The Passions of Chelsea Kane

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Hi there,” Chelsea said, then, when there was no response, “Hello?” Only when she stepped closer did Donna look up.

  Her eyes immediately lit. Her face broke into a smile that held excitement and pleasure, or so Chelsea imagined because she needed both.

  “How are you?” she asked, feeling pleasure of her own.

  Donna nodded in a way that said she was just fine, then raised her brows in return of the question.

  “I’m great.” Chelsea laughed. “I’m back.” Mocking grimness, she dropped her voice an octave and said, “On business.” Then she smiled again and tossed a glance behind her. “Everything looks great. I love your straw hats.” They stood on a hat tree not far from the picnic hampers and conjured up thoughts of long, gauzy dresses, Brie, bread, and wine, and lazy afternoons on the banks of a stream. “Are they locally made?”

  Donna waved a hand to suggest yes and no. While Chelsea waited for her to explain, she looked torn. Finally, with a resigned grimace, she pointed to her ear and shook her head.

  In that instant it struck Chelsea that Donna was deaf. She was stunned, alternately chiding herself for not having guessed and feeling an overwhelming sorrow. She opened her mouth to say something, then, not knowing what to say, closed it again.

  Donna came to the rescue, gesturing her around the counter. She cleared the computer screen of the inventory list she’d been working with and deftly typed in, “I’m sorry. Everyone in town knows. It’s a shock when people don’t expect it.”

  Chelsea reached in and typed, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have guessed.” In hindsight she saw so many signs that she’d missed.

  Donna’s fingertips tapped the keys. “I read lips. You don’t have to type.”

  “I like to type. What about the hats?”

  “Made in Vermont. Not quite local, but almost.”

  “They’re super. Very romantic.” When Donna looked at her, she rolled her eyes in a wistful way. “But that’s something else,” she said. “I really am here on business.”

  “I know,” Donna mouthed.

  “I figured you would. I figured everyone would. There can’t be many secrets in a town like this.”

  Donna typed, “You’d be surprised.”

  Chelsea looked from her somber profile to the screen and back. Nudging her hands aside gently, she typed, “Sounds intriguing. Anything you can share?”

  “Not if I don’t want to be stoned on the town green.”

  Chelsea smiled. The days of public stonings were over, but there was a message in Donna’s words. Towns like Norwich Notch didn’t air their dirty laundry for the world to see, and although Chelsea didn’t consider herself “the world,” since she’d been born in the Notch, Donna didn’t know that. There would be time for sharing secrets.

  “I understand,” she typed, then, “Can you help me with something else?” When Donna looked at her lips, she said, “I’ll be spending a lot of time here for the next year. It’ll be silly for me to stay at the inn every time I come. I was thinking of buying a place.” Actually she’d been thinking of renting one, but she didn’t correct herself when the other word slipped out. “Can you recommend a good realtor? The bulletin board at the inn had the business cards of three.” Taking a notebook from her purse, she read, “Mack Hewitt, Brian Dolly, and Eli Whip.”

  Donna’s fingers moved on the keyboard. “Mack Hewitt will talk your ear off, Brian Dolly won’t say a word, and Eli Whip will tell you only what he thinks you want to hear. The best realtor in town is a woman. Rosie Hacker. Her office is on West Street.”

  Chelsea liked the way Donna thought. “Thanks,” she typed in. “How about a health club? Is there one nearby?”

  “No health club. There are aerobics classes every morning at six-thirty in the basement of the church. They’re open. You could come if you like.”

  “I’ve never done aerobics.”

  “It’s fun.”

  “But I’m tone-deaf,” she typed. “I can’t hold a tune.”

  “Neither can I,” Donna typed back just as Chelsea realized her faux pas, but Donna didn’t seem fazed. “The teacher uses music with a pronounced beat. If I can feel the beat, so can you.”

  Chelsea was tempted. She couldn’t count the number of times she had watched aerobics classes in progress. Inevitably there were one or two people pathetically out of step. She had always identified with them. Oh, she was coordinated. And athletic. But moving in time to music was something else. Normally the most self-confident of women, she shied away when it came to dancing. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself. So she was a runner instead.

  Donna regarded her expectantly.

  “How big is the group?” Chelsea asked.

  After holding up ten fingers, Donna turned and typed, “All women. I could introduce you around.”

  For that reason alone Chelsea knew she should go. If her goal was to get to know Norwich Notch, the more people she met in town the better. Besides, Donna was a lovely person. She liked the idea of doing something with her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try it. But if I look like an ass, it’s your fault.”

  Donna grinned. The grin disappeared when she glanced in alarm toward the back of the store. Chelsea saw nothing there. Apparently neither did Donna, because she made no move to leave. Nor, though, did she fully relax again. She stared broodingly at the computer screen for a minute, before typing, “Do you know who I am?”

  “Donna Farr,” Chelsea typed back.

  “Donna Plum Farr. Oliver is my father.”

  Chelsea never would have guessed it. There was no physical resemblance to speak of, though with Oliver a scowler and Donna a smiler, any resemblance would be minimized. Chelsea wondered how such an ornery father had spawned such a gentle daughter. No doubt Donna’s mother was responsible for that. The woman would have to be a saint to live with Oliver.

  Donna wrote, “People around here are angry about the agreement he made with you. Plum Granite is a family company. You’re an outsider.” She hesitated, then typed more quickly, “Some consider you the enemy.”

  “Do you think I am?”

  Donna’s eyes met hers. After a minute she shook her head.

  “I made an investment,” Chelsea said gently. “I want that investment to pay off, which means getting the company moving forward again. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

  Donna nodded and turned back to the screen. “But Plum Granite is Plum Granite.” She held her hands above the keyboard as though about to elaborate, then let them fall to her sides and looked at Chelsea.

  “I know,” Chelsea said, and intellectually she did. Emotionally she wasn’t so sure. To identify with a family name so strongly was foreign to her. Likewise to feel part of an ancestral chain. She envied Donna that sense of belonging. “Well,” she said, sighing, “if your father and his men do their part, I’ll be gone at the end of a year.” One year. That was all she needed. With luck she would have her baby, the identity of her parents, and more money than ever. She could continue at Harper, Kane, Koo as though nothing had changed. Or she could move on. For a woman without roots, the options were endless.

  “SHE’S ON HER WAY HERE,” OLIVER TOLD JUDD. HE DROPPED the phone to its cradle and his forearms to the desk. “Just opened two accounts at the bank. One business, one personal. George swears she’s planning to stay awhile.” He propped his fist against his mouth and glowered at the floor. “Don’t know why in the devil she’d do that.”

  Judd didn’t know, either. It had been his experience in life that women with the city in their blood didn’t come to places like the Notch. They left them. Chelsea Kane must have lost her sense of direction. She must have been blinded by dollar signs—which mystified him, the more he thought about it. Sure, there was money to be made in granite. With modern equipment and skilled marketing, there was business to be won and a profit to be had, but that profit was finite. A woman like Chelsea Kane could see a far greater, far faster return in any one
of dozens of different ventures. He wondered why she had chosen granite.

  “Got everything ordered?” Oliver asked, spearing Judd with a look.

  “You bet,” Judd said. Satisfied at the thought of that, he stretched out on his chair and lowered a hand to scratch Buck’s ears. For years he’d been working on Oliver to buy new equipment. For years he’d been pushing to build a facility to cut and polish stone. For years he’d lobbied to computerize the office. But Oliver was a tightwad if ever there was one and wouldn’t hear of any of it. Suddenly the winds had shifted. It appeared that the tightwad could be generous with someone else’s money. And Judd was no fool. He was buying while the buying was good.

  There was actually something exciting about it. What man didn’t dream of building a business? In the case of Plum Granite, rebuilding was the word, but Judd could take the same pride in that. It gave meaning to his college degree and to the ten years of endless hours he’d worked in Pittsburgh. He had trained well. Now, finally, he could put that training to good use.

  “Russ and his crew are starting at Moss tomorrow,” he told Oliver. Moss Ridge had been earmarked for the processing facility. It was the largest of the active Plum quarries and held enough granite to occupy cutters for the next thirty years. “He figures we can get something up and operational by the end of August.”

  “What’s wrong with July?” Oliver asked. “It’s only a shed.”

  “A shed that’s half again as big as a basketball court, with buttressing and ventilation for heavy equipment, a whole side that opens up, and insulation and heat to keep it operational through winter. That’s not to mention the equipment itself. It’s all on special order.”

  “We have to keep ahead of her.”

  “We will.”

  Oliver grunted. When the distant drone of Hunter’s motorcycle whispered in through the open window, his eyes sought Judd’s. “He okay?”

  Oliver was a hard man. His face rarely conveyed much beyond disinterest, impatience, or scorn. When Judd saw vulnerability there, he never failed to be amazed.

  “Well, tell me,” Oliver demanded, abruptly exasperated. “I don’t have you watching over him for nothing. You’re my eyes and ears. You’re supposed to talk with him.”

  “He’s not much of a talker.”

  “Maybe not, but you know him as well as anyone does. He’s bein’ real crabby. How come?”

  Judd wasn’t wild about being a snitch. For the most part Hunter was a pain in the butt, but there were times when he mellowed. During those times Judd felt sorry for him. Sure, Oliver made his life easier materially. Despite the occasional trouble, he kept him on as a jack-of-all-trades, and Judd was the first one to say that he knew his stuff at the quarry. He could handle any piece of machinery, any explosive, any tool, just as Oliver had taught him. But he was hauling around a shitload of emotional garbage. Judd could only begin to guess at his deepest thoughts. The only time he let things slip was when he was half-crocked.

  Judd went on scratching Buck’s head. “He doesn’t like the deal.”

  “Why not? It won’t affect him.”

  “He thinks it will. As he sees it, there’s another person above him now. He has trouble enough taking orders from you. He doesn’t like the thought of taking them from her.”

  Oliver scowled at the window, while the growl of the motorcycle grew. “Did she hit him wrong?”

  “All women hit him wrong.” And it had nothing to do with his sexuality. Hunter was straight as an arrow. There was a string of women to attest to that. He just didn’t like any of them much. He was a hit-and-run kind of guy.

  “Never could figure that one out,” Oliver muttered. “He’s nice enough looking.”

  “He’s angry,” Judd said. He was no psychiatrist, but it was the most obvious thing in the world. One look at Hunter’s face and anyone could see it, and that was before he opened his mouth.

  “What’s he got to be angry about? I took him off the street, set him up in a good home, sent him to school, bought him clothes, and gave him a job. I’m the one bailed him out when he got in trouble. He’s got no cause to be angry.”

  Judd shrugged. It wasn’t his job to analyze the whys and wherefores of Hunter Love, much less to make judgments—and even if it were, no one knew the whole truth of Hunter’s past. His illegitimacy was just the first of the rumors. There were others. They weren’t often bandied about, not within earshot of Judd. But Hunter’s wasn’t the only tongue loosened at Crocker’s. Over the years Judd had picked up enough to convince him that if even a few of those rumors were true, Hunter had good cause to be angry.

  The motorcycle roared into the driveway, then went suddenly quiet. At the same time, a car pulled up and parked on the street.

  Buck lifted his head.

  “She’s driving a fancy car,” Oliver complained, squinting out the window. “Doesn’t she have any sense?”

  Hunter came in the front door, stalked through the anteroom without a word, and entered Oliver’s office. With barely a look at its inhabitants, he planted his black-garbed self at the window with his back to the room.

  Chelsea’s entrance was quieter. She paused to talk softly with Fern, who had been working for Oliver for thirty years and was nearly as nervous about Chelsea’s coming as Hunter was. Fern slowed down a little each year, but what she lacked in speed she more than made up for in loyalty. Judd had assured her that her job was safe. He hoped Chelsea was doing the same.

  At least that was what Judd’s ex, Janine, would have done. She was a political creature. She would sweet-talk anyone she thought might be of use to her. The instant she found out differently, her tone of voice changed.

  Then Chelsea came to the door of Oliver’s office, and Judd felt the same swift kick in the middle that he’d felt three months before. He didn’t know what it was about her—whether it was the misty green of her eyes, the gentle upturn of her lips, the elegance of her legs, or that tumble of auburn curls—but she turned him on.

  Buck rose from where he’d been lying and went to her just as Oliver let her have it.

  “Do you know what the people in this town think when they see someone driving around in a car like that? They think that the driver is an arrogant sonofabee who wants everyone to know how much money he has. That what you want to do?”

  The gentle upturn of lips that Judd had admired turned down, but not in indignation. Janine would have been indignant. He might have done fine with that. But Chelsea looked taken aback, as though she had expected a civil, even friendly, welcome and was disappointed. He actually felt sorry for her.

  Frowning, she said, “That wasn’t my intention at all.” Absently she touched Buck’s head.

  “What possessed you to drive that car?”

  “It’s the only car I own.”

  “Well, you’d better get another. It won’t do.”

  She blinked. “What will do?”

  “A truck.”

  Judd couldn’t see her in a truck.

  “Somehow,” she said, “I can’t see me in a truck.”

  “Then a Jeep,” Oliver said, and threw an impatient hand in the air. “Look at what everyone else is driving. That’ll tell you.”

  Buck kept his head at Chelsea’s fingertips and his eyes half-lidded on Oliver. In his insolence, Buck was amusing.

  “Fine,” Chelsea said, apparently deciding not to argue further, and wisely so, Judd thought. The Jaguar wasn’t a major issue. But Oliver had a thing with tradition and control. He needed to dictate. To confront him was only to invite more, louder.

  Chelsea crossed her hands in her lap and looked at Hunter. When he didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge her presence in any way, she shifted her gaze to Judd. He felt a tiny aftershock, then another when he imagined he saw hesitation. He imagined that her eyes skittered away for a fraction of a second before locking on his, as though she didn’t want to look at him but was helplessly drawn.

  He had a vivid imagination.

  He didn’t imagine
the color on her cheeks, though. It was there, clear as day, no doubt from the heat in the air. The same heat also added curl to her hair and a dewiness to her skin that appealed.

  Telling himself that he should treat her no differently from a male, he calmly pushed himself to his feet and offered his hand as he would to any other business associate new to town.

  “Welcome.”

  Her grip surprised him. It wasn’t ballsy, like Janine’s. Janine believed in letting people know from the start that she wasn’t a ditsy blond broad. Chelsea’s handshake was firm, but there was a gentleness to it, an improbable softness. Same with her mouth. She wore no lipstick, but her lips were a dusty pink as they curved into a timid smile.

  Timid? He had a very vivid imagination. He couldn’t believe he’d thought that.

  “Thank you,” she said to his welcome. Retrieving her hand, she returned it to its mate in her lap. Oliver’s disgruntled voice pulled her eyes from his.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I signed the papers making us partners. My lawyer sent them by courier yesterday. Didn’t you get them?”

  “I got them. But he didn’t say you were coming.”

  “Of course I’m coming. How else are we supposed to work together?”

  “By telephone. By mail.”

  Very slowly, she shook her head.

  Oliver sat back on his chair, which wasn’t saying much given the straightness of it. His expression was as rigid. “Your part in this is money and accounts.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said politely. “I’m putting out a lot of money. I’d like to see how it’s being spent. And as for accounts, once I know how the money is being spent, I can be a more forceful salesman.”

  “Saleswoman,” Hunter said.

  “Well, hello,” Chelsea sang.

  Hunter turned just his head, gave her a warning look, then turned back to the window.