Page 87 of A Beach House Beginning

Maybe she needed to make time. The rehab physician had taken her aside after Hope’s appointment to ask how Christa was doing. Dr. Kolford had urged her to take care of herself first or she would have no reserves left to care for her daughter.

It was good advice in the abstract. But the reality of five months had taught her there was always one more thing she needed to do for her child—one more exercise to get in before bedtime, one more prescription to track down, one more battle to fight with the insurance company.

She sighed and set her paperwork aside. Though she still had much to do, most of it could wait until the next day. Right now Christa needed to be home and get to all thoseone-morethings.

When she neared her mother’s home, she slowed her SUV at the unfamiliar shiny silver pickup in the driveway.

That wasn’t so unusual to find a vehicle she didn’t recognize at the house. Between the medical case workers and the therapists and tutors at school, Hope had a wide circle of caregivers and many of them made home visits.

Perhaps that was the reason Ellen hadn’t answered either the home phone or her cell, because she’d been occupied with a visitor.

Christa opened the door, ready to smile and be polite, but inside the house only echoing silence greeted her.

“Mom? Hope?”

No one answered, and she walked from room to room on the main floor and found no sign of them. Since Ellen couldn’t take Hope up the stairs, she didn’t bother checking there.

This was odd. She could believe Ellen might have pushed Hope outside to enjoy an afternoon walk, but that certainly didn’t explain the unfamiliar pickup truck.

Where could they be?she worried. She knew her mother would have called her if Hope had had a bad seizure or something. But what if Ellen wasn’t able to use the phone?

She walked outside to look around and thought she just heard the murmur of voices on the wind. Odd. It sounded as if the voices were coming from the horse pasture where her father’s beloved pair of Arabians resided.

What on earth would they be doing there? The path between the house and the horse pasture was uneven gravel, far too difficult terrain for Ellen to easily maneuver Hope’s wheelchair.

But when she listened, she could distinctly hear voices. Drat her mother. She pushed herself too hard. Even if Hope had begged her grandmother to take her there—which she probably had—Ellen shouldn’t have given in.

Christa followed the path, thinking how many times she had walked this same route when she was a girl. She had been just as horse-mad as Hope—which might explain why she’d run off with the first hunky cowboy to come her way.

The evening was warm for April and lovely with spring. Daffodils and tulips swayed in the breeze along the fence line, and the trees in her mother’s small fruit orchard burst with color, heavy with lush blossoms.

This was home. In those rough early days on her own in Texas, she had dreamed of the sweetness of a Utah spring, of lilac bushes and cool mornings and their neighbors’ new lambs leaping through the grass.

She remembered Jace McCandless telling her she didn’t quite fit here and she knew in this moment she could have offered him a powerful counterargument. Sometimes she wondered if she had ever truly belonged anywhere else.

Following the sound of voices, she rounded the corner of the barn, then stopped abruptly, her instant astonishment quickly giving way to a slow bubble of anger.

She should have known a man like Jace McCandless wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had asked him to leave her alone. So what was he doing there? He stood by the corral with Ellen and Hope, looking impossibly gorgeous as he supported Hope, who leaned against the fence railing and fed apples to the horses.

“Hi, Mom,” Hope chirped, sounding so much like her old self that Christa blinked and had to fight back tears.

“Hi,” she answered.

“Shiloh remembers me.”

“I’ll bet she does.”

With some measure of defiance, she leaned in and kissed her daughter, doing her best to ignore Jace just inches away from the two of them. Darn him anyway for coming around, for making her so painfully aware of the emptiness of her life.

“How did you get down here with that bumpy pathway?”

“Jace.” Hope beamed at him.

Of course. Who else?

“We were taking a little walk earlier down the street when Jace happened to drive past,” Ellen offered with a smile that seemed just as smitten as her granddaughter’s. “He was kind enough to stop and say hello. And before you know it we were inviting him home with us for pie and coffee. We’ve spent a lovely afternoon together.”

“Is that right?” she murmured.

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