Celie sighed deep in her throat. For once, she wasn’t looking up to him. For once, they were face to face. For once, he wasn’t pushing her away but pulling her against him, his hands hard and possessive down the length of her back, over her hips. It didn’t matter that the air was freezing, that there was snow beneath them. She couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel anything but Jacob’s heat and a driving need for more.
Time had ceased to exist. All that mattered was the feel of his mouth on hers, the heat, the urgency, the faint jolt of pain when he nipped at her lips, the mind-meltingly delightful things he was doing with his tongue. If they stopped, she’d die.
The sharp blast of a horn sounded from the parking lot on the opposite side of the sugarhouse, breaking the moment.
Jacob rolled to his feet and swept the snow off his pants. Here it was again. It was like he got around her and lost all common sense. He cleared his throat. “Okay, look, I need to—”
Celie raised her finger in warning. “Don’t start.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “You are not going into this routine again.”
He glowered at her from beneath his brows. “I don’t do routines.”
“Then why is this one so familiar?”
“Do we need to have this conversation?”
“What, you kiss my face off for the second time and that’s that?”
“No, that’s not that. That’s a good illustration of why you shouldn’t come to work for me.”
“Why, because we kissed? Jacob, get over it. We’re adults.”
“Look, I don’t—” He put his hands on his hips and stared down at the slush and sighed. “I’ve got a lot going on right now with the sugaring season coming and my mom and everything else. I can’t afford to get distracted.”
“Distracted? Is that what you call this?” She raised an eyebrow at him and he lost a beat just looking at her.
“Uh, yeah, distracted,” he said after he’d reminded himself to breathe again. “Look, I appreciate the offer of help, but no thanks.”
“You don’t have a choice. I am going to be here.”
A match for him in stubbornness. Jacob sighed. “Are you always this hard to get along with?”
“Sometimes I’m worse. Want me to demonstrate?”
“No. Look, you’ve got a full-time job. More than.”
And she needed one positive thing that wasn’t about cutting down trees. “That’s nine-to-five. I can put in a couple of hours with you in the morning and as much time in the sugarhouse as you want at night. You need help, I need to learn. It sounds like we can do it together.”
He studied her and finally he sighed. “All right, what’s the earliest you can get here tomorrow?”
“Whenever you want me here. The inoculations are done.”
“Six?”
She traced one finger down his chest. “I’ll see you then.”
Chapter Nine
He kept his word. If he’d promised to teach her, then teach her he would. And Celie proved to be better than any hired help he’d ever had. She worked uncomplainingly, cutting and stacking wood, sterilizing taps, prepping filters. She helped him scrub the evaporator pan free of the dust that had coated it during the long months since it had last been fired up. Together, they cleaned the chimney until she had black smears on her face like some Dickensian orphan.
Each morning, she arrived at the sugarhouse before dawn and worked until she had to leave to begin inspections. Each evening as her workday ended, she returned to work under his direction.
And each day, he did his damnedest to keep his distance.
He had a plan. If he didn’t touch her, if he didn’t get close to her, maybe he wouldn’t remember the way it had felt to hold the length of her body along his, maybe he wouldn’t remember the silky-soft curls of her hair brushing against his cheeks. And maybe he wouldn’t find himself fighting to forget even for a minute that he wanted her.
Keep the chatter to a minimum and keep her across the room. It seemed simple enough but somehow it never worked out. Inevitably she’d get him talking about things he never planned to, wheeling off on some tangent that had nothing to do with sugaring.
And with each day that passed by, he wanted her more, until it drummed through him like some tribal beat, some primitive rhythm that countered every civilized part of him. He’d be in the middle of showing her how to work the valves on the feed tube for the evaporator and suddenly he’d find himself focusing on that soft, barely-there scent of hers that made him want to press his face against her neck and bay like a hound. And that quickly he’d be wondering just what it would be like to peel her out of those clothes, what it would feel like to touch her, wondering what would happen if he—
“Jacob?” She craned her neck to look down at him from where she perched on the stepladder, reaching into the uppermost of the two twelve-hundred-gallon holding tanks that sat outside the back of the sugarhouse. An identical set sat on the opposite side of the sugarhouse door. Jacob stood below her, trying not to think about what lay under her parka. “I dropped the brush. Can you get it?”
He climbed up to peer over her shoulder into the tank where the long-handled scrub brush lay amid soapy water. “Excuse me.” He reached past her and snaked his long arm down, groping.
“This would be perfect for a really big bathtub,” she observed as his fingers curled around the padded handle. “Fill it up with hot water and bubbles and you could sit out here on a spring evening and enjoy yourself.”
And he got an abrupt, vivid image of her naked and wet in the extravagant clawfoot tub Isaac had installed in the master bath, not quite covered by bubbles so that her rosy-tipped breasts bobbed in the water, and he thought of what it would be like to join her and about how reaching around her, holding on to the tub—tank, the tank edge with one hand while reaching in with the other was the next best thing to holding her in the circle of his arms, and he thought he smelled burning as his synapses melted from trying to hold on to so many different images and desires at once.
Or not so many desires, because he only really had one— Celie, warm and naked against him….
“Jacob?”
He gave himself a mental shake. “Right.” He handed her the scrub brush and hastily climbed down from the ladder, heart hammering as though he’d been running. “Here’s the hose,” he said and passed it up to her.
“Pesticides lab, Pete Craven.”
“You should be.” Celie held her cell phone up to her ear with one hand as she drove toward the day’s inspection site.
“What?”
“Craven. Crawling. Pleading for forgiveness.” She pulled off to the edge of the road.
“Oh, hey, Celie, how are you?” Pete’s voice held a forced jollity.
“Puzzled,” she said pleasantly, putting on her parking brake. “I must have something wrong with my e-mail because I never got the message you promised me giving me the status of the release. The one you swore you’d send. It must have been caught by my spam filter.”
“Well, I’ve been—”
“Because I know you’d never just blow me off.”
“Oh, never,” he assured her. “I’ve been meaning to send an update, I’ve just been busy. You know how it is, lot going on. And I’ve been driving the lab carpool so I get home late—”
“Pete.”
“And the draft for my fantasy baseball league is next week, lot of action there, you’ve gotta really be up on the stats and do a lot of research because if—”
“Pete.”
There was a silence.
“When am I going to see the release? You said two weeks, it’s been almost three.”
He cleared his throat. “We’ve run into some delays.”
“Try five and a half years’ worth. What kind now?”
“You’ve got the EPA and the USDA and half a dozen state governments involved,” he said sarcastically, “what kind do you think?”
“I thought y
ou told me the release was written.”
“I did. Right before I told you that didn’t mean anything.”
She stared out through the windshield as two green Vermont Division of Forestry trucks pulled up. “I’m cutting trees down for no good reason, Pete.”
“I know. I’m pushing them.”
“Push harder.” An edge entered her voice.
“I am. It’s getting closer.”
“And you can tell that how?”
“The latest version of the release I’ve seen is on department letterhead,” he offered.
“Oh, that’s progress.”
“It’ll happen,” he said, all joking gone.
“This century?”
“Maybe.”
She got out and rummaged behind her seat for her field kit. “Call me when all systems are go or I’ll have to hurt you.”
“What, you think you’re going to be the first person to use it outside of a field trial?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Yeah. I do.”
It didn’t surprise Jacob to find half a dozen people prowling the shelves of Washington County Maple Supplies. The sugaring season was drawing near, and anybody who had any sense was getting ready.
Of course, a few others who had less sense were happy enough to stand by the stove and yap.
Clayton Billings turned to nod at him as he walked to the aisles in the back. “Jacob.”
He nodded in return. “Clayton.”
“What do you think of all this talk of a thaw? Anything to it?”
Jacob stopped reluctantly. Clayton, Paul Durkin, two other sugar-makers he didn’t know well. He shrugged. “Time will tell. I’m getting my taps in.”
Clayton laughed. “Never had a tired day in your life, have you?”
“I don’t think about it one way or another. The work’s got to be done.”
“Hear that, Paul?” Clayton said to the redhead. “Work to be done.”
Durkin spat into the stove and listened to the pop. “Yeah, well, you can kill yourself getting in a two-day sap run if you want. Me, I’ll wait for the real thing.”
“You do that.” Jacob crossed to the shelf of filter supplies against the far wall. Muriel could talk herself blue in the face about how he should hang out around the hot stove but there were better things to be done. He picked up a box of filters and then turned toward the hardware aisle.
Around the stove, the talk shifted to the scarlet-horned maple borer. “I flat out don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” someone—Clayton, probably—said behind him. “That Rumson fellow from the state says there are other ways to go.”
Dick Rumson, living up to his name. Jacob picked up a box of taps and brought them to the counter, along with his filters.
“That do it for you?” Muriel asked.
“Yep. I can do without all the jawing,” he said as she scanned in the items.
“That APHIS woman and her crew are going through my trees next week,” someone said.
“Her,” a voice said in disgust. Durkin, Jacob thought and glanced toward the group at the stove to see that he was right. “I wouldn’t let her on my property.”
“You heard what she said. She’ll get a court order.”
“Yeah? She can try all she wants to get in my trees and mess around. I’ve already been talking to a lawyer in Montpelier who says he’ll fix her wagon.”
“She seemed pretty sure about it,” one of the unfamiliar voices said.
“Big talk,” Durkin scoffed. “I’ll tell you one thing. If she tries to take down my trees, I’m not going to make it easy for her.” He flicked a contemptuous glance at Jacob. “I’m going to let her know she’s got a fight on her hands.”
“How you going to do that?”
Jacob saw the malicious smile flit across Durkin’s face. “I have my ways. I think she already knows she’s not wanted here.”
Jacob was walking toward the stove before he even realized it. There was a buzzing in his ears. The four men turned to look at him, one by one. What was on his face, he couldn’t say, but their self-satisfied grins dropped away. “What was that you were saying, Paul?” His voice was quiet.
Durkin looked at him assessingly. “About what?”
“About showing Celie Favreau she’s not wanted here.”
“What’s it to you?”
“I spent a couple of hours after the meeting the other night taking off her wheels and helping her get her tires to the all-night truck stop. You wouldn’t be the one who slashed them, would you?”
“The woman’s cutting down your trees and you’re playing automobile club for her?”
“That’s got nothing to do with what I asked you, Paul.” Jacob kept his voice pleasant, but when he took another step, the men at the stove edged away from Durkin warily. “Did you slash her tires?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Durkin said with a cocky grin.
Jacob studied him. “You know, I don’t really even need to ask you. This is Eastmont. I’ll find out. Knowing you, you couldn’t resist bragging about it. People will pass it on. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Don’t get any ideas, Trask. Your girlfriend got what she deserved.”
“It’s the dead of winter, you idiot. You strand someone after everything’s closed and they’re walking in subzero weather on dark highways with no shoulders because of the snow banks. That’s not just being an ass, that’s being dangerous.”
“You can’t—”
“I can.” Jacob’s voice hardened. “Don’t mess with Celie Favreau again.”
“Don’t come around here telling me what I should and shouldn’t do,” Durkin blustered. “She’s the one who came barging in. If something happens to her, she’s got it coming.”
Jacob’s gaze turned flat and cold. “If something happens to her, I’ll know who to come looking for.” He took another step forward. “And trust me, Paul,” he said softly, “I will come looking.”
Durkin blanched and backed up. “You stay away from me.”
“You focus on your sugar-making, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” And Jacob turned and walked away.
Muriel watched him as he approached the counter. “When I told you that you should talk a little more, threatening people wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“I didn’t threaten him with anything in particular.”
“You did worse.”
“What does that mean?”
“Guy blusters and rants, you have a pretty good idea he’s a little scared underneath and making noise to hide it, or that he’s angry but it’ll go away. That ice look you’ve got doesn’t. If I were Paul, I’d be worried.”
“I just wanted to make an impression on him.”
“Oh, I’d say you did.”
“Someone slashed four hundred bucks worth of tires. I think that deserves a lasting impression. I want whoever did it to know there are going to be repercussions next time they try it.”
“He’s a vindictive little bastard.” Muriel’s tone was conversational. “If I were you, I’d watch my back. Tell your friend to watch hers, too. Paul’s not going to do her any favors.”
“Paul’s just scared,” Jacob said contemptuously and picked up his bag.
“And that probably makes him more dangerous, not less.”
“I don’t really give a damn. Because if anyone tries something like that again, I will personally drop-kick them to Montpelier and back.”
“I’ll put the word out.” Muriel studied him a moment. “So was Paul right, are you and she an item?”
Jacob frowned. “What kind of a question is that?”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Muriel said and handed him his change.
Friday might have been the day to wind down for some, but when Celie arrived that morning, she found Jacob behind the sugarhouse, loading his truck with buckets and a pair of blue supply bins. Nearby, Deke loaded his own truck. A new intensity, a purpose quickened the air.
Jacob g
lanced across at her and as always it sent something skittering around in her stomach. He hadn’t bothered to shave, so his jaw was still dark with the previous day’s stubble. Seemingly impervious to the cold, he wore one of his ubiquitous flannel plaids loose and open over a thermal Henley. Then again, it didn’t feel all that cold now that she thought about it.
“What’s this all about? Is it showtime?” she asked.
“Could be.” He set the last bin in the bed of the truck and slammed the tailgate closed. “They’re calling for an early thaw in a couple of days. I want to get the taps in place to catch it.”
“In February? I thought the sap didn’t run until early March.”
“The sap runs when it pleases.”
“Or doesn’t,” Deke put in and made a little barking noise that she realized was a laugh.
The corner of Jacob’s mouth twitched. “Deke’s going to work the upper side of the sugarbush. We’ll start at the bottom.”
“How long does it take to set the taps?” Celie asked as he grabbed his coat and they headed for the cab of the truck. “Are you going to be able to get it all done in time?”
Jacob got in the driver’s side. “We’ll finish, if I have to set up lights in the trees.”
And he would, she thought, studying him as he drove them along the access road of the sugarbush. She’d never met anyone as determined as Jacob. If he said he was going to do something, nothing was going to stop him.
And if he said he wasn’t, he held to that pretty well, too. A week had passed since that mind-melting kiss in the snow, a week during which they’d worked together every morning and every night. And it was there every minute they were together, hovering in the background, giving her those little flutters in her belly whenever she remembered it. She’d talk to him and watch his mouth, remembering what it had felt like.
Wondering when it would happen again.
He’d stayed stubbornly distant, though. She got to him sometimes, she could see it in his eyes. But then he’d find an excuse to move away and the moment would be gone.
He stopped the truck on an access road and Celie felt a little charge of excitement. Jacob or no Jacob, this was the start of it all. Over the days of prep work, she’d felt a steadily sharpening sense of anticipation. Now, the real deal was finally here.
Vermont Valentine (Holiday Hearts #3) Page 12