give yourself too much credit.”
“I make a living out of seeing when people are in pain,” he said. “I never blamed you for leaving. I wanted to go with you. That night, I wanted to go more than you can imagine.”
For an instant she believed him, but instinctive insecurity took over and made her wary. Noah had pulled the mat from beneath her too many times.
“When my father shoved you down those stairs, I wanted to kill him. Instead, I had to drive him to another state and make peace with my mother for doing it. She was still in thrall to the abuse that went on in that house.”
His raw voice cut her. “Don’t,” she said.
Emma stared up at the iron chandelier. She’d wanted to go to the police once after Noah had picked her up, and she’d seen his black eye and a grazed jaw. But Noah had said they would take his brothers and sister and scatter them to different foster homes. He’d said at least he could hold his father off.
“When you left, Celia was only fifteen and Chad was thirteen. I couldn’t leave them. My mother was...” He brought himself up short, his survivor’s reticence taking over again. “She couldn’t handle her own life then.”
“You were almost out the door,” Emma said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re right about settling the past between us. If we do it now, then no matter when you return from now on, we won’t have to rake up these old coals.”
It was the right answer, but it still hurt, and she resented him for that. “I only came back to fix the house.”
Emma started toward the front door, but she didn’t have to urge Noah to leave. He was ahead of her by several steps. Memories rolled through her mind. Kisses stolen in this hall, his mouth eager, his hands gentle. Whispers broken off as they’d reached the foyer and the range of Nan’s acute hearing.
Now she watched as Noah gave a last look around the large, square foyer, at the crystal drop chandelier, the Sheraton console tables on which two Tiffany lamps flanked a bowl that held her keys and notes she’d written herself, the folder that contained Owen’s estimate.
Noah obviously knew he’d never see the inside of her home again. He reached for the glass knob on the front door.
Movement shadowed the long window beside the door, and he glanced through the beveled panes that scattered prisms of rainbow light on the wide-planked maple floor. Owen walked past, maneuvering another armload of white-painted pickets.
Noah nodded at his brother. “Let’s say he can’t get this work done right. Can you afford to have it redone?”
“He won’t let me down,” she said, instantly feeling guilty and foolish for the bitter words.
“I didn’t let you down. I took care of the people who needed me.” He dropped his hand from the doorknob. “I finished training, which meant that I could keep my family from starving or sleeping in the cold.”
Another series of images, imagined ones, shot through her thoughts. Noah’s mother cowering as his father hit her, Noah pushing between her and his enraged dad and the other terrified children. He’d made the correct choice.
“You’re right,” she said. “You never let me down.” She moved closer, ready to shut the door as soon as he went out.
Noah’s head jerked back, as if she’d surprised him. But he didn’t linger. He was out the door and crossing the porch before she knew it. She watched through the glass beside the door as he crossed the porch, then took the stairs with the athlete’s grace that had drawn her to him years ago. Opening his car door, he climbed in, gunned the engine and sped down the drive, his tires spewing gravel and dust.
Emma flattened her palms against the cool window. Her breath fogged the pane. Alone and confused in Nan’s safe, warm house, Emma shivered as if Noah had brought all the cold she’d ever known inside and left it behind.
“I APPRECIATE YOUR coming tonight,” Noah said to the rain-dampened group who’d arrived to hear him speak about the new clinic. “I expected the rain to keep some of you away. But I see it didn’t.”
There were general murmurs of agreement. His thoughts were on Emma, working on her laptop at a table just outside the library’s conference room. She’d barely glanced at him when he came in. Her eyes had widened and she’d looked back at her work. She’d set up a business while she was gone, building websites and creating social media platforms for clients. Maybe that work was difficult to do in her house with Owen sawing and hammering to repair the widespread damage her termites had caused both outside and within the house.
“I’ve distributed some information.” Noah held up a stack of pages. “As many of you know, I’ve been talking to the town council about building a clinic here in Bliss. I’ve ordered a financial study to anticipate costs versus profits. I’ve suggested several properties that might be appropriate. The council is not amenable so far, so I’ve come to you, neighbors and friends, residents who live here full time.”
“Would the town own the clinic?” a man in the back asked. He had a farm down the narrow dirt road from the inn.
“If the town provides funding, yes. I haven’t been able to interest a hospital in building here because of the council’s reluctance, but we need more medical care. I can give you an X-ray and draw your blood, but I have to send tests to a lab in Knoxville or Asheville. I don’t have the equipment here to complete the kind of work my patients often need.”
“You already have an office.” Maeve, who owned the local pharmacy, cut in. “How would you run the clinic as well?”
“I’ve included funding estimates for staffing. I’d take shifts in the clinic, but it wouldn’t be my office.”
“Why is the council against it?”
That soft voice came from the entry to the room, a voice from dreams he’d tried to stop dreaming.
He let no emotion cross his face. He must be good at that—she hadn’t seen how she’d affected him at her house. Despite his inconvenient continued attraction to her, he wasn’t going to let her drag him into the past.
He nodded at her, but then spoke to the room at large. She knew her father was in the mix of the council and opposed the clinic. “A variety of reasons. The first is that it doesn’t suit the council’s idea of the covenants set up when Bliss began to cater to skiing and tourism. A clinic is not high-end shopping. It’s not a picturesque eatery or a B&B that looks like a country estate. It doesn’t bring in the money that new business is required to furnish in this town.”
“Would it pay for itself, though?” the farmer at the back asked.
“Barely,” Noah said, “at least as far as we’ve done the estimation. “But we need an expert who can inform us about any possible tax burden. We’ll set up funding and build a trust from donations that will be as strict as any town covenant dreamed of being.”
“What do you want us to do?”
Noah glanced at Emma, whose troubled gaze rested
