The Sugar House. Christine Flynn

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      Or so she was telling herself as the low drone of a car engine filtered through the cold March air.

      Emmy froze in her tracks. From where she had just emerged from the woods, she could see the BMW with New York plates slow as it approached the white, two-story house with its wide, welcoming front porch and the Wedgwood-blue trim she’d painted last summer.

      Continuing past the house toward the stable she’d converted into a garage, the car crunched to a stop beneath the skeletal branches of a sycamore tree.

      A low growl came from near her knee.

      Only now noticing that Rudy had stopped chasing the squirrel he’d terrorized only moments ago and planted himself at her side, she touched the top of his big head.

      “It’s okay, boy,” she murmured, reassured by his loyal presence. “We’ll just see what he wants.”

      Across the blanket of white, she watched a tall, dark-haired man emerge from the car. The door closed with a crack that sounded like a gunshot a moment before she saw Jack Travers glance toward the house.

      She had been barely twelve years old the last time she’d seen him. The fifteen years since then had erased many of the day-to-day memories of when he and his family had lived nearby, but she remembered well enough how she’d felt about him. He’d been like a big brother to her—or how she had imagined a big brother would be, since she’d never had any siblings. At least, that was the way she’d thought of him until he’d become just like his father and turned on his friends, too.

      She had never seen him lose his temper as she’d heard he’d done. Certainly not with her. But it had been Jack who had first taught her that a person really couldn’t count on anyone but family. Since she had no family left, she pretty much didn’t count on anyone but herself anymore.

      With his hands on the hips of his jeans, his heavy jacket open and making his shoulders look impossibly wide, he looked from the house to the plume of smoke and steam rising from the distant sugar house. As he did, he finally noticed her standing there.

      Her stomach tightened as he started toward her. She remembered him being big. As he moved closer, his breath trailing off in the brisk air, he seemed even taller than she remembered, his build more athletic, more…powerful.

      She hadn’t heard what he did for a living. She wasn’t sure anyone even knew. But he had an intensity about him as he approached, an air of success and command that seemed unmistakable. She’d seen the type before. Men like him, along with their equally intense, successful and demanding wives or girlfriends had been guests of the B and B she and her mom had converted their home into after her father died.

      She saw his eyes narrow on her as he drew closer, his focus never leaving her face. Trying not to look as wary as she felt, she openly studied him back. A striking maturity carved the lean, almost elegant features that were more familiar than she’d thought they would be.

      His mother had once been her mother’s good friend. As he stopped in front of her, she could see a strong resemblance to Ruth Travers in the gleaming black of his short, neatly trimmed hair, his coal-dark lashes. Yet, there was nothing remotely feminine about the man. Certainly not the broad, intelligent brow, the piercing blue of his eyes or the carved lines of his mouth as it curved in a cautious smile.

      She didn’t remember him being so blatantly handsome. But then, she’d been a young girl when he’d left and, being a late bloomer, handsome to her had been her horse.

      As his assessing glance slowly moved from the fleece cap covering her head down her slender frame and back to her unadorned face, he seemed to recognize her, too.

      “Hi, Emmy.” The deep tones of his rich, rumbling voice sounded as guarded as his expression. “It’s been a long time. I’m Jack. Travers,” he added, since she’d given no indication at all that he was familiar to her.

      “I know who you are.”

      He had a small cleft in his chin. She noticed it when he gave her a grim little nod of acknowledgment. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I suppose you do.” A muscle in his jaw twitched as his glance slid from her toward the smoke and steam rising above the trees from the sugar house. “Is your father around?”

      “My dad?” The question wasn’t one she’d expected. “My dad died a long time ago.”

      He opened his mouth. Closing it again, the dark slashes of his eyebrows jammed together like lightning bolts.

      “Ed died?” Incredulity marked his tone. “I mean, I’m sorry,” he hurried to amend, clearly caught off-guard by the news. “I had no idea.” He shook his head, openly searching her face. “When?”

      “Twelve years ago.”

      That seemed to throw him, too.

      “What about your mom?” he ventured when she offered nothing else. “Can I talk to her?”

      Emmy took a step back. It was as apparent as the latent tension radiating from his big body that he had no idea of the events that had eventually destroyed both of her parents, and robbed her youth of nearly every trace of security.

      That blissful ignorance almost felt like an insult, and that insult felt strangely painful. “My mother is gone, too.”

      At her quiet reply, Jack felt a strange, sinking sensation in his chest. He knew how close she had been to her mom. She had absolutely worshiped her father.

      “Emmy,” he said, scrambling for words as he searched the delicate lines of her face. “I’m sorry about your parents. I really am. I didn’t know about either of them,” he admitted, hating how pitifully inadequate the words and the explanation sounded. “Neither did Mom. She’ll be sorry to hear about them, too.”

      He watched her glance shy from his as she took another step back.

      An uncomfortable moment later, she murmured, “Thank you.”

      Jack had forgotten how succinct some New Englanders could be with their responses. But he had the feeling Emmy wasn’t simply being concise. Her brevity and the way she edged from him made it abundantly clear that she had no use for either him or his presence.

      He wasn’t surprised at all by how distrustful she seemed of him. What he hadn’t been prepared for, however, was how much the quiet vulnerability he’d remembered about her touched him now.

      He remembered her as a small and quiet child, all skinny arms, legs and long dark red hair. She’d trailed after him like a puppy, constantly asking questions, giggling when he teased her. She had reminded him of his little sister, Liz. And, he supposed, when she’d been around, he’d watched out for her much as he had his little sister, too.

      Until the day he’d so clearly let her down.

      He had never forgotten the last time he’d seen her, or the haunted look in her luminous gray eyes. He’d come that day to return the spare keys for her dad’s truck, the one he had used in the sugar bush to haul dead snags for him. Emmy had stood on the porch beside her distraught father, holding his hand. As he’d given her dad the keys, he’d looked down to see Emmy looking up at him, her eyes huge as she silently begged him to do СКАЧАТЬ