them to pass, caught her soft, unexpectedly provocative scent. Following them inside, he had to admit that, mostly, he hadn’t anticipated the sucker punch to his gut when he’d looked from her very kissable mouth to the feminine caution in her big brown eyes. Or the quick caution he’d felt himself when she’d pulled back and her guarded smile had slipped into place.
What he’d seen in those dark and lovely depths had hinted heavily of response, confusion and denial.
A different sort of confusion clouded her expression now.
He’d turned on the store’s fluorescent overheads when he’d first arrived. In those bright industrial lights, he watched her look from the rows of bare, utilitarian grocery shelving to the empty dairy case near the checkout counter and fix her focus on a kayak suspended from the ceiling above a wall of flotation devices. Sporting goods still filled the back shelves. After the original offer to buy the place fully stocked had fallen through, he’d donated the grocery items to a local food bank. That had been months ago.
The little boy tugged her hand. “Why is the boat up there, Mom?”
“For display. I think,” she replied quietly, like someone talking in a museum.
“How come?”
“So people will notice it.” She pointed to a horizontal rack on the back wall that held three more. Oars and water skis stood in rows on either side. “It’s easier to see than those back there.”
With his neck craned back, his little brow pinched.
“Are we gonna live in a store?”
“No, sweetie. We’re just...” From the uncertainty in her expression, it seemed she wasn’t sure what they were doing at the moment. “Looking,” she concluded.
Her glance swung up. “You said this belongs to your grandparents?”
“They retired to San Diego,” he told her, wondering what her little boy was doing now as the child practically bent himself in half looking under a display case. There were no small children in his family. The yachting circles he worked and played in were strictly adult. Any exposure he had to little kids came with whatever family thing his business partner could talk him into attending with him. Since he managed to limit that to once every couple of years, he rarely gave kids any thought. Not anymore.
“They’d had this business for over fifty years,” he explained, his attention already back on why the property was for sale. “It was time they retired.”
The delicate arches of her eyebrows disappeared beneath her shiny bangs. “Fifty years?”
“Fifty-three, actually. They’d still be running the place if Gramps hadn’t hurt his back changing one of the light fixtures.” Erik had told him he’d change the tube himself. Just as he’d helped with other repairs they’d needed over the years. But the Irish in John Sullivan tended to make him a tad impatient at times. “He can be a little stubborn.”
“Did he fall?”
“He just twisted wrong,” he told her, conscious of the quick concern in her eyes, “but it took a couple of months for him to be able to lift anything. Grandma picked up as much slack as she could, but those two months made them decide it was time to tackle the other half of their bucket list while they could both still get around.”
Her uncertainty about her surroundings had yet to ease. Despite her faint smile, that hesitation marked her every step as she moved farther in, checking out the plank-board floor, the single checkout counter, the old, yellowing acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Watching her, he couldn’t help but wonder how she would do on a ladder, changing four-foot-long fluorescent tubes in a fixture fourteen feet off the floor. Or how she’d wrestle the heavy wood ladder up from the basement in the first place.
Since Cornelia had specifically asked if the business was one a woman could handle on her own, he’d also thought his prospective buyer would be a little sturdier.
Rather than indulge the temptation to reassess what he could of her frame, hidden as it was by her coat, anyway, he focused on just selling the place.
“The original building was single story,” he told her, since the structure itself appeared to have her attention. “When they decided to add sporting goods, they incorporated the living area into the store, built on in back and added the upstairs.
“The business is seasonal,” he continued when no questions were forthcoming. “Since summer and fall recreation provided most of their profit, they always opened in April and closed the first of October. That gave them the winter for vacations and time to work on their projects.”
It was a good, solid business. One that had allowed his grandparents to support their family—his dad, his aunts. He told her that, too, because he figured that would be important to a woman who apparently needed to support a child on her own. What he didn’t mention was that after the first sale fell through, the only other offers made had been too ridiculously low for his grandparents to even consider.
Because there were no other reasonable offers in sight, he wasn’t about to let them pass up Cornelia’s offer to buy it—if this particular woman was interested in owning it. He hadn’t even balked at the terms of the sale that required his agreement to help get the business back up and running.
Selling the place would rid him of the obligation to keep it up. Even more important than ending the time drain of weekly trips from Seattle to make sure nothing was leaking, broken or keeping the place from showing well was that his grandparents had been the last of his relatives in this part of the sound. Once the place was sold, he had no reason to ever come back.
Considering all the plans he’d once had for his own life there, nearly all of which had failed rather spectacularly, that suited him just fine.
His potential project had yet to ask a single question. He, however, had a few of his own.
“Have you owned a business before?”
He thought the query perfectly reasonable.
She simply seemed to find it odd.
“Never,” she replied, sounding as if she’d never considered running one, either. Still holding her little boy’s hand, she set her sights on the open door behind the L-shaped checkout counter. “Is that the way to the living area?”
He told her it was, that it led into a foyer.
Wanting a whole lot more information than she’d just given, he followed her with the child looking back at him over the shoulder of his puffy blue jacket.
The instant he met the child’s hazel eyes, the boy ducked his head and turned away.
With a mental shrug, Erik focused on the mom. She looked very much like the spa-and-Pilates type married to some of his high-end clients. Yet the car she drove was a total contrast—economical, practical. “Are you into outdoor sports?”
“We have bicycles,” came her distracted reply.
“Mountain or street?”
“Street.”
“For racing or touring?”
“Just for regular
