Hawks Mountain - Mobi (7 page)

He pushed the dark thoughts back into that place in his soul where he kept them hidden to preserve his sanity. Once there, the usual weakness of the aftermath of having relived those memories assailed him, and he had to fight to keep his knees from buckling beneath him. He collapsed into a chair beside the fireplace and buried his face in his trembling hands.

He couldn’t have explained to Becky’s grandmother why he couldn’t accept her dinner invitation, or that he had to get home where he could be alone for what he knew would come. His thinly veiled excuse had made it past Mrs. Hawks, but he was fairly sure it had not made it past Becky. He’d seen the way she looked at him as if mentally dissecting his thoughts.

Aside from the unexpected attraction he felt for this woman, his gut told him she could be dangerous to his peace of mind in so many other ways.

The following morning,
Becky entered the kitchen, which was already fragrant with the smell of baking bread. Granny was cleaning up the flour from where she’d been kneading the dough on the table top. A thick slice of ham and two eggs sizzled in a cast iron frying pan on the stove.

“Granny, what are you doing up so early?”

Granny Jo stopped what she was doing and smiled at Becky, and then went back to her chore. “Early? Have you forgotten that my day starts at sunup? Course, today I’ve been up since around three. I can’t sleep without Jake to keep my feet warm.” Her voice caught. She cleared her throat. “Since Nick wouldn’t accept my offer of a meal, I decided, as long as I was up anyway, that I’d bake him a couple of loaves of bread to tell him thank you for all he did.”

Becky held her breath. Knowing that Granny’s arthritis didn’t allow for climbing the ridge, Becky knew what would come next.

“They’ll be done in a few minutes. I started your breakfast when I heard you stirring around upstairs. After you eat it, you can take the bread up to him.”

Anxiety began to take root inside her. “Can’t we call him and ask him to come by to pick them up?” Becky waited, hope building in her chest. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why, but she was very reluctant to be in a situation where she’d be alone with Nick.

“Doesn’t have a phone.”
Granny turned away to the stove to finish cooking Becky’s breakfast.

The hope died as quickly as it had risen. When Nick Hart cut himself off, he really did a complete job.
Carson
wasn’t the most modern place in the world by any means, but everyone had a telephone, a TV and, according to Granny, some even had cell phones, which only worked beyond the valley’s mountain walls. Yet Nick sat up there on that ridge with no means of communicating with the outside world.

Granny set a plate of eggs, ham and grits in front of Becky, then poured her coffee. “Eat up, child. I want Nick to get the bread while it’s still warm.”

Becky picked up her fork, but continued to stare out the window toward the ridge. Something in her wanted to see him again. At the same time, she felt a glimmer of wariness about the man with the smile that made her heart beat triple time.

An hour later,
Becky clutched the loaves of bread beneath her arm and reluctantly ambled up the road toward the ridge. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to confront the charming Nick Hart in his lair. Just being near him seemed to set her heart on a collision course toward something she had no desire to get into.

The man was illegally gorgeous, and when he chose to smile, it did things to her insides that took her breath away. But there were also things about him that troubled her, things that she just didn’t have the emotional energy to get into
now .
 . . or maybe ever.

Suddenly, she stopped and chastised herself mentally.

Get a grip, girl. Who’s to say he’s even interested in you, Becky? Just because you turn to mush around him doesn’t mean he feels the same about you.
Have you so easily forgotten Sonny’s betrayal?
Just take the bread to Nick, thank him for taking care of Jake and then go home
.

Feeling as if her feet, and her heart, were on firmer ground, she continued up the road at a faster pace.

The ascending sun warmed her bare shoulders. Her hair danced around her face, stirred to life by the same breeze that caressed her cheeks and reminded her of hot summer afternoons down at the pool beneath
Honeymoon
Falls
. Closing her eyes, she could almost feel the chilly, spring-fed water on her hot skin. At the same time,
Grampa
Earl’s voice played in her head as he related the story of how he’d named the falls after he and his bride had swam there one hot summer night.

Then Becky rounded the bend and the cabin appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Abruptly, her musings came to a screeching halt. For a time she hung back and gawked at the cabin, unable to believe her eyes. It was beautiful. One with the land around it, as if it had grown there from some magical house seed. Becky was sure that, like himself, Nick had done his best to make the cabin as unobtrusive as possible. However, he’d missed the mark and instead made it stand out as an architectural achievement that would draw any admirer’s eye.

The oaks and pines surrounded the house, almost as if, when he’d cleared the land, he’d left them intentionally to re-enforce his private wall. It screamed rustic right from the hand-hewn log walls to the fieldstone chimney that towered above it. A porch encircled what she could see of the front and both sides of the house, and two dormers adorned the main roof.

Several boxes of roofing shingles sat on the front porch.
Clearly, destined to finish off the other half of the porch roof.
Odds and ends of lumber sat in neatly stacked piles beneath a large oak tree at the center of the un-landscaped yard.

Becky took a deep breath and made her way through the weeds and uncut grass. She shifted the bread to the crook of arm, and then climbed the four steps leading up to the front porch. From inside came the barely discernable strains of classical music. Tilting her head toward the door, she listened. It took only seconds for her to recognized
Rhapsody
On A Theme Of
Paganini
from one her favorite movies,
Somewhere In Time.
A far cry from the heavy metal rock music Sonny had blasted through their small
Atlanta
apartment every day. She stood still, absorbing the beautiful notes.

Then the strident cry of a hawk swooping overhead roused her, reminding her why she was here. She took a tentative step forward and knocked on the door before she lost her nerve. Scant moments later the door swung open and an impatient looking Nick glared down at her.

“What do you want?”

Nick could see by the way Becky swallowed and took a half step back on the porch that his crisp greeting had taken her by surprise. She nervously licked her lips. He had to wrench his gaze away before he obeyed the strong urge tugging relentlessly at his insides to haul her into his arms and kiss her senseless. His fingers tightened on the door knob.

He softened his tone. “I’m sorry. What brings you here?”

She smiled tentatively. His fingers ached with the pressure he was exerting on the door knob. “Granny sent me to give you these.” She held out two loaves of bread. “They’re to thank you for all you did yesterday for Jake.”

He cleared his throat. “There’s no need for thanks. I was happy to help.”

Becky laughed, and Nick’s insides came alive. “If you’re
gonna
live here, you best get used to this kind of thing. It’s our way. You’ll hurt Granny’s feelings if you don’t take them. She’s beholding to you, and this is her way of making sure she returns your kindness.” She shoved the loaves of bread at him, forcing him to take them.

They were warm against his cold palm, and the aroma drifting up to him made his empty stomach growl in response. “Come in,” he heard himself say before the thought even registered in his head.

Becky hesitated for a moment, and then stepped past him; her sweet, clean fragrance filled his nostrils.

Have you lost what’s left of your sanity? Don’t let her stay. She means nothing but trouble. She’ll steal your peace of body just like she’s stolen your peace of mind by insulating herself in your thoughts every time you let your guard down.

Nick ignored the warning. Instead, as she moved farther into the room, his gaze drank in the gentle sway of her hips and the way her jeans hugged her cute little—

“I love your house,” she said, looking around as though she were a prospective buyer.

Roused from his sensual stupor, Nick swallowed hard. “Thanks.” Not anxious to prolong her impromptu visit he posed his next words as less than an invitation. “I don’t suppose you’d have time for
coffee .
 . . or tea or . . . something?”

Becky’s smile widened. Nick’s heart clicked into triple-time. Lord, but he wished she’d stop doing that. Contrarily, he wanted her to never stop smiling. He wanted to never stop feeling that came over him when she smiled, as if all the weights he’d been carrying around for the last year had been suddenly lifted from his heart and soul.

“Coffee would be fine. If you have it made.”

“It just finished brewing. I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.” He hurried from the room, eager to put space between them so he could regain his mental and emotional footing.

What in God’s name had he been thinking when he’d invited her in? Obviously, that had been the problem. He hadn’t been thinking. But now she was here, and he’d have to figure out how he would get through the next minutes until he could reasonably usher her out the door without being as rude as he’d been when she’d arrived on his doorstep. He didn’t need Becky Hawks playing with his hard-won, tenuous serenity.

Quickly, he put the loaves of bread away and began assembling what they’d need for coffee on a tray. Two cups, sugar, cream, spoons. He stepped back to survey the tray. Had he forgotten anything? The coffee! As he put the coffee carafe on the tray beside the cups and added a plate of store-bought cookies, he stole a glance at her. Quickly, he removed the cookies from the tray. No sense in giving her something else that would take time to consume.

Becky sank into a large,
comfortable couch in front of the expansive, fieldstone fireplace. Considering he was a man living alone, the place was spit and polished. No clutter, no dirty clothes draped over chairs. No dishes abandoned where he’d finished eating off them. No empty beer bottles littering the highly polished coffee table. No discarded magazines or newspapers strewn about the floor or furniture. All in all, a far cry from the condition she’d often found the apartment in after Sonny had spent just a couple hours alone there.

This year spring had arrived with temperatures much warmer than usual, so it didn’t surprise her that no fire blazed in the fireplace. The hearth had been painstakingly swept clean, and the brass andirons flanking it gleamed like newly polished gemstones. Unburned wood was piled inside the dark cavity, ready to be lit to fight off the first cold winds of fall. From where she sat, she could see a small dining area and beyond it a screened-in porch. Behind her, stairs rose to the second floor loft area. The smell of the pine-paneled walls filled the air.

On the far side of the room, beneath a wide bay window, stood a desk.
In the middle of it sat the laptop he’d been carrying in the meadow the day she’d accused him of trespassing and a small printer. Beside the computer lay a stack of paper. On the floor, the only clutter in the otherwise immaculate room, several dozen crumpled wads of paper littered the carpet. She wanted to see what the discarded paper contained, but she forced herself to remain on the sofa.

Leaning back, she drank in the hominess of the room. Then she noticed the black ball cap on the end table. Though time and probably the sun had faded it to a dark charcoal gray, it was clear that something had been removed from the front of the cap, leaving behind a darker outline of three distinct figures. One arched above a center imprint, and one below, but it was the one in the middle that caught her attention.