His Hometown Girl

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“Actually, I’d rather talk if you have a minute...Frank.”

Frank, one of his bowling team members, caught the small shake of Daniel’s head and took the hint.

“Uh, that’s okay. I was just looking for a dance.”

“Oh.” Jodi’s mouth turned down in disappointment. “Maybe another time.”

“How about a dance with me?” Ted reappeared, out of breath. “Came back as quick as I could before another fellow got you. Oh, and it turns out you had the wrong truck, Gleason.”

Jodi extended her hand. “I suppose this is the only way I’ll get to speak with anyone.”

Daniel paced as he watched her smiling and talking a mile a minute. Ted’s eyes looking unfocused; his hands drifted lower and lower until Daniel couldn’t take it anymore.

“Time’s up, Ted. She’s dancing the next one with me,” he grumbled when he reached them. He forced his face to relax when Ted immediately gave way.

“Of course, Daniel. If I’d known...”

“We have a conversation to continue, Ted. Remember? My offer?” Jodi asked, insistent.

But Daniel held Ted’s eye until he shuffled away.

“Later, Jodi,” Ted muttered.

“Phone me at my aunt Grace’s,” she called, her business card disappearing back into her purse. Her eyes leveled on Daniel. “There’s no reason to behave unprofessionally. And, despite what you said when you dropped us off, this is not a war. It’s business. Big difference.”

He looked down at her and shook his head, unable to resist tucking a strand behind her ear. “Keep telling yourself that.”

When the music switched up to something low and smooth, he pulled her in close, every inch of him aware of the feminine beauty he held in his arms.

“Regardless, he said he planned to sell and knew other farmers that would hear me out. Oh. And he liked my offer. See? Not personal.”

His body tensed as he looked around at the many people who had traveled less than a few miles to be here and at all of their community events. This was their hometown. Who’d be left if Jodi had her way? Pamela Bates? Frank Trudeau? He’d grown up with them. Had imagined them all farming and growing old together. Yet with one check, Jodi would destroy that future. Old men who’d fought to preserve their legacies for the next generation would finish their lives in nursing home corridors instead of on their farms’ front porches. It wasn’t right.

“Look around you.” He gestured at their classmates. “These are people, Jodi, so it’s personal. How can I get that through to you?”

“You can’t. This is a business transaction. Plain and simple.”

A spotlight stopped on them, blinding him before he could insist that it was the end of a way of life. He’d thought the old Jodi might still be reachable, but now he knew the truth. Another Midland suit stood before him. The only difference? She resembled someone he used to know.

“And now it’s time for a speech from our valedictorian,” boomed Frank. “Daniel Gleason.”

Raucous applause exploded around him and he reluctantly let go of Jodi’s hand and took his place on stage. When he looked out at the smiling, cheering audience, the group that had voted him class president, he knew what he had to do. With old men about to get turned out of their farms, and Jodi’s offer too good to turn down, desperate times called for desperate measures. Her refusal to consider others meant he’d run out of options.

He held up his hands until they hushed, and raised the microphone.

“Folks. Looking out at all of you, I see family, friends...Layhee.” He paused for the ripple of laughter to die down and Ted’s attention-getting protests to end. “I see a community of people I’ve known all my life, whose parents grew up together and their parents before them.”

Lots of smiles and nods erupted around the room as well as a few cups of punch raised his way.

Daniel yanked at his tie. It was hot under these bright lights, especially with Jodi’s narrowed eyes fixed on him. He gave her a look that he hoped expressed his silent apology for what he was about to do.

“Farming and family-run businesses have been a way of life in Cedar Bay since our ancestors struggled, sacrificed, fought and died to make the independence we enjoy today possible.”

“Hear! Hear!” someone hollered in the back. Bobby, another one of his bowling pals.

“Our teachers gave us extra time to turn in work during harvest or when we had to get the fields ready in the spring, but they understood—like the rest of our community—that we’re in this together, helping one another. We’re here for each other, whether it’s taking over someone’s milking to give another a vacation, bringing meals every day if someone’s ill, joining forces to repair and rebuild when tragedy strikes.” He avoided Jodi’s eyes. If he met them, he knew he wouldn’t have the heart to go on.

“And that doesn’t even take into account the good times like our potluck dinners overseen by Grace Chapman, Mary’s line dancing, hay-bale mazes at the Darbys’, the Winches’ sleigh rides, our tractor races and watermelon-eating contests and all the other things that go into making our daily challenges worth it.”

“I’m ready to line dance right now!” roared Ted, whose wandering hand moved toward Jodi before she shook it off. She was pale under the lights, her stare unwavering.

“We’ll get there, Ted.” Daniel shifted in his tight dress shoes. “I wanted to bring this up because this is the first time we’ve all been together since we accepted our diplomas and faced a future that, for many of us, was already a given. We knew we’d take the torch our farming families passed us and keep it safe.”

“We love you, Daniel!” shouted a female voice. By the set of Jodi’s face, it wasn’t hers.

“We’ve done a good job so far, weathering one of the worst economic times and coming through intact. Yet some would like to take advantage of the cracks in our foundation. Midland Corp, for instance.”

Several boos erupted in the audience and he saw Jodi flinch. He had to swallow over the lump clogging his throat and force himself to keep going.

“We’ve resisted their attempts to steal our livelihoods from us—our communities, our traditions, all that we have to pass down to our own kids. Yet they’ve devised an even more sinister plan than I could have imagined.”

He had the room’s full attention now. Many leaned in or stepped forward. You could have heard a pin drop.

“They’ve sent one of our own against us. Jodi Lynn Chapman.” He gestured toward her and while everyone turned to stare, no one clapped or smiled. In fact, many who had been cordial before now looked hostile. Guess word hadn’t reached everyone about her real purpose for coming home until now.

Jodi’s face turned bright enough to look sunburned.

“Let’s show her the door. That’s all the welcome she’s getting if she’s with Midland instead of us,” yelled someone from a shadowed corner.

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd, their angry babble rising until it drowned out his attempts to quiet them. He had more to say, but they weren’t listening. In fact, they’d turned their backs on him and were closing in on Jodi. Her face contorted and she pressed a napkin to it before pushing through the crowd and out the door, her rose hair clip loose and flopping on her shoulders.

He turned away from the microphone and muttered a word not for public hearing. After hopping off the stage, he shoved through the crowed in pursuit of her.

“Great speech, big guy.” One of his friends slapped him on the back.

Daniel nodded to the well-wishers who swarmed him, angry at himself for stirring this already boiling pot. Jodi’s motivations were wrong, and the sooner she realized it the better, but he’d underestimated the crowd and he owed her an apology. He’d wanted to get through to her, not drive her to her breaking point. The thought filled him with regret.

“Jodi!” He cupped his hands around his mouth and belted her name across the parking lot before she slipped inside her car.

“Leave me alone, Daniel.” Her keys fell from her shaking hands. “You’ve done enough.” She crouched down to search but ended up putting her fingers over her eyes, her shoulders quaking.

In a flash he was by her side, scooping up her keys and the flowered hair clip that’d fallen before pulling her upright. Her damp hair clung to her temples when he pushed it away from her face, and his hands cupped her cheeks, his thumbs brushing away the moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Jodi. I didn’t mean for it to turn that ugly.”

“Didn’t you?”

His stomach clenched. Hadn’t he? Yes. In a way. But he’d never imagined the aftermath would affect him this much. He had her on the ropes, but he felt as if he was the one down on the mat. Yet it’d always been that way between them. Each swinging until they couldn’t raise an arm, the wounds they inflicted staying long after the contest was over. His chest constricted when he recalled their squabbles over the years, from who’d win the blue ribbon for best pumpkin at the county fair to who’d win class president.

Even their temporary truce, called when they’d given in to their feelings, had ended badly. She’d disappeared from his life for ten years. And now she looked ready to quit again. It was what he wanted. So why, then, did he suddenly wish she’d stay?

He pressed his forehead to hers, but she jerked away. “Please believe me. I’m not out to get you. I meant it when I said this isn’t business, it’s personal. I’m fighting for my life. Mine and others’.”

Suddenly her face regained its composure. If anything, she looked stronger and more beautiful than ever. She took his breath away.

“So am I, Daniel,” she said after a long moment. “So am I.”

He started to ask her what she meant, whose life she fought for, but she held up a finger and the words dissolved on his tongue.

“You’re right. It isn’t just business. It’s personal. Like you said, this is war, and I’m in it for the long haul.”

And with that she grabbed her keys, unlocked her car and roared into the night, leaving him with thoughts and emotions as scrambled as the dust cloud she left behind.

Despite his turmoil, however, he grinned. The old Jodi was back. She drove him crazy, but he’d rather have a clean, honest fight with the firecracker he remembered than mince words with one of those polished suits he’d feared she’d become.

He stared down at the rose she’d left behind, then tossed it skyward. When it returned, he snatched it out of the air and tucked it into his pocket.

“Now, that’s my girl.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A DUCK CALL woke Jodi the next morning, her uneasy sleep clinging to her like the muggy air. She peered at the sunlight filtering in around the edges of the opaque window shade, then at her alarm clock.

It was 10:00 a.m.

She bolted upright, her quilted coverlet pooling in her lap. How could she have slept so late? Usually Tyler’s monitor sounded by six. But when she glanced at it, the light was off, the battery dead. She lunged to her feet and stumbled down the narrow hall lined with pictures of her father and Grace as kids and Grace’s wedding photo.

“Aunt Grace? Tyler?”

Her heart pounded as she peeked into Tyler’s room, then her aunt’s. Last night at the reunion, she’d broken down and admitted to Daniel that her fight wasn’t business. What he didn’t know was that her personal reason for returning to Cedar Bay was Tyler. Yet how noble was her fight to help her son if she couldn’t keep track of him?

She swerved into the kitchen and spotted a cartoon-patterned cereal bowl, a cup and a mug drying in the dish rack beside her aunt’s porcelain sink. Evidence that they’d eaten together. Jodi’s chest loosened and her breathing eased as she stood beside the potted geraniums lining her aunt’s open windows. Okay. So he was supervised. But where was he?

A distinct belly laugh followed another duck call outside. Tyler?

As she pushed out onto the back deck, a fifty-state spoon collection beside the kitchen door swung wildly.

“Tyler!” She lowered her cupped hands and squinted into the midmorning light. The slanted roof shaded much of the narrow back lawn, its shadow reaching to the uneven rock wall and the stone staircase that led to a wooden dock. Lake Champlain sparkled brighter than a sapphire and for a moment the reflective, rippling waves blinded her.

She clutched the rail and groped her way down the steps, blinking the spots out of her eyes.

“Jodi! We’re over here,” called Aunt Grace.

Relief filled her as she jogged to the dock where her aunt cradled her son on her lap, a familiar young woman with short dark hair and hazel eyes lounging nearby.

“Sue?” Amazement pulled her up short and the rough planks scraped against her bare feet, her sleep shirt flapping in the lake breeze. She hadn’t seen her since the day they’d bet on which egg would hatch first on her father’s farm.

Sue lifted a carved duck whistle and blew, making Tyler bring his hands close to his ears and laugh again.

Warmth radiated through her at the sight of her animated boy, his head swiveling every which way, his cheeks flushed and mouth parted in a smile as he chuckled. The moment rejuvenated her more than a cup of Mr. Williams’s espresso and eased the heaviness Daniel’s speech had put in her heart. Seeing Tyler like this convinced her that she was on the right path, no matter how many cuts and bruises she got along the way. Daniel may have won last night’s battle, but the war wasn’t over.

And her enemy’s sister was in her backyard. Coincidence?

“I heard you were in town and wanted to come over and say hi.” Sue’s wide smile made her look more pixie-like than Jodi recalled. Sue shoved her glasses higher on her delicate nose and peered up at Jodi. “How are you?”

Jodi swallowed. How much had she heard from her big brother?

“I’m fine. Tired, I suppose.” She laughed self-consciously and plucked at her sleepwear. “Good morning, Tyler, Aunt Grace.” She leaned down to kiss his cheek, and he turned and caught her on the lips instead.

Happiness filled her. Tyler loved her. He might not be able to say the words, but his actions spoke for him.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” Her aunt’s eyes crinkled. “That must have been some reunion.”

“Something like that.” Jodi avoided Sue’s assessing stare. “If you don’t mind waiting a minute, I’ll grab Tyler’s glasses, change and be right back.”

“Sounds good.” Sue blew the duck whistle again and the memory of Daniel whittling them chased Jodi to the house.

Inside, she leaned against the shut door, the glass knob digging into her spine. What was Sue’s real motive for being here? They’d grown up together, had been in the same 4-H groups and riding club. The two-year age difference meant they’d spent time hanging out, but had never been close friends. Was she the next weapon in Daniel’s arsenal?

Five minutes later, Jodi rejoined them on the pier, her tank top the same emerald as the Adirondack Mountains across the lake, her jean shorts practical in the rising heat. When she kneeled on the dock, she twisted her hair in a high ponytail, earning it a tug from Tyler when she pulled his eyeglasses band over his head.

“Hey!” She untangled his fingers, then lifted them to her lips before he could swat her. Prevention like that was pure autistic mother instinct. “Hands to ourselves, Ty.”

“Ah!” He kicked off his sneaker and it arced into the lake, where it bobbed on the surface. Jodi smothered a sigh and kept her face neutral as Tyler watched her. At least it wasn’t his glasses.

“Got it!” Sue slid onto her belly and snagged the shoe when it drifted close. She pointed the dripping sneaker at Tyler before handing it to Jodi. “Sneakers are for feet, not fish,” she said with a smile.

Tyler’s improbable, deep chuckle was infectious. His head pivoted on his shoulders, his eyes wide. When he reached for the band behind his head, Jodi tugged him into her arms. “Glasses don’t swim either, Ty.”

“Want to go in?” Sue lifted the hem of an open-stitch crochet half shirt to reveal a bathing suit underneath.