Bachelor In Blue Jeans

“Good. Tell them to take special care with this one. Mrs. Hart has a lot of rich, influential friends. We want her endorsement.”

“They take special care on all the jobs,” Dan returned, chuckling. “They don’t want to end up in the unemployment line. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Zach hung up the phone, his nerves still thrumming. He’d told Kristin he wouldn’t grovel and he meant it. So why couldn’t he just put her out of his mind and go to sleep?

Grabbing some change from the top of the dresser, he went outside, then crossed the courtyard to the vending machines and bought another Pepsi. Angry voices came from a nearby unit, but he didn’t give a damn about their problems. He had enough of his own. He took a long drink and started back to his room.

He’d been acting like an idiot since he hit town, and it was all because of her. First he’d let Chad needle him into some kind of pseudo-high school rivalry, then he’d lost his focus and kissed Kris. He took another long swallow.

She was wrong, blaming him for all of it. If what she’d felt for him was love, she couldn’t have kept quiet about her mother’s illness. Not even for a minute. She would’ve needed to tell him—needed for him to hold her and tell her things would be all right. Instead…

Instead, Gretchen found him behind Etta’s barn that night, working on his second six-pack and wondering why his father thought booze could ease a man’s pain. And that time when she offered a different kind of remedy, he didn’t say no.

Crumpling the empty can, Zach went inside where the air conditioner was finally clearing away the shower mist, and tossed it into the wastebasket beside the bureau. It clattered against hard plastic.

All right, he thought, going to the bed and repacking his briefcase. He’d been a bastard. That was old news. But Kris wasn’t completely faultless. She’d known how insecure he was about her feelings, especially with Hollister champing at the bit to take her away. She should’ve told him the whole truth.

Stripping to his briefs, he flopped down on the bed, then grabbed the remote control from the nightstand and hit the on button. In a burst of color and canned laughter, the set sprang to life.

Tender kisses in motel rooms were for him and some other woman now—some other temporary woman. He didn’t have time to worry about old relationships or start new ones. He had a company to run, an empire to build. At thirty-three, he was finally earning respect and position, things that had been denied him from birth, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. His business was his chief priority. He didn’t need Kristin Chase in his life anymore.

Two days later, Zach grabbed a towel, swiped the sawdust and sweat from his arms and chest, then sank to the top step of Etta’s front porch and snatched up his cell phone. He frowned as indecision gripped him again. Then he swore and dialed Kristin’s number from memory. Overhead, the Monday afternoon sun beat down through the tall maples, relentless in its effort to burn every square inch of his exposed skin.

“Hi,” he said soberly when she picked up the phone at her shop.

The long pause on her end had Zach wondering if she was trying to place his voice.

“This is a surprise,” she said coolly.

He imagined it was, since they hadn’t parted on the best of terms Saturday night. “I had some time, so I thought I’d call and see if your cheek was okay.”

“It’s fine.”

“Your shoulder?”

“That’s fine, too.”

Zach reined in his impatience. All of her responses were tolerant and polite, but obviously, she was still angry. He damned the illogical compulsion that made him keep trying with her. “Any news on the intruder?” he asked, committed to make the best of it.

“Not yet, but I’m hoping Chad will have some information when he comes over later.”

Considering his aversion to Hollister, the jealous pinch he experienced was hardly unexpected. “Going out for dinner?”

“No, before the Arnetts went home yesterday, I bought a few of Anna Mae’s pieces and the contents of her attic. Half of it’s being delivered this afternoon. Chad’s helping me find room for it in my shop.”

“Nice of him,” Zach drawled.

“He is nice,” she replied. “And if you were a little more flexible in your thinking, you’d be able to see that.” She paused, and her tone softened. “I know he gave you a hard time in school. But he’s not the same person he was then.”

“Leopards don’t change their spots.”

“This one did.”

Right. The kid who’d never shown a shred of compassion to anyone below him in the social pecking order, had turned over a new leaf. Zach wouldn’t put money on it.

He’d been the son of the boozed-up school janitor—a job his dad was given only because Etta was on the school board and did some serious begging. Of course, her intervention hadn’t worked. Though she’d hoped her nephew would straighten out and support his teenage son when they returned to Wisdom, Hap Davis was out of a job in four months, and dead of cirrhosis a year later.

“Zach?”

Zach yanked himself out of the past, annoyed that he’d made the trip. He hadn’t allowed those thoughts into his mind for years. “I’m here,” he said into the receiver. “Just hoping there’s an arrest soon. You don’t have to go back to that house, do you?”

“No. I’ll have nearly everything I need by six o’clock tonight, and the rest will be here on Wednesday.”

Everything she needed. He resisted the urge to ask if Hollister was part of that package. “Well, I’d better get back to work on Etta’s porch.” Pushing to his feet, he crossed to the fringe of grass near the driveway where his table saw was set up. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he finished gruffly.

“Thank you. I am, too. Goodbye, Zach.”

“Bye.”

Frowning, Zach set the phone aside, turned the saw back on, and went back to work cutting floorboards for Etta’s porch. He was still keyed up and didn’t know why. The feeling was really beginning to aggravate him.

Kristin hung up the phone and pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to quiet her butterflies.

All right…this is good, she decided, willing her heartbeat to slow, willing herself to breathe normally. They were speaking civilly. That would be helpful if they bumped into each other again before he went back home. And in a town the size of Wisdom, it was a near certainty.

Tamping down the rush of nerves that thought evoked, she returned to her sales floor to ready it for her new acquisitions.

Kristin shoved a table full of lace doilies and votive cups closer to the wall, then carried a spinning wheel to the front and set it near a wooden barrel topped with potpourri. Standing back, she visually measured the space she’d cleared near the door to her stockroom. It wasn’t big enough.

Anna Mae’s attic had been pack-rat heaven, she thought, determined to concentrate on the job at hand—not the gray eyes that kept filling her mind. There’d never be enough room to store everything here in the shop. She needed to look into self-storage places.

Three hours later, Kristin stood near the side door and directed Chad and a deliveryman named Wayne where to stack the merchandise from Anna Mae’s home. In the dim light, it had been difficult to assess the worth of some of those attic pieces. Now she could see that she’d bargained well with the Arnetts. Some of the items were absolutely lovely—a fact that was totally lost on the heavy, middle-aged deliveryman with the ponytail, tattoos and multistudded earlobes.

He’d already dropped a carton of books and it had split open in the paved alley between her shop and Harlan’s tax office. She stepped back from the door as Chad carried an antique chair inside from the wide alley.

“Where do you want this?” His tone turned dry. “Is there room behind the cash register where Wayne put the books he dropped?”

She lowered her voice as she followed him inside. “Yes, just set it there. And thanks for helping. Especially since he’s not the most cautious person on the planet.”

“That’s an understatement. If there’d been breakables in that box you would have lost them all.”

Kristin put a fingertip to her lips as the deliveryman came back inside with another load. Only his boots and faded jeans were visible beneath a tall stack of boxes.

“I’ll tell him again to watch what he’s doing,” Chad muttered.

“No, don’t make waves. Nothing’s been damaged. There can’t be that much more to— Oh, no,” she groaned looking at one of the marked cartons. “He has glass this time.” And the boxes were piled so high, he could barely see around them.

Kristin hurried forward to take the top box from him, but Chad beat her to it.

“Buddy,” he said coldly as he snatched it away. “This lady’s going to give you the tongue lashing of your life if you drop one more thi—” Chad went stone still.

Because it was Zach’s face, not the deliveryman’s, behind the box.

A whisper of a smile touched Zach’s lips as he settled his gaze on Kristin. “In that case, maybe I should drop something on purpose.”

Fighting an embarrassed flush, she found her voice before Chad could start an argument. “I—I thought you were working on Etta’s porch.”

“I was, but I wanted to get to the mall before it closed. Now that the power is back on and I’m staying at the house, I decided to buy one of those cheap spongy futons. Etta’s hardwood floors aren’t the most comfortable.”

“No, I suppose they aren’t,” Kristin returned. Above those boots and faded jeans, he wore a navy blue T-shirt that hugged his shoulders and chest. And though it wasn’t fair to compare the two men, next to Chad’s fair skin and clean-shaven blondness, Zach was darkly intriguing.

He spoke again. “I saw the truck and remembered you said you were expecting a delivery today. Thought I’d give you a hand.”

Chad sent him a chilling look. “I’ve already given her both of mine. If you have work to do, feel free to get back to it.”

“Nah, I’ve been at it most of the day. I’ll just grab a few more boxes. The guy in the truck was shuffling them from the back to the tailgate so they’d be easier to unload. He’s probably finished by now.”

Zach smiled. “Want to bring both of your hands outside, Hollister? We can probably finish unloading the rest in just a few minutes.”

Chad’s face turned a deeper shade of crimson. He didn’t like being mocked, and it showed. “I intended to,” he said coldly, obviously trying to snatch back a little power. “Just watch your step carrying those boxes in here.”

Ten minutes later, the tension increased markedly when the deliveryman drove off, leaving the three of them alone. Between her taut nerves, Zach’s presence and Chad’s brooding silence, Kristin was so wired, it was difficult to keep her mind on arranging the new merchandise in the best possible order.

Zach’s deep voice carried to her from the front of the store where he was inventorying cartons and scrawling a list of contents on the sides of the boxes. “Your shop looks good, Kris.”

“Oh, it’s lovely,” she joked nervously, hoisting the broken box of books from the floor to the counter. “You must be a big fan of clutter.”

“I wasn’t talking about the clutter. I was talking about the changes you’ve made. It used to be a major tourist trap.”

Yes, it had been. Amish buggy key-chains, tiny cedar outhouses and cheap cardboard hex signs had abounded. But when Marian Grant put it up for sale seven years ago, it was exactly what Kristin had been looking for. She’d loved the prime location where faux Victorian gaslights lit the street and spills of petunias hung from double holders on the parking meters—where the bakery across the street filled the air with mouthwatering smells and Eli Elliott’s coffee bar and country bookstore drew patrons from all over. The street was so quaint, so warm and charming, that she knew it was the ideal place for the shop she wanted to open.

“You have good taste,” Zach finished.

“Thank you. I try.”

Chad sidled up to her as she delved into the small carton of first editions. Their hands tangled and their bodies brushed as he reached inside to help. Kristin inched away, feeling even more awkward.

“Actually, I think her taste has improved a lot over the years,” Chad remarked.

“How’s that?” Zach called.

“Oh, the company she keeps, for one thing. She hangs out with a classier group of people now.”

“Really?” Zach asked with a slow smile. “Compared to whom?”

Kristin glared at Chad, then fumbled with the books, feeling the temperature in the room rise. He and Zach were headed for a confrontation, sure as heat in July, and she had to diffuse it. “Chad, could you grab a—”

She’d intended to ask for a sturdier box in which to store the books. But as the words left her mouth, the other side of the damaged box split open and books tumbled from the glass counter and fell to the floor. With an exasperated sigh, she dropped to her knees to close the books that had opened before their pages could be creased and ruined.

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