LITMIR.BIZ

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the boys in question if they didn’t meet his demands, a mortifying prospect.

      It was probably a good thing those who weren’t thrilled about Riley’s return didn’t know their new chief of police had once included blackmail in his repertoire. She and Alex had spent every Saturday for two months taking over his customary duty of mowing and edging the McKnights’ lawn in exchange for Riley’s promise to destroy the tape.

      All the teasing and mischief of their childhood seemed worlds away, buried deep under the weight of all that had come later. Her father’s scandalous death, her mother’s subsequent breakdowns, his father’s midlife crisis that had decimated his family and Riley’s own wild youth.

      Sometimes she thought she would give anything to go back to that peaceful time, when the only thing she had to worry about in junior high was her algebra grade and Riley leaking to Jeff Bradford that she had a crush on him.

      After another half hour while he spent considerable time on his cell phone with, she assumed, officers working the other crime scenes, he finally collected the last evidence and loaded everything into a bag.

      “That should do it,” he said. “I’m going to send everything here to the crime lab and hopefully we can get a print or two.”

      “Thanks, Riley. I really appreciate everything you’ve done.”

      “No problem. I hope to have information for you as soon as possible.”

      He gave her the big, broad, charming smile he had perfected as the youngest and only boy in a family of five sisters, the same smile that helped him wiggle out of more trouble than she cared to think about.

      A little sizzle of attraction sparked through her, just like the flickering lights floating down the mountainside in the hands of skiers during the annual Christmas Eve candle festival at the resort. She frowned, especially when he stepped a little closer and reached for her hand.

      “It really is terrific to see you, Claire. When things settle a little, what do you say I take you up to the resort for dinner so we can catch up under better circumstances?”

      Okay, she had been out of the dating scene for pretty much ever, since she had started seeing Jeff when she was fifteen, but that sounded suspiciously like Riley McKnight was asking her out.

      “Uh.” Brilliant answer, she knew. She couldn’t help it—she couldn’t remember the last time anything beyond leaving her grocery list at home managed to fluster her. Surely she must have misunderstood. He was just being polite, wasn’t he?

      “It was only a simple dinner invitation, Claire.” A dimple quirked at the edge of his mouth. “I didn’t intend to send you into a panic.”

      She forced a bland smile and reminded herself this was pesky Riley McKnight. “The day you send me into a panic is the day I dye my hair purple and join a punk-rock band.”

      “Now that I would love to see.”

      Too late, she remembered that he never backed down from a challenge. Once when they were kids, Alex had been grounded for a month when she dared her brother to ride his bike down from the top of the Woodrose Mountain trail without hitting his brakes once. He’d made it almost to the bottom before his spectacular crash—and, of course, never once considered braking to slow his descent. That would have been cheating.

      That was years ago. A man didn’t become a decorated law enforcement officer without gaining a little wisdom along the way and learning how to pick his battles, right?

      “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to catch up,” she answered as calmly as she could manage. “Alex tells me you’re renting the old Harper place on Blackberry Lane. That’s just down the street from my house. I’m in the redbrick house with the portico.”

      He smiled again. “Great. Guess I know where to head when I need to borrow a cup of sugar.”

      How on earth did he manage to make such a simple statement sound vaguely sexy? She decided to ignore it—just as she decided it would probably be better not to mention it had been a long time since she’d loaned anyone a cup of sugar—or enjoyed any other euphemism, for that matter.

      “Is it all right if I reopen the store now? I can’t afford to be closed all day.”

      “As far as the police are concerned, sure. Do you need me to send somebody over to help you clean up?”

      She shook her head. “I’ll check around and see if I can round up a crew.”

      “Okay. So I’ll call you, right?”

      She frowned. She was so out of practice at this, she had no idea how to tactfully discourage him. Better to just plow ahead, she decided. “Riley, I don’t know if that’s such a great idea…”

      He gave her a long, amused look. “Funny, I figured you’d want to know what’s going on with the case.”

      “Of course I do!”

      “What else did you think I meant?”

      She had no way of answering that without sounding like an idiot. Now she remembered why he used to drive her and Alex crazy.

      “Absolutely nothing. Please do call me. About the case anyway.”

      “Right. I’ll be in touch.”

      Only after he left and she moved to close the door behind him did she remember that silly horoscope. Something fun and exciting is heading your way. That was Riley McKnight, all right. Too bad she wasn’t in the market for either of those things—and especially not with her best friend’s younger brother.

       CHAPTER TWO

      FOR THE FIRST TIME IN months, Claire was relieved when business was slow. She didn’t know how she could provide any sort of decent customer service when she still had hours of work to do clearing up the mess the burglars had left behind.

      In desperation, she had finally swept the tens of thousands of spilled beads into one huge bin to be sorted back into compartmentalized trays. If she’d been forced to tackle it by herself, she didn’t know what she would have done.

      “This is going to take months. You know that, don’t you, honey?”

      Ruth seemed to read her mind, in that uncanny way her mother had perfected. Claire managed to keep from grinding her teeth, but before she could answer, her best friend chimed in from the other end of the worktable.

      “Are you kidding, Mrs. T.?” Alex McKnight’s dimple, much like her brother’s, flashed with her grin. “You’ve got the town’s best and brightest beaders here. With all of us superwomen working together, we can probably cut the job down to three weeks, tops.”

      “I say we can do it in two,” Evie Blanchard, Claire’s assistant manager, spoke in her quietly cheerful way. Monday was supposed to be her day off, but when Evie heard about the burglary, she had insisted on cutting short a late-season cross-country ski outing to help with the cleanup effort.

      Evie and Alex were two of the seven women surrounding the String Fever worktable, each with a small kaleidoscopic pile of beads in front of them they were sorting by color and shape into compartmentalized trays that lined the middle of the table. After that, the spilled beads would have to be sorted by size and type—furnace glass, handblown glass, semiprecious stones, cloisonné—and organized once more on the shelves.

      Claire’s mother sat at one end near Maura—Alex’s next oldest sister—and Mary Ella, their mother. To Claire’s left was Evie and on her right was Katherine Thorne, who had sold her the store nearly two years ago, while Alex sat across the table.

      Chester, of course, presided from his place of honor on his favorite blanket, curled up on his side. Sometimes she thought half her customers came into the store just to visit her dog, who was never quite as happy as when he was

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