Vermont Valentine

Alone.

The knot around her was as thick as it had been before the meeting. But Jacob was nothing if not patient. One by one, the sugar-makers drifted off, and finally she stood on the low stage, stacking up the last of the literature she’d brought along.

“I thought it went well,” Bob Ford was saying as Jacob walked up.

“We got the information out there, anyway. What happens now will depend on what we find.”

“And how the lab tests turn out.”

Lab tests? Jacob’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward to stop just below the steps. “May I speak with you a moment?”

Celie glanced over at him, then at Bob Ford. “Why don’t you go on ahead, Bob? I’ll take care of this.”

“You want me to take that back to the Institute?” He nodded at the box of remaining leaflets and flyers.

“I’ll do it,” Celie said.

He nodded “I’ll lock the doors on my way out. Just make sure the lights are off and things are shut up when you leave.” He shook hands with them both and headed up the aisle.

Jacob looked at Celie. For the first time, they were eye to eye. Her gaze was speculative. She studied him, in fact, as though he were a puzzle that interested her.

Jacob shifted and nodded at the box of literature. “I can get that for you.” Action always came more easily to him than standing around. Or speaking.

“Thanks.” Celie watched him climb onto the low stage and pick up the heavy box. “So what do you think?”

“Of the talk?” Or of her? There was something about her, he thought, something appealing, maybe irresistible.

But that wasn’t why he was here.

“You were in my trees yesterday,” he said abruptly, knowing no other way than to be direct. “Were you inspecting them?”

The glint of humor in her eyes disappeared. “Not officially, no. I thought I was on Institute property. Something just caught my eye and I wanted a better look.”

“At what?”

Her pause was too deliberate. It made him uneasy. “Something interesting about the trunk.”

He felt the flare of impatience. “Don’t dance around the question. You were bent over one of my maples with a field kit when I walked up. What was that about?”

“Maybe nothing. I noticed the tree as I was driving by. Some things that are characteristic of an infested tree,” she elaborated. “I just wanted to take a closer look, but I didn’t realize it was your land.”

“I don’t give a damn about trespassing. I want to know what you saw.”

“I’m not sure.” She looked at him, her eyes troubled. “The bore holes were the right size but the wrong shape. I thought the sample I got out of the hole contained fungus but the test I did showed up negative.”

“Negative?” Relief made him lightheaded. “So it’s clear?”

“I’ll do a more comprehensive test tomorrow, once I get my lab set up. Of course, your dog knocked my vial into the snow before I got the top on, so the results aren’t iron-clad.”

“Murph can be a little overenthusiastic sometimes.”

“I’ll say. What is he, the love child of a lab and a Shetland pony?”

Jacob grinned. “Lab, great Dane and a little bloodhound thrown in for good measure, or so the vet tells me.”

“An interesting background beats a pedigree any time.”

“We’re nothing if not interesting around here.”

“I bet you are.” Killer smile, Celie thought as they stepped off the stage. A mouth that begged to be nibbled on and she was just the nibbler to do it. But it was the smile that lightened up that sober face, that made him approachable. His nose looked as though it had lost a battle once with something bigger or harder, but the resultant bump only made him look more interestingly rugged.

There was a strength to him, not just height and width of shoulder but some quality she couldn’t name. Certainty of self, perhaps. It was what had driven her to seek him out when she could have wandered to a seat by any of the men she’d been chatting with. They didn’t intrigue her.

Jacob Trask did.

They started up the aisle. “Speaking of interesting,” she said, “I’ve never seen a Feed ’n’ Read before.”

“I guess you’ve been by Ray’s. One of my favorite places.”

“So he was telling me.”

“He was telling you?” Jacob watched her walk ahead of him, the red trousers shifting in some very intriguing ways.

“He mentioned you.”

“If you got Ray talking, you’re good.” Then again, she’d somehow managed to get him talking, too.

“I got the impression he likes to do nothing but.”

“Not to strangers. Ray usually barks at strangers, if he talks to them at all.

“I guess I charmed him.”

Like she was charming him, Jacob thought. “I’m impressed.”

“Well, then I must be doing well. From what I hear, impressing you isn’t easy.”

“Sounds like people have been doing way too much talking, altogether.”

“Don’t worry,” she said as they neared the open doorway. “I’m a scientist. I prefer to collect data on my own.”

“Are you planning to collect data on me?” he asked, amused.

She glanced laughingly back over her shoulder at him. “I don’t know. Do you mind?” She started out the open door and then reached back in to shut off the lights.

Their hands landed on the switch at the same time.

It was just a touch, hand to hand, but the effects ricocheted crazily through his system. Vivid awareness of her fingers, cool and soft and tangled with his. For an instant, he felt her tense in reaction, then relax. It took him a moment longer than it should have to move his hand.

When he snapped the switch down, it enveloped them in a darkness broken only by the hallway light coming through the open door.

Her eyes were shadowed as she looked back in at him. He could see her profile, the quick tilt of her nose, the generous mouth. “Time to go.”

It might, Jacob thought uneasily, be long past time.

Chapter Three

Painted maple leaves in a blaze of autumn colors adorned the white sign at the side of the road. “Trask Family Farm and Sugarhouse,” read the forest-green letters. The long, low clapboard building beyond was presumably the gift shop; at the far end, the shingled roof jumped up abruptly to the sugarhouse vent.

Celie turned into the parking lot, navigating the mixture of rolled gravel and snow to nose her truck against the post-and-rail perimeter fence. She’d come on a whim, driven by the impulse to see Jacob Trask again. And Celie generally went with her impulses. Granted, it was a Saturday morning, a time most people took off, but she had a feeling Jacob Trask didn’t.

She already knew he wasn’t like most people.

At the start of the gravel path that led from parking lot to gift shop stood a tall, thick post with a galvanized sap bucket hanging from it, a little peaked hood snapped in place. Smart people, the Trasks. A person could make a living from selling maple syrup purely to distributors but a business that catered to both the wholesale and retail trade benefited from higher margins and greater diversity. Little touches like the bucket gave the feel of sap collecting. People would stop out of curiosity, stop for the novelty. They’d stay around to buy.

Besides, it was charming.

She climbed the steps to the broad veranda that ran along the front of the building. Of course, the incongruous part of the setup was the idea of gruff Jacob Trask at a cash register selling maple syrup in little metal log-cabin-shaped containers. Or serving up maple ice cream, she thought with a smile as she glanced at the cone-shaped sign beside the door.

Then she stepped inside and all she could think was that it was a shame she hadn’t been in the store a few weeks before when she’d been feverishly trying to finish her Christmas shopping. Her mother would have loved the quilted potholders and matching dish towels. Her sister the gourmet would have been even happier with the jars of lemon curd. She could have given her little nephew a plush stuffed moose and her father the illustrated history of the Green Mountains. And maybe bought one of the gilded maple leaf Christmas ornaments for herself.

The shop itself was a delight with walls and shelves of pine, floors of wide-planked hardwood, polished until they gleamed. Through an archway, Celie could see a bright room furnished with picnic tables. There, presumably, the currently absent staff served up maple ice cream and other snacks.

A hollow-sounding thump had her jumping. She turned to look around the deserted shop. “Hello?” She stepped forward and glanced into the café. Nope, no one there, either. Which was strange. Granted, it was just opening time and hers was the only car in the lot, but still…

The thump sounded again, this time, closer at hand. Scanning the shop, Celie suddenly saw what looked like a closet door shake in time with another thump. Before her astounded eyes, the doorknob rattled and rotated just a bit. It was either a poltergeist or…

A very human voice spat out a succinct curse. “Where the hell is a third hand when you need one?” someone demanded.

Fighting a smile, Celie reached out for the handle.

And opened the door, only to see a stack of teetering cardboard boxes, and stairs leading down into what was, presumably, a basement. “Bless your heart,” a voice said from behind the stack and stepped forward.

The cardboard ziggurat wavered, in imminent peril of falling. Celie reached out a hand. “If you don’t stop, you’re going to lose them.” Reaching out, she took the top two cases—foam cups and paper napkins, if the labels were to be believed—and like magic, the head and shoulders of a silver-haired woman appeared from behind them. A woman with a vaguely familiar face.

“Just set them on the floor there,” she directed.

“No way. Let’s just take them in where they go. The café?”

“Good guess.”

Celie headed across the gift shop and under the arch to the cheerful café with its red-and-white-covered picnic tables. At the entrance to the ice-cream counter, she set down her load. “Here all right?”

“More than. You’re a dear.” The woman set down the boxes. “I’m Molly Trask,” she said, holding out her hand.

Of course. Celie could see the resemblance now that she looked, the high cheekbones, the arch of the eyes. Instead of black, Molly Trask’s hair was silver, a chin-length bob that curved along her jaw and made her eyes look even bluer.

“Celie Favreau, at your service.”

“More than you know. One of these days I’m going to get that door fixed. It was supposed to stay ajar.”

“It probably got sucked shut when I came in,” Celie said apologetically.

“Not your fault. I should learn to take more than one trip. I just hate taking the time.”

Celie winked. “I’m the same way. You know those plastic grocery bags with the looped handles? I’ve been known to hang five or six of them on each hand just to get everything in the house all at once.”

Molly laughed. “Separated at birth?”

“Could be.”

They grinned at each other.

“Can I help you with anything?” Molly asked.

“Actually, that was going to be my question to you. Need anything else brought up?”

“Nothing I can’t get later.”

Celie shook her head. “Separated at birth, remember?”

“Customers aren’t supposed to help out.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I’m not a customer. I actually work for the government, so I really work for you.”

“Ah, so you’re the one.”

The one? “What do you mean?”

“The one who spoke at the meeting last night. Jacob filled me in a little. He left a few things out, though,” she said, looking Celie up and down.

Celie stared at her, nonplussed. Somehow, she had a feeling Molly wasn’t talking about the maple borer. “Well, I don’t…I’d be happy to send you some information.”

“Clearly I’m missing out on all kinds of interesting information at these meetings,” Molly said, with what might just have been speculative amusement.

Before Celie could decide, the door to the sugarhouse opened abruptly and she heard Jacob’s voice. “Hey Ma, did you still want me to bring up—” He stopped short, staring at Celie.

He wore jeans and a blue plaid shirt hanging open over a gray T-shirt. His hair was tousled, as though he’d had his hands in it, his jaw dark with the previous day’s growth of beard.

Jesus, he was a gorgeous man.

Celie smiled at him. “Hello.”

Jacob didn’t like being caught flatfooted. He liked things to be predictable, consistent. So why was it that the first emotion he felt after surprise at seeing Celie was pleasure? That, and the desire to be able one of these days to look his fill at her. “What brings you here?”

Celie rummaged in her pocket. “Is that dog of yours around?”

“Murph?”

“The Shetland pony.”

Molly smothered a snort of laughter.

“He’s at my house. We don’t let him in the sugarhouse, and it’s too cold for him to be out back this time of year.”

Celie looked disappointed. “I brought him some cookies.”

“Cookies?”

“Doggy biscuits. I stopped by Ray’s this morning and he was running a special.”

“Well, you’ve just earned Murphy’s lifetime devotion,” Molly observed.

It was a small thing, a goofy thing, but Jacob found himself charmed. They always said the first way to a woman’s heart was through her children. What did it say about him that he was so ridiculously tickled at her kindness to his dog?

“Why don’t you take her back to the house so she can give them to Murphy herself?” Molly asked casually.

Jacob blinked. “What about those boxes?”

“Oh, I got the important ones. Celie helped me.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised. She had that way about her. Two seconds after ‘hello,’ she somehow seemed to become everyone’s best friend.

The front door opened and a trio of women came in, chattering and unbuttoning their coats. “Okay, out.” Molly made shooing motions. “I’ve got customers. Take Celie to see the Shetland pony. Unless you want to start giving tours,” she added.

One of the women turned to him. “Oh! You offer tours?”

“Let’s go say hi to Murph,” Jacob said hastily.

“I was wondering how you fitted into the gift-shop thing,” Celie said as they stepped out into the crisp January air.

“I don’t. That’s Ma’s territory. My job is sugar-making.”

“Selling potholders not your thing?”

Jacob slipped on his buckskin jacket. “Buddying up to anyone who walks through the door isn’t my thing.”

“Ah. Doesn’t work with your image.”

He gave her a narrow-eyed glance. “I don’t have an image.”

“Sure you do. Town curmudgeon, everybody tells me. I think you like it. Of course, you’re not very good at staying in character, it seems to me. So I’m thinking maybe it’s actually all just a put-on for the gullible.”

He glowered at her. “Maybe I should just take those biscuits myself.”

“No way.” She shoved the bag deep into her pocket. “I bought them, I get the doggy devotion. So where’s your house?”

“Oh, a half mile or so away, down that road.” He gestured toward a curving path that led through the trees. “Close enough to walk, if you don’t mind the cold.”

Celie slipped on her gloves. “I like being outside. Besides, I get to look at trees.”

“For signs of the scarlet-horned maple borer?”

“No, I just like looking at trees.”

“Do you ever stop?”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “No. Do you?”

“Got me there,” he admitted.

The dry snow squeaked under their boots as they walked. There was something timeless and calm about the columns of the trees rising around them, sugar maples, red maples, the occasional ash, birch or beech. A light dusting of snow the night before had frosted all the branches so that the whole world felt wrapped in a white muffler.

“So why do you live out on your own in the woods instead of in that big farmhouse? Does your aversion to people extend to your mother?” She gestured at the three-story white clapboard house with its curving porch and carved posts.

“That’s the Trask family house.”

“Home to millions of Trasks everywhere?”

“Enough of them,” he said shortly.

“Relax, I was only teasing.” She pushed at his shoulder a little. “I think it sounds nice.”

“It’s where I grew up but I wanted my own space. Ma’s the only one living there now.”

“So what do you have, a hermit’s cave in the woods?”

He gave her an amused look. “See? My reputation’s useful.”

“Like I said, I think your reputation is a pose. You’ve got everyone fooled into thinking you’re this crusty fellow, when all you really want is not to be bugged by boring people. Isn’t that right? Not that I blame you, of course.”

He blinked at her. “Shouldn’t I be on the couch for this, doctor?”

Celie laughed. “Sorry. I talk too much sometimes. And it’s not always what people want to hear.”

“It’s easy to tell people what they want to hear. Being straight takes something more.”

“I’m so glad you approve.” Her lips twitched. “So you don’t live in a hermit’s hut. Just where do you live?”

“There’s another place out here. My great grandfather’s brother wanted to get away from the family house, too. He built a home of his own.”

Celie stared at him. “Your great grandfather’s brother? How long have you people owned this place, anyway?”

“Since 1870. My great-great-grandfather, Hiram Trask, bought it when he came home from the Civil War.”

“What did he do, pick up a few souvenirs on his way home?”

“He went to war in the place of a mill-owner’s son from Burlington. In trade, he got a nice chunk of change. He’d planned to go to Europe on it, or maybe South America.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Little jaunts like Antietam kind of take it out of a man. Hiram came home, bought up as many acres of maples as he could and just hunkered down. I guess he figured he’d seen as much of the outside world as he needed.”

“So you come by it honestly,” she commented, straying to the edge of the road to brush her fingers over the smooth, bright trunk of a birch.

“I suppose. In every generation there’s been a Trask who keeps to himself.”

“And in every generation has there been a Trask who’s known as the town grump?”

His lips twitched. “Maybe.”

“Then I guess you fit right in. So how do you know so much about them?”

“We’ve got all their journals in the main house. I went through them the year I was sixteen.”

“Summer reading project?”

He shrugged. “I thought I should know more about where I came from.”

She could imagine them coming to life on pages covered in painstaking copperplate. Not distant ancestors but sons and brothers, fathers and uncles, real men with real desires and torments. Somehow, it didn’t seem stifling the way her family’s dusty history did. It felt warm, grounded. Maybe it was part of what made Jacob seem so sure of who he was. “So was the land already in sugar maples when Hiram bought the place?”

“Some. He bought sections of two or three different sugarbushes and tied them all together with open land that he planted himself. He kind of made a life’s work of it.”

She could imagine him, coming back from chaos and carnage to patiently build an ordered retreat from the world, a place of safety and security, a place where knowledge and planning could take the place of luck and survival.

“The trees look like they were laid out by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“Hiram had a whole journal just on maple-farming techniques. Pages of it. He read everything he could get his hands on. Sent his son, Ethan, to school for it.”

“The one who built your house?”

“No, that was his brother, Isaac, who stayed on the farm.”

“By choice or because he had to?”

“A little of both. Education wasn’t cheap back then but his journals sound like he was happiest keeping to himself. He courted a woman for years but she wound up marrying a guy from Boston. Didn’t like the idea of living out in the middle of nowhere, I guess.”

“I imagine it’s an acquired taste,” Celie agreed.

He turned to look at her and his deep-blue gaze jolted her system. “I don’t know that you can acquire the ability to be happy in yourself. You’ve either got it or you don’t.” They rounded a curve and started into a long avenue of oak trees that led to Jacob’s home.

And Celie caught her breath.

She’d expected a small clapboard farmhouse, not this three story Victorian edifice, all gables and gingerbread and carved pillars and railings. The paint job alone was a work of art, a half dozen tones of umber and green and gold that both stood out and melded with the landscape around it. “My God, he built this himself?”

Jacob nodded. “It took him eight years, working on it every minute he wasn’t in the sugarbush. He built it for the woman he hoped would be his wife. She was from Montpelier.” They started down the tree-lined drive.

Celie’s brow furrowed. “Montpelier? That was a long way to go back then. How did they meet?”

“She came to a maple-sugar-on-snow party at the farm. Isaac fell for her hard. Sarah Jane Embree. I think she was fifteen, he was twenty-four. Her father was a lawyer, big in the Montpelier social set.”

The oaks rose to either side, the bare branches curving over their heads. In summer, she thought, they would make a full canopy, leafy-green and glorious. “How could he have courted her? I’d think the father would have kept a farmer as far away from his daughter as possible.”

“Don’t forget, though, Isaac had half of a very prosperous farm coming to him. Embree hedged his bets. He told Isaac he could court Sarah Jane with the intention of marriage, but that her husband had to be able to keep her in the style she deserved as an Embree. Isaac underlined that part in his journal. The style she deserved. The best of everything.”

“Including a mansion.”

Jacob nodded. “That didn’t stop Isaac, though. He just put his head down and started building. Spent every penny he had on materials—marble sinks, crystal door knobs, Tiffany stained-glass windows. He even sold off some of his part of the sugarbush to finance it. He figured if he just worked hard enough, just persisted, he’d win her hand.”

“It didn’t work, though.”

“No. He had it just about finished by 1906—mahogany furniture, running water, even electrical power from a generator out back. She’d gotten engaged by then to her brother’s school friend. No way a house in the woods could compete with Beacon Hill. I still have the ring he bought her.”

“It must have shattered him,” Celie murmured, looking up at the house, lonely even in its splendor.

“He never got over it. Never looked at another woman.”

“She didn’t care for him at all, did she?”

Jacob shook his head. “Isaac thought they had an understanding. The Embrees were just hedging their bets. I tracked down their papers the summer I read the journals. Edwin didn’t even mention Isaac. Sarah Jane’s had a few entries, mostly about how he was always pestering her with plans for the house when all she cared about was the social scene. I don’t think she ever even saw the place.”

“It was a quest. Slay the dragon and you get the maiden.”

“Kind of like that. But when he completed his task, the maiden was gone. Not even his family knew what he was building out here. He kept it a secret.”

“He was obsessed.”

“He was in love,” Jacob said simply.

It seemed unbearably sad to her. “She wasn’t for him.”

“Didn’t matter. He really believed if he just worked hard enough, offered her enough, he could win her.”

“But a house can’t do that. Things can’t do that. All it takes is the right person, if they really love you.” She glanced at Jacob. And she felt a sudden dizziness, as though the world had tilted on its axis. Their gazes met and tangled and then his eyes were all she could see, endlessly blue, endlessly deep, like pools she might fall into, sinking forever into him.