There weren’t any sparks.”
“Oh, there were. Small ones, but still sparks. Jared’s eyes kept wandering over to you when you weren’t looking, like he couldn’t resist. Then, when I was opening my bedroom window before I got into bed—you know I like it cracked to sleep—and there he was, standing on the landing after you’d let him out, staring at the door, smiling as big as you please. He wouldn’t have been doing that if he hadn’t liked you. And you wouldn’t have lit up when he called this morning and then changed clothes and gone to that window to look out a hundred times since if you didn’t like him, too. Sparks.”
“Don’t go imagining things,” Mara advised.
“I know what I saw.”
“Your grandson and I… There probably aren’t two less-suited people on the planet.”
“I don’t see that at all,” Celeste said emphatically.
“He’s not a small-town boy anymore—if he ever was. He’s a man of the world. A jet-setter. A wheeler-dealer. A mover and a shaker.”
He was also—by every account in the articles about him and according to talk around town, too—the way Celeste was said to have been in her youth. He was restless and in need of more stimulation, excitement and adventure than could be found in Northbridge. Not to mention that he’d spent his life breaking things apart rather than holding them together, and that was the last thing Mara would let anywhere near her.
But rather than get into things that might give Celeste the impression that she thought one iota less of her than she did, or that she held her youthful actions against her in any way, Mara only finished her argument with, “And I’m nothing but a small-town dry cleaner.”
“A beautiful, intelligent, kind-hearted, generous small-town dry cleaner,” Celeste amended. “And he’d be lucky to have you.”
“He came because of you,” Mara reminded. “Nothing else has managed to get him back, because he doesn’t like it here. Or the kind of people he finds here.”
“He doesn’t like his grandfather—that’s what kept him away. Not hating Northbridge.”
Just then the phone rang at the same time as there was a knock on the door, making Mara jump.
“That will be the lawyer calling again, just as she said she would,” Celeste said with a nod at the phone, pushing herself to her feet once more. “And I’ll bet that’s our Jared at the door.”
Mara told herself that being startled by the unexpected knock on the door was the reason her heart was beating so fast, that it wasn’t because Celeste’s grandson had suddenly appeared on the landing outside.
“I’ll take the call in the other room. You let Jared in,” Celeste said as she headed for the bedroom again.
Reasonably certain that Jared Perry had seen her through the window beside the door, Mara couldn’t delay letting him inside in order to compose herself. So she pushed away from the sill and pivoted to the open door, trying to ignore her racing heartbeat.
It wasn’t easy when she looked into the now clean-shaven face that seemed even more eye-poppingly handsome than it had in the mental image that had inched its way into her consciousness a hundred or so times since the previous evening.
She was vaguely aware of exchanging greetings with him as she stepped aside to let him in. She devoured the sight of him in that same overcoat he’d had on the night before, open today to show dark-brown wool slacks and a dress shirt to match, worn buttoned all the way to his Adam’s apple. There was no denying that he looked spectacular, important and like a force to be reckoned with. All very un-Northbridge-ish.
“Is there a reason you don’t want to close the door?”
His voice brought her to her senses and made her realize that she was still standing there, holding the door open.
It also occurred to her that she hadn’t taken a breath in that same amount of time.
Taking one now, she shut the door as he removed his coat.
“Is there anywhere I can put this so it’s out of the way? I’m guessing this place is going to get pretty crowded.”
“I’ll take it,” Mara said, accepting the soft-as-a-cloud cashmere coat that had probably cost more than her entire wardrobe.
She took it into the hallway and carefully hung it on a hook on the wall. As she did she caught the faintest whiff of what smelled like fresh, clean citrus. It must have been his cologne, but if she could buy candles with that exact scent she would put them in every room of her house.
“Celeste is on the phone in the bedroom,” she said as she rejoined him. “She spoke to the attorney this morning, who said she was going to call back to go over things again just before the questioning got started, so I think that’s who Celeste is talking to.”
“Stephanie. The attorney’s name is Stephanie.”
Mara recalled the familiarity in the way he’d talked to the lawyer on the phone the night before and her own initial curiosity about what their relationship might be. Now she thought there was something proprietary in his reference to the woman and her curiosity grew—along with an antipathy toward a person she’d never even met.
“Is she a friend of yours—Stephanie?” Mara heard herself ask before she could stop it.
“Yes, she is.”
“A good friend?”
Jared Perry was standing behind Celeste’s chair and he aimed those mesmerizing eyes at Mara, raising a questioning brow. “Stephanie is a longtime friend,” he qualified, still not telling Mara what she wanted to know.
And even though she told herself it was absolutely none of her business, she couldn’t seem to keep from pushing it. “A long-time friend who owes you one, which is why she’s taking Celeste’s case,” she said, repeating what he’d told Celeste the previous night.
“Right,” he confirmed. Then both of his brows lowered. “Are you worrying again that we’re conspiring to do my grandmother harm? Do you think that because we’re friends, Stephanie isn’t on the up and up? That she’d do my evil bidding or something?”
Mara shrugged in an effort to conceal her relief. Obviously he didn’t realize she was trying to get information about the woman and what role she might play in his life.
“Just checking,” she said.
“Check all you want. Stephanie is at the top of her field in New York and, as a result of being in demand in a number of high-profile cases across the country, she happens to be licensed to practice law in several states—Montana among them. Were she and I not friends I doubt she’d bother with something like this. But since we are, she took the case. So our friendship is working in Celeste’s favor, not against her.”
Friends again. But were they more? That was what Mara really wanted to know.
“Is there something about Stephanie’s handling of things today that’s made you more suspicious?” Jared asked.
