by Anna Adams
Emma flattened her palms against the cool window. Her breath fogged the pane. Alone and confused in Nan’s safe, warm house, Emma shivered as if Noah had brought all the cold she’d ever known inside and left it behind.
CHAPTER TWO
“I APPRECIATE YOUR coming tonight,” Noah said to the rain-dampened group who’d arrived to hear him speak about the new clinic. “I expected the rain to keep some of you away. But I see it didn’t.”
There were general murmurs of agreement. His thoughts were on Emma, working on her laptop at a table just outside the library’s conference room. She’d barely glanced at him when he came in. Her eyes had widened and she’d looked back at her work. She’d set up a business while she was gone, building websites and creating social media platforms for clients. Maybe that work was difficult to do in her house with Owen sawing and hammering to repair the widespread damage her termites had caused both outside and within the house.
“I’ve distributed some information.” Noah held up a stack of pages. “As many of you know, I’ve been talking to the town council about building a clinic here in Bliss. I’ve ordered a financial study to anticipate costs versus profits. I’ve suggested several properties that might be appropriate. The council is not amenable so far, so I’ve come to you, neighbors and friends, residents who live here full time.”
“Would the town own the clinic?” a man in the back asked. He had a farm down the narrow dirt road from the inn.
“If the town provides funding, yes. I haven’t been able to interest a hospital in building here because of the council’s reluctance, but we need more medical care. I can give you an X-ray and draw your blood, but I have to send tests to a lab in Knoxville or Asheville. I don’t have the equipment here to complete the kind of work my patients often need.”
“You already have an office.” Maeve, who owned the local pharmacy, cut in. “How would you run the clinic as well?”
“I’ve included funding estimates for staffing. I’d take shifts in the clinic, but it wouldn’t be my office.”
“Why is the council against it?”
That soft voice came from the entry to the room, a voice from dreams he’d tried to stop dreaming.
He let no emotion cross his face. He must be good at that—she hadn’t seen how she’d affected him at her house. Despite his inconvenient continued attraction to her, he wasn’t going to let her drag him into the past.
He nodded at her, but then spoke to the room at large. She knew her father was in the mix of the council and opposed the clinic. “A variety of reasons. The first is that it doesn’t suit the council’s idea of the covenants set up when Bliss began to cater to skiing and tourism. A clinic is not high-end shopping. It’s not a picturesque eatery or a B&B that looks like a country estate. It doesn’t bring in the money that new business is required to furnish in this town.”
“Would it pay for itself, though?” the farmer at the back asked.
“Barely,” Noah said, “at least as far as we’ve done the estimation. “But we need an expert who can inform us about any possible tax burden. We’ll set up funding and build a trust from donations that will be as strict as any town covenant dreamed of being.”
“What do you want us to do?”
Noah glanced at Emma, whose troubled gaze rested on a face in the crowd. It was Megan, her stepmother, perched on a metal chair near the exit door. Megan, who appeared equally troubled, looked back at Emma. Some things hadn’t changed. Emma must have conditions for Megan to meet before she could accept her.
He’d been there.
He got back to work. “I’d like to set up a committee. Someone to search for a property the council can’t reject. Someone who has experience or an interest in fundraising. Someone who’s done PR.”
Some of the attendees stirred. Not Emma. He hated being so aware of her. Couples in the crowd spoke to each other. No one volunteered.
“Look.” He took off his jacket and dropped it over the back of his chair at the table beside the podium. “You all know me. I come from a family where violence and anger flourished, but care was—care was almost nonexistent. Maybe that’s why I’m a doctor. I want to take care of people. I believe that we can arrange for every family in this little town to have more immediate care. They deserve it.”
He tugged at his tie.
“If you have a skill you think would benefit the clinic, see me, call me, email or text. I need your help. We all need your help.”
Except Emma, he was thinking as he glanced back at the two Candler women. Megan was already slipping beneath the red letters of the exit sign, but Emma remained, one brow raised as if she were puzzled that Megan had left without speaking.
Just then a number of people rose from their seats and surged to meet him at the podium and volunteer their services. Startled, he took names and numbers and business cards and promises. By the time the last volunteer took her leave, he had a meeting set for the following week to assess their position.
Noah packed everything into his laptop case and cleared paper coffee cups and forgotten notes and his flyers from the tables and floor and gothic window ledges. He straightened chairs and took one last look before he turned off the light and walked out of the room. He tried not to look for Emma, but he failed.
He waited a moment too long to look away, for she lifted her gaze and pulled out her earbuds.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted me to help,” she said.
He’d never lied to Emma before, but he didn’t want her close. Sure, he’d dated other women in the time she’d been gone. Nurses where he’d done his residency. Skiers, who had no reason to stay in Bliss after their vacations. But Emma still affected him.
“I thought you’d probably rather not be on a committee with me. Besides, you won’t be here long.”
“I can set up a website, social media.” She glanced at her screen. “It all helps get your word out. Someone else can run it after I leave.”
“I’ll find someone to work with you if you’re willing?”
“I am,” she said and picked up her earbuds.
“Not getting along with Megan?” he asked, wishing he hadn’t, wishing she’d been quicker with her music.
“I don’t know her. It feels strange. She’s married to my father. They have this whole life I don’t know about. I don’t even know if I’m welcome.”
“She looks like she’s feeling the same. She’s nice, Emma. She didn’t move to town with an attitude, and she loves your dad. She wants him to be happy, which means she’ll welcome you into their new life.”
Emma’s natural response four years ago was a smile. He didn’t even realize he was waiting to see the sweet, open curve of her mouth until it didn’t come.
“I thought you weren’t looking after anyone except yourself these days.”
“You want to get along if we pass on the street, but you won’t try to be friends,” he said. “Good to know where we really stand.”
“Wait.” She stood, glancing around, but no one left in the library seemed interested in them. “I’m sorry. I do want to be friends, but I’m not sure how we manage that.”
“Neither am I,” he admitted, clamping down on his compulsion to take her hands in his and ease her fingers apart. “For a start, we could trust each other. I know you’re leaving. You know I’m staying. We both know our relationship ended four years ago. We have no ulterior motives.”
“You were talking about my dad in there. All those reasons to turn down the clinic, they’re stodgy and shortsighted.”
“If you mean I was speaking directly to you, I wasn’t. All the council members stand by the old covenants. You know there are towns in these mountains that feature bright lights and big noise. No one wants that here. I don’t want that here, but I want facilities that keep someone like my brother from having to drive alm
ost two hours to get help for a work injury.”
“And you’ve explained that to the council?”
“No one in your dad’s position will listen.” Noah kept in mind the need to rein in his anger. He assumed part of the council’s rejection of his plan was that it came from him, the son of a man who’d put the town in a bad light every time he staggered out of one bar and into another, hitting on young female skiers and begging for change for his next drink.
Now Noah was in the position of begging, and the council seemed to enjoy every opportunity they had to say no to a Gage.
“I can talk to Dad,” Emma said.
“I’m not asking you to do that.” His voice rose, startling her, shaming him. The last thing he wanted was to be aggressive with a woman. In the middle of long dark, lonely nights he felt around his psyche for those instincts. He softened his tone. “I will if I have to, but not yet,” he said. “If you’d set up the media links we could use, I’d be grateful.”
“Okay. I’ll email the information to you. I can get your email address from Owen?”
He pulled a business card from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. “Now, about Megan,” he said.
“I know.” She rubbed her mouth. “I have to stop acting as if she swung into town just to pick Dad’s pockets.”
“You should probably thank her for being willing to live here with him. I hear she was kind of an influential voice in New York.”
“I heard socialite. I just didn’t believe anyone used that word anymore.”
He smiled because she couldn’t hide the bitterness she clearly disliked feeling. At least she felt safe venting to him. “I’ll look forward to your information. Thanks for doing this, Emma.”
“You’re welcome.” She picked up her own laptop case, and slipped his card into a pocket. He left while she was packing the rest of her things.
* * *
IN THE GRIP of an overgrown crepe myrtle she was trying to prune, Emma heard tires on the gravel drive. She twisted, hoping not to see Noah. She didn’t recognize anyone’s car sounds anymore. Struggling against the pull of the bony branches in her hair, she turned to set the shears on the ground and tried to unthread herself.
Too bad Owen wasn’t working today. He’d had some super-secret trip to a city in the big world.
A low-slung, silver vehicle turned on the gravel, slinging a few rocks upward. The driver was Megan, looking pretty sporty for a pregnant woman. She parked and climbed out, pushing her sunglasses into her dark brown hair like a headband.
As they eyed each other across the expanse of gravel, Emma didn’t know what to say. They’d been polite at the wedding about nine months ago, but neither had experienced step-relation love at first sight. And the other night, Megan had left without speaking to her.
Maybe because no matter how much Emma didn’t want to be her old, pushy, demanding, loveless, but hungry-for-love self, she couldn’t help the hostility she used for protection. Her father had someone new, and a new child coming.
Emma hadn’t expected life to stop while she was gone, but she hadn’t expected her father to find a whole new family that might be a bit more pleasant than she was.
Megan turned back to the still-open door of her car and tugged a big, canvas bag of greens out of the passenger seat. “Your father said you like kale.”
Emma nodded. “Thank you.” She crossed to her and took the bag out of her arms. The tension between them was almost palpable. It had to stop, Emma thought. She could stop it. “Do you want to come in for some coffee?” She glanced down at her stepmother’s swollen belly. “Or maybe herbal tea?”
Megan shut her car door. “I’d like that.”
Emma turned toward the house. Her father, Brett Candler, had met Megan at some bank do in New York, and less than a year ago they’d married. Her stepmother was barely nine years older than she was. Emma wanted to like the woman who’d made her father happy at last.
“Mind the construction area. Owen’s off today.”
“How much longer do you think he’ll be working here?”
“Until sometime around Thanksgiving.” Emma glanced back. Megan was holding her stomach and clinging to the newly sturdy handrail.
Emma stopped and held out her hand. “Let me help you.”
Megan hesitated for a moment. Then she took Emma’s hand. “Thanks.”
At the top of the stairs, they both released themselves from the oddly awkward handclasp, and Emma put on some speed to reach the kitchen. She eased the kale out of the bag and into the wide sink. “Take a seat. I’ll plug in the tea thing.” That was what she’d always called her grandmother’s clear plastic electric kettle. “It plugs in and heats water quickly. Nan loved hot tea when the weather turned chilly, and I’ve been drinking it, too, since I got back.”
“A way to be closer to her, maybe,” Megan said.
Emma measured her stepmother with a smile that felt stiff no matter how badly she wanted it to be natural. “Let me see what I can offer you.” She went to the cupboard and took down several different packets, as pretty as small square paintings. “Any of these look good to you?”
Megan pulled a purple packet from the array. “I’ll get the mugs.” She turned in a half circle. “If you point me to the right shelf?”
Emma did, and then she folded the canvas bag and set it at the end of the island. “It was nice of you to bring the greens.”
Megan nodded, setting the mugs on the counter. She came back to the island, playing with the corner of the teabag. “I wanted to talk to you, Emma,” she said.
Emma moved back to the counter. “Maybe I haven’t been as open with you as I should be.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.” Megan dropped the teabag. “But I love your father. I wonder if you believe that.”
Emma would have changed the subject immediately if her mind hadn’t gone blank.
“I asked your dad if I could bring the kale because I want to clear the air between us. You’ve been home for more than a week. I don’t know how long before you leave again, but your father doesn’t know how to invite you to our house—to your old home—without worrying I’ll be hurt. He thinks you stay away because you’re upset we got married.”
Emma reached into a cupboard beneath the island for the tea thing. She went to the sink to add water, then plugged it in. “I’d like to see more of Dad. Just ask me when you both have some time.”
Megan plucked her sunglasses off her head and dropped them on the folded bag. She crossed to Emma, her sudden purpose startling. “You have twigs in your hair.”
“Thanks.”
“Bend down.”
Though Megan was so close to her in age, her hands, easing the crepe myrtle out of her hair, reminded her of Nan and being cared for. Small moments that mattered because Nan had glowed with a kindness Emma couldn’t even begin to grasp.
But Megan wasn’t required to groom a testy stepdaughter.
“You know what?” Emma said. “There’s baby stuff in the attic here. Nan kept it. Apparently, every time I outgrew an item of baby equipment, my mom dragged it over here to get it out of her sight.”
Megan looked startled. Her mom must not have been like Pamela. Emma closed her eyes, then plastered on a smile. “Sorry. I’m trying to change, and that kind of talk was a step backward. Do you want to see if you like anything?”
“I have a crib and a few other things.”
Emma turned to look at her with a smile. “Throw me a tiny bone. I’m trying.”
“I mean yes,” Megan said. “I’d enjoy rooting around in your attic.”
“It’s cleaner than most of the downstairs, as I’m moving everything to make room for Owen to work. Apparently, we had termites almost everywhere, but the attic floor is safe. We’ll go up this way.”
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The back stairs landed on the second floor and then again at the attic, the door of which opened as if Emma had just oiled the hinges. Which she had.
“Could we talk about what I said?” Megan asked.
“I’m not upset you married my dad.” Emma regretted the polite lie, walking ahead of Megan to show her to the far corner of the attic. Furniture was set up as if in a nursery. A high chair her great-great-grandfather had dented with his spoon, and a crib with totally unsuitable spindles. “I take that back. I’m a little upset.” She lifted the high chair’s table. “See, this works.”
“I do like that. I’ll need to make sure it’s still safe for a baby.”
“Good idea. I didn’t want Dad to live alone the rest of his life. I thought he’d find some lovely, stable woman.”
“More his age?” Megan’s laugh was gentle. “But I am stable. I can get you references.”
Emma laughed with her. “It’s just odd. You’re practically my age. He didn’t tell me you were pregnant until I came back.”
“So I heard. He burst out with it as soon as the exterminator turned his back while they were showing you the termite damage here.”
“Dad and I share a pretty strong tendency toward clumsiness.” Emma moved on to a rocking horse her father had painted dark green for her. “I remember when he put this mane and tail on. The original was bedraggled and gray.” She stroked the fine, honey-brown strands. Her choice of color. “I called her Miriam, and I braided for hours and hours. If you have a girl, she’ll love Miriam, too.” Emma turned the horse and dragged it toward Megan. “I feel disloyal toward my mother if I accept you, which is odd, since she and I are still on tense terms. I’m sure you heard what happened before I left for Europe.”
“I’m sorry. I have heard.”
Emma tugged at the rocking horse’s mane, braiding automatically.