The Sugar House

“I know you’re getting ready to close, Agnes. But I told Amber I’d pick up baking soda on my way home and just now remembered. She’ll have my hide if I come home without it.”

A man wearing a deputy’s heavy, brown leather jacket and serge uniform pants pulled off his fur-lined hat as he shoved the door closed. Looking prepared to offer a neighborly greeting to whoever was at the counter, he stood with a broad smile on his rugged face for the two seconds it took recognition to hit.

The burly ex-high-school line-backer swore. Or maybe, Jack thought, the terse oath he heard had been inside his own head.

It seemed like some perverse quirk of fate that Joe Sheldon should now be a sheriff’s deputy. One of the last times they’d seen each other, the old deputy Joe had apparently replaced had almost arrested Jack for nearly breaking Joe’s jaw.

Lifting his hand, Joe touched the short silvery scar that curved from the left corner of his mouth. It appeared that he hadn’t forgotten the encounter, either.

The guy’s voice sounded like gravel rolling in a can. “I heard you were back, Larkin.”

“He said he’s not developing that property.” Agnes offered the pronouncement as she bagged Jack’s purchases. “But he’s asking after Emmy.”

Joe took a measured step toward him, his rough-hewn features set, his eyes assessing. He looked beefier than he had as a cocky teenager, solid in a way that told Jack he wouldn’t want to tangle with him now. Not that he wouldn’t be able to hold his own if he had to. He usually started his mornings with a five-mile run and pumped iron at the gym four days a week for no other reason than to keep his head clear. He’d always been a physical man, always felt best using the pent-up energy in his muscles. But he’d fought all those years ago only because he had felt forced to defend his family’s name. The battles he took on now were won by sheer determination, ambition and drive.

Joe’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want with her?”

Jack wanted no hassles. He also had no intention of answering to anyone but a Larkin. “That’s between Emmy and me.”

“Not if you cause her or anyone else around here any trouble.” His one-time teammate’s voice lowered with warning. “You do and you answer to me.”

Pushing bills across the counter, Jack picked up his bag, paper crackling. He had no intention of feeding an old grudge. His or Joe’s. “I didn’t come here to cause trouble,” he informed him, wondering what it was they thought he was going to do to the woman. Or anyone else, for that matter. “Not for her. Not for anyone.”

“Then, why are you here?”

“To set things right.” Steel edged his tone. That same unbending resolve glinted in his eyes as he walked past the man he could have sworn was trying to stare him down.

“How do you intend to do that?” Joe demanded over the tinkle of the bell as Jack pulled open the door.

“That’s between me and Emmy, too,” he called back, and closed the door a little harder than he probably should have.

He hadn’t forgotten how narrow and protective the small-town mentality could be. In Maple Mountain the sins of the father carried right down to his offspring. The fact that the offspring had defended the father was obviously remembered, as well. He just hadn’t thought he’d have to deal with anyone other than the Larkins.

The muscles in his jaw working, he headed through the dark and cold to his less-than-welcoming motel room. The good news when he got there was that he didn’t have to deal with anyone else—and that the only homage to the local wildlife on his room’s knotty pine walls was a painting of a moose. The bad news was that he still didn’t know Emmy’s full name.

That didn’t do much for his mood, either.

Emmy knew Jack hadn’t left Maple Mountain. Agnes had called last evening while she’d been filling tins with syrup, a task that couldn’t easily be interrupted, and left the news flash on her answering machine.

She hadn’t called Agnes back. Nor had she done anything other than thank her for her call after services that morning before excusing herself when the elderly minister’s wife, bless her, rescued her from the speculation Agnes had clearly been itching to share.

It had been Emmy’s experience that the less she let on that something was a problem, the less others treated it like one. She’d also learned that life was less complicated when the personal parts of it weren’t served up for public consumption. She tried hard not to look back, to focus her energies on the present, and allowed herself to look no farther ahead than the next season.

The only season on her mind at the moment was the current one. As she bounced her rugged and reliable old pickup truck over a berm of snow at the edge of her driveway, her only thoughts were of getting home and to her chores before she lost any more of the day. It was already one o’clock in the afternoon.

The pastor’s wife had asked a favor of her, and completely sidetracked her from her original plan to be home before noon.

Sidetracking her now was the black sedan parked by the old sycamore—and the sight of Jack standing outside the stable that now served as a garage.

He hadn’t struck her as the sort who would give up easily. Knowing he’d stayed last night, she’d pretty much expected him to come back, too. She’d just rather hoped that he would come back, find her gone and leave.

Not sure if she felt threatened by his persistence or relieved by it, she drove past him and through the open doors of the utilitarian white building.

What he had come back to do had been on her mind all evening. It had been the first thing on her mind that morning. Part of her, the part that felt unkind and uncomfortable about how she’d walked away from him yesterday, had actually considered stopping by the motel to apologize for being so insensitive. She felt awful for the way she’d treated him. After she’d had a chance to truly consider what it must have taken for him to come back, and after she’d acknowledged the courage, the integrity, and the basic sense of decency he would have to possess to even want to make amends after so long, she’d felt even worse.

She hadn’t even thanked him for his apology.

Another part of her, the more protective part, had hoped he would tire of waiting for her and be halfway to the free-way—which was probably, she figured, why she really hadn’t minded the delay getting home.

Feeling no less torn by his presence now, she climbed out of her truck and squeezed past the cherry-red snowmobile she used to haul skids of firewood from the woodshed to the sugar house, or to get into town when the snow was too deep to drive there. The sun that had shone so brightly yesterday had given way to a ceiling of pale gray. From that solid layer of clouds, a few tiny snowflakes drifted down as she headed into the open expanse between the outbuilding and her house.

They weren’t supposed to get snow until that evening, she thought, looking from the sky to the tall and totally disconcerting man closing the distance between them. He wore the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, the dark-gray jacket that made his shoulders look so wide, the darker-gray turtleneck and sweater, the worn jeans that molded his lean hips and long, powerful legs. He’d shaved, though. She could tell from the smoothness of the skin on his strong, too-attractive face, and the nick under his chin.

That tiny vulnerability made her feel guilty for his long wait. He’d shaved before he’d come to see her.

“Come to the sugar house,” she said, saving him the trouble of telling her he needed to talk to her. “I need to get the fire stoked and bring in more wood. We can talk there.”

A fleece cap in the same shade of pale pink as her turtleneck poked from the side pocket of her quilted black coat. Without the cap she’d worn yesterday, the spitting snowflakes clung to the top of her head, caught in her high, swinging ponytail. Watching her walk away, it seemed to Jack that her shining baby-fine hair seemed darker, more auburn than the deep red he remembered. Richer. Softer.

He’d heard somewhere that natural redheads tended to be rather volatile. He’d never dated one to know how much truth there was to the claim, though one particular blonde had proved explosive enough. Emmy, however, didn’t strike him at all as a woman prone to fits of temper. The sense of quiet control about her gave him the feeling she’d go as far out of her way as necessary to avoid confrontation.

Watching her ponytail bounce, he started after her. She also possessed an absolute gift for throwing curves. Rather than meeting the wall of resistance he’d expected, she hadn’t seemed all that opposed to finding him waiting.

Telling himself to be grateful, he glanced back toward her truck. Heavy tire chains wrapped the tires. Bags of sand lay in the bed for better traction. It was the vehicle itself that had first caught his attention, though. The old workhorse of a pickup looked very much like the one her father had driven fifteen years ago.

“Was everything all right this morning?” he asked, thinking the truck had to be pushing thirty years old by now.

“Everything’s fine. Why?”

“I just thought that with the sap running, you’d be in a hurry to get back and start boiling.”

Instead of heading for the sugar house, she’d angled toward her home.

“The minister’s wife asked me to do a feasibility study for the restoration of the church. We started looking around,” she said, snow crunching under their boots, “and I lost track of the time.”

She truly had. For a while. There wasn’t much that appealed to her more than the prospect of taking something old and falling apart and returning it to what it once had been. Just studying the 120-year-old building and researching its repair excited her. Or would have had she not been so aware of the man who’d just walked up beside her.

She could practically feel his frown on the side of her face.

“I thought you turned down the scholarship.”

She stopped in the snow, looking up at him as a tiny flake settled on her cheek. One clung to a strand of the dark hair falling over his wide forehead. Another drifted between them. “How do you know about that?”

“Agnes said you were going to study architecture and design, but that you turned down your scholarship to stay and help your mom.”

The corner of her mouth quirked, half in acknowledgment, half in something that looked almost as if she might have expected as much.

“I did turn it down,” she replied, but offered nothing else as she continued on.