Pausing at the leafy edge of the tree’s spread, Bella took another look at the machine behind her. She tended to avoid the tree. It was the scene of the grandest embarrassment of her life, and one with dire consequences. The only way she’d come within a stone’s throw of the oak of shame was knowing that neither Jimmy Blaggart nor Adam Fisher had stepped foot within the boundaries of Grimes County since they’d finished school. Those were the only two people who knew what had happened that day. They were the only ones who could disclose her embarrassment.
She saw the tapered trouser legs first, then the suit coat with tails. The gentleman’s eyes flew from her lunch pail to the books beneath her arm. He sighed.
“I beg your pardon.” Bella would be polite due to his age, even if he’d dismissed her on account of hers. “Is this your machine? It looks very interesting.”
His salt-and-pepper beard was trimmed to a sharp shovel’s point, and when he talked, it looked like he was digging a hole. “The machine belongs to him.” He motioned toward the tree. “He can tell you all about it.”
The shovel stopped digging, and he walked toward town.
Bella took another look at the massive hunk of metal. However it operated, it probably wasn’t as interesting as the armored dragon she’d imagined. Better to learn about it now than to interrupt lessons for no cause. Finding a gap in the limbs, she picked her way beneath the tree.
The cool, fresh air surprised her. Although she walked past it with every trip to town, she’d forgotten the magical beauty of this spot that had always enraptured her. It was so magical that she nearly forgot what she was doing there.
The second man had his back to her and was studying the trunk of the tree. She reached up to capture one of the extending branches. Her wrist twinged with pain, but it was expected and ignored as she rustled the branch to get his attention.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt you, but your friend sent me to ask you a question.”
He straightened at the sound of her voice. His cotton shirt stuck to the small of his back, showing the strength of the morning heat, but he answered without turning to face her.
“What’s your question?”
Bella shivered in the damp air. It might be humid, but something about him gave her goose bumps. A sickly feeling of something being undone, of guilt, of a reckoning, made her lean more heavily on the branch. But she wasn’t about to walk away. It was her town, and he was a stranger. He would answer to her.
“Your friend said that the harvesting machine is yours and that you could tell me about it.”
He rested one hand against the trunk of the tree. Bella released the branch, suddenly and foolishly convinced that if they were both touching the same thing, then it was akin to touching each other. She looked to her feet. Did that include the ground? Sweet potatoes! Then she was touching everyone all the time, except for people who were jumping into the air, and she didn’t think there were enough of those at any one moment for it to deserve her consideration.
But the short of it was that he hadn’t answered.
“People are saying that you’re doing a demonstration.” She wrapped her left hand around her right wrist in a tight clasp that often stopped the aching. “If that’s so, I’d like to know what your demonstration entails.”
He took a deep breath, and she braced herself for an answer.
“Bella, how in the world have your initials gone unclaimed?”
She clutched her wrist against her stomach. It was Adam. Adam Fisher. And he was tracing her initials inside the heart with his finger.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped. And how were those initials still visible? She hadn’t thought about them for years. She longed to stomp away, but her feet were as rooted to the ground as the old oak.
With the speed of a waterwheel, Adam turned, seemingly aware of the dramatic role he’d fallen into.
“It’s my threshing machine,” he said. “I came to Oak Springs to bring our town up to date. It’s the 1870s. Progress needs to happen.” He patted the inscription on the tree like it was a cherished pet. “But you haven’t answered my question. What have you been up to, Bella Eden?”
Her greatest fear had been that either Jimmy or Adam would talk and word would spread of her embarrassing spectacle. As far as she knew, both had been gentlemen, but now Adam had returned, and it seemed he had no compunction against broaching the delicate subject.
With her lunch pail swinging, Bella hurried to the tree trunk. “I’m going to take my penknife to that bark and scratch it bare. I’d completely forgotten.”
“I hadn’t, and don’t you dare deface it. This is a piece of history.” His eyes flickered to her wrist. “Are you all healed up now? It was pretty rough there for a spell.”
It was so like him to remember that part too. After she’d fallen, it was Adam who’d taken her in his arms and tried to soothe her cries. Despite her anger at him, she’d been in too much pain to deny herself that comfort. When he’d seen the swelling in her wrist, he’d wanted to go fetch her parents, but she convinced him to help her home instead. She couldn’t take the chance that they would see the tree trunk and wonder what she’d been up to. It was bad enough that he knew.
“That wasn’t the worst of it.” She turned away from the tree trunk. Seeing the empty space, unclaimed, above her initials hurt too much. Reminded her that she was unclaimed. And she couldn’t place the blame for that at Adam’s feet. “I’m fine. I’ve learned to live with it.”
He was still handsome, with his inky lashes lining ice-blue eyes, and the way his
