“Can you get a call out?”
“I don’t know. Cell service is spotty. Robert lost a friend yesterday. He’s upset, understandably. He said Derek knew you were in Vermont and was freaked out.” She pulled off her gloves and withdrew her cell phone from her jacket pocket, her fingers stiff, red with the cold. She found Scott’s number, not looking at Nick as she dialed. “I don’t know if the call will go through. The signal’s pretty weak.”
Scott answered on the first ring. “What’s up, Rose?”
“Robert Feehan just paid me a visit,” she said, then briefly told him what had transpired between them.
He listened without interruption. “Feehan pushed you?”
“Yes, but it was no big deal. I’m not hurt, just cold and irritated.”
“Where are you now?”
“Nick Martini and I are on our way to meet Lauren at the sugar shack.”
“Good. Wait for me there.”
Rose disconnected and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She turned to Nick. “Did you see Lauren and the kids before you left?”
“They were just starting out across the meadow.”
“They should be there now. I don’t want Robert backtracking through the woods and harassing them.”
She climbed over a snow bank at the end of the lane. Nick stayed with her, and she led him to a narrow path, the snow disturbed only by the occasional deer and wild turkey tracks. Just past a curve, she saw the old sugar shack through leafless, graceful deciduous trees.
She found herself smelling for smoke, but the air was clear, clean and cold.
Nick moved ahead of her as they came to the small field where the sugar shack, constructed of rough-cut lumber, grayed now with age, was situated above a stream, just through the woods on the edge of the expansive, open meadow behind the lodge. A few days ago, she and Lauren had shoveled out the area in front of the entrance, exposing an outside stone fireplace.
Rose heard the happy squeal of her niece and nephew through the trees and felt her knees weaken in relief, telling her just how keyed up she was.
Nick opened the barn-style door.
“You can go on about your business,” Rose told him. “We’ll be fine. I’ll tell Scott—”
“You’re my business.” Nick peeked inside the rectangular-shaped shack and asked, his tone deceptively casual, “Does Feehan know what happened between you and Derek Cutshaw?”
She stiffened. “I’m not talking about this with you.”
He glanced back at her. “I just saved you from being thrown down a frozen hill.”
“You did not. Robert wanted to avoid you. He panicked.”
“Right,” Nick said skeptically. “Ever take private ski lessons from him or his friends?”
“No. I know how to ski.”
“Feehan’s good?”
“I would think so if he’s giving private lessons.”
“But you don’t know,” Nick said. “Do you know why Cutshaw would be upset because I was in town?”
She shook her head. Her sister-in-law, laughing, ducked around a scraggly white pine, with little Jim and Baylee, in puffy snowsuits and mittens, clinging to the edges of their toboggan.
Lauren pulled the sled up to the entrance and moaned, grinning at the same time. “These kids are getting too heavy for me to haul this far!” She kicked off her snowshoes, then swooped down, scooped them up and leaned them against the door frame. She clapped her gloved hands at Jim and Baylee, who hadn’t moved off the toboggan. “Up you go. Say hi to Aunt Rose.”
They jumped up, and ran to Rose. She hugged them, but they couldn’t wait to play in the snow.
Lauren listened quietly as Rose explained that Scott Thorne was en route and what had happened. Her sister-in-law swallowed visibly but maintained her composure. “Is Nick staying until Scott gets here?”
“I imagine so. Lauren, I’m sorry. If I’d had any clue—”
“It’s not your fault, Rose. Show Nick around. I’ll hang out here with the kids. I have the radio. I’ll let A.J. know what’s going on.”
Rose started to argue but instead stepped into the shack. She and Lauren had already replaced broken panes in the windows and cleaned them, and they now let in the late-morning sun.
Nick stood next to the old evaporating pan in the middle of the floor. “Looks like something from a postcard out here,” he said.
“This is part of the original farm.” She pulled off her hat and gloves, wet from when she’d landed in the snow. “We’ve ordered a new evaporator. It should be here any day. This one’s ready for a museum. I’m surprised it’s still here, but I guess who would want it?”
“Will the new one also be wood-fired?”
She nodded. “We’re bringing in a couple of cords of wood and stacking it on the back wall. It’ll stay dry there. We’ll collect sap from trees close by and boil it down to syrup. It’s about a forty-to-one ratio—forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.”
“That’s a lot of sap.”
“A lot of boiling, too. The evaporation pan speeds up the process. It creates lots of steam.” She pointed up at a vent in the ceiling. “Hence the vent.”
“Clever.”
“We’ll collect most of the sap in buckets. Guests can participate if they want to. We’ll bottle the syrup in mason jars and sell it at the lodge. Any profit will go to our local mountain rescue team.”
“A nice little cottage industry.”
“I hope so. There’s an outdoor fireplace, so we can do some boiling outside. That’s really more for atmosphere. The fireplace is made from local stone. I love that, don’t you?”
His eyes were on her as he smiled. “A lot of rock in Vermont.”
Rose laughed. “Something to keep in mind when you try to argue with one of us.” Suddenly warm, she unzipped her jacket. “Nick, if there’s someplace you need to be—”
“There isn’t.”
“It’s supposed to get above freezing today. Of course, you’re spoiled from living in Southern California and might not realize what an event that is. When are you going back?”
“Sometime. Not today. You forget I haven’t always lived in a high-rise condo. Some days…” But he didn’t finish his thought and nodded to the open door. “Go on and do what you came here to do. Pick out maple trees, whatever. I’ll be right here.”
“Scott will want to talk to you.”
“No problem.”
Rose felt the snow melting in her hair, dripping onto her forehead. Nick struck her as a rich Californian who didn’t belong in the middle of the Vermont woods, but maybe it was just her. She’d first met him five years ago, when she was starting out in search management and he and Sean had just formed Cameron & Martini and were struggling to make it work.
Nick had been fearless, confident and sexy, but it hadn’t occurred to her to sleep with him.
He’d had his share of close calls fighting wildland fires. She’d run her fingertips over burn scars when they’d made love in June. She’d realized he could be vulnerable, could suffer and bleed. He’d continued to do the work he loved even after he’d taken a hit.
She resisted saying anything else and headed back outside. Jim and Baylee were helping their mother dig snow out of the fireplace. “We have a lot of work to do,” Lauren said, her cheeks pink with cold and exertion, “but I think we’ll make it before we seriously start collecting sap.”
“We should have some warm days coming up to drill tap holes.”
Lauren smiled through her obvious uneasiness. “Excellent.”
She was clearly holding her breath, hoping Derek’s death had been a terrible accident and Robert had simply panicked given the violence of the past few months.
The lodge didn’t need another Cameron in the middle of more violence.
Rose heard someone coming through the woods, but it was just Scott Thorne, arriving along the same path she and Nick had taken from the lane. He wore his state trooper’s parka over his uniform, his expression tight and
