound as if he didn’t spend nearly every night wondering how the hell he was going to reinvent a medical career that depended on the most subtle dexterity of both his hands.

“The flexor tendons are still totally screwed,” he told her on a ragged breath, in a voice he hardly recognized. “There’s triggering in both the middle and forefinger so that there’s a sixty percent loss of flexibility.”

She looked up at him. “Cortisone injections?”

“Back in the beginning.”

“Therapy?”

He gave her a grim smile. “I’ve had some progress since the immobilization cast came off. The ring finger used to be completely locked so I had to straighten it by force, but that’s getting better.” He shook his head. “It could have been much worse, I suppose, but you know as well as I do what the ramifications will be if I can’t get significant mobility back.”

Les shook her head at him. “I wish you’d have let me come to Chicago to help you. Doc would have given me the extra time off, and I know I could have made a difference.”

That was the last thing he had wanted—Les or his family seeing him at his worst. “I had the whole hospital helping me,” he told her. “There’s nothing you could have done for me that wasn’t already being done.”

“I’m not talking about just the physical help,” she said. “I know how to make you do what’s best for you. How to keep you on the straight and narrow when all you want to do is slack off.”

He knew that was true. Les had always been the practical one, the one who never let him get away with anything. But the thought of her witnessing his weakness, his struggle…. In their relationship, he was the one who had always been strong.

“It wasn’t a good time,” he admitted. “I wasn’t someone anyone liked to be around, and I would never subject you to the person I was during all those months of recuperation.”

It wasn’t just the poor lighting. She looked stunned. He realized that, before this moment, she hadn’t had a clue how serious this injury was for a man who’d been touted in a medical magazine last winter as one of country’s rising stars of microsurgery. No reason why she should have known, he supposed. God knows, he hadn’t shared much of this with his parents, who already had enough to worry about with running the lodge.

Lost in the private misery of his own thoughts, he wasn’t prepared for Les’s reaction.

Cradling his hand in hers, she bent her head, touching her lips to the center of his palm. Spellbound, he could do nothing more than watch her, every nerve in his body tingling. In all the years of their unique history together, they’d never shared this kind of deliberately intimate moment before. Not once. Not even on that cold January night so long ago.

He felt a sweet sense of expansion in his chest, and a piercing alarm, all at once. He might even have reached out with his good hand to stroke her hair.

But in that moment, she lifted her head and looked at him. “I’m so sorry, Matt,” she said in a whisper filled with sadness. “This should never have happened to you. Not this.”

Pity was in her eyes. The one thing he did not want to see. From anyone. Especially not from Les.

He felt his pulse strong in his throat, as though he had swallowed a clock and it had lodged there. He pulled his hand out of her grasp, and somehow managed to shrug. “It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but I’m sure I’ll adjust,” he said. “Pity doesn’t make it any more palatable.”

She looked confused. “Matt, I wasn’t—”

“I should go in,” he said, stepping away from her. “There’s no point in standing out here in the cold. You should go in, too. It’s been good to see you again, Les.”

Inside the house were friends and family, full of questions and curiosity. They would touch those locked places in his mind. There would be whispers in quiet corners and surreptitious looks. They would stumble through well-meaning, but completely unrealistic predictions about his career. But how bad could it be compared to what he’d just witnessed in Les’s eyes?

Leslie made a move toward him. “Matt…” she began in an aggrieved voice, but by then he had already swung away from her and was headed for the front door.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING Leslie stopped by the darkened clinic to pick up another tube of cream for Kari D’Angelo. Delivering the medicated ointment to her friend offered the best excuse to see Matt again.

The day was cold, with a faint dusting of new snow on all the buildings, so that even the oldest of them gleamed fresh and sparkling. The air was filled with the scent of wood smoke and pine. A brilliant blue sky made Broken Yoke look postcard pretty this morning, Leslie decided.

But she knew the town was barely holding its own. Last year they’d lost one of the motels down by the interstate. This year, the doors had closed on two restaurants, a flower shop and Myerson Cleaners, which had been in business for nearly sixty years. The week-long festival Broken Yoke had held this past summer— Mayor Wickham’s brainchild to bring tourists into town—had been an embarrassment and a costly flop. Merchants were still stopping the mayor on the street to complain about the money they’d lost.

The recent economic difficulties hadn’t extended to the clinic. With Doc Hayward one of only two full-time physicians in the immediate area, the waiting room stayed busy. During certain times of the year—flu season, for example—Leslie put in so many hours that sometimes her own cat didn’t recognize her when she came home.

Leslie realized that her attention had wandered, and she jerked it back to the road. She had always been a terrible driver. It was common knowledge in town that she couldn’t parallel park, that her turns were too sharp and her stops too abrupt. Even Matt, patient and filled with the masculine certainty that he could teach any one to drive, had almost given up on her when she’d flunked her test a second time.

It wasn’t until she turned off the car’s engine in the parking lot of Lightning River Lodge that she finally took the time to sit and gather her thoughts.

The lodge was one of her favorite places, grand without being pretentious, warm and welcoming to anyone who crossed its threshold. Compared to the yellowed linoleum floor and fake wood-paneled walls of the trailer she’d called home as a child, it was like stepping into a dreamscape. Massive log beams. Huge windows. Cozy corners where you could sink into furniture that folded around your body like a glove.

She supposed there were fancier resorts along the craggy, majestic mountaintops that made up Colorado’s Front Range, but Leslie couldn’t think of any that offered what Lightning River Lodge was famous for—the hospitality of its hosts, the D’Angelo clan.

A gracious reception wasn’t just reserved for paying guests, either. Leslie had been visiting here for years, and the family had always welcomed her into their midst. A thought slid into her mind with frightening clarity. The D’Angelos had come to mean more to her than her own family.

Why then, this hesitancy?

She remembered that fleeting vision of Matt’s face last night in the porch light, the abrupt end to their conversation. It had started out so well—just like the old days—with laughter and sarcasm and the warm camaraderie that came from being with a person you knew as well as yourself.

But when talk had turned to Matt’s damaged hand, he had done something he’d never done before. Not with her.

He had shut down. Pushed her away.

That reaction had been a completely new experience. Over the years they’d naturally had a few disagreements, but there had always been open and honest warfare between them, never that wary, distancing chill.

She knew the cause of it, of course. She should have chosen her words more carefully, should have schooled her features before responding to the sight of his injury. Matt, who had always been so gifted, so confident and bold, had never been pitied in his life. But in just a moment, with a few words she had instantly regretted, pity was exactly what she had offered him.

He had left the party before she could make it right between them, but this morning she would explain somehow. He’d understand. He had to. A real rift between them didn’t bear thinking about.

She got out of the car quickly, tucking her serviceable old coat around her for warmth and keeping her hands shoved into the deep pockets. She went up the long drive, her breath blowing warm little puffs against her cheeks. It had to be a good ten degrees colder at this elevation.

The air was as still and hushed as a church chapel. Beyond the hiking trails along the ridge and through the evergreen trees, Leslie caught sight of Lightning Lake. It was small and had been frozen solid for a couple of weeks now. On a beautiful, clear day like today, the surface sparkled in the sunlight, as though the ice were embedded with diamond dust.

She had a special fondness for that lake. It was there, years ago, that she’d had her first real conversation with Matt.

Although they’d been in the same sixth-grade class that year, she’d never actually spoken to Matt D’Angelo before. He was everything she was not—popular with the other kids, a favorite of the teachers. He’d already begun to display a natural talent for sports and a killer charm. His life was headed on an upward course, and Leslie suspected he knew it.

The boys he hung out with were cocky, arrogant creeps. The girls were giggly future cheerleaders already in love with their own images. None of them were Leslie’s friends. No one in Matt’s circle would have ever sat at the same lunchroom table with someone who lived in Mobley’s Mobile Court.

She told herself that their shallow attitudes suited her just fine. In spite of mediocre grades, she wasn’t stupid. Living with two volatile parents had taught her a lot about survival. Since summer that year, trouble at home had been particularly stressful. Her father’s temper was in full force due to his inability to hold a job for very long. She’d been busy developing an I-don’t-care approach toward the world in general from the day school started.

In February the PTA held a fundraiser, and the D’Angelos offered their property for a winter carnival—sleigh rides, cross-country skiing on the trails, ice-skating on Lightning Lake. Everyone said the D’Angelos knew how to host a celebration, and it should be fun as well as profitable.

Leslie had no intention of going.

But the day before the fundraiser she found herself suddenly volunteering to help out. Her parents were in the middle of a three-day argument, and with the weekend ahead and tempers escalating, the last place Leslie wanted to be was home, playing referee and maybe getting in the line of fire herself. Besides, she had a secret longing to see just what was so darned special about Lightning River Lodge, a place she’d been hearing about all her life.

By midmorning her feet felt frozen and her cheeks stung. The job of selling hot chocolate at a booth by the lake bored her. Only pride kept her from marching off and leaving Mrs. Elliott, the history teacher, to run the concession alone.

Every kid she despised seemed to be on the lake that day. She watched as they sailed laughingly around the ice. The boys wove in and out of the crowd with long, wild strokes—imagining themselves professional hockey players, no doubt. The girls spun in short skating skirts, a rainbow dazzle.

She’d seen Matt D’Angelo whiz by the stand several times. He made skating look effortless. His arms never flailed; he never lost his balance. He could stop so quickly that ice particles sprayed out from his skate blades.

Show off, she thought, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

Mrs. Elliott had gone up to the lodge for a few minutes, and Leslie had just poured herself some steaming chocolate when Matt skated up to the stand. Since his family had furnished the cocoa, she thought he might expect a freebie, but he didn’t hesitate to plunk down fifty cents.

Without a word she passed him a cup. He wrapped both hands around the plastic and took a cautious sip.

His cheeks were blotchy red, his dark hair disheveled, but there was a undeniable aura of potent energy about him; something in his eyes radiated confidence. In spite of herself, Leslie felt a warm tingle begin in her stomach. They spent several long seconds studying one another in such an odd silence that she picked up her own fresh cup and took a large swallow.

She had to stifle a gasp of pain. The heat from the cocoa seared the taste buds right off her tongue.