Blue Hollow Falls

by Donna Kauffman

  Sunny shook her head, unable to keep the smile from creasing her face. “I’ll admit I can’t stop thinking about it. The size, the scope, the artistry of the ironwork. It’s beautiful, even in its decay. I’m so sorry it was abandoned for so long.”

  Sawyer drove out of the heavier forest through a series of open meadows separated by narrow creeks with a single-lane bridge spanning each one. “It’s a miracle it was ever built in the first place. Can you imagine that undertaking back in that day and age, all the way up here?”

  “Must have been true love,” Sunny said with a sigh. “That’s why the Taj Mahal exists, and look at the size of that.”

  “Have you ever been?” he asked.

  “To the Taj Mahal? No, I haven’t.”

  “In love,” he clarified. “True or otherwise.”

  Surprised, she shifted to look at him. He’d asked casually enough, but given the soberness of a great deal of their conversation, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more than natural curiosity prompting the question. “Once,” she said, “or so I thought. Probably because it was the first time I felt it for real. I had crushes in high school, but I never pursued them, and was never really pursued.”

  “I find that hard to believe. Smart, pretty, good sense of humor.”

  She was even more surprised by the frankly delivered compliments. “Thank you, that’s kind.” Then she laughed. “But, to be honest, I was a pretty nerdy kid. Science geek, with a flakey hippie mom who dressed me funny. Although, to be fair, I’m sure most of the friends I had in high school stuck it out as my friend because they loved my mom.” She laughed, and felt the tiniest bit of sheen come to her eyes. “She was Peter Pan, only with flowing skirts, bangle bracelets, and many, many scarves.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to meet her.”

  Touched by his sincerity, she smiled and said, “She wasn’t really that person by the end. Hadn’t been in some time. But earlier, when I was in high school? Oh, she’d have loved you. You and Seth both.” She let out another laugh, drier this time. “She was a shameless flirt, but also a harmless one. Back then she’d have charmed your socks off. I can guarantee that.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Now I really wish I could have met her.”

  That made Sunny laugh again, and they settled into a comfortable silence as he drove through another long grove of pine trees, and then the little creek they’d been crisscrossing went under a bigger bridge and emptied into Big Stone Creek. At least, that’s what the sign on the bridge indicated as they crossed over it.

  “So, about that true love,” he said, breaking the silence.

  Her eyebrows lifted a bit at his persistence, but she said, “Sophomore year in college. I thought he was the one. I fell, he fell, I lost my virginity, and I thought maybe, just maybe, he would be willing to take on my not-so-simple life.”

  “Did you live on campus?”

  “No, but he did. I was still a full-time caregiver, even with the part-time help we got from community services and my mama’s church friends. I was a commuter.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Oh, he loved Daisy Rose, as did everyone, but when he was around long enough, he got to see it wasn’t all singing camp songs and fluttering scarves. My mom had some pretty serious health issues and, as they progressed, not all of them were physical. She had a few fairly extreme . . . moments, as I called them, that he was unfortunate enough to witness. He bowed out pretty quickly after that.” She lifted a shoulder. “It was just as well I found out sooner than later. I decided to focus on school, or even more on school. I went year-round and managed to get four years done in two and a half, then went straight into getting my graduate degree. I got that done by the time I was twenty-four. I’ve been at the USBG since I was twenty-five.”

  “If you stayed in D.C. for your doctorate, could you do that and keep your day job?”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t had all that much time to consider it. Life is very different now.” She glanced at him, smiled, but then looked away. “It must have been something of the same for you. I mean, looking at life through a new lens, when you got out, came home again. Nothing would look the same to you after your experiences. How could it?”

  “That is true,” he said, seeming surprised by her insight. “I guess I think of it as a process. I mean, it’s apples and oranges in a lot of ways, my new world versus yours, but we’re both looking at life in a new way. You take it one day at a time. Work on figuring out what you want, what you don’t want. When what you do want takes some kind of shape, you take a hard look at how you can achieve it, then move on from there.”

  “You’re still a man on a mission,” she told him, smiling as she said it.

  He let out a short laugh. “Yeah. I guess you can take the soldier out of the Army, but not the Army out of the man.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s my training, I guess, to think about things as tasks to be accomplished, but it still holds me in good stead.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, liking that he was a man who spent time considering things, thinking them through. He paid attention not only to the world around him, but to his own world and what part he wanted to play in it. That was a rare thing, in her experience. It was one of the reasons she’d connected so quickly to Stevie. She was a thinker, too. So many people of her acquaintance just went through the motions, day in, day out. They didn’t give thought to much of anything other than what to wear and what to cook for dinner, what television show to watch. Maybe it was the life she’d led, but Sunny spent a lot of time—too much, probably—contemplating the world around her, and how she fit into it. She’d thought a lot about what her role should be, what she wanted it to be, now that everything was different.

  As if offering up proof that they were on the same wavelength, he said, “Then you find out you have this old mill and a whole family you knew nothing about and life flips what little bit you might have figured out right on its head, just for grins.”

  “Or restore a mill you thought was yours, then find out this whole family you knew nothing about not only exists but has co-opted a third of your home, and yeah, exactly,” she added with a laugh. “You know,” she added, sobering slightly, “I didn’t really think about it that way until now. I guess this has probably thrown you as much as it has the rest of us.”

  He came to a stop when the road they were on ended at an intersection with a slightly bigger road, one that actually had lines painted on it, and paused to shift and look at her, hold her gaze for more than a blink. “One thing I learned, or have come to believe, is that things really do happen for a reason. It’s such a cliché, yes, and yet maybe it’s a cliché that came into being because so many people find truth in it. But the more important part, to me at any rate, is that a lot of those times, we think we know what that reason is, when, in fact, we’re really only seeing what we want it to mean, or hope that it means. If we’re smart, we spend a little time really looking at it from all sides, and learn what the real reason might be. I believe it’s only then that you can really gain everything from whatever the change in circumstances has to offer.”

  “I know what you mean. Like when a person is fired from a job and thinks, oh, that’s an opportunity to look for a job they really love, when maybe, if they examined their disappointment in the loss, what getting fired really did for them was make them recognize they already had the job they wanted, but didn’t work hard enough to keep it.”

  “Exactly.” His lips twitched. “And sometimes we have to get hit over the head a few times before the real reason becomes clear. Or before we accept what fate is trying to hammer into us.”

  “A pretty profound realization, though,” she said.

  “I had a lot of time to think out there in the desert,” he said dryly. He flashed another grin her way, only this time there was a lot more than casual, friendly interest in those gorgeous blue eyes of his. “And yet, even with all that time to think all those profound thoughts .
. . here I am again, seeing what I want to see, and maybe actively working against what I’m supposed to be reaching for.”

  “And what is that?” she asked, all caught up in that sudden, abruptly focused gaze, only realizing when she heard the breathless note in her voice, that she’d spoken out loud.

  “I keep thinking that complications equal bad, and smooth and easy equal good, and I generally opt for good. Complications in our missions weren’t looked upon all that favorably. Or course, there, I had no choice. But in civilian life, I do. So what do I tackle? Restoring a two-hundred-year-old mill, which has been anything but problem-free. Complications galore. Yet, once all’s said and done, it will turn out to be—I hope—one of the most rewarding things I do. As a civilian, anyway.”

  “And?”

  He put the truck into park and flipped on the flashers, not that she’d seen a single other car on their entire drive down toward town. He shifted to look at her fully, then stunned her into complete stillness by reaching out and pushing her hair back from her cheek again, as he had that sunny afternoon in D.C. Only, this time he didn’t stop there. He tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear, then slid the side of his work-roughened thumb down along the side of her jaw. Her breath grew a little ragged, and her pulse rate leaped into a gallop. But she didn’t lean away from his touch. It was only through great force of will that she didn’t lean into it.

  “You’re complicated, Sunny. Doing anything about you, much less with you, would be beyond complicated. We spend a lot of time in the military learning how to keep ourselves from getting emotionally involved, to stay mission focused. So I tried to talk myself out of wanting you because complicated equals bad. But life doesn’t work like a military mission. It’s emotional and messy and rarely simple. At least so I’m told. Then I spend time with you again, and think . . . maybe I need to remind myself to look at this inheritance, and the fallout from it, from all sides, figure out what the reason it’s happened really is.” He let the edge of his thumb brush just the barest corner of her mouth, drawing a quick intake of breath from her, before letting his hand drop away. “And remind myself that sometimes, like with the mill, complicated is worth it . . . complicated can equal good.”

  He snagged her gaze then, and held on to it. But instead of leaning forward and doing something constructive, like kissing her, or ripping her clothes from her body, with his teeth . . . instead he did something far more devastating to her equilibrium. He picked up her hand and turned his palm upright, so he could fold his fingers through hers.

  She looked from their joined hands, hers small and pale, his broad, callused, and deeply tanned, back up to his eyes. His smile was slow, and when it deepened, flashing white teeth and the wink of a dimple, the flicker in his eyes turned into a full-on flame.

  “Really, really good,” he said, a bit of a gravelly note entering his voice.

  He gave her hand a slight squeeze, and rather than feel trapped, or pinned, she felt . . . safe.

  “Maybe even the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nothing like diving from that frying pan in a full swan dive straight into the fire there, Hartwell.

  Sunny said nothing, just stared at him with those whiskey gold eyes of hers all wide and unblinking. And those lips he’d been trying like hell not to think about wanting to taste were parted now, and looking so damn soft that it made parts of his body anything but.

  Another beat of silence played out, then another, without her saying a word. Yet she was staring at him in a way that used up every ounce of restraint he had to keep from reaching for her and dragging her into his lap.

  When the silence pulsed on another beat, then another, for both of their sakes, he let her hand go, and opted to let his little declaration die its own natural death. He turned and put the truck back into gear, determined to keep his trap shut the rest of the way into town. He could spout all the profound crap he wanted, and examine this latest twist in his life until he was blind, but hadn’t they just gotten done talking about her recent emancipation from a lifelong role as caregiver? And her talking about pursuing a possible doctorate? And how he’d told her she shouldn’t let Addie steamroll her into playing any larger role than she wanted in this new, wacky family dynamic they had going on?

  But it was okay for him to drop that truth bomb into her lap?

  Smooth, Hartwell. So, very, very smooth.

  Maybe he should do the really smart thing and drop her off on Seth’s doorstep. His buddy had been drooling over Sunny since the first time she’d set foot in the Hollow. Given Seth could charm the smock off a nun, Sawyer would be doing all three of them a favor by letting Seth work said charm on Sunny and letting nature—as proven by Seth’s one hundred percent success rate where women were concerned—take its lusty course. Then they could all get right the hell back to what they were doing. Problem solved.

  Only the very idea of Seth Brogan laying so much as one fingertip on any part of Sunny Goodwin didn’t sit well with Sawyer. Not. Even. So, maybe he had to find a different solution.

  He pointed out the post office, the small general mercantile, and Bo’s, as they slowly drove through the old mountain town. Blue Hollow Falls covered a large area, from Hawk’s Nest Ridge all the way down to Buck’s Pass, but the town itself could only be described as tiny. Four blocks long and three wide with an ancient yellow traffic light in the middle that was only there because fifty years back a former mayor had thought it would make the town seem more advanced, and hopefully attract commercial growth. It hadn’t worked, but rather than take it back down again, folks simply sat and waited for it to turn green, despite the fact that there wasn’t enough traffic to require more than a stop sign, and even that would have been overkill. Venture so much as a yard beyond the four-by-three-block area, and you’d immediately be driving through cow pastures, crop fields, or deep woods.

  “How does this road connect to the one the mill is on?” Sunny asked. The first words she’d spoken since his clumsy declaration.

  He wasn’t used to feeling clumsy—far from, in fact—and yet she made him feel like an untried, hormonal adolescent with two left feet just by smiling in his general direction. It would be funny if he wasn’t so damn hard his teeth ached. “If we’d turned left at the traffic light back there, that road heads north out of town and winds up into the hills, eventually leading to Falls Road, which takes you in to the falls and the mill. You came in Falls Road from the state highway north of here. There used to be a little green sign on Falls Road where the route from town connects to it, but it came down in a storm a few years past and hasn’t been put back up. Everyone out here knows what connects to what, so it hasn’t been high on the list of things needing to get done.”

  “Will that disconnect—there not being an obvious route between the town and the mill—be an issue when you’re drawing folks in, once it becomes a cultural center?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ll have signage put back up there, and out on the state highway to direct folks, and we’ll be doing lots of marketing in town, as well as online, which will probably be the fastest and easiest way to draw folks in. Will has discussed maybe even having a small storefront in town that can also sell products made by our artisans and crafters, sort of the boutique angle, but I think that would be a good ways down the road, and only really worthwhile when and if the mill generates real growth in town due to tourist traffic.”

  “Will?”

  “Wilson McCall. Jake’s dad.”

  She nodded, but fell silent again.

  He wanted to address the elephant that now sat between them in the cab of his truck, but since she’d clearly opted to let it lie, he knew better than to bring it up again. “There’s a lot planned for the mill and its participants if we can pull this off. It’s all part of a cohesive strategy we mapped out before I took on the renovation. I’d be happy to go over all of it with you.”

  “What?” she said, looking surprised by his offe
r, as if her thoughts had been elsewhere again.

  “Well, it’s part yours, or in trust for Bailey, but still, you should probably know what’s being planned. I think you’ll like how we’ve connected it all together.” She said nothing to that, still looking a bit blank, so he plunged on, wanting back the easy camaraderie he’d gone and spoiled by pushing too hard, too fast. “We envision music festivals, winery tours, artisan showcases, classes, and, personally, I hope to eventually grow my microbrews to include a full pub menu. My friend, Noah Tyler, runs an inn here, and another local couple is considering putting up cabin rentals. There’s great fishing in Big Stone Creek, and down in the Hawksbill. I think there’s potential for a little technical whitewater kayaking, as well as flat water canoe paddling. We already have hiking trails, a few that even intersect with the Appalachian Trail. The mill will be a way to bring all of this together and make Blue Hollow Falls a destination for folks wanting to explore a slice of mountain life.”

  “You have a microbrewery?”

  “That’s what you took from all that?” he said, chuckling. “Will have. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a while. I toyed with it a bit when I was enlisted. Over time, it became the direction I was pretty sure I wanted to go once I got out. But the horse has to come before the cart.”

  “You said you have property here, too. Will you operate the brewery there or at the mill?”

  “The mill. My property will be my next project.” He glanced at her, saw she’d settled back in her seat, and relaxed a little himself. “It’s up near the Ridge, down the chain a short way from Addie’s place, as the crow flies. They look close on an aerial map, but it takes a bit of driving to get from one to the other since there aren’t many roads up this way.” He paused, then silently cursed himself even as he heard himself ask, “Would you like to see it?”