Strangers When We Meet by Marisa Carroll Page B

She wanted time to stand still so that their kiss could last forever.
    Blake lifted his head and broke the kiss. He reared out of the leaves, scattering them to the four winds, pulling her up with him. Keegan had been standing above them with another armful of leaves. He went head over heels backward, and the twins leaped on him like playful wolf puppies, laughing and pummeling him with their fists, giving Emma and Blake a moment of near solitude in a chaos of autumn splendor.
    “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “That’s the last damned thing we should have done.”
    Emma didn’t know what to say next. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that incredibly enough, it was exactly the right thing to do, but she never got the chance. Clint was standing on the deck, arms braced on the railing. “Emma, Daryl Tubb is on the phone for you. He said he’ll be here in twenty minutes. He wants to take you to Williamstown for dinner.”
    Blake’s hands were still clasped lightly around her forearms. He stiffened, and his grip tightened almost painfully for a split second. Then he let her go.
    She wished he hadn’t.
    But then, she would have stood there staring at him all day if she had her choice.
    She didn’t want to have dinner with Daryl. She wanted to be alone in her room and think about what had just happened to her. Because something had happened. She just couldn’t tell what. “I...tell him I can’t be ready in twenty minutes, Clint. There are so many leaves—”
    Clint waved her objections aside. “You’re a guest, not the gardener. I’ll help Keegan finish the raking.”
    Blake stepped away, brushed leaves out of his hair and off the front of his sweater. “Go,” he said, not looking at her as he bent to pick up the rake he’d discarded earlier. “He’s waiting for you.”

CHAPTER SIX
    T HE HOUSE WAS QUIET when Emma let herself in, shutting the heavy oak door behind her as softly as she could. She leaned against the wooden panel for a moment, drinking in the silence and the scents of wood smoke, furniture polish and potpourri from the bowl on a table beside the door. The dining room was deeply shadowed, the silver and glass of the breakfast settings shining fitfully in the reflected light from the gathering room beyond. A figure stirred in one of the wing chairs flanking the massive stone fireplace, which still held the glowing embers of the evening’s fire. It was Maureen, her auburn hair gleaming in the lamplight. She put down the yellow legal pad she’d held in her lap and stretched her arms over her head.
    “I must have fallen asleep.”
    “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, coming in so late.”
    “Don’t apologize, Emma. It isn’t late. I came in here to work because Clint’s watching an old western and the noise was distracting me. I guess the fire and the quiet were too much for me.”
    She didn’t look as if she’d been dozing. Her eyes were clear and alert, watchful. Emma had noticed that quality about the older woman before. It sometimes made her wonder what Maureen’s life had been like before she came to Cooper’s Corner. Clint had been an architect in New York. That was common knowledge in the village. But Maureen’s past was a blank page. Lori and Burt Tubb weren’t even sure if she was divorced or widowed. Philo and Phyllis Cooper, the owners of Cooper’s Corner General Store and Daryl’s parents’ biggest rivals in the town’s gossip race, either didn’t know or weren’t telling. They were, after all, distant cousins of Maureen’s and Clint’s. As a doctor’s wife, Emma’s grandmother had long ago learned to keep information to herself, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t above speculating on her friends’ and neighbors’ lives when she had Emma for an audience. “There’s a story in Maureen’s past,” she had said more than once. “Mark my words. And it’s not a happy one, I think.”
    “Am I the last guest in tonight?” Emma asked.
    “Yes. There’s only you and Mr.