And those ten days he’d spent trying to get to his great-grandfather…how had he eaten? Where had he slept? He had to have hitched rides with people; who would pick up a nine-year-old kid and not call the police?
There was a knock on the door just before it opened. “Some guy told me I’d find you in here,” Jack said, walking up to the desk. “Is there a reason you didn’t warn me about—Megan! What’s the matter?” he asked, rushing around the desk and hunching down in front of her. “You’re crying. Why? What did that man say to you?”
The dam holding back her emotions exploded, and Megan threw herself into Jack’s arms with a wailed sob and clung to him fiercely.
“Megan! What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, holding her tightly. “Tell me what’s wrong!”
“M-my answer’s yes, Jack,” she said between sobs. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Tomorrow, if you want. Or right now. W-we’ll find Father Daar and get married tonight.”
“And this is making you cry?” he asked with a chuckle, trying to lean away to look in her eyes. But when she wouldn’t stop clinging, he sighed softly and just held her, her head tucked under his chin as he gently swayed them in a rocking motion. “Okay, then,” he whispered into her hair. “We’ll get married first thing tomorrow morning.” He tried once more to see her face, this time succeeding. “What brought this on all of a sudden? And why is your decision to marry me making you cry?”
Megan tried to regain her composure; she really, truly tried. But when she pictured the man in front of her as a little boy watching…“You watched your family die!” she wailed, burying her face in his shirt again.
He went perfectly still. “What are you talking about?” he whispered tightly. “What’s going on?”
“I kn-know the whole story,” she sobbed. “About the accident, and how you tried to save them. The truck driver even told Frank how he dragged you down the road to get you away from—Oh God, it must have been horrible!”
Jack took hold of her shoulders and forcibly set her away from him. Megan shuddered, blinking through her tears, and saw him pick up the report sitting on the desk. He silently thumbed through it, his face completely void of expression. “You sent someone to Medicine Lake to investigate me?” he asked ever so softly, stopping at one particular page for several seconds, then moving on. He finally brought his gaze back to her. “You couldn’t have just asked me?”
His eyes were distant, and Megan felt a cold, bottomless fissure open between them.
“No, wait, I forgot. You don’t believe anything I tell you.” He tossed the report down on the desk, the soft sound making Megan flinch. “I just remembered I have stuff to do tomorrow,” he told her. “So I guess the wedding’s off. Not that I’m in a hurry to hitch myself to a woman who doesn’t trust me—much less one who’s marrying me out of pity.”
He turned and headed for the door.
“Jack, wait!” Megan cried, grabbing the report and running over to the hearth, where she tossed it onto the glowing embers. “I haven’t even read it. I don’t need to anymore!”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, quietly closing the door behind him.
Megan chased after him but he was already down the hall, and she had to wrestle her way through a mob of children before she finally reached the front door just as it was closing. She wrenched it open and ran onto the bridge spanning the rippling brook below. “Jack! Wait! Please wait!” she pleaded.
He stopped at the end of the bridge and turned to face her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t trust you when you first came here, so I hired someone to check out your story. But I trust you now, Jack. I burned the report because I trust you.”
“Really? Enough to tell me what the favor is you’re doing for Kenzie?” he asked, his emotionless voice carrying across the expanse between them.
“Please don’t ask me that,” she pleaded, stepping toward him, her hand outstretched. “I-I gave him my word.”
“And your little ride to Bear Mountain last night with your sister?” he asked. “Did you promise not to tell me about that, either?”
She took a step back, bumping into the door.
“I’m chief of police, sweetheart. You don’t think I’d hear about a TarStone Resort snowcat roaming through town in the wee hours of the morning? So where’d you and Camry go until six this morning?”
Silence spanned the distance between them.
“I see,” he said finally. “Funny how trust can be selective.” He touched his fingers to his forehead in a brief salute. “I’ll see you around town.”
At that, he turned and walked off into the night.
Megan watched until he disappeared into the shadows, then went back inside, running past the people heading to the dining room as her mother carried in the cake. She ran up the stairs to her childhood bedroom, threw herself down on her bed, and stared up at the ceiling, unable even to cry.
She’d hurt Jack badly. She’d seen it in his eyes and heard it in his voice, and feared he was so wounded, he might never be able to forgive her.
The door opened and her mother walked in, quietly lay down on the bed beside her, and also stared up at the ceiling in silence.
“I’ve really done it this time, Mama,” Megan whispered into the moon-softened darkness. “I think I broke his heart tonight.” She turned her head toward her mother. “Will I be able to mend it, the way he did mine?”
“I don’t know, baby. Women are more resilient than men are in matters of the heart, because hope is the very fabric of our being. If it wasn’t, the human race would have died out several hundred generations ago, since we wouldn’t have brought children into a world wrought with war, hunger, pain, and heartache.” Grace looked over and smiled sadly. “But men…men aren’t as lucky. For them, everything seems to be cut and dried. Black and white. All or nothing.”
“I told Jack I trusted him, but when he asked me about Kenzie and the dragon, I couldn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I promised I wouldn’t.”
“And your promise to Kenzie is more important than your love for Jack?”
Megan rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow to face her mother. “Are you saying I should have broken my promise?”
“I’m saying that you shouldn’t have given your promise to Kenzie to begin with. He asked you for a favor, and that you keep it between yourselves, but you were under no obligation to go along with his terms. You could have told Kenzie that Jack came first in your life.”
“But he wasn’t really in my life at the time.”
“And when he was? Did you tell Kenzie you could no longer keep his secret? That you’d either have to stop whatever your favor is, or tell Jack about it?”
Megan threw herself onto her back again, blinking up at the ceiling. “I hadn’t thought about that. Kenzie dictated the terms of the favor, and I just blindly went along with it.” She frowned over at her mother. “I am such an easy mark. I want everyone to like me, and I can’t live with myself if they don’t. Look at how much I covered for Winter this past fall when she was fooling around with Matt.” She sighed and stared back up at the ceiling. “I can see now that my heart wasn’t anywhere near as broken as I let on when I came home. I knew deep down inside that Jack had sent me away for a good reason, but I still carried on like an idiot.” She looked at her mother again. “I was afraid everyone would think I was a failure for running home to my parents, pregnant and without a husband.”
Grace laughed softly. “You did cry a lot.” She propped her head up on her hand and squeezed Megan’s arm. “But the only person who has to like you is the man you love, baby. If your heart belongs to Jack Stone, then he is your priority. He should have your unconditional trust, respect, and total devotion. And Jack strikes me as the sort of man who would return those qualities in spades, given the chance.”
“He would,” Megan whispered. “So how do I fix it?”