Speak of the devil.
Jonathon lowered himself onto a log and poked at the campfire with a stick. Contentment etched itself into every crevice of the man’s face, and Charles was struck with jealousy—and not for the first time. Must be nice to be secure in one’s future, doing what one loved, with a family that took you as you were.
“Well, this was a fine day!” Jonathon rested the stick in the fire and leaned his elbows on his knees. “And a fish dinner you won’t find anywhere in Milwaukee.”
Charles nodded. The crusty, blackened, campfire-fried bass had been good. Would’ve been better had he added some trout to the mix, but nope. Nope, Abby had made sure to smile cheekily as he finished out the day unwinding, unwrapping, and unhooking his way to an empty fishing basket.
Jonathon’s chuckles interrupted Charles’s thoughts. “I knew she’d get under your skin.”
Charles frowned. “Who?”
Jonathon tipped his blond head toward the Nessling cabin. “Abby. Tried to charm your way into her good graces, didn’t you?”
Charles curled his lip and tossed a pine cone into the fire. It snapped and popped, the sap boiling on one of its wooden petals. “A tad.”
“Told you she was off limits.”
Charles shrugged. “Never stopped me before.”
Jonathon stretched his arms wide then drew them back and interlocked his fingers behind his head. “Abby has always been a fine friend.”
“Then why haven’t you courted her?” Charles honestly wanted to know. Courting was serious business and not something he hankered for, but Jonathon? He was the sensible, family man type, and the Strauss family might be wealthy and stand on pretense, but they were also of deep faith. Charles didn’t think the financial differences between families would stop Jonathon if he were serious about Abby.
Jonathon smiled as he stared at the fire. “My father and Mr. Nessling go way back. They grew up together but had different goals. Mr. Nessling came north and worked in the logging camps. Dad always said Harry was of the earth and he was of the city. Same with Abby and me. She’d never survive in Milwaukee, and I wouldn’t ask her to. I would never survive here. It’s nice for a getaway, but nothing more. Besides …” Jonathon dropped his arms and reached for the stick he’d placed in the fire. Its tip glowed and then crumbled into the coals. “I’ve only seen Abby nigh on four times in my life. While I think the world of her, we don’t have that—that”—he waved the end of the stick to make his point—“spark.”
Spark. That was all Charles felt when he was around Abby. This morning he’d been rather fascinated with her mouth and that little spot on her neck at the bottom of her ear. Very kissable. Now, he wanted to wring her neck for making him wrestle with that daft fly rod all afternoon and catch nothing.
The Nesslings’ cabin door opened and Mr. Nessling exited, running his thumbs down the length of his suspenders. He cast them a wave and retreated around the back of the cabin.
“Mr. Nessling is a good sort,” Jonathon observed. “Shame about his wife.”
“His wife?” Charles watched the open door of the cabin, but Abby didn’t appear.
Jonathon nodded. “She died about a year ago. Mr. Nessling had just bought this land with his earnings, my dad said. Planned to retire from logging and offer expeditions to folks like us.”
“Rotten luck to work your whole life and lose your wife when you finally settle in to what you want to do,” Charles muttered, trying to ignore the memories that surfaced.
“Luck? Nah.” Jonathon tossed his stick onto the fire for good. “God knows we all have a designated time and place.” Charles could feel his buddy give him an indirect glance. Jonathon continued, as Charles knew he would, as he always did. “Grief is hard to master though, even when that loss is nobody’s fault.”
Charles vaulted to his feet and kicked at a renegade coal, knocking it into the campfire. “Yeah. Sure.” He steered for their cabin, for his cot, and wished he was more like his father. A drink would be nice right now. But that was just another difference between them. Charles had seen liquor do its damage in his family and distanced his father even further.
Jonathon’s voice stopped him. “You need to stop blaming yourself, Charles.”
Charles rammed his hands into his pockets. Stop blaming himself? That was difficult to do when it’d been made clear to him that it was his fault that David was dead. That he should have saved his brother. He had failed. Plain and simple. It was why he kept moving. To stop, to think, meant he had to relive it all again.
He spun on his heel with a jaunty smile. Flippant but weighted with meaning. “Devil knows I should’ve learned how to swim better.”
At the stunned look on his friend’s face, Charles marched into the cabin. He should have become a stronger swimmer, way back when he was fourteen instead of a handful of trouble. If he had, David would still be alive.
Nights like tonight, Abby missed her mother more than usual. She cupped her coffee mug between her palms and stared out the window, across the way, toward the men’s campfire. Mama had a way of softening Abby’s edgier side. It was Mama’s voice that kept Abby from uttering her snippy thoughts most of the time, but this afternoon? She had been a horrendous guide to Charles Farrington III—even if he did deserve it.
She took a sip of coffee and eyed Jonathon as he sat alone by the campfire. She’d watched him and Charles have some sort of tense interaction, and then Charles had disappeared inside. This couldn’t be good. Not for her father. She’d be willing to bet that Charles was fed up with the defeating day and complaining about it to Jonathon.
Abby bit her bottom lip and sighed. She needed to muster every ounce of her mother’s hospitality and shower it on Charles Farrington III or else it would all go awry.
The cabin door opened, and she met her father’s gaze as he entered. His smile matched the warmth in his eyes. His beard was flecked with more gray since Mama had died, and the color streaked through his temples, almost clouding out his once very black eyebrows.
“Hey, teacup.”
Teacup. He’d always called her his “spot of tea.” As if she were his one joy in the middle of a hard afternoon.
Abby mustered an apologetic smile. She had to get it off her conscience now. “I’m so sorry, Papa.”
Papa frowned, shutting the cabin door behind him.
“Mr. Farrington. I—I don’t believe I did a proper job of teaching him to fly-fish today.”
The clink of the kettle against a tin coffee cup met her ears in response. The sound of liquid pouring into her father’s cup followed. He sniffed. Sipped. Swallowed.
“He’s a bit of a rascal.”
For sure and for certain! Abby refrained from being sidetracked from her confession. She turned and almost tripped over a furry little creature that danced around her toes. Smiling, she bent and held out her hand. The squirrel her father had rescued as a baby earlier in the spring had grown exponentially and was wholeheartedly the third member of their little cabin home. It scampered into her hand and Abby clutched it, bringing it higher so it could jump onto her shoulder. Perching on its hind legs, the squirrel looked between her and her father and back at Abby.
So be it. Even Harold the squirrel wanted her to make her confession more absolute. Harold pawed at her hair and then scuttled down her back to jump onto the windowsill. His bushy tail swung back and forth.
Papa seated himself at the table, his hands wrapped around his mug. Abby gave Harold a fast scratch on his head and moved to join her father.
“Mr. Farrington doesn’t know how to fly-fish, and I didn’t have much patience with him today.”
“Mmm, hm.” Papa gulped his coffee. Waiting. As he always did. He was a man of few words, even more so since Mama had passed.
Abby pressed on. “I don’t believe Mr. Farrington was very happy with me. And if he returns to Milwaukee with a negative review, well—”
“Now wait.” Papa held up his hand. “There’s going to be days whe
n our guests struggle. They’re not used to the woods, to fishing or hunting. That’s why they come here. To experience something new.”
“But what if they don’t believe they’re getting the service they paid for?” Abby argued. Harold scratched at the windowpane and stole her father’s attention for a moment.
“We can only do our best, teacup.”
“But that’s just it!” Abby remembered Charles Farrington III’s teasing eyes, flirtatious and incessant winking, and his intoxicating smell. “I didn’t do my best.”
Silence followed her confession. Harold leapt from the windowsill, scurried across the floor, and up the leg of the chair to take his place on Abby’s lap. She rubbed his back with her finger and waited. Papa took a drink of coffee, then another, and finally set his empty cup on the table.
“Well,” he concluded, “there’s always tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. The word sank into Abby like a metal sinker on a spinning rod. Charles Farrington III was still going to be here in the morning, and the morning after, and … he wasn’t going to be a problem that just went away.
Chapter Four
She’d hoped Papa would take Charles Farrington III and she could guide Jonathon today. It would be so much simpler. This two-week excursion was going to seem like two years if she had to spend every day with this man.
“How’s the beautiful Miss Nessling this morning?” Charles Farrington III met her at the workbench on the side of her cabin. His cavalier stance put Abby on edge, not to mention he was chewing on a silly toothpick again. No, no. She couldn’t be jittery already. She needed to be sweet, hospitable, welcoming … She met his chocolate eyes, and the twinkle in them made her look away.
Charles Farrington III moved closer to see what she was working on. She was packing a fishing basket, for goodness’ sakes, it wasn’t that exciting! Back away, sir, back away. Abby could smell his cologne. Maybe the flies and mosquitos would, too, and he’d be eaten alive, forced to retreat back to his cabin.
As she chided herself for her mean thoughts, she also tried to quell the excited twist of her stomach that his presence caused. Her body froze as she felt his hand rise and his fingers fondle a strand of her hair that escaped her braid. The back of his knuckles brushed her neck. Good heavens! He was bold, daring, attractive … She could probably write lists of adjectives to describe the indecency that was Charles Farrington III. She opened her mouth to protest but was stopped by a flurry of red.
“Mother of—Moses!” Charles Farrington III leapt backward, spitting out his toothpick, as Harold alighted on the tabletop, his red tail swiping across the man’s hand.
Abby pressed her lips together as she attempted not to laugh at the man’s quickly abbreviated curse and the incredulous look on his face as he met Harold’s challenging, black-eyed stare. The squirrel chattered at him.
“You’ve a squirrel as a guard dog?”
Abby graced him with a stern smile. “Harold is quite protective of me, yes, Charles Farrington the Third, and his teeth are razor sharp.”
“Charles. Charles. This whole ‘Farrington the Third’ bit is loathsome.” He held out a finger toward Harold, who nattered on louder. “But he is a cute little fellow.”
Abby raised her eyes to the heavens. Lord, give me grace. She batted Charles Farrington the–fine, Charles’s–finger away. “He will bite you.”
Charles withdrew but tilted his head to the side. “Does he fish with you?”
“Sometimes.” Abby didn’t bother to tell Charles that she was trying to break the habit of locking Harold in the cabin for fear an owl or hawk would swoop down and eat her only friend. He was meant to be free, only she didn’t want him to be.
“Well. Are we to begin, your beautiful highness?”
The words. Oh, the words! He was pithy and shallow, and … Abby swallowed as he gifted her with a lazy smile.
“Yes,” she responded. Graciousness. Her mother always touted graciousness in the face of distress. But most of Abby’s tenacity to be amiable fled with Mama when she died. There didn’t seem to be all that much to be gracious about.
“Do we get to fish the river today?”
Abby shook her head. “I was thinking the stream.”
“Very well.”
He was so agreeable it was sickening. Abby handed him a fly rod that leaned against the work table. “Here. While I prepare a few things, why don’t you practice casting in the clearing.”
Charles reached for the rod, but Abby held onto it even after he gave it a little tug. She skewered him with what she hoped wasn’t too patronizing of a look. “Watch for the trees.”
His grin broadened, deepening those ever-present dimples. “But it’d be delightful to watch you climb one to retrieve my hook.”
Abby released the rod and Charles gave her a wink as he spun on his booted heel and marched into the clearing between the cabins with purpose in his stride. His wide shoulders made his cotton shirt taut over his upper arms as he lifted the fly rod, and dark curls teased his collar. He was completely insufferable. It was important she remember that.
The sharp sting, followed by the inarguable feel of the hook piercing his skin, stilled Charles’s forward motion with the rod. His left eye shut, he reached up with his hand and felt. If the pinching pain wasn’t enough evidence, the feel of the fly against the corner of his eye was plenty to verify the hook that was embedded in his skin.
There wasn’t a manly way in the world he could explain himself out of this one. With the line swinging from the hook hinged at his eye and attached to the fly rod, only humor could save his pride now. Humor, and hopes that Abby knew how to unhook more than a trout from her fly.
“Miss Nessling?”
She didn’t answer. Charles twisted and saw her petite form bent over her workbench. A tiny hook was clamped in a brace, and she wrapped thread around the hook’s shank. Her silence either meant she was half-deaf, or she was ignoring him. Charles knew it was the latter. He’d had absolutely no effect on the woman but to peeve her more, and while that had bothered him even up to a few minutes ago, it was a non-existent worry now as his eye began to throb.
“Abby?”
Silence.
“Ahem!” He cleared his throat.
Another wrap of the thread.
“I believe I’ve caught something.” Maybe that would get her attention.
It did. She raised her blonde head and turned those ginger eyes on him. They narrowed, then widened, and her face paled to a color even whiter than her hair.
“Oh my. Oh my!” She clapped her palm to her mouth.
Charles swallowed. His eye twitched and tears squeezed from it as his eye reacted to the painful proximity of the foreign object in his face.
“I could use your assistance.” He couldn’t deny there was a plea in his voice now. Charles was still attached to the fly rod and it would be nice to at least cut ties with the split-cane pole.
Abby slumped onto a stool. She shook her head. “No, no. I can’t. No.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” This wasn’t good. Charles took a step toward her and Abby turned even paler, swaying in her seat.
“I’m not medically inclined.” Her whisper was a pathetic protest against the pain he was beginning to experience. This was not the reaction he’d expected from plucky Abigail Nessling.
“It’s not surgery, Abby, it’s prying a hook out of my face before I’m permanently scarred for life.” An exaggeration. But neither of them seemed prone to rationality.
The tiny fly-fishing guide slipped from the stool in a graceful motion … and crumpled.
“For the love of—!” Charles bit his oath and marched toward Abby, fly rod still gripped in his hand because, well, what else was a man to do when he was attached to it?
“This is a fine kettle of fish you got yourself into.” Abby’s father had a twinkle in his eye. Charles would have looked away, but Mr. Nessling also had hold of the fly still embedded in Charles’s skin.
“Very funny,” Charles smirked. It was providential that Jonathon and Mr. Nessling had chosen to return to the cabins to retrieve one of their fly rods they’d accidentally left behind. They found Charles gently slapping Abby’s face. Jonathon was quick to take over this task and let Mr. Nessling ply his hook-removal expertise.
Mr. Nessling wiggled the hook and Charles winced. Blasted thing hurt like the dickens. “I’m afraid I’m not the most talented at casting.”
Mr. Nessling didn’t respond. Charles waited, and decided to try again.
“But your daughter is a fine teacher.”
“Mmm, hm.” Mr. Nessling wiggled the hook again, and Charles wondered if there was some sadistic side to the older man that was enjoying the twinge of nerves it sent through Charles’s face.
“She has quite the way about her.”
“Abigail is sensitive.” Mr. Nessling’s response held a warning tone in it. Don’t play with her emotions, Charles could almost hear the man say.
“Of course,” Charles responded.
Mr. Nessling’s finger pushed firmly against Charles’s skin at the base of where the hook was embedded. Charles squinted in pain and Mr. Nessling let up. He leaned back and gave Charles a square look.
“You can’t wince, Mr. Farrington. I won’t be able to get the hook out if you do.”
“My apologies.” Charles focused on keeping his expression still as Mr. Nessling pressed again, twisted the hook, and then tugged.
“Good heavens almighty holy–” Charles searched for every acceptable almost-curse he could find. Mr. Nessling held the fly up and eyed it as he extended a clean handkerchief to Charles.
“Push that against the wound. The bleeding will stop under the pressure.”
Charles held the cloth to his face.
Mr. Nessling waggled the fly in front of him. “Souvenir?”
Of Rags and Riches Romance Collection Page 44