Once Upon a Groom. Karen Smith Rose

and …” He motioned to Zack. “Zack told me you’d be a big help with that.”

      “What about a cardiac rehab program?” Zack asked.

      “I’ll be speaking with your father about that, too. There are a couple of different ways we can handle it. He’ll have to choose what’s right for him.”

      “He’ll probably want a private nurse and a home gym,” Zack muttered.

      The doctor didn’t look fazed. He just said, “Whatever it takes.”

      Jenny knew he was right. She would do whatever it took to keep Silas on the road to good health. Seeing how quickly Zack had responded to her call, she was hopeful he would, too, even if it was only so he could get back to his own life.

      “How long do you think it will be until he’s able to do the things he wants to do again?” she asked.

      “We’re going to have to see how his recuperation comes along. But if you’re asking in general terms, I’d say four to six weeks at least. Maybe longer until the changes he makes take effect.”

      Jenny saw Zack frown and didn’t know what that meant. Would he consider staying in Miners Bluff that long? If so, why? Did he feel she couldn’t handle Silas on her own? Or was he simply worried about his father and didn’t want to admit it?

      “I’m going to keep him in CICU for today. Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll transition him to an intermediary room. I want to keep an eye on his blood oxygen level. Then we’ll decide what happens next.”

      Zack extended his hand to shake the cardiologist’s. “Thank you.”

      Jenny did the same, saying, “I wish we weren’t so far from the hospital.”

      “Miners Bluff has a superior urgent care center. Don’t hesitate to go there or call me if there are any problems.” The doctor moved toward the door. There he stopped. To Zack he said, “Your dad is a tough customer. It might take both of you to convince him to do what he needs to do.” Then he exited the room, leaving Zack and Jenny alone—each wondering what came next.

      Four days later, Jenny stepped through the mahogany French doors to Silas’s parlor, surprised to see Zack cleaning out the cupboard behind the wet bar. “What are you doing?”

      Zack didn’t know if this was going to be a fight or not, but he wouldn’t back down from it. He stacked bottles of liquor into a carton. “I’m clearing away temptation. Dad’s resting, I hope?”

      They’d driven into Flagstaff together to pick him up when he was discharged. Both wanted to hear what the instructions were for after-care. He was supposed to take it easy for the next week. Zack wasn’t sure that meant the same thing to his father that it meant to him.

      He continued to remove bottles from the cabinet and shove them in the box. “I know he doesn’t like staying in one of the guest bedrooms down here, but it’s for his own good. I’ll stay down here, too, then I can keep an eye on him.”

      “He can use the intercom system if he needs you.”

      Zack stared down into the box so long, Jenny finally asked, “Zack?”

      “Sorry. I was remembering … This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this.”

      She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

      Did he want to get into this with her? Why not? The past didn’t matter anymore. If she didn’t know the gritty details, maybe it was time. “Dad drank and gambled for as far back as I can remember, then he’d come home and fight with Mom. When I was around ten, I got this mistaken impression that if I went through the house and got rid of some of the liquor, that might make a difference. So I’d take out a bottle here, a bottle there and I’d dump them behind the barn. I couldn’t wipe out the whole cupboard, there would’ve been hell to pay. But at least I felt I was doing something.”

      He saw the softening in Jenny’s brown eyes and he knew what that meant. It was pity. He certainly didn’t want her pity, not for the boy he’d been, and certainly not for the man he was now. “That taught me one very important lesson,” he added, suddenly realizing exactly why he was telling her this story. “You can’t make a difference in someone’s life unless they want you to.”

      She crossed the hunter green and burgundy Persian rug, rounding a suede and leather sofa. “That’s not true, Zack. Don’t tell me you believe that.”

      When she stopped in front of the bar, he focused his gaze on her. “Do you think you’ve made a difference in his life?” He knew Jenny had poured everything she was and everything she could have been into Silas and the Rocky D.

      “I have made a difference. Because I’ve become a substitute for you.”

      This time there was no pity in her eyes but there was something else he couldn’t decipher. That bothered him. He used to understand Jenny so well … why she yearned for bonds she could depend on.

      Jenny’s father had done his duty by her when he’d had to. His love had always been the rodeo. Early on, Jenny had had her mom, but had only seen her dad when he came in from the circuit. After that …

      Jenny’s mom had suddenly died of a brain aneurysm when Jenny was eight and her father had been devastated. Jenny had known, even though he wasn’t at home that much, that he and her mom had really loved each other. After a year of Jenny taking care of Charlie, rather than Charlie taking care of her, he’d left her with a neighbor more and more, always chasing a rodeo purse and a dream. That’s the way it had been until Jenny had done an internship on the Rocky D the summer before her senior year in high school. She’d loved horses, handled them expertly and calmed them, showing up his father’s best grooms. His mother had started giving her other responsibilities and had let her handle some of the bookwork. When his mom learned her history, she’d asked Jenny if she wanted to live with them her senior year of high school. Charlie had easily agreed, handing off some of the responsibility for his almost-grown child. Jenny became like a daughter to the Deckers.

      Zack’s attraction to Jenny and hers to him had revved up the moment she’d set foot on the Rocky D. Zack had known it wouldn’t be fair to start something with her, when he intended to leave Miners Bluff as soon as he could. Jenny, on the other hand, wore her heart on her sleeve, which had made it easy for him to confide in her, go on long walks and rides, become close to her in a way he’d never been close to a girl before. The night of their high school graduation, they’d gone to the all-night party, come home around 3:00 a.m. and climbed up to the hayloft, which had become their private place. They’d been so excited. He’d won the National Young Filmmakers Scholarship and his dad had hired her to be one of his horse trainers and handlers. In that excitement, their threshold of restraint had fallen low. They’d made love in that hayloft. He’d asked her to go with him to L.A. She’d refused. That had been the end of them.

      “You didn’t have to be a substitute for anyone,” Zack protested, feeling as if she were blaming him for something about her life, too.

      “I didn’t say I didn’t want to be here, because I did. But I also realized that after your mother died, Silas gave up on the idea that you’d ever come back.”

      Staying in this house again, recollections from that difficult time in Zack’s life pummeled him. As he’d tried to do since he’d returned, he shoved them away. “Even if Mom hadn’t died, I doubt if I would have come back. When she visited me in L.A., she made sure to tell me she was proud—of me, of my work … But have you forgotten that when I left for film school, my father cut me off? He didn’t want to know how the classes were, or what kind of projects I was doing. He didn’t want to know if I was successful. He just didn’t care. He’d planned for me to take his place someday. He blamed her for my absence because she gave me my first video camera.”

      Jenny leaned closer, the bar still a barrier between them. “You’re both carrying too many shadows from the past. It’s time to let go of all of it.”

      Just