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He’d have arrived a day earlier if he’d had the sense to stop and ask for directions. Instead, he’d spent the night in Lancaster, the closest city. But she probably meant the nine months that had lapsed since he’d inherited his gram’s summerhouse.
Adam’s stomach knotted when she avoided looking him in the eye. He knew the place was run-down. He’d visited only a handful of times when he was a kid, and the house had been old then. If it was beyond repair, he didn’t know what he would do. The promise of moving to the small fishing village, of restoring the old house and making a home, had kept his head above water for the past few months.
In a few minutes he’d see for himself what shape it was in, but it was just as important to get a feel for the village and the people living here. The café seemed like a good place to start. “Interesting place. Are you the owner?”
“My family owns it.”
People were eating breakfast in the first half of the room. Past the crowded tables and chairs, several comfortable armchairs and a couch were loosely arranged around a woodstove with a glass door on the front. Everywhere he looked there were stacks of books; in columns leaning against a support beam, on several small tables positioned around the room. Two laptops stood open and ready for use on a long table in another corner. Available Wi-Fi. Great. It would probably take a while before he could get his systems up and running. In a little nook near the back was a kid’s corner with a knee-high table holding paints and crayons and more books.
The morning sun spilled in through the large front windows that looked out on the street, and apart from the colorful mural, the walls had been painted a warm gold color. It was a room that tempted people to use it, and judging by its warm, lived-in look, people had accepted the invitation.
“How much for the coffee?” When his voice echoed through the suddenly hushed room, he kept his smile in place. He imagined small towns had their own set of rules, and one of those would be knowing your neighbor’s business.
“First one’s free.” The angel smiled.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“You have a family?” she asked.
Not one he planned to tell anyone about. “Just me and my dog. So, Briar Lane?”
“Go back to the main street, turn right. Turn right again at Seaman Street. Briar Lane’s at the end. We’re the only two houses on it.”
Adam felt a whoosh of air as the door opened behind him. “Hey, sis. I need a coffee to go.” A man close to his age stepped up to the counter. He was an inch or two shorter than Adam and solid through the chest and upper arms. He had the same blond curls as his sister, but his eyes were a darker blue, edged with creases, like he spent a lot of time squinting into the sun. Adam thought he might remember the guy from the few times he’d visited his grandmother as a child.
The man turned to him. “That your dog in the half-ton?”
“Yeah.”
“Beautiful animal. Oh, thanks, Syl.” He grabbed a cup of coffee from his sister. “I never saw a shepherd with that much white in it. Is it a mix?”
“Haven’t the faintest. I’m thinking part wolf.”
“Must make a great attack dog.”
“The only thing I’ve seen Romeo attack are bumblebees.”
“Romeo?” The guy laughed. “What kind of name is that for a dog?”
Adam cracked a grin. “He’s a lover, not a fighter. He’s got a deep bark, though.” He turned to Sylvie. “I’ll keep him in at night so he won’t wake you up.”
The brother’s smile dried up as he looked from his sister to him. “What’s going on?”
“Meet my nosy brother, Dusty Carson. This is the...guy who bought the old Johnson place. Adam Hunter.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her smother a smile. Not only tarnished, but sassy, as well. Nice. He didn’t like the way she’d hesitated, though, like there was a better way to describe him. Idiot? Rube? Take your pick. Adam stuck out his hand to shake Dusty’s.
“Actually, I inherited the house from my grandmother.”
After an eternity, the angel’s brother shook his hand. “I think I remember you. You came once or twice when your grandmother was up from the States. You’ve got Ontario license plates.”
“I’m from Toronto.”
Dusty studied him over the rim of his coffee cup. “You plan on holding on to the house or selling it?”
“I’m hoping to fix it up so I can spend the winter. Install some windows, probably put on a new roof.”
An older man barreled through the kitchen doors, wiping his hands on a towel. “Whose roof are we talking about?” He looked at Sylvie. “I thought you’d left already, Sylvie. Better get going. I don’t like you driving back from Lancaster in the dark.”
Sylvie’s father or grandfather, if his looks were anything to go by. He was as tall as Dusty but more solid, bulkier. Despite his age, he still had a full head of blond hair. He held himself with the casual authority of someone used to commanding respect.
“His roof.” Dusty jerked his thumb in his direction. “Adam Hunter. Mrs. Johnson was his grandmother, and he inherited her house. This is our dad, Pops Carson.”
Not big on authority figures, Adam tried not to flinch as he met the old man’s stare straight on. “You’ve got a beautiful town here,” he said to fill the heavy silence in the café.
Pops shook his hand. “Your grandmother was a lovely person. I was sorry to hear she died. You’re from Toronto, aren’t you?”
“That’s where I grew up.”
“Toronto’s a long way from here.”
“That it is. I’m looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet.” He’d told himself that so many times, it had become a mantra. Peace and quiet. His salvation.
Pops switched his attention to the red patch on the back of Sylvie’s hand. “What did you do to your hand?”
“It’s nothing.” She turned her hand so only the palm showed.
“That looks like a burn. It could blister and get infected if you don’t take proper care of it. Let me see.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes. “It’s okay, Pops. My hand is not going to fall off because I spilled a bit of coffee on it.” She put her hand up to stop her father’s retort. “I’ll go home before I head out for Lancaster and put some ointment on it. Okay? Your turn. Did you take your morning medication?”
A smile softened Pops’s weather-lined face. “Just going to do that now, missy. You phone when you leave the city to come home so I’ll know when to expect you.”
“No, I won’t,” she responded over her shoulder as she sashayed toward the door. “You’ll be too busy chasing all the women at the dance. Come on, Adam. I’ll show you where your house is. I have to run back home now, anyway. See you later, all.” She waved over her shoulder and led the way out of the café.
Adam bit back a smile, nodded to the two men and followed her. Sylvie’s father and brother might like to think they held the upper hand, but he had a feeling the sassy little angel was used to getting her own way. Something to keep in mind.
He climbed into his truck and gave Romeo a hard scrub behind his ears. “This is it, Rom. What we’ve been waiting for.” He started the motor, his leg jittering so much the truck almost stalled as he engaged the clutch. Cursing under his breath, he pulled out behind Sylvie’s fire engine–red SUV.
He’d envisioned this moment a thousand times. In his mind, it had been him, alone, standing in front of the house and taking his time to soak in each and every detail before going inside to explore. He hadn’t counted on having an audience. Still, he was grateful to Sylvie for rescuing him from her father’s interrogation. He was so jacked up about seeing his house, he hadn’t been paying as much attention as he should have to what he said. He wanted this to work. He needed it to.
He followed Sylvie’s four-wheel drive down a short side street that was lined with wood frame houses, each one different from the other. The last one was a lumbering old beauty with a widow’s walk on its roof and fanciful trim. Driving into the village, he’d noticed a couple of other houses with the same kind of intricate detail. Once he got to know some people, he’d ask what the story was behind the elaborate carpentry.
It had been over seventeen years since he’d been here, and the end of the street came up quicker than he remembered. A long stretch of beach and the wide gray ocean opened up in front of him. When Sylvie turned sharply to the right, he cranked his steering wheel and strained forward to catch his first glimpse of his gram’s house. Sylvie drove past 2 Briar Lane and pulled into the gravel driveway of a cedar-shingled two-story. He pulled into the weedy, narrow driveway he barely remembered and turned his attention to the small box of a house that sat before him.
His gaze shot over to his neighbor’s house, which had dormers and a huge veranda along the front, then back to his. His had cedar shingles, too, but they looked mottled, the white paint peeling from them, partially exposing the gray beneath. The windows and front door looked like they’d rattle in a light breeze, and the way the stunted spruce between the houses leaned drastically to one side suggested they got their share of gales here. A huge crescent beach crept up to meet the small patch of grass that formed his front yard.
“Hey.” Sylvie rapped her knuckles against his fender.
He switched off the engine and climbed out of the truck. Romeo jumped out after him, his nose leading him straight to Sylvie.
“Gorgeous dog.” She bent down to run her hand over Romeo’s head.
“Thanks.” He couldn’t peel his eyes away from the house. His house.
Someone else might see crumbling and decay, but to him it was beautiful. Everything he’d hoped for.
Sylvie straightened up from patting Rom. “What do you think?”
He tore his gaze away from the house and looked at her. At her clear blue eyes and silken, blond curls. A woman like her, she’d have a husband or a boyfriend who kept her busy. He wasn’t interested in distractions, and Sylvie, if she were free, which she probably wasn’t, could become a major distraction if he let her. He was here to work on his house. Maybe make a couple of friends. That’s all.
Her forehead furrowed. “It’s pretty run-down. Probably too much work to fix up. Although my other brother, Cal, says the house has a solid foundation and framework.”
She’d said that last bit almost grudgingly. “I think I remember Dusty, but not you or another brother. How many siblings do you have?”
“Just the two brothers.”
“Do they live here with you?”
“Cal and Anita have a house on the hill, and Dusty bought his own house just a few weeks ago.”
“So, it’s you and your dad.” As anxious as he was to go inside and explore, he wanted to know who lived beside him. Where he’d grown up, being aware of his neighbors had saved his hide several times.
“Just me at the moment.” She folded her arms and tucked her chin into her chest, frown lines creasing her forehead.
Before he could wonder why that ticked her off, she gave him a sour smile. “I have to get going. Enjoy your...house.”
A vague feeling of distress settled around him as he watched her scoot over to her house and slam the door shut. Why did he get the feeling she was slamming the door on him?
Hell, he’d only been in town half an hour and already there could be complications. Fitting in and being accepted was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined. Maybe he’d made a mistake; Collina was too small. People would want to know where he came from, who his folks were.
But he’d been running from the day he’d been born, and it was time to stop.
One thing he knew for certain. He’d keep his distance from Sylvie Carson. He hoped to ease his way into the community, get to know a few folk before the questions started in earnest. After watching Sylvie’s dad fuss about the light burn on his daughter’s hand and her driving home in the dark, he had no intention of riling up papa bear. Not that Sylvie seemed the least bit interested in him. The exact opposite, as a matter of fact. But still, he’d be smart to stay on his side of the fence.
He dragged his attention back to where it belonged—his new home. His future. His hand shaking, he stuck the key into the keyhole and turned the lock.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO DAYS LATER, Sylvie dropped the phone into its cradle and wandered over to the dormer window of the attic room Pops had made into a studio for her years ago.
She’d woken depressed and tried to convince herself the low pressure system moving in from the ocean was the reason for her foul mood. The clouds looked saturated with rain, but none had fallen yet. There wasn’t a breath of wind outside. The ocean, for once, was a benign presence, still and crystalline. She should go for a brisk walk along the beach, get her heart pumping and clear her head of the debris left from her brief conversation with her now ex-boyfriend, Oliver, whom she’d left behind in Toronto.
Oliver was a sophisticated, cultured man, and everyone envied her relationship with him. Even her father and brothers, for Pete’s sake. No matter how many times she explained to them that Oliver had a doctorate degree in museum studies, not medicine, they referred to him as Dr. Templeton. When he’d visited her two months ago, nothing had been too good for the doctor. Lobster, scallops, boat rides out to watch the whales. Her family had fallen in love with him. Which, now she thought about it, wasn’t an unusual reaction to Oliver. She was the problem, not him. To make matters worse, he’d seemed genuinely interested in everything her father and brothers had talked about. But that was Oliver. He made everyone believe they were fascinating.
In fact, during the entire two years they’d been a couple, she had thought about breaking up with him on more than one occasion. But when she tried to talk about it with her girlfriends or her family, or even Oliver, they looked at her like she was crazy. Small wonder. Her sole reason was that her handsome, considerate boyfriend annoyed her to no end. She always felt she had to be on her best behavior around him. And if she ever did let her guard down, act snotty and throw a fit, he’d say it was her artistic temperament and would she like a back rub? She didn’t want a back rub, and she didn’t want him to be so damned nice. She wanted...well, that was the problem. She had no idea what it was she wanted, but it wasn’t Oliver.
This morning she’d taken the coward’s way out and ended the relationship over the phone. The gesture had been mostly a formality. She’d only seen him twice since she’d moved back home and had assumed he’d gotten on with his life.
To her surprise, he’d done his best to change her mind, just as he had every time she’d told him she needed a break from their relationship. Yet this time she’d sensed something different. He hadn’t sounded upset as much as annoyed—probably because he was far too self-contained to blow up. Too bad. She’d have welcomed a shouting match. Something that she could rip into. Something...real. The only thing she felt was relief.
Their lives had dovetailed together perfectly in the beginning. He owned a respected art gallery, and took a chance on her as an unknown artist—a chance that had paid off for both of them. Her career had taken off under his guidance and had been capped off when a corporation commissioned her to paint six seascapes. She’d managed to paint four before she returned home to help take care of Pops.
How could she have guessed that here, at the edge of the ocean, her muse would desert her, and she wouldn’t be able to complete the last two seascapes? This was where it had all begun. Where she’d won her first drawing contest. Where she’d spent endless hours learning and perfecting her craft.
And now Oliver was hinting that she’d run out of time. The buyers wanted their paintings, and if she couldn’t come up with them, the damage to her reputation, not to mention his reputation, would be irreparable. Bottom line, either she pulled it together and started painting again, or she’d better start shopping around for another career. Which was a slight exaggeration, and beside the point, because if she couldn’t paint, she couldn’t paint. But damn, she wished she could get it all back. Well, not Oliver necessarily. But she truly loved painting.
A burning sensation shot through her chest, a sure sign of an oncoming panic attack. She plopped into the chair by her desk, stuck her head between her legs and started counting. Life was difficult enough with her father still not completely recovered and her being blocked, she didn’t need this. The panic attacks had to stop. Maybe she should forget about her career for now. Forget about everything, except resolving her issues with her family.
Except she hadn’t even told them what she’d remembered about the night her mother died. She was waiting for Pops to get stronger. And then she’d ask her questions, and maybe somehow magically, she’d get her life back. Problem was, the longer she stayed in limbo, the more she wondered if she wanted to go back to her old life.
When her equilibrium returned and she could breathe again, she grabbed her sketch pad from the desk where she’d flung it the day before and ripped out the first page without looking at it, tore it in half again and again. She tore out another useless sketch, scrunched it into a ball and jammed it into the wastepaper basket. Sentimental drivel. The lines in the drawings weren’t bold enough, they left too much room for interpretation. She wanted to excite people, stir them up—not give them something to snivel over.
The miserable preliminary sketches she’d ripped to shreds were all she had to show for six months of anguish. She’d actually thought she was an artist...with a future. Hah! What she was—three more pages came loose in one pull—was a talentless nobody. A waitress in her family’s café.
She tossed the pad on the desk and stared sightlessly out the window until a movement next door caught her eye. Adam Hunter strode into his backyard and started his tai chi routine. Yesterday, watching him go through his routine for the first time, she’d sat riveted for an entire half hour. She’d seen people do tai chi in the city parks, but the difference was like looking at a reproduction of a masterpiece and looking at the original. Adam was the real thing.
Her fingers itched for a pencil as he slowly glided through a complicated set of movements, his body moving with the sinuous elegance of a dancer. Romeo sat only three feet away from him, but didn’t move. Interesting that a man, whose less-than-perfect nose suggested he’d been in a few fights, would choose to practice tai chi, not one of the more aggressive disciplines.
Not able to stop herself, she grabbed her book and started sketching. She’d thought she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him the past two days because of what she had remembered of her father’s relationship with his grandmother, but maybe it was because she needed to draw him. Heaven knows he had an interesting face, but drawing his body in motion, the combination of the brute strength of his huge, well-muscled body tempered with grace...
She chucked the book on the table and paced the large, open room. She needed to sculpt him in clay, a medium she’d been playing with before The Great Demise. She’d make a small sculpture, no bigger than twelve inches—any larger, and it would be overwhelming. And it would be best if she could get him to pose in the nude. She stopped, laughed out loud. Like that would happen. Her father and brothers would probably take him for a long boat ride and not bring him back.
Still. She took another turn around the attic room. She’d start slow, ask him if he’d sit for her. Then maybe work her way up to no shirt, get him down to his boxers or whatever he wore for underwear. Her breath hitched in her throat. She felt almost giddy, ramped up like...
What was she doing? Sylvie looked at the sketch where it lay on the desk. Hideous. A three-year-old could do a better job. Adam didn’t look graceful or sensual in the sketch. The proportions were all there, but the excitement he incited was missing. The magic. She’d lost her touch, and she didn’t need Adonis next door reminding her of that fact.
Sylvie ripped the sketch out of the book and crammed it into the wastebasket. Disgusted with herself, she pulled the window shade down and stalked out of the room. It was time to admit her life had completely crapped out. Sooner or later, she would have to tell her family that she wasn’t moving back to Toronto until...well, she didn’t know. Until her father was better, and they could finally talk about her mother. Until whatever had blocked her was dislodged. Until Sylvie Carson finally knew who she wanted to be when she grew up.
* * *
ADAM STOOD LOOSE, but alert, as he transitioned from his meditative state back to the world around him. He’d grown addicted to seeing the world in bright detail while feeling a deep sense of peace inside. Never in a million years would he have imagined he’d end up getting into meditation and tai chi. As always, he gave thanks to Jake McCoy, the man who’d given him the tools to manage his anger. He took a final deep breath and turned to track Sylvie over the four-foot cedar-slab fence that separated their yards.
He knew she’d watched him the past two mornings, and he was curious to hear what she thought about his morning practice. He’d have done his exercises inside if there was room, but his little house was divided into three small rooms downstairs and three upstairs. None were big enough for him to perform his daily exercise routine.
Not that he was ashamed of practicing tai chi, but he suspected the male stereotype still reigned supreme in a village like Collina, where most of the men made a hard living at sea. He wanted to fit in, not alienate people.
Wearing clingy, black pants that came to just below her knees, and a formfitting, long-sleeved T-shirt the color of a plum, Sylvie sauntered into the back corner of her yard. When she crouched down and cooed, a white cat materialized out of the shrubs. Adam put his hand down by his side and rotated it, signing Romeo to his side. Sylvie alone was trouble, but put her together with a cat, and he and Rom could both be in trouble.
Against his better judgment, he drifted closer to the fence. He knew he should leave well enough alone. On the other hand, people would start asking questions if he holed up in his house and didn’t talk to anyone.
He cleared his throat when she didn’t look in his direction. “It feels like rain,” he said. Brilliant, yet original. Hard to top that.
Sylvie obviously thought otherwise. He heard her sigh as she scooped the cat into her arms and turned to face him. The smile she offered looked like the leftovers that usually resided at the back of his refrigerator. Bland, wilted and dried up around the edges. Guess she wasn’t thrilled about acquiring a new neighbor. Or maybe it was having him as a neighbor. He was aware he looked like he belonged in a dark alley on the wrong side of town rather than in a quaint coastal village.
She glanced at the sky as if just noticing the day. “Probably. This is Moonbeam.” She held the cat up in front of her. The white puffball’s eyes were as blue as her mistress’s. “I kept her in yesterday so Romeo could get used to his surroundings, but she was getting twitchy, so I let her out earlier. She’s used to coming and going as she pleases. Is he okay with cats?” She nodded at Romeo, who was straining to sniff the cat through the slats of the fence.
Adam leaned against the fence, catching a whiff of peaches. “I don’t know. This is a first for us. What do you think, Rom? Are you going to be nice to Moonbeam?”
