Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  He was on his knees, just his mouth touching hers.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered. She slid her hands down his arms, shot over to his waist and eased them over his smooth, hard hips, pulling him onto her. “Just don’t stop.”

  His eyes searched hers for a moment. “Never.”

  And he came into her with a single thrust that was so hard, so fast, so exquisite she almost erupted then. She was aware of yelling, but what she didn’t know.

  “This is perfect,” he whispered, moving slowly inside her, still holding his breath. “Perfect.”

  She made her agreement known with her body, and he groaned, his thrusts going harder, deeper, faster. He no longer held back. Within seconds the contained fire they had built between them, hot and wonderful, was a wildfire raging out of control. It consumed everything in its path—inhibitions, self-restraint, old animosities, remoteness. Everything that had kept them at bay was left charred, like the blackened forest after a fire, to be replaced with new, fragile growth.

  They didn’t speak afterward, but walked hand in hand into the living room, where they made love again, cushioned by sleeping bags and pillows. They went slowly this time, exploring, inventing, laughing, teasing. They were like two seeds, Char thought, blowing across the blackened landscape, looking for a place to land, spread roots, grow and flower.

  “I’ve never known anyone like you,” Adam told her as he stroked her hair.

  And she smiled, because, of course, there was only one Adam Stiles and if all the world didn’t know it, all of Vermont did. Especially her.

  They showered again, together, and ate their barbecue sandwiches as she and, in turn, Adam, told silly and outrageous stories about things their kids had done, things they themselves had done when they were growing up together in small-town Vermont.

  Later, when they were dressed and ready to leave for the airport, Adam brushed a finger through her hair. “No regrets?”

  Char shook her head without hesitation. “None.”

  “Same here. Char, when I get back to Vermont—”

  “No, Adam.” She cut him off gently, but could feel her chest tightening at thoughts of the future, of reality. “Let’s not think about tomorrow right now. I’m starting a new job. I’ve got unfinished business here. You’ve got a business to help run back home. We can’t promise how we’ll feel, what we’ll do. No promises, okay?”

  He studied her for a moment, his eyes more green than blue now, like dark, gleaming emeralds. Then he nodded. But Char could tell he had already made up his mind about how he felt, what he would do. He just wasn’t telling her, and that, for now, was what she wanted.

  At the airport he did kiss her goodbye, for a long enough time that people began to stare. They both noticed and laughed, embarrassed, for public displays of affection weren’t in their background.

  “Next time we’ll take Abby and David and Em with us,” Adam said.

  Next time. “Right.”

  And Char’s knees were rubbery and her mouth dry when she left Adam to board his plane and headed down to the gate where Emily, little world-traveler that she was, was arriving in an hour. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to see her daughter. She was her reality, her anchor, her reason for not sinking into despair or doing something to Harlan Rockwood that would land her in jail, or even saying to hell with it all and running after Adam. For Emily’s sake she had to remain whole. She couldn’t give in to desperation. She couldn’t let Adam Stiles rescue her from herself.

  Emily came out of the jetway in a frilly new dress and with a big grin on her cherubic face. Char couldn’t tell whether it was with relief or a touch of regret that the flight attendant returned her charge to her mother. On her last visit with her father, Emily had learned she could ask for extra bags of peanuts.

  Mother and daughter headed off together, arm in arm. Char gave one final glance toward the gate where she’d left Adam. He would be thirty thousand feet up in the air by now, on his way back home. Char wanted him back down on terra firma with her, in Nashville. She knew that much. But she also knew that she had to get her life sorted out on her own, and having Adam Stiles around wouldn’t allow her to do that. He was a man of action. Asking him not to act was like asking him not to breathe. It would be easier on him, she hoped, being back in Vermont.

  “First things first,” she said to herself, and smiled at Emily in her god-awful new dress. She would go on.

  Chapter Eight

  ADAM ARRIVED BACK home in a stormy mood that persisted through the week. He kept to himself and assumed no one else noticed that his second trip to Tennessee hadn’t agreed with him any more than his first one. With Char on his mind, he stayed away from the mill’s huge saws. He burrowed in at his desk, making overdue phone calls and digging into paperwork. He let Julian and Beth handle employee relations and outside visitors, explaining that he had too much else on his mind right now to deal with people directly. It wasn’t long before his two siblings had a fair idea that the “much else” had virtually nothing to do with Mill Brook Post and Beam.

  Julian was the first to call his older brother onto the mat about his mood. Newly married and himself swamped with projects, such as the renovation of the prestigious, now-defunct Mill Brook Academy for Boys, Julian wasn’t one to concern himself with his brother’s occasional spells of brooding. Adam sometimes withdrew from the people around him. Julian understood that need. For him to notice and comment on his brother’s mood, Adam knew, meant it had to be out of the realm of what Julian would consider normal— which meant most everyone else was probably steering clear of the president of Mill Brook Post and Beam altogether.

  Julian lowered himself into the wooden chair near Adam’s desk in a far corner of the large, open office floor of the eighteenth-century sawmill. “Morning,” he said.

  Adam grunted without looking up from a stack of orders.

  ‘‘Busy day ahead?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “Good,” Julian said. “Then we can let Beth mind the shop and get some lunch in town.”

  Adam still didn’t look up. “No time.”

  He heard Julian sigh. “You haven’t left the mill since you got back from Tennessee. You work here all day, then go home—”

  Setting down his pencil, Adam turned in his chair. “I’m aware of what I do.”

  Julian didn’t flinch under his brother’s relentless stare. Adam’s reputation for unapproachability had never had any noticeable effect on either his brother or his sister. Or Charity Bradford. She had always been annoyingly unique among his nonrelations in that regard.

  Adam swore under his breath, tensing. Char again. All week he had worked at repressing any thought of her—unsuccessfully. She was always there, hovering in his thoughts. Time hadn’t made putting her out of his mind any easier.

  “You’re a grouch, Adam,” Julian said casually, stretching out his legs as if settling himself for a long chat. “Char’s always pushed you to the edge, but now maybe she’s pushed you over. What’d she do this time?”

  Adam scowled. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  “Lunch,” Julian said, snapping his legs back and rising. “Noon. I’ll drive.”

  Not bothering to argue, Adam impatiently waved Julian off and returned to his work. He wasn’t having lunch with his brother or anyone else. He would have a sandwich at his desk, as he had had every day this week. If Julian wanted to join him, fine. They could discuss the academy renovations or any other business. If he brought up Adam’s bad mood, Adam would boot him back to his own desk. But he wasn’t going out.

  And he sure as hell wasn’t discussing Charity Bradford.

  When Adam made his position clear at noon, Julian didn’t make a scene or even argue. Instead he sent Beth in. She lacked any of Julian’s subtlety. Sitting on one end of Adam’s desk, she gave him a once-over.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “The whole damn town knows you’re not fit to live with these days.”


  Adam wheeled his chair back and said nothing. His sister was prone to exaggeration. His desire to pull himself back into himself for a while didn’t effect his relationship with his children: Abby and David received his full attention, while aware he had other things on his mind. Unexplained things. Like Char Bradford, hardheaded, broke, the ex-lawyer who hated Mill Brook. Like her war with his sister’s ex-husband. Like how much Adam wanted to fly back to Tennessee and fight her battles for her. Every minute he had to resist the temptation to pick up the phone and dial his travel agent. But Abby and David, as attuned to his human complexities as he was to theirs, gave him space and didn’t pester him too much with questions they had no business asking.

  Unlike their uncle and aunt.

  “Something happen in Tennessee you don’t want to tell me?” Beth asked.

  Lots. Adam narrowed his eyes at his younger sister, a sturdy, hotheaded woman as action-oriented as either of her brothers. The thought of her energy left half the residents gasping for air and the other half shaking their heads in wonder. A nonconformist and a devilishly hard worker, she had the capacity to skewer men in their chairs with just one look. Her brief marriage to Harlan Rockwood had left her cynical on the subject of romantic love. Adam had no intention of bringing up with her the dreams of Char that had haunted his nights all week. Beth would only blame some chemical imbalance in his system—hormones. And howl with laughter at the idea of her equally hardheaded best friend having such an effect on her brother, whom Beth had always relied upon for being as unromantic as she.

  “You and Julian are making a mountain out of a molehill,” Adam told her with more patience than he felt. Given a choice, he would rather rile Julian than Beth. “I have a lot of work to do. If you two quit bugging me, I might get it done.”

  Beth didn’t budge. “You told me Char’s fine. She didn’t just talk you into telling me that, did she?”

  “No”

  In fact, he had talked himself into reporting back to Beth such an outright lie. Of course Char wasn’t fine. She was broke. She was going after one of Tennessee’s wealthiest men. She was nuts was what she was. But Adam didn’t want to come between his sister and her friend. In hindsight he should have never gotten involved in their schemes in the first place. Now he sure as hell didn’t want to be the one who told Harlan Rockwood’s ex-wife that he had swindled her best friend out of everything she had…including, no doubt not incidentally, twenty grand that belonged to Beth Stiles herself.

  Adam wasn’t worried that Beth would take out her emotions on Char: she didn’t think like that. No, she would go after Harlan herself. Adam knew it, and so, probably, did Char. Char would have her reasons— protecting Beth, solving her problems herself. Adam had his. It didn’t make much sense to him, but the fact was, he liked Harlan enough as a person not to sic Beth on him. He was hoping, perhaps naively, that Harlan’s disastrous business dealings with Char could be explained and resolved to their mutual satisfaction without involving Beth. Adam didn’t want to defend Harlan without all the facts, but he didn’t want to lynch him, either.

  Or turn his fire-eating sister on the poor bastard.

  Such thinking, of course, wouldn’t get him far with either woman. Neutrality wasn’t something Beth Stiles nor Char Bradford wanted to encounter when dealing with Harlan Rockwood.

  “Adam,” Beth said, ‘‘I haven’t heard from Char all week. You won’t talk, but you sit over here like a thundercloud waiting to burst. What’s going on?”

  “If you want to know what’s going on with Char, talk to her. There’s nothing going on with me.”

  Beth scoffed. “You went back to Tennessee for the expressed purpose of finding out what Char was up to. Did you?”

  “Talk to Char yourself.”

  “So you found out something and won’t tell me.”

  “I’m not going to come between you two. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me that I even got involved in this mess in the first place. I’m out of it,

  okay? Whatever you and Char have going is your business. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Fine,” Beth said huffily, cutting him off.

  Adam sighed and looked at his only sister with as much patience as he could muster up. It wasn’t much. “I’m in a no-win situation, Beth. Cut me some slack.”

  She gave him a look that suggested she would willingly cut him something besides slack—namely a noose—and flounced off.

  Adam gave up and yelled to his brother. “Okay, damn it, you win. Get me the hell out of here. I don’t care where we go—just don’t mention Tennessee, horses or Charity Bradford.”

  Julian grinned, and Adam realized that he had just confirmed that it was precisely Tennessee, horses and Charity Bradford that were bothering him. He didn’t bother telling his brother that Tennessee and horses were way down on his list. Mostly it was Charity Bradford.

  Char lasted at her new job exactly four days. She considered that something of an achievement: she had wanted to quit after four hours. Helping people choose lipsticks and hide the bags under their eyes made her irritable, and she hadn’t gotten up on Monday morning in that great a mood to begin with. Too much obsessing about Adam Stiles. As if she didn’t have other things to think about and didn’t know better than most just what she was getting into, falling for that one-handed sawyer.

  She would tell her customers, “Here, take the poppy-red,” instead of letting them arrive at the decision themselves, and even when they did choose, she would argue: “No—that shade of plum will make you look like a corpse.”

  Her colleagues behind the cosmetic counter instructed her on the art of tact, never her long suit. She was used to being straightforward with people and being able to get away with saying more than she sometimes should say. She wasn’t mean. She was just... blunt. Her penchant for speaking her mind in not always the most diplomatic of ways had never hurt her in her law practice. People—or at least the citizens of her corner of Vermont—responded to a lawyer who said what was what.

  That approach didn’t necessarily work in selling cosmetics. The idea was to lead people into appropriate colors and show them techniques that would highlight their best features. But if they wanted plum, her colleagues would tell Char, and plum made ‘em look sick, sell ‘em the plum.

  She didn’t quit. There was still the problem of the rent to keep in mind, and Adam’s groceries wouldn’t last forever. Char figured she was learning lessons in humility, patience, what made women feel more attractive and the art of selling a product. But biting her tongue didn’t come easily, and apparently she wasn’t succeeding all that well.

  She was fired on Thursday afternoon.

  Her boss, a gracious lady who could sell fish hooks to trout, stuttered and stammered and finally got around to saying Char was just too New York for her position.

  “Too New York? I haven’t lived in New York in years! Some of the nicest people I know are from New York. How’d you like me to say all Southerners are lazy? Regional stereotypes aren’t just offensive, they’re unwarranted in today’s mobile society—”

  Char came to a grinding halt. Her boss was looking at her in mute despair, her expression saying better than words, “There, you see? I rest my case.”

  TOO New York.

  Char collected her pay and went home and cut off all her fingernails.

  An hour later she considered her firing her first positive omen in months: without it she would have missed Ginger’s call. Ginger, a Rockwood employee for more than twenty years, had remembered Char from her visits to the Rockwood estate during her boss’s brief marriage to Beth Stiles. Ginger had a soft spot for Beth, and Char had no illusions that that was the main reason she had agreed to let her know if Harlan did anything unusual. It wouldn’t exactly be spying, Char had explained; she would just be helping out an old friend of Beth’s and letting her know what she’d only find out sooner or later. She had also confessed that she wasn’t beyond resorting to the less-than-honorable tactics to ke
ep an eye on Harlan, such as binoculars and camping out on estate property and interrogating the stable hands, i.e. spying.

  Char had made a point of bringing Ginger postcards of Mill Brook Post and Beam. Picturesque though it was, it was still a sawmill, and Ginger didn’t think a woman had any business working in such a place. “Well,” Char had said, “Beth entrusted her entire savings with me. I guess she never thought Harlan would stoop to swindling her, no matter what had gone on between them.”

  Ginger had been persuaded, if with reservations. She believed Harlan was innocent. He was an honest man, she would tell Char. He couldn’t survive in breeding and racing Thoroughbreds if he went around swindling people, especially his ex-wife and her best friend. In the end Ginger had agreed to spy for Char out of her firm belief in her boss’s honesty.

  Char didn’t care about her motives: she just wanted to keep tabs on Rockwood. When she’d gotten her telephone on Tuesday—to keep her own ex-husband off her back about not being able to reach Em—Char had given Ginger the number.

  That made two people who knew where to find her: Em’s father and Ginger. Still, when the phone rang, Char’s first thought wasn’t either of them, but Adam Stiles. He found my number... he’s here in Nashville.

  She could have kicked herself for such soppy thinking. Whatever had happened between her and Adam over the weekend was finished. Adam probably considered it a nightmare by now. Even if he didn’t he no doubt wished he did. Char hadn’t heard a word from him all week. No note, no flowers, nothing. Not that she had contacted him, but how could she with Beth around Mill Brook all the time?

  Groaning, she warned herself to quit thinking about Adam. She’d just have to deal with him later. Right now she’d answer the damn phone. Probably some telemarketer, anyway.

  “Miss Bradford?”

  “Ginger! What a nice surprise. How are you?”

  “Well... I only wanted to tell you that Mr. Rockwood came home last night.”