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What We Find
Robyn Carr
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORSULLIVANS’ CROSSING: BOOK ONEIs leaving her life behind the only way for Maggie to find happiness – and love?Neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan knows she needs to slow down before she burns out completely, and the best place she can do that is by heading home to Sullivan’s Crossing.She relishes the opportunity to indulge in his simple way of life. But Maggie’s world is rocked and she must take responsibility for the Crossing.When quiet and serious Cal Jones, offers to lend a hand, Maggie is suspicious of his motive. Though as Cal and Maggie spend more time together it gives Maggie hope for something brighter just on the horizon…Readers love Robyn Carr:‘Lovely book from a lovely series’‘Robyn Carr reflects real life wonderfully’‘fascinating and heartwarming characters and a stunning setting’‘a must-read for fans of contemporary romance’
Join Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Virgin River and Thunder Point series, as she explores the healing powers of rural Colorado in a brand-new story of fresh starts, budding relationships and one woman’s journey to finding the happiness she’s long been missing
Between the urban bustle of Denver and the high-stress environment of a career in neurosurgery, Maggie Sullivan has hit a wall. When an emergency high-risk procedure results in the death of a teenager, Maggie finds herself in the middle of a lawsuit—and experiencing levels of anxiety she’s never faced before. She knows she needs to slow down before she burns out completely, and the best place she can think to do that is Sullivan’s Crossing.
Named for Maggie’s great-grandfather, the land and charming general store at the crossroads of the Colorado and the Continental Divide Trails have been passed down through the generations and now belong to Maggie’s eccentric father, Sully. When she shows up unannounced, he welcomes her with open arms, and she relishes the opportunity to indulge in his simple way of life.
But shortly after arriving, Maggie’s world is rocked once again and she must take on more responsibility than she’d planned. Though she’s relieved a quiet and serious-looking hiker, Cal Jones, is willing to lend a hand, Maggie is suspicious of this mysterious man’s eagerness to help—until she finds out the true reason for his deliberate isolation.
Though Cal and Maggie each struggle with loss and loneliness, the time they spend together gives Maggie hope for something brighter just on the horizon…if only they can learn to find peace and healing—and perhaps love—with each other.
What We Find
Robyn Carr
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This one is for Nicole Brebner, my editor, my partner, my friend.
Thank you.
Contents
Cover (#u1c6f718d-986c-5783-bc50-6bb8d69574ff)
Back Cover Text (#u24c564d1-b100-5264-afc5-5aa6f548f016)
Title Page (#u1c513c02-ac6e-5cbc-a40f-cfc98129819e)
Dedication (#uad6ec6d6-54e8-5997-97e6-937ed9ccd840)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_0f02c0e5-fb85-58f5-bb6e-5b2aa4db1063)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_29e0c22e-1119-5391-b420-776b45387a7c)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_e88e8ead-8a8f-59d4-9d0a-21f775be3d67)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_be845419-babc-5053-a251-801c6b9a99f3)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_da3c84e1-f55a-5e8c-a611-80b26a931105)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Just living is not enough...
One must have sunshine,
freedom, and a little flower.
—Hans Christian Andersen
Chapter 1 (#ulink_84cdd0f1-b91a-5a4d-902f-687380430995)
Maggie Sullivan sought refuge in the stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors at the far west end of the hospital, the steps least traveled by interns and residents racing from floor to floor, from emergency to emergency. She sat on the landing between two flights, feet on the stairs, arms crossed on her knees, her face buried in her arms. She didn’t understand how her heart could feel as if it was breaking every day. She thought of herself as much stronger.
“Well, now, some things never change,” a familiar voice said.
She looked up at her closest friend, Jaycee Kent. They had gone to med school together, though residency had separated them. Jaycee was an OB and Maggie, a neurosurgeon. And...they had hidden in stairwells to cry all those years ago when med-school life was kicking their asses. Most of their fellow students and instructors were men. They refused to let the men see them cry.
Maggie gave a wet, burbly huff of laughter. “How’d you find me?” Maggie asked.
“How do you know you’re not in my spot?”
“Because you’re happily married and have a beautiful daughter?”
“And my hours suck, I’m sleep-deprived, have as many bad days as good and...” Jaycee sat down beside Maggie. “And at least my hormones are cooperating at the moment. Maggie, you’re just taking call for someone, right? Just to stay ahead of the bills?”
“Since the practice shut down,” Maggie said. “And since the lawsuit was filed.”
“You need a break. You’re recovering from a miscarriage and your hormones are wonky. You need to get away, especially away from the emergency room. Take some time off. Lick your wounds. Heal.”
“He dumped me,” Maggie said.
Jaycee was clearly shocked. “What?”
“He broke up with me. He said he couldn’t take it anymore. My emotional behavior, my many troubles. He suggested professional help.”
Jaycee was quiet. “I’m speechless,” she finally said. “What a huge ass.”
“Well, I was crying all the time,” she said, sniffing some more. “If I wasn’t with him, I cried when I talked to him on the phone. I thought I was okay with the idea of no children. I’m almost thirty-seven, I work long hours, I was with a good man who was just off a bad marriage and already had a child...”
“I’ll give you everything but the good man,” Jaycee said. “He’s a doctor, for God’s sake. Doesn’t he know that all you’ve been through can take a toll? Remove all the stress and you still had the miscarriage! People tend to treat a miscarriage like a heavy period but it’s a death. You lost your baby. You have to take time to grieve.”
“Gospel,” Maggie said, rummaging for a tissue and giving her nose a hearty blow. “I really felt it on that level. When I found out I was pregnant, it took me about fifteen minutes to start seeing the baby, loving her. Or him.”
“Not to beat a dead horse, but you have some hormone issues playing havoc on your emotions. Listen, shoot out some emails tonight. Tell the ones on the need-to-know list you’re taking a week or two off.”
“No one knows about the pregnancy but you and Andrew.”
“You don’t have to explain—everyone knows about your practice, your ex-partners, the lawsuit. Frankly, your colleagues are amazed you’re still standing. Get out of town or something. Get some rest.”
“You might be right,” Maggie said. “These cement stairwells are killing me.”
Jaycee put an arm around her. “Just like old times, huh?”
* * *
The last seven or eight miles to Sullivan’s Crossing was nothing but mud and Maggie’s cream-colored Toyota SUV was coated up to the windows. This was not exactly a surprise. It had rained all week in Denver, now that she thought about it. March was typically the most unpredictable and sloppiest month of the year, especially in the mountains. If it wasn’t rain it could be snow. But Maggie had had such a lousy year the weather barely crossed her mind.
Last year had produced so many medical, legal and personal complications that her practice had shut down a few months ago. She’d been picking up work from other practices, covering for doctors on call here and there and working ER Level 1 Trauma while she tried to figure out how to untangle the mess her life had become. This, on her best friend and doctor’s advice, was a much needed break. After sending a few emails and making a few phone calls she was driving to her dad’s house.
She knew she was probably suffering from depression. Exhaustion and general misery. It would stand to reason. Her schedule could be horrific and the tension had been terrible lately. It was about a year ago that two doctors in her practice had been accused of fraud and malpractice and suspended from seeing patients pending an investigation that would very likely lead to a trial. Even though she had no knowledge of the incidents, there was a scandal and it stank on her. There’d been wild media attention and she was left alone trying to hold a wilting practice together. Then the parents of a boy who died from injuries sustained in a terrible car accident while on her watch filed a wrongful death suit. Against her.
It seemed impossible fate could find one more thing to stack on her already teetering pile of troubles. Hah. Never challenge fate. She found out she was pregnant.
It was an accident, of course. She’d been seeing Andrew for a couple of years. She lived in Denver and he in Aurora, since they both had demanding careers, and they saw each other when they could—a night here, a night there. When they could manage a long weekend, it was heaven. She wanted more but Andrew was an ER doctor and also the divorced father of an eight-year-old daughter. But they had constant phone contact. Multiple texts and emails every day. She counted on him; he was her main support.
Maggie wasn’t sure she’d ever marry and have a family but she was happy with her surprise. It was the one good thing in a bad year. Andrew, however, was not happy. He was still in divorce recovery, though it had been three years. He and his ex still fought about support and custody and visits. Maggie didn’t understand why. Andrew didn’t seem to know what to do with his daughter when he had her. He immediately suggested terminating the pregnancy. He said they could revisit the issue in a couple of years if it turned out to be that important to her and if their relationship was thriving.
She couldn’t imagine terminating. Just because Andrew was hesitant? She was thirty-six! How much time did she have to revisit the issue?
Although she hadn’t told Andrew, she decided she was going to keep the baby no matter what that meant for their relationship. Then she had a miscarriage.
Grief-stricken and brokenhearted, she sank lower. Exactly two people knew about the pregnancy and miscarriage—Andrew and Jaycee. Maggie cried gut-wrenching tears every night. Sometimes she couldn’t even wait to get home from work and started crying the second she pulled the car door closed. And there were those stairwell visits. She cried on the phone to Andrew; cried in his arms as he tried to comfort her, all the while knowing he was relieved.
And then he’d said, “You know what, Maggie? I just can’t do it anymore. We need a time-out. I can’t prop you up, can’t bolster you. You have to get some help, get your emotional life back on track or something. You’re sucking the life out of me and I’m not equipped to help you.”
“Are you kidding me?” she had demanded. “You’re dropping me when I’m down? When I’m only three weeks beyond a miscarriage?”
And in typical Andrew fashion he had said, “That’s all I got, baby.”
It was really and truly the first moment she had realized it was all about him. And that was pretty much the last straw.
She packed a bunch of suitcases. Once she got packing, she couldn’t seem to stop. She drove southwest from Denver to her father’s house, south of Leadville and Fairplay, and she hadn’t called ahead. She did call her mother, Phoebe, just to say she was going to Sully’s and she wasn’t sure how long she’d stay. At the moment she had no plan except to escape from that life of persistent strain, anxiety and heartache.
It was early afternoon when she drove up to the country store that had been her great-grandfather’s, then her grandfather’s, now her father’s. Her father, Harry Sullivan, known by one and all as Sully, was a fit and hardy seventy and showed no sign of slowing down and no interest in retiring. She just sat in her car for a while, trying to figure out what she was going to say to him. How could she phrase it so it didn’t sound like she’d just lost a baby and had her heart broken?
Beau, her father’s four-year-old yellow Lab, came trotting around the store, saw her car, started running in circles barking, then put his front paws up on her door, looking at her imploringly. Frank Masterson, a local who’d been a fixture at the store for as long as Maggie could remember, was sitting on the porch, nursing a cup of coffee with a newspaper on his lap. One glance told her the campground was barely occupied—only a couple of pop-up trailers and tents on campsites down the road toward the lake. She saw a man sitting outside his tent in a canvas camp chair, reading. She had expected the sparse population—it was the middle of the week, middle of the day and the beginning of March, the least busy month of the year.
Frank glanced at her twice but didn’t even wave. Beau trotted off, disappointed, when Maggie didn’t get out of the car. She still hadn’t come up with a good entry line. Five minutes passed before her father walked out of the store, across the porch and down the steps, Beau following. She lowered the window.
“Hi, Maggie,” he said, leaning on the car’s roof. “Wasn’t expecting you.”
“It was spur-of-the-moment.”
He glanced into her backseat at all the luggage. “How long you planning to stay?”
She shrugged. “Didn’t you say I was always welcome? Anytime?”
He smiled at her. “Sometimes I run off at the mouth.”
“I need a break from work. From all that crap. From everything.”
“Understandable. What can I get you?”
“Is it too much trouble to get two beers and a bed?” she asked, maybe a little sarcastically.
“Coors okay by you?”
“Sure.”
“Go on and park by the house. There’s beer in the fridge and I haven’t sold your bed yet.”
“That’s gracious of you,” she said.
“You want some help to unload your entire wardrobe?” he asked.
“Nope. I don’t need much for now. I’ll take care of it.”
“Then I’ll get back to work and we’ll meet up later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said.
* * *