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“Mother, I’ll be going to the center tomorrow, too. And the day after that.”
“Every day?”
Laura obviously didn’t quite grasp the concept of a commuted sentence. “I have a hundred hours of community service to complete in only a few weeks. Yes, I’ll probably be going every day between now and Christmas.”
“This is what happens when you decided not to have your father represent you. He could have had the whole misunderstanding thrown out.”
Like Charlie’s little “misunderstanding” that had killed one girl and severely injured another? William had been helpless to fix that situation. Charlie had taken full responsibility for his actions and had come out of his time in youth corrections a different young man, no longer sullen and angry.
“It’s done now,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I really need to go or I’ll be late for my first day.”
“Well, will you come back to the house instead of staying in this horrible place? Then I would at least have a chance to catch up with you in the evenings.”
Again, her mother saw what she wanted to.
“I can’t. My evenings will be spent here, trying to do what I can to prepare this house for sale. Dad didn’t give me any other choice.”
“He has your best interests at heart, my dear. You know that, don’t you?”
“He might have thought he did. We have differing opinions on what the best thing for me might be.”
Not that anything was new there. Her father had notoriously found her lacking in just about every arena. He thought she had been wasting her time to obtain a degree in interior design, nor could he see any point in the sewing she had always loved or the riding lessons she tolerated.
The only time either of her parents seemed to approve of her had been during her engagement.
“Will you at least go to dinner with us this weekend? With Charlie back in California for his finals week, the house is too quiet.”
“I’ll try,” she promised. She ushered her mother out with a kiss on the cheek and firmly closed the door, practically in her face.
After Laura drove away, Genevieve hurriedly grabbed one of the totes she loved to make and headed out the door, fighting down a whirl of butterflies in her stomach.
For two days, she had been having second—and third and fourth and sixtieth—thoughts about this community-service assignment with A Warrior’s Hope. She couldn’t think of a job less suited to her limited skill set than helping wounded veterans. What did she know about their world? Next to nothing. Most likely, she would end up saying something stupid and offensive and none of them would want anything to do with her.
A hundred hours could turn into a lifetime if she screwed this up.
By the time she drove into the parking lot of the Hope’s Crossing Recreation Center in Silver Strike Canyon, the butterflies were in full-fledged stampede mode.
She was five minutes early, she saw with relief as she climbed out of her SUV and walked into the building.
Construction on the recreation center had been under way during her last visit home for Pearl’s funeral. The building was really quite lovely, designed by world-renowned architect Jackson Lange. Created of stone, cedar planks and plenty of glass, the sprawling structure complemented the mountainous setting well for being so large.
It also appeared to be busy. The parking lot was filled with several dozen cars, which she considered quite impressive for a weekday morning in December.
She wasn’t exactly sure how A Warrior’s Hope fit into the picture, but she supposed she had a hundred hours to figure that out.
The butterflies went into swarm-mode as she walked through the front doors into a lobby that wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of the hotels at the ski resort.
She stood for a moment just inside the sliding glass doors, hating these nerves zinging through her. Spying a sign that read A Warrior’s Hope at one desk, she drew in a steady breath in an effort to conceal her anxiety and approached.
The woman seated behind the computer was younger than Genevieve and busy on a phone call that seemed to revolve around airline arrangements. She held up a finger in a universal bid for patience and finished her call.
“Sorry,” she said when she replaced the phone receiver on the cradle. “I’ve been trying to reach the airline for days to make sure they know we need special arrangements to transport some medical equipment when our new guys arrive next week.”
“Ah.” Gen wasn’t quite sure what else to say. “I’m Genevieve Beaumont. I believe you were expecting me.”
The woman looked blank for a moment then her face lit up. “Oh! You’re one of the community-service people. Spence said you were coming today. Our computers have been down. No internet, no email, and wouldn’t you know, our IT guy is on vacation. I’ve been so crazy trying to track down somebody else to help I forgot you were coming. I’m Chelsea Palmer. I’m the administrative assistant to Eden Davis, the director of A Warrior’s Hope.”
“Hi, Chelsea.”
She didn’t recognize the young woman and couldn’t see any evidence Chelsea knew her—or of her—either.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about computers, do you?” the woman asked hopefully.
Gen gave a short laugh. “On a good day, I can usually figure out how to turn them on but that’s the extent of my technical abilities. And sometimes I can’t even do that.”
Chelsea gave her a friendly smile. She was quite pretty, though she wore a particularly unattractive shade of yellow. She could also use a little more subtlety in her makeup.
Gen certainly wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead, she would relish the promise of that friendly smile. Around Hope’s Crossing, she found it refreshing when people didn’t know who she was. Here, many saw her as snobbish and cold. She had no idea how to thaw those perceptions.
She had loved that about living in Paris, where her friends didn’t care about her family, her connections, her past.
“Thanks anyway,” Chelsea said. “I’ll figure something out. My ex-boyfriend works in IT up at the resort. He agreed to come take a look at things.”
“Even though he’s an ex?” She hadn’t spoken with Sawyer since the day she threw his ring back at him.
“I know, right? But we left things on pretty good terms. He’s not a bad guy.... He was only a little more interested in his video games than me, you know? I decided that wasn’t for me.”
“Understandable.”
Chelsea’s gaze shifted over Gen’s shoulder and her face lit up. “Hey, Dylan! Eden said you would be stopping in this morning.”
“And here I am. Hi. Chelsea, right?”
“One two-second conversation in line at the grocery store and you remembered my name.”
Gen didn’t like the way all her warm feelings toward the other woman trickled away. Friends weren’t that easy to come by here in Hope’s Crossing. She certainly couldn’t throw one away because she was feeling unreasonably territorial toward Dylan, even if she had been the one shackled to the man.
She didn’t blame Chelsea for that little moment of flirtatiousness. Dylan still needed a haircut. Regardless, he looked quite delicious. Even the black eye patch only made him more attractive somehow, probably because the eye not concealed behind it looked strikingly blue in contrast.
She thought of that moment when she had nearly fallen on the ice a few days earlier, when he had caught her and held her against his chest for a heartbeat.
And then the humiliation of his words, basically accusing her of being so shallow she recoiled in disgust when he touched her, which was so not true.
“Genevieve.” He again said her name as her Parisian friends did and for some strange reason she found the musical syllables incredibly sexy spoken in that gruff voice.
“Is that how you say your name?” Chelsea asked in surprise. “I though it was Gen-e-vieve.”
She managed to tamp down the inappropriate reaction to the man. “Either way works,” she said to Chelsea. “Or you could simply call me Gen.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
The young woman turned her attention back to Dylan. She tucked her hair behind her ear—her pointy ear, Gen thought, before she chided herself for her childishness in noticing. She was a horrid person, as superficial as everyone thought.
“We’re all so excited you’re finally coming to help us,” Chelsea said. “Eden has been over the moon since she heard about your, er, little brush with the law.”
“Good to know I could make everybody’s day,” he said dryly, but Chelsea didn’t appear to notice.
“It’s going to be perfect,” she exclaimed. “You’re going to be great! Exactly what we need.”
She had said nothing of the sort to Genevieve, yet another piece of evidence in what she was beginning to suspect—that her presence was superfluous here, an unnecessary addendum. The organizers of the program wanted Dylan to help out at A Warrior’s Hope because of his own perspective and experience. She, on the other hand, was little more than collateral damage.
“Where is Eden?” she finally interjected.
“She’s at the pool with Spence and our new program coordinator, Mac Scanlan.”
“I thought Eden was in charge,” Genevieve said.
“Technically, she is. She’s the executive director, in charge of fundraising, planning, coordinating events etc. We just hired a new person to actually run the activities. He’s spending the day familiarizing himself with the facilities. She told me to send you to the pool the minute you both arrive.”
Which had been several minutes earlier, but who was counting?
“Thanks,” Genevieve said.
“I’m supposed to make you ID badges first, but we’ll have to do that later, when my system is back in action. You know where to go, right? Through the main doors there and down the first hall.”
Dylan seemed reluctant to move. Apparently Genevieve would have to take the lead. She followed Chelsea’s directions, aware of him coming up behind her.
“You made it,” she said to Dylan as they entered the hallway.
“You didn’t think I’d show?”
“Given your general reluctance to this whole idea, I guess I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had decided you’d rather go to jail.”
“I’m still not discounting that possibility.”
She smiled a little. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Chelsea’s right. You are in a far better position than anybody else, especially me.”
“So everybody says. I’m not seeing it.”
“You know what it’s like to be injured in battle, to have to rebuild your life.”
“Right. I’m doing a hell of a job, aren’t I?”
Genevieve flashed him a quick look. “Better than I would in your situation,” she answered truthfully.
“You would probably start designing a fashion line for one-armed pirate wannabes and go on to make millions of dollars.”
She laughed. “The only one-armed pirate wannabe I know doesn’t seem particularly interested in fashion.”
He gave her a mock offended look. “What do you mean? I wore a bolo, didn’t I? I thought I was going for the hipster look.”
“Or something,” she answered.
He snorted but said nothing as they moved toward the door at the end of the hall where she could see the flickering blue of water.
“You were wrong the other day,” she said when they nearly reached it.
He paused and gave her a curious look. “You’ll have to be more specific. I’m wrong about a lot of things.”
She fiercely wished she hadn’t said anything but she couldn’t figure out a way to back down now.
“Er, you implied I flinched away when you touched me—that I was, I don’t know, disgusted or something because you’re, er, missing your arm. That wasn’t it. You just...” Her voice trailed off.
“I just...” he prodded.
“You make me nervous,” she said in a rush. “It has nothing to do with any eye patch or...or missing hand. It’s just...you.”
His eyebrow rose and he studied her for a long moment, so long she could feel herself flush. “How refreshingly honest of you, Ms. Beaumont.”
“I just didn’t want you to think I’m— What’s the word you used? Er, chickenshit.”
He laughed as she pushed open the door to the pool area and the sound echoed through the cavernous space.
Several people congregating beside the pool looked over at the sound and Genevieve recognized Spence Gregory and Dylan’s sister, Charlotte, as well as a man in a wheelchair and another woman she didn’t know.
“I wasn’t sure you would make it,” Spence said to Dylan when they reached them, holding out his hand. After a slight pause, Dylan took it.
“Why does everybody keep saying that?” he asked.
“No reason.” Charlotte hugged him and he gave her an awkward sort of pat with his right arm.
“I’m so glad you agreed to do this,” his sister said.
“You made it impossible for me to refuse, didn’t you?”
“Don’t blame me. It was all Pop’s idea, and Andrew’s the one who ran with it. Though I probably should confess that Spence might have mentioned to Harry Lange how much we’d like to have you volunteer here and I believe Harry might have mentioned it to Judge Richards during one of their poker games.”
Charlotte stepped away from her brother and gave Genevieve a cool smile. “Hello, Genevieve. We’re glad you agreed to help, too. We have a strong core of volunteers already, but we’re always glad for more.”
Genevieve had enough experience with polite falsehoods to recognize one when she heard it. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Charlotte probably blamed her for her brother’s troubles in the first place.
“I’m happy to help.” She was an old hand at polite falsehoods herself.
Spencer Gregory stepped up. “Good to see you again. I didn’t have the chance to say hello when we saw you at the airport last week.”
He really was gorgeous up close. She didn’t follow baseball but she knew Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory was a nickname given only in part for the man’s fastball. Oddly, despite those long lashes and that particularly charming smile, he didn’t make her nerves flutter at all, unlike others in the room she could mention.
“My father loved to tell business associates from out of town how you used to be our paper boy.”
