Vermont Valentine (Holiday Hearts #3)

by Kristin Hardy

  The cubicle was small but more than adequate for her purposes. The lab facilities were what counted. It was there that the major detective work went on, there that the test she’d developed could confirm or deny the presence of the maple borer.

  Setting down her computer bag, Celie began to pull out files and hook up her computer to the network.

  “About damned time you showed up to do some work,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Celie whipped around to stare at the rangy blonde who leaned against the cubicle entrance. “Marce!” She jumped up and threw her arms around the newcomer. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You, too.” Marce gave her another squeeze and released her. “I thought you were coming in last night.”

  “I left you a message. I got a late start yesterday so I just stopped somewhere overnight and finished up this morning.”

  Marce eyed her. “Tell me it wasn’t some rest stop.”

  “Why do you think I got the camper shell put on?” Celie said reasonably.

  “It was one thing when we were in grad school,” Marce protested. “You’ve got a job now. You can afford to stay in a real hotel with real locks and a real bed.”

  “On a government travel stipend?” Celie snorted. “Anyway, I’m going to be staying in a real bed while I’m here, aren’t I? Didn’t you tell me you got rid of your futon in the guest room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s already a step up from my camper shell and what I’ve got back in Maryland.”

  “You’re still sleeping on a futon? Celie, you’re practically thirty.”

  “And I spend a day or two there a month if I’m lucky. I ought just to rent a storage unit and bunk there.”

  Marce rolled her eyes. “You’re no better than you were in grad school.”

  “Hey, your average storage facility is miles better than that pit we all lived in during grad school.”

  “Agreed.” Marce grinned. “Anyway, it’s almost the end of the day. Why don’t we knock off early and get you settled? I made a pot of barley soup last night.”

  “Still into the junk food, I see.”

  “I don’t consider burgers and potato chips two of the major food groups, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well I do. So I’ve got a better idea: let’s knock off early, get me settled and scare up a pizza.”

  “All right,” Marce sighed, “I can tell when I’m beat.”

  “I can’t believe you. I live here for three years and I barely see anyone human. You stop in the woods to sample a tree and you stumble across a god?” Marce shook her head and bit into a slice of pepperoni pizza.

  “It’s not like he was falling at my feet or anything,” Celie pointed out. “In fact, I think he was pretty pissed that I was in his trees. All I wanted to do was get out of there.”

  “Before or after you decided to have his baby?”

  “His baby? Maybe in a parallel universe.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t see him in a parallel universe? I can’t think of anyone around here who looks like that. Trust me, I’d have remembered.”

  “Bob Ford said it was someone named Jacob Trask.”

  “Jacob Trask?” Marce almost dropped her pizza. “Wait a minute, the Jacob Trask I know looks like the kind of guy who trapped beaver during the Gold Rush. We can’t be talking about the same person. I mean, he’s big enough but…”

  “Well, I didn’t describe him in exhaustive detail to Bob. Maybe he had it wrong.” Celie raised her beer bottle.

  “Let’s hope so. Jacob Trask is not the friendliest guy around, I’ll warn you. I had to go out and help him thin his sugarbush last year. I think I got two words out of him the whole time. Of course,” she said thoughtfully, “that’s not exactly going to be a problem for you.”

  Celie froze with the bottle at her lips. “Are you suggesting I talk too much?”

  “Far be it from me to suggest. I mean, I do use semaphore with you when you get on a roll, but I’m sure there are times when you’re merely voluble rather than garrulous.”

  “I just talk a lot when I’m nervous,” Celie protested.

  “I guess you spend all your time nervous, then,” Marce replied, ducking when Celie tossed a wadded-up napkin at her.

  “Serve you right if I never talk again.”

  Marce snorted. “That’ll be the day.”

  Jacob walked the hall of the James Woodward Elementary School, remembering the days he’d run down the tile floors to the playground at recess. He’d always hated being cooped up inside; he didn’t fit. He fitted outdoors, in the sugarbush. Going into class was something to put off until the last minute.

  The passage of years had made it no different, even if he was going to a growers’ meeting now instead of a class. It still meant a room full of people and making conversation. Granted, the talk was mostly about sugaring, but still, he’d rather be at home with a book or playing guitar than standing about searching for things to say.

  The auditorium echoed with the voices of sugar-makers, louder than usual. When he saw the cluster of people crowded around the coffee machine, he wondered if some kind soul had brought in free food. And then the crowd parted enough for him to see what was attracting all the attention.

  Or who.

  It was the pixie he’d stumbled over in his maples. She wasn’t enveloped in a parka now but stood in narrow red trousers and a shiny white blouse with a little black and white checked sweater over the top. She looked impossibly lively and bright against the muted tones of the clothing around her, seeming to take up more room than just her body would explain, as though her energy occupied physical space.

  She’d stuck in his mind after he’d seen her the day before. At odd moments he’d thought of those laughing eyes, that soft, tempting mouth. And when he’d closed his own eyes and fallen into sleep, she’d drifted through his dreams, leaving him to wake feeling vaguely restless.

  Now, he watched her amid the crowd, animated and quick as a butterfly. And he heard her laughter, spilling out across the room in a bubbly arpeggio that invited everyone around to join in. For a moment, he was tempted to go over. Only to find out who she was, he told himself, not to get a better look. Then again, given the fact that she’d shown up in his trees one day and at the growers’ meeting the next, it was pretty obvious she had something to do with the Institute.

  And if he’d figured that out, there was no point in fighting his way through the crowd to talk with her. Not his style, first of all. Second, he had more important things to focus on than a pretty face and an inviting laugh. Like finding out the status of the situation and what, if anything, his exposure was. He’d done his Internet research, he knew the enormous risk posed by the maple borer. Now he had to find out what that meant for him, personally.

  At the front of the room, Bob Ford from the Institute tapped the mike. “Okay, everybody, let’s get started.” He waited a few minutes as people drifted toward the rows of seats. “There are some contact sheets being circulated. Please fill them out and hand them in as you leave. We need to update our roster.”

  Someone handed Jacob a clipboard. He pulled out a pen and bent over the form, filling out the top. When he looked at the questions, though, he frowned. Number of taps? Monoculture or mixed population forest? What the hell?

  Then a scent drifted over to him, something tempting and subtle and essentially female. Something immediately distracting. He glanced up to see her sitting beside him.

  And all his senses vaulted to the alert.

  “Hi,” she whispered. “Is this seat taken?”

  Low and quiet, with a little husk of promise beneath it. The way she might sound over drinks, in some dark, quiet bar.

  Or in a bedroom, late at night.

  “All yours,” he said, fighting the image.

  Her smile bloomed like a summer flower.

  At the podium, Ford cleared his throat. “Since I know everyone here, I’m going to skip introducing myself and get t
o business. As some of you may have heard, there have been scarlet-horned maple borer outbreaks in New York. It’s something we need to be concerned about here. Understand, if this thing gets a chance to spread it can take down entire forests. Entire forests, people. No maple syrup, no fall foliage, no tourist dollars, nothing.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve invited Celie Favreau of APHIS, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, to come to the Woodward Institute to take a look around the area. She’s going to tell you a little more about what we’re up against and what happens next. Celie?”

  “Wish me luck,” Celie murmured, squaring her shoulders and rising to walk to the front of the room. From a distance, she looked even smaller than she had in the woods. She didn’t stand behind the podium but leaned against the table next to it, microphone in hand.

  “Good evening. I’m Celie Favreau with APHIS. I head up the program to eradicate the scarlet-horned maple borer. How many know something about the beetle?” Only a sprinkling of hands went up, including Jacob’s, and she nodded. “All right, let me give you a quick rundown. The scarlet-horned maple borer is a nasty customer. It’s about half an inch long and is often mistaken for a benign bark beetle unless you look closely at the horns. Unlike the bark beetle, though, the maple borer targets live wood, not dead. And it’s particularly fond of maples.

  “It bores through the bark down near the root collar and lays its eggs at the cambium, where the bark and wood interface. Over the course of a few weeks, a fertilized female can lay several dozen eggs in galleries in the first few rings of wood. When the eggs hatch, the larvae live on the cambium. I don’t need to tell any of you what that means.”

  No indeed. A few dozen larvae merrily eating their way into maturity could easily girdle a tree. No fluids could travel from root to leaf. Presto, instant death. Jacob could hear the rustling around him as his fellow sugar-makers took it all in. It wasn’t news to him but he still felt the hot press of anxiety.

  “Of course,” Celie continued, “there’s a bigger problem than just girdling. The maple borer carries a fungus that’s deadly to maples. Each time a borer works its way into the tree, the fungus spores rub off on the sides of the hole. At that point, the tree is both infected and infested and it’s just a matter of time. Our trap tests have shown that the mature beetle will range up to a hundred yards in search of a suitable host tree.”

  There was some shifting and muttering at this. Celie scanned the room, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “So you see what we’re up against. We can’t take chances with this one. If one adult gets loose, population growth is exponential. And that means if we find any infestations, we have to take radical action to control them.”

  In the audience, a craggy-faced man with a lantern jaw raised a hand. “Just how radical do you mean?”

  “It’s pointless to talk about action until we’ve investigated the scope of the problem. I’ll be teaming up with forestry specialists from the Institute and the state to cover as much territory as possible before the days warm up. We can’t afford to play wait and see. The maple borer hatches early, so we’ve got to find any infestation pronto and take measures.”

  “And they are?” the sugar-maker persisted.

  Celie took a breath. “We have to take down any infested trees we find, plus a buffer circle of at least a hundred and fifty yards in radius around that host tree. The felled trees have to be cut up, chipped and burned immediately, and the stumps ground down to eight inches below ground level.”

  An angry buzz erupted in the room. The men who’d been charmed by her weren’t charmed any more. “You’re talking about clearing acres,” a burly redhead protested.

  “Let’s not get ahead of things,” she said calmly. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with, yet. In Michigan, they called me in and I didn’t find a sign of infestation.”

  “And in New York, you cut down half the state,” the craggy-faced man retorted.

  For an instant, Jacob thought, she looked like she didn’t know whether to sigh or laugh. Instead, she merely shook her head. “We took out a total of twelve hundred trees, spread across three different sugarbushes and a town common. I don’t take felling trees lightly.” She looked around the room. “But I’ve seen what the maple borer can do and I’m ready to do everything in my power to stop it. If there’s infestation here, all of your trees are at risk. All of them. I hope you’ll cooperate with me to stop it.”

  “You’re not here for your health. You’re here because you know there’s a problem,” the redhead accused.

  She hesitated and locked eyes with Jacob. She’d been crouched at the foot of his tree, he remembered, and felt the clutch of foreboding in his gut. “I’ve seen early signs that might be cause for concern. If we take care of things quickly, before the weather warms up, we can get a handle on it. If anything slows that down, well, this time next year your sugar-bushes are going to look very different.” She let out a breath. “Next question?”

  The session dragged on nearly an hour before Celie finally passed around handouts on the maple borer. Jacob waited impatiently for the meeting to end. He didn’t need handouts. He didn’t need to hear any more questions. What he needed was to talk to Celie Favreau.

  Alone.

  The knot around her was as thick as it had been before the meeting. But Jacob was nothing if not patient. One by one, the sugar-makers drifted off, and finally she stood on the low stage, stacking up the last of the literature she’d brought along.

  “I thought it went well,” Bob Ford was saying as Jacob walked up.

  “We got the information out there, anyway. What happens now will depend on what we find.”

  “And how the lab tests turn out.”

  Lab tests? Jacob’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward to stop just below the steps. “May I speak with you a moment?”

  Celie glanced over at him, then at Bob Ford. “Why don’t you go on ahead, Bob? I’ll take care of this.”

  “You want me to take that back to the Institute?” He nodded at the box of remaining leaflets and flyers.

  “I’ll do it,” Celie said.

  He nodded “I’ll lock the doors on my way out. Just make sure the lights are off and things are shut up when you leave.” He shook hands with them both and headed up the aisle.

  Jacob looked at Celie. For the first time, they were eye to eye. Her gaze was speculative. She studied him, in fact, as though he were a puzzle that interested her.

  Jacob shifted and nodded at the box of literature. “I can get that for you.” Action always came more easily to him than standing around. Or speaking.

  “Thanks.” Celie watched him climb onto the low stage and pick up the heavy box. “So what do you think?”

  “Of the talk?” Or of her? There was something about her, he thought, something appealing, maybe irresistible.

  But that wasn’t why he was here.

  “You were in my trees yesterday,” he said abruptly, knowing no other way than to be direct. “Were you inspecting them?”

  The glint of humor in her eyes disappeared. “Not officially, no. I thought I was on Institute property. Something just caught my eye and I wanted a better look.”

  “At what?”

  Her pause was too deliberate. It made him uneasy. “Something interesting about the trunk.”

  He felt the flare of impatience. “Don’t dance around the question. You were bent over one of my maples with a field kit when I walked up. What was that about?”

  “Maybe nothing. I noticed the tree as I was driving by. Some things that are characteristic of an infested tree,” she elaborated. “I just wanted to take a closer look, but I didn’t realize it was your land.”

  “I don’t give a damn about trespassing. I want to know what you saw.”

  “I’m not sure.” She looked at him, her eyes troubled. “The bore holes were the right size but the wrong shape. I thought the sample I got out of the hole contained fungus but the test I did showed up ne
gative.”

  “Negative?” Relief made him lightheaded. “So it’s clear?”

  “I’ll do a more comprehensive test tomorrow, once I get my lab set up. Of course, your dog knocked my vial into the snow before I got the top on, so the results aren’t iron-clad.”

  “Murph can be a little overenthusiastic sometimes.”

  “I’ll say. What is he, the love child of a lab and a Shetland pony?”

  Jacob grinned. “Lab, great Dane and a little bloodhound thrown in for good measure, or so the vet tells me.”

  “An interesting background beats a pedigree any time.”

  “We’re nothing if not interesting around here.”

  “I bet you are.” Killer smile, Celie thought as they stepped off the stage. A mouth that begged to be nibbled on and she was just the nibbler to do it. But it was the smile that lightened up that sober face, that made him approachable. His nose looked as though it had lost a battle once with something bigger or harder, but the resultant bump only made him look more interestingly rugged.

  There was a strength to him, not just height and width of shoulder but some quality she couldn’t name. Certainty of self, perhaps. It was what had driven her to seek him out when she could have wandered to a seat by any of the men she’d been chatting with. They didn’t intrigue her.

  Jacob Trask did.

  They started up the aisle. “Speaking of interesting,” she said, “I’ve never seen a Feed ’n’ Read before.”

  “I guess you’ve been by Ray’s. One of my favorite places.”

  “So he was telling me.”

  “He was telling you?” Jacob watched her walk ahead of him, the red trousers shifting in some very intriguing ways.

  “He mentioned you.”

  “If you got Ray talking, you’re good.” Then again, she’d somehow managed to get him talking, too.

  “I got the impression he likes to do nothing but.”

  “Not to strangers. Ray usually barks at strangers, if he talks to them at all.

  “I guess I charmed him.”

  Like she was charming him, Jacob thought. “I’m impressed.”