Let him worry about whether he really has the upper hand, she thought as the meeting came to a close. He’ll find out soon enough he’s underestimated me.
* * *
“I THINK YOU underestimate her,” Jake said as the two men drove toward town to tour the possible sites for a Yes! Yogurt outlet store.
“No, I don’t,” Drew protested.
But his cousin was right. Drew had realized that the instant he saw that strange smile on her lips right after he had managed—he thought—to put her in her place.
Why he’d said what he had, so abruptly and so condescendingly, he hadn’t yet figured out. Why hadn’t he simply let her prattle on and hang herself?
Because it was his responsibility to keep things focused on results, he’d told himself. Britt was the dreamer and Jake held the purse strings—tightly, which was fine with Drew. Drew’s role was to keep things moving forward.
Where would Alexandra Murphy fit in that mix? And why was he so adamant about not wanting to find out?
“She’s a very bright young woman.” Jake pulled off the highway at the empty storefront next to the Dairy King and a gas station. “Britt is convinced the two of you can be a powerful team, if you give it a chance.”
“You make me sound like some kind of rigid stuffed-shirt,” Drew protested, giving the car door a slam and heading toward Cordelia Rolphe, the real estate agent waiting for them at the door of the cinder block building, which had been painted a soft yellow.
Jake smiled pleasantly and clapped him on the shoulder. “If the shoe fits.”
“Well, she’s a bit wet behind the ears.”
“Be open-minded. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I am open-minded.”
But he wasn’t, not about this. Drew stewed over the admission to himself as they toured the building. With only half his attention, he studied the refrigerated display cases and the floor, badly in need of retiling, telling himself that having little foot traffic here on the highway wouldn’t be a major drawback, as customers could drive. Most of his thoughts were on the woman whose presence this morning had thrown him so. He hadn’t expected that. But from the moment he’d walked around the table and recognized his new co-worker, Drew had known he had problems.
Alexandra Murphy sparked something in him that few women touched. She was beautiful in an exotic way, with that tawny complexion, dark hair and eyes, those sculpted cheekbones and that generous mouth so ready to leap into a warm smile. But her looks weren’t the problem, at least not the whole problem. He’d worked with plenty of gorgeous women and never given it a moment’s thought.
No, he’d seen an innocence, a girlish enthusiasm beneath her polish, and it was that that had struck a chord in him. Despite her power suit, her sedate pearls and the Grace Kelly hairstyle that screamed she wanted to be in control, Drew couldn’t get out of his mind another image of her—the leggings and the braid and the university sweatshirt worn by a young woman unable to resist the lure of candy and a jack-in-the-box. She might look sophisticated, but Drew knew something else about her.
She still had a lot of kid in her. And it was that that he was pulled toward, attracted to.
He almost groaned aloud as the thought registered. He wasn’t attracted to her. Couldn’t be attracted to her. Absolutely refused to even consider the possibility.
“On a scale of one to ten, what do you think?”
Jake’s disconcerting question reminded Drew that his thoughts had gone far afield. Dragging himself back to the moment, he took a final sweeping look at the shop. “I think it would serve the purpose.”
They walked from the chilly building into the sharp, cold breeze. Cordelia paused behind them, locking up. While they waited, Drew looked restlessly up and down the highway. In addition to the Dairy King and the gas station, a stretch of uneven sidewalk led to the Heidelberg Restaurant, Sugar Creek Park and beyond that, of course, Ingalls Farm and Machinery. Most of the walkway had already been cleared after the previous afternoon’s snowfall.
In front of the F and M, however, the ice remained, making walking treacherous. Except that no one would be walking in front of the Tyler landmark. Yellow police tape still cordoned off the scene.
The site of last fall’s fire remained a blight on the highway, reminding everyone as they came and went that futures were precarious in Tyler right now. With the cause of the fire still undetermined and people growing uneasy about weeks out of work turning into months, the yellow tape festered in the town’s consciousness. Even Britt had begun to question whether now was the time to open their outlet shop. A slow start seemed almost guaranteed. But Jake kept reassuring her that this thing would be settled soon, that the insurance company would write the check and renovations would begin. Tyler would return to normal.
Drew wondered if that wasn’t overly optimistic, but kept his worries to himself.
“Drew, look.” Jake nudged him with an elbow. “Isn’t that Matt?”
“Matt’s in school, isn’t he?”
The young man standing at the edge of the woods across the highway had pulled the collar of his jacket up and his knit cap low, so it was impossible to see his face. But Drew had to admit he looked a lot like Jake’s sixteen-year-old stepson. But what would he be doing out here on the highway in the middle of the day, when he ought to be in class?
“Come on,” Jake said, taking off toward the boy, who simply stared across the highway, apparently into the burned-out shell of the F and M. “I’m going to see what this is all about.”
But in the time it took a truck to rumble past, the youth had disappeared, probably through the trees and back to the high school beyond.
“Damn!” Jake stood staring at the woods, a grim expression on his face. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
“Well, it looked like him to me. But it’s not like Matt to cut school, is it?”
“Well, it didn’t used to be. But...”
“What?”
“Something’s wrong. He’s been acting weird lately.”
“He’s sixteen. How can you tell?”
Jake shook his head and laughed, although Drew could sense it took an effort. “You’re right.”
“Probably girl stuff. The head cheerleader probably won’t give him the time of day. You know how it is.”
“Yeah.”
But Drew noticed that both he and his cousin were preoccupied as they toured the second building, this one on Main Street, between the bank and the video-rental store. And neither of them could tell Britt a thing about the second building when they got back to headquarters.
Drew knew what Jake’s excuse was, but couldn’t think of anything to safely blame his own inattention on.
* * *
CLARENCE ALBERT STIRLING smiled his most charming smile at the Chicago hospital nurse who wanted to stick him. “That’s a frightfully big needle, Nurse Ratched.”
She was a pretty young thing, round faced and dark eyed, with the most adorable pink bow of a mouth that now curved in a wry smile. “The name is Anna Grisham. And we save the biggest pains in the rear for the patients who’ve been the biggest pains in the rear. So, are you gonna roll over or shall I call in the SWAT crew to hoist you over and hold you down?”
Clarence chuckled and obliged. “Actually, I wouldn’t complain at all, but I fear that isn’t necessarily my best side any longer.”
Anna Grisham laughed at the same moment Clarence grunted, and it was over.
“Need anything else while I’m here?” she asked, dropping the needle and her plastic gloves into a locked container on the wall.
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “perhaps you could provide me with some information. How long would you say is the record for a hospital stay following hip-replacement surgery?”
Anna shook her head and retrieve
d his chart from the nearby table. “No malingering, Mr. Stirling. You’re doing very well. We’ll have you out of here in less than a week, I can promise you that.”
Clarence hated frowning in front of such a pretty young thing, but he couldn’t stop himself. “What if I relapse?”
“You’re not going to relapse.”
“What if I fall out of bed?”
Anna ducked her head and tried not to smile. “Mr. Stirling, you’re not gonna make me tie you down, are you?”
He smiled. “I’m not normally into the kinky stuff, but I’ve been known to make exceptions.” He wasn’t typically so familiar, but had discovered during his hospital stay that the limits of acceptability had stretched some since his day.
“I’m gonna start bringing a chaperon with me.”
Clarence chuckled. “Fine. Bring that nice Miss Leverone, the one with the red hair.”
She paused at the door. “Sounds to me like you’re ready to be discharged right now, Mr. Stirling.”
“No, I assure you, Nurse Ratched, I’m pitiably weak.”
Then she was gone, leaving behind the sound of her laughter and the soreness in his backside.
Clarence’s smile faded. He hadn’t enjoyed being alone these past days, now that he knew what his grandson had in mind. He closed his eyes and tried to block memories that hadn’t stirred in years—not since he’d had his heart attack in ‘86 and thought he was done for. The attack had turned out to be nothing but a nasty case of heartburn—as it turned out, he had the heart of a young man, according to the cardiologist—but he’d thought about her then nevertheless. Thought about forgiving her, if he happened to see her somewhere up there in the clouds.
But he hadn’t died, and he hadn’t allowed himself to think of Mag again.
Except maybe on Valentine’s Day each year. But that was a natural thing, for a man to think of the worst day of his life from time to time.
And Drew going off to Tyler, Wisconsin, of course, had triggered more than a few memories. But Clarence had kept himself busy with his chess games and the birds in the park and sitting with the great-grandkids and taking those dance lessons once a week. Not that he didn’t already know how to dance, though he’d been a little creaky ever since he took a bullet during the war. But it was company. A chance to put his arms around a member of the fairer sex. And the women did still say he looked like Fred Astaire.
Mag had been the first one to say that. Went right to his head, it had.
Magdalena. Maggie with butter-blond hair and eyes the color of Timber Lake. Mag the heartless, who had left him high and dry.
He had to change Drew’s mind. He couldn’t possibly go back to Tyler. At this stage of life, he didn’t dare risk discovering that he still had a broken heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
SANDY LEANED OVER and took Jacob into her arms, distracting the two-year-old from his exploration of the deep recesses of the yellow Lab’s mouth by swinging him over her head.
Jacob squealed in protest.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she murmured in reply, sitting at the enormous, round kitchen table where the Hansen-Marshack clan gathered for meals and communication and even squabbles.
“Down!” fair-haired Jacob demanded, squirming and wiggling.
“Only if you promise not to climb down Daffy’s throat again,” Sandy bargained.
“Down!”
“I see the fine art of compromise is lost on you, Jacob.”
Britt closed the oven door on the pot roast she was preparing for dinner and glanced at them. “You have about three seconds to make him a free man before—”
Too late. The shrieks began.
Britt grinned and stuck her head out the back door. “Christy! David! Somebody come get this screaming machine so we can converse like grown-ups in here!”
Sandy smiled. This was what she had always loved about the Marshack home, the ease with which everyone seemed to get along—despite banging screen doors, barking dogs, fussing children. And all of it, so it seemed, under the sure-handed control of Britt Hansen Marshack, with her girlish freckles and her disheveled strawberry-blond braid.
Of course, some things had changed since Sandy first started baby-sitting for Britt a good ten years ago. The white Victorian farmhouse with its gingerbread trim and wraparound porch had been painted and reroofed and spiffed up in countless other ways. But shopping lists and crayon artwork still adorned the fridge in the huge kitchen and family racket still provided the background music, with Britt conducting.
“Mo-om!” The exasperated voice coming from the living room belonged to fourteen-year-old Christy, already a mirror image of her petite mother. “I am on the telephone. How am I supposed to hear with both of you yelling like that?”
Britt rolled her eyes and stuck her head back out the door. “David! Matt! Somebody! Now!”
“I’m in the middle of an experiment, Mom!” Twelve-year-old David’s voice was fainter, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the barn.
“No arguments!”
Suddenly, a tall, broad-shouldered youth barged into the room, snatched the wailing Jacob out of Sandy’s lap and said, “Come on, rug rat. Let’s arm-wrestle.”
Then they were gone. The crying ended almost as suddenly as the teenage boy had appeared.
“Wow. When did Matt grow up?”
Britt stared wistfully after her oldest and her youngest and sank into the chair across from Sandy. “Overnight, I think. Yesterday morning he was this awkward, skinny-chested kid with a cracking voice. Today, I looked up and Matt’s almost six feet, his voice never cracks and he has to shave—shave, can you imagine?—almost every day.”
She sighed with deep satisfaction. “The best part is, he and Jake are so close. I don’t know what I would’ve done with a teenage boy if it weren’t for Jake. He always knows exactly how to deal with a crisis. They would’ve had to lock me up long before now. But he handles everything like it’s just another lump in the oatmeal.”
Before starting to work summers during college for Yes! Yogurt, Sandy’s only contact with Britt had come from her baby-sitting. She had known her in the way that small-town people know others who aren’t in their age group or social circle, which is to say she knew everything there was to know about the thirty-something widow with four kids and a family farm the bank was threatening to repossess. Everything, including the romantic story of Jake Marshack coming to her rescue by bringing her goat’s milk yogurt to the attention of influential people he knew in the food industry. Attention that had landed Britt on syndicated talk shows and had eventually pulled the farm out of financial difficulties.
That fairy-tale ending aside, Sandy could remember how envious she had been the summers she’d worked for Yes! Yogurt and witnessed firsthand the partnership between Britt and her new husband, Jake. Jake’s obvious respect for Britt’s creative bent and the thoughtful way they had listened to each other had become Sandy’s ideal.
What the Marshacks had was what she demanded in a relationship. Nothing less would do.
Was it any wonder that since then she hadn’t managed to date anyone for more than two months before disillusionment set in?
Was it any wonder she thought of it this afternoon, right on the heels of Drew Stirling’s humiliating reaction to her at their first official meeting?
“He hates me,” she said now.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Britt said. “He cries like that whenever he doesn’t get his way.”
“Not Jacob. Drew Stirling.”
“Oh.”
Sandy noticed that no denial was forthcoming from her friend. In fact, Britt’s only response was to bring a bag of potatoes, a paring knife and a bowl to the table with her.
“I’m right, then?”
“He doesn’t hate you. H
e just isn’t sure we need a marketing director.”
“Swell. That makes me feel much better.”
Britt grinned. “He likes the company the way it is. Small.”
“Doesn’t he know small will be squeezed out in ten years or less? You have to compete to stay alive, Britt. I—”
Britt held up a hand to stem the flow of words. “Save it, Sandy. Jake and I are the ones who hired you, remember?”
Sandy stared at her friend and finally went after another knife. It took a lot of potatoes to feed this brood, she knew. “You didn’t hire me out of some kind of misguided loyalty, did you?”
“We hired you because we think you have a lot of terrific experience that’s going to help us go places with Yes! Yogurt. Okay?”
Sandy nodded grudgingly. “Okay.”
They peeled in silence for a few minutes, then Britt asked, “How’s living at home with the folks after all this time?”
Groaning, Sandy said, “Don’t ask. You don’t have a spare stall in the barn you’re willing to rent out, do you?”
“That bad?”
“Mom and Dad are great. But they think I’m still a kid. They worry about me, for goodness’ sake. They want me to call if I’m ten minutes late.”
“You’ll find a place soon. So, what kind of gossip do you need catching up on?”
While they finished preparing dinner, Britt filled Sandy in on who had married whom and which couples had already started families, the new photograph gallery in town and newcomers to Tyler. In short order, Sandy learned the latest on the young and attractive minister, Sarah Fleming, who had just married Michael Kenton, a drifter whose arrival in Tyler had set off all kinds of fireworks. Including, some people still insisted, the ones that had sparked the fire at Ingalls F and M. She found out that Pam Kelsey, the high-school football coach who also had multiple sclerosis, was still in remission and very happily pregnant, and that Ethan Trask had been appointed juvenile-court judge in Sugar Creek. Sandy’s head was beginning to spin from all the news.
Love and War Page 4