Christine Flynn - The Sugar House

She hadn’t called Agnes back. Nor had she done anything other than thank her for her call after services that morning before excusing herself when the elderly minister’s wife, bless her, rescued her from the speculation Agnes had clearly been itching to share.

It had been Emmy’s experience that the less she let on that something was a problem, the less others treated it like one. She’d also learned that life was less complicated when the personal parts of it weren’t served up for public consumption. She tried hard not to look back, to focus her energies on the present, and allowed herself to look no farther ahead than the next season.

The only season on her mind at the moment was the current one. As she bounced her rugged and reliable old pickup truck over a berm of snow at the edge of her driveway, her only thoughts were of getting home and to her chores before she lost any more of the day. It was already one o’clock in the afternoon.

The pastor’s wife had asked a favor of her, and completely sidetracked her from her original plan to be home before noon.

Sidetracking her now was the black sedan parked by the old sycamore—and the sight of Jack standing outside the stable that now served as a garage.

He hadn’t struck her as the sort who would give up easily. Knowing he’d stayed last night, she’d pretty much expected him to come back, too. She’d just rather hoped that he would come back, find her gone and leave.

Not sure if she felt threatened by his persistence or relieved by it, she drove past him and through the open doors of the utilitarian white building.

What he had come back to do had been on her mind all evening. It had been the first thing on her mind that morning. Part of her, the part that felt unkind and uncomfortable about how she’d walked away from him yesterday, had actually considered stopping by the motel to apologize for being so insensitive. She felt awful for the way she’d treated him. After she’d had a chance to truly consider what it must have taken for him to come back, and after she’d acknowledged the courage, the integrity, and the basic sense of decency he would have to possess to even want to make amends after so long, she’d felt even worse.

She hadn’t even thanked him for his apology.

Another part of her, the more protective part, had hoped he would tire of waiting for her and be halfway to the free-way—which was probably, she figured, why she really hadn’t minded the delay getting home.

Feeling no less torn by his presence now, she climbed out of her truck and squeezed past the cherry-red snowmobile she used to haul skids of firewood from the woodshed to the sugar house, or to get into town when the snow was too deep to drive there. The sun that had shone so brightly yesterday had given way to a ceiling of pale gray. From that solid layer of clouds, a few tiny snowflakes drifted down as she headed into the open expanse between the outbuilding and her house.

They weren’t supposed to get snow until that evening, she thought, looking from the sky to the tall and totally disconcerting man closing the distance between them. He wore the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, the dark-gray jacket that made his shoulders look so wide, the darker-gray turtleneck and sweater, the worn jeans that molded his lean hips and long, powerful legs. He’d shaved, though. She could tell from the smoothness of the skin on his strong, too-attractive face, and the nick under his chin.

That tiny vulnerability made her feel guilty for his long wait. He’d shaved before he’d come to see her.

“Come to the sugar house,” she said, saving him the trouble of telling her he needed to talk to her. “I need to get the fire stoked and bring in more wood. We can talk there.”

A fleece cap in the same shade of pale pink as her turtleneck poked from the side pocket of her quilted black coat. Without the cap she’d worn yesterday, the spitting snowflakes clung to the top of her head, caught in her high, swinging ponytail. Watching her walk away, it seemed to Jack that her shining baby-fine hair seemed darker, more auburn than the deep red he remembered. Richer. Softer.

He’d heard somewhere that natural redheads tended to be rather volatile. He’d never dated one to know how much truth there was to the claim, though one particular blonde had proved explosive enough. Emmy, however, didn’t strike him at all as a woman prone to fits of temper. The sense of quiet control about her gave him the feeling she’d go as far out of her way as necessary to avoid confrontation.

Watching her ponytail bounce, he started after her. She also possessed an absolute gift for throwing curves. Rather than meeting the wall of resistance he’d expected, she hadn’t seemed all that opposed to finding him waiting.

Telling himself to be grateful, he glanced back toward her truck. Heavy tire chains wrapped the tires. Bags of sand lay in the bed for better traction. It was the vehicle itself that had first caught his attention, though. The old workhorse of a pickup looked very much like the one her father had driven fifteen years ago.

“Was everything all right this morning?” he asked, thinking the truck had to be pushing thirty years old by now.

“Everything’s fine. Why?”

“I just thought that with the sap running, you’d be in a hurry to get back and start boiling.”

Instead of heading for the sugar house, she’d angled toward her home.

“The minister’s wife asked me to do a feasibility study for the restoration of the church. We started looking around,” she said, snow crunching under their boots, “and I lost track of the time.”

She truly had. For a while. There wasn’t much that appealed to her more than the prospect of taking something old and falling apart and returning it to what it once had been. Just studying the 120-year-old building and researching its repair excited her. Or would have had she not been so aware of the man who’d just walked up beside her.

She could practically feel his frown on the side of her face.

“I thought you turned down the scholarship.”

She stopped in the snow, looking up at him as a tiny flake settled on her cheek. One clung to a strand of the dark hair falling over his wide forehead. Another drifted between them. “How do you know about that?”

“Agnes said you were going to study architecture and design, but that you turned down your scholarship to stay and help your mom.”

The corner of her mouth quirked, half in acknowledgment, half in something that looked almost as if she might have expected as much.

“I did turn it down,” she replied, but offered nothing else as she continued on.

“Then where did you learn what you’d need to know to restore a church?” he called after her.

“The same places I learned the plastering methods for the walls and moldings when we restored the library. I ordered books and did research on the Internet. That led me to a restorer in Montpelier, so I spent a week one spring working with her. She came out later to check what we’d done.”

Leaving him staring at her back, she headed up the shoveled steps to the back door of her house to let out her dog, then pulled open the aluminum storm door. The moment she opened the wooden one behind it, her impatient pet leaped past her in an exuberant blur of pale-gold fur, then practically slid to a stop ten feet from the porch when he noticed Jack standing a few yards away.

“It’s okay, Rudy,” she called, closing the doors to descend the stairs herself. “He’s coming with us.”

The animal instantly went from eyeing him to ignoring him. Looking like a mutt on a mission, he raced ahead to lift his leg on the side of a stump, then ran off, snow flying, to weave his way toward the distant gray building.