Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  “Understandably,” Adam said in a tone that told Char he hadn’t understood anything she had done.

  She leaned against the counter as the kettle began to hiss and quickly took in this hard, quiet man, wondering what about her had prompted him to leave Vermont and the mill for a second time in a week. Not his style. She said, “I’m not trying to justify my actions to you.”

  “Why didn’t you call someone from home for help?”

  “Who? Beth? My clients? You?”

  “I’d have helped,” he said simply, without drama.

  Yes, he would have. So would Beth and his brother Julian. So would dozens of others from Mill Brook and the surrounding towns. So would her ex-husband, if it had come to that.

  “I can handle my own problems,” she said tightly.

  “I know how you feel.” His voice was surprisingly quiet, nonjudgmental, even gentle. “I’ve learned the hard way that to ask for help isn’t always a sign of weakness, but often a measure of strength. You’re independent and hardheaded, Char. Always have been. Doesn’t mean you need to go it alone all the time.”

  Ignoring him, Char swung around and grabbed the kettle before it had a chance to whistle, dampening the grounds with the near-boiling water. She waited impatiently for the water to soak in, her grip on the kettle tight. To her relief Adam kept quiet. She could feel his gaze on her and feigned composure, knowing he couldn’t see her knuckles whitening on the kettle handle.

  You’re just making coffee for an old family friend, she told herself while she went ahead and admitted she had wrecked her life and didn’t have a single person she felt comfortable turning to for help or even solace. Aunt Mil was dead. Her father had died when Char was fourteen, and her mother had disengaged herself from her daughter years ago and lived in Florida. Except for Em, Char thought, she was pretty much alone in the world and might as well admit it.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Adam asked softly.

  “What’ll you do if I don’t?” Her tone was belligerent, and she banged the kettle back down onto the stove.

  Adam didn’t respond. The only sound in the kitchen was the drip of the coffee into the glass carafe. When it finished, she filled the two mugs and set them on the table. She remembered Adam didn’t take milk or sugar, one of those useless tidbits that cluttered her brain. It came from a morning not long after his accident when she, as his lawyer, had come to his house to discuss his legal affairs. Still in considerable pain, he had insisted on making her coffee. He wasn’t yet used to working one-handed, but she had had the good grace, for a change, to keep her mouth shut and let him get the job done in his own good time. Without her help. Eventually he’d learned to manage most anything one-handed or with the use of his hook. Beth said he could even tie his work boots using just his right hand.

  Maybe, Char thought, that experience, that need to adapt to his disability on his own, would help him see that he had to butt out of her business now.

  Then again, maybe not. This was Adam, and she wasn’t missing a hand.

  "If I have to,” he said finally, his tone heating up, “I’ll knock on Harlan Rockwood’s door and ask him what he knows about the mess you’re in.”

  Just what she needed. Harlan and Adam—a couple of know-it-all men, one of them a crook—discussing her over a fifth of bourbon. Beth had warned Char to steer clear of her ex-husband. “Tennessee’s a beautiful state and there are a ton of nice people there,” Beth had told her, “but do not—do not—go near Harlan Rockwood. He’ll use you to get back at me.”

  And indeed he had.

  For the moment.

  Char restrained herself and managed to give Adam a cool look. “Harlan will say he doesn’t know anything about me or the mess I’m in.”

  “Will he be lying?”

  “Adam, let’s just have a cup of coffee together and forget about everything else.” She held her mug in her hands, welcoming its warmth against her suddenly icy fingers. “How’re Abby and David doing?”

  “Fine. Beth took them hiking this weekend. Nothing like walking in the New England woods this time of year, in my opinion.” His eyes rested on her just a split-second longer than necessary. “Join us sometime?”

  “Sure. I’ll just pop on up. It’s only—what, a thousand miles?” But she could see her sarcasm wasn’t going over well with Adam, knew it wasn’t going over well with herself. Her stomach hurt, and she could recall the sweet, unique smells of ripe apples being pressed into the famous Stiles cider. She sniffed her coffee, just to get that nostalgic scent from her memory. “Have the leaves turned?”

  ‘The reds and bright oranges are all out, most of the yellows. We should be at peak next weekend. Char—” Adam bit off her name, as if saying it made his stomach hurt. He sighed. “Char, if I have to I’ll beat the truth out of Harlan. He’s no friend of mine.”

  “I am?”

  “You have to ask? You’re Beth’s friend. That makes you important to me.”

  Beth’s friend. Was that all she was to him? What more do you expect? What more do you want? This is Adam we’re talking about!

  She cleared her throat, wondering if inexpensive coffee destroyed rational thinking. ‘‘You don’t want to see Beth hurt.”

  Adam looked at her. “Or you.”

  She laughed, in spite of herself. “Too late for that! As for Beth...” Char sighed, wishing she could press some kind of internal rewind button and start all over again. She had already told Adam too damn much for her own good. “Did you tell her I’d sent you to Rock wood’s house?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Probably not. If you had, there’s no telling what Beth would have done, but I doubt she’d be taking Abby and David hiking.”

  Adam nodded. “She’d be down here wringing Harlan’s neck. He sold you your horse?”

  Char quickly drank a mouthful of coffee to hide her surprise at Adam’s question. How much did he know already? Was he playing games with her? If she wasn’t known as a game player, Adam—well, Adam Stiles took the prize when it came to straight-up, no-nonsense Yankee curmudgeons.

  She said, “You’ve been prying information out of Beth, haven’t you?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Adam said without apology. “She’s loyal to you, Char, but she’s also worried. Rightly so, in my opinion.”

  Char set down her mug, not as hard as she felt like. “I’m all grown up now.”

  “You’re out on a limb in a hurricane and you’re so stiff-necked you’d rather ride out the storm than let someone give you a hand down.”

  His face had gotten red and his voice had risen, although he wasn’t shouting. Adam, she recalled, seldom shouted. He didn’t need to. People usually backed down just with one of his famous looks. The man was intimidating.

  Char wasn’t intimidated.

  ‘‘What would you do in my place?” she asked calmly.

  Adam grunted, clearly annoyed. “I don’t know what ‘your place’ is. Tell me and I’ll tell you what I’d do. Char,” he went on, rising from his chair, “all I’m offering is my friendship.”

  “You’re not offering friendship, Adam. You’re shoving it down my throat.”

  He said nothing, just marched over to the counter and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “Okay,” Char said, equivocating.

  Adam turned around and leaned against the counter, looking ever the woodsman. She noticed the length of his legs, the tough, bulging muscles of his thighs and chest. Married to Mel and then a guilt-ridden widower, he had been off-limits to Char for years, and she had simply not considered him in any sexual way. Now she couldn’t imagine how she had resisted. Every fiber of the man exuded masculinity.

  She sprang to her feet. “Look, I need a little time to think. If you were Beth... hell, Adam, if you were anybody but you I’d know whether to confide in you or send you packing. But we’ve got a history, you know. I mean— Adam, to be honest, I’d never considered you a friend.”

  He
surprised her with a grin, raking his eyes over her. “Sweetheart, the feeling’s mutual.”

  Her mouth snapped shut. “I didn’t mean you weren’t a friend.”

  He laughed. “I know what you meant. Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

  “Of course. I’ll meet you at your hotel—”

  “No hotel.”

  She grew very still, just waiting.

  “I’m staying here.” He moved closer to her, invading her space... shattering her elusive sense of stability. “Even brought my own sleeping bag. I saw Em’s. Dinosaurs don’t suit me.”

  Right then, Char wasn’t so sure about that.

  Adam took one look in Char’s refrigerator and decided they had better have dinner out or hit the nearest grocery. Even in her solvent days she had never been much on stocking up. She had lived within walking distance of the Mill Brook Country Store and fetched what she needed when she needed it or just made do.

  “You’re into legumes these days,” he commented, examining the equally meager contents of her cupboards.

  “They’re good for you.”

  “Emily likes them?”

  “She eats them. She’d live on boxed macaroni and cheese and canned string beans if I let her.”

  Adam didn’t mention he could go for a little boxed macaroni and cheese over the stuff lurking in Char’s old natural peanut butter and no-sugar jam jars.

  “I could whip up some spicy kasha,” she offered.

  “Thanks, no.”

  She was sitting at her makeshift kitchen table, calm now that he had stopped pressing her for truth and honesty. “The key with grains and legumes,” she said, “is the right herbs and spices.”

  “Or thinking like a horse,” Adam muttered.

  Char frowned at the mention of horses: not a good subject. “I’ve got some catfish in the freezer. I could broil up a few with salsa and... I don’t know, white beans.”

  “Let’s hit the grocery. We’ve got tomorrow to think about, as well. Don’t you ever get the urge for good Vermont cheese?”

  “I eat cheese in moderation,” she said loftily. “Have to watch the fat content. Now Vermont maple syrup— that I miss. I can get it here in certain places, but it’s so expensive. To think we used to get sick on it every March when we were kids. Look, if we’re going to the grocery, I’ve got to stop and get some cash.”

  ‘‘My treat.”

  Her expression grew dark, remote. “Dinner last weekend was your treat.”

  “And this weekend I’m an uninvited guest.” Adam shut the cupboard door, aware he was on thin ice again. “If I hadn’t shown up, what would you eat for supper?”

  “Curried lentils, probably. They’re not Em’s favorite, so I save them for when she’s away. They’re delicious—and good for you.”

  “I’m sure. Another day, Char.”

  She gave up on trying to talk him into lentils, kasha, bulgur or—and here Adam really drew the line—dried fermented bean curd. Instead she drove him to a monstrous grocery store, where she pushed the cart while he pulled items off the shelves.

  “Just enough for the weekend,” Char warned. “I’m not a charity case.”

  Adam glowered at her. “Maybe you should be. Or would you rather starve?”

  She sniffed, an improvement over a couple of hours ago when she probably would have blown her stack. “I’d go back to Vermont before I’d let Emily starve.”

  “If it were just you?”

  “That’s a speculative question. It’s not just me.”

  “Lawyer talk.” He ignore her dark looks and pulled anything he felt like from the shelves: crackers, cereal, oatmeal, chocolate chips, flour, a few packages of macaroni and cheese for Em’s sake. When he saw Char ready to blow a gasket, he just smiled at her and said, “I don’t know what I might be in the mood to eat tomorrow— I want to be prepared.”

  “What are the chocolate chips for?”

  “Just in case I feel like making cookies.”

  “You can’t. I don’t have vanilla or baking soda.” So he tossed the biggest jar of vanilla and the biggest box of baking soda he could find into the cart. Char just glared at him. In her glory days as a New York lawyer, and even as a Vermont lawyer, she could have fed half of Mill Brook on her earnings.

  Life as a gentlewoman horse farmer apparently hadn’t met her expectations.

  Why, Adam wondered, did that thought not particularly bother him?

  Because Charity Bradford was a survivor, yes. Because she was a lawyer, not a horsewoman. Yes, that, too. Because she belonged in Vermont. Damn right, he believed that. Because she had no business in Nashville, Tennessee. True.

  But there was more to his perverse neutrality, if not out-and-out satisfaction, toward her apparent failure at raising horses. He wanted Char to be happy, he realized. And he didn’t believe she would be happy chasing some damn childhood dream that hadn’t made sense when she was ten and sure as hell didn’t make sense now.

  It wasn’t even that, however. Char had to make up her own mind about what made her happy and what didn’t. No, Adam thought, as much as he wanted Char to be happy, he wasn’t thinking about her when he reacted to her misfortunes. He was thinking about himself.

  He wanted her back in Vermont.

  Ignoring the exorbitant price and Char’s grimace, he tossed a quart of pure Vermont maple syrup into the cart.

  “Pancakes and sausages for breakfast?” he suggested.

  “I don’t have any sausages.”

  “You do have a frying pan?”

  She gave him one of her prickly looks, telling him better than words could that he was pushing it.

  The sausage department was bigger than any he had ever seen in Vermont. Char recommended a spicy local brand, apparently her legume kick not deterring her from anything as high-fat, high-salt and plain good as sausage.

  Here he had come to wring the truth out of her and instead he was making up possible menus for Sunday breakfast...which was preferable, he supposed, to thinking about how they were going to get through the night in that tiny house. On the flight from Nashville he had carefully worked out the logistics of spending the night in her tent: he wouldn’t. Not that he had intended to give Char the chance to abscond again by staying in a hotel. He would just lay in his sleeping bag on the ground in front of her tent and camp out under the stars.

  He had counted on that tent.

  He had counted, too, on Emily being around.

  Now here they were, Char and himself, shopping for groceries and planning to spend the night in a cozy cottage like a pair of honeymooners. Madness.

  His only consolation was that he hadn’t been invited and Char would likely boot him out if she had the chance.

  If only, he thought, she didn’t look so stubborn and confident and forlorn and more damn beautiful than he ever remembered, even the day she had married that uptight New York lawyer. Had she changed that much in the past year? Or had he just never really bothered to see her before?

  The grocery tab came to just over a hundred dollars.

  “Quite a weekend you’re planning,” Char grumbled.

  “Us Vermont mountain men have big appetites.”

  “You’d better. We’ve got enough food here for a month.”

  “That’s an exaggeration, Char, even the way you’ve been eating. Course, I might decide to stay a month unless you start talking.”

  She didn’t answer him, just stalked off ahead of him, leaving Adam to push the cart to her beat-up car. “It’s tough,” he said as she opened the rusting hatchback without a word, “when your vision of yourself doesn’t fit the reality.”

  “You don’t know anything about my vision of myself.”

  He shrugged, hefting a bag of groceries. “You wouldn’t want to be mistress of Belle Meade?”

  “It’s a museum,” she snapped.

  “Now that sounds more like Mill Brook’s own feet-flat-on-the-floor Charity Winnifred. What about mistress of the Rockwood estate?”
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  Char scoffed, grabbing a bag of groceries. “The only involvement I want with the Rockwood estate is setting it on fire.”

  “Aha. So Harlan did have something to do with your downfall.”

  But Char was staring into the bag of groceries she’d lowered into the back of her car. ‘‘Adam— Adam, what’s this?”

  He had a peek. “Country ham.”

  “That stuff will harden your arteries just from reading the ingredients label.”

  “Bet it’s good, though.”

  She made a face. “I guess we could soak some of the salt out...”

  That was close enough to victory for him. He got the last of the groceries into the car while Char darted into the front seat, thinking, no doubt, her comment about the ham had diverted him from the subject of Harlan Rockwood.

  He hoped she knew him better than that.

  He climbed in beside her. “The horse you and Beth invested in came from Harlan, didn’t it? The investment went sour, you lost your shirt and you don’t want to tell Beth her ex-husband has her twenty grand.”

  Char’s knuckles were turning white from her grip on the steering wheel.

  “Have I hit the nail on the head?” Adam asked casually.

  “Except for one thing.”

  Char spoke quietly, but her voice was tight and her grip hadn’t slackened on the poor wheel. Adam, however, couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for her. Pity would just have made her madder, and since she had gotten herself into this predicament and could easily get herself out by returning to Mill Brook and dusting off her lawyer’s shingle and renewing her many friendships, he didn’t figure he owed her an overabundance of sympathy. He would save that for victims of earthquakes and famine.

  But he was curious... and concerned. Char seemed to be in a state in which she couldn’t see the forest for the trees. When she didn’t go on, he said, “What one thing?”

  “My deal with Harlan wasn’t on the up-and-up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she said with difficulty, “he swindled me.”

  “And by extension, Beth?”

  “Yes.”

  Adam couldn’t help himself: he had to laugh. He was incredulous. Amazed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the idea of anyone swindling Charity Bradford and getting away with it—”