Heartache Falls Part 27

"The witch," Sarah observed. The Callahans were spending New Year's with Gabe's family in Texas.

"Happy New Year, my dears," Celeste called out as she joined them. "Isn't it a lovely day?"

"It's ten degrees, Celeste," Sage protested.

"A gorgeous ten. Have you ever seen a more brilliant blue sky?"

As the quartet resumed walking, Sage glanced at the basket Celeste carried. "What's that?"

"A little restaurant-warming gift for Ali," Celeste replied. "You'll want to see this."

She rustled among the contents and removed a small shadow box. Inside it, hanging from a suns.h.i.+ne-yellow ribbon, was one of the Angel's Rest blazons that Sage had designed and Celeste gifted to those for whom Angel's Rest had worked its healing magic.

"That's so pretty," Sarah said.

Sage grinned. "I like how you've used it on a ribbon instead of a necklace. That's for Ali, I a.s.sume?"

"Yes."

Sarah stared at the angel's wing medal and knew a yearning so deep and so sharp that it bordered on painful. "It's beautiful, Celeste. I want one of those. Nic and Sage and Ali all have one. When do I get mine?"

Celeste halted in midstep. She turned to face the others and, her arm extended in presentation, turned in a slow circle. "Look around you, Sarah Reese. See the brilliant blue sky above and the snow-decked mountains around us. Smell the heavenly scents of pine and wood smoke and Italian spices on the air. Listen to the gentle winter wind. Can you hear it?"

Sarah saw and smelled and listened, and a lump formed in her throat. "It's Mac and Ali and their kids."

"Joyous laughter of a loving family at peace." Celeste smiled gently, winked at the Raffertys, then linked her arm with Sarah's. "You have lived in Eternity Springs all of your life, Sarah Reese. Whether you've been aware of it or not, that is a blessing that those around you envy."

"I know I'm lucky," Sarah said.

"Then give thanks for your blessings, my dear friend. Open your heart to all of life's possibilities. It's a new year. A new world. Rest a.s.sured that your turn is coming."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

New beginnings are exciting things. For this one, I'd especially like to thank my awesome, talented, oh-so-keen-eyed editor, Kate Collins, and my agents, Meg Ruley and Christina Hogrebe, for their support and guidance and belief in this series. You ladies rock. Special thanks to Lynn Andreozzi for the spectacular cover designs for the Eternity Springs series. I love this look! Also, tremendous thanks to my dear friends Scott and Christina Ham, who knew just the motivation to give me to find my way to Eternity Springs, and to Mary d.i.c.kerson for being my reader, my red-liner, and most important, my friend.

Read on for an excerpt from

LOVER'S LEAP by EMILY MARCH.

Published by Ballantine Books

ONE.

Near Cairns, Australia "Mom! Hurry up," Lori Reese urged, sounding more like a six-year-old than a young woman in college. "We don't want to be late!"

At the sound of her daughter's voice, Sarah Reese rolled over in bed, buried her face in the thick, downy pillow, and contemplated how many banks she'd have to rob in order to afford a return trip to this resort. She and Lori were nearing the end of their two-week, all-expenses-paid Australian vacation, and the experience had given her a tantalizing taste of traveling in the lap of luxury.

"Ten more minutes," she mumbled into her pillow. This bed was heaven.

"It's already 6:15."

The bus to the marina didn't pick them up until 7:00 and getting ready would take fifteen minutes, tops. "Five more minutes."

Indulgent frustration laced Lori's voice. "When exactly did we switch roles? I think it must have been the first day of the trip when you spent half of that interminable plane ride flirting with the man across the aisle."

Sarah grinned, then lazily rolled her head and looked at her daughter. "I was just being friendly. He was the one doing all the flirting."

"Yeah, right." Lori's eyes gleamed with amus.e.m.e.nt as they made an exaggerated roll. "Okay, here's the deal. I'm going to head over to the lobby and get two cups of coffee. If you're not out of bed by the time I come back, I'll drink both of them."

Sarah scowled. "Obviously, I didn't spank you enough when you were little."

Laughing, Lori finger-waved good-bye, and a moment later, Sarah heard the door to their suite softly close. She gave a wistful sigh, rolled onto her back, and sat up.

Her reluctance to rise had more to do with the fact that today was the last day of their dream-of-a-lifetime vacation than with fatigue. They'd had an absolutely, positively wonderful trip, seeing enough of the country to give them a taste of it, but not so much that they'd felt rushed. They'd spent the past three nights here at this magnificent resort on the Coral Sea, and today, they would ice their vacation cake with a catamaran trip to the Great Barrier Reef.

Sarah lifted her arms above her head and stretched as she gazed out through gla.s.s-pane French doors, past the verandah with its private spa tub, and across the golden sand beach toward the turquoise sea. Crossing to the doors, she pushed them open and inhaled deeply the fresh morning air as she took a moment to count her blessings. This trip had been the grand prize in a contest sponsored by Angel's Rest, the healing center and spa owned by her friend Celeste Blessing in the little Colorado mountain town where they lived, Eternity Springs. At home, a foot of snow covered the ground, and the thermometer flirted daily with 0. As the warm, seaside breeze softly stirred, Sarah murmured, "I still can't believe I'm here."

She'd dreamed of visiting Australia for a long time. Back in high school, she and Cam Murphy had spent hours stretched out on a quilt up at their favorite make-out spot, Lover's Leap, and planned how they would travel the world together. They'd talked of backpacking across Europe, exploring the pyramids of Egypt, and, most exciting of all, diving the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, life had taken a pair of unexpected turns their junior year, and youthful dreams had faded in the face of stark, cold reality.

She wished one of those realities would hurry back with the coffee.

Sarah turned away from the breathtaking view and headed into the bathroom. When she emerged showered and dressed ten minutes later, she spied Lori seated outside on the verandah. Two cups of coffee and two huge cinnamon rolls waited on the small round table in front of her.

"You are both wonderful and wicked, my child," Sarah told her, taking her seat. "I'll gain two pounds just looking at that roll."

"Nah, we have a strenuous day ahead of us. We need the calories. Besides, you need to check out the compet.i.tion. You might want to tweak your recipe for the cinnamon rolls you make for the Mocha Moose."

Sarah sipped her coffee and lifted her brows in disdain. "My cinnamon roll recipe doesn't need to be tweaked, thank you very much."

"Okay, you're right." Lori licked sugar from her fingers. "It's impossible to improve on perfection."

At home, Sarah operated Eternity Springs's only grocery store, the Trading Post, established by her great-grandfather and run by family members ever since, but she supplemented her income by baking for a number of the businesses in town. She nodded her acceptance of her daughter's compliment, then tore off a piece of roll and popped it into her mouth. Cinnamon and sweetness exploded on her tongue. "Yum, this is good. Could use a tiny bit more vanilla, though, I think."

The two women shared a grin, then polished off their breakfast. Moments later, tote bags stuffed with necessities for a day on the water in hand, they exited their suite. Seeing that the shuttle bus to the marina had yet to arrive, Sarah lamented, "I could have had my ten minutes, after all."

"Oh, stop it. I'm too excited to listen to you whine. Aren't you excited?"

"Yes, I'm excited." Sarah threaded her arm through Lori's and squeezed. She was excited. The tour's itinerary sounded divine. First, the catamaran would take them to a cay famous for its protected, sandy lagoon, gorgeous beach, and migratory bird population. Sarah had never learned to dive, so she would snorkel while Lori, who'd earned her certification while away at college, would join other tour members in a drift dive along the reef. Following a gourmet lunch and some beach time, they would sail to the Outer Barrier Reef, where Lori would make a wall dive and Sarah could snorkel some more or just be lazy.

Imagine. Small-town girl Sarah Reese snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. Wow.

As a shuttle bus sporting the Adventures in Paradise Tours logo pulled into the resort's circular drive, Sarah couldn't help but think of Cam. She seldom allowed her mind to go down that rocky path, but today, as their daughter was about to fulfill one of those Lover's Leap dreams, she couldn't hold back the memories.

Cameron Murphy. From the time he was born, Eternity Springs had waited with baited breath for the Murphy bad blood to show itself. They didn't have to wait very long. Cam first ran afoul of the law when he spray-painted threats on the courthouse wall when he was nine, shortly after his father's manslaughter conviction. For the next few years, he'd been in trouble more often than he'd been out of it.

But my oh my, he'd done it for her-long before she even knew what "it" was. Tall, handsome, those mesmerizing eyes. As a young man he'd been as wild and beautiful as the cougars that prowled the surrounding forests. And just as dangerous.

Like the rest of Eternity Springs, Sarah's parents had recognized the threat in him, so when Cam first turned his smoldering intensity her way, she'd instinctively kept it a secret. The relations.h.i.+p that developed between them over the next year had remained a secret, too. To this day, most people in Eternity Springs believed the lie she'd told to protect her precious child's shoulders from bearing the weight of "Murphy bad blood."

Yet she had loved Cam Murphy with every fiber of her foolish, teenaged soul, and it had taken time for that love to die. Time and his rejection for the hope to die.

Time, his rejection, and the reality of a child dependent upon her for Sarah to finally grow up.

She gave her head a shake when the shuttle braked to a stop and the driver's door opened. A young man with sun-streaked hair and suntanned skin climbed from the bus. "G'day, ladies," he said in that wonderful Aussie drawl. "Reese, party of two for Adventures in Paradise Tours?"

"That's us," Lori confirmed.

"Great. M'name's Mike and I'm your transportation to the marina and the Freedom. Hop on in and I'll introduce you to our other guests."

The two physicians and their wives were from Minnesota, the men in their mid-forties, the women a decade younger, nearer to her age, Sarah guessed. The doctors were divers. One of the wives planned to snorkel, but the other confessed to a fear of sharks that kept her out of the ocean.

"I'm perfectly happy to sunbathe," she told Sarah. "Some friends of ours took this tour a year ago and said the scenery of the cay alone is worth the price of the ticket."

The other wife leaned toward Sarah and lowered her voice. "She also said the captain and crew weren't half bad to look at, either."

Lori must have overheard that exchange, because she glanced at Sarah and mouthed, "No flirting."

Sarah smothered a smile, then eavesdropped as her daughter peppered the young driver with questions about the tour.

"No, it's my dad's business," Mike was saying. "I'm really proud of him. He built it from nothing. We keep it small-we run only two boats-but we're the best tour operator in Queensland. You'll have a great time today."

"I'm so excited," Lori replied. "This is going to be the highlight of our trip."

"That's our goal."

Sarah's attention was pulled away from Lori when the sunbather doctor's wife asked her where she was from. It came as no surprise that the obviously wealthy Minnesotans had been to Telluride, Vail, and Aspen but had never heard of Eternity Springs. "Next time you plan to visit Colorado, you should consider a stay at Angel's Rest, our new healing center and spa. It's a heavenly place. You'd love it."

"We'll keep that in mind," one of the doctors said.

"I adore spa vacations," his wife added.

"Is there golf?" the other doctor asked.

"No, I'm afraid not. But we do have some of the best trout fis.h.i.+ng in the world nearby at the Taylor River."

"Taylor River Rainbows," he responded. "I've heard of them. We'll have to put your Angel's Rest on our to-do list."

Satisfied that she'd done her part as an Eternity Springs amba.s.sador, Sarah smiled, sat back, and tuned into Lori's conversation once again.

"... Next year. Dad really wants me to go to college, but I don't see it happening. School already interferes too much with my days on the boat."

"So what's your average day like?" Lori asked.

While the young man spoke of sun and surf and the deep blue sea, Sarah considered her daughter. Lori had never been a shy child, but she'd truly blossomed since leaving Colorado for college in Texas. She was a beautiful, intelligent, confident young woman, and her natural curiosity had been elevated to new heights. Lori never stopped asking questions, never stopped wanting to learn. I'm so proud of her.

For the second time that day, Sarah's thoughts returned to Lori's father. This time, however, the memories weren't bittersweet, only bitter. You made a huge mistake twenty years ago when you turned your back on us, Cam. Lori is special. She would have made such a difference in your life. She could have brought such joy into your world.

You blew it, Murphy. Our daughter could have been your redemption.

ALSO BY EMILY MARCH.

Angel's Rest.

Hummingbird Lake.