Confessions of a Small-Town Girl Read online

  His quiet question brought her head up. “I never said I didn’t.”

  “At the diner the other morning,” he reminded her, “your mom said you were on an important call. By the time you hung up, it was pretty clear you weren’t happy with whatever that call was about. It was right after that when you asked if I’d ever had any doubts about my career. It just made me think you might be doubting something about yours.

  “So what is it you’re really having trouble with?” Despite the faint challenge in the way he arched one dark eyebrow, his tone remained as casual as his manner. “Which job to choose, or what you’re doing in general?”

  There had been a time when Kelsey would have totally dismissed the latter part of his question. It was a fair indication of how confused she’d become that it now didn’t even strike her as odd.

  Prodded as much by his subtle coaxing as the need to answer that question herself, she returned to her pacing. “I know I should see this the way she does. I know I should be happy to even have these choices. I’ve worked hard and it’s finally paying off,” she insisted, as frustrated with herself as she was with the situation. Working hard was how she was happiest. When she had time on her hands, she inevitably felt as if something were missing. Or, maybe, what she felt was that she would miss an opportunity. As confused as she’d become since receiving the offers and returning home, she honestly didn’t know.

  “I never thought I’d have one offer like this, much less have two. But I don’t feel nearly as certain about my career as you do yours.” She paced away, paced back. He’d said he’d never considered being anything other than what he was. She couldn’t even pretend to understand what he got out of the work he did. She just knew she wasn’t getting what she needed out of hers. “You’re very lucky. I hope you know that,” she said in all sincerity. She didn’t have to understand why he wanted to do what he did. What was important was that he was apparently happy doing it. “You want the life you were expected to lead.”

  His voice went flat with conclusion. “And you don’t want yours.”

  There were parts she definitely didn’t want. She could handle the work. She just hated the politics, the competition, the arguing that went on behind the scenes when egos clashed. She balked at the size of the businesses themselves. The push was always to be bigger, to be more lavish. She wanted the simplicity of a small operation. In her heart, that was all she’d ever really wanted.

  “What I’m doing is Mom’s dream. Not mine.”

  The unexpected admission brought her to a halt. She had never acknowledged just how much her own dreams had been buried. Not until a few nights ago when she’d been reading her diary. She wasn’t at all certain how she felt having verbalized that long buried suspicion, either.

  Dragging her fingers through her hair, she felt an entirely new sort of uneasiness wash over her. “I’m not sure why I told you any of that.”

  He didn’t seem to think what she’d done at all extraordinary as he pushed himself from the post. “Sometimes it’s easier to tell a stranger what’s bothering you than it is someone you know. That’s why bartenders hear so much.”

  “That’s not it,” she replied flatly. “For one thing, you’re not a stranger. You’re part of the community.” She’d always thought him so, anyway. “It’s probably more that you’re just good at what you do. The interrogation thing, I mean.

  “I should let you get back to work,” she concluded, not at all certain how he’d homed in on her need to talk. It seemed the man was destined to know all her secrets. Best she leave before he learned any more. Not, she thought, that she had any left. “I didn’t mean to keep you. I was just on my way to the mill.” Apology softened her smile as she backed up. “I always visit it when I come home.”

  It wasn’t often that Sam found himself disarmed. Yet, at that moment, he was. Completely. He had no idea what to make of her unquestioned acceptance of him, or of her peculiar fondness for the places in her past. As she had of the house, she’d spoken of the mill as if the place had a soul.

  “Is going to the mill one of those nostalgia things?”

  It seemed he hadn’t forgotten the excuse she’d offered the last time she’d shown up bearing baked goods.

  “This time, yes. It really is. And there’s nothing wrong with a little nostalgia,” she defended. “There are probably things or places you’re sentimental about, too.”

  His gray eyes steady on hers, he slowly shook his head. “I can’t think of a one.”

  His certainty gave her pause. “Everyone has a soft spot for something that once mattered to him,” she insisted. More curious than she wanted to be about what might matter to him, she tipped her head, studying him back. “You can’t think of anything that makes you long a little for what once was?”

  “I can’t afford to be sentimental. I’m a cop.”

  He made his occupation sound like an excuse. “You weren’t always one. And just because that’s what you are doesn’t mean you’re nothing else,” she replied, wondering why he wanted to cheat himself out of all the other roles that defined him. “You’re a son, and a brother, and an uncle. And a friend,” she added, thinking of Charlie and Amos.

  “I’m pretty sure that if you think about it, you’ll remember something that was once important to you. A pet. Or a place.” She hesitated. “A car,” she suggested, her tone helpful now. “A guy’s first car can be as important as his first love. Or so I’ve heard.”

  Sam wasn’t quite sure how she had done it, but in less than a minute, the woman smiling at him in the sunshine had managed to target a hefty portion of nearly everything he seldom considered about himself—along with much of what he had chosen to bury. Her comment about how lucky he was still bothered him. But her question about longing for what had once been had him ruthlessly dismissing any further possibility of discussion.

  “I guess you heard wrong. As I said, I can’t think of a thing.”

  Like a flame in a draft, her smile flickered and died.

  The unease that replaced it made him feel like a louse.

  He hadn’t meant to be so curt with her, or sound so defensive. Thinking this must be one of those social skills the shrink had referred to, he tried to think of how to soften his response, only to find her already backing up.

  Walking backward, she motioned to the box she’d left for him. “I think I’d better get out of your way. Don’t forget your muffins.”

  “Kelsey, wait a minute.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, as if she knew he was about to apologize and wanted to save him the trouble. Offering a ghost of her gracious smile, she took another step back. “You’re busy and I really did just want to drop those off.”

  Every time he saw her alone, it seemed she was hurrying away from him. She’d done it the day she’d shown up with the pie. She’d done it the night he’d found her in the house. She hadn’t done it the other day in the diner’s kitchen, but that was only one out of four.

  Jamming his hands onto his hips, he watched her as she turned away now, his focus on her long legs, the heart-shaped curve of her backside, the swing of her hair.

  He wasn’t thinking of her taut and taunting body, though—something he would have found rather surprising had he bothered to consider the oversight. At the moment, he was actually more interested in her mind.

  He had become a master at avoiding what he didn’t want to think about. In the time it had taken him to realize how easily she’d cracked the door to his past, he’d slammed it shut again. He was equally proficient when it came to focusing his energies when the pieces of a puzzle didn’t fit.

  He loved the challenge of finding clues, discarding what wasn’t important, homing in on what was. That was what he missed about his work. Not having something to resolve. He also hated leaving a puzzle unsolved. And Kelsey Schaeffer definitely puzzled him.

  The woman was clearly intelligent, independent and ambitious. She obviously had no aversion to responsibility, and he didn’t dou
bt for a minute that she had worked hard to earn the accolades her mother prided herself in passing along. Considering what he knew of her, it made no sense to him that she hadn’t already changed her path if the one she was on wasn’t taking her where she wanted to go.

  Two minutes later, too edgy to let it rest, he’d put the muffins she’d brought inside the trailer so the deer or the ants wouldn’t get them, and headed through the woods for the bridge that led to the mill.

  Chapter Five

  It seemed to Kelsey that the mill never changed. The two stories of gray rock, parts of it covered with moss and ivy, stood as strong as a medieval fortress beside the babbling stream. A huge waterwheel that had once powered the grinding stones inside turned lazily with the steady flow of water spilling over the dam that created the pond beyond.

  With the change of seasons, the surrounding sugar maples and sycamores would turn from lush green to gold to bare. The wide meadow that stretched to the forest would transform itself from a carpet of wildflowers to dry weeds and finally to a pristine snowfield before spring started the cycle all over again. But the little mill itself never looked any different to her.

  With her hands in her pockets, she walked through the summer grass and wildflowers that had long ago overtaken the dirt road. Her glance drifted up, as it always did, to the row of small timber-framed windows below the pitched roof line. The rooms there were where the millers had lived with their families. In the hundred and fifty years since the mill had been built, four generations of the Harding family had passed it from father to son, working the great grinding wheel inside, turning wheat into flour for the farmers and residents of the area. Then, the big flour mills had gone into production, the farmers had made more money selling their grain to them, commercially milled flour became relatively inexpensive and the business had died.

  For nearly seven decades the mill had sat silent. With their livelihood gone, the mill had fallen into foreclosure and the Hardings had moved on.

  Kelsey waded through the grass to the larger of the two lower doors. Breathing in the rich smell of good earth and vegetation, she remembered how much she’d missed the clear, clean sweetness of the air in the hills. And the peace. She’d missed that, too.

  The chirp of birds melded with the murmur of the creek as she reached for the door’s big iron latch. That peace was what she had always missed most about the place. It was also the first thing she sought to find whenever she moved to a new city.

  In Boston, she’d found a little patch of that tranquility in a lovely commons on the Charles River. Her refuge in San Francisco had been in the wooded park beneath the bay bridge. In Scottsdale, she’d settled for a tree-lined patch of lawn and a man-made lake on the resort’s property. She could have hiked the preserves and gotten her nature-fix there, but cactus and spare desert vegetation, beautiful in their own stark way, didn’t hold the same appeal for her as deep meadows and trees that rustled in the breeze.

  A forged iron handle barred the heavy wood door. Tugging on its latch, she wondered where Sam went when he felt the need to regroup. Or if he somehow possessed the enviable ability to simply find peace within himself. He didn’t strike her as a man who would know what to do with stillness or calm, though. He even chose to work on holidays.

  Not sure why that bothered her, bothered just as much by the feeling that she’d definitely overstepped herself with him, she gave the door another tug. It moved six inches before it became solidly stuck in a deep tangle of leaves, grass and pine needles. It had been so long since the door had been opened that rains, wind and snows had compacted the vegetation into a door stop.

  She’d had to clear the overgrowth away to get in when she’d last been there. And the time before that. With no owner to care for it and as hidden as it was in the trees, only nature seemed to remember the building was there.

  “Need help?”

  At the distant sound of Sam’s voice, she turned to see him crossing the meadow toward her.

  The other night in the moonlight, he had reminded her of a battle-scarred warrior. A few minutes ago, wearing the tool belt he’d now left behind, she’d had the impression of a lawman of days gone by. The images intensified as she watched him now. With his long strides carrying him toward her, aware of the power in his big body, she realized that a warrior might well be who he was. Considering how he’d either blocked or dismissed the things that might have once mattered to him, she just couldn’t help wondering how many of the battles he fought were within himself, and whether peace was something he knew at all.

  “It’s just overgrown,” she called back, too aware of her own restlessness to wonder why he was there.

  He gave no indication at all as he walked up to where she stood and checked out the problem himself. With the heel of his boot, he cleared the accumulation of pine needles at the base of the door, then hauled back on the handle. Hinges groaned as heavy wood slipped over the thick grass and stopped. He’d opened it two feet. Giving another yank, he gained two more feet and stepped back from the gap that was now wide enough to walk through.

  She would have pulled the grass to get the door open. He’d simply applied a little brute force.

  “I came over to check this place out when I first got here,” he admitted, sounding very much like a man who preferred to know what surrounded him, “but I never went inside. Since you seem so interested in it, I thought I’d come see what the appeal is in here.”

  “I thought you were going out to your aunt and uncle’s.”

  “If I go, it won’t be until later. Give me a tour?” he asked, looking as if he’d pretty much expected her reluctance.

  That reluctance was definitely there. But not because of how totally he’d shut her out a while ago. Not exactly. It was there because she didn’t believe for a moment that she could make him see the mill the way she did. He was entitled to his cynicism. He’d probably earned it. But as unsettled as she felt about her life just then, the last thing she wanted was for a man without an ounce of sentiment in his body to question what she could possibly have found so interesting about the old place, or to have him laugh at her haven.

  She’d wanted to be here alone. She’d wanted to quietly poke around the old building, to experience even for a few moments, the sense of hopefulness and potential she’d felt when she’d come there as a young girl. She was growing desperate to shake the feeling that she had come up against a huge wall in her career and that she didn’t know which way to go to get around it. She might be living her mother’s dream, but she had been the one who’d made the choice to follow it.

  “There really isn’t much to see,” she warned.

  “Then just show me what there is.”

  She told herself to be quiet, to just give him a quick tour before he picked up on her hesitation and her unwillingness only increased his interest.

  “I’m not hiding anything in here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I never said I thought you were.”

  Feeling trapped, or maybe it was exposed, she slipped past him and into the dim interior. In the beams of light shafting through the broken-out windows, dust flickered and danced. Above their heads, the twigs of birds’ nests poked from the ledges of the high windowsills. Cobwebs dangled from the beams supporting the second floor.

  Hearing his footfall behind her on the stone floor, she crossed the large, empty space to another door, this one opening to the inside. Grabbing its handle with both hands, she hauled it open with the groan of protesting hinges. Fresh air rushed in, along with enough light to chase away the gloom.

  “This is where the farmers used to pick up their flour.” Absently wiping her hands on her jeans, she motioned behind her. “They would bring their grain for the miller to grind and dump it in a hopper out there.”

  She glanced to the huge flat circular disks taking up the center of the room. A thick wood shaft ran through the wall, connecting them through a series of pulleys to the waterwheel outside.

  Th
e stones, what was left of the wood casing surrounding them, and some old pallets, boxes and moldy burlap bags piled in a far corner were all that was left of the old operation. Gone was the wood hopper, the flour spout and the stacks of flour sacks she’d seen in sepia-toned pictures hanging in the community’s small library. Gone, too, were the saw blades and chains that had converted the building to a sawmill each spring before the harvests came in. The bank had sold off everything of value years ago. The only reason the grooved, thousand-pound stones hadn’t been carted off and sold or scavenged was because the building had been built around them and no one could get them out. Or so she’d learned when the mill had been her subject for a local history paper in high school.

  She told Sam all that, then admitted that was pretty much all she knew about the place before she saw him glance to the open stairway at the back of the room.

  “What’s up there?”

  “Just the miller’s quarters.”

  Arching one eyebrow, he lifted his hand for her to go first.

  It seemed to Sam that Kelsey looked even more reluctant than she had outside in the moments before she headed up the thick and surprisingly solid slabs of rough wood. He wasn’t interested so much in the history of the building as he was in what drew her to it. But he saw nothing to explain her fascination with the place. Certainly he found nothing worth an emotional attachment, if that was what she felt for it. To him, the mill simply felt like what it was. Empty. Abandoned. Forgotten.

  Unable to imagine what he was missing, he followed her up and into a space filled with light and the distant chirping of birds. He could hear the sound of the creek, too. Many of the windows here had suffered the same fate as those downstairs and were broken or missing completely. Those that did remain were rain-stained and cracked. Yet, Kelsey didn’t seem aware of the dinginess and disrepair as she glanced around the open space. While he regarded the dilapidated interior with abject skepticism, she simply looked as if she were reacquainting herself with it as she touched a gray slate counter that had once held a sink, then moved to a window with the little bench built into its narrow recess.