That Stubborn Yankee

by Carla Neggers

  There was no light on the attic stairs. She mounted them slowly, meat cleaver held tight, and listened for any sounds of a human presence. Her heartbeat accelerated.

  Halfway up the stairs she heard flapping and ducked as a bat swooped across the open room and landed on the wall above her head. Beth threw her meat cleaver at it and missed by a yard. She stomped back downstairs, grabbed a blanket, came back up, two steps at a time, and tossed the blanket over the unsuspecting bat. She carried bat and blanket out the front door and left them there.

  Breathing hard, she shut the door and leaned against it. Better a bat than Harlan. Better a bat, certainly, than the men who had beaten up Harlan. A bat was one of the familiar disadvantages of having purchased old Louie’s place. When she fixed up the attic, there would be no more bats.

  She stuck one hand into her tub. Her bathwater had gone cold. She got her bucket and began emptying the water into the sink. She dragged the washtub back into the pantry, mopped up the splashed water and hung up her towel. After a while she went out and retrieved her blanket.

  The bat had flown away.

  HARLAN LAY ON the lumpy mattress of his makeshift bed in Beth’s attic and stared at the beamed ceiling, the timbers sawn, no doubt, generations ago at the water-powered sawmill now run by the Stiles family. Beth had once explained to him the workings of the old up-and-down saws. She had a passion for saws, post and beam construction and forest management that he had appreciated, if not shared. At the time she hadn’t acknowledged her passion, wanting out of Mill Brook, out of Mill Brook Post and Beam, out of New England altogether. It was strange that Beth was aware only of his rebellion against family tradition, not of her own.

  Strange, too, that they’d both made places for themselves within family tradition. He couldn’t give up his life in Tennessee and join the Stiles clan. He wouldn’t be himself then.

  So how could he expect Beth to give up her life in Vermont and join the Rockwood clan? Why was that self-destructive act expected of her? During their brief, tortured marriage, he had watched her try to become a Rockwood, try to live his life, and slowly, painfully, struggle to become someone else—a woman he didn’t know. Ambivalent and then angry at having to become someone she didn’t want to be, Beth had taken out her frustrations on Harlan. They’d begun to fight. Their marriage had fallen apart, and Beth had fled, back to the familiarity of her home and the much-needed love and approval of the Stiles clan.

  Harlan closed his eyes, attempting to shut out his own contradictions, his own torn loyalties. He must have been mad to come back here. They were both tenacious, stubborn, committed to their own ways of life. What could be more different than his life in Tennessee and hers in Vermont?

  He shifted slightly and heard the springs creak. Tensing, he remained utterly still. It was past midnight. He hoped Beth was asleep. Thank God for that bat! The damned thing had been diving at him for over an hour, and he’d about had his fill when Beth had heard the commotion above her. She’d dealt with it efficiently, missing him as he ducked behind an old bureau. She probably would have thrown a blanket over him and tossed him outside, too, given half a chance.

  She’d never come back to collect her meat cleaver. A small favor she hadn’t come after him with her ax.

  “Madness,” he breathed. “You should have gone back to Coffee County.”

  But Jimmy Sessoms… his mother… Saul…

  Problems for tomorrow. He would get through the night and be gone in the morning.

  In his dream he had the sensation of plummeting down a black hole. He threw out his hands and legs in a futile effort to stop himself. He kept falling. He landed with a thunk and groaned, not sure of where he was, whether he was asleep or half-awake. He gasped for air in the blinding darkness and heard the pitter-patter of rain on a tin roof.

  Then he felt the pressure of a foot on his back. “Don’t move,” Beth said.

  The ax or the meat cleaver? He didn’t move. Fully conscious now, he realized he’d fallen off his bed and landed on the floor in a tangle of blankets. Beth couldn’t see his face. He wasn’t sure it would help his cause if she could.

  She tore back the blanket and almost ripped his head off in the process. Then she said, “You,” in that mix of disgust and excitement that had always signaled her ambivalence toward him. She removed her foot from his back. He rolled over and saw she’d lowered the nastiest-looking poker he’d ever seen.

  He sat up. “Would a bad guy have fallen out of bed, for God’s sake?”

  “I don’t take chances.”

  “Did I scare you?”

  “No,” she said, standing back. “I figured it was you.”

  “Otherwise you’d have skipped the poker and brought your submachine gun?”

  That elicited a faint smile from her. “No, I’d have snuck out and gone for the police. You know, I used to feel safe here, until you showed up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  She didn’t reply. “Be downstairs in five minutes. I’ll make coffee.”

  Only then did he notice the gray light in the eyebrow windows. He glanced at his watch: not quite six. Beth disappeared down the stairs. He heard the yapping clamor of dogs and cats as she let them out. He pulled on his pants and joined her in the kitchen.

  She’d put a dented aluminum coffeepot onto the stove to perk and waved him off while she went into the pantry to change into her jogging clothes. Harlan felt like a trespasser. He sat uneasily at the table and watched the coffeepot steam and rattle.

  When she emerged in her shorts and T-shirt, her legs long and strong and smooth, Harlan felt himself stirring and had to resist the impulse to go to her. She’d pulled her hair off her face, and he was struck by her angular beauty. He knew he wanted her. Knew the energy and spirit and cockiness that had attracted him fifteen years ago were still there, stronger, deeper, more defined.

  He knew he loved her. His doubts and confusion were gone. He acknowledged his love for Beth and had a hard time concealing it.

  He was in her house, uninvited and most likely unwanted. What he did next was up to her.

  He got up and moved toward her. She held up a hand, stopping him in his tracks. He watched her hold her breath, could see the doubts and confusion clouding her face.

  ‘‘Don’t,” she whispered. ‘I’m going for a run. I need to think. You’re not what I expected to have to face today.”

  “What did you expect?” he asked.

  Her eyes held his. ‘To have to begin getting used to going on without you.”

  He was silent. She darted out the door.

  The coffee boiled over. Harlan turned off the heat, and burned his fingers on the pot. He nearly tripped over one cat, while another nuzzled against his pant leg. He nudged them both away and filled one of the mugs Beth had set on the counter. The coffee tasted burned and was strong enough to have paved Maple Street. Harlan took it onto the porch.

  The rain had stopped. A dense fog blocked the view of the mountains and enclosed the house in the private world of the valley. The air smelled of damp grass and soil. Leaning against a porch post, he imagined Beth jogging in the fog, taking long strides.

  He left his mug on the arm of a chair and started down the driveway, toward Maple Street. The dirt road was slick with rain. He crunched his bare toes in the mud and stretched his arms overhead, easing the stiffness from them. He inhaled the damp, cool morning air. He wasn’t following her. He had no idea which way she’d gone. He was just walking, just working himself into the day. If only, for a few minutes, he could stop thinking, stop feeling.

  She came up on him from behind.

  He whipped around, startled, and saw her tentative smile. She didn’t speak. Her route must have taken her down Maple Street first, then back up, so that he’d somehow ended up ahead of her. She wiped a red bandanna across her face and down her neck, then stuffed it into the waistband of her shorts.

  “Do your
feet hurt?” she asked.

  “No.” His voice was hoarse.

  “Do you remember?” She paused, then brushed one finger down his bare arm, not looking at him. “Do you remember when we made love in the field? The horses were just yards away and could have trampled us, for all we knew, and the risk added to our excitement. We were foolish, weren’t we?”

  There were fields all around them. No horses, though. He said cautiously, “No, in love.”

  “Whatever that means.”

  “Beth…”

  She moved closer to him, trailing her fingertips all the way down his arm to his wrist, then slid them onto his waist. She brought her arm around him and eased herself even closer, until he could feel the softness of her breasts against his chest.

  Her mouth was open when it reached his. Whatever restraint he might have had left vanished with the taste of her, salty and warm. She started to sink against him, and he caught her about the hips, heard her moan as they deepened their kiss.

  He didn’t know if she propelled him under the maple, or if he did her. He was hardly aware of leaving the road. They fell together into the soft, green, knee-high bed of grass beneath the arching branches of an ancient maple.

  “We weren’t foolish.” He pulled her onto himself. “We are foolish. Anyone due out on this road?”

  “Not at this time of morning. No one can see us over the stone wall.” She grinned, pulling off her shirt. “It’s my land, anyhow.”

  “I don’t want to be the subject of small-town gossip.”

  “You already are.”

  She peeled off her bra, casting it aside. It caught on a fern. Harlan smoothed his palms over her breasts and felt a familiar ache spread through him. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted her.

  Within minutes they’d both torn off all their clothes, tossing them into the dead leaves along the stone wall, into the grass and ferns. The rain started again. They paid no attention. Coming together in the cool, wet grass, enveloped by the fog, was an experience nothing like Harlan had known before.

  “Are we too old for this?” Beth asked, her mouth close to his.

  Harlan pulled her deeper into him. “Never.”

  She made a face. “I mean in the rain—out here.”

  “A dry bed would be nice, one of these days. We’ve got time.”

  Her expression darkened. “Do we?”

  Before he could answer, her mouth came down onto his and they lost themselves in a new wave of passion, as the rain pelted them. Harlan gasped for air, for release. He would drown out here, making love in the rain.

  Then there was quiet, the lull after the storm, and he realized it wasn’t raining as hard as he’d thought.

  Beth pulled on her drenched clothes. “I need to finish my run.”

  He reached for his own clothes and struggled to find the right words, the ones that could express his flood of emotions and ease the ambivalence he knew Beth was feeling. Before he could speak, she was dressed and had disappeared into the fog.

  Alone in the rain, Harlan shook bits of grass and fern from his clothes and pulled on the sopping mess as best he could. If he got back to Beth’s house and she had pulled the shades and barricaded the doors, he wouldn’t blame her. When they were apart, it seemed perfectly reasonable to him to expect they could act like two rational, intelligent adults who had put their failed marriage behind them and gone on with their lives. When they were together, that seemed a totally unreasonable expectation. They had such a volatile relationship. Even on the best days of their marriage, it had been volatile, yet invigorating. He couldn’t expect that volatility between them—whether invigorating or just damned frustrating—to dissipate.

  Climbing over the stone wall, he reminded himself of his decision last night to get out of Mill Brook this morning. First he would explain to Beth why he’d come, then she could decide for herself what to do.

  He swore and peeled a briar from his pant leg. Strange how he hadn’t noticed it before. The Beth Stiles influence. He headed back toward her house with extreme caution.

  Chapter Eight

  After she showered, dressed and made a fresh pot of coffee, Beth felt more in control of herself. She gave up trying to pretend that she and Harlan hadn’t made love and put the whole problem out of her mind. She took her coffee onto the porch and sat in one of Louie’s old chairs. A tabby cat crawled into her lap. She scratched his head and listened to his purr. The rain had stopped and the fog was lifting. Streaks of sunlight penetrated the clouds and sparkled in the puddles.

  She spotted Harlan coming around the bend, heading up her driveway.

  “Dressed in your V.P. clothes, I see,” he said easily, taking the porch steps in a single bound.

  Her vice president’s clothes weren’t all that different from her casual wear. She dressed in serviceable shirts and slacks that would be appropriate for anything from sales meetings to running one of the saws, in a pinch. Today’s outfit was stone-colored slim jeans and a coral short-sleeved cotton sweater.

  “There’s fresh coffee,” she told him.

  He was drenched and chilled. When he looked at her, her eyelashes were blacker than ever, her irises even bluer than in his dreams. “Beth, about—”

  She cut him off. “Don’t. Please. I can’t talk, not now.”

  “In a hurry?”

  She shook her head. “I need to sort things out on my own first.”

  “I understand. I’ll change clothes,” he said. “Be out in a few minutes. If you happen to see anyone coming, yell. It’s probably best no one knows I’m here.”

  “Harlan...”

  Pulling open the screen door, he grinned at her. “Wouldn’t want to become a subject of Mill Brook town gossip.”

  “You already are.”

  Given her house’s location on a knoll in the rolling valley, she could see cars coming. Beth’s curiosity was stirring again. How had Harlan’s meeting with Saul Rabinowitz gone? She was annoyed at how little she knew, and because Harlan was back in her attic, shattering her stable life, arousing her passion and curiosity and telling her nothing.

  She was falling in love with him all over again, crashing down that slippery, treacherous slope that could only lead to heartbreak. Harlan Rockwood wasn’t what she needed in her life right now.

  He returned with a mug of coffee and sat sideways on the top porch step, as he had in Coffee County, appearing relaxed and calm. He’d put on jeans and a black pullover and looked so rugged and sexy that Beth felt hot. Resist. Stick to business. You are not going to fall in love with this man.

  The tabby jumped off her lap and climbed into his. Typical! Everyone was charmed by Harlan Rockwood.

  “If you plan to stay,” she said, “you’re going to have to tell me everything. Not bits and pieces. Not what you want to tell me. Everything. Even then I might insist you leave.”

  He leveled his green eyes intently upon her. After a second he nodded. “That’s only fair. I shouldn’t have come,” he said. “I guess I can see that now. Beth, this isn’t some kind of revenge. I never had any intention of driving you crazy.”

  “That’s what you think? That I’ve gone nuts?”

  “Angry crazy, not insane crazy. I’ve thrown your life all out of balance, and I’m sorry. Mine’s been out of kilter since Char came to Nashville and I started thinking about you again. I can see—well, I can see it hasn’t been the same for you.”

  But it had—only she thought it best not to tell him so right now.

  He stretched out his long legs, crossing his ankles. The cat stretched out and fell soundly asleep, as if there were no place more secure or comfortable than Harlan Rockwood’s lap. “As they say, the road to hell’s paved with good intentions. You got out of Nashville all right?”

  She nodded. “No problem.”

  “I thought you’d stick around until after I’d met with Saul.”

  “I thought so, too. I changed my mind. It seemed... I don’t know, it seemed to me you were doing fi
ne on your own and I really was meddling— however justified my meddling might have been.”

  He digested her words for a moment, then continued. “My meeting with Saul went well. He’s on the story.”

  “Are you worried about him?”

  “He’s a pro. So are the people he’s investigating. They won’t want to tackle a member of the media if they can help it.”

  “Meaning they’d rather get to his source.”

  Harlan shrugged. “They already tried that and failed. I doubt they’ll try again. Anyway, they’re a nasty lot. For the most part, I don’t think they’d go beyond cracking skulls and breaking ribs.”

  Beth leaned forward. “For the most part?”

  “There’s one individual I’m more worried about. Even him—I don’t know.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. Saul and I agreed that I’d lie low while he did his thing. I decided one of the best places I could do that was right here, even with what’s happened this past week. Given your apparent hostility toward me, even if those gentlemen knew I’d been here, they’d hardly expect I’d come back for another dose of Stiles medicine for ex-husbands.”

  He had a point. Beth asked, “What about all your talk of not involving me in your troubles?”

  “I’m not involving you. I’m just staying with you for a bit.”

  “Sounds like a rationalization to me.”

  “Saul’s the one on the hot seat now. If these guys try to stop the story by giving me another pounding, they’ll only confirm for Saul that what I gave him is on the money. Coming after me would be counterproductive.”

  “Not if they got to you and Saul both.”

  Harlan smiled faintly. “Then they’d have the entire Manhattan Chronicle and one Elizabeth Stiles on their case, in addition to the police. Charges of horse swindling would pale next to assault or even murder. No, I believe these guys are lying low as well, contemplating ways to deny the charges against them. Their plan of intimidation didn’t work. Now common sense should tell them to drop it and find a new one.”