Til First Snow

Chapter One

Ben Hill could hardly believe his eyes. Up ahead and off-road, a redhaired beauty waded ankle-deep in his own personal fishing hole, an out-of-the-way spot a quarter mile or so removed from his equally private cabin located deeper in the woods. He'd paid a bundle to remain unknown in these parts and the seclusion he'd purchased five years back sure helped.

Until today.

His precious anonymity at stake, he went crashing through the bushes, thinking to confront the woman, her pert nose to his honker.

Well, almost. She was still lollygagging in the water down below in the stream when he finally reached her, so the confrontation he'd envisioned turned out to be at a distance.

"Miss," he called down to her from up on high, "you're trespassing on private property. More importantly, you're disturbing the trout. You'll have to leave. Right now."

At that last part, a no-mistake-about it-shout, the intruder jumped about a mile-high. Her water landing was shaky, splashes flying every which way. Eventually, she settled back down in the stream...with a pained squeak.

He hollered over, "You alright, Miss?"

"Fine, fine. I stubbed my toe on a rock is all. No cause for you to ride into town for Doc Baker or anything drastic like that."

"Glad to hear. And I apologize for scaring you. I shouldn't have raised my voice."

"I understand." She dimpled. "You were frightened for the fish."

Ben shrugged. "They'll recover."

Now, him?

A toss-up. The woman's cheeky grin had his heart going all pitter-pat. A rarity. These days, he was mostly dead inside, a corpse without a tomb. His unexpected awareness of her got his blood pumping.

Still, he wanted her gone. And with good cause.

Back in New York City, where buildings his company constructed dotted the skyline, violations of his privacy were an everyday occurrence. Thanks to yellow journalism, his present life was pure misery. And that was saying something considering the past few years hadn't exactly been a stroll down Park Avenue.

Stumbling upon his name in various gossip columns was the very worst. Those sordid stories made him cringe. The legitimate press was something else again. He routinely granted interviews to those fellas. The advertisement was free and the information contained within sold property. Hell, occasionally, he even consented to doing human-interest pieces, and for the same reason - money coming into his business.

But yellow journalists?

Uh-uh. That nosy pack of cannibals never failed to get his goat. Those so-called reporters hounded him all the damn time, not only violating his own privacy but the privacy of anyone who happened to be involved with him at the moment. He'd lost many a friend that way.

Common decency was never once considered. Truth didn't matter. If they didn't have the makings of a scandal, those vultures made something up, weaving a salacious story out of thin air.

Done without his permission, of course. As a bachelor who routinely rubbed shoulders with the crème de la crème of New York City society, Ben was considered fair game, especially for marital speculation. Damnably embarrassing for the lady who happened to be on his arm that evening to bump into her name in one of the Dailies the next morning.

Now here in the Berkshires, he never got pestered. And that was no accident. Fact was, he'd hand-picked this out-of-the-way location in the middle of nowhere with his anti-social habits in mind. Only a single dirt road led out from the rural town that served as his sanctuary. And no one but no one ever bothered to stop here along it.

Until right now today.

Ten-to-one, this brazen little redheaded sneak was one of those yellow journalist reporters here to snoop. Most likely, she'd heard him coming and jumped into the stream below to avoid detection. They did underhanded stuff like that all the time. Nervy opportunists like her, with easy access to a typewriter and a printing press, stuck in his craw but good.

Still, when everything was said and done, he was a businessman. He had manners and polish…and a team of about twenty lawyers...and all the rest that came of having money and a reputation to protect. Even after working up a full head of steam, he still managed to offer her an excuse for trespassing, if only to get her out of his hair on the q.t.

"A Keep-Out sign clearly marks the beginning of my property. You must've missed it. Huh, lady?"

"Oh, I saw the posting, all right, sir. I simply chose to ignore it."

Ben scratched his bristled jaw. What the hell! How come she didn't take the easy way out he'd just offered?

Making up excuses was how these types did business. Playing coy, she could've argued she'd somehow lost her way and missed the terse sign that ended with: All violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Hey, he might even have pretended to believe her for convenience's sake. But no. Not her!

Taken aback by her boldness, Ben gave the redhead the once-over.

Hiked-up blue skirts and white petticoats encircled a slender waist. Mud streaked both. Tannish-colored drawers peeped out from below the tangle. No saccharine bows, no perky rosebuds, no frisky ruffles, nothing girlish or pretty could he see, not for her. Even the plain brown leather belt holding the whole bunched-up mess out of the stream looked like it had taken a few beatings through the years.

Ben could identify. In recent history, he'd taken a few hits himself, gotten all-leathery and cracked, just like her belt, as a result. By no stretch of the imagination would anyone call him good-looking, not with the size of his broken nose.

His bankroll?

Plenty handsome enough.

Himself as a human being?

Lately, Ben had some concerns there.

His patience frayed, he pointed a finger down at her. "I know who you are, lady."

Her forehead got all scrunched up. "You do?"

He nodded. "Damn right. You're a reporter from some damn scandal rag after a scoop on the new Rejuvenation Project, that's who you are. Just so you know, I'm not open to sweet talk. Sugar gets you exactly nowhere with me."

The redhead made a disgusted face. "Good Lord. Did you just use sugar and sweet talk in two adjoining sentences?"

So saying, she gave Ben a bedazzling smile, an ear-to-ear grin designed to lighten his dark soul.

Hadn't she heard?

He didn't have one of those.

No damn exclusives! Not for her, not today, not any day. Sure, she was pretty and all that, but she wasn't cute enough to have him fooled. This new development was too damn important to spill the beans.

Thanks to Ben, literally a groundbreaking property acquisition - a piece of geography close to the recently developed swamplands now known as Central Park - had stalled in its initial phase. Some irony that he, the project's builder/developer, was the single holdout against it going forward. And it never would, either, not until one sticking point was resolved:

Fairness for the displaced.

An old-fashioned concept, fairness. But right was right, and he was sticking to his guns, no matter what went on around him.

Plenty was on the line and all of it would make for one hell of a newspaper scoop. And that very exposure would ruin things for the impoverished neighborhood involved. Those folks didn't have access to high-powered lawyers like the other side did.

Namely Ben and his company

Progress was progress and all that, but everything was moving too fast for Ben's tastes. Folks displaced by the project couldn't be dumped on the city streets, after all. They needed financial compensation for the homes they were about to lose. Without fair restitution, they'd never find new housing.

And Ben would never get a decent night's sleep ever again.

No one knew better than Ben that New York City was damn expensive. He'd helped make it that way. With that admitted, railroading folks was not how he did business. Despite pressure from all sides, including from his own associates, Ben had decided to make himself scarce again this summer - right in the middle of negotiations - thereby halting the project. His people were some steamed about that.

Too bad about them. He wasn't budging. Those dispossessed folks were getting what they deserved. It was only right.

"Return to the city, lady," he snapped. "Leave me the hell alone."

The redhead clucked her tongue. "My, but you are full of yourself, aren't you? Point of fact - and this may be difficult for you to accept - I wasn't looking for you, sir."

Ben frowned. "Huh?"

"I said - I know nothing about this rejuvenation project. And, why on earth would such a person - a reporter, I believe, is who you alluded to - end up barefoot in your stream?"

Barefoot? She had no shoes on? This made no fucking sense...

Flustered, he blustered, "Why not a stream? Back in New York City, reporters have been known to jump out of the bushes at me in the interests of hunting down a scoop. It's all a game to you folks, pretending to be who you're not."

Needing to get some things off his chest...and it didn't help matters that the last time he'd spoken aloud was to the squirrels he'd been feeding...Ben continued his rant:

"Lady, I once caught one of you reporters peeping in at me."

She made a face.

"Don't look so scandalized. You know exactly what I'm talking about. One of your kind was pretending to wash my brownstone's windows."

Now, she backed up, going deeper into the stream, to get away from him, no doubt.

Who could blame her?

Even to his own ears, he sounded mildly deranged. That was what hiding out from the press did to a man.

"True story," he assured her. "As it turned out, the reporter had bribed the regular window washer fella into taking his place for the day."

"And did the reporter manage to get anything on you, sir?"

"He came close. Not on me, personally - on the project I've been working on. At the time, I was looking over a blueprint at my drawing board and he had a pair of binoculars slung over his arm. I pulled the drapes, then called the police."

"Sir - do I look like a writer for one of those rags?"

Her blue eyes, flashing with righteous indignation, convinced him of his mistake.

So what?

Ben scowled at her, anyway.

She sighed. "Furthermore, your presence only complicates matters for me. Now, I suppose, you'll demand monetary compensation for something Mother Nature provides for free." She sniffed. "Wretched, wretched man."

"I can accept one wretched, Miss. But two? That's going overboard. And monetary compensation for what?"

"The clay, of course."

So saying, she slipped, her foot sliding out from under her and striking a nearby semi-submerged pail, tipping it over and sending its contents splashing up onto the legs of her drawers.

What a fucking mess! Muck was everywhere.

A Gilbert and Sullivan opera performed at the Savoy could not have amused him more. Fortunately, Ben had his wits about him and he quick swallowed his chuckle. He was glad he had when she sobbed:

"I'll have you know that fallen container held the finest raw material of my entire day's dig. This whole vein was almost porcelainlike in its purity. Now it's gone. Lost forever. Irreplaceable."

"You mean to say you're crying over spilt mud?"

"I'm not crying." She wiped at her eyes with the back of her filthy hand, thereby smudging her face some more in the process. "And it's not mud. It's clay! I heard of its quality from a local girl. I simply had to come and investigate for myself."

So that was what brought her all the way up here. Not him. Not the newspaper exclusive of a lifetime. The damn mud!

Ben didn't know if he should laugh or cry. Could be he was getting a little too big for his expensively tailored britches to do either. He settled for gawking some more at her.

The trespasser tossed her head and her loosened hair tumbled past her shoulders in a rich array of red waves and curls, interspersed with streaks of the most hideous, smelly, mucky mess, the kind mamas warned their children about not getting into.

Totally mesmerized was Ben's new address. And that was before she drew herself up and pulled back her shoulders, standing her ground and ready to do him battle.

Though the slimy streambed looked damn treacherous underfoot, she held her position, and Ben's admiration for her soared even more. Especially when the intruder brushed a fallen lock of fiery hair back from a rounded forehead with a workworn hand, the short nails all gritty and chipped.

Now here was a person obviously unaccustomed to getting a bi-weekly manicure, the kind considered essential in the rarefied social circles in which Ben traveled, where polished nails were de rigueur for both genders.

"Sir?"

At her change in tone, from cantankerous to contrite, Ben's frown shifted to a relaxed, quasi-smile. So, this was it! This was where, caught red-handed where she didn't belong, the trespasser would finally murmur an embarrassed apology.

What the hell! Ben could be generous. Even forgiving. He'd save her the trouble.

"Oh, well, then, Miss. No harm done and all that. Never fear, I won't have you prosecuted for being where you don't belong. Your remorse is sufficient..."

"No, sir, you misunderstand. Trespassing?" She tossed back her head and her beautiful throat arched. "I say harrumph to that. As Mother Nature doesn't recognize the meaning of that word, why would I express remorse?"

After that bit of stuff and nonsense, there was nothing left to say. Seconds passed in stony silence, during which Ben's annoyance grew all over again.

No reason for him to feel like some damn ogre. He wasn't the one in the wrong here. She was on his land, where she hadn't been invited and where he clearly didn't wish her to remain. Furthermore...

"Sir – I confess to taking the clay without permission. I assure you it's for a good cause. And I took great care not to disturb the flora and fauna on your property during my dig."

Ben scratched his head. "Huh?"

She explained. "I didn't stomp all over the plant life. Rather, I tippytoed around each grouping I came across. Please note, I hunted no bobcat, moose, bear, deer, rabbit or any other wildlife populations indigenous to this area while I was here. I did nothing that would get the fullest extent of the law thrown at me."

Not just a pretty face, she was just so...just so...passionate! Passionate like he never encountered passion in his line of work. He could listen to her go on and on, railing against injustice and all that crap, and never grow weary.

With a sigh of defeat, Ben heard himself mutter, "So, tell me why you want the clay."

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