Strangers When We Meet Read online

  “My option’s good until the fifteenth. I’ll let you know what I’ve decided then.” Blake watched as another wave of disquiet flickered across Daryl’s face. Tubb probably had another prospect on the line and didn’t like the idea of Blake holding up the new deal. But he hadn’t yet made up his mind about the place. He wasn’t about to let it go in a fit of pique over breaking up with Heather. “But you’re right. It’s not the land deal I want to talk about.”

  “Look, man. I’m sorry about Heather, all right? It was just one of those things—”

  Blake cut him off with a wave of his hand and took a menacing step forward. He had the advantage of several inches, twenty pounds and five years, and he’d learned his intimidation techniques from some of the best teachers in the world—the drill instructors at Parris Island. “Do you think if I’d really cared about what you did with her, I wouldn’t have broken your damned jaw that night?”

  Daryl swallowed hard. “Then if it’s not the McGillicuddy place, and it’s not because you caught me with my fly undone in your living room, what are you doing here?”

  “Forty-eight hours ago I met the woman you’re proposing to marry.”

  “Emma?” Blake was gratified to see Daryl turn pasty white under his carefully maintained tan.

  “Yes, Emma Hart. And I don’t like the idea of her getting hurt by the likes of you.”

  “Did you tell her about me and Heather?” Daryl dropped his hands to his sides and licked his lips.

  He looked scared, and Blake was glad. He kept his expression carefully impassive. There was no way he would let Daryl Tubb know he wished to God he could do just that. This knight in shining armor business was for the birds. “I thought I’d give you a chance to do the right thing.”

  “Look. She doesn’t have to know anything about it. It was just one of those things. We met a few times. Had a few drinks. Heather cried on my shoulder about you dragging her out here to the boonies to live.” He shook his head as though to clear it. “Man, I half think she seduced me to get me to renege on the deal.”

  The lying weasel wasn’t telling him the whole truth, he could see it in his eyes, in the tense set of his shoulders and jaw. But what difference did it make now? That night he’d been too busy dealing with an indignant, then furious, then hysterically tearful Heather to get all the sordid details of the tryst he’d walked in on. To be damned honest, he hadn’t wanted to hear them, but Blake figured Daryl was probably telling the truth about one thing. Heather knew how to use her body to get what she wanted. It was an unsavory trait that Blake had chosen to ignore, to his regret.

  Maybe Tubb wasn’t wholly to blame for what had happened. But he was still a spineless, two-timing, lying jerk. And Emma Hart didn’t deserve to get saddled with the likes of him.

  “I love Emma—”

  Blake reached over and grabbed a handful of Daryl’s expensive cashmere sweater. “Don’t give me that line. If you loved her, you wouldn’t have cheated on her.”

  “I tried to tell her.” There was a tremor in Daryl’s voice. He heard it and swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple jumped up and down in his throat. “I just couldn’t find the right words. It’ll never happen again. If you don’t tell her, she’ll never have to know.”

  He had had enough of Daryl Tubb, but his damnable sense of honor and fair play forced him to offer Emma’s lover one more chance. If Tubb didn’t come clean by morning, then all bets were off. He would go after Emma himself without a qualm. “You’re a fool, Tubb. She’s already close to figuring it out on her own. If I were you, I’d get on the phone right now and make it right with her. I’d bet the farm it’s your last chance.” Blake let go with enough force to send Daryl stumbling backward against the desk. He turned on his heel, walked out of the office and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE CLOUDS EMMA had observed that morning had moved in to block the sun by the middle of the afternoon. She’d left her grandmother puttering around in the kitchen and her grandfather napping in his chair in front of the TV and returned to Twin Oaks, promising to be back for dinner at eight. Sharp.

  Daryl had called shortly after they’d finished lunch. He wanted to meet her for dinner but she told him she had plans. He’d been insistent, though, and she’d agreed to join him for drinks at a roadhouse a few miles outside Williamstown at nine-thirty. He said they needed to talk. And if he did convince her he was telling the truth, then what would she do? Forgive him? Try again?

  Her thoughts were as unsettled as the weather.

  Maureen was in her garden picking the last few mums to place on the table in the dining room. Emma followed her, recalling the riot of blooms and good things to eat that the garden had been bursting with just weeks before. As filled with promise as her future. A future that, in some aspects, now seemed as bleak as the landscape.

  “I don’t think I’ll offer you a penny for your thoughts,” Maureen said, straightening from her labor with a hand to the small of her back. “You’re wearing such a frown on your face, I’m sure they’re not happy ones.”

  “You’d be right,” Emma agreed. “Isn’t there something I can help you with that will give me a chance to work off my bad mood?” She hadn’t been good company for her grandparents, though she’d tried, and the worried looks on their faces when she said goodbye told her they hadn’t been fooled. Evidently Maureen could read her just as easily.

  “There’s really very little left to do except for cutting back the mums,” Maureen said with a wave that took in the last few straggling pumpkin vines and valiant chrysanthemums. The rest of the garden was raked and composted, rosebushes covered, tomato cages stacked neatly near the garden shed. “I just wanted to save these last few blossoms from the wind and rain. But I could use help putting them into vases.”

  “I can manage that. As long as you don’t expect anything too professional looking.” Emma made a face. “I should amend that to say as long as you don’t expect anything that looks at all professional.”

  “That’s exactly what I strive to avoid. We want Twin Oaks to feel like home, not like a hotel.”

  Maureen led the way to the back of the house. They met Blake Weston coming around the corner from the parking area. He was wearing a worn leather bomber jacket and a frown that matched Emma’s. A ball cap was stuck in the back pocket of his jeans. It was red, and Emma would bet money that it was emblazoned with the Marine Corps emblem. Her grandfather had one just like it.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Weston,” Maureen said.

  “I wish you’d call me Blake,” he replied, the frown transforming itself into a smile.

  “Thank you. And I hope that you’ll stop referring to me as Ms. Cooper.”

  “Thank you, Maureen.” His gaze turned to Emma, and the frown returned. “Hello, Emma. I thought I saw your car back in the lot.”

  “Emma’s looking for something to keep her occupied until teatime,” Maureen informed him. “I was just about to suggest a hike up to the waterfall. If you’re looking for a little exercise, why don’t you go with her?”

  That was the last thing Emma wanted at the moment. She had too much on her mind to be distracted by Blake Weston’s unsettling company.

  “That’s up to Emma,” Blake said, shifting his gaze to the hills above the house.

  She looked at her sturdy walking shoes. Blake was wearing hiking boots, too. No help there. “It looks like rain, and I don’t have a raincoat.” It was the only excuse she could think of.

  “I can help you there,” Maureen announced. She handed Emma the basket of purple and bronze mums and stepped into the back porch for a minute. When she emerged she had a sage green raincoat and a long orange-red scarf, the color of bittersweet, in her hands. “We’re nearly the same size. This ought to fit.” The raincoat had a soft flannel lining, and Emma’s last objection evaporated. She couldn
’t refuse to go with him because she wasn’t dressed warmly enough.

  “The trails are well marked until you get above the waterfall,” Maureen reminded them. “You should be able to get there and back before tea.” She squinted at the lowering clouds. “And before it rains.” She smiled and gave a satisfied nod, the universal reaction of an innkeeper who has successfully disposed of two bored guests.

  Blake was already moving across the yard, but after a few strides he turned and waited for her to catch up. “I won’t be having tea with you,” Emma said hastily. “I’m having dinner with my grandparents. And then I’m meeting Daryl for drinks.” She had told Maureen earlier she would be moving down the hill to her grandparents’ house and had attempted to pay for the rest of the week, but Maureen had brushed aside the offer, saying she knew how happy that would make Felix and Martha, and that Emma would always be a welcome guest at Twin Oaks in the future.

  “We’ll expect you when we see you, then,” Maureen said, making a shooing motion with her hand. “Go, get some exercise.” She turned and went into the house. Emma was alone with Blake.

  * * *

  THEY STARTED OUT in silence, walking through the meadow behind the house, one of the last remnants of the farm that Clint and Maureen had been left by their great-uncle. Their passing stirred up a few grasshoppers, swaying heavily on grass stems, as seemingly oblivious to the change in the weather and the onset of winter as their fictional counterparts in the old nursery story. Overhead, the same noisy crows Emma had observed that morning winged their way into the trees and the shelter of their nests.

  The afternoon was melting into an early twilight, and the wind carried with it the scent of rain. The fire in the massive stone fireplace in the gathering room of Twin Oaks would feel especially welcome tonight.

  Blake set an easy but steady pace and kept his own counsel. Emma turned up the collar of Maureen’s coat, then pushed her hands deep into the pockets. The trees closed around them and the pathway rose sharply as they moved into the hills behind the house. Blake pointed out a squirrel busily gathering the hickory nuts that had fallen onto the pathway. The animal watched them with bright black eyes, unafraid, until they were only a couple yards away. Then he bounded up the trunk, climbing swiftly and noisily into the lower branches of the big shag bark to scold them with chattering long after they were out of sight.

  The waterfall that was the preferred destination of the B and B’s casual hikers was a small one at the top of the first rise behind the house. With the leaves off the trees, Emma could see the roof and chimneys of the big old farmhouse from a boulder at the base of the falls once they arrived. Somehow it didn’t seem as if they’d gone far enough for her to overcome her reluctance to say what was on her mind. She sat on the rock and tried not to think about the summer kisses she’d exchanged with Daryl in this very spot, because she had the feeling they would be washed away like footprints in the sand by newer, more sensual memories of a single kiss exchanged with the man she was with.

  “Not much water running this time of year,” Blake said. His deep voice blended well with the browns and grays of the hardwoods and the somber green of the pines.

  “It’s beautiful in the summer, though, cool and green, with a sound like...I don’t know—”

  “Water tumbling over rocks, maybe?” he asked, giving her a sideways look.

  Emma felt a bubble of laughter pushing its way past the lump of anxiety in her throat. “I was going to say like fairy bells chiming in a secret glade or something equally improbable and poetic.”

  “You came here with Daryl, right?”

  She sidestepped the question. “Everyone who stays at Twin Oaks comes here. Maureen told me they’re thinking of bringing a bench up. Something suitably rustic, so you don’t get moss all over your hostess’s coat the way I’ve just done.” She stood up and glanced over her shoulder, brushing at the stain on Maureen’s coat.

  “Want to go back?”

  She gave him look for look. “No. But I don’t think I want to stay here, either.”

  He nodded. “Okay.” He looked around. “This way.”

  A faint trail led up the ridge, following one of the small streams that fed into the creek above the falls. “I don’t think we’ll get lost if we follow the water.”

  “I thought Marines never got lost.”

  “That’s true,” he replied without missing a beat. “But we do occasionally misplace the objective.”

  “How did you go from the Corps to Wall Street?” Emma asked, watching her steps carefully as they worked their way into the woods. The light was failing a little, and she didn’t want to twist an ankle.

  “My hitch in the Marines paid for my education. Didn’t know what I wanted to do when I got to college. I just knew I wanted to make something of myself. I was good with numbers so I took an economics course. My professor liked to dabble in the market on the side. He set some of us up in a dummy investment club. I made a mint on paper that semester and decided I wanted to do it with real money. I ended up with a double major in business and economics. Did my postgrad work at Harvard and never looked back.”

  “You make it sound easy.” She knew there was much more to his life story than he had revealed, and found herself wishing he would tell her more.

  “About as easy as getting your own radio show in one of the biggest markets in the country.”

  “In other words, you worked your butt off.”

  “Exactly.”

  He turned and offered his hand and a smile that was so electrifying it almost blew her socks off. Emma hesitated. She wasn’t altogether certain sparks wouldn’t arc through the air between them if she touched his hand. Taking a deep breath, she let him fold his long, strong fingers around hers. Warmth. Solidness. No sparks, but a slow deep tingle that started somewhere low in her middle and rose steadily toward her heart.

  She moved along in a fog after that, not really paying attention to where they were going. She found herself standing on the edge of a narrow, tree-filled ravine. Blake was surveying the rise of ground on the other side. “I think if we can get around this ravine we’ll come out of the woods just about where I want to be.”

  “Where’s that?” she managed to ask without sounding too winded. They were higher into the hills than she had ever gone. There wasn’t a sound to be heard that didn’t belong there except their own footsteps. The wind sighed through the trees, another squirrel scolded them from a high branch, a grouse drummed somewhere off in the distance. It was hard to believe Cooper’s Corner and the farmhouse were little more than two miles away as the crow flew. They might have been in another world, even another time.

  They left the faint path and scrambled into the ravine at its shallowest point. The climb up the other side was strenuous, and more than once Emma found herself needing a helping hand. Even Blake was breathing hard by the time they reached the top. “I think we’ll look for another way back to Twin Oaks. There’s probably an old logging road around here somewhere that will lead us down toward the village.”

  “Good idea.” Emma was panting. “I wish I’d thought to ask Maureen for a bottle of water when she brought me the raincoat.”

  “We can get a drink right down there.” Blake had moved ahead of her a little way. He was standing on a rocky outcropping and held out a hand to pull her up beside him.

  An old homestead was spread out in a tiny valley below them. The house was very large, four-square and unpretentious, the paint faded away to gray. Five double-hung windows marched across the upper floor, and below the overhang of a ramshackle porch, four more windows flanked a wide front door with a fanlight. Behind the house a steep-roofed barn stood forlorn and neglected, listing a little away from the relentless winds that blew off the hillside. A chicken coop and garden shed squatted in the lee of the barn, and what was unmistakably an outhouse occupied the corner of
a ruined garden behind the house.

  Stone fences ran their course through meadow grasses and disappeared into the trees on the far hillside. A small creek meandered through the front yard and crossed the road under a narrow humpbacked bridge. It had been a substantial property in its day, but time and the elements had taken their toll.

  A Berkshire Realty sign was prominently displayed near the driveway. Emma’s heart began to pound like a drum inside her skull, and she hung back, reluctant to cross the gravel lane that fronted the property. This was McGillicuddy place. She knew it in the very marrow of her bones.

  Blake led the way into the overgrown yard. “I was driving through the area one day last spring and came across this place. I thought it was going to be my escape from the rat race. Or more precisely, a return to my roots.”

  “I thought you said you’re from Indiana.”

  “You remembered that?”

  She felt her cheeks grow hot and was glad the rise in color could be attributed to exercise and the cool wind that had freshened to a stiff breeze while they were in the woods. “I have a very good memory.”

  “I’ve made an offer to buy this place,” Blake said as he walked up the rickety steps to the front porch.

  Emma followed him and tried to peer in through the wavy glass of one of the windows. “It’s too dark to see inside. I wish we had a key.”

  “We don’t need one.” He put his shoulder to the door, gave it a mighty shove, and it swung back on rusty hinges. “I guess the agent figured putting a shiny new lock on this old place would just invite trouble. Anyway, there’s nothing left inside worth stealing.”

  They stepped over the threshold. The house smelled of mildew and dust and age. A central hallway ran down the middle of the house, and small, high-ceilinged rooms opened from either side. A narrow stairway disappeared into the shadows above.