Love in Another Town
Barbara Taylor Bradford
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995
Copyright © Barbara Taylor Bradford 1995
Barbara Taylor Bradford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780007443185
Version: 2017-11-16
For my dearest husband Bob,
to whom I owe so much
Contents
JAKE CANTRELL SLOWED his pick-up truck as he approached Lake Waramaug near the Boulders Inn, came to a standstill and gazed out of the window.
The lake was still; it held a glassy sheen, looked almost silver in the late afternoon light of this cool April day. He lifted his eyes to the etiolated sky, so bleached out that it, too, seemed as pale and as unmoving as the water. In stark contrast were the rolling hills rising up around the lake, darkly green and lush with trees.
Jake could not help thinking once again how beautiful the view was from this angle: a dreamy landscape of water and sky. To Jake, it was somehow evocative, reminded him of another place, yet he was not sure of where … some place somewhere he had never been, except in his imagination perhaps … England, France, Italy or Germany, maybe even Africa. Some place he would like to go one day. If he ever got the chance. He had always wanted to travel, dreamed about going to exotic lands, but thus far in his twenty-eight years of life on this planet he had only been to New York City a few times, and twice to Atlanta where his sister Patty was now living.
Shading his eyes with one hand, Jake scanned the vistas of land, water and sky once more, then nodded. How incredible the light is today, almost other-worldly, he thought, as he stared ahead.
He had always been fascinated by light, both natural and artificial. The latter he worked with on a daily basis, the former he frequently endeavoured to capture on canvas, when he had time to pick up a paintbrush and indulge himself. He loved to paint whenever he could, even though he wasn’t very good at it. But it gave him a great sense of satisfaction, just as did creating special lighting effects. He was working on a big lighting job now, one that was tough, tested his talent and imagination and fired his creativity. He loved the challenge.
The car behind him honked him forward, and, rousing himself from his thoughts, he pushed his foot down on the accelerator and drove on.
Jake headed along Route 45 North which would take him up to Route 341 and all the way to Kent. As he drove he kept noticing the unusual clarity of the light today; it echoed the light over the lake and seemed to get even brighter the farther north he drove.
Lately he had come to realize that this clear bright light was endemic to this part of the state, called the northwestern highlands by some, the Litchfield Hills by others. He did not care what people called the area. All he knew was that it was beautiful, so breathtaking he thought of it as God’s own country. And the extraordinary, incandescent skies, almost uncanny at times, inspired awe in him.
This particular area was relatively new to him, even though he had been born in Hartford, had grown up there, and had lived in Connecticut all his life. For the past four-and-a-half years he had been a resident of New Milford, but he had rarely ventured beyond the town’s boundaries. That is until a year ago, just after he had finally separated from his wife Amy.
He had stayed on in New Milford, living alone in a small studio on Bank Street for almost a year. It was around then that he had started driving into the countryside, going farther afield, looking for a new place to live, something a bit better than the studio, an apartment or, preferably, a small house.
It was on Route 341 near Kent that he had found the little white clapboard three months ago. It had taken him a few weeks to get it cleaned up, painted and made reasonably