Burning Springs

  Streetlight Graphics Publishing

  A division of Streetlight Graphics

  Burning Springs

  Copyright © 2017 by Tabatha L. Haddix. All rights reserved.

  First Edition: Feburary 2017

  Visit www.tlhaddix.com for updates, news, bonuses and freebies.

  www.facebook.com/tlhaddix

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Streetlight Graphics Publishing, a division of Streetlight Graphics.

  Also by T. L. Haddix

  The Firefly Hollow Series:

  Firefly Hollow

  Butterfly Lane

  Dragonfly Creek

  Cattail Ridge

  Cricket Cove

  Stormking Road

  Fern Valley

  Snapdragon Way

  Stardust Valley

  Kathy

  Spring Valley

  Murky Pond

  Burning Springs

  The Shadows Collection:

  Secrets in the Shadows

  Under the Moon’s Shadow

  Shadows from the Grave

  Hidden in the Shadows

  In the Heart’s Shadow

  Deception in the Shadows

  Seduction in the Shadows

  Redemption in the Shadows

  Writing as Mallory Love:

  Capturing Colleen (Sunset Motel, Book One)

  Seducing Samantha (Sunset Motel, Book Two)

  You can connect with T.L. on Facebook and her website:

  www.tlhaddix.com

  www.facebook.com/tlhaddix

  If you’d like to receive email notifications about future releases, please subscribe to T.L.’s newsletter at the address below.

  www.tlhaddix.com/newsletter

  Author’s Note:

  I know there’s the standard disclaimer at the front of the book that says “any resemblance to persons living or dead, yadda, yadda, yadda,” but I wanted to add another disclaimer here and stress something very important. There’s mention of a doctor, an oncologist, in this book who is a not-very-nice person. This doctor is from the not-fictional town of Hazard, Kentucky. In no way, shape, or form does this ENTIRELY fictional doctor bear any resemblance to any REAL oncologist, past or present, practicing in Hazard.

  As a matter of fact, everyone I know who has had contact with oncologists and their teams in the real Hazard has nothing but good to say about them. They’re hard-working men and women, and they do a lot of good for a lot of people. It’s just an unfortunate happenstance that Molly’s fictional job happened to be set in Hazard. Thank you!

  Chapter One

  Less than one month after her twenty-fourth birthday, Molly Burke Campbell was running away from home. Fed up with her brothers’ hovering and concern, she’d packed her bags, written a note for her parents and her cousin Easton, with whom she shared a rental, and sneaked out in the middle of the night simply to avoid the concern and protests she knew she would face if she waited till morning to leave.

  This wasn’t the first time Molly had run away. When she was eleven, life had risen up to overwhelm her to such an extent that she couldn’t stand being home for one more minute. She’d written a note then too, an angst-filled missive full of semi-logical reasons why she couldn’t stay with her parents any longer. They’d made sense to her, at least. Somewhere, her mother still had that note in a scrapbook.

  That time, she hadn’t sneaked out. After pondering the idea of escaping for most of one overcast summer Saturday, she’d called her grandfather, Owen Campbell, and told him she was coming to live with him and her grandmother, Sarah, even if she had to hitchhike to get there.

  “Why don’t you let me pick you up instead?” He’d made the suggestion in a calm and matter-of-fact tone, as though he picked up errant grandchildren on a daily basis. “We can meet Sarah at work, and all three of us can go out for burgers and shakes before we come back home.”

  “Not back home here, right, but to the farm, to your house?” Molly stressed.

  “To the farm, yes. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”

  Molly glanced at the two suitcases—one full of books, the other clothes—that had been packed for hours. “I’ll meet you on the porch.”

  She marched downstairs somewhat awkwardly, a suitcase in each hand, purse strap hung around her neck, and went out the door, right past her astonished mother. After setting the cases down, she turned to go back in to tell Zanny she was leaving, but her mother was already on the porch.

  “Planning a trip?”

  “Yes. This is my resignation.” Molly handed her the envelope that contained her letter. “I’m running away from home. My ride will be here soon. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to wait for him alone.”

  Forever and a day after, she’d be able to close her eyes and see the expression on her mother’s face. A mix of concern, amusement, and to Molly’s shame, a bit of hurt had been reflected in Zanny’s hazel eyes.

  Her mother had been remarkably calm when she asked, “May I inquire as to who your driver is?”

  “Grandpa.”

  Zanny gave a single decisive nod. “Good choice. Well then, I don’t suppose I can talk you out of going, can I?”

  “No, ma’am. I think it’s for the best.”

  “Do you have everything you need?” Zanny clasped the envelope to her chest. “Money, clothes…?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Her mother’s concern almost undid Molly, and she had to look away in order not to cry.

  “Okay. Well, we’ll miss you. Promise to call if you change your mind?”

  Molly nodded. With a heavy sigh, Zanny went into the house, looking over her shoulder as she let the storm door close quietly behind her.

  Fighting tears, Molly sat on the top step, her arm wrapped around the biggest suitcase. Her relief when Owen pulled up just a couple of minutes later was huge. She didn’t wait for him to get out of the truck but grabbed her things and hustled down the walk.

  He met her at the passenger door and got the first suitcase into the space behind the seat. When he lifted the second, he grunted. “What’s in here, bricks?”

  Molly propped her hand on her hip. “No, Grandpa. Books.”

  Owen chuckled. “Ah. Okay. We definitely can’t leave those behind. Are you certain you want to do this?”

  “Yes, sir. So long as I’m welcome…”

  Owen gave her a quick hug. “Of course you are. Let’s go before it starts raining on us.”

  When he waved at the house, Molly realized her mother was probably watching them. She didn’t turn her head in that direction though. She’d cry if she did.

  Years later, Zanny still loved to tease her about how prepared she’d been. “I was certain when I read your ‘resignation’ you were going to end up going to law school, and I’m more grateful than you know that you were so responsible for doing things the way you did.”

  Regardless of how cute the memory had become for her parents, Molly still felt a good deal of embarrassment about that time. Her brother Eli had been going through a rough teenage patch, and he’d made everyone in the house miserable as he dealt with the pains of growing up. Noah, her
oldest brother, had left a couple of years earlier to travel the world, landing in Italy as a woodworking apprentice. He’d not gone under happy circumstances either, as he and Eli had fought bitterly in the weeks leading up to Noah’s leaving.

  Molly got to see the whole stinking mess up close and personal. She loved both of her brothers, but she had a lot of anger toward them for the way they’d acted. Plus, at eleven, she was starting to have some growing pains of her own, and she needed to be away from everything for a little while. She’d stayed at the farm with Owen and Sarah for two weeks, only seeing her parents at Sunday dinners. On the third Sunday, her father convinced her to come home simply because of the sadness he’d expressed over her being gone.

  Now she was all grown up, an adult with a college degree—not in law as her mother had thought, but as a fully licensed nurse practitioner with a bit of actual experience under her belt. But she didn’t currently have a job. She’d quit months back due to some workplace pressures she’d not expected and wasn’t prepared to tolerate. As a result, she was utterly at loose ends, unsure of what to do with herself or where she wanted to go in life.

  She’d spent most of the previous summer and into the fall at her uncle’s horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky, helping Easton recover from a vicious beating that had left him with permanent damage. While there, she’d also helped her cousin and best friend, Lily, plan a formal wedding. Lily and her now-husband, Warren Sullivan, had eloped back in the summer, jaunting out to Vegas to exchange their vows, but they wanted to have a big ceremony for their families.

  Lily’s big to-do had gone off without a hitch a week ago, and Easton was back home in Hazard, Kentucky. He was even working, having been hired on as a private-investigator-in-training with another cousin’s husband.

  With no one to take care of and no job to report to, Molly had been quietly going nuts. It was the first week in November, and though she could keep herself occupied by planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas, she needed something else to do. Something challenging. Something with purpose.

  When she’d mentioned her growing boredom at her grandparents’ house during Sunday dinner, both of her brothers had been quick to offer her options.

  “You could babysit,” Noah said. He and his wife Sophie had just had their first child at the end of September, a little girl they’d named Owen Delilah.

  “Yeah, you could start a nursery or a daycare or something. It isn’t like you wouldn’t have clients between the four of us and Sydney and Sawyer,” Eli told her, chiming in with a grin as he gestured to their cousin and her husband, who were seated beside him. Eli and Haley were new parents as well. Their son, Jacob Frederick Campbell, had been born only ten days prior.

  “Oh, no. I’m not chasing after nieces and nephews all day.” Molly was adamant. Though she adored her niece and nephew and cousins, she didn’t want that kind of responsibility. She sent an apologetic smile across the table to Sydney, who was pregnant with her second child, due in early March. “Especially not hellions like Campbells and their kin tend to be. I love you all dearly, and I’ll spoil every single one of these babies rotten. But no.”

  She knew if she stuck around very long, the boys would find her a job doing something. They were good brothers, the best she could ask for, but they both worried. Thanks to that overprotectiveness, there had been a lot of times throughout the years when Molly had felt as though she had four parents instead of two. There had also been a lot of times she’d been able to turn to Noah or Eli—or both of them—for support that she couldn’t ask for from her parents. She gave thanks daily that her brothers had been able to mend fences and grow close as best friends.

  At the same time, they were hovering. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t get them to back off. Their solicitousness was getting on her last nerve, and she needed to escape before she ended up saying or doing something that would hurt them all.

  So that evening after everyone else had gone home, she talked to her grandparents again. “I need something more. I’d like to travel a bit, see the country, I guess. I don’t want to jaunt all over the world like Noah or Lily or even Eli, but I do want to go farther than I’ve been. What should I do?”

  “I think you should get in your car and see where the road leads you.” Sarah settled in on the couch beside her, a bundle of crocheting in hand. Much to the family’s relief, she’d finally given up on knitting after two years of trying and was focusing on crocheting, which was something she was actually good at, an interest she shared with Molly. “I’d also recommend you start heading in a southerly direction as this weather is only going to get colder and more miserable as the next several weeks go on.”

  The first truly cold snap of the season had settled over the region in the last few days, and everyone was grumbling about the chill.

  “Just don’t go so far you can’t make it back in time for Thanksgiving,” Owen said from his chair beside the fire.

  “Grandpa, this house will be so full of Campbells you won’t even miss me,” she teased.

  He winked at her. “Young lady, you know better.”

  Now, at nearly midnight on Wednesday, she was in her car heading down the parkway toward London, Kentucky, where she’d reserved a hotel room. She’d get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning, she’d begin her journey. She planned to head west to Paducah to visit the National Quilt Museum, something that had been on her bucket list for ages. She couldn’t sew a straight line, but she appreciated the craft and loved looking at the pretty fabrics and patterns, seeing the creations other people had worked so hard at producing.

  From there, she’d head south to Nashville and play the tourist, then maybe down to the Gulf. Or she could change her mind entirely and head into the mountains of North Carolina. Beyond the quilting museum, she wasn’t entirely sure where she wanted to go. Not terribly far, not at first. As much as she’d teased her grandfather about not making it home for Thanksgiving, she’d never miss the holiday without good reason.

  She might pick up an odd job here or there if she could, something to do to earn a little extra cash along the way. She was extremely fortunate not to have a mountain of college debt hanging over her head, as her parents had set aside money for her and her brothers’ educations so they’d not have to worry about that. But picking up a job somewhere along the way might be fun, and she’d keep her eyes open.

  She’d had jobs throughout college, and working as an ARNP in Hazard had paid well enough. Plus, Molly’d never been wasteful, even though she liked to shop perhaps more than she should. Her father, an accountant, had drummed financial responsibility into the heads of all his children from the time they were old enough to earn an allowance.

  If the opportunity arose and she thought it might be fun, she could see herself staying a while in some out-of-the-way place, passing the time. Maybe she’d get a job in a used bookstore, though those were a dying breed. Or maybe she’d hit the big city and work as a barista, though she wasn’t a coffee drinker unless it involved ice and lots of cream and sugar.

  “I guess I’ll wing it. That’s something I’ve never tried, after all,” she told herself as she drove the quiet parkway. “Some aspects of this gig do sound fun after all, like visiting the museum.”

  To Molly, the thought of living an unplanned life, a life without much structure, was frankly terrifying. But since everyone and their brothers—with the exception of her own—seemed to think that was what she needed, she’d give it a try. She was at a loss as to what else to do.

  The job she’d thought she wanted had turned out to be an utter disaster. She had hated everything about it, from the doctors to her coworkers to the patients. She’d stuck it out as long as she could—well over a year—before throwing in the towel. Thinking about that last week, the horrible week from hell that had caused her to make the final decision to walk away, still made her queasy. She felt like a quitter, like she was wasting her pot
ential.

  But she couldn’t go back and pick up where she’d left off. That life had felt wrong, so wrong, and enduring it had leeched the soul from her bones. Dramatic? Yes. Accurate? Oh, absolutely.

  “Something is out there, Mol. You just have to find it.”

  She could feel the mysterious “something” calling her, and its pull was impossible to resist. She only wished she could plan this segment of her life at least a little or knew what to expect. How else was she supposed to prepare for what was to come?

  She laughed. “I guess maybe that’s the point of taking a sabbatical, as Easton calls it. The journey itself is the preparation. God help me, I guess I’d better get used to the chaos. Right?”

  There wasn’t an answer, not that she’d expected one. With any luck, she could have some fun and get the job of “finding herself” out of the way so she could get on with whatever her life was supposed to be.

  Chapter Two

  Maude’s Diner was crowded near to overflowing when Jonah Sutton walked inside Sunday evening, a blustery wind at his back. He shrugged off the aggravation that came from seeing that his favorite booth in the corner wasn’t available almost as easily as he removed his coat. He hung it on the rack beside the door, which only the locals seemed to make use of. A couple of empty barstools were left at the counter, and he took one of them.

  Hazel Cooper, Jonah’s aunt and the proprietress of the diner, poured him a cup of coffee before he could ask for it. “We wondered if we’d see you today. You’re running a bit late.”

  “I got tied up on the mountain.”

  “Good thing you managed to escape,” the uniformed blond man two seats over said with a laconic drawl. Trevor Absher, the small town’s police chief and Jonah’s best friend, grinned at him. “I keep telling you that kinky stuff is going to get you in trouble one of these days.”