Rekindled Hearts Read online

  And her wedding ring set. She tried not to think about the engagement ring that Colt had put on her finger so many years ago, or the wedding ring they had picked out together. They’d been in a box in the hall closet.

  Michael was still standing next to her.

  “No sign of the Logan ring?” Lexi placed her bottle of bubbles into the hands of a little blonde with large blue eyes and dimples.

  “Nothing. Some jewelry has shown up, but not the ring. Or Tommy’s dog.”

  Tommy. Her gaze lingered on the boy, whose hand was held by the strong and powerful hand of Gregory Garrison. Now that was a wonderful tribute to God’s care for the little ones.

  “I know. I’ve had my eyes out for that dog.” Lexi turned her attention back to the reverend. “Is it wrong to pray that a dog comes home?”

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. Remember ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’”

  “‘The Lord God made them all.’”

  “And not only does He care about that dog, He cares about broken hearts.”

  Lexi looked up, shocked by the words. Her surprise must have registered. Michael smiled. “Tommy’s heart, Lexi. That dog was his family when he didn’t have one. I know he has one now, but the dog is still important to him.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Michael shifted, looking away for a moment before looking back at her, a reverend again, not a young man, uncomfortable with the conversation.

  “Don’t give up.” He said it with conviction and she was lost, because there were several things she could tag with that saying.

  “Give up?”

  “On Colt.”

  She blew out a sigh and looked away. “We gave up two years ago, Michael.”

  But she could admit to herself that in the crumbled remains of her house—that night in the basement—she had wondered if they could work things out. She had wanted him to stay with her that night.

  And he had repeated history by sending her off in the ambulance alone. Alone.

  She didn’t want that to be the epitaph of her life: She Loved a Man, But Was Always Alone. Yuck, how depressing. But looking around High Plains with crumbled buildings and shattered lives, she put her marriage in that category. Some things couldn’t be rebuilt. Like her marriage, they were beyond fixing.

  “Where there’s faith, Lexi, there’s hope.” Michael still stood next to her, and his smile was soft but firm.

  “Of course.” She remembered Michael’s sermon of two weeks ago. God doesn’t make mistakes. He isn’t taken by surprise, either.

  Her marriage hadn’t been a mistake. She still believed that God had brought her and Colt together. The divorce was another matter altogether. But it hadn’t been her choice. She’d let Colt go, because she knew that she couldn’t force him to stay.

  He left her long before he actually walked out.

  Chapter Three

  Colt rounded the corner of the church and found Lexi sitting on the back of her truck eating a burger drenched in ketchup and looking off in the direction of the river. It wasn’t much of a river, not now with the floodwaters receding and normal, dry September weather depriving it of rain.

  She looked up, and he smiled, lifting his plate. “I thought maybe I could find a seat next to you.”

  “I think we might be able to find you a place to sit.” She pointed to the tailgate of the truck.

  “Feels a lot like our first date.” He sat down, leaning a little against the side of the truck so he could look at her.

  “You took me to a soccer game in a field next to the apartment you lived in.”

  “You have to admit, you never forgot.”

  “No, I never forgot. You missed the goal and sprained your knee.”

  He hadn’t forgotten, either. He still remembered the way she had sat next to him, perched on the tailgate of his truck, her dark hair blowing in the wind and the scent of strawberries and springtime circling and teasing his senses. He had fallen in love with her that day.

  He hadn’t planned for this moment to be a replica of the afternoon that had first brought them together. This had been an easy, uninvolved way to spend time with her. He hadn’t meant for it to snare his heart.

  “What’s this all about, Colt. We’ve hardly talked since the tornado.”

  “Friendship, remember. I didn’t forget, Lexi. I know what we talked about in the basement. We live in the same town, and we have to be around each other.” He stared at the place where the gazebo had once stood, and he remembered kissing her there. “Sometimes I miss you.”

  He missed her all the time. Every day. He had thought that after two years, missing her would be easier. It wasn’t.

  “Sometimes I miss you, too. But I’ve missed you for three years.”

  Since Gavin’s death, a year before their divorce.

  He couldn’t let this moment become something more than he meant it to be. He didn’t want to mislead her. He didn’t want to let her down, either.

  “Lex, I can’t make promises that…”

  “We’ll work things out?”

  He sighed, because she could still finish his sentences. How could he put walls between them and help her to move on when she constantly filled his thoughts and took up space in his heart?

  “I want so much for you to have everything.” He didn’t know what else to say, and he knew she deserved a better explanation. But explaining his fears, admitting to the choking anxiety, that wasn’t easy to do.

  The cell phone attached to his belt jangled. He set his plate down to answer it. Lexi watched, waiting for him to hang up.

  “That was Michael.” He dropped the phone into his shirt pocket. “He went in to check the lost and found, and he found what looks like the Logan ring.”

  “The ring? Why would someone put it in the box?” She tossed her last bite of hamburger a distance away and picked up her soda can. “If someone had the Logan ring, they’d just give it back. Everyone in town knows who it belongs to.”

  Colt laughed. “All good questions, Lexi. And as the chief of police for High Plains, I plan on finding the answer to each and every one of them.”

  He tossed his plate in the nearby trash barrel. When he turned, Lexi was behind him. She smiled. “I’m going with you.”

  He shook his head. “I think I can handle this one on my own.”

  “Men never pay attention to details.”

  “Details are my life, Lex.”

  The set tilt of her chin warned him he wasn’t going to give her the brush-off. “I’m not letting you off the hook.”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  Neatly plucked eyebrows arched. “No, but you’re not going to get away from me this easily, Colt Ridgeway. I’m coming with you.”

  “Fine, let’s go.”

  He led her through the back door of the church and down the hallway to Michael’s office. The door was open a crack, and Colt could see Michael inside, sitting behind his desk, something held between his fingers.

  Colt knocked lightly on the door and pushed it open. Michael looked up, holding the ring to the light. He handed it over to Colt and then glanced past him to Lexi, smiling too much as if he’d planned for the two of them to be together.

  “It isn’t much of a ring for an heirloom, is it?” Colt held the tiny band, gold with a quarter-carat diamond.

  Michael shrugged. “It isn’t big, but it means a lot to the Logan family. It’s a tradition that started with William Logan and Emmeline Carter, something like six generations back.”

  “I guess it didn’t hold some lucky power, did it?” Colt gave the ring another look and shook his head.

  “What do you mean by that?” Lexi slid into the room. He’d forgotten that she had followed him.

  “I mean, the ring is an heirloom, but it doesn’t guarantee a lasting marriage or happiness.”

  “That’s cold.” Lexi’s chin went up a notch and her eyes narrowed. “It isn’t about the ring making a marriage work. It’s about f
amily, and history, and people who were willing to work hard to make their lives something worthwhile that their children can look up to, and model their own lives after.”

  Colt held on to his serious demeanor, which wasn’t easy in light of her foot-stomping anger. She was downright beautiful when she was mad.

  And she was still dreaming of happy-ever-after. As if life was some kind of fairy tale. He had been her handsome prince, taking her out of the castle tower she’d been raised in to a life of happiness in a village with people who loved her.

  He had been more than happy to play the role of prince to her princess in a tower. But then he had realized he couldn’t slay all of the evil dragons. And he couldn’t stick her back in the tower.

  She cleared her throat, brows arching and a ringless hand pushing back the curtain of brown hair.

  “You’re right, Lex. I’m sorry.” He reached, but then lowered his hand. He wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t brush that angry look off her face with a touch of his hand on her cheek.

  “I called Jesse to let him know about the ring.” Michael interrupted what could have been a tense moment. Wisely interrupted, Colt thought.

  “I’ll take it out there and let him see it.” Colt held the ring up again. “I just don’t know…”

  “Why anyone would put the real ring in a box,” Lexi finished for him.

  He tried not to remember back to when they’d been together. At night they’d curled on the sofa together, discussing cases, hers and his. More often than not, those late-night conversations had helped them find answers they hadn’t seen on their own.

  It had been easy to talk about cases. Not as easy to talk about their marriage and why it wasn’t working. He hadn’t wanted to look that deeply inside himself.

  The thought shook him a little, because he hadn’t realized that before. He looked up, meeting Lexi’s blue gaze, her soft smile.

  “I think it probably isn’t the Logan ring,” Michael interjected.

  “I’ll take it out to him anyway. If it isn’t the real ring, then we’ll have to solve the mystery of who and why.” He slipped the ring into his shirt pocket.

  Lexi’s eyes lit with delight. She loved a mystery.

  “Can I go with you?”

  At least he had agreed to let her tag along. Lexi waited for Colt to speak, but he was busy driving—busy thinking. His new patrol car was a Jeep, and it still had that new-car smell. She leaned back in the seat and had to admit it felt better than the old sedan. But what a way to get a new car, having the other totaled in a tornado. A tree had blown down and landed on it.

  She didn’t like to think of that day, or of how close they’d come to being seriously injured. Or worse. Jesse Logan’s wife, Marie, hadn’t survived the storm. And now he had three tiny babies to raise alone.

  “Why the look?” Colt’s words pulled her back to the moment.

  “What look?”

  “The dark look, the one that says you’re thinking of something serious.”

  “The storm. I was thinking of how close I came to losing…” You. But she couldn’t finish it, because that would refer to the dissolution of their marriage.

  “I’m still here.”

  He had to know what she was thinking. He smiled, a halfway smile, flashing white teeth and dimples. But the smile was for her. It didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Yes, you’re here.” But not in her life, not really. She’d already lost him.

  She sighed and looked out the window. They were getting close to the Logan ranch. She could see the roof of the house. It was a beautiful place, tall and stately, but welcoming.

  “That day after the tornado, driving out here was the longest ride of my life,” Colt shared. His voice was husky and all male, broken with emotion. “There’s no easy way to tell someone that their spouse is dead. The person they leaned on—planned to spend their life with—is gone.”

  Lexi shivered and pushed the vent to the side, because she knew the memories that night must have evoked for him. He had been the one to tell Gavin’s wife that her husband had been killed. He had stood in her doorway and watched her fall apart as their children stood in the background.

  He had cried in Lexi’s arms when he came home. He had shared the story, the grief in Gavin’s wife’s eyes, the tears of the children. And then Colt had retreated into some strange shell where he didn’t share, not after that night.

  He had blocked her from his life. She knew he had meant it as a way to protect her. Or maybe himself. And she’d allowed it to an extent. She thought maybe she hadn’t fought hard enough to keep their marriage alive. Maybe she had pushed him away, too, because she hadn’t wanted to be the wife that lost her husband?

  She glanced sideways, and he was staring straight ahead.

  “Colt, we don’t have to handle everything alone.”

  He nodded but didn’t look at her. “I know that, Lex. I know that we can have faith.”

  She sighed and waited, wanting him to say that he had faith. But he didn’t say it, because he couldn’t. Faith was inside him somewhere, she knew it was. It had been planted there years ago, by a Sunday school teacher and his parents. He’d lost his way, but she was praying he’d find it again.

  “Lex, why don’t you move on?”

  “Leave High Plains.” She knew that wasn’t what he meant.

  “No, and you know better. Find someone to marry, someone who will give you that family you want and the home you’ve always dreamed of.”

  “Oh, that kind of moving on.” She closed her eyes. “Is it that easy, Colt, to just forget someone and move on? Do you think I’m going to pick out a new man to replace you, just to have my happy-ever-after and a few kids?”

  He didn’t answer. She’d known he wouldn’t, because he was honest, and he couldn’t tell her it was easy. So instead he said nothing.

  And she wouldn’t tell him that she had tried moving on.

  “Colt, I don’t really understand what happened between us, or why you walked away from me. Sometimes I wonder if I did something wrong. I should have tried harder to work things out.”

  “No, Lexi, don’t ever think that it was you. It was me. It was—” he glanced at her and then back to the road “—it was me, and my own…”

  “Fear?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Colt slowed as they neared the driveway to the Logan home. He couldn’t answer Lexi. He hadn’t moved on, because he still loved her. He loved her so much it was like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

  He wondered if Jesse Logan was still reeling with that same kind of pain. Or was Jesse’s pain more about betrayal, because the night of the storm Marie had left him a Dear John letter and walked away from their lives together and her triplets?

  People in town wondered if it was depression, postpartum, or something she had dealt with alone, not telling the people who cared about her.

  Her life was cut short by the tornado. Jesse and Marie would never have a chance to talk, to work things out. How many times had he thought of that over the last eight weeks? Too many to count.

  What if it had been Lexi who had died in the tornado?

  He shoved the thoughts aside and reached to turn up the radio. A love song blasted from the country station. Every light in the house is on…Some poor guy, waiting for a woman to come back to him. Colt turned the radio off and heard Lexi chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. You’re like a bear with a thorn in his paw. You’re wounded and in pain, but you’re not going to let anyone close enough to help.”

  “Nice.”

  “I’m a doctor. I can help.”

  “Amputation?” He smiled again, because that’s what she did for him. She always made him smile. Accidents on the highway, helping family services remove abused children from homes, domestic violence…the realities of his job, and she’d always found a way to lighten the load.

  “Thanks, Lex.”

  “Don’t mention it. And please, don’t give
up.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “That’s optimistic.”

  He shot her a look and she shrugged.

  “Yeah, okay’?” she repeated, deepening her voice to imitate him. He laughed again.

  “I sound that happy?”

  “No, not even close. I made you sound better than you are.”

  “I’ll work on it.” He braked to a stop in front of the house. “Man, I don’t want to do this.”

  “He’s going to tell you it’s the wrong ring.”

  She had that tilt to her chin, the one that said she was right and she knew it. He smiled and pushed his door open. “You’re probably right, but I want to make sure.”

  “And then what?” She was out and at his side as they walked up the wide steps to the front door.

  “I’ll find out who put it in there and why. Or maybe we’ve got it all wrong and the person who put it in the box didn’t intend to make us think it was the Logan ring. It could just be a lost ring that was found.”

  “I like the mystery better. It adds suspense.”

  Colt laughed and slid an arm around her waist, just for a moment, just long enough to pull her close and kiss the side of her head, to smell the herbal scent of shampoo.

  He knocked on the door and in a moment it was opened by Jesse.

  “Sorry to bother you, Jess.” Colt slid the ring out of his pocket. At least this time it wasn’t the worst news he could give another man.

  “No problem, Colt. I’m glad you called and caught me at home.”

  “Here it is.” Colt handed Jesse Logan the ring. Jesse motioned them inside and then he paused and did a double take. Colt followed his gaze to Lexi.

  “I didn’t realize that was you, Lexi.” Jesse held his hand out and took Lexi’s for a moment. And Colt wanted to pull her hand loose.

  That didn’t make sense. He let it go, because it was a greeting, nothing more, and he wasn’t a jealous teenager.

  “I was at the church when they found the ring,” Lexi explained, still standing at Colt’s side. “Colt let me ride out with him.”

  “Would the two of you like a glass of tea?” Jesse held the ring up to the sunlight that streamed through the window.