The Sugar House

by Christine Flynn

  Still, she couldn’t make herself let go.

  Hating the doubts Jack raised, not crazy about him for planting them, she opened the box he had set on top and pulled out another of her father’s old bookkeeping ledgers.

  She opened the blue cloth-bound book, swallowed at the sight of her dad’s neat columns of numbers. The ledger was for a sugaring season twenty years ago. She wanted those he’d kept for his summer jobs, but she would search everything.

  “I’m looking for the name of the woman you said my father had been involved with.” The sense of desperation didn’t feel so masked now. Not with Jack watching her. He had a way of looking at her that made it feel as if he already knew whatever she tried to hide. “Or something about a baby.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jack watched her turn the page. His heart involuntarily turned right with it. Emmy was no longer insisting that what his mother had told him couldn’t be true, and the possibility that he’d told her nothing but the truth had left her without defenses. When she glanced up, she looked fragile enough to shatter.

  “Did your mom mention a name?” The hesitation in her voice made it apparent she didn’t know which would be better—having something solid to go on or still being able to doubt. “Or did she say what happened to the child?”

  The restlessness Jack had felt moments ago had somehow deserted him. He wanted it back. Irritation and annoyance felt safer around her. Certainly safer than the need he felt to soothe the anxiety he’d so obviously caused.

  He knew all about loyalty. All about the duty and need to defend someone a person loved. That need was why she’d lashed out at him last night. That duty was why he had lashed back at her.

  The edge refused to stay in his voice. “She didn’t mention either to me. I can ask her,” he offered, ducking his head to catch her glance when it fell. “If you want, I’ll call her when the phone starts working.”

  Looking guilty for simply having the questions, she drew a breath, let it shudder out. Because she needed answers, she murmured a faint, “Okay.”

  He should go, he thought. He should go shovel snow and leave her to her search until breakfast was ready, then go back and shovel some more.

  Watching her thread her fingers through her hair, thinking she looked either lost or overwhelmed or some draining combination of both, he stayed where he was instead. The little bomb that had exploded on her last night was the reason she seemed so terribly uncertain now. But he’d been the one to drop it. And she had been left to deal on her own often enough.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her hand fell as she met his eyes. “I’m fine,” she said, sounding as if she were willing herself to be. “I’m just… I’m just trying…”

  “Trying to what?” he coaxed, when she cut herself off with another shake of her head. He’d been where she was. He knew how hard the struggle could be. “I know what it’s like to have a parent fall from his pedestal, Emmy.” He offered the assurance easily, all too familiar with the conflicted emotions betrayed in her expression. “It hurts like hell. It leaves you questioning and feeling betrayed and wondering who you can trust if you can’t trust one of the two people you’re supposed to be able to believe in.”

  His voice dropped. “So what is it you’re trying to do?” he asked, knowing the battle came down to two choices. “Are you trying to let go of the image you had of him…or hang on to it?”

  Her eyes flicked hesitantly back to his. If he had to answer for her, he’d have to say she honestly didn’t know.

  He knew that for certain when she crossed her arms tightly beneath her breasts and her glance fell to the small patch of bare carpet between their feet.

  “If what you said is true, then my father had been as much at fault for all that happened as your dad had been. And if my father was the one who started all the problems, then everything I’d assumed about my parents and their relationship was a lie.”

  Her brow pinched as she studied the carpet. “If that was a lie,” she continued quietly, “their marriage hadn’t been as solid and stable as I had always believed it to be. My father would have betrayed my mother.” And broken her heart, she thought, because she would believe until the day she died herself that her mother had truly loved her father. “But Mom never said a word against him.”

  “I imagine she wanted to protect you.” He’d suggested that to her before. She just hadn’t been terribly receptive to anything he’d said at the time. For her sake, he hoped she was now. “They probably both did.”

  The haunted look Jack had remembered for so long filled her eyes as she lifted them to his.

  “That would really be ironic.” Her mouth curved, her smile as poignant as her sadness. “I’d tried to protect them, too. I’d just always felt I’d failed them both because I couldn’t stop Dad’s drinking or ease Mom’s grief after he’d gone.”

  It was the smile he couldn’t handle. That and the way she hugged herself as if she were the only support she had. With her arms locked so tightly, he’d never seen anyone look so badly in need of being held.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he lifted his hand and slowly skimmed the back of his fingers down her cheek.

  “You didn’t fail anyone, Emmy.” He watched her eyes shy from his, felt her move almost imperceptibly toward his touch. “If anything, you were probably what kept them working together. It sounds to me as if your parents did the best they could to shield you from what was going on.”

  He didn’t question the need he felt to offer her comfort as his hand slipped from the softness of her cheek and he eased her into his arms. He knew only that he needed to alleviate what he’d seen in her expression and that he’d do whatever he could to make it go away.

  With her head still lowered, her forehead bumped his chest. She didn’t bother to move. As if she were too caught up in her struggle to question anything herself, she simply let her head rest where it was.

  “They’d succeeded, too,” he reminded her, wanting her to focus on whatever positives had existed. “You were spared years of fighting and the stress kids grow up with when their parents’ relationship sucks.” He knew that stress. He’d been there, too. “They kept all that away from you. Think about that when you think about your dad.”

  Beneath his hand, he felt her narrow back rise with a slow, indrawn breath. He couldn’t believe how small she felt, how vulnerable. He couldn’t believe, either, how much it meant when he felt her lean a little more heavily against him. It wasn’t like him to give a woman the idea that he’d be there for her. But this was just for now. And this was Emmy.

  Emmy eased out her breath, felt some of the anxiety gripping her body flow out with it. She didn’t know which mattered to her more at that moment, Jack’s surprising compassion for her memory of her father or what she felt locked in his strong arms.

  She had wanted to be right where she was. She’d just had no idea how badly she’d needed the comfort he offered until she felt his heat surrounding her, seeping into her, calming her.

  It made no sense to her that she should feel any comfort at all in the arms of the man causing her such upheaval. But the reassurance she felt was as real as the uncertainty still nagging at the back of her mind. It was in his words, his embrace, the gentle touch of his hand at the back of her head.

  “It was never my intention to upset you.” His breath feathered her hair. His hand slowly smoothed it down. “I know you might have a hard time believing it, but that’s not why I came here.”

  Emmy closed her eyes, tried to blank her mind. She should tell him she knew that hadn’t been his purpose. Circumstances had turned on him as much as they had on her. She knew, too, that she should move away. She shouldn’t want so badly what he offered. But at that particular moment he wasn’t tormenting her with some distant memory. He wasn’t doing anything but encouraging feelings she hadn’t experienced in her entire adult life. All she wanted was to stay where she was and let the balm of those compelling sensations
wash over her.

  With his arms surrounding her, shielded by his big body, she felt understanding in him. And acceptance of the neediness she would undoubtedly be embarrassed to death about later but wasn’t going to worry about at all just now. Now she felt protected. And safe.

  And not alone.

  The feelings would be fleeting. She knew that. That was why she needed to absorb as much of them as she possibly could before those powerful and foreign sensations were gone.

  “It’s not,” he repeated, his voice low as he smoothed her hair once more. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  From her silence, he probably thought she didn’t know what to believe. She also had the feeling the respite he’d offered was about to end when he curved his fingers beneath her chin and tipped it up. Fearing he would see how badly she needed what he was giving, she looked away from the hard lines of disquiet carved in his expression.

  His hands cradled her face, his palms cool against her skin. “Hey.” With the pad of his thumb, he brushed along one cheekbone. “Talk to me.”

  “Yes,” she finally whispered.

  “Yes, what?”

  “I believe you.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured, and bent to press his lips to her forehead.

  Emmy’s heart caught at his unexpected tenderness. With his big hands framing her face, his kiss warming her skin, she could almost imagine what it would feel like to be truly cared for by this masterful and totally bewildering son of a man she’d thought she hated. Almost. The thought of being cared for that much by anyone seemed as foreign as every other sensation Jack caused her to feel.

  She reached between them, slowly gripped a handful of his sweater. Swallowing against the odd tightness he put in her chest, she prepared herself for him to break that disarming contact. But he didn’t pull back. When she reached for him, he simply carried that unbearably soft kiss to her temple, then angled her head to slowly cover her mouth with his.

  Her heart bumped her ribs before her breath leaked out with a sigh. There was something in his kiss beyond the comfort he offered, something that felt almost like apology, or maybe it was regret, as he sought to soothe the aches and doubts he’d so unintentionally brought her. It felt as if he didn’t want her to have to deal with the questions he’d raised. But as long as she had to deal with them, he didn’t want her to have to cope alone.

  The thought squeezed her chest even as her heartbeat quickened at the touch of his tongue to hers.

  Slipping his arms around her, he drew her closer. His thighs brushed hers. His chest pressed against her fist. She was suddenly aware of little beyond his warmth moving into her, through her and touching a part of her that had felt so cold for so very long.

  Her fist uncurled. Reaching up, she curved her arms around his neck, leaned closer still. That honeyed warmth drew her like fire on a freezing night. She needed to be closer. Needed more of his heat. Needed more of whatever else he could cause her to feel.

  A faint moan came from deep in her chest. Or maybe, Jack thought, feeling her stretch her curvy little body against his, that low sound had been his own.

  He was in trouble here. When he’d reached for her, his only thought had been to comfort. He’d never intended to do anything other than hold her. But that was before he’d been drawn by the softness of her skin, her sigh, and kissing her had suddenly seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

  Holding her now, molding her body to his as she pressed closer, his thoughts had little to do with easing her mind and everything to do with the slow-burning hunger growing low in his gut.

  She wanted this. She was seeking him as he now sought her.

  The knowledge stunned him. It also threatened to override his common sense as his hand slipped beneath her soft shirt and over the satiny fabric covering her back. She tasted warm and sweet, like some exotic liquor that seemed innocent enough at first sip but slowly worked its way into a man’s blood, heating it, hazing his mind. She tasted a little desperate, too, as she rose on tiptoe, kissing him back.

  He caught the silk of her hair in his other hand, drank more deeply. Her mouth felt impossibly soft beneath his. The almost tentative touch of her tongue felt incredibly erotic. Each breath he drew brought the fresh, powdery scent of her into his lungs, heating the desire coursing through his blood. But no matter that she seemed so willing, no matter how unbelievably tempting he found her, she was forbidden fruit as far as he was concerned.

  His heart felt as if it were about to pound out of his chest when he slipped his hands up to frame her face once more.

  Edging her back, he rested his forehead against hers. Had they met under different circumstances, had he not come intending to close the book where their families were concerned, he suspected he wouldn’t have kept his hands to himself even as long as he had. She was an intelligent, remarkable and beautiful woman, and right now he wanted her in bed, naked and moving beneath him. But sex with her would only add another layer of complications to their situation. And their situation felt complicated enough as it was.

  “You know something, Emmy?” he asked, his voice husky with denied need. “I think I’d better get out of here before I change my mind.”

  Emmy’s arms slipped back around herself. With her pulse scrambling, her knees weak, she edged back far enough to see the little cleft in his chin when he lifted his head. Shocked by how she’d craved his touch, embarrassed by how desperately she’d encouraged it, she blinked at his broad chest. “About what?”

  “About behaving myself.”

  Embarrassment turned to something confusing, and terribly seductive, when he slipped his fingers beneath her chin and smoothed his moisture from her lower lip with his thumb.

  “I’m going to start shoveling out around the sugar house,” he told her, his focus on her mouth, his thoughts drifting toward stuffing snow in his pants. “How long do I have until breakfast?”

  Emmy gave him twenty minutes, every one of which she spent vacillating between wishing he hadn’t behaved himself and telling herself she should be grateful that he had.

  She wasn’t terribly experienced where men were concerned. Not intimately, anyway. She had male friends. Old ones. Young ones. A few in between. Two of those friends were boys, now men, she’d dated in high school. Rob Higgins, who ran a cattle and wheat ranch with his father, had taken her to homecoming and football games and taught her how to kiss. T.J. McGraw, whose mom still taught English and Home Ec., had taken her to the prom and been too shy to do anything other than hold her hand.

  Both men were now married to women she shared recipes and committee projects with and who knew about the kissing and the handholding because they’d been in high school with her. But her only adult relationship had been with an English professor who’d stayed at her B and B four summers ago.

  Jeremy Barton, Ph.D., had stayed from June until September writing a dissertation to be published in some collegiate tome that would ensure his professional immortality. He’d been young, smart and the biggest flirt she’d ever met, which should have been her first clue that she shouldn’t take anything he said seriously—especially when he’d confided one summer evening that he’d become totally infatuated with her and Vermont.

  Looking back, she supposed her only excuse for having been so easily seduced was because she’d lacked the sophistication to spot the human version of a tomcat. As she’d told Jack, the eligible men in Maple Mountain were either eighteen or eighty and at twenty-three, her experience had been sorely limited. As her business had grown, she’d since encountered other more urbane men from down country. But until Jeremy, no man had ever paid her the compliments or attention he had. She’d never opened up to him the way she had to Jack about her family, but she’d liked being with him because he’d given her something new to look forward to each morning.

  He had also left exactly as scheduled—and she hadn’t heard from him since.

  Jack would leave, too.

  Unfortunately, knowing that
Jack would soon be gone did nothing to alleviate the pull she felt toward him. She knew her ability to confide in him existed mostly because they shared a history. He hadn’t been around for the aftermath of his dad’s decision, but he’d been there in the beginning and he’d known her mom and dad. Yet, that ability to share with him aside, no man had ever made her feel the raw need he had elicited. Or given her the sense that he cared about how his actions might affect her.

  Still, Jack would leave. Being the practical person she was, Emmy figured that meant she didn’t need to worry too much about why that pull was there. Or the undeniable strength of it. As she searched out a scrunchee and scraped her hair into a ponytail on the way into the kitchen, she had more immediate matters to tend. She needed to get them both fed, find her father’s old snowshoes for Jack to use—the ones she hadn’t wanted to sell because they’d belonged to her grandfather—and tackle the snow herself.

  By one o’clock the icicles dangling from the eaves of the sugar house had started to slowly drip from the warmth of the sun. With the new layer of snow coating the roof and the branches of the trees glistening with snow-glazed ice, the world looked like something enchanted, something magical. A fairy forest, Emmy had called the winter woods as a child, because as a child, her imagination had run to all manner of fanciful things. Tiny fairies in glittering gowns of white frost and gossamer wings seemed to fit those fancies perfectly. She would even imagine that the diamondlike reflections of the sun sparkling on ice were those tiny, ephemeral spirits and make a wish before they shimmered away.

  Watching the sun glitter on the ice coating a maple tree as she stood in the doorway of the sugar house, Emmy didn’t notice any of that magic. As she had so often in her life, she simply felt as if she were holding her breath.

  One of the tree’s branches was broken. So were several others in the trees beyond. There hadn’t been time yet to see what other damage had been done in the sugar bush.

  “What’s the matter?”