Passions of Chelsea Kane Part 9

"No."

"You must have somewhere better to be." 196 The Pa.s.sions of Cheimm Amm ', I don't."

"No family?" She felt a twist inside.

"Not this year."

"No boyfriend with a house on Nantucket?" The arcasm was there, no doubt about it this time. She shook her head. "No glitzy parties in the city?" Sarcasm was one thing, scorn another. Emboldened that, she looked him straight in the eye. "Not this year. Or ever. I was never the type for glitzy parties. y do you have me pegged for someone I'm not?" His eyes didn't give an inch. "Because you're slick, and you're savvy. You've been around more than most anyone here." "'Been around'?" she asked. The phrase conjured up something soiled. "Lived."

"If you mean traveled, okay. Anything else, and you're wrong. He stared at her for a minute before glancing off toward the green. "Do you believe me?" she asked. It meant a lot to her that he did. "I know that I come from a different place, and that my experiences in life have been different, but I've tried to not to wave those differences like a red flag in front of people." His gaze fell to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then rose slowly. "Is that why you were running along Old River Road this morning wearing skimpy shorts and a tank top?" Her heart skipped a beat. She wondered when he'd seen her. More meekly she said, "That's standard running gear."

"Not around here it isn't. The guys aren't used to women showing themselves off." 197 MWwbxm aeuwww "I wasn't showing myself off. I was running."

"You were the main topic of breakfast conversation at Crocker's. Didn't you notice the trucks slowing down? Most of those guys are quarrymen. You didn't leave much to their imagination." She didn't know what to say. It hadn't occurred to her that she would cause a stir. She had been running, just running. But he looked angry. She didn't understand. "I thought you were doing aerobics at the church," he said. "I was. I am. But I miss running, so I thought I'd alternate."

"Can't you wear something a little more conservative?"

"That's standard running gear," she repeated, bewildered. "Well, it's all wrong here.

Keep it up and you'll be hearing more than little kid's voices in that farmhouse at night. You'll have half the men of the Notch panting at your door." A pulse beat at his temple. "Maybe that's what you want."

His suggestion was like a slap in the face. "It's not what I want," she cried, "not what I want at all. But I have a right to run, and I have a right to wear whatever I want when I do it." He lifted one large shoulder in a negligent shrug. "Then be prepared to accept the consequences." Chelsea felt an anger growing inside. She felt wronged by Judd, wronged by the town, wronged by Kevin, and Carl, and suddenly defiant. "I won't do any such thing," she said, straightening from the fence post to face him. "Maybe it's time Norwich Notch came out of the dark ages. Women nowadays 198 "M Pa.s.sions or camhwe Kane 4 and when they do, when it's hot out, they wear .1he coolest clothes possible. They also drive ars, and own companies, and believe it or not, ,.:..there are places where they even hold public office. Good G.o.d, what kind of backward mentality are you talking about?" He drew himself up, rising that much taller than he. His eyes were dar -s ker than ever and impas-sioned. "I'm talking about Norwich Notch. You call it backward. I call it conservative. Whichever, it Isn't about to change just because you've shown up. "I'm not asking it to change. I'm perfectly happy to let it go its own way. All I ask is that it lets me go mine."

"That's all? I wonder." She gave him a puzzled look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means,", he said, "that your being here is strange. There's no need for it. Oliver was right. You could be doing your part of the job in Baltimore. It'd be a h.e.l.l of a lot easier working'there than working on that rolltop desk in your room at the inn." His mouth slanted. "How do I know you're doing that?" he asked just as she was wondering it. "The maid who cleans your room is the little sister of one of our men, and she tells him about the crumpled yellow tissue paper in your wastebasket every morning. So I know you're trying to work, and I know you'd be better off in a studio, and I keep asking myself why you're suffering up here. Were you run out of Baltimore?" Chelsea was feeling exposed. "No."

"Man troubles?" No!" 199 BRfbam Demmsky "Their what? What would a successful, talented, beautiful woman like you want with a place like this?" Successful, talented, beautiful. She was flattered. Others had used the words, but never begrudgingly, as Judd did. That gave them more weight. And because he'd said them, she felt she owed him something. "in the last five months," she said simply, "I've lost the better part of the three most important people in my life. There is nothing to keep me in Baltimore."

"So you're running away."

"No. I choose to be here."

"For how long?"

"For however long I want." When the roar of Hunter Love's cycle preceded him around the corner, she tore her eyes from Judd's. "He's not conservative. He does what he wants."

"He's a special case." "Well, so am I," she said, and crossed the sidewalk to the gra.s.sy berm just as Hunter pulled up. "How's it going?" He took off his helmet and wiped his face with his arm. "There's a problem. I need you out there."

"Okay.

I'll get the car." But the words were no sooner out than she had a better idea. He had offered her a ride once, and she had refused. Now she had a statement to make. She looked at the spare helmet that was secured behind the seat, then at Hunter. "Any objections?" He shrugged.

"It's your life." It was more than that. It was the life of her baby, too, but Chelsea was feeling rebellious enough just then to risk it.

Without another thought, she climbed 200 The Paswom of Chelvea JLMM the cycle behind Hunter, fitted the helmet to head, and gave Judd a final, defiant look. If the set of his jaw meant anything, he was furi- ich was poetic justice for the way he haunther nights, she reasoned, and flipped down the sor. Hooking her hands on Hunter's belt, she sat nfidently behind him while he revved the engine d zoomed off. They made a full circle of the green, ising garden club heads and pa.s.sing Judd once ain before heading out of town. The first few minutes were fun. Chelsea hadn't -been on a motorcycle in years, and Hunter's was a ,@.-good one.

It roared smoothly, hugging the road, bringing back the sense of exhilaration that came with freedom and speed. The whip of the air cooled her body, which moved with Hunter's and the cycle from one turn into the next. Then the curves started coming more frequently. They leaned right, then left, right, then left. It occurred to Chelsea that she didn't recognize the road as one that led to Boulderbrook. It struck her that she didn't recognize the road, period. She grew uneasy.

"Hunter?" He didn't hear. She wondered if she'd been reckless entrusting him with her life. But he was Oliver's troubleshooter. He was third man at the quarry behind Judd. And he was doing a good job at Boulderbrook, which said that he was responsible, didn't it? "Hunter?" she called louder. He turned his head to the side. "Where are we?"

"Seben Road.

Behind Acatuk. It's the scenic route." The road had narrowed. The turns grew sharper. 201 Chelsea imagined them rounding a curve and hitting a car head on, but if Hunter was aware of that danger, he was ignoring it.

If anything, he pushed the cycle faster. Holding tighter, she watched the road. It climbed, then swooped low before resuming its twists and turns. When she began to feel dizzy, she called, "Can you slow up a little?" The motorcycle bucked, then caught in a lower gear and sped up another hill. Dizziness became nausea. Chelsea tugged at his waist.

"Stop for a minute, Hunter." He drove on. She put her head against his back and closed her eyes, hoping that she wouldn't feel as sick if she didn't see all that they pa.s.sed, but it wasn't more than a minute before she felt worse than ever. "I'm going to be sick, Hunter!" she cried, and tugged at his sides. "Pull over now!"' She didn't know what finally got through to him, whether it was the frantic sound of her voice, or the urgent clutching of her hands. But he slowed the cycle, pulled up on the shoulder of the road, and stopped with seconds to spare. She barely had time to run for the foliage at the side of the road, tossing aside the helmet as she went, before she was dis_ mally sick. She hated being sick. Her doctor said that nausea was a healthy sign, that it indicated the baby had taken a good, strong hold of her insides. But the doctor wasn't the one hanging over the toilet or, in this case, bracing himself on shaky arms over a patch of moss. And the doctor wasn't the one who was alone. That was the worst of it. She didn't 202 The Pa.s.sions of Chersea KMW think she would have minded if someone had been with her, for moral support if nothing else. But she was alone. Other than the doctor and Cydra, no one even knew about the baby. Sitting back on her heels, she brushed wisps of hair from her cheeks with an arm. She jumped when Hunter's voice came to her. It was quiet, not at all defiant or mocking. "There's a brook over there." Now that the heaving was done, she could hear it. Following the soft trickle, she worked her way through the low-growing foliage until she reached it. Then she sat on a flat rock by its edge and bathed her face. Oh, yes, she hated being sick, but the one good thing about this particular sickness was that it pa.s.sed. It would be back, no doubt by the end of the day, but for now, other than feeling weak-kneed, she was all right. A cracker or two would have helped. Since she was without, she settled for rinsing her mouth before making her way back to the road. Hunter was leaning against the motorcyle. His helmet was on the handlebars, hers was back on the seat.

He regarded her cautiously, clearly unsure of what she would say, but she didn't know, any more than he. What had happened hadn't been all his fault. If she hadn't been pregnant, she would have been fine. Looping her hands in her lap, she looked first at him, then, squinting, at the undulating road. "That was some ride." In the same quiet voice he'd used to tell her about the brook, he asked, "Are you all right?" She nodded and gazed off toward the horizon. 203 "Why did you do that?" When he didn't answer she said, "it wasn't very nice." "You said you were experienced."

"I am." She pointed to her nose. "See this? It was reconstructed once, then a second time when it didn't set right after a motorcycle accident. The accident was my fault. I was going too fast. I was seventeen at the time and reckless. What's your excuse?" Hunter tucked his hands under his arms. "Bad genes." Shelaughed. "Think that's funny?" he asked, looking hurt. "It is. It really is. I was adopted. I have no idea who my biological parents are, but not once did I ever blame what I did on bad genes." Neither had her parents, bless them.

"Blaming behavior on genes is a cop-out. You are what you make of your life."

"Not around here. Around heie, you are what your name is."

"It doesn't look to me like you've done so badly with Love." He had a solid position with Plum Granite, and he was serving as general contractor for her house-actually, more than general contractor. Many an evening or weekend she found him doing the work himself. At those times she wondered about his personal life. Judd had said that he had his own place, that he wasn't married, and that he was a loner, but nothing more. Not that she was interested for any but incidental reasons. Hunter Love was a nice-looking man, but nothing about him affected her the way Judd Streeter did. She was grateful she hadn't been sick in front of 204 Ike Pa.s.sions of cheimm K=w Judd. That would have been humiliating. "So," Hunter asked, "do I still have the job?"

"Of course you still have the job." She thought quickly. "But I want to be in on the third of July."

"That's little more'n ten days off!"

"You don't have to have the whole house done, just my bedroom and bathroom. I can do without a kitchen, but I'm sick of the inn."

"You wanted an oversize tub in that bathroom.

There's no way I can get it so quick."

"Give the supplier a call. Twist his arm." Hunter shook his head. "I'll need a month."

"No, you won't.

Set your mind to it, and I'll be in in a week. " Because he had deliberately tried to frighten her on the cycle, she added, "Unless the little voices slow you down." His face darkened. "I wouldn't joke about those."

"Have you heard them since you've been working?."

"The noise scares them off."

"Come on, Hunter," she scoffed. As far as she was concerned, the mere fact that he had been willing to work on the house proved the voices were a hoax. She figured it was his own private joke.

"Just wait. When you're living there all alone, you'll hear them. They come from the secret pa.s.sageway." She grew alert. "What secret pa.s.sageway?"

"The one behind the fireplace. That's what I wanted you to see."

"Secret pa.s.sageway?" Chelsea repeated in excitement. She tried to picture it. "Where does it lead?"

"Upstairs."

"Incredible." Her mind went to work. "Do you think there are others?"

"Sure, with skeletons lying inside. The place is 205 Barbara Delkag&y haunted, I tell you.

Want to change your mind about living there?" "No way!" she said.

"Secret pa.s.sageways are great!" In her book, the discovery of one upped the value of the house immeasurably. "What if that farmhouse was a stop on the Underground Railroad? Just think of the history in those walls!"

Hunter looked bored. "History was never my thing. Just tell me what you want to do with the door. You want it plastered over-"

"No!"

"Secret pa.s.sageways can be dangerous."

"No more so than the ride you just gave me." She looked at the motorcycle. She wasn't wild about climbing back on with Hunter at the controls. "How about you let me drive?"

"Uh-uh."

He reached for his helmet. "If you drive the way you did before, I'll be sick again." He handed her the second helmet. She hesitated before putting it on. "Hunter?"

"You'll be safe."

"Safe is one thing, sick is another. That didn't feel real good."

"Neither will your legs come morning." He pulled on his helmet. Through the mouthpiece he said, "That was poison ivy you walked through on your way to the brook." She stared at her legs, which were bare from her upper calves to her ankles.

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You had more urgent things on your mind. Besides,, you should've known what poison ivy looked like." 206 Me nowons or cbehme KMW "How would I know?" she asked in dismay. "I've never lived in the woods before." She looked at her legs again. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yeah. Pray you're not allergic to the stuff."

"Swell," she muttered, and watched him mount the cycle. "Are you coming?" he asked, starting the machine. She glanced down the road. "What are my chances of someone else pa.s.sing by and picking me up?"

"Slight. Very slight."

"How long will it take me to walk?"

"It's up and down, kind of roundabout. A couple of hours, I'd say." Chelsea could be stubborn. She could be defiant, rebellious, and impulsive. But she wasn't dumb. She had long since learned not to cut off her nose to spite her face. If she didn't want to be walking on strange roads for the better part of the day, she had to climb back on Hunter's machine. Helmet in hand, she walked over to him. "Okay. I'm riding with you. But if I get sick again,' I'm not yelling first. Got that?" The look in Hunter's eyes just before he lowered his visor said that he had. There were three secret pa.s.sageways in Chelsea's farmhouse.

One ran behind the fireplace and up narrow steps into an upstairs closet. Another was little more than a hidden storage room behind the kitchen pantry. The third started at a trapdoor in the bas.e.m.e.nt and ran into an underground tunnel for ten feet before ending in a wall of earth. Chelsea was sure that the hidden pa.s.sages had 207 once had a purpose. She was dying to find out what it was but had no time to look.

With Hunter speeding up work on Boulderbrook, she added buying basic furnis.h.i.+ngs to her long list of things to do. If she wasn't shopping in Concord or Manchester, she was on the phone, first from her room at the inn, then, once the lines were installed, from the office over the Quilters Guild. The personal clients she had left behind in Baltimore needed frequent rea.s.surance that she was doing their work, and increasingly, in response to the letters she wrote, she received calls from the potential granite market. On top of that, the Hunt-Omni had indeed been sold for conversion into condos, which meant that she was spending what few free minutes she had designing. For all her talk of putting the drafting table under a skylight in the attic, she never seemed to get to drawing until sundown, but that didn't bother her. She plugged in a small radio tuned to soft cla.s.sical music, adjusted her lamps, one on each side to minimize shadows, taped down her paper, and went to work. She kept handy a thermos of tea from the inn, as well as a lap quilt that she'd bought from the guild. Given the chill of Norwich Notch evenings, she made frequent use of both. On the first of July, she returned to Baltimore for several days of catch-up at Harper, Kane, Koo.

Carl was there. She felt awkward with him and, for the first time, wondered whether the firm would survive what had happened. Cydra was dismayed when she mentioned it. "You can't fold," she protested as they ran. "The 208 nm Pa.s.siow or amfims K=W Is too successful. You've made it so. It's youm , Notch is only temporary."

"True. But if things are odd with Carl now, think of what they'll be like later." She couldn't envision @'Carl looking at her ballooning stomach during the 4ay and Hailey's ballooning stomach at night. The situation was absurd.

"When will you tell him?" Cydra asked. "I don't know. I tell myself to do it. Then I wonder @wh ether I should."

"It's his child."

"But he's married to Hailey. Their relations.h.i.+p will be strained if they learn I'm pregnant, and what -good would that do? I don't want anything from him.

I can have this baby myself." She reached down and slapped at her leg as she ran. "What about your dad?" That bothered her more than the other.

"Moot point. He's in Michigan for the holiday." You have to tell him."

"I wanted to do it over the Fourth." She still felt the disappointment of that. The Fourth of July had always been a time spent with family and friends. She liked it that way. Grabbing Cydra's arm, she stopped them both dead in the street. "Fly back with me, Cydra. The Fourth in the Notch will be an adventure. I guarantee it. Fly back with me. I want you to see the place." She rubbed her shoe over the back of her leg. Cydra looked torn. "I wish I could, but my brother is at the Jersey sh.o.r.e.

It's his first summer separated from Ginger. He has the kids. I promised I'd visit." Chelsea might have guessed that Cydra had 209 Rmtem Defimay plans; still, it had been worth a shot. Not that she wouldn't be busy.

She intended to experience the Fourth of July in the Notch from start to finish. But it would have been nice to share it with a friend. They started running again. After several minutes Cydra asked, "Do you like it up there?"

"I think so. I've been so involved in setting things up that I haven't had much time to relax. I'm hoping to do that this week."

"Have the people been friendly?"

"Some. Some resent me.- "Does that bother you?"

"Sure, it bothers me. I've always been one to have friends around. I miss that. I miss running with you." She had been trying to convince Donna to run, so far with no luck. She could see that Donna was tempted, but something held her back. "Maybe you shouldn't be there," Cydra said. "Being pregnant, you ought to be with people you know. If something happened and you needed help, how would you get it?"

"By dialing 911. Come on, Cydra. Norwich Notch isn't the end of the world."

She scratched her s.h.i.+n. Cydra was the one to grab her arm this time and stop. "What is that rash?" she asked, looking at legs.

"Hives?"

"Poison ivy. I had. a run4n with a patch. This is the tail end.

You should have seen it last week."

"Thank G.o.d I didn't." She bent over for a closer look at the rash, then straightened with a worried look on her face. "This is not a good sign." Chelsea rolled her eyes. "You don't see any message in it?"

"None," Chelsea said firmly, and started running again. 210 BW Pa.s.sioam of Chcagm K=W Cydra caught up in a flash. "Have you done anything about the silver key?"

"Not yet."

"What are you waiting for?" Chelsea wasn't sure. "I take it out and look at it ry day.

I study the faces of people around town. I n read the names on gravestones when I pa.s.s ' church. But I've been too busy to do much else ... pnce things quiet a little, I'll start asking around." Running on, she thought about that. "I don't know much I'll learn, though. These people give new ' ",'Meaning to the word laconic."

"Don't talk much?"

"Don't talk much. I'm an outsider, so they're wary. Maybe once I move into my place, things will On the third of July, Chelsea moved into Boulderbrook. Her bedroom and bathroom were fin- !. The plumbing worked. The electricity worked. She even had a telephone that worked.