Cold River (11 page)

“My brothers shouldn’t have to worry about me. Neither should you.”

“Is it okay for anyone to worry about you?”

“Sean…” Hannah cleared her throat, feeling more than a little hot now. “It’s been a long day. I’m not sure I trust myself with you.”

His eyes sparked. “Does that mean you want me to kiss
you or you don’t want me to kiss you?” Before she could respond, he stood up straight and winked at her. “I won’t make you answer.”

She pushed the trunk with one foot, feeling ragged, wishing she had gone upstairs to her apartment and not answered the door for Jo and Elijah after all, just locked herself in her bedroom and studied for her bar exam.

She
did
want Sean to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him. She’d wanted it since she was fourteen years old, and it had been crazy then and was crazy now. They’d both know it come morning. This was adrenaline and circumstances at work.

She’d been impulsive enough for one day.

“I need to see Devin and Toby. I’m having dinner with the Robinsons tonight. I probably should cancel.” With her uninjured hand, she caught Sean’s fingers into hers and gave him a quick smile. “
Long
day.”

She ran for the stairs. Sean didn’t stop her, and, despite her hike up and down Cameron Mountain and the incident at Four Corners, she didn’t break her stride on the two flights of stairs to her apartment.

By the time she reached her apartment, all the hounds of hell might as well have been after her. Her head was pounding and she was breathing hard, her heart racing, her stomach churning.

Having Bowie there—the competition and open animosity between him and Sean—must have prompted Sean to touch her that way. Talk to her that way.
Look
at her that way.

She caught her breath and raked her uninjured hand through her hair, coming up with, indeed, cobwebs. What kind of fool was she? Of
course
cobwebs in the hair weren’t sexy. Sean had simply thought of something to say and said it.

She entered the living room. It had a working fireplace
and windows that looked out on the village green with its white Christmas lights shining in the black night. Ever since Devin had found Drew Cameron’s body on Cameron Mountain, and in particular since his own encounter with Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall, Devin had seemed unfocused and rootless, as if he were caught between his past and his future.

No wonder he’d jumped at the chance to move to Southern California.

Hannah found Toby hunched over a mountain-biking magazine at the kitchen table. “I thought you were working on your take-home test,” she said.

“It’s all done.” He looked up at her. “Dev told you?”

“Yes,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. “He told me he’s heading to California, too.”

Toby leaned back in his chair. “I only sort of knew. I kept it to myself in case it didn’t work out.”

“That I understand.” She hesitated. “Are you sure about going to California yourself? You have so much to do before you graduate.”

“I’m finishing my last college application tonight. If I don’t do this now, when?”

Her throat felt constricted. For the past seven years, she’d been responsible for her two brothers. She’d been their sole legal guardian. She’d worked and sacrificed for them and laughed with them and cried with them. They were a family.

She’d bought Toby his first mountain bike.

“I don’t have to go,” he said in a small voice.

“No—no, Toby. It’s okay. You’re right. If not now, when? It’s a great opportunity.” She found herself blinking back tears. “You and Dev need to get on with your own lives.”

“Hannah, we don’t want to you to feel bad—”

“I’m studying for the bar. I’ve got the café. Friends.” She
smiled through her sudden anxiety. She’d never been apart from one or both of her brothers for more than a few nights. “I’ll be fine.”

“What about Bowie?”

“Bowie? He’s a stonemason I grew up with. That’s all, Toby.”

Toby got up from the table. “You could come out to California. I have that big race at the end of January.”

“I’d love to see you race. If I can make it happen—I will, okay?”

“You’ve put your own life on hold long enough for us,” Toby said.

“That’s not how I’ve looked at things.”

“I know, but maybe it’s time you did.” He gave her a crooked grin. “You’ll be turning gray before you know it.”

Hannah looked down at the books and papers on the table. Hers, Toby’s. Devin had gotten halfway through one college application before he quit, saying he’d decided to postpone college for at least a year. Was he going to California because Toby was? Or because it was what he himself wanted to do?

Or because handsome, rich, rugged Sean Cameron had offered him a job?

Devin came into the dining room, looking sheepish. Hannah felt a stab of guilt. He should be excited about his trip. She didn’t want to be a wet blanket and have either of her brothers put their dreams on hold because of her.

Wind rattled the old window by the table. She could feel a cold draft and forced a smile. “I don’t blame you for wanting to check out sunny California.”

She headed for her bedroom. In warm weather, with the windows open, she could hear the river. Now she could only hear the clanking of the ancient heating system. She had no desire to go out into the cold night and be sociable, but
Devin’s news helped motivate her not to back out of dinner with the Robinsons. She needed to prove to her brothers—and to herself—that she had a life.

And that she was still safe in Black Falls.

“B
owie hasn’t been in since the fight,” Liam O’Rourke said from behind his rough-wood bar. “I expect his probation officer wouldn’t want him here.”

“Do you?” Sean asked. He hadn’t gone to the lodge after Hannah had run upstairs. Instead he’d walked down to O’Rourke’s.

Liam shrugged, his shoulders as powerful as his cousin’s. “I stopped wanting or not wanting anything concerning Bowie a long time ago. I stay neutral. He does what he does. Always has.”

“Do you like having him back in town?”

“Neutral. No opinion.”

Sean stood up from the stool. He’d had only two sips of his beer. His head was already screwed up enough with his reaction to Hannah in her cellar. It wasn’t thinking about kissing her that he regretted. It was
not
kissing her—a line of thinking, he knew, that was the path to frustration.

“What about Bowie and Hannah?”

“I’ve never understood their relationship.” Liam reached for Sean’s glass. “She saw my uncle in action. Bowie’s father. He’s a great guy to the rest of the world, but he was
rough on Bowie. A bad drunk. When your father’s against you, maybe you feel like the whole world’s against you.”

“Does Bowie blame Hannah for his arrest—for being here that night, then for showing my father where to find him?”

“Anything’s possible. I don’t claim to know how Bowie thinks. All I know is it’s a good thing you grabbed her that night. Those guys weren’t going to stop. Who knows how far they’d have gone with it. With her.”

“Bowie should just have walked out of here.”

“The insults were tough to listen to.”

Sean noticed his friend hesitate. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I don’t know.” Liam scratched the side of his mouth, awkward now. “I haven’t seen those stupid bastards in here since March. Derek Cutshaw. That guy’s a prick. I don’t know if he was just talking about Hannah.”

“Who else?”

Liam dumped Sean’s beer into the small sink in front of him, below the bar. “Doesn’t matter.” He looked up. “Was that trip out here in March the last time you saw your father?”

Sean nodded.

“I’m sorry, Sean. I’m really sorry.”

He left the bar, buttoning his coat as he walked down Main Street to the building he owned and rented out to Hannah Shay and her brothers. The gallery on the west end of the first floor was struggling. Three Sisters Café was thriving. His father had been surprised by the café’s immediate success. He’d never expected there were enough people in Black Falls who’d keep such a place in business.

He dialed Elijah. “Police done at the crypt?”

“All set. They didn’t find anything that disputes either Hannah’s or Bowie’s story.”

“Elijah, was it an attack?”

“It wasn’t a raccoon or a ghost,” his brother said.

“Kids? Could Bowie have walked into the middle of
a drug payoff? Could he have been in the middle of one and Hannah—”

“No evidence of either.”

“Does Jo believe Hannah told her the truth?”

“The truth,” Elijah said, “just not the whole truth.”

“Meaning she stuck to the facts and didn’t tell Jo what she’s thinking.”

“Hannah never tells anyone what she’s thinking. Keep that in mind, brother.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Sean said, and disconnected.

He stood on the shoveled, sanded sidewalk and watched Hannah pull open the heavy front door and trot down the stone steps. She had on a simple black wool dress coat, her skirt even longer, her flat-heeled boots suited to a walk on a cold Vermont winter evening. She wasn’t wearing gloves or a hat, her fair hair not pulled back, shining in the glow of the Christmas lights.

She handed him his scarf. “I forgot to return this,” she said nonchalantly, as if seeing him on Main Street was an everyday occurrence and nothing had just happened between them.

“Go ahead and wear it.” He wrapped the scarf around her neck. Her bruised cheek wasn’t badly discolored, and the swelling appeared to be no worse. “I’ll walk over to the Robinsons’ with you.”

“You’re coming to dinner?”

He smiled at her slightly stricken look. “I am.”

She didn’t seem tired or self-conscious as they walked up the street. They turned onto a side street and crossed a covered bridge, rebuilt after the original had come apart in a flood fifty years ago. The Robinsons’ Greek Revival house was another twenty yards past the river. Its white wooden fence was draped with holiday greenery. Multicolored lights sparkled on a spruce tree in the front yard.

“Is Judge Robinson helping you prepare for the bar exam?” Sean asked.

“He’s bugging me to get a study partner and cut back on work at the café. He’d like me to quit and devote myself to studying full-time.”

“He’d put you through your paces in a courtroom, wouldn’t he?”

“Without a split-second’s hesitation.”

“Are you looking forward to becoming a full-fledged lawyer?”

“Most days. Some days I dread it.”

“Is today a dread day?”

“In more than one way,” she said half to herself, then angled a smile at him. “I mean my brothers and their California adventure in addition to figuring out my career. I don’t mean you, Sean.”

“Hannah, I don’t want to add to your stress—”

“It’s okay,” she said.

He almost told her he didn’t believe the insults about her sex life that Derek Cutshaw and his friends had shouted at O’Rourke’s back in March, but he figured that would just remind her of them, as well as be an admission that he’d been thinking about that night himself.

He followed her up the steps to the Robinsons’ front door. Statues of Dickens-style carolers—fully dressed in Victorian garb—stood next to the glass front door. Ginny Robinson was known in town for her elaborate Christmas decorations.

Hannah rang the doorbell, positioned below a simple pinecone wreath. “I’ll have more time and space to study with Devin and Toby off in California,” she said. “I could be admitted to the bar before Toby gets back.”

“Then on to becoming a prosecutor?”

“That’s the plan. We’ll see what happens.”

Everett Robinson opened the door. He was in his early
sixties, a stocky man with a gray beard and thinning gray hair in perpetual need of a trim. His wife, a homemaker, was generous and patient with her husband’s sometimes black moods after twenty years on the bench and forty years practicing law.

“Help, help,” he said cheerfully, leading his guests into the comfortable house. “Ginny tried new, heart-healthy hors d’oeuvres, and I don’t want to be the first to take a bite.” The judge stood back and frowned at Hannah. “Good heavens. What happened to you?”

She smiled. “I learned the hard way never to get into a fight with a rock.”

He didn’t press for more details. Given his position, he would easily be able to find out about the incident at the cemetery. Hannah started to pull off her coat, but Sean helped her, careful of her bruised wrist. He then shrugged off his own coat and hung both on a coat tree surrounded by the Robinsons’ winter gear.

The judge led his guests down a hallway decked out in Christmas decorations and into a comfortable living room with a fire in a brick fireplace and more Victorian carolers on the mantel. Lowell and Vivian Whittaker had already arrived and were seated opposite each other by the fire. Ginny Robinson, who barely skimmed five feet, joined them with a silver tray of marinated mushrooms, sardines, toasted pita points and a few other things Sean wasn’t sure he wanted to identify.

“Looks wonderful,” Hannah said with a sideways smile at the judge.

He grinned at Sean. “See what a good prosecutor she’ll make? Fearless.”

Ginny glanced at Sean, her eyes wide with surprise as she turned to Hannah and mouthed something that he suspected amounted to
“Is he your date?”

Hannah smiled and shook her head.

Everett settled into a worn leather chair. Sean helped himself to a mushroom and a glass of wine and sat on the couch. Hannah stayed on her feet. He sensed her restlessness and wondered if she might bolt at any moment. The judge lifted a glass of wine from a nearby side table. He had a friendly, open face, but the way he narrowed his eyes on his protégée was a reminder of the keen mind behind them and the many tough decisions he’d had to make in his long career.

Vivian Whittaker nibbled on a sardine on a pita triangle. “Hannah, your face—did you have an accident at the café?”

Lowell leaned forward with his wine. “I met with Bowie O’Rourke a little while ago. He’s doing some work for us. He told me about the incident in the cemetery. He feels terrible. Vivian, I didn’t think to tell you.”

“What incident?” she asked sharply.

Her husband relayed Bowie’s rendition of what had happened. The judge sat back, listening intently, Sean thought, but saying nothing.

When Lowell finished, his wife was visibly pale. “I don’t know if I want Bowie on the premises now.”

“Let’s just see how it goes tomorrow,” Lowell said quietly.

Everett sipped his wine. “What work are you having done?”

“We’re repainting the guesthouse and having some minor repairs done,” Vivian said. “Both apartments. The one where Nora stayed and the one where…” She held her hors d’oeuvre in midair. “Where that killer stayed. Kyle Rigby. Melanie Kendall stayed with Thomas Asher in one of our guestrooms. I’ll tackle it next. I don’t know if fresh paint will help, but it can’t hurt. But if Bowie…”

“He’s considered one of the best stonemasons in the area,” Lowell said.

Sean noticed that Everett Robinson’s incisive gaze was
on Hannah. “Bowie’s had his struggles,” the judge said, “and he knows he has to stay out of trouble. He’s still on probation.”

“We heard about the bar fight in March,” Vivian said, turning to Hannah. “You were involved, weren’t you?”

“I was there,” Hannah said simply.

Vivian shifted her attention to Sean. “You and your brothers were there, as well, weren’t you?”

Sean nodded and started to change the subject, but Lowell interrupted him, addressing Hannah. “We heard that some drunk young men insulted you. Of course, that’s no excuse for Bowie bloodying the perpetrator, but one can understand. You and Bowie go way back. I walk out to where you grew up almost every day when we’re up here. It’s so peaceful.”

“It’s beautiful,” Vivian said, “but I can’t imagine being a child there. Were you bored?”

“Never,” Hannah said, without any hint of defensiveness.

Ginny announced dinner, breaking the tension, and they all drifted into the dining room. Sean liked the Robinsons and had nothing against the Whittakers, but he wished he hadn’t come to dinner but instead had whisked Hannah up to the ridge and watched the stars come out with her. He didn’t know if it was the aftereffects of being alone with her on the mountain, or charging after her when she was in danger at the crypt, or finding her among the cobwebs in the cellar, but he was having a hard time maintaining any objectivity with her.

But who was he kidding? It’d started back in March, this unsettling attraction to Hannah. Seeing her sipping wine by herself at O’Rourke’s. Watching her self-control and reserve as she’d tried to ignore Derek Cutshaw and his friends, then her anger and passion as she’d jumped into action.

Sean could still feel the fight in her when he’d carried her out of O’Rourke’s—and how alone she’d looked as
she’d headed home in the freezing rain. He’d never understood Hannah, and he hadn’t that night, either.

That was before his father’s death. Before Elijah’s life-threatening wound in Afghanistan. Before Melanie Kendall and Kyle Rigby had gone after Devin Shay and themselves been killed.

Sean had convinced himself there was no one in Black Falls for him and he no longer belonged there, but on every visit to Vermont since March, he’d found himself at Three Sisters Café. In California, he’d told himself he was too busy to date when he knew he wasn’t. It was Hannah and his inexplicable desire to be with her.

And now here he was, caught between his mission to get the truth out of her and his urge to reach for her hand under the table.

What did he know about Hannah and her life, her dreams?

Vivian Whittaker sat next to him at the dining table. “I understand you’re a smoke jumper,” she said abruptly, with a coy smile. “It sounds fascinating. Tell us about it.”

Sean was accustomed to interest in that part of his life and offered his usual answer. “It’s hard work that I enjoy. I used to do it full-time. Now I volunteer when needed.”

She reached for her wineglass. “Smoke jumpers parachute into the middle of raging wildfires, don’t they?”

“We try to get to a fire when it’s small and put it out before it’s had a chance to spread. We work mostly in remote areas and choose our jump spots carefully.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“We mitigate the dangers as much as possible through training and planning.”

“You obviously have to stay in top shape,” she said, eyeing him over the rim of her wineglass.

Sean smiled through his discomfort. “The point of any training is for us to be able to do the job we’re called to do.”

“I read that you have to be able to climb a tree to retrieve your parachute and gear. Is that true?”

He managed a smile. “It wouldn’t do to leave the stuff up there, would it?”

Vivian took a big gulp of wine and set her glass back down. “It’s hard to picture you in full firefighter gear, out in some western canyon with a fire raging around you. I suppose jumping out of an airplane to fight a fire sounds romantic to those of us who’ve never done it.” She gave a mock shudder. “Have you ever been in danger?”

“I’d rather not—”

“Ah. Just what I expected. You’re not going to tell us the details, are you?” She glanced across the table at her husband as she continued. “True heroes never want to discuss their exploits. You should brag, Sean. You’ve earned the right.”

Sean thought about a fire a year ago and a mistake that had led to the near-death of his business partner and a fellow smoke jumper, Nick Martini. It had been Nick’s mistake. He’d be the first to say so—and the first to say he was glad he’d been the one hurt and no one else.

Hannah’s eyes were on him, as if she knew he was reliving a bad moment. Sitting there in the Robinsons’ festive dining room on a cold Vermont winter night, he could feel the fire exploding around them, propelled by high winds and fed by dry underbrush. They’d been building a fireline, back-breaking, necessary work that they’d done scores of times. He and Nick were able to deploy their emergency shelters at the last second and managed to survive.