felt fairly certain, however, that “normal” wasn’t having the pretty blonde who had all but ignored him at the diner show up that afternoon with the smile he hadn’t been able to get out of her before and a freshly baked apple pie.
Chapter Two
Kelsey figured she had two options. She could try to get upstairs alone and, depending on how much wall Sam had torn out, get the diary and sneak it out in her purse. Or, she could look around to see how far he was with his demolition and go back when he wasn’t there.
The nerves in her stomach were jumping as she watched him walk toward her.
With her oversize handbag dangling from one shoulder, and carrying a pink pastry box with both hands, she left the compact sedan she’d rented at the airport and moved past the construction debris to meet him. Old cupboards, carpeting and a rusted sink formed a pile at the end of the gravel driveway that cut into the deep and wooded lot. Stacks of new lumber nearly blocked the sagging front porch, waiting to be used inside.
She’d heard that he was living in the long white trailer parked near the curve of the stream that meandered through the back of the property. According to her mom, the leveling of that trailer had been the local event of the day. Charlie and Amos said they’d helped supervise. Lorna Bagley, who took turns with her sister, Marian, waiting tables for her mom, told her she’d packed up a picnic and her kids and headed out to watch—though mostly, the single mother of two had confessed, she had watched Sam. They didn’t get many men as easy on the eyes as that one, she’d confided. Certainly, none as intriguing.
Since news and gossip were shared freely among the locals, and since nothing pleased some of the them more than to bring someone who’d been away up to date, Kelsey had also learned that Sam had been a detective for years, and divorced for nearly as long. No one seemed to know what had caused the demise of his marriage. No one knew exactly what sort of “detecting” it was that he did, either. Some thought he solved murder cases like the detectives on television. But no one knew for sure. He apparently didn’t say much about his work.
As unusual and fascinating as his occupation was to certain citizens of Maple Mountain, as far as most of them were concerned what he did in the city was no real concern of theirs. Sam was just Tom and Janelle Collier’s nephew and he’d come to help out a member of his family. Helping family and neighbors was something they were all familiar with. When there was a need, it was simply what people in Maple Mountain did.
He stopped six feet in front of her, as tall and solid as an oak. Even as he spoke, she had the unsettling feeling she’d been appraised from neck to knee without his glance ever leaving her face.
“I’d ask if you’re lost, but I figure you know your way around here a whole lot better than I do.”
It was as clear as the gray of his eyes that he remembered their meeting that morning. Specifically, that she’d barely spoken to him—which obviously would make him wonder what she was doing there now.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she replied, hoping she hadn’t offended him too badly.
“I’m not doing anything that can’t wait.”
Desperate not to appear as anxious as she felt, she held out the box containing one of the pies she’d baked between the breakfast and lunch that morning.
“You said you like apple,” she reminded him.
Curiosity slashed the carved lines of his face as he lifted the box from her hands. “What’s this for?”
“A chance to look around?” Looking past the impressive shoulders and muscular arms she’d once fantasized about, she glanced toward the old two-story house behind him. “I heard you’re tearing out walls in there. If you don’t mind, I’d like to see the house before it changes too much.” She hesitated, trying to act only casually curious. “How far along are you? With tearing them out, I mean.”
She thought he still looked skeptical of her presence. Or, maybe, it was interest in the contents of the box she saw in his expression as he pried up the front of the pink cardboard lid.
“I still have half the upstairs to go.” Distracted, he lifted the box to his nose and sniffed. “You use cinnamon.”
“It’s just your basic apple pie.”
“I’m a basic sort of guy.”
There was that smile again.
“So.” She swallowed, wondering if he had any idea how appealing it was to a woman to see a grown man grin like a boy at her baking. “May I go look around? I used to hang out here with my girlfriend when we were in high school. This was her grandma’s house,” she explained. “We’d come out in the summer and spend nights with her. Sometimes in the winter, too, when we’d skate on the pond.
“It’s a nostalgia thing,” she justified when his only response was the faint pinch of his brow. “I never thought anything about this town would change,” she hurried to admit, because that much was true. If finding that damnable diary hadn’t been so necessary, revisiting the memories honestly would have been important to her. Some of the best times of her life had been spent in and around the buildings beyond him. “As much as this house meant to me growing up, I’d really like to see it before what I remembered doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know if you have any places like that from your childhood. Old hangouts, I mean. But this is really important to me.”
Nerves had her rambling. Realizing that, she shut herself up before she could betray just how uneasy she felt with what she’d written about him, and how totally lousy she was at being less than up-front and honest. She really had loved being in this charming old place. But the abandoned gristmill across the stream had been far more important to her. She had spent hours poking around the mill’s dim interior, wondering what life had been like for the miller who’d lived there a century ago. She’d spent even more time by its slowly moving waterwheel dreaming of her future, writing those dreams and plans in the diary she needed to find before Sam discovered just how large a part he’d played in her mental musings.
Apparently she hadn’t silenced herself soon enough. The curiosity in Sam’s expression changed to scrutiny as his eyes narrowed on hers.
Feeling exposed, not quite sure what to say, her glance fell to the ground. She figured she’d be better off to stay silent. Being a detective, he could probably spot a con at ten paces.
Sam was actually far better than that. He could spot a fraud a mile away and the woman now avoiding his eyes clearly had something more on her mind than revisiting memories of old times. She wanted into the house. Rather badly, he concluded, considering that she was willing to bribe him to get there.
Intrigued, his glance drifted from the rapid and betraying blink of her dark lashes and down her long-legged frame. Certain her motive was something other than what she’d claimed, his mind should have leapt to questions, possibilities, objectives. But a heavy dose of pure male interest had joined his more analytical instincts. Indulging it, he found himself fascinated as much by her as with discovering her purpose for being there.
Kelsey Schaeffer was the antithesis of the women he’d encountered day after day living undercover. Women who blatantly advertised what she seemed to deliberately underplay. But, then, when sex was for sale, a little advertising was simply good business. Those “ladies” wore their blouses cut to their navels, if the fabric reached that far, and their skirts or pants were inevitably
