Second Chance Dad (Aspen Creek Crossroads Book 2) Read online

  Chipper, talkative, happy people who wanted him to be the same as them had no idea what it was like to be consumed with guilt and grief, with no way to ever make things right again.

  They made him want to punch a fist through a wall…though given the heavy log construction of the cabin, that would be a stupid thing to do. It would mean more medical care. More disability. And more physical therapy—the last thing he wanted.

  Still…despite everything, he did seem to be doing a little better.

  Sophie had been thrilled over an increase of just fifteen degrees in his joint movement last week. She’d been positively ecstatic about the modest improvement today.

  And, unbelievably, the new exercises and deep massage for the chronic pain in his lumbar vertebrae were actually starting to make a difference. Not much. But he’d expected no change at all, and last night he’d been able to sleep comfortably without any painkillers.

  Even if it was just a fluke, he was thankful for the first decent night’s sleep he’d had in a year or more. If it was a portent of even better things to come, then he would be grateful.

  Through most of his appointments so far he’d been ungrateful, though. Uncooperative. More than a little surly. Sophie’s persistent cheerfulness had irritated him more than anything else.

  That his bad attitude might be a defense against the twinkle in her eyes, her soft touch and her silvery laughter was something he didn’t want to consider.

  But someday, maybe he’d need to apologize, and admit to her that she’d been right.

  “You need to do something with your grandfather. Soon.”

  Sophie stared at her dad, and belatedly realized that her mouth had dropped open. She snapped it shut, then bent down to give Eli a goodbye kiss and sent him on up to the house where Margie was standing on the porch.

  She waited until Eli was out of hearing range. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Or why you don’t make an effort, too, she thought to herself, though she knew from past experience that it was better to leave such words unsaid.

  “That woman from the Northwoods Gift Shop called again yesterday evening. She found Dad downtown, sitting on a bench in front of her store.”

  “Maybe Gramps just wanted to get out of the house. He enjoys watching tourists.”

  “Wearing those ratty white sweatpants, a purple Minnesota Vikings T-shirt and red corduroy slippers? He looked like a bum when I went after him and took him home. Abigail thinks he scares her customers away.”

  “Did she say that? Exactly? I thought she liked Gramps. He says she always gives him hot tea and a cookie whenever he comes by and sits on her bench. If she isn’t busy, she comes out and sits with him while he tells her stories about the old days in Aspen Creek.”

  “So she’s feeding him. Luring him to come back?” Dean sputtered. “I’ll go back and have a talk with her.”

  “He isn’t a stray puppy, Dad. He may be color-blind, but he’s an independent adult, and he wears those slippers sometimes because he has a bunion and his regular shoes hurt. I made a doctor’s appointment for him, two weeks from tomorrow.” Sophie thought for a minute. “Maybe Abigail just thought he would need a ride home since there was a threat of rain.”

  “Whatever. I’ve been saying for some time, and I’ll say it again. It’s time we looked into a long-term care facility for him—and if it can be arranged before Margie and I move south, all the better. Since you’re the only one who can convince him to do anything, you need to get busy.”

  “That would kill Gramps. You know that. He’s always said he wants to die in his own home.”

  “Being on the loose could kill him, too. What if he wanders in front of a car?”

  “He doesn’t wander. I’ve walked downtown with him many a time this spring. He’s very slow, but sure. And he’s cautious about traffic. He warns me about oncoming cars.”

  Not for the first time, she wondered about Gramps’s property and investments, and if her dad was keeping an interested eye on what would happen once Gramps was safely stowed away in a nursing home.

  “You’ll be the one responsible for him, missy, if you don’t listen to reason. And we all know how responsible you are.”

  She drew in a ragged breath. Like tiny poison arrows, she felt his words pierce her heart, and it took a moment for her to control the first response that flew to her lips. But this was about Gramps, not her.

  “He still balances his checkbook to the penny and writes his own checks,” she said evenly. “When you visited the lawyer, she made it pretty clear that Gramps is still able to make his own decisions. And his doctor says she thinks he is doing fine.”

  “If you’re going to be as stubborn as he is, then I’m going to do what I can to take care of this before I leave town. And this time, I don’t want you to stand in my way.”

  Her Friday morning home visit appointments went smoothly. Baxter, a ninety-year-old recovering from a heart attack on the golf course, was exceeding her rehab expectations—largely because he couldn’t wait to get back on the course with his buddies.

  Louisa, an eighty-year-old post-CVA rehab, was still as demanding as ever and driving her daughter-in-law to the brink of sanity, though her recent stroke had garbled her speech and her complaints were no longer intelligible. Still, she was gaining dexterity for self-feeding and her ambulation was improving.

  Minnie, with a hip fracture, and Theodore, with failure to thrive and generalized weakness, were both as cheerful and positive as they’d been from day one.

  The afternoon brought one of her favorites and two of her biggest challenges.

  At Alberta’s cramped apartment, with its profusion of blooming violets, explosion of lace doilies and more pink than she’d ever seen in her entire life, she was greeted at the door by the aroma of fresh chocolate chip cookies and a chipper eighty-eight-year-old pushing a walker.

  Though carefully guarding an ankle encased in a bright pink cast, the old woman beamed with an inner joy that radiated from within like candlelight. “Come in, come in,” she chortled. “I was hoping you’d be here today.”

  “I won’t ever miss a chance to see you, Mrs. Roberts.”

  With a silvery laugh, the elderly woman awkwardly ka-thumped her walker against the floor in short stages to get turned around, and then she led the way into the small kitchen and dining area, settling herself into a chair. “I’m doing much better since you’ve been visiting me, dear.”

  “It looks like you are.”

  She snorted as she backed into a kitchen chair and sank into it. “Never could’ve told me that I’d go and break my ankle instead of a hip, but for that I am truly blessed.”

  “How are you doing with your exercises?”

  “I do them exactly as you said. Three times a day during the Morning Show on TV, Jeopardy, and the ten o’clock news. These past few days I started using the two-pound weights instead of the one pounders.” She winked. “I’ve got to get ready for the Aspen Creek Marathon, you know.”

  Sophie laughed. “Mrs. Roberts!”

  “Well, why not? I’m spry for my age, and there are some handsome guys in the seventy-and-over division. My friend Martha said so.” She winked. “Find a young pup, and he might last as long as you do.”

  With Alberta’s age and fractured ankle, there’d been a number of therapy exercises that Sophie hadn’t been able to implement. Still, Alberta was making excellent progress for someone her age at six-to-twelve weeks postop.

  “Are you doing your Thera-Band stretches?”

  She reached into the cloth bag hanging from her walker handles and pulled out her long yellow Theraband. “Just like you said.”

  “I think we’ll move you up to a red band—the next resistance level,” Sophie murmured as she watched the old woman demonstrate how she’d been doing her strengthening exercises with the six-foot-long stretchy band. “You’re doing great.”

  “My daughter has been taking me to the senior center for the exercise bike, and t
o the high school for the early morning Senior Water Exercise classes, too. Three times a week.”

  “She’s a good daughter.” Sophie knelt in front of her and began massaging her ankle and lower leg. “And good for you, for making such an effort. You’ll be even better than normal in no time.”

  Alberta fixed her with a piercing look. “So how’s it going with that young man of yours?”

  “What?” Caught off guard, Sophie looked up. “Oh—you mean my son?”

  “No. That nice young man you go visit on the afternoons after you see me.”

  Well, there was Beau, the surly high school student with an ACL injury received after falling over his sister’s bike last month—no doubt a tale too embarrassing to tell his teammates. It was too soon to know if he’d be missing out on his senior year basketball season next winter, and he was alternately angry and worried about that.

  And there was the surly client after Beau, Dr. McLaren, who mostly just wanted to be left alone despite his initial, grudging agreement to receive therapy.

  He’d had five full therapy sessions now, and he’d seemed more remote with each visit. Which was probably just as well, given the attraction to him that had come out of nowhere.

  The warm, deep tone of his voice always made her skin tingle. Whenever their eyes inadvertently met, they would both still for a long moment, then she would drop her gaze and hastily begin describing a new set of strength-building exercises, or would start babbling inanely about the weather or about happenings in town.

  By now, he had to think that she was a complete idiot.

  Sophie poured more lotion into her cupped hand, then resumed the massage. “I haven’t told you where I go after seeing you, Mrs. W. That wouldn’t be professional.”

  “Never trust an old newswoman, dear.”

  “Newswoman? Really?”

  Alberta’s smug smile wreathed her face in wrinkles. “Cooking column, Aspen Creek Chronicle. It ran twenty-two years, until the paper folded in ‘76. And I peeked at your schedule one day when your planner was open.”

  “Mrs. R!”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone know.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “So tell me, is that Dr. McLaren as gorgeous up close as he is from a distance?”

  Sophie rocked back on her heels and tried to stifle her laugh with a cough. “I can’t say anything to you about my clients.”

  Her eyes lit with merry twinkles. “Well, is he nice?”

  “I can’t say—”

  Alberta snorted. “Well, even I can say that much, just from seeing Dr. McLaren on the street a few times before I got hurt. He looks just like that…that Pierce somebody. The actor, you know—the hand some one? And from what I hear,” she added in a triumphant, conspiratorial voice, “he’s single!”

  “The actor?”

  “Your patient.” Alberta settled back in her chair with an expression of bemused annoyance. “Keep up, dearie. A young lady like you ought to pay attention to these things before it’s too late. You aren’t getting any younger, you know.”

  Sophie gave up and laughed aloud, reining in her impulse to give the chipper old gal a hug. “That’s true. But honestly, I’m just not looking.”

  Alberta gave her a knowing look. “Honey, we’re all looking for happiness, even if we’ve been burned too many times to count.”

  Josh glanced at the calendar on the wall above the kitchen table, then the clock on the wall. A quarter of five. She was fifteen minutes late. Sixteen.

  And now he felt like some high school kid hoping his date would show up, which was totally insane. There hadn’t been one moment during the past weeks when the visits by his home health therapist had even remotely strayed into a more personal realm.

  Sure, she’d bullied him into agreeing to those visits. She’d teased and cajoled and spoken soothing words to get him to push himself beyond his limitations. She’d lightly chattered about world events and sports news to distract him while providing punishing deep tissue massage that might have made him weep if he’d been a lesser man.

  But she hadn’t departed from her professional persona, and he’d tried to maintain a barrier of nonchalance—no easy feat, when he was far too aware of her smile, her soft touch, the light scent of her perfume.

  Maybe he was experiencing some strange form of the Stockholm syndrome, finding that he wanted to get to know the physical therapist causing him discomfort on a more personal level.

  Or maybe it was some sort of need to analyze and control his unwanted attraction to the whirlwind of activity that blew into his cabin three times a week, bringing with her even more challenges for him to face. Maybe—

  Maybe he’d better admit it to himself right now. She had been businesslike at every visit, but he’d begun to see her in a far different light.

  Bear gave a single low woof—his here-comes-a-friend greeting as tires crunched up the lane outside. Even Josh had learned the unique sound of Sophie’s car, and now he stroked the dog’s head to distract himself from his rising sense of anticipation.

  “Here she is, Bear. Dog biscuits for you and misery for me. Quite a deal.”

  Only it wasn’t all misery.

  He was starting to feel stronger. More supple. The sessions no longer left him reaching for a couple Tylenol the second she walked out the door.

  And in the process, he was finding his therapist entirely too attractive as she earnestly lectured him about his exercises and checked his progress.

  He’d even, Lord help him, imagined taking her to some quiet place for a candlelit dinner in celebration of the end of his therapy…though he didn’t even know when that would be.

  The car outside pulled to a stop.

  But this time, she didn’t hop out of the car and immediately jog up to the door, knock and bring in a rush of fresh, pine-scented air and pure energy.

  The car sat out there, its doors closed for a minute, then two.

  Her door finally opened, and his heart kicked in an extra beat as she stepped out, her cap of sleek auburn hair gleaming in the sunlight; her oversize dark sunglasses, peach shirt and khaki slacks accenting the bronzy glow of her early summer tan.

  He had no business feeling any romantic interest in her or anyone else, he reminded himself firmly. He had capitulated and agreed to accept her help, and she was here to work. End of story.

  He’d started to turn away from the window when the back passenger door opened on the other side of the car. Sophie rounded the bumper then appeared to lean over, and now his curiosity was well and truly piqued.

  When she reappeared, she wasn’t alone.

  He stared, blindsided, as a cold, numb feeling took hold of his heart, then slowly crawled through his chest. She’d brought a boy along.

  But not just any child.

  This one was the embodiment of what Josh had always imagined his own son might have been, if he’d had a chance to live. Glossy, near-black hair. Big, dark eyes. A beautiful, shy, vulnerable little boy, and from the interaction between him and Sophie, there was no doubt that he was her son.

  So she was a package deal.

  An utter impossibility.

  And no matter what his wayward heart had been urging him to consider regarding Sophie, there was absolutely no way that he could ever risk such responsibility again.

  Not when he’d already let a beloved wife and child die.

  Chapter Six

  Sophie gave Eli’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll just be here for an hour, honey,” she whispered. “If you want to, you can sit on the porch with your books, or you could come inside. Dr. McLaren has a really nice dog you can play with, too.”

  The door of the cabin swung open and Josh stood there, looking out at them with an unreadable expression that sent a shiver through her.

  He was staring at Eli as if he were seeing a ghost.

  “Dr. McLaren, this is my son, Eli. I’m sorry that I had to bring him along, but his grandma Margie called me an hour ago and
said she had an appointment, so I had to pick him up. But I promise you that he won’t be any trouble.”

  He nodded curtly and opened the door wider, his face impassive.

  Eli crowded closer to her side, obviously picking up on the awkward tension in the room as the two of them stepped inside, but when Bear padded across the room, his tail wagging gaily, Eli looked up at her with awe.

  “Can I pet him?”

  “He’s good with children, isn’t he, Dr. McLaren?”

  Another curt nod.

  Josh stared as Bear approached Eli, his body wiggling in a full-body tail wag, then he jerked his gaze away. “Bear would play catch all day long, if your boy wants to stay on the porch and throw balls out into the yard. Or of course, they can also stay inside.”

  Eli turned back to her, dancing from one foot to the other with excitement. “Please—can I go outside with him? Please?”

  Josh was so stiff, so strangely formal with Eli here, that she nodded without hesitation. If the man didn’t like children, he’d just slipped a few dozen notches in her book, but she’d try to make him as comfortable as possible during this single appointment with Eli tagging along.

  As soon as the dog and Eli were out the door, she turned back to Josh. “Again, I apologize for bringing my son along. It wasn’t a very professional thing to do—especially since you don’t seem to care for kids very much. It won’t happen again.”

  A shadow crossed Josh’s expression. “Not a problem. So, what are you doing to me today?”

  At the end of the hour, Sophie took new measurements of the range of motion in his bad knee, then nodded with obvious satisfaction. “Do you feel a difference in that knee? Are you ambulating more during the day?”

  He hadn’t expected miracles. He hadn’t expected much at all, when she’d first showed up at his door determined to prove that she could help him. As the past couple of weeks had passed, he’d been unwilling to admit to himself that he’d been wrong. But there was no way he could deny his improvement now.