"Cathy Farmer's all divorced now," she offered, sticking to her obvious agenda. "And you like kids, so it shouldn't bother you that she's got three."
"Cathy Farmer comes up to my belly button," he said with a choked laugh. "Uh-uh," he added when she opened her mouth to continue. "I don't need you matchmaking for me, baby girl."
"You're not getting any younger, you know," she said, ignoring his warning. "Hey, what about her?" she asked, suddenly spinning them so that Anna came into his view. "Isn't that the lady from your mill? God, she's beautiful," Delaney whispered.
"Don't swear."
She looked up with a frown. "I heard you fired her for saving a puppy. How could you, Uncle Ethan? She's single, she seemed really nice when we toured the mill, and she's the prettiest woman here besides Mom." Her face scrunched up again. "But she probably won't dance with you because you fired her."
Nevertheless, that didn't stop Delaney from guiding them toward where Anna and John Tate were dancing. "Try anyway," she whispered. "I'll cut in on Sheriff Tate, and you grab her and apologize before she can walk away."
But just as his niece was about to implement her matchmaking plan, a woman behind Ethan said in a booming voice, "Abigail Fox! Just look at how you've grown up, child!"
To a person, everyone on the dance floor stopped, the band screeched to a stuttering halt, and silence rippled through the gymnasium on a wave of urgent hushes.
"I couldn't believe it when your mother called to see if I had any rooms available," Penny Bryant continued, stepping up to an obviously shocked Anna. "I nearly fell out of my chair when she told me she was coming to visit you!" Penny tsk-tsked loudly and shook her head. "Imagine my surprise when Madeline told me you've been living here five months now. And you never once came to see your dear old babysitter," she scolded, pulling Anna into a smothering hug.
And that was when Ethan discovered exactly what would rattle Anna Segee's cage. She stood stiff in the woman's embrace, her face completely drained of color, stunned. Ethan found himself looking into the same terrorized eyes of the eleven-year-old girl's the day he'd found her cornered in Frost Lake.
"Abby!" Penny Bryant yelped, her voice admonishing Anna for not reacting properly to her dear old babysitter— just as the first rumbles of speculation started rolling through the crowd.
Ethan strode over and pulled Anna free, folding her protectively against him. "She's been going by Anna Segee for the last eighteen years, Mrs. Bryant," he said, his voice heavily laced with warning. "And it seems you've given her a bit of a surprise."
"Well!" Penny said in a huff, her face ruddy with reproach. "She should have come to see me. I had to find out she was here from Madeline."
"I'm afraid that's my fault," he said, acutely aware of the rising murmurs spreading through their audience. "I've been monopolizing Anna's time, seeing how we're engaged to be married," he added somewhat more loudly as he briefly smiled down at Anna's blank, unseeing eyes. He looked back at Penny Bryant. "We're planning a May wedding."
"Oh, Abby— I mean Anna!" Penny gushed, reaching for her.
Ethan turned to put Anna out of the busybody's reach. "And if you will excuse us, I think I'll take my fiancée home." He started to turn for the door, still holding Anna tightly against him, but stopped and looked back at the owner of the only bed-and-breakfast in town. "When did you say her mother was arriving?"
"Oh. Madeline's flying into Portland on Wednesday," Penny said, puffing up with importance, "but she won't get here until Friday. She and her husband are renting a car and driving up the coast first."
Ethan felt Anna shut down completely, as if a heavy slab of granite had slammed inside her, sealing her off from the world. He reached behind her knees and lifted her into his arms, then nodded to Oak Grove's town crier. "Thank you," he said, striding past the gaping crowd, making eye contact only with Alex.
Alex said something to his wife, rushed to open the door for him, and followed him out. They walked to Ethan's truck in silence, where Alex opened the passenger door and Ethan set Anna inside before shutting the door and turning to his brother.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Alex asked tightly.
Ethan ran an unsteady hand through his hair. "I have no idea," he admitted, glancing over to see Anna sitting stone still, blankly staring out the windshield. He stepped toward the back of the truck. "But I couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Look at her," he growled. "She's nearly comatose."
"Then yes, get her out of there. But why in hell announce that you're engaged?"
"For insurance."
"Against?"
"Against what happened to her before," he snapped. "To make sure it doesn't happen again."
Alex shook his head. "She's not eleven anymore, Ethan. Anna appears more than capable of holding her own against men. She'd been doing a damn fine job of it all evening."
"As Anna Segee." He headed around the back side of the truck. "Every goddamn whore hound this side of the border would be sniffing around her within the week if I hadn't said we're engaged." He stopped beside his door. "I may need you to come in and work at the mill. Can you cover it? I have until Friday to snap her out of this so she can face her mother as Anna Segee." He made a helpless gesture. "If I can't, then we're both screwed."
Alex grabbed Ethan's arm when he reached for the door handle. "Why do you care?"
"Because I do." He opened the door and got in the truck before looking at Alex. "Because… because I do," he said thickly, and closed the door.
He drove out of the parking lot, acutely aware of the silent, motionless woman beside him as he turned onto the main road and headed toward Fox Run. Dammit to hell! He was so angry, he wanted to roar.
No, not so much angry as scared. She was far too quiet. What was going on in her head right now? Anything? Nothing? Anna was so completely shut down, so not there, that Ethan suspected it didn't have anything to do with learning her mother was arriving on Friday, but rather that the entire town knew who she was. But could something as simple as Penny calling her Abigail Fox turn her back into a terrorized little girl in the blink of an eye?
And terror it had been. From the time he'd found her torn dress on the path leading down to the lake, to when he'd come upon her standing shoulder deep in the cold water, begging the boys to leave her alone, Ethan had instinctively known what was happening. He'd gone after the bastards in a rage, and by the time the dust had settled, she'd taken advantage of the distraction he'd caused and disappeared. He'd never seen her again; his last memory of her was her huge, shattered eyes and pale, bruised face as she'd tearfully pleaded with her attackers to leave her alone.
Ethan sensed her silently looking over at him, and realized that on some level she was cognizant. And though he felt like a bastard himself for asking, he knew he wouldn't have a better chance of getting an honest answer out of her. Besides, he needed to know exactly what he was dealing with if he hoped to help her— as well as finally put to rest something that had haunted him for eighteen years.
He took a calming breath and said as gently as possible, "I was never sure, exactly. Were those boys threatening you for sport, or did they rape you?"
"One tried, but couldn't," was her barely audible reply.
He took a shuddering breath, his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel as his rage resurfaced. How in hell could anyone be as free-spirited in bed as Anna was, after such a devastating experience? "Which one?" he gently probed.
"I don't know."
After turning off the main road and onto her lane, he stopped the truck, shut off the engine, and stared through the windshield.
"Craig Logan died in a logging accident about nine years ago," he told her. "Peter Wright moved to Texas right after high school, and Ron Briggs lives down in Greenville now." He looked over at her. "Briggs has been in and out of jail for the last fifteen years and works odd jobs when he's not too drunk."
She hugged her arms, staring at the dash in front of her. "You weren't surpris
"I've known for some time," he softly admitted, opening his door and getting out of the truck. He walked to the gate, realized he didn't have the key, and stood there in the beam of the headlights— damn near close to shutting down himself. He dropped his head instead, and took another shuddering breath.
The lights on his truck went out, and he heard the passenger door open and close just before he heard Anna's footsteps on the gravel. "We'll have to walk. I don't know where my purse is," she said flatly, rounding the gate and starting down the lane.
Ethan ducked under the metal bar and fell into step beside her and they headed down the mile to her mill in silence. But a short time later she suddenly stopped and grabbed his arm for balance to take off her shoe. He'd forgotten she was wearing three-inch heels. Before she could undo the strap, he lifted her into his arms and started walking again.
"It's too far to carry me."
"Hush. You'll cut your feet if I don't." He smiled at her. "Besides, this way I get to enjoy how nice you smell."
Anna took his edict to heart and stayed mute in his arms the rest of the way— while Ethan silently wondered if she had heard him tell everyone that they were getting married next month.
Chapter Seventeen
By the time he climbed her porch steps, Ethan's arms had gone completely numb. He didn't know if Anna had fallen asleep or simply withdrawn inside herself, because she hadn't so much as twitched in the last half hour.
Deciding that if he set her down he'd never be able to pick her up again, he fumbled the door open and carried Anna upstairs. He set her on her feet in her bedroom, holding her until he was sure she could stand, alarmed that she remained so uncharacteristically malleable.
He lit the kerosene lamp on the bureau, then unzipped the back of her dress. "How about if I draw you a bath and make you a cup of hot cocoa?"
She clasped her hands to the front of her dress so it wouldn't slip off. "I— I can undress myself," she whispered, looking straight ahead. "Thank you for bringing me home. Could you feed Bear before you leave?"
Leave? He wasn't stepping one goddamned foot off this property, knowing she'd be halfway to Quebec by sunrise.
"I'll go run your bath and put on the kettle." He hesitated at the door, but she still didn't move. "Just throw on your bathrobe and I'll come get you in a little while."
When she still didn't respond, he headed down the stairs, so angry that he wanted to pound something— preferably Penny Bryant. That self-serving bitch couldn't have waited until she'd gotten Anna alone. Oh no, she'd had to make her announcement to the entire town.
"We don't need armies to invade a country," he muttered to himself, putting the kettle on to boil. "We could just send in one single busybody to start a vicious rumor and the whole damn place would implode from the chain reaction."
Ethan went out and started the generator to kick on the well pump and lights, then went into the bathroom, put the plug in the tub, and started running the water. He spotted the assortment of bottles on the shelf, reached for the purple one labeled BUBBLE BATH, and took off the cover and sniffed it. Lavender; that's what Anna smelled like. He poured a quarter of the bottle in the tub, watching the water froth into bubbles as the air filled with the scent of flowers. Ethan gave a tired sigh, in need of a hot soak himself.
Leaving the tub to fill, he strode back into the living room and out onto the porch, and whistled to Bear. The dog came lumbering up the steps and inside, and Ethan propped the door closed with a heavy chair, then sat down and took off his boots. He stood with a groan, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders, and looked up the stairs as he listened for sounds of movement. All he heard was the hum of the generator and an occasional creak of the old house settling into the thawing ground.
He fed Bear, set out some seed for Anna's critters, shut off the boiling kettle, then went in and shut off the water in the tub— which now had bubbles cascading over its rim. "What do you think, old boy?" he asked Bear, who had forgone his dinner to come sniff the bubbles instead. "Any suggestions on how we can get her through this?"
Bear nudged Ethan's hand and gave a soulful whine.
Ethan rubbed the dog's ears. "I'm tempted to just pack us all up and take her deep into the woods." He returned to the living room, Bear padding behind him. "But that would only postpone her crisis, not resolve it. And she's already spent eighteen years keeping what happened bottled up inside her."
He stirred the dying embers in the fireplace, added some kindling, then sat down on the stone hearth and turned to Bear. "So if it takes a month of Sundays, she's going to deal with it now. And I'll be right beside her the entire time, no matter how hard she tries to push me away."
Bear's cataract-clouded eyes looked up at him, his whole body shaking with his wagging tail as he wheezed out a soft woof.
"I agree," Ethan said with a final pat before he stood up and headed for the stairs. "The Segee clan did such a good job smothering her in love that they raised an entirely different person from the one who left here eighteen years ago. Now we have to find a way to make Abby Fox and Anna Segee into one whole confident woman again." The old Lab wagged his tail, and Ethan quietly headed up to Anna's bedroom.
He found her lying on her bed facedown, wearing thick flannel pajamas that had feet, softly snoring. This was good, he decided as he settled a blanket over her, though he was amazed she could fall asleep. He didn't dare close his own eyes, for fear his imagination would fill in the rest of what sort of hell she'd gone through that day when those bastards had torn off her dress and tried to rape her.
He rubbed a hand over his face in an attempt to wipe away the frightening image. Good God, Anna had been Delaney's age. He turned and walked downstairs into the bathroom, and just stared at the tub of bubbles. Well, dammit to hell. He stripped off his clothes, climbed in, and sank into the steaming lavender-scented water. He still couldn't shut down his mind the way Anna had, but his muscles finally started to loosen.
Afterward, Ethan dried and dressed, then sat down in front of the fire. He spotted the stack of old, dusty blue journals on the coffee table and thumbed through them until he realized what they were. He looked for the book dated eighteen years ago, opened it to the first page, and started reading.
* * *
Anna woke up sticky with sweat and stuffy from the strong smell of flowers, the source of both apparently being the large male body enveloping her like a Swedish sauna. But if Ethan was sleeping with her, why had she put on her flannel pajamas? And why in heck did he reek of lavender?
Then she suddenly remembered last night, how Penny Bryant had shattered her carefully constructed wall of protection in front of the entire town, like a rogue wave crashing down with the force of the entire Atlantic behind it.
All Anna remembered was feeling utterly naked and completely helpless— emotions so foreign to her that she'd simply shut down. She had no recollection of what happened after, only a vague sense of being carried off by a dark, familiar figure whose anger had been a palpable thing.
Ethan. But had he been angry at Penny Bryant or at her? It must have been a shock to learn the woman he was sleeping with was the same person he'd rescued eighteen years ago. No, not the same. Abigail Fox no longer existed; she was Anna Segee now, and she was afraid of no one— especially a town full of gossiping busybodies.
Then why couldn't she shake this feeling of dread? And would she be able to put that frightened little girl back in the bottle and cork it as tightly as she had before? Now she understood why her father had fought her returning to Maine. He'd instinctively known that she might be risking her very existence. And as for Ethan… By coming back she had also risked her fairy-tale childhood memory of him in exchange for the reality of the man he had actually become.
And hadn't she seen a glimpse of the real Ethan last night, and hadn't he been as frighteningly dangerous as everyone kept telling her? But despite knowing who she really was, he'd brought her home and stayed with her. Out of a sense of obligation, or worse, out of pity?
Ethan had felt compelled to protect her— just as he had eighteen years ago, and just as he had tried to do for Pamela Sant. The man really did have a knight-in-shining-armor complex; he still couldn't turn his back on a woman in distress.
How… noble of him.
Feeling so stifled she could no longer breathe, Anna carefully raised Ethan's arm from around her waist and slipped out of bed. She tiptoed to the bureau, gathered up some clothes, and quietly walked downstairs. She stopped upon entering the bathroom and frowned at the tub full of cold, murky water. Ethan had taken a lavender bubble bath?
She pulled up the sleeve of her pajamas, reached into the water with a shiver, and pulled the drain plug just as Bear came padding in and butted his head against her leg. "Hey, pup." She wiped her wet hand on her pajamas, then gave his ears a gentle rub. "Are you hungry?" she asked, going into the kitchen to fill his dish, only to find it overflowing with food. She crouched down and held his head to look him straight in the eye. "You can't stop eating, Bear. I know I'm a poor replacement for Gramps, but I love you. Please don't start wasting away from a broken heart."
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