by Amy Frazier
“I did my job,” she replied cautiously, “so that others could take over. And they will. Beautifully. With you and Dad there it will be a gala opening.”
“Of course it will, but we’ll miss you, darling. We do miss you. We only want you to be happy.”
“Thank you. I’m working on it.”
“Justin wants to know if he can call you.”
“No.” Justin Steele was her ex-almost-fiancé. She’d come to think of him as the fox in the henhouse. “When he proposed, I was very clear we had no future together.”
“Oh, darling, that was the stress talking.”
No. Of all the things she’d done to please others, turning down Justin had been the first genuine action she’d taken for herself. She wouldn’t debate her mother on the issue.
After a long silence, her mother tried a different approach. “Can you give me a tiny hint as to where you are?”
“Mother!” As much as she missed her parents, Samantha needed this time. Alone. She didn’t need her mother’s well-intentioned meddling. And she certainly didn’t need the intrusion of the paparazzi that had followed her arrest and court date. “I’m counting on you to honor Dr. Kumar’s advice, and to make sure Dad doesn’t send Max out on the trail.” Max was the personal detective her father kept on retainer.
“You flatter me. I have very little real control over your father. As you say, a steamroller in a tux.”
“I’m not trying to hide from you, Mother. Every day I feel stronger and stronger. But before I come home, I want to make certain I’m strong enough to avoid a repeat of—”
“An unfortunate incident. There’s no need to bring it up.”
“But part of my recovery is accepting responsibility.”
“Darling, you had a drink or two during a social occasion. We all do. No matter what the judge thought, you are not a drunk.”
“An alcoholic. A recovering alcoholic. And, over time, it was more than a couple drinks. In fact, so many drinks at that particular luncheon I don’t even remember the school zone—”
“No!” The single syllable pierced the distance between mother and daughter. “You paid your debt. Can we, please, not relive it all?” her mother pleaded.
“Agreed. I’d like to focus on the present. And right now the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I’m breathing the most wonderful fresh air.”
“Sea air? The Hamptons, perhaps? That lovely spa on the far end—?”
“Mother, you’re incorrigible.”
“Well, Dr. Kumar may have prescribed a year’s rest, but you’re not going to keep the location secret for the whole time, are you?”
“No. I just need to settle in.” It had been three months since her rather secret—to keep the news-hounds away—release from rehab. At first she hadn’t wanted her parents to know her new location because she was afraid of being drawn back into her old life. Now, she was head over heels in love with the simplicity and beauty of Applegate, tucked away in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, she was afraid if her parents showed up in town, they’d love it, too. So much so that her father would buy it and turn it all into a five-star resort.
LATER THAT NIGHT, GARRETT returned home, glad that today on the job had been routine. It wasn’t always so. When he’d become sheriff five years ago, he’d inherited a mess. Colum County was changing rapidly. Developers were buying up mountain tracts and turning once nearly communal land into gated vacation communities and upscale commuter subdivisions, shutting long-term residents out and making their taxes stratospherically high. That was a minor intrusion compared to the influx of big-city problems. Drugs especially. Recreational drugs had replaced moonshine. The county remained a bucolic paradise on the surface, but underneath simmered some very real issues.
Sheriff Easley, his predecessor, had run things as his daddy and granddaddy had done before him—by a slow and convoluted good-ol’-boy system that didn’t want to recognize change. The small department had been low-tech, ill-equipped and badly trained. Not to mention susceptible to the lure of small-town graft. A real embarrassment. Elected on a reform platform, Garrett had been vigilant in turning things around and confronting the county’s problems head-on. Which meant he appreciated a routine day. A relatively quiet day. Like today.
He found Geneva in the kitchen, scrubbing a scorched pan. The smell of burnt popcorn filled the air. “How’s it going?” he asked his housekeeper.
“It’s going, all right,” Geneva muttered as she lifted the pan and made as if to throw it out the window over the sink. “That boy uses my best pot to make popcorn. Puts in the oil then walks away to check on a video game. Smelling something not right, I come back here to find flames shooting out. My best,” she repeated dourly. “Nearly ruined.”
“I’ll speak to him.”
As Garrett turned toward Rory’s room, Geneva caught his arm. “Don’t.” Her voice immediately changed from irritated to concerned. “He’s been wrestling with something heavy. Been on that skinny little phone of his most of the evening with his mama. Won’t tell me what’s got him so riled.” She returned to her scrubbing. “So don’t mention this stupid old pot.”
“I won’t.” He headed for a chat with his son.
In the three years since he and his ex-wife, Noelle, had divorced, Rory had spent every vacation with Garrett. It was part of the custody settlement. Garrett always looked forward to the return to day-to-day parenting, and Rory seemed to enjoy his time in the mountains, but the initial transition was always hard. This time especially so. At twelve, almost thirteen, Rory, with one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood, had stopped communicating with his father. It made Garrett worry his son might be getting ready to tell him he was too big for life in a small town and wanted to live full-time in Charlotte.
He knocked on Rory’s bedroom door.
“Yeah.”
Taking that monosyllable for permission to enter, Garrett pushed the door open. Rory was at his computer, intent on a game Garrett had seen his deputies playing. He didn’t think it was appropriate for a twelve-year-old, but he needed to pick his battles. Right now he wanted to find out what was bugging his son.
“How did work go?” he asked. Up at Whistling Meadows Rory had seemed almost happy.
“Okay.” His boy continued to play.
Garrett sat on the edge of the bed, facing Rory. “I’d like to talk.”
Reluctantly Rory shut off the game, but he didn’t face his father. Didn’t speak.
“Geneva says you seemed upset.”
Rory scowled as if fighting back tears, as if struggling to put the boy behind him.
“Son, I can help—”
“No you can’t!” Rory twisted away. “Mom’s made up her mind.”
“About what?” Foreboding stabbed him. Despite their cool but cordial relationship so far, Noelle didn’t reveal much about Rory’s and her life in Charlotte, only her rise in the banking world. That was something she never tired of telling him, her proof, perhaps, that she’d been right and he’d been wrong about the limitations of Applegate. Now, what was going on? Was she thinking of remarrying? Or—the awful possibility hit him—was she tired of fitting Rory’s trips to Applegate into her increasingly hectic schedule? Was she planning to seek sole custody? With her continued climb up the corporate ladder, she had the contacts and the financial wherewithal.
“What has your mother decided?” he repeated.
Rory whirled on the computer stool to face Garrett. Tears glistened in his eyes. He looked five, not twelve. “Mom wants to send me to boarding school after eighth grade.”
Damn. This was out of left field. “Why?” His kid was bright and conscientious. Perhaps, at times, too conscientious. Too buttoned down. If Noelle had a fault, it was that she tried to make Rory a little pin-striped banker. “You’re doing great right where you are.”
“Mom says Harpswell Prep can help me get into an Ivy League college. But I wanna be a vet, and there are good vet schools that don’t
look at whether you went to some snooty high school or not.”
Garrett felt the anger rise. Not at the notion of a prep school, but at the idea that Noelle had failed to consult him on a big decision in his son’s life. And what a decision. She had to know it pushed his buttons. He hadn’t spent his youth in foster care just so his son, with two loving parents, could get farmed out to boarding school.
“I’ll talk to your mom,” he said, rising.
“You can’t talk to her now. She’s on a plane to London. Besides, we need a plan, and I’ve been working on one.”
Surprised, Garrett turned to his son. “What plan?”
“I want to live with you. Full-time. I don’t want to go back to Charlotte. Mom’s always traveling, anyway. We could switch the schedule. I could see her on vacations.”
“Have you mentioned this to your mother?”
Rory shook his head.
Garrett could see the fireworks now. Noelle would think this was his idea. Would think he was using Rory to question her parenting skills, to circumvent the judge’s orders. While she’d use all her considerable money and influence to make Garrett pay, Rory would be the one to suffer in the end.
Garrett couldn’t let that happen.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU LOOK LIKE THE WRATH OF God.” That’s what Geneva had told Garrett as she’d bustled through the kitchen door earlier that morning. Then, while getting eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator, she’d muttered, “I wouldn’t worry so much if I thought there was a chance you’d been out on the town. Goin’ a little wild. Havin’ a little fun…”
She knew him better than that.
Last night, after leaving a message on Noelle’s voice mail to contact him as soon as she arrived in London, he’d lain awake for hours, worrying the untold consequences of both her and Rory’s separate plans. Not having heard from her by morning, he’d called her assistant in Charlotte, who had her itinerary. Overseas, Noelle was already in a closed meeting. Garrett needed to understand the time difference was five hours. Was it an emergency? If not, try Noelle again around nine, North Carolina time. She should have a small break before heading into another meeting, the assistant had said, promising to leave a message as well—
“Dad, look at that!” Rory said with disgust. Garrett had thrown the old banana-seat bike in the cruiser’s trunk and was giving his son a ride to Whistling Meadows. “Someone’s tossed garbage into the pasture. I’m gonna have to take care of that first thing. Before Percy and the boys eat something they shouldn’t.”
It made Garrett proud that his son was already taking ownership of this new job.
As they pulled up the farm road, Garrett could see six llamas haltered and tethered to the paddock fence. One carried a double-sided pack, and Samantha was adjusting another on a second animal. Four more packs lay on the ground. The llamas looked cool, calm and collected, but the woman looked frazzled.
Rory barely waited for the car to come to a stop before he hopped out. “Need help?”
“Yes, please!” Samantha moved from one side of the black-and-tan animal to the other, apparently trying to balance the contents of the bags. “Twelve Rockbrook campers and their counselor are booked for this morning. I just got a call they’d penciled in the time one hour earlier than I had. They’re on their way. I’m not ready.”
Garrett, noting she looked like a woman who preferred being in charge and prepared, stepped forward to pick one of the packs off the ground. “The cinch work looks simple. Anything in particular I should know?”
“The process is pretty straightforward,” she replied, swiping wisps of pale blond hair away from her face. “If you keep the loads evenly distributed, you shouldn’t have a problem.”
“Problem?”
“Llamas express their displeasure by spitting, but that’s really a llama-llama thing.”
“Come on, Rory,” he replied, only slightly reassured. “I’ll put the bags in place. You tie them.” He headed cautiously toward a piebald llama.
“Dad, meet Fred.”
Fred emitted a sound like high tension wires that Garrett could only hope came from the front end of the beast.
“He’s humming!” Rory looked thrilled to be among these strange-looking creatures. In that, he didn’t take after his father. As a kid Garrett had never been allowed a pet.
“So, how do you keep them clean?” his son asked Samantha. “I can’t picture giving one of these guys a bath.”
“They’d get bathed only if I were going to show them,” she replied. “Which I’m not. Everybody here stays happy with a lot of rolling in the dust on their part and some very careful brushing on mine. And spring shearing.”
For the first time, the woman’s speech pattern, her cultured inflection, fully registered with Garrett. He took note of her spotless designer jeans, her expensive boots and her carefully ironed shirt—some soft material in a grayish-green—nothing from the local discount store. Stuff Noelle would have picked out. The Weston woman seemed to know what she was doing with the llamas, but she sure didn’t look or sound as if she belonged on a North Carolina farm.
“Can I do it as part of my job?” Rory asked her. “Brush ’em, I mean.”
“I’ll teach you if you really want. It’s tricky. Llamas are very sensitive to touch. Their coats can be full of static. And more than that, you have to earn their trust….”
Garrett listened with surprise to his son and this stranger talking easily. Rory had spoken more words in the past five minutes than he had in the entire week he’d been in Applegate. As a father, he wanted to be a part of the conversation, too.
He fell back on what every resident asked a newcomer. “So, Samantha, where are you from originally?”
She looked as if he’d asked her for her Social Security and bank account numbers plus the key to her house. At that moment the instincts of both father and sheriff kicked in. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to run a check on his son’s employer.
Samantha tried to keep her features neutral. “I’ve lived too many places to count,” she replied with her pat answer. It wasn’t a lie. Although the Virginia estate outside D.C. had always been the family home, as an adult she’d traveled the world for the hotel business.
“Army brat?”
Rechecking a cinch, she pretended not to have heard the question.
“How do you come to run a llama trekking business in western North Carolina?” he persisted.
She wasn’t about to tell him about the rehab center just outside Asheville, recommended by an old family friend, and its program, wherein residents took turns caring for a Noah’s ark assortment of animals. She’d fallen in love with Pogo the llama. Actually, she’d fallen in love with the calm and purposeful woman she’d become in the llama’s presence.
She inspected a strap Rory had tightened. “Good work,” she said, then turned to the sheriff. “Who wouldn’t want to do this if they had the opportunity?”
As he lifted the last piece of baggage from the ground, the glance he gave her said he knew she was being deliberately evasive. But he didn’t pursue the issue.
She took the pack from his hands and headed for Percy as the sound of the Rockbrook Camp van floated up the road. Good. She didn’t need any more questions from Sheriff McQuire. Nor any more looks. If her father was a steamroller in a tux, and her ex-almost-fiancé a fox in the henhouse, she suspected this man was a walking, talking lie detector. She preferred staying off his register.
“It seems like you have things under control,” he said, his manner brusque. “Son, see you at supper.”
“Okay.” Rory eyed the giggling girls piling out of the van with as much trepidation as Samantha felt for his father’s questions. “I’m gonna clean up that garbage in the pasture near the road.” And before the lead camper could reach him, he bolted.
Samantha didn’t see the sheriff leave. She made herself busy settling the girls and giving them the basic instructions that would lead to a happy trail experience. As she t
alked, as she demonstrated what to do, over the girls’ questions and the llamas’ gentle humming, she began to feel at ease. Despite the possibility that her parents or the paparazzi could invade her sanctuary at any moment or that Rory’s father could reveal her as a fraud, she refused to be driven from her new life. These campers didn’t care that she was an heiress. This land didn’t care that she was a recovering alcoholic. Her llamas didn’t care about her background as a deb. They cared about her present behavior. A kind word. A gentle touch. Those were things that Samantha could offer from the heart. It was an authentic start. She would not let others spoil it.
THOUGHTS OF NOELLE AND RORY and the perplexing new owner of Whistling Meadows weighing on his mind, Garrett eased his cruiser up the rutted trail on the Whittaker property—one of many old logging roads that crisscrossed the area. Lily Whittaker had called him to say her son Mack had taken his shotgun and a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s and had left the house without a word. She was worried. It wasn’t hunting season.
Garrett was worried, too.
Mack Whittaker had been his best deputy. And his best friend. Hired because of his army training, Mack had successfully juggled work for the Sheriff’s Department with a continued Armed Forces commitment in the reserves. He had seen active duty in the reserves in a call-up to Iraq. Garrett had promised him his position when he got back. Trouble was, Stateside again, Mack didn’t seem to want the job anymore. Or Garrett’s friendship. Or any part of his previous life. He’d broken up with his longtime girlfriend. His mama said he was a bear to live with. His daddy said his eyes looked like those of a dead man. After one nasty brawl in town, he shunned old friends and acquaintances entirely. People reported seeing him in odd places, on foot tramping the side of the roads, sometimes crossing fields, sometimes lying way up on Lookout Rock, motionless, a bottle in his hand. He rarely drove. He never spoke.