He could be ticked at himself but it wouldn’t do any good. He’d made the decision the night before to throw caution to the winds. Except he was full of it, he thought impatiently. He’d been working his way edgewise to that particular decision for weeks. Now, he had to live with it. Complications? Life had gotten so far beyond complicated it didn’t even bear discussing.
Like he didn’t have enough to worry about trying to get through his first sugar-making season on his own while a plague on six legs might be working its way through the trees he had left. Now, when he could least afford the distraction, he’d stumbled deep into the middle of something. Because there was no kidding himself that this was some one-time fling he could shrug off. She’d gotten into his blood and he was well and truly hooked. He couldn’t stop missing her. He couldn’t stop wondering about her.
And he couldn’t stop needing her, not then, not with the memory of her flavor still saturating him.
Sunlight streamed through the maples, but all he could think about was the dimness and firelight of the sugarhouse. All he could think about was the feel of Celie’s skin, the warm promise in her eyes.
He didn’t need any more complications, but he didn’t think he had a choice anymore. The time for backing away had been weeks ago, when he’d first laid eyes on her. It had been too late by the time they’d kissed, and it had definitely been too late by the time he’d turned to see her in the light of the fire-box the night before.
And everything he’d tried to tell himself about distance and solitude and safety was a lie, because he’d known in the early-morning hours when he lay holding her, feeling her breathe as she slept, that he was in as deep as a man could get. And if he could snap his fingers that instant and make life go back to normal he wouldn’t, because it was that singular, that astonishing. That extraordinary.
Even though he could already see the end.
The close of the day came as a relief. The upside of dealing with Rumson was that he’d taken her mind off Jacob. Now, seeing the sugarhouse dark as she drove up, she frowned. Granted, it was nearly six and past closing, but Jacob should have been at work running a boil. Instead, for the first time in days, there was no steam rising from the peak.
And she wasn’t sure what to think.
Well, if he wasn’t at the sugarhouse, she had a pretty good idea where to find him, she thought, and swung the wheel.
There were lights behind the windows of his house as she drove down through the lane of oaks. He was in there, making dinner, perhaps, or reading a book. Or sleeping. She’d show up and they could talk. So he’d shut down the sugar-house without warning her. It wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t mean anything.
She didn’t think.
Her boots thumped on the porch boards as she came to a stop at the front door. Before she could knock, frenzied barking broke out. Murphy, of course, she thought with a grin. Dark shapes moved behind the etched glass and the door opened to reveal Jacob, with Murphy lunging to get past his legs.
Celie smiled widely and reached out for the dog. “Hi gorgeous. Hey Murph, how you doing? How’s this doggie doing?”
Murphy wriggled deliriously as she dove her hands into his black fur and began scratching where she knew he liked it best.
Jacob wore a denim shirt loose over jeans. His hair was slicked back from a shower. His eyes were very blue. Celie looked up at him, feeling suddenly awkward. “Well, it looks like your dog’s happy to see me, anyway.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “He’s not the only one. Come in.”
Celie stamped the snow off her boots and stepped inside. She wanted to touch him.
She resisted the urge.
“I stopped at the sugarhouse but all the lights were out. I’d never seen it that way before. I mean, you’re always working. So I wasn’t sure if something had happened or something.” She was babbling, she knew she was babbling, but she was powerless to stop. “I figured I’d come back and check on you.”
“Smart thinking. You found me.”
Looking good enough to eat, but he still hadn’t kissed her or even so much as brushed her hand. “Why aren’t you boiling? Too beat?”
“The run petered out today. I finished up around five.”
“I noticed things were freezing back up.”
“It usually happens like this when we get an early run,” Jacob said, rubbing Murphy’s ears. “Thaws don’t last too long.”
Which kind of thaws, the winter kind or the personal kind? “So is that it or do you expect more?”
“Oh, we’ll definitely get a run in March that’ll last longer. With luck.” There was a sudden flash of mischief in his eyes. “Why, did you like it?”
She caught her lip in her teeth. “The tapping was fun but I liked boiling the best.”
“That was my favorite part, too.”
“It was pretty hot in that sugarhouse.” Oddly breathless, she stepped toward him.
“It’s never gotten that hot in there before.” His hands settled on her hips.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“I hope it’s not the last.”
And the next thing she knew his mouth was on hers, her hands were in his hair and everything was right again.
“It must be something about this carpet,” Celie said after, as they lay on the living-room rug looking up at the ceiling. “We got stalled out here last night, too.”
“Maybe Isaac had a spell cast on it,” Jacob said lazily, stroking his fingers over her ribs.
“That must be it. Good thing he designed a nice ceiling.”
“True. I’m getting pretty fond of this ceiling.”
“That makes two of us.”
“So how about food?”
“I’m in favor of it.”
He chuckled. “Any ideas?”
“I dunno. Whatcha got?”
“Oh, eggs, frozen pizza, bread…”
“…sandwich meat,” she finished for him.
“Hey, if I’d known you were coming I’d have gotten premium cold cuts.” He rose, sliding on his jeans. Celie rolled to her feet and pulled on his shirt. He looked her up and down. “That looks better on you than it does on me.”
“Oh, goody. Can I have it?” Her throat gleamed, white and strong against the denim. Her lips looked soft and bruised from his. But there was something more, a kind of strain bracketing her mouth. He’d seen it when she’d walked in but he’d chalked it up to the same awkwardness he’d been feeling himself. Given that it was still there, he figured it was safe to assume it had nothing to do with the two of them.
So what was it about?
“How’d your day go?” he asked.
Her gaze skated off to one side. “As well as could be expected. We finished the inspection at Charlie Willoughby’s and didn’t find anything.”
“That’s good news.”
“It is.”
But not good enough. “So, let’s see…. Inspections, lab tests, paperwork, reports… Did I miss anything?”
“No.”
“So what’s bugging you?”
“What’s bugging…” She met his gaze then. “Nothing’s bugging me. I’m just tired. It was a long day on no sleep.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Nothing to tell. I wrote a status report for my boss. Did some lab testing, confirmed the infestation of Durkin’s trees.”
“Paul Durkin?”
“Yeah, why?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” And that was where the strain came in, he guessed. “I assume he’s not taking it well.”
“Well, if Rumson would—” She broke off.
“If Rumson would what?” Jacob watched her shrug, saw the shadows deepen in her eyes and waited for an answer.
“He’s just being a pest,” she said instead.
“In the usual way or something new?”
“A variation on a theme. He’s got Durkin all stirred up to where he’s getting a lawyer to block the tree-felling on
his property.”
“Idiot.” Jacob drew her down to sit on the couch. “Can you beat it?”
“I’m confident we can, but it’ll take time we don’t have. If he ties this thing up in court for three or four months, we’re in trouble. We could get a couple dozen adult borers out of each infested tree, and once they get loose, well…” She turned her hands up, helpless.
Catastrophe.
The tension was back in her shoulders, worse than ever. He wanted it gone. Rumson, he had no control over. Durkin, he couldn’t fix. There was something he could do, though.
Jacob reached out to wrap his fingers around the neck of his guitar. “So did you still want that command performance?”
Her eyes lit and he knew he’d figured it right. “Of course.” She rose to open the French doors to let Murphy in from the hallway. When she sank back down on the couch, the dog settled his head in her lap with an expression of bliss.
“What do you want to hear?”
“What do you want to play?”
He gave a quick smile and broke into a handful of chords and Celie raised an eyebrow at him. “‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’?” she asked dryly.
“Seems appropriate,” he said. “Okay, you don’t like that, how about this?” This time, it took only two chords before she laughed out loud.
“‘We Shall Overcome’? What are you, the aural version of Successories?”
“Everybody’s a critic,” he complained and segued into a song she didn’t recognize. The notes were fluid but it was his hands she couldn’t get enough of. She’d seen them at work, she’d felt them on her skin, but the quick, sure grace of his fingers on the strings was a revelation. He coaxed a pure, sweet tone from the guitar that looked effortless, the same way he’d coaxed pure, sweet pleasure from her.
And then he began to sing, a slow folk ballad. His voice was true, a little rough, a little smoky. His blue gaze snared hers as he sang of joy and pain, of lovers meeting, lovers parting. It was beautiful enough to make her ache. And she understood, finally, how much more he was than she’d ever guessed, this guarded man, this solitary man, at once steadfast, loyal, unexpectedly generous, deeply kind.
His hair fell down over his forehead and she reached out to push it back. When he flashed her a quick, crooked grin before starting the chorus, it made her heart squeeze painfully in her chest.
And when she thought of leaving, it made her want to weep.
Chapter Thirteen
Celie stood on the edge of the road that ran along Paul Durkin’s sugarbush, listening to the rumble of diesel engines. She felt the familiar depression at the prospect of taking down acres of trees. Even if Durkin hadn’t been difficult, it would have been unpleasant. His combativeness made it more distasteful than usual.
Joe Doluca, the head arborist, walked up to her, consulting his clipboard. “Looks like everything’s in order. All the trees look marked. I just need your signature and we can get started.”
Feeling vaguely sick, Celie signed the sheet.
Then Joe waved his hand and the driver of the Caterpillar with the grappler claw revved his engine and prepared to drive forward.
“You’d better stop that right now,” said a voice behind them.
Celie and Joe turned to see a Washington County sheriff’s deputy standing behind them, an envelope in his hand.
“Hi Roy,” the arborist said to him.
“Hey Joe. How’s Emily?”
“She’s good. What have you got there?”
“Depends.” He turned to Celie. “Are you Cecilia Favreau?”
“Yes.”
Lines networked his face. He looked like he’d seen enough that nothing would ever surprise him. “I have here a court order to stop all cutting on Paul Durkin’s property.” He handed it to her even as Joe Doluca’s arm shot up to signal the Caterpillar driver to halt.
Celie tore into the envelope, fighting down fury. Durkin had been as good as his word. He and his Montpelier lawyer had managed to get to a judge and put through an injunction. The whole time-wasting case was in court and until they beat it, no clearing could go forward. Of course, the scarlet-horned maple borer didn’t know from court documents. When it hatched, it would merrily chomp its way through the host tree and emerge to infest others.
While the lawyers were busy with dueling motions.
Celie stifled the urge to curse. She knew who was behind it. She knew it wouldn’t stand.
And she knew the last afternoon of her week wouldn’t be spent doing anything productive; instead, she’d be on the phone with legal trying to find a way to shut down the lawsuit before it ever really got started.
There had to be something better to do on a Saturday afternoon, Jacob thought, than standing around a fancy hotel feeding people maple sugar. Still, he’d made a promise, and in his book that was as good as done.
He walked into the gift shop to see Kelly at the register. Shiny, blond Kelly, the spookily precocious teen. “Hey, Kelly, you seen my mother?”
“Hey, Jacob,” she purred. “What are you all dressed up for?”
He’d put on one of the outfits he’d been given during the makeover. Soft wool slacks, some kind of thin black sweater and a sport jacket over the top. At the time, he’d brought the clothes home and tossed them in the back of the closet, figuring they’d never see the light of day. He still wasn’t sure what had possessed him to dig them out instead of his usual pressed khakis and twill shirt. He definitely hadn’t bargained for running into Kelly, who spent way too much time staring at him these days for his comfort. “Oh, gotta go over to the Hotel Mount Jefferson,” he muttered.
“Your collar’s all messed up.” She stepped out from behind the counter. “Here, let me fix it for you.”
“I’ve got it,” he said hastily, checking it himself and wishing desperately for his beard. When he’d had it, his life hadn’t been in chaos. Life maybe hadn’t been as interesting, he thought, his mind turning to Celie, but at just that moment, interesting was overrated. “Look, what I really need is to find my mother. We’ve got to get rolling.”
“I think she went into the sugarhouse,” Kelly said, patting his shoulders proprietarily before walking back to the cash register.
“Thanks.” He hurried down the passageway to the sugar-house door, hoping it didn’t look like flight. “Hey Ma, we gotta go,” he called as he opened the door. “I told Gabe—” He stopped. “Ma?”
She stood at the evaporator, staring into the partitions. When she turned, he saw the marks of tears on her cheeks.
Oh no, he thought, stomach sinking. “You okay?”
She wiped her cheeks. “I’m fine. It just hits me out of the blue sometimes.”
Jacob didn’t need to ask what “it” was. Instead he crossed to her and pulled her to him.
“A couple of newlyweds came in on their way up to Montreal,” she said, her voice muffled. “You know we’d have celebrated our fortieth anniversary next year?”
“I know,” Jacob said helplessly. “I’d give anything if I could bring him back.”
She pressed her cheek to his chest for a moment and then he felt her shoulders rise as she took a breath. “I do, too. You can’t go backward, though. But I miss him every single minute of every day. Lately I feel like we got cheated of time.”
“I wish I could make it stop hurting you so much.” He wished he could believe that that hurt would ever go away.
“Those were wonderful years there. If he’d been a sonofagun, I might be happy he was gone, but I’d have nothing good to look back at. I guess I should call it a good tradeoff.”
He drew her to a bench along the wall. And when they were seated, he put his arm around her, not knowing what else to do. He could fix his mother’s leaky faucets and work every day to earn a living for them both from the sugarbush. He could climb up to take down hornets’ nests from the eaves, risking stings to save her pain. There wasn’t a damned thing he could do to help her with this pain, though, except sit besid
e her and feel useless.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” she said with an apologetic laugh. “I can’t stop the waterworks.” She exhaled and looked up at him with a forced smile. “So, where’s your helper?”
“Celie?”
“Of course, Celie. Who else?”
“She had to catch up on some work this morning. She was going to try to stop by and say hi before we left.” Celie would know what to do, he thought in a rush of relief. She’d know how to make things better. She understood people that way.
“You know, she really is one of the good ones. It’s important to me to see you with someone like her.”
“I don’t know that we’re with each other,” he hedged.
“Well I don’t know what you’d call it, but if you let her slip away you’re a fool.” Her voice was sharp. “You need her, Jacob. You need the extra pair of hands, and not just in the sugar-making. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the change in you.”
He looked away and sighed. “Well don’t get your heart set on it. It’s strictly short-term.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“But it is. With her job, her life, this is just a temporary stop. She’ll be leaving in a month or two, chasing that bug, and that’ll be the end of it.” If he were smart, he’d pull away now, get a head start on the grief instead of getting himself in deeper by the day. Get used to an empty house at night again, instead of one ringing with her laughter. “It was never something that was meant to last.”
“You know, lasting and not lasting is a funny thing,” Molly said gently. “I have a friend who lost her husband a month after they’d married. I have another who got divorced after eighteen years. And then there are your grandparents, who celebrated their golden anniversary and then some before they were through. If you’re looking for guarantees in life, you’ll be disappointed.” She brushed a bit of lint from his knee. “You just have to live it and take your chances. If you care about this woman, then make it happen.”
Vermont Valentine (Holiday Hearts #3) Page 16