Loe raamatut: «Safe in Noah's Arms»

CHAPTER ONE

Standing amid the hustle and bustle swirling around her like a colorful carousel, Monica Accord thought back to when it all started. She wasn’t a violent person, but she thanked her lucky stars that she broke Noah Cameron’s arm all of those years ago.

* * *

THERE WERE THREE kinds of days in Monica Accord’s life—days when she didn’t care, days when she knew she should care and the odd, rare day when she actually did care.

This morning, driving onto Noah Cameron’s organic farm outside of Accord, Colorado, she cared.

Too bad. Life would be easier if she didn’t have a conscience.

She parked beside Noah’s ancient pickup truck, which was next to a big old farmhouse that appeared to be abandoned. White paint peeled from the railing on the veranda. One eaves trough hung askew—it was a forgotten house, the owner off to parts unknown without a backward glance.

Was she at the wrong place? She had understood it to be a working farm.

Yesterday, the court’s directions to the farm had been clear. The address was correct. This had to be the right place, but she couldn’t be sure. Situated as it was down the highway that ran south from Accord, instead of north toward the attraction of Denver’s shopping centers, it ran counter to Monica’s internal compass. She rarely drove out this way.

And no one came out of the farmhouse to greet her.

She glanced at her watch—7:00 a.m. Maybe Noah was already up and out in the fields, or maybe he was already in town at his store. Maybe she wouldn’t have to face him this morning.

She could live with that. The shame burning a hole through her stomach concurred. Though at least the shame was better than emptiness. Something, anything, was better than nothing.

Bewildered, she glanced toward the fields. Ah. There was the proof of a working farm. Meticulously and perfectly tended, and an obvious indication of where the owner put his energy—the fields were cared for a heck of a lot better than the house.

She stepped out of the car and studied the yard. Sorry-looking place.

In yesterday’s courtroom when Judge Easton had intoned, “Guilty of a wet reckless,” and had sentenced her to two hundred hours of community service, she’d thought she would be talking to high school kids about the dangers of drinking and driving.

She would have taken that on happily. Because what she had done last Friday night had been beyond reckless—there was no excuse for drinking and driving.

As her daddy had said after the verdict, “You don’t make mistakes often, sweetheart, but when you do, they sure are doozies.” He’d softened it with a hug before walking out and leaving her to pay her five-hundred-dollar fine. Fair enough. It had been her mistake and hers alone.

Lecturing kids would have made sense.

But no-o-o-o. Judge Easton had given her a far tougher sentence.

This whole terrible experience had moved with mind-numbing speed, as though she was caught in a vortex. Was she the only person who’d done something wrong last weekend? She’d committed a crime on Friday night and, boom, she was in a courtroom a few days later. She’d barely had time to hire herself a lawyer, but then, the facts were not in dispute. She had been drinking. She had run down Noah on his bike and had broken his arm. She’d heard he also had plenty of scrapes and bruises.

She shivered. She was lucky she hadn’t killed the man.

The judge sentenced her yesterday and, boom, she was to start right away. Today. Was it a slow point in crime or did Noah have some kind of pull with the courts?

The whole town knew Noah as an ethical guy. Truly, she didn’t think he’d do anything like pull strings.

If anyone had pull, it was the Accords, not the Camerons. Not that they’d ever used it. She strongly doubted the justice system in Montana was corruptible.

Was this rush because of the time of year and the fact that Noah needed help immediately? She imagined June must be a busy month for a farmer. Maybe that was the real and simple answer.

So here she was, serving all two hundred hours on Noah’s farm, near him, with him. Crazy old judge. What did he think Monica knew about farming?

She’d expected to have to atone, but with Noah? Pure, simple torture.

Why couldn’t it have been anyone other than arrogant, holier-than-thou Noah Cameron on that dark road last Friday night, he of the über-huge brain who lorded it over others every chance he got?

They had gone to high school together, him one year behind her, but even then she’d been intimidated by the massive mind lurking inside the hippie exterior.

From her youngest days, she’d been made to feel inadequate by him.

Even worse, these days she worked for his mother. And Olivia Cameron wasn’t the least bit happy that Monica had hurt her precious Noah.

Didn’t anyone—the judge, Olivia, Noah, the townspeople—get that she would never intentionally hurt anyone, least of all someone she would happily never have to deal with for the rest of her life?

For years, she’d pushed the guy off her radar, but now she couldn’t avoid him. She had to spend the next couple of months with him—her entire summer—all because of a mistake fueled by loneliness. Still, she knew there were no excuses.

She approached the nearest field with trepidation. Ha! She’d bet Noah would never believe she even knew a word like trepidation, let alone its meaning and how to use it properly.

Stepping over a couple of puddles, more miserable than she’d been at any time in the five years since Billy’s death, she moaned low in her throat. A bird somewhere nearby sang in response.

She should have worn sturdier shoes. Rubber boots, maybe. Problem was, she didn’t own any. Until yesterday, she’d never owned a pair of jeans, either. She didn’t do denim.

Across a long field of swirling dirt in leftover patches of early-morning mist, to a stand of trees in the distance, plants dotted rows of dark earthen hills like tiny green hieroglyphics, a foreign language she would have to learn by immersion—and fast. Sink or swim.

She used to be that new, that green and full of promise, like those plants. Where had it all gone?

Fascinated by their burgeoning vulnerable beauty, she squatted and rubbed a tender leaf between her fingers, both the plant and the soil still cool in the early day.

Babies scared her. Small helpless creatures terrified her. These soft plants intimidated her. What if she killed them?

If she bent over and walked down the rows with her palms outstretched, she could read them like braille, but she still wouldn’t understand their needs, or how to keep them alive. She still wouldn’t know how to farm.

Her lawyer had told her not to worry, that Noah would guide her.

She wouldn’t be surprised if Noah kicked her off the farm upon first sight. In the pit of her stomach, that blasted recurring shame stabbed at her with a hot poker. Her tummy had been doing somersaults all morning.

She didn’t want to be here, to have to face the man she’d hurt.

She touched the plant closest to her.

“How do I help you to grow?” she whispered.

Against the bright green, her hands screamed “pampered,” her nails manicured with OPI’s Not So Bora Bora-ing Pink. These hands that had never gardened—had never even tended a houseplant—had to learn how to dig around in the dirt.

What had the judge been thinking?

What on earth did one night of loneliness and one drink too many have to do with farming?

She spotted Noah across the field, watching her, red hair blazing in the sunlight. Noah, she’d noticed, presented two faces to the world—the happy, easygoing hippie and the über-intelligent, fierce activist.

At the moment, he’d added a third. Angry farmer—directed at her.

The heat that had roiled in her belly all morning crawled up her chest and into her throat, choking her.

Her mind refused to remember what she saw Friday night, but echoing sounds gathered, drowning out the nearby bird’s sweet melody. The screech of her tires on wet pavement. The awful thud of Noah hitting her car. The shattering of her windshield and tinkling of glass raining down on her in the driver’s seat.

The silence of Noah’s prone body.

She didn’t want to be here.

* * *

A WILDFIRE RAGED inside of Noah.

His right arm ached from overuse.

His left arm itched inside the cast.

He needed to be able to work whole, unhindered. Almost as badly, he needed to wring that pampered, rich, entitled woman’s neck.

Since last Friday night, he’d cursed Monica Accord from here to the Pacific Ocean, but his anger still hadn’t cooled.

He didn’t want to see her today, didn’t want her on his farm infecting the goodness here with her shallowness, but what choice did he have?

The prosecutor had consulted with him before requesting the sentence for Monica; otherwise, they would have been inflicting the offender on the poor, hapless victim. Which wouldn’t have been right. And he’d agreed with their decision.

He might not want Monica here, but he needed her, and he found the sentence fitting, forcing her to learn exactly how hard this job was, and how much her selfish act of drinking and then getting behind the wheel of her car had set him back.

He had told the courts that, yes, he would have her here to serve her community service.

Let her get her precious hands dirty for a change. Daddy couldn’t buy her way out of this fix.

He knew he was being hard on her, but he had a right to be.

He tore out a couple of weeds and tossed them into the pail by his side, seething with an anger that hadn’t abated even a fraction since the accident.

He hated this. He wasn’t an angry man. Passionate? Oh, yeah. Angry? Nah. He left that for other people. He was a lover, not a fighter, but man, he wished he had a heavy bag to punch for an hour or two. He needed to vent, badly.

Trouble was, it would amplify that he had only one useful arm.

He flexed his neck to ease the tension that had lodged there like a recalcitrant tree stump, going nowhere no matter how hard he tried to yank it out.

Stop. This doesn’t do you any good.

Filling his lungs with the fresh scent of morning dew, he tried to clear his mind. Usually, not much got him down at this glorious time of day—not worries, not memories.

He’d already been out here weeding for two hours, the drill usually as calming as yoga or meditation. Even so, rage flexed its fists in his chest, pummeling his ribs, beating up on him from the inside out.

He didn’t need this.

An engine sounded in the distance, then in his driveway. He heard it because he’d been waiting for it.

She was here.

He dropped his spade and stood—it was a real struggle to rein in his emotions. Useless exercise. Fury flooded his veins. Every last item of produce he grew was destined for a food kitchen in Denver, or for families living miles around who had fallen on hard times.

Now this—a broken left arm and too much work to do alone in his current state. Whatever didn’t get grown and harvested couldn’t be eaten by those in need.

Why couldn’t it be anyone but Monica here to help him? At the moment, he’d take aid from a goat if it was a viable option to get more accomplished. He really didn’t want to deal with that woman.

Court-appointed or not, help was help. He glanced toward the driveway and his breath backed up in his throat.

Monica Accord stepped out of her baby blue BMW convertible, cool and composed, pale blond hair in place, long legs encased in designer jeans, a Victoria’s Secret model and Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue model rolled into one. A classy one.

Monica Accord could no more do trashy than the Pope could break-dance.

She walked toward one of his fields, stepping close to his rows of new radish plants, a puzzled frown furrowing her otherwise perfect brow. He tracked her progress, ’cause the thing with Monica was that walk was too normal a verb to describe her movement. Monica did nothing so mundane as walk. She glided, floating with a lithe elegance that mere mortals couldn’t imitate.

God, she was gorgeous with the sun running warm rays over her skin as though infatuated with her.

Who wasn’t?

His heart boomeranged inside his chest, beating hard enough to hurt. Twenty years after leaving high school, she was still the golden girl, and he was still the guy who had an unrequited crush on her— disgusting in a rational thirty-seven-year-old man.

He tossed his spade into the pail with the weeds.

Still a fool.

He needed his wits about him. Sure, he was a smart guy, but Monica Accord could scramble his brain in creative ways.

She bent over and touched a plant. Her lips moved. She was talking to it? Wasn’t that a little New Agey for Monica?

Wrapping his anger around himself like a protective shield, he approached. She noticed him. He glared and watched guilt heat a path up her neck and into her cheeks. Good. She was the reason he was in this hellish predicament.

A swift glance at the cast on his arm had color infusing her face. When she noticed the healing scabs on his forehead, she winced.

When he reached her, she said, “I’m truly sorry.” No “hi” or “how’s it going?” She sounded abject and looked miserable. Good. She had screwed him royally.

There wasn’t one ounce of compassion or forgiveness in him for her.

“Y-y-y-ou have any id-d-d—” He hissed in a breath, furious. Not this again! Stuttering, for God’s sake. He’d worked his butt off to overcome his affliction, but a split second in Monica’s rarefied company and a bad case of stupefying adoration threatened to lock his tongue.

Steeling his nerves, he pulled himself together and started again.

“You have any idea what you’ve done to me?” He hated the victim-like sound of that “to me,” but said it anyway, skipping the niceties and gesturing with the cast. “You have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?”

“I can only imagine, Noah.”

“No, you can’t,” he snapped and was gratified when she flinched. He’d pierced her cool elegance. Since early adolescence, her effortless physical grace had mocked his gangly limbs, old clothes and wild hair. He’d grown up since then, had added muscle in all the right places, courtesy of hard work. His thin face had matured; his jaw had hardened. He refused to cater to fashion or vanity and yet, women found him attractive. Except for Monica, of course. He had the worst desire to crash through her facade and break down her boundaries, to make her as human as the rest of the world.

As human as me.

“I can’t get my work done.” Bitterness churned up from his belly like acid reflux. “You’ve screwed me at my busiest time of year.”

Had she ever once in her life thought of anyone other than herself?

“You’ve got big amends to make. Huge.”

Hurt lingered in her eyes and he fought the urge to soften his words because he wasn’t mad at just her. He was furious with himself because even after the nightmare of her hitting him with her car and breaking part of his body, his knee-jerk, teenaged reaction to her was to turn to jelly.

Some boys never grew up where some girls were concerned.

Those boyhood memories, those significant moments of teenage mortification, rose too close to the surface. She had never been intentionally cruel. He just hadn’t existed for her, in her world—not even on the periphery of it. What boy wants to be invisible to a beautiful girl?

Back then he’d been a tall redhead, growing like a weed. How could he possibly have been invisible to her?

That wasn’t all of the truth, though, was it? There had been that one time when she’d seen him and had been cruel. Intentionally? He didn’t know.

There’d been a gaggle of pretty girls standing in the hallway at their lockers when he had walked by. He had thought of them as worldly fourteen-year-olds to his thirteen-year-old unsophisticated self, aggressive in his opinions because without them he was just...awkward.

Monica—tall, gorgeous and perfect in every way—had been in the center of the whirling vortex of giggling femininity.

One of the girls had pointed to him and whispered something to Monica. She’d glanced his way, coolly, because that’s how she did everything—with calm self-assurance.

His ever-hopeful young self had thought, This is it. Monica Accord is finally going to acknowledge me, and talk to me!

After that one brief glance, she had turned away, dismissing him and leaving him to feel invisible again. And after a word to her friends that had set them off giggling, he became worse than invisible. He was shunned and ignored and left to feel worthless.

He didn’t know what mean or unkind remark she had said about him, but his hatred of her had started that day. Problem was, it was worse than pure hatred. It was love-hate from afar and he was a fool for still falling under her spell, especially when he clearly still meant nothing to her.

He knew he meant less than nothing to her because, since high school, she’d spent the better part of her adult life ignoring him, except for that damned polite little smile the odd time when their paths crossed. And that he could do without.

In the grand scheme of things, this was peanuts. In his work with the poor and needy, especially in New Orleans after Katrina, he had seen true hardship. He had no illusions this wasn’t on the list of the worst things that could happen to a guy, he knew that, but it had happened during those impressionable, early adolescent years, a time fraught with raging new feelings.

As it turned out, it had been a pivotal event that had shaped his life for years to come.

Her behavior on the previous weekend, drinking and driving, cemented what he had always known about her—Monica Accord was still as self-centered and self-indulgent as ever. The town might accept her goody-two-shoes image, but he knew better.

The cast on his arm and his bruised ribs told a more accurate story.

So, no, he had no use for her, but today he required her help. No choice. It put him in the impossible position of needing her, but not wanting her.

Her gaze dropped, and then shot back to his face. “You’re wearing socks...with sandals.”

“So what?”

“It’s so unfashionable.”

“Seriously?” Still an airhead, believing that fashion was more important than anything. What about poverty? Need? What about war? What about—? Ah, hell, none of it mattered to Monica.

“It’s chilly in the mornings.” That he sounded defensive further inflamed his irritation. “My toes freeze if I don’t wear socks.” Crazy woman. What the heck difference did it make? “So? How many hours did they give you for a DWAI?”

“Two hundred for a wet reckless.”

“They dropped the driving with ability impaired?” he asked, incredulous. Once again the rich got favors while the common man was screwed. “Why? Did you get a break because you’re one of the mighty Accords?”

The delicacy of her frown bothered him. Was there anything Monica did that wasn’t attractive? “Not exactly, Noah. In fact, Dad wasn’t happy when Judge Easton took his seat to preside over my sentencing. He said I was lucky he hadn’t made things worse, not better.” She fiddled with the hem of her shirt. She was nervous? Couldn’t be. Not Monica. “I don’t know why it got knocked down. You’d have to ask my lawyer how he reduced the charge. He worked it all out.”

Despite what Monica’s father had told her, he and the judge were cronies. Had to be. What else would it have been? Once again, money talked, and that made him livid. “Your lawyer? Don’t you mean your daddy’s lawyer?” He was being sarcastic and cutting, and he didn’t like that in himself, but God, he was mad. At a time when he needed to be strong in order to get massive amounts of work done, she’d turned him into half a man. Helplessness fueled his outrage.

As an awkward kid trying to come to grips with bones that were growing too quickly for his muscles to keep up, he’d been beat on by a group of nasty boys, repeatedly. Day in and day out, they would hold him down while Kenny Rickard whaled on him.

Helpless to defend himself, he’d grown to hate that feeling.

He wouldn’t complain, though. He’d never once snitched.

Over time, he had grown into his bones and his gangly limbs had filled out. These days, at six-one and two hundred pounds of lean muscle, he could fight anyone who tried to hurt him, but Monica Accord could still bring him to his knees with nothing more than a glance. Plus, she’d handicapped him physically.

Worst thing she could have done to him was to make him feel helpless.

“You broke my arm.” Lame. She already knows that, Cameron.

Her pretty lips thinned. “For God’s sake, not on purpose.” She sounded angry.

Good. Welcome to my world.

He stepped closer. “Let’s get something straight. I’m not happy about you being here, but you caused this—” he pointed to the cast “—so I’m going to work the daylights out of you. Farming is a tough, physical business, so be prepared to work like you’ve never worked before for your mandated two hundred hours.”

A woman like Monica would never have volunteered for such a job.

Disgusted, he growled, “Let’s get started. Follow me.”

He turned away, but she touched his good hand to stop him. Fireworks zinged up his arm.

“Okay, Noah, you want to clear the air? Fine.” He’d never heard her sound so hard. “I’m not any happier about this than you are. I hate that I broke your arm. I don’t like hurting people.”

She took a deep breath, to calm herself he assumed, but what the hell did she have to be angry about? She hadn’t been injured in the accident. “I’ve never driven drunk before—never—but as my lawyer said, it takes only one time for something bad to happen. I’m sorry I hit you. I will pay to replace your bicycle. I’ve already offered more than once.”

“It was vintage. It can’t be replaced.”

“Well, I’m going to try. Give me all the details you can and I’ll track one down.” She tilted her head to one side. “Or can yours be fixed?”

“It’s in bad shape. You really hit me hard. We’re both lucky all I got was a broken arm. You could have killed me.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she shivered.

“Maybe you have a conscience, after all,” he conceded. “In my experience, rich people rarely do.”

“Stereotype much, Noah?”

“As I said, I’ve come by it honestly. Through experience.”

One long-fingered hand rubbed her stomach. What was that about? “I am really, truly sorry. I don’t know how many more times I can say it. Let’s move forward from here, okay? Show me what I need to do to help you.”

So, the spoiled girl knew how to be reasonable. Okay, he could be, too.

“Do you know how to farm?”

“Nope.”

“Do you keep houseplants?”

“Never.”

“Do you know anything about plants?”

“Nada.”

“Oh, crap.” Visions of how useful she would be to him evaporated like the last vestiges of morning dew dried up by the sun. He stared at Monica in her designer jeans and absolutely useless loafers.

His silly dreams of a capable helper came to a screeching halt. She was going to be useless to him—even less so than he’d imagined.

None of his friends or family had the time to help him out, and he couldn’t afford to hire employees.

Instead, he was stuck with Monica Accord.

What made it all truly rotten was that despite despising everything that Monica stood for—her princess-in-an-ivory-tower lifestyle, her frivolity, her designer clothing that embodied crass consumerism, her uselessness—Noah still felt those awful pangs, the ones he’d had in high school that had been worse than the growing pains in his long legs, worse than the way the other kids made fun of his retro clothing and taunted him his fervent fights to save the environment. He still felt those awful, unwelcome and debilitating pangs of unrequited puppy love.

For two hundred long, long hours, he would be stuck with Monica, golden goddess, former cheerleader and prettiest prom queen Accord High had ever seen.

As he led her around to the back porch of the house to hunt down a pair of rubber boots that might fit her, he said it again, with feeling. “Oh, crap.”

* * *

FOR THE FOURTH time in the two hours Monica had been weeding, Noah yelled at her.

“What are you doing?” Along with his harsh shout came a shadow that cut off light.

Behind his head, the sun created a halo around Noah’s too-long red hair. Wisps of it had escaped his ponytail and curled in the heat.

“That’s not a weed,” he cried. “It’s a radish.”

Rats. She’d screwed up again. Cramming it back into the earth, she shoved soil around the roots with shaking hands. She’d been pulling up too many plants. She just couldn’t tell them apart. She wished she could. Contrary to what Noah seemed to think, she didn’t like screwing up, especially when he’d drilled into her that she was wasting food.

“It will be okay.” She picked up the pail beside her and watered the radish. “Honest, I’ll check it again tomorrow to make sure it survived.”

He crouched down, too close. Noah had grown up well. Really well. His eyes sparkled like bright green gems. The man exuded a lot of heat. His mouth, a flat slash that divided his red mustache and beard, signaled his disapproval. Usually when she saw him around town, his lips were full and on the verge of an ever-ready smile—not that she’d noticed.