The Heart of a Hero (5 page)

“My apartment is available,” Nicholas said. “Or it can be as of tomorrow. My house is finished enough for me to start staying there.”

“Oh, that’s perfect.” But then Olivia’s smile vanished. “Assuming Julia’s pride doesn’t get in the way, knowing our staff housing is for international workers. Never mind, I’ll figure it out,” she muttered, turning and running to her truck.

Nicholas immediately followed, going to the rear passenger door and opening it, then leaning inside. “I would see for myself that you’re okay,” he said as he gave Trisha a visual inspection. Satisfied she was only shaken, Nicholas slid his gaze to Julia. “You might reconsider ordering me to stay in the truck from now on, as it appears that size really does matter,” he said before straightening away to hide his grin—and also to keep from acting on his urge to lift her jaw when it slackened. He shut the door and walked back to Mac, his grin disappearing when he remembered Julia racing into the house alone. Far from fearing men, the woman apparently not only thought nothing of ordering around one twice her size, but wasn’t afraid to go up against one while being armed with nothing more than a stick and one hell of a temper.

But then his mood lightened again when he pictured her squaring off against a small herd of bossy cats.

* * * 

“I’m sorry I went back, Jules,” Nicholas heard Trisha say for the third time since they’d all started back down the mountain just before one o’clock. “I really needed my book bag to take with me to the MacKeages’, and I thought I could sneak in without Dad’s knowing. I even parked down the road.”

“Peg said you don’t have to babysit tonight,” Julia told her for the third time.

“But they’ve been planning this trip to Bangor for weeks. And I’m okay. Really. That is, if you’re okay staying alone tonight,” Trisha whispered.

Nicholas glanced at the rearview mirror in time to see Julia hug her sister. “Are you kidding?” she whispered back. “I’ve got cable TV and room service.”

Not that she’d use the room service, Nicholas guessed as he pulled into the marina to see Peg MacKeage standing at the top of the dock ramp. She immediately ran over and had the back door opened before he’d even shut off the engine.

“Oh, Trish,” Peg said, pulling the girl out to hug her. “Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. MacKeage. I locked myself in my bedroom and pulled my bureau in front of the door.”

Apparently not quite ready to stop hugging her babysitter, Peg looked past Trisha’s shoulder as Julia climbed out of the truck. “You can both stay with us for however long you need.”

“They’re going to take Nicholas’s apartment for now,” Olivia said. “Just as soon as he moves out his stuff and we burn up two vacuums sucking up all that cat hair,” she added, shooting him a scowl as he stood grinning at them over the top of the truck. She looked back at Peg. “And Julia’s commute to work will only be three minutes long.”

“Well, the offer stands,” Peg said, releasing Trisha to wrap an arm around the girl and start toward the dock. “I’ll bring her back around six tomorrow night, okay, Jules?” she said past her shoulder. She urged Trisha to keep going as she stopped and turned. “Or she can stay over and get on the bus with the kids Monday morning.”

Julia shook her head. “Thanks, but I prefer she take her truck to school. Trisha?” she called out when the girl climbed in the speedboat tied to the dock. “You remember our room number, right? You call me tonight after the kids are in bed, just . . . just to talk,” she added when Trisha nodded. Julia then softly groaned, turning to Olivia when Peg climbed in the boat and shoved off. “I thought my worries would be over if I could just get Trisha safely settled in a dorm room in Orono, but now I’m afraid I’ll be even more of a basket case when she’s over a hundred miles away.”

“Hey,” Olivia said, touching Julia’s shoulder. “Trisha’s a sharp, mature young woman, and she’ll do just fine at UMO. You told me yourself that she’s maintained a three-point-eight grade point average despite losing your mom and putting up with your father. She’s resilient and determined.” Olivia opened Julia’s door with a laugh. “Listen to me; I’ll be worse than you—no, I already am worse—and Sophie’s only in middle school.”

Instead of getting in the truck, Julia gave Olivia a hug. “Thank you for being such a good boss.”

“Hey, we’re
friends
,” Olivia said thickly. “And neighbors. We take care of one another up here. Now come on, let’s go pack your stuff.”

Nicholas looked around the marina that had once been Peg’s gravel pit before the earthquake had cut a fiord practically up to her front door, his gaze stopping on his fishing boat tied in a slip between a day sailor and small cabin cruiser.

He wondered if Julia liked to fish.

With a sense of déjà vu to be acting the errand boy again—although for a much,
much
younger Mrs. Oceanus—Nicholas slipped on his sunglasses with a sigh, got back in the truck, and once again drove Julia Campbell home.
But this time to pack her belongings and move her only half a mile away as the crow flies,
he thought cheerfully. It was farther by road, though, as the home Lina had designed for him—that Duncan MacKeage’s construction crew and a bit of Mac’s magic had built—sat a little over a mile down the winding resort road from the summit. He’d chosen the site for its proximity to Nova Mare in case he was needed in an emergency, while still being far enough away to afford him plenty of privacy. He also hoped it was too far for his cats to want to make the trek to the restaurant’s kitchen twice a day for gourmet handouts.

“Nicholas.”

“Hmm?” he murmured.

“I said,” Olivia drawled as he pulled up next to Vern Campbell’s pickup and shut off the engine, “that we’ll let you know if we need you to carry any heavy stuff to the truck. We should only be about an hour.”

“Take your time,” he said, getting out and looking around, his gaze stopping on Julia as she walked up the porch steps and disappeared inside. She was definitely a lovely-looking lady, he decided as he slid his hands in his pockets and wandered toward what he assumed was the cedar mill set behind the house. She was also quite fearless, although maybe to the point of recklessness. And his size didn’t seem to be an issue for her, although she hadn’t seen him naked . . . yet. She definitely wasn’t chatty, she appeared to have an excess of energy, and she was smart, resourceful, and obviously determined to get herself and her sister settled into new lives.

She did seem to have a powerful pride, though. But he didn’t consider that a bad thing, as he rather liked a woman who was a bit abrasive, since he admittedly had a few rough edges that could use some polishing. She was also on the thin side, but then, his cats hadn’t exactly been butterballs when they’d each first come to him, so he figured it wouldn’t take him any time to have Julia . . . well, no longer able to sleep on her belly.

Nicholas stopped and peered inside the building at what he decided was the shingle manufacturing section of the mill, considering the strange-looking saw nearly buried in sawdust and the pallets of shingles stacked against the far wall. He continued on to another door, stepping inside to study the variety of lathes surrounded by curled shavings, and he realized the Campbells also made cedar rail fencing. He skirted the ancient-looking machinery to reach the open back wall of the building and looked around the muddy yard stacked with cedar logs.

Spotting the rusty metal wagon half-filled with pinecones sitting in front of another small building, Nicholas headed down the well-worn path through the trees toward it. He wrestled open the door and peered inside, and grinned at the realization he’d found Julia’s workshop. He glanced back to see the mill was blocking his view of the house, then took off his sunglasses and stepped inside.

The first thing he saw was a large chopping block with two hatchets driven into its center and two smaller blocks on either side of it serving as seats. He grinned again, picturing Julia and Trisha chatting away as they split the short cedar log ends stacked nearby into kindling. He continued snooping and saw some sacks full of pinecones—which were excellent fire-starters for the resort’s fireplaces—leaning against the back wall. He then turned to the bench that ran the length of another wall and dipped his fingers into a bowl of evergreen needles. He held up his hand and sniffed, then brushed the needles back into the bowl and picked up one of the small burlap pillows already filled and sewn closed. He set it down, picked up an even smaller pouch made of a more colorful material, and slid its contents into his hand with a frown.

Soap, he guessed as he ran his thumb across the tree-shaped cake. He held it to his nose to find it also smelled of balsam, which he liked well enough to slip it in his pocket before he plucked a different colored tree from a nearby box. Finding it smelled of lavender, he tossed it back into the box and picked up another one, which smelled like roses. Another one smelled . . . hell, it could be any one of a dozen plants, because what did he know about scents? It had been centuries since he’d stopped to smell the flowers.

He set down the soap and looked around again, only to realize that Julia was about to lose access to her supply of cedar. She could collect pinecones on Nova Mare land and dry her balsam needles and package her soaps in her new apartment, but he suspected the kindling was her most lucrative product.

And since there didn’t appear to be anyone around to stop him, Nicholas pulled out his cell phone to call some of his men to come load up a couple of pickups with the cedar, because what fun was there in bringing a small team of elite warriors with him from Atlantis if they couldn’t do a little neighborly raiding to keep life interesting? It wasn’t like they were attacking Carthage or anything; they’d leave all the buildings and equipment and any stacked stones intact.

And they’d grab the chopping block and hatchets and pinecones while they were at it, along with the soaps and pillows and balsam needles, and simply move Julia’s little cottage industry up the mountain—which should make the order-issuing, stick-wielding woman deliriously happy that he’d butted into her business.

But Nicholas suddenly slipped the phone back in his jacket with a snort. It was obviously longer than he remembered since he’d found himself interested in a lovely lady, as he’d apparently forgotten the finer points of a romantic pursuit. Though similar in some ways to mounting a war campaign, he wanted to
capture
this particular target, not overpower her. And last he knew, women balked at a full-speed, head-on attack, but usually responded quite nicely to a more subtle approach.

He took one last look around, then walked out and pulled the door shut. How convenient that he happened to have a workshop at his new home that was filled with scraps of lumber he’d intended to cut up for kindling. He also happened to know where several large stands of pines teeming with cones stood, some of the groves requiring a slow, lazy boat ride to reach. Well, slow if they happened to be dragging a couple of fishing lines behind them. And what woman wasn’t attracted to a man who enjoyed long walks in the woods?

No; he’d never been accused of
not
taking advantage of a situation, especially when the prize was a lovely lady he wouldn’t mind finding curled up in bed beside him one morning very soon.

Nicholas made it back to the house in time to grab two large trash bags just as Olivia set them on the porch. “Let me carry anything down from upstairs,” he said, heading to the truck with what felt like clothes.

He made five trips inside, up the stairs and down, carrying several more trash bags full of Julia’s and Trisha’s belongings. His last trip to the truck, however, found him carrying a large plastic bin of carefully packed items Julia had pulled off the walls and taken from a china cabinet in the living room. Apparently worried she wouldn’t be allowed back in the house, it appeared the woman was taking some of her mother’s more precious possessions.

“I . . . There’s one more thing I need to get,” Julia said as she set a half-filled trash bag in the rear seat and turned to Olivia. “You can wait here,” she added, heading at a stilted run toward the mill. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Nicholas decided he was going to have to get used to Julia’s concepts of time and distance, however, when ten minutes went by and she still hadn’t returned.

“Let me go see what’s keeping her,” Olivia said, heading for the mill only to stop halfway there when she realized he was following. “I think I should go alone, Nicholas. Julia’s still pretty embarrassed about what happened today and . . . last night.” She shook her head. “I would have come alone with her this afternoon, but I wanted you here in case Vern suddenly showed up.” She smiled. “And to lug the heavy stuff.” But then she sobered and touched his arm. “Don’t take it personally, okay? Just try to understand that it’s . . . well, it’s humiliating for a grown woman to have a man see her throwing all her belongings in trash bags as she runs away from home.”

Nicholas shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away to hide his scowl. “I’ll wait at the truck, then. But call me if there’s a problem.” Only he hadn’t even gotten the driver’s door open when Olivia called out to him from the mill.

“Nicholas, we need you,” she shouted before disappearing again.

He ran through the mill and practically beat her back to the shed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, following Olivia inside to see Julia cradling a hand wrapped in a rag as she sat on one of the chopping stumps. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she’d made a valiant effort to rub away the evidence that she’d been crying.

“She was trying to pry up that board,” Olivia said, pointing at the floor where he specifically remembered bags of pinecones had been but were now shoved to the side. “When the hatchet slipped and cut her hand.”

“The wood is swollen stuck,” Julia said, her voice husky with restrained tears. “But I can’t leave without the box hidden under it.”

“I’ll get it for you,” Nicholas murmured, crouching in front of her. “After we decide if you need stitches.”

“I just skinned it, and the bleeding’s already stopped,” she said, even though she allowed him to take her hand and peel the rag away. “It’s mostly my back that hurts. I must have . . . I guess I wrenched it again prying on the board.”