End Of The Road: (A Clean Romance Novella) (Women's Adventure in Alaska Romance Book 3)

by Renee Hart

  “Or take a big gouge out of the sale price of the land,” Harold said, laughing. “Oh, my. Sharada, remind me never to get on your bad side.”

  I laughed as well, resting the axe against my shoulder and looping my other arm through Harold's as we headed back inside. I might have to turn the land over to Sunil, but I was determined that by the time I was done with it, the property value would plummet down so far that he would never make a profit off it.

  Chapter 13

  For the rest of the week, we spent our “vacation” wreaking havoc all up and down the cranberry farm. Harold asked me more than once if we might get into legal trouble for this, but I reassured him that as long as I owned the property, I could do whatever I wanted to it. And Sunil would have to take what he got in the end, because suing me to reimburse him for the damages would never work out in his favor.

  We made a game of it, driving from one sprinkler, pump, or mechanism to another, smashing them and moving on, as if we were in some kind of video game: “Cranberry Crush Saga.” When we encountered something that couldn't be pulled out of the ground by the tractor, we either smashed it up with the axe, or Harold pulled out his tools and disassembled the joints and struts that held the machine in place so that it could be more easily torn apart. I didn't know if we'd have time to ruin the entire 1200 acres, but I was having so much fun that I didn't care.

  I never would have thought, after more than a decade working in a university library, that I would have developed such a penchant for vandalism. I almost understood why some of our fraternities took such great risks on their annual pranks, just to feel the rush of it all.

  By night, Harold and I cooked dinner over the fire in the farmhouse. My phone died in the second day, and there was no way to charge it with no electricity. I left it off, feeling refreshed now that I was unplugged from the constant flow of information that clouded us in the digital age.

  I felt like I was living back in the 1800s, burning wood for warmth and unable to communicate with the outside world. Of course, we didn't go too rustic; we went into town for dinner most nights, and brought bottled water and packaged foods back to the farmhouse. I knew I would never have cut it as an old-fashioned farm girl without at least some modern conveniences. And after the first few days of sweating in the fields I was really missing my big Jacuzzi bathtub back home.

  One of the real treasures we found in the farmhouse was the books. They were old, most of them published between the 1950s and 1980s. Their covers were wrinkled and faded with age, and the yellowed pages had that musty smell of old paper. Most of the titles were ones neither Harold or I had ever heard of: a variety of old Harlequin romance novels that had been forgotten by time, some campy 1970s sci fi with horribly inaccurate predictions of what life in the 2000s was expected to be like, and some quirky mystery novels with the humorous style reminiscent of 1980s sitcoms. There were also first editions of To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I packed those away carefully, eager to add them to my personal collection at home.

  On Friday, with our vacation nearly at an end, Harold and I drove Babe the Blue Pickup Truck down to the shore and spent the day at the beach. I laid out on a towel under the sun, sipping lemonade and eating salt water taffy we'd bought at the boardwalk. Children ran past, laughing and splashing in the water, reminding me of the family I'd never gotten around to starting. I watched them through my sunglasses, wishing that it weren't too late in life to open that unfinished chapter.

  Harold watched me as I watched the children. He put a hand on my knee and gave me a small smile. “I think maybe you haven't been honest with yourself,” he said.

  “About what?” I looked over at him, fearing I knew the answer.

  “About that.” He nodded towards the children. “About starting a family of your own.”

  “It's too late for that.” I laid back on the towel, closing my eyes. “I'm in my forties. And don't give me any of that stuff about women in their forties being young, or how plenty of women my age have kids. It's...it's not that simple.”

  “Why can't it be? I mean, if that's what you want...”

  I looked up at him. His head was haloed by the sun hanging in the clear blue skies overhead. He wore a pair of cutoff jeans as his swimsuit, and his bare chest gleamed with sweat. There were touches of gray in the hair on his chest, and in the week's worth of whiskers he'd grown during the vacation.

  “You already went through that part of your life,” I said. “Your kids are grown, out of college. Do you really want to start it all again, this late in life? Setting aside the fact that we've only been together a short time, and it'd be another year or more before I'd be ready to talk about marriage, kids, and all that. If I did tell you that's what I wanted, would you even be up for it?”

  He was quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought. He sat there with his knees pulled against his chest, staring out at the ocean waves. “Sometimes, I'm not sure,” he finally said. “Towards the end of my marriage, my wife and I actually talked about having another kid.”

  “Really?” I studied his profile, wondering about his ex-wife and the slow deterioration of their marriage. He'd already told me they had only stayed together for the sake of the kids. I was surprised that they had considered having more.

  “We thought it would be good for us,” he said. He pulled a twig out of the sand and tossed it towards the water. “As much as we struggled, there were times when we were happy. Most of those times were centered around the kids. I think Janet and I never really knew how to love each other, but we knew how to love our children. We knew how to be parents.”

  “Oh.” I stared out at the water, wondering if I even knew how to be a parent. I'd been a wife, I'd been a librarian. But I'd never raised kids of my own. I hadn't even helped out with my sister's kids, since they still lived back in India, and I only saw them once or twice a year. I adored them and I did my best to dote on them. But I'd never experienced what it was like to be with them twenty-four hours a day. I was the aunt who brought presents and took them out to have fun, then left them with their parents when it was time for me to fly back home.

  “We finally decided against it,” Harold said. “But there's a part of me that's always regretted it. I don't know if maybe I thought I'd do it better the next time around. Learn from the mistakes I made when I was younger. I did the best I could for my kids, but they had a rough time. Especially in the early days, when I could barely support them. But now?” He shrugged. “I'm certainly doing just fine financially these days. I could provide for a kid. I could love a kid.”

  I watched the children running along the beach. I saw a couple of younger kids building a sand castle, while further down a pair of young girls dug for sea shells and collected them in a plastic bucket. There was an ache inside of me, a piece that had been missing for years. I weighed that hole against the thoughts that I was too old, that there were so many possible health risks, and that Harold might not want to go through all of that with me. I couldn't come up with an answer.

  “It might be something to think about,” I said.

  “Might?” Harold looked over at me, studying my expression.

  “Let's see how everything else goes, first,” I said. I sat up and put my arms around him. “I want to focus on us for now. And I like where 'us' is going. And it's possible that there might be room to turn 'us' from a couple into a family. Though maybe adoption would be best. Fewer health risks, and maybe we could find some child that really needs a good home, and provide them with one.”

  “And we could skip the changing diapers part,” Harold said.

  I laughed, then kissed his cheek. “Yes, that would be a nice bonus, I suppose.”

  We enjoyed the sun awhile longer, then took a quick dip into the ocean to cool off and rinse the sand from our skin. The sun was setting by the time we climbed into Harold's truck and drove back to the farm. Our vacation was just about over, and I found I wasn't looking forward to heading back to
civilization. The college campus would be so noisy and crowded compared to the privacy Harold and I had shared over the past week. There was something mystical about sharing the old farmhouse, knowing that there was no one else around for as far as the eye could see. We could have danced naked through the fields in the middle of the day without fear of getting caught. We had a freedom the likes of which I'd never known back home.

  Though one thing I had learned after spending every day and night with this man for a week straight was that I enjoyed being around him so much. I was getting used to sharing every moment of our days together. We might have been too early in our relationship to start thinking about children, but I already knew that Harold was the man I wanted to live with. I wanted him to become a permanent part of my life as soon as the situation with Sunil was completely sorted out.

  Chapter 14

  On the last day at the farm, we hauled a few big old gas cans out of the barn and loaded them into the back of the truck. We drove into town, fueled up the truck, and filled all of the cans with gasoline. While Harold was working the fuel pump, I went into the bathroom and washed up a bit, and I found an electric outlet I could plug my phone charger into. It was just about time to get back to civilization, and that meant being ready to face phone calls and emails once again.

  On the way back to the farm, I spotted a little family-owned ice cream parlor. We stopped for a couple of homemade ice cream cones, then drove back to the farm. When we pulled onto the dirty driveway that led up to the farmhouse, I left my cone in a paper cup in one of the truck's cup holders, and Harold and I set to work.

  I brought all of our luggage out, along with the old books we had found, and loaded it into the back of the truck. I added the rest of the cranberry wine as well, plus a few other keepsakes that I thought were worth saving. Harold took the gas cans and started pouring them all over both barns, then all throughout the house. Once the luggage was loaded up, I sat on the hood of the truck, eating the last of my ice cream, as I watched my boyfriend prepare to commit an act of arson. Part of me worried about the police showing up. But we were far enough from the next nearest farm that we almost never even saw another car drive by.

  It was a pity to destroy the old farmhouse. There was clearly a lot of history there. I wondered about the family that had once lived there. Sunil's relatives. I'd never really met most of the American side of his family. I didn't know what they were like, if they were anything like him, or whether they knew about the kinds of illegal activities he got up to. I wondered what his deceased uncle would think about us destroying his farm, ruining the work of generations of his family. Some of the equipment and irrigation systems we'd destroyed had been decades old, maintained over the long years by a loving hand. And a lot of money had clearly been invested into making this land into a profitable venture. Harold and I were destroying all of that.

  Part of me wondered if I was only doing it to get back at Sunil for all of the trouble he'd caused me lately. I'd heard of women who would smash their husband's stereo or ruin an expensive pair of golf clubs to get back at a man who had cheated or been horrible to them in some way. I once knew a girl who had thrown her boyfriend's widescreen plasma TV out of the window of a fourth-story apartment when she found another girl's panties in their bedroom. Of course, the boyfriend had sworn they must have just gotten mixed in with their laundry at the laundromat, but she hadn't believed him.

  I had told myself, before all of this started, that I was only doing this to keep Sunil from profiting from this land. He would probably still make a lot of money off the sale of the land based on the acreage alone, but not anywhere near as much as he would have with the equipment still intact. Some of the pumps, sprinklers, and irrigation systems would have just needed some basic repairs to be up and running again, if Harold and I hadn't destroyed them so thoroughly.

  Harold lit a few wooden matches and tossed them into each building. Then he joined me on the hood of the truck. I handed him his ice cream cone and we sat there for awhile in silence, eating our ice cream and watching the buildings burn to the ground. The muddy land around the farm was wet enough to keep the fire from spreading too far or getting out of control. I wondered if I was out of control. But I knew that soon enough, I'd be back at the library, living my simple, boring life once again. Though with Harold there, simple didn't have to be boring.

  I tossed the last few bites of my ice cream cone aside and folded my hands in my lap. Sitting there with Harold, watching the fire, was almost romantic. At least, in a wild, illegal sort of way. Smoke poured into the air, and I kept looking around to see if fire trucks would show up. But when you were surrounded by 1200 acres of land, there was no one around to watch the place burn to the ground.

  “How do you feel?” Harold asked as we watched the flames. The roof of the farmhouse caved in with a monumental crash, sending sparks into the air. Even as far back as we were, I could feel the heat from the flames on my face.

  “Better,” I said. “Free. Like it's a cleansing flame.”

  “I've heard of women burning an ex's old clothes, or the gifts he'd given them,” Harold said, chuckling. “Kind of like burning your bridges. Getting rid of all of the evidence that your life together ever happened.”

  I thought about my house, waiting for me back in the city. The house I'd shared with Sunil. There was still a lot of history there. Evidence of the life he and I had once shared together. I wasn't about to burn it all down, but I wondered if maybe it was time to move on. Sell the house, find someplace new. Someplace to start building new memories.

  I watched one of the walls of the barn tip over, splashing into the mud. The wet ground hissed and sizzled as the crumbled wall burned.

  “I'll be glad to have all of this behind me,” I said. “The thing about burning your bridges is that it makes you have to keep moving forward. It keeps you from being stuck living in the past.”

  Harold patted my knee. I scooted closer to him and laid my head against his shoulder. We snuggled there, on the hood of Babe the Blue Pickup Truck, as the flames slowly ate away at what was left of the buildings and the inferno started to fade away.

  When the buildings collapsed into piles of flaming rubble, Harold started the gas-powered generator that was hooked up to the last sprinkler system, the only one that we'd left intact. It started spraying water over the ruins, slowly dousing them until nothing was left but charred embers and muddy puddles of ash. When the fire finally burned itself out, we got into the truck and drove off, the tires splashing through mud puddles as we made our way down the long dirt driveway and made our way back to civilization and to our lives.

  Chapter 15

  My first day back at the library was simple and boring. A lot of the day was filled with students coming in searching for books they needed to complete midterm assignments. Assignments they had put off until after Spring Break, because that was how college students were. Jessica asked me a lot about my vacation, though of course I didn't want to let her in on the real details.

  “It was kind of this little rustic bed and breakfast thing,” I told her. I felt bad for lying to her, but I couldn't exactly tell her that I'd gone to my ex-husbands farm and burned the place to the ground. I still couldn't believe that I'd done it.

  “That sounds so romantic,” she said. “Was it by the shore?”

  “Yes. We spent a day down at the beach. Though most of the time we just stayed in, reading and sitting in front of the fire. Or we went outdoors and enjoyed nature.”

  “That sounds nice.” She forced a smile, but I knew that when Jessica called something “nice” it was her way of saying it was boring. She'd told me that her Spring Break had been spent down in Atlantic City, seeing the shows and racking up big bar tabs in the casinos.

  After work, I went home and got changed into one of my nicer professional dresses. I did my hair and makeup, wanting to make sure I looked good when I faced Sunil. It might have been vain, but it made me feel better to know I'd be showing
him what he had lost. I kept my chin high and drove to my lawyer's office, ready to sign the papers that would hopefully keep Sunil out of my life forever.

  When I got there, my lawyer was already waiting. He had a private security guard in the room as well. Officially, the guard was there simply because we were dealing in deeds and papers for lands that had been appraised for a value in the millions (though that would change after the week I'd just had). Unofficially, the guard was there just in case Sunil couldn't keep his temper.

  My lawyer knew all about every encounter Sunil and I had had over the last couple of months. He'd encouraged me on more than one occasion to press charges, and I'd been tempted to do so. But I'd decided that I was handling this situation my own way.

  Sunil was late, and I sat there the entire time trying to keep my hands from shaking. It wasn't just because of fear of the way he'd been behaving lately. I also knew that he had an explosive temper. And for the sake of full disclosure, I'd have to report the damages today. If I waited until after I'd signed over the land to tell Sunil what had happened, he'd have a better chance of taking legal action against me. But technically, as long as I told him in advance, nothing I'd done was strictly illegal. At least, I hoped not.

  Sunil came in wearing a dark gray business suit. His lawyer walked in with him, carrying a briefcase. They sat across the table from us. The lawyer said, “Good morning,” but kept a grim face as she sorted through her papers. Sunil stared me down from across the table. I wished that Harold could have been here. But when it came down to it, this was something that Sunil and I had to settle on our own.

  The lawyers went over some of the basics first, touching on the main points of the meeting. I was handed a contract to read over, which basically said that I was giving up ownership of the land and transferring it to Sunil in its entirety, at no cost. Things were completely straightforward until it came time for full disclosure about any issues with the property.