Hawks Mountain

Jo

Chapter 1

The deafening explosion came from nearby. Too near. Near enough to rattle his eardrums and rock the earth beneath him. He plastered his body against the ground. Choking sand filled the air. The screams of injured and dying men echoed all around him through the following eerie stillness.

Doc! Over here, Doc!

Where are you?

I’m here. I’m over . . . But the pain slicing through his head kept him on the ground, helpless to help those who called to him.

Then the voice and the screams faded away, drowned out by the melodic chirping of a bird. The air had cooled, and the sound of mortar fire receded. The scorching, abrading sand against his cheek became the cool caress of meadow grass.

Nicholas Hart opened his eyes, still afraid to move. Residual fear shook his body. Pin points of pain jabbed at his chest. Sweat beaded his forehead and torso. He looked down at his hands. Red. Blood?

Not until Nick inhaled the perfume of the wildflowers and the ripening wild strawberries crushed in his curled fingers and saw the green grass biting into his bare chest did he come back to reality. He was not lying in the bomb-riddled streets of Baghdad. Instead, he lay in a sun-dappled meadow on Hawks Mountain in West Virginia.

Slowly, the fear and tremors ebbed from his taut limbs, but, as always, the guilt remained. He must have dozed off while reading and had that dream again. That same nightmarish dream that had haunted him since he’d come back to the states a year ago. Would he ever truly escape the horrors of war once and for all?

Coming to Hawks Mountain, a place he’d visited and been happy and carefree as a child, should have helped erase the nightmares, but so far even the peace of this majestic place had done nothing to chase away the memories of his time in Iraq.

He sat up slowly and looked around. Everything was as it should be. A book, 100 Ways to Commit Murder and Not Be Detected, research for his crime novel, lay open on the ground beside his discarded shirt. Remnants of his lunch lay scattered over the grass around his open laptop. The laptop’s screen had gone blank. Dead battery.

He must have been asleep for some time. Glancing at his watch, he sighed. Two hours. Only a few more hours of daylight remained, thanks to his unscheduled nap. He’d wanted to get the rest of the roof on his cabin’s porch before sundown. Maybe if he hurried he could still get at least half of it done.

He gathered his lunch leftovers and shoved them in the brown paper bag in which he’d carried them down here. Then he marked his place in his book with a paper napkin. Grabbing his shirt, he wiped away the juice from the crushed strawberries on his hands, then closed his laptop and stacked everything on top of it and stood.

Who are you, and why are you trespassing on our land?

He turned toward the woman’s voice and froze.

A few feet away from him, the sun dancing off her coppery curls, her curvy body encased in tight jeans and a brief, pink crop-top, stood perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Even with the angry scowl distorting her features she was captivating. As he stared at the woman, her youth became apparent, perhaps somewhere in her early twenties. Though he felt ancient, it was close to his own age.

A breeze toyed with the loose curls framing her face and playfully whipped the bright strands around in wild abandonment. The black duffle bag emblazoned with the Atlanta Falcons’ gold logo clutched in her hand made him wonder if she was a tourist passing through. However, he deep-sixed that notion when he recalled her verbal claim to the land. Definitely not a tourist.

Ignoring her questions, he continued to study the woman for a few moments longer, and then shook his head, denying himself the tiny flicker of enjoyment seeping into his senses and the sudden acceleration of his pulse rate.

Well? What do you have to say for yourself? Why are you trespassing on my grandmother’s land?

Ah, just as he’d suspected. Not a tourist. But she evidently had not been around here for a while. First of all he would have definitely recalled seeing her before. A woman like this did not drift in and out of a man’s life without him remembering her. Second, she didn’t realize this was his land, sold legally to him by her grandmother, Josephine Hawks, over eight months ago.

However, he had no intention of explaining himself to her or anyone else. If he had been so inclined, he’d have told all the speculating gossips in town why he was here long ago. Instead he let their imaginations run the gamut between him being an axe murderer running from the law and a man dying from some horrible, incurable disease.

Clutching the laptop in one hand and balancing the brown bag and the book in the other hand, he tore his gaze away from her and turned his back, then slowly walked to the line of trees bordering the meadow.

Where are you going? Hey, you gonna answer me? Mister? You got no business being here.

Casting one last glance over his shoulder, as if to reaffirm her existence in his mind, he turned away again. She’d dropped the duffle bag and taken one step in his direction. Something about her pulled at him, but he fought it. This woman may be beautiful, but that made her more of a threat to his solitude and no less an intrusion. Whoever she was, he had no desire to let her into his life, not even the little bit that replying to her questions would allow. He’d been alone for a long time now, and come what may, he planned on staying that way. Sometimes, the loneliness almost overwhelmed him, but it beat the heck out of attaching himself emotionally to someone, then losing them forever.

Well, I’ll be . . . Rebecca Hawks stared after the stranger as he disappeared into the trees. If that doesn’t just beat all.

Despite being upset with the trespasser, she had to smile. She’d sounded just like her homespun granny and not a woman who had a college degree and had spent three years in the city working for Atlanta’s Department of Human Services.

As she gazed at the spot where the man had vanished into the trees, she made a note to speak to Granny Jo about him. Considering that he’d carried a laptop and a book and not a gun, he couldn’t be a poacher, but he was still a trespasser. Even though Granny Jo probably wouldn’t object to the man cutting across Hawks land, Becky couldn’t tamp down her own unreasonable anger or the feeling of her private haven being invaded.

This was Hawks Mountain. It had been in her grandfather’s family for generations. Now that Grampa Earl was gone, it was Granny Jo’s land, and one day it would be hers. Becky felt an unwarranted need to protect it, to keep it safe from . . . From what? A man who was perhaps only using it as a shortcut to the other side of the ridge?

Is that what city living had done to her? Had she forgotten all the teachings of her gentle, hospitable grandmother in the seven years she’d been away from here? Though the stranger was broad-shouldered, handsome as the day was long and silent as a rock, something about him called to her inner nurturer, something about the way his shoulders slumped and the corners of his mouth drooped that told her he wasn’t as strong inside as he appeared to be outside. And, Lordy, the way his tanned chest bulged with muscle left no doubt as to his physical strength.

She shook her head. You really need to get out of the sun and stop these foolish thoughts. You’ve got enough of your own problems without worrying about someone else’s, someone you don’t even know. She picked up her duffle bag and stepped back on the dirt road leading up the mountain.

With the sight of the swaying pines, the smell of the sun-warmed earth, the ripening spring strawberries in the air and the redtail hawks circling high above her, she could almost forget the man in the meadow and the time she’d spent in Atlanta. She could almost wipe from her memory the dark shadows that haunted her heart.

Almost.

She frowned and tried not to allow those memories admittance, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never completely erase the memory of the people she’d met as part of her job with the Division of Family and Children’s Services. Crying babies without food. Desperate mothers without a means to provide it. The squalor everywhere. No electricity. Sickness. Sometimes no heat. Never enough funds, personnel or time to provide the help needed. And sometimes the tragic endings . . .

Determinedly, she shook her head as if to dislodge those troubling thoughts and concentrated on her surroundings. Like a hungry kitten in a dairy barn, she lapped up the familiar landscape’s beauty—beauty that always made her heart feel easy with life, beauty she hadn’t truly appreciated until her world had turned ugly.

She strained her eyes straight ahead, searching for the last familiar bend in the road that would reveal the white clapboard house where she’d grown up with Granny Jo, the only house on Hawks Mountain. The house where Granny Jo would welcome her home with her all-encompassing embrace, the one safe haven that would help her heal. The place that would provide the peace of mind and gentle familiarity for which her soul hungered.

Becky rounded the last curve in the winding road, stopped dead and for a moment drank in the sight of the home in which she’d grown up. Before her, embraced by the loving boughs of three large, oak trees, stood the house Grampa Earl had built for Granny Jo over fifty years ago.

Quickly, she dropped the duffle bag and slipped off her tennis shoes, then buried her feet in the grass surrounding the house, just as she’d done as a child. She looked up at her home and sighed. Home. She was really and truly home.

From the side of the house, a large, gray bundle of fur came hurtling toward her, tail wagging, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.

Jake! You remember me. Becky squatted and buried her face in the dog’s shaggy coat. Jake, Granny Jo’s beloved companion, licked her face and pressed against her, almost knocking her over. I’d love to stay here and play with you, but that’ll have to wait until later.

She stood, watched Jake amble to a spot of shade beneath a large oak, make several circles before flopping down and closing his eyes. Then she turned her attention back to the big house. The white clapboard could use a coat of paint and a spindle was missing from the front porch railing, but other than that, it was exactly as she remembered it. As welcoming as the caress of the cool grass on her hot, tired, bare feet.

Planted in neat rows along either side of the front path leading to the porch, Granny’s multi-colored roses welcomed visitors. Dwarf marigolds, looking like little puffs of golden sunlight, snuggled in against their feet. Becky held her breath and listened. The steady buzz of honey bees filled the silence. She watched them flit from one beautiful rose to another and thought of the patchwork life she had led since leaving the mountain for college and then to find a tenuous destiny in the big city, far removed from the tiny community of Carson, West Virginia. And, in the end, she’d found not her shining future, but a world filled with nothing but disillusionment, pain and ugliness and guilt at her inability to change any of it.

She shook away her unhappy thoughts, determined that nothing would ruin this homecoming for her. Picking up her duffle bag, she hooked her sneakers over two fingers, then padded up the walk to the wide front porch. Slowly, savoring the feel of the rough wood against the soles of her feet, she climbed the stairs. When the second step from the top squeaked loud and clear, she nearly laughed aloud with joy. Granny Jo called it her doorbell.

Can’t a soul around here climb those steps and not make that board squeak, she’d say with a sly grin and a playful wink. Except me.

Then she’d laugh because she knew exactly how to ascend the stairs without hitting the squeaky board, and though Becky had begged her to tell her, Granny Jo had kept her secret from even her small granddaughter for many years.

On her eighteenth birthday, Granny had revealed how to do it. Becky stared down at the step now and counted over three nail heads from the left, then placed her foot back on that exact spot, followed by her full weight. Again a loud squeak announced her arrival. She waited and listened.

Well, come on in. Don’t stand out there waiting for an invitation. Granny Jo’s voice rang out through the screen door.

It had come, Becky knew, from the kitchen at the back of the house. Granny’s domain. Becky had often thought that the rest of the house could have burned to the ground, but as long as the kitchen remained intact, Granny would have shrugged it off.

Becky smiled and opened the screen door. Stepping into the coolness of the dark front hall, she set her bag and shoes on the worn, braided rug at the foot of the stairs, inhaled deeply of the welcoming aroma of apples and cinnamon and fresh made cornbread that perfumed the house, and then padded down the passage toward Granny’s kitchen.

Still grinning, Becky stepped quietly into the warm, fragrant room. Granny Jo was rolling out pie crust. Sweat beaded her forehead just below the line of her salt and pepper hair, and a dusting of flour muted the bright colors of her flowered dress and apron. As she worked, she hummed Rock of Ages.

After using the rolling pin to carefully place the top crust on the pie plate heaped with apple slices, she laid the pin aside. The one-handled rolling pin brought a quick grin to Becky’s lips. Grampa Earl claimed she’d broken the other handle off over his sorry head the first year they were married. Granny Jo never said otherwise. As a small child, Becky had speculated on what her dear grampa could have done that had made her peace-loving granny hit him hard enough to break her rolling pin. But, Granny Jo kept that explanation stowed away with the secret of the squeaky stair, and to this day had never revealed a word about it.

Back then it was a secret a small, inquisitive child yearned to learn. As a woman, Becky didn’t have to ask. Now she knew all too well that even the best of men had a dark side.

Granny crimped the edges of the crust with practiced fingers, and then trimmed off the excess. Picking up the pie to insert it in the oven, she turned, and noticed Becky for the first time. Tears instantly filled the old woman’s clear gray eyes.

My Lord, child. You’ve come home. Granny Jo set the pie aside and then rushed to embrace her granddaughter.

Warm, welcoming arms swept around Becky and gathered her to that familiar ample bosom. Contentment unlike any she found anywhere else but here enveloped her. At last, she’d truly come home and very soon her life would be better. She would be better.

Disengaging their tangled embrace, Granny Jo held her at arm’s length. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home, child?

I wanted to surprise you.

Truth be known, Becky hadn’t known she was coming back until yesterday, when she’d returned home to their tiny apartment and found Sonny, her college sweetheart and live-in boyfriend, in bed with another woman. When she’d confronted him, it resulted in the first and last time he’d laid hands on her.

Next thing Becky knew she was in the bus station with Sonny’s duffle bag and what little money she’d had to her name and no idea where she’d go. Then the man behind that barred window had asked, Where to, ma’am? And she knew instantly. She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home to Granny Jo and Hawks Mountain.

Well, you certainly did surprise me, Granny said, pulling Becky from her memories, then planting a warm kiss on each of her granddaughter’s cheeks, just like she used to do when she’d put Becky to bed every night. Her grandmother peered behind Becky, and she knew Granny had expected to see Sonny, the man she’d spoken of in all her letters. But she didn’t ask.

Instead, Granny stared deep into her granddaughter’s eyes. How long you plan on visiting?

Becky could only push one word past the knot of emotion closing off her throat. Forever. Granny frowned, but just as Becky knew she would, Granny asked no questions. When the story needed telling, she would leave it to Becky to choose the time and place.

Lord, just look at me, blubbering like a baby. Dabbing at her moist eyes with the hem of her apron, Granny stepped back. Let me get this pie in the oven and pour us some sweet tea, then we’ll go out on the porch where it’s cool and catch up.

Granny scurried about the