“Your mom and sisters would go berserk.”
“It wouldn’t be right. Jackson and Caroline are the stars of the show this weekend, and I want it to be perfect for them. And to be honest, I want time alone with the baby at first. Trace and I will need to bond.”
Wariness in his tone, Tucker asked, “Alone? Boone, you’re not going to try to do this without help, are you? A nanny or something?”
“No, of course not. Sarah Winston—she’s the social worker who has taken point position on this whole thing—recommended a nanny for me. Excellent references and experience, and she wants to move to Colorado.”
“You’ve hired her sight unseen?” Tucker asked, his tone incredulous.
“I trust Sarah. Besides, I don’t really have any options. I don’t know anyone here in Eternity Springs who is in a position to step up at this particular time.”
After that, the conversation turned to wedding-related issues. Throughout the discussion, Boone found his attention divided between his cousin and the woman on the pier.
Anniversaries were hell. He knew that much from firsthand experience. The first anniversary, in particular, was a great big hairy bad. He wondered if today was the first for Hannah Dupree, and just whom she mourned.
Because mourn she did. Someone, not something. Boone would bet his favorite pair of Lucchese boots on that.
In his ear, Tucker’s impatient voice said, “Hey? Did I lose you?”
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“I said I won’t need to bunk at your place this week. I’m going to stay at the North Forty instead.”
“Want to be closer to your wife?”
“Don’t say that out loud,” Tucker snapped. “I swear, Boot, if you don’t keep your big mouth shut, I’ll shut it for you.”
“Boot” was the nickname his cousins sometimes used for him and reflected back to when his father threatened to put a boot in his ass. Tucker tended to use it when he seriously meant what he was saying.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Boone assured his cousin. “You’re actually doing me a favor. It looks like a friend of mine might need a place to stay this week, and there’s not a rental unit to be had in a hundred miles of Eternity Springs. The cabin will be perfect for her.”
“Her?”
Boone decided a subject change was in order. “Did I tell you I’m getting a puppy?”
* * *
The creak of footsteps on the wood planks clued Hannah into the fact that she was no longer alone. She glanced over her shoulder and was unsurprised to see Boone McBride approaching. He carried a cooler in one hand and a pair of fishing poles in the other. Setting the cooler down, he handed her a pole.
“I don’t have a fishing license.”
“Not a problem. The game warden is a friend of mine, and I prepaid for a stack of ’em to cover instances just like this. The top compartment of the cooler is a tackle box if you want to change your bait. The cooler has beer, water, soft drinks.”
“A combination tackle box and cooler, hmm? That’s handy.”
“Indispensable.” Boone opened the cooler. “I’m having a beer. What’s your preference?”
“I’ll stick with water, thank you.”
He handed her a bottle of water, snagged a beer for himself, then motioned toward the end of the pier. “Mind if I join you?”
“Please.” She scooted to one side, then with a wry twist of her lips added, “It is your fishing pier, after all.”
He sat beside her and spent the next few minutes opening his beer, switching a spoon for a spinner bait, and tossing his lure into the water. Once upon a time, Hannah had enjoyed fishing, having grown up in a boating family with a father who was an avid angler. She’d always found the repetitive process of casting and reeling to be soothing and peaceful. Now, though, she couldn’t bear the thought of hooking anything hidden beneath the lake’s surface. A stream, okay. A lake? Not in a million years.
“Not gonna fish?” Boone asked.
“No. I’m a lucky fisherman. I’d catch something, and I’m not in the mood for fish-smell hands.”
“Hey, I’m a gentleman. I’ll take the fish off your hook.”
She shook her head. “My father taught me better. You catch it, you free it, and you clean it.”
“Ah. A man after my own heart.”
Hannah smiled wistfully. “I miss him.”
Boone pinned her with a sharp look. “Is your father the person you are mourning today?”
The question was switchblade-deployed in surprise and sliced deep. Hannah shrank against the pain of it, sliding her gaze away from Boone. It landed on the open tray of tackle. Spying a casting plug, she reached for it and quickly, expertly, removed the swimming bait on the end of her line and attached the plug.
She cast, reeled, cast, reeled. Cast.
Boone must have figured that she wasn’t going to answer his question. He cast his line away from hers, then said, “My college roommate started dating a girl from Fort Worth during our freshman year of undergrad. His name is Joe Hart. She’s Ashleigh. Ashleigh introduced me to her best friend Mary, and I fell hard. Joe and Ashleigh married the weekend after we graduated. Mary and I tied the knot the weekend after that.”
Guessing his age, she figured this would have been somewhere between twelve and fifteen years ago.
“Due to Mary’s medical history, we knew going into it that we wouldn’t be able to have children. We also knew the adoption road could be long and full of bumps, so while I went to law school, Mary did a deep dive into adoption. We knew we’d likely have a wait on our hands if we wanted an infant, but we were young, and Mary really wanted a baby.”
Hannah set her fishing pole beside her on the pier. Why is he telling me this? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but neither did she want to interrupt him. She was curious now.
Boone placed his pole on their pier and set about changing his tackle as he matter-of-factly continued his story. “Twice, we brought babies home. Twice, something happened, and the adoption fell through.”
“That must have been terribly hard,” Hannah said.
“Ripped our hearts out.” Boone sent a top-water lure flying. “By then, I had my law degree and passed the bar. I worked for a little while at Ashleigh’s father’s law firm in Fort Worth, but defense wasn’t my calling.” He gave his line a series of jerks, working the lure. “I decided I really wanted to prosecute, so I joined the DA’s office. It was a much better fit. I specialized in cases involving crimes against children.”
Hannah involuntarily shuddered. Boone didn’t notice her reaction. He was staring off into space.
“While all this was going on, Joe and Ashleigh’s marriage was showing some serious cracks. Mary and I tried to be Switzerland and remain neutral, but there were times Joe was a real jerk. I’d call him on it.” Boone’s lips twisted in a sadly rueful grin. “Once it went so far, we had a fistfight. Only black eye I’ve ever had that wasn’t given to me by one of my cousins, though I did get a little bit of a shiner when my friend Devin Murphy broke my nose. That’s a different story, though. Remind me to tell you about it.”