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But as Sarah made her way toward the back, she realized that she was not alone. Something was going on at the back of the shop, near the cash register. All the salesclerks—and several people who looked like customers, as well—were clustered around the counter.
A sales meeting? It didn’t sound like it. In fact, as she stood, wondering, the voices grew louder. It quickly became clear that she had stumbled into some sort of fracas. One person was waving a newspaper, and about four other people began talking at once.
Feeling like something of an intruder, Sarah considered trying to sneak out again. But her curiosity got the better of her. What, in an idyllic hamlet like this, could be making everyone so hot tempered?
She fingered a few coats not far from the action, shamelessly eavesdropping. She couldn’t help being curious about the people here. The anecdotes in Uncle Ward’s vivid letters had made her feel as if she knew them.
“It’s libel, I tell you. It’s actionable. I can prove damages—”
“He can’t do this! I won’t make it through the winter without the profits from the festival!”
“Damn it, Tremaine, if you can’t do something about that bad-tempered old hermit—”
Tremaine? Sarah looked up, wondering if it could be the sheriff she’d met on the mountain. It was hard to see through the crowd, but finally the agitated people shifted, clearing the way. And there he was.
Sheriff Parker Tremaine, his gold star still resting on the soft black leather of his jacket, was the man at the core of the debate, the authority to whom they all appealed. No question it was the same man. Same wavy, dark hair, same startlingly blue eyes. Same tip-tilted smile on the same generously chiseled lips she had admired once before. Apparently he wasn’t exactly terrified of the annoyed crowd around him.
Sarah caught her breath. She had found him fairly eye-catching before, but obviously seeing Parker Tremaine from the neck up didn’t tell the whole story. As she watched him leaning back against the cashier’s counter, listening to the escalating complaints, Sarah finally got the full effect of his long, lazy limbs and tight, narrow hips.
He was even better looking than Ed, she realized. And yet, he had a kindness in his expression that Ed hadn’t ever exhibited. Even more appealing, he seemed comfortably indifferent to his looks. His jacket was well-worn, fitting his broad shoulders with a fluid familiarity. His hair was just wavy enough to be unruly, but she saw no sign that Parker cared. Where Ed had always been obsessively gelling or spraying, Parker’s hair was merely cut and combed and then ignored. But the result was an unintentional sexiness, as if that slight disarray invited someone to smooth it into place.
Her hands unconsciously stroked the silky fabric of the coat she held. Yes, she concluded, Parker Tremaine wore his sex appeal the same way he wore that shiny badge on the breast of his black leather jacket—lightly. As though both of them were fun but ultimately unnecessary.
She hadn’t realized she was staring until she saw that Parker was looking right at her. Even from this distance, she could tell that there was a pleased recognition in his gaze.
Maybe she could help. In a way, she owed him. He had offered to rescue her on the mountain, and he had, without realizing it, actually done so. She hadn’t needed a jump start or a can of gas or a new tire. But she had needed that smile, that simple gesture of welcome. He had rescued her confidence, her optimism. He had given her the courage to make it that last mile down the mountain.
She spoke up quickly, just loud enough to be heard over the clamor of voices. “Excuse me? I’m sorry to interrupt, but is there anyone who might be able to tell me about this coat?”
Everyone turned toward her, apparently shocked to discover that there was a witness. Sarah felt herself flushing, slightly uncomfortable at being the center of attention, but then she caught Parker Tremaine’s eye one more time, and he was giving her that special smile. She smiled back, but she felt the flush deepen.
“I’m sorry. May I help you?” Two salesclerks came over instantly, chagrined. The rest of the people dispersed edgily, talking to one another in lowered tones, as if wondering what imprudent comments this stranger had overheard.
Sarah pretended to listen to the saleswoman extolling the virtues of Polarweave technology—something about storm cuffs and synthetic insulation and temperature ratings—but she was really watching as Parker Tremaine made his escape through the confused crowd.
As he passed her, he winked conspiratorially in her direction. “Thanks,” he mouthed, and she found herself grinning stupidly back, as if she really had done something heroic.
“Damn it, Tremaine, you can’t get out of here without promising you’re going to do something about that selfish old bastard.”
One of the men from the crowd, a seventy-ish, self-important type with a red face and a snub nose, had followed the sheriff to the door and was obviously not going to give up easily.
Parker sighed, pulling on black leather gloves as he shouldered open the shop’s front door. A blast of freezing air hit the front of the store, driving the older man back, as the sheriff had no doubt expected it to do.
“I’ll take care of it,” Parker said firmly as he zipped up his jacket and prepared to exit. “This festival is going to take place even if I have to lock Ward Winters in the county jail until spring.”
Ward Winters?
But Sarah was too shocked to say a word. And with a melodic ringing of door bells, Parker Tremaine departed, leaving her standing there, with an expensive black Polarweave coat in her arms and a stupid, disbelieving smile fading from her lips.
FOR THE THIRD TIME, Emma Tremaine Dunbar sat down in the back office of her stationery store, The Paper House, to proof the copy for the Kemble baby announcement.
She prayed that the front door chimes didn’t sound. It seemed ridiculous to hope for bad business, but she couldn’t afford to get called away again. She had promised Harry that she’d close early. He wanted to have lunch at home together. He wanted to have a “serious talk.”
But this announcement had to get to the printer today, or the Kemble family would be justifiably furious. If only she thought Harry would understand. He liked the money her store brought in, but he seemed to think it took care of itself. He didn’t accept that Emma should ever be busy when he needed her.
Darn. There were three typos. She swiveled to the computer, punching in the keys as fast as she could, trying to call up the Kemble file. She glanced nervously at the clock overhead. It was one. She was already late.
The door chimes rang out. Emma stifled a groan, mentally begged the file to open more quickly, then stood up to return to the sales floor.
But this time it wasn’t a customer. It was Harry.
He wasn’t in uniform. Harry didn’t work on Monday. His days off were Monday and Tuesday, about which he complained bitterly, blaming Parker for designing an unfair schedule. Emma had pointed out once that Parker’s own schedule was even worse—he didn’t even get two days off in a row—but Harry didn’t care. Whenever anything displeased him these days, it was always Parker’s fault.
Or Emma’s. She looked at Harry’s tight face and wondered why he was still so unhappy. Last year had been so different. Back before Parker had moved home and snagged the job Harry had wanted. Before the other bad news, before they had discovered that they…
Well, just before. They had been happy then. They had laughed—a lot. Now she couldn’t remember the last time Harry had even smiled.
And yet, in spite of his frown, he looked so darling today, in that brown suede jacket she’d given him for his birthday, which matched his brown hair perfectly. Her heart did a couple of hot little thumps, thinking how much she loved her husband—and yet how little she seemed to be able to comfort him.
“I knew I’d find you here,” he said stiffly. “I knew you’d forget I had asked you to come home for lunch.”
“I didn’t forget,” she said, vowing not to take offense. “I had customers.”
He looked around the empty store, commenting silently on its emptiness.
“And then I had an order to proof.” She felt her patience giving out on her. “Come on, Harry. You aren’t always able to get home on time, either. Do I give you this kind of grief about it?”
He tightened his lips. “I don’t think you can really equate the two, do you? I think enforcing the law might be just a little more significant than sending out invitations to Birthday With Bozo.”
Emma stared at him helplessly. She wanted to go up to this sour, embittered man and grab him by his suede collar and shake him until he told her what he had done with her real husband. Or else she wanted to go up and kiss him until he thawed, until he remembered that he was special, no matter what had happened to make him feel so insecure. Until he remembered that she loved him, and she always would.
But she’d already tried those things, more or less. And they hadn’t worked. They’d only driven him deeper into his emotional hole. Apparently he didn’t want to get better. And he didn’t like it that she seemed to be able to move on, to put together a happy life in spite of the grim disappointments they had endured this past year.
Her strength didn’t sustain him. It only made him feel even more inferior.
But she wouldn’t be weak just to please him. She wouldn’t drown with him, no matter how much she loved him.
“Well, we’re together now. How about if I lock the door, and we can have our conversation here? What did you want to talk about?”
He raked his hand through his hair. “You know what. The poster. I want you to explain to me why you took it down. I want to know why you aren’t willing to campaign for your own husband. I want to know why, when the income from my career supports you, too, you can’t do even that one little thing to help me win.”
Emma’s heart was beating rapidly. Stalling, she arranged herself on the edge of the nearest table, careful not to dislodge the large sample books of cards and invitations. She took a deep breath and gave Harry a steady look.
“That’s not a conversation,” she said. “That’s an interrogation.”
“I don’t care what you call it. I want some answers.”
“So do I.” She folded her hands in her lap, to help her resist the temptation to choke him. “I want to know why you’d put me in the embarrassing, distressing position of having to choose between my brother and my husband.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “And I want to know,” he said, his voice acid, “why that choice should be even the slightest bit difficult.”
The urge to shake him grew stronger. Was it possible he really didn’t understand this? That his self-absorption had become so complete that he couldn’t imagine what she was feeling?
“Because I love you both, you idiot. Because you and Parker are the two most important people in the world to me. I can live with the fact that you are competing for the same job. But I will not be forced to take sides.”
“You’re already taking sides. If you don’t publicly support me, it makes me look bad. Everyone will know what that means.”
“I disagree,” she said, still striving to be rational. “I think it makes you look good. It shows that you’re not eager to make this campaign any more uncomfortable for your family than it has to be. It makes you look as if you’re sensitive to your wife’s dilemma. Even if you’re not.”
He made an angry gesture. “Oh, so now I’m not sensitive, either?”
“Harry, for heaven’s sake—”
To her dismay, the front door chimed, and a customer walked in. Oh, God, she had forgotten to lock the door. The tension of living with this new Harry was making her absolutely crazy.
It was a middle-aged woman. A tourist. You could tell by her deep copper suntan, something you never saw on the faces of locals. She was dusting snow from her shoulders, oblivious to the fact that she was shaking it onto the Valentine’s display Emma had just begun to assemble, where it would melt and ruin everything it touched.
The woman patted her big, teased helmet of preposterous yellow hair, transferred her huge designer purse from one hand to another and scanned the store avidly. “Have you marked down your Christmas cards yet?”
Emma stood politely. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll show you where they are. Just give me a minute to—”
But Harry was already gone.
THE COAT HAD COST her three times what she could afford, but as Sarah trudged up the winding path toward Winter House, which sat at the top of a small, snow-covered hill, she decided it was worth every penny.
Though it was only about two in the afternoon, the temperature had begun to drop, and the light had taken on a bluish cast, as if twilight were impatiently pressing against the sun. The falling snow was thicker now, and with every step Sarah’s feet sank into several inches of fresh white powder.
Looking up toward the mansion, Sarah saw that it, too, had been transformed by winter. In that long-ago summer, to the thirteen-year-old Sarah who had harbored here, Winter House had seemed like a happy, honey-colored, sun-kissed castle. The hill it stood on had been kelly-green, and the surrounding lush parkland of oaks had softened the mansion’s asymmetrical lines.
It was different now, in this stark setting. It was more like some mysterious, silent abbey—dark and complicated and vaguely forbidding. For the first time, she could see that the mansion had been aptly titled. Even if its owners had been named Smith, this would have been Firefly Glen’s Winter House.
It was a typical nineteenth-century Gothic mansion of fawn-colored stone. Its eccentric, disorderly silhouette of crenellated towers, steeply pointed arches crested with fleur-de-lis, wide oriel windows, turrets, spires and gables stood out boldly against the low, oppressive pewter sky.
Rising from its bare and snow-covered hill, it looked like the ultimate temple of winter: cold and hauntingly beautiful.
When Sarah finally reached the huge oak doors, which were decorated with bold iron strap hinges and a brass lion’s mouth knocker, she almost expected it to swing open with a creak, revealing a shuffling, half-mad hunchback.
Instead, the door was answered by a charming woman of about sixty-five, with silver hair impeccably groomed, pink lips, sparkling brown eyes, and a trim figure displayed to advantage in a shirtwaist dress patterned in giant yellow tulips, as if in defiance of the weather.
At the sight of Sarah, the woman smiled sweetly and swept the door wide.
“Oh, how wonderful, you must be Sarah. Ward has told me so much about you. It’s just marvelous to meet you. Just an absolute delight. Come in, come in. You must be freezing. Give me your coat—what a lovely coat. Your uncle will be so happy. I’m Madeline Alexander, dear, a great friend of your uncle’s.”
Apparently without drawing a breath, she whisked Sarah’s coat away, hung it on a large oak hall stand and kept talking.
“Yes, a very great friend. In fact, dear, I’ll tell you a secret,” she said as she led Sarah by the arm through the enormous, wood-paneled front hall, moving so briskly that Sarah barely had time to register the ribbed, vaulted ceiling and thick tapestries draped along the walls. “I’m probably going to marry your uncle Ward someday.”
Sarah hesitated without thinking, pulling the older woman to an abrupt stop. “What?” Her uncle’s letters had never even mentioned anyone named Madeline.
Madeline smiled peacefully. “Well, he doesn’t know it yet, of course. And you don’t need to mention it to him—it would only upset him.” She patted Sarah’s shoulder with a beautifully manicured hand. “It’ll just be our little secret, all right?”
Sarah began walking again, unsure what else to do. Madeline seemed quite in control of the situation, and completely at home in the mansion. “Your uncle is in the library. He does love the library, doesn’t he? Although I think it’s rather gloomy. Those stained-glass windows may be quite valuable, but they do strange things to the light, don’t they? Right here, dear. I keep forgetting it’s been so long since you’ve visited. You probably don’t remember where the library is.”
But Sarah did remember. The library had been her favorite room, too. She and her uncle had spent many a happy hour here, lost in deep, philosophical conversations over a game of chess. Uncle Ward had been the world’s best listener, and his young, unhappy great-niece had had much she wanted to say.
Suddenly she was so eager to see her uncle that she wanted to burst through those doors and wrap her arms around him. She felt a burning behind her eyes, thinking of him living in this huge, strange mansion, all alone now that Aunt Roberta was gone. She wanted to hold him close, to apologize for letting Ed stop her from coming to Aunt Roberta’s funeral. And she wanted to thank him for extending his friendship, opening his haven—on that long-ago summer, and again today, when she was almost as vulnerable as she had been at thirteen.
But that was probably just the hormones acting up again. With effort she restrained herself. Effusive boiling over of affection wasn’t Uncle Ward’s style. If such feelings were ever to be shared between them, it would be more subtle. Indirectly, through a seemingly impersonal discussion of art or literature or theater, they would make their emotions understood.
So Sarah hung back, letting Madeline, who obviously relished acting as mistress of the mansion, throw open the ornate doors and announce her formally.
It took a moment for Sarah’s eyes to adjust to the light, what little there was. Red and yellow stained-glass windows made up one whole wall of the library, and the winter sun was just barely strong enough to penetrate. The result was that everything—leather-bound books, mahogany tables, Oriental carpets and people alike—seemed washed in a watery golden glow.
Sarah had been expecting to see her uncle enthroned here in lonely splendor. But as her vision cleared she saw that at least four other people were in the room.
Two women of approximately Madeline’s age perched in the window seat, pouring tea from a tea set that probably was silver but glowed an eerie bronze in the strange light. Her uncle sat in his usual chair—his throne, Aunt Roberta had always teasingly called it. It was a heavy, carved monstrosity with serpent arms and lion’s claw feet.
And in the chair beside him sat another man. This had been Sarah’s chair, that summer. The chair of honor. The chair of the chosen chess partner, the lucky confidant, the favored friend.
She squinted, unable to believe her eyes. But it was true. The man who sat in that chair today was the sheriff of Firefly Glen. The man who, just half an hour ago, had threatened to put her uncle in jail.
CHAPTER FOUR
SARAH WENT FIRST to her uncle, surrendering in spite of herself to the overwhelming impulse to envelop him in a tight hug. For a long moment, she remained there, silently drinking in the comfort of his wiry strength, his familiar scent of soap and leather and pipe tobacco. Oh, she was so glad she had come. She hadn’t felt this safe in a long, long time.
He accepted her embrace with uncharacteristic patience and warmth, as if perhaps he, too, had found the years apart too long and lonely. But just when she began to fear she might dissolve into overemotional tears, he patted her back briskly and chuckled in her ear.
“If you don’t let go soon, Sarah, my love, you’ll ruin my reputation as a prickly old bastard. And then I’ll have to beat the Alexander sisters off with a stick.”
Sarah grinned and pulled away, finally remembering her manners. Turning, she faced the others. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling. “Hello.”
Madeline took over. “Oh, my dear, you mustn’t apologize. Of course you want to say hello to your uncle, after all these years. It’s just the sweetest thing. Well, now, I’d like you to meet my sisters. Flora and Arlene, Flora’s the eldest. I’m the youngest, of course—” this with a flirtatious double blink in Ward’s direction. “I know they’ll be happy to pour a cup of tea for you. You do like tea, don’t you? It’s just the thing on such a nasty day.”
The two women over by the stained-glass window immediately began clinking cups and saucers and pouring steaming, aromatic liquid. The sisters were every bit as lovely as Madeline, though they couldn’t match her rippling stream of charming chatter. They didn’t, in fact, seem to try. They merely beamed at Sarah and nodded their heads in agreement that, yes, it was delightful finally to meet her.
“And the guy with the badge over there,” Sarah’s uncle said from behind her, “is Sheriff Parker Tremaine. Tremaine, this is my niece. Keep away from her. I haven’t had a long visit with her in fifteen years, and I don’t plan to share her visit with anybody.”
“Hello, Sarah.” Parker, who had stood at Sarah’s arrival, smiled that cockeyed smile she remembered all too well. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to say thank you in person. Your niece and I have already met, Ward,” he added blandly. “She saved my life about an hour ago.”
“She did what? How?” Ward looked irritated. “No, don’t even tell me. Sarah, I’m going to have to ask you not to fall in love with Tremaine here. It would be just too boring. Every other female in the Glen already has beaten you to it. Hypnotized by the badge, I guess. You know women. Anything that sparkles.”
Madeline made a small, offended noise. “Not every woman, Ward,” she sniffed, but the old man just rolled his eyes and ignored her.
“Besides,” Ward went on, obviously enjoying himself, “he’s kind of a half-ass sheriff, and lately he’s been annoying the hell out of me. But he’s a passable chess player, so I haven’t thrown him out. Yet.”
“Actually, I think you should hear this story.” Parker Tremaine was clearly undaunted, as amused by the bickering as her uncle was. He tossed a wink at Sarah. “It’s a good story, Ward. You’ll love it—it’s all about you. See, your niece rescued me from a lynch mob. That’s right, a lynch mob, ready to string me up in the town square. And you know why? Because I haven’t slapped you in jail yet.”
“Ha! Put me in jail?” Ward raised his shaggy black eyebrows. “You and whose army?”
