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“One thing I don’t have to do anymore,” Emma said to both brothers, “is listen to anyone in your family argue. This is Owen’s place of business, and I can’t afford more labor hours while you two sort out your problems with each other.”
Noah nodded. “Right.” He turned to his brother. “I’ve given up being the family do-gooder. This was a onetime deal. Just drop by the inn and let Mom see you’re sober.”
His suggestion apparently lit a fuse. Owen’s work boots scraped through grit and sawdust on the porch planks as he came at his brother. Emma stepped between them.
“What do you think you’re doing, Owen?”
“I don’t need—”
“You need to calm down.” She turned her back on him, ignoring the rage shimmering around him.
Noah looked at her, his full mouth stretched thin and bracketed by deep lines.
Soon after she’d left, she realized she’d been one more needy burden to a guy who’d carried his family on his back all his life. But now he looked even more disillusioned than he had the night she’d walked away. Four years hadn’t made him any happier.
“Come inside, Noah, and I’ll give you coffee.” Talking might ease the awkwardness between them. She was tired of ducking down alleys and around corners to avoid him.
Noah nodded. He paused to put a hand on Owen’s shoulder. His fingers were splayed, long and sure.
And kind.
Emma stared at the veins beneath his skin, the ridges of flesh on his knuckles. He could say he wasn’t in the business of protecting his family anymore, but he was lying to himself.
Noah loosened his tie as he crossed the threshold. “What do we need to talk about?”
She glanced back at Owen, who was gulping coffee from his thermos lid. His eyes bore dark circles. He hadn’t shaved in the five days he’d worked for her, and his hands shook as if he’d electrocuted himself with one of his own power tools. If he was drinking the hair of some dog, she might drag him up to the roof and throw him off herself. As Owen poured another cup, she shut the door and willed herself into a state of detachment.
“We need to get some things straight,” she replied.
He was lean, but he made the foyer seem small, despite its being as large as most of the apartments she’d rented in her wanderings across Europe and Asia. He dissected her with his gaze as if she were another problem he needed to solve.
She tugged at the hem of her T-shirt. Even with the windows open and a late-October breeze whipping fresh air into the house, Emma felt uncomfortably warm, too aware of the man. She turned down the hall, hiding her face from his intense gaze. Noah could read people in seconds and decide what came next.
Hence his skill at protecting his mother and siblings from their father.
After reaching the kitchen behind her, he walked around the island and took a couple of mugs from the long cabinet over the coffee maker. Just like the old days, when they’d visited her grandmother, who’d occasionally advised, but never judged or doubted that the guy from an abusive family belonged with the daughter of the town’s most scandalous woman.
“How long are you staying?” Noah asked.
“Gossip travels these hollows as fast as the breeze. I’m surprised no one’s told you I’m only here until Thanksgiving. The house should be finished by then.”
He poured the coffee for both of them and pushed one mug toward her. He turned back to the cabinet and took down sugar, then grabbed half-and-half from the fridge.
“So we don’t need to discuss anything. You’re just a visitor here. I’m never leaving Bliss. Case closed.”
“I don’t know if you think of me like most people here.”
He laughed, startling her. “Of course not. I was there, I saw everything, remember? Anyway, the very next day, I drove my father in his car to his brother’s in Kentucky, and then I took the bus back. He’s not welcome here.”
“I might have pushed him if he’d hurt my mother or Nan.” Or Noah. A piece of information she left in the past. “I’m not staying long, but I’ve dreaded seeing you.”
“No need.” Noah pulled at his tie once more. She must have imagined the tension she’d thought she’d seen in the movement. He seemed totally relaxed as he added cream to his coffee.
“We don’t owe each other explanations,” he said. “You left, and I stayed. That’s all we need to know.”
Then why did she feel as if she were testing an injury every time she saw him?
“I do wonder why you hired my brother,” Noah said.
“What?” If she meant nothing to him, why did he care? “Was I supposed to ask you before I hired him?”
“Answer me.”
She tried to see it through his eyes. “You think I might be using Owen to get at you?”
“Your father must have told you about Owen’s drinking. You came back for your dad’s wedding and Nan’s funeral. You must have heard about my brother.”
She rubbed the back of her neck as she remembered avoiding Noah at Nan’s service. She’d wanted to thank him for coming, but she hadn’t trusted herself. Her mother’s constant hunger for the next man had made her afraid Noah was her drug. There hadn’t been anyone as serious as him since she’d left.
“It’s an old habit,” he said, “trying to get my attention.”
Because he’d rarely focused it on her. “So you think I realized, after four years, I couldn’t possibly live without you, and then chose the one contractor who’d drag you to my home.”
“I just need to make sure you know that won’t work.” He looked straight at her, the kindness he’d shown Owen just as evident for her.
“Noah, I broke up with you, and I didn’t come back dying to worship at your arrogant feet.” Only, he wasn’t being arrogant. He was trying to let her down easy, just in case she needed letting down. The three years of their relationship had been an exercise in frustration she wouldn’t repeat for any reason. “I hired Owen to repair the termite damage to my house because his estimate was the one I could afford, and he has good references.”
Noah straightened the tie that seemed to be giving him so much trouble and drank from his coffee cup. “And we’re not getting involved again.”
“I only give my time now to people who deserve me,” she said. It would be true if any other man had mattered to her as much as Noah.
She had acquaintances, colleagues, clients in her website design business. No one who made her want to love again.
Noah took his mug to the porcelain sink she’d bleached to glowing perfection only that morning. “I should get out of here,” he said. “Why are you spring cleaning? Are you planning to sell?”
“It’s crossed my mind, but no. Nan just wouldn’t want me to neglect her belongings.”
“Yours now.”
“They’re still hers, but she’d hate the dust and grime.”
Owen, carrying a load of new pickets for the porch, stopped outside the open window and looked in. She shook her head, slightly.
Noah didn’t even look back. “Owen’s checking on you?”
“He’s still my friend.” Owen had always been like a brother to her. When she’d come back to town, they’d continued their friendship as if they’d been interrupted in midconversation. “You and I will have to work at being friends, but nothing’s changed between Owen and me.”
“Of course everything’s changed between us, Emma. You left, and you told me I could either come with you or we were through.”
“I thought we weren’t discussing this.”
“You need to know the truth. You’re obviously still hurt.”
“You give yourself too much credit.”
“I make a living out of seeing when people are in pain,” he said. “I never blamed you for leaving. I wanted to go with you. That night, I wanted to go more than you can imagine.”
For an instant she believed him, but instinctive insecurity took over and made her wary. Noah had pulled the mat from beneath her too many times.
“When my father shoved you down those stairs, I wanted to kill him. Instead, I had to drive him to another state and make peace with my mother for doing it. She was still in thrall to the abuse that went on in that house.”
His raw voice cut her. “Don’t,” she said.
Emma stared up at the iron chandelier. She’d wanted to go to the police once after Noah had picked her up, and she’d seen his black eye and a grazed jaw. But Noah had said they would take his brothers and sister and scatter them to different foster homes. He’d said at least he could hold his father off.
“When you left, Celia was only fifteen and Chad was thirteen. I couldn’t leave them. My mother was...” He brought himself up short, his survivor’s reticence taking over again. “She couldn’t handle her own life then.”
“You were almost out the door,” Emma said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re right about settling the past between us. If we do it now, then no matter when you return from now on, we won’t have to rake up these old coals.”
It was the right answer, but it still hurt, and she resented him for that. “I only came back to fix the house.”
Emma started toward the front door, but she didn’t have to urge Noah to leave. He was ahead of her by several steps. Memories rolled through her mind. Kisses stolen in this hall, his mouth eager, his hands gentle. Whispers broken off as they’d reached the foyer and the range of Nan’s acute hearing.
Now she watched as Noah gave a last look around the large, square foyer, at the crystal drop chandelier, the Sheraton console tables on which two Tiffany lamps flanked a bowl that held her keys and notes she’d written herself, the folder that contained Owen’s estimate.
Noah obviously knew he’d never see the inside of her home again. He reached for the glass knob on the front door.
Movement shadowed the long window beside the door, and he glanced through the beveled panes that scattered prisms of rainbow light on the wide-planked maple floor. Owen walked past, maneuvering another armload of white-painted pickets.
Noah nodded at his brother. “Let’s say he can’t get this work done right. Can you afford to have it redone?”
“He won’t let me down,” she said, instantly feeling guilty and foolish for the bitter words.
“I didn’t let you down. I took care of the people who needed me.” He dropped his hand from the doorknob. “I finished training, which meant that I could keep my family from starving or sleeping in the cold.”
Another series of images, imagined ones, shot through her thoughts. Noah’s mother cowering as his father hit her, Noah pushing between her and his enraged dad and the other terrified children. He’d made the correct choice.
“You’re right,” she said. “You never let me down.” She moved closer, ready to shut the door as soon as he went out.
Noah’s head jerked back, as if she’d surprised him. But he didn’t linger. He was out the door and crossing the porch before she knew it. She watched through the glass beside the door as he crossed the porch, then took the stairs with the athlete’s grace that had drawn her to him years ago. Opening his car door, he climbed in, gunned the engine and sped down the drive, his tires spewing gravel and dust.
Emma flattened her palms against the cool window. Her breath fogged the pane. Alone and confused in Nan’s safe, warm house, Emma shivered as if Noah had brought all the cold she’d ever known inside and left it behind.
CHAPTER TWO
“I APPRECIATE YOUR coming tonight,” Noah said to the rain-dampened group who’d arrived to hear him speak about the new clinic. “I expected the rain to keep some of you away. But I see it didn’t.”
There were general murmurs of agreement. His thoughts were on Emma, working on her laptop at a table just outside the library’s conference room. She’d barely glanced at him when he came in. Her eyes had widened and she’d looked back at her work. She’d set up a business while she was gone, building websites and creating social media platforms for clients. Maybe that work was difficult to do in her house with Owen sawing and hammering to repair the widespread damage her termites had caused both outside and within the house.
“I’ve distributed some information.” Noah held up a stack of pages. “As many of you know, I’ve been talking to the town council about building a clinic here in Bliss. I’ve ordered a financial study to anticipate costs versus profits. I’ve suggested several properties that might be appropriate. The council is not amenable so far, so I’ve come to you, neighbors and friends, residents who live here full time.”
“Would the town own the clinic?” a man in the back asked. He had a farm down the narrow dirt road from the inn.
“If the town provides funding, yes. I haven’t been able to interest a hospital in building here because of the council’s reluctance, but we need more medical care. I can give you an X-ray and draw your blood, but I have to send tests to a lab in Knoxville or Asheville. I don’t have the equipment here to complete the kind of work my patients often need.”
“You already have an office.” Maeve, who owned the local pharmacy, cut in. “How would you run the clinic as well?”
“I’ve included funding estimates for staffing. I’d take shifts in the clinic, but it wouldn’t be my office.”
“Why is the council against it?”
That soft voice came from the entry to the room, a voice from dreams he’d tried to stop dreaming.
He let no emotion cross his face. He must be good at that—she hadn’t seen how she’d affected him at her house. Despite his inconvenient continued attraction to her, he wasn’t going to let her drag him into the past.
He nodded at her, but then spoke to the room at large. She knew her father was in the mix of the council and opposed the clinic. “A variety of reasons. The first is that it doesn’t suit the council’s idea of the covenants set up when Bliss began to cater to skiing and tourism. A clinic is not high-end shopping. It’s not a picturesque eatery or a B&B that looks like a country estate. It doesn’t bring in the money that new business is required to furnish in this town.”
“Would it pay for itself, though?” the farmer at the back asked.
“Barely,” Noah said, “at least as far as we’ve done the estimation. “But we need an expert who can inform us about any possible tax burden. We’ll set up funding and build a trust from donations that will be as strict as any town covenant dreamed of being.”
“What do you want us to do?”
Noah glanced at Emma, whose troubled gaze rested on a face in the crowd. It was Megan, her stepmother, perched on a metal chair near the exit door. Megan, who appeared equally troubled, looked back at Emma. Some things hadn’t changed. Emma must have conditions for Megan to meet before she could accept her.
He’d been there.
He got back to work. “I’d like to set up a committee. Someone to search for a property the council can’t reject. Someone who has experience or an interest in fundraising. Someone who’s done PR.”
Some of the attendees stirred. Not Emma. He hated being so aware of her. Couples in the crowd spoke to each other. No one volunteered.
“Look.” He took off his jacket and dropped it over the back of his chair at the table beside the podium. “You all know me. I come from a family where violence and anger flourished, but care was—care was almost nonexistent. Maybe that’s why I’m a doctor. I want to take care of people. I believe that we can arrange for every family in this little town to have more immediate care. They deserve it.”
He tugged at his tie.
“If you have a skill you think would benefit the clinic, see me, call me, email or text. I need your help. We all need your help.”
Except Emma, he was thinking as he glanced back at the two Candler women. Megan was already slipping beneath the red letters of the exit sign, but Emma remained, one brow raised as if she were puzzled that Megan had left without speaking.
Just then a number of people rose from their seats and surged to meet him at the podium and volunteer their services. Startled, he took names and numbers and business cards and promises. By the time the last volunteer took her leave, he had a meeting set for the following week to assess their position.
Noah packed everything into his laptop case and cleared paper coffee cups and forgotten notes and his flyers from the tables and floor and gothic window ledges. He straightened chairs and took one last look before he turned off the light and walked out of the room. He tried not to look for Emma, but he failed.
He waited a moment too long to look away, for she lifted her gaze and pulled out her earbuds.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted me to help,” she said.
He’d never lied to Emma before, but he didn’t want her close. Sure, he’d dated other women in the time she’d been gone. Nurses where he’d done his residency. Skiers, who had no reason to stay in Bliss after their vacations. But Emma still affected him.
“I thought you’d probably rather not be on a committee with me. Besides, you won’t be here long.”
“I can set up a website, social media.” She glanced at her screen. “It all helps get your word out. Someone else can run it after I leave.”
“I’ll find someone to work with you if you’re willing?”
“I am,” she said and picked up her earbuds.
“Not getting along with Megan?” he asked, wishing he hadn’t, wishing she’d been quicker with her music.
“I don’t know her. It feels strange. She’s married to my father. They have this whole life I don’t know about. I don’t even know if I’m welcome.”
“She looks like she’s feeling the same. She’s nice, Emma. She didn’t move to town with an attitude, and she loves your dad. She wants him to be happy, which means she’ll welcome you into their new life.”
Emma’s natural response four years ago was a smile. He didn’t even realize he was waiting to see the sweet, open curve of her mouth until it didn’t come.
“I thought you weren’t looking after anyone except yourself these days.”
“You want to get along if we pass on the street, but you won’t try to be friends,” he said. “Good to know where we really stand.”
“Wait.” She stood, glancing around, but no one left in the library seemed interested in them. “I’m sorry. I do want to be friends, but I’m not sure how we manage that.”
“Neither am I,” he admitted, clamping down on his compulsion to take her hands in his and ease her fingers apart. “For a start, we could trust each other. I know you’re leaving. You know I’m staying. We both know our relationship ended four years ago. We have no ulterior motives.”
“You were talking about my dad in there. All those reasons to turn down the clinic, they’re stodgy and shortsighted.”
“If you mean I was speaking directly to you, I wasn’t. All the council members stand by the old covenants. You know there are towns in these mountains that feature bright lights and big noise. No one wants that here. I don’t want that here, but I want facilities that keep someone like my brother from having to drive almost two hours to get help for a work injury.”
“And you’ve explained that to the council?”
“No one in your dad’s position will listen.” Noah kept in mind the need to rein in his anger. He assumed part of the council’s rejection of his plan was that it came from him, the son of a man who’d put the town in a bad light every time he staggered out of one bar and into another, hitting on young female skiers and begging for change for his next drink.
Now Noah was in the position of begging, and the council seemed to enjoy every opportunity they had to say no to a Gage.
“I can talk to Dad,” Emma said.
“I’m not asking you to do that.” His voice rose, startling her, shaming him. The last thing he wanted was to be aggressive with a woman. In the middle of long dark, lonely nights he felt around his psyche for those instincts. He softened his tone. “I will if I have to, but not yet,” he said. “If you’d set up the media links we could use, I’d be grateful.”
“Okay. I’ll email the information to you. I can get your email address from Owen?”
He pulled a business card from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. “Now, about Megan,” he said.
“I know.” She rubbed her mouth. “I have to stop acting as if she swung into town just to pick Dad’s pockets.”
“You should probably thank her for being willing to live here with him. I hear she was kind of an influential voice in New York.”
“I heard socialite. I just didn’t believe anyone used that word anymore.”
He smiled because she couldn’t hide the bitterness she clearly disliked feeling. At least she felt safe venting to him. “I’ll look forward to your information. Thanks for doing this, Emma.”
“You’re welcome.” She picked up her own laptop case, and slipped his card into a pocket. He left while she was packing the rest of her things.
* * *
IN THE GRIP of an overgrown crepe myrtle she was trying to prune, Emma heard tires on the gravel drive. She twisted, hoping not to see Noah. She didn’t recognize anyone’s car sounds anymore. Struggling against the pull of the bony branches in her hair, she turned to set the shears on the ground and tried to unthread herself.
Too bad Owen wasn’t working today. He’d had some super-secret trip to a city in the big world.
A low-slung, silver vehicle turned on the gravel, slinging a few rocks upward. The driver was Megan, looking pretty sporty for a pregnant woman. She parked and climbed out, pushing her sunglasses into her dark brown hair like a headband.
As they eyed each other across the expanse of gravel, Emma didn’t know what to say. They’d been polite at the wedding about nine months ago, but neither had experienced step-relation love at first sight. And the other night, Megan had left without speaking to her.
Maybe because no matter how much Emma didn’t want to be her old, pushy, demanding, loveless, but hungry-for-love self, she couldn’t help the hostility she used for protection. Her father had someone new, and a new child coming.
Emma hadn’t expected life to stop while she was gone, but she hadn’t expected her father to find a whole new family that might be a bit more pleasant than she was.
Megan turned back to the still-open door of her car and tugged a big, canvas bag of greens out of the passenger seat. “Your father said you like kale.”
Emma nodded. “Thank you.” She crossed to her and took the bag out of her arms. The tension between them was almost palpable. It had to stop, Emma thought. She could stop it. “Do you want to come in for some coffee?” She glanced down at her stepmother’s swollen belly. “Or maybe herbal tea?”
Megan shut her car door. “I’d like that.”
Emma turned toward the house. Her father, Brett Candler, had met Megan at some bank do in New York, and less than a year ago they’d married. Her stepmother was barely nine years older than she was. Emma wanted to like the woman who’d made her father happy at last.
“Mind the construction area. Owen’s off today.”
“How much longer do you think he’ll be working here?”
“Until sometime around Thanksgiving.” Emma glanced back. Megan was holding her stomach and clinging to the newly sturdy handrail.
Emma stopped and held out her hand. “Let me help you.”
Megan hesitated for a moment. Then she took Emma’s hand. “Thanks.”
At the top of the stairs, they both released themselves from the oddly awkward handclasp, and Emma put on some speed to reach the kitchen. She eased the kale out of the bag and into the wide sink. “Take a seat. I’ll plug in the tea thing.” That was what she’d always called her grandmother’s clear plastic electric kettle. “It plugs in and heats water quickly. Nan loved hot tea when the weather turned chilly, and I’ve been drinking it, too, since I got back.”
“A way to be closer to her, maybe,” Megan said.
Emma measured her stepmother with a smile that felt stiff no matter how badly she wanted it to be natural. “Let me see what I can offer you.” She went to the cupboard and took down several different packets, as pretty as small square paintings. “Any of these look good to you?”