I didn’t reply, just gunned the engine up the pot-holed gravel drive.
“Harry . . .”
“Patience, my love.”
The drive loosely ran alongside a tributary of Mossy Creek. Like most Appalachian streams, it ran too fast to freeze in all but the coldest weather. It was just a brook now, but in the spring the rains would engorge it into a full-fledged roaring stream.
A quarter-mile past the road, we reached a break in forest. The brook had formed a natural waterfall here, falling in three tiers from a combined height of ten feet. The pebble-lined pool formed at the bottom was six feet deep in the middle and twenty feet wide.
Right on cue, Josie caught her breath.
I’d hiked here Friday to tie red velvet bows around every tree surrounding the pond.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off Josie’s face as I turned off the engine. She looked around in wonder, her eyes wide, her mouth open.
Without tearing her gaze from the pool, she grabbed for my hand.
I locked my fingers through hers.
“Oh, Harry. Is this what I think it is?”
I brought her hand up to my lips. “It’s ours, if you approve.”
“If I approve . . .? Geez, Louise.” She finally turned to me, her face shining. “Where will we put the house? Not too far from the stream, okay?”
“You’re the feng shui expert,” I said. “You tell me.”
She shoved open the car door and spent ten minutes darting around the pool and clearing, chattering the whole time. I leaned against the Explorer and watched, my heart so full of love I feared it might come apart at the seams.
Finally she stilled, staring down into the pool. Brookies were visible swimming in the crystal clear water. I came up beside her, and she melted against me.
“Thank you, Harry,” she said softly. “It’s perfect.”
“I’m glad you’re not put out that I did this on my own.”
“You found it on your own,” she clarified, “but we’ve been looking together for six months.”
“I haven’t actually bought it yet. I wanted it to be in both our names, and that will require your signature.”
“How much land?”
“It’s about seventy-five acres, all told. Enough so that we’ll never catch sight of any neighbors who might build on our mountain.”
“Let’s go to the bank tomorrow.”
I kissed the top of her head. “We have an appointment at one-thirty.”
She nodded against my chest. “I’ll take a late lunch.”
I pointed across the stream. “Colchik is in that direction. Our cabin is three-quarters of a mile closer to this spot than from the house we live in now. Your parents are five miles further.”
She giggled. “They’ll survive.”
“Have you decided where to put the house?”
“Not yet. It’s going to require more thought, and detailed measurements. It’ll have to face the pool, of course. Water should always be in the front of a house, with a mountain in the rear. But I don’t know which direction is which, so I don’t know if it should be on this side of the pool or the other.”
“North is—“
“Not tonight, Harry. It’s cold and it’s getting dark. And we have plenty of time.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Can we come back tomorrow after we sign the papers? I’ll tell Swee I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off.”
“Of course.”
She sighed and settled against me. We watched the water tumble down the falls until the darkness was almost complete.
I lifted her chin so I could peer down into her face. “So you approve? We’re going to live here?”
“Yes, my sweet Harry, we are.” She pulled my head down to kiss me, whispering just before, “Happily ever after.”
Sandy
WHEN I GOT HOME, Jess was there, but he wasn’t dressed for our Valentine’s Day dinner out. In fact, he still had on his hiking boots, jeans, and camo jacket. “Let’s go fishing,” he suggested.
“What about our ‘special date?’”
“I canceled the reservation. What I have in mind is way cooler than that. I’ve packed your backpack. Put on your hiking clothes and boots and let’s get started. We’ve got a ways to go before dark.”
I walked to the bedroom as fast as I could go to get myself out of his sight before I said something that would not be becoming to an officer of the law. What was this man thinking? I thought about my conversation with Sergei and decided that I would not become a high-maintenance woman. So I changed into my loosest-fitting jeans—dang that Bubba Rice and his high-fat burritos—hiking boots with wool socks, a flannel shirt and a quilted, down coat.
It was almost dark when we reached Jess’s camp site in a little hollow in one of the foothills of Colchik Mountain north of town. The northern tributary of Mossy Creek ran right beside where Jess had pitched the two-man tent and set up his Coleman stove and other niceties. Our his-and-her rods and reels were leaning against a loblolly pine nearby.
Jess went to the side of the creek and turned to face me, spreading his arms wide. “How do you like your Valentine’s present?”
I stared at him blankly and could feel the feelings of resentment I’d tamped down so long start to bubble to the surface. Choosing my words carefully I said, “A fishing trip. For my Valentine’s present. It’s sure an interesting choice, I have to say. I wonder how many other lucky women across America have longed for a romantic fishing trip so they can scrape and gut fish for their men?”
“Sandy,” Jess began, but I was just getting revved up so I cut him off.
“I have spent all stinking weekend trying to keep two knife-happy foreigners who can barely speak English from slicing and dicing each other all the way up and down Main Street.”
“Wait, you don’t—” Jess tried to butt in.
I felt my voice rising a half-octave or so. “This is the second weekend you’ve left me alone while you went off by yourself. It’s not like I get any of your time on weeknights anymore what with you sitting down at the computer as soon as you get off from work and barely saying two words to me for the rest of the night.”
“But, I—”
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. “And now, now you cancel our dinner reservation at Bubba’s for a nice night out and instead you take me on a forced march up a mountain to the middle of nowhere and that’s my Valentine’s present? You must have found a moonshine still or some of those funny mushrooms up here somewhere or else you have lost every bit of sense you ever had.”
The corners of Jess’s mouth twitched, and he looked like he was about to break out into a giggle. I wanted to smack him one, but it wouldn’t do for an officer of the law to commit spousal abuse, much less an officer bucking for chief crisis negotiator, so I just took a deep breath.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
“For now.”
“While you’re taking a breather, let me explain.” Jess gestured behind himself again. “This. This place, a ten-acre chunk of it centered right here where we’re standing, it’s yours. This is where we’re going to build our dream house—the one we’ve always talked about.”
I felt my mouth working like a guppy, but nothing came out. As vocal as I’d been a minute ago, that’s how speechless I was now. “But how? How is that possible?”
Jess reached into the pocket of his jeans and unfolded what looked like a check. “Remember that manuscript I sent off six months ago? Well, the editor made an offer—for three books! So I hired an agent who got them to up the offer to this. I signed the contract and here’s the first of the advance money.”
“And this is the first you’re telling me?”
“I couldn’t tell you until now because I was
so afraid something would fall through. I wasn’t going to relax until the check was in my hand. And then when I realized that the check was going to get here around Valentine’s Day, it all seemed too perfect.
“I know how much you love the mountains so I scoured the hills all around to find the perfect spot. Then I worked with Julie Honeycutt—who, you know, is a real estate agent—to do the deal. So, how do you like it?”
I took the check from him and nearly choked on my own spit when I saw the amount. “I like it. I like it right fine.”
Jess laughed. “I know you like the money. I mean the spot. How do you like our new place?”
I looked around at the little clearing, really seeing it for the first time. Mossy Creek was named for places like this, where the moss-covered river stones lined the gently babbling creek and tall ferns and clover grew lush and green. Even in winter it looked lush. The scent of evergreen lightly perfumed the air. The way the waning sunlight played among the pines put me in mind of the magical woodland glades filed with elves, wood nymphs, and fairies like in the fantasy books Jess had introduced me to in books.
I half expected to see a unicorn step out from behind a tree, stamp its foot and rear its sleek head. In the spring the wildflowers would sprout and the dogwoods that dotted the hillside would bloom in pink and white. This enchanted place would be my home, thanks to Jess.
I put my arms around him and laid my head against his chest. Somewhere under his thick camo coat was the hair I loved. “It’s perfect,” I said. “And you’re going to be a famous novelist, just like Stephen King. You’ve worked so hard. You deserve all the success in the world. I’m sorry for complaining.” And for being such a beech, I thought.
Jess gave me a big hug and a kiss and took me by the hand toward the center of the campsite. “Now it’s time for our special date,” he said. He got our big picnic basket out of the tent and spread out a table cloth. Then he set our places with some fancy Lucite dishes he said he’d picked up at Hamilton’s Department Store in town. “Rob and Teresa helped me pick ‘em out,” he bragged. Rob Walker was Mayor Ida’s son. He had turned Hamilton’s, a dusty has-been of a dry-goods store, into a sleek modern retail heaven. His wife, Teresa, was a fancy lawyer. “Rob’s got style,” Jess added, nodding. “He reads men’s magazines and whatever. And Teresa says Lucite plates are the new plastic.”
I was so choked up I could only nod and smile.
“I’ve got your favorite,” Jess went on as he fired up the camp stove. He reached into the cooler and removed two takeout boxes from Bubba Rice’s diner. He shoveled the burritos and rice into the skillet sitting on the stovetop.
“Wow, you really went all-out,” I said. “This is the best Valentine’s Day of my life! The only thing missing is the champagne to toast our new home.”
Jess chuckled. “You can’t drink champagne, silly.”
“Whyever not?” I dearly love champagne, how the bubbles tickle my lips as I tip the glass.
He turned away from the camp stove and looked at me for several seconds. “Don’t play coy. Do you think I don’t know? When were you going to tell me, anyway? I gave you a nice surprise just now. Don’t you think it’s about time you returned the favor?” He gave me a sly wink and one of those grins that made me fall in love with him.
“Jess Crane, what in the Sam Hill are you talking about?” Had the boy done gone and lost his mind?
His expression turned from teasing to wonder. “You really don’t know, do you?”
I shook my head dumbly.
“Babe, think about it—the burrito cravings, the five pounds you keep trying to lose, the house-cleaning spells, irritability that’s not like you—it all adds up. Sandy, sweetheart, I’m bettin’ you’re going to have a baby.”
“I—I—I am?” My hands went to my belly and I thought about what day it was on the calendar. After some quick calculations my jaw went slack. He was right. So it wasn’t just burritos after all. “I’m going to have a baby! A Baby Crane!”
Jess laughed. “The stork is coming to the Crane house. There’s got to be a joke in there somewhere.”
My husband put down his spatula and came to sit beside me. He put his arms around me and covered me with kisses. How’s that for a sensitive, twenty-first century man? He knew I was pregnant before I did. My man was definitely a keeper.
After we ate our burritos and toasted our home, our baby, and each other with spring water, we snuggled deep into a sleeping bag and made love under the stars. Jess went into a deep sleep as I lay in his arms, letting his chest hair tickle my cheek. Even though it was wintertime, I’d never felt warmer or cozier than I did snuggled up to my tall bear of a man.
I thought about the little girl in my dreams the night before. The one with blond ringlets like mine and fireflies in her hair and Tinker Bell wings on her tiny back. Now I knew who she was. Not me. Our baby.
I hoped I’d give Jess a baby as smart and as talented and as sweet and sensitive as her daddy. I had a lot of points to score to catch up with Jess. I owed him big-time.
Hannah
“I SHOULDN’T HAVE lied to you,” Dave said softly. He’d walked me to the library after I dropped Monique at the circus bus. Now we sat in my office in the quiet, empty building, a private place where I steeled myself to deal with the truth about his motives.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“But I didn’t see it like that, at first,” Dave went on. “I routinely take a false name these days, because I’m so well-known that once people go on the web and find out about my work, it changes how they behave toward me.”
The web. Busted again. As I hurriedly closed my laptop, he added, “It makes it hard to get a real photo.”
Thinking of those initial images, I raised my eyebrow. “And by ‘real photo,’ you mean . . .”
He grimaced. “All right, yes, I admit it. When I first came here, I was predisposed to . . . shoot a certain sort of image.” He stepped further into the room. “After I’d seen the coverage about Hurricane Katrina, I’d proposed a series to the Museum of Modern Art that I was calling “Beneath the Mask of the South.” They were damned eager for it. Since I’d already met Ardaleen Bigelow at an exhibition and she’s the First Mother of Georgia, I’d thought she’d be the perfect source for information about a town to photograph, one that fit my admittedly biased opinion.”
I blinked. “Ardaleen was behind this?” Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker’s much-older sister, mother of Governor Ham Bigelow, was notoriously anti-Creekite, the result not only of a long sibling feud between her and Ida but a rivalry between small-town Mossy Creek and big-city Bigelow that went back over 150 years. “The governor’s mother was willing to help you make Mossy Creek look bad to the world? And by extension to slander the entire state of Georgia—and not just the state, but the whole Southern region?”
“I know, I know,” he said ruefully. “It only took me a week here to realize that asking Ardaleen Bigelow where to shoot photos was like asking a wolf to help me deliver mail to Red Riding Hood’s house. But I rationalized that it was all right because your mayor knew everything.”
“What?!!” I said, outraged. I would have to have a talk with Ida.
“I contacted her the minute I came to town. I told her what I wanted to do, and after she calmed down—I thought, for moment, she might kill me—she agreed to let me shoot wherever I wanted. She even promised to keep my identity secret.”
When I shook my head in disbelief, he added dryly, “I suspect that Mayor Walker knew I couldn’t spend more than a week in Mossy Creek without abandoning my original vision.” He looked suddenly embarrassed. “I also suspect that I . . . er . . . raised her hackles when I pompously explained how I wanted to capture the inequities that I knew ran rampant in small Southern towns. She practically gave me the keys to the city.” His eyes gleamed. “She even suggested pl
aces I should shoot. Canny woman, your mayor.”
My admiration of Ida went up another notch. Suddenly her true intentions dawned on me. “She’s going to blackmail the governor with this scheme of his mother’s.” I clapped my hands and laughed. “We’re going to get a football stadium at the new high school! You watch! Suddenly the governor will find plenty of funding for it.”
Dave leaned over my desk. “But just so you won’t think I’m a complete arse, there’s something else. It’s no excuse, but . . .” His face flushed. “Though I was born in Edinburgh, I was raised in a remote Scottish village in the Highlands. That’s where my father chose to bury himself after my mother died. I think he was trying to gain comfort by returning to his roots, but for me—”
He broke off, and suddenly I understood. “I don’t guess there were many half-Burundians in the Highlands.”
“None. No one of color at all. While I fell in love with the mountains and lochs and burns, school was hell. And my father was oblivious.” He cast me a self-deprecating smile. “So I caught the brunt of the bullying, not only because of my mixed blood but because I was a science-fiction-loving geek. I wasn’t a bluff and braw Scot. I didn’t fit in. So I came to Mossy Creek with a chip the size of all Scotland on my shoulder.” His voice softened. “Until you knocked it off.”
I was having trouble holding back my happy tears. “Mossy Creek knocked it off.”
He shook his head. “You did it first. From the day I entered that library, you treated me like any of your other patrons, fussing over me, ordering in books to suit my reading tastes, recommending places to eat and sights to photograph . . . And you did it without knowing I was the famous Dave Brodie.”
My cheeks got hot. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed.” His gaze held an unnerving intensity. “Just like I noticed the brilliant green of your eyes and the sweet curve of your hip and the innocent way you had of rousing a man’s guilt with one gentle word.” He dragged in a heavy breath. “I’m sorry for what I said about you and the library yesterday. It was a knee-jerk reaction to watching you close me out again.”
At Home in Mossy Creek Page 22
