Cider Brook

With a slightly muddy hand, Olivia pointed at the door to the ell. “The kitchen’s through there. I’ll be right in. Help yourself to whatever strikes your fancy. Maggie and I made applesauce this afternoon. No sugar added. The apples are perfect on their own.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Samantha said, feeling less tense. “Thank you again.”

Justin headed to his truck, grabbed her backpack and brought it to her. “I can bring it up to your room if you’d like.”

“Got it, thanks.” She took the pack from him and slung it over one shoulder. Picturing him in her guest room at Carriage Hill wasn’t helping her heart rate at all. She could feel heat rushing to her cheeks. Ah, hell. She wasn’t the blushing type. She forced a quick smile. “Thank you for all your help today. I hope the fire won’t set back your plans for the mill.”

“It won’t.” He glanced at Olivia as if expecting her to scowl at him for being so abrupt, then shifted back to Samantha and added, less bluntly, “I have more dreams than actual plans. I’ll adjust. Glad you weren’t hurt today.”

“Same here. That you weren’t hurt, I mean.”

He grinned. “I appreciate that.”

She couldn’t get inside fast enough but turned to Olivia. “I look forward to that applesauce,” she said, then headed up the steps past the mums and through a blue-painted door into a cozy kitchen.

A white mixing bowl of applesauce was in the middle of a butcher-block island. She set her backpack on the floor by the door and went over to the island, felt the sides of the bowl and realized the applesauce was still warm. As she found a small bowl and spoon, a big dog wandered out from the adjoining mudroom and yawned at her. He was mostly German shepherd, she guessed.

She heaped applesauce into her bowl and sat with it at a white-painted table. The dog flopped down at her feet. She patted him, wondering at how her day had started in the cluttered office of Harry Bennett and now was ending in a warm, inviting kitchen on the edge of the Quabbin Reservoir, in a little town that time seemed to have forgotten.

She still smelled like the fire at the cider mill, though.

Maybe a bath with the goat’s milk soap would help.

Four

Justin knew he was in trouble with Olivia, but it wasn’t unexpected. She’d been giving him a hard time ever since she and her little friend Maggie O’Dunn had caught him and a couple of his brothers raising hell out by Frost Millworks when they were teenagers. Now Maggie was married to his younger brother Brandon, and Olivia was engaged to a California multimillionaire.

And he’d just dumped a problem on her doorstep.

Samantha Bennett. Treasure hunter, expert on pirates and a woman who had an uneasy relationship with the truth. What was it Duncan McCaffrey had told him?

“Samantha Bennett isn’t your problem, Justin. She’s my problem.”

Justin watched as Olivia picked up a yellow mum in a clay pot and glared at him. “I know you’ve had a rough day with the fire at the mill, but could you be any more brusque?”

He winked at her. “Yeah, probably.”

She tucked the pot under one arm. “Samantha needs a little time to get her feet back under her. You did the right thing bringing her here.”

He suspected Samantha already had her feet back under her, but he made no comment.

“What was she doing out at the mill?” Olivia asked.

“She says she’d been following Cider Brook and ducked into the mill when the storm hit. We didn’t get into details.”

Olivia tilted her head back, frowning at him. “Justin, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds as if you arrived at the mill just in time.”

“I stopped by after the storm. I knew it’d gone right through there, and I wanted to check for damage. Figured at most I’d run into a fallen tree.”

“Instead the place was on fire.” Olivia let out a breath. “Really scary, Justin. Was Samantha trapped inside?”

“Overcome with smoke. She was right by the door. Rescue was a piece of cake.”

“That’s what you always say.”

Probably so, he thought. He’d learned a long time ago that if he dwelled on the dangers and the might-have-beens of his life, he’d never do anything. He trusted his training, preparation and experience. Beyond that—not much he could do. Which wasn’t to say that discovering a semiconscious woman overcome by deadly smoke in his old cider mill hadn’t taken a toll.

He appreciated the cool breeze in the wake of the storm. It helped clear his head. He wanted to talk to Dylan about Samantha Bennett.

He realized Olivia was eyeing him with concern. He preferred her scowls to outright worry, but she said, amiably, “You’re welcome to stay for dinner, Justin.”

“I’m good. Dylan’s up the road?”

She nodded. “He rode out the storm in his car. As I said, it wasn’t that bad here.”

“Olivia,” Justin said, “if you’re not sure it’s okay for Samantha to stay here—”

“I’m sure. I imagine she’s still in shock. She might not be able to grasp how close she came to real harm.” Olivia took in an audible breath. She’d had close calls of her own and was palpably tense, as if she were picturing Samantha collapsing in the burning mill. She seemed to give herself a mental shake. “I’ll keep that in mind tonight.”

“Dylan will be here, right? He’s not going out of town?”

“He’ll be here.” Olivia smiled and leaned toward him. “You’re free to go, Justin. Your good deed for the day is done.”

She’d always thought it about killed him to be nice. He pointed at the mum in her arm. “I like the yellow.” He grinned. “Autumnal.”

“You’d say that no matter what color it was.”

He laughed. “Probably. See you around, Liv. Call if you need me.”

He returned to his truck, aware she was still frowning at him. As he got in and started the engine, she set the yellow mum off to one side at the base of the kitchen steps. He doubted arranging flowers was foremost on her mind. She had good instincts. She’d sense he hadn’t told her everything he knew about her guest.

Justin’s grip tightened on the wheel. Was Samantha helping herself to applesauce in Olivia’s kitchen?

Thinking about taking a crowbar to the walls in search of pirate treasure?

Looking for a place to hide his padlock?

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, bringing her to Carriage Hill had made sense. Now he wondered if he should have left her to her own devices. But that hadn’t been a viable option. One, because of who she was. Two, because she’d had a scare and shouldn’t be on her own out in the woods.

But mostly because of who she was.

She was younger and more attractive than he would have guessed from the one glimpse he’d had of her two and a half years ago. He hadn’t recognized her when he grabbed her out of the mill and plunked her down by the brook, her face smudged with grime and just pale enough that he had no doubt the fire had affected her. She had golden-brown curls that framed angular features, dark, almond-shaped eyes and a full mouth. She’d struck him as a curious mix of unflappable and vulnerable.

Then again, who wouldn’t look a touch vulnerable after escaping a fire?

But that was before he’d learned her name.

He’d been tempted to rifle through her backpack when he’d retrieved it from the mill, but he had a feeling most of the interesting stuff was in her jacket. She was the type to grab any incriminating evidence at the first smell of smoke.

Maybe he should have driven her to Amherst or Boston—away from Knights Bridge.

Or just loaned her a damn tent.

* * *

It was almost dark when he pulled into the gravel driveway just up the road from The Farm at Carriage Hill and parked behind Dylan McCaffrey’s Audi sedan. A new house and barn were going up on the site where Grace Webster, a retired teacher now in her nineties, had lived for more than seventy years. Dylan’s father had bought the property from Grace but hadn’t told his only son. Dylan had found out this past spring, when Olivia had contacted him about the mess in his yard. Before that, he’d never even heard of Knights Bridge.

Justin knew Grace, but she’d been long retired when he was in school. She’d moved to Knights Bridge as a teenager with her father and grandmother. After they’d died, she stayed on in their simple house and taught high-school Latin and English. She never married and had just moved into an assisted living facility in town when Duncan, a respected treasure hunter, had shown up and bought her crumbling old house.

Duncan had died a few months later while on an expedition in Portugal, without revealing the reasons for his interest in Knights Bridge. Dylan had figured out the truth on his own. His father hadn’t come to the little Massachusetts town for treasure but to investigate a long-dead British jewel thief and the young woman he’d met while on the run more than seventy years ago. Grace Webster and Philip Rankin were star-crossed lovers and Duncan’s birth parents.

Philip, a Royal Air Force flyer, had been killed early in World War II and never returned to Grace. She’d secretly delivered their baby boy—Duncan—who’d been adopted by a Boston couple. Grace had never held her son and had never seen him again, until he’d ventured to Knights Bridge seventy years later.

It was a hell of a story that had taken Justin and everyone else in Knights Bridge by surprise, but it had changed Dylan’s life. He had fallen for Olivia Frost and was making a home in Knights Bridge, launching the adventure travel business his father had dreamed they would start together one day.

Not one to let the grass grow under him, Dylan had hired a local architect, drawn up plans for a house and barn that could be used for the business and enlisted Sloan & Sons to do the construction. Justin—one of the sons—was in charge of the project. The foundations were in, and he anticipated finishing basic exterior work before cold weather set in. The original house hadn’t been worth saving. Grace had often said she had considered tearing it down and wasn’t at all sad to see it go, although she’d been pleased when Dylan had put aside bits and pieces to incorporate into the new house.

Olivia was involved in every decision about the construction, particularly those having to do with color. Dylan, she maintained, would default to “cappuccino” if she didn’t step in. Justin had never pictured her with a Southern California businessman and former hockey player worth upward of a hundred million, but no question she and Dylan were right together—a good thing since they were planning a Christmas wedding at Carriage Hill.

As Justin got out of his truck, he noticed the air had cooled even more in the time it had taken for the short drive. The unseasonable humidity had gone with the line of thunderstorms that had moved through. He walked up the driveway to a stack of two-by-fours that had been delivered just before the storm. Dylan was adjusting a blue tarp over the lumber. He wore a sweater, jeans and boots, looking like any other guy in Knights Bridge—except he wasn’t like any other guy in Knights Bridge.

Dylan stood straight. “I just talked to Olivia. She told me about the fire. She said you dropped off the woman you rescued. Damn, Justin. Hell of a day’s work.”

“It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“I imagine this woman thinks otherwise.”

Justin wasn’t too sure about that. “Her name’s Samantha Bennett.”

Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “Someone I should know?”

He obviously didn’t recognize her name. Justin wasn’t surprised, although he would have less explaining to do if Dylan was familiar with her. “She’s not from town.”

“So I gathered.” Dylan, known for his keen instincts about people, stood back. “What’s going on, Justin?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Your father had me out here when he was in town. I mentioned I’d seen a woman checking out the place a couple of weeks before that. I thought she was his daughter or an assistant or something, but he got quiet, asked me to describe her. He recognized her right away. He told me her name was Samantha Bennett, and she worked for him as an expert on pirates.”

“Pirates.”

“That’s right. He said she was his problem.” Justin left it there. “I never thought much about our conversation after that.”

Dylan nodded thoughtfully. “My father never liked the term treasure hunter. He loved the work, and he was serious about it. I don’t recall him mentioning pirates or a pirate expert—or this woman. Not that he would have. I wasn’t involved in his treasure hunting. Most of his unfinished projects have been taken over by colleagues. I’ve only just started sorting out the orphaned ones.”

“Maybe Samantha is in town to get in on one of them.” Justin rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the effects of fighting the fire. Hauling Samantha Bennett out of the mill hadn’t been a strain at all. She couldn’t weigh more than a few sticks of lumber. “I don’t know what she’s up to, Dylan, but maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to have her stay at Carriage Hill.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll be there.”

Justin pulled at the tarp, letting loose a small pool of water from the earlier downpour. It streamed onto the ground. “When I described her to your father, it was clear she hadn’t told him she’d been out here.”

Dylan winced. “He wouldn’t like that. Trust was important to him. He worked hard to establish and maintain his reputation. He didn’t take well to anything that might threaten it.”

“Understandable.”

“That doesn’t mean he was thorough. He thought he was good at reading people. He hated taking the time to check people out, even people he hired. He relied on his gut. Usually it worked out, but maybe not in this case.” Dylan looked out at the rolling fields behind his house, dark now with the increasingly shorter days of autumn. “I didn’t know my father had come to Knights Bridge, and I’m his son. How did Samantha Bennett find out?”

“I don’t know.” Justin placed a rock on top of the tarp to hold it in place. “We only had that one conversation about her.”

“Did you recognize her today?”

“Just her name. I don’t know why I remembered it, but I did.”

“And it’s the same Samantha Bennett?”

“Doubt there are two, don’t you?”

Dylan nodded, sighing. “My father never mentioned her to me, but he wouldn’t have. Treasure hunting was his passion.” Dylan’s voice was laced with pain and loss, but he maintained his composure. “Hell, I miss him. I guess I always will.”

“I see that as a good thing,” Justin said simply.

“Yeah, me, too. Anyway, having Samantha stay at Carriage Hill gives us a chance to find out who she is and what she’s up to.”

“I doubt she knows I’m the one who told Duncan about her.”

“Just as well, maybe.”

Justin shrugged. “I’m not worried.”

“You’re not the worrying type,” Dylan said with a grin that quickly faded. “I’ll call Loretta and see if she knows anything about her.”

Justin had met Loretta Wrentham, Dylan’s longtime San Diego attorney and friend, when she’d blown in and out of Knights Bridge a few weeks ago. He’d spent less than ten minutes with her but could easily believe she would be someone Dylan would turn to about a mysterious woman from his father’s past.

“Let me know if I can do anything,” Justin said.

“Will do. Thanks for stopping by. My father and I got along, but we didn’t spend much time together his last few years. I guess we thought there would be more time than there was. He didn’t tell me everything, as you know.”

“I can go back and get Samantha if you change your mind.”

“There’s plenty of room at Carriage Hill. She must be exhausted after today.” Dylan eyed him with obvious concern. “You, too, Justin.”

“I’m good. Just need a beer and a good night’s sleep.” He started back to his truck. “Give a yell if I can do anything.”

“You saved a woman’s life today. I think that’s enough.” Dylan paused, then added, “Besides, my father was right. Samantha Bennett isn’t your problem.”

Justin got into his truck and pulled the door shut. The fire, the padlock. Pirates.

Somehow he doubted he’d heard the last of the dark-eyed woman whose butt he’d just saved.

Five

Instead of calling it a night, Justin headed back to the cider mill. He parked his truck, got out his flashlight and navigated the pitted patch of dirt that passed for a driveway. Cider Brook was quieter now that the immediate rush from the downpour had eased. He ducked under the yellow caution tape his fellow firefighters had strung up, the bitter, unmistakable smell of smoke and burnt wood still heavy in the sharply cooler air.

He pointed the beam of his flashlight at the mill door. It didn’t show any obvious damage from where he’d kicked it in earlier that afternoon.

A moth fluttered in the light and disappeared.

He’d bought the property a year ago when the town, which had seized it due to unpaid back taxes, had put it up for sale. His brothers, sister, father, mother, uncle, grandmother and everyone else who had voiced their opinions—all of them unsolicited—said he should convert the mill into a residence or, better yet, tear it down and build a new house. Then sell the property at a profit. He didn’t disagree that would be the practical thing to do. It made a hell of a lot more sense than thinking he would find pirate treasure out here.

He turned and shone his flashlight at the small millpond and spillway and across the brook to a stone wall that had once marked off farmland and now snaked into the woods. How could he sell this place?

Not that he knew what he would do with it.

He heard an owl hooting in the dark trees and turned back to the mill.

“I like the name Cider Brook. Pretty, isn’t it?”

Yeah, but it wasn’t what had drawn attractive Samantha Bennett to Knights Bridge.

Justin gritted his teeth and went into the mill. The smoke and burnt-wood smells were stronger. He shone his flashlight on the blackened wall and floor where the fire had done its damage. He hadn’t planned to stop at the mill today. He only had because of the storm’s path. He’d ridden it out in his truck. He hadn’t been in a hurry to get out here, and it was by chance he’d arrived in time to call in the fire before it devoured the mill.

And by chance he’d arrived in time to save Samantha.

She struck him as the sort who relied on miracles.

He’d just known that whoever had broken into his mill was in danger. He’d acted quickly, certain the situation was worsening and time wasn’t on his side.

It’d been a cinch to lift Samantha and carry her out to the brook. She was small but obviously fit—strong legs, flat abdomen, and she’d recovered immediately when he’d dumped her in the wet grass.

All the junk she’d stuffed in her safari jacket hadn’t seemed to get in her way.

He shifted the stream of light to the things she’d left behind. He hadn’t lied to her about her tent and sleeping bag. They were in a trampled, sodden heap. He pictured her stretched out in her sleeping bag. He had no doubt she hadn’t thought twice about being alone out here in the dark.

Why had she decided to come to Knights Bridge now?

Why alone?

He sucked in a breath. Picturing her in a sleeping bag wasn’t helping him. He squatted by her destroyed camping gear and maneuvered his flashlight beam to the edge of the tent and then past it to something that caught his eye. He held the light steady on a red-covered journal or notebook. It looked intact, as if it had been dropped or had fallen there after the fire. Had it fallen out of Samantha’s backpack when he’d grabbed it for her? He’d been in a rush. Preoccupied. He could easily not have noticed.

He picked up the notebook. The cover was a little wet, but the inside pages looked to be dry, with no sign of fire damage.

Definitely a journal of some kind.

He tucked his flashlight under one arm and opened to a title page.

Notes on Captain Benjamin Farraday, Pirate and Privateer.

Please return to Samantha Bennett.

Neatly printed on the lines provided were her email address, telephone number and a Boston post office box.

Justin stood back. “Well, well.”

He took the journal with him and headed back outside. He could drive to Carriage Hill and return Samantha’s journal to her.

Or he could hold on to it, at least for now.

Either way, she would discover it was missing at some point, and she would want it back.

He had no desire to read her personal notes. He wasn’t the sneaky type. At the same time...

“Pirates.”

Damn.

He heard vehicles out on the road, through the woods. In another minute, a truck and a Jeep drove into the small clearing. All four of his brothers got out of the vehicles—Eric, the eldest, and their three younger brothers, Brandon, Adam and Christopher.

They had a six-pack and wood for a fire.

“Just like the old days,” Brandon said. “Except then it used to be a keg.”

“Sloan solidarity,” Eric said. He’d changed into jeans like his younger brothers.

Adam, who also worked with Sloan & Sons, dumped an armload of cordwood into a fire circle on the edge of the driveway. “Christopher says you pulled this woman out of the fire in the nick of time.”

Brandon grinned. “Our brother, the hero.”

“I just was here at the right time to help,” Justin said with a shrug.

“How’d she get into the mill?” Christopher asked. “Don’t you keep it locked?”

“She either broke the lock or picked it,” Eric said. “Or it wasn’t intact—”

“It was intact.” Justin heard the abruptness in his own voice. Olivia would have scowled at him, but his brothers barely noticed. “Good that she got herself out of the storm,” he said, less irritably.

“Better the mill caught fire than she was struck by lightning,” Christopher said.

Justin nodded. “Agreed.”

They left it at that and got the fire going and the six-pack opened. In a little while, more of the crew who fought the fire turned up, all of them volunteers like Justin.

Time to decompress.

An hour later, the impromptu gathering broke up. Eric insisted on driving Justin’s truck back to the converted antique sawmill where Justin had an apartment a few miles away, on another stream. The mid-nineteenth-century sawmill was owned by Randy and Louise Frost, Olivia’s parents. They ran a custom millwork business up the hill, on the same property. Their younger daughter, Jessica, had vacated the sawmill apartment a few weeks ago, ahead of her wedding that Saturday. Justin was renovating the place in exchange for rent.

He and Eric got out of the truck. Stars glittered in the night sky, and a quarter moon had appeared above the dark silhouette of trees.

“A missing padlock isn’t much to go on,” Eric said, “but let me know if you have any concerns about this woman.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“You know more about her than you’re saying, don’t you?”

Justin debated a half beat, then said, “Some. Not much.”

“I see. Well, I don’t see, but I’ll leave you to it.”

Christopher pulled up in his Jeep. Eric hesitated, then climbed in without another word. He was engaged to a great woman, a paramedic. Christopher was seeing someone in Amherst. Justin doubted it would go anywhere.

He wasn’t seeing anyone. Hadn’t in a while. Which wasn’t like him at all.

He climbed the narrow stairs to the small apartment. He’d added a few things of his own, but most of the furniture belonged to the Frosts. He’d always lived in Knights Bridge and always would, but he didn’t need a permanent address at this stage in his life.

His head was clear. He’d only had one beer. Eric had insisted on driving him because of the close call today, for him and for the woman he’d found in his burning mill.

He tossed Samantha’s journal onto the coffee table and sat on the couch.

Notes on Captain Benjamin Farraday, Pirate and Privateer.

“Uh-huh. Pirates. No surprise, Samantha. No surprise.”