One Night with her Bachelor (6 page)

January

M
olly stood on
a ladder and adjusted the moose head on her living room wall. “How about now?”

“Still wonky,” her friend Lily said from below. “Nudge it a little to the left.”

Molly shifted the bottom of the head to the left.

“No, the other left.”

Hands full of moose head, Molly glanced down Lily. “The other left? What are you talking about? There’s only one left.”

“Move the
top
of it to the left.”

As if she could reach the top. She was struggling just to hold onto the dang thing. Molly nudged the bottom to the right and took her hands away. “Now?”

“Perfect.”

Thank God. Her shoulders were aching. That moose had to weigh twenty pounds, and she’d carried it up the ladder before lifting it over her head to hang it on the hooks. She stepped down, stood next to Lily and shook her aching arms out. Staring at the grotesque monstrosity she always swore never to decorate with, she grimaced. “Who ever heard of mounting a moose head as a welcome-home gift?”

Lily slung her arm over Molly’s shoulder and pulled her close. “He’ll love it. Seriously, he’ll go ape shit all over it. Or moose shit. Either way, you might want to put a tarp down.”

All the adrenaline she’d mustered to get the huge head up the ladder seeped away from her, leaving her awash in naked reality.

Bringing Josh home was going to be the beginning of her challenges, not the end. Together they would have to figure out how to cope with his injuries, and learning to let go of trivial details—like hideous moose heads on her wall—was crucial. “You’re right, he
will
love it. It’s perfect. I don’t know where you found a fake moose head around here, but thanks for getting it for him.” She paused. “It
is
fake, right?”

Lily stiffened. “Uh, yeah. Obviously I got a fake one. I know how much you hate hunting.”

Molly’s eyes narrowed and she took a long look at the moose’s glassy-eyed stare. “It looks really realistic.”

Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Lily said, “Uh, yeah, it’s… um… it’s high-quality workmanship. Totally fake, though. Totally.”

Liar.
But Molly didn’t care anymore. Josh had loved hunting with her dad. As probably the only vegetarian in Montana, Molly had refused to dress any of his kills or decorate her house with carcasses. Now, though, she would do anything to make Josh smile. As usual, Lily had known exactly what Josh would like. She laid her head against Lily’s shoulder, so grateful for all the ways her friend had supported her through the horror of nearly five months.

Surgery after surgery. Good news—
He’ll live
—followed by bad news—
He has incomplete paraplegia and may never walk again
. Lily had been there through it all, holding her hand, wiping her tears, holding back her hair as she’d vomited all her terror, and sometimes even making her smile. Lily had helped her wade through the bureaucracy and legal issues. And when Molly had discovered there weren’t any specialist spinal hospitals or rehab units in Montana or any of the surrounding states, Lily had helped Molly make the toughest decision of her life—taking Josh to live with his dad and step-family in Boulder so he could get the care he needed.

With an avalanche of bills smothering her, Molly couldn’t afford to take unpaid leave from her job. So she’d had to say goodbye to her baby boy and trust Greg and his wife Sharon to become Josh’s everyday family instead of people he saw every couple of months. Every Friday afternoon, Molly had driven ten hours to Boulder and slept on Greg’s couch so she could spend the weekend hanging out with Josh at the rehab unit Greg was paying for. She’d been there when her boy had learned he would probably spend the rest of his life sitting down. She’d screamed and yelled and attacked a punching bag alongside him when he’d discovered his rodeo days would never come.

She would exchange everything she had for a chance to see Josh on a bronco. It made no sense, since she would probably wet herself with fear, but every cell of her body raged at the unfairness that he would never be able to make his one dream come true.

She’d driven home overnight every Sunday, showing up at work on Monday mornings completely unprepared to face twenty five-year-olds who wanted to sing
“When You’re Happy and You Know It.”
But she only had to make the journey one last time. Josh was graduating from the rehab program tomorrow, and on Sunday she would bring him home.

At least she still had a home to bring him home to. A month from now, she might not. She’d fallen a few months behind on her mortgage payments and couldn’t seem to get on top of her mounting debt. Tension pounded in her temples. The knot that had taken up residence between her shoulders grew tighter, harder.

“When are you taking off to get him?”

“In about twenty minutes.” She dropped her arm from Lily’s waist. “I need a sandwich first. Hungry?”

“Starved. Let me make it, though. You have a long drive ahead of you. Put your feet up.”

Panic hit Molly, and she rushed after Lily into the kitchen. “No, no, I can do it! Lil—”

“What the hell is this?” Lily pointed at the open refrigerator door. Its light was off and its shelves empty. She spun and looked at the ice chest on the floor next to the back door. Giving Molly a hard stare, she opened the ice chest and glared at the cheese and vegetables packed in the snow Molly had gathered this morning. Then she straightened and flipped the light switch on the wall.

Nothing.

Crossing her arms, she tipped her head to the side and raised her brows. “Want to tell me something?”

“I thought Josh and I should get back to basics and live a simpler life,
Little House on the Prairie
style.”

Lily shook her head. “When did they cut off the electricity?”

Molly’s shoulders slumped. “A week ago. It should be switched back on later today, though, so it’ll be on by the time Josh and I get back. I borrowed the money from Greg.”

“Jeez. How did that go down?”

Molly cringed. “About as well as you’d expect.” He’d accused her of seeing him as a cash cow and even made her sign a piece of paper saying she’d pay it back with five percent interest. “He’s actually been really good to Josh since the accident, but he loves making me squirm since I threatened him with a lawsuit for not paying child support a few years ago. I really,
really
don’t want to ask him for more.”

Problem was, she might have to. She’d received two bills this morning stamped with
Final Notice
in big, red letters. She bit her lip. She was desperate, and there was a subject she’d been meaning to broach with her friend but she didn’t know how. Lily’s former career was a sensitive subject, not something they’d ever talked about openly. Unlike most people in Marietta, Molly had met Lily long before she’d moved here to make a new life, so she’d always known how Lily had made her living in Billings. Also unlike most people in Marietta, Molly had never judged her for it. “Lil, can I ask you something about… about how to make a lot of money in a short amount of time?”

Lily’s brows snapped together. “No. Don’t even think about it.”

“But—”

“Seriously. No.”

Despair tinged with relief swept through her. “Yeah, it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. I mean, I know my body’s kinda mommy-ish.”

“You have a great body compared to some of the women I worked with. That’s not the issue. You’re sweet and optimistic and believe the best in people. Stripping would kill that. Some women can hang onto that part of themselves. Some women can distance themselves from what they’re doing and who they’re doing it for. Not you, Mol. I know you well enough to be absolutely sure of that. It would kill the best parts of you.”

Molly rubbed her forehead. There it was again, though not in so many words. She was
nice
. She couldn’t pay her bills because she was too nice for the best-paid profession available to her. How unfair that tearing off her clothes and gyrating for strangers would leave her flush with cash while teaching kids to read and count had left her in crippling debt.

“I’ll figure something out.” She had to. She wouldn’t take Josh away from the comfortable home his dad provided and force him to grow up in a hovel just so she could stay close to the community she’d grown up in. She would figure out a solution. She had to.

They talked about nothing important as they ate, and then Lily left so Molly could get ready for the long drive to Colorado. She packed up her crochet bag—one of the only things that had kept her sane on the long, lonely evenings when she felt Josh’s absence most. Not having the brainpower to focus on a real project, she’d crocheted hundreds of squares in dozens of colors. She had no idea what she would do with them all. Maybe burn them, since they would only remind her of the worst months of her life.

She hoisted her overnight bag over her shoulder, locked up the house, walked down the porch stairs—and froze. Slowly she turned back around and looked at the stairs.

Shit.

The curse word fumed inside her as darkness and fury melded into a hot, living beast. The day after tomorrow, she would come home with her son in a wheelchair, and the only way to get into their house was up three stairs.

“
Shit!
” Five months ago, she had complete control over her mouth. Five months ago, she’d never had a violent impulse in her life. Now she needed to hit something, bad. Her gaze flew around the front yard, but everything was covered in snow. Fortunately her boots were heavy because she kicked the wooden stairs so hard she heard the crunch of wood breaking.

She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then another. And another.

Still angry, she stomped over to her truck, opened the door and threw her bag onto the passenger-side floor. She climbed in and turned the key in the ignition, watching the gas gauge climb steadily to the right. The familiar sight only made her more uncomfortable. A full tank, just like every Friday. She would have to fill up in Boulder for the journey home, but after she got home she would wake up to a full tank again. Her gas had been magically topped-up before and after every long trip.

Lily wasn’t her only guardian angel.

She reversed out of her driveway and let her mind wander to Gabriel. Though he would never know it, he’d been her constant companion on these long, lonely journeys. Sometimes her imagination put him in the passenger seat, and she poured out all her emotions while he silently listened, only occasionally speaking to tell her exactly what she’d wanted to hear. Sometimes her fantasies pulled her away from the empty stretch of highway in front of her and transported her somewhere else, somewhere exotic and far too warm for clothing. Never his cabin. Her brain couldn’t take her there. If it did, she remembered all the horror of that September day in mind-bleeding detail. The way Josh’s pale, broken body had hung against Gabriel’s as the angel-warrior climbed a rope out of hell. The sweat and focus on Gabriel’s face as he’d pulled Josh to safety along the tightrope. Her anguish as Gabriel laid Josh on the stretcher and stabilized him. Her helplessness as Gabriel had taken her cell phone and sped off on his dirt bike to get help. Her determination as he’d returned and told her they needed to carry Josh to a safe clearing where a helicopter could land.

No, the point of her fantasies was to help her cope with the tragedy, not relive it.

She had gone back to his place once. She didn’t know any other way to contact him, except for hoping she ran into him in town. But, other than filling up her truck overnight, he’d made himself scarce. So back in late October, before winter had set in, she’d driven to the trail head, hiked to his cabin and left him a letter. She’d had no idea what to say, so she’d extracted from her confused thoughts the only thing that made sense:
Thank you for giving me back my son. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

She’d never heard back from him. Not in person or by letter. Nothing but a full tank of gas and one less bill to worry about. How he knew her travel routine, she had no idea. But she’d always known Gabriel Morales was a man of many hidden talents.

She talked to him off and on for the next ten hours, the one-sided conversation helping her express the scattered thoughts that festered inside if she didn’t get them out. She confessed her money worries, something she hadn’t felt comfortable telling anyone, not even Lily. And she brainstormed ways to dig her way out of debt.

Unfortunately, when she asked him for ideas, he was silent.

*

The whir of
the circular saw filled Gabriel’s ears as he fed it a two-by-ten. The machine cut through the pressure-treated wood in a matter of seconds, and a few inches of unnecessary wood clattered to the floor. He set what would become a joist in a pile with the others and grabbed another uncut two-by-ten. He’d just laid it against the machine and felt the blade’s first bite into the wood when a movement in the doorway caught his eye and made him jump and reach for the phantom M4 that hadn’t been by his side for a year. “Holy shit!”