Cabin Fever

by Marilyn Pappano

  She didn’t know how much time had passed—five minutes, maybe ten—when Chase spoke out of the blue. “I just went for a walk.”

  The statement, seemingly in response to nothing, puzzled her. She was about to ask for clarification when he gestured around him with the paint can. “That’s how I wound up here.”

  “Oh.” So he wanted her to know he hadn’t intended to come here. He’d gone for a walk in the woods and found himself behind the store quite by accident. He hadn’t sought out her company on purpose.

  Except . . . there was only one trail leading into the woods behind her cabin, and only one place it went—a fact he’d admitted he knew the night before.

  But just because she stuck to trails didn’t mean everyone else did. Some people blazed their own, and it was easier to believe Chase belonged in that category than that he’d come looking for her.

  Nolie smiled dryly. All her life it had been easier to believe any number of theories when it came to males than that any man at any given time might be interested in her. Except Jeff. He’d been her best friend since kindergarten, then her boyfriend, then her husband. He’d never minded that she could put on weight as easily as most people put on clothes, or that she was lacking a bit in confidence, and he’d thought she was pretty.

  He and her dad were likely the only men who’d ever thought that.

  “You know, you’re going to have to hire someone to help out here.” He stepped back, flexed his index finger, then studied the shelving to make certain no gray showed through on the section he’d finished. After shaking the can again, he bent to finish the bottom half.

  “I hope so, eventually. I don’t want to work six days a week for the rest of my life.”

  “You’ll need someone when you open. To help with the heavy stuff.”

  “I can lift the heavy stuff.”

  “Uh-huh.” Chase was fairly certain Fiona had never lifted anything heavier than five pounds in her life. When she traveled, someone else carried her luggage. When she shopped, someone else carried her bags. She wouldn’t have dreamed of setting foot in a feed store, and the suggestion that she might heft a fifty-pound bag of feed would earn one of her infamous derisive looks. The thought was almost enough to make him grin.

  But Nolie wasn’t Fiona. If she believed she could handle this place by herself, hell, she probably could.

  Gradually he became aware that she was watching him, hands on her hips. He turned to face her, to wait for whatever she had to say.

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “Me? Skeptical?” he asked dryly.

  “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve lived most of my life on a farm, where on occasion I helped haul hay and feed supplement to the stock and drove a tractor and wrestled a calf or two when I had to.”

  The key phrase there was “on occasion.” That could mean anything from once in a while to once every few years.

  “To say nothing of the fact that I carried Micahlyn around much of the first two years of her life. You try doing that and see if you don’t build some muscles. Of course”—her challenging look faded into sheepishness tinged with self-mockery—“I keep them well hidden underneath all this lusciousness.”

  Her cracks about her weight seemed designed to forestall any comments he might make. After all, teasing someone wasn’t any fun when she made fun of herself first. Maybe she would stop if she knew he wasn’t about to say anything disparaging. So what if she was a little plump? Her weight and her satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, with it were her business.

  Though Fiona certainly would have offered a few subtly snide comments. Beautiful Fiona, who existed on sugar-free this and nonfat that, who visited the gym as religiously as her old Irish grandmother attended mass, had little tolerance for slackers who let their weight creep one pound over their ideal.

  And, for all her physical perfection, look at the kind of person she’d turned out to be.

  When the sun was directly overhead, Nolie set down her spray can, stretched her arms over her head, then bent at the waist to ease the kinks out of her spine. “It’s time for a break. Want to go to Harry’s and get some lunch? My treat.”

  “I have money.”

  “Congratulations. And you’ve spent the last ninety minutes working for free. I think that deserves a free lunch.”

  “You go ahead.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring it back. What would you like?”

  He hadn’t set foot in Harry’s in sixteen years, but he hadn’t forgotten his favorite meal in all that time. “A club sandwich on wheat with potato salad.”

  She disappeared inside, then returned a few minutes later with her face, arms, and hands freshly scrubbed, her cap gone, and her hair freed from its ponytail. There wasn’t much she could do about her clothing, but all in all, she looked fine. Her skin, where it wasn’t dotted with freckles, was smooth, pale ivory, her blue eyes were bright, and her mouth . . . His gaze fixed on it, free of lipstick, nicely shaped, with a prominent cupid’s bow, and definitely kissable—

  The direction his thoughts had wandered made him swallow convulsively and look away as she dug her keys from the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  His only response was a grunt and a nod as he went back to work, keeping his gaze averted as she climbed into the car, then backed out. Once the sound of the engine faded away, he released the breath he’d instinctively held and swore.

  He needed a woman. If he had any sense, he would go to one of Howland’s numerous bars, have a few drinks, pick one out of the crowd, and spend the rest of the night making up for the past three years. It wouldn’t have to be anyone special—just female, breathing, and willing—and he would forget any stupid ideas his extended abstinence might put in his head about Nolie.

  Yeah, sure, that was what he would do. Not that he’d engaged in one-night stands in a long time. But before Fiona, he’d been pretty good at them, and he was fairly certain that, like riding a bicycle, it was something you never really forgot. Besides, he didn’t have much choice. When he had even the faintest sexual thought about a woman like Nolie, he had to do something—and not with her. For his sake. For hers.

  She was gone close to half an hour. When she returned and got out of the car with a brown paper bag and a cardboard drink carrier, he set the paint can aside and went inside to wash up. By the time he finished, she’d spread a quilt from somewhere over the concrete stoop and laid out their lunch.

  “Was Harry’s busy?” He sat at the near corner of the quilt, where cinder blocks provided support for him to lean against. She was doing the same at the other end.

  “Very. It’s a great place. It reminds me of the café back home. That was its name—The Café—and it was the place to go if you wanted all the latest news and gossip.” Then she grinned. “It was also the only place to go.”

  He unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite before asking, “How big is Whiskey Creek, really?”

  “Let’s see . . . with Micahlyn and me leaving, it got demoted from ‘wide spot in the road’ to . . . hmm, I’m not sure there’s a name for places that small. We had one café, one gas station, a tiny post office, and four churches.”

  “And you stayed there so long because? . . .”

  “It was home. That’s where my parents lived when I was born. That’s where Jeff lived . . . and died.”

  “How?” It took Chase a moment to realize that the question had come from him. As a rule, he didn’t ask such personal questions just to make conversation. But this wasn’t just small talk. He wanted to know.

  She took a bite of her own sandwich—grilled chicken on thick slices of fresh-baked white bread—and gazed at the traffic passing by on the highway for a moment. “He had an accident at the farm. The tractor rolled over, and he...”

  The images that immediately popped into Chase’s mind were gruesome, and far more than he wanted to know. He murmured, “Sorry,” and she gave him a smile
colored with sadness. “Me, too.”

  “Does it bother you to talk about him?”

  “Oh, no. I talk to Micahlyn a lot. Even though she was too young to remember him, I want her to know him— what kind of man he was, how much he loved her.”

  Lucky kid. He didn’t know what it was like to have a father’s love—and his was still living. Not that he’d given Earl much reason to care. After the less than pleasant eighteen years he’d lived with them, he’d pretty much shut his family out of his life for good, and he didn’t miss them at all.

  Except occasionally in the loneliest part of the night.

  Not wanting to consider that, he asked, “Do your parents still live in Whiskey Creek?”

  “No. They died in a car wreck when I was a senior in high school. Jeff’s parents took me in, and as soon as I graduated, we got married.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered again.

  “Don’t be. People we love die. It’s a part of life. I’d rather have Jeff, Mom, and Dad alive and well, but . . . at least I got to be a part of their lives while they were here.”

  “You’re much better adjusted than I am.”

  “Oh, there’s a surprise.”

  He gave her a sharp look. It had been a long time since anyone had felt comfortable enough to tease him. He wasn’t sure how he felt that she did.

  As he finished his potato salad, she slid another small foam container across the quilt. “You can have my potato salad, too. I’m saving the calories for dessert.”

  “And what’s for dessert?”

  Reaching into the bag, she pulled out a clear plastic box holding three pieces of pastry. “Baklava.” She said each syllable distinctly, turning the name into a drawn-out “ahhh” of satisfaction.

  “Baklava?”

  “It’s a Greek pastry.”

  “I know what it is. When did Harry start selling baklava?”

  “Sebastian Knight’s new wife is Greek-American, and the recipe is her mother’s. Harry made it for her originally— she was having cravings when she was pregnant—but everyone loved it, so he keeps making it.”

  “And you know this because? . . .”

  “Because I spent nearly thirty minutes waiting for our lunch. By the way, she had a girl. In March. Named her Hildred Alyssa. Calls her Alyssa for obvious reasons.” She gave him a thoughtful look. “I should have asked Maeve, the waitress, if she knows anyone from Bethlehem named Chase.”

  He swallowed hard. If she ever did such a thing, she would find herself minus one tenant. It wouldn’t take long for someone to remember him—most likely Maeve or Harry themselves—and within minutes, his parents would know he was back. He would have to get out and go . . . hell, wherever. Where did a man go when there was no place left for him?

  After polishing off the second container of potato salad, he reached for a triangle of baklava, then carelessly said, “She would have told you no. Not everybody in Bethlehem knows everybody else.”

  “You must be confusing it with Boston.”

  The absurdity of her calmly spoken statement brought a long-forgotten sound from him—a chuckle. He cut it off before it finished. “Oh, sure. People make that mistake all the time.” It was an easy distinction for him. He’d been happy in Boston. He hadn’t been in Bethlehem.

  She ate one piece of baklava, then delicately licked the honey syrup from her fingers before she stood up. She gave an exaggerated groan. “I’m not built for hard physical labor.”

  “I thought you helped haul hay and wrestle calves.”

  “On occasion,” she reminded him, then admitted with a grin, “which was only when I couldn’t hide from Jeff’s dad when he came looking for help. I wasn’t meant to be a farmer’s daughter.”

  “You look like one.”

  Her gaze narrowed as it settled on him. No doubt she was trying to determine whether he’d insulted or complimented her, and he figured that look meant she was leaning toward an insult. “How does a farmer’s daughter look? Corn-fed? Fattened up for market?”

  “No.” He got to his feet, too, so he didn’t have to look up at her. Words came to mind—innocent, fresh, sweet— but he didn’t offer them. “Wholesome. Healthy. Robust.”

  She sniffed disdainfully. “Robust? You like to live dangerously, don’t you? Don’t forget that I outweigh you, slim. I could hurt you.”

  He didn’t know what devil goaded him to move, to step across the quilt and not stop until he was right in front of her—too close, his defenses warned. So close she had to tilt back her head to look at him. “I don’t think so. I’m not as harmless as I look.”

  She tried to snort with derision, but it came out no more than a soft exhalation of honey-scented breath. This close he could see the subtle shadings of blue in her eyes, could hear the whisper of her breathing and see the pulse beating faintly at the base of her throat. This close she could tempt him to cup his hands to her face, to lower his mouth to hers, to take just a taste, to kiss her just once, briefly, innocently.

  And then what? Walk away?

  That was the problem.

  He didn’t know if he could.

  Chapter Five

  ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO FIT INTO A SMALL town was to join in the local church services. Cole Jackson had learned that lesson long ago, and had often put it to good use. This Sunday morning he’d gotten up, showered, and shaved, and dressed in pale gray trousers and a white shirt. He’d tossed a darker gray jacket and a tie across the bed, eaten a breakfast of cold pizza left from last night’s dinner, and tried to convince himself to finish dressing and leave.

  The last of the church bells had stopped tolling fifteen minutes ago, and he was still at home.

  He’d had a lot of homes over the years, so many that the word had stopped meaning anything by the time he was ten. A few had been even nicer than this old mansion, but most hadn’t existed in the same league. He’d spent more than his share of time in places without heat or electricity, where the rats lived more comfortably than he. Hell, he’d slept plenty of nights in the back of a beat-up old car.

  But not anymore. And by God, never again.

  Accepting that he wasn’t feeling any too pious this morning, he removed the diamond cuff links and rolled his sleeves up. Logic said he should change into jeans and a T-shirt, walk the two blocks to the office he’d rented, and finish cleaning away a year’s grime so he would be ready for the furniture delivery in the morning. But when he moved away from the kitchen sink, where he’d eaten his pizza, he didn’t take the back stairs to his bedroom. Instead, he headed down the hall, grabbed his keys, and left, locking the door behind him.

  The Miller mansion—his mansion—was located catty-corner from the courthouse, which was home to both the sheriff’s office and the police department. Beyond that was the town square and downtown Bethlehem. The town was smaller than he liked, but size aside, there was one hell of a lot of money there and in his business, that was all that mattered.

  He crossed the small yard that fronted the house and went through the gate. He didn’t need to be told that an elderly woman had last lived in the house. One look at the elaborate picket fence and fussy flower beds made that clear, to say nothing of all the crocheted doilies and ruffled fabrics inside the house. The seller, the old woman’s son, had offered to remove the furnishings before Cole moved in, but Cole had suggested renting it instead. After all, he needed furniture, and the house was filled to overflowing with it.

  The morning was ten degrees cooler than the past few days. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he crossed the street in front of his nearest neighbor, Small Wonders, then crossed the side street and turned toward the square. He’d seen the woman who ran Small Wonders more than a few times since he’d moved into the mansion. She was pretty, dark-haired, and slender. Her business appeared profitable— there was no shortage of customers, and she drove an expensive little SUV that, even now, was parked around the corner from the shop’s entrance.

  Of course, most businesses in Bethlehem app
eared profitable. Wasn’t that why he’d come here in the first place? The town had a history of doing all right for itself, helped along by its rather isolated location. When McKinney Industries had moved their headquarters here a few years earlier, all right had transformed into outstanding. It was rumored the head of MI, Ross McKinney, was worth billions—yep, with a B—and his top people were millionaires twenty or forty times over. That kind of money could make a big difference in a small town.

  The square was like something from a hundred years ago—lush grass edged by flower beds, benches, tall trees offering shade, a bandstand in the middle. It didn’t require much imagination at all to picture the 4 th of July there, with red, white, and blue bunting, flags flapping in the breeze, brightly colored quilts spread across the grass where families picnicked, and a band offering rousing patriotic tunes. Or an Easter-egg hunt or Christmas carolers in the snow.

  At the moment, though, it was pretty much deserted, except for one small boy, driving a dump truck through the grass, and his mother, reading a newspaper on the bench nearby. His neighbor from Small Wonders.

  As he debated striking up a conversation with her, the breeze snatched the paper from her hands and sent it sailing along just above the ground. With a laugh, the boy went running for one page, and she started after the others. Cole caught them first, folded them neatly, and offered them to her with a practiced smile. “I guess it’s true that news really gets around fast in Bethlehem.”

  She responded with a smile of her own. “You bet it is.”

  “I’m Cole Jackson.”

  “I know. You’ve come here from California, you’ve bought the Miller house, and you’ve rented office space on Main Street, across the hall from Alex Thomas.” That smile came again. “News travels very fast.”

  “How did you miss the part about my being an investment counselor, thirty years old, and single?”

  “Well, I haven’t been out much lately.” Tucking the newspaper under one arm, she offered her right hand. “I’m Leanne Wilson.”