Hearts Awakening by Delia Parr Read Free Book Online

questions—answers that would determine whether she would agree to marry him or not.
    Unfortunately, even though she rushed her steps, Jackson Smith was long gone by the time she returned to the house. Disappointed, but not discouraged, she eventually found him working alone in the orchards on the western side of the island, a solitary figure nearly obscured by a crop of pale yellow apples flushed with just a hint of pink.
    She lifted her skirts and traipsed down one of the narrow grassy expanses between long rows of apple trees, their limbs bowed close to the earth under the weight of a very healthy harvest. She had to sidestep her way past trees where drop baskets sat filled with apples that had fallen to the ground before anyone could harvest them.
    Concerned she might startle the man enough to cause him to fall off his ladder at the crown of a nearby tree, she called out to him when she was a good four trees away. “Mr. Smith?”
    In response, he moved a branch out of the way, looked at her, and gentled the branch back in place. “If you need someone to help take you back across the river, you’ll likely find Michael Grant back at his house. It’s on the north shore. Obviously, he hasn’t made it here yet.”
    “I wasn’t looking for Mr. Grant. I . . . I was looking for you,” she ventured and stopped a few feet away from the bottom of the ladder he was standing on.
    He looked over his shoulder at her, frowned, and climbed down slowly, protecting the apples he had stored in the canvas pouch secured around his neck and lying against his chest. When he had both feet on solid ground, he turned to face her. “I thought you wanted to leave.”
    She moistened her lips. “I thought I did, too. I still might.”
    His gaze softened. “I never intended to insult you with my proposal. I made a mistake. My problems are my own, not yours, and I’ll simply have to find another way to solve them.” He turned and started back up the ladder.
    “Perhaps you don’t need to worry about that,” she blurted.
    He paused and reversed his steps. When he was back down again and facing her, his gaze narrowed with disbelief. “You’ve reconsidered?”
    “Somewhat,” she admitted. “I realized I left without giving you the opportunity to explain exactly how this business proposal of yours might work.”
    He cleared his throat and looked self-conscious for the first time since she had come to this island. “As I said earlier, I’m not a rich man in my own right. In all truth, I haven’t a penny to my name.”
    Her eyes widened. “But this island, the orchards—”
    “All held in trust for Daniel and Ethan and subject to the terms of my father-in-law’s will,” he explained as he removed the white cotton gloves he wore while harvesting. “My father-in-law was a very wealthy man, wealthy enough to indulge his lifelong passion for orcharding, which would provide little more than a middling existence for them all, at best. When he named me executor of his will, as well as the boys’ trust, he made sure I’d have the authority to allocate whatever funds I deemed necessary for their well-being and security, as well as my own, particularly since he assumed . . . that is, he had no reason to believe Rebecca would die so young,” he said, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.
    “I see,” she murmured, surprised to see how uncomfortable he was discussing his situation when he had been so at ease discussing her plight earlier.
    “I was going to suggest that I would provide for you quite comfortably, at least until the boys reached their majority. Then you’d be free to stay or to leave, as you or I might prefer.”
    She swallowed hard. “I might agree to stay only until Ethan reaches legal age, but I’d expect a settlement of some kind when I left, if that’s what I decided to do.”
    “Or if I decided that was best,” he said and cocked a brow. “Did you have a figure in mind?”
    Surprised he would even