“That’s not the only thing that’s unlatched around here,” Wade said, fixing her with a burning glare. “Who in her right mind gives a sheep free run of her yard? I sweated for two days building a pen for that rampaging rack of lamb so incidents like this could be avoided.”
“You always blame Muffin!” With an indignant sniff, Bronwynn turned and took her sheep by the collar, coaxing her down off the hood of the Lincoln. “Poor Muffin. Some people would rather see you locked up and miserable.”
“Some people would rather see her in a crock pot.”
Wizzer chuckled at Wade’s dry remark and Bronwynn’s offended gasp. “I have a great recipe for herbed mutton and new potatoes,” he offered.
“Does it go well with fern fronds?” Wade asked casually.
Wizzer nodded, straight-faced. “If you have a wine that’s not pretentious.”
“Come along, Muffin,” Bronwynn said haughtily, unwilling to have her pet be the butt of any more jokes. “Let’s go back to your pen.”
“Closing the barn door after the horse has escaped?” Wade asked. He picked up the tattered remains of the cigarette carton and raised an eyebrow.
Bronwynn shot him a look of annoyance. “I don’t own a horse or a barn.”
As she strode stiffly for the backyard with Muffin at her heels, Wizzer leaned against the looted car and laughed from his belly up. Wade’s brows lowered, but the corner of his mouth quirked up in a reluctant smile. “Some day I’m going to send her to a class in remedial maxims.”
“Well,” Bronwynn said, forcing a smile while she fought against the reflex to gag. “They were certainly . . . unusual.”
“Nnn,” was the best response Wade could come up with. They had reached a truce over the sheep and car incident. Bronwynn had helped clean up the mess the animals had made on the upholstery of his car, and he had eaten fern fronds to make up for his nasty remarks about Muffin. He silently vowed never to say another word about that sheep for as long as he lived.
Bronwynn decided to give in to her true feelings.
She pushed her plate away. “Uck. Yuck. They not only looked like something the cat coughed up, they tasted like it too. I’m sorry I made you eat them, Wade.”
“Me too.” He pushed his own plate away on the top of the work island and automatically reached to his pocket for a cigarette, then remembered the sheep had shredded them. Instead of feeling impatient, he decided he hadn’t really wanted one anyway. Glancing around the kitchen he said, “This room is really shaping up, sweetheart. You’re doing a great job.”
A pleased flush bloomed on Bronwynn’s cheeks. The kitchen was beginning to look new. The cupboards had been stripped and repainted white. The walls had been sanded and sized and now awaited the pretty wallpaper that was still in rolls on a table. Ugly lineoleum had been removed, revealing a beautiful parquet floor that had required a good scraping and polishing. The room was coming to life with the promise of character and beauty. And Bronwynn had done much of the work herself—with help from Wade.
“I can’t take all the credit,” she said, reaching across the counter to twine her fingers with his.
“I provided a little muscle, that’s all,” Wade said, discounting his part. It really was Bronwynn’s doing anyway. If not for her resolve, Foxfire would have been nothing but a memory by now. Looking around at the half-finished kitchen, seeing the potential charm and style of the room, he felt no regret for the abandoned ski lodge plan. His gaze landed back on Bronwynn. “I owe you an apology. If it hadn’t been for your determination, this place would have slid the rest of the way into ruin. I misjudged you at first; I really didn’t think you’d stick it out. You proved me wrong. I’m proud of you.”
Her heart swelled with a warm full feeling again. It was love, wasn’t it? Surely it had to be the real thing if four words like
I’m proud of you
could make her feel so happy.
Suddenly her nose began to twitch. She sniffed. “Do you smell something funny?”
“You mean besides new paint, polyurethane, and marinated fern fronds?” he asked dryly. “No. What do you smell?”
Bronwynn sniffed again, puzzled. “I’m not sure—”
A racket in the front yard intruded on the discussion. There was the crunch of tires on gravel as a car drove in. Tucker barked tiredly from the porch, in accompaniment to the unmistakable sound of a sheep bleating.
“Sounds like company,” Wade said as they headed down the hall to the front door. “Too bad they didn’t get here sooner; we could have foisted fern fronds off on them.”
Bronwynn stepped out onto the porch and her smile froze on her face. Parked in front of her steps was a gunmetal gray Jaguar. Muffin had somehow managed to escape her pen and now stood with her front feet on the driver’s door of the car, staring directly into the face of Ross Hilliard.
A frown creased Wade’s forehead as he watched the driver emerge from the passenger’s side of the car. The man was tall with meticulously combed dark hair and expensively tailored clothes. He wore a petulant frown as easily as he wore his Canali original raw silk jacket.
“Do you know him?” Wade asked Bronwynn, who stood at attention beside him like a Doberman ready to attack.
“Oh, yes, I know him,” she said sharply, never taking her eyes off Ross’s face. “That’s the creep I almost married.”
Muffin bounded up the steps ahead of Ross and stood at the top bleating at him as if she fancied herself to be a guard dog. Ross scowled at the sheep. Muffin sniffed at him and stamped her feet.
“Bronwynn, what is this creature doing running around loose?” he asked in a Boston Brahman accent that was as dry as a good martini.
Bronwynn lifted her nose. It might have been dusted with freckles, but it was still patrician, and the gesture of icy disdain was unmistakable. “Muffin is my pet; she may run where she chooses.
She
belongs here. What’s your excuse?”
“Your sister expressed a certain amount of concern over your determination to stay away from home. Naturally I felt compelled to check up on you.”
“Get off it, Ross.” His explanation was so absurd, she almost laughed out loud. “About the only thing Zane would express to you would be a swift kick. What did you do, sneak through her mail to find out I was up here?”
“I refuse to dignify your question with an answer.”
She had to give him points for having mastered a hurt look. Not many people would have noticed the impatient lines that tightened ever so slightly around his mouth.
“Compelled to check up on me, were you? How thoughtful—nearly a month after the fact. What happened, Ross? Did Belinda get bored with you and run off with the tennis pro to Mazatlán?”
“You’re hardly the one who should be slinging barbs, darling.” He fixed his pale green stare on Wade but spoke to Bronwynn, anger accenting his speech. “Obviously the muck-raking press knew what they were talking about when they suggested you’d run off with another man. How long has this little affair been going on?”
Outrage made her pull her fists out of the pockets of her shorts. The urge to go for his throat was overwhelming. “You philandering pig! How dare you accuse me of running off with someone else, when you were panting after my own cousin behind my back. What were the two of you planning, Ross? Draining my trust fund, then a tidy divorce, or was I going to have an unfortunate accident on our honeymoon?”
“Really, Bronwynn,” he said with a huff. “You completely misinterpreted my relationship with Belinda. I could have explained everything. In fact, I came here to do just that. However, I can see now that you were only looking for an excuse to leave me at the altar so you could dash off with this common Casanova.”
Bronwynn was ready to start swinging. People
may have questioned her sanity from time to time,
but no one ever questioned her integrity. To have Ross do so was more of an insult than she could stand. While she was busy deciding where to hit him first, Wade stepped in front of her.
A red haze clouding his vision, he grabbed Ross Hilliard by his overstarched collar and backed him toward the steps. Never in his life had he felt such rage. The overbearing ass had hurt Bronwynn, and now he had the gall to be angry with her! Wade wanted to turn him inside out.
“I think you’d better leave, pal,” he said tightly.
In spite of his pallor, Ross tried to brazen it out.
“Or what? You’ll break my nose?”
“Actually I had something nastier in mind, but I’d rather not waste my energy on a worm like you.” With a little shove, he sent Ross stumbling down the steps. “For the record: Bronwynn didn’t come up here to be with me. She came up here to get away from you. Devious bastard that you are, you would manage to read something suspicious into it. You’re not trustworthy, so how can you expect anyone else to be? Bronwynn wasn’t cheating on you. You’re the one who blew it, Hilliard. Be a man and face up to your mistake instead of trying to blame someone else.”
In the fading twilight, Ross looked very much
like a sulky little boy, Bronwynn thought. How could she ever have believed she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him? It made her skin crawl to think of it.
“It would have served you right if I had run off with Wade,” she said. “But I wouldn’t stoop to your level. I couldn’t get that low if I were run over by a steamroller. And for your information, Wade is hardly a common Casanova. He’s a congressman.”
“Bully for you,” Ross said snidely.
Bronwynn tried to tamp down the urge to dismember him with her bare hands. “I’ll ask you to leave now, Ross.”
“You haven’t heard the last of me, Bronwynn,” he said in warning, jerking his tie straight. “I won’t take public humiliation lying down.”
“Really?” She arched a delicate brow above her blue eye. “I would have thought that your favorite position.”
“How amusing,” he said with a sneer.
“Just so you don’t have an excuse to come back here and harass me, I’ll give you back your suitcase.” She ducked inside the front door and returned
from the hall closet dragging Ross’s ruined bag. She heaved it down the steps, stood back, and dusted her palms. “I want you out of my life, bag and luggage.”
“Baggage,” Wade murmured under his breath. A broad grin took command of his mouth as he watched Ross’s face when the man looked at the expensive case and clothing Bronwynn had set ablaze.
“What—what have you done?” Ross asked, sputtering as he peered through the hole in the top of the bag. Slowly he pulled a custom-tailored shirt out and stared, aghast at what was left of it. Ross lifted his gaze to glare at Bronwynn. “My luggage. My clothes. How could you?”
“You’ve heard of being burned in effigy?” Bronwynn said. “Think of this as being burned in Gucci.”
“Can you believe the nerve of that man?” Bronwynn demanded, fuming as she paced the length of the parlor. She jammed her hands on her hips, then
crossed her arms over her chest, then dragged her hands through her hair. “Thought he could come up here and worm his way back into my good graces. Accuses me of humiliating him!
Boy, that’s rich. Arrogant, obnoxious . . . argh!”
Wade stood at the end of the new rose sofa and watched her, his temper cooling slowly. “He didn’t win any points for charm in my book. Why did you ever get hooked up with him, Bronwynn? If you were looking for a relationship like the one your parents had, I can’t believe you thought you’d find it with him. He’s the last man—”
He broke off as Bronwynn stopped and stood stock-still in the center of the room. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her mind as she tried to fit the puzzle pieces together.
Bronwynn scarcely dared breathe. She had caught the end of the thread that had eluded her, the one that would weave everything together. If she had been looking for a relationship like her parents had had . . . she wouldn’t have chosen Ross. Why had she chosen him?
Wanting desperately to help her sort it all out, Wade thought back to the day she’d told him about her parents. He could still see the haunted look in her eyes when she’d spoken of her mother letting go of life after the car crash that had killed her husband. He went to Bronwynn and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Ross was safe—”
“Because I knew I would never love him so much that he could destroy me,” she said softly, melancholy seeping through her. “Isn’t it strange how perfectly clear it all is now?” She closed her eyes and stepped into his embrace, resting her cheek against his chest. “Oh, Wade, what a terrible mistake I would have made for me and for Ross. What an insult it would have been to my parents. What they had together was so wonderful.”
He stroked a hand over her hair. “So wonderful it was frightening. You were protecting yourself, honey.”
Protecting herself from love. It wasn’t the way she wanted to live her life. It was better to live a short time with the kind of love that was deep and real than to live forever without it. Looking back on the last year, she could see it had been pale and passionless. She had been safe, but she hadn’t been alive, not in the way she had been since she’d come to Foxfire—since she’d met Wade.
Everything was in focus now—not just her past, but her present as well. And the future wasn’t just something she would drift aimlessly into. She could see what she wanted with startling clarity. It all began with the man before her. She wasn’t positive of his feelings, but she was sure of her own.
Slowly she lifted her head to gaze up at Wade. “Wade, I—” Suddenly she sniffed, her brows knitting in concern. “There’s that smell again. It’s kind of musty and acrid and it sort of smells like—”
Wade’s eyes went wide with realization. “Smoke!”
NINE
T
HERE WAS WATER
everywhere. It dripped from the ruined kitchen ceiling, ran down the wall that had been so carefully prepared to receive the new wallpaper—the new wallpaper that was sitting on the table in a puddle of water. Another thin puddle spread from the west outer wall about halfway into the kitchen, seeping into the parquet floor.
Bronwynn stood in the back doorway and surveyed the damage with a look of shock. She knew
the room directly above the kitchen looked even
worse, but she didn’t really care about that room.
It was a small guest bedroom she hadn’t been planning
to work on for a long time. The kitchen was the room that now made big tears swim in her smoke-stung eyes. She’d worked so hard in here—she and Wade.
A layer of grimy soot coated the once-pristine white cupboards and clung to the freshly sanded and sized walls. It dusted the abandoned dinner dishes and the food wrappers sitting on the work island, nearly obliterating the logo on a fresh box of Twinkies. It ran in muddy streaks down the outer wall.
While the water damage was limited to two rooms, the smoke had reached every corner of the house. It was even in the closets, Bronwynn thought dejectedly. Everything she had scrubbed and polished over the past few weeks would have to be scrubbed and polished again. Every floor, every wall, every ceiling, every pane of glass in the thirty-seven windows.
Not all the damage had been caused by the fire. The overzealous firemen had gone axe crazy on the back screen door. The thing hung drunkenly from one hinge, kindling held together by shreds of wire mesh. Upstairs there was a gaping hole in what had been the bedroom wall.
“Pretty simple to figure out,” the chief of the
Shirley volunteer fire department said in an unusually cheerful voice. A small man with a round face and neatly trimmed black mustache, it appeared he was being swallowed whole by his brilliant yellow fireman’s coat. His hat was too large and wobbled on his head as he spoke, making Bronwynn think of those toy ball players with the big bobbing heads her nephew collected. “Pete was using a torch on the outside trim today. The heat started the squirrel’s nest in the upstairs wall to smoldering, the fire spread through the wall. If you hadn’t caught it when you did, we could have had a doozy of a blaze out here tonight.”
“We smelled smoke.” Bronwynn murmured hoarsely. What had been a vague aroma earlier in the evening was now a thick stench that burned her nostrils and throat. She had heard someone in the large curious crowd that had gathered on her lawn say that smell would permeate everything in the house—draperies, clothing, her new sofa.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Wade said. He stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. She felt thin and frail to him as she took a shuddering breath.
“First Ross, now this.” Bronwynn turned and looked up at him, not that she could see him through the tears pooled in her eyes. Her lower lip trembled threateningly. “I’m not having a very good night.”
“Oh, poor baby.” Wade wrapped his arms around her as she fell, sobbing against his chest. There was a lump in his throat the size of Rhode Island. Trying to be gentle, he dragged her out the back door into the yard. She had gone corpselike in his arms and made no attempt to move her feet. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get some fresh air.”
The Green Mountain night air was cool and cleansing. Stars made diamond points of light in the black velvet sky. Now that the possibility of danger had passed and the fire was out, there was almost a party atmosphere in the yard. The firemen and the citizens of Shirley who had followed them up milled around, talking. Someone had a radio going. Someone else had brought a cooler of beer along. Muffin and Tucker worked their way through the crowd, looking for handouts.
Wade helped Bronwynn up to sit on the bed of her pickup, then sat beside her with his arm around her shoulders. “It’ll be all right, honey. We’ll get the mess cleaned up in no time. Pete told me he felt so bad about his torch being the start of all this, he’s going to do all the repairs to the walls right away.”
All Bronwynn could manage to do was sniffle pathetically. She was exhausted from the events of the evening. She had reached the end of her rope and was too tired, emotionally and physically, to dig her fingernails into the knot and hang on.
“Have a brownie, dearie,” one woman offered sympathetically. She had a Roman nose and was built like a Marine, but her eyes were soft and kind. “Rose Lubonovich,” she said in introduction, then lifted the brownie pan. “They have caramel in them.”
Bronwynn turned her head into Wade’s shoulder and began to cry. Everyone was being so nice, she didn’t think she could stand it much longer. She was trying so hard to be strong, but it was darn near impossible with everyone offering her their support. She wanted to sob until she melted down into a puddle like the one that was ruining her beautiful parquet floor in her charbroiled kitchen.
“I guess she don’t like caramel,” Rose said to Wade.
“I think she’s just a little overwhelmed by it all,” Wade said, stroking a soothing hand over Bronwynn’s hair.
“Oh, yeah, I don’t blame her a bit. You like caramel?”
He took a brownie to pacify Mrs. Lubonovich, then tossed it to Tucker after the woman had left. Kissing the top of Bronwynn’s head, he worked his handkerchief out of his hip pocket and offered it to her. “At least I’m prepared this time. I don’t have to rip your underwear.”
A watery chuckle escaped Bronwynn as she recalled the first time she’d met Wade, how he’d held her while she’d cried, and how he’d torn her slip so she could have a hankie. “You’re so sweet. You’re always right here when I need you. I think you’re the sweetest man alive, even if you do act like a porcupine half the time.”
Looking embarrassed, Wade changed the subject. “I think it would be a great idea for us to get away for a few days. You don’t really want to wash all those windows again. We can go somewhere while someone else deals with this mess.”
“Go somewhere?” she asked, raking her hair back out of her eyes. “On a minivacation? What about all that paperwork you keep making noises about?”
Wade shrugged and wiped a smudge of soot off her chin. “It’s not as important as you are.”
Touched beyond words, Bronwynn leaned up and kissed his cheek. She knew how seriously Wade took his career. If he was willing to put her ahead of it, it had to mean he had strong feelings for her. She had been on the brink of telling him she was in love with him when the fire had broken out. She wanted to tell him now, but her emotions were running so high and her strength so low, she was certain she couldn’t get through it without bursting into tears again.
Poor Wade had endured enough tonight. The last thing he needed was to have to sit through a profession of love delivered by a bawling woman who looked like a war refugee and smelled like a flame-broiled burger.
“Where do you want to go?” Wade asked, envisioning luxury accommodations, room service, and a Do Not Disturb sign. “Lake Champlain?”
Without the slightest hesitation Bronwynn said, “Camping.”
“Camping?” His voice was flat and unenthusiastic.
“Camping.”
“I had to be a sucker and give you a choice,” he said dryly. Camping with Bronwynn? Bronwynn set loose in the woods? He’d written the script for another disaster. On the other hand, the idea of having her totally to himself in the wilds definitely held a primitive appeal. Visions of afternoons spent swimming naked with her in some clear mountain lake, and evenings spent slowly making love between the flannel folds of a sleeping bag ran through his head. “Okay, camping it is. Tonight you’ll stay at my place.”
“No argument,” she said wearily, resting her head on his shoulder.
“You can take a long hot bath,” he said, then sniffed her hair. “In fact, I insist on it.”
Bronwynn managed to chuckle and elbowed his ribs.
Once the fire truck headed back into Shirley, the party broke up quickly. Mrs. Lubonovich left half a pan of brownies. Someone offered Bronwynn a thermos of hot coffee and the name of a professional cleaning service. Eventually the last of the neighbors drove away, taillights glowing red off into the quiet summer night.
Wade and Bronwynn sat on the pickup and watched as the dynamic duo of the raccoon world scampered into the kitchen through the tattered remains of the screen door.
Bronwynn sighed. “I’m too beat to chase them out.”
“There’s nothing left in there that’s fit to eat anyway.” He gave her shoulders a squeeze and winked at her. “Maybe they’ll discover the last of Wizzer’s fern fronds. That’ll cure them from going into the house. They’ll probably move to New Hampshire.”
They slid down off the truck and started for the front of the house where Wade’s car was parked. Bronwynn leaned against him, feeling safe and protected with his arm around her, her hip brushing his as they walked.
How would she have gotten through this night if it hadn’t been for Wade? She knew she would have gotten through the confrontation with Ross. She would have survived the fire. Experience had taught her that her strength ran deep. But it would have been an even bleaker evening if not for the man beside her. She felt as though the rug had been yanked from under her feet. Wade had caught her when she would have fallen hard. He had offered strength when hers had run out. He’d given her a hankie when she had needed to cry.
Wade Grayson was some kind of guy. Unless she was way off the mark, he was
the
guy.
* * *
“Are you out of your mind?” Wade demanded to know.
Bronwynn blithely ignored the thundering scowl he wore. As he stomped around her, she sat on the living-room floor, calmly and efficiently packing their backpacks with necessary supplies—extra socks, insect repellent, and three kinds of candy bars. She very discreetly slid Wade’s carton of cigarettes under the sofa. “No. I’m a little unusual, but I’m perfectly sane.”
He really didn’t have to laugh to express his disbelief, the look on his face said it all. Bronwynn paid no attention to him. Anyone would have thought by looking at her that her announcement had been perfectly reasonable, when, in reality, it was about as crazy as she was. Not for the first time Wade wondered how she could manage to exasperate him and arouse him all at once. No other woman he’d ever known would have suggested what Bronwynn had. He wanted to pick her up and shake her—then hug her and kiss her and take her back to bed and make love to her for the next month or so.
“You want to take that four-legged lint ball camping with us.”
“I won’t leave her here with strangers.”
“Then leave her with the guy you got her from.”
“Myron and Phyllis are in their RV on their way to a Knights of Columbus jamboree in Oswego, New York. Don’t you keep up on anything that goes on around here, Wade?”
“Leave her with Wizzer.”
“Forget it. Wizzer has a recipe for herbed mutton and new potatoes, remember?”
“Yes.” Wade smiled unpleasantly. “I do.”
“Muffin is going with us.”
“What if we run across a bear? She’ll be the first thing it goes for.”
“Nice try. Wizzer told me there hasn’t been a bear sighting around here in years. They’re all farther north.” She zipped the packs, stood up, and kissed Wade’s cheek. He scowled at her again. She smiled, thinking he was unbelievably cute when he was being owly. “The only bear I’m likely to encounter on this camping trip is you, darling.”
Wade ground his teeth as he watched Bronwynn carry the packs to the front door. The argument was pointless; he knew he’d give in. Still he had to admit he enjoyed sparring with her. It was fascinating to see how her completely skewed logic
worked. “Bronwynn, you can’t take a sheep camping.”
“You’re taking Tucker,” she pointed out, carefully leaning her backpack so it wouldn’t tip over.
“Tucker isn’t a sheep. He’s a dog. Dogs belong on camping trips.”
Bronwynn made a face. “Oh, Wade, you’re so traditional. Loosen up. If a dog can go camping, a sheep can go camping.”
An hour later, they stood in the deep mountain forest—Wade, Bronwynn, and Tucker—staring at Muffin, who had managed to entangle herself inextricably in a stand of cockleburs.
“This,” Wade said between his teeth, “is why you can’t take a sheep camping.”
Muffin was subsequently left in Wizzer’s care after Bronwynn extracted a promise from the hermit that he wouldn’t break out his recipe book. Wizzer gave them tea, directions, and some pastries made from the ground bark of birch trees. While Wade was poring over a hand-sketched map, Bronwynn took a neatly wrapped package from Wizzer and carefully tucked it away in her backpack.
It was afternoon by the time they made it to the spot Wizzer had told them about. It was exactly
what Wade had pictured when he’d thought of having Bronwynn all to himself in the wilderness. Working together with quiet efficiency, they pitched their tent among the trees on the edge of a small meadow.
When the campsite had been set to rights, Wade wasted no time luring Bronwynn into the pool of clear cool water that was nothing more than a wide spot in a small, fast-flowing river. The beauty of the scene made his heart stop. The stream rushed down a wooded hill, tumbling over rocks, spilling in a spray of white over a ledge and into the pool. All around was the richness of the forest—the trees with their dark trunks and brilliant green foliage, ferns, tiny wildflowers of white, pink, yellow, and lavender. And the jewel in this setting was Bronwynn—so beautiful and uninhibited in her nakedness, she might have been a creature of the woods.
They splashed and played in the water, laughing like children. They made love under the spray of the tiny waterfall. Wade couldn’t get enough of touching her, running his hands over her slick skin. She gave herself to him with no thought of reservation.
She loved him. He would know that before
they returned to civilization and the time for making
decisions. For now, she reveled in Wade’s lack of restraint, in the freedom of spirit that had seemed to be missing from his life when she’d first met him.