Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  All at once utterly serious, Adam said, “Maybe we both needed to be jolted out of the ordinariness of our lives to discover each other.”

  She nodded. “Maybe so.”

  They kissed slowly, erotically, hands and legs smoothing and probing and teasing. Then the tasting began, still slow, still erotic, until Char felt as if her entire being were filled with the scent and taste and sight of this man who was affecting her life in ways she couldn’t have anticipated, wasn’t even sure she wanted. Yet she wanted him as she had never wanted anyone else before.. .cared about him. To be with him she was prepared to throw away the old crystal ball she had for her life and fashion herself a new one.

  She crawled onto his stomach and felt the tension— the wanting—in him. He didn’t have to articulate what he was feeling. She could see his ambivalence, feel his wanting.

  “It’s all right,” he said, as much to himself as to her, and lifted her hips, then eased her onto him.

  Was it all right? What in blue blazes were she and Adam doing?

  Then he moved inside her, and she sighed with acceptance and, at the same time, anticipation. “Yes— yes, it’s all right.”

  She went with the moment, inhaling deeply as she set the pace for their lovemaking.

  We’re making love, she thought, that’s what we’re doing.

  It was her last moderately coherent thought for what might have been minutes or hours. She didn’t know; she didn’t care. Time had no meaning. They threw off blankets and pillows, and any languor left over from their hot bath vanished with thrust after thrust, until they were breathing hard, moving faster and faster, crying out together.

  She thought he might have yelled that he loved her, but she wasn’t sure even what she herself had said. What did it matter? They were there, in bed together.

  They remained joined for a long time, listening to their hearts beat and the fire crackle.

  Char slipped out of bed early the next morning and got breakfast together. Adam being Adam, his kitchen was laid out in a logical manner: wherever Char looked for something first, there it was. She put on a pot of coffee, sliced a grapefruit and heated a couple of wild blueberry muffins in the microwave, waiting for the smell to get to Adam. It finally did, and he joined her in the kitchen.

  “Quiet around here,” he said.

  “Mmm. Think we should call Julian and Holly and see if the kids lived through the night?”

  “Probably should reverse that.”

  Char laughed and made the call. Everything was fine off in the woods. Julian and Holly weren’t up yet, but Abby, David and Emily were all pitching in making pancakes and sausage. From scratch, Em said proudly. Char could just imagine. Adam warned them to clean up after themselves and promised he’d be by to pick them up soon.

  ‘‘Have your kids ever made pancakes?” Char asked him when he’d hung up.

  “No. Em?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “So long as they don’t burn the place down, Julian and Holly won’t care. But I guess we’d better get ourselves fed and dressed and rescue them before long. No homemade pancakes and sausages for us?”

  “Reheated frozen muffins.”

  “Could be worse.”

  They ate on stools at the counter in the kitchen, Char practically inhaling her first cup of coffee. She poured another. “Adam, are you in a position to tell me what you and Harlan Rockwood talked about yesterday? I don’t want to violate a confidence or put you in the middle, but...” She sighed, slipping back onto her stool with her fresh cup of coffee. “I would like to know where I can find the snake.”

  Adam’s expression was unreadable, distant. “My guess is he’s headed back to Tennessee.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I told him that was where you were. I didn’t know at the time you were on his tail.”

  “Oh.” So she’d missed him: a thousand-mile trip for nothing. Well, she thought, not exactly nothing. “I see.”

  “Does that change your plans?”

  “I didn’t really have a plan. I just headed north when I found out he was in Mill Brook and figured I’d play it by ear once I got here. So you think he was here because of me?”

  ‘That was the impression I got,” Adam said carefully. “He had no idea you were still living in Tennessee.”

  Char could feel her face coloring. “Thought he’d run me out of the state, did he?”

  Adam cleared his throat. “I would say it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Char snapped, then immediately regretted her bad temper. “Sorry. I know you’re trying not to take sides until all the facts are in, but I want an end to this thing with him so I can get on with my life. Right now... hell, I can barely think straight.”

  Easing himself off the stool, Adam refilled his mug, but didn’t sit back down. He leaned against the counter, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. Char even thought his toes were sexy.

  “You do what you have to do,” he said.

  “You’re not going to give me advice?”

  “No.”

  “Even if I ask?”

  He smiled. “You won’t.”

  “But if I did”

  “I told you, I’m not going to meddle.”

  For some reason that irritated Char. But she knew she would have been just as irritated if he had offered her unsolicited advice. “But don’t you want me to do one thing instead of another?”

  “No,” he said, with surprising equanimity. “You do what you have to do. If you need to straighten out your business with Harlan before you can ‘get on with your life,’ then okay. If you don’t, that’s okay, too. I’m not going to make your decisions for you.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” she countered. “It’s just if you don’t give a damn what I do—”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “All right, all right. You’re right. If you told me what to do and it turned out wrong, then I’d blame you. Even if it turned out right, I’d probably still blame you, wondering if I could have finished this thing on my own.” She arched him a look. “But you do care?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I care.”

  He demonstrated just how much before they showered, dressed and went to fetch three children... in separate cars. Char had decided to head back to Tennessee.

  “It’s just something I have to do,” she told Adam before they headed out to Julian and Holly’s.

  “I understand.”

  “You can tell me how you feel about it.”

  “How I feel isn’t important.”

  She sighed. “It is to me.”

  With one finger he tilted up her chin and locked his eyes with hers. “I’ll miss you” was all he said, but for Adam Stiles that was plenty.

  On her way out of town Char stopped at the mill when she spotted Beth’s bomb of a car in the parking lot. She almost drove straight on past, but Beth had to know her best friend was in Mill Brook—and was no doubt wondering why she had chosen to stay with a Stiles male instead of the only Stiles female.

  Beth, of course, knew everything that had happened in Mill Brook within the past twenty-four hours: about Harlan’s chat with her older brother, about Char’s arrival, about Abby, David and Emily going off to stay with Holly and Julian while Char and Adam spent the night at his place, alone. Not a gossip herself, Beth was the sort of person in whom people confided. She had a way of finding out what she needed to know.

  Char sent Emily off to play marbles in a far corner of the mill offices while Beth stood with her arms crossed, awaiting a well-deserved explanation.

  “From the top,” she told Char.

  Taking a breath, Char complied. When she finished, Beth volunteered to join Char on her trip to Tennessee and help her skewer Harlan Rockwood.

  Char politely declined her help. “The bottom line, Beth, is that I was swindled by your ex-husband and I’m in love with your brother, and I’m damned if I know what I’m going to do about either. But right
now they’re my problems, not yours.” She smiled, and squeezed her friend’s hand. “It’s nice to know you’re there if I need you. I—honestly, Beth, after Aunt Mil died I thought there was nothing left for me in Mill Brook. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “That’d be a first,” Beth muttered, then grinned, hugging Char and wishing her well.

  Emily wasn’t nearly as charitable: she felt cheated at having to leave Mill Brook so soon and let her mother know so in no uncertain terms.

  “Why can’t we stay until tomorrow?” the seven-year-old demanded.

  “Because we can’t,” Char said as she got her unwilling daughter back into the car. ‘Things didn’t work out. The man I was supposed to see went back to Tennessee, and I’ve got to see him there.”

  “Will we be back?”

  Char paused a moment, listening to the river rushing over the rocks and the wind in the brightly colored trees. ‘‘Yeah,” she said, “well be back.”

  But a second-grader and only child of two attorneys wasn’t one to be satisfied with such a vague answer. ‘‘When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Soon?”

  Char felt the cool autumn breeze in her hair as she shut Em’s door. “I hope so.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE NEXT WEEK was one of the hardest in Adam’s life. No tragedies were involved, as there had been in Mel’s death and his own disabling accident. Instead there were dreams involved—hope, love, the future, all so elusive and unpredictable. All stuff he had forced himself to stop thinking about in terms of his own life, many, many months ago.

  It was just a long week. Hellishly long.

  He called Char every day, but she was close-mouthed about her affairs, although she did say that Harlan Rockwood remained in one piece. Adam judiciously kept quiet about his conversation with Harlan that day at the mill; he wondered if his former brother-in-law would remain in one piece if Char found out he had suspected her of swindling him, and perhaps still did.

  He ached to be in Tennessee with her. The distance he had tried to keep between himself and that fact slowly melted away during the week, and finally he admitted as much to Char.

  “Just what I need,” she muttered, “some Yankee mountain man swooping down here on his white horse.”

  But she had sounded pleased. And she had told him she would slay dragons for him, too.

  He could have ignored her desire to straighten out her life on her own. He could hear the loneliness in her voice; he knew, in her way, she loved him. Yet he also knew Charity Bradford was proud and stubborn and had risked more than most would dare and lost more than most could stand. She had a right to straighten out her life on her own.

  ‘‘Has word hit the streets that we spent the night together?” she asked.

  “It was on the front page of the paper.”

  He worked and took Abby and David apple picking and talked to them about how Mel would always be their mother, no matter what Adam did with the rest of his life. They seemed already to know that.

  He looked into frequent-flyer benefits in case Char decided to stay in Tennessee and they would have to have a long-distance relationship.

  He checked out buying a travel van.

  He considered ways he could restructure his responsibilities at the mill to include more time in Tennessee, working around Abby and David’s schedules.

  He studied horses.

  And he daydreamed. That was a new experience for him. He would sit at his desk and imagine Char coming through the door, imagine her dark doe’s eyes flashing, imagine how he would ask her to marry him.

  Craziness. But his daydreaming helped pass the time.

  By Friday afternoon he had resigned himself to a long weekend ahead, and an even longer week. He dug into his work.

  Beth, who had been uncharacteristically quiet all week, slid into the leather chair by his desk. “Have you heard? Somebody’s rented Char’s old office.”

  “I guess it was bound to happen. It’s a good location.”

  “I heard it was a lawyer.”

  Adam felt his jaw stiffening. “The town could use another lawyer.”

  “Char’s shoes won’t be easy to fill.”

  “No,” he said in agreement, surprised at how awful he had felt. However unrealistic, he had hoped that in straightening out her life, Char would decide to return to Mill Brook and her law practice—on her own, without any pressure from him. Now even if she did decide to come home, she would have competition. It might not be so easy to pick up the pieces of her old life.

  “You want me to find out more?” Beth asked.

  Adam shook his head. “There’s no need.”

  So much for out-of-hand dreams, he thought. For now he’d better stick to reality.

  The brightest reds and oranges had fallen from the trees, but southern Vermont was still crowded with leaf-peepers. With Emily singing beside her, Char picked her way through the clogged traffic in downtown Mill Brook. This time her car wouldn’t be spotted: her old hatchback couldn’t make another thousand-mile trip within a week. She’d traded it in for a newer model. Another time of year the Tennessee license plate might have been a dead giveaway, but not during leaf-peeping season.

  “Are we going to stay with Uncle Adam?” Emily asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Abby and David said they’re making cider this weekend.”

  Char could almost smell its sweetness. ‘‘Maybe they’ll let you help.”

  Satisfied, Emily resumed singing. To entertain herself on the long trip north, she had resorted to singing every song she had ever learned, from nursery school on up to second grade. She seemed to have worked her way into kindergarten, but Char couldn’t be sure if Em had finished one cycle and had started all over again. Good mother that she was, she had tuned out her daughter’s singing sometime around Wytheville, Virginia.

  There wasn’t a parking space to be had on Main Street. Mill Brook natives could park at Hank’s Garage without fear of being towed, but Hank couldn’t reasonably be trusted to let an unfamiliar car with Tennessee plates off. Char turned off Main, circled the block and came up and tried again. After two attempts she finally landed a space practically in front of her old office.

  It was Emily who first spotted the restoration of Charity W. Bradford, Attorney-at-Law to the signpost. If her car wouldn’t start gossip, her name back in place certainly would. By her instruction, however, it had been put there no earlier than midafternoon.

  ‘‘Mom!”

  Char grinned at her daughter. “I didn’t know you could read.”

  Emily took a moment to scowl at her mother before racing into the building. There, as Char had instructed her mover, a former client’s son, her office furniture had been pulled out of storage and set up, if somewhat haphazardly. She unlocked the place and peered in,

  feeling more satisfaction than terror, although there was a little of that, too.

  “My shingle’s all dusted off and ready to be nailed up again,” she said, leaning against the doorframe while Emily explored. “Your mom the lawyer.”

  “Can I have my old shelf back?”

  Em had always had one shelf in her mother’s office reserved for her things, provided they weren’t living. “Of course.”

  For days Em had been flying high because they were moving back to Mill Brook, but Char had withheld details on exactly how they were going to survive. She’d had to get used to the idea of returning to her law practice herself. Now it felt fine, sort of like climbing back into a favorite raggedy sweatshirt and a pair of jeans after an arduous diet.

  “Where are we going to live?” Em, ever practical, asked.

  Char sighed. “I’ve got a line on a cottage within walking distance of town for rent, but for now...” She thought of Adam, and her stomach muscles tightened. “I’m working on it.”

  Adam had left the mill early to pick up ten bushels of apples for Saturday’s cider-making extravaganza. It was his turn to host this y
ear. Julian would bring the press, Beth the containers, Holly the makings for cider doughnuts and hot mulled cider. In addition to his mountain of utility-grade apples, Adam would provide lunch and supper. He had plates of cold cuts and raw vegetables in the refrigerator, two big pans of lasagna he’d made and stuck in the freezer before Nashville and Charity Bradford, salad, garlic bread and baked apples.

  With his hook in place he opened the tailgate on his truck and grabbed one of the baskets of apples, setting it on the edge of the driveway. He hardly paused before snatching the next basket.

  He worked furiously, sweating and cursing. There wasn’t any hurry: no foreman on a timetable, no forecasts of rain, nowhere else to go. But he had always relied on hard work to keep distractions at bay.

  Damn, he thought, I hate gossip.

  One of the sawyers at the mill had heard around three o’clock that Char’s name had been replaced on a signpost in front of the Stiles building in town.

  Someone’s idea of a joke, Adam assumed. The town was having a hell of a time passing along the news that crusty old one-handed Adam Stiles and sharp, cranky Charity Bradford had a thing going.

  He wasn’t in the mood to laugh.

  A car turned into his driveway, but he ignored it, leaning into the truck to grab another basket of apples. Probably just some leaf-peeper using his driveway to turn around. But he heard the car make the hill up to the house, and when he turned around, it was practically at his heels.

  A dark blue compact. Strangers, he thought. He supposed he’d have to be sociable.

  Then Char poked her dark head out of the driver’s window and grinned at him. “You give up the mill and go into the apple business?”

  He couldn’t speak. Emily was already bounding out of the car, and when she asked where Abby and David were, he managed to grunt something about their being in their tree house. He could have put them to work unloading the truck, of course, but he had wanted the job all to himself.

  Char climbed out of the car, dressed in jeans and a fisherman’s sweater and as gorgeous and elusive as he had ever seen her.