River Road(10)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Forget the takeout,” she said. “I’ve already got plans for dinner.”

“Yeah?” His eyes darkened a little.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I’m dining in, and since you are going to be kind enough to take out those tiles for me, I will buy enough salmon for two.”

“That works,” he said instantly. “Thanks.”

He looked pleased, she decided. Really pleased. Like he’d just won the lottery. She was feeling oddly energized herself. What had she just done?

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you at five-thirty. Bring your tools.”

“I never leave home without them.”

She hesitated and then made herself do the right thing. He was doing her a favor. The least she could do was be gracious.

“Thanks,” she said.

He surprised her with a wicked smile. “For offering to deal with the fireplace or for rescuing you from that party out at the Harper Ranch thirteen years ago?”

She gave him polite bewilderment. “For the offer to help with the fireplace, of course. I don’t recall being rescued from a party. What I remember is being humiliated beyond redemption. But, hey, that’s all water under the bridge now. I forgave you a long time ago because I knew even then you just couldn’t help yourself. In your own heavy-handed way, you were trying to protect me.”

“Heavy-handed, huh? Is that by any chance your way of telling me that I’m a bad communicator?”

“No, it’s my way of telling you that you obviously haven’t shaken the take-charge attitude. But it’s okay because I have been known to take charge once in a while myself. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get my bulbs and leave. There is a lot of stuff to do at the house.”

“What sizes do you need?”

She took out the list she had made and went through it. When she was finished, Mason collected the various bulbs and headed back to the counter. She followed.

Mason rang up the sale, swiped her credit card and gave her the sack full of bulbs.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

Once again she started toward the door.

“Don’t change any bulbs that require getting on a ladder,” Mason said behind her. “Not until I get there. It’s too dangerous. People fall off ladders all the time. I’ll take care of the ceiling and wall fixtures tonight.”

She smiled, shook her head and kept walking. Really, the man did not know when to quit.

She paused with her hand on the doorknob and looked back. “I suppose you know that Sara’s house and land weren’t the only things I inherited.”

“I heard. By some quirk in Sara’s and Mary’s wills, you got Mary’s shares in her brother’s company. It’s all over town.”

“I thought that might be the case,” she said. “Hard not to notice the curious stares.”

“I’m no financial guru, but even I can tell you that it would probably be in your best interests to sell those shares back to the Colfax family as soon as possible.”

“That’s what my parents told me. Turns out it’s not going to be that easy. Two different lawyers representing various members of the Colfax family have been emailing me and leaving messages on my phone for the past month.”

“Colfax Inc. is one of the few things that hasn’t changed in the past thirteen years,” Mason said. “It’s still a tightly held, family-owned company, and according to Uncle Deke, there is one hell of a squabble going on at the moment. Something to do with a merger proposal.”

“Yes, I got that much from the lawyers’ messages.”

“You don’t want to get in the middle of that situation, Lucy. You know what they say about family quarrels.”

“Right,” Lucy said. “They are always the worst.”

5

He could tell from the coolness in her voice and the resolute set of her very nice shoulders that she was not going to take his financial advice. The question was, why not? Evidently, it was the same advice her parents had given her. She stood to make a fortune selling the shares back to the Colfax family.

But she wasn’t going to do it—not immediately, at any rate.

Mason waited until the door closed behind her before he went down an aisle to the big display window at the front of the shop. Joe padded after him and sat at his feet. Together they watched Lucy slip on a pair of dark glasses and walk briskly toward a small, silver-gray compact parked at the curb.

Mason took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Something deep inside him that had been in a coma for the past couple of months had slammed into wide-awake mode the moment Lucy opened the door of the shop.

“Well, what do you know?” he said to Joe. “She’s all grown up now. She sure looks good, doesn’t she?”

Joe slapped his tail against the floor a couple of times and focused his attention on two crows that were amusing themselves by dodging vehicles in the street.

Lucy looked better than good, Mason decided. She looked like exactly what—until now—he didn’t know he needed.

The weird part was that he had not even realized that he had been sleepwalking since the Gilbert Porter case until Lucy showed up. He reminded himself that there was a term for this kind of intense jolt. It was called sexual attraction, and it was merely a force of nature like heat lightning or wildfire—and just as dangerous.

Still, he could not remember the last time he had felt anything this powerful. What he knew for a fact was that there were only two options when it came to dealing with forces of nature. A man either ran for shelter or went straight into the storm and to hell with the risks.

He was not about to run.

Out in the street the crows abandoned the car-dodging game and flew off in search of another source of entertainment. Joe yawned, got to his feet and prowled back toward his favorite spot behind the counter.

Mason did not take his eyes off Lucy. He did not want to take his eyes off her. Yesterday, when he’d heard that she was back in town, he’d discovered that he was suddenly curious to see how she had turned out. But he had not been expecting the kick-in-the-gut shock of excitement that had hit him when he got his first look at her.

He had been surprised by her air of cool self-confidence and professional sophistication. So much for assuming she would follow in the footsteps of her aunt and become an adult flower child who ate organic, meditated and practiced yoga.

Instead, everything about Lucy told him that she’d learned a few hard lessons since leaving Summer River. She was no longer the sweet, lonely, too-trusting girl who could be easily deceived by a budding young sociopath like Brinker. The all-grown-up Lucy had claws.