When Adam Came to Town

Adam bit back a smile, nodded to the two men and followed her. Sylvie’s father and brother might like to think they held the upper hand, but he had a feeling the sassy little angel was used to getting her own way. Something to keep in mind.

He climbed into his truck and gave Romeo a hard scrub behind his ears. “This is it, Rom. What we’ve been waiting for.” He started the motor, his leg jittering so much the truck almost stalled as he engaged the clutch. Cursing under his breath, he pulled out behind Sylvie’s fire engine–red SUV.

He’d envisioned this moment a thousand times. In his mind, it had been him, alone, standing in front of the house and taking his time to soak in each and every detail before going inside to explore. He hadn’t counted on having an audience. Still, he was grateful to Sylvie for rescuing him from her father’s interrogation. He was so jacked up about seeing his house, he hadn’t been paying as much attention as he should have to what he said. He wanted this to work. He needed it to.

He followed Sylvie’s four-wheel drive down a short side street that was lined with wood frame houses, each one different from the other. The last one was a lumbering old beauty with a widow’s walk on its roof and fanciful trim. Driving into the village, he’d noticed a couple of other houses with the same kind of intricate detail. Once he got to know some people, he’d ask what the story was behind the elaborate carpentry.

It had been over seventeen years since he’d been here, and the end of the street came up quicker than he remembered. A long stretch of beach and the wide gray ocean opened up in front of him. When Sylvie turned sharply to the right, he cranked his steering wheel and strained forward to catch his first glimpse of his gram’s house. Sylvie drove past 2 Briar Lane and pulled into the gravel driveway of a cedar-shingled two-story. He pulled into the weedy, narrow driveway he barely remembered and turned his attention to the small box of a house that sat before him.

His gaze shot over to his neighbor’s house, which had dormers and a huge veranda along the front, then back to his. His had cedar shingles, too, but they looked mottled, the white paint peeling from them, partially exposing the gray beneath. The windows and front door looked like they’d rattle in a light breeze, and the way the stunted spruce between the houses leaned drastically to one side suggested they got their share of gales here. A huge crescent beach crept up to meet the small patch of grass that formed his front yard.

“Hey.” Sylvie rapped her knuckles against his fender.

He switched off the engine and climbed out of the truck. Romeo jumped out after him, his nose leading him straight to Sylvie.

“Gorgeous dog.” She bent down to run her hand over Romeo’s head.

“Thanks.” He couldn’t peel his eyes away from the house. His house.

Someone else might see crumbling and decay, but to him it was beautiful. Everything he’d hoped for.

Sylvie straightened up from patting Rom. “What do you think?”

He tore his gaze away from the house and looked at her. At her clear blue eyes and silken, blond curls. A woman like her, she’d have a husband or a boyfriend who kept her busy. He wasn’t interested in distractions, and Sylvie, if she were free, which she probably wasn’t, could become a major distraction if he let her. He was here to work on his house. Maybe make a couple of friends. That’s all.

Her forehead furrowed. “It’s pretty run-down. Probably too much work to fix up. Although my other brother, Cal, says the house has a solid foundation and framework.”

She’d said that last bit almost grudgingly. “I think I remember Dusty, but not you or another brother. How many siblings do you have?”

“Just the two brothers.”

“Do they live here with you?”

“Cal and Anita have a house on the hill, and Dusty bought his own house just a few weeks ago.”

“So, it’s you and your dad.” As anxious as he was to go inside and explore, he wanted to know who lived beside him. Where he’d grown up, being aware of his neighbors had saved his hide several times.

“Just me at the moment.” She folded her arms and tucked her chin into her chest, frown lines creasing her forehead.

Before he could wonder why that ticked her off, she gave him a sour smile. “I have to get going. Enjoy your...house.”

A vague feeling of distress settled around him as he watched her scoot over to her house and slam the door shut. Why did he get the feeling she was slamming the door on him?

Hell, he’d only been in town half an hour and already there could be complications. Fitting in and being accepted was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined. Maybe he’d made a mistake; Collina was too small. People would want to know where he came from, who his folks were.

But he’d been running from the day he’d been born, and it was time to stop.

One thing he knew for certain. He’d keep his distance from Sylvie Carson. He hoped to ease his way into the community, get to know a few folk before the questions started in earnest. After watching Sylvie’s dad fuss about the light burn on his daughter’s hand and her driving home in the dark, he had no intention of riling up papa bear. Not that Sylvie seemed the least bit interested in him. The exact opposite, as a matter of fact. But still, he’d be smart to stay on his side of the fence.

He dragged his attention back to where it belonged—his new home. His future. His hand shaking, he stuck the key into the keyhole and turned the lock.

CHAPTER TWO

TWO DAYS LATER, Sylvie dropped the phone into its cradle and wandered over to the dormer window of the attic room Pops had made into a studio for her years ago.

She’d woken depressed and tried to convince herself the low pressure system moving in from the ocean was the reason for her foul mood. The clouds looked saturated with rain, but none had fallen yet. There wasn’t a breath of wind outside. The ocean, for once, was a benign presence, still and crystalline. She should go for a brisk walk along the beach, get her heart pumping and clear her head of the debris left from her brief conversation with her now ex-boyfriend, Oliver, whom she’d left behind in Toronto.

Oliver was a sophisticated, cultured man, and everyone envied her relationship with him. Even her father and brothers, for Pete’s sake. No matter how many times she explained to them that Oliver had a doctorate degree in museum studies, not medicine, they referred to him as Dr. Templeton. When he’d visited her two months ago, nothing had been too good for the doctor. Lobster, scallops, boat rides out to watch the whales. Her family had fallen in love with him. Which, now she thought about it, wasn’t an unusual reaction to Oliver. She was the problem, not him. To make matters worse, he’d seemed genuinely interested in everything her father and brothers had talked about. But that was Oliver. He made everyone believe they were fascinating.

In fact, during the entire two years they’d been a couple, she had thought about breaking up with him on more than one occasion. But when she tried to talk about it with her girlfriends or her family, or even Oliver, they looked at her like she was crazy. Small wonder. Her sole reason was that her handsome, considerate boyfriend annoyed her to no end. She always felt she had to be on her best behavior around him. And if she ever did let her guard down, act snotty and throw a fit, he’d say it was her artistic temperament and would she like a back rub? She didn’t want a back rub, and she didn’t want him to be so damned nice. She wanted...well, that was the problem. She had no idea what it was she wanted, but it wasn’t Oliver.

This morning she’d taken the coward’s way out and ended the relationship over the phone. The gesture had been mostly a formality. She’d only seen him twice since she’d moved back home and had assumed he’d gotten on with his life.

To her surprise, he’d done his best to change her mind, just as he had every time she’d told him she needed a break from their relationship. Yet this time she’d sensed something different. He hadn’t sounded upset as much as annoyed—probably because he was far too self-contained to blow up. Too bad. She’d have welcomed a shouting match. Something that she could rip into. Something...real. The only thing she felt was relief.

Their lives had dovetailed together perfectly in the beginning. He owned a respected art gallery, and took a chance on her as an unknown artist—a chance that had paid off for both of them. Her career had taken off under his guidance and had been capped off when a corporation commissioned her to paint six seascapes. She’d managed to paint four before she returned home to help take care of Pops.

How could she have guessed that here, at the edge of the ocean, her muse would desert her, and she wouldn’t be able to complete the last two seascapes? This was where it had all begun. Where she’d won her first drawing contest. Where she’d spent endless hours learning and perfecting her craft.

And now Oliver was hinting that she’d run out of time. The buyers wanted their paintings, and if she couldn’t come up with them, the damage to her reputation, not to mention his reputation, would be irreparable. Bottom line, either she pulled it together and started painting again, or she’d better start shopping around for another career. Which was a slight exaggeration, and beside the point, because if she couldn’t paint, she couldn’t paint. But damn, she wished she could get it all back. Well, not Oliver necessarily. But she truly loved painting.

A burning sensation shot through her chest, a sure sign of an oncoming panic attack. She plopped into the chair by her desk, stuck her head between her legs and started counting. Life was difficult enough with her father still not completely recovered and her being blocked, she didn’t need this. The panic attacks had to stop. Maybe she should forget about her career for now. Forget about everything, except resolving her issues with her family.

Except she hadn’t even told them what she’d remembered about the night her mother died. She was waiting for Pops to get stronger. And then she’d ask her questions, and maybe somehow magically, she’d get her life back. Problem was, the longer she stayed in limbo, the more she wondered if she wanted to go back to her old life.

When her equilibrium returned and she could breathe again, she grabbed her sketch pad from the desk where she’d flung it the day before and ripped out the first page without looking at it, tore it in half again and again. She tore out another useless sketch, scrunched it into a ball and jammed it into the wastepaper basket. Sentimental drivel. The lines in the drawings weren’t bold enough, they left too much room for interpretation. She wanted to excite people, stir them up—not give them something to snivel over.

The miserable preliminary sketches she’d ripped to shreds were all she had to show for six months of anguish. She’d actually thought she was an artist...with a future. Hah! What she was—three more pages came loose in one pull—was a talentless nobody. A waitress in her family’s café.

She tossed the pad on the desk and stared sightlessly out the window until a movement next door caught her eye. Adam Hunter strode into his backyard and started his tai chi routine. Yesterday, watching him go through his routine for the first time, she’d sat riveted for an entire half hour. She’d seen people do tai chi in the city parks, but the difference was like looking at a reproduction of a masterpiece and looking at the original. Adam was the real thing.

Her fingers itched for a pencil as he slowly glided through a complicated set of movements, his body moving with the sinuous elegance of a dancer. Romeo sat only three feet away from him, but didn’t move. Interesting that a man, whose less-than-perfect nose suggested he’d been in a few fights, would choose to practice tai chi, not one of the more aggressive disciplines.

Not able to stop herself, she grabbed her book and started sketching. She’d thought she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him the past two days because of what she had remembered of her father’s relationship with his grandmother, but maybe it was because she needed to draw him. Heaven knows he had an interesting face, but drawing his body in motion, the combination of the brute strength of his huge, well-muscled body tempered with grace...

She chucked the book on the table and paced the large, open room. She needed to sculpt him in clay, a medium she’d been playing with before The Great Demise. She’d make a small sculpture, no bigger than twelve inches—any larger, and it would be overwhelming. And it would be best if she could get him to pose in the nude. She stopped, laughed out loud. Like that would happen. Her father and brothers would probably take him for a long boat ride and not bring him back.

Still. She took another turn around the attic room. She’d start slow, ask him if he’d sit for her. Then maybe work her way up to no shirt, get him down to his boxers or whatever he wore for underwear. Her breath hitched in her throat. She felt almost giddy, ramped up like...

What was she doing? Sylvie looked at the sketch where it lay on the desk. Hideous. A three-year-old could do a better job. Adam didn’t look graceful or sensual in the sketch. The proportions were all there, but the excitement he incited was missing. The magic. She’d lost her touch, and she didn’t need Adonis next door reminding her of that fact.

Sylvie ripped the sketch out of the book and crammed it into the wastebasket. Disgusted with herself, she pulled the window shade down and stalked out of the room. It was time to admit her life had completely crapped out. Sooner or later, she would have to tell her family that she wasn’t moving back to Toronto until...well, she didn’t know. Until her father was better, and they could finally talk about her mother. Until whatever had blocked her was dislodged. Until Sylvie Carson finally knew who she wanted to be when she grew up.

* * *

ADAM STOOD LOOSE, but alert, as he transitioned from his meditative state back to the world around him. He’d grown addicted to seeing the world in bright detail while feeling a deep sense of peace inside. Never in a million years would he have imagined he’d end up getting into meditation and tai chi. As always, he gave thanks to Jake McCoy, the man who’d given him the tools to manage his anger. He took a final deep breath and turned to track Sylvie over the four-foot cedar-slab fence that separated their yards.

He knew she’d watched him the past two mornings, and he was curious to hear what she thought about his morning practice. He’d have done his exercises inside if there was room, but his little house was divided into three small rooms downstairs and three upstairs. None were big enough for him to perform his daily exercise routine.

Not that he was ashamed of practicing tai chi, but he suspected the male stereotype still reigned supreme in a village like Collina, where most of the men made a hard living at sea. He wanted to fit in, not alienate people.

Wearing clingy, black pants that came to just below her knees, and a formfitting, long-sleeved T-shirt the color of a plum, Sylvie sauntered into the back corner of her yard. When she crouched down and cooed, a white cat materialized out of the shrubs. Adam put his hand down by his side and rotated it, signing Romeo to his side. Sylvie alone was trouble, but put her together with a cat, and he and Rom could both be in trouble.

Against his better judgment, he drifted closer to the fence. He knew he should leave well enough alone. On the other hand, people would start asking questions if he holed up in his house and didn’t talk to anyone.

He cleared his throat when she didn’t look in his direction. “It feels like rain,” he said. Brilliant, yet original. Hard to top that.

Sylvie obviously thought otherwise. He heard her sigh as she scooped the cat into her arms and turned to face him. The smile she offered looked like the leftovers that usually resided at the back of his refrigerator. Bland, wilted and dried up around the edges. Guess she wasn’t thrilled about acquiring a new neighbor. Or maybe it was having him as a neighbor. He was aware he looked like he belonged in a dark alley on the wrong side of town rather than in a quaint coastal village.

She glanced at the sky as if just noticing the day. “Probably. This is Moonbeam.” She held the cat up in front of her. The white puffball’s eyes were as blue as her mistress’s. “I kept her in yesterday so Romeo could get used to his surroundings, but she was getting twitchy, so I let her out earlier. She’s used to coming and going as she pleases. Is he okay with cats?” She nodded at Romeo, who was straining to sniff the cat through the slats of the fence.

Adam leaned against the fence, catching a whiff of peaches. “I don’t know. This is a first for us. What do you think, Rom? Are you going to be nice to Moonbeam?”

Romeo lay down on his belly, which, according to the books Adam had read, was a supplicant position. Yes, sir, that was his dog, ready to let a little kitty-cat walk all over him. The cat sprang out of Sylvie’s arms and onto the top of the fence. With a graceful leap, she landed on the ground in front of Romeo and swiped at his nose. Having delivered her message, she sat back, looking pleased with herself as she started to lick her paw.

“Moonbeam!” Sylvie glared at her cat. “I had no idea she was going to attack him. Sorry, Romeo.”

Romeo cringed away from them, whimpering, his nose buried under his paws. The old boy was going to have to toughen up if he was going to survive in this neighborhood. Adam patted the dog and stood. “I’m going to reinforce the fence so Rom can spend most of the day out here. I can’t keep him inside with all the dust from the renos. They’ll have to work things out for themselves, I guess.”

Adam studied Sylvie’s face as she stepped back from the fence. She had dark circles under her eyes and her beautiful mouth was turned down at the corners. When he’d first arrived she’d been so full of herself, she’d practically glowed. But this morning she looked preoccupied and kind of sad.

“For now, I’ll try to keep Moonbeam inside during the day as much as I can and let her out at night to roam. Will that work?” she asked.

“Sure, but sooner or later they’re going to have to make some kind of peace.” He wanted to ask Sylvie what was wrong, but clamped his mouth shut. Neighborly was one thing, getting involved in a person’s life, another. He didn’t like that she was sad, though. He wished he could think of something to make her smile—she had a great smile.

“How’s it going with the house?” She shifted from one foot to the other. Twitchy like her cat.

His house. He smiled. “I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do. Matter of fact, I should get going. I have to drive to the city and buy some building materials today. Do you know anyone who would be interested in helping with the renos? I want to get started right away.”

“I suppose I could ask Cal. He was supposed to go away, but I think his plans have changed. But if he’s busy, he’ll know if anyone else is available.”

She made it sound like asking her brother was the last thing she wanted to do. Fine by him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to work with Sylvie’s brother, anyway. From the short exchange in the café, he could see her family watched out for her, and with him living right beside her, he didn’t want anyone on his case or looking too closely at him.

Sooner or later, someone was going to get wise to the fact that he had a criminal record. He didn’t want to make waves or draw attention to himself. He just wanted to fit in.

“Collina is small, in case you haven’t noticed. Tell one person you’re looking for a carpenter and everyone will know in the next half hour,” she continued.

Which meant it would be damn near impossible to keep a secret in this village. He’d known going in it was going to be hard. He wasn’t ready to give up on his dreams that easily.

He hesitated, wanting to say something to make them both feel better. “You...you look great.”

Her head shot up. “Excuse me?”

Adam backed away, a flush scorching the back of his neck. “Just...you know. You look nice. I gotta go.” He turned and sprinted inside his house. At the very least he’d given her something to laugh about. Mr. Smooth strikes again.

* * *

SEVEN HOURS LATER, Adam arrived home tired, but excited. He’d decided to put up with both his malfunctioning toilet and the rust-colored water, instead focusing his efforts on a new roof and windows before the cold weather arrived. Although it felt like it already had.

The hour drive from the city had taken twice as long thanks to the thick, syrupy fog that had rolled in after sunset. And yeah, he’d gotten lost again, but he’d realized pretty quickly and backtracked to the main road. Reducing his speed by half had made the long, twisty drive in the dark only marginally easier. No wonder Sylvie’s father had wanted her home before dark the other night.

He was thinking of Sylvie again.

He climbed out of the truck, and Romeo bounded out after him, immediately starting his circuit of their yard to mark his territory. Even though his mind had been occupied today with learning how to navigate the city and tackling all the decisions he had to make, Sylvie still slipped into his thoughts way too often.

There was no doubt about it—the less contact he had with her, the better.

He had a ton of other things demanding his attention, anyway. Like replacing the lightbulb over his front door. Unlike the city, the darkness here was complete, penetrating every corner of the night. Only the main street in the village had lights, and they hadn’t done much to dispel the fog on his way home.

There wasn’t much more to the village other than that one street, and a few side streets, like his, which led to or away from the ocean. He imagined the local fishing wharf and the café were the hot spots for socializing. Not that he planned to become a party boy. He’d partied so enthusiastically in his youth that if he never had another beer, he wouldn’t miss it. Okay, that was an exaggeration. He liked having a cold one once in a while, but he didn’t plan his life around drinking binges. Not like some of his family.

He felt his way cautiously through the fog to his front door, wishing he was as adept as Romeo at finding his way through the dark. Behind him, the restless surf raked over the round stones that made up the beach, the ocean sounding much closer at night.

When he first learned he’d inherited Gram’s summerhouse, he thought his mother was jerking his chain. Just a step from the beach in the picturesque fishing village, and filled with good memories of time spent with Gram, the house was exactly what he needed at this point in his life. Something he could put his heart and soul into. A place to call home.

It had taken him an entire day to summon the courage to call the lawyer’s number. If his mother was tripping on something and screwed up the message, he didn’t think he could face the disappointment. Hope was a brittle concept to him. But finally, he phoned, and two weeks later, he was the proud owner of an ancient, decrepit house far away from everything he knew.

Moonbeam appeared out of the mist and twined herself around his ankles as he shoved the door open with his shoulder. “It’s not all that nice out, so you can come in if you behave yourself. But give Rom a hard time, and you’re on your own. Understand?” The cat followed him into the house and padded into the kitchen. Adam laughed. At least she knew what she wanted. He’d get her some milk in a minute.

Juggling an armload of groceries, he flicked on the light and grinned as he deposited the food on the kitchen counter. He didn’t care if the rooms were so small you could barely sneeze in them, or that the whole house had to be gutted and just about everything replaced. It was all fixable. And it was all his.

A door slammed next door. When Moonbeam reappeared and stared at him, he ran his fingers along her spine before edging up to the window to look out. A man stood in Adam’s front yard, staring at his house. Adam had expected a few curious souls to come around, but not on such a gloomy night. When he heard the man talking outside the door, he wondered if there was more than one person, then remembered Romeo was still outside and swung the door open.