Mending the Line Read online

  Mending the Line

  By Christy Hayes

  Amazon Edition

  Text Copyright © Christy Hayes

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art © by Stephanie Mooney. All rights reserved.

  The characters portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without prior written consent of the author.

  Amazon Edition, License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Mending the Line

  Jill Jennings’ dream of becoming an elite runner turns into a nightmare when she breaks her leg less than a year before the Olympic trials. After two surgeries and a lengthy rehabilitation, she’s ready to pursue her goal again. Or is she…

  Jill’s healing and ready to hit the pavement, but her passion for the sport she’d planned to make her career unexpectedly wanes. On a whim, she changes course and runs right into tall, blonde, and gorgeous Tyler Bloodworth. Fly fisherman come and go in south central Colorado, but Ty’s back for a second summer, minus his girlfriend and hotter than ever.

  Tyler Bloodworth's life plan to start a fly-fishing business with his dad back home in North Carolina is suddenly snagged when Jill Jennings runs circles around his heart during a summer stint as a fishing guide in Colorado. Back for a second summer, he sets his bait and casts his line, but Jill's not so easy to catch.

  A catch and release fisherman hooks the one girl he won’t let go. A distance runner with big dreams and an uncertain future falls hard for a summer fling. Can Jill risk losing her career and her heart to Tyler when he’ll be gone in a few months, or will Ty reel in the biggest catch of his life?

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 1

  Ty Bloodworth had been in a daze for the better part of three months. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes while he waited for the object of his desire to appear. All the things he savored with that one breath captured everything he loved about the woods. Nobody understood why he chose to live alone tucked in the forest instead of in the free wheeling dorms near the fly shop, but at twenty-four, he’d had enough of communal living.

  He sucked in another breath of cool morning air and could almost feel it clearing out all the dust in his lungs. His friends said it was too quiet, but had they listened, really listened? The birds called to loved ones, back and forth from above and all around. The bugs croaked a different melody from the ground. Squirrels, when they scuttled about the forest floor, sounded like a speeding jaguar leaping on its prey.

  And then he heard it, the sound he’d been waiting for while holding his steaming cup of coffee and wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. The gravel crunched under her mile-eating stride. When she cleared the curve, he let his free hand rest on his stomach and tried to wipe away the ache. He felt the clench in his gut, the adrenaline rush he felt just before reeling in a big fish. Jill Jennings probably wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a fish.

  He felt himself lean forward in anticipation, ushering the moment of eye contact to fruition. He wasn’t disappointed by the wait. She was beauty in motion, although she’d probably hate that description as she pushed herself up the steep incline. Sweat made her thin shirt cling to her stomach muscles as they twisted with every step. Her quadriceps quivered, almost in tune with his thundering heart. She wasn’t the biggest fish he’d ever seen, not with her elegant build and slight frame, but she was the most magnificent.

  Conflicted by his overwhelming attraction while still attached to his girlfriend back home, Ty avoided Jill most of the time, at the restaurant where she worked and whenever she came to the fly and rafting shop to visit her roommate. He didn’t even try to ignore her here, outside his door when he could watch her move and admire everything about her that had caught his attention from the very first glance.

  She looked up, her head swung in his direction, and a line of irritation graced the delicate space between her dark brows. She glanced down at the path, but not before she landed on a rock that had fallen from the stony overhang at some point and came to rest in the road. Her ankle buckled and she went down hard, her leg crashing against a boulder lining the road. Ty heard the crack just seconds before her scream. He was at her side in a flash, grabbing her shoulders as she thrashed around on the ground, filling her chestnut hair with gravel and dirt.

  “It’s broken,” she huffed through clenched teeth. “Damn it, it’s broken.”

  Ty noticed her eyes hadn’t filled with tears, but the tawny color had almost disappeared around her enlarged pupils. She was dangerously close to shock.

  “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to my truck,” he said.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered, as if speaking loudly would make the pain spread throughout her body. “Call an ambulance. I don’t want to move.”

  “I don’t think either one of us wants to wait forty minutes for an ambulance to come from Del Noches. I’ll be careful. Put your arms around my neck.”

  After one uncertain look, she cinched her fingers around his neck and he lifted her into his arms, careful to support, but not grab her injured leg. Once he got the door open, he kicked his fly vest to the floorboard and gently placed her on the backseat. She used her arms to inch across so Ty could close the door before he raced inside the cabin for his keys, wallet, and cell phone.

  He tried to drive with consideration for how every bump and turn felt as she braced herself with her arms and breathed heavily through her nose. “You okay back there?” he asked as he studied her face through the rearview mirror. She’d gone deathly pale and her pupils were still enlarged.

  She let out a groan when the truck bounced over a rut in the gravel. “I will be once we get onto the blacktop.”

  “We’re almost there.” He gunned the engine when they leveled out and he could see the pavement ahead. “Is there anyone you want me to call? Your family?”

  “No. Not yet.” She held her lips tight and her head leaned back against the seat. “I’ll deal with them later.”

  Ty could only wonder why she didn’t want her family around when she’d obviously broken her leg and lay writhing in pain. He knew her dad was her coach, but beyond that, he knew very little about the girl in his backseat, other than how she’d occupied his mind for most of the summer.

  He pa
ssed an RV, a huge tractor, and a carful of tourists on the two-lane highway before pulling under the emergency overhang for Del Noches General. He hopped out, ran inside, grabbed a wheelchair, and lifted her from the truck as delicately as he could. He wheeled her in, oblivious to his state of half dress.

  “I need some help here,” he said to no one specific when everyone seemed not to notice the girl whimpering in pain in the wheelchair with her leg lying at a very unnatural angle. When the nurse stood up and looked over the partition and down at Jill, she dropped her clipboard and bounded around the counter.

  “What happened?”

  “I broke my leg,” she managed before her eyes fluttered closed.

  “She’s going into shock.” The nurse grabbed the wheelchair and ran her into the back. Ty stopped at the doors she’d disappeared behind and wondered what he should do. He walked back to his truck, fished his cell phone out of the cup holder, and called Tommy Golden at The Golden Rule fly shop.

  “Tommy, it’s Ty.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re canceling this afternoon with the Allgoods.”

  “I’m not. Listen, I’m with Jill Jennings at the hospital. She broke her leg running on the road outside my house.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. They just took her back and I don’t have any way to get in touch with her family. Is Olivia there?”

  Tommy blew out a breath loud enough for Ty to hear. “She’s out with a group, but I know someone who’d know. Where’d you take her? Westmoreland?”

  “Del Noches.” When Tommy groaned, Ty explained, “It’s a bad break, Tommy. She was going into shock. I don’t think she’d have made it all the way to Westmoreland.”

  “Her dad’s going to have a fit.”

  “Yeah. Can you make some calls? I don’t want her to be here alone.”

  “You leaving?”

  He looked down at his bare feet and chest. “No, not until someone else gets here. But tell them to hurry.”

  “Will do,” Tommy said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Ty knew when Jill’s father arrived. Picking him out as a track coach wasn’t hard, not with his lean figure and the gold windbreaker synonymous with the local college. His dark hair, the exact color of his daughter’s, was beginning to streak with gray around the temples and his worried expression turned to suspicion when Ty stood up and approached him as he waited by the nurses’ station.

  “Mr. Jennings?” Ty asked.

  Gary Jennings assessed Ty from toe to head. Ty stood at least half a foot taller than Jill’s dad. Despite his height advantage, Ty felt put in place by Gary’s disdainful stare, especially since Ty stood shirtless in a pair of flip-flops he’d found in the back of his truck. “Yes?”

  “I’m Tyler Bloodworth. I brought your daughter in.”

  “You did? From where?”

  “She fell in front of my place on Vista Road just north of the Lower Fork.”

  “Vista Road? What the hell was she doing up there?”

  Ty lifted his shoulder. “Running?”

  The nurse returned and told Gary he could follow her through the double doors. Gary didn’t even say thank you, or goodbye, or glance in Ty’s direction before hurling himself through the doors.

  Ty’s cell phone rang as he walked to the parking lot. “Yeah,” he said when he recognized Tommy’s shop number on the display.

  “Jill’s dad should be there soon.”

  “He’s already here. Thanks for the warning.”

  “Lyle said he’d be upset.”

  “Lyle?” Ty rubbed the spot on his chest that continued to ache from not knowing how Jill was doing. The nurses wouldn’t even give him an update because he wasn’t family.

  “Lyle Woodward. Friend of Jill’s; he lives in Hailey.”

  “Oh.” Friend didn’t mean boyfriend, but that didn’t help Ty’s mood. Of course, he wasn’t exactly one to cast stones considering he’d yet to cut ties with Dana. “I’ll be in later for the Allgoods.”

  “Last group of the season for you, my friend. You’re one hell of a fishing guide. If you change your mind and want to come back next summer, you let me know.”

  “I just might,” Ty said. He’d been thinking about it since the first moment he saw Jill. “I’ll let you know by the end of the first semester.”

  “Hell, kid. I thought I was pissing in the wind. What happened to Wyoming?”

  “I like it here,” he said as he took one last glance at the hospital entrance where the real reason he’d come back was hopefully getting the help she needed. “More than I thought I would.”

  Chapter 2

  Nine Months Later

  Ty slept like the dead. After nine solid months at school with an apartment full of frat boys and their girlfriends mingling about at all hours, the quiet had lulled him into the kind of sleep he longed for while studying for finals. Ty rolled over and glanced at the clock through the one eye he dared to open against the sun slanting through the shades. Almost noon and he could have easily slept for a few more hours. As it stood, he only had seven minutes before his stepmom or one of his sisters bounded into the room demanding he rise and join the living. Like clockwork, they knocked at twelve on the dot.

  “Ty? Are you getting up?” Gabby asked through the closed door. He grunted an answer that could have been yes or could have been no. With a headful of chestnut curls, his middle sister poked her head inside and scowled at him with the same expression his stepmom wore when she was irritated. “Mommy said to get you up.”

  “I’m up, I’m up.” He leaned onto an elbow and tried to pry his eyes wide.

  She held tight to the doll cradled against her side. “Mommy said up meant out of bed.”

  “Maybe to her it does.” He finally got his eyes to function and stared at Gabby. His five-year-old half-sister wore a bright yellow sundress and a hot pink sweater. “You’re wearing two different shoes.”

  “I know,” she said, and if she knew how to roll her eyes, Ty felt sure she would have done so. “I can’t find the matches, so Mommy said I could wear these. She said it was a fashion statement.”

  Ty thought of his stepmother, the shoe designer, and smiled. “She would know.” Ty pulled back the covers and stifled a grin as his sister squealed and hid her eyes.

  “Don’t look, Baby,” she told her doll. “Ty’s naked.”

  “I’m not naked,” he said and popped her on the butt before she scooted out of his room. “I’m wearing boxers, aren’t I?” he asked the bathroom mirror before relieving his aching bladder. He grabbed a shower, took his time shaving, and brushed his teeth before dressing in his usual t-shirt and cargo shorts.

  He looked around the room, tossed the comforter over the bed to make it seem as if he’d made his bed, and realized he was stalling. It was his life, he told himself as he descended the stairs of the old farmhouse his dad had called home since he came back to Sequoyah Falls almost twenty years before. Ty could barely remember living with both his parents in the one level ranch on Third Street.

  He could smell something simmering on the stove before his feet cleared the stairs. Lita stood in the kitchen wearing an apron, a thin white shirt, snakeskin heels, and capri pants the same color as her middle daughter’s sweater, chopping vegetables on a cutting board. “’Bout time you got up,” she said. The scolding tone of her voice didn’t match the dazzling smile she barely tried to hide. “Sleep well?”

  “Like a baby.” Ty rifled through the crammed refrigerator and scowled at the six packs of yogurt and gallon jugs of apple juice and milk. “Where’s the adult food?”

  “Rumor has it there’s some in the back. I’m making shrimp stew for dinner tonight and your dad’s going by the new bakery in town for dessert. Your mom and Bryce and the twins are coming, and so is Cal.”

  “All this for me?”

  “The prodigal son is home, at least for a few days.” Lita waved the knife in his direction. “We’re not allowed to spoil you rotten?”

  “Spoil awa
y.” He pulled out the milk, grabbed a bowl from the cupboard, and almost sighed when he spied a new box of Frosted Flakes in the pantry.

  “I thought you wanted adult food?” Lita asked.

  “I forgot how great it feels to be a kid.”

  She set the paring knife down and grabbed his shoulders from behind when he plopped at the bar to eat his breakfast. “We’ve missed you. Your dad is so glad to have you home. He’s a little testosterone challenged in this house.”

  Ty shoved a spoonful in his mouth and spoke around his food, something he’d have gotten in trouble for at his mom’s house. “Even with me home, the odds still aren’t good.”

  “Yes, but you’re both bigger than the rest of us. That has to count for something.”

  “Where’d the rug rats go?”

  “The girls are having a tea party on the porch with their stuffed animals. Gabby said you’re invited if you put some clothes on.”

  “I wasn’t naked!” Ty said, his face hot.

  Lita only laughed. “It’s so good to have you home, Ty. We’ve missed you.”

  “It’s good to be home. I wish I could stay longer, but I’ve got to head out day after tomorrow if I’m going to make it to Colorado on time.”

  “Colorado?” She tilted her head and her enormous gold hoops swung like pendulums into her hair. “I thought you were going to Wyoming this year?”

  Practice with her, Ty reminded himself. If he could pull the story off with Lita, he might stand a chance with his dad. “I’m going back to the Lower Fork.”

  She wiped her hands on a towel and leaned on the counter. “Does your dad know?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she mumbled under her breath.

  She came around the island and plopped a knee on the barstool next to him. Ty concentrated on fishing the last flakes from his bowl and not on his stepmother’s steely eyes. It didn’t matter that she was only thirteen years older than him. She could yield parental guilt like the best of them.

  “Why do I get the feeling you don’t want to tell him?”

  Ty shrugged and filled his bowl again. He got up to retrieve the milk from the refrigerator and avoid eye contact. “I guess I don’t.”