Barbara was sick with fear and disgust.
Sebastian Redwing hadn’t seen her. She was sure of it. But if he hadn’t lost his balance—if he hadn’t gone into the falls—he would have come after her. As it was, she’d had to pelt additional rocks at him to get him into the water.
A close call. Too close.
Thank God for her instincts. They’d warned her someone was nearby, and she’d ducked off the path and spotted him at the falls. Otherwise, she’d have bumped into him. She’d have had to scramble for an explanation.
He was still thrashing about in the water when she’d heard Lucy, the children and their low-life friends at the bottom of the falls. Barbara had crouched in the brush and ferns, itching and sweating as she’d waited, motionless, before finally creeping back up to the dirt road.
A very close call, indeed.
Now, pacing on the deck of the house she’d rented for the senator, she couldn’t believe the risks she’d taken. She was calculating and intelligent, not one to succumb to impulse. If her friends and colleagues in Washington learned of this obsession of hers, these risky escapades, they would be shocked. They wouldn’t understand. She didn’t understand. She imagined what a bulimic girl must feel like, eating away at dinner, then throwing up in secret—the satisfaction, the disgust, the inability to stop herself.
Except she didn’t have a disorder, Barbara thought. She could stop herself, if only she would.
She leaned against the deck rail, listening to the brook, the cool early-morning breeze gusting in the woods. Such a peaceful, beautiful spot. She’d chosen well. Jack would enjoy his time here, even if he should be seeing to his constituents in Rhode Island.
What if you’d killed Sebastian Redwing?
Once she’d spotted him lurking in the woods, she’d known Lucy had contacted him on her trip to Wyoming. Lucy had gone crying to him about the few little things that had happened to her over the previous week. Barbara hated whiners. And Sebastian was Colin’s friend, not Lucy’s. Lucy had no right.
Now Barbara had to worry Darren would find out. “God damn you, Lucy.”
Well, Sebastian Redwing had survived. Lucy had helped him down to her house. Barbara had seen them as she’d hid in the woods like a madwoman.
Would Madison tell her mother—and Sebastian—about their visit yesterday?
It didn’t matter. No one would make the connection between Sebastian’s accident at the falls and Barbara’s presence in Vermont. She breathed deeply, reminding herself she was the only one who knew—who could even imagine—she could do such a thing. To everyone else, she was the competent, professional, longtime personal assistant to a United States senator.
She sighed, feeling better, calmer. Sebastian Redwing was here in Vermont, and maybe she should tell Darren—but she wouldn’t.
* * *
Sebastian awoke to a pounding head and the sounds of J.T. and his buddy playing Star Wars outside his window. He moaned, not moving, not even opening his eyes. “I hate kids.”
The boys were throwing things—his guess, green tomatoes—and pretending they were bombs exploding on impact, with appropriate sound effects. Sebastian remembered playing similar games with his grandmother’s green tomatoes.
“Boys!” Lucy yelled, probably from the back steps. “Those are my tomatoes!”
Explanations followed. They were the knobby tomatoes. They’d fallen off the vine. It was good to weed out the weaker tomatoes so the strong could get big and ripen.
Lucy wasn’t buying. “Stay out of the tomatoes. Why don’t you go pick blackberries? I’ll make a cobbler.”
“What’s a cobbler?” J.T. asked. Apparently his mother didn’t make too many cobblers.
She threatened to put them to work in the barn sorting mail. They grabbed cans from the recycling bin and vanished. Welcome silence followed.
Sebastian carefully rolled out of bed. It had been a hellish night. The pain and humiliation of falling into the water. Thoughts of kissing Lucy. And memories. So damn many memories. At fourteen, in shock from his parents’ sudden deaths, he’d never wanted to leave here.
He reeled, reaching out for a bedpost to steady himself.
“Mom! Sebastian’s dying!”
Two boys’ faces popped into the window screen facing the backyard. The little bastards were spying on him. He banged on the screen as if they were a couple of pesky moths, and they gasped and cleared out.
Lucy burst in. Her mistake. He was hanging on to the bedpost in his shorts. “Oh,” she said, grinding to a halt in the doorway. “I thought—J.T. said—”
He grinned. It was a damned nasty thing to do, but he felt like it. “Be glad I still have my shorts on. Those kids need to learn some manners.”
“They know their manners. They just don’t always employ them.” She had a portable phone in one hand. “I should have remembered to pull the shades.”
“Should have thought of it myself.”
“You’re all right?”
“A pot of coffee and a bottle of aspirin would help.”
She nodded and retreated, shutting the door behind her. Sebastian sank onto the bed. He wasn’t up to catching bad guys today. He was sore as hell with a mood to match.
He reached for his pants on the footboard, and realized instantly they’d been washed. His shirt was folded next to them. Lucy had managed to sneak in and out of his room at least twice—once to get his clothes, again to return them freshly laundered. He hadn’t known. This did not improve his mood.
He got dressed and found his way to the bathroom. Except for fresh paint and towels in bright, vibrant colors, it hadn’t changed since Daisy’s day. A look in the mirror told him why J.T. and his friend thought he was dying—and why they’d run off when he’d growled at them. Dried blood, raw scrapes, purple and yellow bruises.
And he needed a shave, but the only razor around was pink. He decided to wait.
He staggered out to the kitchen, where Lucy was at her laptop at the table. She had on a white top and shorts—simple, sexy. She barely looked up at him. “Coffee’s made.”
“Thank you.” He moved slowly to the counter. “You stole my pants in the middle of the night.”
“Actually, it was only about nine o’clock. You were dead to the world.”
“What if bad guys had stormed the house?”
“I could dial 9-1-1 as easily as you could.”
She kept the mugs in the same place Daisy had. He dragged one out and poured his coffee. “I hate going after bad guys in my shorts. I like having my pants. It’s one of my rules.” He leaned against the counter with his coffee. “Lucy Blacker, are you laughing at me?”
“Me? No way.” She tapped a few keys. “Anyway, since you’ve renounced violence, you wouldn’t have gone after the bad guys even if you were up to it.”
The coffee was hot and strong, and made him feel almost human again. He took note of Lucy’s bare arms and legs, their smooth muscles. She was strong and fit. No wonder she’d been able to help him down from the falls.
“The best thing to do in a dangerous situation,” he said, “is to get out of it. Having a gun can give you a false sense of security. And just because I’ve renounced killing,” he added, “doesn’t mean I can’t still catch bad guys.”
She licked her lips. “Have you renounced all violence or just deadly force?”
“I don’t carry a gun. I don’t own any firearms. When I did, I only fired my weapon when I believed deadly force was the only option.” He sipped more of his coffee. “You don’t shoot to wound someone. You shoot to kill.”
“Uck,” she said.
“Yes. It’s too often too easy to see shooting as your only option when you’re armed to the teeth.”
“But would you hit someone?”
He smiled, which made his face ache. “As in spanking or beating the shit out of someone?”
She flushed slightly, whether out of annoyance or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell. Probably annoyance. He didn’t think Lucy embarrassed easily. She looked at him. “What would you have done if you’d caught whoever knocked you into the falls yesterday?”
“I don’t deal in hypotheticals.” He dropped onto a chair across from her. “I’ve done enough killing. That’s my only point.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t, which is good. Can you point me to breakfast?”
“I can even fix you breakfast.”
“You pulled me off the rocks and washed my clothes. That’s enough.”
She got up and opened the refrigerator. “I don’t need you collapsing on my kitchen floor. A cheddar cheese omelette okay?”
“It would be wonderful. Thank you.”
The kitchen quickly filled with the smell of eggs, butter, Vermont cheddar cheese and toast. Sebastian remembered countless sunny summer mornings here in his grandmother’s kitchen. In Wyoming during the past year, while he gambled, rode his horses, walked with his dogs, bided time in his hammock and otherwise did nothing, he’d found himself haunted by his childhood in Vermont. Images, memories, smells, the hopes and dreams of the introspective boy he’d been. He’d assumed it was because of Lucy, knowing she was here. But maybe not.
He refilled his mug and reached for the bottle of Extra-strength Tylenol.
Lucy turned a lightly browned omelette onto a plate. “Why didn’t you go to the funeral?” she asked quietly.
At first he thought she was talking about Daisy, but he pulled himself out of his own depths and realized she meant Colin. “I was in Bogotá. A kidnapping case.”
“You didn’t call, write, send a flower—”
“Would it have made you feel better if I had?”
She buttered the toast, not looking at him. “No. That’s not the point.”
He knew it wasn’t.
She placed his food in front of him and walked out of the kitchen, leaving him to his breakfast. And her laptop. Sebastian slid it over with one finger and poked around her hard drive while he ate. Lucy Blacker Swift was a very busy lady, he decided. Her adventure travel company was an attractive mix of active sports, education and relaxation. He called up a draft of her new brochure. Autumn inn-to-inn canoe trips ranging from a long weekend to ten days. Sea kayaking on the coast of Maine. A nature and history hike in Newfoundland. And on it went. Each trip was described with the kind of rich detail that made Sebastian realize he hadn’t been that many places just for fun. Tracking down kidnappers in Colombia wasn’t the same as enjoying its fascinating culture and scenery.
Madison plopped onto the chair across from him. “Are you spying on my mother?”
No good-morning. No polite enquiry into the state of his health. He eyed her over the laptop’s screen. “I’m checking my email.”
“No, you’re not. The modem’s not hooked up.”
“Okay. I’m spying on your mother.”
She gave him a direct, no-nonsense look. “Why?”
The kid was a pain. “You’re fifteen. Why don’t you have a job?”
“I do have a job. I work for Mom’s company.”
“That’s not a job. That’s working for your mother.”
She made a face. Probably if he weren’t so bloodied and bruised and dangerous-looking, she’d have told him what was what. The kid had spirit. He shut down Lucy’s money file and a financial spreadsheet he’d pulled up. Taking a look at her new brochure was easier to explain. He’d have to talk to her about password protection.
“I figure you can drive me out to my motel,” he said. “I need to pick up a few things if I’m going to be laid up here.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. You drive, right?”
“I have my learner’s permit. I can’t drive without an adult—”
“I’m an adult.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“Go ask your mother while I finish my breakfast.”
The girl seemed taken aback. “Are you serious?”
He sighed. “Don’t I look serious? I fell off a flipping cliff last night. I’m not in the mood to joke around.”
She mumbled something about asking her mother, and fled. If nothing else, Sebastian figured he’d given her a good excuse to make her retreat. He’d always made kids nervous. He didn’t know why.
Madison returned in a few minutes, breathless. “Mom said absolutely not.”
“How come?”
She shrugged. She was a pretty kid, looked a lot like her father.
Sebastian grinned at her. “You mean you didn’t put up a fight? I thought all fifteen-year-olds snapped up every opportunity to drive.”
“I have things to do,” she said quickly, and disappeared.
A teenager who didn’t want to get behind the wheel. He had to look bad.
At least his head was clearing, if slowly. He felt better after eating. He cleaned up his dishes and poured himself a third cup of coffee, staring out at the backyard. Birds twittered in the garden, and he could hear the hum of bumblebees in the still summer air. A Japanese beetle had made its way onto the kitchen windowsill.
The air, the feel of the light, the vegetation—everything was so different from Wyoming. This was more like a dream, or an elusive memory.
“What do you need at your motel?” Lucy asked behind him.
He pulled himself back into the moment. This wasn’t Daisy’s house anymore. This was Lucy’s house, and Lucy was in a kind of trouble that still didn’t make sense to him.
He turned and leaned against the counter, avoiding any sudden movements that could send his head or stomach into a tailspin. “I want to check out.”
“And go back to Wyoming?”
“And move in here for a few days.”
She didn’t react. She wasn’t twenty-two anymore, the happy and ambitious young woman starting a life with Colin Swift, the son of a senator, a decent human being who wanted to make the world a better place. Sebastian didn’t have such high hopes for himself. Now she was the mother of two children, he realized, and a thirty-eight-year-old widow. She was making a name for herself in the competitive world of adventure travel. If the years had made her stronger, they’d also taken some of the spark out of her. She knew life could kick her in the head.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “If your fall yesterday wasn’t an accident—”
“Which we don’t know.”
“Granted. But if it was deliberate, why you? Why not Rob or Patti or me?”
“Two immediate possibilities. One, our little friend saw me checking on you and your place, didn’t know who I was and worried I’d mess up their fun. Two, our little friend recognized me.”
“How?”
“I grew up here, and I have my share of enemies from my work.”
“But your work has nothing to do with me,” Lucy said.
Sebastian chose not to tell her about Darren Mowery. “True.”
“Could it be someone I’d know, too?”
“Maybe.”
Her brow furrowed. “Who?”
“If I knew who,” he said, “this’d be over.”
She gave herself a small shake. “This’ll make me crazy. All right. I’ll go check you out of the motel. You can bunk in my room. I’ll move upstairs to the guest room.”
“I don’t mind the guest room.”
“Are you kidding? If someone leaves another dead animal in my bed, I’d much prefer you be the one to find it.” She grabbed her keys off a wall hook. “You’ll look after the kids while I’m gone? Rob’s putting Madison to work this morning, and J.T.’s hanging out with Georgie. They have chores to do.”
“My childhood revisited,” Sebastian said drily.
She smiled over her shoulder at him. “A little normalcy will do you good.”
She pushed open the screen door, felt the morning air warming up fast. “I don’t like the idea of you going out to my motel by yourself,” he said.
“Oh, sure. Big help you’d be.” She turned and shook her head at him through the screen. “Sorry, Redwing, but you look as if you took a header off a waterfall. I know, even beaten and broken, you can probably still take half the men on the planet, but—” she flipped him another smile “—I’ll take my cell phone and call 9-1-1 if I run into trouble.”
“Have the desk clerk go into my room with you.”
She trotted down the back steps, calling back, “Why? If anyone’s hiding under your bed, I wouldn’t want to endanger some poor innocent desk clerk. If not, then there’s no reason to worry.”
He went to the door. “Lucy.”
She looked up at him. “I’ll be fine, Sebastian. Back in an hour.” She frowned suddenly. “Oh, wait.”
For a moment, he thought she’d changed her mind about going alone. But she ran back into the kitchen, grabbed her laptop, and, as she walked past him again, said, “I’ll remove temptation.”
Two minutes after she left, J.T. and Georgie made their way into the kitchen. They kept their distance, checking him out like a couple of wary dogs.
“He looks scary,” Georgie half whispered to his buddy.
J.T. licked his lips and asked Sebastian politely, “How are you feeling this morning?”
“All in all, I’d rather be in Wyoming. What’re you boys up to? I thought you had chores.”
“We’re done,” J.T. pronounced.
“I’ll bet. Let’s go take a look at your mother’s garden, see if it’s weed-free.”
They didn’t like that idea, but they weren’t going to tell him. They scampered back outside, Sebastian following at his own reduced speed. He hurt like hell. Pure, dumb luck had saved him worse injury. He couldn’t afford to let his mind wander again.
But when he stepped into Lucy’s garden, it was as if his past reached up out of the ground and grabbed him by the throat. The feel of the warm dirt under his feet, the sounds of the birds and the wind, the smell of flowers and earth and mown grass. Skinny beans hung from bushy plants. Green tomatoes slowly ripened in the sun. Five varieties of lettuce were at various stages of growth, and prickly vines of cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini and pumpkins spread in their raised beds.
Daisy hadn’t had raised beds or mulched paths. She’d planted more vegetables. Her garden hadn’t been just a hobby, it had been a way of life for her. What she couldn’t use herself, she’d given away. And she’d always had garden work for Sebastian. It wouldn’t have occurred to her not to.
She’d never assumed he didn’t want the place. Even when she was old and dying, and he was starting his own business and buying a ranch in Wyoming, she’d told him, “You’ll get the farm after I die.”
“I don’t want it,” he’d said.
“So what? Once you get it, you can do with it as you please. I don’t have anyone else.”
“You could donate it to the Nature Conservancy.”
She’d scoffed at that idea. “If you get yourself killed before I die peacefully in my sleep of natural causes, then I’ll consider giving it away. I worked too hard to hang on to this place. If I’d wanted to give it away, I’d have done it fifty years ago.”
He hadn’t tried to follow her logic. Daisy Wheaton had a mind of her own, and she’d do what she meant to do, regardless of what he thought. She’d lost a husband and her daughter, her only child, and gone on without them, living by a code that made sense to her.
“You’ll know what to do with the place, Sebastian,” she’d told him later, when she walked with a cane and could no longer tend her gardens. “I know you will.”
He’d sold it to Lucy.
“Can we go fishing?” J.T. asked.
Sebastian shook off the onslaught of memories. This was why he’d gotten rid of the damn place. It stole his mind, invaded his senses. “No. Weed the squash. Then you can go fishing.”
“Mom didn’t say we had to—”
“I’m saying it.”
J.T. stood his ground. “You’re not our boss.”
Sebastian smiled. It was about the first time the kid had impressed him. “So? You’re still weeding the squash. I’ll sit up on the back steps and watch you.”
“Mom trusts us.”
“Good for her. I don’t. First chance you get, you boys’ll be sneaking off to the brook. Did she tell you no fishing without adult supervision?”
They didn’t answer, which meant she had.
“Yeah,” Sebastian said, smug, and headed stiffly to the back steps.
Madison appeared in the back door. “Sebastian, there’s a call for you. Your friend Plato Rabe—I can’t say his last name.”
“Rabedeneira.”
“He was calling for Mom. I told him you were here, and he said he’d talk to you.”
She looked at him expectantly, as if he’d explain, but he took the portable phone from her without comment. Being her mother’s daughter, she stayed in the door. He sat on the steps and glanced up at her. “You going to listen in?”
She blushed. “I wasn’t—”
“I thought you were working in the barn.”
“I was. I’m on break.”
These kids. “Your brother could use help weeding.”
“I don’t weed,” she said. His look must have done the trick because she added quickly, “But I will today. It’s not like I don’t have chores in the garden. I picked beans the other night.”
“That was the other night.” He pointed with the phone. “Weeds’re waiting.”
She slid off down the steps, and Sebastian put the phone to his ear. “I’m here.”
“I don’t even want to know what that was all about,” Plato said. “Sounds like goddamn Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”
“Tell me you’ve ever read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. What’s up?”
“Jack Swift called for you.”
Sebastian was silent.
“Blackmail,” Plato said.
“Mowery.”
“He wouldn’t give me the details, just that someone’s blackmailing him and he wants to talk to you.”
“Did you tell him where I was?”
“No.”
It was a stupid question. Of course, he wouldn’t. Plato was a talker, but he wasn’t indiscreet. “No details on the blackmail?”
“None.”
What could the intrusive and determined Darren Mowery find on a squeaky-clean senator like Jack Swift?
“The girl said something about you slipping into a waterfall?”
Sebastian sighed. No secrets in this family. “I had help.”
“Let me know when you need me,” Plato said. “I’m scheduled to leave Frankfurt in the morning. I can leave tonight.”
“I’ll let you know. Thanks, Plato.”
“Happy Ford hasn’t picked up Mowery’s trail. I put her on Jack Swift.”
Sebastian nodded. “We won’t find Mowery unless he wants us to.”
“You found him a year ago.”
“Yes,” Sebastian said, “but I didn’t finish the job.”
* * *
Lucy parked in front of Sebastian’s motel room and let herself in with his key. The room was hot and dark, the curtains and shades pulled, and she felt as if she were meeting a lover. She quickly reminded herself the man who’d occupied this room was in no condition for a romantic tryst or whatever it was her mind was conjuring. And besides, he was Sebastian Redwing.
“Enough said,” she muttered and got to work.
His clothes and personal items were simple, functional and obviously expensive. He was a man accustomed to travel. There was nothing frivolous, just exactly what he needed for a few days or even a few weeks.
Nor, Lucy thought, was there anything to satisfy her growing suspicion that he had other reasons for being in Vermont. It wasn’t just her. It wasn’t just some sense of obligation to Colin. She wasn’t sure what had triggered her doubts, but last night, waking up in her guest room with the eerie sounds of an owl in the nearby woods, she’d latched onto the idea that Sebastian was holding back on her. He knew things, he had suspicions that he was keeping to himself.
She was so convinced last night she almost marched down to his room to demand an explanation. But common sense intervened, and this morning her suspicions seemed a little more far-fetched. Not that Sebastian wouldn’t withhold information, but that he had anything to withhold. What could he possibly know that concerned her? Certainly nothing bad, not at the level he was used to. Assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, extortion. This was just someone trying to spook her.
Pushing back the flood of questions, Lucy dashed into his bathroom for his shaving gear. She was struck by the intimacy of her chore. Sebastian must have known what she’d be handling. Maybe he was too out of it to care.
“Sebastian is never too out of it,” she said out loud.
That was his job. Staying alert, on task. Even, she thought, if he had managed to fall into Joshua Falls.
She wished she could call her friends in Washington for the scuttlebutt on him. What did they know about his “sabbatical”? What rumors had they heard? But she didn’t dare, because her questions would give them something to gossip about, and it could get back to Jack.
She stuffed everything into her car and walked over to the small building housing the front desk. The clerk was a no-nonsense woman in her sixties. She wouldn’t have been much help with any desperadoes hiding under Sebastian’s bed.
The woman complained about her bad knee while she flipped through handwritten cards for the appropriate bill. “I hurt it last winter cleaning out Mother’s attic. It’s been a year since she died, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” She found the right card and set it on the counter, adjusting her reading glasses. “The owner keeps threatening to computerize, but I don’t see the need myself. Well, I’ll be! Sebastian Redwing. Daisy Wheaton’s grandson?”
“That’s right,” Lucy said. “Do you know him?”
“Not since he was a boy. I don’t know if I’d recognize him now. He came to live with Daisy after his parents were killed. That was horrible. Just horrible. I’ll never forget it. That poor woman outliving her husband and her only child.” She shuddered. “I was just a little girl and didn’t really know what was going on when Joshua Wheaton died, but I’ve been afraid of waterfalls ever since. I’ve never even been to Joshua Falls.”
“Really? They’re very beautiful.”
She pursed her lips in disapproval. “I thought it was morbid to name the falls after him. If I get run over by a truck, I don’t want anyone naming the truck after me!”
Lucy smiled. “I think it was to honor him because he saved a little boy from drowning.”
“He was reckless. He didn’t think about his wife, his own little girl.”
“Maybe not, but in that situation—I don’t know, it would be hard not to try to do something to help. I imagine Joshua thought he could handle the risks he was taking. You can’t stand by and watch a little boy drown, but you can’t be totally reckless, either. That’s suicide.”
The clerk nodded grudgingly. “People do say Joshua knew what he was doing, and it was just one of those things. The conditions were worse than he expected, and there he was, committed, with no way out.”
“Yes,” Lucy said, distracted, wondering if in a way that explained her situation with Sebastian. Committed, no way out.
“Well, it’s a sad story. Mother said Daisy never really got over Joshua.”
“They were friends?” Lucy asked. She was curious about Daisy Wheaton, whose spirit was so much a part of her life. But she’d never asked many questions of townspeople about her for fear of seeming too nosy, prying into the life of one of their own. And she’d never considered asking Sebastian.
“They were in the quilting club together.” The older woman sighed wistfully, tears coming to her eyes. “But that was a long time ago. Mother was ninety-two when she died.”
And her daughter missed her, Lucy thought, touched. Would her own children still miss their father when they were in their sixties, after all those years without him? They’d think about him, remember him. That much she knew.
“What did you do with her quilts?” she asked suddenly.
“I saved them, of course. I gave one to each of my children and grandchildren. What else would I do with them?”
Sell them with your mother’s place, Lucy thought. That’s what Sebastian did. She didn’t think he’d saved even a single one of Daisy’s quilts.
With all the memories and tragedies associated with Vermont, and specifically Joshua Falls, he could have been distracted yesterday, the landslide thus catching him by surprise. It could have been an accident, after all. Under the circumstances, how reliable a witness was he?
Lucy paid his motel bill and thanked the clerk for her time. “I’m Lucy Swift, by the way. I bought Daisy Wheaton’s house from her grandson a few years ago.”
“Yes! I’ve heard of you. You’ve got that adventure travel business, right?”
“That’s right. I hope you’ll stop in one day. The house came with a bunch of Daisy’s quilts. I’d love to have you tell me about some of them.”
“I’d be happy to. I’m Eileen, by the way—Eileen O’Reilly. I’ll take you up on your offer one of these days.”
“Soon, I hope.”
Lucy headed straight home. When she turned into her driveway, she stopped at the mailbox and stared down at Joshua Brook. It was wide and easy here, its water clear and coppery. Placid, beautiful. Soothing. She loved to sit on a rock on a warm afternoon and watch the water course over her feet. It was always cold, and even amidst a mid-summer dry spell, it had never gone dry.
And yet upstream, these same waters had claimed Joshua Wheaton’s life and made his wife a widow. The Widow Daisy.
The Widow Swift, Lucy thought again.
She dumped Sebastian’s stuff in her bedroom and found him stretched out on a blanket in the shade of an old apple tree in the backyard. J.T. and Georgie were playing checkers on the far edge of the blanket. Lucy pushed aside any lingering thoughts of Sebastian’s motel room.
“Boys,” she said, “would you mind getting me something cold to drink?”
“Can we have something, too?” J.T. asked.
“Of course.”
“Milk shakes?”
“Not right now. Just whatever’s in the fridge.”
They scooted off. Sebastian eyed her, his head propped on a couple of pillows. “Madison’s in the barn. She’s pissed at me. Now she says I’m more like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.” He squinted up at Lucy. “Do you think I’m more Bogie than Eastwood?”
“I think my daughter has an active imagination.”
He sat up, wincing. In the midday light, she could see that his wounds, while unpleasant and painful, really were superficial and would heal quickly. He narrowed his eyes at her, again giving her that sense he could see into her soul.
“What’s on your mind, Lucy Blacker?”
He’d always called her Lucy Blacker, from the day they’d met. “Nothing.”
She realized she was pacing, and stopped. She stared out at her garden. It was lush and healthy, and it had her stamp on it. Yet it still felt like Daisy’s garden. People in town thought of her as stepping into Daisy’s life. Exchanging an old widow for a young widow.
Was that what Sebastian thought?
Suddenly Lucy couldn’t breathe, and she knew he was watching her, trying to read her mind. Possibly succeeding.
She turned to him. “Did Daisy ever go back to the falls?”
She could see he knew what she meant. He didn’t react in any obvious way, just seemed to slide deeper inside himself. His past must have taught him that—to stay in control, bury his feelings, choose what he wanted someone else to see. The past three years had taught her similar skills.
He shook his head. “No, never.”
“The falls must not be an easy place for you to be.”
“My grandfather died long before I was born. Daisy never liked me going up there, but she didn’t stop me, except in winter.” The unusual gray eyes stayed on her.
If he could read her mind, penetrate her soul, she didn’t have the slightest idea how to read him, get inside his soul. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
He added, enigmatically, “It’s a beautiful spot.”
“Then you weren’t distracted yesterday?”
He shrugged. “No, I was distracted.”
“And?”
“And what?”
She groaned. “You know damn well what I mean.”
“You’re fishing, Lucy. What else is on your mind?”
“You didn’t come here just because of me.” She spoke without thinking, analyzing, debating. Enough already, she thought. She stepped closer to his blanket, knew that what her instincts were saying to her were right. “You had other reasons, too.”
“Such as?”
The man was maddening. “Why should I guess when you can just tell me?”
He gave the smallest of smiles. “I don’t know, I like the idea of seeing how far-fetched your guesses are.”
“Is that a yes, you do have other reasons for being here?”
“You think too much.”
And here she was, not thinking at all. She gave him another few seconds, but that was the end of it. Lucy crossed her arms on her chest, considered a moment. “Okay. Fine. Well, here’s how it is. From this point forward, you are to keep me informed of where you are and what you’re doing, what you know, what your plans are. This is my house, my town, my family—my life. Understood?”
“Sure, Lucy.” He clasped his hands together behind his neck and settled back on the blanket. He shut his eyes and yawned, making himself comfortable. “By the way, your son cheats at checkers. When Georgie figures it out, there’ll be hell to pay.”