Adam got out of there in a hurry.
Chapter Nine
MILL BROOK HADN’T changed in the year she had been gone.
As she and Emily walked down Main Street sipping lemonade, Char realized she had thought maybe it would. She should have known better, of course. But somehow she had anticipated—expected or hoped were too strong—that her absence would have had a visible effect on the community where she had grown up and spent the last five years of her adulthood.
How silly.
The air was crisp and bright, the autumn leaves at peak color, the scene worthy of a Vermont postcard.
It felt good to be back, Char decided. Not great, given the circumstances, but good. Better, certainly, than she had expected.
Emily darted into the open doorway of the bookshop and said hello to Ron, the proprietor, and patted Frost, Ron’s overweight, lazy Siberian husky who had been a fixture on Main Street for years. Nowadays he mostly napped. Ron came out and greeted Char, asked how she was doing; she said fine and left it at that.
“We miss you around here,” he said. “I do, for sure.” He grinned that easy, low-key grin that had helped him earn the loyalty of so many customers. “I used to sell you a lot of expensive hardcovers.”
“Those were the days,” Char said, more cheerfully than she would have expected.
She dragged Emily away from Frost and continued along Main Street, moving inexorably along the same route she had taken countless times in the past.
That’s right, she told herself, the past. Not the present and not the future.
The Nathan Stiles House on the south end of Main Street was still standing. The understated sign outside, the manicured lawn and flower beds, the sparkling paned windows, the white clapboards and black shutters, the slate-blue front door—everything was the same.
Except, of course, Charity W. Bradford was no longer listed among the professionals who occupied offices in the converted historical Colonial house. It had been built in the early nineteenth century by the first Stiles who had made his fortune as a sawyer on Mill Brook. The Stiles family had dispersed up along the river and around Mill Brook Common, away from the village and the relative crush of Main Street. Char had never given much thought to working in the former drawing room where Adam’s ancestors had lived and loved and died.
She tried not to now as she followed Emily into the entryway. The floor was gleaming cherry, the walls a subdued cream, the carpet on the graceful staircase a shade lighter slate-blue than the front door. Off to the left was where Char’s office used to be.
“Look, Mom,” Emily squealed, “nobody’s there!”
Her old office was for rent, the accountant who had taken over her space apparently having departed. Char tried not to consider this development an omen, just something that was. She had simply given into human curiosity and come by to check out the place where she had spent so much time. So what if it were for rent?
“Can I go up and see Maria?” Emily asked, referring to the psychologist on the second floor.
Char said yes, then felt herself sagging as she watched her daughter bound up the stairs. So much energy. The entire trip north she had talked about seeing this person or that, stopping in this store or that. As far as Emily Bradford Williams was concerned, Mill Brook had no equal. Char wondered if she had felt that way at seven. She couldn’t remember.
Adam probably does, she thought.
“No.”
She wasn’t going to think about Adam Stiles. She wasn’t here about the president of Mill Brook Post and Beam... about romance and passion and all that. She was here about Harlan Rockwood and thievery and getting herself out of one mess before she started getting into another.
She peered into the vacant rooms, remembering the Persian rug Aunt Mil had insisted on giving her, the big old Shaker table she had used as a desk, the tons of books and files and the computer that had seemed so incongruous amid the nineteenth-century lines of the former drawing room. The late-afternoon sun streamed in through the tall paned windows, making the two rooms seem even emptier and lonelier, reminding Char of exactly what she had given up for a dream.
For a dead dream.
“Looks pretty empty, doesn’t it?”
Char whirled around just as Adam Stiles came through the double front door into the entryway. Her heart began to pound. He studied her, not coming too close. The uncompromising expression, the changeable eyes, the hardened muscles, the work shirt, the jeans, the boots—every inch of him looked a part of the Vermont landscape. Even the gleaming hook where his left hand had been prompted images of men and women who lived lives of danger and hard work, who had carved livings out of the unforgiving mountains of northern New England for generations. Adam was a part of that tradition. So was Char. The difference was, it was a tradition he had no desire to escape, where she did—and had.
She managed a smile and said easily enough, “Fancy meeting you here.” Trite, but it provided a few needed seconds to compose herself. She had been in a car for two days and looked it: her hair was all over the place, she had on no makeup and her jeans and sweatshirt had seen her through law school. “Guess I should have known better than to think I could be an anonymous presence in Mill Brook for even an hour. You aren’t here by accident, I take it?”
“Your car was spotted in town,” he said, seldom one to mince words. “I heard about it.”
“Figures. I’ve been in town an hour and already word’s gotten upriver.”
Adam shrugged. “Everybody knows what kind of car you drive. It was good for business, you know.”
“What, driving a beat-up wreck?”
His eyes seemed to sparkle, and Char found herself remembering things she had no business remembering, at least not right now. First things first, she told herself.
“That’s right,” he said. “If you’d driven a big, fancy car, people around here would have wondered if you were looking after your interests disproportionately to looking after theirs.”
Char knew what he was talking about. It wasn’t a question of lawyer bashing, but one of balance. Earning a comfortable living was one thing, something her clients understood and believed in. She did, after all, provide a necessary service and had the education, experience and expertise to do so. But living extravagantly, and rubbing people’s noses in it, was quite another, particularly in a small town.
“Guess I’m living proof that not all lawyers are rich,” she said. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“Even you couldn’t resist a look at your old office.”
“I just happened by.”
‘You’re human, Char.” He nodded toward her empty former office. “Any regrets?”
She shook her head. “Regret isn’t the right word. It’s more like nostalgia, maybe, except I’m not sentimental. What’s Stan asking for rent these days?”
‘Too much.”
“You’d say that no matter how much he was asking.”
“He told me he’d love to have you back. Said you could probably afford twice what he asked.”
“Not anymore.”
“Keep your nose out of the horse business, you never know,” Adam said without condemnation or approval, just, as he would no doubt say, stating the facts. Before Char had a chance to get after him, he looked around and asked, “Where’s Emily?”
“Upstairs visiting Maria.”
“Avoiding her yourself?”
Char didn’t squirm, but came close. She said innocently, “Why would I do that?”
“In case she started analyzing your reasons for going to Tennessee and losing all your money on a horse.”
More “stating the facts,” Char assumed, bristling. “Maria’s always told me she doesn’t analyze anyone who doesn’t pay.”
Adam grinned. ‘Think she’d be able to resist this one?”
“Probably not,” Char said, laughing. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s pumping Emily for information, trying to find out if I’m certifiable or not.�
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Shifting his balance from one leg to the other, Adam gave Char a long look. She could feel her skin turning hot, could feel herself wanting to touch him, to be touched. He asked softly, “You going to tell me why you’re in Vermont?”
“I guess I’d rather not go into it.”
His eyes narrowed, and she could sense him pulling back from her, becoming distant and unapproachable. “I see.”
“Because of Emily,” Char added quickly. “It’ll take time to explain and she’ll be right down.”
“I can assume, can’t I, that you and Harlan Rockwood showing up in Mill Brook on the same day isn’t a coincidence?”
There was no amusement in his voice, but it was Char’s turn to stand still and look distant, to conceal the emotions raging inside her. “You’ve seen him?” she asked coolly.
“He came by the mill. He—” Adam stopped when he heard a child’s clambering footsteps on the staircase. He looked at Char. “We’ll talk over dinner. I assume you haven’t figured out where you’re staying.”
“I’m not worried about it.”
“The hotels and inns are booked solid for peak weekend, even if you had considered spending money for a room, which I doubt. You didn’t bring your tent, did you? We’re expecting a frost tonight.”
“No tent,” Char said, tight-lipped. “But I can take care of myself. And Emily.”
“Did I say you couldn’t? If you’re after Harlan, you won’t want to stay with Beth—correct?”
She folded her arms across her chest, wondering just what Adam was getting at. His meddling always had a purpose. She said stiffly, “Correct.”
Adam shrugged. “That leaves me.”
“Look—”
“Dinner’s at six-thirty. I’ll put fresh sheets on in the guest room.”
“Adam, the entire state of Vermont will know I’m staying with you.”
He arched a brow at her. “So?”
So, indeed. Before she could think of a comeback, Emily burst in between them, yelling, “Uncle Adam!” He scooped her up, asking what her favorite food was, because whatever it was, that was what she was having for supper. So spaghetti and butterscotch pudding it was.
He put her down and grinned over the top of her head at Char. “Remember where I live?”
There was no graceful way out—exactly what Adam had planned, Char felt certain. He was trying hard not to look cocky and victorious. Char sighed. As if Harlan Rockwood, Mill Brook, unemployment, debts and shattered dreams weren’t enough for her to deal with. Now she had Adam Stiles, as well.
But wasn’t that what she wanted?
She left the question hanging and told him, “Yeah, I remember.”
If asked a month ago, Char would have said she had been to Adam’s house countless times. But as she pulled up his winding driveway, shaded by natural-growing hemlock and oak, she realized it couldn’t have been more than a half-dozen times. Maybe not even that many. A big, airy, post-and-beam house constructed with Stiles lumber and sweat, it was nestled into the hillside above Mill Brook on fifty wooded acres. There were neighbors within walking, if not shouting, distance, so it wasn’t as isolated as his brother Julian’s place miles out on a dirt road. And it was close to the mill. With Adam that counted. Since Mel’s death, however, his guests were more likely to be family members or the under-fourteen friends of his two preteen children, not people peripheral to his life.
As Char herself had been when she had lived in Mill Brook.
In fact, most of her visits to Adam’s house had occurred when Mel was still alive. Mel had hated moving out of town, but had never said so, instead pretending that what she wanted was anything Adam wanted. If he preferred a quiet life in the woods above the river that had made his family’s living for generations, then so did she. Except, of course, that meant she was living a lie—and such lies weren’t easily kept secret. Adam had known. Everyone in Mill Brook had known that Mel Stiles was an unhappy woman.
Char parked behind Adam’s pickup and leaned back for a moment, enjoying the cool late-afternoon breeze through her open window. She couldn’t have played the martyr the way Mel had. She was no good at suffering in silence and even less adept in pretending. Keeping her clients’ confidences, yes. She could be closemouthed when she needed to be. But not speaking her mind, especially when someone had sought out her opinion? Never. Adam had consulted Mel about building a house out of town, but instead of telling him how she felt, she had said, in effect, “Whatever you want, honey.”
Mel had been a lively, interesting woman who had adored Adam and their two children. If only she had been less confused about what and who she should be. “Just be yourself,” Beth, who had reported her comments back to Char, used to tell her sister-in-law. “It’s all anyone can ask you to be. Nothing more, nothing less.”
On that particular score Char had never had a problem. It was in the areas of compromise and opening herself up to other people—allowing them into her life, allowing herself the occasional mistake—where she sometimes tripped up.
Or fell flat on her face, as the case may be, she thought dismally.
She exhaled, aware of Emily staring at her in curiosity, but she wasn’t ready to move yet. She could hear the river tumbling over the rocks down by the road on its way from the mountains to join with the Connecticut River, then on with it into Long Island Sound. It had been Adam who had explained Mill Brook’s micro-role in the earth’s ecology, back when she was nine or ten and had complained that it wasn’t much of a river. Big rivers are made up of little rivers, he had told her.
Strange, she thought, that she only just now was remembering that episode with Beth’s older brother. Before Nashville she would have said it had never happened, that Adam had almost never talked to her. Given their age difference, more pronounced in childhood, she supposed he must have seemed more remote to her growing up than he actually had been.
Mill Brook was, in fact, a beautiful river—a creek, the folks in her adopted state would call it. Char had come to recognize, if not appreciate, its picturesque quality even before she had left the town of Mill Brook for the first time after her high school graduation. It was then that she had made her now-infamous remark about how much beauty a person could stand.
And Tennessee certainly was a beautiful state. Harlan Rockwood’s place along the Cumberland River rivaled any in Vermont—or anywhere else, for that matter.
So why had the bastard swindled her? It wasn’t as if he needed the money.
“Mom, aren’t we going in?”
Char looked at her daughter and smiled. “Nothing like an impatient child to rouse a mother from thinking things she’s got no business thinking in the first place.” She looked at Adam’s natural-stained house and sighed. “As I’m always telling you, Em, first things first.”
Harlan she would have to deal with later. Right now she had to concentrate her energies on getting through the evening—the night—with Adam Stiles. At least they would have three children in the house. As much as Char wanted to work out their relationship, or whatever it was they had, she had other things she needed to work out first.
Dinner.
Then bed alone or with, at most, Emily.
Then Harlan Rockwood in the morning.
That was her plan, and she would just have to stick to it. She didn’t need complications right now.
Was that what Adam was—a complication?
She remembered their afternoon together, and suddenly the breeze off the river wasn’t nearly cool enough.
“Mom,” Emily groaned impatiently.
“Okay, okay. Let’s go.”
The air, crisp and icy clear, smelled of autumn and the woods. Oddly, Char felt herself begin to relax as she joined Emily on the flagstone walk to the side entrance. Adam’s was the sort of front door used only by salesmen and bill collectors. Tucked into the hillside as it was, the house had only a small yard, the land cleared enough for vegetable and flower gardens and a patch of grass where two
ancient Adirondack chairs sat in the shade of a sugar maple, its leaves a vibrant orange. In the woods along the perimeter of the yard, Char noticed various knotted ropes and tire swings dangling from trees.
So did Emily. “Oooh,” she said. “Think Abby and David want to swing?”
“It’ll be dark soon,” Char pointed out, trying not to picture her daughter swinging like Tarzan over the hillside. The Stiles family had always had a fatalistic attitude toward broken limbs and skinned knees. Char could remember the antics she and Beth had performed on various rocks and trees when they were children. She had hoped her daughter would be more sensible.
Children, her Aunt Mil would have said, will be children.
Adam was waiting for them just inside the door, his hook discarded, his expression filled with warmth and satisfaction as he gave Em a hug and tousled her hair. With his children standing behind him, he didn’t touch Char, just said, “Hello. Glad you could come.”
“Me, too,” she mumbled, somewhat taken aback. The man was so damn outrageously sexy. How could she have not noticed before?
Abby and David couldn’t wait to whisk Emily off to work a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle they had just started in the family room. Being reasonably mannerly children, however, they first greeted Char, welcoming her like a long-lost, somewhat wayward aunt who’d finally returned to her senses and come home. She might have spent the past year on the moon, never mind just a thousand miles away in Tennessee.
“Did you really take Dad to an amusement park?” Abby asked. Except for her huge blue eyes, she was every inch her father’s daughter. “He said you talked him into going on a wild rollercoaster.”
Char laughed. “I did.”
“Did he scream?” David, younger and fairer, like his mother, asked.
“Only a little. He even went on a tubing water ride. Did he tell you he got soaked?”
And afterward we made love. But Char knew that Adam played his romantic cards very close to his chest. His children wouldn’t have an inkling of what was going on between them until he was good and ready to tell them. And when, she wondered, would that be? When she tucked her tail between her legs and ran home to Vermont?
Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2 Page 14