by Susan Wiggs
“Is there a problem here?” Fletcher Wyndham’s voice was not loud, but it seemed to cut a swath through everything. And although it was a question, he didn’t wait for an answer. Fletcher was not bigger than Degan. But he made himself bigger by the way he carried himself. There was something piercing and intimidating in his eyes. “There’s work to be done,” he said.
“Yeah? Are you the boss all of a sudden?” Degan tossed his head and brushed past Fletcher, stepping outside. Instead of getting to work, he shoved Gordy toward an open tank beside a tree. “Didn’t I promise you a swirly?”
Moving with startling quickness, Fletcher crossed to Degan and grabbed him by the back of the pants and the back of the collar. He lifted Degan up and slammed him against the trunk of a tree, looping his belt over a bucket hook.
“You’re not so hot at listening,” he said.
“What the hell?” Degan’s toes dangled above the muddy ground. “Son of a bitch—”
His two minions snickered as he twisted this way and that, trying to get down.
Loyal to the end, thought Annie, beginning to shiver from the cold.
Degan heaved himself away from the tree. There was a ripping sound, and then he landed on his hands and knees in the mud. The dogs pranced around, thinking it was a game. When Degan stood up, his pants slid down, revealing jockey shorts and thick, hairy legs. He yanked up his pants and sent Fletcher a glare of fury. But the effect was lost because he had to keep a grip on his pants. “You are so dead,” he snarled.
Fletcher shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky. “You guys can call it a day,” he said, then turned to Annie. “Gordy and I will finish up with the filtering.”
He turned his back on Degan and walked away. Degan made a growling sound and lunged, but his pants dropped again and he stumbled into the mud a second time. Fletcher didn’t spare him a glance.
Degan picked himself up, his expression aflame with pure rage. But Annie saw something else in the bully’s face—uncertainty. She planted herself in front of him and addressed Degan and his pals. “It’s time for you guys to head home. Don’t bother coming back. I’ll bring your final checks tomorrow.” Then she held her breath, praying they would cooperate.
Degan’s uncertainty hardened into belligerence. Annie held her ground, although her stomach was churning. Go, she thought. Just go.
“You heard her,” Fletcher said, standing behind her. “Take a hike.”
Degan let loose with a string of sputtering invectives as he clutched his pants and marched away, heading down the mountain through the woods, toward the parking area by Kyle’s office. Ivan and Carl looked at each other, then at Annie. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at them until they followed Degan.
“Good riddance,” she muttered as they disappeared into the woods. Her heart was beating fast. She’d never been comfortable with drama and conflict.
She and Gordy followed Fletcher into the sugarhouse. Inside, she stood near the fire burning under the evaporator, trying to warm up.
“Hey, thanks, man,” Gordy said, his gaze worshipful as he regarded Fletcher. “That was really cool of you.”
The taller boy gave a shrug. “Don’t thank me. Do yourself a favor and figure out how to quit being a target.”
“I didn’t know I was being a target,” Gordy muttered, staring at the floor. “How am I supposed to know when Degan’s going to go all Lord of the Flies on me?”
“It’s not rocket science,” Fletcher said, an edge of annoyance in his voice. “Look people in the eye and tell them to knock it off.”
The dogs curled up together on their blankets.
Fletcher looked Annie up and down. “You’re soaking wet.”
“Looking him in the eye didn’t really work for me,” she said.
“Do you need to find some dry clothes?”
“It’s warm here by the fire.” She felt a flush rise in her cheeks. Despite her discomfort, she liked the way he was looking at her. Interested but not rude. At least, she hoped he was interested. Most guys gave her a pass, because she didn’t have long, shiny hair or big boobs. She was small in stature, with curly hair that bordered on kinky, and olive-toned skin that didn’t look quite right in Vermont in the winter.
“Wow, it’s awesome in here,” said Gordy. “I’ve never been inside a sugarhouse before.”
Annie raised her eyebrows. “I thought everybody had.” She turned to Fletcher. “What about you? Are you new to sugaring, too?”
He offered a quick flash of a grin. “My idea of syrup comes in a plastic squeeze bottle in the shape of an old lady.”
Annie winced. “That imitation stuff will kill you,” she said. “I don’t even think it’s legal in the state of Vermont. Real maple syrup is pure. There is nothing added and nothing removed, except water.” Her legs felt clammy from the spilled sap, but she ignored the discomfort. There was work to be done and she loved having an audience. Besides, it was a way to shift gears away from the altercation with Degan. “This is where the real stuff is made,” she told them. “We boil down forty gallons of sap to get a gallon of maple syrup.” She showed them how the liquid flowed through the pans. “That’s how it gets sweeter by the minute,” she said.
“Too bad you can’t use that technique on sisters,” said Gordy. “I have gnarly sisters.”
Annie checked the clock on the wall. Nearly dinnertime already, and she’d probably miss out, because the work wasn’t done. “The sap has to be boiled while it’s fresh,” she told them. “That’s why we boil as fast as we can during the season. And that’s why my brother’s going to be ticked off when I tell him I fired three of his guys.”
“He won’t be ticked off when you tell him why,” Gordy pointed out.
She shrugged off the comment. Kyle had a family now; he’d married a woman with two kids. He was definitely more concerned with the bottom line than he was with high school bullies. “We’ll see.”
She showed them how to check the rendered syrup, knowing when it coated the spatula in a certain way that the temperature had reached 219 degrees, ready to be drawn from the finishing pan into barrels. Holding up the grading rack with its four clear bottles, she showed them the four grades of syrup—golden, amber, dark, and very dark.
“They all look good to me,” Fletcher said, but his attention was not on the rack.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Kyle showed up, stomping the snow and mud from his boots on the front step of the sugarhouse. He nodded a greeting at Gordy and Fletcher.
Kyle was eight years older than Annie, a guy’s guy, strong and big-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed like Annie. He was quick to laugh, but sometimes quick to anger. His full-time job was with the Forest Service, but in addition to that, all the operations on Rush Mountain—the sugaring, the orchards and lumber operation—had been his responsibility since he’d turned eighteen and their father had left.
“Things are going fine,” Annie told him. “I should be finished in an hour or so.”
He craned his neck to look out the window. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”
Annie shot a glance at Fletcher, then looked back at her brother. “I sent them packing. They were slackers.”
“Damn it, Annie,” said Kyle, surveying the idle equipment outside. “We’re only halfway through the season. I need all hands on deck.”
“You don’t need slackers,” she said with a sniff. “Hire a different crew.”
“Every sugarbush in the area is shorthanded this year. Where am I going to find more help?” He ripped off his hat and threw it down. “You know what it costs to lose even a day of sugaring.”
“Um, can I make a suggestion?” Gordy said.
“What?” Kyle sounded exasperated.
“My sisters could help out.”
“Your sisters. You’re volunteering your sisters.”
“Well, you’d have to pay them.”
“You know what this work is like,” Kyle said. “Cold, dirty, and backbreaking. N
ot exactly women’s work.”
Gordy rocked back on his heels. “You haven’t met my sisters.”
Kyle looked skeptical, but he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go call them.”
As they hiked up the hill to find a cell-phone signal, Annie went back to work. “Sorry about him,” she said to Fletcher. “He gets stressed out during the sugar season.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him Degan was being a douche to you?”
“I didn’t want—” She cut herself off. “Good question. I don’t know why. And speaking of those douche bags, aren’t you worried they’re going to retaliate?”
He gave a short laugh. “It won’t keep me up at night.”
“Well, thank you for stepping in.” She liked talking to him. He was . . . different. Not like the guys she’d come through school with.
“Want a hand with anything else?”
Yes. She tried to act cool. “Sure, that would be great.” She checked the density of the syrup with a hydrometer. Then she showed him how the sugar sand was removed by pushing it through a filter press. The clear, golden syrup was ready, flowing into the barrels. She caught a sample in a coffee cup and handed it to Fletcher. “Let that cool a bit and take a taste. You’ll never give that squeeze bottle another look.”
He blew on the cup, his lips pursing as if in readiness for a kiss. She felt mesmerized, watching him. He took a taste, and a smile spread slowly across his face. “That flavor is amazing,” he said.
They finished the chores together, working side by side as they talked. “You just moved to Switchback, right?” she asked. As if she didn’t know. When he’d enrolled in school a couple of weeks ago, a tidal wave had spread through the girls of the senior class. New guys were rare in this small town. New guys who were cool and good-looking and interesting created a major stir.
“Yep.”
“And?” she prompted.
He gave her a slantwise grin, full of charm. “And what? Where’d I come from, what’s my family like, how’d I wind up in Switchback?”
“At the risk of being nosy, yes.”
“I can handle a nosy girl.” He helped her scrub out the equipment. “My dad’s a mechanic, specializes in foreign imports, but he can fix anything.”
“I saw where he bought Crestfield’s garage in town.”
Fletcher nodded. “He imports scooters from Italy, too. Fixes them up and sells them, mostly online.”
“And your mom?”
“It’s just my dad and me.”
“Oh. So where’s your mom?”
He shot her a look.
“You said you could handle a nosy girl,” she pointed out.
“I’ll tell you about her,” he said. “Just not today.”
“Fair enough.” She felt bad for prying, and changed the subject. “My mother’s an artist. She draws and paints. Never studied it formally, but she’s really good. See the illustration on the maple syrup tin? And on our label?” She gestured at a storage shelf crammed with containers. “It’s from a painting by my mom. The kids in the picture are Kyle and me.”
“Hey, that’s cool. What about your dad?”
“Hmm. I’ll have to think about whether or not I want to tell you,” she said, lightly teasing.
“It’s cool,” he said. “That way, we’ll have something to talk about next time.”
Next time.
“It’s no big secret. My father took off when I was ten,” Annie said. She wondered if the old fear and confusion and hurt still echoed in her voice. “I didn’t see it coming. Which is weird, because they fought a lot.”
“You were just a kid.”
“Mom says he was always dreaming of adventure somewhere else. Then, right after Kyle turned eighteen, Dad said he’d bought acreage on a beach in Costa Rica, and he was going to build a surf camp there.”
“Costa Rica sounds amazing.”
“I thought so, too. My mom and grandparents, not so much. Mom was so mad she divorced him and took back her maiden name and changed mine and Kyle’s to Rush, too. She wanted it to seem as if my dad had never existed.” Annie paused, surprised at how easily the words came when she talked to him, a virtual stranger. “I guess for me and Kyle, it’s a good thing he did exist. The name change was a good thing, too. My dad’s last name is ridiculous—Lickenfelt.”
He slapped his knee. “So you were Annie Lickenfelt? I guess you don’t miss that.”
“God, no.”
“So how often do you see him? Do you get to go to Costa Rica?”
“I only went down there once. The beaches are just like you see in postcards, and I learned to surf.”
“That’s cool.”
She nodded. “It’s harder than it looks, but once you get up on a wave, you never want to stop. There was tropical fruit growing wild everywhere, and I thought the seafood tasted like candy. The local fishermen would bring it right in from the surf. And there were birds and monkeys like you wouldn’t believe. And one day, we went zip-lining in a chocolate forest. Cacao, technically.”
“Why’d you only go once?”
“My dad comes back to Vermont twice a year to see his parents over in Milton, so I visit him then. The airfare and travel time to get from here to Dominical are insane. Four flights from Burlington. Plus, I’m not a big fan of Dad’s girlfriend, Imelda. She’s mean as a snake.”
“Yeah, but I’d put up with snakes if it meant surfing in Costa Rica.”
“There are alligators, too. Big ones. They hang out at the river estuaries, so surfers have to watch out for them.”
“I bet I’d still like surfing.”
“You don’t talk like you’re from around here,” she said.
“I’ve lived in a lot of places.”
She waited for him to specify, but he didn’t. Next time, she thought again, hoping this year’s sugar season was a long one.
“You don’t sound like you’re from around here either,” he said.
“Oh, I sure as tootin’ can if I’ve a mind to,” she said in her broadest Vermonter’s accent.
He laughed. “Why don’t you want to?”
“I’m going into broadcasting. One of the first rules is that you can’t sound like you’re from any particular place. Regional accents limit you.”
“What do you want to broadcast?”
Annie tended to guard her dream from people, not wanting to hear it was going to be hard or it couldn’t be done, or you had to know the right people or you’d never break in. Yet she instinctively trusted that Fletcher wouldn’t say any of those things.
“A cooking show,” she said.
“Cooking? For real?” He didn’t seem to think it was funny or weird.
“For real,” she said.
“Cool.”
She went to the pie safe and offered him an iced maple pecan cookie. “We made these last night.”
He took a bite and clutched his chest. “Man, that’s good. You’re gonna do great with your show. If everybody knew how to make something like this, it would probably bring about world peace.”
She laughed. “See, this is what I love. Making food that makes someone happy.”
“Oh.” He crammed the rest of the cookie into his mouth. “This is me being more than happy. This is me being . . . oh, man.”
She laughed again. “Maple is everyone’s favorite. It’s one of those things most people never get tired of. Ever try sugar on snow?”
“Nope.”
She scooped up a ladle of hot syrup from the finishing pan, stepped outside and poured a thin stream over a mound of clean snow. “See? It hardens into the world’s purest candy.”
He broke off a piece and sampled it. “It’s really good.”
“When I’m feeling fancy, I make snowflakes and spiderwebs with it.”
“Artistic, like your mom.”
She couldn’t stop smiling. How was it that everyone thought this guy was bad, just because he had long hair and came from nowhere? He was totally nice.
“How are you not the size of a linebacker from eating maple sugar all day, every day?” he asked.
She wondered if that was a compliment or merely an observation. “I’ve been on swim team since the third grade. Plus, I work like a rented mule around here. It’s not just making sugar a few weeks out of the year. We have to take care of the trees so they’ll be good producers. Then there’s the firewood. I’m not much for cutting, but I’ve done my share. I usually drive the tractor with the stone boat behind it. In the summer, there’s the garden and the critters. In the fall, the orchard keeps us busy. Apple cider.”
“And you want to leave all this for the big city and a broadcasting career.”
“Oh, hell, yes. Please. Why does that surprise you?”
He studied her in a way she wasn’t used to—as if he was really seeing her. Not just her long dark hair and her boobs, but seeing who she was.
“Because just now when you were talking about this place, you looked like the happiest person in the world,” he said.
“I did?”
“You did.”
“Well. I suppose that’s because I am happy. But I want to be happy trying something else, something I’ve always dreamed of doing.”
“Fair enough.”
“What about you? What are your plans after graduation?”
“I’ll probably work with my dad. He needs the extra help getting his business off the ground.”
Her spirits dampened just a bit. Her mother was constantly warning her about hometown boys with no ambition. “They’ll hold you back,” Mom would say. “They never amount to anything. They want to settle down and raise a family, same as their parents and grandparents.”
Annie didn’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. But doing exactly that hadn’t worked out for her parents. No wonder her mother was so skeptical.
“So you’re interested in being a mechanic,” she ventured.
He grinned. “I’m interested in girls and beer. And maple syrup. I just added that to the list.”
6
Fletcher Wyndham stuck around through the rest of the sugar season, coming up the mountain each day at the end of school, and all day Saturday and Sunday. True to his word, Gordy brought on his two older sisters. Paula and Roberta were large, like Gordy, but a lot more outgoing, and they seemed to love the outdoors. They gathered and hauled and worked as hard as any man.
