Christine Flynn - The Sugar House

With the fog of their breath mingling between them, he was close enough to see the slivers of silver and pewter in her beautiful eyes. Close enough to see the tiny creases in the fullness of her lower lip. Her skin might invite a man to touch, but her mouth fairly begged to be kissed.

The tightening low in his gut made him go still.

So did her dog’s low, feral growl.

Suddenly as aware of the canine’s teeth as he was the woman warily watching him, he let her go. He’d braced himself for a less-than-welcoming reception, but things weren’t going at all as he’d expected.

“I didn’t come just to visit, Emmy.” With another glance toward the fifty pounds of fur and snarl that had yet to move from her side, he took a step back himself. “There’s something I need to do, but I can’t if you won’t hear me out.”

“If you’re here to tell me you bought the property next door, it’s not necessary. Everyone already knows.”

He would have been surprised if everyone hadn’t. “I take it the local grapevine is still intact.”

“Word gets around.”

“Word in this case is incomplete. No one knows what I want to do with that land.”

“What you do with it is your business.” Deliberately she moved around him. “And the community council’s. They’ll try to block whatever you do.”

“The community council has nothing to say about this,” he insisted, stepping into her path again, mindful of her guard dog. “I bought it to give it back to your parents.”

Blocked in her tracks once more, she glanced back up. An uncertain frown shadowed the gray of her eyes.

“My father passed away last year,” he explained before she could decide to bolt again. “Mom never felt right about what had happened between our families. Neither did I. I want to give the property back. And to apologize.

“I hadn’t realized your parents were gone,” he told her, relieved that she was staying put. He wondered what had happened to Stan and Cara, decided now wasn’t the time to ask. “When I checked with the real estate broker I used to see if the property was available, I was told that Larkin Maple Products was still in operation. I assumed your dad was still running it, so the quitclaim deed I brought is in his name.”

He touched the jacket pocket that held that deed, thinking of what he needed to do now. “I’ll redraw it for you. It won’t take long. I just need to know your full name. I’ve always known you only as Emmy.”

His glance shot to her left hand. The way she had her cuff pulled to her palm, he couldn’t tell if she was wearing a ring. “Is it still Larkin, or are you married now?”

For a moment all Emmy could do was stare at the man blocking her path to the sugar house.

He wanted to give back the property. Of all the possible scenarios she might have imagined, this one had never occurred to her. It had apparently never occurred to anyone.

Her only thought now was that he’d made a long trip for nothing.

“My name doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does. I can’t change the deed without it.”

“You don’t need to change it.”

“Emmy,” he said, suddenly sounding terribly patient. “I’m not a tax attorney and I’m not sure what estate laws are here, but it’s to your advantage to have the deed recorded in your name. That way there will be no questions. No hassles. It’ll just be yours.”

“I don’t want it.”

The dark slashes of his eyebrows merged. It seemed he wasn’t prepared for that, either.

They were even, she supposed. She wasn’t at all prepared herself. Not for his unexpected offer. And definitely not for his disquieting presence. As he towered over her, his cool blue eyes intent on her face, she could practically feel his tension snake inside her. The sensation disturbed her as much as the odd heat his scrutiny caused to radiate from her breasts to her belly.

Pulling her glance from his, she let it fall to where the hem of his comfortably worn jeans bunched over a pair of heavy and expensive hiking boots. She didn’t feel terribly trusting of him, and he unnerved her in ways she wasn’t prepared to consider, but it wasn’t like her to be unfair.

His father was responsible for what had happened to her family. And Jack had earned a reputation, too. Everyone knew he was responsible for the scar that hooked down from the corner of Joe Sheldon’s mouth. Still, he had come to apologize. For himself, apparently. And for his mother. It sounded as if the matter had weighed for a long time on Ruth Travers.

As badly as Emmy wanted the past to stay there, she couldn’t deny someone their need to try to set it right.

“I accept your apology,” she told him. She had no desire, however, to hear whatever else he might have said beyond I’m sorry. All she wanted was for him to leave. “But I have no need of anything else.

“Please excuse me.” Ducking her head again, she backed away, hoping he would just let her go. She’d lost her appetite for supper. Even if she hadn’t, she had no time to put anything together now. “I’m boiling,” she said, using the sugar-makers’ term for making syrup. “I have to get back to work.”

Wanting desperately to avoid the feelings and memories his presence elicited, she quickly retraced her path toward the sugar house, Rudy on her heels. Part of her couldn’t believe how discourteous she was being. No one ever came to her home that she didn’t take a minute to visit with them. But, then, her callers were inevitably neighbors or summer guests of her bed-and-breakfast, and she would invite them in to talk while she worked. More often than not she offered coffee or cocoa to go with their conversation. Or, in summer, when she worked in her garden, she offered lemonade or iced tea she made by setting a clear jug of water and tea bags in the sun because the tea tasted sweeter that way.

The twinge of guilt she felt leaving him standing there faded beneath an equally inherent need for self-preservation. It was probably horribly selfish of her, she admitted, watching Rudy race ahead, but she was far more interested in preserving the already shaken tranquillity she’d finally found than in being hospitable.

Emmy wasn’t running, but she wasn’t wasting any time getting away from him, either.

With that less-than-encouraging thought, Jack jammed his hands on his hips and watched Emmy motion her loping dog toward the trees and the distant sugar house.

It wasn’t often that he underestimated a situation. As driven and determined as he could be when it came to achieving an end, he’d learned to plan for contingencies, to expect the unexpected and always have a plan B. With everything else he’d been dealing with lately, however, he’d obviously forgotten to consider that it could be a Larkin other than Stan running the sugaring business.

Once he’d learned that the operation still existed, he had simply assumed Stan was still running it. He had considered that Stan and Cara could be divorced by now, but it had never occurred to him that the man would have passed away, much less that his wife would have, too.

He definitely hadn’t considered that the property would be refused.

The cold breeze carried off the fog of his frustrated breath. For the past month he’d felt as if he’d been running a marathon. Now he felt as if he’d just run himself straight into a wall. Not that a wall would stop him. He just needed to find a way over, under or around the obstruction. Given that this particular obstruction wouldn’t even talk to him at the moment, he headed back to his car.

It had been his goal to acquire and return the property ever since he and his mother had found a copy of the papers securing the money Stan had borrowed from him in his dad’s desk. They had gone through the desk the day after his father died looking for insurance papers and, for the first time in years, he and his mom had talked about what had happened in Maple Mountain.