Cider Brook

by Unknown

  Fortunately, Justin returned with a tray of iced tea. Samantha seized the moment. She took a glass of tea—complete with mint sprigs and a slice of lemon—and got to her feet, mumbling niceties and retreating as fast as she could without being rude. She had no particular destination in mind, just away from the scrutiny of the three older women and, especially, her own discomfort.

  Her fourth day in Knights Bridge, and the locals had her thoroughly discombobulated.

  And they knew it. Especially Justin.

  She didn’t realize he was behind her until she arrived at the lawn behind the older section of the center-chimney house, where tables were set up for the wedding lunch. Her throat tightened at the white cloths, silver, clear vases of hydrangeas, tinted burgundy with the arrival of autumn, and small, prettily bundled favors.

  Justin looked at ease, but he would be comfortable here. These were people he had known his entire life. She was the outsider—the stranger.

  Samantha spun around at him, almost spilling her iced tea. “Loretta Wrentham and Dylan don’t think I had anything to do with Duncan’s death, do they?”

  “Whoa. I was thinking you were about to comment on lunch.”

  She should have. She wanted to have a normal conversation about the wedding, the lunch, the gorgeous day. But it wasn’t possible. She was the treasure hunter Duncan McCaffrey had fired. The stranger with the weird family. The woman who’d be dead but for one of their own.

  Better not to pretend she could fit in.

  She tried not to sound defensive as she continued. “It never occurred to me that Duncan was having heart troubles. I never saw any signs of a problem. I wouldn’t. I’m not a doctor. When he fired me, he wasn’t screaming or upset—he’d let people go before. He’d been a businessman. It wasn’t anything new. He wasn’t happy about it, but there was no acrimony.” She knew she was talking too fast—talking more to herself than to the man next to her. “I’m sorry. I should leave.”

  “Not before lunch.” Justin caught a sprig of mint as it was about to fall off the edge of her iced tea glass. He tossed it into the grass. He was calm, as if nothing about her rush of emotion got to him. He gave her one of his sexy winks. “It’d look like I said something asinine and ran you off. You don’t want that, do you? Leaving me to explain myself.”

  Samantha sighed. “You’re not worried about explaining yourself.”

  “Would you buy a little worried?”

  “No.”

  He grinned. “See why I keep wanting to kiss you?”

  “It’s weddings,” she said. “They addle people’s brains.”

  “Maybe it’s you.” He placed a hand on her waist, as if she were his real guest for the day instead of one more or less foisted upon him. “All that talk of pirates.”

  She let herself sink into his hand, imagined it skimming over her hips. Not good. She stood straight, drank some of her tea. “I think you’re just keeping an eye on me in case I lead you to buried treasure.”

  He flicked a fly away from her shoulder. “What if it’s the other way around and you’re the one keeping an eye on me?”

  “Why would I think you could lead me to buried treasure?”

  “The cider mill has something to do with your Captain Farraday and his missing treasure, doesn’t it?”

  “As I told you, tales of buried pirate treasure are mostly discredited.”

  “What about treasure aboard sunken pirate ships?”

  “That’s different,” she admitted. “But it’s complicated, and not a subject for a wedding reception—”

  “It’s okay, Sam. Relax. Throttle back for a bit and enjoy the day.” His deep blue eyes held hers, unreadable, but he smiled. “Lunch smells good, doesn’t it?”

  She hadn’t noticed, but now she did, appreciating the mix of scents emanating from inside the house. Butter, apples, cinnamon, warm bread. “It does smell good, yes, definitely.”

  She wanted to let herself be distracted, to forget her reasons for being in Knights Bridge and the suspicion—the understandable suspicion—she was under by the people around her.

  She returned his smile. “I think it’s time for champagne, don’t you?”

  He drew her a little closer to him. “Or maybe some of that Scotch in your grandfather’s flask,” he said, then winked and headed back to his best man’s duties.

  It was a few moments before she got her breath back.

  * * *

  Samantha stayed for lunch but left before the cake was cut. Everything was perfect. The food, the company, the setting, the weather. Justin. Watching him with his friends and family, she saw there was more to the taciturn man who’d rescued her than she’d realized.

  The best thing she could do for him—and for herself—was to accept that she didn’t belong here and go about her business. “I have to go,” she whispered to him as she rose from their table. “Thank you. It’s been a wonderful day.”

  He didn’t stop her. He had more best man duties, and maybe he wouldn’t have, anyway. She slipped around the side of the house to the cars and trucks parked out front for the wedding, hoping to hitch a ride with a departing guest.

  But no one was leaving, not yet.

  “Well, damn. What now?”

  No choice. None. She had to get herself back to Justin’s sawmill apartment, fetch her backpack and figure out where to sleep tonight. Not on his couch.

  Not in his bed, either.

  Weddings, she thought. They absolutely did addle people’s brains.

  She sucked in a breath, called on the intrepid spirit of her grandfather and headed up Carriage Hill Road in her vintage dress and borrowed shoes.

  Nineteen

  Samantha had just passed Grace Webster’s former property when Christopher Sloan pulled over in his truck. “Justin said you were stubborn. Climb in. I’m missing the dancing but I’m on duty in an hour. Where you off to?”

  “To retrieve my backpack.”

  “It’s still at Justin’s place?”

  She didn’t want to get into the details and responded with a nod. “Did he send you after me?”

  “Told me to look out for you.” Christopher gave her what she was beginning to recognize as a Sloan smile. “Wouldn’t want you getting blisters. Did you panic back there?”

  “Panic?”

  “It’s not unusual to be jumpy at a gathering a few days after getting caught in a fire, even if you’re normally not the type to have panic attacks.” The grin again. “Must be a reason for you to run off in high heels.”

  “Two-inch heels aren’t that bad. Anyway, I didn’t panic.”

  “Right.” As if now he knew what had gotten into her. “You have the key to Justin’s place?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t think of it being locked.”

  “Given your skills with his padlock, you could probably manage, but I know where he keeps his spare. Where are you going after you pick up your backpack?”

  “The cider mill,” she said without hesitation.

  “I’ll take you out there.”

  And he did, first showing her the extra key tucked by a gutter, then waiting for her while she changed her clothes and grabbed her backpack. She was halfway out the door when she went back and scrawled a note to Justin on a small pad on the kitchen counter.

  Sorry to run but thank you for everything.

  Yours truly,

  Samantha

  She frowned. Yours truly? It sounded stiff, but hugs and kisses was too familiar.

  What was she doing?

  She left the note on the counter and ran back downstairs. Christopher Sloan was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, obviously impatient. “Thanks for waiting,” she said, climbing in. “I know you must be in a rush. I can walk—”

  “It’s okay. We’ll make it.”

  Samantha didn’t change her mind as he drove her out to Cider Brook. He parked on the dirt road, not taking the time to venture down the driveway and back out. “I appreciate this so much, Ch
ristopher.”

  He shrugged. “Not a problem. You have a phone. Call one of us if you run into trouble.”

  He sounded as if he at least half expected she would run into trouble, but she jumped out of his truck with her backpack and headed down the rough driveway to the clearing and the nineteenth-century cider mill. Abandoned, partially burned and boarded up, it little resembled its earlier incarnation in the photographs at the Swift River Country Store and even less the cider mill in the painting in her grandfather’s closet—so much so that she wondered if adrenaline and wishful thinking had made her see a similarity where none existed. It could have been another Cider Brook. One in New Hampshire or Vermont, maybe, or a creation of the painter’s imagination.

  But she didn’t think so. She believed the painting was of this cider mill.

  She saw the door wasn’t padlocked and went inside. When she smelled the burned wood, her heart raced and her palms felt clammy. She ran back out and steadied herself as she sat on her boulder above the brook and watched the water tumble over the small dam.

  She hadn’t expected to flee the wedding.

  Flee was the only word for it, as un-Bennett-like as it had been of her.

  And it wasn’t only the wedding that she’d fled. It was Justin and her attraction to him. She was getting in too deep with a man for whom she was, at best, a momentary distraction. Her history with Duncan McCaffrey and her search for answers about Benjamin Farraday had caused suspicion and distrust, a wariness toward her that she could well understand.

  She glanced at the mill behind her. She couldn’t go back in time and change the choices she’d made once Caleb and Isaac had dropped her off. She couldn’t find a different place to get out of the storm. She couldn’t explain herself right from the start. She couldn’t take away her own questions, suspicions, worries.

  She could hear her grandfather and knew what he would tell her now. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Samantha. You got out of that fire alive. Be grateful and move on.”

  She sighed. It wasn’t always so easy to forgive yourself, be grateful and move on.

  Letting Justin kiss her—kissing him back—hadn’t helped her sense of equilibrium.

  “Gad. Why did you kiss him back?”

  Too much reading about rogue pirates, she told herself, avoiding any deeper reasons, the ones that had to do with her heart. Ultimately, she knew, that was why she’d left the wedding. Fleeing had been an act of self-protection.

  She pushed aside her thoughts and settled on a reasonably level, grassy section between the mill and the brook to pitch her new tent. It was a bit more complicated than she’d anticipated, but she managed, finishing up just as dark clouds moved in from the west. This time she did a thorough check of the weather on her phone. There was no threat of severe storms. A chance of a passing shower later and colder temperatures overnight. Nothing worrisome—nothing that would drive her from her tent back to Justin’s couch.

  She rolled up her jeans to just below her knees, pulled off her shoes and socks and stepped onto the narrow dam, inhaling sharply at just how cold the brook was. She stood still, watching the clear water flow from the millpond over her bare feet on the dam and then down the spillway. What an amazing spot. If only she’d waited until today to venture to Cider Brook. She would have arrived at the clearing now, with the owner at a wedding, instead of in the middle of a dangerous thunderstorm.

  She heard a vehicle stop out on the dirt road, then a door shut. In another moment she was aware of Justin behind her on the driveway. “Thank you for not startling me,” she said without looking back at him. “I don’t want to lose my balance. I’d get very wet.”

  “Or you’d hit your head on a rock and get a concussion.”

  “I’d make sure I fell into the deeper water in the pond and not on the rocks.” She steadied herself in the constant flow of water over the stone-and-earth dam. “The water is even colder than I expected.”

  “It warms up for five minutes on the Fourth of July.”

  His voice was close now. He had to be on the bank of the brook, but Samantha still didn’t look back. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “I won’t, but if you fall, you’re on your own. I’m not jumping into that cold water to rescue you.”

  “The millpond probably isn’t over my head. I’m more likely to get hypothermia and freeze to death than I am to drown.”

  “You won’t freeze or drown,” he said. “You’ll just get wet and cold.”

  “The optimist.”

  She turned carefully, mindful of any slippery mud, sodden leaves or rocks hidden under the cold water atop the dam. Justin stood at the end of the dam, out of his wedding tuxedo now and back in jeans, a T-shirt and a canvas shirt. Whether in his usual clothes or in an expensive suit, he looked comfortable with himself and his world.

  And fit and handsome. Always fit and handsome.

  “Or are you just a pragmatist?” she asked him. “Neither a pessimist nor an optimist but someone who takes life as it is?”

  “Doesn’t matter. We all have to take life as it is.”

  “You don’t believe we create our own destinies?”

  He grinned at her. “I think you’re creating your own destiny right now. You have cold feet and a cold night ahead of you in a tent.”

  Not, she saw, the time to make serious conversation, but, in a way, she had her answer. She made her way back along the dam. Justin put out a hand, and she took it as she jumped onto the bank.

  “Thanks,” she said, letting go of his hand. “Do you want to dip your feet into the water?”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “It’s refreshing.” She stood up on a flat rock, still warm from the sun. “Although my feet are so cold right now they hurt.”

  “That’s quite an invitation, Sam.”

  She wondered if a hundred years ago Zeke and Henrietta had dipped their feet into Cider Brook. How romantic it must have been out here for a young couple, with the cider mill in full operation. But Samantha warned herself not to get carried away speculating about the unknown couple. She didn’t even know if they were a couple. They could have been brother and sister, or mere acquaintances—and couple, siblings or acquaintances, the odds they had anything to do with Benjamin Farraday were slim at best.

  “I think I can feel my toes again.” She gave him a light smile. “I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t a bear coming through the woods. Now, that would have startled me. I can’t say for sure I would have been able to control my fall and end up in the pond if you’d been a bear.”

  He shook his head at her. “It never occurred to you I was a bear.”

  “You said you have black bears out here. How was the rest of the wedding?”

  “There was dancing after you left. I had to dance with my grandmother.”

  “I doubt you suffered for dance partners, and you would have danced with your grandmother whether or not I’d stayed.” Samantha sat on her rock and pulled on a wool sock over her partially dry left foot. Her toes were numb, but she didn’t regret her dip in the cold water. “What about your brothers? Did your grandmother dance with them?”

  “Couldn’t hold her back.” He scooped up a sock that had ended up down toward the brook and handed it to her. “Gran grilled me about you.”

  “Oh, dear. What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing she didn’t already know.”

  “I’m a subject of town gossip. I guess it makes sense, given the fire, if nothing else.” She put on her second sock, aware of Justin’s eyes on her as she reached for her trail shoe. “Did your grandmother really expel you from nursery school?”

  “Nah. That was just Gran and me joking around, but I wouldn’t have put it past her. She didn’t play favorites with my brothers and me just because we were her grandkids. We had to toe the line. I had my share of time-outs.”

  “What about high school?”

  “Suspended once. Never expelled.”

  Samantha eased h
er foot into her trail shoe, relieved she hadn’t gotten blisters from her borrowed shoes. “Why were you suspended?”

  “A fight. No regrets.” Justin nodded to her. “Your fingers look cold. Need help tying your shoes?”

  “Nope. I can manage. Thanks.” It was just too intimate to think about, Justin Sloan tying her shoes, although he did have a point about her fingers. They were cold from putting her sock and shoe on her cold foot. She had to tie more slowly than usual. “Who was the fight with that got you suspended? Were you settling a score with a bully?”

  “Nothing so noble. Just fighting with today’s groom.”

  Samantha sat up straight. “Mark? Did he hold his own with you?”

  Justin smiled as he picked up at stick and tossed it into the brook. “He did not. That was the point of the fight, as I recall. He told me he could hold his own in a fight with me, and he had to prove it. He was wrong. He couldn’t. He could be an arrogant SOB.”

  “And this morning you were the best man at his wedding. What about Brandon and Maggie? Did they get a chance to dance?”

  “He grabbed her out of the kitchen for a quick spin.”

  Samantha put on her other shoe, her fingers warmer as she tied the laces. It would be a while before her feet warmed up. “I gather they were separated for a time.”

  “Longer than they should have been by their own accounts. Maggie’s two younger sisters are still annoyed with him.”

  “The wounds between a couple often spread to those around them.” She stood, noticing the dark clouds had moved overhead, the gray light deepening the blue in Justin’s eyes. She pictured him dancing and suddenly wished she had stayed longer. “I gather Maggie isn’t still mad at Brandon, and he’s not still mad at her.”

  Justin shook his head. “Haven’t asked. Won’t.”

  “But you’d be able to tell, wouldn’t you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I stay out of my brothers’ romantic lives.”

  “Do they stay out of yours?”

  His gaze settled on her, then he grinned. “Not a chance. Meddling bastards.” He nodded to her tent. “Determined to stay out here, aren’t you?”