Home to Hope Mountain. Joan Kilby

sell up and move?”

      “If you have to ask that, you don’t know me,” she said, opening the unlocked garage door.

      “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

      She tossed her hat on a hook beside the door and toed off her boots. She could give him an impassioned speech about how she grew up riding in these woods, how Hope Mountain was in her blood, how she couldn’t conceive of ever living anywhere else. But she didn’t know him, so she wasn’t about to tell him her innermost thoughts and feelings. They wouldn’t mean anything to him. So she shrugged it off. “Guess I’m just stubborn that way.”

      Adam stood in the doorway, blatantly cataloguing the sparse furnishings. The shabby recliner, the old tea crate she used as a coffee table, the Indian bedspread she’d hung on the wall for color, the battered two-seater table and chairs and her pull-out couch with the extra blanket folded over the arm. If he said something cheerful about how cozy it was she just might pull out her rifle and shoot him.

      “My paddocks are full of long grass,” he said instead. “You’re welcome to bring your horses over to graze.”

      “That’s kind of you, but I can fend for myself.” She washed her hands, then rummaged through the cardboard box that held her supply of canned goods and packets of dry food.

      She felt his skepticism and ignored it. She didn’t want to be beholden to the man who’d indirectly been responsible for her husband’s death.

      “You’d be doing me a favor,” Adam went on. “I’m trying to clear away excess fuel and make Timbertop fire-safe. The grass is way overgrown. If you don’t bring your horses over I’ll have to get a flock of sheep.”

      She got an image of him herding sheep in his fancy suit and polished leather shoes. Hiding a smile, she said, “That much feed is worth a lot of sugar.”

      “I’m not offering it as some sort of repayment for services rendered, either now or in the future. I thought the creed of the bush was that everyone helped each other.”

      She straightened, holding two partial bags of sugar, one white and one brown. “True, but you’re not part of the local community. You don’t have any responsibility to help.”

      “My daughter lives here.”

      So she did. And Adam had dumped four hundred dollars into the community center fund. Hayley felt ashamed. Why was she pushing him away so hard? Where was her tolerance? Another creed of the bush was “live and let live.”

      Maybe he didn’t want anything from her. Maybe he was simply being generous because he could afford to be. And maybe that was why she was so prickly. An urbane, sophisticated man like Adam Banks couldn’t possibly be interested in a scruffy mountain girl like her except as a charity case. Not that she was ashamed of who she was. No, sir. If anything, she felt sorry for him because city folks were soft. Put Adam Banks in the bush without his smartphone and he would be lost within minutes.

      But he had a point about reducing fuel. Come summer that grass would dry out and be tinder.

      She took the plastic container from him and emptied the contents of both bags into it. Combined there was about three quarters of a cup of sugar. There went her nightly hot chocolate, one of her few indulgences. “I hope that’s enough.”

      “Perfect.” His gaze flickered at the realization that he’d taken the last of her sugar.

      Before he could do something stupid like try to give it back, she said, “Well, you’ve just done me a favor. I’ve been trying to use this up so I could go on a sugar-free diet. That stuff will kill you. Better you than me.”

      “Come for dinner,” he said suddenly. “Summer would be glad to have company other than her father for a change.”

      Lamb chops with barbecue sauce. Probably mashed potatoes and green beans or salad. For a moment she was so tempted she actually salivated. If she stayed home she’d be dining on canned tuna and toast. Or lentil soup, which was tasty enough and nutritious but uninspiring after the third or fourth night in a row. “Thanks, but I can’t.”

      He waited for more. She shrugged and smiled but didn’t utter another word. She didn’t owe him an explanation. And frankly, she didn’t have one. She was no martyr. If anyone else had invited her for dinner she would’ve gone in a heartbeat, just for the company. But Adam, well...

      He looked pretty tasty himself....

      Admit it, you’re attracted to him.

      No, no way. She was not attracted to him.

      He was generous and kind. And hot, don’t forget hot. But that didn’t mean she was attracted. He didn’t belong here and he couldn’t wait to get away. He’d said so himself.

      Leif hadn’t been gone a year. Getting involved with the man whose property he’d died defending when that man hadn’t even bothered to show up would feel like betrayal. She and Leif hadn’t made love for six months before he died, but so what? Despite their problems, she’d been loyal in life and she was loyal in death. And what would Molly and Rolf think if she started seeing someone so soon? Hurt and disappointment wouldn’t begin to describe their reaction.

      It was only dinner, not a date. Don’t overreact, she told herself.

      Finally Adam raised his hands in surrender. “Okay. If you change your mind you know where we live.”

      She was relieved he didn’t press her to come. The fact that he didn’t proved he was only being polite. “I’ll drive you back.”

      “You don’t need to,” he began, then stopped as he realized the alternative was her doubling him again on Bo. Heat flared in his eyes, kindling an answering response from her. For a moment they just stared at each other. She recalled the press of his thighs against hers, the feel of his arm around her waist, his legs tightening around her butt.

      Then he shook his head. “Actually, I’d appreciate a lift. Next time I won’t wander into the woods so impetuously.”

      Nope, he clearly didn’t want a repeat of that kind of togetherness any more than she did. Hayley released her breath.

      He held up the container of sugar. “Thanks for this. I owe you.”

      She gave him a tight smile and grabbed her truck keys. What he owed her, he couldn’t begin to repay.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “THANKS ANYWAY,” ADAM SAID, and scratched the last name off his list of potential counselors. “You have my number if you get an opening.”

      He tried Diane for the fifth or sixth time. After leaving another message he pushed back from the desk in his study and went upstairs to knock on his daughter’s door. “Summer?”

      “Yeah?” she said in a distracted, muffled voice.

      He peeked in and found her lying on her stomach in bed, still in her pajamas, her red hair spilling across her shoulders. She didn’t even look up as her fingers flew over her phone, texting.

      “Hey, kiddo. What do you call a lazy baby kangaroo?”

      “Dunno.”

      “A pouch potato.”

      She groaned. “You need new material.”

      “Can you give me a hand outside?”

      “I’m talking to Zoe.”

      “Say goodbye for now. I want to move the woodpile away from the house.” And he figured Summer would benefit if she got outside and did something physical instead of moping around indoors.

      “That’s dumb. We’ll just have to walk farther to get wood for the fireplace during winter.”

      He hoped she wouldn’t be living here next winter, but he wasn’t foolish enough to mention that. “It’s a hazard