A Desperate Hope Read online

  “I like the way you think,” she said simply.

  He seemed surprised, but only for a moment. “You do? Most people find me horrible.”

  “Everything you just said makes perfect sense. I admire the straightforward rationality of it.”

  She thought she glimpsed a flash of pleasure, but he quickly retreated behind his austere demeanor. “But can you apply it?”

  Her confidence surged. She’d already memorized the chart of simple mathematical equations and gave it back to him before scanning the interior of his office. She noted the wood paneling, the number of electrical outlets, and the arrangement of windows. It took less than a minute to apply the formula and perform the math in her head.

  “The value of your office, stripped of furniture and moveable equipment, is $435.”

  That took him aback. He stood and glanced around the room, mental calculations going on behind his cool features. She hid a smile when he had to peck out a few numbers on his adding machine.

  A look of admiration crossed his face. “The assignment is yours.”

  “I respectfully decline.”

  Fletcher leaned back in his chair, flummoxed by her refusal. “Are you . . . do you perhaps have mixed loyalties?”

  Her eyes widened, but she kept her voice calm. “Why should I have mixed loyalties?” He can’t possibly know.

  “I gather you grew up not far from Duval Springs, correct?”

  “Close. The house where I lived was at the top of the valley, but I’ve never actually set foot in Duval Springs.”

  She and Alex had met in an abandoned apple orchard halfway between the mansion and the village. At the time, those summers had been magic, but now the memory brought only hurt and embarrassment. The years that followed had been brutally hard, but she’d survived. Her shattered heart had mended, and she covered it with a layer of smooth professionalism, but coming face to face with Alex might crack that hard-won veneer.

  “I’m an accountant,” she reminded Fletcher. “We do our work from an office.”

  “All the other accountants in the office work too closely with the engineers for me to send them upstate. You are the only person I can afford to send. Eloise, I need you.”

  They were the three words she was powerless to refuse. Some women might crave wealth or beauty or popularity. Eloise craved being needed, even if it meant she’d have to endure seeing Alex Duval again. Fletcher needed her, and she wouldn’t let a disastrous, long-ago love affair interfere with her responsibilities.

  “Then of course I shall go.” Just saying the words made her cringe inside.

  “Excellent. Please join the team for a meeting tomorrow afternoon to discuss logistics. Brace yourself. Claude Fitzgerald will supervise the team, and he doesn’t like women. Figure out a way to cope with it.”

  She rose, smoothing her face into a look of cool composure. “I shall join the team tomorrow afternoon.”

  She just hoped she would be able to survive the next four months, for it would be a test unlike any she’d ever endured.

  Chapter

  Two

  At two o’clock the following afternoon, Eloise joined a dozen employees in the Water Board’s conference room to plan the initial stages of clearing the residents out of Duval Springs. Four of them would be stationed on-site for the preliminary work. The team consisted of two demolition engineers, a land surveyor, and an accountant.

  They clustered around a conference table covered by a map of Duval Springs, and a lump of dread settled inside Eloise. Their mission was to obliterate this idyllic town. The buildings would be torn down, and thousands of people would be displaced. The trees would be chopped down, the roots dug up and grubbed. All vegetation and wildlife would be cleared away. Their mission was to literally wipe Duval Springs off the map.

  Claude Fitzgerald, the team leader and chief demolition engineer, stood at the head of the table. Eloise had no doubt Claude was a competent engineer, but he fought hard to avoid living in Duval Springs during the assignment.

  “I refuse to live in a backwoods village without decent plumbing and electricity for the next four months,” he said. “Kingston is only twelve miles away and an easy commute to the town.”

  Claude was a bully, but she hoped his opinion would carry sway. It was going to be hard enough to work in Duval Springs without being forced to live there as well.

  “It will save the state considerable funds to house the team in Duval Springs,” Fletcher said. “Hotel rooms in Kingston cost nine dollars per night but only five in Duval Springs.”

  Claude whipped the cigar from his mouth. “Are you going to penny-pinch us over four dollars?”

  “Miss Drake?” Fletcher asked, turning to her. “Please calculate the four-month cost differential between staying in Duval Springs versus Kingston.”

  She didn’t want to live in Duval Springs, but Fletcher had asked a mathematical question, and it was impossible not to supply the answer.

  “Since there are four of us on the team, it amounts to a difference of sixteen dollars a day,” she said. “Multiply that by four months, and it comes out to $1,920. And that doesn’t account for the cost of daily transportation and loss from compounded interest.” She looked at Fletcher. “What is today’s rate of annual interest?”

  “Six-point-two percent.”

  She closed her eyes to run the calculations in her head. Fletcher had once called her a human adding machine, and he hadn’t been off base.

  “Adding in the cost of transportation and the loss of compounded interest, it comes to a total savings of $2,446,” she said. “Of more value is our time lost during a daily commute. If we average the hourly salary of four employees, multiplied by—”

  “For the love of all humanity, please shut up,” Claude groused.

  “Miss Drake was merely pointing out that it makes sense to live in Duval Springs, even though it may lack the comforts found in Kingston,” Fletcher said. “The Water Board appreciates the sacrifices the team will undertake on behalf of the city, and you will be well compensated for the temporary discomfort. The demolition team shall live in Duval Springs for the duration of the preliminary assessment.”

  Despite her reluctance to see Alex again, Eloise was intrigued by the chance to finally venture into the town she’d always admired from the mountaintop mansion where she’d spent her summers as a child. Her bedroom had a telescope intended for astronomy, but it could also be directed to focus on the village nestled at the bottom of the valley. She had studied the residents of Duval Springs with a mix of fascination and envy. What would it be like to live in such a quaint village where there were other children to play with? She used to plead with her guardian to be allowed to explore the town, but Bruce always refused, which made the village even more intriguing. There were no other children at Bruce’s house and little to do after finishing her daily lessons, so she aimed the telescope down into the village, studying its inhabitants like a scientist exploring remote life forms.

  When she was fifteen, temptation got the better of her. How hard could it be to walk to the bottom of the valley and explore Duval Springs on her own? She’d waited until one warm Monday morning when Bruce set off for Kingston on business, then snuck outside and crept behind the high stone walls that ringed the estate. Bruce had wolfhounds, bodyguards, and heavy locks on all the gates, but there was a low opening where the dogs came and went, and she was slender enough to slip through.

  It was frightening to leave the safety of the estate and venture into the forest blanketing the hillside. She’d never been alone in the woods before, but she swallowed her misgivings and pressed onward.

  It should have been easy to keep heading downhill until she arrived at the town, but within an hour, she was hopelessly lost in the shrubs, brambles, and trees that all looked alike. She could no longer see the village and had started following a narrow path through the forest, assuming it would lead to someone who could point her toward Duval Springs. She later learned that she’
d been following deer trails and had wandered miles away from home. If she hadn’t stupidly followed those deer trails, she might never have met Alex Duval, the boy destined to change her life forever.

  Slim, handsome, and with golden-blond hair, she recognized him immediately from the countless hours she’d spied on him and other young people in the village through her telescope. She could tell by the way others congregated around him that he was popular and athletic, but she didn’t know his name until that afternoon when he found her while hunting for rabbits. She tried not to cry when she confessed she was lost.

  “You’re not lost anymore,” Alex said with easy confidence. His smile felt like a sunbeam, and she fell a little in love with him in that moment.

  From that day, they began meeting secretly in the woods whenever Bruce was away on business. She loved the way Alex talked about his family, which was the complete opposite of hers. He came from a rowdy and boisterous family that he adored. They were loud, passionate people who took delight in simple things like a game of darts or the annual apple harvest. She confessed terrible secrets about her own family that should never have been told, but she trusted him, and it felt good to finally confide in someone. All her life she’d been terribly isolated, and the chance to have a friend was irresistible.

  That first summer had been thrilling as they secretly met behind the old cider mill. He taught her how to swim and smuggled books to her from the Duval Springs library. Treasure Island, The Count of Monte Cristo, Robin Hood—he introduced her to the great swashbuckling novels of the ages, and together they let their imaginations soar. More than anything else, Alex taught her to be brave. His indefatigable confidence rubbed off on the sheltered girl who never felt worthy.

  Their relationship caught fire the next summer when she was sixteen and Alex turned eighteen. Back then Eloise didn’t realize that little good could come from a boy and a girl who had lots of time and complete privacy as they huddled behind the crumbling stone walls of the mill.

  Eloise dragged her attention back to the present as Claude proceeded to lay out the timetable for their mission.

  “I want our work completed by the last day of December,” he said. “We’ll return to the city while the residents clear out of town, then go back in May to begin demolition.”

  The rest of the meeting outlined the steps necessary to evaluate the structural components of each building to be dismantled. It took hours to thrash out the plan, and it was late by the time Eloise returned to her desk. Everyone else in the accounting division had gone home for the evening, but she still had reports to file. The clatter of her adding machine echoed in the nearly empty room, and she was startled when Fletcher approached.

  He set a slim blue box on her desk. “For your troubles,” he said simply. “An advance token of thanks for the coming hardship.”

  They were alone in the office. Had he deliberately waited until they would have privacy? Fletcher was so straight-laced that he squeaked when he walked, so she wouldn’t jump to any conclusions, but the box came from Tiffany.

  Inside was a lovely silver pen and a matching letter opener. Hardly a token! The silver was embellished with elegant swirls of vines, the work of a master craftsman.

  “I’m not certain I should accept such a gift,” she said a little breathlessly.

  “You can’t accept office supplies?”

  “Is that what they are?” A pause stretched between them for the space of a dozen heartbeats.

  “If that’s all you want them to be.”

  He hadn’t moved a muscle, and yet she sensed that he had just tossed a ball into her court. It was buried under a layer of starch, but she liked his reserved formality. A gentleman seeking to court a woman offered a token of affection and hoped she accepted it. He would never bodily toss her into a lake because it was past time she learned to swim. He would never dare her to climb a tree to see what a woodpecker’s nest looked like, or tug her down onto the grass and kiss her until they were both breathless.

  She ran a finger along the silver vines. Accepting a gift of this magnitude would mean something. “Thank you,” she said in a voice that mirrored his own reserved tone. “It’s very generous of you.”

  Fletcher’s face grew somber. “A word of advice,” he said quietly. “Keep your dealings with the people in Duval Springs to a minimum. They are incensed, and it’s an emotional quagmire in the valley. Rely on the formula for determining the value of their property. The moment you stray from it, they will bombard you with sentimental appeals that will be needlessly difficult for all sides. I know you to be a woman of sound logic. I wouldn’t be sending you otherwise.”

  The mild praise from a man as reserved as Fletcher gave her a thrill she kept carefully hidden. The next four months would be challenging, and she must never forget that Alex Duval was her past but Fletcher Jones might be her future.

  Chapter

  Three

  The only sound Alex Duval heard as he strolled up Mountainside Road was the breeze rustling through the oak and maple trees. The deep forest lining both sides of the road made it seem like a pristine, long-forgotten paradise.

  It wasn’t.

  As mayor of Duval Springs, Alex had been summoned up here over the latest incident of sabotage to mar the valley. He rounded a bend and spotted a tractor tilted at a haphazard angle in a freshly dug trench. Half a dozen men stood by the side of the road, but Alex focused only on Bruce Garrett, the richest man in the valley and the only enemy he had in the world.

  “A little mishap?” he asked cheerfully as he approached the group. If the glare in Garrett’s eyes carried actual heat, Alex would have burst into flames, but he was no longer afraid of Bruce Garrett. The quarry owner once got the better of him, but twelve years, a battlefield commission, and the crucible of the Spanish-American War had taught Alex how to stand up to bullies.

  Sheriff Dawson from the nearby town of Kingston stepped forward. “Thanks for coming up, Mayor Duval,” he said. “We’ve got quite a mess on our hands.”

  “So I see.” The trench was only a few feet deep, but the tractor had gone in headfirst during the predawn accident and was still stuck.

  “That ditch is man-made,” Garrett said. “This is sabotage, and it ruined a six-thousand-dollar tractor. Someone in your town did it, and your people are going to pay for it.”

  “You don’t have any proof of that,” Alex said in a casual tone that masked his concern. Garrett was a well-hated man in the valley, and someone from Duval Springs might have done it. The only people who used this stretch of road were workers from Garrett’s quarry and some lumberjacks hired by the state to start clearing land for a work camp to house the thousands of construction workers expected to move into the valley soon. Both the quarry and the work camp were wildly unpopular.

  “I don’t have eyewitnesses because it was done in the middle of the night,” Garrett said. “When my crew left yesterday, this road was in good shape. That trench happened overnight and was covered with pine boughs. It was sabotage.”

  The sheriff turned to Alex. “Mayor Duval? It wouldn’t be the first time someone from your town sought a little rough justice from Mr. Garrett.”

  “That ended five years ago,” Alex said. “As soon as the strike was settled, those minor disruptions came to an end.”

  They’d hardly been minor. The strike had been a ten-month standoff between Garrett and the workforce he treated like peasants. Alex led the charge, and the strike was finally settled in the workers’ favor. It was Alex’s leadership of the strike that earned him his election as mayor.

  “Somebody from your town did this,” Garrett snapped. “Now I have to order a crew of men to beat this road back into shape.”

  “But you’re so good at ordering men to beat your problems.”

  The insult flew past everyone except Bruce Garrett, on whom it was a direct hit. Alex had plenty of reasons to despise Garrett. His arrogance. His skinflint business practices. But mostly, he hated Garrett because
of Eloise Drake.

  His summers with Eloise seemed like another lifetime. A better, more innocent life. At first his attraction to her had been the thrill of the forbidden, but soon it was simply the thrill of Eloise. She was unlike anyone he’d ever met. Brilliant, book smart, but strangely unworldly and shy. Her adoration made Alex feel ten feet tall. Their love had been a shining beacon of light, but Garrett trampled on it, making it seem seedy and shameful.

  The worst thing was that after all these years, Alex couldn’t quite recall Eloise’s face anymore, only the way she made him feel—like he’d captured a ray of sunlight that lit his whole world. Those summers were a time of innocence and joy, but they slipped a little further away with each passing year.

  “At this point, it doesn’t matter who did it. You’ve got to get that tractor out of the middle of the road,” the sheriff said. “The lumberjacks plan on hauling out timber tomorrow, and this pass needs to be clear.”

  “The lumberjacks can cool it,” Theodore Riesel said. “This road can’t be repaired that fast for heavy use. It would be a safety hazard.” Dressed in a dapper three-piece suit, Riesel looked out of place amid the others gathered on the mountain. His thirty-year-old son, Jack, stood beside him, looking equally formal except for the peppermint stick dangling from his mouth, which gave him a friendly, lackadaisical air. The Riesels owned the cement factory that processed Garrett’s limestone, and Jack was the only man standing on this mountainside that Alex trusted.

  Jack took the peppermint stick from his mouth. “What I don’t understand is why the state is spending so much money on another work camp. The Kingston Work Camp is perfectly good and already in operation. Why build another?”

  Alex agreed. All this construction was the result of the coming reservoir, which would move thousands of city workers to this remote rural valley. The Kingston Work Camp was built to house two thousand laborers, but the state had just announced they wanted a second camp outside of Duval Springs. Lumberjacks had been clearing the land for the new Timberland camp all week, and soon construction crews would arrive to erect the dormitories.