Brambleberry House. RaeAnne Thayne

it open for them and they walked inside where the smells of Abigail’s lush late-summer flowers surrounded them in warm welcome.

      She eased Maddie off her back. “You two take Conan inside to get a drink from Anna while I talk to Mr. Garrett, okay?”

      “Okay,” Simon said, and headed up the steps. Maddie followed more slowly but a moment later Julia and Will were alone with only the sound of the wind sighing in the tops of the pine trees.

      “What’s wrong with Maddie?”

      His quiet voice cut through the peace of the night and she instinctively bristled, wanting to protest that nothing was wrong with her child. Absolutely nothing. Maddie was perfect in every way.

      The words tangled in her throat. “She’s recovering from a bone marrow transplant,” she answered in a low voice to match his. It wasn’t any grand secret and he certainly deserved to know, though she didn’t want to go through more explanations.

      “It’s been four months but she hasn’t quite regained her strength. She’s been a fighter through everything life has thrown at her the last two and a half years, though—two rounds of chemo and a round of radiation—so I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be back to her old self.”

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      HE HEARD HER words as if she whispered them on the wind from a long distance away.

      Bone marrow transplant. Chemotherapy. Radiation.

      Cancer.

      He had suspected Maddie was ill, but cancer. Damn it. The thought of that sweet-faced little girl enduring that kind of nightmare plowed into him like a semitruck and completely knocked him off his pins.

      “I’m sorry, Julia.”

      The words seemed horrifyingly inadequate but he didn’t have the first idea what else to say in this kind of situation. Besides, hadn’t he learned after the dark abyss of the last two years that sometimes the simplest of sentiments meant the most?

      The sun had finally slipped beyond the horizon and in the dusky twilight, she looked young and lovely and as fragile as her daughter.

      “It’s been a long, tough journey,” she answered. “But I have great hope that we’re finally starting to climb through to the other side.”

      He envied her that hope, he realized. That’s what had been missing in his world for two years—for too long there had seemed no escape to the unrelenting pain. He missed Robin, he missed Cara, he missed the man he used to be.

      But this wasn’t about him, he reminded himself. One other lesson he had learned since the accident that stole his family was that very few people made it through life unscathed, without suffering or pain, and Julia had obviously seen more than her share.

      “A year and a half, you said. So you must have had to cope with losing your husband in the midst of dealing with Maddie’s cancer?”

      In the twilight, he saw her mouth open then close, as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind.

      “Yes,” she finally answered, though he had a feeling that wasn’t what she intended to tell him. “I guess you can see why I felt like we needed a fresh start.”

      “She’s okay now, you said?”

      “She’s been in remission for a year. The bone marrow transplant was more a precaution because the second round of chemo destroyed her immune system. We were blessed that Simon could be the donor. But as you can imagine, we’re all pretty sick of hospitals and doctors by now.”

      He released a breath, his mind tangled in the vicious thorns of remembering those last terrible two weeks when Cara had clung to life, when he had cried and prayed and begged for another chance for his broken and battered little girl.

      For nothing.

      His prayers hadn’t done a damn bit of good.

      “It’s kind of surreal, isn’t it?” Julia said after a moment. “Who would have thought all those summers ago when we were young that one day we’d be standing here in Abigail’s garden together talking about my daughter’s cancer treatment?”

      He had a sudden, savage need to pummel something—to yank the autumn roses up by the roots, to shatter the porch swing into a million pieces, to hack the limbs off Abigail’s dogwood bushes.

      “Life is the cruelest bitch around,” he said, and the bitter words seemed to scrape his throat bloody and raw. “Makes you wonder what the hell the point is.”

      She lifted shocked eyes to his. “Oh, Will. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and before he realized her intentions, she reached out and touched his arm in sympathy.

      For just a moment the hair on his arm lifted and he forgot his bitterness, held captive by the gentle brush of skin against skin. He ached for the tenderness of a woman’s touch—no, of Julia’s touch—at the same time it terrified him.

      He forced himself to take a step back. Cool night air swirled between them and he wondered how it was possible for the temperature to dip twenty degrees in a millisecond.

      “I’d better go.” His voice still sounded hoarse. “Your kids probably need you inside.”

      Her color seemed higher than it had been earlier and he thought she looked slightly disconcerted. “I’m sure you’re right. Good night, then. And...thank you for the ice cream and the company. I enjoyed both.”

      She paused for the barest of moments, as if waiting for him to respond. When the silence dragged on, an instant’s disappointment flickered in her eyes and she began to climb the porch steps.

      “You’re welcome,” he said when she reached the top step. She turned with surprise.

      “And for the record,” he went on, “I haven’t enjoyed much of anything for a long time but tonight was...nice.”

      Her brilliant smile followed him as he let himself out the front gate and headed down the dark street toward his home, a journey he had made a thousand times.

      He didn’t need to think about where he was going, which left his mind free to wander through dark alleys.

      Cancer. That cute little girl. Hell.

      Poor thing. Julia said it was in remission, that things were better except lingering fatigue. Still, he knew this was just one more reason he needed to maintain his careful distance.

      His heart was a solid block of ice but if it ever started to melt, he knew he couldn’t let himself care about Julia Blair and her children. He couldn’t afford it.

      He had been through enough pain and loss for a hundred lifetimes. He would have to be crazy to sign up for a situation with the potential to promise plenty more.

      When he was ready to let people into his life again—if he was ever ready—it couldn’t be a medically fragile little girl, a boy with curious eyes and energy to burn, and a lovely auburn-haired widow who made him long to taste life again.

      * * *

      SHE DIDN’T SEE Will again for several days. With the lead-up to the start of school and then the actual chaos of adjusting to a new classroom and coming to know thirty new students, she barely had time to give him more than a passing thought.

      But twice in the early hours of the morning as she graded math refresher assignments and the obligatory essays about how her students had spent the summer, she had glimpsed the telltale glimmer of lights in his workshop through the pines.

      Only the walls of Abigail’s old house knew that both times she had stopped what she was doing to stand at the window for a few moments watching that light and wondering what he was working on, what he was thinking about, if he’d had a good day.

      It wasn’t