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  I stood a moment longer, tracing my finger over the delicate lines of the nest, marveling at their intricacy.

  "You like the clock?"

  I turned toward Fletcher’s voice. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching me with an expression only one step removed from a grin.

  "Of course," I responded with surprise. "It’s extraordinary." My mind returned to the day he had offered to buy me out—how he had so glibly referred to the inn as "broken down." How could he not understand what a treasure this was?

  I watched him thoughtfully. "Was this your mother’s clock?" I asked.

  He paused a second before answering. "Yes."

  "Was it a gift?" I pressed. Judging from the state of the white house, I had begun to doubt that the Blacks, though land rich, would have had the liquid wherewithal for such a purchase. But after seeing the box of suits, I was fairly certain who did.

  "Yes," he answered, his tone defensive again. "Any more questions?"

  He did have money. He had to, and lots of it. Money he obviously didn’t want me to know about.

  A thought struck. He had said that everything on the moving van was going to charity, but he couldn’t possibly intend to give those suits away. I couldn’t stand by and let him make such a costly mistake, even if it did mean confessing my snooping.

  "Your suits," I said in a rush. "You left a whole box of them in the van. You’d better get them before they’re packed in."

  His eyes narrowed. "What were you doing in the van?"

  "Nothing," I protested. "I just noticed the lid was off, and I thought I would put it back before whatever was inside got dirty—"

  "I’ll bet," he said sarcastically. He turned his eyes from me and exhaled. "For your information, I couldn’t care less about the suits. They’re going to Goodwill."

  I stared, unable to squelch the penny-pinching ethics my father had so laboriously drilled into me. "But they’re worth a lot of money! If you really don’t want them, you could at least take them to a consignment store—"

  "Goodwill can sell them," he interrupted. "Some guy will get a great bargain. It’ll make his day."

  I stared down at him another moment, then closed my eyes. The man was an enigma, and trying to figure him out was more than enough to drive me batty—even if Sheila’s wedding date was not still echoing in my brain, periodically pushing itself to the forefront like the worst moment of a bad dream.

  "Fletcher Carlisle!" a scratchy voice screeched suddenly from the hall below. "What in the devil do you think you’re doing?"

  I opened my eyes to see Fletcher whirl around. From my position on the landing, I couldn’t see who was yelling at him.

  "How many times have I told you not to wear those damned boots in here? There’s mud all the way down the hall and out the back! What are you? Ten years old? If you don’t sweep that mess up right now I’ll turn you over my knee if it cracks both my leg bones to do it!"

  To my amazement, Fletcher grinned from ear to ear. "Now, Estelle," he said warmly, stepping out of my field of vision. "You know you’ve missed my mud."

  I heard a thwack, which I strongly suspected to be dusting cloth on denim. A man’s laugh followed, deep and rumbling. The sound resonated through me, cheery and reassuring, and I wished desperately to hear it again. I began to creep down the stairs.

  "Missed cleaning up your mud off the tile every damned day? I should say not!" Estelle protested, though her was tone was clearly teasing now. "If this is the way it’s going to be till you get that house built, I’ll just lock the blasted doors myself and throw away the key."

  "You couldn’t stand it," he answered. "There would still be dust in here. Floating around. Building up. A little more every day—"

  "Oh, you!" I heard another thwack. "And how am I supposed to clean this place now? You’ve got your stuff all shoved up against the furniture. You promised me I’d have a pathway, and just look at that—I can’t get within three feet of that bureau!"

  "I’ll move it," he assured, his voice all charm. "Just for you."

  Estelle scoffed.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs, though neither of them seemed to notice me. Estelle reached up a bony hand and tweaked Fletcher’s stubble-covered chin. "I have missed you, you lout. I’d tell you I nearly cried when I heard you were back to stay, but then you’d get all full of yourself, wouldn’t you? So I won’t say a word. Except that if you think your sweet talking is going to make me forget that mud in the hall—"

  She stepped around him, saw me, and stopped cold.

  "Hello Estelle," I offered.

  She cast a questioning glance at him, then looked back at me. "You still here, honey?" she asked with forced warmth. "What for?"

  Fletcher stepped forward. "She’s not quite done with Sheila’s things," he explained. His voice was stiff and distant again, and my heart fell. The mere sight of me had soured both their moods.

  "She needs a place to stay for a few more days," he continued. "I told her it was fine. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have some more moving to do." He brushed past us and disappeared down the hall, leaving Estelle and me to stare awkwardly at one another.

  I took in her disapproving glare with curiosity, remembering how she had asked me what I knew about Fletcher, then warned me to stay away from him. Given her obvious fondness for the man, I suspected now that the warning had been delivered for his benefit, not mine. Which made sense, given that he had money. Clearly, in Estelle’s mind, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  Either Sheila’s tree, or Mitchell’s.

  "So Fletcher is moving back here," I stated, trying to wrap my mind around the concept. The things stacked at the inn weren’t going to California after all—they must have just come from there. He was clearing out the white house; Estelle had alluded to the building of a new one. Could he really be planning to build another house and live here, on his family’s estate? For good?

  A surge of hope spread through me, and my cheeks grew hot. If so, I thought with joy, it means he has no intention of selling.

  A broad smile erupted on my face, and without a word I left Estelle and headed after him.

  Chapter 12

  "Fletcher, wait!" I held the French doors open and called out to him, but though he ceased his trek across the meadow, he did not turn around.

  I said nothing more, but hastened out to meet him.

  "I need to talk to you," I explained, circling around to face him. "Can we sit down somewhere?"

  He exhaled with displeasure, his eyes looking anywhere but at me. "I’m trying to work here. Can it wait?"

  "No!" I demanded, so firmly I surprised myself. Maybe turning thirty really had done something to me. Not that I hadn’t always stood up for what I believed in, but the old Meara did have a tendency to soft-pedal when things got ugly. "This conversation is already overdue," I insisted. "You can walk away from me if you want to, but I’m still going to talk."

  "I don’t doubt that," he muttered, rubbing his nascent beard. His eyes met mine briefly, as if assessing my level of determination. Then he started walking toward the white house again. "Come on," he offered over his shoulder.

  I followed him around the side of the dilapidated house to where a collection of flat-topped sandstone boulders rose out of the steep slope. He moved toward the tallest one, then leaned against it with his feet crossed at the ankles and his arms crossed over his chest—his favorite defensive position. I chose a boulder uphill, so that I could sit down without having to look up at him.

  "Here’s the deal," I began. "I was honest with you about how I feel about this place. My little rant on the stump yesterday came straight from the heart. Except for one thing. I can’t fight you in court. I don’t have any money. I was only bluffing to buy time—so I could try and convince you not to sell to the developer."

  He made no response.

  "And if you had been honest with me when I asked you what your plans were," I continued in an accusing tone, "we
could have settled all this yesterday."

  He threw me a questioning glance.

  "I thought you wanted to sell!" I explained. "Everything you said at the meeting led me to believe that—that you wanted nothing to do with this place, that you just wanted to get back to California. But if you really want to keep this land intact and live on it yourself, that changes everything."

  His eyes narrowed. "Why should it?"

  "Is that what you’d like to do?"

  He didn’t answer.

  "Oh, for heaven’s sake!" I groaned, springing off my rock. "Do I look like some kind of real-estate barracuda?"

  Amusement sparkled in his eyes, and for a brief moment I thought I might have gotten through to him—that he was beginning to trust me. Then just as quickly, that abominable distant expression of his returned. But I was not so easily discouraged. Determined to put him at ease, I climbed up on the boulder he was leaning against and settled myself next to him. "Just answer me, please?" I encouraged. "What could you possibly stand to lose?"

  Our shoulders grazed, and he immediately swiveled away to face me.

  "Plenty," he retorted.

  I didn’t say anything more. I just looked at him. I was being honest, and I was certain that if he looked into my eyes long enough, he would realize that.

  After a few seconds of staring, something inside him did seem to break. He blew out a breath and turned his gaze to the ground. "Fine," he acquiesced. "You heard what Estelle said, anyway. Yes. I want to live here. I’ve always planned to come back and live here, and I have no intention of selling any part of this property to anyone. But that doesn’t matter, because other than my sister, I also have no intention of sharing it with anyone."

  His voice softened slightly. "I have nothing against you personally, Meara. But I do have plans. Plans that were in place long before my father died. Construction on the new house was supposed to start next week; now it’s on hold indefinitely. I’m not trying to cheat you out of anything else your birth mother might have left you, but I will contest your inheritance of this land. I have to."

  I studied him as he spoke, transfixed by the conflicting string of emotions that drifted across his eyes. Compassion. Anger. And as always, hurt. Then a series of images flashed across my own mind. How natural he had seemed hanging about the cabin in his mud-covered clothes. His pride in speaking of forestry. How nimbly he moved over the landscape.

  Now I understood. He wasn’t interested in the money the land might bring. Nor did he give a hoot about the Sheepsworth Inn, with its elegant—a.k.a., stuffy—milieu. All along, what he had really cared about was the forest. He was a certified, tree-hugging nature lover, just like me, and it was his passion for this place that I had seen in his eyes when he had tried to buy me out.

  Of course he hadn’t wanted me to know how much this place meant to him—not when his personal wealth made him a target for extortion. He might have moved to California for a while, but his heart had remained in the Laurel Mountains. He had always wanted to come back here, to raze the aging farmhouse and build a new one, perhaps originally as a gift for his parents. But his mother had died young. And his father—

  Oh, Mitchell. No. My stomach twisted, so much so that I put my hand to it. Mitchell must have known how important the land was to his son. No doubt he had intended for him to inherit it all along. Fletcher had purchased adjoining property; they had made plans for the new house together. But that was before Sheila.

  After Sheila, Mitchell had lost his mind. He had met her, courted her, and married her, all without telling his children she existed. He hadn’t bothered asking his lawyer for advice. He hadn’t bothered with a prenuptial agreement that would have protected his children’s interests in a divorce. Most importantly, he hadn’t bothered to update his will—an oversight that could have permitted the court to draw a line down the middle of the property and award half the Black legacy to a stranger.

  Mitchell had forgotten his son altogether. And until the morning Fletcher had found me sleeping at the inn, he had no idea that his father had failed to safeguard his inheritance. When he did find out, his father was already dead. You couldn’t yell at a dead person. No matter how betrayed you felt.

  I knew all about that one.

  "Fletcher," I said softly, a wave of guilt badgering me for being part of such a mess, even involuntarily. "I don’t want the estate. I never did. It belongs to you and Tia—not to Sheila, and not to me."

  He didn’t move for a moment. His gaze met mine, his eyes wide.

  "What does that mean?" he asked. "What do you want?"

  I smiled at him again. "It means I’ll sign whatever you want me to—returning whatever I would have inherited from Sheila. I don’t want anything from you."

  He stared at me for several seconds, another string of garbled emotions parading across his face. Disbelief, relief, gratitude, and joy all took their turn, but suspicion grabbed the first foothold.

  "I offered you a huge sum of money!" he exclaimed. "Why didn’t you take it?"

  I felt a sudden desire to deliver a playful punch to his perfectly shaped jawbone, but I settled for a chuckle. "My, but you do have a high opinion of me. Is it the hair? Because I am always getting mistaken for Satan incarnate."

  He almost laughed. But not quite.

  "I don’t want your money," I reaffirmed. "But I suppose I do want something. I’d be terribly grateful if—sometime—you would smile at me like you were smiling at Estelle just now. Because as I keep telling you, I don’t want to be your enemy. And this distant, scowling thing is getting really old."

  Despite himself or otherwise, he did smile then. And the effect was worth the wait. His face lit up with a grin so honest and heartfelt it warmed me to my toes, and as his eyes held mine, I saw a newfound fondness there.

  "I don’t know what to say to you, Meara. Except thank you."

  His deep, gentle voice rumbled through me, bringing with it a subtle, nagging pull that made my own smile widen, even as alarm bells rang. Whoa, I ordered myself. Steady.

  Women with better self control would think I was overreacting. But I had come to recognize these twinges of mine for exactly what they were: ominous forerunners of the same damnable, incredibly powerful pull that had thrice made me leap headlong into a man’s arms—desperate to hold him, desperate to make him happy, and heedless of the consequences to myself. I was not going down that road again. It had happened with Derrick, with Kevin, with Todd. In every case, it had started just like this. I saw something in a man that touched me. I saw hurts I felt I could heal. I offered comfort, and he took it. And took, and took, and took.

  I fell in love too easily, and always with men who wanted something different from life than I did. I wanted commitment; Derrick had wanted freedom. I wanted children; Kevin had wanted to be one. I wanted excitement and challenge; Todd had wanted his dinner on the table by five. I had vowed on my birthday to never again allow a man to use me, and that meant not letting my heart fall for anyone whom my brain had not thoroughly screened, analyzed, and pre-approved. No exceptions allowed.

  "No thanks are necessary," I answered, averting my own eyes. "I’m just doing what’s right." My heart sank, and I hopped off the rock. Or at least I tried to. But midway down I was surprised to feel Fletcher’s hands on my waist, catching me and breaking my fall. My arms rested on his as I landed, and as we stood that way, studying each other, an irrepressible flush of heat swept through me. I was attracted to him, there was no point in denying that. But I could stop myself there. Now that I was on to me, I could control the Florence Nightingale thing. I could, and I would.

  His eyes studied me back, and for a few tantalizing seconds I was certain the attraction was mutual. But then the lights in his eyes went out—as abruptly as if doused with water. He released me and stepped away.

  "Thank you again, anyway," he repeated awkwardly. "You’re welcome to stay at the inn as long as you want. My sister should be back in a few days. Perhaps you’d like to
meet her."

  "I would," I answered, feeling inexplicably sad. "I’d like that very much."

  He clapped his hands together—an uncharacteristic nervous gesture. "All right, then. I’d better get back to supervising these guys. I’ll—." He seemed at a loss for words. "I guess I’ll see you around."

  I nodded. His gaze lingered on mine only briefly, but in it I got another glimpse of the emotion most likely to be my downfall.

  Pain. Something was still hurting him. Something beyond his worry over losing this place. Something beyond, even, the sting of his father’s disregard.

  What could it be? And why did the mere sight of me seem such a catalyst?

  "Fletcher," I called after him, before I even realized I was doing it. "Would you mind if I used the kitchen at the inn? I have a hankering for my own cooking tonight. Perhaps you could join me—and bring whatever papers I need to sign."

  He stopped and turned, considering the offer for a seemingly endless period. "Sure, Meara," he said finally, his apprehension poorly concealed. "I’d like that."

  ***

  I stirred the pasta into the boiling water, regretful that the meal preparations were nearing a close. I enjoyed cooking. Having something to do with my hands was always therapeutic, but particularly so when my brain was heavy with thought. This evening, the burden was crushing.

  Settling my conscience over Sheila’s estate had been a relief, and a big one. But I had no shortage of angst with which to replace it. The revelations of the morning were once again foremost in my mind, and the voice that had taunted me all day seemed only to be getting louder.

  They were married when you were born. They still didn’t want you.

  The scenarios ran through my head in an endless chain, pummeling me in tandem.

  Maybe they did want you, but the county took you away.

  My stomach churned.

  Or maybe they thought they couldn’t afford you.