A Temporary Courtship

by Jenna Mindel

  Emily rose, and the twins looked up at her expectantly. “I’m going to walk outside and let the children stretch their legs for a minute. We’ll be right back.”

  The secretary glanced away from her computer screen and blinked. “Of course,” she murmured politely. “Why don’t you give me your cell phone number in case Mr. Monroe comes in while you’re out?”

  “Mama doesn’t give out her cell phone number,” Paul interjected helpfully. “It’s just for emergencies. Minutes cost money. Like hamburgers.”

  The secretary’s gaze slid over to her son, and Emily was suddenly aware of how rumpled and sticky they all looked after the three-hour drive in her old car with its wonky air-conditioning system. She tilted up her chin.

  “We’ll come back in about fifteen minutes. I’m sure Mr. Monroe won’t mind waiting for us if he gets back before then.” The secretary looked as if she thought Mr. Monroe probably would mind, but Emily was past caring. She pushed open the heavy door and ushered the twins out into the early-summer sunshine.

  It was only eleven thirty in the morning, but the Georgia heat had already settled over the town like a hot, moist blanket. Emily hesitated in front of the old storefront that housed the lawyer’s office, blinking in the strong sunlight.

  Jim Monroe’s office faced the town square. The brick courthouse loomed directly across the street from where they stood. Its lawn looked lushly green, and shade from a huge magnolia tree dappled a bench near a concrete war memorial. Emily took her twins’ hands and headed in that direction, hoping to put some distance between Phoebe and the smell of grilling burgers.

  While the twins ran off some of their energy chasing each other around the tree’s gnarled trunk, Emily sat on the bench nibbling at the sticky sandwich and feeling uncomfortably conspicuous. Passersby curiously glanced her way, and she could see them wondering who she and the twins were, trying to place them. This was a small town, and outsiders stood out.

  She hadn’t always been a stranger here. She wondered how long it would take before somebody figured that out and remembered the last time Emily Elliott had been downtown in Pine Valley. That had been the day her grandmother had marched her into Donaldson’s Drugstore to buy a home pregnancy test.

  She’d felt pretty conspicuous then, too.

  Emily’s eyes flickered to the twins, who were clambering over the twisting roots of the ancient magnolia, and she felt her nerves ease a little. That had been the beginning of the toughest time in her life, but God had brought two amazing blessings out of it. He’d get her through today, too.

  “I’m telling you, this isn’t right.” An emphatic male voice broke into Emily’s thoughts, and she glanced up to see two men rounding the corner of the courthouse. “None of it’s right.”

  Emily frowned. The man had his dark head turned away from her, but his voice sounded oddly familiar. He was tall and casually dressed in jeans and a red cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His companion was older, and either the Georgia heat or the sharp edge of the tall man’s voice had the fancy-dressed gentleman sweating through his very expensive suit.

  “You’re the lawyer,” the familiar-sounding man continued. “Find a loophole.”

  “There isn’t one.” The other man mopped at his balding head with a handkerchief as he struggled to keep up with his companion’s long strides. “We’ve been over this, Mr. Whitlock. Repeatedly. And all I can do is tell you the same thing I’ve been saying all along. There’s nothing I can do.”

  Whitlock.

  Emily squinted at the dark-haired man, and her heart jumped. She stood, shading her eyes with one hand to get a better look. “Abel? Abel Whitlock?”

  The man stopped walking and turned toward her. “Emily?”

  She felt her lips tilt upward in her first real smile in two long weeks. She took four running steps and flung herself into the tall man’s arms hard enough that he staggered backward a step.

  For a second she held on to him without thinking, her nose buried in the softness of his shirt, inhaling the scent of him—wood shavings, soap, the wild tang of the pine woods that surrounded his cabin. “Oh, it’s so good to see a friendly face.” She backed up a step, still clutching his upper arms, feeling the solid strength of his muscles through the worn cotton of his shirt. She peered up into his face. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, you truly are!”

  His blue eyes, startling in his tanned face, looked bemused. He seemed at a loss for words, but that wasn’t unusual for Abel. She’d met him when she was fourteen, and he was the lanky eighteen-year-old who helped out on her grandmother’s farm. He hadn’t been much of a talker back then, either.

  “Emily,” he repeated.

  She laughed self-consciously and released him. “I know. I’m terrible, flinging myself at you like that. I just couldn’t help it.” She turned back and motioned for her twins to approach them. “Phoebe, Paul, this is Grandma Sadie’s friend Mr. Abel. He takes care of her animals.” She smiled up at him. “He and I knew each other when I used to spend my summers with Grandma Sadie out on the farm.”

  The twins approached them slowly. Their experience with men in general was fairly limited—Emily didn’t trust most men around her children. But this was Abel Whitlock, and he was in a category all by himself.

  Abel detached his gaze from her face and dropped his eyes to the two tousled blond heads beside her.

  “Well, now.” He lowered himself slowly onto one knee and considered the children soberly. “So you’re the famous twins I’ve heard so much about! I’ve waited a good while to meet you.” He fished in his shirt pocket and produced a couple of striped discs of candy. “Do you like peppermint?”

  Emily’s smile widened. She’d seen him use the same technique countless times with skittish animals. Move slow, talk low and have a treat ready, he used to tell her. They’ll come around.

  The children considered his offering warily, glancing up at their mother for direction.

  “You can take it. Mr. Abel’s a good friend.”

  “You’re big. Like a tree.” Phoebe blinked her green eyes at him as she accepted her candy. Abel’s mouth crooked up in a lopsided smile that jarred half a dozen more memories loose in Emily’s mind. How could just that sideways quirk of his lips bring back so sharply the details of her Pine Valley summers? She could almost smell the odors of drying hay, fresh sliced tomatoes and green beans processing in her grandmother’s pressure canner.

  “I am that,” Abel said, agreeing with her daughter. “And you’re sweet. Like a daisy.”

  “She’s not sweet all the time.” Paul popped his own peppermint in his mouth and held out his hand. “I’m Paul Thomas Elliott, and it’s nice to meet you. Thanks for the candy.”

  Abel shook the proffered hand. “I’m honored to meet you, sir, and you’re welcome.”

  “I’m not a sir. Not yet. I’m just a kid.” Paul cocked his head on one side, and Emily could see him weighing her old friend carefully. “But when I am a grown-up, I want to be a pilot. Of an airplane. Or maybe a rocket. I haven’t decided yet.” Emily smiled. Abel must have passed inspection. Paul was her reserved child, and he didn’t share personal information easily.

  “Good to know,” Abel said gravely. “I like a man with a plan.”

  They nodded solemnly at each other for a couple of seconds before Abel got back to his feet. When his blue gaze returned to Emily’s, it held a lingering gentleness that made inexplicable tears prick at the back of her eyes. She blinked furiously and managed to keep them from spilling over. Good grief. She was crying over everything these days.

  Abel held his hand out to her next. “I didn’t get a chance to speak to you at the funeral. I want you to know how sorry I am about Miss Sadie.”

  “You of all people don’t have to tell me that.” She took the hand he offered, feeling the dry roughness of his calloused s
kin. She squeezed hard, looking up into his face. “Grandma’s death is just as much your loss as mine. I know that.”

  “Now, see there!” the stocky man interjected jovially. “It’s always nice when folks get along. And it sure makes my job a whole lot easier.” He offered his own hand to Emily. “Jim Monroe. And you must be Miss Elliott.”

  Her grandmother’s lawyer. Finally. “Yes.” She took the man’s perspiring hand briefly in her own and couldn’t help comparing its flabby softness to the hard strength of Abel’s.

  “I’m late, I know. Sorry about that. I was—” the man glanced up at Abel briefly before finishing “—delayed. Whew, it’s hot as blazes out here! Why don’t we take this little reunion inside where it’s air-conditioned? The three of us have a lot to talk about.”

  * * *

  Inside the lawyer’s office Abel shifted his weight in the captain’s chair he’d been assigned, and it creaked irritably. He ran a fingertip along its polished arm, assessing the wood. Cherry, he thought absently, with a pretty, rosy grain to it.

  Any other day he’d have offered Monroe cash for this chair and hauled it back to his cabin. He’d have taken it apart, stripped off its polish and studied the grain of the wood, looking for the secrets he could carve out of it. But not today. Today he had other things on his mind.

  Abel stole a look at Emily, who was standing at the doorway of the conference room talking earnestly to her twins. She was wearing a white shirt with short, filmy sleeves and pale green slacks, and she had that bright hair of hers pulled into some sort of soft little roll at the back of her neck. She was leaning over with her slim, city-pale arms extended, her hands resting gently on her twins’ shoulders.

  She reminded him of a dogwood tree just coming into blossom in the earliest days of spring, when its flowering branches looked like bits of lace tangled in the pines. Emily had always had something of the refreshing chanciness of springtime about her, and she’d always given Abel the same fluttering, uncertain feeling in his belly that the first days of March always did. That sense of waking up after the dull darkness of winter.

  When she’d run up and grabbed him outside, he’d felt just like he had last fall when Miss Sadie’s ornery little bull calf butted him squarely in the stomach. But then Emily’d always had a knack for knocking him off balance, for making him feel clumsy and foolish, like he was wearing his boots on the wrong feet. Back when she spent her summers on Goosefeather Farm, he’d done his share of mooning over her.

  That was what happened when you put a lonesome boy and a pretty girl in the same general vicinity, he reckoned. Of course, Emily had never looked twice in his direction, not that way, and he’d never seriously expected her to. The Whitlock and Elliott properties might butt up against each other, but the families were worlds apart in every other way. Even back then, he’d had enough sense to know that much.

  All that was water under an old bridge, because once Emily heard what this lawyer had to say, Abel didn’t figure on getting another hug from her any time soon.

  “You be good for Miss Marianne, now,” Emily was telling her children. “Mind your manners.”

  “I always mind my manners,” the boy, Paul, answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s Phoebe who forgets.”

  “I do not! Well...” Phoebe stuck one finger between her pink lips and hesitated. “Sometimes I forget.” In spite of the knot of nerves in his belly, Abel found himself smiling.

  Emily’s twins were cute little things with bright expressions and golden hair exactly the color of wildflower honey, just like their mama’s. The boy had Trey Gordon’s brown eyes, though, and the girl had something of Trey in the set of her chin.

  The memory of Trey Gordon made the smile fade from Abel’s face. The summer that Emily Elliott had fallen for Trey had been her last in Pine Valley, and the recollection of it still rankled more than he liked to admit. Still, the man was dead and gone. If Abel couldn’t bring himself to be overly sorry about that, at least with the good Lord’s help he could toss a little mercy at Trey’s memory.

  Miss Sadie had taught him that much.

  “The kids will be fine.” Jim Monroe sounded impatient. “Marianne loves kids, don’t you, Marianne? Take ’em down the hall to the library, and let them watch cartoons on the television in there.” Monroe dismissed his secretary with a wave and began rummaging through the files stacked on his desk. “Have a seat, Miss Elliott, and we’ll get started.”

  Emily had her head stuck out into the hallway, watching her children. She glanced at the lawyer, but she lingered where she was, apparently reluctant to let her children out of her sight.

  She’s a good mother, Abel realized, which was pretty remarkable considering that her own mother hadn’t exactly been cut out for parenthood. He’d only met Marlene Elliott a few times, but he remembered her as a flighty woman who always seemed to be in the middle of some kind of man-related crisis. Maybe Emily had inherited her common sense from Tom Elliott, Miss Sadie’s son. He’d passed on before Abel came into the picture, but Tom was remembered in Pine Valley as a solid, upstanding man.

  “Close the door if you would, Miss Elliott.” The lawyer darted an uneasy look at Abel. “In these situations privacy is important.”

  Emily hesitated another second, then eased the heavy door shut. She came over to take her place in the second chair angled across from the lawyer’s desk.

  “Now, Mr. Whitlock, Miss Elliott, you’re here because you are both beneficiaries of Mrs. Sadie Elliott’s last will and testament.”

  Abel’s heart sank, and he glanced over at Emily wondering how she’d take this first blow. Emily turned to him, her face lighting up like a spring sunrise.

  “Oh, Abel. I’m so glad! You’ve been such a help to Grandma all these years. She’d never have been able to stay on Goosefeather Farm without you, and we both know she’d have been miserable anywhere else. I’m so happy she remembered you in her will!”

  Abel winced. He’d thought he couldn’t feel any worse about this whole thing than he already did.

  He’d been wrong.

  “I never expected her to.” Abel cut another look at Jim Monroe, who winced and pulled a tissue out of the box on his desk to dab at his perspiring forehead. “And, Emily, I want you to know before we go any further, that I had nothing to do with this.”

  “We’ve been through all that, Mr. Whitlock,” Monroe sighed heavily and continued as if Abel had directed his comment toward him. “I’m well aware of your sentiments on the matter. But as I’ve already explained to you, Mrs. Elliott set out her wishes very clearly in her will, and like it or not, all three of us are going to have to abide by her terms or accept the consequences.”

  Emily frowned. “Of course we’ll abide by the terms of Grandma’s will. Why wouldn’t we?” She looked from one man to the other, her expression puzzled. “What consequences are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  Fifteen minutes later she knew.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Emily sounded bewildered, but she didn’t sound angry. Not yet. Abel had his elbows on the desk and his chin cradled in his hands.

  So far this was going just about the way he’d figured it would. Not well.

  “I’m afraid it’s no joke, Miss Elliott.” Jim Monroe slid his glasses down his nose and looked at Emily sympathetically. “As I said, Mrs. Elliott was very clear. Either you reside on Goosefeather Farm for three months and care for its livestock and crops to the satisfaction of the county extension agent, beginning now, or you forfeit the farm and the rest of your grandmother’s assets to Mr. Whitlock here. Lock, stock and barrel.”

  Abel’s gut clenched. Emily was pale except for two spots of red burning high on each cheekbone. She looked like she’d just been slapped.

  He couldn’t have loved Miss Sadie Elliott any more if she’d been his own flesh and blood, which wa
s no wonder when you considered that she’d done a sight more for him than any of his own people ever had. When she’d died it had felt like somebody had cut a chunk right out of the middle of his heart. But she’d sure left him in a mess with this crazy notion of hers.

  “I can’t live here!” Emily was protesting. “I have a job and an apartment in Atlanta. Phoebe and Paul will be starting kindergarten in August. I’ve already registered them.” She shook her head. “I just don’t get it. What was Grandma thinking?”

  “As it happens, we may have an answer to that question.” Jim Monroe slipped an envelope out from under the papers neatly stacked in the manila folder in front of him. He slid it across the table toward Emily. “She left this for you.”

  Emily accepted the letter, which bore her name in Miss Sadie’s spidery writing, but she kept her eyes fixed imploringly on the lawyer. “You don’t understand. I can’t stay in Pine Valley,” she repeated. “I just can’t!”

  “If you’re unable to meet the conditions of the will, then I’m afraid Mr. Whitlock gets the farm and all your grandmother’s monetary assets, which while hardly extensive are not inconsequential. I’m very sorry, Miss Elliot. I can see this wasn’t what you were expecting, and I agree that it’s quite unusual. I also want you to know that I did encourage Mrs. Elliott to speak to you about it when we drew up the will a couple of years ago. Obviously she didn’t take my advice.”

  “This is crazy.” Emily closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with trembling fingers. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” The confusion and hurt on her face reminded Abel of the time he’d happened across a tiny fawn tangled up in the rusty remains of a barbed-wire fence. Emily’s expression tore into his heart just the same way. Only this time he couldn’t ease the pain with a pair of wire cutters and some salve.