LITMIR.BIZ

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leaves.

      Absently, Alan reached back to retrieve the vase with its pale-pink rosebuds. They seemed puny compared to the Ashline woman’s garden.

      Not for the first time, Alan considered forgetting about this stupid mission. Except, it had never been said of Ridge men that they were cowardly. Hitching up the belt of his well-worn jeans, he thrust a hand through his freshly cut hair, which still bore a cowlick. Alan slammed the Jeep door and set out across the footbridge. He’d taken two steps onto the spongy wooden slats when a huge, snarling dog flew from around the left corner of the cottage, running straight at him. Black ears laid flat spoke of the animal’s displeasure at seeing a stranger. A second look at the black muzzle, lips curled over gleaming white incisors, had Alan edging back the way he’d come.

      He tried softly cajoling, muttering, “Good dog,” several times, to no avail. After which he resorted to shouting for the dog’s owner. “Ms. Ashline! Laurel? Hey, could you come out and call off your watchdog?”

      He got no response. But Alan would swear the white lace curtains covering the largest window moved. And wasn’t that the shadow of a human form appearing briefly behind a rip in the lace?

      Maybe that was wishful thinking. Gripping the neck of the vase, Alan scanned the hill behind the cottage. Between the upper and lower dwellings, two horses poked their heads over a split rail corral.

      Alan had assumed, maybe wrongly, that someone was home, based on the battered pickup beside which he’d parked his Jeep. It occurred to him now that she could be out riding. Although… He glared suspiciously at the window again. Was it logical to leave her monster dog to watch the house instead of taking him along for protection? Hell, maybe her bite was worse than her dog’s.

      He knew absolutely nothing about Laurel Ashline, except that she had a sexy voice. He probably should’ve gleaned more details from his grandmother. Or from Eva Saxon, who loved sharing gossip more than anything else on earth.

      He felt like a fool standing here, clutching a vase of pink rosebuds, squared off with a snarling dog. Yet it was obvious the German shepherd wasn’t going to let him cross.

      Hitting on a new plan, Alan dug out his cell phone and punched in the number written on the crumpled business card. She might be working in the upper cottage. He had no idea whether looms made more noise than that fool dog. He frankly doubted it, but then he knew nothing about weaving.

      The phone rang and rang. If he took the cell away from his ear, he could hear it ring in the cottage across the way. Listening through at least twenty rings, he finally swore again, closed the phone, and stowed it away. That was when he noticed the garbage can sitting near his Jeep. Damned if sticking out of it wasn’t a still-wrapped basket of fruit.

      “Phew! Stinko!” Striding up to the container, Alan waved away a swarm of flies and saw that the fruit had rotted. He would bet ten to one that Ms. Ashline had read the card Vestal had composed in his name and then tossed the whole thing in the trash. Hell, the proof was staring at him. She had tossed away a kind gesture, lock, stock and basket. The card lay on top of the torn cellophane.

      Alan moved away from the odor and the flies, wondering what kind of person could do that—throw away an apology, judging a man she didn’t know. Unless she just hated men, period.

      That notion raised his hackles. It made him want to lob the damn vase at her front window. But, no, that’d probably be the type of macho jerk action she’d expect him to pull.

      Instead, baring his own teeth at the dog, Alan stalked across the bridge and roared, “Hush up!” The animal backed off with a surprised whimper, just long enough to give Alan a chance to set the vase on the porch. “Pitch those in the trash,” he yelled at her tightly closed door. “You can’t hide forever. We have unfinished business, you and I. One day we’ll meet. Bank on it!”

      Because the shepherd had recovered from the onslaught, and now raced at him again, barking furiously, Alan lost no time hotfooting it back to his Jeep. Though he was sweating like a pig and panting like a man twice his age, he felt a measure of satisfaction at accomplishing his mission.

      And oddly, he hadn’t felt so alive in months. Not—he realized with shock—since the accident. As he started the Jeep and made a sweeping turn, aiming the vehicle downhill to the highway, he thought about the hermit he’d become in recent months. And he didn’t like the picture. Didn’t like it at all.

      FLATTENED AGAINST THE WALL between the window and the door, Laurel waited several long minutes following her visitor’s last diatribe. She wished she’d had a clearer look at him. Framed against the trees, with the backdrop of brilliant sunlight, he’d been little more than a shadow.

      She’d apparently out-waited him at last. Dog had stopped his incessant barking. Venturing another glance through a gap in the curtain, she saw that the pesky man had indeed gone.

      Laurel opened the door just a little, and Dog trotted up, shaking his shaggy coat. “Good boy,” she said, praising his efforts as she stepped out and rubbed his ears. He seemed to grin at her, slobbering on her jeans when he rose on hind legs to lick her face. Dropping again, the dog lowered his head to sniff at something behind the screen. A low growl alerted Laurel and she went to investigate.

      A cut-glass vase holding several rosebuds of a delicate pink winked at her in the flickering light. Laurel’s breath caught in her throat. He’d left her flowers? Roses. Store-bought roses.

      Kneeling, she fingered the soft, fragrant petals. She had to shove Dog’s nose aside as she hesitantly picked up the vase. Breathing in the light, sweet scent, she smiled through suddenly teary eyes. This must be what he’d shouted at her to pitch. She thought he’d retrieved his earlier offering of fruit from the garbage can. Why on earth would the man brave being bitten by Dog to leave flowers for an ungrateful wretch who’d disposed of his first gift? Fruit baskets weren’t cheap. Nor were roses in cut-glass vases. Too bad they’d been purchased with the profits from whiskey, she thought with a sigh.

      She nudged open the screen door, letting Dog lead the way inside. Despite everything, she couldn’t help being touched. Laurel tried the vase in three separate locations before finally carrying it up the hill to her loom cottage. Shabbily though she’d treated him, Laurel reasoned it didn’t mean she shouldn’t enjoy the first bouquet anyone had ever given her. Well, technically she supposed, three rosebuds, some fronds of fern and a stalk of baby’s breath wasn’t a bona fide bouquet. Nevertheless, they were lovely.

      Gazing at them, she felt more…more…well, more for the giver than she’d wanted to. Guilt cloaked her as she took a seat at one of her floor looms, which she’d set up for weaving a commissioned rose-patterned bedspread.

      Alan Ridge’s roses sat on the windowsill, reminding her how abominably she’d acted.

      Whether he was aware of it or not, Mr. Ridge had made a favorable impression, and she should probably revise her earlier opinion. She was sorry she hadn’t gone out to see him. Maybe she should call him—just to say thank-you.

      Humming a tuneless melody, Laurel kept time alternately with the foot pedals and the beater bar of her giant loom. The double-rose pattern her client had selected for this piece dated back to the late seventeen hundreds. An elderly weaver who’d given Laurel the pattern had painstakingly written directions with a stubby pencil on tablet paper. The old weaver called the entwined roses “Bachelor Among the Girls.” Did that describe Alan Ridge? Laurel supposed not. Eva Saxon from the flower shop had said Ridge’s wife had died in an auto accident. That made him a widower.

      So Laurel could call this version of the pattern “Widower among the Ladies.” Given his stature in the community, if he handed out roses willy-nilly, Alan Ridge had to be a hit with every unattached female for miles around.

      A hit with everyone except her. The kindness of his gesture aside, Laurel still disliked the man’s business. Did he know or care how many potentially good people had problems with whiskey? How many lives had been destroyed by liquor? On second thought, she wouldn’t be phoning the whiskey baron of Ridge City to say thank-you anytime soon. Laurel had made one monstrous

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