Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  I’m just being hyper-observant because I’ve got something to hide, Char rationalized, attempting to make herself feel better. It didn’t work. There was that tingling in the backs of her knees again. Perhaps, she thought, if she simply admitted the obvious truth she’d get back to normal.

  Adam Stiles was and always had been one hell of an attractive man.

  There. She’d admitted it.

  The problem was, she didn’t pop back to normal. Instead she found herself looking at the tanned top of his hand as he shifted the car into gear.

  “Did a crocodile bite off your hand, like Captain Hook?” Emily asked from the back seat.

  Mortified, Char whipped around. “Emily!”

  Adam laughed. “Nothing so exciting as that. I lost it in an accident at the sawmill.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I remember now.”

  Char didn’t doubt her daughter for a moment. That had been a tense, dramatic, emotional day in Mill Brook three years ago when Julian had raced to the hospital with his bloodied, mutilated brother. Attempts to sew his hand back on had failed. Adam Stiles, however, had never been one for brooding and self-pity; he’d gotten on with it. Char recalled hoping she’d have comparable courage should she ever face similar hardship, not that she’d expected she really would, at least not so soon.

  While explaining the mechanics of his hook, which he was wearing less and less these days, Adam headed out to the restaurant in downtown Nashville that Char suggested. It wasn’t the most expensive restaurant in the area, if only because she wanted a place at least somewhat child-oriented, for Emily’s sake. The Stiles family had done very, very well for themselves in their two hundred years in southern Vermont. Adam could afford to treat her and Em to dinner at any restaurant Char might have chosen.

  But, Char admitted, she would have preferred to have treated him. That had been her plan when she and Emily had moved to Tennessee: she was grabbing her brass ring and off to make her fortune. Angling for free dinners hadn’t been a part of her dreams for her future.

  “You okay?” Adam asked.

  “Sure.”

  “You haven’t said much.”

  “Is making conversation my responsibility?”

  He scowled at her. “You know better.”

  “Let’s just say I haven’t seen anyone from Mill Brook in a year and it takes some getting used to and leave it at that.”

  “Especially since that someone’s me?”

  There was no bitterness in his tone, no hint of self-deprecation, just the simple understanding that he and Char did know each other. His eyes half-closed, he studied her a moment at a stoplight, his expression and silence reminding her that this man was forty years old, a widower, a father, the president of a profitable, highly regarded family corporation. Adam Stiles was an intelligent, experienced man. He had been born, bred and probably would die in Mill Brook, Vermont, but in his own way, he’d been around—and he knew people. Char couldn’t help wondering what Beth had told him before he’d left for Nashville. Nothing, Char assured herself. Beth didn’t know enough to tell. Remember that. If Adam Stiles is my undoing, it’s my own fault. Right now he doesn’t know anything.

  Finally she smiled, an easy, sincere smile that she hoped pulled him off guard. “You’re just being the Adam Stiles I’ve known all my life.”

  The light turned green, and Adam redirected his attention to his driving. “I talked to Beth a little while ago. I told her the house you claimed you were living in is a museum.”

  “Did you offer to send her a brochure?” Char asked lightly.

  Adam clamped his mouth shut.

  “You have no sense of humor,” Char said. “Beth does, I hope. The photograph I sent was a joke, Adam. Get it? A joke.”

  He didn’t laugh or even crack a smile. “Okay, it was a joke. So where do you live?”

  Char glanced at the back seat, where Emily was contentedly looking out the window. Having lived with this child for seven years, Char knew she was trying to catch as much of her mother’s conversation as she possibly could. But Emily also knew better than to comment on her and her mother’s current living quarters. The subject was verboten with anyone from Mill Brook, particularly Adam Stiles. “Uncle” Adam, Char had explained to her wise-to-the-world daughter, just wouldn’t understand.

  “We have a place on the Cumberland River,” Char replied smoothly. “It’s a beautiful spot.”

  “And you have horses?”

  “That’s why I came down here.”

  Adam gave her a look that would have sliced anyone else in two, but Char merely yawned and settled back into her seat. Technically she had told the truth. No one had been more surprised than Adam when Mill Brook’s busiest hometown lawyer had announced she was off to central Tennessee to make her fortune— or at least fulfill a childhood dream—in horses. She had had the big city. She had had small-town New England. Now she wanted the rolling hills of Tennessee and the milder weather and the excitement of the New South. She and Beth used to fantasize about raising horses, owning land in Kentucky or Virginia, but it was the Nashville area that had captivated Char six years ago. She was visiting Beth and her now ex-husband on their incredible spread in central Tennessee, and Char had fallen in love with the area.

  Just as a few cases had gone sour on her and Mill Brook was beginning to seem smaller and smaller, Char’s Great-Aunt Millicent had died, leaving her an unexpected inheritance. Horses and Tennessee seemed to be Char’s destiny. So off she went. At the time she had thought she was making a sound, rational decision. Looking back, she realized she’d gone off on a whim—she’d seen that brass ring and gone for it. Maybe, though, that was how it should have been. Chasing dreams wasn’t necessarily rational, and if she should have foreseen the nightmare her dream would become, then maybe the blinders and the faith were all a part of it, too. If she had paused to think, she might have stayed in Mill Brook. And who knew but she might have landed in a bigger mess than she had by coming to Tennessee? Hard to imagine, but regrets were a bigger waste of time than dreams. Dreams you could do something about. Regrets you couldn’t.

  Adam, naturally, had paused to think on Char’s account, but she had told him what she did with her life was none of his business. She could talk to Adam like that. Someone’s being straight up with him had never cost him a night’s sleep, Char was positive of that much. Always boringly rational and analytical, he had pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that she knew next to nothing about horses. Char had chosen not to make any attempt to justify her actions to him. He wasn’t the most imaginative of men. She loved horses and had dreamed of raising Thoroughbreds since she was a kid. In her opinion that was enough analysis and all the rationale she needed.

  ‘I’d like to see your place while I’m in town,” he said.

  Char felt ice cubes sliding down her back. There was no way she was going to invite Adam Stiles back to her tent! But she said, “Fine with me.”

  “Good. You can give me directions over dinner and I’ll meet you there tomorrow. Are you free for lunch? My flight leaves a little before four.”

  “Lunch would be fine.”

  Less than twenty-four hours more of this man to go! Char stifled an urge to clap and cheer, even as she felt a pang of loneliness. What was wrong with her?

  Lunch wouldn’t be fine, of course, but she would deal with that in time. She ignored Adam’s frank look of suspicion. She hadn’t asked him to come to Tennessee and meddle in her life. That was his choice, and he’d have to bear the consequences. And it was fairly obvious that Beth hadn’t called him off—or, if she’d tried, hadn’t succeeded. Not that that would surprise Char. Adam Stiles had always been hardheaded and compulsive.

  Well, she had until after dinner to come up with a way out of lunch. She had no intention of having Adam over to her particular spot on the Cumberland River. None.

  They arrived at the restaurant Char had chosen, a good, solid steak house just beyond the country and western tourist traps. Even with one of h
er French braids starting to come apart, Emily looked great; Char had resurrected one of her old lawyer suits for herself.

  With a scarf it didn’t look too bad. She was confident Adam wouldn’t remember it—not, she reminded herself, that she gave a damn if he did.

  The restaurant was dark inside, with lots of wood and framed photographs of old Nashville, and they took a booth, Adam on one side, Char and Emily on the other. Char only had to glance at the menu, just to figure out which cut of steak she wanted. She directed Emily away from the mundane children’s specials to the petite-sized sirloin tips, ignoring her persistent lobbying for a hot dog.

  “You don’t eat hot dogs in a place like this,” Char told her. “People will think you’re crude.”

  Emily scowled. “Then why are they on the menu?”

  There was still plenty of no-nonsense Yankee left in her daughter, Char thought with a mother’s mix of affection and annoyance. “To catch little girls not acting right. Order the steak. We’ll have hot dogs tomorrow.”

  Adam had kept quiet during the exchange, apparently knowing better than to interfere in a mother-daughter discussion of dinner entrees. Char promised Emily she could pick out her choice of dessert, and that ended the matter. Steaks were ordered all around. Emily contemplated which dessert would be the biggest and sweetest and least appropriate as far as her mother was concerned.

  The waiter delivered two beers, one for Adam, one for Char. Adam took a sip and leaned back comfortably. “So, if the photograph was just a joke, what were you doing out at Belle Meade this afternoon?”

  “I do volunteer work there.”

  Char hated lying in front of Emily, but pride and survival were human impulses her daughter would come to understand at perhaps a younger age than most. And Em would figure out that with some people the truth was better off skirted.

  Warming to her topic, Char went on. “Belle Meade was once an internationally famous Thoroughbred nursery and stud. Bonnie Scotland was born there.”

  “I’m not up on my horse history,” Adam said dryly.

  Char took a bigger drink of her beer than she’d intended, but welcomed the cold liquid in her throat. She was burning up under Adam’s scrutiny! Why was he making her so nervous and self-conscious all of a sudden? She was known for her cool, had been for years. She hadn’t expected Beth to send her brother after her. Never mind that Beth’s motives were irreproachable and Char had invited trouble sending home that picture of Belle Meade. She didn’t deserve having to outwit Adam Stiles. No one did.

  “Bonnie Scotland was a top Thoroughbred of the nineteenth century,” she went on, surprised at how relaxed she sounded. And why not? You can handle Adam! “Many of the most famous horses of the twentieth century are descendants of his, including Secretariat. You have heard of Secretariat?”

  “Fastest Belmont Stakes ever run, Triple Crown winner, put out to stud until his death at nineteen.” Adam obviously wasn’t amused and gave her a look that told her so in no uncertain terms. “Don’t be smug, Char. A year ago you didn’t know a horse from a mule.”

  His remark wasn’t, Char sadly knew, that much of an exaggeration. Unfortunately it still wasn’t. As was her custom, however, she was learning—the hard way. She said, more defensively than she’d have liked, “I’ve wanted to have horses for as long as I can remember.”

  “Thoroughbreds?”

  “Of course.”

  Adam contemplated his beer for a moment, slowly, deliberately, drawing his finger down the side of the frosted mug through the condensation. Something about his concentration and the movement of his finger struck Char as inordinately erotic. She was feeling hotter than ever, to the point of wanting to scoop ice out of her water glass and rub it over her face. But she resisted. How could she have explained? She was acting weird enough as it was.

  He shifted his attention back to her. “Horses are an expensive hobby, aren’t they?”

  ‘They’re not a hobby. They’re what I do now.”

  To her relief Emily didn’t counter her mother’s claim. Char shot her a quick look, warning her to maintain her discreet silence on the touchy subject of what Mom did for a living.

  “Ever miss lawyering?” Adam asked.

  “With all your questions you should have been a lawyer yourself.”

  He grinned at her frank irritation. “You were born to argue, Ms. Bradford. Horses don’t argue back. Can’t be that much fun.”

  “People change.”

  “Not you, Char.”

  But he left it at that, with a glance at Emily, engrossed in her tropical fruit punch and studiously avoiding eye contact with either him or her mother. Char decided a change in subject was in order and suspected that Adam, a parent himself, would cooperate.

  Swallowing her annoyance with him, she asked conversationally, “How’s the mill?”

  “Busy.”

  Talkative Adam. “Sorry I didn’t make it up for Julian and Holly’s wedding. Beth says they’re quite a pair.”

  “I guess they deserve each other,” he said with a laugh. “Holly sort of burst into Julian’s life. Neither one’ll ever be the same again, I don’t think.”

  “Julian needed someone—he was turning into a recluse.”

  “He’s happy. So is Holly. They’re lucky and they know it.” He smiled with sudden self-awareness. “But being a recluse isn’t so awful.”

  “You should know. If it weren’t for Abby and David, you’d be just as happy living in a cave.”

  He laughed. “Too dark.”

  “What about Beth? Is she seeing anyone special?”

  “Nope. She’s still smarting over her divorce, not that she’d ever admit it.”

  Beth’s ex-husband, a man rich enough to consider horse breeding a pleasant hobby, was the last person Char wanted to talk about. She had had her own run-ins with Harlan Rockwood that Adam—and above all Beth—didn’t need to know about.

  “And you, Adam?”

  “I’ve got too much work to do to be chasing women,” he said casually. His eyes rested on her. “Someone interesting comes along, okay. If not, me and the kids are getting along just fine.”

  Mention of Abby and David sparked Emily’s attention. “How are they doing?” she asked, obviously tired of being seen and not heard.

  “Great,” Adam said warmly. “They miss you.”

  Char resisted making a face. Adam was deliberately rubbing it in and they both knew it.

  “Have you started making apple cider yet?”

  “Some.”

  Cider-making was a passion among the Stiles family, and Char once again felt the bite of nostalgia as Adam indulged her daughter with long, descriptive answers to her questions about cider, apple picking, pumpkins, the annual harvest fair.

  Autumn in New England ...

  As a kid, she’d taken the changing of the leaves for granted, giggling with Beth at the busloads of leaf-peepers. What was the big deal about Vermont’s multicolored leaves? Tennessee was a beautiful state, as well. Char loved the rolling hills of the central basin and the long, lush springs. But her feelings about Vermont were mixed up with childhood and family and everything she’d left behind—house, office, law practice, the diner where she ate lunch, the woman at the library who used to help Emily pick out books. All of that was gone. She hadn’t been in Tennessee long enough for it to be home yet. It would be, though, in time.

  Although he had never really lived anywhere but Mill Brook, did Adam ever get lonely? Did he ever long for his life to be something it wasn’t? Char had never asked him. Such questions were too personal, too intimate. If nothing else, Adam might think she owed him answers to intimate questions in return. Like what the hell were she and Emily really doing in Tennessee?

  Their steaks arrived, piping hot and utterly luscious, and conversation drifted to weather, food, schools. Ordinary, nonthreatening subjects. Char began to relax. The rich food and beer and light talk made her troubles seem less pressing and immediate, more distant. She found
herself actually enjoying Adam’s company. He seemed different on his own in Tennessee, where he was free from the pressures of being a Mill Brook Stiles, a single parent, a one-handed president of a highly regarded sawmill. Or perhaps it was just her. She supposed it didn’t matter which. She was seeing a side of Adam—or looking at him—in a way she never had before. Before he had only been Beth’s older brother. The hardworking, no-nonsense president of Mill Brook Post and Beam. Just Adam. Nothing more.

  Now...

  Oh, what do you know? He’s still just Adam.

  So why had she never really noticed the flecks of gray in his eyes? Why had she never really noticed the powerful muscles in his shoulders and the sun-bleached hairs on his wrist?

  Why had she never wanted to touch him before?

  She sat up straight. I am going off the deep end.

  Clearing her throat, she made an effort to concentrate on her steak. She was at a vulnerable point in her life and Adam just happened to be there. He wasn’t family, and he wasn’t exactly a friend, but he knew her better than anyone else in the state of Tennessee did. And she knew him. He was familiar, if not comfortable. A part of the life she’d given up. That was why she was responding to him the way she was.

  “Char?”

  She looked up, startled, aware her thoughts had drifted and she hadn’t been listening. “I’m sorry— what?”

  “Nothing. It’s not important. How’s your dinner?”

  “Wonderful.”

  She decided not to gush about what a treat dinner was. It’s come to this, she realized miserably. The high point in my week is going to be eating steak with Adam Stiles.

  Had she given up too much to chase rainbows and pots of gold? She bit back another assault of nostalgia, reminding herself that time and separation had a way of clouding the negative. Five minutes back in Mill Brook and she’d be climbing the walls. She knew she would. But maybe you shouldn’t be worrying about Adam’s loneliness. Maybe you should be worrying about your own.