The Sugar House Read online

  “I’ll get you something.” Apparently unwilling to let a minor detail slow down his departure, she reached for the quilted red-and-black flannel shirt hanging on another peg.

  His frown landed squarely on her back. Without the bulk of a coat, it seemed to him that there wasn’t much to her. At least not enough for what she apparently did around there. A sugaring operation was hard work. He knew. He’d worked with her father in the sugar bush thinning trees in the summer, running lines and tapping trees in the winter. He’d occasionally worked in this very room, hauling heavy buckets of hot syrup to the filter and stacking filled boxes of the finished product.

  She needed to be sturdier. Heftier. She needed more muscle.

  Not that there was anything wrong with her undeniably feminine shape, the purely male portion of his brain admitted. As his glance drifted over the seductive curve of her backside, then up to her raised arms, he felt the same unmistakable jolt of heat that had caught him so off guard yesterday. She’d tucked the soft-pink turtleneck she wore into the waist of slender dark-gray denims, revealing sweetly rounded breasts and a waist small enough he could almost span it with his hands.

  The thought of having his hands anywhere on her sexy little body had him looking away even as she tugged on the heavy flannel shirt that practically swallowed her whole.

  He was far better off thinking of her as the skinny little kid who’d barely been big enough at one time to stand at the long metal sink without a step stool. He remembered her dragging that stool around the room as she followed her dad, stepping up on it so she could watch him measure the sugar in the sap or the syrup, climbing down to lug a single piece of split wood for the fire.

  An unfamiliar disquiet had him heading for the large door at the end of the room. Remembering her with the dad she’d adored, he could only imagine how hard it must have been for her to lose him. He knew how hard it had been to lose his own father, and they hadn’t agreed on much of anything for years.

  Not wanting to think about that, either, he pushed on the heavy door and jammed it open against the snowbank behind it. She couldn’t object to his bringing the wood in now. He had to wait for his coffee.

  Tiny snowflakes still drifted down as he gathered and carried in two large armloads. He was on his way in with a third when he turned to see her standing at the threshold holding a pair of large, worn leather gloves.

  “You really don’t need to do this,” she said.

  He walked past her, unloading his load on the growing stack. “You didn’t need to make me coffee, either.”

  The coffee hadn’t been an act of hospitality. It had been a hint. Apparently too courteous to point that out, she held out the gloves.

  “Put them on. You don’t need splinters.”

  He held his hand up, palm out. “Already got one,” he said, but took the gloves anyway.

  Giving him a look of resignation, or maybe it was forbearance, she pulled on her own gloves and silently went to work beside him.

  Within minutes, the half cord of wood that had been outside was now inside, bits of bark and wood had been brushed from their clothes, and the big door was pulled closed.

  “Thank you,” she said, leaving him to toss his gloves next to where she’d just left hers on the replenished stack.

  “No problem,” he replied to her departing back and pulled at the Velcro tabs on his heavy jacket. Even with the side door still open and the inside air cool from the bigger door having been open, too, the small task had quickly warmed his muscles. From the fire inside it, the metal arch radiated heat like a large, squat furnace.

  Vaguely aware of her dog barking somewhere in the distance, he looked from the crowded worktable to where she pulled a hair clip from her baggy shirt’s pocket. “You don’t do this all alone, do you?”

  “Not all the time.”

  He was glad to hear that. Knowing she had help relieved him. A little.

  “How much of the time?” he wanted to know, thinking Rudy’s barking sounded more like excitement than warning.

  As if she’d done it a thousand times before, she deftly whipped her ponytail into a knot and anchored it with the clip. “Charlie Moorehouse usually helps me.”

  He knew Charlie. Of him, anyway. He was one of the old guys who’d played checkers at the general store. “I thought Charlie had his own sugaring operation.”

  “He retired and sold it to the Hanleys a few years ago,” she replied, speaking of another sugaring family in the area. “He gets cranky come sugaring time if he can’t make syrup, so I asked him if he’d work for me.”

  Thinking it sounded as if she’d hired Charlie as much for the old guy’s benefit as her own, he nodded toward the open door. “Is that who your dog’s barking at?”

  “Charlie won’t be coming today. His gout has been acting up and his big toe is too painful to get a boot on.”

  Looking curious herself about who her dog seemed to be greeting, she was already moving to the doorway.

  Curiosity promptly faded to caution when she stopped and looked back toward him.

  “It’s Joe,” she said, and turned to check on the progress of the coffee.

  Jack stifled a groan as he brushed back the sides of his jacket and jammed his hands on his hips. He’d figured he had another ten minutes to get the answers he sought before she started hinting again that he should leave. The absolute last thing he wanted right now was to be interrupted by a deputy with a chip the size of a tree on his shoulder.

  “We still have a couple things to discuss, Emmy.”

  As if she knew exactly what he wanted, she sent a look of utter patience across the aged plank boards of the floor.

  “I already told you, I appreciate what you offered, but I don’t want it.”

  He opened his mouth, promptly closed it again. He wasn’t going to argue with her now. Not with Joe on his way. There was one thing he thought she should know, however, in case the local deputy got any grandiose ideas about running him off.

  “I’m not leaving until we’ve talked.”

  “We have talked.”

  “You talked,” he countered. “You said what you had to say, but I never got started.”

  “Other than the property, there’s nothing else to discuss.”

  “Actually there’s a lot more. We haven’t even started talking about you.”

  It was as clear as fresh sap that she had no idea why she should be a topic of discussion. It seemed equally apparent that she had no intention of indulging his interest, but she didn’t have time to actually tell him that before Rudy ran through the door, tongue lolling, just ahead of the man who filled most of the doorway.

  Wearing his uniform, his hat dangling from one hand, Joe absently leaned down to scratch the dog behind its ear. As he performed the apparently routine gesture, he looked straight at Jack.

  His bold brown eyes locked on eyes of piercing blue.

  “Everything okay here, Emmy?” Joe asked.

  The chill suddenly permeating the room had nothing to do with the cold outside. Emmy had never known the area’s only law officer to be anything but easygoing. As far as she was concerned, Joe was a big, congenial teddy bear who spent more time checking in on folks to make sure nothing was amiss than doing actual law enforcement. But then she’d never seen him around anyone he held a grudge against. Or who obviously held one against him.

  Her glance fixed on the scar at the corner of his mouth a moment before she turned it on the man pointedly holding his stare. Joe would see that silvery reminder of Jack every morning when he shaved.

  Pure challenge marked Joe Sheldon’s usually affable expression. Despite his almost casual tone, that confrontational air snapped in his eyes, stiffened his stance as he rose.

  “Everything is fine,” she hurried to assure him.

  “He’s not bothering you?”

  It sounded almost as if Jack sighed. Or maybe what she heard was exasperation. “I told you last night I’m not going to cause her any trouble.”<
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  “I know what you said,” the deputy countered flatly, “but I’d prefer to make sure for myself.” One sandy-blond eyebrow arched in her direction. “Emmy? Is he bothering you or not?”

  Jack Travers definitely bothered her. Though both men were the same impressive height and Joe was probably brawnier, it was the tension in Jack’s leanly muscular body that coiled around her, making her aware of him in ways she truly didn’t want to acknowledge or consider. Especially with the little battle of testosterone taking place between him and their local deputy.

  “Jack is just here to take care of some…family business,” she decided to call it. “We were just about to finish up.”

  “Do you want me to stick around while you do?”

  That was the last thing she needed, she thought. “Thanks, Joe. But I’m fine. Really.”

  Despite her implied assurance that she wasn’t being inconvenienced or otherwise distressed, Joe still didn’t look as if he trusted Jack when he looked back to where he stood a few feet from the evaporator.

  Behind Jack’s big body, steam from the pan rose like slow, simmering fury.

  “The temperature’s starting to drop, Travers. That means the roads will be icing over soon. If you leave in the next ten minutes, you should be able to make it as far as St. Johnsbury before dark. With the storm moving in, I’d hate to find you off the road in a ditch.”

  Challenge worked both ways, Jack thought. Dead certain the man wasn’t the least concerned with his safety, he met the warning with a flat, “I’ll keep that in mind.” He would leave when his business was finished.

  The scar seemed to pucker as Joe’s mouth thinned. Apparently feeling he’d made his point, he gave Rudy a final pat.

  “You call me if you need anything, Emmy.”

  “I will,” she murmured. “And thanks, Joe.”

  Her soft smile removed the strain from her pretty features, lit the little chips of silver in her eyes. Watching her, Jack saw that smile move to curve the lush fullness of her mouth.

  The thought that the two of them had something going had barely tightened the knot in his gut when Emmy took another step forward.

  “Give your wife a message for me, will you?” she asked, stopping the deputy just outside the door. “I have a dozen loaves of maple bread baked and in the freezer for the sugar-on-snow supper, but with the sap running, I’m not sure I’ll have time to bake any more.”

  “A dozen loaves. Got it.”

  “And tell her Dora said she’d pick up the slack for me. I know Amber and she’ll think she needs to bake my other dozen herself. Between teaching, heading up that committee and having a baby on the way, she has enough to do.”

  “You’ll never convince her of that,” Joe muttered, a hint of his good-natured self showing with his rueful smile. “But I’ll tell her what you said.”

  The smile faded. Glancing over her shoulder, he shot Jack a scowl that made it clear he’d love an excuse to get even for the jaw incident, slapped on his hat and headed off in the falling snow.

  Old resentments were surging hard when Emmy finally closed the door.

  Aware of her unease with him, hating that it was there, Jack tried to stifle the bitterness Joe’s posturing had brought.

  Traces of it lingered anyway as he watched her head for the long work sink.

  It seemed clear that she and Joe weren’t a couple. Not bothering to wonder why he felt relieved by that, he wondered instead if there was any man in her life at all. He had the feeling there wasn’t a boyfriend lurking in the background, though. The local deputy wouldn’t have checked up on her so quickly had there been another man around.

  “Were you and Joe ever involved?” he asked, just to be sure.

  “Joe and me?” His blunt question stopped her short of the gurgling coffeemaker. It also had her looking totally baffled. “What makes you ask that?”

  “I just thought he seemed kind of…protective.”

  “He’s just being a friend. And, no,” she said as if to end any further speculation, “we’ve never been ‘involved.’ I’ve never been involved with anyone around here.”

  She had just answered the next question he would have asked. He now knew for certain that she lived alone, and that except for the occasional help of an old man, she had to handle everything pretty much on her own.

  He didn’t like what that thought did to the sense of obligation that had brought him back there that morning. The fact that she was alone seemed to add another layer to that sense of responsibility, and tugged hard at a form of protectiveness toward her that didn’t feel familiar at all.

  “The Amber who Joe married.” Still shaking the effects of Joe’s little visit, he wandered toward her. Even as he did, Emmy moved to the steaming evaporator. “That isn’t Amber McGraw, is it?”

  “Amber’s a McGraw,” she confirmed as she checked a valve at the back of the pan. “Why?”

  “Just curious.” The bubbly blond cheerleader had been the subject of half the hockey and football teams’ adolescent fantasies. Including his own. “How long have they been married?”

  “Two or three years now, I think. She went to college in Montpelier, then taught there for a while before she moved back.” She glanced over to see that he’d crouched by her dog. Rudy had turned two circles on the red, cedar-stuffed cushion under her desk and plopped down to rest his chin on his paws. “I guess you would have all gone to school together.”

  “She was a year behind us.” Jack held out his hand, watched Rudy lift his head to take a sniff. “But we went out for a while.”

  “You dated Amber?”

  Relieved that at least the dog wasn’t avoiding him, he scratched Rudy’s furry neck, received a contented sigh for his efforts. “For a few months.”

  “It’s no wonder he looked like he wanted your hide,” she murmured. “You left him with a permanent reminder of how you beat him up, and you dated his wife.”

  “It was high school.” His tone went as dry as dust. “She was hardly his wife at the time. And I didn’t beat him up. I only swung once.”

  “And nearly broke his jaw.”

  Jack felt his own jaw go tight. “He called my father a bastard.”

  The quick edge in his tone made her hesitate.

  “I’d heard you were looking for a fight because the coach had benched you. Joe just happened to be in the way.”

  “You heard wrong. I know I was mad because I got benched. The coach only did that to spite my dad. But I just wanted out of the locker room. Joe blocked the door so I couldn’t leave, but no one seems to remember what he did or what he said. Not that it would have mattered,” he muttered darkly. “I was my father’s son. Once they’d condemned him, people wanted to believe the worst about all of us.”

  Emmy hesitated. “What about the other fights?”

  He frowned. “What other fights? The only punch I ever threw was at Joe.”

  Emmy’s immediate reaction was to insist that wasn’t true. She didn’t want anything to challenge the conclusions she’d finally managed to put to rest over the years. But Jack had already challenged what she’d believed simply by having come there. By what he had said about his mom. By what he’d said just now, and the quick, barely bridled anger behind it.

  “I’d heard there were others,” she admitted quietly.

  “Well, there weren’t. I’ve only hit one person in my life. And that was your deputy.”

  He had no reason to lie about such a thing. Not after all these years.

  “Really?” she asked, anyway.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Really.”

  She could practically feel a corner of her old convictions crack. From Jack’s knee-jerk reaction, it sounded as if he’d only been defending his father when he’d hit Joe.

  She knew now that Jack hadn’t agreed at all with his father’s actions. And though she hated what his father had done, and while there was no way on God’s green earth she would change her mind how she felt about that, she under
stood family loyalty well enough. If Joe truly had taunted Jack in such a way, then the man she’d thought of as another victim of the Larkins’ destructive legacy might well have deserved exactly what he’d received.

  Uneasy with the doubts Jack caused her to feel, she forced her thoughts to her task. Thick steam was already rising as the evaporation process began, its sweet scent filling the room. It took forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup. With over two hundred gallons in the pan, she had a lot of water to boil off, and other work to do before it became syrup. She still had to pack what she’d made last night.

  A thermometer hung on the frame outside the multipaned window. Checking the temperature, she frowned. Joe had said the mercury was dropping. She just hadn’t realized it had fallen far faster than she would have liked. With the temperature now below freezing, the flow of sap from the trees into the holding tank would soon stop, if it hadn’t already.

  “Joe is right, you know.” She spoke as she moved to the coffeemaker that was on its final gurgle and hiss. She couldn’t deny the conclusion Jack had drawn about the town having condemned them all. In her little neck of the woods, people were judged by their kin as much as they were by their own actions. The inhabitants of Maple Mountain weren’t exactly the Hatfields and the McCoys. To the best of her knowledge no one had ever taken after a neighbor with a shotgun. But once sides were chosen and people decided who was right and who was wrong, it was easier to make a loon fly backward than to get folks to change their minds. “You don’t want to get stuck out there. It’ll just be a minute before your coffee is ready.”

  With the clock ticking on his departure, Jack jammed down the irritation that had slipped past his guard. Subtle, she was not. But she had a point. Getting stuck in the middle of nowhere was not something he wanted to do with a storm coming in. He did need to get out of there. He had movers coming at eight in the morning.

  “Just answer one thing for me, would you?”

  Removing the lid of a small insulated container, she filled it with hot water at the sink. “What’s that?”