I found him sleeping soundly. To make sure he stayed warm, I added a pink and blue comforter my mother had made before heading back out to the stubborn cat who sat preening herself in the kitchen.
“Kinda wish he’d wake up, Sera. It would be nice to have someone to talk to around here . . . besides you, of course,” I quickly added as the cat stuck her tail in the air and sauntered over to her pillow by the fireplace. Hearing another person’s voice and reading the mind of my cousin were two different things entirely.
Pulling out my cast iron skillet, I set it on the replica antique stove I’d purchased at a flea market the year after my father died. Unlike the original, this huge boxy stove ran on electricity instead of wood. Daddy’s grandmother had raised him in a one room cabin, and they had a stove just like this one, only it was the real deal. I often imagined him smiling down from heaven at my mock wood stove.
I grabbed a slab of bacon from the fridge and six eggs I’d collected this morning from the henhouse out back and got busy preparing breakfast. Hopefully the smell would wake Jack up and we could eat breakfast together.
After scraping some of the meat drippings from the pan, I called out to the cat. “Sera, I added bacon fat to your kibble.” She didn’t budge from her pillow. “Come on. Don’t be mad. You know I enjoy talking to you, too. Anyway, it’s important you get your strength back from yesterday.”
“Are you speaking to your cat?” Jack’s deep, rich voice startled me. It also sent a rush of excitement to my belly. I wheeled around.
“You shouldn’t be up yet. How are you feeling?” I hurried to the table and pulled out a wooden chair, setting it next to Jack. He immediately sat, his knees wobbling slightly. He smiled, which made my knees wobble.
“Allow me to thank the fair damsel who rescued me from certain death.” He put a playful hand over his heart, the other he held out gallantly toward me. I dipped my head and the corners of my lips turned up. “So tell me, how did I get from the hole in the ground to your cabin? It’s all kind of a blur.”
I swallowed hard. “Um . . . well . . . I . . . What do you remember?”
“You waving your fingers at me and then I floated onto a donkey.” Although he chuckled, he looked confused.
“You don’t remember climbing out of the hole?” I pressed, hoping he’d at least remember that part.
“Now that you say it, I do remember climbing out. You were there . . . and a skunk?” His brow arched.
“My mule, you mean, though I must admit, she is a bit stinky.” The cat hissed. I shrugged at Jack who laughed.
“I think I remember falling back down the hole,” he said.
“Well, I can assure you if you did, you would still be there. I hardly have the strength to pull you out.” He nodded in agreement at my half-truth. Marigold the girl could never have pulled him out. Marigold the witch, however . . . “I helped you over to the mule, and after climbing on, you fainted again.” I swallowed twice. “You woke when we reached my porch and I helped you into the bed, though you kept calling me Mom.”
“Now that I don’t remember. Trust me, when I look at you, thoughts of my mother are the last thing on my mind.” He covered my hand with his and squeezed as I became lost in his eyes.
Spitting bacon broke the trance. I jumped and raced to the stove, flipping each bacon slice over with a fork. “How do you want your chicken fruit cooked?” I asked, grabbing two brown speckled eggs from the bowl next to the stove.
“Chicken fruit?” Jack chuckled with a shake of his head. “I haven’t heard eggs called chicken fruit in nine years. In fact, my mother never allowed us to call them that when we lived here.”
“The big city folk in Port Fare, New York, don’t know about chicken fruit?” I teased.
“You remember I moved to Port Fare?” His head tilted in surprise.
“Yes. But if I didn’t, the news of you being shot was all over the local newspaper.” I fingered the eggs in my hand nervously. I didn’t mean to sound like a stalker, even though that was actually what I’d been doing these past nine years. I knew about his high school basketball career and the fact that he’d blown his knee out in twelfth grade, which forced him from the team, and he’d lost his scholarship to Ohio State University. I’d also read about his accomplishments in his police work and how he’d moved rapidly up the ranks for his exemplary service. Thank heaven for the Internet.
“That’s right,” Jack said. “Chayton told me The Town Crier ran a couple stories on me in their paper. I heard they even had some pictures. I hope they got my good side.”
You have a bad side?
The conversation lulled and it didn’t take long to lose myself in a sweet memory from nine years ago—Jack was teaching me how to skim rocks on the partially frozen Sugar Maple crick. I remembered his large hands wrapping around mine as he guided my toss. We laughed as it sank after only one skip. Jack’s stone skipped ten times, a record for him. I may have helped it a little.
“Scrambled, please,” Jack said.
“Excuse me?” I asked, pulling myself back to the present.
“The chicken fruit. Scrambled, please.” He pointed to the eggs.
“Oh, right.” I cracked the eggs into the frying pan.
“Did The Towne Crier tell everyone about my divorce, also?” he asked hesitantly.
“No. Gina, Chayton’s wife, mentioned it,” I admitted, “but she didn’t offer any details.” Gina didn’t gossip. I’d known her all my life and couldn’t remember ever hearing her repeat the local chatter.
“I got the divorce papers yesterday. I think yesterday.” He glanced at his watch. “Time just about stands still when I’m with you.” He met my eyes. “And I mean that in a good way.”
You don’t know the half of it.
His brow pinched. “What were we talking about? Oh yeah, my gold-digging, two-timing ex-wife.”
“That bad, huh?” I asked, stirring the eggs and adding a sprinkle of salt to the pan.
“Worse. I met Debbie six months after I started working for the Port Fare PD. My mother set me up with her. That should have been my first hint to run.” He scrubbed the stubble on his chin.
“What did she look like?” I asked, biting back jealousy.
“Short, blonde, shopaholic.” He shrugged. “Debbie liked things, the more expensive the better. She pressured me into buying a house we couldn’t afford.” He interlocked his fingers and put them behind his head as he leaned back in the chair. “I’d just been promoted so I had to be trained in undercover work. Most work days were twelve to fifteen hours long for me.”
“That must have been difficult for both of you.”
“For me, yes. For Debbie, not so much.” His jaw ticked once before he continued. “She loved to frequent the health spa in town, getting a massage at least once a week. Needless to say, she held up very well in my absence. As I lay in the hospital after the shooting, with tubes coming out of my chest and nose, Debbie showed up. Not to comfort me, mind you, but to say she no longer loved me and wanted a divorce.” His jaw ticked yet again before he continued. “She and her massage therapist were running off together. Not a surprise, really. The marriage was a disaster from the beginning. Debbie insisted on separate bedrooms within six months, claiming I tossed in my sleep and it kept her awake.”
“You’re kidding me.” I stood there, my hands on my hips. “Jack, that’s terrible.”
“It gets worse. Three weeks after the shooting, the bank foreclosed on my house. It seems Debbie hadn’t been making the house payment as she claimed. I always wondered how we could afford her massages with our burdensome house payments.” He shrugged and sat forward. “But I’m a free man now. Lesson learned.”
“She didn’t deserve you, Jack.” I offered him a smile.
“Sorry I’m dumping all this on you. You always were easy to talk to.” Jack stood slowly and came over next to me. A warm thrill wrapped around me.
“N-no need to apologize,” I assured him, turning my eyes
back to the pan.
“Beautiful,” Jack said in my ear a few moments later.
“What?” My breath caught as our eyes met.
“These cabinets. They’re beautiful. Did your father build them?” Jack ran a hand over the cabinet next to the stove.
“He built the entire house.” I smiled proudly. My father was a gifted carpenter. “He bought the land about five years before I was born, cleared most of it himself, too. The wood for these cabinets came from sugar maples on our property.”
“How did you end up living here? I remember you had that pretty Cape Cod on Noah’s Bend.” He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. I shivered. “Didn’t your father build that home, too?”
“Yes. After my mother died, Daddy fell apart. He started drinking.” Sorrow clutched my heart at the memories and I took a deep breath to keep from tearing up. “He didn’t finish several carpentry jobs he had in town, and in my senior year, he lost the Cape Cod. We moved up here. It was only a one room cabin then. He’d built if for my mom years earlier. She loved it up here.”
“I don’t blame her. Sugar Maple Ridge is beautiful. Magical, almost,” he said, reverently. I smiled to myself.
“When we moved in, Daddy sunk himself into finishing the cabin exactly how she’d envisioned it. Luckily, the year my mom died, he’d stockpiled all the supplies he needed to finish. I was at college for most of the construction but when I came home I could tell working on the house was like therapy for him. He actually stopped drinking for a while. He seemed happy again.”
Jack squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Marigold. I can only imagine the pain you and your father must have felt.”
“Thanks,” I said softly.
“Your father did a great job. This place is fantastic.” His eyes took in the kitchen and adjoining family room. “How many bedrooms are there?”
“Three bedrooms, two of which are upstairs. There’s this large eat-in kitchen and family room, of course, and two-and-a-half bathrooms. He also built a workroom.” I pointed to a side door off the kitchen. “I use it for packaging my herbs.”
Jack glanced over his shoulder at the workroom as I gathered some cheese from the fridge and grated it into the eggs, adding a pinch of herbs from a tin on the stove.
“Did your dad do better after he fixed up the place?” Jack asked.
“He hoped to get back to work, but you know the small town mentality.” I tried to bite back my bitterness at the small minds in Sugar Maple. “Once a drunk always a drunk. No one would hire him. He sold off some of Sugar Maple Ridge to the Abbott brothers, a little each year until all that’s left is the third that I have. Then, he just gave up and went back to drinking—he was too depressed and heartbroken to try harder. He died three years ago.”
Jack brought a sympathetic hand back to my shoulder. “Chayton said the Abbott brothers offered to buy the last third from you. Why don’t you sell it and move down into town? It must get pretty lonesome up here all by yourself.”
“I’ll never sell. This is all I have left of my parents. I intend on raising my children up here. Besides, I love this ridge. I love the privacy, and I’m away from all the town gossip. I have an acre of herbs I grow to sell fun little mixes strictly to the tourists. And I have another one for growing medicinal herbs for the locals. It’s how I make a living. A very good living.”
Opening the cabinet to grab a package of my healing herbs, I handed it to him. The small muslin bag held a cupful of lavender. On the label was a silhouette of a witch flying on a broom. I read the label aloud. “Lavender soothes bug bites and burns, and will chase away headaches. If placed under your pillow at night, it will keep the evil spirits away for a restful night’s sleep.”
“Keep evil spirits away? Isn’t that false advertising?” Jack removed the bright purple ribbon from the bag and inhaled the scent.
“No, not really. Lavender does aid relaxation, and if you’re relaxed, chances of having a nightmare are pretty slim.” I shrugged. “That’s the theory. By law I can’t say the herbs will help you since the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t tested them.” I rolled my eyes. “They even force me to add that disclaimer to my labels.” I pointed to the stupid statement on the back of the package. “If you ask me, the government should mind its own business. My family has helped people heal using herbs for decades. I have several customers who special order my herbs for what ails them.” I took a deep breath to calm myself. It wasn’t Jack’s fault a bunch of morons ran the government.
“Tell me how you really feel, Marigold.” We both chuckled at his tease. “So why the witch on the label?”
“Two reasons. One, the tourists love it. On any given day, someone is spreading a rumor about the witch who lives in the hills.” Usually a Fartious twin trying to stir up trouble. “The label is good for business.”
“And the second reason?”
“I got tired of fighting the rumors. I decided to embrace them. It’s made my life so much easier. In fact, whenever I go into town to deliver my products around Halloween, I dress like a stereotypical witch. It boosts business every time, although some locals get their knickers in a knot.” I smiled broadly.
Jack reached out and brushed my cheek. “That’s what I remember most about you back in high school. Your tenacity. Remember that week we spent together?” I nodded, mesmerized by his touch as he smiled warmly. “I remember thinking I’d never met a girl like you before. I was so crazy in love after only one week.” Jack sighed. “Sixteen and in love.” His fingers left my cheek. I could feel the quick rhythmic sound of my heart pulsing in my ears.
“Jack, I have a confession to make. I was crazy in love with you, too. When you moved, it devastated me. I cried myself to sleep for a month.” It shocked me that I freely expressed my feelings to him, and yet it felt good to come clean.
His eyes widened, as if he too were surprised, but after a moment, his jaw firmed. “I have a confession also, Marigold.” He moved closer to me. “When I said beautiful before, I didn’t really mean the cabinets. I meant you. You’re even lovelier now than you were nine years ago. I wouldn’t have thought that possible.”
Leftover bacon grease from the pan spat, landing on his soiled shirt, interrupting the moment. He jumped back.
“Are you okay?” I grabbed a dishtowel from the sink and wet the corner, dabbing at the oil spot.
Jack laughed. “I don’t think a little oil is going to matter at this point, do you?” He stuck his fingers through a few holes in his shirt, wiggling them.
“Guess not. I have a few of my father’s things in the room you’re in.” I found myself talking faster in my nervousness. I could hardly believe that Jack Mahoney almost kissed me. I also wanted to curse the stupid bacon for spitting. “You’re welcome to change. And shower, too. I’ll show you the bathroom after we eat.”
“I wouldn’t mind a shower. Though I guess I could just go home and take one. I’ll head out after breakfast.” Jack stumbled back over to the table.
I scooped up some eggs and bacon, placing it in front of him on a blue plate, along with some silverware. “Where’s your car?”
“Bike actually. It’s down the road, about two miles. I don’t think I’m in any shape to walk there. Where’s your car, and please tell me it’s not a stick?” He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and groaned in delight. “This is the best chicken fruit I’ve ever had.”
“Stick as in broom?” I cocked my head nervously. “You do think I’m a witch,” I teased.
He laughed heartily. “No, stick shift car, but you’d be driving so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a car.” His eyes lifted to mine and I shrugged. “You can stay with me a few days until your strength is back. The temperature’s dropped quite a bit since yesterday. You probably shouldn’t be out in it after your accident. Least not until your strength is back.” I dropped my gaze to the table. “I reckon I could go into town and get Sherriff Chayton to come here fo
r you. I’m sure he’s worried.”
“Actually, he’s not. I’m supposed to be on vacation for the next week. I stopped in to see you as my last assignment.” Jack pushed the rest of his eggs around his plate now. “I . . . ah . . . could stay for a few days, if you’re sure.”
His eyes met mine and I smiled. “No, I don’t mind at all. It will be nice to talk to someone other than Sera.” I pointed to the cat who sat near my feet, batting at a dust bunny.
Jack chuckled. “Not sure I’ll be as much fun.”
“Come on. I’ll get you some of my dad’s old jeans. You can shower and change.” I tried to hide the grin that took over my face. I was going to spend a few days alone with Jack, the man of my dreams.
Chapter Six
Jack
“They may be a little big,” Marigold said, handing me a pair of nicely folded jeans, along with a t-shirt and a blue plaid shirt. “To fend off the cold,” she said when I shot her a quizzical look. Plaid. Now, wouldn’t my mother pass a stone if she knew? A flannel plaid shirt, no less. I thanked Marigold and took the clothes from her. Our hands touched and a prickle raced up my arm. As always. I had no idea why, but it seemed every time I touched her, I felt the same rush of energy. As a teen, I’d brushed it off to overactive hormones. But I wasn’t a kid anymore, though I suspected overactive hormones still played a part.
So pretty. And she’d gotten prettier over the past nine years. She had a confidence about her now, as if finally comfortable in her own skin. It made me happy that she’d put the witch rumors behind and no longer let them weigh on her.
“Shower’s in there.” She pointed to the small bathroom next to the room. “Clean towels are under the sink.”
“Thanks, Marigold, for everything.” I reluctantly closed the door.
I stripped the mud-caked clothes from my weary body and dropped them in the garbage can in the corner. Climbing in the shower, I cranked the water up as hot as I could withstand and stood under the spray. It felt good as it raced over my battered body. After a few moments, I lathered up a face towel and carefully scrubbed myself clean, noting the bruises and cuts on my chest and legs.
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