A Bride at Last (11 page)

And that thought, more than anything else, put a smile on her lips.

She walked down the hallway toward the front of the office. She might regret the impulse in the morning, but for tonight she felt as if she was in charge. She turned on the security, locked the main office door, then went back down the hallway to the back of the building turning lights off as she went.

Maybe Grandma would have some fresh muffins
made, Nadine thought as she pulled out the keys to her car. To sweeten her I-told-you-so’s.

Headlights swung down the alley and momentarily blinded her. Nadine stepped back toward the newspaper office. A car pulled up beside hers, and with a start, Nadine recognized Clint’s vehicle.

The car stopped and Clint got out, walking around to meet her. “Hi, there,” he said. “Going out?”

Nadine shook her head, a sense of shame mocking her newfound confidence. “No, just home.”

“But I thought you had a date….”

“I did.” Nadine shrugged, fully aware of her boss standing beside her, his height overwhelming her. His hair looked tousled, and his tie was gone, causing Nadine to recall the way he’d looked the day they’d covered the Foodgrains Project together.

“And…” he prompted, “he broke it?”

Nadine shook her head, fiddling with the end of her scarf. “No. I did. I didn’t feel like waiting anymore.” She looked up at him, only to catch his gaze on her. She looked down again. “What are you doing here?”

“Forgot some papers I needed.” He jingled the change in his pants pocket. “So what are you going to do?”

Nadine shrugged. “Go home. See if Grandma has any supper left for me.”

“I see.” He made a move to leave, checked himself and came back. “I, uh…” He stopped and cleared his throat. Nadine glanced up at him, puzzled. He seemed hesitant, unsure of himself. “I
haven’t eaten, either. We could grab a bite at the inn.”

Nadine paused in surprise, her hands no longer fiddling with her scarf. “Okay,” she agreed, hardly knowing what else to say.

“Good.” Clint took a step backward and whacked his leg against the fender of his car. He steadied himself, straightened and held his hand up to Nadine. “Sorry.”

She didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but his unexpected—and uncharacteristic—clumsiness gave him a sudden vulnerability.

“So. Do you want to ride with me or take your car?”

“I’ll drive my car.” She wanted the option of being able to leave on her own. “I’ll meet you there.”

He nodded, took another step back. “Okay. I’ll see you later.” He turned and jogged up the walk to the office, leaving Nadine to wonder what had come over her usually calm and collected boss.

Briefly she recalled his touch yesterday, his concern. Then with a laugh she dismissed her foolish thoughts. He just wanted company and she just happened to be handy.

But as she backed out of the parking lot behind the
Derwin Times,
she couldn’t help remembering his grin when she’d said yes.

Clint settled himself behind the table and glanced across it to where Nadine sat. Her gaze roved around
the restaurant, as she looked everywhere but at him. For a moment he regretted asking her. She seemed ill at ease, even though she had agreed to come.

He couldn’t get her off his mind lately. It seemed that each day he tried to seek her out, tried to find out where she was.

That moment in the darkroom when he had kissed her. He still didn’t know what had come over him. She had a boyfriend.

The guy who had stood her up tonight.

Clint took the menu from the smiling waitress and looked once again at Nadine.

Her thick brown hair shone with reddish highlights and hung loose, framing her face, softening her features even though tonight she looked a little tense.

Not at all unusual, he reflected. Nadine never seemed comfortable whenever he was around. And that in turn created a measure of tension within him. He didn’t like it. He wanted her to be as relaxed around him as she had been around the people the afternoon of the Foodgrains Project. He wanted her to look up at him with a smile brightening her eyes, the way it had that day.

“What are you going to have?” she asked.

He wasn’t really hungry, and had asked Nadine out for supper on an impulse. He had two issues to confront with her, and he guessed she would dislike dealing with one as much as the other.

One had to do with his changing feelings toward her. The other with Skyline. And for the first time
in his life he didn’t know how to proceed with either.

“The chicken burger and potato salad,” he told the waitress, handing back the menu.

Nadine smiled at him. “Sounds like a good balance between health and convenience.”

Clint just nodded, his heart skipping a beat at the sight of the smile he had wished for.

“I’ll have a bowl of beef barley soup.” She laid her menu down and folded her hands on the table in front of her. “Not really hungry,” she explained, tapping her thumbs against each other, then looking around the restaurant.

They sat in a strained silence until the waitress left, and then Clint knew it would be up to him.

“How are your sisters?” Not that he really cared, but he had to start the conversation somehow.

Nadine smiled. “Fine. I haven’t been to see Sabrina’s daughter for a couple of weeks, but she’s cute. Leslie is also expecting a baby.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. “Seems hard to imagine either of them married.”

Nadine tilted her head in acknowledgment, glancing at him, then away. “I always knew both of them would get married before I did.”

Clint didn’t know if he imagined the hint of pain in her voice and wondered if she was jealous. “Why did you know that?”

“You of all people can answer that.” She lifted her eyebrows at him. “After all, you went out with one of them.”

But really only wanted to be with you, he thought. He was quickly losing ground with her. He needed to change the subject, and grasped at the first thing that came to mind. “How long was your mother sick?”

Nadine pursed her lips, picking up her napkin, playing with it. “Most ALS sufferers live anywhere from one to three years after diagnosis. In mother’s case it took a little longer.”

“How come?”

Nadine carefully pleated the napkin as if weighing her answer. Then she looked up at him, holding his gaze. “My mother’s mission kept her alive longer. And that mission was to see Skyline Contractors brought to justice for my father’s death.” Nadine stopped abruptly and bit her lip.

Clint absorbed this piece of news with a heavy heart. How could he do what he had to after what she had just told him?

He reminded himself that he was her boss, that his partner was practically screaming at him to rein her in. That another lawsuit would cost too much and that this time Skyline would do more than threaten.

“I know that your father died while working for Skyline, but I’ve never heard how it happened.” Even as he spoke the words Clint wondered if he was fashioning his own noose. But he wanted to know. Wanted to find out what it was that drove her to keep up the battle after all these years. Wanted to discover what he could about her.

“Didn’t Sabrina tell you?”

“She only told me that he died at work.”

“Do you want to hear the official line we got, or do you want to hear what I think?” She looked away, then at him, her expression troubled.

“Tell me both.” He leaned forward, wishing he could forget about his paper, wishing he dared give in to a sudden and intense need to protect her, to support her.

She carefully unfolded the napkin again. “The line we got from the company was that my father was out in the bush by himself. He was using a felling practice calling domino falling. What you essentially do is drop one tree so that it hangs up on another, cut that tree until it leans against another and so on. Then you get one main tree that falls all the way, taking all the others with it. It’s highly illegal according to labor standards and extremely dangerous. Lots of fallers get killed that way. According to Skyline, this is what my father did, and he was killed by a hung-up tree coming down on him.” Nadine stared up at Clint, her brown eyes intense. “My father was the most careful man I know. He would never do anything as dangerous as that.”

“So what do you think happened?”

Nadine held his gaze a moment, then looked down again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. I’ve talked to as many employees that will talk to me, other subcontractors. I’ve heard rumors that my father went in behind another young guy to clean
up the mess he made. I’ve heard that he was working in tandem with another faller. And I’ve heard that it was just fluke.” Nadine held up one hand, ticking off her fingers with the other. “I haven’t gotten any names, any times, any sign of other vehicles, no verification of any of the rumors, at least not anyone who was willing to commit. Nothing.”

“The bush is a pretty wild place.”

Nadine almost laughed. “Not when there’s a logging show or two in an area. You go out there, it’s like a little community. If my mom wanted to bring my dad supper, and we made a wrong turn, all we’d have to do is drive until we saw a skidder or Cat operator. They always knew who was working where. But in my father’s case…nothing.”

Clint didn’t know what to say. Nadine’s voice took on a note of authority that showed him clearly that she knew of what she spoke, and how important it was to her.

“How did you find out?”

“My father didn’t come home that night and my mother called my dad’s supervisor. He went back to the bush looking for my father. It took a while because he wasn’t working in the block he had been assigned to. At least, not according to the supervisor’s information.” Nadine folded the napkin again, her eyes intently focused on it. “He was found lying underneath a tree. Dead.”

Clint gave in to a sudden impulse. He reached across the table and covered her hands with his,
squeezing them, wanting to pull her close, to comfort her. “You must have cared for him a lot.”

Nadine looked down at their hands and tightened her grip on his. “I did. I loved him a lot.” She bit her lip, but when she looked back up at him, her eyes were clear but pensive. “Seems kind of wrong,” she said with a soft laugh. “I had my mother around longer than my father, but sometimes it’s as if I miss him more.” She shrugged, then pulled her hands away from him.

“Your mother was a lot of work for you and your grandmother, wasn’t she?”

Nadine waved the comment away with a graceful turn of her hand. “I resented it at first, but then I wondered if it wasn’t God’s way of giving me a chance to get to know her better. I always spent so much time with my dad.” She smiled, her eyes looking over his shoulder as if she had disappeared into another place and time. “We would go out to the bush on Saturdays to cut firewood. The other girls stayed at home with mom.” She smiled softly. “He called me his little tomboy.” She shook her head and looked back at Clint.

“I always remember him as a very kind man.” Clint folded his arms, leaning his elbows on the table. “He would always ask about Uncle Dory and what we were working on at the acreage.”

“He liked you.”

“I liked him. He was a man of integrity who was content with his life.” Clint couldn’t keep the bitter note out of his voice. “Unlike so many others.”

“Others being…” prompted Nadine.

Clint rubbed his thumb along the inside of his opposite arm, concentrating on the tabletop. “My parents.”

“And…” Nadine prompted. “What about
your
parents.”

Clint shrugged, hesitant to tell her even after all these years. “They both worked very hard to collect enough money to buy more things. They were going to give me a car when I graduated high school.”

“But you didn’t get it.”

“No. I blew it. That’s how I ended up at Dory’s. I was caught stealing a flashlight from a hardware store.” He looked up at her, his mouth curved in a wry grin. “My parents didn’t understand what was happening. Neither did I.”

“You wanted them to notice you.”

Clint caught Nadine’s intent look, surprised at her expression. As if she had just discovered something new, and, he conceded, she probably had. At that time he hadn’t told too many people how he had ended up in Derwin. It was embarrassing to admit to anyone he wanted to impress that he had only stolen a flashlight. As he got to know the Laidlaws he said nothing—more because of his shame over the ease with which his parents had sent him away that far out shadowed any guilt he felt over a mistake. “That’s exactly what Uncle Dory said,” he said softly.

“And where are your parents now?”

“Dad’s in Rome and Mother shuttles between Toronto
and New York.” Clint smiled at her as if to negate the bitterness that crept into his voice. He had forgiven his parents the same time he had become a Christian, but he still struggled with it.

“I take it they’re divorced.”

“You take it correctly.”

“But it still bothers you.”

Clint lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug. “It doesn’t matter what the marriage counselors say, it’s always hard on kids when their family breaks up. At any age.” Clint looked back up at Nadine, pleasantly surprised to see a gentle understanding in her expression. “Your family was one of the first ones I saw that worked. A family that cared about each other. A family that loved God. I’ve always wanted that for myself.”

Nadine looked down and Clint thought that maybe he had overstepped some unknown boundary. One never knew with Nadine and he had been talking more in the past few minutes than he had in days.

But the moment was interrupted as the waitress returned with their order. She laid the plates down in front of them. Clint smiled his thanks at her.

The waitress left and Clint hesitated and then, without looking at Nadine, bent his head to say grace. He raised his head precisely the same time as Nadine. Their eyes met and held, a feeling of accord springing up between them.

It felt right to be sitting across a table from her,
to say grace together. To be joined in a communion of spirit and mind.

Clint smiled carefully at her and when she returned that smile, he felt his heart lift.