Vermont Valentine. Kristin Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ the cold spreading up through her toes. What mattered was the puzzle in front of her. What mattered was finding the evidence.

      There were holes, though not the characteristic round holes of the maple borer but something more irregular. Were they signs of the beetle or just normal bark disturbances? Unzipping a pocket of her field kit, she pulled out a wire-thin metal spatula.

      Scraping the side of the hole yielded a crumbly, dark residue. Rotted bark or the fungus that the beetle carried from tree to tree? She rubbed a bit thoughtfully between her fingers and tipped the spatula into a glass sample vial. A laboratory analysis would show.

      The sudden barking of a dog made her jump and drop the vial. When she turned, shock took her breath. A man stalked toward her, looking as if he’d walked out of another century with his buckskin jacket and his coal-dark hair brushing his shoulders, a black hound at his heels. Way over six feet tall, with shoulders a couple feet wide. The bones of his face stood out strongly, as though pressed there by sheer force of personality. The dark stubble on his jaw only made him look dangerous. But it was his eyes that caught and held her attention, startlingly blue and narrowed now at her in irritation.

      “You mind telling me what you’re doing in my trees?”

      Jacob usually came across trespassers in the fall, when the leaf peepers were out in force. People figured that if there weren’t fences, they were free to just walk all over the place, not understanding that they compacted the soil, compressed the roots and generally compromised the health of the trees every time they walked near them.

      The battered, rust-streaked mini truck he’d stopped behind boasted out-of-state plates. And the intruder crouched in front of the tree was not just looking at it but messing with it. Sightseers were damaging enough. Those, he usually chatted with and pointed toward the Trask gift shop. A kid vandalizing his trees, though, earned a different treatment. Jacob strode over with the intent of summarily tossing him off the property.

      But then the kid looked up and Jacob realized the him was a her, a bright-eyed pixie of a her with a cap of curly dark hair.

      Murphy barked his way up in his usual fearsome guard-dog act. It was just an act—the minute she began talking to him and rubbing his ears, he began wagging his tail, the traitor.

      Of course, if she petted Jacob the way she was currently stroking Murphy, his tail might start wagging, too. “Hi, sweetie,” she crooned. “Aren’t you gorgeous? And you like that, don’t you?” She scratched Murphy’s chest until he sank down on the snow and rolled over for her to rub his belly. No dignity at all.

      She offered Jacob a disarming smile. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass. I thought this was Institute property. Your forestry techniques are top, really top. That’s why I thought I was on Institute land,” she chattered. And the whole while she was swiftly putting her tools away and zipping up her field kit.

      A very professional-looking field kit, he realized with a frown.

      “That’s why I got confused,” she continued. “I wasn’t expecting a private grower to be doing such a good job and I—”

      “Who are you?” he interrupted. “What were you doing?”

      “Just looking at trees. It was an honest mistake.” She stood. Propping one fist on her hip, she stared up at him. “Well, you are a big one, aren’t you?”

      His impression of a pixie had been accurate, Jacob thought—she was easily a foot shorter than he was, and tiny, even wearing her bulky parka. The cold had reddened her cheeks. The humor dancing now in her sherry-brown eyes didn’t entirely hide the sharp intelligence—or purpose—that lurked there. Mostly, though, in her red jacket, she was a welcome flash of color in the drab winter backdrop, sloe-eyed, lush-mouthed and far too tempting for the middle of a work day.

      She leaned down to give Murphy a last pat. “Anyway, I apologize. I didn’t intend to trespass.” Nimbly, she stepped around him and walked across the drainage ditch toward the battered red truck. “I tend to get excited about trees and sometimes I don’t think, I just stop and take a look. But I’ll get out of your way now.” She was opening the door and inside almost before he realized she was really going.

      And then she was gone and only small footprints in the snow gave any evidence that she’d ever been there at all.

      How was someone that beautiful allowed to just walk around in the woods sneaking up on women? Celie wondered feverishly as she drove away. Good lord, the man made her palms sweat. Not to mention the fact that he’d come across her on his land without permission. Strictly against the policy and procedure manual her boss loved to wave in front of her face. You were required to get permission from property owners before venturing in, and mistakes—however well-intentioned—weren’t allowed. Oh yes, Gavin Masterson would have a field day with the incident. Shoot, it would give him fodder for a whole week of lectures.

      Assuming he found out.

      She breathed a silent prayer that the hunk of a property owner—the very large hunk of a property owner—would just let the incident go. Then again, there wasn’t much she could do about it if he didn’t. He’d do what he was going to do. All she could do in return was roll with the changes, something she’d always been good at.

      “Thank God,” she muttered at the sight of the Woodward Institute sign at the side of the road. At least something was finally going right.

      The Institute occupied an unprepossessing two-story building faced with biscuit-colored vinyl siding and roofed in pale brown. Rising behind it she saw the high venting peak of a sugarhouse. In all directions stretched different varieties of maples.

      The inhabitants of the facility didn’t stand on ceremony. When she walked through the doors, she stepped into an empty reception area separated from the central room beyond by a waist-high wooden barrier fitted with a gate and a bell. To get someone’s attention, presumably, you rang, although she supposed yelling was always an option. The central area held a few cubicles inside the perimeter of offices. A number of the doors were open, letting winter sunlight stream through.

      A bearded man in a flannel shirt and jeans stood in front of a copy machine. He glanced up at her, the light glinting off his gold-rimmed glasses. “Can I help you?”

      “I’m looking for Bob Ford.”

      “You’ve found him.” He collected his copies and took the original off the glass plate. “Are you Celie?”

      She nodded. “Sorry I’m late. I had some adventures finding the place.”

      “I’m not surprised. We really need to sit down and redo our directions. Come on in.” He waved her through the barrier and put his hand out to shake. “Pleasure to meet you. Come on, my office is over here.”

      She followed him along the aisle to where he turned in a door. “Wow.” She stopped short, staring through the wide band of windows at the sugarbush beyond. “Quite a view you’ve got here.”

      “A corner office.” His teeth gleamed against his neatly trimmed silver beard. “The perks of command.”

      At his gesture, she sat in the client chair. “It’s gorgeous up here.”

      “We like to think so. It won’t be for long if your bug gets loose, though.”

      Her bug. Celie had studied the scarlet-horned СКАЧАТЬ