The forever equation, p.1
The Forever Equation, page 1
The Forever Equation
THE WORTHINGTONS
KATHRYN KALEIGH
To learn more about Kathryn Kaleigh, visit
www.kathrynkaleigh.com
Chapter One
NATALIE ST. CLAIR
Snow in July.
Something that could only happen in Whiskey Springs, Colorado.
Tucked high in the Rocky Mountains, Whiskey Springs sprawled over what was technically a valley even though the elevation was just over nine thousand feet. Nine thousand five hundred twenty-two to be exact.
July in Whiskey Springs felt like the dead of winter in Houston most days.
Even now, the mountain peaks still wore their white caps of forever snow.
Sometimes in August, they would have no more than patches of glaciers, shrinking steadily due to global warming, but this year promised to defy the trend and stay cold all year.
The air carried the scent of wood smoke from the fireplaces that hadn’t been converted to gas. Most people preferred to burn wood over gas if for no reason other than ambiance. The St. Clair Firewood Company had grown into a thriving business over the years and thanks to that ambiance, had continued to thrive.
With a solid business plan started a hundred years ago, they cut, planted, and intentionally repeated over thousands of acres. Anything related to timber, they were into it.
Firewood. Christmas trees. Hunting leases. Barrel cured maple syrup.
Selling saplings to nurseries, locally at first, now shipping all over the country.
Even tours and guest cabins secluded in the trees down by the river.
As a natural consequence, it was one of the biggest employers in the area. Family owned and family run.
Turning left heading down the sidewalk toward Main Street, I passed a couple of blue spruce trees still damp from a little afternoon shower. The scent was so strong and fresh it was almost painful to inhale.
I walked slowly. With a tight bandage around my left ankle and another around my fractured ribs, it would have been difficult to walk any faster.
Every step, every time my left foot hit the sidewalk, I felt a little jolt of pain. It wasn’t from the sprain, but was more from the bruises.
The doctors said stay off it. The doctors said to exercise.
The medical team finally came to a compromise. Light exercise.
They were more concerned with my mental state at this point anyway than my physical state. I would heal physically. It would just take a bit of time.
The recovery trajectory of my mental state, however, was a bit more difficult to predict.
So I had packed my bags, closed up my apartment in Houston, and boarded a plane.
Home is where you go when life knocks you off your feet.
Or more specifically when you’re caught in the middle of a ten-car pile-up on a Houston freeway.
My family was understandably worried and naturally happy to have me home.
Our family estate—any other word just didn’t do it justice—had been built in the late 1800s and sprawled on the edge of town next to the river. There was a short cut that made walking into town almost as fast, if not faster, than driving.
Standing in the glass enclosed roof deck, a person could see all the way down to Main Street.
My family struggled to understand me—the only member of the family who had escaped the family business and moved out of state.
Fate had a funny sense of humor sometimes. Just when I had my life going the way I wanted, it brought me back.
As I reached Main Street, I pulled my sun glasses out of my carryall bag and slid them onto my face.
I didn’t wear the sun glasses for fashion or even for the bright sunlight.
I wore them to hide my black eye. There was nothing I could do about my busted lip.
Holding my head high, I walked into the General Store and straight back to the pharmacy to pick up some ointment that was supposed to help with the pain.
Just as I reached the counter, I caught sight of the pharmacist.
Markus Blackwell.
Everything inside me screamed to turn back around. I didn’t need the ointment that bad.
If it wouldn’t have hurt my cracked ribs so much, I would have done just that.
Instead I just stood there, frozen in place, and tried not to visibly cringe when Markus Blackwell looked up and recognition registered on his face.
Chapter Two
ADAM WORTHINGTON
Whiskey Springs was home.
No matter how far I traveled or how long I stayed away, it would always be home.
Part of that feeling came from my family living here. As the saying went, home is where your family is.
For me that was my parents and my sister. My sister was married now and was about to have her second child.
She and her husband lived in a little house not far from Main Street—everything was either on Main Street or not far from it. My brother-in-law traveled a lot. It was really probably about the best way to make a living in Whiskey Springs unless you worked for the Sterling family.
He was currently in Boston and possibly, although I was not certain, on his way home. He always seemed to swoop in at the last minute and take credit for being where he needed to be.
I circled around, taking in a view of the picturesque little town where I had grown up before going in for a landing. The little airport had grown since I had moved away.
My great uncle Noah Worthington had put in a terminal building. During the day, there was always—almost always—someone staffed there to help out both pilots and passengers.
He had also extended the runway to accommodate larger private jets that descended upon the area during the winter, especially December and the summer as well.
There were two airplanes, a Phenom and a Cessna, parked off the runway now.
No cars. That meant that I would have to wait for a ride into town.
The airport might have grown, but ground transportation continued to be a problem.
My wheels touched down in a smooth landing that no one was around to appreciate. Still, I felt a sense of pride. I taxied over to park near the building away from the other airplanes.
Even though the airplane didn’t belong to me, I didn’t feel like a guest here.
It wasn’t that the tourists bothered me by being here. They were the town’s bread and butter. But just because I didn’t live here didn’t make me one of them.
I still considered myself a resident. Always would.
The only way for me to study aviation had been to leave Whiskey Springs. It had been an intentional choice made thirteen years ago.
I might miss the little town, my family especially, but I loved flying. As long as I was in the air I was okay.
If I had to miss flying for more than a couple of days, I began to feel off-kilter. Some people in the field called it a positive addiction.
I think that explanation had started from one of the psychologists in the family. Probably Great Uncle Noah’s wife.
Great Aunt Savannah would certainly have up close experience with anything related to pilots.
Noah had started his company, Skye Travels, with just one little Cessna. Skye Travels had grown into one of the largest private airline companies in the country, if not the largest.
He’d sold that little Cessna a few years ago at his wife’s insistence. I would have loved getting my hands on that old airplane. Old airplanes were something of a passion of mine even though they were few and far between.
I’d first gotten interested in aviation after I’d visited a museum in Denver. I would never forget that road trip.
I’d been sixteen years old and crushing hard on a girl in my class.
Natalie St. Clair.
Natalie was the daughter of the wealthiest family in Whiskey Springs. Out of my league, everyone said.
I had not completely disagreed. It hadn’t however, stopped me from crushing hard on her.
I had not only discovered old airplanes on that school trip, but I had kissed Natalie St. Clair.
The course of my life as I knew it had completely changed direction that day.
Halfway through my post flight checklist, I checked on my car.
The town had one driver, an Uber driver before Uber was even a thing.
By the time I finished up my checklist, the familiar old blue Toyota was making its way toward me.
It was time for me to go from airplane pilot Adam to Uncle Adam.
Chapter Three
NATALIE
“Hello Natalie,” Markus said, not moving from his post at one of the computers behind the counter.
He didn’t have to move closer for his eyes to zero in on me.
Instead of answering, I forced myself to walk forward until I reached the girl working the counter. She looked like a high school girl, probably working part-time just as I had when I was a Senior.
“I think I have a prescription,” I told her, keeping my voice low. “Natalie St. Clair.”
“Yes ma’am,” she said, tapping on the computer keyboard. “It’s not ready.”
I tried not to roll my eyes, but wasn’t completely successful in keeping my expression blank.
“I was told it would be ready.”
The girl shrugged.
“But you do have it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I was not old enough to be called a ma’am.
“When can you have it ready?”
&
“She has a prescription that isn’t ready.” The girl tapped the screen.
“I’ll get right on that,” Marcus said with a little glance in my direction. “It’ll just be a minute.”
He waited a split second too long for me to respond. Just long enough for the girl to notice that I didn’t answer.
She looked at me curiously.
I must look like quite a sight with my bruised up face, eyes hidden behind dark sun glasses. Wearing an oversized flannel shirt to accommodate for the stretchy tight bandage keeping my cracked ribs from becoming broken ribs.
Marcus went back to his station, presumably to fill my prescription. It was odd, really, that he didn’t even seem to notice my busted up face.
“I’ll just come back,” I said.
“He’s filling it now,” the girl said, looking at me as though I had gone mad. How dare I walk away from the pharmacist? And not just any pharmacist. Marcus Blackwell.
I turned quickly. Too quickly to accommodate my cracked ribs.
Wincing, I wandered to the toothpaste aisle.
Might as well use my time efficiently, kill two bird with one stone and all that.
Unfortunately, my heart was racing and I had trouble focusing. I grabbed up the first box of toothpaste that looked decent and moved to the Tylenol.
“Mrs. St. Clair. Your ointment is ready.”
Had the girl never heard of HIPAA?
I thought about giving her a quick education, but since there wasn’t anyone else around, I chose to let it go.
I felt Marcus watching me as I swiped my credit card.
If there was one thing this town needed, it was another pharmacy.
Maybe next time I’d drive into Boulder for my meds.
No. I held my head high as I walked out of the store.
I would not let Marcus force me into a three hour road trip just to pick up my medication.
I could use a few other things besides my ointment and toothpaste, but they would have to wait.
Besides, the town did have more one than one store.
It had that going for it at least.
Stepping out on the sidewalk, the air cooled my heated skin.
I heard the airplane before I saw it.
A little Cessna made a scenic loop around the town before going in for a landing at the little local airport.
It was a Skye Travels plane. I recognized the red logo on the fuselage.
My heart started beating fast again, but this time for a different reason.
It could be one of several pilots flying into Whiskey Springs in a Skye Travels airplane. They made the trip often. Even more now that the owner, Noah Worthington, had made a considerable investment to bring the airport into the twenty-first century.
But there was only one pilot I knew.
Adam Worthington.
He, too, had gotten out of Whiskey Springs.
There had been a time when I had thought we would get out of Whiskey Springs together, but Adam had thought differently.
We had both gone to Texas, but I had gone to Houston and he had gone to Dallas. After that, we might as well have been a world apart.
Still standing on the sidewalk outside the General Store, I watched the airplane until it disappeared behind the tree tops.
It could be any number of people in that airplane.
But even the possibility that it might be Adam Worthington had my heart slamming against my sore ribs.
I was supposed to be here to rest. To relax my body and my emotions.
If Adam Worthington was in town, that wasn’t going to happen.
Even if I didn’t see him, I wouldn’t be able to not look for him.
As I walked back toward my family’s house, I contemplated just how long I could stay inside the house.
I had everything I needed and if something came up I could send one of my siblings to get it.
What good were siblings if they couldn’t help their sister avoid an old boyfriend.
And not just any boyfriend. The one boyfriend who had taken my heart and ripped it into about a thousand pieces. It never had really gone back together quite right. Just like that piece of broken pottery that my brother had tried to glue back together—an antique bowl that had been handed down through the year. All the pieces were still there, but it was obvious that it had not gone back to the way it had been before it was broken.
Chapter Four
ADAM
My reason for coming home to Whiskey Springs was to be here to help my sister get through the birth of her second child. Pulling together when needed was what family did.
I’d known when I came home, my job would be to help out.
I had expected to have to babysit her one-year-old infant, Ivy.
I had not expected to be asked to do their house maintenance.
Taking a break from doing things outside around the house including cleaning out her gutters, while our mother doted over my sister who was so pregnant she could barely move, I took Ivy out for a walk.
Since cleaning the gutters had absolutely nothing to do with childbirth and seemed to me like my sister was taking advantage of me being there and being captive to her needs, I decided to make myself scarce until her attention got redirected from finding things for me to do that her husband could do when he was home.
Somehow once a younger brother, always a younger brother. No doubt in her mind I was still a kid she could boss around.
But who could argue with a pregnant woman when she insisted that it was imperative that her gutters be cleaned out. I shuddered to imagine what she would come up with next.
Balancing Ivy on one hip, I strolled past the Hungry Biscuit. Since it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, I kept walking. Maybe on the way home, I’d pick up hamburgers and fries for the three of us.
Turning left onto Main Street, I shifted Ivy to my other hip.
She tugged at the collar of the denim shirt I’d grabbed just before I’d headed out the door.
The sun was warm, but the breeze beneath it was cool. In the shade of the blue spruce trees I walked past, it was actually downright cold.
Just after ten o’clock, the stores were open, but there were only a few people moving about.
The bookstore owner was sweeping off the sidewalk in front of his store and the owner of the local flower shop was bringing out her trailing succulents and putting them in the macramé holders beneath the covered walkway in front of her store.
Everything was all quite normal for a Friday morning.
“Do you want coffee?” I asked Ivy.
I took her cooing as a positive response and headed across the street to the coffee shop next to the market.
Stepping up onto the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, I missed a step, then I froze.
I knew the girl coming out of the market.
Just before she slid a pair of dark sun glasses over her eyes, I caught a glimpse of the purple bruise around her eye.
In that same moment, she saw me and recognition flashed across her features.
“Natalie,” I said. “What the hell happened to you?”
Ivy cooed and pulled on my ear. I barely noticed.
The woman I had loved since the first time I’d laid eyes on her in first grade stood in front of me looking like someone had used her as a punching bag.
“Adam,” she said, looking from me to Ivy and back again.
If I found out who laid a hand on Natalie, I would kill him.
“Who did this to you?” I asked, putting a hand lightly on her chin and examining her busted lip on the opposite side from her black eye.
In that moment, it did not matter that it had been thirteen years since I had seen her, I was flooded with protective instincts.
“No one,” she said.
I looked over her shoulder, hoping to catch sight of the bastard that did this to her.
I’d had a friend in college whose boyfriend beat her. She denied it, of course, but we all knew it and she wouldn’t leave him.
The day after she showed up to class battered and bruised, he would give her flowers and promise to never do it again.
