Finding You

by Carla Neggers

  Concentrating on the image, she allowed herself to hear her father’s laugh and see his smile and his eyes, green like hers, and after a while longer, sitting up in the apple tree with her eyes shut tight, she could almost believe that when she opened them, he would be there. She would talk to him about her uneasiness about owning the house and land that had been in her family for generations, about working for the Vanackerns, about pretending the anonymous calls she’d received on the road had never happened. She would talk to him about how her career had seemed to take on a momentum of its own, carrying her along with it, and she wasn’t sure who she was anymore, and they would pick apples together. He would help her finish the cider and tell her not to be squeamish about the few bugs that might get into it.

  “Geez, you’re lucky the neighbors don’t call the men in white coats.”

  Her sister Meg’s voice came out of nowhere, startling Cozie so that she almost fell out of the tree.

  Meg didn’t seem to notice. “Aren’t you getting a little long in the tooth for climbing trees?”

  Cozie jumped down from the branch and grinned at her older sister. “Look who’s talking.”

  “You don’t see me parked up in a tree. I brought Matt and Ethan up to go apple picking. Tom’s keeping a lid on things at the farm.” Tom Strout was Meg’s laid-back, dairy farmer husband. “The trees are in a sorry state, aren’t they?”

  “At least they’ve got apples.”

  Ducking under a low-hanging branch, Cozie joined her older sister in the sunshine. Her two nephews were walking up from the driveway, each carrying a half-bushel basket. Sara, the littlest, must have stayed with her dad at the farm where Meg ran a popular nursery school/day care center. Unlike Cozie, who was athletic in build, Meg had inherited their mother’s pear shape and slightly darker coloring, although she, too, had the Hawthorne green eyes.

  “Welcome back,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You look a bit done in still. Hey—heard you scrounged up someone to rent the sawmill. Rumor has it he’s quite the stud and not likely to complain about not having a dishwasher.”

  “Have you been talking to Aunt Ethel?”

  “And Sal and anyone else who’s seen this guy.”

  “Well, he’s a human being, not a prize bull.”

  But Cozie had to fight off an image that had materialized, unbidden, of her tenant whacking a log in two. She could see the muscles in his forearm tighten. His look of concentration. Jet lag, she told herself. It was only jet lag that had her mind so unruly.

  “So you’ve met him?” her sister asked.

  “Seth and I brought him wood this morning.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Are you going to confirm or deny the rumors?”

  “How do you hear so much watching little kids all day?”

  “They have mommies and daddies happy to indulge the best child care provider in town.”

  Cozie just scowled and walked past her sister.

  Meg laughed. “Let the rumors be confirmed. Only a good-looking guy would make Cozie Hawthorne that fidgety. Want to join us apple picking?”

  It was just the antidote she needed. Apple picking, warm cider by the woodstove afterward—inculcating a new generation of Hawthornes in family traditions. “Sure.”

  Meg yelled to her kids, Ethan, age seven, and Matthew, age five, to hustle or they’d be picking apples in the dark. “Ethan! Ethan, you get that basket off your brother’s head!”

  Then Zep leaped onto all fours and streaked down the hill toward the driveway, barking as if he meant it.

  “My, my,” Meg said, ignoring her boys for a moment. “Who have we here?”

  Cozie squinted at the tall figure walking up her driveway. “My new tenant.”

  “Oh?”

  “Shut up, Meg.”

  Hoping her sister wouldn’t follow, Cozie headed down to the driveway, where Daniel Forrest was standing with her splitting maul slung on his shoulder like a too-light baseball bat. Despite the drop in temperature and the stiffening breeze, he still had on his short-sleeved pullover, no jacket. She couldn’t help noticing the close fit of his jeans over his narrow hips and long, long legs. He swung the splitter off his shoulder and stood it next to him. His movements were smooth and confident, unhurried.

  He patted Zep on the head. “Figured I’d return your splitter while I was thinking about it. Nice spot you’ve got up here.”

  “Thank you. You’re finished with the wood?”

  “Not yet. I bought my own splitter in town.” If he felt any lingering awkwardness from their last encounter, it wasn’t in evidence. He grinned. “Reckon I’m on my way to becoming a real Vermonter?”

  She smiled. “Would I be a real Texan after just a couple of days in Texas?”

  The gray eyes flashed with a mix of amusement and frank sexiness. “Honey, I don’t think you’d be a real Texan after forty years in Texas.”

  No one had ever called her honey. Not ever. Cozie straightened her shoulders, reminding herself she was this man’s landlady. She rubbed her wrist where she’d scraped it jumping from the apple tree. “So, what exactly brings you to Vermont?”

  “I’m here for some R and R,” he said without elaborating. He nodded at her wrist. “You okay?”

  She dropped her hand. “Yes, fine.”

  “That was you up in the tree?”

  “I was checking the apples.”

  He appraised her with a deliberate frankness that reminded her she had no idea who this man was. She saw that he had a small white scar at the corner of his left eye. What did he do to get so many scars?

  “You can lean the splitter against the toolshed,” she told him. “I’ll put it away later.”

  He did as requested and returned to where she was standing at the edge of the driveway. The hard lines of his face gave away nothing of what he was thinking, feeling. “Thanks for the loan of the splitter.”

  “Anytime. By the way, did you catch up with my brother?”

  Daniel looked around at her as he started down the driveway. “Not yet. There’s no hurry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “If you want,” she said, “there’s a path that goes along Hawthorne Brook right up to the sawmill. I used to take it all the time. Beats the road.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  Refusing to give him a backward glance, Cozie grabbed a ragged bushel basket from the toolshed and charged back up to the apple trees. Physical work, she’d always believed, was an antidote to most anything, even, she hoped, a gray-eyed Texan with an obvious agenda of his own.

  Chapter

  4

  Cozie let her sister talk her into dinner at the Strout farm. She picked up Aunt Ethel on her way across town, Seth having passed on joining them so he could work in his garden. They caught up with each other over beef stew and dumplings, but Cozie never mentioned the weird phone calls she’d received on the road. She wanted to put them behind her. She presented T-shirts to her nephews and niece and headed back home to her quiet house, still feeling strange there alone.

  The smell of warm cinnamon and coffee brought her down to the kitchen the next morning just before eight. She’d pulled on some clothes in case it wasn’t her brother, but it could hardly have been anyone else. He was pouring coffee at the counter, making himself at home. “Doughnuts are on the table,” he said, his back to her. “They’re still warm.”

  Cozie sighed. “One day you’re going to barge in here without knocking and embarrass yourself.”

  He looked around at her and grinned. “I don’t get embarrassed.”

  No doubt true. Unless she started locking her doors, which would involve buying locks and maybe even new doors, Cozie suspected she would just have to get used to her brother’s unannounced entrances. He wasn’t about to change his behavior because his older sister owned the house in which they’d both grown up. What would he have done, she wondered, if her mother had had to sell to strangers? If s
he hadn’t been in a position to buy the old house and its two hundred acres at fair market value? She didn’t care whether he made a lot of money, but his presumptuousness sometimes irritated her.

  She helped herself to a cider doughnut. It was soft and sweet, rolled in cinnamon sugar, a family tradition kept alive by her otherwise unambitious brother. Their mother had taught him. Cozie couldn’t make doughnuts to save her soul. “Delicious as always, Seth.”

  He set a mug in front of her on the long pine table before throwing one lean, well-muscled leg over the bench and sitting down himself. Nothing in his expression or demeanor indicated he had anything more pressing on his mind than how many doughnuts he would eat. But that was Seth. He took life as it came.

  He made a face when he tried his coffee. “What the hell is this stuff?”

  Cozie sipped hers to find out. “Hazelnut.”

  “Geez, Coze, you turning into a flatlander now that you’re loaded? That stuff’s awful. I’ll bring my Maxwell House next time.” He set down his mug. “Mind if I work up in the field? I’ve got to check the Christmas trees, see if we’ve got any worth selling this year.”

  “Of course not. They’re your trees.”

  “Your land.”

  Good of him to notice. Yet it bothered her that he did. “Did Daniel Forrest finally catch up with you? He was looking to pay you for the wood.”

  “Haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. He bugging you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” She studied her brother a moment. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Guess he just rubbed me the wrong way. You should watch yourself around him.” He swung up off the bench. “See you around.”

  Calling Zep, he loped down the short hall to the back room and outside to his field of Fraser firs and Scotch pine. Her brother was, Cozie thought, the most infuriating combination of high energy and devil-may-care she had ever encountered.

  She took her coffee and a second doughnut outside and walked around the yard. It was a bright, clear, chilly, beautiful morning, the kind that made the long Vermont winter no price to pay. Fully awake now, she headed back inside and spent the morning and part of the afternoon cleaning house, brushing Zep, filling the bird feeders, clearing some of the junk out of the garden, and making another gallon of cider. The work chased away her lingering jet lag and plunged her back into some semblance of her old life, even if she did have a Texan living in her sawmill. She felt more in control of herself than she had in months.

  By midafternoon she wound her way into town to spend a couple hours at her computer.

  There was no black truck with Texas license plates or champagne-colored Mercedes with Connecticut license plates anywhere in sight. She let herself in through the back. Since it was Saturday, the Vermont Citizen building was quiet. Even Aunt Ethel took the day off. Freelancers and staff reporters would still cover their stories, but one of the perks of a weekly newspaper was being able to shut the place down on weekends.

  As she entered her office, Cozie had a sudden image of her father and Grandpa Willard poring over the galleys of a Thanksgiving issue of the Citizen, back in the days before computers. Had they ever imagined their paper would end up in Vanackern hands?

  Tourists had crowded onto the Woodstock common. A walking tour was getting started, a young couple strolled arm in arm, a balding man swung a toddler onto his shoulders. Cozie watched, clearing her mind, as she booted up her computer.

  An hour later, she hadn’t typed a word worth saving when Aunt Ethel unexpectedly turned up. She peered over her niece’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take a walk if you’re stuck?”

  “I’m not stuck. I’m thinking.”

  She grunted. “I don’t know how you can stand having that thing blinking at you for hours on end.”

  “It’s called a cursor.”

  “How appropriate.”

  Cozie sighed and backed away from her desk. She hated having people look over her shoulder while she was working, even if there was nothing to see. “What’s up?”

  “I saw your Jeep parked outside and decided I’d better stop in and tell you what’s been going on.” She stood back, arms folded under her breasts. She had on an elastic-waist navy twill skirt, a navy turtleneck, and a tweed jacket that had probably seen her through the Eisenhower administration. “Thelma was at the library this morning—they have some new large-print mysteries in. Anyway, she said some fellow came in to research the Hawthorne family.”

  “Us? What for?”

  “Hold the interrogation and let me finish. Thelma described this gentleman as tall, dark, kind of mean-looking; said he wears cowboy boots and has a southern accent.” Aunt Ethel let her arms drop to her sides. “Sounds like your Texan to me.”

  Her Texan. Cozie jumped to her feet. “That man’s up to something and I intend to find out what.”

  “From what Thelma could tell he checked back issues of the paper, a couple of histories of Woodstock. She tried to peek over his shoulder to see if he was after anything particular, but she thinks he must have caught on because he got up and left.”

  Cozie snatched up her field jacket. With no one at the office, she hadn’t changed from the jeans and work shirt she’d put on that morning. What was Daniel Forrest up to? Maybe Seth’s instincts were on target and she shouldn’t trust him.

  “There’s more,” Aunt Ethel said. “The gossip about you two has already started.”

  “What two?”

  Her elderly aunt pursed her lips. “Don’t be disingenuous with me, Cornelia Hawthorne. You had to know the minute you laid eyes on that man that people would talk—which is exactly what they’re doing.”

  “Aunt Ethel,” Cozie said. “The details, please.”

  “All right. You know I’m not one to repeat gossip, but Thelma said she has it on good authority that you and your tenant are going to the Vanackern dinner together tonight.”

  Cozie groaned, kicked her chair under her desk, and switched off her computer.

  “I take it you’re not,” her aunt said mildly.

  “No. We are not. Thanks for the information. I have a feeling this Forrest character is in town for something besides rest and relaxation. But don’t you worry about it, Aunt Ethel. I’ll handle him myself.”

  Daniel had his feet propped up on the sawmill porch rail and his chair tilted back and was reconciling himself to Vermont not being Texas when Cozie Hawthorne marched up the stairs in that hurried Yankee way of hers. She was back to looking like hell again. Blue chambray shirt that needed ironing, baggy pants, hair pulled back with a rolled-up purple bandanna. He didn’t know how a woman could be so damned sexy dressed as if she’d just stepped out of the barn. He noticed she had a half-gallon plastic milk jug hooked around one finger. It seemed to be filled with a tea-colored liquid.

  Her eyes were huge and damned near spitting fire.

  “Afternoon.” He deliberately laid on the drawl. “Nice out for Vermont.”

  “Good afternoon.”

  Clipped. Uptight Yankee. He crossed his ankles. “No feet on the porch rail?”

  “I don’t care where you put your feet.”

  He savored several rejoinders, all designed to make her blush, if she were the blushing type, which he’d already figured she wasn’t, but—judicious for a change—he kept them to himself.

  She thrust the jug at him. “I brought you some cider. It’s homemade. You might watch for the odd spider leg.”

  “I see. Thanks.”

  He dropped his feet to the floor and rose, aware of how much taller and bigger he was than Cozie Hawthorne, not that she seemed to notice. Had she found out he’d lied to her? Doubtful. She wouldn’t be bringing him cider, with or without spider legs. He set the jug on the rail. She had her eyes narrowed on him as if he slithered instead of walked on two legs, and it occurred to him that probably not too many people gave Miss Cornelia Hawthorne a hard time.

  “Why have you been snooping on my family?”

  So that was
it. “The old lady at the library talked?”

  “Her name is Thelma Higgins, and she and my aunt have been friends all their lives.”

  “So that’s why she was so interested in what I was doing. I wouldn’t say I was ‘snooping’ on anyone. I was just doing a little research.”

  “Why?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He shrugged. “That’s your choice.”

  He could see irritation roll right up her spine. “And I guess it’s your choice not to tell the truth. I suggest you don’t stir up any unnecessary trouble.”

  “As you wish, ma’am.” He studied her a moment. “You’re one straightforward woman, aren’t you?”

  She stiffened. He was bugging the hell out of her. No question. “I see no point in beating around the bush.”

  “So I gathered. You want a glass of cider?”

  “No.”

  “You know, maybe I’m not just the nosy bastard you think I am. Your family goes way back in this area. Maybe I’m a historian. Maybe I’m a fellow reporter doing a feature on the newly famous Cozie Hawthorne.”

  “I thought you were a Texan in Vermont for rest and relaxation.”

  He was undeterred. “Maybe I’m killing two birds with one stone.”

  She laughed, rather nastily, he thought. But with her head thrown back, the sun hit her eyes and made him wonder what she’d be like really happy, really laughing.

  A dangerous thing to be wondering when he’d come to Vermont to find out if her brother had tried to kill him and J.D.

  “I don’t suppose,” she said, back to business, “you’d know why people are saying we’re going to the Vanackern dinner together.”

  Daniel didn’t have to ponder that one. “Because I told some old geezer at the general store in town we were. Must have been another of your auntie’s buddies. He figured out I was your new tenant—God knows how—”