by James Lavene
Alain said that Nick had told his lawyer that he didn't care if she was the Queen of England. He obviously didn't feel that money was important to the matter. If she could discover what did matter, why the two-parent concept was so important to him, she might be able to dissuade him.
She was gathering her papers to grade that night and thinking about her next move. She looked down and saw Adam's flute case still on the floor under his seat. She picked up the battered black case and a light came on in her brain.
She could return the case. Make small talk about Adam's progress. Then mention casually that Adam had told her that Amber was up for adoption. It would give her the opportunity to plead her case, and possibly learn what her real obstacle was in the matter.
She stuffed the papers into her briefcase and loaded the flute case on top of everything else. The school secretary, Mrs. Piler, looked up Nick's address for her.
It was after five when Emilie finally left the school. That time between day and night, the fleeting twilight, was her favorite time of day. Night was falling gently over the mountain. Lights were twinkling along the highway and halfway up the mountainside. The towering black shadow of Ferrier's Mountain met the darkening sky where the evening star danced in the purple dusk.
She looked at the star and closed her eyes, making a silent, desperate wish. Then she got in her car and drove into town.
Emilie reached the address the school had given her and her heart sank. There was a big, white moving van parked in the narrow drive. Three men in overalls were moving furniture and boxes from the house to the truck.
"Oh no," she pleaded with fate. "Don't let this happen!"
She left her car in the street, bringing the flute case with her. Her leg had been painful that day from the cold, wet weather. She moved stiffly up the drive, hoping that Nick wasn't watching. Sometimes if she walked a little, the stiffness worked itself out. She didn't want to lose Amber because he thought she was physically incapable of taking care of a toddler.
The house was ablaze with light. Boxes, some half-packed, were everywhere. The rooms were pulled apart, furniture pushed in every corner so it was impossible for her to tell what the house had looked like before the moving process had begun.
It was clean, though, she noticed. No dust balls or half-eaten candy bars as she might have expected from a house where there was a man living as a single parent with two small children.
"Emilie?" Nick called her name as she walked past him from the kitchen to the living room.
She turned and he was immediately, painfully, aware of her. It was a physical sensation that brought with it a narrowness of vision to include only her face and a tingling that started in his toes and worked its way to his brain.
"Nick!" She saw him standing halfway down the stairs she'd walked past. He looked frustrated and impatient. His dark hair was disarrayed and the sound of the baby crying filtered down from the second floor.
"What are you doing here?" He pushed a clean diaper into the pocket of his black jeans.
"I came to bring Adam's flute case. He forgot it at school and I thought he might need to have it." Her reply held more practice than confidence. "I hope I’m not intruding."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to give you the third degree. It's just that—" The baby's cry came louder and stronger from upstairs. "Hang on a sec! Can you come up?"
Her leg was still a little stiff. Emilie nodded. She waited for him to go up, following slowly after him, hoping he wouldn't notice that she didn't sprint up the way he did.
Almost everything was gone from the second floor. Only the crib and a few boxes, filled with toys and stuffed animals, remained, not to mention an unhappy little girl.
"She needs to have her diaper changed," Nick explained unnecessarily when Emilie walked into the nursery.
Emilie smiled and looked at the colorful borders on the walls, the smiling stars and moon on the ceiling. She looked out of the window at the winding street below and tried to calm down. Everything was going well so far.
Amber kept howling, even when her diaper had been changed. Nick picked her up and balanced her on his chest, looking around the room.
"Can I get something for you?" Emilie asked, seeing his desperate gaze.
"There's a blue case here somewhere.” He began searching through what was left in the room. "It has her bottle and her turtle."
"Her turtle?"
Nick grimaced. "She won't go to sleep without it."
Emilie spotted the blue case under a pink blanket. The furry turtle was beside it. "Is this it?" She held up the prize.
"Can you get the bottle out?" He took the turtle. "Look, Amber, look. It's Tommy. See?"
She stopped crying for an instant, looking at her furry friend. She was about to start again when the bottle was passed to her uncle. He sat down on one of the boxes and rested the girl in his lap, holding the bottle in her mouth while she smiled contentedly and held the little turtle.
"Sorry about all of this," he apologized again. "We're moving out for a few weeks and it's a mess. I didn't mean to snap at you downstairs."
"That's okay." Emilie perched on the other box, watching the little girl as she drained her bottle. "You had an emergency! Are you leaving town?"
"No," he responded. "This is an older house and they found asbestos in the insulation. I didn't like the idea of the kids being here with it. I'm having it cleaned out and new insulation put in. So everything has to go into storage and we have to stay at a motel for a while until it's finished."
Emilie's pulse beat faster as she realized that this was her opportunity. She wouldn't have to admit that she knew his secret. It would give her the time she needed to show him exactly what it would be like for Amber to live with her.
"This may be awkward. I don’t know." She tried to sound natural and not as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. "You could move into my house until yours is finished."
He looked up at her with narrowed eyes, calculating what it was that made her offer. "That's nice," he answered. "But no, thanks."
"It wouldn't be an inconvenience," she rushed to assure him. "I mean, the house is huge. You wouldn't even know I was there. I wouldn't even have to see you. I mean, well, you've seen the house."
"Why? You don't owe me anything. You sure don't know me that well. Why would Emilie Ferrier want to have town riffraff move into her house for a few weeks?"
She looked down at her hands and he was immediately sorry. No matter what they said in town about the Ferriers, he had a hard time believing it applied to this woman. He'd never met anyone less self-assured or more vulnerable to insult, no matter how minor. She was too sensitive, too willing to put herself out because of what other people might think of her.
"I'm sorry," he repented, smiling at her when she looked up at him again. "It's been a hard day. I'm not sure exactly where Adam is. The baby has been miserable teething and Joe Patterson wanted his Dodge truck back yesterday."
"That's all right." She smiled back at him. "The offer still stands. It'll be hard for Adam to practice his flute in a motel without getting you thrown out. And if Amber is teething, she'll be crying a lot, disturbing other people."
"I'm not going to do anything disturbing," he promised. "They might let me stay."
"True," she admitted readily. "I didn't mean to list your problems for you. I was only pointing out that it might be better, easier, to stay with me."
"Emilie, do you go around saving everyone?"
She looked up at him, not realizing the loneliness and unhappiness he saw in her eyes. "I don't know if you realize it or not," she told him. "But Christmas is coming in the next two weeks. A motel won't be a very good place to spend a holiday."
He searched her face, wondering why she would be lonely or unhappy. He knew he shouldn't even be asking that question. In the car that night, he’d put some distance between them. The action had felt necessary. He had enough going on with the two kids.
Then he'd driven himself c
razy until he’d finally asked her out. She’d said ‘no’ like she’d meant it. What had he expected?
He'd told himself afterwards that she had been the smart one. She knew nothing could ever work out between them, no matter the attraction he felt for her. Between his responsibilities and her status in town, it was stupid to even try.
It occurred to him that she might have made the offer to let them stay with her because she was attracted to him too. How awkward would that be?
"I appreciate your offer."
"That's okay." Her heart plummeted. She stood slowly, obviously in pain, though no grimace crossed her smooth features. "It was a spur of the moment thing. Always trying to save people. That’s me.”
"It's just not a good idea, Emilie."
"What's not a good idea?" Adam asked from the doorway where he'd been standing, watching the two adults.
"Nothing, Adam," Nick snapped. "Where have you been all afternoon?"
"I've been at Mikey's. He got a new train for Christmas."
"It's not Christmas yet," Nick reminded him.
"I know." Adam shrugged and grinned at him. "His parents let him open a present early."
Emilie smiled at him. "I was offering to let you stay at my house over Christmas."
Nick’s face mirrored his anger. He couldn’t believe she’d put the proposal to Adam that way when he’d said no. Of course the boy was going to want to live with the teacher he admired over the holiday. She’d put him in a bad position.
"Uncle Nick said you don't have a Corvette," Adam said after thinking about it for all of two minutes.
"That's true," Emilie ruefully admitted. She knew what she’d done and carefully avoided Nick’s angry, dark eyes. It was her last shot at getting what she wanted.
Adam grinned at her. "That's okay. I'd like to come and stay with you anyway."
"We’re not staying with Miss Ferrier,” Nick said.
"Come on, Uncle Nick." Adam pleaded. "Amber likes Miss Ferrier, too."
Nick stood up, transferring the sleeping child in his arms to rest her head on his shoulder. He put her bottle down on the floor and wondered what Emilie’s game was. "We're not going to stay with Miss Ferrier, Adam. That’s it."
"Why not?" the boy whined. "I want to stay with her!"
Nick glanced darkly at Emilie who smiled and shrugged.
"I have to go," Emilie said, edging her way towards the door. "The offer's open, if you change your mind."
"I won't," Nick assured her, trying to put the baby down in the crib only to have her wake up and start to cry.
"I want to stay with Miss Ferrier," Adam told him loudly.
"Quiet, Adam!" Nick tried to settle Amber back down.
"Uncle Nick!"
Emilie walked slowly, thoughtfully, down the brightly-lit hallway. She hadn't thought about Adam being in her corner. She could still hear Adam's pleading and the baby's wailing as she left the house. Would he give in to the boy's demands? Emilie didn't think Nick was the kind of man who gave into anything very easily.
It was unfair of her to put him in that position. If she wouldn’t have been desperate, she wouldn’t have done it. She knew in her heart she could care for Amber as well as any other adoptive mother, even one who had a husband. She just needed a chance to prove it to Nick.
She shook her head as she drove down the streets, smiling at the multicolored Christmas lights that glowed softly on the trees and building fronts. The idea that she could have children in the house for the holiday made her think of all kinds of crazy things. They would need more decorations and lots of snack food. They could bake cookies and make candy!
She would have to get Aunt Joda in on her plan. She didn’t want her aunt pulling one of her stunts that would completely turn Nick against her.
Even though he’d said no, Emilie was sure he’d change his mind. It was intuition. It was wishful thinking. She prayed hard on the wishing star. If she’d thought it would help to take off her clothes and dance naked with her aunt’s friends, she would have done that too.
This is going to work, she thought as she fell asleep that night. Her brain argued that it was illogical. Her heart said it was going to happen.
#
The rest of the week was chaotic at school. There were end of term tests for the upper grades, including Emilie's, as well as Christmas pageants and plays.
Emilie went to the Christmas band concert, at Adam's invitation. Though the boy had only been with the band a scant two weeks, he was able to participate in the concert. Mr. Foster was beaming at his 'prodigy', making a fuss over the boy's talent and ability to pick up quickly on what the band was already doing.
Thrilled to see Adam in the spotlight, Emilie sat in the back row of the auditorium, watching Nick and Amber in the front row. He sat with the baby, pointing out her brother in the flute section of the band on stage. He'd walked past Emilie without looking at her as he came into the auditorium.
She put her hand up to hail him and then changed her mind. It was better not to push it any further. Though Nick hadn’t decided to take her up on her invitation to stay at her house, she still felt confident that he would. It was only a matter of time.
Adam was handsome in his dark suit and white shirt. He wore a bright red Christmas tie around his thin neck and played his little heart out for his flute section. When Mr. Foster introduced him as his newest and brightest pupil, he took a small bow and the audience applauded.
“The next song is for my mom,” he said to the audience. “She taught me to play the flute when I was just a kid. She couldn’t be here tonight because she was killed. But I still love her.”
Emilie felt her eyes brim with tears on the boy's behalf—she knew there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience. Adam seemed to be on the road to recovery finally. She was so happy for him.
Would Nick adopt him out if he wasn't in trouble all the time? Or would he decide to keep Adam? Had his sister wanted Amber adopted out?
Emilie sighed, afraid she would never know the answers to those questions. She'd been glad to see Amber's smiling baby face as she sat in Nick's lap. Maybe it meant that she hadn't been adopted yet. There could still be time for her plan to work.
Nick sat in his seat with Amber when the concert was over after the band's stirring rendition of 'Frosty the Snowman'. People had lined up to the stage from the audience. He didn't feel like wading through them with the baby who'd fallen asleep in his lap during the concert.
He was watching the parents and relatives of the other band members laughing and talking with their children. Then he saw Emilie.
She was holding the red and white program that had been handed out at the door and she was talking to Adam. She was wearing a bright green dress that clung to her slender form, emphasizing her rounded breasts and curved hips. Her hair was different, pulled back on one side. There was a sprig of fake holly near her ear.
He'd seen her when he'd walked into the auditorium. He’d developed a sixth sense where she was concerned. It was as though he could feel her near him. He'd purposely walked by her at the back of the seating, telling himself that Amber needed to sit near the front to see Adam better.
Of course, Amber had fallen asleep within the first five minutes. Then he'd been tortured, wanting to look back at her and knowing that if he did, she'd see him looking and know that he was looking at her.
Nick enjoyed looking at Emilie. She was like a living jewel on the stage, laughing at something Adam had said to her. She bent down and hugged him tightly, touched his hair where it wouldn't ever lay flat. He wondered what Adam had said that had brought that light to her eyes and that curve to her pink lips.
He knew he was obsessing about the woman and bitterly regretted it. If he could have moved from Ferrier's Mountain to get away from her, he would have. All of his money was tied up in the house and business.
Emilie wasn’t interested in him. He was her mechanic. It sounded feudal, but he knew that kind of relationship wouldn’t work out. Bes
ides, he had the kids to think about.
Still, he hadn't slept at all the night after he'd kissed her, wanting her. His mind might tell him that it wouldn’t work between them. His body didn’t seem to care.
The crowd was thinning and Adam was looking his way. Nick stood up and started toward the stage. When his gaze met Emilie’s, her bright smile faded. She said something else to Adam who nodded and smiled at her. Then she began to walk away.
She walked slowly, as if she was in pain, but she didn't look back. Nick knew the story about her now. She’d had polio as a young child and all the Ferrier’s money couldn’t make it better. She’d survived, but couldn’t have children to continue the family name.
The mountain was as much a mother lode of gossip as it had once been of gold. Emilie was one of their favorite tidbits.
Nick had heard about her brief marriage too. She’d married a bad 'un, as Sam Clark had told it—divorced quietly a few weeks after. Emilie had gone away for a time after that and no one had seen her. Broken hearted, they speculated. Her husband had left with a cocktail waitress from down the mountain.
What had that cost a woman like Emilie, with her soft heart and sad eyes? He’d speculated on it more than he should have. It was as though he couldn't think about anything else besides Emilie Ferrier since he'd met her.
"Uncle Nick!" Adam held his flute aloft, hailing him. "What did you think? Did Amber like it?"
"We both loved it!" Nick told him. "Amber liked it so much, she fell asleep."
Adam frowned. "That didn't mean she liked it."
"She did," Nick disagreed. "She was laughing and clapping her hands before she went to sleep."
"Really?" Adam looked at his sister's sleeping face. "It was easy! Mr. Foster is a great teacher."
Mr. Foster came up and shook Nick's hand. He laughed and patted Adam's head, telling them both what a pleasure it was to have Adam in his class and how much he looked forward to seeing him after the Christmas break.
Emilie paused when she'd reached the shadows at the back of the auditorium. She looked back at Nick in his dark suit and deep blue shirt, standing beside Adam who was triumphantly waving his flute. The baby was asleep on Nick's shoulder.