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Vermont Valentine
Kristin Hardy
IN EVERY GENERATION OF TRASKS LIVES ONE MAN BORN TO BE ALONE….And Jacob was clearly his generation's representative. Because while his brothers sought their livelihoods–and loves–elsewhere, he knew he had to stay where he belonged. Where he was needed. And where eligible women were as rare as an eighty-degree day in January…And then came a possible danger to his beloved family farm. The bearer of bad news? A petite, gorgeous, non-stop talker named Celie Favreau. And though captivated by Jacob's rugged good looks and piercing blue eyes, she had to stay on track. She'd come to warn of a threat to his trees.The threat to his heart was merely incidental….
“I’m impressed.”
“Well, then, I must be doing well,” Celie said. “From what I hear, impressing you isn’t easy.”
“Sounds like people have been doing way too much talking altogether,” was Jacob’s comment.
“Don’t worry. I’m a scientist. I prefer to collect data on my own.”
“Are you planning to collect data on me?” Jacob asked.
Celie glanced laughingly back over her shoulder at him. “I don’t know. Do you mind?” She reached over to shut off the lights.
Their hands landed on the switch at the same time.
It was just a touch, hand to hand, but the effects ricocheted through his system. Her eyes were shadowed as she looked back at him. He could see her profile, her generous mouth. “Time to go,” she said softly.
It might, Jacob thought uneasily, be long past time.
Dear Reader,
Well, if there were ever a month that screamed for a good love story—make that six!—February would be it. So here are our Valentine’s Day gifts to you from Silhouette Special Edition. Let’s start with The Road to Reunion by Gina Wilkins, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. When the beautiful daughter of the couple who raised him tries to get a taciturn cowboy to come home for a family reunion, Kyle Reeves is determined to turn her down. But try getting Molly Walker to take no for an answer! In Marie Ferrarella’s Husbands and Other Strangers, a woman in a boating accident finds her head injury left her with no permanent effects—except for the fact that she can’t seem to recall her husband. In the next installment of our FAMILY BUSINESS continuity, The Boss and Miss Baxter by Wendy Warren, an unemployed single mother is offered a job—not to mention a place to live for her and her children—with the grumpy, if gorgeous, man who fired her!
“Who’s Your Daddy?” is a question that takes on new meaning when a young woman learns that a rock star is her biological father, that her mother is really in love with his brother—and that she herself can’t resist her new father’s protégé. Read all about it in It Runs in the Family by Patricia Kay, the second in her CALLIE’S CORNER CAFÉ miniseries. Vermont Valentine, the conclusion to Kristin Hardy’s HOLIDAY HEARTS miniseries, tells the story of the last single Trask brother, Jacob—he’s been alone for thirty-six years. But that’s about to change, courtesy of the beautiful scientist now doing research on his property. And in Teresa Hill’s A Little Bit Engaged, a woman who’s been a bride-to-be for five years yet never saw fit to actually set a wedding date finds true love where she least expects it—with a pastor.
So keep warm, stay romantic, and we’ll see you next month….
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
Vermont Valentine
Kristin Hardy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KRISTIN HARDY
has always wanted to write, starting her first novel while still in grade school. Although she became a laser engineer by training, she never gave up her dream of being an author. In 2002, her first completed manuscript, My Sexiest Mistake, debuted in Harlequin’s Blaze line; it was subsequently made into a movie by the Oxygen network. The author of twelve books to date, Kristin lives in New Hampshire with her husband and collaborator. Check out her Web site at www.kristinhardy.com.
Thanks go to Dennis Souto, Mark Twery and
Kathleen Shields, of the USDA Forest Service;
George Cook of the University of Vermont; Joe Doccola
of Arborjet Inc.; and to Doug and Barbara Bragg of the
Bragg Farm (www.braggfarm.com), the inspiration
for the Trask Family Farm.
And as always, to Stephen,
a fine ambassador for the human race.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Prologue
Vermont, November 2005
“You want me to do what?” Jacob Trask stared at Kelly Christiansen, the teenaged cashier of the Trask Family Farm gift shop.
Kelly shifted and pushed a lock of her blond hair behind her ear. “You know, help out with our fundraiser. Our cheerleading squad qualified for the national championships in February but we need money for our travel. We need your help.”
Jacob reached back for his wallet, relieved. “I think I can see my way clear to—”
“No, I’m not asking for money. It’s like…” She stood hip-shot and stared at the ceiling. “…have you ever seen that cable show where those five stylists fix up a clueless straight guy?”
“No.” And he wasn’t at all sure he was following.
“Well, we’re going to do a hometown version called Teen Eye for the Eastmont Guy. Except we put up five possible makeover victims and invite everyone to vote for the one that they’d most like to see made over by donating.”
He was beginning to get it. “And?”
“And we want to get you.”
“Clueless straight guy?” he repeated dangerously.
She turned beet-red, all the way to the roots of her pale hair. “No, um, you look great, Mr. Trask. We just need someone with…” She flapped her hands at his thick beard and black ponytail. “You know, someone who’ll look really different when we cut everything off. The town paper’s going to put the before and after of the winner on the front page.”
Just what he needed, to be the town entertainment.
Kelly’s embarrassment was fading as she warmed to her subject. “We’re going to put jars with the candidates’ pictures on them in every store in town. It runs through New Year’s Day and then we count the money and announce the winner.”
Perfect. “When’s the makeover?”
“A week later. Don’t worry, we won’t do it ourselves. We’ve got stylists all set up in Montpelier. You’ll be in good hands. It’d just be some of your time.”
Time, something that was at a premium on this, the first year he was working the maple sugar farm after the death of his father. Every hourcounted and so did every dollar. “I don’t think—”
“We really want to get to the championships,” she pleaded. “This is the only way we can think of to get the money. Won’t you help us, Mr. Trask? Please?” Kelly risked another glance. Over her shoulder, Jacob’s mother, Molly Trask, watched him from the gift shop’s café, her arms crossed.
“Can’t I just donate a hundred bucks and call it good?” Jacob asked with a tinge of desperation.
“Oh, with your help we can raise a lot more than that,” Kelly said in a tone that suggested she knew she had him beat. “We polled the local storekeepers to see who they wanted to see done over and your name came up most often. You’ll get us lots of votes.”
And he could just imagine the amusement it would stir up in the maple-sugaring community.
“I think it sounds like an excellent idea,” Molly put in briskly. “It’s been almost fifteen years since I last saw your face, Jacob. It’ll be a nice change of pace.”
He didn’t need a change of pace. Steady and predictable, that was what Jacob wanted. He didn’t need one more thing to worry about.
He liked things just the way they were.
Chapter One
Vermont, January 2006
Celie Favreau muttered an impatient curse and dragged her fingers through her short brown hair. Trees, trees and more trees: beech, ash, birch, the occasional startling green of a pine, and maples, always maples, as far as the eye could see. Sugar maples, Vermont’s state tree.
She’d always adored maples. Too bad she hadn’t come to the state in the autumn, in time to see the legendary wash of glorious color. Instead, she saw the flat brown and white of a dormant winter landscape. Of course, she knew it wasn’t really dormant at all, not in late January. Already the drumbeat of spring was beginning to pulse in the trees as the sap gathered for the rise that triggered rebirth.
And already the threat was stirring.
Celie squinted at the page of directions in her hand and checked her odometer again. When she’d fled Montreal for a career in forestry, she’d done it partly out of a desire for open space and a conspicuous absence of concrete.
She hadn’t thought about the conspicuous absence of road signs.
Of course, she should have been used to it by now. In the past four years she’d been sent to hot spots in seven different states, always moving around. Living somewhere new every few months wasn’t a hardship—generally, she enjoyed the variety, she enjoyed a chance to get out of the same old rut.
These days, though, a rut didn’t seem like such a bad thing.
The sign by the building up ahead read Ray’s Feed ’n’ Read. It made her grin. She couldn’t pass that one up without a look. With luck, she could also get directions to the Institute.
When she opened the front door, the blast of heat made her forget the winter chill outside. To the left of the door stood a checkout counter, the wall behind it decorated with a lighted Napa sign and a calendar advertising cattle cake. The smile of the balding man at the register faded as he pegged her as a stranger. He gave her a sharp nod.
“Good morning,” Celie said. Beyond him lay the swept concrete floor and pallets of goods of a standard seed and grain store. To the right, she saw an incongruously cozy book nook with a dozen shelves and a few comfortable, over-stuffed chairs. It called to her irresistibly. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
He grunted.
“Is this Eastmont?” she asked, drifting to a stop in front of a display of lurid thrillers.
“Last time I checked.”
Celie fought a smile. “Is this the part where I ask directions and you say ‘Cahn’t get theah from heah?’”
His lips twitched. “Well, if it’s Eastmont, Maine you’re asking about, that’s different. We have a translation book for Mainers,” he added.
“So I see. No translation book for Vermonters?”
“None needed. We don’t have any accent. Now you, you’re not from around these parts. What’s that I hear in your voice?”
Even after all these years, the whisper of a French accent still lingered. “Canada. I grew up in Montreal.”
“Ah. The wife and I went up there about twenty years ago for an anniversary. Nice town, especially the old part.”
“My parents own a bookstore in Vieux Montréal.”
“Do tell? I thought you looked like a book person when you walked in.”
She couldn’t tell him that she’d moved away because the bookstore had suffocated her. Instead, she picked up a thriller and headed to the counter. “So what’s more popular, the feed or the read?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Folks around here will pick up a book, especially in winter. Shoot, we’ve got one guy buys so many books I don’t know how he gets any sugaring done.” He passed the book over the bar-code scanner.
“Maybe he’s trying to improve himself.”
