could practically feel his back rise at the suspicious way she looked him over. He hadn’t counted on the defensiveness he would feel in this place. But then, he’d been so focused on his promotion, moving and acquiring the property to give back to the Larkins that he hadn’t thought about how resentful of other’s attitudes he’d become by the time his family had left there.
The feeling, however, had wasted no time coming back. “Mrs. Waters,” he said, forcing an intentionally civil nod.
Geese in flight were silk-screened across the front of her heavy green sweatshirt. Obliterating half the flock as she crossed her arms, she gave him a tight little nod. “Hello, Jack. Been a while.”
His tone remained even. “A while,” he agreed, refusing to let old resentments get the better of him. “I just need to pick up a few things,” he explained. “I know you’re getting ready to close, so I’ll hurry.”
“I saw you come through town earlier,” she told him, stopping him in his tracks. Ignoring any need she had to close up and go home, she checked him over from haircut to hiking boots. “You seem to have done well for yourself.” Her sharp eyes narrowed. “What is it you do?”
“Do?”
“For a living.”
“Commercial development.” By noon tomorrow everyone in the community would know what he drove and what he did to earn his keep. He’d bet his new corner office on it. “Why?”
“I was afraid it was something like that,” she claimed, managing to look displeased and vindicated at the same time.
“Excuse me?”
“Your occupation.” Looking as if she couldn’t imagine what he didn’t understand, she tightened her hold on the geese. “I had the feelin’ you were going to develop that land the minute I heard you’d bought it. I can tell you right now that you can forget about whatever it is you’re plannin’ to put on that parcel, Jack Travers. We don’t want commercial development here. The community council won’t stand for it. I know. I’m on it.”
His voice went flat. “I’m not building anything,” he assured her, and hitched his thumb toward the back wall. “I’m just going to grab what I need and get out of here. Okay?”
Pure confusion pleated the woman’s forehead as he turned toward a display of chips, grabbed a bag and headed for the back wall.
The woman was getting herself all worked up for nothing. The old bat had taken a fragment of information, thrown in a lot of supposition and dug in her heels to oppose him without a clue about what was actually going on. Unfortunately, while telling her to can the attitude would have made him feel better, it wouldn’t do a thing to help him get the information he needed.
Wanting only to get that information and get out of there, he headed back with his hastily chosen purchases and started setting them on the counter.
“Do you know where I can find a notary and a copier around here?”
“The library has a copy machine.” Ignoring his other request along with his packages, the pleats in her forehead deepened. “If you’re not building anything, why did you buy the old Larkin parcel?”
“It’s not for business,” he assured her again. He pushed a toothbrush and a disposable razor toward her. He couldn’t find shaving cream. He’d just have to use soap for his shave in the morning. “It’s personal.”
“Then you’re not putting up condos?”
“I’m not putting up anything,” he repeated, adding a package of Danish, lunch meat and a cola. Had he been home, he’d be at the little Italian place around the corner from his apartment, ordering penne with mushrooms and a glass of good wine. “The library,” he repeated, thinking the wine sounded especially good. With Agnes frowning at him, so did a shot of anything with a burn to it. “Thanks. What about Emmy Larkin’s full name? Do you know what it is?”
The woman had yet to ring up a single item. “What are you up to with Emmy?”
He bit back a sigh. “I’m not up to anything.”
“Well, you’d better not cause her any trouble. That girl’s been through enough without whatever it is you’re up to out there making her life any harder than it needs to be. She’s lost…”
“She told me about her parents,” he cut in, saving her the trouble of mentioning their deaths since it seemed she was about to. “I’m sorry to hear they’re gone.”
He wasn’t sure why, but for an oddly uncomfortable moment, he thought the older woman might say that he certainly should be, as if he, or at least one of his kin, was somehow responsible for those particular losses. It was that kind of accusation tightening her expression.
The disturbing feeling he’d had when he’d left the Larkin place—the feeling that they had lost more than just land and profits because of what his dad had done—compounded itself as Agnes finally punched in the price of the chips.
“How is she doing?” he asked, not knowing what to make of the new edge to the reproach he’d experienced all those years ago. The same censure he’d picked up from Hanna Talbot was definitely there. But with Agnes it felt almost as if his father’s transgression, along with his own, perhaps, had been more…recent.
Edging the Danish toward her, he tried to shake the odd feeling. It had been fifteen years. There was nothing “recent” about it.
“Is she able to handle the sugaring operation okay?”
“She does as well as any of the other sugar makers,” the older woman admitted, punching in the cost of the small package. “Her B and B is one of the nicest around, too. Works hard, that girl.”
Apparently deciding she wasn’t getting anything else out of him, she punched in the razor, too.
He handed over the package of sliced turkey. “She runs a bed-and-breakfast?”
“Summer and fall. She turned down a scholarship to study architecture and design when her mom took ill so she could stay and help Cara run the place. She did most of the redecorating herself.”
The cash-register drawer popped open when she rang up the last of the items and hit the total key. Over the heavy footfall on the porch that announced another customer’s approach, she said, “That’ll be $10.80.”
The unexpected information about Emmy had Jack wondering what else he could learn from the woman as he reached for his billfold. Thinking he might hang around for a minute after her customer left, he glanced toward the door. It opened with the ring of the bell, a rush of icy air and the voice of a man apologizing even before he was all the way inside.
“I know you’re getting ready to close, Agnes. But I told Amber I’d pick up baking soda on my way home and just now remembered. She’ll have my hide if I come home without it.”
A man wearing a deputy’s heavy, brown leather jacket and serge uniform pants pulled off his fur-lined hat as he shoved the door closed. Looking prepared to offer a neighborly greeting to whoever was at the counter, he stood with a broad smile on his rugged face for the two seconds it took recognition to hit.
The burly ex-high-school
