“I should never have come here...

  “I came for all the wrong reasons.” Suddenly a flood of words gushed out of Dana. “It’s your land, it’s your family, this is your town and I just came here and...”

  Mason pulled back. “And changed everything.”

  “For the worse,” she insisted.

  “Feels like it at the moment.” He smoothed back a lock of her hair. “But I’m not sorry.”

  “How can you say that? The things people said…” They’d stopped just short of accusing him of selling out the town to a shady cause in order to save his own skin. Someone had even used the word contaminate. How could he look at some of these people as neighbors ever again?

  “I’m not sorry,” he repeated. “It’s not turned out anything close to how I wanted. How I expected, even. But I can’t say I’m sorry that you’re...here. That you’re in my life. In Charlie’s life.”

  Mason held her gaze...and Dana’s legs felt unsteady beneath her for a whole different reason.

  Allie Pleiter, an award-winning author and RITA® Award finalist, writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion for knitting shows up in many of her books and all over her life. Entirely too fond of French macarons and lemon meringue pie, Allie spends her days writing books and avoiding housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a BS in speech from Northwestern University and lives near Chicago, Illinois.

  Books by Allie Pleiter

  Love Inspired

  Wander Canyon

  Their Wander Canyon Wish

  Winning Back Her Heart

  His Christmas Wish

  A Mother’s Strength

  Secrets of Their Past

  A Place to Heal

  Matrimony Valley

  His Surprise Son

  Snowbound with the Best Man

  Wander Canyon Courtship

  Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com for more titles.

  A PLACE TO HEAL

  Allie Pleiter

  Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.

  —Psalm 71:20

  To Pastor Lauren

  One of my favorite recent new beginnings

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Excerpt from The Soldier’s Baby Promise by Gabrielle Meyer

  Chapter One

  Dana Preston fought the dry Arizona wind as she spread the map out on the hood of her car. She compared the bright red circle on her map to the address on the gate across the road in front of her. “Yep,” she declared to the April sky and the dusty roadside, “this is the place.”

  Even though she did not grow up in North Springs—her childhood home was closer to Phoenix—it felt familiar. The sense of space here was so strong you could feel it. Almost touch it, like a cold Denver snowfall or a thick fog. It was a different kind of mountain air, yes, but the clarity and the wide-openness of it made her feel human again. Significant, but not the life-and-death stakes she’d just made the choice to leave. Different. Possible, if that made any sort of sense. It had been a while since Dana felt a surge of any kind of hope.

  Which was good. Hope was why she was here.

  She’d never been the dream-chaser type, but then again she’d not ever been shot in the abdomen before, either. She was different now, and her old life in Denver just didn’t fit anymore. All she knew was that she had to come here and had to try. She had no idea if this life would fit. It was entirely possible she was looking at an impractical pipe dream.

  If she were honest, it was likely. No one in Denver would ever believe she was toying with the ideas that filled the file folder on her passenger seat. Dana climbed to sit on the hood of her car, wincing as she did. It bugged her that the surgery wounds still hurt. They would bother her for another six months, the doctor had said. “Not all the time, just when you ask the wrong thing of those muscles.”

  “That’s enough of that,” she lectured her abdominal wall, shifting further onto the hood despite the jolt of pain radiating out of the scar that ran across her belly below her navel. The zing of pain stopped as she settled herself next to the map. She needed to think, and she wanted to do that staring at the thing she was thinking about: the camp.

  Of course, she wasn’t staring at a camp. She was staring at the run-down front gate of Mason Avery’s property. The chain-link gate was old and creaky-looking. A battered No Trespassing sign hung off one of its fasteners in the opposite of a welcome. It squeaked and clanged a warning as it swung in the same wind that kept trying to steal her map off the hood of the car.

  Fencing on either side of the gate stretched far in both directions. She’d done her homework; the property was a full twenty acres. Good land, right size, a perfect creek and mountain spring running right through it, old enough to be affordable but not too run-down. At least she hoped not too run-down. The sizable plot of mountainside land had everything she was looking for—except a willing seller.

  In fact, the property in front of her wasn’t even up for sale. Yet. All the properties that were on the market loomed beyond her means at the moment, so she’d had to get creative. Find the right land first, then convince the owner to sell it to her. Not exactly the way people do this, she told herself. Then again, what sort of people did this? At every stage of this irrational journey, half of her kept hoping things would fall through. That life would hand her an excuse not to do this.

  In fact, just the opposite had happened. She’d been able to extend her medical leave indefinitely, pack up and leave Denver, work out sufficient finances, make the trip here, and find a nice place to stay. Dana didn’t know what to make of the fact that all her obstacles kept disappearing.

  And now here she was, staring at a gate, contemplating how to turn the land behind it into a camp for kids who had lost a parent to violence or trauma. Practical people like you don’t do things like this. Don’t even consider doing things like this. And yet the idea had taken hold of her in the days after the shooting and the surgery, and had not let go since.

  How? Why? When—now? Someday? Never? Dana chose to just sit with the avalanche of doubts, to perch on the hood of her car with the acres in view and see if the mountains or the sky or the steady spring wind would give up any secrets to help her.

  She’d been there perhaps twenty minutes when a squeaky noise caught her attention. A young boy—about seven or eight by the looks of it—rode up the gravel drive on a bicycle. Charlie. Mason’s young son.

  Dana watched him approach, keen to all the signals kids gave off. Years as a detective specializing in juvenile violence gave her a radar for that sort of thing. Charlie was wary, but curious. A bit defiant and defensive, as if bravery came easy when the gate was locked.

  Dana didn’t get the sense that the gate was opened often. It was two o’clock on a Tuesday—why wasn’t Charlie in school?

  He rode his bike right up to the gate, the chain-link rattling when his front tire bumped up against it. It sent the No Trespassing sign swinging again. His oddly steady stare unnerved Dana—and not many things unnerved her after all the ugliness and violence she’d witnessed.

  “Hello,” she called from her side of the road. It seemed like the thing to say.

  Charlie stood there, still astride his bicycle, staring at her. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and chewed something—gum? his lip?—as he leveled her with a narrow-eyed glare way too old for his tender years. One foot tapped against the ground as if he couldn’t quite pull off the steely stance he was trying to show her.

  It seemed ridiculous to try “Hello” again, so she folded the map and gingerly slid off the hood of the car. She leaned against the fender and mirrored Charlie’s stance by putting both her hands in the pockets of her jeans.

  “Who’re you?” he asked after a solid minute of stare-down.

  Funny how the simple questions can be the hardest to answer. I used to be a police detective, but now I don’t think I am anymore because I got shot and I don’t want to go back was probably a longer answer than what the kid was looking for. She settled for “I’m Dana.”

  Charlie bumped his bike up against the gate again, maybe to remind her it was there between them. “Dana who?”

  “Dana Preston.” This was the first time in a long time she didn’t preface those two words with “Detective.” Technically, she was still a detective. She’d gotten her six-month leave reclassified as “indefinite,” but she knew it was permanent. Dana wasn’t here to buy a vacation home. She was here to either launch a totally new life or get a wild dream out of her system.

  “Why’re you staring at me?”

  Dana took a small step toward Charlie. “I’m not
staring at you.”

  His chin rose and one hand came out of its pocket. “Yeah, you are.”

  Dana took another step toward Charlie and let one of her own hands come out from a pocket. “No, I’m looking at the land around you. Why are you staring at me?”

  “Am not,” Charlie countered. He scuffed the gravel with the foot that had been tapping. “Are you looking at Grandpa’s house?”

  So it was family land. She’d gone back through the county records to see that the land had originally been purchased by Dwight Avery, Mason’s father. He’d been prosperous in his day, but Mason wasn’t. Barely scraping by, from the looks of it. Dana needed a motivated seller, one that might like very much to stay on the property and help with the upkeep. Mason fit that bill—she hoped. “Sort of,” she replied, reminding herself to keep the law enforcement edge out of her voice. “I’m looking at all of it, actually.”

  “Why?” Charlie’s free hand rose to the handlebar of his bicycle, signaling that he could turn around and ride right out of there if he didn’t like the answer she gave.

  Dana opted for something close to the truth. “Not sure yet, actually. I probably need to ask your dad, I suppose.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “How do you know I’ve got a dad?”

  Dana risked another step—which put her out into the road, so she kept one ear cocked for the sound of a car coming around the mountain road’s many bends. “Everybody’s got a dad. Just a question of whether or not they’re around. Or nice,” she added, remembering the last gut-wrenching abuse case she’d worked back in Denver. “Nice” most definitely did not apply. She had made sure “criminal endangerment” did.

  “Mine’s here.” His chin rose slightly as he said that, as if it was something that needed defending.

  “Is he nice?” It probably was a risk to ask, but Dana couldn’t help herself. Charlie’s answer might tell her a lot about who she’d be dealing with. Intel was never a bad thing, even when chasing outrageous dreams.

  “He’s Dad.” A shrug and an eye roll accompanied the declaration. That could have meant anything from dads are never nice and sometimes they hit to he won’t let me eat ice cream for breakfast.

  It struck her, watching the way Charlie stared at her with narrow eyes, that the boy looked too old for his body. Scruffy hair and gangly limbs but a straight spine. A little lost with a hard edge that didn’t belong on someone that small. As if someone had managed to stuff a thirteen-year-old inside his skin when no one was looking.

  Maybe no one was looking. After all, the kid couldn’t have been more than seven or eight and he was wandering around near the road with no adult in sight on what should have been a school day.

  Dana felt that tug, that relentless obligation that made the fellow officers in her old precinct nickname her “Mom.” The sense of duty that made her very good at her job.

  And very nearly gotten her killed.

  * * *

  Mason Avery looked up from the workbench and felt his whole body slump. Charlie was gone. “Charlie? Charlie!”

  His son was so good at disappearing the kid should pursue a career in espionage. Seven-year-olds should be cute and charming, not wily and exasperating. “Charlie!” he called again, dashing through the rooms of the large house in search of the boy. I should never have believed the bit about the stomachache. I should have insisted he go to school.

  It was never a good thing to feel outsmarted by your own second grader, and Mason felt as if that was happening far too often lately. Our boy... Mason moaned to the memory of his late wife as he took the stairs two at a time up to Charlie’s bedroom. You were always so much better at this than me.

  The huge property was securely fenced—and gated—but none of that replaced the constant supervision Charlie ought to have. Gone to the kitchen for a juice box was not the same as vanishing from sight while Mason looked down for half a minute to finish fitting a dovetail drawer joint.

  Mason turned in desperate circles about the room, hands fisted in his unruly hair, looking for clues to where Charlie had taken off to now. Melony, I’m failing him. This is so hard.

  Out the window, he spotted Charlie. He was far down the drive, all the way to the gate. And he was talking to someone.

  Mason took the stairs three at a time down toward the front door and sprinted down the gravel after his son. The gate was always locked, but that didn’t stop the surge of panic that sped Mason’s steps. Charlie was developing a worrying talent for getting into things that weren’t good for him, and the woman on the other side of the fence didn’t look at all familiar. School official? Child services? Another annoying land developer looking to turn his land into a subdivision?

  “Charlie!” he yelled when he was still a ways away, hoping his son would turn around and come to him. He didn’t. More often than not these days, he didn’t. It was like Charlie was slipping down the mountain slope away from him, and all the prayer and care Mason could douse on him did little to stop the landslide.

  Don’t yell, he lectured himself, slowing his steps and tamping down his frustration as he neared Charlie and the visitor on the other side of the gate. “Hey, buddy, you’re supposed to be on the couch in my workshop reading. Whatcha doing all the way out here?”

  Charlie turned with an “Oh, hi” expression as if house escapes on supposed sick days were perfectly okay. “Talking to her.”

  Mason was relieved “her”—whoever she was—was neither in a developer’s slick suit or a uniform. Still, that was little comfort. “And who are you?” It would have been smarter not to make that so much of an accusation, but Mason’s last bastion of good manners had been stomped out weeks ago.

  “Dana Preston.”

  Mason didn’t know what to make of the fact that no title came with the name. She didn’t say “officer” or “from the county.” Tall and fit with an efficient bob of blond hair, she was head-turning, but not in a “knockout beauty” kind of way. Her stance and the power in her eyes—even from here—demanded notice. She looked close to his age, which was a welcome change from the battalion of well-intentioned church aunties who occasionally forced visits on him. Those women always called first, and often brought cookies and casseroles to soften their list of concerned questions.

  He walked closer to the gate. “Can I help you?” He was proud of choosing that over “What are you doing staring through my fence talking to my son?” But he still put a protective hand on Charlie’s shoulder—at least until Charlie shrugged it off with a “Daaaaaad” worthy of a grumpy teen.

  “You own this place?” Ms. Preston cast her glance around as if she knew just how far the land and the fence extended.

  Eyeing the land. The moment of him finding her nice-looking evaporated like a puddle in August. One of those. Mason was trying hard to hold on to the family land for Charlie’s sake, and it didn’t help that greedy developers kept knocking on his door. No stack of bills would ever be high enough to make him sell this place to become vacation condos. Ever.

  Mason met her eyes with all the welcome of the well-locked gate. “I’m not selling.”

  She must have worked hard to master that look of surprise. “How do you know I’m looking to buy?”

  “You all are,” he shot back. “Nice touch trying to get at me through my son, by the way. Really adds to the charm.”

  “He rode up to me and asked first, not that I’m sure it would make any difference to you.”

  That wasn’t welcome news. Mason looked down at Charlie for an explanation.

  “She started it,” Charlie whined. “She was just sitting there on her car staring at us.”

  One corner of Ms. Preston’s mouth turned up at that. “I suppose I did start it. I was sitting on my car consulting my map and my notes and looking at your property. But I did not lure your son to the gate, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Mason pointed at her. “So you are looking to buy.”

  She shifted her weight. At least she had the decency to realize she hadn’t made the best first impression. “I’d like to talk to you about it, yes.” Mason waited for her to push a business card through the chain link of the fence. Three others had tried that, and their cards were still lying somewhere in the grass.