Vermont Valentine (Holiday Hearts #3) Read online

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Well, then, I must be doing well,” Celie said. “From what I hear, impressing you isn’t easy.”

  “Sounds like people have been doing way too much talking altogether,” was Jacob’s comment.

  “Don’t worry. I’m a scientist. I prefer to collect data on my own.”

  “Are you planning to collect data on me?” Jacob asked.

  Celie glanced laughingly back over her shoulder at him. “I don’t know. Do you mind?” She reached over to shut off the lights.

  Their hands landed on the switch at the same time.

  It was just a touch, hand to hand, but the effects ricocheted through his system. Her eyes were shadowed as she looked back at him. He could see her profile, her generous mouth. “Time to go,” she said softly.

  It might, Jacob thought uneasily, be long past time.

  Dear Reader,

  Well, if there were ever a month that screamed for a good love story—make that six!—February would be it. So here are our Valentine’s Day gifts to you from Silhouette Special Edition. Let’s start with The Road to Reunion by Gina Wilkins, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. When the beautiful daughter of the couple who raised him tries to get a taciturn cowboy to come home for a family reunion, Kyle Reeves is determined to turn her down. But try getting Molly Walker to take no for an answer! In Marie Ferrarella’s Husbands and Other Strangers, a woman in a boating accident finds her head injury left her with no permanent effects—except for the fact that she can’t seem to recall her husband. In the next installment of our FAMILY BUSINESS continuity, The Boss and Miss Baxter by Wendy Warren, an unemployed single mother is offered a job—not to mention a place to live for her and her children—with the grumpy, if gorgeous, man who fired her!

  “Who’s Your Daddy?” is a question that takes on new meaning when a young woman learns that a rock star is her biological father, that her mother is really in love with his brother—and that she herself can’t resist her new father’s protégé. Read all about it in It Runs in the Family by Patricia Kay, the second in her CALLIE’S CORNER CAFÉ miniseries. Vermont Valentine, the conclusion to Kristin Hardy’s HOLIDAY HEARTS miniseries, tells the story of the last single Trask brother, Jacob—he’s been alone for thirty-six years. But that’s about to change, courtesy of the beautiful scientist now doing research on his property. And in Teresa Hill’s A Little Bit Engaged, a woman who’s been a bride-to-be for five years yet never saw fit to actually set a wedding date finds true love where she least expects it—with a pastor.

  So keep warm, stay romantic, and we’ll see you next month….

  Gail Chasan

  Senior Editor

  VERMONT VALENTINE

  KRISTIN HARDY

  Books by Kristin Hardy

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Where There’s Smoke #1720

  Under the Mistletoe #1725

  Vermont Valentine #1739

  Harlequin Blaze

  My Sexiest Mistake #44

  *Scoring #78

  *As Bad as Can Be #86

  *Slippery When Wet #94

  †Turn Me On #148

  †Cutting Loose #156

  †Nothing but the Best #164

  §Certified Male #187

  §U.S. Male #199

  KRISTIN HARDY

  has always wanted to write, starting her first novel while still in grade school. Although she became a laser engineer by training, she never gave up her dream of being an author. In 2002, her first completed manuscript, My Sexiest Mistake, debuted in Harlequin’s Blaze line; it was subsequently made into a movie by the Oxygen network. The author of twelve books to date, Kristin lives in New Hampshire with her husband and collaborator. Check out her Web site at www.kristinhardy.com.

  Thanks go to Dennis Souto, Mark Twery and

  Kathleen Shields, of the USDA Forest Service;

  George Cook of the University of Vermont; Joe Doccola

  of Arborjet Inc.; and to Doug and Barbara Bragg of the

  Bragg Farm (www.braggfarm.com), the inspiration

  for the Trask Family Farm.

  And as always, to Stephen,

  a fine ambassador for the human race.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Prologue

  Vermont, November 2005

  “You want me to do what?” Jacob Trask stared at Kelly Christiansen, the teenaged cashier of the Trask Family Farm gift shop.

  Kelly shifted and pushed a lock of her blond hair behind her ear. “You know, help out with our fundraiser. Our cheerleading squad qualified for the national championships in February but we need money for our travel. We need your help.”

  Jacob reached back for his wallet, relieved. “I think I can see my way clear to—”

  “No, I’m not asking for money. It’s like…” She stood hip-shot and stared at the ceiling. “…have you ever seen that cable show where those five stylists fix up a clueless straight guy?”

  “No.” And he wasn’t at all sure he was following.

  “Well, we’re going to do a hometown version called Teen Eye for the Eastmont Guy. Except we put up five possible makeover victims and invite everyone to vote for the one that they’d most like to see made over by donating.”

  He was beginning to get it. “And?”

  “And we want to get you.”

  “Clueless straight guy?” he repeated dangerously.

  She turned beet-red, all the way to the roots of her pale hair. “No, um, you look great, Mr. Trask. We just need someone with…” She flapped her hands at his thick beard and black ponytail. “You know, someone who’ll look really different when we cut everything off. The town paper’s going to put the before and after of the winner on the front page.”

  Just what he needed, to be the town entertainment.

  Kelly’s embarrassment was fading as she warmed to her subject. “We’re going to put jars with the candidates’ pictures on them in every store in town. It runs through New Year’s Day and then we count the money and announce the winner.”

  Perfect. “When’s the makeover?”

  “A week later. Don’t worry, we won’t do it ourselves. We’ve got stylists all set up in Montpelier. You’ll be in good hands. It’d just be some of your time.”

  Time, something that was at a premium on this, the first year he was working the maple sugar farm after the death of his father. Every hourcounted and so did every dollar. “I don’t think—”

  “We really want to get to the championships,” she pleaded. “This is the only way we can think of to get the money. Won’t you help us, Mr. Trask? Please?” Kelly risked another glance. Over her shoulder, Jacob’s mother, Molly Trask, watched him from the gift shop’s café, her arms crossed.

  “Can’t I just donate a hundred bucks and call it good?” Jacob asked with a tinge of desperation.

  “Oh, with your help we can raise a lot more than that,” Kelly said in a tone that suggested she knew she had him beat. “We polled the local storekeepers to see who they wanted to see done over and your name came up most often. You’ll get us lots of votes.”

  And he could just
imagine the amusement it would stir up in the maple-sugaring community.

  “I think it sounds like an excellent idea,” Molly put in briskly. “It’s been almost fifteen years since I last saw your face, Jacob. It’ll be a nice change of pace.”

  He didn’t need a change of pace. Steady and predictable, that was what Jacob wanted. He didn’t need one more thing to worry about.

  He liked things just the way they were.

  Chapter One

  Vermont, January 2006

  Celie Favreau muttered an impatient curse and dragged her fingers through her short brown hair. Trees, trees and more trees: beech, ash, birch, the occasional startling green of a pine, and maples, always maples, as far as the eye could see. Sugar maples, Vermont’s state tree.

  She’d always adored maples. Too bad she hadn’t come to the state in the autumn, in time to see the legendary wash of glorious color. Instead, she saw the flat brown and white of a dormant winter landscape. Of course, she knew it wasn’t really dormant at all, not in late January. Already the drumbeat of spring was beginning to pulse in the trees as the sap gathered for the rise that triggered rebirth.

  And already the threat was stirring.

  Celie squinted at the page of directions in her hand and checked her odometer again. When she’d fled Montreal for a career in forestry, she’d done it partly out of a desire for open space and a conspicuous absence of concrete.

  She hadn’t thought about the conspicuous absence of road signs.

  Of course, she should have been used to it by now. In the past four years she’d been sent to hot spots in seven different states, always moving around. Living somewhere new every few months wasn’t a hardship—generally, she enjoyed the variety, she enjoyed a chance to get out of the same old rut.

  These days, though, a rut didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

  The sign by the building up ahead read Ray’s Feed ’n’ Read. It made her grin. She couldn’t pass that one up without a look. With luck, she could also get directions to the Institute.

  When she opened the front door, the blast of heat made her forget the winter chill outside. To the left of the door stood a checkout counter, the wall behind it decorated with a lighted Napa sign and a calendar advertising cattle cake. The smile of the balding man at the register faded as he pegged her as a stranger. He gave her a sharp nod.

  “Good morning,” Celie said. Beyond him lay the swept concrete floor and pallets of goods of a standard seed and grain store. To the right, she saw an incongruously cozy book nook with a dozen shelves and a few comfortable, over-stuffed chairs. It called to her irresistibly. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  He grunted.

  “Is this Eastmont?” she asked, drifting to a stop in front of a display of lurid thrillers.

  “Last time I checked.”

  Celie fought a smile. “Is this the part where I ask directions and you say ‘Cahn’t get theah from heah?’”

  His lips twitched. “Well, if it’s Eastmont, Maine you’re asking about, that’s different. We have a translation book for Mainers,” he added.

  “So I see. No translation book for Vermonters?”

  “None needed. We don’t have any accent. Now you, you’re not from around these parts. What’s that I hear in your voice?”

  Even after all these years, the whisper of a French accent still lingered. “Canada. I grew up in Montreal.”

  “Ah. The wife and I went up there about twenty years ago for an anniversary. Nice town, especially the old part.”

  “My parents own a bookstore in Vieux Montréal.”

  “Do tell? I thought you looked like a book person when you walked in.”

  She couldn’t tell him that she’d moved away because the bookstore had suffocated her. Instead, she picked up a thriller and headed to the counter. “So what’s more popular, the feed or the read?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. Folks around here will pick up a book, especially in winter. Shoot, we’ve got one guy buys so many books I don’t know how he gets any sugaring done.” He passed the book over the bar-code scanner.

  “Maybe he’s trying to improve himself.”

  He snorted. “I think Jacob would say he’s as improved as he needs to be. That’ll be $6.25,” he added, slipping the book into a plain brown bag.

  Celie passed him a twenty. “I wonder if you could help me out. I’m looking for the Woodward Maple Research Institute. It’s around here, right?”

  “Close enough.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me how close?”

  He considered, making an effort to look crusty. “Oh, a couple miles as the crow flies.”

  “Any chance I could get there if I weren’t a crow?” she asked, reaching out for her change.

  “Oh, you’re wanting directions.”

  “Assuming you can get theah from heah.”

  The smile was full-fledged this time. “Well, you’ll want Bixley Road.” He rested his hands on the counter. “Turn right out of the parking lot and go until you see a sign that says Trask Farm. The second left after that is Bixley Road. You’ll know it because it heads uphill at first. You’ll pass maybe three roads and you’ll see the signs for the Institute. If you see the covered bridge, you’ll know you’ve gone too far.”

  “Thank you kindly,” she said.

  “You working at the Institute?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  She grinned. “Whether I find it.”

  “Well, Jacob Trask, who would have thought you were such a good-looking boy under all that hair?” Muriel Anderson, the comfortable-looking clerk at Washington County Maple Supplies gave him a long look up and down. “I almost didn’t recognize you. I see those Eastmont girls took you to task.”

  Those Eastmont girls had trimmed and tidied and upholstered him until he could hardly stand it. In the first stunned moments when he’d stared at his newly shorn face in the salon mirror, all he’d been able to do was calculate feverishly how long it would take to grow back. He’d been shocked at how naked being clean-shaven made him feel.

  He’d grown the beard at twenty and left it on. Without it, he almost hadn’t recognized himself. In the intervening sixteen years, his face had grown more angular, the chin more stubborn, the bones pressed more tightly against the skin.

  It was the face of someone else, not him. A week, he’d figured, a week to get covered up.

  He hadn’t figured on noticing the mix of gray hairs among the black in the new beard as it sprouted. More, far more than he’d recalled before. There certainly weren’t any on his head. He could do without the ones down below. After all, a man was entitled to some vanity, wasn’t he? The beard, he’d decided, would stay gone.

  “Hi, Jacob,” purred Eliza, Muriel’s twenty-year-old daughter, as she walked past.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t, he thought uneasily, taking the fifty-pound bag of diatomaceous earth off his shoulder and setting it down on the counter. He was all for having a personal life, but the non-stop scrutiny he’d begun attracting from women felt a little weird. He liked cruising along below the radar; he had from the time he’d looked around in third grade and realized he was a head taller than any of his classmates. Cruising below the radar had gotten hard, though, all of a sudden.

  “Did you hear they found some cases of maple borer over in New York?” Muriel asked as she started ringing up Jacob’s order. “They had to take down 423 trees from the heart of a sugarbush to get it all. Sixteen-inchers, most of them.”

  Four-hundred-some-odd trees? Nearly ten acres, maybe more. That would be a financial hit, and one that would persist for decades. After all, sugar maples didn’t grow old enough to tap for thirty or forty years. “Are you sure they’re not exaggerating?”

  “Tom Bollinger said it, and he can be trusted.” Muriel shook her head. “You should spend less time looking at books in Ray’s and more time around the stove talking to people, Jacob. You might find out something yo
u can use.”

  “I’d rather hear it from you.” He winked at her, as he had so many times over the years. And to his everlasting shock, she blushed.

  “Oh, you.” She shook her head at him. “Talking isn’t nearly as hard as chopping brush.”

  For Jacob talking was harder, except in the case of a handful of people, such as Muriel.

  “Everything I hear tells me we’ve got something to worry about here,” Muriel continued. “Some of those Institute fellows were over at Willoughby’s sugarbush a couple of weeks ago, poking at his trees and muttering.”

  Concern was immediate. Willoughby’s property adjoined his own. Like most sugar-makers, Jacob found solvency a delicate balancing act, especially now that he was the one running the farm to support his mother and himself. The prospect of losing five or ten percent of his revenue-producing trees was a sobering one. “Do they think his trees are infested?”

  “They don’t know. Took some samples, said they’d get back to him.”

  Jacob stuffed his change in his pocket distractedly. “If you see him, tell him I wish him luck.”

  “You can tell him yourself at the county growers’ meeting tomorrow.” His noise of disgust earned a click of the tongue from Muriel. “You’ve got to show up at these things, Jacob,” she chided.

  “I do show up, Muriel.”

  “It’s not enough to show. You need to talk. You can’t just sit through the program. That’s not where you learn the important things.”

  It was where he learned all he needed to know, Jacob thought, that and the Internet. He’d never understood people’s obsession with sitting around and yapping their fool heads off about nothing. Working he understood, and he was happy to do it. Standing around and chewing the fat in hopes he might get something more than idle speculation was a waste of time.