by Inez Kelley
Half his mind on his work, the other half firmly entranced by her, he didn’t stop to think ahead. The tin roof came into view long before his mind registered that he didn’t want to be here, but by then it was too late.
Kayla stopped beside him. “This place came with a couple outbuildings, but I haven’t been in this one.”
“It’s the sugarhouse,” he murmured.
Her head turned sharply. “Sugarhouse?”
“For boiling maple syrup. You can tell by the louver vents on the roof.”
“I thought maple syrup was made in the northeast.”
“Mostly it is. But like you said, the Eastern Panhandle soil’s great. These mountains are old and the altitude is unique. It’s ideal for sugar tapping. A lot of old-timers still tap just for family, but there are a few small companies who sell locally.”
“Oh.” A speculative light brightened her face, shining in the autumn sun like a candle. She pulled a set of keys from her pocket and headed straight for the concrete building. His stomach took a nosedive.
Deliberately, he gave her his back, concentrating on a tree he knew wasn’t quite large enough to be cut. Thoughts of air so thick and sweet he could taste it lingered on his tongue and he swiped a hand across his mouth, pushing the images away. Ancient history.
He worked the tree line at the edge of the clearing. The poplar trees were smaller here, not ready for harvest, so he went deeper, making his way up and down the ridge, never lifting his eyes to the stone cabin at the base of the mountain. He saw it plain enough in his memories.
A metal crash jerked his head up. The noise had silenced every peep and flutter in nature and the air hung heavy with awareness. Strain crept into his neck.
“Kayla?”
His voice came back, echoing through the trees. A smaller metallic scrape joined with a feminine squeak. He dropped the clipboard and tape, barreling for the only place in the woods that could have made that noise. The sugarhouse.
* * *
Kayla muttered a curse, rubbing the knot forming on her skull. Although there was a switch, there was no electricity in the sugarhouse. The swath of sunlight pouring from the open door didn’t reach far into the building, and the one lone window was crusted thick with dirt and dust, choking any light. She’d used her hands and skimmed cool metal pans, a brick fire pit, valves and gauges she could only guess at. Shelving on the far wall held five-gallon plastic buckets, smaller metal pails and lids plus a few old boxes. She’d reached for a box, and a stack of galvanized buckets had rained down around her.
Gritting her teeth against the clanging, she’d frozen. The lids crashed down. One caught her on the crown with a sharp whack.
Stars were still spinning in her vision when Matt’s baritone made her jump. “You okay?”
A flashlight beam traced her from forehead to toe.
“Yeah, just a bump on the head.” A rueful smile stretched her lips. “I’m being nosy.”
“Should be careful. You could get hurt in here.”
“Why is this stuff still here? Wouldn’t the people who owned it have taken it with them?”
His light darted over the room as his shoulders stiffened. “Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they had to leave everything lock, stock and barrel when they left.”
Kayla shook her head. It seemed like such a waste. The huge rectangular pan was stainless steel and couldn’t have been cheap. Her trained eye took in everything visible in the flashlight glow. Shelves completely lined two walls. The buckets had hit a poured concrete floor with a center drain. Along the east wall was a spigot and industrial sink set into a countertop. Tucked into a corner was a metal bed frame lacking either box spring or mattress.
With a fair amount of elbow grease, the sugarhouse could be functional again. Ideas that had sprouted on the hillside flourished. Her goal to expand Mountain Specialty Spices took a sweeter turn.
She waved her hand around. “Do you know what all this stuff is for?”
“Making maple syrup.”
“I got that.” She pulled the box off the shelf. It was heavier than she anticipated and she nearly dropped it. Matt’s hand shot out and caught the box. He lowered it to the ground and peered inside. Dozens of cast iron fingers were visible in the dim light. “What are those?”
“Spiles, what you tap the tree with.”
Matt clicked off the light. Sudden dark pressed around them, heightening the echo of empty concrete, her heart beating and his breath skating over her forehead. The heat from his skin carried an earthy masculine scent, like cut wood and tilled soil, a drugging lure that tempted her. Her chin tipped up automatically. Even in the dim light, she saw his eyes drop to her mouth. She licked her upper lip, slicking it in preparation for his kiss.
He hesitated, then reached out and touched her hair. “Cobweb.”
Matt wanted her. Kayla knew it and reveled in it. But he stepped back. “I need to get back to the office. I’ll start again in the morning.”
Strangely, his restraint attracted her more than if he’d actually made a move. Too many men would have grabbed her flirtation and run with it. He hadn’t, and that turned her on. Ethics were sexy.
“Gimme a sec. I want to look around a little bit.”
His nod was awkward. “Sure. I’ll be outside.”
She enjoyed thirty seconds of watching the sun trace through his chocolatey-brown hair and dance along his shoulders. She had a healthy appetite, for delicious foods as well as other pleasures. She simply hadn’t had time to indulge in anything more than work for ages. But Matthew Shaw stirred something in her besides enthusiasm for her job.
She’d expected an older, paunchy man with decades of training. She hadn’t excepted sex-on-legs to ring her doorbell. Those few minutes in her kitchen had stilled her concerns about his experience. They had also let her appreciate the breadth of his chest and the hard-cut lines of his arms.
Her nipples tightened. She wanted to touch those muscles, feel the hardness beneath his skin slide along her fingertips. More than just gorgeous, he was smart and friendly, and she stood there sucking in the sight of him until she grew dizzy. But he stepped out of view, his head bent and aimed toward a tree.
He was working and she needed to do the same thing. She turned back to the box of spiles. Cool and heavy, each metal spigot seemed foreign and promising. Excitement began in her stomach, but she tempered it. Matt and this sugarhouse were a lot alike. She didn’t know enough yet to make any decisions on either, but what she saw appealed to her.
All her life, she’d wanted to feel grounded. Moving every few years, traipsing across the country—or the world—with her father had opened doors she’d never imagined. But the cost had been steep. The worst question people ever asked was “Where are you from?” She had no idea. She was from Colorado and Rhode Island, Virginia and Hawaii, Japan and Germany. She had no discernible accent, no regional food preferences and had lived through Christmases where she swam in the ocean and ones where she played in the snow.
Kayla wanted a home, a homestead. She wanted to say “I come from here” and feel a sense of connection. She knew no one would give it to her. She had to make it happen for herself.
So she had. Her roots might still be fragile and tender, but they were growing. Digging deep in to the West Virginia mountains like veins of coal. Given time, she knew she could make a diamond out of them. Getting rich wasn’t what she craved. It was earning a hometown pride, a sense of belonging. She was tired of being the new girl everywhere.
Her eyes lifted to the woodlands outside the door. From the day she’d first seen this land, it felt right. A family had lived here for generations. The soil was soaked with tradition and nostalgia. Her new life, in these age-old mountains, was ready to grow. Those trees were going to help her to do just that. Looking around the building, she heard opportunity kno
ck.
The light was simply too dim to see much inside, so she headed outside and around the small building. A huge plastic holding tank of some kind sat beside concrete blocks forming a square base. There must have been a generator at one time. The potential for electricity put a pop in her step as she refastened the padlock on the door and hurried to Matt.
He stood with his back to the sugarhouse, staring up at the mountainside, metal clipboard clenched in his hand. His ass was a fantastic sight to focus on as she approached.
“They had a generator!”
His eyes closed. “Too expensive to run power lines clear out here for just a few weeks.”
“Weeks?”
Abruptly, he turned and headed back toward the truck. Grasses, twigs and brambles crunched under his boots as he climbed the slope. “Yeah, you only harvest and boil in February or March, depending on the weather.”
Kayla scrambled to keep up with his stride. “Why?”
“That’s when the sap runs.”
“Can I still sell the timber rights if I keep the maple trees?”
“It’s your property. You can do whatever you want with it.”
The trek back was quiet. Matt seemed lost in his thoughts and her mind whirled with ideas and prospects. Mental lists scrolled through her head, things she needed to research, brainstorms she had to plan, marketing strategies she had to investigate.
Fists clenched in anticipation, Kayla spun on her heel and looked over her land. Those longed-for roots uncurled and sank deeper into the soil. This is all mine. I’m home.
Chapter Two
The maple family contains over two hundred
different species of trees.
Some sugar maples form intricate patterns in their wood, such as the birds-eye maple that has circles scattered through the wood resembling birds’ eyes.
The biweekly management meetings were a pain in the ass. Matt normally hightailed it back to the field as soon as they were finished, but today CEO Webb Hawkins motioned for him to stick around. He dropped back into a chair to wait, and sawdust poofed from his torn jeans.
Alvarez beamed, flashing pictures of his new baby for everyone to see. Matt wiped his fingers on his jeans before he took the photo, careful to keep his stained hands from the glossy front. His degree was in forestry but he’d worked the dirtier part of the industry for years, managing the logging department of Hawkins Hardwood for the past five. With seven sawmills and three dry kilns spread throughout the state, Hawkins employed a full-time logging crew as well as contracting out smaller jobs. Kayla’s land was one he planned on outsourcing. Guilt didn’t even cause a twinge.
He’d avoided Kayla, finishing the cruise alone later in the week. He’d walked his old homestead, drinking in memories with every step. It had been like swallowing nails and gargling with salt water, but he’d lived through it and done his job. Every night he’d woken, ripped from sleep by strange nightmares. The carefully crafted wall he’d built around his past cracked. It left him with a strange vulnerable ache.
Even a week later, the cruise was taking its toll. Circles deepened under his eyes and his mood had been more than surly. Idly, Matt wondered if Webb had asked him to stick around to reprimand him.
The baby photo made the rounds from person to person, ending with Webb at the head of the table. A thick scar ran the length of Webb’s left temple and tugged his eye slightly upward. Matt looked away, fastening his gaze on a picture hanging beside old lumber camp stills. A younger Webb posed with a blond guy, both holding grading sticks, stacks of air-drying green lumber in the background. Their haircuts were dated, but little else had changed. Other than the fact that Webb now had a glass eye and the other guy was dead.
“Good thing the kid looks like your wife,” Webb joked, then clapped Alvarez on the back.
His dark three-piece suit seemed at odds with his rough hands. The calluses weren’t for show. He’d started on the stacker belt and worked his way up to take over when his father died, learning every dirty job in between. He’d taken a small lumber company and turned it into one of the industry leaders on the East Coast. Matt had been there for most of the growing pains, trusting a man some called driven and others called crazy. Matt just called him friend.
He pulled at his sweaty T-shirt, feeling like a poor relation. He could clean up fine but he wasn’t bothered enough to change before the meetings. They typically held an unusual mix of business attire and sawdust-covered work clothes.
Alvarez and most of the others cleared out, headed to their offices or back to outside locations. The vice president of Hawkins Hardwood, Babette Garrison, aka Bob, was a piranha in pinstriped skirts. She held a degree in wood science as well as law. Her brain and her body were a deadly combination. Too many men saw only her curves, underestimating her in this masculine-run business. They learned to regret it.
“You look like you could use this.” Bob set a cup of coffee in front of him.
Matt saluted her with the mug. “Thanks, I owe you.”
“You’re welcome.” Bob settled back at the conference table, crossing her long legs. “And I prefer Glenlivet and diamonds.”
“Damn, woman,” he teased. “You’re expensive.”
“You have no idea.” Webb shook his head.
“I’m worth it.”
“So you keep reminding me.” Webb cocked one brow at her then swiveled his chair, facing Matt. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Matt shrugged. “Haven’t been sleeping much. I’m going to crash this weekend, reset my biorhythms or some shit.”
Webb scrawled a messy signature across the bottom of a page then slid an open folder across the desk toward Matt. “Set up a contract signing for this.”
Matt’s gut clenched. Kayla’s place. “Alvarez is back, why can’t he do it?”
“Because I need him elsewhere and you have a rapport with her.”
Rapport. Well, that was one way to say she’d featured in several of his masturbatory shower sessions in the past two weeks.
“Is there a problem?”
Swallowing the urge to vomit, Matt shook his head. “No.”
Signing the contract was nothing, ten minutes tops. He’d arrange to meet her somewhere for coffee or something. Then he could walk away and never look back.
He was good at that.
Plans for future jobs filled a few minutes. Matt pointed to three different job sites throughout the region, one out of state, on the huge wall map.
The wheels on Webb’s chair squeaked. “Where’re you cutting next week?”
“Randolph County, Carter’s Ridge.” Matt strolled back to the table and picked up his coffee mug. “Why? You need me somewhere else?”
Webb tapped the Edwards folder. “Here. The walnut there’ll round out the specialty shipment to Tsukuba, Japan.”
Sensations skittered across his neck like a noose tightening. His brain began to quiver. I can’t go back there. I can’t. The mug trembled as he fisted his hands. Aware there were two sets of eyes on him, he pretended to study the map as if he’d never seen it. Red and blue lines blurred in his sight.
It took four slow breaths for his vision to clear. He turned to find the CEO had fixed him with a hard stare, measuring him against some invisible yardstick. “Problem?”
Webb was a decent man. If he knew why the place haunted Matt, he’d never force him back there. But he didn’t know. No one knew. Matt licked his lips. “I was going to contract it out to Holley Brothers.”
“Keep the Edwards property in-house.” Bob’s lipstick was a perfect, shiny bow. “Send the Holleys to Carter’s Ridge. The walnut is a special order. For $60,000 worth of lumber, we need our best crew on it at every point of production.”
“That starts with your men, with you at the controls.” Webb nodded. “There a reason
you can’t do it?”
Only one. One he had never been able to talk about. One he couldn’t talk about now. “Nope. You’re the boss.”
Matt grabbed the folder and headed downstairs to his own office, a smaller cubby down the hall from the security monitors. The room had had his name on the door for five years now but he’d spent little time inside it. His work was outside, at whatever job site demanded his attention. He stopped by once a week to pick up interoffice mail crap and do his weekly reports, but technology kept him connected without tethering him to a desk.
But he needed that solid desk now. He crashed into his chair and leaned his elbows on the scarred desk, burying his fingers in his hair. Fuck, he was trapped. Though the air swirling from the vent was barely cool, his body erupted in shivers. Strange sweat pooled under his arms and along his neck. He couldn’t suck in a deep enough breath. His ribs wouldn’t expand. Spots flashed behind his pinched eyelids.
The pity... Former teammates avoiding him in the halls... Falling asleep in class after working a twelve-hour shift... Mom shaving a bar of soap because there wasn’t any more shampoo... Abby’s shoes pinching her feet so bad she cried... Church gift baskets full of canned goods and bags of beans...“Shit, I can smell the poor from here.”... Wearing three sweatshirts because he outgrew his winter coat and there was no money for another.
Shame burned deep, down into his marrow. It had forged his will to steel—unbendable, durable, straight and unforgiving. It sealed the pain inside and silenced the tears he’d swallowed so many years ago. He’d left that mountain two decades ago, thought he was past the hurt. He’d moved away, grown up and made his own way. Now he had to go back.
Licking his dry lips, he considered telling Webb he couldn’t do it. But then he’d have to open the door to his past, the one he’d locked and thrown away the key to. He’d never talked about those years with anyone. Not even Abby. His sister rarely brought that time up and when she did, it was the good memories.
