Ain’t nothing but a stray away…
Loran had only just heard the quaint expression while she was waiting in the checkout line at the little discount store in the North Carolina mountains. Two old women had been talking about someone’s granddaughter, one who frequented places where she had no business being. And it wasn’t that the girl “hadn’t been raised” and didn’t know better, they had assured each other. It was that she apparently was just like Loran’s mother. Maddie knew better—but she did it anyway.
“Mother—”
“Loran, stop worrying. I’ll feel much better after I shower and eat something.”
“I wish I could believe you—you have no idea what it’s like having such a liar for a mother,” Loran said, and Maddie laughed.
“Ah, well. We all have our heavy burdens to bear.”
Loran kept driving. They weren’t far from the B and B now. Maddie did seem better. She was sitting up a little straighter, at any rate.
“You know what they say—if you don’t sow your wild oats when you’re young, you’ll sow them when you’re old.”
“Couldn’t you have picked someplace a little closer to home?”
“Home is a state of mind, my darling.”
Cheryl Reavis
Cheryl Reavis is an award-winning short-story and romance author who also writes under the name of Cinda Richards. She describes herself as a late bloomer who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her Silhouette Special Edition novel A Crime of the Heart reached millions of readers in Good Housekeeping magazine. Her books, The Prisoner, a Harlequin Historical title, and A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow, both Silhouette Special Edition titles, are all Romance Writers of America/RITA® Award winners. One of Our Own received the Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from Romantic Times BOOKclub magazine. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.
Blackberry Winter
Cheryl Reavis
For my editor, Tara Gavin, and my agent,
Maureen Moran. Thank you both
for bringing shovels.
With appreciation to Dawn Aldridge Poore,
fellow writer and my “mountain friend,”
who graciously answered all my questions
about the Appalachian experience.
Any mistakes are mine, not hers.
And special thanks to Linda Buechting and
Janet Wisst, and to Pat Kay, Lois Dyer,
Julia Mozingo, Myrna Temte, Lisette Belisle,
Laurie Campbell, Chris Flynn and
Allison Davidson—for their wisdom,
encouragement and boundless generosity.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
S he stood at the open window, feeling the cool breeze that always rippled off the mountain after the sun went down. She turned her head slightly to savor the feel of it on her face, never once taking her eyes off the line of trees that obscured the old logging road deep in the shadows on the mountainside.
She had no idea what time it was or how long she’d been waiting. There were no working clocks in the house except for the small windup alarm clock she used to catch the school bus on time. She didn’t dare leave the window long enough to go and get it for fear of missing the small flicker of light among the trees that would mean he had finally come for her.
A question formed in her mind, but she immediately pushed it aside. It was the kind of question her mother would have asked, the unanswerable kind a woman who didn’t matter couldn’t keep from asking. She didn’t want to think about her mother now—or her father. He lied when he didn’t have to, and he did as he pleased—always. Tommy wasn’t like him. Tommy wouldn’t—
Where is he?
For a brief moment she was afraid she’d spoken out loud, because if she had, if she voiced the fear she didn’t dare give a name, it would become real, inescapable.
She took a deep wavering breath and forced her hands to unclench.
No. He wasn’t like her father. Never.
Always before, meeting Tommy had been so easy. She would stand exactly where she was now, and in no time at all she would see the blink of light among the trees that meant he was waiting for her, for her—Maddie Kimball—when he could have any girl in the valley, girls whose families had money and whose fathers weren’t Foy Kimball.
It had never taken this long for him to get here before. If anything, he was apt to come too soon, before it was even dark enough for her to be absolutely certain she’d seen his signal. And when she did see it, she always waited just a little longer before she slipped away from the house, in case her father had seen it, too. Foy Kimball was a hard man to fool, primarily because he had done so many devious things himself and because hindering other people was a pleasure to him. Getting away tonight should have been easy. Foy wasn’t here. Her mother wasn’t here. The house was wonderfully and unexpectedly quiet, and all she had to do was watch for the light, then pick up the brown paper grocery bag that held a few of her carefully ironed clothes and go.
Easy.
And permanent.
She would never have to come back here again if she didn’t want to, never have to live hand to mouth with two people who only knew how to cause each other pain.
She could hear the faint rumble of thunder in the distance. She forced herself to move away from the window and cross the cluttered room to the front door. She stepped outside onto the porch, careful of the warped and rotted boards under her feet.
She knew that she wouldn’t be able to see the trees along the ridge any better from the porch, but she still looked in that direction, straining to find something, anything in the shadows.
She could smell the rain coming. The trees in the yard began to sway, and she could hear the wind moving along the mountainside treetop by treetop.
Tommy.
“Tommy,” she said in a whisper.
“Tommy!”