Carla Neggers - Cider Brook

“Let me know if I can do anything,” Justin said.

“Will do. Thanks for stopping by. My father and I got along, but we didn’t spend much time together his last few years. I guess we thought there would be more time than there was. He didn’t tell me everything, as you know.”

“I can go back and get Samantha if you change your mind.”

“There’s plenty of room at Carriage Hill. She must be exhausted after today.” Dylan eyed him with obvious concern. “You, too, Justin.”

“I’m good. Just need a beer and a good night’s sleep.” He started back to his truck. “Give a yell if I can do anything.”

“You saved a woman’s life today. I think that’s enough.” Dylan paused, then added, “Besides, my father was right. Samantha Bennett isn’t your problem.”

Justin got into his truck and pulled the door shut. The fire, the padlock. Pirates.

Somehow he doubted he’d heard the last of the dark-eyed woman whose butt he’d just saved.

Five

Instead of calling it a night, Justin headed back to the cider mill. He parked his truck, got out his flashlight and navigated the pitted patch of dirt that passed for a driveway. Cider Brook was quieter now that the immediate rush from the downpour had eased. He ducked under the yellow caution tape his fellow firefighters had strung up, the bitter, unmistakable smell of smoke and burnt wood still heavy in the sharply cooler air.

He pointed the beam of his flashlight at the mill door. It didn’t show any obvious damage from where he’d kicked it in earlier that afternoon.

A moth fluttered in the light and disappeared.

He’d bought the property a year ago when the town, which had seized it due to unpaid back taxes, had put it up for sale. His brothers, sister, father, mother, uncle, grandmother and everyone else who had voiced their opinions—all of them unsolicited—said he should convert the mill into a residence or, better yet, tear it down and build a new house. Then sell the property at a profit. He didn’t disagree that would be the practical thing to do. It made a hell of a lot more sense than thinking he would find pirate treasure out here.

He turned and shone his flashlight at the small millpond and spillway and across the brook to a stone wall that had once marked off farmland and now snaked into the woods. How could he sell this place?

Not that he knew what he would do with it.

He heard an owl hooting in the dark trees and turned back to the mill.

“I like the name Cider Brook. Pretty, isn’t it?”

Yeah, but it wasn’t what had drawn attractive Samantha Bennett to Knights Bridge.

Justin gritted his teeth and went into the mill. The smoke and burnt-wood smells were stronger. He shone his flashlight on the blackened wall and floor where the fire had done its damage. He hadn’t planned to stop at the mill today. He only had because of the storm’s path. He’d ridden it out in his truck. He hadn’t been in a hurry to get out here, and it was by chance he’d arrived in time to call in the fire before it devoured the mill.

And by chance he’d arrived in time to save Samantha.

She struck him as the sort who relied on miracles.

He’d just known that whoever had broken into his mill was in danger. He’d acted quickly, certain the situation was worsening and time wasn’t on his side.

It’d been a cinch to lift Samantha and carry her out to the brook. She was small but obviously fit—strong legs, flat abdomen, and she’d recovered immediately when he’d dumped her in the wet grass.

All the junk she’d stuffed in her safari jacket hadn’t seemed to get in her way.

He shifted the stream of light to the things she’d left behind. He hadn’t lied to her about her tent and sleeping bag. They were in a trampled, sodden heap. He pictured her stretched out in her sleeping bag. He had no doubt she hadn’t thought twice about being alone out here in the dark.

Why had she decided to come to Knights Bridge now?

Why alone?

He sucked in a breath. Picturing her in a sleeping bag wasn’t helping him. He squatted by her destroyed camping gear and maneuvered his flashlight beam to the edge of the tent and then past it to something that caught his eye. He held the light steady on a red-covered journal or notebook. It looked intact, as if it had been dropped or had fallen there after the fire. Had it fallen out of Samantha’s backpack when he’d grabbed it for her? He’d been in a rush. Preoccupied. He could easily not have noticed.

He picked up the notebook. The cover was a little wet, but the inside pages looked to be dry, with no sign of fire damage.

Definitely a journal of some kind.

He tucked his flashlight under one arm and opened to a title page.

Notes on Captain Benjamin Farraday, Pirate and Privateer.

Please return to Samantha Bennett.

Neatly printed on the lines provided were her email address, telephone number and a Boston post office box.

Justin stood back. “Well, well.”

He took the journal with him and headed back outside. He could drive to Carriage Hill and return Samantha’s journal to her.

Or he could hold on to it, at least for now.

Either way, she would discover it was missing at some point, and she would want it back.

He had no desire to read her personal notes. He wasn’t the sneaky type. At the same time...

“Pirates.”

Damn.

He heard vehicles out on the road, through the woods. In another minute, a truck and a Jeep drove into the small clearing. All four of his brothers got out of the vehicles—Eric, the eldest, and their three younger brothers, Brandon, Adam and Christopher.

They had a six-pack and wood for a fire.

“Just like the old days,” Brandon said. “Except then it used to be a keg.”

“Sloan solidarity,” Eric said. He’d changed into jeans like his younger brothers.

Adam, who also worked with Sloan & Sons, dumped an armload of cordwood into a fire circle on the edge of the driveway. “Christopher says you pulled this woman out of the fire in the nick of time.”

Brandon grinned. “Our brother, the hero.”

“I just was here at the right time to help,” Justin said with a shrug.

“How’d she get into the mill?” Christopher asked. “Don’t you keep it locked?”

“She either broke the lock or picked it,” Eric said. “Or it wasn’t intact—”

“It was intact.” Justin heard the abruptness in his own voice. Olivia would have scowled at him, but his brothers barely noticed. “Good that she got herself out of the storm,” he said, less irritably.

“Better the mill caught fire than she was struck by lightning,” Christopher said.

Justin nodded. “Agreed.”

They left it at that and got the fire going and the six-pack opened. In a little while, more of the crew who fought the fire turned up, all of them volunteers like Justin.

Time to decompress.

An hour later, the impromptu gathering broke up. Eric insisted on driving Justin’s truck back to the converted antique sawmill where Justin had an apartment a few miles away, on another stream. The mid-nineteenth-century sawmill was owned by Randy and Louise Frost, Olivia’s parents. They ran a custom millwork business up the hill, on the same property. Their younger daughter, Jessica, had vacated the sawmill apartment a few weeks ago, ahead of her wedding that Saturday. Justin was renovating the place in exchange for rent.

He and Eric got out of the truck. Stars glittered in the night sky, and a quarter moon had appeared above the dark silhouette of trees.

“A missing padlock isn’t much to go on,” Eric said, “but let me know if you have any concerns about this woman.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“You know more about her than you’re saying, don’t you?”